Malaysia has banned 11 books for allegedly giving a false portrayal of Islam, such as by linking the religion to terrorism and the mistreatment of women.

The government ordered the books, most of them released by U.S. publishers, to be blacklisted earlier this month because they are not in line with what we call the Malaysian version of Islam, said Che Din Yusoh, an official with the Internal Security Ministry's publications control unit.

Some of them ridicule Islam as a religion, or the facts are wrong about Islam, like associating Islam with terrorism ... or saying Islam mistreats women, he said. Once you mention something which is not correct, it's not proper.

The banned books include eight English-language ones, such as The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and its Role in Terrorism, Secrets of the Quran: Revealing Insights Into Islam's Holy Book and Women in Islam. There are also three books written in the local Malay language.

Government authorities regularly review the contents of books and publications that could have sensitive material, mostly regarding religion and sex, Che Din said.

Islamic extremists have murdered a Pakistan man after mistaking him for his brother who had been accused of blasphemy against Islam.

Simon Emmanuel was the brother of Younis Tasadaq, who was imprisoned in 1998 on charges that he had committed blasphemy against Islam. Due to pressure from human rights organizations, however, Tasadaq was released and fled to the United States in 1999. Last year, he decided to visit his ailing mother, and when certain extremist Muslims found out about his arrival, they decided to kill him. At midnight on January 9, 2008 a group of extremists arrived at the house where Tasadaq was staying and shot his older brother to death, mistaking him for Tasadaq.

The Pakistan police in the area attempted to cover up the shooting by treating it as a suicide case and did not register a case against the killers.

The Archnutter of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has called for new laws to protect religious sensibilities that would punish “thoughtless and cruel” styles of speaking.

Williams, who has seen his own Anglican Communion riven by fierce invective over homosexuality, said the current blasphemy law was “unworkable” and he had no objection to its repeal ...BUT... whatever replaces it should “send a signal” about what was acceptable.

This should be done by stigmatising and punishing extreme behaviours that have the effect of silencing argument.

The Archbishop, delivering the James Callaghan Memorial Lecture said it should not just be a few forms of extreme behaviour that were deemed unacceptable, leaving everything else as fair game.: The legal provision should keep before our eyes the general risks of debasing public controversy by thoughtless and, even if unintentionally, cruel styles of speaking and acting.

Dr Williams said: It is clear that the old blasphemy law is unworkable and that its assumptions are not those of contemporary lawmakers and citizens overall. But as we think about the adequacy of what is coming to replace it, we should not, I believe, miss the opportunity of asking the larger questions about what is just and good for individuals and groups in our society who hold religious beliefs.

Dr Williams was criticised by the National Secular Society who accused him of promoting self-serving and dangerous ideas. Terry Sanderson, president, said that the Archbishop’s speech was a blatant pitch for new legislation to replace the blasphemy laws that the Government are planning to scrap.

The Government is at present consulting the Church of England about its plans to repeal the blasphemy laws before introducing the changes when the Criminal Justice Bill is in committee stage in a few weeks.

It is as if the prolonged and widespread debate on the recently-introduced religious hatred legislation had never happened, said Sanderson. Dr Williams takes us right back to the beginning with his special pleading for the protection of religious feelings – in other words, another form of blasphemy law that would be even worse than the one we’re about to ditch.

Sanderson pointed out that the Racial and Religious Hatred Act – which had been under consideration for five years - was now on the statute book. It was enacted only after a great deal of bitter dispute between religious interests and those who feared for free speech.

There is also now in law a concept of religious aggravation that can be applied to some public order offences. It carries a potential prison sentence of seven years. This is draconian and extreme by any measure – and now the Archbishop appears to want something else.

Sanderson said that the Archbishop appeared in his speech to be making excuses for those who rioted about the Salman Rushdie case and threatened the author with death. He also seems to think that those who created lethal street protests over the Danish cartoons had a point. The Archbishop’s speech is, at base, self-serving and dangerously illiberal,” Mr Sanderson said. “We certainly hope that the Government is not now going to bring forward something even more extreme as a quid pro quo for abolishing blasphemy.

Comment: Interpretation

31st January 2008

From MediawatchWatch see full article

Owing to the Archbishop’s opaque style of discourse, it is unclear whether or not Times reporter Ruth Gledhill is correct in her interpretation of his James Callahan Memorial Lecture. Other reports, from more overtly religious sources, do not put the same spin on it.

This appears to be the section which has led the Times to shout that he is calling for new legislation. It’s not quite there, is it? Williams said:

"It is clear that the old blasphemy law is unworkable and that its assumptions are not those of contemporary lawmakers and citizens overall. But as we think about the adequacy of what is coming to replace it, we should not, I believe, miss the opportunity of asking the larger questions about what is just and good for individuals and groups in our society who hold religious beliefs".

Whichever way you look at it, he was talking drivel.

