CHRONOLOGY / BLOG 5 – SUBMISSION TO SELF-APPOINTED LEADERSHIP

Islam and Western Democracies

 
   Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney website, www.sydney. catholic.org. au/Archbishop/ Addresses/ 200627_681. shtml , Address at Legatus Summit, Naples, Florida U.S.A., By + Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, February 4, 2006
   September 11 was a wake-up call for me personally. I recognised that I had to know more about Islam.
   In the aftermath of the attack one thing was perplexing. Many commentators and apparently the governments of the "Coalition of the Willing" were claiming that Islam was essentially peaceful, and that the terrorist attacks were an aberration. On the other hand one or two people I met, who had lived in Pakistan and suffered there, claimed to me that the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims.
   Although I had possessed a copy of the Koran for 30 years, I decided then to read this book for myself as a first step to adjudicating conflicting claims. And I recommend that you too read this sacred text of the Muslims, because the challenge of Islam will be with us for the remainder of our lives - at least.
   Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully? What of Islamic minorities in Western countries? Views on this question range from n�ive optimism to bleakest pessimism. Those tending to the optimistic side of the scale seize upon the assurance of specialists that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving, and that the extension of this concept to terrorism is a distortion of koranic teaching[1]. They emphasise Islam's self-understanding as a "religion of peace". They point to the roots Islam has in common with Judaism and Christianity and the worship the three great monotheistic religions offer to the one true God. There is also the common commitment that Muslims and Christians have to the family and to the defence of life, and the record of co-operation in recent decades between Muslim countries, the Holy See, and countries such as the United States in defending life and the family at the international level, particularly at the United Nations.
   Many commentators draw attention to the diversity of Muslim life - sunni, shi'ite, sufi, and their myriad variations - and the different forms that Muslim devotion can take in places such as Indonesia and the Balkans on the one hand, and Iran and Nigeria on the other. Stress is laid, quite rightly, on the widely divergent interpretations of the Koran and the Shari’a, and the capacity Islam has shown throughout its history for developing new interpretations. Given the contemporary situation, the wahhabist interpretation at the heart of Saudi Islamism offers probably the most important example of this, but Muslim history also offers more hopeful examples, such as the re-interpretation of the Shari’a after the fall of the Ottoman empire, and particularly after the end of the Second World War, which permitted Muslims to emigrate to non-Muslim countries[2].
   Optimists also take heart from the cultural achievements of Islam in the Middle Ages, and the accounts of toleration extended to Jewish and Christian subjects of Muslim rule as "people of the Book". Some deny or minimise the importance of Islam as a source of terrorism, or of the problems that more generally afflict Muslim countries, blaming factors such as tribalism and inter-ethnic enmity; the long-term legacy of colonialism and Western domination; the way that oil revenues distort economic development in the rich Muslim states and sustain oligarchic rule; the poverty and political oppression in Muslim countries in Africa; the situation of the Palestinians, and the alleged "problem" of the state of Israel; and the way that globalisation has undermined or destroyed traditional life and imposed alien values on Muslims and others.
   Indonesia and Turkey are pointed to as examples of successful democratisation in Muslim societies, and the success of countries such as Australia and the United States as "melting pots", creating stable and successful societies while absorbing people from very different cultures and religions, is often invoked as a reason for trust and confidence in the growing Muslim populations in the West. The phenomenal capacity of modernity to weaken gradually the attachment of individuals to family, religion and traditional ways of life, and to commodify and assimilate developments that originate in hostility to it (think of the way the anti-capitalist counter-culture of the 1960s and 70s was absorbed into the economic and political mainstream - and into consumerism), is also relied upon to "normalise" Muslims in Western countries, or at least to normalise them in the minds of the non-Muslim majority.
   Reasons for optimism are also sometimes drawn from the totalitarian nature of Islamist ideology, and the brutality and rigidity of Islamist rule, exemplified in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Just as the secular totalitarianisms of the twentieth century (Nazism and Communism) ultimately proved unsustainable because of the enormous toll they exacted on human life and creativity, so too will the religious totalitarianism of radical Islam. This assessment draws on a more general underlying cause for optimism, or at least hope, for all of us, namely our common humanity, and the fruitfulness of dialogue when it is entered with good will on all sides. Most ordinary people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, share the desire for peace, stability and prosperity for themselves and their families.
   On the pessimistic side of the equation, concern begins with the Koran itself. In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages. I will return to the problems of Koranic interpretation later in this paper, but in coming to an appreciation of the true meaning of jihad, for example, it is important to bear in mind what the scholars tell us about the difference between the suras (or chapters) of the Koran written during Muhammad's thirteen years in Mecca, and those that were written after he had based himself at Medina. Irenic interpretations of the Koran typically draw heavily on the suras written in Mecca, when Muhammad was without military power and still hoped to win people, including Christians and Jews, to his revelation through preaching and religious activity. After emigrating to Medina, Muhammad formed an alliance with two Yemeni tribes and the spread of Islam through conquest and coercion began [3]. One calculation is that Muhammad engaged in 78 battles, only one of which, the Battle of the Ditch, was defensive[4]. The suras from the Medina period reflect this decisive change and are often held to abrogate suras from the Meccan period[5].
   The predominant grammatical form in which jihad is used in the Koran carries the sense of fighting or waging war. A different form of the verb in Arabic means "striving" or "struggling", and English translations sometimes use this form as a way of euphemistically rendering the Koran's incitements to war against unbelievers[6]. But in any case, the so-called "verses of the sword" (sura 9:5 and 9:36)[7], coming as they do in what scholars generally believe to be one of the last suras revealed to Muhammad[8], are taken to abrogate a large number of earlier verses on the subject (over 140, according to one radical website[9]). The suggestion that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving is also contemptuously rejected by some Islamic writers on the subject. One writer warns that "the temptation to reinterpret both text and history to suit 'politically correct' requirements is the first trap to be avoided", before going on to complain that "there are some Muslims today, for instance, who will convert jihad into a holy bath rather than a holy war, as if it is nothing more than an injunction to cleanse yourself from within"[10].
   The abrogation of many of the Meccan suras by the later Medina suras affects Islam's relations with those of other faiths, particularly Christians and Jews. The Christian and Jewish sources underlying much of the Koran[11] are an important basis for dialogue and mutual understanding, although there are difficulties. Perhaps foremost among them is the understanding of God. It is true that Christianity, Judaism and Islam claim Abraham as their Father and the God of Abraham as their God. I accept with reservations the claim that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship one god (Allah is simply the Arabic word for god) and there is only one true God available to be worshipped! That they worship the same god has been disputed[12], not only by Catholics stressing the triune nature of God, but also by some evangelical Christians and by some Muslims[13]. It is difficult to recognise the God of the New Testament in the God of the Koran, and two very different concepts of the human person have emerged from the Christian and Muslim understandings of God. Think, for example, of the Christian understanding of the person as a unity of reason, freedom and love, and the way these attributes characterise a Christian's relationship with God. This has had significant consequences for the different cultures that Christianity and Islam have given rise to, and for the scope of what is possible within them. But these difficulties could be an impetus to dialogue, not a reason for giving up on it.
   The history of relations between Muslims on the one hand and Christians and Jews on the other does not always offer reasons for optimism in the way that some people easily assume. The claims of Muslim tolerance of Christian and Jewish minorities are largely mythical, as the history of Islamic conquest and domination in the Middle East, the Iberian peninsula and the Balkans makes abundantly clear. In the territory of modern-day Spain and Portugal, which was ruled by Muslims from 716 and not finally cleared of Muslim rule until the surrender of Granada in 1491 (although over half the peninsula had been reclaimed by 1150, and all of the peninsula except the region surrounding Granada by 1300), Christians and Jews were tolerated only as dhimmis[14], subject to punitive taxation, legal discrimination, and a range of minor and major humiliations. If a dhimmi harmed a Muslim, his entire community would forfeit protection and be freely subject to pillage, enslavement and murder. Harsh reprisals, including mutilations, deportations and crucifixions, were imposed on Christians who appealed for help to the Christian kings or who were suspected of having converted to Islam opportunistically. Raiding parties were sent out several times every year against the Spanish kingdoms in the north, and also against France and Italy, for loot and slaves. The caliph in Andalusia maintained an army of tens of thousand of Christian slaves from all over Europe, and also kept a harem of captured Christian women. The Jewish community in the Iberian peninsula suffered similar sorts of discriminations and penalties, including restrictions on how they could dress. A pogrom in Granada in 1066 annihilated the Jewish population there and killed over 5000 people. Over the course of its history Muslim rule in the peninsula was characterised by outbreaks of violence and fanaticism as different factions assumed power, and as the Spanish gradually reclaimed territory[15].
   Arab rule in Spain and Portugal was a disaster for Christians and Jews, as was Turkish rule in the Balkans. The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans commenced in the mid-fifteenth century, and was completed over the following two hundred years. Churches were destroyed or converted into mosques, and the Jewish and Christians populations became subject to forcible relocation and slavery. The extension or withdrawal of protection depended entirely on the disposition of the Ottoman ruler of the time. Christians who refused to apostatize were taxed and subject to conscript labour. Where the practice of the faith was not strictly prohibited, it was frustrated - for example, by making the only legal market day Sunday. But violent persecution was also a constant shadow. One scholar estimates that up to the Greek War of Independence in 1828, the Ottomans executed eleven Patriarchs of Constantinople, nearly one hundred bishops and several thousand priests, deacons and monks. Lay people were prohibited from practising certain professions and trades, even sometimes from riding a horse with a saddle, and right up until the early eighteenth century their adolescent sons lived under the threat of the military enslavement and forced conversion which provided possibly one million janissary soldiers to the Ottomans during their rule. Under Byzantine rule the peninsula enjoyed a high level of economic productivity and cultural development. This was swept away by the Ottoman conquest and replaced with a general and protracted decline in productivity[16].
   The history of Islam's detrimental impact on economic and cultural development at certain times and in certain places returns us to the nature of Islam itself. For those of a pessimistic outlook this is probably the most intractable problem in considering Islam and democracy. What is the capacity for theological development within Islam?
   In the Muslim understanding, the Koran comes directly from God, unmediated. Muhammad simply wrote down God's eternal and immutable words as they were dictated to him by the Archangel Gabriel. It cannot be changed, and to make the Koran the subject of critical analysis and reflection is either to assert human authority over divine revelation (a blasphemy), or question its divine character. The Bible, in contrast, is a product of human co-operation with divine inspiration. It arises from the encounter between God and man, an encounter characterised by reciprocity, which in Christianity is underscored by a Trinitarian understanding of God (an understanding Islam interprets as polytheism). This gives Christianity a logic or dynamic which not only favours the development of doctrine within strict limits, but also requires both critical analysis and the application of its principles to changed circumstances. It also requires a teaching authority.
   Of course, none of this has prevented the Koran from being subjected to the sort of textual analysis that the Bible and the sacred texts of other religions have undergone for over a century, although by comparison the discipline is in its infancy. Errors of fact, inconsistencies, anachronisms and other defects in the Koran are not unknown to scholars, but it is difficult for Muslims to discuss these matters openly.
   In 2004 a scholar who writes under the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg published a book in German setting out detailed evidence that the original language of the Koran was a dialect of Aramaic known as Syriac. Syriac or Syro-Aramaic was the written language of the Near East during Muhammad's time, and Arabic did not assume written form until 150 years after his death. Luxenberg argues that the Koran that has come down to us in Arabic is partially a mistranscription of the original Syriac. A bizarre example he offers which received some attention at the time his book was published is the Koran's promise that those who enter heaven will be "espoused" to "maidens with eyes like gazelles"; eyes, that is, which are intensely white and black (suras 44:54 and 52:20). Luxenberg's meticulous analysis suggests that the Arabic word for maidens is in fact a mistranscription of the Syriac word for grapes. This does strain common sense. Valiant strivings to be consoled by beautiful women is one thing, but to be heroic for a packet of raisins seems a bit much!
   Even more explosively, Luxenberg suggests that the Koran has its basis in the texts of the Syriac Christian liturgy, and in particular in the Syriac lectionary, which provides the origin for the Arabic word "koran". As one scholarly review observes, if Luxenberg is correct the writers who transcribed the Koran into Arabic from Syriac a century and a half after Muhammad's death transformed it from a text that was "more or less harmonious with the New Testament and Syriac Christian liturgy and literature to one that [was] distinct, of independent origin"[17]. This too is a large claim.
   It is not surprising that much textual analysis is carried out pseudonymously. Death threats and violence are frequently directed against Islamic scholars who question the divine origin of the Koran. The call for critical consideration of the Koran, even simply of its seventh-century legislative injunctions, is rejected out of hand by hard-line Muslim leaders. Rejecting calls for the revision of school textbooks while preaching recently to those making the hajj pilgrimage to Mount Arafat, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia told pilgrims that "there is a war against our creed, against our culture under the pretext of fighting terrorism. We should stand firm and united in protecting our religion. Islam's enemies want to empty our religion [of] its content and meaning. But the soldiers of God will be victorious"[18].
   All these factors I have outlined are problems, for non-Muslims certainly, but first and foremost for Muslims themselves. In grappling with these problems we have to resist the temptation to reduce a complex and fluid situation to black and white photos. Much of the future remains radically unknown to us. It is hard work to keep the complexity of a particular phenomenon steadily in view and to refuse to accept easy answers, whether of an optimistic or pessimistic kind. Above all else we have to remember that like Christianity, Islam is a living religion, not just a set of theological or legislative propositions. It animates the lives of an estimated one billion people in very different political, social and cultural settings, in a wide range of devotional styles and doctrinal approaches. Human beings have an invincible genius for variation and innovation.
   Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited. To stop at this proposition, however, is to neglect the way these facts are mitigated or exacerbated by the human factor. History has more than its share of surprises. Australia lives next door to Indonesia, the country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world[19]. Indonesia has been a successful democracy, with limitations, since independence after World War II. Islam in Indonesia has been tempered significantly both by indigenous animism and by earlier Hinduism and Buddhism, and also by the influence of sufism. As a consequence, in most of the country (except in particular Aceh) Islam is syncretistic, moderate and with a strong mystical leaning. The moderate Islam of Indonesia is sustained and fostered in particular by organisations like Nahdatul Ulama, once led by former president Abdurrahman Wahid, which runs schools across the country, and which with 30-40 million members is one of the largest Muslim organisations in the world.
   The situation in Indonesia is quite different from that in Pakistan, the country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. 75 per cent of Pakistani Muslims are Sunni, and most of these adhere to the relatively more-liberal Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence (for example, Hanafi jurisprudence does not consider blasphemy should be punishable by the state). But religious belief in Pakistan is being radicalised because organisations, very different from Indonesia's Nahdatul Ulama, have stepped in to fill the void in education created by years of neglect by military rulers. Pakistan spends only 1.8 per cent of GDP on education. 71 per cent of government schools are without electricity, 40 per cent are without water, and 15 per cent are without a proper building. 42 per cent of the population is literate, and this proportion is falling. This sort of neglect makes it easy for radical Islamic groups with funding from foreign countries to gain ground. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of religious schools (or madrasas) opening in Pakistan, and it is estimated that they are now educating perhaps 800,000 students, still a small proportion of the total, but with a disproportionate impact[20].
   These two examples show that there is a whole range of factors, some of them susceptible to influence or a change in direction, affecting the prospects for a successful Islamic engagement with democracy. Peace with respect for human rights are the most desirable end point, but the development of democracy will not necessarily achieve this or sustain it. This is an important question for the West as well as for the Muslim world. Adherence to what George Weigel has called "a thin, indeed anorexic, idea of procedural democracy"[21] can be fatal here. It is not enough to assume that giving people the vote will automatically favour moderation, in the short term at least[22]. Moderation and democracy have been regular partners in Western history, but have not entered permanent and exclusive matrimony and there is little reason for this to be better in the Muslim world, as the election results in Iran last June and the elections in Palestine in January reminded us. There are many ways in which President Bush's ambition to export democracy to the Middle East is a risky business. In its influence on both religion and politics, the culture is crucial.
   There are some who resist this conclusion vehemently. In 2002, the Nobel Prize Economist Amartya Sen took issue with the importance of culture in understanding the radical Islamic challenge, arguing that religion is no more important than any other part or aspect of human endeavour or interest. He also challenged the idea that within culture religious faith typically plays a decisive part in the development of individual self-understanding. Against this, Sen argued for a characteristically secular understanding of the human person, constituted above all else by sovereign choice. Each of us has many interests, convictions, connections and affiliations, "but none of them has a unique and pre-ordained role in defining [the] person". Rather, "we must insist upon the liberty to see ourselves as we would choose to see ourselves, deciding on the relative importance that we would like to attach to our membership in the different groups to which we belong. The central issue, in sum, is freedom".[23]
   This does work for some, perhaps many, people in the rich, developed and highly urbanised Western world, particularly those without strong attachments to religion. Doubtless it has ideological appeal to many more among the elites. But as a basis for engagement with people of profound religious conviction, most of whom are not fanatics or fundamentalists, it is radically deficient. Sen's words demonstrate that the high secularism of our elites is handicapped in comprehending the challenge that Islam poses.
   I suspect one example of the secular incomprehension of religion is the blithe encouragement of large scale Islamic migration into Western nations, particularly in Europe. Of course they were invited to meet the need for labour and in some cases to assuage guilt for a colonial past.
   If religion rarely influences personal behaviour in a significant way then the religious identity of migrants is irrelevant. I suspect that some anti-Christians, for example, the Spanish Socialists, might have seen Muslims as a useful counterweight to Catholicism, another factor to bring religion into public disrepute. Probably too they had been very confident that Western advertising forces would be too strong for such a primitive religious viewpoint, which would melt down like much of European Christianity. This could prove to be a spectacular misjudgement.
   So the current situation is very different from what the West confronted in the twentieth century Cold War, when secularists, especially those who were repentant communists, were well equipped to generate and sustain resistance to an anti-religious and totalitarian enemy. In the present challenge it is religious people who are better equipped, at least initially, to understand the situation with Islam. Radicalism, whether of religious or non-religious inspiration, has always had a way of filling emptiness. But if we are going to help the moderate forces within Islam defeat the extreme variants it has thrown up, we need to take seriously the personal consequences of religious faith. We also need to understand the secular sources of emptiness and despair and how to meet them, so that people will choose life over death. This is another place where religious people have an edge. Western secularists regularly have trouble understanding religious faith in their own societies, and are often at sea when it comes to addressing the meaninglessness that secularism spawns. An anorexic vision of democracy and the human person is no match for Islam.
   It is easy for us to tell Muslims that they must look to themselves and find ways of reinterpreting their beliefs and remaking their societies. Exactly the same thing can and needs to be said to us. If democracy is a belief in procedures alone then the West is in deep trouble. The most telling sign that Western democracy suffers a crisis of confidence lies in the disastrous fall in fertility rates, a fact remarked on by more and more commentators. In 2000, Europe from Iceland to Russia west of the Ural Mountains recorded a fertility rate of only 1.37. This means that fertility is only at 65 per cent of the level needed to keep the population stable. In 17 European nations that year deaths outnumbered births. Some regions in Germany, Italy and Spain already have fertility rates below 1.0.
   Faith ensures a future. As an illustration of the literal truth of this, consider Russia and Yemen. Look also at the different birth rates in the red and blue states in the last presidential election in the U.S.A. In 1950 Russia, which suffered one of the most extreme forms of forced secularisation under the Communists, had about 103 million people. Despite the devastation of wars and revolution the population was still young and growing. Yemen, a Muslim country, had only 4.3 million people. By 2000 fertility was in radical decline in Russia, but because of past momentum the population stood at 145 million. Yemen had maintained a fertility rate of 7.6 over the previous 50 years and now had 18.3 million people. Median level United Nations forecasts suggest that even with fertility rates increasing by 50 per cent in Russia over the next fifty years, its population will be about 104 million in 2050 - a loss of 40 million people. It will also be an elderly population. The same forecasts suggest that even if Yemen's fertility rate falls 50 per cent to 3.35, by 2050 it will be about the same size as Russia - 102 million - and overwhelmingly young[24].
   The situation of the United States and Australia is not as dire as this, although there is no cause for complacency. It is not just a question of having more children, but of rediscovering reasons to trust in the future. Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
   Most of this is a preliminary clearing of the ground for dialogue and interaction with our Muslim brothers and sisters based on the conviction that it is always useful to know accurately where you are before you start to decide what you should be doing.
   The war against terrorism is only one aspect of the challenge. Perhaps more important is the struggle in the Islamic world between moderate forces and extremists, especially when we set this against the enormous demographic shifts likely to occur across the world, the relative changes in population-size of the West, the Islamic and Asian worlds and the growth of Islam in a childless Europe.
   Every great nation and religion has shadows and indeed crimes in their histories. This is certainly true of Catholicism and all Christian denominations. We should not airbrush these out of history, but confront them and then explain our present attitude to them.
   These are also legitimate requests for our Islamic partners in dialogue. Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? Is the programme of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad's death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible?
   Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Sharia law? Can we discuss Islamic history and even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran without threats of violence?
   Obviously some of these questions about the future cannot be answered, but the issues should be discussed. Useful dialogue means that participants grapple with the truth and in this issue of Islam and the West the stakes are too high for fundamental misunderstandings.
   Both Muslims and Christians are helped by accurately identifying what are core and enduring doctrines, by identifying what issues can be discussed together usefully, by identifying those who are genuine friends, seekers after truth and cooperation and separating them from those who only appear to be friends.
   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   [1]. For some examples of this, see Daniel Pipes, "Jihad and the Professors", Commentary, November 2002.
   [2]. For an account of how some Muslim jurists dealt with large-scale emigration to non-Muslim countries, see Paul Stenhouse MSC, "Democracy, Dar al-Harb, and Dar al-Islam", unpublished manuscript, nd.
   [3]. Paul Stenhouse MSC, "Muhammad, Qur'anic Texts, the Shari’a and Incitement to Violence". Unpublished manuscript, 31 August 2002.
   [4]. Daniel Pipes "Jihad and the Professors" 19. Another source estimates that Muhammad engaged in 27 (out of 38) battles personally, fighting in 9 of them. See A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq (Oxford University Press, Karachi: 1955), 659.
   [5]. Stenhouse "Muhammad, Qur'anic Texts, the Shari’a and Incitement to Violence".
   [6]. Ibid.
   [7]. Sura 95: "Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; for God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate."
   Sura936: "And fight the unbelievers totally even as they fight you totally; and know that God is with the godfearing." (Arberry translation).
   [8]. Richard Bonney, Jihad: From Qur'an to bin Laden (Palgrave, Hampshire: 2004), 22-26.
   [9]."The Will of Abdullaah Yusuf Azzam", www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php? articleID=532& (dated 20 April 1986).
   [10]. M. J. Akbar, The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity (Routledge, London & New York: 2002), xv.
   [11]. Abraham I. Katsch, Judaism and the Koran (Barnes & Co., New York: 1962), passim.
   [12]. See for example Alain Besan�on, "What Kind of Religion is Islam?" Commentary, May 2004.
   [13]. Daniel Pipes, "Is Allah God?" New York Sun, 28 June 2005.
   [14]. On the concept of "dhimmitude", see Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, trans. Miriam Kochman and David Littman (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison NJ: 1996).
   [15]. Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non Muslims (Prometheus Books, Amherst NY: 2005), 56-75.
   [16]. Ibid.
   [17]. Robert R. Phenix Jr & Cornelia B. Horn, "Book Review of Christoph Luxenberg (ps.) Die syro-aramaeische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschl�sselung der Qur'ansprache", Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, 6:1 (January 2003). See also the article on Luxenberg's book published in Newsweek, 28 July 2004.
   [18]. "Hajj Pilgrims Told of War on Islam", www.foxnews.com, 9 January 2006.
   [19]. The World Christian Database (http://worldchristian database.org) gives a considerably lower estimate of the Muslim proportion of the population (54 per cent, or 121.6 million), attributing 22 per cent of the population to adherents of Asian "New Religions". On the WCD's estimates, Pakistan has the world's largest Muslim population, with 154.5 million (or approximately 96 per cent of a total population of 161 million). The CIA's World Fact Book (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook) estimates 88 per cent of Indonesia's population of 242 million is Muslim, giving it a Muslim population of 213 million.
   The Muslim proportion of the population in Indonesia may be as low as 37-40 per cent, owing to the way followers of traditional Javanese mysticism are classified as Muslim by government authorities. See Paul Stenhouse MSC, "Indonesia, Islam, Christians, and the Numbers Game", Annals Australia, October 1998.
   [20]. William Dalrymple, "Inside the Madrasas", New York Review of Books, 1 December 2005.
   [21]. George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America and Politics without God (Basic Books, New York: 2005), 136.
   [22]. For a sophisticated presentation of the argument of the case for the moderating effect of electoral democracy in the Islamic world, see the Pew Forum's interview with Professor Vali Nasr (Professor of National Security Studies at the US Naval Postgraduate School), "Islam and Democracy: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan", 4 November 2005, http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=91.
   [23]. Amartya Sen, "Civilizational Imprisonments", The New Republic, 10 June 2002.
   [24]. Allan Carlson, "Sweden and the Failure of European Family Policy", Society, September-October 2005.

