An Indian professor has approached the Delhi High Court seeking to ban the screening of recently released Black and White alleging that the movie portrays his community in a bad light.

Dr Khalid Alvi, head of Urdu Department in Zakir Hussain college, has contended in his petition that the Anil Kapoor starrer portrays his community in a bad light and its screening should be stayed.

The producer, director and the script writer have intentionally produced the film with an anti-Muslim angle, he said. He alleged the film shows his community as harbouring terrorists.

The film, produced and directed by Subhash Ghai, was released all over the country early this month.

The students and the staff of the college were stunned and shocked that the college was featured in the film and used to malign their community as anti-national and unpatriotic, the petition said.

An 11-year-old girl died from diabetes after her parents prayed for her recovery rather than calling for medical assistance.

Madeline Neumann died on Sunday in Wisconsin, from an undiagnosed but treatable ailment. The local police chief said she had been ill for a month, suffering symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness: She just got sicker and sicker until she was dead.

Police are now preparing a report for prosecutors. However, legal action against the parents may be prevented by a Wisconsin state statute against failing to act to protect children from bodily harm. The statute contains an exemption for what it refers to as treatment through prayer. Mrs Neumann said they had never expected her daughter to die. She suffered from diabetic ketoacidosis, which left her with too little insulin.

She said her family believed in the Bible and that healing came from God. But she insisted that they were not crazy religious people and had nothing against doctors. She said their daughter had been tired over the past two weeks but the day before she died, her bad health went into a more serious situation. She explained: We stayed fast in prayer. We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that - to us - it looked like she was recovering.

However, Madeline's aunt said she pleaded with the dead girl's parents to take her to a doctor in the last few days of her life. As Madeline went into a coma, Ariel Gomez telephoned the emergency services from her home in California. But they were too late to save her. She told the ambulance control room that Mrs Neumann had explained to us that she believes her daughter's in a coma now and she's relying on faith.

The state law that allows healing through prayer became an issue in 2003 when a two-year-old autistic child in Milwaukee was crushed to death during an attempted exorcism. The "exorcist" was convicted on a far lesser charge than many people believed was appropriate. The local district attorney urged legislators to remove the exemption but they failed to act on his advice.

Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) extremists stormed two Easter Sunday services and beat at least 16 Christians, including two pastors, in the Karnataka state capital of Bangalore and in Shimoga district.

A mob of more than 150 Hindu intolerants launched the attack on a Pentecostal church and a group of more than a dozen assailants struck Christians of an independent church in Bangalore.

Accusing the church of “forced” conversions without any evidence for the charge, the attackers beat 35-year-old pastor Mandya Nagraj and five others, besides vandalizing church property.

Police arrested six of the attackers and provided protection to the pastor. The Pentecostal church, attended by around 60 Christians, has been functioning for six years with no evidence of attempting to convert people by force or fraud.

In the second attack, at least 12 extremists led by the Hindu priest of a local temple and his associate, identified only as Puttappa, attacked the Grace Almighty Full Gospel Church in Byapanahalli in Bangalore.

The assailants beat 30-year-old pastor P. Isaac and nine believers. Following the attack, the assailants went to the homes of a few believers and warned them against attending the church. They also took Pastor Isaac to the police station and sought to register a complaint against him for “forced” conversions. Police interrogated the pastor and subsequently released him.

Fitna debuted on Thursday at Web site LiveLeak.com, only to be taken down a day later following threats to LiveLeak's staff.

LiveLeak on Friday afternoon issued a statement explaining its decision: Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill-informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, LiveLeak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.

This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people, from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realized LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.

Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one another's culture. We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high.

During the day that the film was available, it prompted widespread condemnation. On Friday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decried Fitna as hate speech: I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders' offensively anti-Islamic film. There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here. I acknowledge the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film, and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it. Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility.

The Organization of The Islamic Conference also denounced the film as blasphemy. OIC Secretary General Prof Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said, The film is a deliberate act of discrimination against Muslims, incitement for hatred and an act defamation of religions which is solely intended to incite and provoke unrest and intolerance among people of different religious beliefs and to jeopardize world peace and stability.

In the day that Fitna played, it was viewed over 420,000 times. More than 280 comments were posted on LiveLeak.com. And many chose to reply through countervideos, which are still online.

The film may also generate a lawsuit. The BBC reports that Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, known for his cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban, plans to sue Wilders for using his cartoon in the film without permission.

See full article from Reuters

Reuters summarised some of the reaction around the world which has so far being constrained to verbals.

Iran called the film heinous, blasphemous and anti-Islamic, and Indonesia, said it was an insult to Islam, hidden under the cover of freedom of expression.

The Saudi Arabian embassy in The Hague said the film was provocative and full of errors and incorrect allegations that could lead to hate towards Muslims.

Dutch Muslim leaders appealed for calm and called on Muslims worldwide not to target Dutch interests. Our call to Muslims abroad is follow our strategy and don't frustrate it with any violent incidents, Mohammed Rabbae, a Dutch Moroccan community leader, told journalists in an Amsterdam mosque.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said he was proud of how Dutch Muslim organisations responded to the film but that it was too early to draw conclusions about the international consequences: There are reasons for continued alertness.

See full article from the BBC

The EU's Slovenian presidency said the film served no purpose other than "inflaming hatred".

In Pakistan there were small protests in several places on Friday against the film, while the government summoned the Dutch ambassador in Islamabad to lodge a protest. Pakistan said it told the Dutch ambassador that it was incumbent on the Netherlands to prosecute  Wilders for defamation and deliberately hurting Muslim sentiments.

The foreign ministry in Bangladesh issued a statement calling the film "unwarranted" and "mindless".

See full article from Yahoo News

A coalition of Jordanian media said they would take Wilders to court over the film and launch a campaign to boycott Dutch products. They urged Arab leaders to review ties with Denmark and the Netherlands.

British Foreign Minister David Miliband stressed the importance of freedom of speech but said it should be combined with respect for religious and racial diversity.

Europe's top human rights authority, the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, called the film a distasteful manipulation which exploits ignorance, prejudice and fear. It is simply political propaganda and it plays into the hands of extremists who are given such a prominent role in his film," the council's secretary general, Terry Davis said.

A German Muslim group said that protests were likely against the first ever staging of a dramatized version of Salman Rushdie's controversial book The Satanic Verses in Potsdam near Berlin on Sunday.

Nurhan Soykan, spokeswoman for the central council of Muslims in Germany, told Reuters Muslims believed in a free press and freedom of opinion....BUT... even this has its boundaries. We're worried that provocations and insults against us have increased recently. I wouldn't want to ban (the play)....BUT...you can bet on protests from Muslim people. They can't be expected to put up with everything.

German police said they had been consulting with the Potsdam theatre and a large number of officers would be on patrol for the premiere on Sunday. We'll be monitoring the situation, police spokesman Rudi Sonntag said. Although we haven't had any indications of dangers or disturbances, we can't rule out the possibility that demonstrations will be going on.

The top UN rights body has passed a resolution proposed by Islamic countries saying it is deeply concerned about the defamation of religions and urging governments to prohibit it.

The European Union said the text was one-sided because it primarily focused on Islam.

The UN Human Rights Council, which is dominated by Arab and other Muslim countries, adopted the resolution on a 21-10 vote over the opposition of Europe and Canada. 14 countries abstained in the vote.

EU countries, including France, Germany and Britain, voted against. Previously EU diplomats had said they wanted to stop the growing worldwide trend of using religious anti-defamation laws to limit free speech.

The document, which was put forward by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations.

Although the text refers frequently to protecting all religions, the only religion specified as being attacked is Islam, to which eight paragraphs refer.

The resolution notes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001.

The EU said, International human rights law protects primarily individuals in their exercise of their freedom of religion or belief, not religions or beliefs as such.

The resolution urges states to take actions to prohibit the dissemination ... of racist and xenophobic ideas and material that would incite to religious hatred. It also urges states to adopt laws that would protect against hatred and discrimination stemming from religious defamation.

Algeria has ordered 13 Protestant churches to shut down since November, the head of Algeria’s Protestant church group said.

Churches were told to close their doors until they are issued a permit that allows non-Muslim groups to hold organized worship.

Algeria passed a law in February 2006 that required non-Muslim congregations to obtain a permit from their regional prefecture to hold worship gatherings. It also banned the production of media intended to shake the faith of a Muslim, according to Compass Direct News.

After the law’s passage, however, there had not been any enforcement and no Christian churches have been closed until recently.

Thirteen chapels have been closed on the orders of local officials, said Pastor Mustapha Krim, who is president of the Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA). No official reason has been given for the government order, but the decision might be linked to recent tension over allegations that Christians were trying to convert Muslims.

Earlier this month, the former chairman of the Protestant group, American pastor Hugh Johnson, was expelled from the country over links to evangelization campaigns, according to some religious freedom groups. In addition to Johnson’s expulsion, three Algerian Christians were convicted of “insulting Islam” on Feb. 5 and unofficially told they would be sentenced to three years in prison and fined.

A far-right Dutch MP released a provocative film about the Koran on a British website last night, a move that is likely to provoke violent repercussions from angry Muslims around the world.

The 15-minute “documentary” juxtaposing images of Islam’s holy book with the 9/11 terror attacks and other bombings was posted on the internet by Geert Wilders, leader of the small right-wing Freedom Party, after weeks of heated debate in the Netherlands about the project.

Wilders who has built his political career campaigning against the alleged “Islamisation” of the West, argued that the film was a legitimate exercise in freedom of expression; however, many mainstream politicians and Muslims said that it was gratuitously insulting.

Viewers had only a few minutes to see it on the Freedom Party website before it disappeared because of “technical difficulties”. It then became available in Dutch and English on LiveLeak, a British-based video-sharing website, sparking fears that extremists could also target British interests.

The company that runs the website defended its decision to host the film last night, saying that there was no legal reason to censor it. LiveLeak.com has a strict stance on remaining unbiased and allowing freedom of speech so far as the law and our rules allow, it said. There was no legal reason to refuse Geert Wilders the right to post his film and it is not our place to censor people based on an emotive response. The website said that it did not endorse Mr Wilders or his views.

The film opened with a Koran being opened and the text of a sura (a verse from the Koran) which it translated from Arabic as imploring the faithful to “terrorise the enemies of Allah”. It was followed by images of aircraft flying into the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001, with extracts from phone calls to the emergency services on that day.

It showed statistics of the growing Muslim population and images of female genital mutilation, a hanging of suspected gay men, beheadings and bloodied children, all following the words: “The Netherlands in future?”

The film ended with someone leafing through the Koran, and a tearing sound. The sound you heard was from a page [being torn out] of the phone book. It is not up to me, but up to the Muslims themselves to tear the spiteful verses from the Koran, a text on the screen said. Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom, the film concluded.

The final image was a reproduction of the incendiary Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb as a turban. The fuse coming from the bomb was lit and as the screen turned black there was the sound of thunder.

See full article from the Guardian

The 15-minute film, entitled Fitna - strife or division - was posted on the internet, and shortly afterwards segments were rebroadcast by TV channels.

Early reactions were muted. Yusuf Altuntas, of the Contact Group Muslims and Government, said he believed that Wilders is seeking the limits, but not crossing the line. For Mr Wilders, this is quite subtle.

The film was not as jarring as had been anticipated, said Maurits Berger, professor of Islam in the West at Leiden University. It's images and photos, headlines from recent years we already know about.

It was released the evening before a judge was due to hear a Muslim group seeking an independent review to decide whether the film violates hate speech laws. The Dutch Islamic Federation was asking the court to impose a fine of €50,000 (£39,000) every day the film continues to be available for public view.

Mohamed Rabbae, of the moderate National Moroccan Council, had appealed for calm in January when the film was discussed before release. Yesterday he had yet to see the film, but felt this is less bad than we thought he was going to do, but nevertheless it gave the impression the Qur'an justifies violence, and that is really wrong.

