Hindus have urged the Viacom and its brand Paramount Pictures to post a study guide about Hinduism and guru tradition on their websites and place it in movie theaters worldwide to undo the supposed damage done by their upcoming Hollywood movie The Love Guru.

Bhavna Shinde, representing Hindu Janjagruti Samiti and Sanatan Society for Scientific Spirituality, in a communique to Paramount Pictures said: ...We also feel that the parody on Gurus will contribute to the misunderstanding about the sacred concept of the 'Guru'...

Shinde urged Viacom and Paramount to immediately issue a study guide about Hinduism and the sacred tradition/role of the 'Guru' confirming to Hindu scriptures, post it on the official websites of Viacom and Paramount and 'The Love Guru', and make it available free of cost in printed form at the movie theaters worldwide.

She further said, This guide should also offer the viewers a framework in which to see the film, so that the viewers do not carry any misconceptions about Hinduism and that the characters portrayed in this movie are in no way depicting authentic Gurus from the Hindu and spiritual tradition.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh believes his long nightmare is almost over.

The 24-year-old student, sentenced to death in Afganistan for downloading internet reports on women's rights, is allowing himself to be hopeful for the first time since he was condemned.

The Independent has learnt, however, that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has privately assured Kambaksh's campaign team that he will be freed. Senior government figures have also indicated that they believe his sentence, by a court in Mazar-e-Sharif, was based on a mistaken interpretation of the country's constitutional law.

Kambaksh has already discreetly been issued with a passport which will enable him to start a new life abroad if and when he is freed.

A petition by readers of The Independent to secure justice for him has attracted more than 100,000 signatures. Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, said on a visit to Afghanistan yesterday that he would be raising the matter with Karzai.

Kambaksh said from his cell yesterday that he was aware that the Afghan President may save his life. This is very, very important for me. It was a court which said I must die without even hearing my side of the story. There are many judges who are very conservative and say I have insulted Islam without really considering the evidence.

They themselves are also afraid of extremists and this could influence their decision. That worries me. But I am very grateful to the international media, especially The Independent, for taking an interest in my case. I think that makes it difficult for them to just get rid of me.

According to Samay Hamed, the co-ordinator of Kambaksh's campaign team, President Karzai first agreed to pardon the student in March this year. I ... have been told repeatedly by government ministers that [they] want the matter resolved quickly.

A procession of devils, ghosts and zombies through the historic Spanish city of Toledo has been branded blasphemous by the Catholic Church.

Actors from the Morboria theatre company performed a representation inspired by the medieval Dance of Death in Toledo's streets on Saturday, provoking an angry reaction from the cathedral pulpit the following day.

We ask forgiveness for those who yesterday insulted the body of Christ, said Archbishop Antonio Canizares, quoted in newspaper El Pais. He told worshippers the procession made a mockery of the Catholic celebration of Corpus Christi.

A representative of Morboria said the actors had been well received by most passers by except for one small group who told them off and said they would pray for them.

The Departing Mayor of Kirklees launched a blistering attack on a group of Muslims for refusing to pose with her in photographs.

Coun Jean Calvert said it proved 'we are no further down the road' of women's rights than when she first became a councillor in 1992. Coun Calvert was referring to her invitation to attend a community cohesion event at Dewsbury Town Hall in March.

It was organised by the North Kirklees Sunni Muslim Council of Mosques and local imams to mark Eid-Milad-Un-Nabi, the prophet Mohammed's birthday.

She said: I attended this event and was horrified to be left on my own in a room full of people that I didn't know. The press wanted to take photographs of the group with the mayor. The photographer was told in no uncertain terms that 'we don't have photographs taken with women.'

That was bad enough but then to stand on my own for a further 15 minutes while photographs were being taken of all the other guests in the room was very upsetting.

An organiser of the community cohesion event said he had contacted the mayor's office in advance to explain Coun Calvert could not appear in photographs with orthodox clerics.

A muslim pharmacist told a couple he couldn't give them emergency contraception because it was against his religious beliefs

A couple went to a Sainburys chemist to buy the morning-after pill but were told they couldn't have it - because the pharmacist didn't agree with it.

Mum-of-two Kaye said: I was absolutely flabbergasted. I'm a 36-year-old woman, not a child. I respect other people's religions, but when it affects my life it's not on. Surely the pharmacist has a duty of care? If religion comes into it he should change his job.

The couple were told to go to Sainsburys in Denton but with 15 minutes from closing time they knew they wouldn't be able to make it.

A spokeswoman for Sainsburys said if the morning-after pill is against a pharmacist's personal, religious or moral beliefs they are within their rights not to supply it: We would ask our pharmacists to do their best to help, to find another colleague to dispense the pill or to direct them to another pharmacy nearby.

