A Nigerian sharia court has sentenced a man to one year in prison and 100 strokes of the cane for adultery.

Mahmud Hamisu is the first man known to have been convicted of the crime in a sharia court since 2000 when 12 northern, mainly Muslim, Nigerian states began a stricter enforcement of Islamic law.

Hamisu was given 100 lashes in public just after his conviction, then moved to prison. Under Nigerian sharia law, adultery convictions require either a confession or at least three witnesses to the couple having sex.

Hamisu was taken to court by a woman who had accused him of impregnating her. She was also convicted but spared both the lashes and jail because of a mental disability.

A Saudi court has cleared two religious policemen who were charged with killing a man while attempting to capture him in May.

The case has been thrown out and the two policemen are not to be prosecuted, the judge said.

According to the judge, the investigation revealed the victim was killed after the policemen kicked him in the head. The fact that no instrument was used to beat the victim, the judge said, proved the lack of deliberate intent.

The victim was charged with selling alcoholic beverages, which are banned in Saudi Arabia. The man's family, however, will appeal the verdict, according to their lawyer.

A prosecutor is investigating whether to press charges against the Turkish publisher of a bestselling book by atheist writer Richard Dawkins for inciting religious hatred.

Publisher Erol Karaaslan said yesterday that he would be questioned by an Istanbul prosecutor as part of an official investigation into The God Delusion, written by the British expert in evolutionary biology.

Karaaslan could go on trial if the prosecutor concludes the book incites religious hatred and insults religious values, and faces up to one year in prison if found guilty, Milliyet newspaper reported.

The prosecutor started the inquiry into the book after one reader complained that passages in the book were an assault on "sacred values", Karaaslan said.

The publisher said he would be questioned today and faces prosecution both as the book's publisher and translator. The book has sold 6,000 copies in Turkey since it was published by his Kuzey publishing house in June.

The EU, which Turkey hopes to join, is pressing Ankara to change laws that curb free expression and do not fit within the bloc's standards of free speech. Turkey has said it will soften a law which makes it a crime to denigrate Turkish identity or insult the country's institutions.

Five men have gone on trial in the eastern city of Malatya for the murder of three Christian missionaries, in a case seen as a test of Turkey's willingness to tackle growing signs of religious intolerance.

The defendants face life sentences for tying up, torturing and slitting the throats of two Turks and a German on 18 April at the Malatya-based Christian publishing house they ran.

By lunchtime, the judge had ruled the case adjourned until 14 January, citing a lack of lawyers for the defence. Already, though, lawyers for the families say there is evidence the case is being poorly prosecuted.

A known member of an ultra-nationalist group, the chief suspect, Emre Gunaydin, claimed that he was put up to the murder by a man he met while working for a local newspaper, according to Turkish media reports. However, the prosecutor has not investigated Gunaydin's claims.

Lawyers are also angry that dossiers presented to the judge contain documents taken from the victims' computers, including the addresses and phone numbers of their contacts. This information is now in the public domain, said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, one of six of the families' lawyers in court. Not only has the prosecutor failed to make an adequate investigation, he has also put many other peoples' lives in danger.

Listening to proceedings, you'd think [the victims] were some sort of criminal gang, that they deserved what they got, said Ahmet Guvener, pastor of a Protestant church in the neighbouring city of Diyarbakir, who was present at the trial.

In some ways, life for Christian converts in mostly Muslim Turkey has eased in recent years. Pushing hard for EU accession, Ankara legalised missionary activity and relaxed legal restrictions on opening new churches. But the rise in anti-Western feeling since 2004 has been mirrored by a rise in violent attacks on Christian targets. Several churches were fire-bombed last year, and one Protestant church leader severely beaten. Last February, a Catholic priest in the Black Sea city of Trabzon was shot by a 16-year-old boy.

Despite official figures showing barely 350 cases of Muslims converting to Christianity in the past 15 years, nationalists – secularist and Islamist – continue to insist that missionaries represent an existential threat to the country.

Two sisters beheaded their own uncle and his wife in front of the couple's children because the man wore Western-style trousers, according to Iraqi police.

The suspected islamic militants told investigators that Youssef al-Hayali was an infidel because he did not pray and wear appropriate clothing. He was murdered along with his wife Zeinab Kamel at the school in Diyala province northwest of Baghdad where Hayali worked as a security guard.

Baptist pastor Vyacheslav Kalataevsky has been warned not to meet for worship with his fellow believers in Turkmenistan.

"Officials summoned me for what they said was a conversation, but at the end presented me with a pre-written statement saying that I agreed not to meet with my fellow-believers," he told Forum 18.