Denmark's national library is to risk re-opening an international political storm by housing the cartoon images of the prophet Muhammad that provoked violent convulsions throughout the Islamic world two years ago.

The royal library in Copenhagen has declared the drawings to be of historic value and is trying to acquire them for "preservation purposes".

The library, widely acknowledged as the most significant in Scandinavia, has agreed to take possession of the caricatures on behalf of the museum of Danish cartoon art, a spokesman told the Art Newspaper.

Negotiations with the artists behind the 12 cartoons are said to be at an advanced stage. Several have agreed to donate the works for nothing but the museum may have to buy some of them. One has already been sold to a private buyer.

Jytte Kjaergaard, a spokeswoman for the library, said they were unlikely to be displayed publicly and insisted the decision was not intended to be controversial: We are not interested in an exhibition, we are interested in them being kept safe for future generations because they have created history in Denmark. This is the obvious place to keep them because we have all the security measures in place.

It would be very difficult for a private person to come in and sabotage them because to see them for research purposes you will need a letter of consent from your university professor. They will be treated like any rare book.

The library does not expect to have to pay large sums for the cartoons, after Denmark's main auction houses declined to handle any proposed sale.

However, another Danish museum has expressed interest in including the cartoons in an exhibition about freedom of expression. Ervin Nielsen, the director of the Danish media museum in Odense, said: If the library acquires them, we would like to show them together with media reports about the publication and the protests against it.

He said the feature would also cover the violent aftermath of the cartoon controversy. As we would document the incidents around the publication and not simply show the works, I do not expect strong reactions. We do not want to provoke, but inform.

Kasem Said Ahmad, spokesman for the Danish Muslim Society, which headed the original campaign against the cartoons, called the library's decision a "provocation" but said his organisation would ignore it as part of its new strategy. We will not be holding any demonstrations as we got nothing from the Danish courts when we tried to sue the newspapers. We will ignore all provocations in future.

Representatives from the Isan Buddhism and Culture Promotion Network and several other groups in Northeast Thailand called on the company to change the name of the beer to avoid tarnishing the reputation of northeastern people.

They said the name Isan Beer could lead to a misunderstanding that northeastern people of Thailand, fondly called Isan people, are obsessed with drinking alcohol.

Such a misunderstanding, they claimed, could be deep-rooted to become a negative value for the younger generation and detrimental to the society and culture of the region.

They submitted an open letter to Khon Kaen governor and Boon Rawd Brewery executives to demand a change of the name. They also asked the company to stop advertising its product in the media as well as supporting cultural events in the province.

Should the company ignore their protest, they said, they would gather signatures of one million protestors to further submit their demand to the government.

Bilkis Bano was living quietly as the pregnant, uneducated wife of a Muslim cattle trader. Then a Hindu mob gang-raped her and burnt 13 relatives alive.

Six years on, the frail, softly spoken mother has become a symbol of courage for Muslims and women across India after battling the system to bring her attackers to justice.

A special court in Bombay sentenced 11 Hindu men to life in prison this week for their roles in Ms Banu’s ordeal – one of the most notorious atrocities of the anti-Muslim riots that engulfed the western state of Gujarat in 2002.

The court also jailed a policeman for three years for falsifying evidence at the trial, which is seen as a test case for thousands of other victims of the riots – especially those who were raped. It refrained from using the death penalty and acquitted seven others, including five policemen accused of destroying evidence by burying Ms Bano’s relatives with salt to make their bodies decompose faster.

Ms Bano hailed the judgment as a victory for India’s 148 million Muslims and vowed to continue her struggle until the seven other suspects were convicted: This judgment does not mean the end of hatred that I know still exists in the hearts and minds of many people . . . but it does mean that somewhere, somehow, justice can prevail. This judgment is a victory not only for me but for all those innocent Muslims who were massacred and all those women whose bodies were violated because, like me, they were Muslims.

About 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were burnt, beaten or hacked to death in the violence that began in March 2002 after 59 Hindu activists died when their train caught fire in the town of Godhra. Hindu groups blamed a Muslim mob for the fire, although an inquiry later found that it was an accident.

The Supreme Court also found that Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist chief minister of Gujarat, was complicit in the violence, comparing him to Nero, who played his lute as Rome burnt.

Six Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) extremists stormed a house church, abducted two Christians and severely beat them onJanuary 17 in Madhya Pradesh state’s Rewa district.

Brandishing swords, knives, tridents and sticks, the alleged members of the Hindu extremist Bajrang Dal arrived on three motorbikes at a house church prayer meeting in Pathigaon village and began forcing Vijaya Kumar Maurya and Keera Lal to come with them to a police station, said the Rev. Augustine Jebakumar of GEMS, an indigenous Christian organization.

Other believers said they would like to accompany Maurya and Lal to the police station, at which point the Hindu extremists beat the two Christians, took them to a jungle, and beat them again.

Irked at shoppers who blatantly ignore the decade-old ruling for males and females to pay at separate check-out counters in supermarkets and department stores, Nik Aziz has called for stricter enforcement.