Canada is often thought of as a land of bland consensus and multicultural harmony - the last place where you would expect to see a religious minority up in arms, and journalists accusing the state of gagging freedom of speech.

Yet in recent months, these have become fixtures of the country's public debate.

...Read full article

On the evening of Thursday 6th of March in Dudley Hill, Bradford, a Madrassah was attacked.

20 white youths wearing hoodies rushed the madrassah armed with hammers, axes and baseball bats. They attacked everyone in the madrassah. There were young kids in there aged between 9 and 19 who were also attacked and beaten by these thugs. And the teachers were also given a kicking. Most of the students from the madrassah have been hospitalised. It was just sheer luck that no one was killed.

When the police were called they took 30 min to respond when the police station is only 5 min walk away from the madrassah.

There has also been a media blackout regarding this incident. Even the local paper 'The Telegraph and Argus' have not covered this story. The community leaders and local councilors have asked the police about the secrecy of this incident and why haven't they appealed for witnesses via local media.

The police have said that it is important that this incident is kept low key because of Bradford's history this can cause a riot much larger than the one we saw in the summer of 2001. So for the sake of peace and harmony this is kept low key. The police have also assured the community leaders that they will not leave any stone unturned in finding the culprits and bringing them to justice.

See full article from Telegraph and Argus

Police are continuing to investigate a disturbance in Bradford, described as a racially-motivated incident, in which ten people were hurt. The trouble broke out in Harry Street, Cutler Heights, Bradford, at 7pm on Friday, March 7. The disturbance involved about 30 youths in their mid to late teens, some of whom were carrying sticks.

Police made six arrests and all have been released on bail pending further inquiries. Investigations are continuing to trace other witnesses and suspects.

A police spokesman said people from both rival groups had been hurt. She said the disturbance involved people from different races and was being treated as racially motivated.

The police were unable to say whether the incident had been sparked by an attack on a Madrassa, a school for Muslim children.

Egyptian authorities raided a Christian bookstore in Cairo March 15 and arrested Shenouda Armia Bakhait, a bookstore employee. He was interrogated for several hours and then released on bail. Police also seized the Nile Christian Book Shop store records. Why the raid?

Nettleton says human rights advocate groups suspect it was because an Egyptian Christian, Mohammed Hegazy, had visited the store the previous day.

Hegazy was the first convert to petition the religious court to officially change his religion following his conversion to Christianity. It's against Islamic law for a Muslim to leave the faith, and so they denied his request to change his ID. He apparently had been to this Christian bookstore just the day before. It's unclear if the police were following him and that's how they came on the store, or if they were watching the store anyway and just picked this particular day to raid.

Earlier this year I expressed my indignation over the suggestion that the famous Pussy Parlure Spiegeltent, due to be set up shortly as part of this year’s Brighton Festival, might have to shorten its name to placate St Peter’s Church leaders.

All hell broke loose in February when the parish council got arsy over plans to locate the delightful, burlesque-styled Pussy Parlour on council-owned grounds adjoining this useless old church, and for a while it looked as if the venue would have to locate elsewhere.

In a placatory move, the Pussy Parlour’s owner said he was prepared to drop the word “Pussy”, even though it referred to cats (cats being its motif, as you can see from its website.)

It appears that this grovelling gesture has worked. When I picked up a copy of the Brighton festival guide today, I found that “Pussy” had been expunged, and all acts will now take place in the “Parlure”.

This is outrageous! Yielding to pressure from a church is bad enough, but capitulating to one typified by its profusions of phallic projections and named after a Peter – a popular slang term for penis – is intolerable.

Boy, what’s your name? My name is Babu   It is customary to put Mohammed in front of the name   What is your father’s name? Mohammed Abu.   What is that on your lap? Mohammed cat.

A jail official says a cartoonist who was detained on charges of insulting Islam has been released.

Maj. Shamsul Haider Siddiqui, a deputy inspector general of prisons, says a court ordered Mohammed Arifur Rahman's release because the police official bringing charges against him repeatedly failed to appear in court.

Rahman is a former cartoonist for the Bengali-language daily Prothom Alo.Bangladeshi.

The inoffensive cartoonist made a splash with the cartoon shown. Soon after the easily offended kicked up a fuss as reported:

Baton-wielding police broke up a protest by hundreds of Islamists in the Bangladeshi capital against a magazine which published a cartoon they said hurt Muslims’ religious feelings.

Police waded in to halt a march by about 500 demonstrators chanting “death to the editor” and “hang the cartoonist” near Dhaka’s national mosque.

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has left India for Sweden after being hounded into hiding by death threats from militants, her publisher and friends told AFP.

Taslima Nasreen flew out of New Delhi this afternoon to Europe for medical treatment, her publisher Sibani Mukherjee told AFP.

She had been seeking permanent residence in India, where she moved after spending time in Europe and the United States, but New Delhi has been fearful of a Muslim backlash. The writer was forced to flee the eastern city of Kolkata, which she adopted as her home in 2004, in November after receiving death threats from Indian Muslims, and has since been living in hiding in the capital New Delhi

Update: Return

25th May 2008

Taslima Nasreen has said that her health has improved and that she intends to return to India in August

Update: Swedish Safe Haven

25th May 2008

Taslima Nasreen has been granted a two-year safe haven in the Swedish town of Uppsala,

She had been seeking permanent residence in India, but New Delhi had stalled the request.

Update: Returning to India

12th August 2008

Taslima Nasreen, on the run from death threats from Islamic militants, has returned to India to renew her visa, a rights activist said Saturday.

Sujato Bhadra, a human rights activist close to the writer said: She has come from Sweden after she got the assurance from the Indian authorities that her visa would be extended. She will apply for the visa in a few days.

Update: Settled on Paris

4th January 2009. See article from google.com

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, under threat of death from Islamist extremists who accuse her of blasphemy in her writings, is to take up residence in Paris, the city hall said.

Nasreen, who was made an honorary citizen of Paris in July 2008 when Paris Mayor Bertrand said:  You are at home here, in the city where it was proclaimed that men are born and remain free and equal and nobody can be condemned for their beliefs

Human beings have never lacked for things to fight over, but for the last two millennia, they have fought the most over ideas involving the divine. Politics, technology, military capacity, and diseases have all played decisive roles in shaping history, yet it is impossible to understand the rise and fall of empires, the clash of civilizations, and the evolving balance of power without appreciating the unique fervor that religion inspires, and the speed with which new religions can spread.

...Read the full article

The website where Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders was promoting his not-yet-released anti-Qur'an film has been suspended by its US hosting service.

The site formerly showed the film's title, Fitna, the trail line "coming soon" and an image of a gilded Qur'an. Now it shows a note that the company, Network Solutions, is investigating whether the site violates its terms of service.

Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation, the note said.

How many ways are there left for me to be worked against? Wilders was quoted as saying: If necessary I'll go hand out DVDs personally.

A Dutch court will hear a complaint lodged by Muslim groups seeking to bar Wilders from releasing the film on March 28, but there is no legal barrier preventing Wilders releasing his film before then.

Copies of The Profit, a 2001 film blocked from distribution in the United States due to a court injunction won by the Church of Scientology, appeared on the Internet Friday on peer-to-peer file-sharing websites and on the video sharing site YouTube.

Directed by former film executive Peter N. Alexander, movie critics have characterized The Profit as a parody of Scientology and of its founder L. Ron Hubbard. Alexander was a Scientologist for twenty years, and left the organization in 1997. The film was funded by Bob Minton, a former critic of Scientology who later signed an agreement with the Church of Scientology and has attempted to stop distribution of the film.

The film was released in August 2001, and was shown at a movie theater in Clearwater, Florida and at a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France. A Scientology spokesman gave a statement at the time saying the movie is fiction and has nothing to do with Scientology. The Church of Scientology later took legal action in an attempt to stop further distribution of the film. The Church of Scientology claimed that the film was intended to influence the jury pool in the wrongful death case of Scientologist Lisa McPherson, who died under Scientology care in Clearwater, Florida.

In April 2002, a Pinellas County, Florida judge issued a court order enjoining The Profit from worldwide distribution for an indefinite period. According to the original court injunction received by Wikinews, the movie was originally banned because the court found that it could be seen as a parody of Scientology and so influence potential jurors.

Luke Lirot, the attorney for the film's production company, announced on the film's website on April 7, 2007 that We have absolutely no exposure for any repercussions from the court order, but that the film was still blocked from distribution due to an ongoing legal battle. Lirot wrote: all that's stopping the release of the movie is the legal battle with the partner who was compromised by Scientology (Robert Minton) and is currently using his power as partner to stop the release of the film.

On Friday, copies of the film began to circulate on peer-to-peer file-sharing websites and on YouTube. 

On Saturday, Scientology critic and Emmy award-winning journalist Mark Bunker put a streaming version of the film on his website, www.xenutv.com, and encouraged others to watch and discuss the film on a real-time chat channel.

In a post on Sunday to the message board attached to the official website for the film, attorney Luke Lirot asked that individuals stop distributing copies of The Profit over the Internet. Lirot wrote: It has been brought to my attention that several unauthorized transmissions and downloads of this protected work have taken place over the last 72 hours. Such actions are copyright violations and are unlawful. I request that any further distribution and/or dissemination of this important work cease immediately and any copies of the work that have been downloaded please be deleted. He said that unauthorized distribution of the film will only serve to harm the goal of vast distribution.

The OIC representing the world's muslim countries have been passing resolutions urging UN countries to pass laws to prohibit the supposed defamation of religion.

However the Saudi Arabian parliament last week rejected a recommendation to adopt the international agreement that forbids insulting religions, prophets and clerics.

Seventy-seven members of parliament rejected the recommendation, claiming that if they adopted the agreement, they would have had to recognize the legitimacy of idolatrous religions, such as Buddhism.

The recommendation was put forward by MP Muhammad Al-Quweiha's. He wrote that the Saudi Foreign Ministry should cooperate with the Arab and Islamic bloc in the United Nations to adopt the agreement.

Al-Quweiha explained that his incentive was to prevent the ongoing campaign of insulting Islam and Prophet Muhammad, in particular the cartoons and films which are shown in the US and Holland.

Hindu leaders in the US have asked for a sneak preview of The Love Guru because they fear it may mock their religion.

In the film, Mike Meyers stars as an American who is raised in India. He eventually moves back to the US to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality.

Paramount has agreed to a pre-release showing for the religious group. A publicist said: It is our full intention to screen the film for Hindu leaders in the US once we have a finished print.

Lila D Sharma, President of India Heritage Panel, said: Hollywood is trying to make money by laughing at our holy men and in the process creating a stereotype.

Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has returned to his hardline rhetoric with a call for followers to beat up Western tourists to Indonesia and for young Muslims to die as martyrs.

In the sermon, organised by an Islamic youth organisation, Bashir likened tourists in Bali to "worms, snakes, maggots", and specifically referred to the immorality of Australian infidels.

The address was caught on video by an Australian university student.

The youth movement here must aspire to a martyrdom death," said the cleric: The young must be first at the front line - don't hide at the back. You must be at the front, die as martyrs and all your sins will be forgiven. This is how to achieve forgiveness.

Observers said the sermon's content was a clear indication of what many terrorism academics have noted - that the accused spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah has been emboldened by his release from prison last year after serving 26 months for conspiracy in relation to the Bali blasts.

Bashir likened non-Muslims to crawling animals. Worms, snakes, maggots - those are animals that crawl. Take a look at Bali ... those infidel tourists. They are naked.

He called for signs to be erected across Indonesia warning tourists they were entering a Muslim area, and directing they cover up appropriately. But in east Java, he urged the Islamist youth to "beat up" foreigners. God willing, there are none here, Bashir said: If there were infidels here, just beat them up. Do not tolerate them.

