The Belarusian Supreme Court has ordered the early release of Aleksandr Sdvizhkov, former deputy editor of the now-shuttered independent newspaper Zgoda, who was sentenced in January to three years in a high-security prison for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006.

We’re relieved at the Belarusian Supreme Court’s decision to grant early release to Aleksandr Sdvizhkov, but he should not have been jailed in the first place, CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. We remain concerned that the court did not overturn this politically motivated conviction.

Sdvizhkov’s lawyer, Maya Aleksandrova, told CPJ that the court cut the sentence to three months after reviewing the journalist’s appeal on Friday. The journalist, arrested in November, had already served that length of time. Aleksandrova said the court reduced Sdvizhkov’s sentence due to “exceptional circumstances,” citing the journalist’s deteriorating health, his good behavior in prison, and his elderly mother’s poor health.

Sdvizhkov’s paper reprinted the controversial cartoons in Zgoda in February 2006, prompting authorities to begin an investigation into possible incitement to religious hatred. But journalists said the prosecution was motivated less by religious sensitivity than a desire to silence a critical newspaper in the weeks before a presidential election.

The case file of a father who murdered his daughter in an act of "honor killing" with the assistance of another man by stoning her to death, is now under review in Zahedan's general court.

Sharif, the father, confessed, and provided a disturbing account of Samieh's murder. Sharif stated: A while ago, I noticed that my 14 year old daughter is acting suspiciously. Initially, I tried to approach the issue gently, and to find out why Samieh is acting this way. She would leave the house without any reason, and when she returned, she could not provide a convincing explanation. Finally, I could not take it any more and I got in a fight with her, but that didn't do any good because my daughter accused me of being suspicious and maintained that she has not done anything wrong. After a while, I became fully convinced that Samieh is having relations with a man. I perceived my honor to have been damaged, and tolerating such a condition and remaining silent was like death to me. So I decided to kill Samieh and rid myself of this shame. In this context, I had to make a decision about how I should kill Samieh and save myself from such disgrace.

I had to choose a method for killing my daughter that would fit her wrong-doing. Finally, I became convinced that I should stone her to death, but because I could not personally carry out the execution by myself, I sought the assistance of my friend, Ghafoor. When he learned about my problem, he accepted to help me kill Samieh to wash the stain of disgrace from my family. Ghafoor contacted a few other people and established the time and place to carry out the act. On the day of the incident, I forcefully took my daughter out of the house and dragged her to the outskirts of Holoor. She was terrified during the whole trip, and while she realized that she is about to face a horrifying fate, she was not sure of the punishment that I had planned for her. When we reached the planned destination, I threw my daughter on the ground and we began to stone her. Samieh kept screaming and pleaded and begged for her life. But, in order to restore my honor and return myself to a respectable life, I had no choice but to kill her. Then I fled.

After the shocking confession of the murder suspect, the authorities continued their investigation, and found the body of the 14 year old Samieh. They also arrested Ghafoor for his role in the murder of the teenage girl. With the confession provided by the second suspect, Ghafoor, the case has been sent to undergo official trial proceedings. Currently, Ghafoor and Sharif remain in prison until the trial has been conducted.

Channel 4's Dispatches editor Kevin Sutcliffe and the programme makers behind Undercover Mosque are pursuing a libel claim against West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The documentary makers were cleared last November by media regulator Ofcom of allegations of misleadingly editing the Channel 4 programme about extreme Islamic preachers.

Undercover Mosque aired in January last year and featured footage filmed undercover in several mosques in the Midlands. The documentary featured footage of preachers calling for homosexuals to be killed, espousing male supremacy, condemning non-Muslims and predicting jihad.

Channel 4 announced today that Sutcliffe, and production company Hardcash Productions, have now initiated libel proceedings: The statements made by both the West Midlands Police and the CPS were completely unfounded and seriously damaging to the reputation of the programme makers.

The broadcaster also released a statement on behalf of co-claimants - David Henshaw, Andrew Smith and John Moratiel - from Hardcash Production: The statements made by both the West Midlands Police and the CPS were completely unfounded and seriously damaging to our reputation. We feel the only way to set the record straight once and for all is to pursue this matter through a libel action.

In August last year West Midlands police complained to regulator Ofcom about the editing of the Dispatches documentary. But Ofcom said the programme was a legitimate investigation uncovering matters of important public interest in a subsequent ruling in November.

The regulator also said there was No evidence that [Channel 4] had misled the audience and the broadcaster had accurately represented the material and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context.

Channel 4 said any payment of damages will go to charity.

An Israeli MP has blamed a spate of recent earthquakes in the Middle East on gays.

Six earthquakes have struck Israel and neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan in recent months, with two coming last week alone.

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas party, suggested that the tremors could be stopped through the simple expedient of repealing various liberalising laws on homosexuality that have been passed by the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, in recent years.

Since decriminalising homosexuality in 1988, Israel has passed several laws on the subject, including decisions to recognise same-sex marriages carried out abroad, and granting inheritance rights and other benefits held by married couples to gay partnerships. Last Sunday, to the outrage of the religious Right, the country's attorney general, Meni Mazuz, ruled that same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children.

In what Mr Benizri clearly believes is no coincidence, the first of last week's quakes hit the country just two days later.

Why do earthquakes happen? One of the reasons is the things to which the Knesset gives legitimacy, to sodomy, Benizri said during a parliamentary debate on earthquake preparedness.

Stopping passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes, would represent a cost-effective method of preventing future earthquakes, he continued.

God says you shake your genitals where you are not supposed to and I will shake my world in order to wake you up, he added.

Persecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.

The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.

They were arrested following a request of the hated religious Police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

A tale of forbidden love that ended in a man's violent death has sparked rioting in Calcutta and led to the removal of the city's police chief.

The fate of Rizwanur Rahman has exposed the religious and class divisions in modern India. Rahman, 30, was a computer graphics teacher from a Muslim family of modest means. His widow, Priyanka Todi, 23, is the daughter of a wealthy Hindu clothing manufacturer.

Their doomed relationship began after Miss Todi began attending the bookish Rahman's computer classes at a private academy. They secretly married in August and she left her family's lavish suburban villa for his cramped apartment in a poor Muslim area of Calcutta.

In response, her father, Ashok Todi, a prominent businessman, went to Rahman's house with relatives. There, he dropped to his knees and clutched his daughter's feet, begging her to save him from the "humiliation", saying: I cannot take a Muslim son-in-law.

The young couple wrote to the city's police force, seeking protection. Senior officers, however, sided with Todi, and even warned Rahman that he would be charged with kidnap unless he relinquished his wife.

On September 8, Miss Todi visited her father in the belief that he was ill. Instead, her mobile phone was confiscated and she was taken hundreds of miles away to southern India. She managed to call her husband and begged him to wait months or years for her. Yes I will wait for you for ever, he replied. She never saw him again.

Rahman's death just a fortnight later and the subsequent actions of the police shocked Calcutta. When rumours circulated in the city that Rahman's body had been removed from the morgue as part of an attempt to cover up his death, it sparked rioting in which cars and buses were stoned, a police car was set alight and two senior officers were injured. Armed police eventually restored calm.

In the aftermath, the Calcutta police commissioner, Prasun Mukherjee, sided with conservatives, suggesting that it was his force's job to help Todi lure his daughter back. His comments caused further public outcry and the city's authorities have now removed the police commissioner and four other senior officers from their posts.

No arrests have been made following Rahman's death but the country's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is now understood to be inclining towards a verdict of "suicide with abetment", suggesting that they believe he may have been pressed to kill himself.

Anwar Masih, a Christian resident of Shahdara near Lahore, was fired from his job in November 2007 and continues to receive death threats from religious fanatics even though the Lahore High Court declared him innocent of blasphemy charges in December 2004.

Masih reportedly asked his formerly Christian neighbor, Chaudhary Naseer, why he had grown a beard (a symbol of Islam) and converted to Islam in August 2003. They exchanged hard words, and some time later Naseer alleged that Masih made insulting remarks against Muhammad and other prophets of Islam. As a result, police arrested Masih and took him to jail in November 2003.

The Lahore High Court acquitted Masih from the blasphemy charges on December 24, 2004. However, Masih still faces discrimination for his Christian faith and receives death threats for simply being charged with insulting the prophet Muhammad. His life is still in danger. Sadly, this is too often the case for anyone accused of blasphemy in Pakistan, regardless of whether they are exonerated of such charges.

Masih said that soon after his release from jail, he took shelter in Lahore with a Christian NGO and went underground due to the fear of being murdered by Muslim fanatics. Masih said that he restarted his career as a technician in a local factory in August 2005. However, he was fired from that job in November 2007 when the factory administration found out about the charges he had faced. He said the factory administration was threatened with deadly consequences by unknown persons for employing a "blasphemer," who demanded that they fire him immediately.

Anwar Masih still lives in hiding and moves from one village to another because he fears for his life.

According to data collected by the National Commission for Justice and Peace, 892 individuals were charged under the blasphemy laws from 1986 to December 2007.

Pakistan's telecommunications regulator said that it had lifted restrictions imposed on YouTube over an anti-Islamic video clip, but rejected blame for a cut in access to the Web site in many countries over the weekend.

The authority told Pakistani Internet service providers to restore access to the site on Tuesday afternoon after the removal of a video featuring a Dutch lawmaker who has said he plans to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

Officials here have described the YouTube clip as "very blasphemous" and warned that it could fan religious fanaticism and hatred of the West in Pakistan, where the government already faces a growing Islamic insurgency.

Geert Wilders, said his film criticizing the Quran will be completed this week and criticized Pakistan for its moves to block the clip: It's far from a true democracy. A real democracy must be able to bear some criticism.

If you happened to be searching for a video at YouTube.com Sunday afternoon, there's a good chance your browser told you it was unable to locate the entire Web site. Turns out, much of the world was blocked from getting to YouTube for part of the weekend due to a censorship order passed by the government of Pakistan, which was apparently upset that YouTube refused to remove digital images many consider blasphemous to Islam.

According to wire reports, Pakistan ordered all in-country Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to YouTube.com, complaining that the site contained controversial sketches of the Prophet Mohammed which were republished by Danish newspapers earlier this month. The people running the country's ISPs obliged, but evidently someone at Pakistan Telecom - the primary upstream provider for most of the ISPs in Pakistan - forgot to flip the switch that prevented those blocking instructions from propagating out to the rest of the Internet.

So, what happened? From everything I've read and heard, the YouTube situation appears to have been due to an innocent, if inept, mix-up, which allowed Pakistan's ISPs to effectively announce to the world that its Internet addresses were the authoritative home of YouTube.com, and for about an hour or so, most of the rest of the world's ISPs incorporated those updated directions as gospel.

In a country where the government more or less can tell resident ISPs what to do, blocking citizens from visiting certain sites is simple: The ISPs simply tell their customers that if they're looking for a censored site, they either receive an empty page or are redirected to wherever the ISP or government deems as an appropriate substitute destination.

Some experts are crying foul, saying this was an deliberate act of defiance or assertiveness by the nascent Pakistani government. But most seem to agree this was little more than a screw-up. Still, a nation state or other adversary could stir up diplomatic trouble by toying with this sort of trust built into the Internet. What would our government make of it, say, if all of a sudden all traffic destined for .gov domains wound up in China or North Korea?

Marc Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center said for now the checks and balances in the system today are that the same trust that allows network providers to abuse the system can be revoked. In this latest case with Youtube, network operators affected by the bogus update simply discarded the errant directions from Pakistan and in all likelihood told their own routers to ignore any further updates from Pakistan, at least for the time being, Sachs said.

Danish foreign minister in a phone conversation with his Iranian counterpart says his country respects Islam and the world Muslims.

We differentiate between freedom of speech and blasphemy, Denmark's top diplomat, Per Stig Moeller, said.

Pointing to the reprinting of the blasphemous cartoons of Mohammad, he said that such incidents could affect the relations between the European countries and the Muslim world.

Iran's Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, for his part expressed regret that some newspapers are permitted to publish the insulting cartoons.

Mottaki called for initiatives to prevent such incidents: The EU states should pass rules at the national and the Union levels to prevent any insult against 1.5 billion Muslims of the world.

Based on an article from The News

Leaders of various religious groups in Pakistan have demanded that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) should be moved to try Danish authorities and media people who wilfully committed the act of blasphemy by re-publishing sacrilegious cartoons in their newspapers.

They were speaking at a convention titled “Inter-religion harmony and blasphemy” organised by Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI). The representatives demanded that diplomatic and trade relations with Denmark should be immediately severed in order to penalise the European nation whose irresponsible and repetitive act of blasphemy fanned ire and adverse feelings among the Muslims against the Western world.

Presiding over the meeting, JI Karachi Amir Muhammad Hussain Mahanti said that the European media responsible for publishing the blasphemous caricatures in their newspapers should be taken to task and penalised for their wilful criminal act and in this regard the United Nations and Organisation of Islamic Conference had to play their due role.

Bishop Ejaz Inayat said the case of blasphemy committed again by the European press should be tried at the ICJ at The Hague. Denmark, UNO, and Pakistan should be made parties to the case.

Medical organisations have rounded on a Roman Catholic hospital which has been thrown into disarray after the Archbishop of Westminster ordered its board to resign in a dispute over the provision of advice on abortion and contraception.

The British Medical Association criticised Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, after the Cardinal dramatically increased the pressure on the private Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, of which he is patron, to implement a new catholic friendly code of ethics.

The BMA said doctors at the hospital were in effect being required to follow two codes of ethics – that proposed by the hospital and the statutory code enforced by the General Medical Council, which specifies that doctors may not let their own beliefs interfere with the care of patients.

Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the BMA, said: It really does put doctors in a very difficult position. We don't believe they can follow two codes of ethics.

Dr Nathanson added that while a patient would not expect to go to a Catholic hospital for an abortion, if she were pregnant and her foetus turned out to have severe abnormalities and she wanted to consider an abortion she would have the right to information and help.

The Cardinal ordered the hospital to draw up a code of practice to reflect Catholic teaching on matters such as abortion, contraception and gender reassignment operations in mid-2006, after a boardroom dispute over the admission of a local NHS GP practice on to the hospital's premises. The plan had distressed staunch Catholics on the board, who argued that the provision of services such as abortion and contraception would undermine the religious ethos of the hospital.

Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's solution was to produce a code as a way of solving the dispute and maintaining the institution as a Catholic hospital. But it was opposed by the hospital's Medical Advisory Committee and its introduction last December triggered the resignations of at least four directors.

A spokesman for the Cardinal's office confirmed that the Cardinal had asked the members of the old board to resign in light of the recent difficulties and to enable the new chairman to begin his office with the freedom to go about ensuring the future well-being of this Catholic hospital.

Pervez Kambaksh, the 23-year-old student, whose death sentence for downloading a report on women's rights from the internet has been speaking to The Independent from his Afghan prison.

In a voice soft, somewhat hesitant, he said: The judges had made up their mind about the case without me. The way they talked to me, looked at me, was the way they look at a condemned man. I wanted to say 'this is wrong, please listen to me', but I was given no chance to explain.

For Kambaksh the four-minute hearing has led to four months of incarceration, sharing a 10 by 12 metre cell with 34 others and having the threat of execution constantly hanging over him. His fate appeared sealed when the Afghan senate passed a motion, proposed by Sibghatullkah Mojeddeid, a key ally of the President Hamid Karzai, confirming the death sentence, although this was later withdrawn after domestic and international protests.

Since The Independent exposed the case of Kambaksh, eminent public figures such as the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. and Britain's Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, have lobbied Karzai to reprieve him. A petition launched by this newspaper calling for justice for Kambaksh has gathered nearly 90,000 signatures.

Kambaksh's ordeal began in mid- October after the downloading of the document about Islam and women's rights from an Iranian website. He was questioned first by some teachers of religion from the university where he is a student of journalism.

On 27 October he was arrested at the offices of Jahan-e-Naw, a newspaper for which he had carried out reporting assignments. It was about 10 in the morning. They told me that one of the directors of the NDS [the Afghan national intelligence service] wanted to see me. I was taken to a police station and sat around until 3 o'clock when they said they were arresting me over the website entry. When I protested they said they were doing this for my own safety, otherwise I may be killed.

On 6 December he was brought before a court in Mazar where the charges against him, accusing him of blasphemy and breaching other tenets of Islamic law, were read out. But then the proceedings concluded without any evidence being presented before the court.

He arrived at the court at the next session, on 22 January expecting a date to be set for the trial, only to hear numbing news. They normally sit for just a few hours in the afternoon. I was taken into the court just before it shut at 4 o'clock. There were three judges and a prosecutor and some details of the case were repeated. One of the judges then said to me that I have been found guilty and the sentence was death. I tried to argue, but, as I said, they talked to me like a criminal, they just said I would be taken back to the prison.

I was totally shocked. Afterwards I sat and tried to calculate just how long they had taken to judge my case. I thought at first it was three minutes, but then I worked out it was four. That was it, I have been in prison ever since. All I can hope now is that something can be done at the appeal. I would really like the appeal to be heard in Kabul, I think I will get a better hearing there.

Following the international outcry over the case, and the campaign by Mr Kambaksh's supporters, Afghanistan's Supreme Court has said that the appeal may take place at Kabul, away from local justice in Mazar, and that the hearing this time would be in the open. Justice Bahahuddin Baha also stated that the student would have the right to legal representation.

Freedom from religion in Britain is becoming as important as freedom of religion, according to a United Nations investigation.

A report by Asma Jahangir, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, says that the 2001 census findings that nearly 72% of the population is Christian can no longer be regarded as accurate.

The report claims that two thirds of British people do not admit to any religious affiliation.

The report calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England. It says that the role and privileges of the Church do not reflect the religious demography of the country and the rising proportion of other Christian denominations.

The report says that there is an overall respect for human rights and their value but it gives warning of discrimination against Muslims.

Citing research that 80% of Muslims in Britain feel that they have been discriminated against, the report singles out the Terrorism Act 2000 for particular criticism. Under the Act police in some areas can stop and search people without having to show reasonable suspicion.

The report’s author also criticises terms in the Terrorism Act 2006 for being overly broad and vaguely worded.

UTV Motion Pictures, producers of Jodhaa Akbar, said they have moved the Madhya Pradesh High Court to lift the ban on screening of the film in the state.

We will take the matter to the Supreme Court if need be, a UTV official said in a statement.

The entire film industry, including producers, distributors and exhibitors are up in arms against the state government's order for suspension of the screening of the film, it said.

In fact, the MP exhibitors association has threatened to go on an indefinite strike if this arbitrary ruling is not reversed, it added.

The authorities cannot let a small group of individuals dictate what is or is not acceptable for the consumption of the general public, the official said: If we allow our creative freedom to be dictated by every potentially aggrieved party, then I am afraid we will not have as vibrant and creative industry in the future. We will fight till the end.

The film was banned in Madhya Pradesh on February 22 after demonstrations against it by the Rajput community. The film relates the tale of a Rajput princess converting to Islam to marry Mughal emperor Akbar.

Meanwhile, the film was banned in Sonepat city and elsewhere in the district on Saturday after demonstrations against it by the workers of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) at cinema theatres. Earlier the Ambala district administration had banned the screening of the movie.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has directed that the country’s ISPs to block access to the videos sharing website YouTube for allegedly featuring a blasphemous video.

However, and according to the Pakistani “Don’t Block The Blog” there are two theories that could explain PTA’s recent move to ban YouTube: vote rigging videos showing alleged evidence of election fraud in Karachi and a supposedly blasphemous video disgracing Prophet Mohammed.

The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a movie trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release an anti-Koran movie portraying the religion as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

When David Scott fell in love with a beautiful Filipino woman, he embraced the opportunity to escape his humdrum existence as a machine operator in Swindon and begin a new life in an exotic land.

But within weeks of leaving his friends and family to join his girlfriend in her native country, his dream of happiness has vanished - to be replaced by a nightmare he could never have anticipated.

After fathering a child with Cynthia Delfino, whose separation from her estranged husband was not complete, the 35-year-old became an unwitting victim of the Philippines' harsh legal system.

He and 29-year-old Cynthia were charged with adultery and thrown into a rat-infested prison for four days.

They have now skipped bail and have gone into hiding as the country's police search for them. If they are caught, David faces seven years in jail and having his daughter taken away from him permanently.

David's ordeal began when Cynthia became pregnant with his child before she had officially separated. Adultery is illegal in the Philippines, where it can incur a seven-year jail sentence. Now, just weeks after the birth of baby Janina, Cynthia's estranged husband - who is considered the child's legal father in the Philippines - is determined to see the pair imprisoned if they do not pay him £7,000 compensation.

Now only cash, which David and Cynthia do not have, or diplomatic pressure, can save them from jail. However, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office say they cannot interfere with Philippine law.

Philippines lawyer and women's and children's rights activist Katrina Legarda warned: I have to tell you the worst first. David Scott is in great danger if he stays here. The fact that he has a baby proves the adultery. The baby is not legally his. A child born in a marriage is considered legitimate to the marriage only. Legally the baby belongs to her Filipino husband. Frankly put, he does not have a child. He should go home.

Legarda continued: I know this sounds unfair but this is the law and whenever we try to change it there is an outcry from the religious groups.

This should not really be happening. We tried over 20 years ago to introduce a divorce law, but those who supported it were condemned in the pulpits of Catholic churches all over the country as people who would go to Hell.

Muslims protested in two Indonesian cities on Saturday over cartoons in Denmark portraying the Prophet Muhammad, with some predictably calling for the artist to be put to death.

Muslims in the crowd outside the Danish consulate shouted Death sentence for the cartoonist!

Protesters also gathered in Medan, Indonesia's third largest city.

See full article from Indian Muslims

Jordan's trade unions have urged their government to sever economic ties with Denmark.

In a letter to Prime Minister Nader Dahabi, Trade Unions Council Chairman Saleh Armouti also called on the government to summon the Danish ambassador and relay to him a strongly worded protest that reflects our absolute rejection of such offenses.
Armouti contended that the pictures, which were reprinted by a dozen of Danish newspapers last week, represented an unprecedented defiance of the feelings of Arabs and Muslims.

Palestinians demonstrated in the Gaza Strip yesterday against Danish newspapers. They gathered in the southern town of Rafah on the Egyptian border in response to a call from the mini-Parliament, an organ of the Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Children burned Danish, American and Israeli flags and a banner read to hell with Denmark. We will accept nothing less than an apology and a trial.

In Khartoum, around 200 Sudanese demonstrated against Denmark. Angry Muslim men dressed in traditional white robes marched through closed-off streets followed by fellow protesters driving at a snail's pace in air-conditioned cars, under the close watch of security forces. The crowd called for Sudan to end diplomatic relations with Denmark and boycott Danish products.

Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir is threatening to expel Danish organisations, snub its officials and boycott the country's products, the presidential palace and state news agency said.

Al Bashir met with the leaders of his ruling National Congress Party on Saturday to devise a response. The president has directed that all Danish officials and diplomats should not be received by Sudanese officials and that all Danish organisations operating in the country should be expelled and all Danish goods boycotted, the state-run Suna news agency said.

See full article from the Times of India

One of the world's most prominent Sunni religious scholars called on Muslims to boycott Danish products.

Sheik Youssef e-Qaradawi, a hardline Egyptian cleric based in Qatar, urged Muslims on Friday to repeat their boycott, warning them that the world would view them as weak if they didn't react strongly.

Regrettably, Muslims start potently with these issues, then they relax gradually as the strong (supporters) get weaker and the enthusiastic (supporters) get lazy, said el-Qaradawi during a press conference aired by Al-Jazeera television.

See full article from The Post

More than 200 Islamists and students of religious seminaries Friday staged a demonstration at the call of Jamaat Ahl-i-Sunnat to express their resentment and to condemn the reprinting of blasphemous cartoons in Danish and other European newspapers.

The demo was led by Allama Farooq Khan Saeedi, who vowed to continue their protest against this blasphemous act. The participants chanted slogans against President Musharraf and US President George Bush and criticised the government for not taking up the issue with Danish authorities.

Syed Riaz Hussain Shah a central leader of Jamaat Ahl-i-Sunnat told newsmen that resolutions against this sacrilegious act were adopted in all the mosques of the country Friday and religious scholars delivered their speeches on this issue.

London Underground have rejected the advert for Fat Christ, a black comedy starring topless model Abi Titmuss, on the grounds that it was likely to offend ethnic, religious or other major groups.

The poster depicts a portly man on a cross. He is wearing pink striped boxes and a crown of thorns. It was banned from Angel Tube station, where the Upper Street theatre had booked an advertising spot.

The ban has been criticised by the Rev Stephen Coles, of St Thomas’s Church in Finsbury Park, according to the Islington Tribune. He is quoted as saying: The itch to censor is something one should resist. I can’t quite see how this could cause offence. We’re grown-ups and Jesus can defend himself. One has to be a little wary of indulging the super-sensitive.

Gavin Davis, the author of Fat Christ who also features as the man on the cross, insisted he had not set out to offend: The play is a comedy and the poster accurately reflects its content and themes – the central character stages his own mock crucifixion for an art project. We don’t believe it to be blasphemous and can’t understand London Underground’s censorious position. I am, however, prepared to apologise for my choice of boxer shorts.

A London Underground spokesman said the Fat Christ poster was “declined” because it contravened a commitment not to display adverts likely to offend ethnic, religious or other major groups: Millions of people travel on the London Underground each day and they have no choice but to view whatever adverts are posted there. We have to take account of every passenger and endeavour not to cause offence in the advertising we display.

A US businesswoman living in Saudi Arabia fears for her life after the religious police issued a rare statement defending her arrest this month for having coffee with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara, a 37-year-old married mother of three, said that she was strip-searched, forced to sign false confessions and told by a judge that she would “burn in hell”, before she was released on February 4.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice denounced her publicly with a statement posted on the internet on Monday night saying that her actions violated the Sharia of the country: It’s not allowed for any woman to travel alone and sit with a strange man and talk and laugh and drink coffee together like they are married.

All of these are against the law and it’s clear it’s against the law. First, for a woman to work with men is against the law and against religion. Second, the family sections at coffee shops and restaurants are meant for families and close relatives.

The story of Yara captured international attention and has started fierce debate within Saudi society, where reformers and human rights groups are pressuring the Government to be more liberal.

The powerful religious police vowed to sue two newspaper columnists who have written in defence of Yara and who criticised the “Mutaween” and their handling of the incident, saying: The commission has the right to sue the writers because of the lies they are spreading. It gives the wrong idea of Saudi Arabia.

Yara, a managing partner in a finance company has returned to work but she no longer travels to the offices of the company in Riyadh.

A small Christian pressure group has stepped up its protest against a statue owned by a prominent Jewish art collector, depicting Jesus with a phallus, by leafleting a North-West London synagogue on Shabbat.

The work, condemned as “blasphemous” and “pornographic” by Christian Voice, belongs to Anita Zabludowicz, wife of Poju Zabludowicz, chairman and main sponsor of Bicom (the Britain-Israel Research and Communications Centre) and a recently appointed member of the Jewish Leadership Council.

Members of Golders Green United Synagogue were lobbied as they arrived for the minchah service last Shabbat afternoon.

Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said the action had been taken because letters written to the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks and Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies, had failed to bring condemnation of the statue. Sir Jonathan was once the rabbi of Golders Green.

He’s taking no notice of us, said Green, who wants the statue destroyed. Maybe he will take notice of his own people.

Although the Chief Rabbi had written of his sorrow over a situation… that has caused you great offence, Green added: I find it incomprehensible that the Chief Rabbi and the Zabludowiczs have not discussed it. If he failed to condemn it, then, in effect, he’s saying they can keep it.

More than 180,000 worldwide have joined an online protest claiming the images, shown on European-language pages and taken from Persian and Ottoman miniatures dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, are offensive to Islam, which prohibits any representation of Muhammad.

The images at the centre of the protest appear on most of the European versions of the web encyclopaedia, though not on Arabic sites. On two of the images, Muhammad's face is veiled, a practice followed in Islamic art since the 16th century. But on two others, one from 1315, which is the earliest surviving depiction of the prophet, and the other from the 15th century, his face is shown. Some protesters are claiming the pictures have been posted simply to 'bait' and 'insult' Muslims and argue the least Wikipedia can do is blur or blank out the faces.

