do you think this "dark side" is not publicised? i don't think there is a religion in the world that is being under attack, propeganda and critisism like islam, watch tv day and night, you never hear about judiasim because no one can say a word or he'd be called anti-semetic, although it has the worse laws ever, it is the religion that says all none jews are sub human and there to serve jews and that a jew can not be charged with murder for killing a none jew, you don't hear anything bad about christianity basically because 70% of the nation are christians and christian programs on air 24/7 , so you only hear about islam and how bad it is and how it is related to terrorism bla bla bla
Yes islam has harsh laws, islam does not tolerate crime, islam goes with the "eye for eye" rule, if you take someone's life , your life is to be taken, if you steal (something big) then you lose the hand you stole with, if you rape women or kids, you are gonna get one awful punishment aswell.
now that being said, muslims know these rules and should follow them, if you know that for dealing drugs you might get locked up for 20 years, you will not do it, or u might do it knowing the risk , same thing over there, if you know that u might lose your hand, yet you decide to rob a house, terrorise a neighbourhood or kill an elderly at home and stealing their life savings, then you asked for it,, now why go as far as criticising the punishment before you look at the crime itself.
when the consquences are harsh, people will think once and twice and three times before disturbing the community, and then you won't have a society were a woman get raped once every 4 seconds (usa statistics) or where you would hear daily about a robbery, murder, in the smallest city, nevermind big cities like LA or NY.
now if you seem to care this much about criminals and that they shouldn't get such hard punishment , let me ask u a question, would u rather these criminals get a fair treatment and get off easy everyday and have innocents killed, robbed, raped daily or many times a day ? or would u rather criminals getting harsher punishments so you will have less innocen'ts losses ???
believe me to execute 10 murderers a day in the whole country, is much better than having 500 innocents getting shot daily!!!
before going to critisize the islamic law system, look at how good it worked in lowering crime in those countries, then look at our system here and how hearing about shootings and rape became a daily routine!!! you care too much about giving nicer punishments to criminals and you forget all the victims daily, like i said any system that would prevent innocents to lose life or property regardless of how harsh it is on criminals is a good system