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Andrea Santoro

 
   Andrea Santoro, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/ Andrea_ Santoro (accessed Apr 23, 2007), murdered February 5, 2006
   Father Andrea Santoro (September 7, 1945 in Priverno - February 5, 2006 in Trabzon) was a Catholic priest who was murdered in the Santa Maria Church in Trabzon, Turkey, where he served as a member of the Catholic church's Fidei donum missionary program. He was shot dead from behind while kneeling in prayer in the church. A witness heard the perpetrator shouting "Allahu Akbar".[1] A 16-year-old high school student was arrested two days after the shooting carrying a 9mm pistol. The student told police he had been influenced by the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.[2] The murder was preceded by massive anti-Christian propaganda in the Turkish popular press.[3]
   On October 10, 2006, the accused Oğuzhan Akdin was sentenced to 18 years and ten months in jail for "premeditated murder" by a court in Ankara.[4] According to the apostolic vicar to Anatolia, Msgr. Luigi Padovese, neither the killer nor his mother showed any remorse during the trial. She even compared her son to Mehmet Ali Ağca, who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, and said that his deed "was committed in the name of Allah and was a gift to the state and the nation".[5] As the murderer of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink also came from Trabzon and also under 18 years of age, Turkish police is investigating possible connections between the slayings of Santoro and Dink.[6]
   At Don Santoro's funeral at the Basilica of St. John Lateran Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar of the Diocese of Rome, mentioned in his homily that the possible beatification process for Don Santoro may be opened after February 2011. #

Cartoon violence condemned

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), CNS, p 8, February 9, 2006

Catholic, Muslim leaders condemn Beirut riots against cartoons By Doreen Abi Raad

Catholic and Muslim religious leaders condemned the riot that erupted in Beirut when an estimated 30,000 Muslims protested against the publication of satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in European newspapers.
   The Danish Consulate was set ablaze, a Maronite Catholic church and the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox archbishop were vandalised, and numerous roadside shrines were smashed in the February 5 violence. Many of the protesters wielded pipes and various weapons; many wore headbands and waved flags imprinted with the slogan "Prophet's soldiers."
   Archbishop Paul Youssef Matar of Beirut told Catholic News Service he believed the motivation behind the violence was political. Religious and political leaders in Lebanon denounced the violence, attributing it to outside interference to instigate chaos in the country.
   Many Lebanese believe that Syria, which ended its 30-year occupation of Lebanon in April, was behind the incident, and the Archbishop speculated that many of those involved in the disruption were paid to participate and were incited to be violent.
   Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a Sunni Muslim, said "what happened today was an attack against Islam and the principles of the Holy Quran." He pointed out that "the protesters took a definite stand by taking arms; consequently, they came for war."
  [Picture] Jordanian women hold up a banner that reads "Boycott Danish and European Products" during a protest outside the Danish Consulate in Amman, Jordan, on February 6.    Photo: CNS  
   Siniora visited Archbishop Matar and Beirut's Orthodox Archbishop Elias Aoude before inspecting damage at St Maron Catholic Church. Later, in an interview on Voice of Lebanon radio, Siniora said intruders "came to stir strife among the Lebanese themselves and between the Lebanese and the world."
   More than 29 people were wounded in the violence and one was reported killed. Lebanon's An Nahar newspaper reported that of the 192 protesters arrested by security forces 77 were Syrian, 42 were Palestinian and approximately 25 were Bedouin, members of an Arabic nomadic people.
   Father Elias Feghali, pastor of St Maron Catholic Church, said he was in the sacristy preparing for the 10.30am Mass on February 5 when he first heard the mob. Moments later, he heard glass shattering from inside the church and became even more frightened when he heard shooting coming from the streets. Some of the demonstrators attempted to climb up the exterior of the chyurch.
   "I thought, 'These are not people. These are monsters'," Father Feghali told Catholic News Service. He said it was impossible to celebrate Mass, because parishioners could not make their way to St Maron's in the violence.
   The church is in the same neighbourhood as the Danish Embassy; the cartoons originally were published in a Danish newspaper last fall. The cartoons are considered blasphemous because, first of all, Islam does not allow depictions of Mohammed, and, second, they show Mohammed in a number of disrespectful ways. One cartoon, for example, shows Mohammed in a turban shaped as a bomb. One Muslim cleric was reported to have shouted from a loudspeaker, "Do not harm the holy church; the anger is against Denmark and not Christians." Three windows in St Maron's were broken. "It's not a matter of the damage. It's a matter of symbol," Archbishop Matar said.
   He said one of the protesters was seen climbing up the building and trying to pry open a window to plant a bomb in the church.
   "Thank God, the window didn't open, but the danger was very present," the Archbishop said. "The government's role was blatant and unacceptable when it comes to protecting churches and worshippers," said Archbishop Matar. "They knew 24 hours in advance" that the demonstration would take place.
   "This represents a weakness in the government," he said, particularly in light of violence in Syria the day before, in which demonstrators set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies.
   Cardinal Nasrallah P. Sfeir, Maronite patriarch, said he was "greatly disturbed" and called upon all Lebanese to "adhere to a national unity that is strongly needed."
   A delegation of Muslim clerics met with the patriarch late February 5 and urged Lebanese citizens not to react "because we are all Lebanese who are keen to create national unity."
   Archbishop Matar commended " the residents of the predominantly Christian neighbourhood around St Maron's for remaining calm.
   "They were very wise; they didn't react. It was very dangerous. They saw their cars burned, their houses broken into," he said.
   "I think the Lebanese people have shown that they don't want.to come back to the war," said the Archbishop. "They don't want a fight between Muslims and Christians. If we were to have responded in the same way (as the protesters), we would have a civil war," said Father Feghali.
   Michel Aoun, a Maronite Catholic member of Parliament and leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, speaking from St Maron Church said, "What happened is a plan to instigate strife in the country" and demanded the resignation of Lebanon's government for its failure to protect its citizens. If the rioters were Syrian and Palestinian, he said, "Isn't Lebanese law applicable to them?" - CNS #

Outrage over failure to arrest pedlars of hate

 Violence continues across the world as Muslims protest at cartoons 
   The Weekly Telegraph Issue No. 759 (Britain, Australian edition), by George Jones and Ben Fenton in London, and Ramsay Short in Beirut, Pages 1 and 2, Wednesday February 8 to Tuesday February 14, 2006
   POLICE were under pressure this week to adopt "a no tolerance" approach to Muslim demonstrators threatening violence in Britain after a third embassy was set on fire in the Middle East.
   Government ministers and religious leaders appealed for calm as violent protests intensified across the Muslim world over cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed, first published in Denmark.
   The Conservatives called for firm action against any further militant demonstrations as police faced growing criticism over their failure on Friday to arrest protesters in London who chanted and carried placards glorifying the July 7 London bombings and threatening beheadings.
   Scotland Yard said it was studying film of the protests but refused to say if any prosecutions would go ahead.
   Television broadcasts that evening showed the majority of placards in similar hand-writing. One of three veiled women - or at least people who appeared to be women - was seen writing placards and distributing them. Most were held by men who had also hidden their identity.
   Among the slogans were "Europe, your 9/11 will come" and, in an apparent reference to the four July 7 suicide bombers, "Europe you will pay, fantastic 4 are on their way". One protester was dressed as a suicide bomber.
   The only arrests were of two counter-demonstrators, who police said were held after apparently attempting to hand out caricatures of Mohammed. Both were released without charge after a few hours.
  [Picture] A Muslim protester expresses his anger on Sunday in front of the blazing Danish consulate in a Christian neighbourhood.  
   Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain umbrella group, said on Sunday night: "The placards were quite disgraceful and seemed to constitute a clear incitement to violence, even murder."
   He told Channel 4: "I think people will understand that the police did not step in to make matters worse and were waiting for a more propitious time to charge these people. Most Muslims feel enormous distress and anguish at what has occurred. There will be no sympathy for [the extremists] when they are charged."
   A mob of 20,000 attacked Denmark's consulate in a Christian neighbourhood of Beirut on Sunday. Denmark urged its citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible. On Saturday Syrian demonstrators set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus.
   Lebanon apologised to Denmark on Monday. "The cabinet denounces the riots and the targeting of the Danish Embassy which harms the image of a civilised Lebanon," the government said in a statement after a late-night crisis meeting.