In a robust statement on the site, Wikipedia's editors state: Wikipedia recognises that there are cultural traditions among some Muslim groups that prohibit depictions of Muhammad and other prophets and that some Muslims are offended when those traditions are violated. However, the prohibitions are not universal among Muslim communities, particularly with the Shia who, while prohibiting the images, are less strict about it.

Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.

So long as they are relevant to the article and do not violate any of Wikipedia's existing policies, nor the law of the US state of Florida where Wikipedia's servers are hosted, no content or images will be removed because people find them objectionable or offensive.

Scores of Muslims led by a radical cleric have protested against India's decision to extend the visa of threatened Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who is in hiding in New Delhi.

Taslima has hurt the sentiments of Muslims in India. She must be deported from India immediately, Syed Nuroor Rehman Barkati, senior cleric at the Tipu Sultan mosque in the heart of the eastern city of Kolkata, told AFP.

Nasreen fled Kolkata in November after radical Muslims protested against "anti-Islamic" passages in her works.

Barkati had offered money in previous years to see the 45-year-old blackened with tar, garlanded with shoes -- considered an insulting gesture -- and driven out of the Bengali-speaking city she adopted as her home by in 2004, according to reports in the Indian media.

In August, he also backed an order by another radical cleric that offered an "unlimited financial reward" to anybody who would kill her.

Barkati organised a rally at the mosque after Friday prayers at which nearly 2,000 gathered. Most of the worshippers were not part of the anti-Nasreen rally, which saw some 100-odd protesters carrying placards that read We want Taslima Nasreen to leave India.

Free speech should respect religions, says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, regarding the reprints of Prophet Mohammad's cartoons.

The Secretary-General  strongly believes that freedom of expression should be exercised responsibly and in a way that respects all religious beliefs, his spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Wednesday.

See full article from the Antara

Hundreds of people rallied outside the Danish and Dutch embassies in Indonesia to protest the recent publication of cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad by newspapers in the two European countries.

We heard they have reprinted the cartoons to defend the freedom of speech while in fact they have thereby clearly and seriously insulted the Prophet Muhammad and Islam, and this has happened several times, a spokesman of Muslim organization Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia said.

He continued that his organization demanded that those responsible for the defamation be given the death penalty and called on members of the Muslim community to defend the honor of the Prophet Mohammed and condemn all forms of insults against Islam.

See full article from The News

The Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) has announced to observe “day of protest” on Friday 22nd February against re-publishing of blasphemous caricatures in Danish newspapers.

A press statement said that demonstrations would be held outside various mosques in Karachi against the brazen and recurring irresponsible activity in a section of the European press.

The re-publishing of blasphemous cartoons by certain European newspapers had once again proved the hypocritical and acrimonious attitude of the West towards Islam and its followers, it said:

On the one hand the Western powers advocate the policy of inter-faith dialogue but on the other its media outlets commit blatant acts of blasphemy in total disregard of the cause of religious harmony.

Such condemnable acts were being deliberately repeated by the European media in order to provoke and antagonise Muslims all over the world.

The Archbishop of Canterbury returned to the debate on sharia law in the first of three public lectures to be given in Cambridge.

He attempted to make light of the criticism he has received. My doomed enterprise the other day was to try and introduce that bit of perspective. Let that be a warning to you all, he joked.

Addressing an audience of more than 1,200 people, he condemned the way Islamic law discriminated against women in some Muslim countries: In some of the ways it has been codified and practised across the world, it has been appalling. In some of the ways it has been applied to women in places like Saudi Arabia, it is grim.

Despite acknowledging the concerns raised over some aspects of sharia law, he repeated his assertion that it was rooted in the sense of doing God's will in the ordinary things of life.

He warned against demonising Muslims and their religion, saying that to judge the faith purely on negatives would be like judging Christianity on a couple of chapters of the Old Testament.

Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student sentenced to death for downloading an article about women's rights, has been promised the chance to appeal against his death penalty in an open court, well away from the plotters and extremists accused of hijacking the original proceedings.

Afghanistan's Supreme Court said his appeal would be held in "a very open court" in Kabul, and that he would have every opportunity to select a lawyer.

It was claimed he was originally convicted behind closed doors without proper representation.

Supreme Court Justice Bahauddin Baha said yesterday that the appeal would be heard in Kabul at Kambaksh's request.

More than 87,100 people have signed an Independent petition demanding justice for Kambaksh.

A one-woman protest against raunchy advertising outside the Peacocks clothing store in Waterloo Place last week has secured the support of Derry's Sacred Heart of Jesus Pro Life Group.

Christian campaigner Mary Doherty, from Donegal, staged a lone protest outside the shop, condemning their lingerie advertising and its alleged portrayal of women as "objects".

Bernadette Doyle, spokesperson for the Sacred Heart of Jesus Pro Life Group, told the 'Journal': Our stance on this issue is that Mary Doherty was quite right to protest last week at what we would also view as soft porn in underwear advertising at what is a family shop.

She went on: These adverts are immoral, very cheap and very anti-women and anti-children. It takes courage to go out and do what Mary Doherty has done. The woman portrayed in the Peacocks' advert is lying with her legs open.

Doyle said the display was totally unsuitable for viewing by children passing the shop. In general, advertising standards have morally dropped and a large amount of advertising has become soft porn. It's high time that women speak out against it and we call upon all women to stand up and speak out and make their feelings known.

Egypt has banned the sale of four western newspapers for printing pictures it deems offensive to Islam and summoned the Danish ambassador, the latest backlash in a row over cartoons that have enraged the Muslim world.

Under a decree issued by Information Minister Anas al-Fiqi, Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt, Britain's Observer and the US Wall Street Journal will not be sold, the official MENA news agency reported.

Any newspaper or magazine which publishes anything offensive to the prophet... and reprints the offensive caricatures of the prophet or anything offensive to the three heavenly religions will be banned, Fiqi said.

The foreign ministry said the Danish ambassador had been summoned to express Egypt's rejection of the Danish press's attempt to repeat the offence to feelings of Muslims and their holy symbols around the world.

Earlier on Tuesday, thousands of Egyptian students protested on the campus ground of Assiut University in southern Egypt calling for a boycott of Danish products. On Monday, the Danish Football Federation (DBU) said that Egypt had cancelled two youth internationals against Denmark over the cartoons.

King Abdullah should halt the execution of Fawza Falih and void her conviction for “witchcraft,” Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the Saudi king.

The religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence against absurd charges that have no basis in law.

The fact that Saudi judges still conduct trials for unprovable crimes like ‘witchcraft’ underscores their inability to carry out objective criminal investigations, said Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

The judges relied on Fawza Falih’s coerced confession and on the statements of witnesses who said she had “bewitched” them to convict her in April 2006. She retracted her confession in court, claiming it was extracted under duress, and that as an illiterate woman she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint. She also stated in her appeal that her interrogators beat her during her 35 days in detention at the hands of the religious police. At one point, she had to be hospitalized as a result of the beatings.

The judges never investigated whether her confession was voluntary or reliable or investigated her allegations of torture. They never even made an inquiry as to whether she could have been responsible for allegedly supernatural occurrences, such as the sudden impotence of a man she is said to have “bewitched.” The judges did not sit as a panel of three, as required for cases involving the death penalty. They excluded Fawza Falih from most trial sessions and banned a relative who was acting as her legal representative from attending any session. Earlier, her interrogators blocked her access to a lawyer and the judges, and denied her the right to professional legal representation, thus depriving her of the opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses against her. She claims that some of the witnesses were unknown to her and that others had made statements against her only as a result of beatings.

Saudi Arabia does not have a written penal code, and “witchcraft” is not a defined crime. The Law of Criminal Procedure of 2002 grants defendants the right to be tried in person, to have a lawyer present during interrogation and trial, and to cross-examine any prosecution witnesses. The law obliges law enforcement officers to treat detainees humanely.

An appeals court ruled in September 2006 that Fawza Falih could not be sentenced to death for “witchcraft” as a crime against God because she had retracted her confession. The lower court judges then sentenced her to death on a “discretionary” basis, for the benefit of public interest and to protect the creed, souls and property of this country.

The judges’ behavior in Fawza Falih’s trial shows they were interested in anything but a quest for the truth, Stork said. They completely disregarded legal guarantees that would have demonstrated how ill-founded this whole case was.

Critics of Jodha Akbar believe the Congress government's Islamist political ideology drove its appointed chairman of the Censor Board, Sharmila [Khan], to clear the highly controversial film Jodha Akbar without cuts. And as such, they believe they need to be targetted also.

On Monday in Chandigarh, a lawsuit was filed in the district court by combined Rajput and Hindu organisations against this government's Board, Ronnie Screwvala, Ashutosh Gowarikar and UTV, for manipulating history on behalf of Islamists and 'waging war against the state' using cinema.

Among the things they are pointing to is the depiction of Hemu and the subsequent beheading. The film centers around the romance between the Muslim Mughal Emperor Akbar, played by Hrithik Roshan and his Hindu wife,

An Indonesian Muslim, who declared himself to be a prophet after Mohammed, went on trial on Wednesday, charged with religious blasphemy, an offence punishable by up to five years in prison.

Ahmad Moshaddeq, the leader of outlawed Muslim sect al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah, is accused inciting public hostility and tarnishing the image of Indonesia's dominant religion.

Chief prosecutor Muchamad Muhadjir said in his indictment that Mushaddeq had claimed himself the prophet and told his followers there was no requirement for them to go on a haj to Mecca, nor to pray five times each day.

In September 2007, the Indonesian Council of Ulemas, the country's highest authority on Islam, declared al-Qiyahad a 'misguided' sect, saying it had defied one of Islam's six pillars of faith and followed teachings that run counter to mainstream Islamic beliefs.

In November, Mushaddeq and several disciples surrendered themselves to Jakarta city police after angry Muslims vandalized a building used by the sect for meditation. Also in November, Indonesian authorities issued a ban against the group, estimated to have about 40,000 followers in the country.

Three men have been charged in the firebombing of a small mosque in the US.

Authorities said Eric Ian Baker, Michael Corey Golden and Jonathan Edward Stone had planned for a week to burn down the Islamic Center of Columbia, about 40 miles southwest of Nashville, US Attorney Paul O'Brian said.

The men are accused of using gasoline, rags and empty beer bottles to set fire to the storefront mosque. The men, who were arrested later that day, are facing federal charges of unlawful possession of a destructive device and state charges of arson.

The federal complaint filed against the men says Stone and Baker told officers they were members of the Christian Identity movement, an extreme doctrine that claims white Europeans are God's chosen people. The complaint also said Baker spray-painted swastikas on the walls of the building, including the phrase "White Power."

When asked if the men could face hate-crime charges, O'Brian said the investigation is continuing and more federal charges could be filed. Police used surveillance video from a local gas station to identify the suspects.

Twenty of Manila's poorest residents have filed a legal challenge against what they say is a ban on contraception.

The group - 16 women and four of their husbands - are fighting a policy which they say denies them access to condoms, to the pill and other effective forms of family planning. This has had a devastating effect on their lives, they argue, causing unwanted pregnancies, pushing them further into poverty and harming their health and wellbeing.

More than 80% of Filipinos are Roman Catholics and the Church is hugely influential. Abortion is banned and President Gloria Arroyo openly backs the Church's anti-contraception stance.

The case has sparked debate in the Philippines where, says Professor Michael Tan, chair of the anthropology department at the University of the Philippines, there is no national policy on family planning.

Previous attempts to pass laws requiring government funding for services like family planning and Aids prevention have been blocked by conservatives, Tan says. This has left crucial decisions in the hands of local officials and resulted in a very mixed picture nationwide - so this case is very significant: People recognise that the courts must decide once and for all whether local government officials can unilaterally ban family planning services.

The policy at the centre of the controversy was introduced in February 2000 by the then Manila City Mayor Jose Atienza, a staunch Catholic. He backed "natural" family planning and called the use of alternative contraceptives a very, very destructive practice which ruins Filipino values.

Atienza passed Executive Order 003, which upholds natural family planning not just as a method but as a way of self-awareness in promoting the culture of life while discouraging the use of artificial methods of contraception. Although carefully worded to avoid an outright prohibition on "artificial" contraception, it was interpreted as such by city health officials, campaigners say.

Condoms and pills - which had been free - disappeared from local health centres. Hospitals turned down requests for sterilization operations. Many health workers stopped providing any information whatsoever on contraception.

Atienza is no longer mayor - he is now secretary for the Department of Environment - and his replacement Alfredo Lim is currently looking at the issue. But EO 003 remains in place and there are no plans to start providing free contraceptives again - not even condoms for sex workers.

Lawyers for the group - from Philippine-based rights organisations LIKHAAN and Reprocen, and the US-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) - argue that EO 003 has caused "serious and lingering damage" to residents. The policy has hit poorest people the hardest, they say, forcing people to choose between a packet of pills or food for their families.

The plaintiffs argue that EO 003 violates the constitution - which gives couples the right to plan a family in accordance with their beliefs - as well as several international conventions to which the Philippines is a signatory.

Muslim leaders have issued fatwas calling for the death of the female author of a controversial new book, Love and Sex in the Prophet's Life, which was circulated at the Cairo International Book Fair last month.

In a statement to AlArabiya.net, Egyptian writer Passant Rashad said the book tackles sex as a branch of science, deemed as important in Islam for its role in preserving the human race: I wanted to explain sex from the real Islamic perspective and to make it the reference for having a healthy sexual life.

When I mentioned the prophet I meant to demonstrate how his relationship with his wives was the perfect example of a healthy sexual life that is devoid of the complications Arabs try to impose on it these days.

But the book has drawn sharp criticism. Independent Egyptian MP Mustafa al-Gindi complained to the Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny, earlier this month saying the book insults the Prophet and his wives, especially his third wife Ayesha: The book contains parts about positions and orgasms, which is totally inappropriate for a book that had the prophet's name in its title.

A religious TV channel in Egypt denounced the publication and hosted a series of sheikhs – Islamic leaders – who accused her of apostasy and called for her killing, even if she were to repent.

At the same time, Islamic thinker Gamal al-Banna called for an end to the fatwas on writers: This is a backward way of understanding Islam. We have to eliminate this torrent of fatwas through reasoning and refutation of these lies. It is only then that those bloodshed Sheiks will find no audience. He called upon Arab information ministers to ban televised fatwas that wreak havoc in society and make intellectuals live in constant fear.