An Iranian woman under threat of being stoned to death for adultery has been freed, her lawyer has said.

Mokarrameh Ebrahimi was released from prison in Qazvin province on the orders of Iran's judiciary's amnesty commission, said her lawyer Shadi Sadr.

Ms Ebrahimi's partner, Jafar Kiani, was stoned to death in July 2007, causing an international outcry.

The reasons for Ms Ebrahimi's release are unclear, but Ms Sadr said rights campaigns had certainly played a part.

Human and women's rights groups in Iran and abroad had lobbied to prevent Ms Ebrahimi sharing the same fate as her partner.

She was freed after a total of 11 years in custody. Ms Ebrahimi was reportedly freed along with the son she had by Kiani, and is said to have returned with him to her family in northern Iran.

Amnesty International says a total of 12 people - mainly women - are currently at risk of being stoned to death in Iran.

Author of Hajarat Muhammad (Prophet Muhammad and His Monotheism) Rabindra Prasad Panda was arrested and sent to jail today on the charges of hurting the religious sentiments of the minority community.

The author, in his book, portrayed the photo of prophet Mohammed carrying a sword on the cover page of his book.

The police said the author was charged under Section 295(A) of Indian Penal Code.

The court remanded him to Choudwar jail after rejecting his bail application.

According to police sources, the arrest was made after Muslim community members lodged an report with the Lalbag police station against Panda and also the publisher of the book on March 9. The publisher of the book is yet to be arrested.

Over 2000 nutters, including the religious heads of the community of Kendrapara township area congregated for Friday prayers in the mosques and later they took out a rally procession in the township area demanding of arrest the author and publisher of the book.

According to Maulana Ainul Haq, the Imam of Minar mosque, the author and the proprietor of Vidyapuri Publication Pitambar Mishra had deliberately tried to hurt the religious sentiments of the minority community members by printing an imaginary photo of the Prophet.

At least 1,000 people have taken part in a demonstration in Amsterdam against the planned release of a film expected to be highly critical of Islam.

Protesters objected to the planned internet release of the film by Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders.

Some protesters in central Amsterdam carried signs that said Stop the witch hunt against Muslims.

We can no longer remain silent. There is a climate of hate and fear in the Netherlands, said Rene Danen, a spokesman from anti-racism organisation Nederland Bekent Kleur (The Netherlands Shows its Colours), which organised the protest.

In an effort to prolong the trial of two Turkish converts to Christianity accused of denigrating Islam and Turkishness, three gendarme soldiers were summoned to testify before the Silivri Criminal Court in northwestern Turkey as witnesses for the prosecution – which has yet to provide any evidence for its case.

Turan Topal and Hakan Tastan, who were searched, detained and then charged in October 2006 under Turkey’s controversial Article 301 restricting freedom of speech, have been on trial for 18 months.

The state prosecutor had called for the Christians’ acquittal last July, noting that the youthful plaintiffs in the case had given contradictory testimonies and no credible evidence had been produced to prove the charges. But the new judge assigned to the case in November accepted prosecution lawyer demands to call another dozen witnesses to testify.

The three soldiers from the Silivri Gendarme Headquarters testified separately to their involvement in searching the defendants’ homes and office on October 11, 2006, when they said they found a large number of Bibles and Christian documents, as well as several computers.

One of the soldiers said that at the time of their court-ordered investigation, military intelligence officers had shown them an organizational chart, listing names of alleged leaders of the detained Christians’ group, which is accused of conducting illegal religious activities.

Although the Christians’ trial in Silivri is officially held in “open” court, the current judge has refused to admit any Turkish or international press to observe the last two hearings.

301 Changes ‘Shelved Indefinitely’

A senior member of the European Parliament declared last month that the European Union was losing patience with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) over its failure to change the restrictive Article 301.

“We’re preparing a report for the European Parliament which will be voted on in April,” Joost Lagendijk told the BBC on February 11. If nothing has moved by then on freedom of expression, the report will be negative.

Turkey’s prime minister, justice minister and president have declared repeatedly over the past two years that amending the law was both needful and “high on their agenda.” But last week AKP deputy Nihat Ergun admitted that although a revised draft of Article 301 was completed, it had been shelved indefinitely.

Reportedly this reflects accommodations to the opposition Nationalist Movement Party, which supported the AKP’s recent constitutional amendment to allow headscarves on university campuses but opposes making any changes to Article 301.

Far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders plans to release Fitna, a film attacking Islam and the Koran.

The Netherlands Islamic Federation (Nederlandse Islamitische Federatie) asked a court in The Hague to set up a panel of censors to review the film, in order to discover if there is any reason for it to be banned.

The Dutch Government, while calling on Wilders to abandon his project, has previously said there is no legal way to censor a film before it appears.

The court will rule on the association's request by March 28. Wilders has said that he will release the film "before April 1", posting it on the Internet if he fails to find a broadcaster willing to carry it.

Bookmakers were criticised by religious nutters as thousands opened on Good Friday for the first time.

They won the right to open every day except Christmas in the Gambling Act 2005, which came into force last year. But critics said it was an attack on the sanctity of Easter.

At least 4,000 betting shops opened, including almost all Ladbrokes and Corals, and 200 William Hill branches.

Although there was no horse racing Friday, punters were able to bet on sports such as foreign horse racing and British greyhounds.

But the Church of England urged bookmakers to donate some of their profits to anti-gambling charities. It said: We would encourage operators to keep their shops closed on Good Friday. But those who insist on opening will, we hope, donate a decent portion of their profits towards education, research and treatment aimed at checking the growth in problem gambling.

The Methodist Church said people should think about the religious significance of Good Friday than bet.

Ladbrokes said the change in the law merely brought betting shops into line with other retailers who already open on Good Friday. Spokesman Ciaran O'Brien said: You can bet online any day of the week, any time of the day. That's another reason why the shops should be able to compete. I wouldn't want to moralise about how people spend their leisure time.

Police ordered two Algerian churches to cease activity last week, the latest in a series of 10 church closures and further court cases against foreign and local Christians.

In Tizi Ousou security police on March 9 notified pastor Salah Chalah to close his 1,200-member Full Gospel Church. Police issued notice to a second pastor, Mustapha Krireche, to close down his church in Tizi Ouzou’s Nouvelle Ville district.

They are trying to establish a minority, which might give foreign powers a pretext to intervene with Algeria’s domestic affairs, Religious Affairs Minister Bu ‘Abdallah Ghoulamullah told reporters.

Ghoulamullah reportedly said that the churches and their pastors would be investigated to see if they had broken the law, according to The Media Line, a non-profit news service.

Written police orders called on both churches to cease all activity until [their] situation could be regularized and brought into conformity with a 2006 religion law governing non-Muslim worship.

Passed two years ago, the law forbids attempts to convert Muslims to other religions and bans the production of media intended to “shake the faith of a Muslim.” As all Algerian Christians are converts from Islam, the new law could be interpreted to make nearly all Christian churches in the country illegal.

Osama bin Laden warned in a new audiotape of a "severe" reaction for Europeans' publication of cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad in what experts saw as a direct threat of a new attack in Europe.

The message, posted on a militant Web site that has carried al-Qaida statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group's media wing al-Sahab, showed a still image of bin Laden aiming with an assault rifle.

The response will be what you see and not what you hear and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God, said a voice believed to be bin Laden's, without specifying what action would be taken.

Ben Venzke, the head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors militant messages, called Wednesday's video a clear threat against EU member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack.

In the message, bin Laden described the cartoons as taking place in the framework of a new Crusade against Islam, in which he said the pope has played a large and lengthy role.

The Saudi religious police stormed a food court at a shopping mall, and told families to leave because there were no partitions to separate families from one another.

According to the Al-Hayat newspaper, members of the Commission for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice stormed the dining area at the Granada Shopping Center, causing panic among people eating there.

They made no distinction between men, women, or children. They started pulling chairs out from under everyone, one eyewitness told the paper on condition of anonymity. I don't know why they acted like that. There was nothing unusual happening in the place.

While some families left hurriedly, others chose to defy the religious police and ate the rest of their food on the floor, Al-Hayat reported.

The mall manager at the time of the incident, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, called what happened a barbarian assault on the families.

According to the manager, a partition – in the form of screens, curtains or small separate rooms – is used when a woman and her children are dining without a male guardian, but families accompanied by the male head of the family sit at regular tables.

He added that partitions are usually the cause of any problems in restaurants since no one knows what happens behind them: Open areas are more decent.

The Commission's district representative Mansour al-Otaibi said officers did the right thing: Riyadh Province Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz instructed the Commission to stop the mixing of the sexes in markets and malls, but people in charge of the mall ignored the instructions and kept procrastinating.

Otaibi said the instructions were clear – each family must be in a partitioned area, and separate families cannot sit together in the open.

New guidance published today by the General Medical Council suggests that doctors do need to be told where their priorities lie when personal beliefs clash with medical procedures. You must make the care of your patient your first concern, the GMC tells the 128,000 doctors practising in the UK. We expect [doctors] to set aside their personal beliefs where this is necessary, it continues.

Doctor knows best, usually. But the GMC says doctors must ensure they retain patients’ confidence by sharing their scientific and medical expertise, not their personal codes of morality. Doctors must not discriminate against patients by allowing their personal views to get in the way of a professional relationship or treatment recommendations.

Doctors should advertise their unwillingness to become involved in procedures they dislike, but they must not preach to patients in ways that exploit patients’ vulnerability or cause distress. Doctors cannot obstruct a woman seeking advice about the termination of a pregnancy. They must assist a family wanting a male circumcision and ensure that a cremation, if desired, can take place. Doctors must ask a patient about the wearing of a veil, and remove a garment that obscures the face if asked. Doctors must respect the views of a Jehovah’s Witness who does not want a blood transfusion.

Doctors may recuse themselves where they feel their own moral, religious or cultural beliefs demand such action. But they cannot allow this privilege to hinder the patient’s pursuit of care. A Roman Catholic doctor can refuse to become directly involved in abortions, but must see that a woman is referred to a doctor who is willing to help. Serious or persistent failure to follow the guidance could result in a doctor being struck off.

The new code acknowledges that personal beliefs and values, as well as cultural and religious practices, are central to the lives of doctors as well as patients. At the same time, the code does not give patients carte blanche permission to demand anything and everything. Serious crimes – such as female circumcision, an abhorrence better described as female genital mutilation – remain beyond the pale.

It is to be sincerely hoped that the new rules cause no more than a vanishingly small minority of doctors to conclude that they are obliged to stop practising on grounds of conscientious objection. But the principles outlined by the GMC cannot be compromised.

There is no room for a pulpit in the surgery.

Israel's Haifa District Court has sentenced two brothers to life in prison for murdering their sister in what was termed an "honor killing."

The two brothers, Anwar Salameh and Hassan Salameh were convicted of conspiring to commit a crime, kidnapping with intent to murder, and premeditated murder.

The murder occurred in December 2005, when the victim was 21. The two defendants conspired to kill their sister after they discovered she had a secret romantic relationship, defying them. They viewed their sister's behavior as harming the family's honor and consequently planned to convince her to join them on a trip somewhere and then kill her.

The two arrived at their parent's home in a car belonging to the older brother and convinced their sister to join them to go to her lover to work out their relationship. The sister was convinced and joined her brothers on the trip. However, during the ride, the defendants veered from the route into the woods. The two brothers locked the doors of the vehicle and closed the windows to prevent their sister's escape. Then they proceeded to strangle her with their hands.

Anwar Salameh said to the judges that the penalty is a little severe for us; we received a very serious punishment. I ask you to take into consideration our situation ? my family is bereaved. Their defense attorney to prevent the publication of the story in the media.

The judges ruled that they could see no reason to deviate from the norm and permitted the publication of the trial's details.