   Fresh protests erupted across Asia and the Middle East on Monday, despite calls by world leaders for calm. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed alarm and urged restraint but Iran vowed to respond to "an anti-Islamic and Islamophobic current".
   In Teheran, about 200 people pelted Austria's embassy with fire bombs over the cartoons and Iran's nuclear confrontation with the West. The mission did not catch fire and police prevented people from storming it.
   Ukraine became the latest country where newspapers published the cartoons, joining Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, the United States, Japan, Norway, Malaysia and Australia.
   Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, led Government appeals for calm but stopped short of endorsing Tory calls for the police to arrest militant protesters in future.
   Mr Straw said the violence, particularly the burning of Danish missions, was "totally unjustified and what we want to see is this matter being calmed down". He praised the vast majority of Muslims in Britain who had protested peacefully.
   Mr Hain called on all sides to "cool it" and said that politicians must not try to "second guess" police: "If people are on our streets inciting terrorism or promoting suicide bombings, they should be dealt with and dealt with toughly and firmly - and they will be. But that is the police's responsibility and they will discharge that."
Continued on Page 2
Protests over cartoons
Continued from Page 1
   David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said that slogans such as "Massacre those who insult Islam" amounted to incitement to murder and that police should take "a no tolerance" approach to them.
   Scotland Yard, which has received at least 100 complaints from members of the public so far, defended the decision not to make arrests.
   It said the officer in charge at such scenes had to weigh the need to make arrests against the likelihood of provoking more serious unrest.
[A harmless cartoon also appeared.]
   A spokesman said: "We have stated that arrests, if necessary, will be made at the most appropriate time.
   "This should not be seen as a sign of a lack of activity. Specialist officers were deployed to record any potential event, should it be needed at any point in the future." The Crown Prosecution Service was responsible for deciding whether to press charges.
   In Beirut during the early hours on Sunday, a large group of mainly Sunni Islamic extremists broke through military blockades in the Christian Beirut suburb of Achrafieh, defying tear gas and water cannon to reach the Danish consulate, which had been evacuated two days earlier.
   Security officials said at least 30 people, some protesters and some policemen, were injured in the clashes.
   As furious demonstrations were staged across the Muslim world, from Lahore to Gaza, a Roman Catholic priest was shot dead in a church courtyard in north-east Turkey. Fr Andrea Santoro, 59, was shot twice in the entrance of the Santa Maria Church in Trabzon after Sunday Mass. #

'What is point of new security law?'

 
   The Weekly Telegraph Issue No. 759, (Britain, Australian edition), BY AMY IGGULDEN, p 2, Wed February 8 to Tue February 14, 2006
LONDON: IN FIVE weeks' time, Milan Rai is to be prosecuted for organising a remembrance ceremony without a permit He was arrested at the Cenotaph in Whitehall last year with Maya Evans, a fellow anti-war campaigner, under security legislation designed to protect politicians.
   Evans has already been prosecuted, convicted and fined for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq. But Rai's criminal record has been longer coming, because his organisational role in the peaceful protest was greater, and required the attentions of the Crown Prosecution Service.
   He has been told to appear at Bow Street magistrates' court, central London, on March 16, and faces a three-month prison sentence or a fine.
   This week the campaigners said that the failure of police to arrest protesters who called for murder outside the Danish embassy in London showed serious inconsistencies in security legislation.
   Evans, 26, a vegan chef from Hastings, East Sussex, said: "I think those extremists who were inciting violence should be asked to justify their actions. But the police are left in a very awkward situation if a woman can be arrested for holding a remembrance ceremony while others are rightly allowed their freedom of speech."
  [Picture] Maya Evans: convicted  
   She said the demonstration also illustrated that the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, introduced last year, is "completely impractical". She added: "Part of the Act says that you must apply for permission to hold a demonstration in Westminster, yet 60 people held an unplanned demonstration when the 100th British soldier was killed in Iraq... What is the point of this legislation?"
   Rai, 40, a campaigner for the group Justice Not Vengeance, said: "There is a lot of inconsistency going on and the police are in limbo."
   Mark Wallace, a campaigner with the lobby group The Freedom Association, is less charitable.
   He was stopped by police under counter-terrorism laws last autumn after asking passers-by to sign a petition against ID cards. He was filmed and questioned under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
   "It's astonishing that the police will tolerate people calling for bloodshed... while they are prepared to target someone who is just collecting signatures." #

CARTOON PROTESTS

1,000 Islamic protesters demonstrate in London

 
   The Weekly Telegraph Issue No. 759, (Britain, Australian edition), By ANDREW ALDERSON, NINA GOSWAMI, JAMES ORR AND CHRIS HASTINGS, p 4, Wed February 8 to Tue February 14, 2006
   PROTESTS against cartoons satirising Mohammed continued around the world over the weekend.
   In London on Saturday, a crowd of 1,000 Muslims demonstrated outside the Danish embassy. Two dressed as suicide bombers were allowed to stand next to a police van while officers - who had made no arrests the previous day - tried to prevent photographers from taking pictures of them.
   The protesters chanted Allah Aqbar (God Is Great), and their placards bore slogans including: "Free Speech Equals Cheap Insults"; "Leave Muslims alone" and "Freedom is hypocrisy".
   There were sporadic skirmishes but emotions were not running as high as on Friday. The uniformity of the placards suggested that the protest had been organised to prevent a repetition of the scenes the previous day when demonstrators carried placards declaring "Butcher those who insult Islam", and chanted slogans threatening a July 7-style attack.
   The group behind Saturday's more controlled protest was Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic splinter group with a reputation for shrewd dealing with the media and the police.
  [Picture] Above: police hinder photographers as they try to get further pictures of a Muslim protester dressed in a 'bomb vest' (below)  
   Across many countries, anger over the cartoons appeared to be growing more organised and determined. In the most serious incidents of the weekend, hundreds of demonstrators set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus, the Syrian capital.
   In Pakistan, the foreign ministry called in ambassadors from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Holland, Hungary, Norway and the Czech Republic to protest at the cartoons.
   The Vatican, while deploring violence, said that certain forms of criticism represented an "unacceptable" provocation. "The right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers," a statement said.
   The fresh protests came as the journalist who approved publication of the cartoons last September said he was merely upholding Denmark's tradition of satire. Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, justified the images by saying Denmark simply wanted to treat Muslims "as we treat everybody else". #

US condemns images that ‘incite hatred’

 
   The Weekly Telegraph (Britain, Australian edition), p 4, Wed February 8 to Tue February 14, 2006
   AMERICA sided with Muslim protests about cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in European newspapers. In its first comment on the furore, the State Department said on Friday: "These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims."
   Answering a reporter's question, its spokesman, Kurtis Cooper, said: "We all fully respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is not acceptable."
   Meanwhile, America's military commanders have reacted furiously to a "callous" cartoon that lampoons Donald Rumsfeld. In the drawing, by the Washington Posfs chief cartoonist, a heavily bandaged soldier with no arms and no legs appears with the US defence secretary, dressed as a doctor, at his side.
   "I'm listing your condition as battle hardened," says the Rumsfeld character. The quote echoes remarks he made last week in response to claims that the Iraq war risks stretching the US army to breaking point. Mr Rumsfeld replied that it was "battle-hardened". #

Media-savvy group Blair wants to outlaw

 
   The Weekly Telegraph (Britain, Australian edition), BY ANDREW ALDERSON, p 4, Wed February 8 to Tue February 14, 2006
   THE group organising the protests against the cartoons that satirise the Prophet Mohammed is well organised and media savvy.
   Yet behind the apparently acceptable face of Hizb ut-Tahrir lies an organisation with views so radical that Tony Blair believes it should be outlawed. An investigation more than two years ago by BBCs Newsniyht programme discovered that its website promoted racism and anti-Semitic hatred and urged Muslims to kill Jews.
   An influential British Muslim told Newsnight, a year before the London bombings of July 7, that the group was capable of extreme violence. The senior figure, who was not identified, said that unless action was taken against Hizb ut-Tahrir, Britain could be hit by terrorist attacks.
   The Islamist splinter group was founded half a century ago in Jerusalem by an Islamic jurist, Taqiuddin an-Nabhani. It aims to establish a Muslim state across the Middle East under religious law and preaches that Western-style democracy is unacceptable. The group is most active in central Asia, but has been outlawed by many states amid fears that its recruits may also be attracted to terrorism.
   Germany banned the group after the September 11 attacks, as have some Arab countries. Fadi Abdelatif, one of its spokesman, was found guilty of distributing racist propaganda in Denmark in 2002.
   Mr Blair hopes to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir and another radical Islamist group, Al-Muhajir-oun, under new laws contained in the Terrorism Bill. The National Union of Students has already barred it from university campuses.
   Hizb ut-Tahrir activists insist, however, that it is against violence and has no connection to terrorism. They also maintain it is not anti-Semitic and merely objects to the state of Israel rather than Jews in general.
   When asked about Friday's protests in London, Taji Mustafa, a Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman, said: "We do not condone violent protest. What happened on Friday was wrong, dragging Muslims to the low levels of those who offended Islam with the cartoons. We urge Muslims to engage in peaceful protests." #

How a few cartoons unleashed the wrath of millions of Muslims

 
   The Weekly Telegraph (Britain, Australian edition), p 5, Wed February 8 to Tue February 14, 2006
It began innocently enough but, as James Langton and Justin Stares reveal, this story from the home of fairy tales is unlikely to end happily
ONCE upon a time, in the land of Hans Christian Andersen, there was a man who wrote children's books who wanted a picture of the Prophet Mohammed. But, he complained to his friend, the newspaper editor: "No one is brave enough to draw me one."
   This is no fairy tale fit for bedtime, however, and it seems increasingly unlikely that there can be a happy ending, in this story of how a few cartoons in a small Danish newspaper unleashed the wrath of millions of Muslims across the world.
   Instead, it is the latest chapter in the unhappy chronicles of the early 21st century, a culture clash of values in a modern world, punctuated by intolerance and misunderstanding, and orchestrated with the sound of chanting mobs and the threat of the gun and the bomb.
   From these innocent - and, some would argue, naive - beginnings, Kåre Bluitgen, a children's author on religious themes, had hoped to follow the success of his last book, A Boot Fell from Heaven, with a more serious tome: an account of the life of Mohammed. There was one major problem, as he told the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, last September; he couldn't find an illustrator prepared to accept the task for fear of offending the Islamic faith, which forbids any imagery that depicts Mohammed.
   It was then that Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, a conservative paper based in Jutland, came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea that may haunt him for some time. Why not, as he now puts it, devise a "test of self-censorship in Denmark?" Of 25 cartoonists contacted by Mr Rose, 13 turned him down at once. The remaining 12 produced a variety of drawings on the theme of Mohammed "as they saw him". No anonymous submissions were allowed. The resulting works were printed on a single page on September 30. Several were innocuous. One made fun of Jyllands-Posten's "reactionary" culture section. Another took the opportunity to caricature a Danish politician. But one now-infamous drawing depicts the Prophet's turban as bomb with a lit fuse. In another, he turns suicide bombers away from paradise, saying: "Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!"
   While most of the world knew nothing about the row until recently, the outcry in Denmark was instant The storm has built until now, four months later, all the cartoonists are under police guard. There have been three arrests following specific death threats to the paper and the cartoonists: two in Denmark and one in Norway. One threat was made by email, one in a phone call by a 17-year-old boy, and a third on a piece of paper: police found the names of two cartoonists on a man who was arrested on his way to Copenhagen.
   Last week, the editor of the paper, Carsten Juste, sought to reassure his journalists. The paper's Copenhagen offices are in a stone-faced period building on beautiful central square opposite the Royal Theatre. The idea that this peaceful place is the heart of a clash between civilisations seems almost unimaginable.
   Mr Juste told the staff of his determination to carry on as normal. Newspaper production would only be interrupted in the future, he said, if the threat were considered credible; no upstart teenager had the right to close down his paper by simply picking up the telephone.
   But, according to insider reports of the meeting, he also told his troops: "If I had known Danes would have been put in harm's way as the result of printing these cartoons, I would not have done it." Despite this, the editor is maintaining the fine semantic line he has stuck to for several weeks: we regret any offence caused, but we do not apologise for publishing.
   Afterwards, Mr Rose, a former foreign correspondent in the Soviet Union, was unrepentant. As he sat in his office, sifting through the latest hate emails - all of which he forwards to the police - his position was immovable. "This is the essence of plurality," he said. "If every single person's feeling of offence were taken into account, this newspaper would look like Pravda."
   Offence, however, has been taken by the majority of the world's 1-2 billion Muslims. The fury over the cartoons seems to be multiplying daily. In October, the outrage was restricted to Denmark's Muslim population, barely 200,000 strong. At Friday prayers in local mosques, imams denounced the publication of the cartoons from their pulpits.
   In December, 11 ambassadors from Islamic countries sought a meeting with the Danish government and were rebuffed.
  [Picture showing a masked person holding a large placard "Behead those who insult Islam"] Feelings run high: a protest at the Danish embassy in London  
Finding no redress, local Muslims took their complaints to the Islamic strongholds of the Middle East, taking with them a 43-page dossier of what they saw as rampant racism and Islamophobia in Denmark. Included in the dossier, presented to religious leaders in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, were three unpublished cartoons, depicting Mohammed and Islam in obscene terms. Many supporters of Jyllands-Posten suspect that the Danish Islamic delegation passed off these coarse scribblings as the original cartoons. The Muslim delegation insists that it included them as crude examples of the Islamophobia provoked by the publication of the original images. Whatever the truth, the seeds of a bitter row had been sown.
   By the time the Danish Muslims returned home in mid-January, the story of the 12 cartoons had become an international row. Three weeks ago, it reached critical mass, when a Saudi Arabian company with 60 supermarkets in the Middle East announced a boycott of all Danish products. Other countries in the region followed suit. Corner shops and supermarkets pulled Danish butter and biscuits from their shelves and laid the Danish flag across their doorsteps for customers to trample.
   Ahmed Akkari, a Muslim theologian from Copenhagen, said he had met the Danish intelligence service last week, which called the situation "very, very tense". He said that a text message had been sent to the mobile telephones of young Muslims "telling people not to react to provocations from Right-wing extremists, like burning the Koran, but I know some Muslims will not listen to our message".
   In Gaza, where the terrorists of Hamas had just won a famous electoral victory, masked gunmen surrounded the local offices of the European Union and threatened with kidnap anyone they suspected might be Scandinavian.
   European newspapers then rallied to the side of their embattled Danish colleagues. Last week saw the cartoons reprinted in Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Spain and half a dozen other European nations. In America, where Right-wing blogs had made the images available over the internet, the New York Sun also printed two of the cartoons.
   Like former President Bill Clinton, who has branded the images "totally outrageous", British politicians have been quick to add their condemnations and to praise British newspapers who have decided not to publish the drawings. The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, called the cartoons "insulting", saying their republication "has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong".
   The conflagration is the worst flare-up over free speech since the Satanic Verses saga. It was nearly 18 years ago when the writer Salman Rushdie discovered the danger of crossing militant Islam. His novel was condemned for its irreverent depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, and in the months after publication violent demonstrations against the book across the Muslim world left nearly a dozen people dead.
   By Valentine's Day 1989, the then-ruler of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, had labelled the book blasphemous, calling on all "zealous Muslims" to execute Rushdie. A bounty of $3 million was placed on his head, with the author forced into hiding with protection from Special Branch. Islamic extremists eventually murdered or badly injured several of those involved in the production of the book, including Rushdie's Japanese translator and his Norwegian publisher.
   Last week, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese fundamentalist movement Hizbollah, claimed that if Muslims had executed Rushdie, others would not have dared to insult Islam. "If there had been a Muslim to carry out Imam Khomeini's fatwah against the renegade Salman Rushdie, this rabble who insult our Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France would not have dared to do so," Nasrallah said. Rushdie has so far declined to comment on the current row.
   Much of the Islamic fury carries echoes of the Rushdie affair - and Britain has not been exempted from it. Tensions were heightened by the acquittal of two British National Party leaders late last month on charges of inciting hatred against Muslims and by the Government's humiliating defeat over its Racial and Religious Hatred Bill in the Commons.
   After the BBC showed fleeting images of the cartoons on its Thursday evening news bulletin, Islamic militants gathered outside Broadcasting House for a noisy demonstration. Their spokesman, Abu Yahya, is the leader of the radical Islamic group Ahl ul-Sunnah Wa al-Jamma, formed by ex leaders of Al-Muhajiroun, and led by the extremist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, a notorious apologist for the 9/11 terror attacks.
   "I'm pretty sure in days to come a fatwah will be issued against perhaps the corporation, the newspaper and, in particular, perhaps against the individuals who have shown such a picture, and anybody who wishes to support them," Yahya said. (Although a fatwah is reported to have been issued already, there is debate over whether it is genuine.)
   Asked by the BBC if violence was justified, Yahya added: "If any Muslim was to decide to do that, then, this person is honourable in Islam, and this person, we pray that he goes to heaven."
   In a protest at the Danish Embassy in London as part of an international Muslim "day of anger" on Friday, chanting protesters held banners reading: "Butcher those who mock Islam", "Behead the one who insults the Prophet", and"Europe, you will pay. Demolition is on its way".
   On the internet, the British-based extremist Islamic group, Al Ghurabaa, posted a message that began "kill those who insult Mohammed", adding: "The kuffar in their sustained crusade against Islam and Muslims have yet again displayed their hatred towards us, this time by attacking the honour of our beloved Messenger."
   In Denmark, Mr Bluitgen, the author of The Koran and the Life of Mohammed, which provoked the whole row, eventually found an illustrator. The fifth he approached agreed, but insisted on anonymity. The first edition run of 2,000 copies hit the local bookshops last week and sold out within two days. The second edition was due to be delivered this week and is presold out. The third edition is now in print. "You could say, I suppose, that there is no such thing as bad publicity," said Mr Bluitgen. "I live in the Muslim neighbourhood of Copenhagen and I thought that if they have to learn about our culture, we should learn about theirs."
   Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen, a Swedish-born Dane who converted to Islam as an adult, and might be regarded as a moderate, says the expressions of regret from his and Mr Bluitgen's countrymen are not enough. "If I slap you in the face, it is ridiculous to say afterwards that I am sorry it hurt you, but I am not sorry I slapped you," he says. "We cannot accept the excuse of freedom of speech as meaning freedom to insult. Freedom of speech is the right of the smaller man to kick the establishment without it crushing him. It does not give one group the unquestionable right to slander; that is abuse of freedom of speech. We want a proper apology."
   On Saturday, Hizb ut-Tahrir said it stood "shoulder to shoulder" with its Muslim brethren around the world. The radical Islamicist religious group, which will take part in a national unity demonstration in London on February 18, also demanded the refraction of the caricatures and an apology for the offence caused.
   At Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose was himself full of fury at the events of the past week. "Apologising would imply that if you intimidate us enough we will follow your demands," he insisted. "This is blackmail. You cannot edit this newspaper according to mafia rules."
   Did he regret the decision to defend free speech that might conceivably cost his Me and those of the cartoonists he commissioned? "I do not regret it," he said. "It is a bit like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt at a disco." #

