Art. #6:  WHY DOES ISLAM OFTEN SEEM STRANGE?  Islam may seem exotic or even extreme in the modern world.  Perhaps this is because religion does not dominate everyday life in the West today, whereas Muslims have religion always uppermost in their minds, and make no distinction between secular and sacred.  They believe that the Divine Law, the Shari’a, should be taken very seriously, which is why issues related to religion are still so important. 

REBUTTAL:  Islam seems strange to most non-Muslims because IT IS STRANGE!  Any religion that has historically been spread almost exclusively by the sword, that still practices genocide and slavery, demeans women, has the highest incidence of sexual abuse of children, and that deliberately and consistently turns its back on all knowledge, unless derived from the Koran or the Hadith, is exceedingly strange!  As for taking the Shari’a seriously; any Muslim should, for his own survival, take this code of law seriously.  Under Shari’a, a Muslim renouncing Islam comes  immediately under a death sentence, and under the Koran, all Muslims are enjoined to carry out the sentence.