The Malaysian Syariah High Court has convicted former religious teacher Kamariah Ali and follower of the Sky Kingdom sect led by Ayah Pin of apostasy.

Judge Muhammad Abdullah deferred the sentencing to March 3 to give Kamariah a chance to declare that she had repented and was willing to abandon any teachings contrary to Islam.

Although I have drawn up several punishments, what I want to see is for Kamariah to change. The offence is an insult to Muslims in Malaysia and the world generally...I would like to hear an admission from Kamariah that she has repented and is ready to leave all teachings except Islam.

Don’t say I am telling Kamariah to repent because it must come from her own heart. I believe and am confident that Kamariah knows better of what is Islam and who is Allah, he said.

Kamariah was charged under Section 7 of the Syariah Criminal Offence Enactment (Takzir) Terengganu after she declared herself an apostate on July 21, 2005. She could be fined up to RM5,000 or jailed up to three years or both, if convicted.

Justice Muhammad said:  The court has a prima facie case against you, the sentencing could be heavy but the court is giving you a chance to repent and I would evaluate the sentence that should be meted out, later.

A Singapore-based retailer has pulled a line of Jesus-branded cosmetics from its shelves after complaints from some Catholics that the items show little respect for Christianity.

The cosmetics, called Lookin' Good for Jesus, is made by American makeup company Blue Q. It was sold in three Topshop outlets in Singapore.

Wing Tai Holdings, which manages the Topshop brand in the city-state, pulled the items of its shelves late last month after some customers complained.

A Catholic, spotted the items in a Topshop outlet and then wrote a letter to Wing Tai last month saying that the products trivialised Jesus Christ and Christianity.

There are also sexual innuendoes in the messages and the way Jesus is portrayed in these products, he sai:  Some of the products sold include, a "virtuous vanilla" lip balm, hand and body cream and a mirrored Jesus statuette. They feature a drawing of Jesus flanked by two adoring women and carry crude slogans such as "Get tight with Christ", "Get His Attention" and "Redeem Your Reputation and More".

Blue Q also carries other tongue-in-cheek items such as a "Believe in God Breath Spray".

The head of the biggest Islamic organization has warned that the reprinting of blasphemous cartoons in Danish newspapers could lead to more confrontations between Muslims and Christians.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said that by reprinting the cartoons we are heading toward a bigger conflict and that shows that both sides will be hostages of their radicals.

The Jeddah-based OIC is the world's largest all-Islamic body, with 57 countries as members:

It is not a way of improving your rights and exercising your freedoms when you use these rights for insulting the most sacred values and symbols of others and inciting hatred, he said: This is a very wrong, provocative path - unacceptable.

Hundreds of people in the Gaza Strip joined a Hamas rally on Friday against newspapers that reprinted the cartoon. On Thursday, Hamas condemned the newspapers and called for those responsible to be put on trial.

Speaking to the crowd in the northern town of Jabaliya, Hamas MP Yussef Sharafi called on the Danish government to "apologize to Muslims for the offence to the prophet".

Hundreds rallied in Pakistan as well, burning an effigy of the Danish premier Friday in protest at the cartoon's reprinting. Chanting Death to the cartoonist, protesters in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and other locations demanded that the Pakistani government cut diplomatic relations with Denmark and boycott Danish goods.

The punishment for blasphemy in Islam is death, Islamic leader Hafiz Hamidullah told a student rally in northwestern Peshawar, where about 500 students demonstrated.

In the port city of Karachi, students staged a rally outside a medical college while another rally by a religious party later burned the effigy of Danish Premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Dozens of students from the Jamaat-i-Islami party thrashed a dummy of the cartoonist and then set it ablaze at a demonstration in the central city of Multan, joined by about 150 local traders.

The participants chanted slogans against US President George W. Bush and criticized the government of President Pervez Musharraf for not taking up the issue with Danish authorities.

See full article from Gulf News

Danish Police arrested 50 people after groups of youths set fires to schools, cars and trash bins in a sixth consecutive night of violence - mostly in immigrant neighbourhoods of Danish cities - police officials said on Saturday.

The spate of vandalism started last weekend and some believe it intensified with the reproduction of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad in Danish newspapers on Wednesday, motivating the publication as a statement for free speech.

Police spokesman Jan Marker said the overnight violence was spread across all of Denmark, with arrests made in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Ringsted, Slagelse and other cities.

See full article from the BBC

Danish MPs have cancelled a trip to Iran after Tehran demanded they apologise for the republication of cartoons deemed offensive to Islam.

Two days before the scheduled trip, Tehran demanded the MPs condemn the cartoon on their arrival in Iran.

A condemnation and apology would help convince the Iranian people that Denmark's authorities had distanced themselves from the action, Iran's parliament said in a letter to Danish MPs.

Nine members of Denmark's foreign affairs committee were due to arrive in Iran on Monday for a three-day trip focusing on human rights and the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme.

We are not the ones to apologise, said Villy Soevndal, the leader of Denmark's Socialist People's Party: If anyone needs to apologise for freedom of speech, human rights, imprisonments, executions and lack of democracy, it is the Iranians.

Scores of British Muslims held a protest outside Downing Street demanding equal rights and an end of Islamophobia in the media. Around 80 people representing a number of organisations took part in the demonstration under the slogan: Yes to equal citizenship, No to double standards.

The aim was to highlight a number of perceived grievances including the bugging of Tooting MP Sadiq Khan, the media furore over the sharia law debate and the rejection of a visa to the UK for a controversial Islamic scholar.

The protest was organised by the British Muslim Initiative (BMI) and supported by 20 other Muslim groups including the Muslim Council of Britain and British Muslim Forum.

The BMI have said the demonstration is a response to the past week's events including the controversy provoked by the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments that adoption of some aspects of Islamic sharia law in the UK seem "unavoidable". It is also protesting over the Home Office's rejection of Egyptian-born, controversial scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi's visa application to enter the UK. The revelation that counter-terrorism officers had secretly recorded discussions between MP Sadiq Khan and a jailed constituent has also led to angry reactions from Muslims.

Some UK Asians in the police and in Government jobs have been accused of blocking the crackdown against so-called honour killings.

It is alleged they are not only failing to help desperate women trying to flee abuse and arranged marriages but are actively encouraging punishment for those they believe are breaking traditional taboos.

Terrified victims who seek official help are even being tracked down by a network of Asian men working in Government departments and social services, according to a study written by the think-tank Social Cohesion.

The report also claims some Asian police officers actually return women to their abusive families or refuse to act against men enforcing 'traditional' roles.

Meanwhile, non-Asian officials and police officers are scared of acting against families who abuse their relatives for fear of being branded as racist, the report says.

Controversially, the report accuses one of the Government's closest advisers on Muslim matters, the Muslim Council of Britain, of hampering attempts to criminalise forced marriage. It said: The MCB has sought to block legislation aimed at ending honour-based violence. Almost all women's groups interviewed for this report say that the MCB has done little or nothing to end honour-based violence...

In many northern towns...South Asian women are often afraid to seek help because they know that Asians working in local government believe that women who break traditional taboos deserve to be punished.

The new government in Sierra Leone has vowed to outlaw female circumcision, a common practice in the West African country, the social welfare minister said.

Minister Haja Musu Kandeh said the government has an expressed commitment to ban the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). The practice is a fundamental violation of human rights as some women and girls may not have expressed their consent to undergo the practice.

She did not state when the ban would take effect.

35-40% of women in the country undergo circumcision, she said, traditionally believed to control female sexuality and make girls more "marriageable."

A Christian campaigner is protesting against the provocative message one Valentine's ad campaign is sending out to young lovers on the most romantic day of the year.

Christian Solidarity Party member Mary Doherty, from Donegal, is protesting against the Valentine's ad in Peacocks shop, Derry. The ad shows a glam brunette wearing sexy red and black underwear.

Mary - who set up the National Campaign against Pornography and Obscenity in the wake of strip shows in Donegal said: It is the way the model is reclining, with her chest sticking out and legs akimbo. This image is not about love on Valentine's Day. It depicts a woman as an object. Valentine's Day is about spreading love, it's not about raw sex.

She added: I demand Peacocks remove this advertisement. Underwear is an intimate part of our lives, not something that should be on show to the world. Some people may not see anything wrong with it, but this model is lying in a provocative pose in her underwear. Fair enough, show women in a feminine pose, but not as objects.

Peacocks defended its Valentine's lingerie poster campaign: We are sorry that this lady has offended by it - it was not meant to cause her discomfort. But this is an isolated complaint.

Hundreds of Danish Muslims have been demonstrating in Copenhagen against the reprinting of a turban bomb cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad they consider offensive.

All major Danish newspapers decided to republish it after Danish intelligence said it had uncovered a plot to kill one of the cartoonists.

Protestors marched in the capital's streets shouting God is Great! and Freedom of speech is like a plague!.

Many carried the black and white flags of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamic party that calls for the creation of a caliphate.

Earlier, at Friday prayers, Danish Muslims from many backgrounds expressed frustration that one of the cartoons they find so offensive could have been printed again. Many said they simply could not understand the motive unless it was hatred for Islam. But the overwhelming mood was not so much anger but weary resignation; a sense that they have been through this crisis once before and nothing has been learnt.

See full article from the Scotsman

A man sized talking rabbit appeared on television in Gaza yesterday to denounce Danish newspapers over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that offended Muslims.

The latest in a line of cartoon-inspired characters that take the message of the Hamas Islamist movement to Palestinian children, the actor in the Bugs Bunny-style outfit also railed against "Zionist filth" and Israel's control of Jerusalem.

The show Tomorrow's Pioneers on Hamas's al-Aqsa channel has become a weekend fixture for pre-teens.

Alarmed by the lack of support for their advocacy to ban the airing of commercial advertisements over mass media, pro-life groups in the Philippines are preparing to take their cause to the streets to drum up greater awareness and support.

It's time we take to the streets and undertake mass actions to press our cause, said Rene Josef C. Bullecer, national director for AIDS-Free Philippines (AFP).

In a joint press statement distributed to media after the forum, AFP claimed The advertisement of condoms and contraceptives on the Philippine television and radio runs counter to the gains we have achieved through these years.

"Since the government has not planned anything for National Pro-Life Week, we took it upon ourselves to launch this campaign to ban commercial ads for condoms and contraceptives over mass media," Bullecer said. This is against the constitution, the KBP Code, our cultural and religious tradition.

The petition to ban condom and contraceptive ads over mass media was submitted last January 21, 2008 by HLI, FMAF, and other pro-life groups to the Advertising Board, the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) among others.

In the ensuing lively discussion actively participated by the media men present, the group said that in the absence of a proven vaccine or cure against HIV/AIDS, Abstinence and Chastity are still the best proven and most effective weapons against it.

Three persons including a police officer were killed after Muslim students rioted over a caricature of Prophet Mohammed by their Christian colleagues, police and teachers have said.

Students of Government Secondary School Sumaila, south of the northern city of Kano, went on the rampage after a Christian student suspended for two weeks returned to the school.

He had been suspended for having drawn a caricature of the Prophet and posted it on a wall inside the school.

Two people and a police inspector have been killed in the violence while the divisional police station and everything inside including ammunition have been burnt by the rioters, Kano police chief Aminu Yesufu told reporters.

He said about 20 others were badly wounded, including the divisional police officer, who suffered a deep machete cut to the head. Police had arrested 25 people and opened an investigation, he added.

The students began chanting Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest) when the Christian student returned and pursued him to lynch him, Sadiq Haruna, a teacher at the school, told an AFP reporter.

The Christian escaped in taking refuge in the local police station but hundreds of angry Muslim students attacked and set on fire the premises after the police refused to hand him over, Haruna said.

This is the second time in a week in the mainly Muslim northern Nigeria that an allegation of blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed has sparked violent protests and an attack on the police. On Thursday last week police shot dead one rioter during rioting irate Muslim youth in the city of Yana (Bauchi state) over alleged blasphemy by a Christian woman.

British ministers are stepping up the fight against so-called 'honour' crime and forced marriages. Detectives say official statistics are 'merely the tip of the iceberg' of this phenomenon.

Up to 17,000 women in Britain are being subjected to "honour" related violence, including murder, every year, according to police chiefs.

And official figures on forced marriages are the tip of the iceberg, says the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

It warns that the number of girls falling victim to forced marriages, kidnappings, sexual assaults, beatings and even murder by relatives intent on upholding the "honour" of their family is up to 35 times higher than official figures suggest.

The crisis, with children as young as 11 having been sent abroad to be married, has prompted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to call on British consular staff in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to take more action to identify and help British citizens believed to be the victims of forced marriages in recent years.

The Home Office is drawing up an action plan to tackle honour-based violence which aims to improve the response of police and other agencies and ensure that victims are encouraged to come forward with the knowledge that they will receive the help and support they need. And a Civil Protection Bill coming into effect later this year will give courts greater guidance on dealing with forced marriages.

...Read the full article

A row has erupted over “Vatican interference” after the Italian Synod of Bishops appealed to actors to exercise their consciences and refuse to take part in “vulgar and destructive” erotic scenes in films.

The appeal follows public condemnation by the bishops of an explicit sex scene in Caos Calmo, starring the Italian actor and director Nanni Moretti, which has just been released. In the film, directed by Antonello Grimaldi, Moretti plays a television executive who experiences a mid-life crisis after the death of his wife in the course of which he has a torrid affair with a woman he saves from drowning.

Father Nicolò Anselmi, head of the youth section of the Italian Bishops Conference, said that Moretti was normally noted for his “idealistic and sensitive” films. But the “gratuitous” sex scene with Isabella Ferrari, his co-star, would have an undesirable effect on the “impressionable young” since it was shown without any context involving love or tenderness.

Franco Zeffirelli, the film and opera director, said: The Church is full of pedants who have lost all sense of proportion.

Chanting "Death to the cartoonist", dozens of Islamist students burned the Danish flag in southern Pakistan on Thursday after the republication of a caricature of Prophet Mohammad.

In Kuwait, several parliamentarians called for a boycott of Danish goods. The government has to take action against Denmark, said Waleed al-Tabtabai, a member of parliament.