Although Kalataevsky's congregation does not oppose state registration on principle, officials kept telling him that his congregation does not have enough adult citizen members to apply for registration.

They added that unregistered religious activity, including people meeting together for worship in homes, is banned. I asked them to show me what part of the law bans unregistered worship and they were unable to do so.

A British primary school teacher arrested in Sudan faces up to 40 lashes for blasphemy after letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old was arrested at her lodgings at Khartoum's Unity High School yesterday, accused of insulting the Prophet of Islam.

Her colleagues said that they feared for her safety after reports that groups of young men had gathered outside the Khartoum police station where she was taken and were shouting death threats.

The Unity school is a Christian-run co-educational private school that teaches both Christians and Muslims and is popular with Sudanese professionals and expatriate workers.

Teachers at the school, in central Khartoum said that Ms Gibbons had made an innocent mistake by letting her pupils choose their favourite name for the toy as part of a school project.

In September, she asked a girl to bring in her teddy bear to help the Year 2 class to focus and then asked the class to name the toy. They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad. Then she explained what it meant to vote and asked them to choose the name. Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad. Each child was allowed to take the bear home at weekends and asked to write a diary about what they did with the toy. Each entry was collected in a book with a picture of the bear on the cover, next to the message "My name is Muhammad".

A spokesman for the British Embassy in Khartoum said: We are in contact with the authorities here and they have visited the teacher and she is in a good condition.

According to the Sudanese Media Centre, which is closely associated with the government, the attorney-general's office had opened proceedings against Ms Gibbons under article 125 of the criminal law (insult of faith and religions).

Under Sudan's Sharia law, the punishment for blasphemy is 40 lashes, although the teacher could also be fined or jailed for up to six months.

Hopes that a British teacher could be cleared of blasphemy charges in Sudan after naming a teddy bear Mohammed have been raised after an embassy official said the "minute" matter would be resolved very quickly.

Fears were raised that the divorced mother-of-two may be charged with the more serious offence of inciting rebellion. If found guilty of sedition, she could be imprisoned for up to three years and receive 80 lashes.

However, last night Dr Khalid al Mubarak, a spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in London, gave Miss Gibbons and her supporters hope that she would not face the harsh penalties.

He said the police had no choice but to follow procedure following a complaint from a parent, but added that the "minute" issue would be resolved amicably. The police is bound to investigate just as is the case in any country in which there is rule of law, he told BBC Radio 4's PM programme.

Our relationship with Britain is so good that we wouldn't like such a minute event to be overblown. I am pretty certain that this minute incident will be clarified very quickly and this teacher who has been helping us with the teaching of children will be safe and will be cleared.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said everything possible was being done to secure Miss Gibbons' release, with consular staff in close contact with the Sudanese authorities. They visited the teacher on Monday and plan to do so again today to make sure she has been well treated.

Concern was also raised in Sudan by Azhari Tigani, the Minister of Religious Affairs, who asked why she was arrested without a formal case being made first. We are really unhappy with the unlawful way in which she has been treated, a ministry official told The Daily Telegraph.

Meanwhile for al of these placatory words, Gillian Gibbons has now been held in jail for 3 days.

Riot police surrounded a Sudanese court as proceedings began Thursday against a British teacher charged with inciting religious hatred over letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad.

If convicted, Gillian Gibbons faces up to 40 lashes, six months in jail and a fine, Sudanese officials have said, with the verdict and any sentence up to the judge's discretion.

Reporters were briefly allowed inside but were subsequently dismissed.

Prosecutor-General Salah Eddin Abu Zaid told The Associated Press the British teacher could expect a "swift and fair trial."

Gibbons' chief defense lawyer, Kamal Djizouri, scuffled with a tight police cordon before he was allowed in. Djizouri said he would argue her case based on Islamic Sharia law and show there was absolutely no intention to insult religion, and for blasphemy to take place there must be an insult.

Episcopalian Bishop Ezekiel Kondo, Gibbons' employer said he was at the court as a witness to testify that she never intended to insult any religion, but he was also barred from entering.

The charges against Gibbons, who was arrested in her home in Khartoum on Sunday after some parents complained, have angered the British government, which urgently summoned the Sudanese ambassador to discuss the case. British and American Muslim groups also criticized the decision.

In London, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said British diplomats "will do everything to avoid" any of the possible sentences that could be imposed on the teacher. Officials said Miliband would meet with Sudan's ambassador later Thursday to discuss the case.

The country's top Muslim clerics have pressed the government to ensure that she is punished, comparing her action to author Salman Rushdie's "blasphemies" against the Prophet Muhammad.

Comment: Unwarranted Offence

29th November 2007

From the Guardian see full article

The lines which non-Muslims must not cross are being repeatedly redefined, always more restrictively, at times with dire penalties threatened.