The Kelantan chief also ordered the local municipal council to slap compounds of up to RM1,000 on errant operators who failed to advise their customers to queue accordingly.

Errant shoppers, however, will be spared.

The directive takes effect immediately. As for families who do not want to be separated during the process, Nik Aziz said another counter could be set up for them.

Nik Aziz said although supermarket and department store operators had introduced separate check-out counters following the ruling in 1996, they had failed to ensure that their customers obeyed the ruling.

Speaking at a press conference later, Nik Aziz said the ruling on separate check-out counters for men and women was necessary to curb social ills among young couples who, among others, smooched openly. It would also prevent perverts from groping women while queuing up at the counters.

We want to nip the problem in the bud. Other shoppers are hesitant to step in and tell these people off for fear of being reprimanded. We want to instil the understanding that men and women cannot rub shoulders. By segregating the shoppers by their genders, these problems can be avoided and there will be less cases of adultery, pre-marital sex and rape.

Since there are more female shoppers, there are more counters for them but they can still use the counters for families. Males, however, must pay at their designated counter, he said.

A public consultation into domestic abuse, forced marriage and "honour crimes" is to be launched by UK MPs.

The six-week online inquiry by the Home Affairs Select Committee hopes to gain testimony from survivors of all forms of physical and psychological abuse.

Responses will help the committee formulate recommendations to ministers on how to tackle the issues.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the committee, said domestic violence - whether by a relative, spouse or partner - constituted about 15% of all violent crime: Huge numbers of women and men are affected daily by these crimes. Yet their voices are not often enough heard. We want to listen to those who have experienced domestic abuse and forced marriage, since they know better than anyone else what works and what doesn't. What they say in the consultation will help us decide our recommendations to the government."

The consultation will run from 21 January to 29 February and all responses will be confidential and anonymous.

Death came for Hatun Surucu at a cold bus stop here in Berlin three years ago. The 23-year-old was the sixth Muslim woman murdered by a relative in Berlin in as many months for being "too Western."

Hatun had divorced a cousin she had been forced to marry by her Turkish-Kurdish family when she was 16. She had stopped wearing a headscarf and was living with her 5-year-old son independent of her family. She was training to become an electrician and dating German men.

That last detail was probably why her (then) 18-year-old brother killed her.

He allegedly bragged to his girlfriend about what he'd done. One can only wonder at the patriarchal irony: bragging to his girlfriend about killing his sister for having a boyfriend. He was sentenced to prison for nine years and three months.

As for the Said sisters, 17-year-old Sarah and 18-year-old Amina, death found them on New Year's Day in the back of their father's taxi cab, where he left them after shooting them. Family members say their Egyptian-born, Muslim father was given to fits of violence, threats and gun-waving rants about how Western culture was threatening the chastity of his daughters.

When Muslims in the West are not in the headlines for the latest terror threat, they are scrutinized for how poorly they are integrating into their respective societies.

But these Muslim girls and women were murdered by their relatives for integrating too well. Others will die until there is a difficult resolution about Muslim girls and women that for too long has been denied and hidden beneath layers of knee-jerk defensiveness.

Adding to the furor over whether non-Muslims have the right to use the word “Allah” in their publications and religious practice, it is reported that officials confiscated English-language Christian children’s books because they contained images of prophets.

The government reportedly said Internal Security Ministry officials confiscated the books because their illustrations of prophets offended the sensitivities of Muslims. Islam, which shares some prophets in common with Christianity, prohibits the portrayal of prophets.

Enforcement officials of the Publications and Al-Quran Texts Control Department under the Internal Security Ministry reportedly confiscated the books from three bookstores in Johor Bahru, Senawang and Ipoh in mid-December.

The books have been sent to the department’s headquarters in Putrajaya for investigation. Managers of the MPH bookstores reportedly said they will wait for the Internal Security Ministry’s decision on the books.

In a statement released on January 17 , the Rev. Dr. Hermen Shastri, general-secretary of the Council of Churches Malaysia questioned how the books could be offensive to Muslims when they were not meant for them. In the strongly worded statement about the seizures, Shastri said government officials have no right and have overstepped their bounds by confiscating Christian literature.

He urged the prime minister and his Cabinet to take immediate action to put a stop to such seizures and to amend administrative rules and regulations especially in the Internal Security Ministry that give a free hand to enforcement officials to act at their whim and fancies.

At the same time, the debate over whether non-Muslims can use the word “Allah” in publications and religious practice was stoked when the Internal Security Ministry told the Sun on January 16 that it had confiscated a total of 163 publications comprising 18 titles from bookshops nationwide.

A ministry official told the daily that the seizures were made because the word “Allah” was used in the books. But Deputy Internal Ministry Minister Johari Baharum reportedly said that the ministry did not target Christian books.

An underground market for the new unauthorised Tom Cruise biography has sprung up on auction site eBay, with Australian buyers willing to pay a significant premium for the book.