The sons of dogs published drawings that are offensive to the Prophet. Kuwait's deputy prime minister Faisal al-Hajji said the Gulf Arab country would make an official complaint.

There was also a peaceful protest outside the Danish embassy in Tehran where the ambassador was summoned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday to receive a formal protest.

Up to 50 youths from the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, a right-wing anti-government Islamist party, protested in the Pakistan city of Karachi.

Grouped outside the Karachi Press Club, the students held up banners reading We strongly condemn the act of insulting the Prophet by the Denmark Press and Prime Minister of Denmark and the Pope should apologise to the Muslim community.

India has renewed the visa of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, in hiding in India after death threats from Islamic groups over her work.

But it warned the author not to do anything that would "hurt the sentiments" of India's religious communities, an apparent reference to the nation's 140 million Muslims.

It is incumbent on those who are welcomed as guests in India that they remain sensitive to India's traditions, said a statement on the visa extension from India's foreign ministry: We expect that they do not undertake actions that could hurt the sentiments of the many communities that make up our multi-religious and multi-ethnic nation.

Nasreen has said she is very depressed in hiding, describing her condition as virtual house arrest, most recently in an article in the French newspaper Le Monde: I am merely a disembodied voice. Those who once stood by me have disappeared into the darkness.

The country's top judge has overturned the convictions of five Muslim men jailed last year for downloading and sharing extremist terror-related material. The Lord Chief Justice ruled that unless there was clear evidence of "terrorist intent" it was not illegal to read or study such literature.

The prosecution of the five young Muslim men was regarded as a test case, and is likely to lead to other convictions being overturned. These include that of 23-year-old Samina Malik - the so-called "lyrical terrorist". She was the first woman to be convicted under the Terrorism Act and was given a nine-month suspended sentence in December after being found guilty of possessing terrorist manuals.

Irfan Raja, Awaab Iqbal, Aitzaz Zafar, Usman Malik and Akbar Butt were all convicted last year after becoming "intoxicated" with jihadi websites and literature.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, a person commits an offence if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.

Prosecution lawyers have argued that simply obtaining and sharing extremist literature was an offence under the law. However, Lord Phillips ruled against this interpretation and said there had to be a direct connection between the object possessed and the act of terrorism. He added: Difficult questions of interpretation have been raised in this case by the attempt by the prosecution to use section 57 for a purpose for which it was not intended.

The ruling was welcomed by human-rights lawyers who said it safeguarded the right to freedom of speech and thought.

Imran Khan, solicitor for Mr Zafar, said: My client is over the moon. He says it is surreal and he cannot see why he has spent the last two years in prison for looking at material which he had no intention of using for terrorism. Young people should not be frightened of exploring their world. There will always be people out there with wrong intentions, but we must not criminalise people for simply looking at material, whether it is good or bad.

Prosecutors have seven days to appeal against the ruling.

Have a Heart!

Islamist MPs in Kuwait said they will study the possibility of amending existing laws in a bid to ban the celebrations of "alien events" like the Valentine's Day. Head of the Assembly committee monitoring practices alien to Kuwaiti society MP Waleed Al-Tabtabae said after the committee met government authorities that we informed them we will come up with the necessary amendment.

The committee met with representatives from the ministries of interior, information and commerce and industry to study measures necessary to prevent Valentine's Day celebrations that contradict Islamic teachings and values. He said the ministries promised to take all measures necessary to prevent any indecent celebrations and practices and any immoral behaviors that may happen on Valentine's Day today. The measures will include monitoring hotels, restaurants and shops that sell Valentine's Day items to make sure there are no violations of the law.

A number of Islamist MPs meanwhile described Valentine's Day as a Western tradition that is not compatible with Kuwaiti values and contradicts sharia. Some of them however said they were particular about the immoral practices and the concept of the celebrations which encourages out-of-wedlock relationships. The head of the Islamic Sharia College at Kuwait University, Mohammad Al-Tabtabae, issued a fatwa stipulating that the feast is banned under Islam.

Despite its Western origins, Valentine's Day appears to have been embraced by Kuwaitis and red balloons can be found all over restaurants, flower shops and stores selling chocolates. Newspapers are filled with advertisements for jewellery and cakes in the shape of hearts. Main supermarkets and flower shops are filled with Valentine's Day paraphernalia, while hotels publish adverts tempting couples to a dinner and a one-night stay at discounted rates.

Update: No Love for Indonesia

15th February 2008

Aceh in Indonesia also has chipped in with stories that love and romance is un-islamic.

Denmark’s three main newspapers will take the provocative step today of reprinting a cartoon showing the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban bomb after the arrest yesterday of three suspected Islamic terrorists for plotting to murder the artist.

The cartoon by Kurt Westergaard was one of 12 depicting the prophet which triggered riots around the world in 2005.

Westergaard was back at work yesterday to draw a self-portrait for today’s editions. It shows him still clutching his pen and a Danish flag, but he is obscured by a dark and bloody cloud featuring Arabic script which declares: “Glorious Koran.”

Muslim leaders in Denmark appealed for calm last night as police interviewed a Danish citizen of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians about plans for the “terror-related killing” of Kurt Westergaard, 73, who said that he expected to live the rest of his life under threat of death.

Westergaard’s image of Muhammad, which he intended to show how Islam was being used by terrorists, was regarded by some Muslims as one of the most offensive of the cartoons published in his Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Unfortunately, the matter shows that there are in Denmark groups of extremists that do not acknowledge and respect the principles on which Danish democracy is built, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, said. In Denmark we have freedom not only to think and talk, but also to draw.

Jyllands-Posten and two other Danish papers, Politikenand Berlingske Tidende, said that they would reprint the original cartoon as part of their news coverage today. Jyllands-Posten posted it on the front page of its website yesterday. This shows that terror is not only despicable, but also at the end powerless, said Toeger Seidenfaden, Politiken’s chief editor.

The Islamic Faith Community, a religious Muslim organisation at the centre of the controversy, condemned the plot and urged that all disagreements should be handled through legitimate channels: We want to appeal to reason in both politicians and the media to not use this miserable example to feed the flames or use it for their own profit. No one in Denmark deserves to live in fear.

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) said that yesterday’s arrests near Aarhus in western Denmark were made after lengthy surveillance. It expected the 40-year-old Danish citizen to be released pending further investigation. The Tunisians would remain detained while deportation proceedings were brought against them.

Update: Solidarity

14th February 2008

It is reported that 17 Danish publications reprinted the turban bomb Mohammed cartoon including the 3 main dailies. This action was to mark the arrest of muslim men arrested for plotting to murder the cartoonist.

The Church of England condemned the Government’s liberalisation of the gambling laws yesterday, blaming it for a tenfold increase in spending on gaming. The Church called for a statutory levy on the industry to pay for education and treatment of gambling addicts.

The General Synod, meeting at Church House, Westminster, passed a resolution stating it was “gravely concerned” that expenditure on gaming had risen from £4 billion to £40 billion over four years.

The synod stopped short of calling for a ban, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, called on the industry to help to clean up its act. We expect industries to clean up their pollution. The gambling industry is profoundly costly, its human pollution in terms of promoting addiction, destroying family life and so forth, is manifest. The gambling industry needs to take responsibility. A large number of people in Britain felt “deeply uneasy” about the trends in gambling, he said.

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's “Mutaween” police.

Her story offers a rare first-hand glimpse of the discrimination faced by women living in Saudi Arabia. In her first interview with the foreign press, Yara told The Times that she would remain in Saudi Arabia to challenge its harsh enforcement of conservative Islam rather than return to America.

If I want to make a difference I have to stick around. If I leave they win. I can't just surrender to the terrorist acts of these people, said Yara, who moved to Jeddah eight years ago with her husband, a prominent businessman.

Her ordeal began with a routine visit to the new Riyadh offices of her finance company, where she is a managing partner. The electricity temporarily cut out, so Yara and her colleagues, who are all men, went to a nearby Starbucks to use its wireless internet.

She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café's “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.

Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?'. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin, recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.

The men were from Saudi Arabia's Religious Police, the so called Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.

Yara's husband, Hatim, used his political contacts in Jeddah to track her whereabouts. He was able to secure her release.

I was lucky. I met other women in that prison who don't have the connections I did, she said. Her story has received rare coverage in Saudi Arabia, where the press has been sharply critical of the police.

Yara was visited by officials from the American Embassy, who promised they would file a report.

Have a Heart!

Religious police in Saudi Arabia are banning the sale of Valentine's Day gifts including red roses.

The Saudi Gazette quoted shop workers as saying that officials had warned them to remove all red items including flowers and wrapping paper. Black market prices for roses were already rising, the paper said.

Saudi authorities consider Valentine's Day, along with a host of other annual celebrations, as un-Islamic.

In addition to the prohibition on celebrating non-Islamic festivals, the authorities consider Valentine's Day as encouraging relations between men and women outside wedlock - punishable by law in the conservative kingdom.

An Iranian court has sentenced a 22-year-old man to death for violating the Islamic Republic's ban on drinking alcohol several times.

Under Iran's Islamic sharia law, a person who is caught drinking for a fourth time and confesses faces possible capital punishment, even though legal experts say executions for this offence are very rare.

My client had been drinking at home for a fourth time and he made some disturbance in the street and police arrested him, his lawyer, Aziz Nokandei, told the ISNA news agency.

Nokandei said his client, identified only with his first name Mohsen, had confessed and expressed remorse. He can appeal against the verdict within 20 days under Iranian law and the head of the judiciary can also intervene.

A 70-year-old woman christian convert from islam died 1st February from burns she suffered when unknown assailants in a Muslim-majority area about 150 miles northwest of the capital set her home on fire last month.

Rahima Beoa of Cinatuly village suffered 70% burns after the home she shared with her daughter and son-in-law, also converts, was set ablaze the night of January 7.

Murderous villagers were upset over her conversion to Christianity and that of her daughter and son-in-law.

Dressed in black, sporting masks and handing out leaflets on a sunny Sunday morning, more than 30 people stand on an Edinburgh pavement protesting against the Church of Scientology in Scotland.

Posters such as "Honk if you think Scientology is a cult" and "Knowledge is free" were just two of the signs waved at passing motorists and the Hubbard Academy from the narrow pavement.

But despite the healthy turnout of protesters, the numbers pale in comparison with the 7,000 Scots boasted as members by the Edinburgh centre, 100,000 in the UK and more than eight million worldwide.

The Hubbard Academy is just one of 14 in the UK, including Birmingham, Manchester, Brighton, Plymouth, Hove, York, Eastbourne and Tunbridge Wells. There are two in London, including a new centre that opened in October 2006.

But the Edinburgh campaigners, faces blackened, covered by scarves or Halloween masks, argued that the church's behaviour towards critics meant they needed to raise awareness in the wider public.

Websites ranging from Facebook to anti-sect site Operation Clambake coordinated the global "Project Chanology" protests yesterday in centres including London, Brighton, Leeds, Manchester and Dublin.

The Church of Scientology in the UK last night branded Sunday's protesters – who individually and collectively called themselves Anonymous – as "cyber-terrorists" who were themselves anti-free speech.

Scientology is almost as famous for its celebrity members as for its often questioned practices. The church counts Hollywood stars John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Juliette Lewis as members, as well as soul-legend Isaac Hayes, the musician Beck and even the voice of Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright.

A spokesman for the Church of Scientology in the UK said: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity. They are perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology: They initially justified their attacks by claiming that the Church's requests to some websites to remove a stolen video of an internal Church event somehow constituted an affront to free speech. In fact, the Church, as would any copyright owner, had simply sent routine notices that the video constituted a copyright violation.

Online last night, Anonymous insisted they were not a group of "super hackers", adding: We want you to be aware of the very real dangers of Scientology. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. We will be heard. Expect us.

L Ron Hubbard, full name Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, was born in Nebraska in 1911. He wrote many science fiction, fantasy, western and adventure stories, initially under pseudonyms. In 1949, he started to promote his Dianetics self-improvement technique, publishing a book by the same name in 1950: it sold 150,000 copies in the first year.

The Church of Scientology was founded in 1953, describing itself as "the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, others and all of life". According to the church, the ultimate goal is to get the individual being (the "I", called Thetan) back to its native state of total freedom, thus gaining control over matter, energy, space, time, thoughts, form and life. This freed state is called "Operating Thetan".

Believers in Scientology say it offers "exact" methods of spiritual counselling, to help people achieve awareness of their spiritual existence. Through the process of "auditing", people can free themselves of specific traumatic incidents and prior transgressions, which restrict the person from reaching the state of "Clear", and, after that, the state of "Operating Thetan".

Scientology keeps its texts secret until devotees have paid enough money to learn what they say. Some opponents claim the cost of completing all the courses can set an individual back $380,000 (£195,000). The church itself says the most expensive course it offers costs $33,932 (£17,430).

A girl of 15 was tricked into a "telephone marriage" ceremony to a Sheffield man with a mental age of five in a ceremony recognised by sharia (Islamic law).

When the girl arrived from Pakistan expecting to meet the handsome man she had been shown in a photograph, she found that he was 40 years old, unemployed and disabled.

To make matters worse, her mother-in-law decided to exploit her attractive looks by forcing her into prostitution.

The family invited men to the family home to rape her before she managed to escape to the police by bolting through the front door. She was taken into care and now lives in a refuge.

The case is highlighted in a report by the Centre for Social Cohesion, which has found that policemen, councillors and taxi drivers are turning a blind eye or even conniving in enforcing the Asian community's strict "moral code" on young women.

The girl's marriage last April was not recognised by the Home Office but was approved by the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain. She is typical of the runaway brides at risk of an "honour killing". According to official figures, 10 to 12 women are murdered in Britain in honour killings each year, but the government has been warned by MPs that this is a serious underestimate. Police often record the deaths as cases of domestic violence, while other girls are driven to suicide or taken away to their family's country of origin and never seen again. Many Asian parents would rather resort to violence against their children than see their reputation tarnished by the perceived dishonour of allowing them to become "westernised".

The report, Crimes of the Community, claims the problem is no longer an issue of first-generation migrants importing attitudes from "back home" but is "indigenous and self-perpetuating" because it is sustained by third and fourth-generation immigrants.