The majority of Muslims may be much less concerned than the activists and radicals, but it is the activists and radicals who often set the pace.

This constant raising of the bar does not increase respect for Islam but instead makes it appear coercive and threatening. In Sudan, it is not the bear which is of little brain.

Comment: Islam and the modern world don't mix

29th November 2007

From the Independent see full article

Once again, secular people around the world are left reeling at the capacity of Islam to discern "insult" in the most innocuous behaviour. At one level, this sequence of events is preposterous; I'm sure there are plenty of genuine crimes to worry about in Sudan without wasting time pursuing a woman whose good intentions are manifest.

But the significance of the case goes beyond the individuals concerned, highlighting aspects of Islam as it is currently practised in countries such as Sudan and Saudi Arabia – and promoted in some European mosques – which are incompatible with the modern world. One is the role of honour, which has repeatedly been used to legitimise furious over-reactions to everything from the naming of a toy to instances of women and gay people demanding autonomy over their bodies.

The British teacher jailed for 15 days in Sudan after allowing pupils to call the class teddy bear Mohammed could be free this weekend.

Gillian Gibbons was found guilty of insulting religion and inciting hatred at the end of a day long court hearing in Khartoum amid scenes of protest from extreme Islamist groups who had called for her execution.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who earlier summoned the Sudan ambassador for an emergency meeting at Whitehall during which he pressed for Mrs Gibbons’ immediate release, said he would be ordering him back to Whitehall to explain the sentence, which he called “disappointing”.

The 15 days of Mrs Gibbons' sentence will be taken from when she was arrested on Sunday. A diplomatic expert said it was likely she would not have to serve her whole term and could be released in the next 48 hours.

The Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella group of British Muslim organisations, called the sentence completely unjustified. (Mrs Gibbons) should never have been arrested in the first place, let alone convicted of any crime, Muslim Council of Britain spokesman Inayat: There was no crime, it was a wholly innocent and naive... The worst you could say about her actions is that she was inadvertently naive. She should not be put in prison for that.

Prosecutor Babikr Abdulatif, said: “I think that the verdict is in accordance with the law because the objective is to reassure the Muslim community who felt the sanctity of their prophet had been attacked.”

A diplomatic analyst who has been following the case said that the Sudanese Government may suddenly remember that there is presidential clemency and may free Mrs Gibbons in the next few days.

Tony Blair was reluctant to discuss his Christian faith during his time in Downing Street for fear of being seen as a 'nutter', the former Prime Minister reveals in a BBC interview.

You talk about [religion] in our system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter, he tells the BBC One documentary, The Blair Years tonight.

Blair, an Anglican said to be interested in converting to Roman Catholicism, says that his faith is hugely important. There is no point in me denying it, I happen to have religious conviction. I don't actually think there is anything wrong in having religious conviction - on the contrary, I think it is a strength for people.

Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasreen has been flown out of the Indian city of Calcutta after violent protests by Muslims. The protestors accused of insulting islam

On Wednesday, police used tear gas and baton charges to control crowds calling for her Indian visa to be cancelled.

Rioters blocked roads and set cars alight. At least 43 people were hurt. More than 100 arrests were made.

At the centre of the controversy are comments she is alleged to have made to an Indian newspaper 13 years ago which quoted her as saying that alterations needed to be made to the Koran in order to provide women with more rights. A court also accused her of "deliberately and maliciously" hurting the feelings of Muslims as a result of her Bengali-language novel Lajja, or Shame, which focuses on riots between Muslims and Hindus.

Nasrin has adamantly denied making the comment that the Koran should be changed. But she has never shied away from fighting for women's rights in societies – in India and Bangladesh – where they are often a lesser consideration. On her website she writes: Women are oppressed in the East, in the West, in the South, in the North. Women are oppressed inside, outside home. Whether a woman is a believer or a non-believer, she is oppressed. Beautiful or ugly, oppressed. Crippled or not, rich or poor, literate or illiterate, oppressed. Covered or naked, she is oppressed. Dumb or not, cowardly or courageous, she is always oppressed.

Indian intelligence officials say Nasreen was flown out of Calcutta in a special plane to Delhi from where she was taken to Jaipur in the western state of Rajasthan: She was told that it was not safe for her to stay in Calcutta and she agreed to leave after some initial grumbling.

Wednesday's trouble in Calcutta began after the predominantly Muslim All-India Minority Forum called for blockades on major roads in the city. The group said Nasreen had "seriously hurt Muslim sentiments". Many Muslims say her writing ridicules Islam.