There were dozens of auctions for Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography - many offering multiple copies - and bidders willing to pay up to $61.50. The book is available on Amazon.com for about $30, including shipping.

The book is now number one on the Amazon best-seller list.

It will not be printed in Australia and US distributors have now said they will no longer export the book, by British author Andrew Morton, outside the US and Canada.

But eBay sellers are getting around the ban on the book by having partners make bulk retail purchases in the US.

We've got two shipments coming, the first is 150 books," said a man selling the books on ebay, Wojtek: We're buying multiples of 100 at a time. The demand is quite substantial, we need to get in as many as we can as quick as possible.

EU justice ministers have expressed concern about a far-right Dutch lawmaker's plan to make a potentially inflammatory film about the Koran, ministers and officials have said.

They said that Dutch justice officials had raised the issue at informal talks in Slovenia, and had called for EU support, amid concern that the short film could reignite tensions with Muslims after the Danish cartoons affair.

It would, of course, have important repercussions for other countries of the European Union as well, Luxembourg Justice Minister Luc Frieden told AFP, on the sidelines of the talks: It is our moral duty to call upon everybody, to make people aware, so that they do not abuse their fundamental rights of freedom of expression: We must also protect those who may be hurt or harmed by irresponsible statements.

Far-right deputy Geert Wilders has been in the spotlight since he announced in the Netherlands in November that he plans to make a short film to show that Islam's holy book is "a fascist book" that "incites people to murder".

Dutch observers fear that Wilders will burn or tear up the Koran in it.

It remains unclear if and when the movie will be shown. Wilders told Saturday's edition of Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that it would be several weeks yet, after earlier giving a date of the end of January.

De Telegraaf said it had viewed some rushes from the film: The opening shot shows to the left the cover of the Koran, and to the right the words 'Warning: this book contains shocking pictures'. Then images such as a decapitation in Iraq, a stoning in Iran and an execution in Saudi Arabia, where sharia (Islamic law) is applied are shown, it said.

In another twist to the story, Wilders' party spokesman said the lawmaker would take legal action against a clip circulating on the Internet where a poster with his picture is riddled with bullets.

Wilders has been under heavy police protection since the 2004 murder of Dutch director and columnist Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh was killed by a radical Muslim after he directed a film criticising the position of women in Islam.

Numerous Islamic associations have already urged Muslims in the country to stay calm and not allow themselves to be provoked.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said the Netherlands is ready to act quickly if the film causes unrest, and stressed that "provocations" have no place in the Dutch tradition of tolerance.

US Catholics are calling for the cancellation of Jerry Springer – The Opera in Concert scheduled for performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 29 and 30.

The controversial production is being opposed by The American TFP and its America Needs Fatima campaign. The group’s web site, www.tfp.org, is asking its readers to voice their concern by signing an e-mail protest addressed to Mr. Sanford Weill, Chairman of the Carnegie Hall Board of Directors.

The e-mail message states: The show is vulgar beyond description and is an egregious display of blasphemy. Over 82% of America is Christian. Millions feel insulted by this show.

We’re hoping Carnegie Hall will just cancel the show and avoid becoming a center for the promotion of blasphemy and indecency, said TFP spokesman Robert Ritchie. The show mocks everything Catholics hold sacred: the crucifixion, Jesus and the Virgin Mary. The Annunciation is described as a rape. Nudity and profanity abound and Catholic beliefs are ravaged.

The United Nations has called on Afghanistan to review the case of an Afghan journalist sentenced to death this week for blasphemy, saying it had doubts about whether the trial had been fair.

An Afghan court sentenced Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter with the Jahan-e Now daily paper, to death on Tuesday after he was found guilty of blasphemy.

The pressures for punishment, warnings to journalists, as well as the holding of this case in closed session without Mr Kambakhsh having legal representation point to possible misuse of the judicial process, Bo Asplund, chief UN representative in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

Afghanistan’s constitution commits it to upholding Islamic and universal human rights values, which are clearly compatible. We urge a proper and complete review of this case as it goes through the appeals process.

Today we got a letter from the head of the number one Turkish atheist site which has been removed by the Turkish government twice. Once under the original domain and again under another domain. Unfortunately, the owner is unable to fight this in court because to do so, he would have to identify himself which, if you're familiar, will end up resulting in his head being chopped off by the peaceful and loving Muslims who work for Allah. If you speak Turkish and you are an atheist please support this site:

Ateizm.org , the most prominent non-profit Turkish web site on atheism and religions was closed for the second time in December 2007, under orders from a Turkish court. Ateizm.org was established in 2000 by three young Turkish atheists who devoted themselves to the enlightenment of Turkish people. Ateizm.org hosts an online discussion board named Ateistforum, one of the busiest forums for the Turkish speaking online community over the Internet.