Yoga enthusiasts have been warned by a leading Roman Catholic clergyman that they are in danger of being possessed by the Devil.

Father Jeremy Davies, exorcist for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, says that activities such as yoga, massage therapy, reiki or even reading horoscopes could put people at risk from evil spirits.

In a new book, he also argues that people with promiscuous lifestyles could find themselves afflicted by demons. And he says that the occult is closely linked to the scourges of drugs, demonic music and pornography’ which are ‘destroying millions of young people in our time.

The 73-year-old Catholic priest, who was appointed exorcist of the Archdiocese of Westminster in 1986. He has carried out thousands of exorcisms in London and in 1993 he set up the International Association of Exorcists with Fr Gabriel Amorth, the Pope’s top exorcist.

In Exorcism: Understanding Exorcism In Scripture And Practice, which is published by the Catholic Truth Society, Fr Davies compares militant atheists to rational Satanists, and blames them for a rise in demonic activity. He adds that ‘perversions’ such as homosexuality, pornography and promiscuity are contributing to a growing sense of moral unease.

He writes: Even heterosexual promiscuity is a perversion; and intercourse, which belongs in the sanctuary of married love, can become a pathway not only for disease but also for evil spirits...young people especially are vulnerable and we must do what we can to protect them.

While a young Christian man was eating lunch in his factory’s cafeteria, some of his co-workers approached him and tried to convince him to embrace Islam. When the young man refused, his co-workers accused him of blasphemy and wanted to have him burned alive and his family stoned to death.

On 20th May, 2008 when Danish Masih was sitting in the canteen  of the factory, Arsalan and his companions came their chasing him, and asked the waiter not to serve Danish and his friend unless they embrace Islam. Danish got furious and asked them to leave, moreover he said that he is the true believer of Christ and believes that all other Religions are false except Christianity.

The conflict escalated. Arsalan and his friends made it a matter of Blasphemy and gathered the whole factory workers saying that this Kafir (Atheist) has committed Blasphemy against the Holy Prophet.

The workers of the factory that comprised mostly of Taliban’s became enraged and decided to burn Danish alive and stone his family to death. The Managing Director of the factory called police and kept Danish in his custody. Later after settling down the situation for the time being he suggested Danish to leave at once from Attock with family.

The US government has cautioned the Maldives over new wording in the constitution in progress which means non-Muslims could lose their Maldivian citizenship, US ambassador Robert Blake said.

[The wording is] in conflict with some international obligations Maldives has already signed up for, Blake said, in a probable reference to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, which enshrines freedom of religion.

A group from the US House Foreign Relations Committee who visited Maldives in February were also rumoured to have spoken to government on the issue, whilst a 2005 international religious freedom report by the committee said that freedom of religion remains severely restricted in Maldives.

However as the new constitution was developed, the Special Majlis (constitutional assembly) voted to amend wording on citizenship from the current constitution, to add the words: A non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives.

Information minister Mohamed Nasheed said on his personal blog that this wording will operate to take away the citizenship from citizens of Maldives who may have a faith different from Islam.

The existing constitution stipulates individuals must be Muslim in order to vote in elections, but not in order to be a citizen.

Nasheed said on his blog, It will be very difficult for Maldives mentality to accept Maldives citizens may belong to a different faith. It will be seen as an offense to the state of Maldives and an insult to being Maldivian, thus demanding serious reprisal.

Therefore, he added, No Maldives leader would want to rock the boat by advocating a change to the wording.

A mob has burned to death at least 11 people accused of witchcraft in Kenya.

Their houses were torched. Eight women and three men suspected of being witches died, said Charles Owino, Kenya's deputy police spokesman. Residents in the Kisii district in the west of the country said an enraged crowd had gone from house to house.

Those killed were mainly aged between 70 and 90.

Police drafted extra personnel into the area to prevent revenge attacks in a region already reeling from tribal killings during Kenya's post-election crisis. There is widespread suspicion of sorcery, particularly in west Kenya, which has a long tradition of witch doctors and faith healers.

A human rights group has pledged to take action against a police force which tried to prosecute a teenager for branding Scientology a "cult".

The 16-year-old faced prosecution after refusing to get rid of a placard which said Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult at a protest outside the church's headquarters in London on 10 May.

He was told that his sign breached the Public Order Act, which makes it an offence to display a sign that is threatening, insulting or abusive, but the Crown Prosecution Service said no action would be taken against the teenager.

The human rights group Liberty, whose lawyers have been advising the boy, is now considering action against the City of London Police.

Last week's arrest of Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekshot (not his real name) was an absurd, scary episode that casts a depressing light on the freedoms that formerly characterized the Netherlands.