Scale of the Commons fiasco

 
   The Weekly Telegraph (Britain, Australian edition), p 7, No. 759, Wed February 8 to Tue February 14, 2006
   MORE than 70 Labour MPs either rebelled or did not vote in the two key Government defeats. Some 26 rebels openly defied Tony Blair, who did not take part in the second vote, which the Government lost by one.
   Besides Mr Blair, however, another 44 Labour MPs did not take part in one or both votes last Tuesday. In a particular embarrassment for the Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong, Frank Roy, a member of the Labour whips' office, did not vote. He was away co-ordinating Labour's campaign at the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election.
   However, 12 of the 196 Tory MPs did not vote in the crucial second vote. Liberal Democrats claim 6O of their 62 MPs did take part. Twelve Labour MPs, including Mr Roy, were in Dunfermline. Of those not voting, 16 represent Scottish seats.
   Five ministers did not vote, including Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister, and Adam Ingram, a defence minister.
   The first defeat restricts the offence of inciting religious hatred to threatening words and behaviour. The second defeat now requires the offence to be intentional. The Bill now specifies that proselytising, discussion, criticism, insult, abuse and ridicule of religion, belief or religious practice will not be an offence. #

Facing down our own fear

 
   The Weekly Telegraph (Britain, Australian edition), By Charles Moore, p 22, No. 759, Wed February 8 to Tue February 14, 2006
  [Picture, showing cartoonist at desk but behind him were four figures wearing headgear hiding their faces, with firearms and a long knife or short scimitar.]
 “THERE’LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND...”  
IT'S SOME time since I visited Palestine, so I may be out of date, but I don't remember seeing many Danish flags on sale there. Not much demand, I suppose. I raise the question because, as soon as the row about the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed infyUands-Posten broke, angry Muslims popped up in Gaza City, and many other places, well supplied with Danish flags ready to burn. (In doing so, by the way, they offered a mortal insult to the most sacred symbol of my own religion, Christianity, since the Danish flag has a cross on it, but let that pass.)
   Why were those Danish flags to hand? Who built up the stockpile so that they could be quickly dragged out right across the Muslim world and burnt where television cameras would come and look? The more you study this story of "spontaneous" Muslim rage, the odder it seems.
   The complained-of cartoons first appeared in October; they have provoked such fury only now. It turns out that a group of Danish imams circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries. When they did so, they included in their package three other, much more offensive cartoons which had not appeared in Jyllands-Posten but were lumped together so that many thought they had.
   It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking. Peter Mandelson, who seems to think that his job as European Trade Commissioner entitles him to pronounce on matters of faith and morals, accuses the papers that republished the cartoons of. "adding fuel to the flames"; but those flames were lit (literally, as well as figuratively) by well-organised, radical Muslims who wanted other Muslims to get furious. How this network has operated would make a cracking piece of investigative journalism.
   Now the BBC announces that the head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars has called for an "international day of anger" about the cartoons. It did not name this scholar, or tell us who he is.
   He is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. According to Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, Oaradawi is "the most progressive force for change" in the Muslim world.
   Yet if you look up Qaradawi's pronouncements, you find that he sympathises with the judicial killing of homosexuals, and wants the rejection of dialogue with Jews in favour of "the sword and the rifle". He is very keen on suicide bombing, especially if the people who blow themselves up are children - "we have the children bomb". This is a man for whom a single "day of anger" is surely little different from the other 364 days of the year.
   Which leads me to question the extreme tenderness with which so many governments and media outlets in the West treat these outbursts of outrage. It is assumed that Muslims have a common, almost always bristling, view about their faith, which must be respected. Of course it is right that people's deeply held beliefs should be treated courteously, but it is a great mistake - made out of ignorance - to assume that those who shout the loudest are the most representative.
   It's as if the Muslim world decided that the views of the Rev Ian Paisley represented the whole of authentic Christianity. There is no reason to doubt that Muslims worry very much about depictions of Mohammed. Like many, chiefly Protestant, Christians, they fear idolatry.
  [Picture] Charles Moore  
But, as I write, I have beside me a learned book about Islamic art and architecture which shows numerous Muslim paintings from Turkey, Persia, Arabia and so on. These depict the Prophet preaching, having visions, being fed by his wet nurse, going on his Night-Journey to heaven, etc. The truth is that in Islam, as in Christianity, not everyone agrees about what is permissible.
   Obviously, in the case of the Danish pictures, there was no danger of idolatry, since the pictures were unflattering. The problem, rather, was insult. But I am a bit confused about why someone like Qaradawi thinks it is insulting to show the Prophet's turban turned into a bomb, as one of the cartoons does. He never stops telling us that Islam commands its followers to blow other people up.
   If we take fright whenever extreme Muslims complain, we put more power in their hands. If the Religious Hatred Bill had passed unamended last week, it would have been an open invitation to any Muslim who likes getting angry to try to back his anger with the force of law.
   On the Today programme last week, Stewart Lee, author of Jerry Springer: The Opera - in which Jesus appears wearing nappies - let the cat out of the bag. He suggested that it was fine to offend Christians because they had themselves degraded their iconography; Islam, however, has always been more "conscientious about protecting the brand".
   The implication of the remark is fascinating. It is that the only people whose feelings artists, newspapers and so on should consider are those who protest violently. The fact that Christians nowadays do not threaten to blow up art galleries, invade television studios or kill writers and producers does not mean that their tolerance is rewarded by politeness. It means that they are insulted the more.
   Right now, at the fashionable White Cube Gallery in Hoxton, you can see the latest work of Gilbert and George, mainly devoted, it is reported, to attacks on the Catholic Church. The show is called Sonofagod Pictures and it features the head of Christ on the Cross replaced with that of a primitive deity. One picture includes the slogan "God loves F***ing".
   Like most Christians, I find this offensive, but I think I must live with the offence in the interests of freedom. If I find, however, that people who threaten violence do have the power to suppress what they dislike, why should I bother to defend freedom any more? Why shouldn't I ring up the Hon Jay Jopling, the proprietor, and tell him that I shall burn down the White Cube Gallery unless he tears Gilbert and George off the walls? I won't, I promise, but how much longer before some Christians do? The Islamist example shows that it works.
   There is a great deal of talk about responsible journalism, gratuitous offence, multicultural sensitivities and so on. Jack Straw gibbers about the irresponsibility of the cartoons, but says nothing against the Muslims threatening death in response to them. I wish someone would mention the word that dominates Western culture in the face of militant Islam - fear. And then I wish someone would face it down. #

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Democracy has a gun held to its head

 
   The Weekly Telegraph Issue No. 759 (Britain, Australian edition), Editorial Comment, p 23, Wed February 8 to Tue February 14, 2006
LAST WEEK, Muslims marched in the centre of London chanting "Freedom go to Hell!" There could be no more graphic illustration of the paradox at the heart of the cartoon row. These protesters were exercising - and in many cases abusing - the freedom of protest and freedom of assembly that are foundation stones of British democracy. Yet, even as they exploited these hard-won liberties, they were calling for them to be abolished.
   This newspaper would not have published the cartoons of Mohammed at the centre of this controversy, images which we regard as vulgar and fatuously insulting. But - and this is the crucial point - we reserve absolutely our right to make our own decision, free of threat and intimidation. The difficulty is that what started as an issue of editorial judgment has become a question of public order.
   The protesters in London with their disgraceful slogans - "Behead those who Insult Islam", "Britain you will pay - 7/7 is on its way" - have made it all but impossible for a genuinely free debate on this issue to take place. All such debate is now being carried out in the shadow of murderous intimidation.
   In this wretched affair, no sight has been more wretched than that of Jack Straw last week kowtowing to militant Islam. "There is freedom of speech, we all respect that," the Foreign Secretary said, "but there is not any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory." How pathetic that Mr Straw did not find time to condemn the outrageous behaviour of protesters at home and abroad. Where, also, was Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, as Islamic militants called for bloodshed?
   The Government's response is especially feeble when compared to Margaret Thatcher's behaviour during the Rushdie Affair. Whatever her private feelings about the author, she and her Cabinet colleagues were resolute in their defence of his rights. Even before the fatwah, she declared that "it is an essential part of our democratic system that people who act within the law should be able to express their opinions freely".
   In this controversy, Mr Straw has been put to shame by the German home minister, Wolfgang Schauble, who robustly defended the freedom of newspapers to make their own decisions. "Why should the German government apologise?" he said. "This is an expression of press freedom." In contrast, the British Government's craven response has sent a terrible signal: those who wish to see free expression curtailed need only light a flame, issue a threat and wave an angry fist.
   The bitter irony of the protests is that Britain proved itself after the July 7 bombings to be a tolerant, multi-cultural society. Quite rightly, the citizens of this country drew a sharp distinction between their law-abiding Muslim compatriots and the extremists responsible for the atrocities.
   The problem is that militant Islam is not seeking a level playing field - equality before the law, for instance - but special treatment. Muslims expect, as they should, the benefits and protections of British pluralism but, in too many cases, baulk at the duties that are their corollary. One of those duties is to accept that, in a free society, there are occasions when each of us is bound to be offended.
   "Everyone is in favour of free speech," remarked Churchill. "Hardly a day passes without its being extolled. But some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like - but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage." There is no excuse for gratuitous offence, of course. But some Muslims might like to consider how insulting their own views on women's rights, theocracy and Western practices are to many non-Muslims. This offensiveness is no reason to close British mosques or Islamic newspapers.
   The abrasions of a modern, multi-faith society are constant and need to be negotiated calmly and diplomatically. The proper boundaries of speech, art and humour are matters for continuous democratic review and consultation. What is completely unacceptable is that this debate should be carried out in a climate of fear. For let us not delude ourselves: it is violence, or the threat of violence, that has driven the decisions that have been made in the past week. At a time when reasonable dialogue is most needed, the supposed custodians of our democracy are allowing a gun to be held to its head. #

   The West Australian, "Bleeding Virgin Mary cartoon tagged offensive," p 11, Tuesday, February 21, 2006  
   WELLINGTON: New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, an avowed agnostic, says she finds a television cartoon offensive in its depiction of a statue of a menstru�ating Virgin Mary.
   Channel 4 said it would show the controversial Bloody Mary episode of the South Park cartoon series despite a call for a boycott from Catholic bishops that was read on Sunday at Masses throughout New Zealand.
   "I'm not a religious person myself, but I think it is important to show religious faiths respect and tolerance towards each other," Ms Clark said.
   "It comes down to issues of taste and judgment. From what I've heard of it, I consider it quite offensive personally. As a woman, I find it offensive."
   New Zealand's seven Catholic bishops signed a pastoral letter that was read to worshippers at services yesterday and dubbed the episode, which Channel 4 said it will screen in May, "ugly and tasteless".
   The bishops urged the country's 500,000 Catholics to boycott the channel and its sister TV3 and adver�tisers if the episode is screened.
   The episode shows a statue of Mary bleeding, which is taken to be a miracle, until Pope Benedict suggests she is simply menstruating.
   The statue then starts spurting blood.
   It was to be shown on SBS in Aus�tralia on March 6 but reports suggest the station has deferred the episode.
[Cleric offers $1.3 million to kill; 2 churches burnt]  
   The controversy flares as police in the Pakistani city of Islamabad fired teargas and rubber bullets to break up a banned protest against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and Den�mark said its ambassador to Pakistan had returned home.
   In southern Pakistan yesterday, hundreds of Muslims ransacked two churches before setting them on fire after allegations that a Christian had desecrated the Koran.
   Police said no one was injured in the attack. There were 30 arrests..
   Denmark and Norway condemned a Pakistani cleric's offer of a reward for anyone who kills any of the 12 Danish cartoonists.
   "It's murder and murder is also forbidden by the Koran," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller.
   A Pakistani Muslim cleric and his followers offered rewards last week amounting to more than $1.35 mil�lion for killing one of the Danish cartoonists, who have been under police protection since the storm of protest started last month.
   Protests have turned violent in several countries, including Libya, where 11 people died, and Nigeria, where 16 people were killed in rioting.

PM inciting hatred, says cleric

 
   News.com.au , www.news.com. au/story/0, 10117,1821 5940-2,00. html , By Richard Kerbaj and George Megalogenis, [as accessed 23/02/2006] February 21, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: ONE of Australia's most senior Islamic clerics has accused Prime Minister John Howard of inflaming public hatred towards the wider Muslim community.
   Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly said the Prime Minister's criticism of the extremist views held by a fragment of the Muslim Australian population had been "childish, irresponsible and uninformed".
   MP3: Listen to this story (Powered by Audio Read) [Link may be made later.]
   "His comments will only magnify the wave of antagonism and hate towards Muslims," the Mufti told The Australian in an interview conducted in Arabic.
   The Prime Minister also said he believed Australians wanted immigrants to adopt Australian values when they arrived.
   NEWS.com.au readers have overwhelmingly backed this view in an online poll opened yesterday. More than 12,000 readers have now voted and 80 per cent say immigrants should be forced to adopt Australian values.
   Mr Howard's views also received widespread support in our forum.
   Sheik Hilaly said Mr Howard should take a crash course in Islam "because if a prime minister does not understand the true meaning of jihad, then how can we blame the general public for not understanding it?"
   But Mr Howard was supported yesterday by both the Labor Opposition and a moderate Muslim leader who said those who advocated terrorism had no place in Australian society.
   The debate was ignited by the publication yesterday of Mr Howard's long-held concerns that "raving on about jihad" by a minority of the Islamic community and the conservative attitudes towards women were two problems that Australia had not faced with previous immigrant groups.
   Mr Howard revealed his thoughts in an interview with The Australian for The Howard Factor, a book to be published next week to mark the 10th anniversary of his rise to power.
   "I stand by those comments," Mr Howard said in Sydney yesterday.
   "These attitudes are not typical of all Muslims but they do represent the attitudes of a small section of the Islamic population and there's no point in not saying so.
   "I hope it will encourage the broader Islamic community to understand that it is an issue."
   Prominent Melbourne cleric Sheik Fehmi Naji El-Imam conceded that there was a radical minority who should probably leave the country.
   "These (extremists) can be found, but the mainstream are not extremists," the imam of Preston Mosque, in Melbourne's north, said.
   "But we should ask why the extremist have such views. In the case of Palestine and the double standards of the West, what do you expect?"
   Sheik Fehmi, who is regarded as a moderate, said he understood why Muslims would fight overseas. But he said Muslim Australians had no business preaching and pursuing violence here.
   "It's not wrong to fight the invasion in Iraq, it's not wrong to assist the Palestinians but here (in Australia), we cannot go ahead to do some terrorist (attack) to help the people over there," Sheik Fehmi said.
   "If you live here, you have to keep (extremist views) to yourself. If you cannot keep it to yourself, then leave."
   Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke welcomed Mr Howard's statement, but said it was long overdue: "Finally, he's recognised that the Department of Immigration is one of the departments that's relevant to national security."
   Mr Burke said the deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Aivarez Solon and the detention of Cornelia Rau showed that the minister, Amanda Vanstone, had betrayed the national interest.
   "If you don't know who you are kicking out of the country, you don't know who you are letting in," Mr Burke said.
   Sheik Hilaly, head of Lakemba mosque in Sydney's southwest, said Mr Howard did not know what he was talking about.
   "His views on both jihad and the treatment of women in Islam are reflective of a primary school student's views," he said.
   He accused Mr Howard of playing politics with Muslim Australians. "The easiest way to claim public votes these days is to attack Islam and Muslims," the Mufti said.
   "By making such statement about Muslims, he is telling the Australian public that Muslims are different, not human beings."
   Related links [Linkage only on original webpage] Reaction: Muslims condemn 'ignorant' Howard
   Comment: Keith Windschuttle on Howard's vision
   What you said: Readers debate PM's comments
   Vote: Should immigrants adopt Australian values?
   Search for more stories on this topic on Newstext, our news archive service. Click Here
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   Copyright 2006 News Limited. All times AEDT (GMT + 11). #