The Thai Information and Communications Technology Ministry is to ‘hack and crack' foreign websites deemed offensive to Thailand's revered institutions.

A March 15 report in Krungthep Turakij newspaper (www.bangkokbiznews.com) quoted a source at the ICT that the ministry could pursue legal proceedings only with websites registered in Thailand, and is now planning a ‘hack and crack' programme to hack offensive websites hosted abroad and delete their contents, because the legal process would take too long.

This approach may be somewhat illegal, but sometimes it might be worth it, if [the websites] are really unacceptable, the source said.

One website registered abroad has been found to advertise merchandise including calendars, dolls, bags, hats, glasses, watches, trousers and underwear, all with a logo of the Buddha meditating on a lotus, with the face of a dog. It was reported to have upset some Buddhists.

The Technology Centre has found that the website has its server in California, USA, and the centre has twice asked the ICT Ministry in writing to shut down the website, but it is still online. The centre has also asked the Foreign Ministry's Information Department to address the problem through diplomatic means.

If within one month the problem is still not solved, I will ask for cooperation from ‘internet cop' Pol Col Yanapol Yangyuen, Commander of Office of Technology and Information Cases under the Department of Special Investigation, to shut it down, said Booncherd. He added that his centre has cooperated with relevant agencies in shutting down 5 similar websites which made commercial use of Buddhist symbols.

Eight Muslims wielding razor-sharp machetes and knives broke into two village churches in southern Ethiopia earlier this month and began wounding worshipers, instantly killing one Christian.

Tulu Mosisa of Kale Hiwot church died after a machete blow nearly beheaded him, according to an eyewitness. Another two members of the Kale Hiwot and Birhane Wongel Baptist churches in the remote village of Nensebo Chebi both lost a hand each in the March 2 attacks, and a 5-year-old boy is still hospitalized after his arm was slashed to the bone.

A total of 23 Christians from the two congregations were injured before local militia officers drove off the attackers, who launched what one observer called “a seemingly well-planned,” simultaneous assault midway through Sunday worship services.

In a first for post-Taleban Afghanistan, a woman has made it to the final three in the country's version of Pop Idol.

Lima Sahar is up against two male contestants for a place in the final sing-off on Afghan Star, which has become one of the nation's most popular television shows.

Conservatives decry the fact that a woman has found success singing on TV, while others – younger Afghans – say the show is helping women progress.

With her hair tucked under a headscarf, Lima brushes off her critics, saying there can be no progress for women without upsetting the status quo. "No pain, no gain," she told reporters.

Afghanistan's clerics' council has protested to the president, Hamid Karzai, over the show. In the situation that we have in Afghanistan right now, we don't need a woman singer. We don't need Afghan Star. We are in need of a good economy, good education, said Ali Ahmad Jebra-ali, a member of the council. If Lima Sahar wins Afghan Star, how can she help the poor? This is not the way to help the Afghan people.

A government decision to ban two cartoon shows on a Russian TV-channel has caused widespread debate. While some see the decision to clamp down on violence on TV as a defence of taste and decency, others see it as unnecessary censorship.

The Happy Tree Friends are a kind of extreme Tom and Jerry, aimed at young adults and heavy on stylised violence. It's a cult classic that's shown in more than 50 countries.

The Two by Two station that airs the show pulled it and another show after receiving an official government warning

The controversy began with a complaint from Russia's protestant church. One of its top officials says the station is perverting the morals of the nation. And they want the station closed down. Someone has to stop the violence. Television is a tool shaping the minds and the future of our children, Konstantin Bendas from the Union of Evangelical Christians said.

However the regulator - despite upholding the complaint says that closing TV stations is not on their agenda.

Nevertheless for Two by Two this is a serious issue. Their CEO says the channel has had thousands of messages of support and thinks the ban is an insult to the intelligence of viewers and that the complaints are unwarranted.

The wife of a clergyman beaten up in a faith-hate attack outside his church described the community’s shock and distress.

Canon Michael Ainsworth is expected to be released from hospital early this week after being attacked 12 days ago in East London.

The attack has led to fears of an increasing number of religiously aggravated attacks on Christian clergy and concerns that the problem is overlooked by police and prosecutors.

Speaking after giving the service at St George’s-in-the-East Church in Shadwell, the Rev Janina Ainsworth who is also a priest in the Church of England, said that the couple had taken much strength from the support offered from around the country: There is a lot of shock and distress around the congregation and the area.

Canon Ainsworth who was wearing his clerical collar, was punched and kicked by two Asian youths while another shouted religious abuse outside St George’s on March 5. He suffered cuts, bruises and two black eyes. He was discharged from St Bartholomew’s hospital but later readmitted following complications to an injury.

The church has been targeted in the past, with bricks thrown through the windows of the 18th-century building. On Good Friday last year, worshippers were showered with glass during a service.

Allan Ramanoop, an Asian member of the parochial church council, said that parishioners were often too scared to challenge the gangs. I’ve been physically threatened and verbally abused on the steps of the church. On one occasion, youths shouted: This should not be a church, this should be a mosque, you should not be here.

Nick Tolson, a former police officer who set up the National Churchwatch safety scheme, said that there had been an increase in faith hate attacks on clergy: The harassment is usually coming from young Asian men – often, but not exclusively, Muslim. The police and prosecutors will classify an attack on a mosque or Muslim as a hate crime but not if it is a church or a vicar. These aren’t targeted attacks, they are spontaneous, but [the victims] are being singled out because of their faith and should be dealt with in the same way as other members of the community.

The editor of a Swedish newspaper has received death threats for publishing a picture of Jesus being defecated on by the devil.

Östgöta Correspondenten editor Ola Sigvardsson has received several death threats since the publication of the picture, which featured on posters for a punk festival. The poster depicted a Satan figure defecating on Jesus.

Linköping city council had previously censured the festival poster.

The newspaper published the picture and it sparked a vigorous debate on its homepage. A few days later the discussions became more threatening and Sigvardsson received the first of several telephone calls involving death threats.

Sigvardsson has, among other things, been threatened with having his throat cut. Sigvardsson admitted that he realized that publishing the picture would be controversial, but he underlined that the censured picture addresses the issue of freedom of speech and it was therefore important to run the story.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “moral enforcer”, who led a crackdown on women failing to adhere to Iran’s strict Islamic dress codes, has been arrested in a Tehran brothel.

Brigadier General Ali Reza Zarei the Tehran police chief and a confidant of the president, was said to have been with six prostitutes when he was detained by members of his own force two weeks ago.

He has been removed from his post and put on bail, according to the Iranian Farda website. There has been no mention of the case in the official Iranian media but a spokesman for the justice department admitted last week that an unnamed senior official had been arrested.

The Shahab news site, which is also linked to opponents of Ahmadinejad, said it was believed that up to 60 hours of videotape featuring the general and the prostitutes had been confiscated by his officers.

Zarei - who was in charge of the programme for the “moralisation” of women - now faces possible prosecution.

Saudi Arabia's highest ranking cleric said in a rare fatwa this week that two writers should be tried for apostasy for their "heretical articles" and put to death if they do not repent.

Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak was responding to recent articles in al-Riyadh newspaper that questioned the Sunni Muslim view in Saudi Arabia that adherents of other faiths should be considered unbelievers.

Anyone who claims this has refuted Islam and should be tried in order to take it back. If not, he should be killed as an apostate from the religion of Islam, said the fatwa, or religious opinion, published on Barrak's Web site: It is disgraceful that articles containing this kind of apostasy should be published in some papers of Saudi Arabia. The rulers should hold these papers to account ... and all those who took part in the publication should know they were involved in the sin of heretical articles.

Barrak is viewed by Islamists as the leading independent authority of Saudi Arabia's hardline version of Sunni Islam, often termed Wahhabism.

Abdullah bin Bejad al-Otaibi, one of the two writers, said he feared for his life and called on the government to intervene. The second writer was Yousef Aba al-Khail.

My articles have been met with fatwas before but it never got to this level of directly inciting murder or directly accusing someone of no longer being a Muslim, he told Reuters.

Update: Intellectual Terrorism

8th April 2008

Arab human rights activists have condemned a Saudi religious edict calling for the execution of two writers for apostasy - giving a rare glimpse of tensions over Islam inside the conservative kingdom.

The ruling by Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Barrak was called "intellectual terrorism" by "clerics of darkness" in a statement obtained by Reuters and signed by 100 human rights groups and intellectuals from the region.

Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop in Iraq who was kidnapped last month, has been found dead.

The Italian Catholic news agency SIR quoted an Iraqi bishop, saying that the archbishop's body had been found buried near Mosul, where he had been abducted.

Pope Benedict XVI was said to be profoundly moved and saddened by his death, Reuters reported.

The archbishop was kidnapped soon after he left Mass in Mosul on 29 February.

He was the latest in a long line of Chaldean clerics to be abducted in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Three people who were with the archbishop at the time were killed by gunmen.

A Paris appeal court confirmed the acquittal of Philippe Val, editor of the Paris-based satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, on charges of insulting Muslims by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

The court issued its decision in response to an appeal by the Union of Islamic Organisations of France and the World Islamic League against his acquittal by a Paris criminal court on 22 March 2007. The prosecutor’s office, which had requested his acquittal by the criminal court, asked the appeal court to uphold his acquittal.

Protestant nutters have urged Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to shut down the cartoon channel 2x2 for broadcasting shows they claim promote homosexuality and religious intolerance.

It is the second time in a week that the network, owned by Vladimir Potanin's Prof-Media Group, has come under fire for its content.

The Consultative Council of the Heads of Protestant Churches in Russia sent a letter to Chaika, accusing 2x2 of promoting cruelty, violence, homosexual propaganda, religious hatred and intolerance by airing cartoons such as South Park, said Vitaly Vlasenko, a spokesman for the group, which unites several Protestant denominations.

Last week 2x2 pulled two of its shows, Happy Tree Friends and The Adventures of Big Jeff, after a receiving a warning from the government media watchdog that the shows promoted a cult of violence and brutality.

Under Russian law, a second warning letter could result in the loss of the channel's broadcasting license.

One of Scotland's most senior Catholics has launched an attack on the gay lobby in Scotland, claiming there is a huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy against Christian values.

The Rt Rev Nutter Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell said gay rights organisations aligned themselves with minority groups, such as Holocaust survivors, to project an image of a group of people under persecution.

He warned that the gay lobby which he labelled the opposition – had mounted a giant conspiracy to shape public policy.

Last night his views were attacked by gay rights groups, which branded them unChristian and deeply out of step with the views of ordinary Scots.

In the fourth of the Gonzaga Lectures held at St Aloysius' College in Glasgow, Bishop Devine said: The homosexual lobby has been extremely effective in aligning itself with minority groups. It is ever-present at the service each year for the Holocaust memorial, as if to create for themselves the image of a group of people under persecution. We neglect the gay movement at our peril. I want to ask you if you are able to see the giant conspiracy that's taking place before our eyes, even if we didn't see it at the time. I take it you're beginning to see that there is a huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy taking place, which the Catholic community missed.

He said prominence had been given to the supreme moral values of liberty and equality replacing truth and goodness as supreme moral values. It was bound to result in state-sponsored morality at war with Christian values. We must resist being corrupted by secularism.

About half a dozen people were injured as thousands of Pakistani Islamists held demonstrations for the fourth consecutive Friday to protest the republishing of cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed in Danish newspapers.

Almost all the commercial markets remained closed and the public transport remained off the road in the southern port city and the commercial hub of the country, Karachi, on the general strike call by the fundamentalist Islamic organizations like Sunni Movement and Jamaat Islami (JI).

Hundreds of protesters held rallies in various parts of the cities and set ablaze the Denmark flags and chanted slogans like Death to Danish government.