Many aspects of Ateizm.org are considered to be revolutionary for Turkey. First time in the history of Turkey every conceivable aspect of Islam is being openly, scientifically, honestly and courageously discussed and criticized. Over the years many thousands of articles appeared in the forum, many of which referred to the verses of Koran and Hadits. With the possible exception of Ilhan Arsel and Turan Dursun's studies, Koran had never been criticized in Turkey so much before. In addition to these short communications, numerous satires, short stories, poems, comments and lengthy articles were published. A few years after the inception of Ateizm.org, a separate science forum was established and started to enlighten young Turkish minds.

During its lifetime Ateizm.org was hacked three times and experienced some serious hosting problems. We survived all of them with flying colors and started over wherever we had left. Last year, however, our web site encountered a different and more ominous kind of problem. In June 2007, without warning, our web site was closed to its Turkish audience with a court order based on a legal action taken by a Turkish creationist named "Adnan Oktar" (now widely known by his pen name "Harun Yahya"Eye-wink. Since ateizm.org was hosted in the US, it remained accessible from abroad, but inaccessible to its main audience in Turkey. If we hired a lawyer and challenged the court order, we probably would have won our case. But we do not want to disclose our identities. This is our biggest weakness. According to our lawyer, there is no way to take a legal action in Turkey and remain anonymous at the same time. Many Turkish intellectuals who were against Islam and outspoken about their views on religion were murdered by Islamic fundamentalists in the past. We do not want to risk our lives.

Since we were unable to challenge the court order, we chose to change our domain name to Ateizm1.org and remained in operation. We continued to bitterly criticize a Turkish creationist organization called "Science Research Foundation" ("Bilim Arastirma Vakfi" or "BAV"Eye-wink and its honorary president Harun Yahya. In December 2007 Ateizm.org (then called Ateizm1.org) was closed to Turkish audience for the second time by another court order.

During 2007 Turkish Telecom has been busy blocking access to many other web sites(*), including YouTube, but they had to back off from YouTube ban due to public outrage.

We know that if Turkish media or Turkish Government is criticized in Europe or US, they listen and pay more attention to it. Becoming a full member of the European Union is crucial for Turks, therefore whenever issues related to democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and alike are raised in the West, they are taken seriously, sometimes even addressed by the government, particularly if the issue is something that affects Turkey's image or credibility in the West. Therefore it is vitally important that we find prominent international allies eager to support our cause by publicizing this issue as much as possible. We need a lot of noise!

Some of the web sites blocked by Turkish Telecom in 2007:

mfipb.com
antoloji.com
calinmisgenclik.com
calinmis-genclik.com
sozluk.sourtimes.org
gizliweb.com
19.org
superpoligon.com
adnanoktar.com
cevaplar.wordpress.com
yahyaharun.com
adnanoktar.wordpress.com
bilimvedin.blogspot.com
cevaplar.wordpress.com
kisiselgoruslerim.blogspot.com
ateizm.org

Philippe Val, the editor of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo who was acquitted last year of charges of “offending Muslims”, was back is court yesterday on the same charges.

The Paris Grand Mosque accepted the March 07 ruling, but it was appealed by the Union of Islamic Organisations of France and later by the Saudi-based World Muslim League.

The verdict is expected next month.

The Muslim associations aimed to show that reprinting the cartoons was a provocation equal to anti-Semitic acts or Holocaust denial which are banned under French law.

The weekly Charlie Hebdo, which put out a special edition with the cartoons, argued religions are not beyond criticism and letting Muslims censor the media would curtail a basic right.

A Private Malaysian television station 8TV has been banned from broadcasting live and delayed telecast concerts for three months.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said it has also imposed a ban on artiste Faizal Tahir for live or delayed concerts aired by other TV stations for the same period.

MCMC corporate communications department director Muhamad Tahir Muhamad Noor said in a statement that the rulings, following an investigation into the live Rockin' Birthday Concert by 8TV on Sunday where Faizal bared his chest

He said 8TV had failed to comply with conditions for a live and delayed telecast: The commission found the artiste’s act was intended without taking into account the sentiments and sensitivities of the viewers and public values.

During the Rockin' Birthday Concert, Faizal, a former member of nasyid group Mirwana, took off his shirt, exposing his body painted with an “S” in red.

A politician has warned that a "fear of Islam" is governing Holland after he delayed the release of a short film attacking the Koran.

Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, who compares the Muslim holy book to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, sparked government panic after saying the anti-Islam film would be released tomorrow.

As Dutch police prepared for a weekend of riots and Wilders was told by the authorities that he would have to leave country, he launched a new attack on "intolerant" Islam while announcing that his 10-minute film attacking the Muslim faith would be postponed for two weeks.

Iran's parliament, the Majlis, this week warned of extensive repercussions from Muslims throughout the globe if the film was broadcast.

Pope Benedict XVI has said the media were too often used irresponsibly to spread "violence and vulgarity" and impose "distorted models" of social and family life. He urged the world's communicators instead to adopt what he called "info-ethics".