9/11 : A Prophecy

   Fidelity magazine (Australia), fidelity@j23.com.au , By Giuseppe Bernardini, p 6, March 2006
Two years before 9/11, Giuseppe Germano Bernardini, a 72-year-old Italian who is archbishop of Izmir, (i.e. the biblical Smyrna) in Turkey, bluntly warned the European Synod of Bishops that Muslims have a "clear program of expansion and re-conquest" of Europe ...
   I have been living for the past forty-two years in Turkey, a country 99.9 percent Muslim, and I am the Archbishop of Izmir--Asia Minor--for the past sixteen years. The theme of my intervention is therefore obvious: the problem of Islam in Europe today and in the future ....
   My intervention is to make a humble request of the Holy Father, above all. To be brief and clear, first I will mention three cases that, due to their provenance, I believe to be true.
   1. During an official meeting on Islamic-Christian dialogue, an authoritative Muslim person, speaking to the Christians participating, at one point said very calmly and assuredly: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you; thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you."
   This is to be believed because the "dominion" has already begun with the "petrol-dollars," used not to create work in the poor North African or Middle Eastern countries, but to build mosques and cultural centers in Christian countries with Islamic immigration, including Rome, the center of Christianity. How can we ignore in all of this a clear program of expansion and re-conquest?
   2. During another Islamic-Christian meeting, always organized by Christians, a Christian participant publicly asked the Muslims present why they did not organize at least once a meeting of this kind. The Muslim authority present answered [in] the following words: "Why should we? You have nothing to teach us and we have nothing to learn."
   A dialogue among deaf persons? It is a fact that terms such as "dialogue," "justice," "reciprocity," or concepts such as "rights of man," "democracy," have a completely different meaning for the Muslim than for us. But I believe this to be recognized and admitted by all, by now.
   3. In a Catholic monastery in Jerusalem there was and perhaps still is a Muslim Arab servant. An honest and gentle person, he was respected greatly by the religious who in turn were respected by him. One day, he sadly told them: "Our chiefs have met and have decided that all the 'infidels' must be killed, but do not fear because I will kill you without making you suffer."
   We are all aware that we must distinguish between the fanatic and violent minority from the tranquil and honest majority, but this, at an order given in the name of Allah or the Qur'an, will always march compact and without hesitations. Anyway, history teaches us that the secure minorities always manage to impose themselves over the renouncing and silent majority.
   It would be naive to underestimate or, worse yet, smile on the three cases I have referred to; I feel that their dramatic teaching must be reflected upon.
   This is not pessimism on my part, despite the appearance. The Christian cannot be pessimistic because Christ is Risen and Alive; He is Cod, as opposed to all other prophets or those calling themselves such.
   The final victory will be Christ's, but God's times may be long, and often are. He is patient and waits for the conversion of sinners: in the meantime He invites the Church to organize herself and to work to quicken the coming of His Kingdom.
   I end this [with an] exhortation, suggested to me by experience: do not allow the Muslim to ever use a Catholic Church for their cult, because this would be, in their eyes, the certain proof of our apostasy. #

The Two Faces of Islam Saudi Fundamentalism and its Role in Terrorism Stephen Schwartz "Minces no words.. Schwartz's opinions are not just forcefully expressed; they are born out of a sophisticated and informed vision of history." 346 pp softcover. [PICTURE of front cover] $30.00

Anglican Shame

 
   Virtue Online (the voice of orthodox Anglicanism), www.virtue online.org/ portal/modules/ news/article. php?story id=3683 , As Eye See It, By Hal G.P. Colebatch (of Australia), March 1, 2006
   BRITAIN: With impeccable timing, the British Anglican General Synod -- the Anglican Church's highest governing body -- has voted for a campaign of economic attacks on Israel just as Hamas is settling into power.
   The General Synod resolved to disinvest in "all companies profiting from the illegal occupation." Singled out is Caterpillar tractors, whose machinery has been used to build Israel's security wall and to level buildings suspected of being used by terrorists. (It apparently escaped the General Synod's notice that Caterpillar machinery is also used by the Palestinians.) The Church Commissioners hold about $3.65 million in Caterpillar.
   The subtext behind this is that it is illegitimate for Israelis -- or, let us be frank, Jews -- to try to defend themselves from terrorism. Dr. Irene Lancaster, of the Centre for Jewish Studies at Manchester University, said the vote marked "a very black day for Anglo-Jewish relations... The writing is on the wall for the Jews of Great Britain, 350 years after they settled here."
   Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, normally the most gentle and diplomatic of men, told the Jerusalem Post that the vote made him "ashamed to be an Anglican." Lord Carey previously warned that such a policy would "disastrous" for peace efforts in the region. He said Israelis already felt traumatized by attacks on them and this would be "another knife in the back." The chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, the Rt. Rev. Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St. Albans, also attacked the vote as "unbalanced." A counter-motion by pro-Israeli Anglicans was not allowed to be put.
   The present Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, supported the vote, but the second most senior Archbishop, John Sentamu of York, abstained. Bewilderingly, Williams then apologized to the British Chief Rabbi, regretting the vote which he had supported as "specially unfortunate... at a time when, as we are well aware, anti-Semitism in a growing menace and the State of Israel faces some very particular challenges." That, I suppose, is Anglicanism for you.
   The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Rev. John Gladwin, said Christians in Palestine were in despair. Although recent reports have indicated a high level of Muslim persecution of Christians in Israel, Bishop Gladwin blamed the Israeli government for their plight.
   Bryan Reuben, Emeritus Professor of Chemical Technology at London South Bank University, wrote in the (London) Times of 21 February: "Where are the protests about the banning of churches in Saudi Arabia; about the destruction of Taibe, a West Bank Christian Village, by Palestinian Arabs; about the persecution of Burmese Christians, and so on? What about divesting from the firms supplying the bulldozers that Robert Mugabe uses to destroy Zimbabwean villages?"
   Numerous statements have been put out by various church bodies attacking Israel security measures with no criticism of terrorism against Israel or with weasel-word attempts to justify it, like the Anglican Peace and Justice Network's statement that "it is the Occupation in its many facets that foments violence and fuels the conflict," as though Israel is to blame if Hamas fits out brainwashed children as suicide-bombers.
   To emphasize further the brilliant timing of the general synod, an all-party Parliamentary committee inquiring into anti-Semitism in Britain has just begun hearing evidence. Henry Grunewald, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said anti-Semitism had increased since 9/11 and "it's worse in some ways than at any time since Jews have lived here." The number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain has doubled in the past five years, a period that has seen literally thousands of terrorist attacks on Israel.
   The temper of the times -- and the peril facing the people of Israel -- is indicated not only by the murder of Jews in France and elsewhere and the international Cartoon Jihad (in which Williams apparently supported the Islamicist position, claiming the cartoons "cast a shadow over Christian-Muslim relations"), but also by the fact that a recent poll of British Muslims found that two-fifths regard Jewish civilians as legitimate targets. Abu Hamza, recently and very belatedly jailed for inciting murder and race-hatred, has claimed: "We do not want Jews to pull away from Palestine, we want them to be buried there," with "their skulls and bodies" used as landfill under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. British poet and Oxford don Tom Paulin called for the killing of Jews on the West Bank, claiming in an Egyptian paper: "I think they should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists and I feel nothing but hatred for them," and that "I never believed Israel had the right to exist at all." Paulin continued after this to be a regular contributor on BBC2's "Newsnight Review" arts program. There have been several cases of students and others being refused admission or publication by British academic institutions for the simple -- and admitted! -- reason that they were Israelis or Jews.
   Oxford University simultaneously held an anti-Semitic "Israel Apartheid Week," hosted by the Palestinian Society (not a registered University society, and which was acting illegally in using the University's name), sanctioned by the University's Student Union. Flyers stated it was to commemorate the "30th anniversary of the international convention for the suppression and punishment of the crime of apartheid." Posters put out to publicize the festival showed Israeli soldiers beating a Palestinian man with maps of Israel (described as Palestine) and South Africa. The festival's themes were Apartheid and Zionism, divestment and resistance. Despite protests by Jewish students, university authorities failed to intervene, thus condoning the intimidation which many Jewish students obviously felt.
   Mark Steyn has quoted Paul Oestreicher, Anglican chaplain of the University of Sussex: "I cannot listen calmly when an Iranian president talks of wiping out Israel. Jewish fears go deep. They are not irrational. But I cannot listen calmly either when a great many citizens of Israel think and speak of Palestinians in the way a great many Germans thought and spoke about Jews when I was one of them and had to flee."
   This suggests, as Steyn points out, a kind of moral equivalence between building a defensive security wall to protect civilians from terrorism and threatening to launch a nuclear Armageddon. Archbishop Carey is right to feel shame for his church.
   Hal G.P. Colebatch's book Blair's Britain was selected as a Book of the Year in the London Spectator. He is a journalist, lawyer, and author and lectures part-time in International Law and International Relations at the University of Notre Dame in Western Australia.

Book by Mariwan Halabjaee, “the Salman Rushdie of Iraqi-Kurdistan,” now online

 
   The Is-Ought Problem blogspot, http://theisought problem.blog spot.com/ 2006_03_01 _theisought problem_ archive.html , (Author not clear), (later updated Apr 3, 06), Friday, March 31, 2006
   UPDATE Apr/3/06: See the most recent article, Iraqi-Kurdistan: Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam published on the Internet. As first reported by the The Kurdistani, the book Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam by Mariwan (sp. Marywan) Halabjaee (sp. Halabjay, Halabjayee, Halabjaye, Halabjayi), "the Salman Rushdie of Iraqi-Kurdistan," is now available online.
   The book is about how Islam is allegedly used to oppress women. "I wanted to prove how oppressed women are in Islam and that they have no rights," said Halabjaee. The book was made available online by BoPeshawa.com, along with information about Halabjaee. In addition, BoPeshawa.com provides contact information for the representative of Halabjaee's campaign in the United Kingdom, Shapol Said [ shapoldarya@yahoo.co.uk ].
   The site also provides a list of some of Halabjaee's supporters in the United Kingdom. The book was originally (and continues to be) hosted by The Kurdistani in compressed RAR format.
   The book has now been mirrored in Adobe Acrobat PDF format at the following sites: Rapid Share Badongo.com YourFileLink.com OxyShare RapidUpload.com Up-File.com BestSharing.com Content-Type.com Megashares.com FileFactory.com SaveFile.com
   As previously reported, Halabjaee was forced to flee to Sweden after the Islamic League of Kurdistan issued a "conditional" fatwa to kill him if he did not repent and apologize for writing his book.
   The "conditional" nature of the fatal fatwa was uncertain. Halabjaee reported that "a couple of weeks ago in Halabja, the mullahs and scholars said if I go to them and apologize they will give me 80 lashes and then refer me to the fatwa committee to decide if I am to be beheaded. They might forgive me, they might not." As a result, Halabjaye went into hiding with his pregnant wife and three children.
   Halabjaee was forced to flee Iraqi-Kurdistan after the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) refused to offer him any protection or to arrest those who threatened his life. "The Kurdish authorities have not provided any protection from threats and fatwas," said Halabjaee, "any moment I am expecting a bullet or a hand grenade to be thrown into where I live." In response to the Halabjaee affair, the KRG Minister of Religious Issues, Dr. Mohammad Gaznayi, told protestors that according to the law of Iraqi-Kurdistan, "defamation" or "criticizing" religion or religious figures is a crime and its punishment is severe. "We will give those who attack our prophets a sentence so that they can be a lesson for everyone," said Gaznayi.
   Halabjaee was in possession of a warrant for his arrest issued by the Suleimaniya police department when he fled Iraqi-Kurdistan. The irony is that the only thing accomplished by those who sought to suppress publication of Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam was to cause it to be published to the entire world. The Internet publication of the book also serves as a powerful lesson. For everyone.
  Posted by Charles Chapman at 3/31/2006 12:59:00 AM

Islamic body ‘using school to milk funds’

 
   The Weekend Australian, by Natalie O'Brien, p 9, March 25-26, 2006
   SYDNEY (NSW): AUSTRALIA'S peak Islamic council has been accused by its own internal investigators of funding its activities with public money siphoned off from a nonprofit Muslim school.
   A leaked report alleges the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils is artificially inflating rents to milk federal and state government funds from the popular Malek Fahd school in western Sydney, possibly contrary to government rules.
   The report obtained by The Weekend Australian says AFIC, which advises the Howard Government on Islamic issues, should seek legal advice about the $900,000 in rent it charges the school a year - up to four times more than average commercial rates.
   The private school, which receives more public funds than any other in NSW, is situated on land owned by AFIC. While it operates as a separate non-profit organisation, it has four AFIC executives or office holders on its governing board.
   AFIC charges the school rent, accounting fees, cleaning costs and other charges which provide two-thirds of AFIC's budget of more than $2 million a year.
   The school receives $11 million a year from the federal Government on condition the funds are used only for educational purposes and the school only uses surplus profits for its own activities.
   But the investigation into AFIC's finances by forensic accountant Robert Smith reveals that the rental income is used to support the political activities of dozens of Muslim groups in the country.
   "Arguably there is a diversion of 'profit' from the school to AFIC," Mr Smith warns in his report, prepared for AFIC.
   "Such a diversion is what I have speculated that governments will be concerned about - educational funding being diverted to other entities for purposes other than education."
   AFIC has nine Islamic councils and dozens of smaller affiliates as members. It spends its funds on a range of activities, including grants to Islamic societies and donations to individual imams around the country.
   The chief executive officer of AFIC, Amjad Mehboob, said Mr Smith had got it wrong.
   "He overstepped the mark, he did not have enough information to support that conclusion," Mr Mehboob said. "He did not get all the facts."
   Mr Mehboob also pointed out that Mr Smith found no evidence of wrongdoing or corruption within AFIC.
   Mr Smith, managing director of Sydney-based accounting firm Worrells, was commissioned to prepare a report on AFIC's finances after a split between members at last year's AFIC annual general meeting.
   Some members called for the inquiry after concerns were raised about payments being made to executive committee members and alleged conflicts of interest with associates of the executive committee.
   There was also concern that the rent charged to Malek Fahd, which has about 1750 students from kindergarten to Year 12, was to rise even higher to $1.5 million a year.
   Mr Smith was commissioned to examine AFIC's accounts, its schools, its adherence to its own constitution and the corporations law, and to probe all payments made in the past six years to AFIC executive committee members, contractors and associates.
   AFIC was compelled to hand over documents and give Mr Smith access to its financial accounts.
   AFIC has increased the rent by more than 1000 per cent on the 3.62ha property leased by Malek Fahd. It rose from $67,500 in 1999 to $418,750 in 2000 and then $900,000 in 2001, where it has remained.
   But the property, zoned general rural, has a current unimproved land value recorded by the Bankstown Council - which has not been reviewed since 1992 - of $3 million. Local real estate agents told The Weekend Australian this value would give it an annual average rental return of about $240,000.
   Mr Smith warned AFIC it was charging the Sydney school based on an "improved land value", believed to be $5.1 million, even though AFIC had made no contribution to those improvements.
   Mr Mehboob told The Weekend Australian AFIC had not charged rent in the early years after AFIC founded the school in the early 1990s.
   He also said AFIC had a valuation done on the property and the valuer recommended that Malek Fahd be charged more than the $900,000 rent.
   Mr Smith wrote that during his inquiries he was "continually informed of the need for confidentiality".
   "It was clear to me that people were happy to talk about certain issues behind closed doors but not in a public forum," he wrote in his 37-page report. "Many people expressed concern about perceived conflicts of interest where persons associated with AFIC were appointed to provide goods and services."
   But Mr Mehboob said AFIC was an open and transparent organisation that "had nothing to hide".
   Mr Smith's report found that some of AFIC's accounting practices were breaching its own constitution. Payments were being made without the proper authority and in some cases, where there was no access to documentation, it could not be determined if AFIC was complying with the Corporations Law. AFIC declined to respond to questions about perceived conflicts of interest. #

How Islam is Presented and Explored in “The Prophet’s Hair”