Angry young muslims set on fire six buses and minibuses and at least six people were injured as the protesters faced resistance from the secular Muttaheda Qaumi Movement part during their attempt to close some markets by forces on Friday afternoon.

Similar demonstrations were held in the eastern city of Lahore and other areas of the country outside the main mosques after the Friday noon prayers.

Update: Sheikpura

24th March 2008

Pakistan's protest continue with the latest on 23rd March at Sheikpura

Islamic states are bidding to use the United Nations to limit freedom of expression and belief around the world, the global humanist body IHEU told the UN's Human Rights Council on Wednesday.

In a statement submitted to the 48-nation Council, the IHEU said the 57 members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) were also aiming to undermine the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Islamic states see human rights exclusively in Islamic terms, and by sheer weight of numbers this view is becoming dominant within the UN system. The implications for the universality of human rights are ominous, it said.

The statement from the IHEU, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, was issued as the UN's special investigator on freedom of opinion and expression argued in a report that religions had no special protection under human rights law.

The IHEU statement came against the background of mounting success by the OIC, currently holding a summit in Dakar, in achieving passage of UN resolutions against "defamation of religions."

The "defamation" issue has become especially sensitive this year as the UN prepares to celebrate in the autumn the 50th anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration, long seen as the bedrock of international human rights law and practice.

See full article from the Raw Story

The world's Muslim countries warned Wednesday that an "alarming" rise in anti-Islamic insults and attacks in the West has become a threat to international security. The OIC called on Europe and America to take stronger measures against 'Islamophobia' in a report prepared for the summit.

The report by a special OIC monitoring group said the organisation was struggling to get the West to understand that Islamophobia has dangerous implications on global peace and security and to convince western powers to do more.

OIC leaders have expressed renewed concern following events such as the publication in Denmark of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed and a plan by the Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders to release a film calling the Koran "fascist".

The OIC said Islam had faced constant attacks since it was created but in recent years the phenomenon has assumed alarming proportions and has become a major cause of concern for the Muslim world.

The monitoring group called on Europe and North America to do more, through laws and social action, to protect Muslims from threats and discrimination and prevent insults against Islam's religious symbols. The report added that Muslims in many parts of the world, in the West in particular, are being stereotyped, profiled and subjected to various forms of discriminatory treatment: The most sacred symbols of Islam, in particular the sacred image of of the Prophet Mohammed is being defiled and denigrated in the most insulting, offensive and contemptuous manner to incite hatred and unrest in society.

The OIC said the Muslim world must launch a campaign to show that it is a "moderate, peaceful and tolerant" religion, closely monitor and the raise the alert over anti-Islamic incidents and organise more inter-faith initiatives.

A majority in the Dutch parliament, led by the ruling Labour Party, wants to scrap a law which fines or even imprisons people who commit blasphemy. But although the law isn't used anymore, even debating whether or not to scrap it is sensitive. The Christian parties in Dutch politics have always argued to keep it on the books.

Now, tension is high in anticipation of far right Dutch MP Geert Wilders' film, which is expected to be considered blasphemous by most Muslims.

And although there's a majority for scrapping the law, government is not asked to get rid of it immediately.

Why has the ruling Labour Party chosen to go against the wishes of it's coalition partners in the government, and scrap a law which could be seen as protecting Muslims?

Labour Party MP Ton Heerts says there's never a good moment to scrap the law. He doesn't want to cause the Christian coalition parties any trouble, but, he says, It's a law that's been on the books for years, and is never used. At some point, we should just get rid of it. The last conviction under the law took place more than forty years ago, when a student newspaper got the maximum fine of 100 guilders (40 euros) for making fun of the New Testament. And in the infamous "donkey" case in 1968, confrontational Dutch author Gerard van het Reve fantasized about sexual relations with God who had taken the form of a donkey. The author was prosecuted for blasphemy, but the court acquitted him.

The current coalition government agreed as recently as October to leave the law as it is. Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Balin wants to tread carefully regarding the law against blasphemy. He says he doesnt want to dispose of a law that's meant to reinforce mutual respect without giving it further thought.

Now, in the run-up to Geert Wilder's film about the Qur'an, some feel Muslims abroad will see the scrapping of the blasphemy law as confirmation of supposed Dutch islamophobia. But the law has never been used to prosecute blasphemy against other religions. In fact, some legal experts wonder if it even applies to religions other than Christianity.

It remains to be seen if parliament will get its wish and gets the law taken off the books. In the Geert Wilders era, no one wants to be seen as encouraging blasphemy.

The Bishop of Oxford was sent a death threat calling for his beheading after backing a plan to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer.

The Rt Rev John Pritchard today told a meeting discussing the issue he had received a bundle of "extraordinary mail" containing a number of threats.

The Bishop gave his backing, in principle, for the call to prayer to be broadcast from the Oxford Central Mosque, in Manzil Way, East Oxford.

Speaking at a public meeting organised by the Anglo Asian Association in East Oxford at Oxford Community School, he said: After the interview, I received extraordinary mail. One said, on a piece of A4, 'resign' six times in large font. One called on me to be beheaded and one said 'I wish I was closer so I could spit on you'. The dark underbelly of British society was coming out.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Oxford said the matter had not been taken to the police, and said the Bishop had received a bulging post bag of comments, both positive and negative.

The audience of about 60 people was told the call to prayer had not been officially requested and was not imminent. Co-chairman Saj Malik said: They the mosque's committee have no mandate from the Muslim community to say these sort of things.

County and city councillor Craig Simmons said a condition of the mosque's construction was a ban on amplified calls to prayer. He said: Planning permission would be needed to overturn this, which would involve a full consultation, and there has been no request submitted.

The Central Mosque's general secretary Altaf Hussain admitted the issue of the call to prayer had been badly managed by the mosque's interim committee: It was basically a romantic idea from pure hearts. It was something that people wanted to share without any intentions of asserting a theology or culture on anyone. We're producing an information pack and a questionnaire for the neighbourhood. No steps will be taken without consulting them.

Last week, secularists and rationalists around the UK raised a collective glass of champagne and let off some party poppers after the House of Lords agreed to add an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill abolishing the blasphemy laws. ‘It is disgraceful that such a relic of religious savagery has survived into the twenty-first century’, said Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society (1). Quite right, too. Good riddance to the ‘savage’ laws which, in erecting a forcefield of offence-detection around God, his baby Jesus and the people who worship them, were an affront to freedom of speech.

Yet this week, not seven days later, a tiny group of Christians – one might even call them a ‘sect of Christians’ – managed to get a series of adverts banned on the basis that it was offensive to Christianity.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 23 complaints about the TV promo for ghd hair products. The ads said that ghd – which makes gel, mousse, hairspray and the like – represents a new ‘religion for hair’, and featured beautiful women with ghd-enabled hairstyles praying, carrying candles, and wearing lingerie as they clasped rosary beads to their bosoms in a state of supplication. Most of the complaints were from Christians, including one from the Archdeacon of Liverpool, The Venerable (allegedly) Ricky Panter. The ASA upheld the complaints, denounced the ads as ‘offensive’, and decreed that they must never again be shown ‘in their current form’ (2).

In summary? Blasphemy is dead! Long live blasphemy!

...Read the full article

Cross about Adverts

See full article from Comment is Free by AC Grayling

What about the hair-styler advert? Twenty-three people, among them someone magnificently described as the Archdeacon of Liverpool, complained that they were offended by it. Crumbs, eh? What hordes, what enraged majorities, what anguished multitudes are here tormented by the association of four words and a Christian symbol with hair stylers, humorously confected to represent "a new religion for hair"? Are there any concerns here about "social responsibility, decency, matters of opinion and truthfulness"? No? So it is just that 23, perhaps representing 230, or maybe even 2,300, or perhaps even 23,000, people without a sense of humour or a robust enough grip on their own convictions, refuse to let the remaining 59.99 million of us see this advert.

...Read the full article

A Roman Catholic bishop has likened books which criticise the teachings of the Church to works that deny the Holocaust took place.

The Rt Rev Nutter Patrick O'Donoghue, Bishop of Lancaster, told MPs that books critical of the Catholic faith should be banned from school libraries.

Asked if that applied to works by authors such as Karl Marx and Albert Camus, he told the Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee: Suppose you went into a school and found in the library material that said the Holocaust never took place?

Fiona McTaggart, the Labour MP for Slough, said she was extremely concerned that Catholic sixth-formers would be denied access to great works of fiction as well as non-fiction if the bishop's ban were implemented. I would not expect a school to promote material that was lies but I also would also expect children to encounter a wide range of material even if they then need to be given the tools to criticise them, she said.

But Bishop O'Donoghue defended his stance. I think there has to be a vetting of material given the age range of children in schools. There is certain material that you do not put in front of them.

The bishop's summons to appear before the committee followed a document he produced last year which angered some MPs because of its strict line on sexual morality. In Fit for Mission?, Bishop O'Donoghue wrote: The secular view on sex outside marriage, artificial contraception, sexually transmitted disease, including HIV and Aids, and abortion, may not be presented as neutral information. "So-called" safe sex was based on the deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against Aids. Schools and colleges must not support charities or groups that promote or fund anti-life policies, such as Red Nose Day and Amnesty International, which now advocates abortion.

More than 600 Muslims gathered in front of the Danish embassy in Bangkok on Wednesday to protest 17 Danish newspapers for reprinting cartoons mocking Mohammad.

The Muslims are also displeased with the Danish government for ignoring the matter as it cited that this is the freedom of expression of the press.

A few hours later, the protesters dispersed peacefully. They said they would present a letter to Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama on this issue.

They also urged Muslims around the world to boycott products from Denmark.

Britishness is... Whinging about minor offence

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned the television advertisements after the company Jemella, that trades as Ghd, used “erotic” images of women combined with with the text, thy will be done, to promote a heated hair styler.

In one scene, a woman wearing lingerie sat on the edge of a bed with rosary-style beads clasped in her hands and prayed in Italian: May my new curls make her feel choked with jealousy. Another showed a woman lying on a bed, with her thoughts in Swedish and printed on the screen: May my flirty flicks puncture the heart of every man I see. A third showed a woman carrying a votive candle through to her bedroom before looking upwards and praying: Make him dump her tonight and come home with me.

Finally text stated ghd IV thy Will Be Done, with the letter “t” appearing as a cross. On-screen text then stated ghd. A new religion for hair.

The advertisement prompted complaints from the shameful Archdeacon of Liverpool,  Ricky Panter, and 22 other members of the public who claimed the images were offensive to the Christian faith.

Panter told The Times last night: It seemed to me the advertisement crossed a line. I felt very uncomfortable with it. It was targeting the Lord’s Prayer and I felt it was taking the mick. This is not about censorship or about being prudish...[BUT]...It is simply about every individual’s right to signal when they think a line has been crossed.

The advertising clearance organisation Clearcast, which had approved this and previous Jemella campaigns, claimed the advertisements did not seek to mock any particular religion and contained language that had been used by Ghd for the past seven years.

The ASA decided however that the devotion to hair prayer depicted in the advertisements went too far: The women in the ads appeared to be in prayer, the ASA said in its ruling. “Their hands were clasped and they were looking upwards towards the sky. One was holding a votive candle and another was holding a set of beads that resembled rosary beads. We also noted the images of the women in their bedrooms, some of them in their underwear and others on their beds, were presented in a way that could be seen to be erotic

The ASA concluded that the eroticised images of the women apparently in prayer, in conjunction with religious symbols such as the votive candle and the rosary beads, the use of the phrase ‘thy will be done’ from the Lord's Prayer and the image of the letter t as the Cross of Jesus, were likely to cause serious offence, particularly to Christians.

The advertisement is still running on YouTube and on the company’s own website. The industry is at present debating how it can regulate new media. A spokesman for the ASA said: If consumers want to stop the ad appearing on a company’s website then, in the first instance, we recommend that they contact them directly.