...By now a number of people have also got round to having a look at the archbishop’s actual lecture (the earliest reactions were to summary impressions), as well his World at One BBC radio interview – the real origin of the calumny heaped upon him. The speech contains some interesting questions and some problematic ideas. The broadcast opportunity that was intended to ‘put things in perspective’ ended up making them very much worse, however. As an object lesson in how to wrench a PR disaster out of a potential three-paragraph story on page 6, this might take some beating. Meanwhile, the real issues about religion and society, voluntary association and civil law, have been in danger of being obscured in the resulting brouhaha.

It is evident by now, I hope, that the head of the Church of England was not actually arguing for the incorporation of chunks of Sharia jurisprudence alongside English law, or its wholesale recognition as a competing legal system – though the damage done by the impression that he was doing this is probably irreparable. Rather, he was (is) suggesting, on the basis of a belief that ‘shared citizenship’ requires the official recognition of different identities and allegiances, that in the limited areas of marriage, divorce, inheritance and custody, voluntarily entered Muslim communal judgements might be recognised within what would remain a common framework of law – much as Talmudic provisions are for Orthodox Jews, it is suggested.

...Read the full article

An Egyptian court has ruled that 12 Christians who converted to Islam and then reverted to Christianity can have their faith officially recognised.

The decision overturns a lower court ruling by a lower court, which said the state need not recognise conversions from Islam because of a religious ban.

This is a case that has tested Egypt's tolerance of conversions from Islam.

A lawyer for the 12 Coptic Christians described the case as a victory for human rights and freedom of religion. He says it could open the door for hundreds of other Copts who want to revert to their original faith from Islam.

It appears, though, that the court's decision will have a limited application. Reports say the judge decided that the Copts should not be considered apostates for converting from Islam, because they had been born Christian.

This suggests that Egyptians born Muslim will still be unable to convert to other faiths and have those conversions recognised on their identity cards. Many Muslims believe that converting from Islam is wrong, and some believe it is punishable by death.

Update: Christian Targets

21st February 2008

See full article from World Net Daily

The danger is just beginning for the christian converts, according to Magdi Khalil, director of the Middle East Freedom Forum.

Since the judge also ordered those Christians to display their "previous Muslim identity" on their national ID cards, the decision creates a high level of danger, Khalil said.

When extremists see their IDs, the Christians could be subject to discrimination or even killed, since they are considered apostates, Khalil explained.

Around 1000 people were displaced, several critically wounded, and every church reportedly destroyed in Shira Yana, Bauchi State, Nigeria on 2 February 2008.

This is the latest in a series of recent incidents of religious violence in northern and central Shari’ah states, reports Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

The violence erupted after a young woman was accused of blaspheming against the prophet Mohammed. According to local sources, the young woman had spurned the advances of a young Muslim man on the previous day. In a last effort the man appealed to her to speak to him in the name of the Messenger to which she responded that she knew no messenger.

On the following morning the youth attacked her house accompanied by a crowd, claiming that she had blasphemed against the prophet Mohammed. When the girl fled to a police station for protection, a pursuing mob proceeded to set fire to the building. Policemen responded by firing live ammunition, killing a young man in his 20s and triggering a rampage in which police and Christians were attacked and their homes and churches destroyed.

Engineer Samuel Salifu, General Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, told Christian Solidarity Worldwide that his organisation commended the speed with which the governor of Bauchi had moved to ensure that the injured would receive treatment, churches would be rebuilt and the victims were compensated. He added that he hoped other governors would adopt a similar response in the event of outbreaks of religious violence.

Legislation has been brought by the government of President Mahmoud Amadinejad before the Iranian Majlis that would mandate the death penalty for apostates from Islam. The law’s reach would be worldwide, the legislation says.

The Washington think tank, the Institute on Religion and Public Policy has reported the proposed “Bill for Islamic Penal” law will be the first time that Iran has by statute mandated the death penalty for conversion from Islam.

The legislation used the word  Hadd -- meaning that it explicitly sets death as a fixed punishment that cannot be changed, reduced or annulled. In the past, the death penalty has been handed down, and also carried out, in apostasy cases, but it has never before been set down in law, the Institute’s president, Joseph Grieboski said.

The proposed Iranian law would enshrine the mandatory death penalty into the country’s civil code for men. Women apostates would be imprisoned. Two types of apostasy are set down in the legislation: parental and innate.

Innate apostates are those whose parents were Muslim, declared themselves as Muslim as an adult and then leave the faith.

Parental apostates are those whose parents were non-Muslims, who had become Muslims as adults, and then left the faith.

Article 225-7 states the “Punishment for an innate apostate is death,” while Article 225-8 allows a parental apostate three days to recant their apostasy. If they continue in their unbelief, “the death penalty would be carried out.”

Article 112 would give the law an extraterritorial jurisdiction, extending its mandate to cover those who renounce Islam both inside and outside Iran.

The law criminalizes heresy saying that anyone who claims to be a Prophet, or a Muslim who creates a sect based on that which is contrary to the obligations and necessities of Islam, is considered an apostate.

Those who practice “witchcraft” shall also be “sentenced to death.”

The draft penal code is gross violation of fundamental and human rights by a regime that has repeatedly abused religious and other minorities, said Mr Grieboski. This is simply another legislative attempt on the part of the Iranian regime to persecute religious minorities.

The proposed laws were a legislative tool to consolidate power around the regime and extend its religious tyranny globally, Grieboski said, and should be condemned by the international community.

A Malaysian church group has accused the government of harassing Christians after customs officers seized 32 Bibles from an airline passenger.

The Council of Churches of Malaysia said the officers at a Kuala Lumpur airport had on January 28 confiscated the Bibles from a Malaysian Christian woman who was returning home from Manila.

The Council of Churches is flabbergasted that such acts are happening in our country with such frequency and impunity, its General Secretary, Rev Hermen Shastri, said in a statement: We call upon the prime minister...to make a clear and unequivocal statement to assure Christians in the country that they will not be subject to such harassment.

A senior ministry official, who declined to be identified, said the matter had been resolved and the Bibles would be immediately returned to the owner. The books should not have been confiscated in the first place, the official said by telephone, adding that they were not on the banned list.

The Philippines House of Representatives has approved a bill that seeks to prohibit both print and broadcast media from using the words "Muslim" and "Christian" as a means of describing a person suspected of committing a crime.

The bill’s main authors said the measure’s objective is to penalize media practitioners by imposing a fine of at least P50,000 whenever the words Muslim and Christian are used: It is hereby declared unlawful for any person to use in mass media, the words Muslim or Christian or any other words that would denote religious or ethnic affiliation to describe any person suspected of or convicted for having committed criminal or unlawful acts."

Hataman, a human rights advocate, said the bill would go a long way as this would reduce connotations of discrimination in the practice of religion.

The bill provides, however, that only editors of newspapers and broadcast stations will be penalized.

Four other measures were approved on third and final reading at the House, including House Bill 2420 amending the Family Code of the Philippines, HB 2811 penalizing those exploiting women and glorifying sexual violence in advertisements, HB 3305 banning obscene porn materials and live sex shows.

The Archnutter of Canterbury faced calls for his resignation today as bishops joined politicians in criticising his remarks supporting the adoption of sharia law in Britain.

Dr Rowan Williams was urged to quit by angry members of the General Synod, the Church's "parliament", who claimed he was undermining the Christian faith.

To add to his woes, Lord Carey, his predecessor at Canterbury, and the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, challenged his view that aspects of Islamic law could be incorporated into the English legal system.

The strength of the backlash represents one of the most serious blows to the Archbishop's authority since his appointment five years ago, and he faces more turbulence when the Synod convenes for a five-day meeting in London on Monday.

Last night friends of the Archbishop said he was "completely overwhelmed" by the hostility of the response and in a "state of shock" at the barrage of criticism he has received.

Lord Carey said that he was wrong to believe that sharia could be accommodated into the English system because there were so many conflicting versions of it, many of which discriminated against women.

Bishop Nazir-Ali, who holds dual British and Pakistani citizenship, said sharia would be "in tension" with fundamental aspects of our current legal system, such as the rights of women.

Offsite Comment: What he wishes on us is an abomination

See article from the Independent by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

What Rowan Williams wishes upon us is an abomination and I write here as a modern Muslim woman. He lectures the nation on the benefits of sharia law – made by bearded men, for men – and wants the alternative legal system to be accommodated within our democracy in the spirit of inclusion and cohesion.

Pray tell me sir, how do separate and impenetrable courts and schools and extreme female segregation promote commonalities and deep bonds between citizens of these small isles?

What he did on Thursday was to convince other Britons, white, black and brown, that Muslims want not equality but exceptionalism and their own domains. Enlightened British Muslims quail. Friends like this churchman do us more harm than our many enemies. He passes round what he believes to be the benign libation of tolerance. It is laced with arsenic.

He would not want his own girls and women, I am sure, to "choose" to be governed by these laws he breezily endorses. And he is naive to the point of folly if he imagines it is possible to pick and choose the bits that are relatively nice to the girls or ones that seem to dictate honourable financial transactions.

Look around the Islamic world where sharia rules and, in every single country, these ordinances reduce our human value to less than half that is accorded a male; homosexuals are imprisoned or killed, children have no free voice or autonomy, authoritarianism rules and infantilises populations.

Offsite Comment: Williams is dangerous. He must be resisted

See article from the Times by Matthew Parris

...Properly understood, the effect of devolving national law and national morality to local and group level is profoundly conservative. Dr Williams's ideas really represent the wilder fringes of a bigger idea: communitarianism...

There is absolutely nothing “left-wing” or woolly-liberal about empowering it. A Britain in which Muslim communities policed themselves would be more ruthlessly policed, and probably more law-abiding than today. But it would be a Britain in which the individual Muslim - maybe female, maybe ambitious, maybe gay, maybe a religious doubter - would lose their chances of rescue from his or her family or community by the State.

The State, not family, faith or community, is the guarantor of personal liberty and intellectual freedom, and it will always be to the State, not the Church, synagogue or mosque, that the oppressed individual needs look. Some two centuries ago Nonconformism in Britain, by offering the individual an unmediated approach to a personal God, started to liberate Christians from the Church. Dr Williams seems not to understand this. Or perhaps he does, and is on the other side.

Update: Unclear & Clumsily Deployed

12th February

See full article from the Independent

The Archbishop of Canterbury has sought to defuse the bitter row over what he appeared to claim was the unavoidable adoption of sharia law in the UK by conceding that his controversial comments may have been unclear and "clumsily deployed".

He insisted that the Church of England had a "considerable" responsibility to other faith groups and asserted that it was not "inappropriate" to raise issues surrounding Islam or other religions – comments that were immediately welcomed by Muslim leaders.

Female Muslim medical students are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs.

Women training in several hospitals in England, according to the Telegraph, have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam.

Universities and NHS trusts fear many more will refuse to co-operate with new Department of Health guidance, introduced this month, which stipulates that all doctors must be “bare below the elbow”.

The measure is deemed necessary to stop the spread of infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile, which have killed hundreds.

Hygiene experts said last night that no exceptions should be made on religious grounds. Dr Mark Enright, professor of microbiology at Imperial College London, said: To wash your hands properly, and reduce the risks of MRSA and C.difficile, you have to be able to wash the whole area around the wrist. I don’t think it would be right to make an exemption for people on any grounds. The policy of bare below the elbows has to be applied universally.

Dr Charles Tannock, a Conservative MEP and former hospital consultant, added: These students are being trained using taxpayers’ money and they have a duty of care to their patients not to put their health at risk. Perhaps these women should not be choosing medicine as a career if they feel unable to abide by the guidelines that everyone else has to follow.

But the Islamic Medical Association insisted that covering all the body in public, except the face and hands, was a basic tenet of Islam. No practising Muslim woman - doctor, medical student, nurse or patient - should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow.

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, is under police protection after he and his family received death threats over his claim that parts of Britain had become “no-go areas” for non-Muslims.

Dr Nazir-Ali was in India when staff at his home in Rochester took a number of phone calls threatening his family and warning him that he would not “live long” if he continued to criticise Islam. He has been given an emergency number at Kent Police, along with other undisclosed protection measures, and said that the threats were being taken “seriously”.

Speaking to The Times, Dr Nazir-Ali, who is on the conservative evangelical wing of the Church and is Britain’s only Asian bishop, said: The irony is that I had similar threats when I was a bishop in Pakistan, but I never thought I would have them here. My point in saying what I did was that Britain had lost its Christian vision, which would have provided the resources to offer hospitality to others.

Afghanistan's President has promised justice for Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, raising hopes that the condemned student journalist will be freed.

At a joint press conference with the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who arrived in Afghanistan on a previously unannounced visit, President Hamid Karzai vowed: Justice will be done. It was the first time that the President has spoken publicly about the 23-year-old's plight, which sparked outrage around the world, after The Independent launched a petition to save him last week. Kambaksh was sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading an article about women's rights, which poked fun at Islam by questioning why men are allowed four spouses, but women are not.

Asked about the case by The Independent, Karzai said he had talked it over with the US and British officials, who have both expressed concerns over Kambaksh's fate.

Karzai insisted it was a matter for his country's courts to deal with. He said: This is an issue that our judicial system is handling. I can assure you, that at the end of the day, justice will be done in the right way.

His remarks suggest he is not planning to use his executive powers to intervene at this stage, but that he may yet pardon Kambaksh if the sentence is upheld by Afghanistan's supreme court. Under Afghan law the President has to sign off on a death sentence before it can be carried out.

Conservative clerics and tribal elders have urged the government not to overturn the death penalty. More than 100 religious and tribal leaders attended a rally in Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, in support of the verdict. The province, in eastern Afghanistan, borders Pakistan's tribal belt, which nurtured many of Afghanistan's hardline mullahs.

Khaliq Daad, head of the Islamic council of Paktia, said Kambaksh had "humiliated" Islam. He said: Kambaksh made the Afghan people very upset. It was against the clerics and Islam. He has humiliated Islam. We want the Afghan President to support the court's decision.

If the verdict is upheld Mr Karzai may be forced to choose between the mullahs, who passed the sentence, and the international community, which opposes it.

Zia Bumia, president of the Committee to Protect Afghan Journalists, said the courts had been hijacked by Mr Karzai's enemies to split him between the religious conservatives and his American backers.

An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts.

In addition to numerous e-mail messages sent to Wikipedia.org, an online petition cites a prohibition in Islam on images of people.