Nekshot's home was raided by a team of ten police officers who had been dispatched by the Openbaar Ministerie, the federal Dutch DA's office that works in conjunction with the Netherlands Justice Department. The cops confiscated Nekschot's computer, his sketchbooks, and other materials, then took him to a detention facility where he spent 30 hours in a concrete cell before being released without charges — but after he had been made to promise to remove eight cartoons from his website. The drawings had been the subject of a three-year-old complaint by radical Dutch muslim Abdul Jabbar van de Ven and the lefty "anti-discrimination" organizations that basically seek to censor everything that doesn't jibe with the country's official rainbow-worshiping, we-are-the-world ethos. They claim Nekshot's art incites hatred and violence.

Many of his drawings are certainly crass and crude. Sometimes, they can even be pointlessly insulting. The goatfucker references (see particularly the example in the third cartoon) are just tired, gratuitous, feeble slams, in my opinion.

The weekly magazine HP/De Tijd, a respectable news-and-opinion weekly that's been publishing a Nekschot cartoon in every issue for the last few years, has now responded to the affair in the only principled way possible: by printing, in the issue that just hit the stands, the very drawings that got Nekschot arrested.

...See the Forbidden Cartoons

Nigerian islamists under the auspices of a paramilitary force last week destroyed six churches to protest a police rescue of two teenage Christian girls kidnapped by Muslims in this Bauchi state town.

Police recovered the two Christian girls, Mary Chikwodi Okoye, 15, and Uche Edward, 14, on May 12 after Muslims in Ningi kidnapped them three weeks ago in an attempt to expand Islam by marrying them to Muslim men.

The kidnappers had taken the girls to Wudil town in Kano state. Following the rescue of the girls, Muslims under the auspices of the Hisbah Command, a paramilitary arm of Kano state’s Sharia Commission, responsible for enforcing Islamic law, went on a rampage on May 13, attacking Christians and setting fire to the churches.

The destroyed churches were the Deeper Life Bible Church, St. Mary’s Catholic Church, All Souls Anglican Church, Church of Christ in Nigeria, Redeemed Christian Church of God, and the Redeemed Peoples Mission.

Kidnapping of teenage Christian girls by Muslims has become a recurring practice in Ningi. Muslims have kidnapped at least 13 Christian girls in the town, Christian sources said: These girls are usually kidnapped, forcefully converted to Islam, and then married out to other Muslim men against the will of both the girls and their parents.

City of London Police have been made to look exceedingly foolish following their issuing of a court summons to a teenager for displaying a sign that branded Scientology a “dangerous cult”.

And today the boy’s protest was vindicated when the Crown Prosecution Service ruled the words were neither “abusive or insulting” to the church and no further action would be taken against him.

The unnamed 16-year-old was handed a court summons by City of London police for refusing to put down a placard saying Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult during a peaceful protest outside the church’s headquarters near St Paul’s Cathedral earlier this month.

Police said they had “strongly advised” him to stop displaying the sign but he refused, citing a high court judgment from 1984 in which the organisation was described as a cult. The summons was issued under the Public Order Act on the grounds that the sign incited religious hatred.

A file was passed to the CPS, which today told City of London police it would not be pursuing the boy through the courts.

A spokeswoman for the force said: The CPS review of the case includes advice on what action or behaviour at a demonstration might be considered to be threatening, abusive or insulting. The force’s policing of future demonstrations will reflect this advice.

A CPS spokesman added: In consultation with the City of London police, we were asked whether the sign, which read ‘Scientology is not a religion it is a dangerous cult’, was abusive or insulting. Our advice is that it is not abusive or insulting and there is no offensiveness, as opposed to criticism, neither in the idea expressed nor in the mode of expression. No action will be taken against the individual.

The National Secular Society invite you to write to your MP and suggest signing Roger Godsiff's Early Day Motion (no. 1586) which criticises West Midlands Police for its behaviour over the Channel 4 Undercover Mosque programme. The matter is one of immense public importance going to the very heart of the Justice system.

The motion reads:

That this House welcomes the unreserved public apology given by the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service and the six figure libel settlement paid by them to Channel 4 over the Dispatches programme broadcast on 15th January 2007 which contained covert filming inside mosques in Birmingham and Derby; notes that the comments and allegations made by West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service had already been dismissed by the industry regulator, Ofcom; further notes that the individuals shown in the programme broadcast were using highly derogatory and racist language against a variety of non-Muslim groups which included Christians, Jews, homosexuals, lesbians and women and were in clear breach of existing legislation in respect of incitement to religious and racial hatred; calls on the Home Secretary to launch an immediate investigation into why the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service chose to attack the programme makers at Channel 4 rather than investigating and prosecuting the individuals who were shown in the programme; and asserts that incitement to religious and racial hatred has no place in British society.

A Nato soldier and two civilians were killed in Afghanistan when 2,000 protesters armed with stones tried to break into an airfield in Chaghcharan in protest about a copy of the Koran being used for target practice by a US soldier in Iraq.