Police arrived in strength to disperse the demonstrators. Violence then broke out in Ripon Street in the north of the city and spread to Park Circus, Moulali and many other areas of central Calcutta. The army was called out. A night curfew imposed on Wednesday has now been lifted.

An appeal court in Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of lashes and added a jail sentence as punishment for a woman who was gang-raped.

The victim was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack.

When she appealed, the judges said she had been attempting to use the media to influence them.

The attackers' sentences - originally of up to five years - were doubled.

According to the Arab News newspaper, the 19-year-old woman was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in the eastern province a year-and-a-half ago.

Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years.

But the victim was also punished for violating Saudi Arabia's laws on segregation that forbid unrelated men and women from associating with each other. She was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the car of a strange man.

On appeal, the Arab News reported that the punishment was not reduced but increased to 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence.

The Arab News quoted an official as saying the judges had decided to punish the girl for trying to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.

The victim's lawyer was suspended from the case, has had his licence to work confiscated, and faces a disciplinary session.

Update: Challenge

25th November 2007

A Saudi woman sentenced to six months in jail and 200 lashes despite being gang raped has vowed to challenge the ruling in a case that has received wide publicity, embarrassing the Saudi government.

Saudi Arabia is facing growing international outrage for sentencing a gang rape victim to 200 lashes and six months in jail.

U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton led demands for the teenager to be pardoned: I urge President Bush to call on King Abdullah to cancel the ruling and drop all charges against this woman. As president I will once again make human rights an American priority around the world.

Canada's minister for women's issues, Jose Verger described the sentence as "barbaric" and New Zealand's prime minister Helen Clark urged the Saudis to show compassion for the teenager, who was raped by seven men.

Meanwhile in Mumbai, India, the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and other groups staged a silent demonstration at the Saudi Arabian consulate to protest against that country’s "inhuman” interpretation of laws that resulted in penalising a victim of gang rape.

The 19-year-old Shia Muslim's punishment was more than doubled after appealing against a judge's draconian ruling that she receive 90 lashes for breaking Islamic law on segregation of the sexes. The girl's only crime was to be in a car with a man who was not a relative.

One reason for the increased punishment was because her family had contacted the media to complain about her treatment. The official Saudi Press Agency said in a statement that if anybody objects to a verdict which has been issued, that person is allowed to appeal "without resorting to the media".

Last night the kingdom's judiciary stood by its decision, saying the "charges were proven" against the teenager. The Saudi authorities say the trial and sentences are in keeping with the provisions of the Sharia and, therefore, fair.

The White House expressed "astonishment" at the rape victim's plight earlier this week, but stopped short of appealing for clemency. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: I think that most people would find this relatively astonishing that something like this happened. The Bush administration denied its stance had anything to do with diplomatic efforts to bring Saudi Arabia to the table at a summit aimed at reviving peace talks between Palestine and Israel.

Saudi Arabia has condemned Western interference in the case of a rape victim who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison.

The Saudi Justice Ministry today confirmed that the flogging sentence would be carried out after the 19-year-old admitted to cheating on her husband in violation of Islamic laws.

The Saudi Justice Ministry today maintained that the ruling was legal and followed the the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Justice Ministry's account of the incident differed substantially from that given by the woman and her lawyer. It largely glossed over her rape, focusing instead on her plan to meet her lover in his car "in a dark place where they stayed for a while".

The Saudi justice minister expressed his regret about the media reports over the role of the women in this case which put out false information and wrongly defend her.

Britain’s contemporary artists are fêted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism.

Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing potter, Turner Prize winner and former Times columnist, said that he had consciously avoided commenting on radical Islam in his otherwise highly provocative body of work because of the threat of reprisals.

Perry also believes that many of his fellow visual artists have also ducked the issue, and one leading British gallery director told The Times that few major venues would be prepared to show potentially inflammatory works.

I’ve censored myself, Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.

Perry’s highly decorated pots can sell for more than £50,000 and often feature sex, violence and childhood motifs. One work depicted a teddy bear being born from a penis as the Virgin Mary. I’m interested in religion and I’ve made a lot of pieces about it, he said. With other targets you’ve got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don’t know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time.

Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at White Cube, the London gallery, welcomed Perry’s admission. It’s something that’s there but very few people have explicitly admitted. Institutions, museums and galleries are probably doing most of the censorship. I would be lying if I said of course we would show something like the Danish cartoons. I think there are genuine reasons for concern. Fundamentalism is a really complex issue and one of the things artists can do is to help us through that complexity. Whether or not it’s their responsibility to do that I’m not sure though.

The police have been criticised for taking action against a television programme which exposed how some Islamic preachers use British mosques to spread a message of hatred and segregation.