Comment: ASA for the Succour of the Easily Offended

Thanks to Alan, 13th March 2008

Interesting to see the Archdeacon of Liverpool's whingeing and the craven response of the ASA, which seems to act as an association for the succour of the easily offended.

I notice that the archdeacon doesn't support censorship...BUT....

Strange thing is, archdeacons have always had a lousy reputation. In the middle ages, they were so notorious for their corruption that theologians seriously debated whether they could be saved. They're not much more highly regarded today, and the favourite definition of an archdeacon in the Church of England is the crook at the head of a bishop's staff.

When I first read of the nine 14-year-old students at the Jewish Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' School in east London who refused to sit a Shakespeare test because they believed the Bard was anti-Semitic, I could well understand their feelings. Their protest against Shylock in The Merchant of Venice – reported in this newspaper last week – seemed well grounded.

However human moneylenders may be ("If you prick us, do we not bleed?"), demanding a pound of flesh from a debtor really does add to the anti-Semitic overtones of Elizabethan literature and – by implication – stokes up the racist fires of our contemporary world. But then – in paragraph four – I came across the killer line. The nine girls were not being tested on The Merchant of Venice at all – they were being examined on The Tempest. It was Shakespeare they were objecting to.

...Read full article

The number of women who have become victims of forced marriages in the UK has been drastically underestimated, according to a report published today. Government figures had previously suggested there were about 300 forced marriages a year but today's study, which focuses on Luton, suggests the true figure could be up to 4,000.

This report is living proof that the government's figures on forced marriage are woefully inadequate, said Margaret Moran, a member of the Commons home affairs select committee, which is investigating forced marriages and domestic violence.

Women who become victims of forced marriage often have no idea who their husbands will be and have no rights once they are married.

The study, carried out by Dr Nazia Khanum, found there were 300 approaches each year to Luton-based support services from people worried about forced marriages. Moran said: This report is the only study in the whole of the UK that uses research at a local level, presenting cases as they occur in a community ... The results are startling.

She said the report could still be underestimating the scale of the problem. The victims of forced marriages will generally not go to statutory agencies, like the police or the government's forced marriage unit, fearing the size and impersonality of these national organisations will lead to their exposure.

In today's report Khanum says there is a wall of silence around forced marriages and called for the authorities to take it more seriously. Forced marriage should be recognised as a form of bullying and domestic abuse and tackled in accordance with the normal professional standards and guidance for such cases, she said.

Khanum said teachers and others who work with girls and young women should look out for signs of family bullying or pressure: After reading the report you realise that forced marriage is not simply a problem in the Asian community; it cuts across all kinds of races and cultures. It is a problem that affects the whole of society.

The select committee is expected to report back within the next two months.

Massachusetts residents could spit on the sidewalk, give a tattoo, even commit blasphemy or adultery without fear of a fine or jail time under a bill being considered.

The bill would repeal nearly two dozen so-called "blue laws", laws that often deal with moral or religious issues. The laws are often considered outdated or even unconstitutional, but have remained on the books.

One of the laws mandates a $300 fine or year in jail for anyone who wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world.

Another sets a $20 fine for spitting. And even though tattooing is now legal in Massachusetts, there's still a law on the books mandating a $300 fine for anyone giving a tattoo who's not a doctor.

The bill also would eliminate laws declaring the Communist Party a subversive organization, making adultery a criminal offense punishable by three years in jail or a $500 fine, and barring anyone from acting in a suspicious manner around any steamboat landing, railroad depot, or any electric railway station.

The bill's sponsor, state Representative Byron Rushing, said there's more than just legal house-cleaning behind the legislation: There was a feeling that we shouldn't have laws that we never use. And there were a few laws that could be used and shouldn't.

Kris Mineau, a nutter of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said his group opposes removing the laws banning adultery and fornication, saying it sends the wrong message: If we remove these laws we are telling young people that adultery and fornication are acceptable.

Thousands of people in Afghanistan have been protesting against the reprinting of cartoons in Danish newspapers they say are insults to Islam.

These protests are believed to be the biggest since 2006, when cartoons of Muhammad were first published.

At the scene of the biggest protest, in the western city of Herat, police say more then 10,000 people took to the streets to denounce Denmark. They also condemned the planned release of a Dutch film critical of the Koran.

They burned Dutch and Danish flags, and called for their troops to be removed from the Nato force in Afghanistan.

One of the protesters, Mir Farooq Hussaini, blamed the US and its allies for what he saw as blasphemy against Islam: We are here today to show our anger for what happened in Denmark, and to all infidels in the leadership of criminal America for what is going on in the world. If next time our beliefs are insulted, we will give a lesson to America and its allies the way we gave a lesson to Russia when they had occupied our country."

Kyrgyzstan has rejected for now a harsh new Decree which would have brought in sweeping controls on religious activity.

But Kanat Murzakhalilov, Deputy Head of the State Agency for Religious Affairs, told Forum 18 News Service that his agency hopes to present a final draft of a controversial new Religion Law to the government by the end of March.

He refused to say if the draft will require 200 adult citizen members before a community can gain legal status, a provision in the latest publicly-available draft which is opposed by the Russian Orthodox, the Catholics, many Protestant Churches, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Baha'is. But he stated that registration will continue to be compulsory.

Boris Shumkov of the Council of Churches Baptists told Forum 18 that such harsh provisions would lead to repression and persecution of our congregations.

The Tunisian Supreme Islamic Council has condemned the recent republishing of Danish cartoons blaspheming Muhammad.

In a press release, the council voiced much resentment and concern over such a disgraceful and irresponsible act that provoked the religious sentiments of hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide.

The council urged judicious and wise people worldwide to exert more efforts to spare humanity fatal fanaticism manifestations that are fueled by such attempts to mock religions and clergymen, an unprovoked matter which is tabooed by all heavenly religions.

However, it also asked all Muslims across the world to do their utmost to correctly promote the benevolent religion of Islam.

And Pakistan's obliged by 'benevolently' calling for the death of the cartoonist

Based on an article article from The News

Demonstrations were held in all the country’s main cities on Friday to protest against the republication in Danish newspapers of a cartoon caricaturing Muhammad.

Angry protesters torched effigies of the Danish premier and his country’s flag. They marched through streets across the country after Friday prayers, demanding the government snap diplomatic relations with Denmark

Rallies were held in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Multan and Quetta, where speakers demanded that the “blasphemers” be punished and Danish products be boycotted.

In Lahore, at five different points, hundreds of university and college students, joined by political leaders and workers of religious parties, held demonstrations, witnesses said. The protesters sprinkled petrol on an effigy of the Danish prime minister wrapped in his country’s flag and set it alight amid chants of Hang the cartoonist and Expel the Danish ambassador.

In Multan, angry protesters also chanted slogans against Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders for producing an anti-Islam film. We demand the Danish authorities punish the blasphemers, or we will take revenge ourselves, a 'benevolent' Islamist leader, Mufti Hidayatullah, told some 400 students in Multan,.

After an acrimonious debate in which the bogeyman of secularism was repeatedly invoked, the House of Lords on Wednesday accepted the amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that abolishes the common law of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

The amendment had originally been introduced by Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris in the House of Commons, but the Government had persuaded him to withdraw it after promising to introduce its own amendment later in the Lords. This it has now done with something less than enthusiasm.

The Bishops in the House were divided, some saying that the abolition was unnecessary and undesirable and others saying that it was inevitable and that the Church should therefore concede. The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, had agreed to the Government's amendment during a consultation, but expressed strong reservations about the timing of the move.

Prominent Christian activist Baroness O'Cathain launched a blistering attack on the amendment, with particular fury aimed at Evan Harris. Lady O'Cathain maintained that abolition of blasphemy would unleash a torrent of abuse towards Christians.

Lib Dem peer Lord Avebury pressurised the Government into keeping its word by tabling his own abolition amendment.

The Government had conducted a "short and sharp" consultation with the Church of England about the amendment, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York both agreed not to oppose the abolition, although both questioned its timing.

Evan Harris said that this debate had been going on for 21 years, since the Law Commission had recommended abolition of the law, and for the Church it would never be the right time.
Lord Avebury also introduced other amendments to the Bill that would clear out some other ancient Church privileges, such as Section 2 of the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act of 1860, under which Peter Tatchell was charged when he interrupted a sermon by the-then Archbishop of Canterbury in Canterbury Cathedral. Lord Avebury's amendments were rejected by the Government and opposed by the bishops.

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society pointed out that although the UK blasphemy laws are in the course of abolition, there is growing pressure in the Islamic world to outlaw so-called "religious defamation", a kind of super blasphemy law. This pressure is being applied at the United Nations and its Human Rights Council. He commented: "If the United Nations Human Rights Council succumbs to the pressure from the Islamic countries to permit laws against religious defamation, it will be a major blow to freedom of expression, which underpins both democracy and civilisation itself. Nations who cherish freedom should wake up to the dangers of such moves, rather than sit idly by as they have done so far."

The following amendment was passed by 148 to 87:

BARONESS ANDREWS

144B* Insert the following new Clause—
"Blasphemy and blasphemous libel
(1) The offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel under the common law of England and Wales are abolished.
(2) In section 1 of the Criminal Libel Act 1819 (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4 c. 8) (orders for seizure of copies of blasphemous or seditious libel) the words "any blasphemous libel, or" are omitted.
(3) In sections 3 and 4 of the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888 (c. 64) (privileged matters) the words "blasphemous or" are omitted.
(4) Subsections (2) and (3) (and the related repeals in Schedule 38) extend to England and Wales only."

No Dutch public or commercial television station is willing to broadcast MP Geert Wilder’s anti-Koran film, the Volkskrant reports.

The paper says Wilders insists the entire 10 to 15-minute feature be screened, a condition no broadcaster is willing to meet.

We would not do that with a film produced by the Christian Democrats or the Liberals and also not for [Geert Wilder’s party] PVV, Herman van Gelderen, head of NRCV programme Netwerk said. We are also extremely cautious about encouraging hatred and discrimination.’

Nova editor Carel Kuyl told the paper that Wilders was willing to allow a preview of his film on the condition programme chiefs agreed to broadcast it anyway.

Wilders will now launch his film, titled Fitna, on the internet later this month. The Volkskrant reports that the press centre in The Hague, Nieuwspoort, has agreed to the presentation of Wilders' film on March 28, pending security arrangements.

Meanwhile, the AD reports that the Dutch anti-terrorism coordinator has raised the terror alarm level from ‘limited’ to ‘substantial’. Both Wilders’ film and the extension of the Dutch military mission in Afghanistan influenced the decision, the paper says.

See full article from Reuters

A majority of Dutch people want an anti-Koran film made by a politician to be broadcast even though they fear it will stoke tension with Muslims and harm relations with Arab countries, a poll showed on Wednesday.

The poll by TNS NIPO for RTL television showed that 54% thought the film should be broadcast although 76% expected it to increase tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims and 74% saw worsening relations with Arab nations.

The survey of 600 people conducted on February 29 showed that 68% expected a boycott like that seen against Denmark after cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed appeared in a Danish newspaper.

See full article from Radio Netherlands

During a meeting in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has told Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende that he will support the Netherlands if it comes under attack because of the anti-Qur'an film Fitna by populist leader Geert Wilders.

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has asked Dutch ambassadors in Islamic countries to do their best to protect Dutch citizens and companies. Pakistan has also brought the issue to the attention of the European Union and the Vatican. At Islamabad's request, the matter has been placed at the top of the agenda at next week's summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference in Senegal.

Update: Artistic Support

14th March 2007

The Danish cartoonist behind drawings satirising the Prophet Muhammad has urged a Dutch lawmaker to air an anti-Islam film despite Muslim outrage.

Kurt Westergaard said MP Geert Wilders should show his film, despite government warnings that this would damage Dutch interests.