The soldier and two of the demonstrators died when they were shot and seven Afghans and ten police were wounded by gunfire.  A petrol station opposite the airfield was set alight during the protest, which was organised by students from a religious school.

The protest was a response to the discovery of a copy of the Koran at a shooting range in Baghdad, which had bullet holes in it. President Bush apologised to Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, and promised to prosecute the soldier responsible. There was no violent response in Iraq.

Members of the Sikh community staged a protest in front of a Bangalore restaurant, objecting to jokes and pictures displayed on menu card which, they said, hurt their sentiments.

The protesters demanded a public apology from the hotel management and lodged a complaint with the police.

Over 50 Sikhs gathered in front of the restaurant, tore a copy of the menu card and set it on fire, shouting slogans against the hotel. They marched from the restaurant to the police station to file the complaint.

Gurudwara Committee president Gursharan Singh said that some words and pictures depicted on the menu card humiliated members of the community. A picture on the card shows the holy Kirpan (sword) and turban kept along with the footwear, which hurts our sentiments. The Kirpan and turbans are highly revered symbols of our religion. The menu card projects Sikhs in a bad light, Singh said.

The United Nations estimates that at least 255 women died in honour-related killings in Kurdistan, home to one fifth of Iraqis, in the first six months of 2007 alone.

The murder of women who are deemed to have disobeyed traditional codes of morality is even more common in the rest of Iraq where government authority has broken down since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A surprising reason explaining the massive increase in the number of honour killings is the availability of cheap mobile phones able to take pictures. Men photograph themselves making love to their girlfriends and pass the pictures to their friends. This often turns out to be a lethal act of bravado in a society where premarital or extra-marital sex justifies killing.

The first known case of sex recorded on a mobile leading to murder was in 2004. Film of a boy making love with a 17-year-old girl circulated in the Kurdish capital, Arbil. Two days later she was killed by her family and a week later he was murdered by his.

Since then there has been a sharp increase in the number of women suffering violence – it is almost always the women rather than the men who suffer retribution – as a result of some aspect of their love life being pictured on mobile phones.

In 2007, at least 350 women, double the figure for the previous year, suffered violence as a result of mobile phone "evidence", according to Amanj Khalil of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, citing figures compiled by women's organisations and the police directorate in Sulaymaniyah.

The true figure is probably much higher. Bodies are buried in the mountains. Violence is concealed. Whole extended families and clans feel a genuine sense of shame because of some supposed act of immorality.

The position of women in Iraqi society has deteriorated dramatically since the start of the occupation. Despite the horrific number of honour killings, their status may be improving only in Kurdistan, where the government is secular, in contrast to Baghdad where the religious parties hold power.

A popular Japanese cartoon is sparking off outcries in the Muslim world.

Shueisha Inc, a Japanese publisher involved in the production of the cartoon JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and its animation version, suspended sales of some of the original comics and the DVD series, but said the material was not intended to be offensive.

At issue is a 90-second segment from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which depicts Dio Brando, a villain, picking up a Quran from a bookshelf and apparently examining it as he orders the execution of the hero and his friends.

After a viewer posted negative comments and the still scene, it sparked off more protests. Eventually responses were carried on more than 300 Arab and Islamic Web forums with some accusing Japan of insulting the Quran.

Sheikh Abdul Hamid Attrash, chairman of the Fatwa (religious edict)
Committee at Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni authority based in Cairo, dismissed the cartoon as an insult to Islam: ‘This scene depicts Muslims as terrorists, which is not true at all. This is an insult to the religion and the producers would be considered to be enemies of Islam.’

In responding to the accusation, the Shueisha official explained that it was a simple mistake. Neither the original comic nor the animation intends to treat Muslims as villains. But as a result, the cartoon offended Muslims. We apologize for the unpleasantness that the cartoon may have caused and will carefully consider how to deal with religious and culture themes.

Gamal Qutb, the former head of the Fatwa Committee at Al-Azhar suggested that Muslims would boycott Japanese products unless Japan takes action against the controversial video.

A Dutch town has moved two paintings of nude women after complaints from Muslims and other people, stoking criticism that the Netherlands is curtailing artists’ freedoms.

The town of Huizen east of Amsterdam confirmed media reports that it had moved two paintings of naked women by Dutch artist Ellen Vroegh from a waiting room in the town hall to a less public position nearby.

Visitors and some staff complained, not just Muslims but others too, a town spokeswoman said: We are against censorship...BUT...there are people who have different opinions about nudity and nakedness and we wanted to give citizens a choice.

The artist said she was the latest victim of heightened sensitivity in the Netherlands about Islam after a cartoonist was briefly arrested last week on suspicion of offending Muslims due to his provocative drawings.