Broadcasting watchdogs have cleared Channel 4 of wrongdoing over the controversial documentary about Muslim extremism.

The programme featured footage of preachers at a number of mosques, including one who praised the Taliban for murdering British soldiers.

West Midlands police rejected calls to take action against the preachers for stirring up racial hatred – and turned on the film-makers.

Three months ago, the police, backed by the Crown Prosecution Service, made a formal complaint to Ofcom, alleging that the way 50 hours of videotape had been edited was 'distorted'.

But The Mail on Sunday has been told Ofcom has backed Channel 4's claim that the film was fair and has criticised the police response.

The programme, Undercover Mosque, broadcast in January, featured TV footage of an Islamic preacher praising the death of a British soldier.

At a meeting in a Birmingham mosque, the cleric said: Do you know what was written in a newspaper? Hero of Islam! The hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders!

Abu Usamah, a preacher at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, was secretly filmed saying: If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy, dogs who should be murdered, that is my freedom of speech isn't it?

The film prompted the Saudi Arabian government to complain directly to the Foreign Office. The Dispatches documentary claimed the Saudis recruited young Muslims in the UK, trained them in Saudi Arabia and sent them back to the West to spread a radical ideology of intolerance and bigotry" through British mosques and Islamic organisations.

Twenty years ago, a young black man walked into a pub in Bristol and ordered a drink. Behind him, a gang of white youths started a chant: Nig nogs on the starboard bow, starboard bow… Straightforward, everyday racism. Only this time, it was caught on camera and broadcast on BBC1.

Fast forward 20 years, and another young man walks into a mosque in Birmingham, one apparently committed to interfaith dialogue. The preacher, however, seems less than committed. Christians and Jews are enemies to Muslims, he says. What about a gay man? Throw him off the mountain. And women? Allah created the women deficient. Again, all caught on film, this time broadcast on Channel 4.

Two clear cases of antisocial, illiberal behaviour. But here's the difference. Twenty years ago, Avon and Somerset Police were full of praise for our undercover exposé; at last, people could see what they were up against, that racism wasn't the invention of an oversensitive race relations industry. How naïve we were to imagine that such a sensible reaction would follow the broadcast of Dispatches: Undercover Mosque.
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When the film was first shown, local politicians in the West Midlands were understandably horrified. The police went to court to obtain an order to go through our rushes, convinced there was enough to investigate a possible breach of the law, including the encouragement of terrorism.

We said they were wasting their time - what we had filmed was offensive, but we couldn't see that it broke any laws. It was just plain nasty, and clearly at odds with Green Lane Mosque's supposed commitment to moderation. This was the job of investigative journalism - to expose what was really going on, rather than what we were being told was going on.

So it was no great surprise that we heard nothing for months. We assumed it had all gone away. What we really didn't expect was a press statement out of the blue from West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service saying that not only did the featured imams have no case to answer, but that they had turned their attentions on us.

They had considered prosecuting us for inciting racial hatred, but decided there wasn't quite enough evidence, so had referred the case to Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator. A CPS lawyer, Bethan David, made one of the most damaging allegations: The splicing together of extracts from longer speeches, she was quoted as saying, appears to have completely distorted what the speakers were saying.

Well, we knew all along what Ofcom has now shown to be the case, that what was going on was the everyday television technique of editing, reducing material to broadcast length. Distortion? At no point in any of the diatribes we recorded, or broadcast from DVDs and tapes, did any of the preachers renege on the offensive statements they made in the film.

Context? No one from the West Midlands Police, the CPS or Green Lane Mosque has yet given us the correct context for the notion that women are born deficient, that homosexuals should be thrown off a mountain or that young girls who refuse to wear the hijab should be hit.

So what was the police's intervention about? Why did the police and the CPS feel entitled to act as television critics and, in effect, as potential censors of what we could watch? Clues to the motive, I think, lie in the slightly sinister phrase "community cohesion".

Anil Patani, the Assistant Chief Constable who reported the programme to Ofcom, is in charge of "cohesion" in the West Midlands force. He said he was worried that those featured in the programme "had been misrepresented".

His chief was worried that our alleged "distorted editing" would create an unfair perception of sections of the Muslim community in the West Midlands. Feelings of public reassurance and safety would be undermined. (The feelings of gays and women, apparently, were not so high on the agenda.)

But here's the strange thing. It emerged that, in the aftermath of Dispatches: Undercover Mosque, the West Midlands Police received no formal complaint about the programme. Not one.

I have now written to the DPP and the Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police asking for an explanation for the highly damaging allegations made in August - allegations that sought to undermine legitimate investigative journalism and that unjustly blackened the reputation of my company and my courageous and entirely honest team of programme makers.