 
   The Is-Ought Problem website, http://the isought problem. blogspot. com/ , By Jamal Muhsin, jmuhsin [at] yahoo.com , April 8, 2006
   'The Prophet's Hair', a short story by Salman Rushdie, called 'a moral fable' reveals much about Islam.  The story was written in 1981 in which it was not controversial.  In a different era – namely after Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, when the fatwa was issued against him and recently when Muhammad's cartoons have caused chaos and the world faces threats of Islam – it can be provoking.  In this essay, I will be dealing with Islam and how it is pictured in the story.  I think to get a good picture of it, one needs to look at Qur'an and compare some verses to the fictional manifestations in this story.  Thus, I will be mentioning some verses from Qur'an that, I think, cohere with the fiction and the life of Hashim's family and the main idea in the story.   It is worth mentioning too that the incident of the stolen relic is a suggestion of the actual one in which the relic in Hazratbal mosque was stolen in the early 60's of the twentieth century.  Hazratbal is the most important and 'holy' mosque in Kashmir because, as it is said, it enshrines a strand of Prophet Muhammad's beard – Mo-i-Muqaddas, which means 'the holy hair' in Persian language.  This strand which is considered sacred and supposed to be worshiped is broadly satirised in 'The Prophet's Hair'.  The relic has wreaked havoc in the splendid charming valley of Kashmir.
   At the very beginning of the story one is puzzled why young Atta is in 'prone form' [1] and beautiful Huma's face is 'bruised', and she and her mother had not 'slept a wink from worrying' (2843).  One wonders why Huma is 'lying motionless amidst the funereally stunted winter blooms of the hopeful florist' and Atta is 'suffering terribly from exposure as well as a broken skull, entered a coma' (2843).  Being beaten and humiliated as we will see in the other episodes of the story, can be interpreted as the state of the members of many families in which Islam is dominant.  It is not important whether Hashim was a Muslim believer (a moderate one) before finding the relic or not; what he does later is derived from Islam.  So, being a moderate or so-called 'fanatic' or 'fundamentalist' alters neither the essence of Islam, or the verses of Qur'an, nor the misery that the 'holy hair' brings to Hashim's family.
   After Hashim finds the relic, he begins to behave like a typical Muslim and apply Islam Shari'a.  Although Hashim does not take the vial for the sake of the relic, he is magically and miraculously affected by it.  He speaks with himself:    He says that he does not take care about its religious value and only sees it as a 'secular object' but 'the holy hair', just like Moses' rod, made him 'looked swollen, distended.  His eyes bulged […], they were red-rimmed, and his knuckles were white'. (2847)  Furthermore, 'He seemed to be on the point of bursting! […], under the influence of the misappropriated relic, he had filled up with spectral fluid which might at any moment ooze uncontrollably from his every bodily opening'. (2847)
   As soon as this change happens, he acts like a Muslim father and husband.  Now, the necessity of quoting some verses from Qur'an seems to be inevitable here.  Hashim tells his wife that 'far from being the principal beneficiary of his will, she would receive no more than the eighth portion which was her due under Islamic law.' (2847)  This is an application of Qur'an:  '[…] And they shall have a fourth of that which you leave, if you have no child; but if you have a child, then they shall have an eighth of that which you leave […]' [2].  He accuses Huma of 'lasciviousness, because she went around the city barefaced, which was unseemly for any good Muslim girl to do.  She should, he commanded, enter purdah forthwith.' (2847)  This is apparently a mirror of Qur'an: 'And stay in your houses with dignity, and do not show off yourselves like the showing off the former days of ignorance […]' (Al-Ahzab 33, 34, 414) [or 33:33] or: 'And say to the believing women that they restrain their eyes and guard their private parts, and that they disclose not their natural and artificial beauty except that which is apparent thereof, and that they draw their head-coverings over their bosoms […]'. (Al-Nur, 24, 32, 341) [or 24:31].
   Another verse can be linked to this issue is: 'O children of Adam! We have indeed sent down to you raiment to cover your shame, and to be an elegant dress; but the raiment of righteousness? that is the best. That is one of the Signs of Allah, that they may remember.' (Al-A'raf, 7, 27, 142) [or 7:26]. Hashim is not only suggesting an Islamic dress or making her follow the Islamic disciplines but also imposing that on her, as we see later when he issues an ultimatum to expel her from the house because she resists. Hashim becomes a regular prayer and '[…] forced his family to rise, wash and say their prayers. From then on, he began to pray five times daily for the first time in his life, and his wife and children were obliged to do likewise.' (2847-48) Burning all the other books except the Qur'an, he orders 'each member of the family to read passages from this book for at least two hours per day' (2848) because according to Qur'an, 'This messenger of Ours believes in that which has been revealed to him from his Lord, and so do the believers: all of them believe in Allah, and His angels, and His Books […]. (Al-Baqarah, 2, 286, 46) [or 2:285] Muhammad's strand of beard has made Hashim a 'good' and 'honest' believer and, therefore, his family members, having no other way or choice, should follow the same belief.
   But we see 'worse to come' as the narrator says. Although Hashim is doing something that contradicts Islam (usury), he makes use of Islamic means of punishments against one of the poor debtors who asks for giving him much time. Calling the debtor as a thief of others' money, Hashim 'tried to cut off the wretch's right hand' (2848). Here, he is like a ruler in Islam ordered to do his job: 'And as for the man who steals and the woman who steals, cut off their hands in retribution of their offence as an exemplary punishment from Allah […].' (Al-Ma'idah, 5, 39, 105) [or 4:38]. This is used ironically by Rushdie to affirm that the 'discipline around' the house is none but from Shari'a. There will surely be some 'disciplines':    As we see, when the mother wants to 'calm Hashim down, he struck her on the face with an open hand. Atta leapt to his mother's defence and he, too, was sent flying.' (2848). Moreover, the wife that cannot bear such harshness, but has to obey, 'began a fit of hysterics which continued throughout that night and the following day, and which so provoked her husband that he threatened her with divorce'. (2848) This is the daily fate shown to women in Islam-ridden countries, as in Afghanistan under Taliban's rule and nowadays Islamic rule too, Iran, Saudi Arabia…etc., to put aside Huma's being disowned and being given 'one week in which to pack her bags and go'. (2848) The answer to why this happens in the story as a stereotype of women's status in those countries can be seen in the mentioned verses and many others from Qur'an.
   Rushdie has ridiculed and satirised Islam in many ways, either by bringing these things I discussed or by giving some icons in the story. The word Sheikh means chief of a tribe or alike, and at the same time it is used for a high social and religious rank of a person. Sheikh Sin in 'The Prophet's Hair' is not a man of Allah. This Sheikh is 'The Thief of Thieves' (2850) and a 'professional burglar'. This irony simply mocks Islam and Islam's symbols. As we see in the opening of the story that Atta is entering 'the most wretched and disreputable part of the city' (2843) and searching for a burglar to save them. What is also more satirical is that because of the disaster the 'holy hair' of Muhammad brings about to Hashim's family, Huma seeks help from the thief of thieves who lives in an 'ever darker and less public alleys'. (2844) Atta and Huma really want to get the relic out of their house seeing it the source of their misery. The thing considered as 'holy' is devastating and people are furious over it; the 'crook' has sought to be a rescuer. Another satiric tone is Atta's speech. When he realizes that the cause of their disaster is the vial, he says to his 'shock-numbed' sister: 'We are descending to gutter-level'. (2848) This implicitly means that Islam and Muhammad's 'holy hair' disgraced and lowered them.
   The relic will be enshrined again in its 'appropriate' place but after having destructed everything. When it came to Hashim's house it brought the enormous catastrophe – the father, the son and the daughter all die and the mother is driven to madness and the Sheikh is shot dead. Sheikh Sin's family seems to have got benefit from it, but it is ironically mentioned that when the four crippled sons have healed, they were 'very properly furious, because the miracle had reduced their earning powers by 75 per cent, at the most conservative estimate; so they were ruined men' (2852).
   After The Satanic Verses and the fatwa against Rushdie, the significance of 'The Prophet's Hair' emerged. I would like to pick out Fiona Richards' point that after the fatwa in 1989, this story had been republished in a collection and then in 1994 in a compendium named East, West. She claims that 'The Prophet's Hair' was a defiance of the Fatwa. She quotes Rushdie's emphasis about that. I would like to quote it again from her article: '"The Prophet's Hair" is the answer to the intimidation question. If I was being scared off writing about Islam it wouldn't be in the collection, would it?' [3]  This asserts that Rushdie undoubtedly criticizes Islam, and even mocks it in 'The Prophet's Hair', since it is not sacred for him.
   The storm ends, and the relic is eventually 'authenticated' by 'the holiest men' because it caused that entire miracle. Nonetheless, the question that remains is the sacredness of Islam. If we just imagine and suppose that the relic is stolen again and this time the police do not find another 'Sheikh Sin' to get it back, and rumours spread that it is a group that has taken it, what would then happen? It would happen what happened in 2002, an immense conflict among the Muslims and the Hindus over the speech of one of the MPs that the relic belongs to a holy Hindu man. The relic was not stolen but someone suspected its Islamic genuine origin and 'questioned the authenticity of a holy Muslim relic' [4].  'The Prophet's Hair' wants to give a message that no religion is sacred. I would conclude by Rushdie's sentence that 'To respect the sacred is to be paralysed by it'. [5]  This short story conducts readers to 'iconoclasm'. One may claim that to let not the relic destroy Hashim's family, or as an icon of the whole society, per say, one has to destroy the vial that enshrines the relic or 'the holy hair'. Otherwise, one will be paralysed by the sacred images portrayed as taboos that cannot be broken. The story gives the perception that Islam is what essentially is and its values cannot be altered. It is pretty true that 'The person who wants to modernize Islam is like that forgetful genius who wants to invent a machine in his/her garage, which can turn copper into gold!' [6]
   Footnotes
[1] M. H. Abrams, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th.ed, vol.2, p. 2843. Further quotations will be mentioned only by the number of the page.
[2] The Holy Qur'an, translated by Maulawi Sher Ali. Alnisa chapter, 4, verse 13, [or 4:12] p.75. Further verses will be taken from the same version with mentioning the name and number of the chapter followed by the number of the verse and then the page.
[3] Fiona Richards, The Desecrated Shrine: Movable Icons and Literary Irreverence in Salman Rushdie's 'The Prophet's Hair', SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
[4] BBC News, MP faces trial in relic row
[5] Salman Rushdie, 'Is nothing Sacred?' Imaginary Homelands. (London: Granta Books, 1991), p.416.
[6] Mansoor Hekmat, 'Islam is part of the "Lumpenism" in Society'. P.360
   Bibliography
   1. Hekmat, Mansoor. "Islam is part of the 'Lumpenism' in Society". Mansoor Hekmat: Selected Works. London: Mansoor Hekmat Foundation, 2002. 356-60.
   2. Rushdie, Salman "The Prophet's Hair", The Norton Anthology of English Literature, ed. by M. H. Abraham and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed., vol.2. New York: Norton, 2000. 2842-52.
   3. Rushdie, Slaman. "Is nothing Sacred?" Imaginary Lands. Salman Rushdie. London: Granta Books, 1991. 415-429
   4. The Holy Qur'an. Translated by The late Maulawi Sher 'Ali. Pakistan, Rabwah: The Oriental and Religious Publishing Corporation Ltd., 1979.
   5. SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
   6. BBC News, MP faces trial in relic row.
   [Editor's Note: The author of this essay, Jamal Muhsin, is currently studying for his Master's degree in English literature at the University of Oslo.]
   Posted by Charles Chapman at 4/09/2006 05:59:00 PM 1 comments #

  • The Silence of the Experts  

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , p 8, April-May 2006
SCHOLARS and nonspecialists alike should be grateful to Dr. Bostom for making these documents available for further research. I wrote 'should be grateful' - but will everyone be pleased to have this comprehensive anthology that gainsays the myth of Islamic tolerance in an irrefutable way?
   And why did it take a nonspecialist such as Dr. Bostom, a scholar from another discipline - clinical epidemiology and randomized clinical trials in medicine - to discover, and have translated and published for the first time in English, this primary and secondary source material? Where were the Orientalists, Islamologists, and professors of Near Eastern studies?
   There are a number of scholars writing and living in the West whose works are widely read, respected, and influential but who, for various reasons, wish to play down the history of the dhimmis*, including the Armenian genocide, and the periodic but persistent massacres not only of Jews and Christians, but the oft-neglected Hindus, Zoroastrians, and Buddhists, living under Islam.
   Some are concerned for the security of Israel and are grateful to Turkey for their treaties with Israel; hence these scholars do their best to deny or at least minimize the Armenian massacres.
   Since any discussion of dhimmis often ends in a discussion of the Armenian genocide, the negationist scholars are hostile to any works highlighting the plight of Jews and Christians under Islam in general.
   Others are simply Turkophiles, having made Turkey their field of speciality, and have friends and colleagues and even girlfriends or wives from Turkey. Others again are grateful to Turkey for its support during the cold war. - Ibn Warraq, Forward to The Legacy of Jihad, ed. Andrew G. Bostom, Prometheus Books, New York, 2005, p.21.
* Dhimmis: 'tolerated' non-citizens - the name given to non-Muslims in Islamic countries.

Bishop Abouna gives worst situation report to date.

IRAQ: 'CHRISTIANS ARE DESPERATE'

     Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , By JOHN PONTIFEX, p 10, April-May 2006
BAGHDAD'S Bishop Andreas Abouna has given his bleakest assessment yet of the situation in Iraq, speaking of the despair that is driving more and more Christians to leave the country.
   Describing a worsening of the security situation since last December's parliamentary elections, the Chaldean bishop told how people were living in fear of their lives.
   Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need, Bishop Abouna said: 'The Christians feel desperate and so many are leaving.
   'In their hearts they do not want to leave their country,' he added, 'but because of the situation, they prefer to be outside Iraq.'
   Throughout the interview, the bishop highlighted a security crisis. 'Security is now very bad,' he said. 'There are a lot of police in Iraq, especially around Baghdad - you can find them everywhere and they are increasing all the time.
   The problem is that the quality of the policing is indifferent,' explained the bishop. 'Sometimes people feel afraid because - more so than before - they do not feel secure.'
   The interview comes after Bishop Abouna's superior, Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Baghdad for the Chaldeans, called a two-day fast for peace to take place next Monday and Tuesday (April 3 and 4).
   Zenit news service quoted Patriarch Delly as saying: 'We have moved away from piety and virtue, from forgiveness...because of this, the blood of so many brothers has been shed and so many children have remained orphans'
   Emphasising that Christians have suffered no worse than others, Bishop Abouna said:  'We still hope that Iraq will rise again but it is very difficult when we have a government who cannot decide anything.  Can you imagine what life is like without any real form of government?'
   He echoed concerns of a full-scale descent into civil war but added that it was unlikely, saying such conflicts were unprecedented in Iraq's history.
   The interview, staged in London, where Bishop Abouna was attending an international conference on religious freedom, comes amid reports showing the clergy stepping up efforts to discourage the faithful - especially the young - from leaving the country.
   'Christians are getting fewer and fewer,' said Bishop Abouna, who went on to say that despite the exodus, churches were packed for services. 'When you look inside the churches, they are full of Christians. But when you go outside you feel that Christians are finished in Iraq.'
   Latest estimates give the number of Christians in Iraq as about 750,000, down from more than one million before the Allied invasion.
   Bishop Abouna, who has responsibility for church youth initiatives, described holding retreat weekends in Baghdad for college students, with Mass, spiritual discourses and workshops on leadership and vocational subjects.
   He said: 'When the young people came together last time, the bombs were falling everywhere. The roads were blocked. And yet somehow 1,500 people came. It was amazing. I said to them: 'The fact that so many of you have come encourages us to lead you.' They were very, very happy. #

If any person kills an apostate.... Nothing [i.e. no punishment]... is incurred by the slayer. - The Hidaya by al-Marghiniani [died 1197 AD].