He said that no Danish politician would dare to block the film.

An agency from London decided Scotland's breathtaking scenery was best illustrated by filming three men surfing in the nude for a clever little viral ad to be circulated worldwide on YouTube, Bebo and Facebook.

Within hours of the three locals stripping off to run along one of Barra's most famous beaches, the tourism agency VisitScotland had taken a furious phone call from one of the Catholic island's parish priests.

Devout islanders, said the Very Rev Angus John Provost MacQueen, were incensed, not least because the film crew had chosen Cockle Beach, Barra's seaside landing strip near the main town of Castlebay. Two flights had just come and both planes were still on the strand there. Many people were there and they were outraged. Would you like people going stark naked running down your runway? We don't want to attract this kind of tourism to Barra. We are overbooked in the summer as it is.

The controversial footage was immediately destroyed, VisitScotland confirmed yesterday, although other adventure sports such as kayaking are still featured, fully dressed. The idea behind this particular element was to do something quirky which we're getting on YouTube and social networking sites, a spokeswoman said. But there was some feedback from the local community that they were offended by the filming. As soon as we heard that, we realised we'd misjudged that and destroyed that bit of filming.

A Malaysian court has jailed a woman follower of a bizarre cult centred around a giant teapot for declaring herself an apostate while still a Muslim. Apostasy is a criminal offence in Malaysia.

An Islamic court in the northeastern state of Terengganu sentenced Kamariah Ali to two years in jail after she was found guilty of apostasy and refused to repent.

What she did was not within the concept of freedom of religion, the news agency Bernama quoted judge Mohamad Abdullah as saying.

Kamariah, a widow with four children, was arrested in 2005 along with 57 other followers of the bizarre cult built around a giant teapot.

The All India Minority Forum have accused the Indian government of trying to protect writer Taslima Nasreen though she has hurt sentiments of Muslims in the country.

Taslima has not only hurt the sentiments of Muslims, but she has defamed the Indian Constitution. The government should not extend her visa and she should move out of this country immediately, president of the Forum Idris Ali told a rally organised by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

Nearly 500 delegates from all over the country spoke in the open session in front of 150,000 people gathered to hear them after the completion of the two-day all India seminar organised by the Board.

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said on Wednesday that the reprinting of a cartoon in Danish paper depicting Prophet Mohammed, was unacceptable and intolerable for Afghanistan.

His comments came a day after Afghan members of the parliament also condemned the reprint of cartoons and asked the Afghan government to summon the Danish envoy to Afghanistan to express the Afghan people's anger.

For Afghanistan it is intolerable and unacceptable that the religious belief and faith of one billion people is subjected to disrespect, Spanta said, adding that those who print these kinds of insulting cartoons, they are pioneers in cultural clashes, ... and they are against peace and friendship of human beings.

Thousands of people also took to street Wednesday in Puli Alam, the capital of southern Logar province, chanting slogans against the Danish paper and an upcoming film in the Netherlands criticizing Islam's holy book.

The protesters also demanded the Afghan government expel Dutch and Danish soldiers deployed in Afghanistan as part of NATO-led peacekeeping forces.

Similar demonstrations were also reported around the country.

For some years, Kazakhstan has been demanding that non-Muslim religious communities complete highly intrusive questionnaires, Forum 18 News Service has noted.

However, there has recently been an apparent increase in both the numbers of communities asked to complete the questionnaires and the pressure officials exert to get the questionnaires completed.

Amongst the numerous highly intrusive questions are: the ethnicity of congregation members, their profession, political preferences, the most influential and authoritative people in the community, foreign missionaries, media contacts, facts demanding attention on the part of state bodies, military service of congregation leaders, their foreign language knowledge, media articles written, and the full names of leaders' close friends and comrades.

A State Programme, stressing increased monitoring and supervision of religious communities, has recently been adopted. Some religious believers, who wish to remain anonymous, have told Forum 18 that the KNB secret police have increased efforts to recruit spies inside religious communities.

Stephen Green, national director of Stephen Green’s Voice (aka Christian Voice) has failed yet again to get the BBC and John Thoday done for blasphemy. The House of Lords refused to hear the appeal of the recent High Court decision.

Update: Nutters with a Cross to Bear

Christian Voice are not impressed by the House of Lords decision not to hear the appeal. Their solicitor wrote to the Times:

See letter from the Times

The House of Lords has decided not to hear the appeal as it was not felt by the House to have “sufficient public interest”. We believe that the House of Lords erred in declining to hear the appeal, since the High Court’s decision was bad law; indeed, one commentator described the decision as “without legal merit”.

Recently there has been another blasphemy case which we believe has fallen foul of the law, namely the grotesque statue of Jesus Christ with an erect penis in the Baltic Art Centre, Gateshead. Many Christians demonstrated against this and the strength of feeling ran high. Many expressed their desire to destroy the statue, but desisted, knowing this not to be lawful. Those same people have expressed a desire to assist in a private prosecution for blasphemy. The police have shown no interest in dealing with these grievances, as far as we are aware, and the art centre displayed the statue until the end of the exhibition. We strongly believe that it is in the public interest to prevent such lewd and offensive displays.

... Read letter

There are 82 Kurt Westergaards living in Denmark but only one of them is the man who life is under daily threat because of his caricatures of the founder of Islam.

However, some of other 81 "Kurts" scattered across Denmark have also received mistaken identity death threats because they share the same name as the illustrator.

One, a businessman from the Danish town of Aabenraa, has been offered protection by Denmark's intelligence agency, the PET, after receiving multiple death threats.

The worst thing was that they also called my three children. They wanted to kidnap my family and murder me, he said.

Yemen’s most prominent governmental figures want an international law against the defamation of Mohammed and other religious figures, after the reprinting of an infamous cartoon in Denmark and a call to reprint it again throughout Europe by Germany’s Minister of the Interior.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujawar and Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi are asking for international cooperation to draft a law against mocking religious figures. Is unclear what organization or organizations would be able to effectively draft and enforce any such law.

Some members of Parliament like Mansour Al-Zindani of the Islah party have called for a boycott of Danish products and asked the Minister of Industry and Trade, Yahya Al-Mutawakel, to create an embargo forbidding the import and export of Danish goods.

However, the government has not and likely will not call for an officially- sanctioned boycott.

Prime Minister Al-Mujawar spoke to a crowd hundreds of men at Al-Iman University about defending Mohammed’s reputation: The republication [of the cartoon] show the ignorance of those who attack religion, said Mujawar: Such behavior begets hatred and creates an unstable relationship between Islamic countries and other nations.

The Dutch government is consulting lawyers on whether it can ban a film by anti-immigration lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

It fears the anti-Koran film could trigger violence against Netherlands citizens.

Meanwhile Nato's secretary general says he fears the airing of the film will have repercussions for troops in Afghanistan.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's comments came after Afghans protested on Sunday against the film being made by far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

Nato's secretary general said he was concerned about his troops after the protests against the film in Afghanistan: If the [troops] find themselves in the line of fire because of the film, then I am worried about it and I am expressing that concern, he said in a television interview.

Wilders' film is called Fitna, an Arabic word used to describe strife or discord. He has said his film will show how the Koran is an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror.

Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney Julian Porteous says desensitisation to violence or sexual imagery does not promote the dignity of the human person and is not in the best interest of society.

While Bishop Porteous believes the causes of violence and crime in society is a very complex problem, the problem should not be compounded by video games that numb our natural repulsion to violence, he told The Catholic Weekly.

In regard to sexually explicit games, it reduces women in particular to mere objects of instant self gratification, Bishop Porteous said: We know from psychological research that exposure to violent video games can desensitise people to real-life violence.

LOver the years, unconventional representations of Christ and far-flung speculations about his true identity have attracted the ire of the devout and the sensitive.

The latest depiction of Jesus to be deemed offensive is the promotional poster for Fat Christ, Gavin Davis’ comedic play, which opened in London last night. The poster was refused advertising spots on the London Underground.

Perhaps suggesting that Jesus suffered from slow metabolism or indulged in fatty food is the ultimate form of blasphemy these days, when obesity is seen as a mortal sin.

...Read full article

Hundreds of demonstrators set Danish and Dutch flags ablaze in northern Afghanistan to protest the reprint of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Denmark and an upcoming Dutch film criticizing the Quran.

Clerics and madrassa students gathered in front of Afghanistan's largest shrine in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif to demand the government shut down the Danish and Dutch embassies in Kabul.

We don't want our government to have any diplomatic relations with these two countries, said Maulawi Abdul Hadi, one of the clerics organizing Sunday's protest. We don't want Danish and Dutch troops in Afghanistan. They should be kicked out of the NATO forces here.

Denmark has 780 troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO's International Security Assistance Force and the Netherlands has 1,650.

The crowd swelled to about 700 before dispersing, said a police spokesman adding that the protest was peaceful.

Life in Iran, in particular for women, can already be pretty grim. But it is about to get a whole lot worse. For just about everybody.

The Iranian parliament is discussing a new penal code, under which citizens who convert from another religion will face execution. The Baha'i community, among the most persecuted of all in Iran described this as a 'gross violation' of Iran's human rights obligations.

Iran's penal codes are already mercilessly draconian. Underground, the youth ministry of Open Doors, reports: No converts to Christianity have been convicted of “apostasy” since international pressure forced officials to drop the death sentence of Christian convert Mehdi Dibaj in 1994. But in the years following the convert’s release, Dibaj and four other Protestant pastors, both converts and those working with converts, have been brutally murdered.

The Institute on Religion and Public Policy published precise details of the proposed new code earlier this month. Besides apostates, the code also s the death penalty for anyone who 'insults the Prophet'.

The Baha'is have reason to be worried. As they said today, the draft code's section on apostasy mandates the death penalty for anyone who changes his religion from Islam. It also extends to naming as an apostate any follower of a religion other than Islam who had one parent who was a Muslim at the time of his or her conception. For example, the child of a Muslim and a Christian who chose to be a Christian would be considered an apostate and subject to capital punishment.

Dr Nazila Ghanea, lecturer in human rights law at Oxford university and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Religion and Human Rights, said: The laws will give the Iranian government legal grounds to resort to taking the lives of any of its citizens who choose to adopt a religion other than Islam. The code is a gross violation by the Islamic Republic of Iran of its obligations as a party to a number of international human rights instruments, particularly those relating to freedom of religion or belief.'

The Vatican joined Al-Azhar, the highest seat of learning in the Sunni world in condemning the reprinting of a controversial cartoon of Muhammad in Denmark.

Both sides vehemently denounce the reprinting of the offensive cartoon and the attack on Islam and its prophet, officials from both religious bodies said in a statement.

Concluding a two-day meeting of their joint interfaith committee in Cairo, the two sides also denounced any insult to any religion.

We call for the respect of faiths, religious holy books and religious symbols, read the statement.

The two sides urged Muslim and Christian religious leaders, intellectuals and educators to instil such respect in society: Freedom of expression should not become a pretext to insult religions and defaming religious sanctities.

The two-day meeting is the first between the two religious bodies in two years.

Comment: Respect Should be Earned

From MediawatchWatch

As Flemming Rose points out, al-Azhar university does not permit Jews or Copts to enroll for their courses in medicine, economics, or agriculture. So much for their “respect of faiths”.

Authoritarians seeking to extend repression have always drawn innocents into manufactured crises. None was more innocent than Jacques Barrot, who, in 2005, helped trigger a wave of death when he entered France's annual pig squealing contest at the Pyrenean village of Trie-sur-Baïse.

An Associated Press photographer snapped him wearing a plastic snout standing at the microphone and put it on the news wires.

The next time it appeared, someone had doctored the picture and added the caption: 'Here is the real image of Mohammed'. Two radical imams, whom Denmark had foolishly welcomed as asylum seekers, included it in a dossier they were hawking round the dictatorships of the Middle East, on how Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had insulted Muslims.

