RabidMongoose, if you are appalled by Saudi Arabia's government, the first person that should hear your outrage is President George Bush. It is thru his support and backing that the Kingdom remains in power. I am a devout muslim and I don't feel that Saudia Arabia's government is even close to a true representation of Islamic government.
The situation the Middle East is in is not due to Islam, the leaders, or intolerance; it is due to decades of corruption, poverty and strife so that you and I (americans) can drive in our 5 mpg SUVs. Read up on a little bit of modern ME history and you'll find out how sickening it is to see what Britan and the US have done. When you live in those kinds of conditions, nothing but evil can arise. Don't blame Islam for the current predicament, it is the West's insatisable greed for cheap and easy oil. We toppled democracies, supported and protected dictators. We urged wars to be fought against governments that didn't fall in line with our doctrines.
BTW, the Taliban did ask for evidence that UBL committed those acts. And we all forget that before the Taliban came into power, there were mass riots and anarchy in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance went around pillaging and raping citizens. When "Mullah" Omar came into power, he hanged all these rapists, killed the murderers and basically imposed martial law throughout Afghanistan. I'm not trying to justify the Taliban, but because of his harshness, Afghanistan was able to experience a glimmer of civility again. Again, the Taliban wasn't even close to a true Islamic republic, but it was the best government that country had seen in 20 years.
About the jizah and other "discriminatory" practices. The jizah is basically a substitute for the Zakat, which all Muslims pay. There is nothing inherently discriminatory. It's a means of record keeping and equality. There is more inequality in most Western societies than there was during the Turks and early Islamic empires. We forget so quickly the impact of Islamic empires in the early century. Most of our mathematics prior to Newton comes from the Arabs (algebra, geometry, etc etc). Before you say soemthig like "OMG THE GREEKS INVENTED GEOMETRY RAWR SCREW THOSE INTOLERANT MUSLIMS," most every Greek and Roman document was destroyed when the Catholic Church came into power. The only surviving copies were in the Arab lands. Plutarch, Aristotle, Plato, and a host of other Greeks were only available in Arabic for hundreds of years. While the Europeans were burning witches and supplicanting themselves before the church, Jews and Christians enjoyed widespread freedom; freedom that was unrivaled until after Hitler lost WWII. Islamic empires made advances in astronmy, mathematics, writing, record keeping, transportation, archetecture long before Europe was anything. Anyways, I digress, back to the jizah. It's a means for everyone to contribute equally to the State. There is nothing in any of the Hadith that said that Jews and CHristians can not practice their religons as they please, nor anything that says one should commit wholescale genocide. Quit listening to Pat Robertson for your Islamic information.