UNDER THE SCIMITAR OF DAMOCLES

     Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , By ANDREW G. BOSTOM, pp 34-36, April-May 2006
ABDUL Rahman faced death at the hands of our Afghan allies for the 'crime' of converting to Christianity. This fate is no fluke, not a brutal Afghan variant on the practice of 'tolerant' Islam. Death for apostasy is part and parcel of Islamic scripture and tradition. When Afghanistan's leading clerics endorse his death, they are on solid ground. Thus, in the wake of appeals by world leaders, including the Pope, even though Mr. Rahman appears to have received a 'dispensation' by the Karzai Government - for 'mental health' or other reasons, unfortunately, he is and remains guilty as per Afghan religious leaders, and Shari’a.
   John Ralph Willis, Princeton University Professor of Near Eastern Studies, has described the 'apparent paradox' that jihad wars and razzias (p.343) - rationalized as struggles to liberate men from unbelief - became, through the mass enslavement intrinsic to these campaigns, 'a device to deprive men of freedom.' And freedom, in the Muslim conception, 'being perfect slavery' to Allah, the sole (distant) hope of earthly freedom from the bondage and humiliation of slavery for the subjugated infidel - whose dignity and very legal essence were annihilated by jihad - was to '...incarcerate his spirit in Islam,' and await manumission at the discretion of his Muslim overlord.
   Another respected Princeton scholar of Islam, Patricia Crone, has stated bluntly (or one might argue, self-evidently) regarding such jihad enslavement - a major historical modality for Islamization -    A strikingly similar 'paradox' of Islam is the contention epitomized by Koran 2:256, 'There is no compulsion in religion.' The poignant ongoing travails of Afghan Muslim convert to Christianity Abdul Rahman illustrate another uniquely Islamic fusion of absurdity and denial: in light of Koran 2:256 and repeated claims that Islam is characterized by freedom of belief and creed, devoid of compulsion, why has apostasy from Islam always been punished so harshly, for thirteen centuries, into the present era? Ibn Warraq's seminal 2003 study of apostasy, Leaving Islam (p.31), distinguishes transient doubt - edified by discovering the 'truth' of Islam - from apostasy:    And punishment by death for apostasy from Islam is firmly rooted in the most holy Muslim texts - both the Koran, and the hadith - as well as the sacred Islamic Law (the Shari’a). Koran 4:89 states* :    One of the most authoritative Koranic commentators, Baydawi (d. 1315/16) interprets this passage thus:    Ibn Kathir's (d. 1373) venerated commentary on Koran 4:89 concurs, maintaining that as the unbelievers have manifested their unbelief, they should be punished by death. These draconian judgments are reiterated in a number of hadith (i.e. collections of the putative words and deeds of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, as compiled by pious transmitters). For example, Muhammad is reported to have said 'Kill him who changes his religion' in hadith collections of both Bukhari and Abu Dawud. There is also a consensus by all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e. Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi'i), as well as Shi'ite jurists, that apostates from Islam must be put to death. Averroes (d. 1198), the renowned philosopher and scholar of the natural sciences, who was also an important Maliki jurist, provided this typical Muslim legal opinion on the punishment for apostasy (vol. 2, p. 552):    The contemporary (i.e. 1991) Al-Azhar (Cairo) Islamic Research Academy-endorsed Shafi'i manual of Islamic Law, 'Umdat al-Salik (pp. 595-96) states:    Finally, Warraq (p. 19) summarizes the means by which convicted apostates have been killed, typically by the sword (i.e. beheading)    Thus even if Mr. Rahman gets a 'dispensation' by the Karzai Government - for 'mental health', or other reasons, unfortunately, he is and remains guilty as per Afghan religious leaders, and Shari’a. As such, once released from prison, should any pious Afghan Muslim kill him (heeding the calls of local Afghan clerics), according to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence (which prevails in Afghanistan), specifically the important legal text The Hidaya by al-Marghiniani (d. 1197),    At this stage, perhaps the only way to assure that Mr. Rahman avoids a tragic and gruesome fate ('We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left,' maintained Abdul Raoulf, a 'moderate' cleric jailed for his previous opposition to the Taliban), is to find sanctuary for him outside of Afghanistan.
   For a decade, three courageous, prescient scholars - Ibn Warraq, David Littman, and Bat Ye'or - have warned about the grave dangers posed by Shari’a-based 'human rights' constructs, such as the 1990 Cairo Declaration (i.e. the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, to which all member states [now 57] of the Organization of the Islamic Conference - including 'secular' Turkey - are signatories). Indeed the intrepid Senegalese jurist Adama Dieng (a Muslim, who subsequently became a United Nations special rapporteur), then serving as secretary-general to the International Commission of Jurists, declared forthrightly in February 1992 that the Cairo Declaration, under the rubric of the Shari’a,    And distracting, fatuous conceptions such as 'Extreme Shari’a' are mere enervating delusions which do nothing to combat this growing, lethal threat to the most fundamental rights of free societies. Invoking the difficult lessons learned from Cold War experiences, David Littman stated with the requisite moral clarity that    More than 80 years ago, in his 1924 The Law of Apostasy in Islam, Samuel Zwemer made these observations, still depressingly relevant today, and extending beyond the 'Near East', to the entire Muslim world:    Again and again has European pressure, aided by a few educated Orientals, endeavored to secure equality before the law for all religions and races in the Near East. But as often as the attempt was made it proved a failure, each new failure more ghastly than the last. The reason is that the conscience and the faith of the most sincere and upright Moslems are bound up with the Koran and the Traditions. Civilization cannot eradicate deep-seated convictions. Rifles and ironclads, the cafe, the theatre, written constitutions, representative parliaments; none of these reach far below the surface. A truer freedom ... than the one supplied by their own faith, must come before Moslems can enter into the larger liberty which we enjoy.
   Denial or obfuscation of the role played by the very essence of Islam - by Shari’a - will never remove this murderous scimitar of Damocles hanging over the heads of hapless 'apostates' such as Abdul Rahman, and others, perhaps untold thousands, if not more, like him, throughout the Muslim world. And burgeoning, often irredentist Muslim populations in the West, especially Western Europe, have established de facto Islamic colonies within their host countries, punctuated by demands for local jurisdiction under Shari’a Law.
   Should nothing be done to desacralize the Shari’a and divorce it entirely from the governance of civil societies, future Western generations, may face the same brutal application of Shari’a punishments for 'apostasy', or as the Danish cartoon jihad demonstrated, for 'blaspheming' the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. If that frightening scenario unfolds, Westerners may be forced to experience Mr. Rahman's current dire predicament - to paraphrase (albeit inelegantly) John Donne: 'Do not ask over whom the scimitar hangs, it hangs over thee'.
__________________
   [*For three simultaneous translations of Koran 4:89, see here: ____________________
ANDREW G. BOSTOM is the author of The Legacy of Jihad. #

  • Omar Sharif: Death Threat for being an 'Apostate'  

   
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , p 34, April-May 2006
A message on a website linked to al-Qaida has threatened death to the veteran Egyptian actor Omar Sharif after he played St Peter in an Italian TV film.
   In remarks widely reported in Italy earlier this month, the 73-year old actor, a convert to Islam, said he had 'seemed to hear voices' during the filming of St Peter, a two-part mini-series shown last week.
   Sharif was quoted as saying: 'Playing Peter was so important for me that if even now I can only speak about it with difficulty. It will be difficult for me to play other roles from now on.
   The Italian news agency Adnkronos International said that a message on a web forum used in the past by al-Qaida had a link to a site carrying the threat. 'Omar Sharif has stated that he has embraced the crusader idolatry,' it said. 'He is a crusader who is offending Islam and Muslims and receiving applause from the Italian people. I give you this advice, brothers, you must kill him.' - John Hooper, 'St Peter Role Prompts Death Threat' in The Guardian, October 31, 2005.

  • Tablighi Jamaat' - Islamic Fifth Column  

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , p 36, April-May 2006
EVERY fall, over a million almost identically dressed, bearded Muslim men from around the world descend on the small Pakistani town of Raiwind for a three-day celebration of faith. Similar gatherings take place annually outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Bhopal, India.
   These pilgrims are no ordinary Muslims, though; they belong to a movement called Tablighi Jamaat ("Proselytizing Group"). They are trained missionaries who have dedicated much of their lives to spreading Islam across the globe.
   The largest group of religious proselytizers of any faith, they are part of the reason for the explosive growth of Islamic religious fervor and conversion. Despite its size, worldwide presence, and tremendous importance, Tablighi Jamaat remains largely unknown outside the Muslim community, even to many scholars of Islam.
   This is no coincidence. Tablighi Jamaat officials work to remain outside of both media and governmental notice. Tablighi Jamaat neither has formal organizational structure nor does it publish details about the scope of its activities, its membership, or its finances.
   By eschewing open discussion of politics and portraying itself only as a pietistic movement, Tablighi Jamaat works to project a non-threatening image.
   The prominent Deobandi cleric and scholar Maulana Muhammad llyas Kandhalawi (1885-1944) launched Tablighi Jamaat in 1927 in Mewat, India, not far from Delhi.
   From its inception, the extremist attitudes that characterize Deobandism permeated Tablighi philosophy. Ilyas's followers were intolerant of other Muslims and especially Shi'ites, let alone adherents of other faiths.
   Indeed, part of llyas's impetus for founding Tablighi Jamaat was to counter the inroads being made by Hindu missionaries. They rejected modernity as antithetical to Islam, excluded women, and preached that Islam must subsume all other religions. - Alex Alexiev, 'Tablighi Jamaat: Jihad's Stealthy Legions,' Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005.

Close school from hell, say teachers

 
   The West Australian, p 26, Monday, April 10, 2006
   BERLIN: Teachers at Berlin's Ruetli school have decided enough is enough.
   They will no longer tolerate being spat at, insulted and attacked by pupils, some of whom speak hardly any German and many of whom carry knives.
   Things had deteriorated to such an extent at the state school - in a district where 80 per cent of pupils are from Muslim immigrant fami�lies - that it had become virtually impossible to teach, and some staff feared for their lives.
   In a letter to the authorities pleading for the school to be closed, staff said: "We are desper�ate. Our teaching is met with flat rejection. The mood in the class�rooms is one of aggression, com�plete lack of respect and ignorance. Instructions are ignored.
   "Few students bring relevant material, and many of us will only enter a lesson with a cell phone in order to call for help in an emer�gency. "
   Students carry knives, they said, supposedly "to defend them�selves", and many came from fam�ilies with no breadwinner and no hope for the future.
   When the letter - sent in Feb�ruary - was leaked to the media last month, the extent of the crisis in the country's once-prized edu�cation system finally burst into the public arena.
   Remarkably, the furore has coincided with the release of the German film Brutally Tough, a fictional portrayal of the criminal youth subculture in Neukoelln, the Berlin neighbourhood where Ruetli school is situated.
   Detlev Buck, the director, said his film was meant as a wake-up call to the German authorities about the parlous state of the nation's immigrant communities.
   For the staff of the school, the film has proved eerily realistic.
   "In many families, the pupils are the only ones who have to get up in the morning," one teacher said. "I feel as though we are rais�ing criminals and terrorists here."
   Since the teachers spoke out, headmasters, staff and pupils at secondary and comprehensive schools across Germany have com�plained of similar deficiencies in the state system.
   Stung into action, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Government last week launched an action plan to try to come to grips with the prob�lem amid warnings that the immi�grant rioting in France last year was imminent in Germany.
   Turkish leaders say the prob�lems in areas such as Neukoelln are to do with deep social problems, not simply the fault of the immi�grant population.
   "Young Arabs who live in Ger�many are raised in an authoritarian manner. The problem is that the school authorities are weak," said Nazar Mazood, head of an Arabic culture institute in Neukoelln.
   Most of Germany's 3.3 million Muslim immigrant population are of Turkish or Lebanese descent. Critics note that for decades, the Turks were officially regarded as "guest workers" who were in the country on only a temporary basis. #

Plea to save teenager from Iran’s hangman

 
   The West Australian, p 31, Monday, April 10, 2006
   OTTAWA: A Canadian beauty queen's cam�paign to save the life of an Ira�nian teenager is drawing world�wide interest, with more than 7000 people signing a petition.
   The petition, addressed to the United Nations and the Islamic Republic of Iran, asks that the death sentence of a young woman named Nazanin be com�muted.
   Amnesty International has said the woman was 17 when she reportedly admitted stabbing to death one of three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece in a park in March 2005. Now 18, Nazanin was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging.
   Amnesty International and human rights workers in the case said they had not been able to contact her family or lawyers and did not know if legal appeals were scheduled.
   "It is a horrific story, and her name being Nazanin shocked me," said Nazanin Afshin-Jam, who came as a baby with her family to Canada, fleeing Iran's revolution. "I could have been in the same situation," she said, "but I'm lucky I live in a country (Canada) that knows what jus�tice is about."
   Ms Afshin-Jam, an aspiring singer with a university degree in political science and interna�tional relations, represented Canada and was runner-up in the 2003 Miss World contest.
   She said she hoped her Miss World profile would help save the Iranian girl.
   The petition notes that when Iranian women such as Nazanin are threatened with rape, they are caught between two undesir�able options.
   "On one hand, Iranian Penal Code severely limits the possibil�ity of using self-defence as a legitimate defence to aggres�sion," it says.
   "On the other hand, if Nazanin had allowed the rape to take place, she could still be imprisoned, flogged or stoned for having sex outside of mar�riage unless four male witnesses to the actual rape would testify on her behalf."
   The petition notes that Iran has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in which it agreed not to execute anyone under age 18.
   Refugee lawyer Negar Azmudeh said at least one previous death sentence of a child in Iran had been overturned because of international pressure. #

Converts from Islam - free to choose?

 
   Barnabas Fund, www.barnabas fund.org , info@barnabas fund.org (Britain), by Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Fund, April 11, 2006
   The case of Abdul Rahman, on trial last month in the Afghan capital Kabul for converting from Islam to Christianity, made the international headlines for some days. Both judge and prosecutor stated that, if found guilty, he would face the death sentence in line with the teachings of Shari’a [Islamic law]. Many Western leaders urged that he should be released and the Afghan authorities duly found a pretext for doing so.
   The response of other Muslims was more mixed. Senior clerics in Afghanistan said that if the state failed to execute him they would incite the people to murder him - a people who by and large appear to agree that death is appropriate for those who leave Islam. But a number of Muslims in the West have denied the existence of the classic Islamic teaching on apostasy. For example, London-based Mufti Abdul Barkatullah said that the Shafi'i school of Islamic law eschews the death penalty for apostasy. This assertion is so easily refuted from the Shafi'i texts that one can only think the mufti assumes that no non-Muslim would ever bother to check his words.
   The classical Shafi'i manual of law, "'Umdat al-Salik" [The Reliance of the Traveller] by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (died 1368) is unambiguous on this point. I quote from an English translation by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, published in the USA in 1997:
   "8.1 When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatises from Islam, he deserves to be killed.
   8.2 In such a case, it is obligatory for the caliph to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does, it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed."
   Anwar Ahmad Qadri, a Pakistani lawyer, published "A Sunni Shafi'i Law Code" in Pakistan in 1984. This work is a translation of "Mukhtasar fil Risalah" by the classical Shafi'i jurist Abu Shuja al-Isfahani (died 1106), and states, including footnotes:
   "Art. 113 Rules for Apostates. It is obligatory to ask the person apostatising from the religion of Islam, or on irtidad, (1) to offer taubah three times; then it is good if he did it, otherwise, he shall be killed (2); then, he will neither be given a bath, nor any funeral prayer, and so also, he will not be buried in the graveyard of Muslims.

¹ May be a male or a female, as he or she refuses to accept Allah, or falsifies any of the Prophets or holds as legal the things held haram by consensus or ijma'.
² If a free man, the imam will kill him but not by burning; if anyone kills him except the imam, he will be punished by ta'zir; if the apostate is a slave, the master will kill him."

   Another Muslim response to the Abdul Rahman case was published in the "New Zealand Herald" by an Australian Muslim lawyer, Irfan Yusuf, who is an occasional lecturer in the School of Politics at Macquarie University. Mr Yusuf's article is a masterpiece of propaganda, blending fact and fiction, passing off exceptions as the rule. He states rather curiously that "the alleged law of apostasy doesn't exist in sharia. And if it does, there is little consensus on its application among Muslim legal experts." His confusion about the existence or not of an apostasy law in Shari’a could easily be solved if he were to check some Islamic texts both ancient and modern, for example, those I have cited above. He would discover that all four schools of Sunni law as well as Shi'a law agree on the death sentence for sane, adult, male apostates. This is hardly the "minority of medieval Muslim scholars" which Yusuf claims were the only ones who supported the death sentence for apostasy.
   Yusuf's short article is worth examining in some detail because it incorporates a number of spurious arguments which are often used by Muslims seeking to present this aspect of their faith in an acceptable light to Westerners. First he repeats the familiar adage that the Qur'an says that "there is no compulsion in religion" and suggests that everyone is free to choose their own faith. The quote is accurate (from sura 2, verse 256) but the interpretation is a special one for Westerners. The normal Muslim interpretation of this verse is that Muslims will not be forced to fulfil all their religious duties, it is up to them whether they do so or not. This verse has nothing to say about freedom of conscience. In any case, it is a verse that was "revealed" relatively early to Muhammad and therefore many Muslims would consider that it has been abrogated [cancelled] by less tolerant-sounding verses which were revealed to Muhammad in later years.
   Yusuf goes on to consider the death sentence for treason, which he believes to be mandatory today "even in the most civilised Western countries". (Presumably he does not consider to be very civilised the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Norway, Canada and the many other Western countries who do not have the death penalty.) He states that Islam's death sentence for apostasy is actually a death sentence for treason because any Muslim who left their faith and yet wanted to remain in the Islamic city-state of early Islam was "effectively committing treason". But why should it be considered treasonable to stay in one's homeland after changing one's religion? Yusuf's argument is nothing but a re-statement of the classical Islamic position that a convert from Islam is by definition a traitor. He does not require any evidence of treacherous activity against the Islamic state; simply to have left Islam without going into self-imposed exile is treachery enough.
   Yusuf attempts to support his case by a further selection of examples. He says that "it isn't the practice in the overwhelming majority of Muslim countries to kill people who leave Islam." I thank God this is true, with only five modern states to my knowledge including the death sentence for apostasy in their legislation (possibly plus Afghanistan whose legal position remains unknown following Abdul Rahman's release) and none of them putting it into practice very often. Even taking into account murders by family and community, and illegal assassinations by the security forces, the vast majority of Muslim converts to Christianity today do not lose their lives. But why should there be a death penalty even in theory?
   Yusuf cites the Swiss Muslim Tarik Ramadan as arguing against capital punishment in Muslim countries because the corrupt police and judiciaries "will make sharia an instrument of injustice". In other words, it is not that Shari’a is unjust but that bribe-taking officials might not apply it impartially. This is not an argument against the rightness of the death sentence for apostasy, but a counsel of despair from one who thinks corruption can never be rooted out.
   Yusuf then gives the example of Indonesia where Muslims can convert freely to Christianity without being imprisoned. Although he does not say so, Indonesian converts are unlikely to face much prejudice or discrimination of any kind (except in Aceh). But there are some fifty Muslim-majority countries, and Indonesia is the only one of which this is true. Indonesia has for many years been a byword amongst Muslims for its lax attitude to Christian evangelism and conversion from Islam, an attitude which many other Muslim nations roundly condemn.
   Yusuf's crowning argument concerns the high rate of illiteracy in Afghanistan, which he says accounts for their ignorance of Islamic law. Again he is determined to disbelieve in the existence of the abundance of Islamic texts which endorse the death sentence for apostasy.
   In fact it is Irfan Yusuf's readers who are likely to be ignorant of Islamic law, not the Afghan people. If he were not so certain of the ignorance of most New Zealanders, indeed of most Westerners, he surely would not have dared to write such an article.
   It is better for Muslims to be completely honest about their faith. The late Dr Zaki Badawi, who was president of the Muslim College in London, wrote a paper on "Freedom of Religion in Islam" tracing the history of the development of the apostasy law. He stated that "earlier jurists, with a few exceptions, supported the death penalty for the apostate and this remains the case to the present day". Muslims can claim that the death sentence for apostasy was never intended by their founder (and this may well be true), but to claim that it was not taught by his followers as a basic doctrine for the next fourteen centuries is ludicrous.
   It is only when Muslims have admitted the true situation that there is the possibility of change. A number of scholars of Sunni Islam's leading Al-Azhar University in Cairo have in recent decades suggested that the apostasy law should be abandoned and genuine religious freedom allowed. We non-Muslims must do all we can to encourage this move within Islam. It was at Al-Azhar on 21st March that the Prince of Wales gave an outstanding speech urging mutual respect between the faiths, indicating in particular the need for reciprocity of treatment of each other's minorities.
   Muslims are rightly permitted to share their faith freely in the West and to win converts who rightly suffer no penalty. But this religious freedom must be reciprocated. Afghanistan is far from being the only Muslim country which has signed up to international agreements guaranteeing freedom of religion (such as Article 18 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and has also asserted the supremacy of Shari’a (complete with apostasy law), thus creating a serious ambiguity over issues such as freedom of conscience.
   Al-Azhar has begun to grapple with the subject of religious freedom in Islam. What can be done to help them with this ground-breaking task, which is sure to face tremendous opposition from certain sections of the Muslim community? Could the Prince of Wales, Jack Straw and the Archbishop of Canterbury jointly urge Al-Azhar to issue a fatwa condemning the execution of apostates? Could the Lambeth-Al-Azhar initiative issue a joint statement? Now is the time to act, while the example of Abdul Rahman, who was willing to die for his faith, is fresh in our minds. For although he may now be safe in exile, the plight of other converts is, if anything, even more acute as Muslim governments may decide it is better to let them be quietly murdered than for them to become an international cause.
A shortened version of this article was published in the Church of England Newspaper, UK (April 7, 2006)
   RELATED NEWS ITEMS
   [a] - Don't forget him now: Standing with Abdul Rahman - A challenge to Christians www.barnabas fund.org/archive news/article. php?ID_ news_items=140
   [b] - AFGHAN CHRISTIAN FACES DEATH SENTENCE IF HE WILL NOT RETURN TO ISLAM www.barnabas fund.org/archive news/article. php?ID_ news_items=137

