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 an