The lingering suspicion must be that here was a police force over-anxious to placate local "community leaders" - and that those efforts took precedence over protecting free speech.

Questions must now be raised in Parliament about the behaviour of the West Midland police. By their actions, they have made the people of Britain signally less safe.

The Dispatches programme performed a public service in exposing sources of the kind of extremism that threatens the safety and security of this country. For the police to turn on this programme with patently implausible charges against it is deeply sinister and against the public interest. As Channel Four said after the ruling, the police action had given: legitimacy to people preaching a message of hate.

The West Midlands police appear to have turned themselves into a mouthpiece for Islamists trying to shut down legitimate and necessary debate. The idea that the police should believe that ‘community cohesion’ — aka the sensitivities of the Muslim community – should trump the need to identify those endangering not only the cohesion but the security of the whole country suggests that the police have totally lost the plot here.

There is also something badly wrong with a system which is unable to act against those identified on this programme inciting hatred in this way. Is this because of the pusillanimity of the CPS? Is it the inadequacy of the law? Whatever the reason, this is the way a culture offers up its own throat to the knife.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: Once they [the police] were clear that no criminal offence had been committed, it was, in my view, a serious misjudgment to continue to pursue the editorial team and risked impeding freedom of speech.

“The Dispatches programme raised matters of wide public interest, touching on security and community relations. The documentary handled inherently sensitive issues in a responsible manner. Having been advised by the Crown Prosecution Service that no criminal charges should be brought, there was no cause for a police complaint to Ofcom. That decision drew the police into scrutinising editorial decisions of a television producer, which is not an appropriate law enforcement function and risks deterring legitimate investigative journalism.

Don Foster, media spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: This whole case raises serious questions about West Midlands Police and the CPS in what appears to be an attempt to censor television, stifle investigative journalism and inhibit open debate.

The National Secular Society has demanded an explanation from West Midlands Police about why it conducted a witch hunt against the makers of Channel 4's Dispatches programme Undercover Mosque. But attempts by the NSS to force the W. Midlands force to explain their actions through the Police Authority and the Independent Police Complaints Authority have been dismissed.

The NSS has tried to discover what was behind the West Midlands (WM) police's pursuit of the programme-makers by initiating a formal complaint against WM Police and its Police Authority, and later appealing to the Independent Police Complaints Authority. As we suspected would happen, these have been ruled inadmissible – third party compplaints will not be entertained, even when there is a public interest at stake. We made the complaints to register our concerns and, if they were rejected, to draw attention to the inability in such circumstances to challenge the police.

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the NSS, said: We welcome Ofcom's adjudication. But it raises the uncomfortable question as to why the top echelons of West Midlands Police and their Police Authority were prepared to go to such extraordinary lengths to try to punish Channel 4 executives for exposing the truth about the situation in mosques.

The supervisory bodies — The Independent Police Complaints Commission and HM Inspector of Constabularies — although acknowledging the seriousness of the complaints, were powerless to investigate. The Police Reform Act should be amended to permit consideration of third party public interest complaints in serious cases. This is even worse than shooting the messenger. If the police had managed to bring a prosecution or their Ofcom complaint had been successful, it would have sent the clear signal that they had the power to silence journalists investigating issues that were inconvenient to them. This would have resulted in a disastrous increase in self-censorship.

A major investigation should be launched into whether regional police forces can be vulnerable to undue local pressure. The Government must also take some blame for creating an environment in which religion and race are conflated in the public sector thinking, and for creating a climate where religion is given a privileged position, and it seems, excused a great deal.

From the Guardian see full article

David Henshaw, the managing director of Hardcash Productions which made the Dispatches film Undercover Mosque , said he was still "very, very angry" and considering legal action

With the backing of Channel 4 he hoped to launch a libel action against the West Midlands police and a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer who was quoted in a joint press release accusing Hardcash Productions of "completely distorting" what some of the preachers were saying. The media regulator dismissed the complaint saying it was a legitimate investigation.

Hardcash's reputation has been severely damaged and it was a good reputation, Henshaw told the Guardian. The Ofcom judgment is great. But damage was done that day in August, huge damage.

Western documentary makers should think twice about making films about Islam because they do not understand the issues as well as their Muslim counterparts, a leading Muslim film-maker has said.

Parvez Sharma, whose documentary about what it means to be gay and Muslim had its European premiere at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival recently, said Western non-Muslim film makers were jumping on the "Islamic bandwagon": Post 11 September, [Islam] is suddenly very hot, and he cited the "plane-loads" of documentary makers who flew from New York to Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

For many documentary film-makers there's very little understanding of the complexities. Everyone has been jumping on the Islamic bandwagon. Very few of those films do justice [to Islam]. They suffer from a lack of comprehension. There's this need to cash in on the Islamic theme.