In his meeting with the bishops of Thailand on their five yearly visit to the Vatican, Benedict XVI insisted on the need for Thai Catholics to promote education in Catholic-run schools.

At the same time he stressed the need for working together with Buddhists to preserve and improve Thailand’s cultural traditions, opposing through inter-faith cooperation one of the negative effects of globalisation, namely prostitution-related trafficking in women and children, which is itself a consequence of the trivialisation of sexuality by the media and the entertainment industry.

Benedict turned his attention to the scourge of the trafficking of women and children, and prostitution.

Undoubtedly poverty is a factor underlying these phenomena, he said. And the Church does what it can to counter this problem: But there is a further aspect which must be acknowledged and collectively addressed if this abhorrent human exploitation is to be effectively confronted. I am speaking of the trivialization of sexuality in the media and entertainment industries which fuels a decline in moral values and leads to the degradation of women, the weakening of fidelity in marriage and even the abuse of children.

Playboy has said it will review how its products are sold in the UK after one retailer placed its branded stationery near merchandise for children.

The shop display prompted an angry reaction from the Reverend Tim Jones, who pulled it down and complained the firm was selling directly to children.

Jones says his protest at a branch of Stationary Box in York was prompted by anger at finding Playboy goods next to items bearing pictures of Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh. He said it was "wicked" to groom children for their commercial exploitation by the sex industry.

Playboy Enterprises said goods bearing its famous bunny logo were aimed primarily at 18 to 34 year olds.

Playboy said it was surprised the goods were inappropriately positioned. We will be reviewing this situation immediately.

By making their brand acceptable they're making everything they do acceptable, including the pornography they promote through their TV channels, said Beatriz Concejo from the pressure group Object: They are normalising pornography by making their brand a household name.

Google's Adsense advertising program has sneaked in a wide range of ads that are found to be offensive in Arab and African states.,

These adverts said to trash Arab and African women are being displayed potentially on millions of sites worldwide..

Advertisements such as "Meet Sexy Arab Women - Thousands Sexy Women Online Free!" and Hot Sexy Older Women - Meet Sexy Single Older Women, View Private Photos and Profiles have started appearing on Arabic languages on the Mathaba News Network, whilst English language pages target Muslims with dating services.

As Google are expert in search technology, they know full well that they are allowing ads which are offensive to Arab and African culture which holds women in high respect, unlike the so-called western world, where women are regarded as sex objects, according to Libya's leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi.

Sites that work hard to generate quality content, such as Mathaba News, are hit in the face by offensive advertising that turn visitors away, whilst being unaware of exactly which ads are being served to their visitors.

Google claim that the ads will target the readership and be based upon the content of the page. This is shown to be a lie by the fact that Mathaba is an international news agency with serious content, and its readership do not come to the site to look at sex adverts.

Mathaba has responded by posting a See Nasty Ads - Please Help Us notice on the bottom left of all 60,000 news pages, but it is a losing battle as recently these nasty ads have proliferated to be the norm.

The suspicion is that the few independent news sites like Mathaba may be being targeted with poor quality ads as the revenue has fallen catastrophically over the past year to unsustainable levels, made worse by the collapse of the US Dollar, the only currency Google pay publishers in.

However, Arab men as well as Asian men from Muslim backgrounds are infamous for using the Internet to view "sexy women" and to try to "chat up white women" who are regarded by many of them as "cheap sex objects", spurned to this simplistic view by the proliferation of western women in pornography. This market must be hard for Google to ignore.

Comment: Fair's Fair

And one of the Google ads on the Matahaba news page did in fact read:

Hot Black Women
Find Black Singles Online. Join Our Free Chatrooms, IM & Photo Gallery!
www.BlackSinglesConnection.com

Well if they will include the word 'sexy' so often in their content, what do they expect?

A vicar was so incensed to see Playboy stationary stacked on a shop shelf next to children’s merchandise that he decided to take direct action, and pulled down the display.

The Reverend Nutter Tim Jones said the pornography empire deliberately aims the bright pink pencil cases and note books, branded with the distinctive bunny logo, at young girls.

So, he decided to take a stand and threw the offending merchandise from shelves in the York branch of Stationery Box, after getting the full backing of the store manager.

Rev Jones said: "I told the assistant manager, who was on duty, I was going to be launching a protest at the shop, and I went over to where the Playboy material was on the shelf alongside the Winnie The Pooh and Mickey Mouse items.

I started tossing it on the floor away from where people were. I also encouraged customers to sign a petition against the intrusion of commercial brands such as Playboy into goods and services targeting children.

The long-term intention of their strategy is to encourage children to see the Playboy bunny as a friendly brand appropriate for children, preparing them for early commercial acceptance of Playboy pornographic merchandise.

This constitutes a kind of institutional grooming of children for their commercial exploitation by the powerful sex industry. It is indirect but not accidental. It is deliberate, intentional, cynical and wicked and must be resisted.