The petition has more than 80,000 “signatures,” though many who submitted them to ThePetitionSite.com, remained anonymous.

A Frequently Asked Questions page explains the site’s polite but firm refusal to remove the images: Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.

The notes left on the petition site come from all over the world. It’s totally unacceptable to print the Prophet’s picture, Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately.

The site considered but rejected a compromise that would allow visitors to choose whether to view the page with images.

Paul M. Cobb, who teaches Islamic history at Notre Dame, said: Islamic teaching has traditionally discouraged representation of humans, particularly Muhammad, but that doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent. Some of the most beautiful images in Islamic art are manuscript images of Muhammad.

The idea of imposing a ban on all depictions of people, particularly Muhammad, dates to the 20th century, he said. With the Wikipedia entry, he added, what you are dealing with is not medieval illustrations, you are dealing with modern media and getting a modern response.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has sparked a political storm by calling for aspects of Sharia law to be adopted in Britain.

Williams said it seems inevitable" that elements of Islamic law, such as divorce proceedings, would be incorporated into British law.

Williams said the UK had to face up to the fact that some citizens do not relate to the British legal system, and argued that officially sanctioning Sharia law would improve community relations.

Nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that has sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states, he told the BBC's World at One programme: But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them.

But his intervention put him at odds with Gordon Brown, who has repeatedly encouraged ethnic communities to integrate.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said that while certain allowances had been made for Muslims, British law would be based on British values and Sharia law was no justification for acting against national law.

Williams said people needed to look at Islamic law with a clear eye and not imagine, either, that we know exactly what we mean by Sharia and just associate it with... Saudi Arabia, or whatever....I do not think we should instantly spring to the conclusion that the whole of that world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow monstrously incompatible with human rights just because it doesn't immediately fit with how we understand it.

Sharia law was originally more enlightened in its attitude to women than other legal systems, Williams pointed out, but did now have to be brought up to date.

Williams's comments were welcomed by Mohammed Shafiq, the director of the Ramadhan Foundation, who said: Sharia law for civil matters is something which has been introduced in some western countries with much success.

A Cairo court has rejected a request by a Christian convert from Islam to have his new religion written on his identity card.

The Court of Administrative Justice said that Mohammed Higazi had not followed the proper legal procedures and that in any case you cannot convert "to an older religion."

Monotheistic religions were sent by God in chronological order... As a result, it is unusual to go from the latest religion to the one that preceded it, the court said.

The person who has such an attitude is straying from the right path and threatening the principles, values and precepts of Islam and of Egyptian traditions, the judgement said.

Without the official ID cards, Egyptians cannot apply for jobs, buy property, open bank accounts or register their children in schools. They are also subject to arrest for not carrying valid identity papers.

The same court ruled that Egyptians from the Bahai minority could leave their religion blank on official documents, in effect restoring their access to jobs, schools and medical and financial services.

A former Romanian Orthodox priest has been jailed for seven years for fatally crucifying a young nun during an "exorcism".

Twenty-three-year-old Irina Cornici was bound and chained to a cross before being starved and denied water for days. She died of dehydration, exhaustion and suffocation.

Ms Cornici believed that the devil was talking to her, and had previously been treated for schizophrenia. Daniel Corogeanu, the former priest, and four nuns decided in 2005 to undertake the exorcism.

Corogeanu was convicted of murder and sentenced  alongside the four nuns in September 2007, but was freed while an appeal took place. Following the appeal's failure he was picked up by police in the remote north-eastern part of the eastern European country.

While the Romanian Orthodox Church regularly performs exorcism rituals it denounced his methods as "abominable", and has promised to take steps to prevent anything similar happening in the future, including psychological screening for potential clergy.

Some 1,000 people attacked the peaceful Ahmadi organization in Kuningan in West Java last December, leaving three Ahmadi members severely injured and two of their mosques heavily damaged.

It has been alleged that the attack was inspired by the edict of the Indonesian Council of Muslim Scholars, or Majelis Ulama Indonesia, an edict that declared the Ahmadi a deviant sect.

This incident was merely the latest in a series of attacks against the group, however. The Ahmadis have long been targeted by so-called Islamic extremist groups, which have used the MUI's edict as a veneer of authority for their attacks.

None of the cases of violence against the Ahmadis has been effectively prosecuted, however, in spite of the Indonesian government ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, whose Article 2 ensures that any person whose rights are violated shall have an effective remedy and that any person claiming a remedy shall have their right determined by a competent judicial authority. Nevertheless, although attacks against the Ahmadis continue, the government ignores the violence directed at them by failing to investigate and prosecute those responsible.

The condemned student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh will not face execution, a senior government official in Afghanistan indicated yesterday.

A ministerial aide, Najib Manalai, insisted: I am not worried for his life. I'm sure Afghanistan's justice system will find the best way to avoid this sentence.

It was the clearest indication yet that the 23-year-old will have his death penalty revoked amid mounting international pressure on the Afghan authorities.

Kambaksh was condemned to die by an Islamic court for insulting Islam. He was found guilty under sharia law after he distributed articles from the internet on women's rights at Balkh university in northern Afghanistan, an act he claims was aimed at provoking debate. His family say he was not allowed a defence lawyer and the trial was in secret.

The verdict, briefly endorsed by the Afghan senate before it retracted its opinion, caused international protests. More than 63,000 people have signed an Independent petition urging the Foreign Office to put all possible pressure on the Afghan government to prevent the execution. The United Nations' senior human rights advocate, Louise Arbour, has written to the President and his top officials. President Hamid Karzai's staff said he had been inundated by appeals from pressure groups across the globe to pardon the student journalist.

The President is concerned about the case and is watching the situation very closely, his spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said. But he added: There is a judicial process ongoing.

Manalai is the senior adviser in Afghanistan's Culture Ministry, which is in charge of arbitrating free speech disputes in the media. He condemned the student writer but maintained it was very unlikely he would face the gallows.

The President can pardon death-row prisoners if their sentence is upheld by the Supreme Court. But privately, government sources have hinted that President Karzai would prefer to see the verdict overruled by an appeal court, before it reaches his office.

See full article from IWPR

As columns of people marched through the streets of Kabul holding portraits of journalist Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, it was strange for me to see his image appear so many times, held by so many hands. Parwez is my brother.

It was just a little over a week since a first-level court in the northern Afghan province of Balkh had passed a sentence of death against Parwez.

The world media had snapped to attention, but for me it was especially important to see my own Afghan countrymen and women staging a demonstration for my brother, and for freedom. The January 31 protest was organised by the Afghanistan Solidarity Party.

Many of the participants told me that although they did not know Parwez personally, they were marching to protect freedom of expression and democracy in Afghanistan.

With shouts of “Long live democracy!” and “We demand Parwez’s release!”, the demonstration went on for almost two hours, ending up at the front gate of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan.

The "Danish Cartoon Riots" were a shock to the world. Many newspapers republished the cartoons in defense of freedom of speech and to inform the public. Others decided it was unnecessary and inappropriate. In Canada, the Western Standard magazine chose to do the former. Whether the decision was appropriate or not, it was entirely in its right to do so.

However, a Saudi Imam was so enraged that he called the police to arrest the publisher of the magazine. His 911 call was dismissed. The Imam then turned to the Alberta Human Rights Commission and argued that Ezra Levant, the publisher of the Western Standard, had undermined his human rights. In Canada, where separation of Church and State and the individual's freedom of speech are cherished, one would think this Imam would have been laughed out of court.

However, the state-funded Commission has taken upon itself to be the arbiter of what is proper and politically correct speech, and the scarier part is that they have the power to punish individuals for speech they consider "illegal". Of course, certain hate-speech laws are necessary, for instance, speech that calls for murder, incites a riot, or speech that harmfully libels an individual should be monitored. Levant, however, did none of these things.

The Commission decided that the mere fact that the Imam was offended is grounds for forcing a private citizen, who was practicing his democratic right, to defend himself before their joke-of-a-court.

Thanks to Levant's video postings of his interrogation on YouTube, which have received about half a million hits, his case has received considerable media attention. The absurdity of this kangaroo court becomes clear when his unabashed interrogator has the audacity to question him on his political motives in publishing the cartoons, to which he unapologetically answers "whatever you find offensive".

Maybe if this was an isolated event it would seem like an absurdly embarrassing, but insignificant episode in Canada's proud history of personal liberty. However, the state has also inserted itself between another high-profile Canadian journalist, Mark Steyn, and the public, due to his publication in MacLean's Magazine titled The Future Belongs to Islam.
He too is scheduled for a court date with the Canadian thought police this summer where he
will go before the so-called Canadian Humans Rights Commission.

Among these journalists are many other less known figures whose basic right of free speech is being questioned by thuggish state institutions. Many journalists, inside and outside of Canada, are watching the proceedings with disbelief.

Freedom of speech is not negotiable in Canada and it is not the government's right to decide which religion or creed may or may not be insulted or criticized in public.

Update: Complaint Withdrawn

3rd March 2008

See response from Syed Soharwardy who withdrew his complaint

A poster claiming that gay people want to abolish the family has been criticised by the advertising regulator.

The Christian Congress for Traditional Values (CCTV) advert showed a man, woman, boy and girl with the statement Gay aim: abolish the family.

A complainant had said the advert did not accurately represent gay people's views and was offensive.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the organisation could not stand up the claim that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

The ASA upheld complaints against the ad, ruling that it could be inflammatory. The poster broke advertising rules on social responsibility, decency, matters of opinion and truthfulness, the ASA said: We considered the statement and the way it appeared was likely to cause offence both to the mainstream gay community and supporters of equality.

The ASA added that it was also likely to be seen as controversial and possibly inflammatory by a significant number of people who saw the poster in an untargeted medium. We concluded that the poster was likely to cause serious or widespread offence and might lead to anti-social behaviour.

The CCTV, which describes itself on its website as an alliance of Christians but not a church organisation, was instructed to make sure future campaigns would not be offensive.

The group defended the poster, citing gay organisations' manifesto documents from the 1970s which described the traditional family unit as working against homosexuality.

The Archnutter of Canterbury has condemned Britain's 24-hour drinking culture, saying it was the "tip of the iceberg" of alcohol abuse.

Rowan Williams expressed his concern that a review, ordered by the prime minister, Gordon Brown, would conclude that the legislation permitting pubs and clubs to serve alcohol around the clock had been a success.

I would be interested to see why anyone should think of it as a success, I think it has had an effect of making less safe and less civil our public space in many contexts, including Canterbury.

There is a whole culture of alcohol abuse which this country has failed to tackle and the 24-hour thing is just the tip of the iceberg. It is not that I am singling it out as the worst bit of the field, it is just that it is one of the more obviously presenting factors.

A group of internet hackers has launched an online campaign against the Church of Scientology.

The group, which calls itself Anonymous, has scored a couple of big successes, first by carrying out a denial of service attack on the Church of Scientology's international website, causing it to crash, and a sustained campaign of "Google bombing" - manipulating the way the internet search engine works - to ensure that the Church of Scientology is returned as the first hit whenever anyone enters the search string "dangerous cult".

The decision of hackers to target the church is believed to have stemmed from YouTube's decision to remove a video from the site showing Tom Cruise hailing Scientology as "a blast".

Anonymous allege that Scientologists forced YouTube to delete the highly embarrassing footage.

However, the Church of Scientology claims that the video, which was shot at a 2004 church anniversary event, was never intended for replay on television and the internet and had been placed on the internet in an out-of-context manner for the purpose of causing controversy.

The video is copyrighted, and the email request that it be removed was no different to what is routinely done by other owners of copyrighted materials whose works are pirated, such as the film, television and recording industries, said the Church of Scientology in a statement.

Global protests are planned for this Sunday, to voice concerns about the church's supposed love for "speech-suppression tactics" and "frivolous" legal injunctions to prevent criticism or discussion of the religion. Protesters are mobilising online on sites such as Facebook and YouTube. A video posted by Anonymous about its anti-Scientology campaign has been viewed more than 90,000 times and the group has its own "channel" on the video-sharing site.

According to a press release circulated by the protest group, Anonymous said that that group's goals include bringing an end to the financial exploitation of Church members and protecting the right to free speech.

It goes on to say that this alleged clamp-down on free speech was most evident on the recent attacks on websites such as Digg and YouTube, where the church filtered anti-Scientology comments and replaced their content with the text: 'This comment is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Church of Scientology International'.

Comment: Best Methods of Protest

From DarkAngel on the Melon Farmers Forum

Regarding those hackers doing "denial of service" attacks on the scientology websites, whilst I admire people wanting to stand up to this lot there is no way I can condone these illegal acts. These people are going to get themselves jailed if they're not careful.

There's a very good YouTube video criticising their methods from an anti-scientology campaigner who goes on to explain the best methods of protesting against them.

The Club of Orthodox Journalists intends to establish a public council on morality in Russian federal TV channels.

The council will be be advisory and the council would welcome all experts regardless of their sex, age, nationality, or religious confession.

No date has been decided upon for the establishment of the council. Aleksandr Shchipkov, chairman of the Club of Orthodox Journalists, hopes its registration will be preceded by a wide public discussion on the format of the council’s work and proposes that both religious organisations and secular structures play a part in it.

The source of the funding for the council should also be discussed. [We should decide whether the money comes] from the state or allied [funding] from the budget, or [should it come from corporations] and social grants. Society has lost control over TV channels, thus, [standards] of public morality are violated and it results in the [corruption] of children,  Shchipkov claimed

Yevgeny Nikiforov, President of the Orthodox media organisation Radonezh, stated that the council should in no way limit creative freedom and freedom of speech, ...BUT... it should only intend to oppose the ’freedom’ of business, and the ‘freedom’ of greed. According to Nikiforov, the council should also protect the honour and dignity of journalists.

Father Vladimir Vigilyansky, head of the press service of the Moscow Patriarchate, believes that the [present leadership] in TV belongs to a censorship of the money bags and a censorship of vulgarity that impedes open and free creative work.

ESPN host Dana Jacobson went back on the air beginning her TV show with an on-air apology for her recent string language.

The US sports presenter said: I want to once again say how truly sorry I am for my poor choices and bad judgment that night. I have taken responsibility for what I did say and do and realize why it was wrong.