Sharma, whose documentary, A Jihad For Love includes emotional interviews with gay Muslims from around the world, torn between their homosexuality and their faith, said there was a "paucity" of Muslim film-makers and called on Islamic documentary producers to make their own voices heard to combat Islamaphobia. His Jihad, filmed over six years, reveals the often shocking treatment meted out to homosexuals in Islamic states such as Iran, where one of the men featured was flogged for attending a gay party, and in Egypt, where another interviewee was thrown into prison, where he was raped, then fled to France.

For Sharma, a gay Muslim from the north of India who now lives in the US, making the film was an intensely personal experience. It was very important for me as a Muslim film-maker not to deal with Islam as a problematic monolith, which is how many people in the west see Islam, he said.

The object of the internationally-acclaimed show Allah Made Me Funny: The Official Muslim Comedy Tour is to knock down stereotypes. In particular, Azeem, Azhar Usman and Preacher Moss, the three American Muslim comics who make up the show, try to demonstrate that Muslims are not, as many of us have good cause to believe, pathologically humourless.

Alas, their efforts have fallen flat in Scotland. We have just learned that Glasgow Caledonian University has banned a planned performance this month of the show.

Why? Because the university’s Muslim Students’ Association has proved pathologically humourless, and declared the show “derogatory to Islam”. The lily-livered Caledonian, fearful of another bout of Muslim rage, promptly pulled the plug on it.

A mealy-mouthed spokeswoman for Glasgow Caledonian University is reported in the Scotsman as saying: The university’s responsibility is to listen to and respect the views of all students on campus. When the Muslim Students’ Association expressed reservations about the show, it was decided the booking would not go ahead.

Indonesia's Coordinating Agency for the Supervision of Religious Faiths and Sects has recommended that the government ban the al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah sect nationwide.

Attorney General Hendarman Supandji will soon issue a ruling that will officially prohibit the sect's existence and the spreading of the sect's teachings throughout the country, spokesman Wisnu Subroto told a press conference.

Wisnu said once the ruling was issued, any al-Qiyadah followers attempting to spread the sect's teachings would be charged with religious blasphemy as stated in the Criminal Code, a violation of which could result in a maximum jail sentence of five years.

The agency, officially chaired by the attorney general, was established to implement a 1965 presidential decree that allows prosecutors, on behalf of the government, to ban religious organizations that distort or misrepresent the teachings of existing religions.

The agency said that among the indications a sect was "misguided" was that it defied one of the Islamic six pillars of faith and believed or followed teachings that are not in line with the Koran and Sunnah as the source of Islamic teachings, and denied that Muhammad was the last prophet.

Stephen Green of Christian Voice is having his day in High Court. He is seeking the right to bring a private prosecution for the common law offence of blasphemous libel.

The case arises over the production and presentation of the award-winning musical Jerry Springer — The Opera at theatres around Britain from October 2003 to July 2006 and then its broadcast on BBC in January 2005. Mr Green wants to prosecute Jonathan Thoday for the production of the play and Mark Thompson, then Director-General of the BBC, for the broadcast.

He applied last year, two years after the broadcast, for a summons to bring the prosecution but was refused at the City of Westminster magistrates' court. Now he is going to the divisional court to challenge that refusal.

Blasphemous libel is the publication of any matter that insults, offends or vilifies the Deity, or Christ, or the Christian religion. It is irrelevant whether there was an intention to blaspheme - the intention to publish the material is sufficient.

But the district judge who heard the initial application held that it was arguable that the Theatres Act prohibits prosecution on the ground of blasphemy; and in any event, Green had not shown a prima facie case. However, Green then won leave from Mr Justice Underhill to seek a judicial review of the district judge’s ruling.

The case is a key test of whether the laws of blasphemy are compatible with free speech, as enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Liberty, the human rights group, has intervened in the case and will argue that free speech protects the secular, sacred and profane alike — and that people should see free speech and conscience rights as running together.

But the case will also be a fresh test of whether blasphemy should exist as a criminal offence at all. Liberty will also argue that the offence should not be recognised in English law at all — because of its lack of sufficient legal certainty as held by the Irish Supreme Court in a case in 2000. The Council of Europe also recommended in June this year that blasphemy should be decriminalised, as has the Law Commission, in a working paper in 1981 and in its final report in 1985.

The chief reason cited for abolition is that blasphemy applies only to Christianity and the Council of Europe is concerned that members of a particular religion should be neither privileged nor disadvantaged by the criminal law.