In a message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Communications Day, Pope Benedict said the media often sought to create reality rather than report it, with agendas dictated by "the dominant interests" of the day. This is what happens when communication is used for ideological purposes or for the aggressive advertising of consumer products. When communication loses its ethical underpinning and eludes society's control, it ends up no longer taking into account the centrality and inviolable dignity of the human person he said.

He added For this reason it is essential that social communications should assiduously defend the person and fully respect human dignity. Many people now think there is a need, in this sphere, for 'info-ethics', just as we have bioethics in the field of medicine and in scientific research linked to life. He said the media in order to attract listeners and increase the size of audiences, do not hesitate at times to have recourse to vulgarity and violence and overstep the mark.

He praised new media such as the internet, which were changing the very face of communications, but said they were often misused. A new "info-ethics" would help to prevent the media from becoming spokesmen for economic materialism and ethical relativism, the true scourges of our time, and from being exploited for indiscriminate self-promotion or ending up in the hands of those who use them to manipulate consciences.

A radical Kansas-based church plans to protest actor Heath Ledger's funeral over his Academy Award-nominated role in Brokeback Mountain.

The Westboro Baptist 'Church' in Topeka claims Ledger died and is in Hell because he played a gay cowboy in the critically acclaimed Ang Lee film.

The church released a statement the same day as the star's death, quoting a Bible passage that states, Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.

 The group reportedly also plans to picket the Academy Awards this year.

A court in Afghanistan has sentenced a local journalist to death for blasphemy.

Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, was arrested on October 27 for allegedly distributing material he downloaded from the Internet and deemed offensive to Islam among fellow students at northern Balkh University.

Based on the crimes Perwiz Kambakhsh committed, the primary court yesterday sentenced him to the most serious punishment which is the death penalty, Balkh province deputy attorney general Hafizullah Khaliqyar told AFP.

The reporter's brother and fellow journalist Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi told AFP that Khaliqyar had threatened to arrest journalists who 'support' Kambakhsh at a media briefing where officials defended the arrest of the reporter.

Ignoring the threats, journalists were gathering outside Ibrahimi's house to organise a 'possible' protest.

Ibrahimi said the trial was held behind closed doors and without any lawyer defending him.

Global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders appealed to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to intervene. We are deeply shocked by this trial, carried out in haste and without any concern for the law or for free expression, which is protected by the constitution, Reporters Without Borders said: Kambakhsh did not do anything to justify his being detained or being given this sentence. We appeal to President Hamid Karzai to intervene before it is too late.

The group said Kambakhsh was supposedly arrested because of a controversial article commenting on verses in the Koran about women, although it has now been established that he was not the article's author. It seems more likely that the charges were a pretext meant to intimidate and stop his brother from reporting about the plight of women.

Kambakhsh has the right to appeal to higher courts.

Watch Ezra Levant, editor of the Canadian Western Standard, put up a robust defence of his right to publish the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

He was scandalously called to account for himself by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. See him tell them off:

Here’s a transcript from his opening statement:

For a government bureaucrat to call any publisher or anyone else to an interrogation to be quizzed about his political or religious expression is a violation of 800 years of common law, a Universal Declaration of Rights, a Bill of Rights and a Charter of Rights. This commission is applying Saudi values, not Canadian values. It is also deeply procedurally one-sided and unjust. The complainant – in this case, a radical Muslim imam, who was trained at an officially anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, and who has called for sharia law to govern Canada – doesn’t have to pay a penny; Alberta taxpayers pay for the prosecution of the complaint against me. The victims of the complaints, like the Western Standard, have to pay for their own lawyers from their own pockets. Even if we win, we lose – the process has become the punishment.

Mohammed Higazi is lucky that he was not present in an Egyptian courtroom on Tuesday. An Islamic fundamentalist lawyer made death threats against the Egyptian for converting to Christianity. To the dismay of Higazi's lawyer the judge made no objection.

What made matters even worse, the judge went so far as to express his loathing off the accused because he had converted. There was no verdict but the judge vowed that he would never let Higazy be registered as a Christian. He defended his decision by saying that Islam is the principal religion in Egypt. No mention was made of the freedom of religion established in the constitution which is a fundamental right of all citizens.

Higazy and his pregnant wife have been hiding for months at a secret location. He is the first convert who is attempting to get a judge to change the faith on his identity card from Muslim to Christian. Egyptian identity cards must report the faith of the holder. While freedom of religion exists theoretically, in practice Muslims are not allowed to change their religion in the municipal register.

When Higazy's wife, who is also a convert, became pregnant last year he decided to make the change official. Otherwise my child will automatically be registered as a Muslim. However, his application was rejected.

Higazi's lawyer Ramsis el-Naggar, who specialises in conversions, says there is no freedom of choice in Egypt, unless you're a Muslim. His law firm now represents some 400 converts. Most of his clients were originally Christian, for one reason or another converted to Islam, and now want to return to Christianity. Sometimes his clients are people who regret that they changed their faith. However, many times his clients are the victims of government bureaucracy, such as children whose Christian fathers became Muslims.

