PATRICK KELLY,
Sir, - I thought that the final months of 2001 had inured me to horror, until I read (December 21st) of the possibility of a young woman, Safya Husseini Yungar-Tudo, being executed by stoning because she bore a male child out of wedlock as the result of rape.
How can the followers of a religion which believes that God created nature through a primordial act of mercy countenance such barbarity in His name? How can any country claiming to govern by civilised human standards allow such a brutal travesty of justice?
As somebody who has lived to welcome the end of colonialism on the African continent and who has worked with admirable Muslims in Sudan, it grieves me to contemplate the possibility of such a dreadful act being perpetrated in the name of their religion by an independent African state. -
PATRICK KELLY,
Yours, etc.,
Ballysimon,
Co Limerick.