Rev Jones has persuaded staff at the Stationery Box branch to remove the entire Playboy range pending a "merchandising review".

City of London police have been cracking down hard on religious intolerance this week and on one four letter word in particular – CULT. And when does the word cult become illegal? Curiously only when it’s applied to the Church of Scientology (CoS) - and in the Square Mile.

Around two-hundred anti-Scientology protesters gathered outside the CoS London base on Queen Victoria Street last Saturday as part of a day of action. Sporting Guy Fawkes masks, many carried signs accusing the organisation of being a cult. They were greeted by a number of City of London Police.

Two officers approached one 15-year-old who was wearing a huge-nosed mask and holding a sign saying Scientology is not a religion – it is a dangerous cult.

He was handed a pre-printed warning by a WPC stating, The sign you are displaying commits an offence under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 .. you are strongly advised to remove the sign with immediate effect.

One cop told SchNEWS’ man on the scene that, the idea is that if somebody gets prosecuted there will be a test case Police were clearly out to protect CoS’s reputation with one officer telling us, Our solicitors at the Crown Prosecution Service have advised us that any signs saying ‘Scientology is a cult’ could be deemed offensive. They are being treated as a religious organisation for the purposes of today.

Ten minutes later and the cops returned. The youth was chased up an alleyway and then forced to hand over his details for a court summons.

So why the sudden desire to defend Scientology so strenuously? Maybe because the scientologists and the City of London Police appear to have a rather cosy relationship, with Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley speaking at the opening of the London HQ in October, saying the science-fiction cultists were raising the spiritual wealth of society.

Update: Barmy

21st May 2008

The case was described as "barmy" and an attack on free speech by Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the human rights group.

She said: "They will be banning words like 'war' and 'tax' from placards and demonstrations next. This is just barmy."

Human Rights Watch has called on Saudi Arabia to dismiss a death sentence against a Turkish barber convicted of cursing the name of God.

The group said in a statement that an appeals court had upheld a death sentence against Sabri Bogday, a Turkish national who had worked in Jeddah for 11 years as a barber, who was convicted of insulting God during an argument with a Saudi client and an Egyptian neighbour.

The sentence can be still reversed by a higher legal body.

The charges, conviction, and sentence against Bogday show the dangers of criminalising speech on the grounds that it's offensive, said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's Middle East director, in the statement.

Dr. Robin Sardar a Christian by faith and a medical doctor by profession, has been charged with violating Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

In an interview with Dr. Shamaoun, a nephew of Dr. Robin Sardar, said that Sardar had a close friendship with a Muslim man named Muhammad Yousaf for years. They were often seen together at family gatherings and social events. However, Yousaf became resentful that Sardar, as a Christian, had such a good professional reputation, social status, and financial resources.

Shamaoun said that Yousaf's envy at Sardar's success boiled over when he told police that Sardar had made derogatory comments about the Prophet Muhammad's beard and the Holy Quran. The police reportedly registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Sardar on May 5, 2008.

Shamaoun further stated that a mob of over 200 Muslims wearing green turbans, a symbol of their Islamic orthodoxy, attacked the doctor's house and medical clinic after the FIR had been registered against him. The mob was holding sticks, guns and kerosene oil, and proceeded to force their way into the house, smashing windows and furniture throughout the house and clinic. The mob then turned on Sardar and his family.

Pervaiz Ghori, another of Sardar's relatives, said that the mob would have killed him if the police had not intervened in the nick of time.

Since then, the religious extremists have organized daily demonstrations on the city's roads demanding that Sardar be hanged publicly. Shamaoun said that all the Christians in the area, especially Dr. Sardar's family members, are living in fear because the local Muslim clerics have been regularly using the mosque amplifier to call on people to kill the relatives of the Christian doctor.

Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student sentenced to death after being accused of downloading internet reports on women's rights, yesterday pleaded innocent to charges of blasphemy. He told an appeal court in Kabul that he had been tortured into confessing.

Kambaksh, 24, vehemently denied that he had been responsible for producing anti-Islamic literature. He insisted the prosecution had been motivated by personal malice of two members of staff and their student supporters at the university in Balkh, where he was studying journalism.

He was convicted in proceedings behind closed doors in a trial which he said had lasted just four minutes and where he had been denied legal representation.

Yesterday, in the first public hearing of the case, the prosecution claimed that Kambaksh had disrupted classes at the university by asking questions about women's rights under Islam. It also said he distributed an article on the subject after writing an additional three paragraphs including the phrase This is the real face of Islam ... The prophet Mohamad wrote verses of the holy Koran just for his own benefit.

In a highly emotional statement, Kambaksh said: I'm Muslim and I would never let myself write such an article. These accusations are nonsense, [they] come from two professors and other students because of private hostilities against me. I was tortured by the intelligence service in Balkh province and they made me confess that I wrote three paragraphs in this article.