So far El-Naggar has only achieved success in cases in which he could prove the person had never changed faith. In 2004 he won for the first time in the case of Mira Makram. Her husband had converted to Islam in 2002 and had forced her to sign a statement confirming that she had converted to Islam. Her religion was changed to Islam in the register without her knowledge. After two years of legal proceedings.the judge ordered that the change be rectified. Fundamentalists called for the death of Mira Makram.

The publishers of Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography have told US Amazon not to send the book to customers from outside of the USA and Canada.

The following notice has now appeared on the page detailing the book:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Publisher has authorized the distribution of this book only to customers within the United States and Canada.

However good old eBay has no problems getting this book to people outside North America.

It seems that a fair few enterprising individuals have bought stocks in the US and are distributing them via eBay.

These are busy times for Pakhshan Zangana. Head of the women's caucus in the Iraqi Kurdish parliament in Arbil, she is on the verge of pushing through a piece of legislation that is the first of its kind in the Middle East — a law criminalizing female genital mutilation (FGM). 68 out of 120 deputies signed our bill, so we could have got it passed by ministerial decree, Zangana says. But law-making is the job of parliament, and we want everybody to debate this issue openly." The bill received its first reading on Dec. 3 and is likely to be passed by February.

Affecting up to 90% of women in Egypt, Sudan and Somalia, FGM is widely seen as an African phenomenon. But it also happens to a lesser extent throughout the Middle East, particularly in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq.

If the Iraqi Kurds are leading the way today, it is partially thanks to a handful of local women's organizations that have struggled for greater awareness of the issue since the early 1990s. But the real breakthrough came in 2005 when WADI, a German non-governmental organization, published the results of its survey of 39 villages in the Germian region, east of Kirkuk.

Of 1,554 women and girls aged older than 10 interviewed by WADI's local medical team, over 60% said they had undergone the operation. Larger surveys completed since show the practice is prevalent among local Arabs and Turkmen, as well as Kurds. The surveys provide the first solid statistics on a tradition which — while practiced relatively openly in parts of Africa — is so veiled in secrecy here that brothers are often unaware their own sisters are affected.

Australian nutters have condemned a play shortly to open in Sydney depicting Jesus as a gay man who is seduced by Judas. The play also features Jesus conducting a gay marriage between two apostles.

The play, named Corpus Christi, is due to open next month as part of the city's annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

A senior Sydney churchman called the play historical nonsense. It is deliberately, not innocently, offensive and they're obviously having a laugh about it, Robert Forsyth, Anglican bishop of South Sydney, was quoted saying.

The play's director Leigh Rowney, who claims to be a Christian, accepted the play would offend some Christians but said he was keen to provoke debate about Christianity.

Playwright Terrence McNally, who is gay, received death threats when the work was performed in the United States, the Sun-Herald reported.

A man on the run from police since his teenage daughters were found shot to death in a taxicab on New Year's Day had threatened to hurt one of the girls for dating a non-Muslim boy.

Amina Said, 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were found after one of the girls called 911 from a cell phone and said she was dying. A capital murder warrant has been issued for Yaser Said, 50, who has not been seen since the Lewisville High School students were found dead.

Gail Gattrell, the sisters' great-aunt, has called the deaths an "honor killing".

The police documents also show that Patricia Said fled with her daughters in the week before the girls were killed because she was in "great fear for her life."

The police department on taped a segment for America's Most Wanted in hopes of finding him.

Minsk City Court in Belarus have imprisoned Aleksandr Sdvizhkov, an editor at the now-shuttered independent weekly Zgoda (Consensus) newspaper, for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006. Sdvizhkov was charged with “incitement of religious hatred” and sentenced to three years in a high-security prison.

Sdvizhkov was arrested on November 18 and his trial began on January 11 in Minsk, according to local news reports. He was tried behind closed doors.

Aleksei Korol, Zgoda’s former editor-in-chief, told CPJ he was shocked by the sentence given to his former colleague. The court ruling is disproportionate to his actions, said Korol, adding that Zgoda’s staff apologized to the Belarusian Muslim community at the time.

Belarusian Islamic leader Ismail Voronovich said he wanted authorities to reprimand the journalist, not jail him. I thought that this case was closed and the newspaper was back working.

Sdvizhkov reprinted the controversial cartoons in Zgoda in February 2006, prompting authorities to begin an investigation into possible “incitement of religious hatred”; a month later, the paper was shuttered. Sdvizhkov fled Belarus to avoid imprisonment and returned last November to attend his father’s funeral. While in the country, the Belarusian Security Service arrested him.

Ministers have adopted a new language for declarations on Islamic terrorism. In future, fanatics will be referred to as pursuing "anti-Islamic activity".

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said that extremists were behaving contrary to their faith, rather than acting in the name of Islam.