...Read the full article

Al Qaeda has reportedly issued an order to kill a Dutch lawmaker who plans to release an anti-Koran film in March, Dutch paper De Telegraaf has reported.

In a recent message on a protected web forum on the website alekhlaas.net, which has links with Al Qaeda, the terror group called on people to "slaughter" Dutch legislator Geert Wilders.

The paper quoted the message as reading: In the name of Allah, we ask you to bring us the head of this infidel who insults Islam and Muslims and ridicules the Prophet Mohammed.

The message honored Mohammed B, who murdered Dutch director Theo van Gogh in 2004 for making a film critical of Islam, as a hero.

The forum also calls for the "terrorization" of the Netherlands to prevent the controversial film from being shown: We, the Muslim people of the world, must fight against anyone who derides Islam. The Dutch do not want Muslims living in their country because they are afraid that Islam will destroy them.

Wilders later said his film will be entitled Fitna (Ordeal) and lasts about 15 minutes. Wilders has a separate website on which his Koran film will be shown.

Last month the German Family Ministry was said to be 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.

Anyway an English translation of the book  been made available as a free download (PDF file). The accompanying images are also available to view online.

A married university professor has been sentenced to 180 lashes and eight months in prison for having coffee with a female student.

The professor of psychology at Umm al-Qra University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, was caught in a "honey trap" operation after angering members of the religious police during a training course, his lawyer said.

The academic is said to have received a call from a supposed student, who asked to discuss a problem in person; he agreed, provided she brought along a brother as a chaperone.
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When the man arrived at the meeting place, the girl was alone, and he was arrested for being in a state of khulwa - seclusion - with an unrelated female.

Abdullah al-Sanousi, the professor's lawyer, said his client had upset some of the commission's trainees on a course that a number had failed.

The professor, who is said to have taped the girl admitting that she was sent by the police, is appealing against the sentence.

Senior Anglican bishops have warned the Government that they have serious reservations about the abolition of the blasphemy laws.

Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu say in a letter today that the Government should not lightly change laws that, though their day-to-day importance may be small...BUT...nevertheless carry a significant symbolic charge.

While not opposing abolition, they urge caution and question why the Government is pushing through the change now.

The abolition of blasphemy from the statute books moved closer this week with the tabling of a Government amendment in the House of Lords. The Bill is scheduled for debate on Wednesday.

The Government had promised in January that this would take place after a “short and sharp” consultation with the churches.

In a letter to Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, the Archbishops say that the pressing need for repeal is not clear and plead for more time to to assess the impact of the new offence of incitement to religious hatred.

They call on the Government to be clear why the offences are being abolished and to spell out what the implications are for Christianity in relation to State and society: At a time of continuing debate about the nature of our society and its values, this change needs to be seen for what it is, namely the removal of what has long been recognised as unsatisfactory and not very workable offences in circumstances in which scurrilous attacks on the Christian religion no longer threaten the fabric of society. It should not be capable of interpretation as a secularising move, or as a general licence to attack or insult religious beliefs and believers.

From the National Secular Society

The Government amendment this week comes at a considerably earlier stage than had been expected as it is very unlikely that the consultation has been completed.

What appears to have happened is that the Government has been panicked into tabling its own amendment following a near identical one being tabled by Lord Avebury. Lord Avebury is a long-time secular campaigner.

The Government is determined that changes to blasphemy are made through their amendments, to give the appearance that they are in control.

See full article from Parliament

A few of the Criminal Injustice Bill amendments knocking around

BARONESS ANDREWS

144B* Insert the following new Clause—
"Blasphemy and blasphemous libel
(1) The offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel under the common law of England and Wales are abolished.
(2) In section 1 of the Criminal Libel Act 1819 (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4 c. 8) (orders for seizure of copies of blasphemous or seditious libel) the words "any blasphemous libel, or" are omitted.
(3) In sections 3 and 4 of the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888 (c. 64) (privileged matters) the words "blasphemous or" are omitted.
(4) Subsections (2) and (3) (and the related repeals in Schedule 38) extend to England and Wales only."


EARL OF ONSLOW
BARONESS STERN

145 Insert the following new Clause—
"Blasphemy
The offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel are abolished."

LORD AVEBURY

148 Insert the following new Clause—
"Abolition of certain religious offences
(1) The following offences are abolished—
(a) blasphemy and blasphemous libel;
(b) any distinct offence of disturbing a religious service or religious devotions;
(c) any religious offence of striking a person in a church or churchyard.
(2) The following provisions are repealed—
(a) in section 1 of the Criminal Libel Act 1819 (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4 c. 8), the words "blasphemous libel, or";
(b) in sections 3 and 4 of the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888 (c. 64), the words "blasphemous or";
(c) section 59 of the Cemeteries Clauses Act 1847 (c. 65);
(d) section 2 of the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860 (c. 32);
(e) section 36 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 (c. 100);
(f) section 7 of the Burial Laws Amendment Act 1880 (c. 41)."

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen called upon legislator Geert Wilders, founder of the right- wing Freedom Party, not to broadcast a movie that is heavily critical of the Islamic religion. Verhagen said the movie might endanger the lives of Dutch nationals worldwide and harm Dutch business in Muslim countries.

I am not trying to meet demands from anti-democratic forces and terrorists in the Middle East, Verhagen said. I am simply protecting Dutch interests abroad.

The faction leader of Verhagen's Christian Democrats in parliament, Pieter van Geel, joined her in the public request.

Earlier Thursday the Taliban threatened to harm Dutch military targets in Afghanistan and beyond if Wilders would persist in his plans to release a movie criticizing the Islamic religion.

Al-Qaeda has also threatened to harm Dutch targets if the movie is broadcast. Last week the Iranian parliament warned the Dutch government to ensure the movie will not be aired.

Responding to Verhagen, Wilders, who announced his film will be broadcast in the coming days on www.fitnathemovie.com, said the Dutch minister could "get lost."

President Omar al-Bashir vowed on Wednesday to ban Danes from Sudan and called for a Muslim boycott of Denmark before a crowd of tens of thousands denouncing the country at a government-backed protest against a cartoon satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.

The rally outside al-Bashir's palace in Khartoum was the biggest protest in the Muslim world since Danish papers reprinted the cartoon, seen by many Muslims as insulting to their religion's most revered figure. The demonstration raised fears that renewed protests over the cartoon — so far small and scattered — could grow.

We urge all Muslims around the world to boycott Danish commodities, goods, companies, institutions, organizations and personalities, al-Bashir told the crowd.

Down, down, Denmark! shouted the protesters. Al-Bashir vowed that not a single Danish foot will from now on desecrate the land of Sudan.

It was not clear whether al-Bashir would expel the two dozen Danes who work in Sudan, mostly in aid organizations and as peacekeepers in southern Sudan and Darfur. The Danish Charge d'Affaires in Khartoum, Karin Soerensen, said her mission had not been notified of any order for Danes to leave and would not comment whether there were any plans to evacuate them.

Khartoum began enforcing a ban on Danish products Tuesday.

Khartoum's protest was peaceful Wednesday, ending after several hours. The rally failed to muster the 1 million participants sought by the organizers, the Popular Front for the Defense of Faith and Religion, which backs al-Bashir's ruling National Congress party.

See full article from Deutsche Welle

Wolfgang Schaeuble C'mon, if you think you're hard enough

More European newspapers should publish the hotly disputed Mohammed cartoons, said German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble as violent protests broke out in Sudan over the recent reprinting of the caricatures.

All European newspapers should print the [Mohammed] caricatures with the explanation, 'We also think they're pathetic, but the use of press freedom is no reason to resort to violence, Schaeuble told the weekly edition of Die Zeit.

The minister added that he "respected" the decision of 17 Danish newspapers earlier this month to reprint a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed with a turban that resembled a bomb with a lit fuse. The re-publication came a day after Danish authorities uncovered and foiled a plot to murder the cartoonist whose drawing first appeared in 2005.

Based on an article from The News

Protest rallies were taken out and demonstrations staged in Pakistan on Friday against the blasphemous caricatures of Mohammed.

Participants of a massive protest rally chanted slogans against Denmark and the Danish newspapers for publishing the blasphemous caricatures and called for severing diplomatic ties with Denmark.

On the occasion, the JUP leaders vowed to continue protest in this respect till an apology is tendered and punishment awarded to those responsible for the act. They said Muslims were ready to sacrifice their lives and would not allow such heinous crime of blasphemy.

Meanwhile, activists of the Jamiat Ulema Islam, including students of religious seminaries, staged a demonstration outside the press club. Qari Kamran, Taj Muhammad Nahion and others led the demonstration. The protestors set ablaze the flag of Denmark to register their protest.

The European Union has called on Iran to drop provisions in a draft penal code stipulating the death penalty for apostasy, heresy and witchcraft.

These articles clearly violate the Islamic Republic of Iran's commitments under the international human rights conventions, the Slovenian EU Presidency said in a statement.

The EU calls upon the Iranian authorities, both in government and parliament, to modify the draft penal code in order to respect the obligations.

The statement said the death penalty had been carried out in Iran for apostasy but it had never before been set down in law.

Turkey is engaged in a bold and profound attempt to rewrite the basis for Islamic sharia law while also officially reinterpreting the Qur'an for the modern age.

The exercise in reforming Islamic jurisprudence, sponsored by the modernising and Islamic government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is being seen as an iconoclastic campaign to establish a 21st century form of Islam, fusing Muslim beliefs and tradition with European and western philosophical methods and principles.

The result, say experts following the ambitious experiment, could be to diminish Muslim discrimination against women, banish some of the brutal penalties associated with Islamic law, such as stoning and amputation, and redefine Islam as a modern, dynamic force in the large country that pivots between east and west, leaning into the Middle East while aspiring to join the European Union.

A team of reformist Islamic scholars at Ankara University, acting under the auspices of the Diyanet or Directorate of Religious Affairs, the government body which oversees the country's 8,000 mosques and appoints imams, is said to be close to concluding a "reinterpretation" of parts of the Hadith, the collection of thousands of aphorisms and comments said to derive from the prophet Muhammad and which form the basis of Islamic jurisprudence or sharia law. One of the team doing the revision said they are nearly finished, said Mustafa Akyol, an Istanbul commentator who reflects the thinking of the liberal camp in Erdogan's governing AK party. They have problems with the misogynistic hadith, the ones against women. They may delete some from the collection, declaring them not authentic. That would be a very bold step. Or they may just add footnotes, saying they should be understood from a different historical context.

Fadi Hakura, a Turkey expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, described the project as an attempt to make Turkish Sunni Islam fully compatible with contemporary social and moral values. They see this not as a revolution, but as a return to the original Islam, away from the excessive conservatism that has stymied all reforms for the last few centuries. It's somewhat akin to the Christian reformation, although not the same.

At least 125 Hindu extremists here yesterday attacked one of the oldest and best-known churches in India's Madhya Pradesh state, Masihi Mandir Church, brutally beating one of the fleeing members.

The mob from the Hindu extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bajrang Dal arrived as the third of the church’s four Sunday services was about to begin, forcibly making their way into the church compound angrily shouting slogans.

They came on Jeeps, said eyewitness James Daniel, beating drums and shouting slogans in Hindi, ‘He who talks in favor of only Hindus will rule the nation’ and, ‘Stop conversions.’

The 15 Christians at the church immediately vacated the building and locked it from outside. The mob broke the windows of the church, shattering all window panes and destroying two expensive chandeliers before damaging a cross outside.

Police arrived at the scene, preventing the mob from further harming the church property, and arrested four of the fleeing Hindu extremists. The rest escaped.

The assault followed an attack in Kosmi on February 22 in which a mob of Hindu extremists dragged at least four people from a home where Christians were meeting and beat them with bamboo poles, rods and belts.