Kambaksh represented himself because his family are having difficulties finding a lawyer to represent him after threats by fundamentalist groups that anyone taking on the job would be killed.

The head of the panel of three judges at Kabul, Abdul Salaam Qazizada, adjourned the trial until next Sunday to allow Kambaksh further attempts to find a lawyer. As of last night they had not succeeded.

Kambaksh's case has been raised with President Hamid Karzai by Foreign Secretary David Miliband and the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

On the 14th of May the Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot was arrested. Gregorius Nekschot is a pseudonym. Gregorius stands for the name of a pope, Nekschot for "shot through the neck", a method used by socialists of various breeds to get rid of unwanted dissidents.

Gregorius Nekschot creates highly controversial cartoons. He himself calls them ‘tasteless cartoons’, and most people agree. By comparison, the Danish cartoons are pure propaganda for Mohammed. Strangely enough, those rather innocent Danish cartoons drew worldwide attention, while Nekschot’s cartoons didn’t.

That is over. On the 14th of this month Gregorius was arrested by a team of no fewer than ten police officers. He was taken into custody, and since the District Attorney deemed his works both highly offensive and commercial, he was kept locked up for two days. After release, he was told: You can forget about anonymity now. They know who you are.

This arrest creates a serious political row. The parliament, to their credit, from left to right, wants an explanation from the minister for Justice, Hirsh Balin. And it better be a good one, for more and more information comes to earth that this is pure political intimidation, if not outright state terrorism.

A broad Lower House majority requested an interlocutory debate on the arrest of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot. Labour (PvdA), the Socialist Party (SP), the conservatives (VVD), Party for Freedom (PVV), leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) and independent MP Rita Verdonk all backed a request by centre-left D66 for a debate. As well as Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, Education Minister Ronald Plasterk will be called to account. He is responsible for culture and media policy.

A Saudi Arabian man is to get 150 lashes and spend eight months in prison after he was caught meeting a woman without a chaperone in a coffee shop.

Muhammad Ali Abu Raziza, a psychology professor in Mecca, was arrested by the Kingdom's feared religious police, the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. He was accused of breaking the Islamic injunctions under the Khilwa code, which restricts the independence of women. It stipulates that women must not meet men alone, other than relatives.

According to The Telegraph, the professor has alleged police entrapment. He claimed a history of personality disputes with the arresting officers, who were once his students. In his defence, Abu Raziza said he had called the woman to ensure she had a chaperone but despite her assurances, she was alone when he arrived. No information has emerged about the fate of the woman since the incident.

Amnesty International has urged Saudi authorities to release the professor.

The most charitable interpretation of the reaction of Anil Patani, the Assistant Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, to the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque is that he was in a state of deep denial.

The programme recorded preachers at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham making remarks that were not only bigoted and full of hate but also bordered on incitement to murder. Abu Usamah, one of the main preachers, was shown saying: Osama Bin Laden, he’s better than a thousand Tony Blairs, because he’s a Muslim; Allah has created the woman, even if she gets a PhD, deficient. Her intellect is incomplete; and advocating that homosexuals should be “thrown off” mountains. Mr Patani’s reaction? To refer the programme makers to the Crown Prosecution Service for inciting racial hatred.

He also referred the programme to Ofcom, the TV regulator, sending out a press release as he did so. Mr Patani’s press release claimed that those featured in the programme had been misrepresented and that it had undermined community cohesion. Those claims were blatantly false, as the Ofcom investigation itself made crystal clear. But why on earth did Mr Patani make them?

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Courts in Jeddah should dismiss cases against a Saudi web critic charged with “insulting” Islam, an unequivocal violation of freedom of expression protected under international law, Human Rights Watch said.

Criminalizing speech on grounds that it is insulting might appease some people, but it violates the fundamental human right of free speech, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch: The Saudi government uses these laws primarily to silence its critics.

On May 5, the prosecution service in Jeddah charged Ra’if Badawi with setting up an electronic site that insults Islam, and referred the case to court, asking for a five-year prison sentence and a 3 million riyal (US$800,000) fine.

Unknown persons have hacked Badawi’s website multiple times, and have published his phone numbers, work address, and a threat on the hacked site: Oh you retard, you are in the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him. Underline ‘Muhammad’ with a thousand lines before a thousand swords are put above your neck! Prosecutors have not investigated the hackers or the death threats against Badawi.

The prosecution service had detained Badawi in March 2008 for one day to interrogate him about his website, which he uses to detail abuses by the Saudi religious police and to question the predominant interpretation of Islam. After being threatened with arrest for his online activities and receiving personal threats of physical harm, Badawi fled Saudi Arabia two weeks ago.