Christian groups protested ESPN last week when they felt it was slow to take disciplinary action against Jacobson for her anti-Christian tirade on Jan. 11 at a roast in Atlantic City, N.J. There, Jacobson, who was reportedly intoxicated during the event, made such remarks as "Fuck Notre Dame," "Fuck Touchdown Jesus," "Fuck Jesus."

In earlier apologies, the First Take co-host said she respects all religions and did not mean anything derogatory by her "poorly chosen words." ESPN affirmed that the comments were delivered in the context of Notre Dame football and its "Touchdown Jesus" icon.

Both ESPN and Jacobson have called the behavior inappropriate and inexcusable and apologized for the incident. The anchorwoman was suspended for one week.

But some Christian groups say the temporary suspension was not enough and have asked for her to be fired or suspended for one year.

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission was working to hold a meeting of pro-family leaders and ESPN's executive leadership. Mike Soltys, executive vice president of Communications for ESPN, however, said no more meetings will be held and no more disciplinary actions will be taken against Jacobson.

We are very disappointed with ESPN's response to our legitimate concerns, said Dr. Gary L. Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission in a released statement Tuesday. Christians must respond or expect more of this kind of blasphemy in public in the future.

Two Iranian sisters convicted of adultery face being stoned to death after the supreme court upheld the death sentences against them.

The two were found guilty of adultery  after the husband of one sister presented video evidence showing them in the company of other men while he was away.

Branch 23 of the supreme court has confirmed the stoning sentence, said their lawyer, Jabbar Solati.

The penal court of Tehran province had already sentenced the sisters identified only as Zohreh, 27, and Azar (no age given) to stoning, the daily said.

Solati explained that the two sisters had initially been tried for "illegal relations" and received 99 lashes. However in a second trial they were convicted of "adultery."

The pair admitted they were in the video presented by the husband but argued that there was no adultery as none of the footage showed them engaged in a sexual act with other men.

There is no legal evidence whereby the judge could have the knowledge for issuing a stoning sentence, Solati said, adding that he had appealed to the state prosecutor. The two sisters have been tried twice for one crime, Solati protested.

The newspaper Etemad reported that the husband of the other sister, Azar, had not filed any complaint against her.

Kuwait's National Assembly Speaker Jassem Al-Kharafi has called for the passing of international legislation penalizing those who insult heavenly religions or religious icons.

He said the Kuwaiti parliament had adopted such a proposal at the meeting of the Arab Interim Parliament, where it was approved with consensus.

It was again proposed at the Islamic Parliamentary Union in Malaysia and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Indonesia last year. Al-Kharafi hoped the Kuwaiti proposal would receive the required support at the IPU meeting, set to be held in South Africa, following which it would be referred to the UN for approval.

The upper house of parliament in Afghanistan has withdrawn its support for a death sentence issued against a journalist convicted of blasphemy.

Legal experts said that the senate's support for the sentence was unconstitutional.

Its secretary, Aminuddin Muzafari, told journalists its statement had been a "technical mistake". He asked the media to make it clear that the senate did respect the legal rights of Mr Kambakhsh, including the right to a defence lawyer.

But it also said it approved the judiciary's prosecution of cases involving what it called the distribution of anti-Islamic articles.

As the statement of support was withdrawn, about 200 Afghans demonstrated in Kabul against the sentencing of Kambakhsh.

Kambaksh is appealing to higher courts against the death sentence.

His family say his trial was unfair because, among other things, he was not given a defence counsel.

The earlier senate statement supporting the death sentence was signed by its leader, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, an ally of President Hamid Karzai. The president would have to approve the death sentence for it to be carried out.

An Iranian music teacher, Abdollah Farivar, has been sentenced to death by stoning, for having relations with one of his students.

Forty-nine year-old Farivar is married with two children.

The family of Farivar, insists that he did not commit adultery, since the teacher signed a timed marriage contract.

A timed marriage contract, or 'Sigheh' means a man and a woman enter into a legally binding, but temporary union, after agreeing on the length of the contract and the amount of compensation to be paid to the woman.

The contract has a background in Shia law and has been used as a measure for curbing prostitution and provides a way around Iran's restrictive laws that prevent pre-marital sexual relations.

The incident reportedly happened in the city of Sari, located in the northern Iran.

When a girl is taken, usually by her mother, to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia, she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet with apparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals. Sponsored by the Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-services organization, circumcisions take place in a prayer centers or schools.

The procedure takes several minutes. There is little blood involved. Afterward, the girl’s genital area is swabbed with the antiseptic Betadine. She is then helped back into her underwear and returned to a waiting area, where she’s given a small, celebratory gift — some fruit or a donated piece of clothing — and offered a cup of milk for refreshment. She has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia, where, according to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an international research group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that their daughters had undergone some form of circumcision by the time they reached 14.

In Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, a debate over whether to ban female circumcision is in its early stages. The Ministry of Health has issued a decree forbidding medical personnel to practice it, but the decree which has yet to be backed by legislation does not affect traditional circumcisers and birth attendants, who are thought to do most female circumcisions. Many agree that a full ban is unlikely without strong support from the country’s religious leaders. According to the Population Council study, many Indonesians view circumcision for boys and girls as a religious duty.

Female circumcision in Indonesia is reported to be less extreme than the kind practiced in other parts of the globe — Africa, particularly. The most common form of female genital cutting, representing about 80% of cases around the world, includes the excision of the clitoris and the labia minora. A more extreme version of the practice, known as Pharaonic circumcision or infibulation, accounts for 15% of cases globally and involves the removal of all external genitalia and a stitching up of the vaginal opening.

Studies have shown that in some parts of Indonesia, female circumcision is more ritualistic — a rite of passage meant to purify the genitals and bestow gender identity on a female child — with a practitioner rubbing turmeric on the genitals or pricking the clitoris once with a needle to draw a symbolic drop of blood. In other instances, the procedure is more invasive, involving what WHO classifies as “Type I” female genital mutilation, defined as excision of the clitoral hood, called the prepuce, with or without incision of the clitoris itself. The Population Council’s 2003 study said that 82% of Indonesian mothers who witnessed their daughters’ circumcision reported that it involved “cutting.” The women most often identified the clitoris as the affected body part.

Any distinction between injuring the clitoris or the clitoral hood is irrelevant, says Laura Guarenti, an obstetrician and WHO’s medical officer for child and maternal health in Jakarta. The fact is there is absolutely no medical value in circumcising girls. It is 100 percent the wrong thing to be doing.

The BBFC has defended its decision to approve for general release films claimed to glamorise Nazism.

SS Experiment Camp is one of a selection of films banned 20 years ago but now approved by the BBFC and being sold online and in high-street shops.

MPs and Jewish groups are concerned that it trivialises the suffering of Holocaust victims.

It supposedly shows women being raped, electrocuted, hung upside down, and burnt alive in incineration chambers by guards dressed in Nazi uniforms. The film's cover features the Nazi SS emblem and the words Previously banned! Legally available for the first time.

Community Security Trust communications director Mark Gardner said: Although we need to see the full content of the videos, they seem totally unacceptable. It seems these videos have been previously banned and I don't see why they should be any more acceptable today than 20 years ago.

Gardner added that the trust was very concerned that over the last couple of years on the internet in particular content that was previously unacceptable has become increasingly mainstream.

We are trying to deal with it through international internet watchdog organisations, as well as directly with retailers. I don't see why they need to be catering for Nazis and sadism.

After viewing the films, the CST would raise its concerns with the BBFC. This is certainly a matter we don't intend to let drop

A BBFC spokesperson acknowledged that the film was not to the taste of most but insisted it was not antisemitic: If something was antisemitic we would cut it, but in the case of this work, we looked at it in 2005 and decided that it definitely is not. It is tasteless and offensive, but not antisemitic. It doesn't contain anything illegal or potentially harmful, which is the test we have to use. The worst thing about it is probably its title.

Board of Deputies chief executive Jon Benjamin said: We have not seen these videos but by all accounts they are extremely unpleasant. Depicting violence and deprivation in this way should be of concern to everyone, although the subject matter of some of these films makes them particularly distasteful to the Jewish community. We certainly support any moves to review the rules whereby this material is made freely available.

The German Family Ministry is pushing to have a book it says slurs Judaism, Christianity and Islam labelled dangerous for children. The book's publisher says kids have a right to enlightenment.

The German Family Ministry is pushing for the children's book How Do I Get to God, Asked the Small Piglet, by written by Michael Schmidt-Salomon and illustrated by Helge Nyncke, to be included on a list of literature considered dangerous for young people.

The three large religions of the world, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, are slurred in the book, the ministry wrote in a December memo. The distinctive characteristics of each religion are made ridiculous.

The book tells the story of a piglet and a hedgehog, who discover a poster attached to their house that says: If you do not know God, you are missing something!

This frightens them because they had never suspected at all that anything was missing in their lives. Thus they set out to look for "God." Along the way they encounter a rabbi, a bishop and a mufti who are portrayed as insane, violent and continually at each other's throats.

The rabbi is drawn in the same way as the caricatures from the propaganda of 1930's Germany; corkscrew curls, fanatical lights in his eyes, a set of predator's flashing teeth and hands like claws. He reacts to the animals by flying into a rage, yelling at them that God had set out to destroy all life on Earth at the time of Noah and chases them away.

The mufti fares little better. While he greets both animals at first as a quiet man and invites them into his mosque, he soon changes into a ranting fanatic. He assembles a baying Islamic mob and holds the animals up in a clenched fist while condemning them to everlasting damnation through bared teeth and an unruly-looking beard.

The bishop, a pale fat man with a clearly insinuated predilection for child abuse, makes up the unholy trinity which eventually convinces piglet and hedgehog, after they have survived the long search in the maze of religions, that nothing of any importance has been missing from their lives.

I think that God doesn't even exist, the hedgehog says at the end of the book. And if He does, than he definitely doesn't live in [a synagogue, cathedral or mosque].

Published in October 2007, the 20-page book's publisher, Alibri, said it was aware it was risking a political battle when it published the book.

Calling the ministry's accusations an attack on freedom of expression, the publisher said the book answers the question of whether a nonreligious child is missing part of life from the perspective of secular humanism. Schedel added that the book is intended for nonreligious parents looking to provide their children with a critical view of religion.

The German department responsible for reviewing children's literature is scheduled to discuss whether the book presents a danger to children's upbringing in a March meeting.

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has been inundated with appeals to save the life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death after being accused of downloading an internet report on women's rights.

While international protests mounted over the affair, with the British Government saying it had already raised its concerns, hundreds of people marched through the capital, Kabul, demanding Kambaksh's release.

A petition launched yesterday by The Independent to secure justice for Kambaksh had attracted more than 13,500 signatories by last night, and a number of support groups have been set up on the social networking site Facebook with more than 400 joining one group alone.

Kambaksh was arrested, tried and convicted by a religious court, in what his friends and family say was a secret session without being allowed legal representation.

The United Nations, human rights groups, journalists' organisations and diplomats urged Karzai's government to quash the death sentence and release him. Instead the Afghan senate passed a motion confirming the death sentence. The MP who proposed the ruling condemning Kambaksh was Sibghatullah Mojadedi, a key ally of Karzai.

In London David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, told The Independent that Britain had raised Kambaksh's case as a member of the European Union and with the United Nations, as well as strongly supporting a call by the UN special representative to Afghanistan for a review of the verdict: We are opposed to the death penalty in all cases and believe that freedom of expression is one of the cornerstones of a democratic society.

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: It is clear that this case has nothing to do with blasphemy and everything to do with prejudice. Afghanistan is sliding back towards the bad old days where women were subjugated and journalists persecuted. We have invested far too much in Afghanistan to allow freedom and democracy to falter. If this sentence is carried through, it will raise major questions about the country's future.

William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said: We call upon President Karzai and his government to urgently reconsider the decision to sentence Pervez Kambaksh to death. Mr Kambaksh was tried without being allowed any legal representation. Moving towards the rule of law is a vital part of peace-building in Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan cannot feel secure unless protected by a body of law and a functioning judicial system.

The Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael, chairman of the all-party group for the abolition of the death penalty, has put down an early day motion urging the British Government to intercede to save Kambaksh's life. In a Commons plea to Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House, he said: I draw the Leader of the House's attention particularly to the front page of The Independent which highlights the case of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh... Surely, given our current involvement in that country... we will not just sit back and allow this monstrous act to take place without doing anything about it?

Ms Harman replied: The Government are determined to stand up for human rights, including freedom of speech, in all countries, and are of course concerned about the matter.

From the Khaleej Times see full article

A group of Afghanistan’s Islamic clerics welcomed a court’s decision to sentence a reporter accused of blasphemy to death.

We welcome the court’s decision, Asadullah Sajid, one of the top leaders of an Islamic council of religious clerics in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

The statement was made after dozens of members of the conservative council met in Jalalabad, the capital town of Nangarhar near the Pakistani border. At least two other such groups have demanded the reporter be executed.

Sajid, who was reading a statement issued by the clerics after their meeting, said, we strongly demand the international community avoid interfering in Afghanistan courts’ decisions.

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In a declaration by the Presidency on January 25, the EU expresses concern over the executions in Iran and barbaric methods used to carry out death sentences.

The declaration denounced death sentences for juvenile offenders which are in total contravention of international norms and standards.

The EU is also deeply concerned by methods of execution used in Iran which fall below international standards for use of the death penalty and violate Iran's international human rights commitments (such as stoning). In this regard the EU is concerned that two men have been sentenced to death in Shiraz and face imminent execution by being 'thrown from a height' or ‘a cliff’. The EU calls on Iran to halt these executions and make a commitment not to apply such sentences in the future, the declaration stated.

The declaration which was also supported by 14 Candidate Countries to join the 27-nation European block reiterated, The EU condemns the increasing recourse to death sentences and executions in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and urges the Islamic Republic of Iran to abolish the death penalty in line with the resolution endorsed on 18 December 2007 by the United Nations General Assembly, on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

In a statement on January 20, the Iranian Resistance's President-elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, strongly condemned escalation of barbaric violations of human rights in Iran, particularly the use of most inhuman methods of punishments and executions. In her statement she called on international and competent bodies not to keep silence over the unprecedented level of rights abuses by the mullahs' regime, and called it a crucial test for these bodies in circumstances where human rights and peace should be safeguarded.