But attempts to scrap it have foundered. David Blunkett, when Home Secretary, floated the abolition of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in 2004 as part of a package of measures to include the offence of incitement to religious hatred. The idea of the repeal was to answer critics, such as Rowan Atkinson, the comedian, who argued that the new incitement law would stifle criticism of religion, cartoonists' lampoons or jokes about vicars and priests.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: No person of faith should doubt the importance of free speech to freedom of religion — we must remember that even Jesus was prosecuted for blasphemy. This law has quite rightly been a dead letter for many years and is ripe for repeal, not a mischievous private prosecution.

The proposal was welcomed at the time by the National Secular Society, which said that it had been fighting the blasphemy law for more than 100 years. But at the same time, it expressed concern that the new incitement laws may be creating a new “all religions” blasphemy law.

The balance is a fine one — but incitement to religious hatred is clearly distinct from remarks that followers of a religion find insulting, disrespectful or undermining of their beliefs.

There is a growing case that the laws of blasphemy are anachronistic, inconsistent and ripe for repeal. Religions, it is said, should be strong enough to defend themselves. What is even more unarguable is that they should not be a tool to stifle freedom of expression.

Update: Blasphemy Today

20th November 2007

Stephen Green's day in court is today, 20th November 2007

Christian evangelists have launched a High Court battle for the right to bring a private prosecution for blasphemy over Jerry Springer: The Opera.

The show was an offensive, spiteful, systematic mockery and wilful denigration of Christian belief, one that that no-one would dream of making about the prophet Mohammed and Islam, two judges were told.

Stephen Green, national director of the evangelical group Christian Voice, is challenging a refusal by District Judge Caroline Tubbs at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in January to issue a summons for the start of a private prosecution against the Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson, who allowed the controversial show to be screened on BBC2. Green also wanted to issue a similar summons against the show’s producer, Jonathan Thoday, who staged it at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End and then in a nationwide tour.

Michael Gledhill, QC, appearing for Green, said that such prosecutions for blasphemous libel were extremely rare, occuring perhaps once a generation. He said it was not being argued that God cannot be criticised, he said. Such criticisms were commonplace in a number of plays and productions broadcast on television. Rather, he said, the complaint arose from the manner in which the criticisms were made.

Gledhill argued that the district judge had erred in law in refusing to issue the summonses as the show had clearly “crossed the blasphemy threshold”.

He argued: This is not just about protecting the rights of a section of the Christian population. It is about protecting the constitution of the nation which is built on the Christian faith.

Neither Mr Thoday nor Mr Thompson felt the least inhibition in ridiculing God, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the sacrament of the eucharist and Christian belief, Gledhill told Lord Justice Hughes and Mr Justice Collins at the High Court in London.

Through Jerry Springer: The Opera they had treated the Christian faith with contempt, reviling it by parodying Christian beliefs scurrilously and in the most ludicrous manner.

The human rights group Liberty is intervening in the case to argue that the blasphemy laws are outdated and that free speech rights must protect sacred, profane and secular language alike.

Gledhill accused District Judge Tubbs of failing properly to assess whether the elements of blasphemous libel had been made out in the case of Jerry Springer: The Opera. He argued no reasonable person, applying the correct legal test, could find that the elements of blasphemy were not present.

David Pannick, QC, for Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, said that people’s religious beliefs might be integral to British society but equally so was freedom of expression, especially in matters of social and moral importance.

The Opera won a large number of awards for exceptional artistic achievement, a recognition that this was a powerful satire on a particular type of exploitative television and not, as the claimant fails to appreciate, an attack on Christianity. He added that the target of the satire was not religious belief but the confessional talk-show genre.

Thompson, in a submission, said that the judges should refuse permission for a private prosecution for several reasons: there had been “very considerable delay” by Mr Green in making his application: the programme was broadcast in January 2005; the attempt to bring criminal proceedings was “verging on the vexatious”; and the claimant had sought at a late stage to amend his application.

The hearing continues for a 2nd day.

The Daily Mail reported:

Mr Green said he was 'hugely disappointed' Liberty was seeking to use his case to challenge blasphemy laws, which he described as vital for protecting God's name.

He added: "It is a great shame that Liberty have gone down this road, and strayed away from their core activities of defending civil liberties, which we as an organisation support."

Looooooooool! Christian Voice support defending civil liberties!

Yeah they do! They want civil liberties for all...

Apart from gays.

And people who say things which upset their precious religious beliefs.

Yeah civil liberties for all say Christian Voice!

Lol!

From the Times

Meanwhile the case has now completed and the High Court reserved judgment on whether Christian evangelists could bring prosecutions against Mark Thompson, BBC Director-General, and the producer of the controversial show Jerry Springer – The Opera.<