Christian nutters based in San Diego have found grounds for outrage over the new retro-style Starbucks logo.

The Resistance says the new image has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute, Mark Dice, founder of the groupsaid: Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks.

The group, which claims more than 3,000 members nationwide and has found a place on the fringe advancing various conspiracy theories, is calling for a national boycott of the coffee-selling giant.

The logo will run on Starbucks cups for several more weeks, said company spokeswoman Bridget Baker, and will live on as the logo for Pike Place bags of coffee.

The image is a less-revealing version of what the chain used for many years, starting when it first opened in Seattle in 1971. The explanation for that initial logo is explained in the book Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, written by company founder Howard Schultz:

[Creative partner Terry Heckler] poured [sic] over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old 16 Century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid, or siren, encircled by the store's original name, Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice. That early siren, bare-breasted and Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself.

Marriott International is coming under heavy fire from nutter activists urging the hotel giant to banish  sexual fare from its bedroom TV.

Focus on the Family met with hotel executives in Washington DC, and provided Marriott with a petition signed by 102,000 nutters who want pornographic films purged from the list of movie offerings.

Daniel Weiss, media and sexuality analyst for the group, said Marriott has billed itself as a family-lodging establishment, and its decision to provide adult films to its customers is contrary to its reputation.

Weiss said hotels and motels have been major contributors to the proliferation of pornography in mainstream culture: We've heard from people who have developed addictions, businessmen, people who travel a lot, who found that away from their support structure and families they were very vulnerable to this type of material. They indicated that hotel porn was very significant in their addiction.

When WND asked Marriott Vice President of Communications Roger Conner why the hotel offers sex films in its rooms, he provided the following response: That's one of those any-kind-of-'why' questions. It's very universal in nature. For 25 years or more, not just Marriott, but the whole industry has offered a wide range including adult movies.

Asked if he believes customers would miss the pornographic films if they were not offered, Conner said, It would be interesting to know. I don't want this to sound flippant, but who knows?

Marriott International offers families an option to block pornographic movies by calling the front desk or using the remote control, but Focus on the Family and other nutter groups would like the hotel chain to consider a policy where the pornography would automatically be turned off unless a guest requests it.

For some people, that may just be enough of a hindrance that they won't access that material, Weiss said. They won't get caught up in it if they have to come out of the anonymity of ordering it in their room and call somebody.

Marriott executives said they will think about the suggestions and respond to concerns by July 1, though Conner acknowledged that not everyone left the meeting satisfied: We know it's not a perfect world that we live in, unfortunately, so it's not a perfect response for those that we met with yesterday. There were some who said they wanted more of an immediate response or decision. But, based upon the complicated business model and contracts that are in place, we can't simply walk away from it as we speak.

Hotels do not lose a large percentage of revenue when they boycott adult content because they only take 10 to 15% of the profits from the sale of pornographic films, Weiss said. He has faith that Marriott International will live up to its reputation as a family friendly establishment and make its 3,000 hotels porn free: I think at this point we want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they will do the right thing. We're going to take a cautious wait-and-see approach.

A cartoonist who works under the pseudonym Gregorius Nekschot has been arrested on suspicion of publishing work which discriminates against Muslims and ‘people with dark skins’, the Netherlands public prosecution department says.

Nekschot, an established cartoonist was released after spending a night in custody. His house was searched and a quantity of work taken away.

In a statement, the public prosecution department said cartoonists are by nature satirical and often insulting to others. However, Nekschot’s work broke the boundaries of freedom of expression and artistic licence.

The arrest follows a complaint made against Nekschot in 2005 by imam Abdul Jabbar van de Ven.

The investigation is continuing.

Muslim leaders in Kenya's North Eastern Province have resolved to campaign against the promotion of condoms as a means of preventing HIV.

The decision was made after a recent meeting on the theme of "Islam and Health", attended by more than 60 Muslim scholars and teachers in the provincial capital of Garissa.

A lot of money is being wasted to poison our community ... a huge amount of money is spent on buying condoms, buying immorality, Sheikh Mohamud Ali, of Garissa district, told IRIN/PlusNews.

The leaders agreed to actively preach against the use and public promotion of condoms as a strategy to contain the pandemic and prevent pregnancy. They also agreed to oppose the distribution of condoms in villages and educational institutions across the northeast.

The clerics further demanded the closure of bars in the northeast and asked the government to suspend the licensing of any new bars. According to the clerics, local bars and "video dens" screened pornographic movies that were contributing to sexually transmitted infections. The widespread abuse of drugs was another factor: a locally grown mild stimulant, "khat", is popular in the region.

The leaders expressed their view that the best way for the youth to avoid HIV was through the observance of Islamic teachings such as fasting, regular prayer and shunning extramarital affairs. They advised men to avoid looking at women, who should dress modestly.