Security officials believe that directly linking terrorism to Islam is inflammatory, and risks alienating mainstream Muslim opinion.

In her first major speech on radicalisation, Smith repeatedly used the phrase "anti-Islamic". In one passage she said: As so many Muslims in the UK and across the world have pointed out, there is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorise, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief. Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic'.

The strategy emerging across Government is to portray terrorists as nothing more than cold-blooded murderers who are not fighting for any religious cause. Al Qaeda inspired terrorism is instead being described by key figures as "more like a death cult".

Last night the Home Office stressed that no phrases have been "banned". But senior Whitehall sources have made it clear that the "war on terror" and "Islamic extremism" will not be used again by people at the top of Government or those involved in counterterrorism strategy.

In her speech, Smith said extremists who use the internet to radicalise young children would be pursued in the same way as paedophiles.

The Home Secretary described the internet as a key tool for the propagandists for violent extremism. Let me be clear: the internet is not a no-go area for government.

In the next few weeks, I will be talking to industry and, critically, those in the community about how best to do this - and how best to identify material that is drawing vulnerable young people into violent extremism. Where there is illegal material on the net, I want it removed.

Illegal material will be tracked down and removed using tactics already deployed against online paedophiles. Those guilty of grooming youngsters for terrorism could face prosecution under incitement laws.

Smith said: If we are ready and willing to take action to stop the grooming of vulnerable young people on social networking sites, then I believe we should also take action against those who groom vulnerable people for the purposes of violent extremism

Her plans also include a new unit to sift through intelligence gathered by police and security agents. The unit will be told to identify, analyse and assess not just the inner circle of extremist groups, but those at risk of falling under their influence.

There will also be measures to restrict extremist material in libraries and galleries.

Meanwhile, internet service providers said that it was not their job to police the internet for offensive comment. They said they worked with charities such as the Internet Watch Foundation which monitored the web for such content and blocked access to sites hosting illegal content where possible, but that censorship was a job for the authorities.

If we spent time searching the web's millions of pages for extremist content then we'd do nothing else, Jody Haskayne, a spokesperson for Tiscali, said. It's not an ISP's job to censor the internet.

The media watchdog Reporters without Borders (RsF) has called on Kabul to save an Afghan journalist whom religious leaders want executed and release a man under arrest for publishing a Koran in translation.

RsF said the Council of Mullahs had called for death for Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a journalism student at Balkh University in northern Afghanistan, for writing articles about the role of women in Islam that they said insulted the Muslim faith.

The calls for the death penalty for Kambakhsh highlight the growing influence of fundamentalist groups on intellectual debate, it said in a statement.

RsF also appealed for the release of Ghaus Zalmai, who was arrested in November for publishing the Koran in the local language Dari (Afghan Persian) which, according to the religious leaders, misinterpreted verses about adultery and begging.

The translation into Dari sparked an emergency debate in parliament and protests in at least two parts of the country. Muslims consider the Koran in Arabic as the literal word of God.

Parliamentarians have even accused him of being 'worse than Salman Rushdie', RsF added.

A coroner this morning returned a verdict of unlawful killing on a Muslim teenager who vanished from home after refusing an arranged marriage, saying she was the victim of a "very vile" murder.

Ian Smith, East and South Cumbria coroner, said the way Shafilea Ahmed's body had been hidden in a riverbank miles from home convinced him she was murdered, and said she probably died shortly after going missing.

After the verdict Cheshire Police vowed to continue investigating the death of the "beautiful and vulnerable young girl" until the killer or killers had been brought to justice.

Miss Ahmed, 17, disappeared four months after being taken to Pakistan by her parents to meet a potential husband. She refused to go ahead with the ceremony and even drank bleach in protest.

Her inquest heard she regularly suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her parents and was terrified about being forced into marriage.

The inquest heard that early in 2003 she ran away from home, only to be coaxed back on the promise she would not be taken to Pakistan. However, that trip went ahead and she was introduced to a suitor, but refused to go ahead with any wedding.

In September, Miss Ahmed, who wore western clothes and wanted to be a solicitor, disappeared from her home in Warrington, Cheshire.

Her parents, Iftikhar and Farzana, were arrested on suspicion of kidnap, and other members of her family were arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. All were released without charge.

Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of the Muslim Parliament in Britain, has called on his community to rise up against a culture of fear and help stamp out forced marriages and honour killings after the third high-profile court case in Britain in the past year.

Scientologists are attempting to block the spread of a video clip in which Tom Cruise zealously espouses his faith in the church.

If you're on board, you're on board, just like the rest of us, he tells those of wavering faith. We are the authorities on getting people off drugs, we can rehabilitate criminals and unite cultures.

Cruise's emotional testimonial is accompanied by a guitar riff playing the theme from Mission: Impossible. Cruise, a Scientologist for 20 years, has recently emerged as one of the controversial church's most outspoken proselytisers. Some suggest that the actor has been elevated to one of the highest echelons of t