Forty dead in blast at Pakistan religious gathering

 
   Yahoo! News, news.yahoo. com/s/afp/ 20060411/ ts_afp/pak istanrelig ionblast_ 0604111 60636 , AFP, 12:24 PM ET, Tue Apr 11, 2006,
   KARACHI (AFP) - A powerful bomb ripped through a gathering of Sunni Muslims celebrating the Prophet Mohammed's birthday in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, killing at least 40 people.
   The bomb tore through a stage set up in a crowded park when speakers were offering sunset prayers, scattering bodies dressed in white ceremonial outfits and limbs across the area, officials and witnesses said.
   "There are at least 40 dead," interior minister Aftab Sherpao told AFP. Police said at least another 80 people were wounded.
   Witnesses said the massive blast triggered panic in the crowd of around 50,000 Sunnis who were celebrating the festival in the city's historic Nishtar Park.
   "I was near the back of the stage when I heard a huge explosion and something hit my head," said 40-year-old worshipper Mohammed Osman. "When I woke up there were pieces of flesh everywhere."
   Angry mobs of turbaned youths waving black flags and sticks rampaged through the smoke left by the blast, burning motorcycles and shouting slogans, witnesses said.
   Police then fired in the air to disperse the crowd, they said.
   Ambulances were ferrying the dead and injured to hospital, witnesses said.
   An AFP reporter saw three bloodstained bodies at the city's Civil Hospital while an official at Jinnah Hospital said 20 corpses had been brought in. Other bodies were reportedly taken to a third clinic.
   "Some of the bodies are badly mutilated and their injuries suggest there was a suicide attacker in the crowd," one rescue services official said on condition of anonymity.
   Police were unable to confirm whether it was a suicide bombing. No one claimed responsibility for the attack.
   However militants from Pakistan's majority Sunni and minority Shiite communities have a history of violence that has claimed thousands of lives in the past ten years. #

Victim defies stigma attached to rape

 
   The West Australian, "Victim defies stigma attached to rape," By MIRANDA DEVINE, devinemiranda@hotmail.com , p 24, Wednesday, April 12, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: Few question the law that suppresses rape victims' identities. It has been seen as protecting their privacy and, by implication, concealing their shame. But in one impulsive, heroic moment last week, 18-year-old Tegan Wagner threw away that legal protection and revealed to the world her face and her name.
   "We're not ashamed of what happened to us," she said. Four years ago, Tegan, then 14, was raped by brothers MSK, 27, and MAK, 26, in their Ashfield home. The two men and their younger brothers MMK, 19, and MRK, 21, are already in jail for gang-raping two other girls at knifepoint.
   None of the Pakistan-born brothers, who have identical first names, can be identified because two were minors at the time. Police have evidence that alleges more victims of the brothers have not come forward.
   Standing in the NSW Supreme Court last week after MSK and MAK were sentenced, Tegan yelled: "F... you, go to hell."
   "I'd like to say, 'Have fun in prison, boys, I won'," she told reporters, as she waived her right to anonymity.
   "We're not telling people so they know we've been raped," she told Channel 9's A Current Affair. "We're telling people so other victims know they have support... to just show that you need to be confident if you're a rape victim, especially from these boys. You need to come forward.
   "We all need to be strong and stick together and convict these people."
   Sitting alongside Tegan was Cassie Hamim, who was 13 in 2002 when she was lured home by the brothers and raped. It was just a month after Tegan's ordeal.
   Inspired by Tegan last week, Cassie, too, waived her right to anonymity. "Tegan's grown stronger," she said. "I realise I need to be strong and move on."
   Cassie also said that her Muslim father was "disgusted" by the fact the rapists used their religion in court as an excuse.
   MSK, a married Australian citizen and one of seven brothers who migrated to Aus�tralia in 1997, blamed cultural misunderstanding for his actions, claiming his upbringing in a small Muslim village in Paki�stan taught him he had the right to rape pro�miscuous girls. Tegan qualified as promiscu�ous, he told an earlier hearing, because she did not wear a headscarf and had come to his house unchaperoned.
   But Justice Peter Hidden dismissed this excuse: "He must have had sufficient expo�sure to the Australian way of life to be aware that the place occupied by women in the tra�ditional culture of his area of origin is far removed from our social norms."
   Despite Tegan's elation after last week's sentencing, the result was more symbolic than satisfying. MSK's jail term was increased by five years and MAK's by two.
   "It is as if there is some kind of discount if you do many rapes," Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen said on Friday.
   But Ms Cunneen, who ran this prosecu�tion and several other successful rape trials, said she was proud of Tegan and Cassie.
   "It is wonderful how they realise in their generation that no shame attaches to being raped," she said. "Part of the idea that (rape victims) not be named is the residual idea that they are also somehow to blame... that it remains a stain on their character."
   Ms Cunneen's compassion for the victims ensured they persevered through long, arduous legal processes.
   But she has suffered through the percep�tion by some colleagues that she has become too involved with a cultural issue that makes them uncomfortable: a series of sexual assaults in Sydney in which most perpetra�tors were Muslim men who regarded non-Muslim women as fair game.
   To some in the legal establishment she prosecuted these men too aggressively, advocated for the victims too passionately and received too much publicity.
   But in the eyes of Tegan and Cassie, Ms Cunneen helped them achieve justice, and protected other women from suffering as they did.
   Together, victims and prosecutor have achieved a profound shift in the perception of rape victims, now seen as heroes rather than shamed victims. #

MY POINT

 
   The West Australian, Letter, p 24, Thursday, April 20, 2006
   PERTH: Recently I happened to come across the transcript and video clips of a remarkable debate on "the clash of civilisations" that took place on al-Jazeera TV between Wafa Sultan, an Arab American psychologist, and Dr Ibraham al-Khouli, a mullah.
   Wafa obliterated her opponent. What she had to say was so insightful and her courage in saying it so inspirational that I wanted to share it with your readers. A full transcript should be published in every newspaper, viewed on every TV channel and shouted from every rooftop. It won't be, but here is an excerpt:
   "The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilisations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilisation and backwardness, between the civilised and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights on the other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women as beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilisations. Civilisations do not clash, but compete."
   That a Muslim apostate, and a woman to boot, would dare to so speak out in truth to the whole Arab world on al-Jazeera is truly heroic. She has received death threats. Let us hope and pray that this brave lady stays safe.

London imams learn texts which call unbelievers 'filth'

 
   The West Australian, p 14, Friday, April 21, 2006
   LONDON: Trainee imams at an Islamic school in London with links to Iran told a Brit�ish newspaper they are being taught fundamentalist texts that describe non-Muslims as "filth".
   The medieval doctrines are taught at the Hawza Ilmiyya of London, a religious school, which is in the same building as the Islamic College for Advanced Studies - a sister institu�tion, The Times reported.
   The two colleges share many of the same staff.
   The Muslim students, who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity, study their religious courses alongside a degree course in Islamic studies at ICAS, which is backed by Middlesex University.
   Their spokesman said the high�lighted text, written by 13th century scholar Muhaqqiq al-Hilli, was just one of a number of books that some students found "disturbing" and "very worrying", according to The Times.
   "They are being exposed to very literalist interpretations of the Koran. These are interpretations that would not be recognised by 80 or 90 per cent of Muslims, but they are being taught this at school," he said.
   "A lot of people in the Muslim community are very concerned about this. We need to urgently re-examine the kind of material that is being taught here and in other colleges in Britain," the spokesman said. Mohammed Saeed Bahmanpour, a teacher at Hawza and ICAS, con�firmed that the Hilli text was used, but denied it was taught as doctrine.
  ‘They are exposed to literalist interpretations of the Koran ’  
  STUDENTS'SPOKESMAN  
   "We just read the text and trans�late for them, but as I said I do not deal with the book on purity. We have left that to the discretion of the teacher whether he wants to teach it or not," Dr Bahmanpour said.
   "The idea is not to teach them jurisprudence because most of the fatwas of Muhaqqiq are not actually conforming with the fatwa of our modern jurists. The idea is that they would be able to read classical texts and that is all."
   As well as allegedly likening unbe�lievers to pigs and dogs, the Hilli text includes a chapter on jihad, laying out the conditions under which Mus�lims are supposed to fight Christians and Jews, The Times said.
   It also reported that one of the managing trustees of Hawza and ICAS was Abdolhossein Moezi, an Iranian cleric and a personal repre�sentative of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader.
  [Picture] Ayatollah Khamenei: Iran's supreme religious leader linked to UK school.

World Vision gives prayer mats to Muslims

 
   Life News (Western Australia), p 4, April-May, 2006
I was recently advised that World Vision, while carrying out a massive aid programme to Aceh and Indonesia in response to the tsunami, also donated thousands of Muslim prayer mats to Muslim recipients of aid.
   Without deprecating the enormous value of the humanitarian work done by World Vision to otherwise destitute people, the above fact, if true, causes me a great deal of alarm.
   First, I interpret this action as a declaration that World Vision has become a purely secular organisation. Secondly, to contribute to another creed and the worship of another god is a flat denial of the uniqueness of Christ and a denial of the very motive of Christian charity of the givers, from which the aid historically arose and economically flows.
   I do not subscribe to any notion that Christ�ian charity or aid should have strings attached to elicit quasi conversions. However Christian donors can surely expect that the world knows that this aid comes largely from Christians. I submit that, if true, the sending of Muslim prayer mats is a misuse of Christian donors' money of which many may not approve if they knew.
   Perhaps some representative of World Vision will refute these facts, or if true, acknowledge these facts to disabuse supporters of any notion that World Vision is a uniquely Christian organisation. If the above facts are true, perhaps the organisers of World Vision will promise to revoke this policy of appeasement of other gods and promptly say so to reassure Christian donors.
   - name supplied

Transcript: Bin Laden accuses West

 
   Aljazeera.Net , http://english. aljazeera.net/ NR/exeres/F96 94745-060C- 419C-8523-2E093 B7B807D.htm , 0:26 Makka Time, 21:26 GMT, Monday, April 24, 2006 (televised April 23, 2006)
The following is an edited translation of an audiotape attributed to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, parts of which were aired by Aljazeera on April 23, 2006. (It is not known where or when the recording was made.)
   [Picture]
   Praise be to Allah, Lord of the world, prayer and peace be upon our prophet Muhammad, his kin and all his companions.
   Peace, Allah's mercy and blessing be upon you, as I am directing this speech to all the Islamic Umma, to continue talking and urging them to support our prophet Muhammad, and to punish the perpetrators of the horrible crime committed by some Crusader-journalists and apostates against the master of the predecessors and successors, our prophet Muhammad.
   The holy verses of the Quran and the holy prophetic teachings have all clarified the need for according love, respect and obedience to our prophet. Allah, the Almighty, has made it a taboo to offend him, saying in the Quran those who harm Allah and his messenger would be damned and severely punished.
   It was also confirmed by an authentic source that prophet Muhammad said no one could be faithful until he loves me more than he loves his parents, his sons and all other people. Therefore, the Umma has reached a consensus that he who offends or degrades the messenger would be killed. Such offence is regarded as kufr (infidelity).
   We ask Allah to give his blessings to whoever decried the behaviour of the infidels who have offended the prophet in every part of the world, and blessings to those who have died in the process, while we vow to Allah to avenge for those whose blood have been spilled.
   The West is incapable of recognising the rights of others. It will not be able to respect others' beliefs or feelings. The West still believes in ethnic supremacy and looks down on other nations. They categorise human beings into white masters and coloured slaves.
   This is why they established institutions and enacted laws to maintain their supremacy by creating the United Nations and the veto power ... . They regard jihad for the sake of God or defending one's self or his country as an act of terror. US and Europe consider jihad groups in Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan as terrorist groups, so how could we talk or have understanding with them without using weapons?
   On their part, the rulers of our region consider the US and Europe as their friends and allies while looking at the jihad groups that fight against the Crusaders in Iraq and Afghanistan as terrorist groups as well. So how can we reach understanding with those rulers who deny us the right to defend ourselves and our religion without carrying arms?
   The net result of their thinking is for us to abandon jihad and acquiesce to remaining as their slaves. This is impossible, God willing.
   The Palestine question is a manifestation of such injustices when the allied forces of the Crusaders and the Zionists decided to hand over Palestine to the Zionists to establish a state after committing massacres, displaced the indigenous Palestinians and brought Jews from all over the world to settle in Palestine.
   The ongoing injustice and aggression did not stop in the last nine decades, while all attempts to reclaim our rights and exact justice on the Israeli oppressors, were blocked by the leadership of the Crusaders and Zionists' alliance by using the so-called veto power.
   Such attitudes were also reflected by their rejection of the Hamas movement and its victory in the elections ... . Their rejection to Hamas has reaffirmed that they were waging a crusade against Islam.
   The US sought to reach southern Sudan, recruited an army of southerners, supported them with weapons and funding and directed them to seek separation from Sudan. Then it exercised pressure against Khartoum government to sign an unjust agreement which permits south Sudan to gain independence from the north within six years.
   [Sudanese President Omar] al-Bashir and [US President George] Bush should have been aware that this agreement is not worth the ink by which it was written, and we do not accord the least concern to it. Nobody, whoever he was, has the right to accede an inch of the land of Islam and the south will remain an inseparable part of the land of Isalm, God willing, even if the war continued for decades.
   The US was not satisfied by all the sedition and crimes, but went on to incite sedition, the largest of which was the west Sudan sedition by exploiting some disputes between the tribes and sparking a savage war between them that will spare nothing, prior to sending in Crusader troops to occupy the region and steal its oil wealth under the pretext of peacekeeping.
   This is a continuous Crusader-Zionist war against Muslims. In this respect I am inviting the mujahidin and their supporters in the Sudan and other countries around, including the Arabian peninsula in particular, to prepare all that is needed for a long-term war against the Crusaders and thieves in western Sudan.
   Our objective is obvious, that is defending Islam, the people and the land but not Khartoum government since our differences with them are so enormous, mostly when it backtracked in implementing the Sharia law and abandoned south Sudan.
   I urge the mujahidin to get acquainted with Darfur state tribes and land and its surroundings, keeping in mind that the region is about to face the rainy season that hampers means of transport.
   This is one of the reasons why the occupation was adjourned for six months. So it is imperative to speed up action and benefit from the time factor by stocking a large amount of landmines and anti-armour grenades such as RPGs [rocket propelled grenades].
   What was the aim behind barring arms from the unarmed people in Bosnia and letting the Serb army to massacre Muslims and spill their blood for years under UN cover? It was a Crusader war against Muslims.
   What was the aim of the pressure against Indonesia by the Crusaders countries until East Timor, 24 hours after a warning by the UN? A Crusader-Zionist-Hindu war against Muslims.
   Meanwhile, a UN resolution passed more than half a century ago gave Muslim Kashmir the liberty of choosing independence from India and Kashmir. George Bush, the leader of the Crusaders' campaign, announced a few days ago that he will order his converted agent [Pakistan President Pervez] Musharraf to shut down the Kashmir mujahidin camps, thus affirming that it is a Zionist-Hindu war against Muslims.
   With respect to Pakistan, some Muslims have done a good job by assisting their fellow Muslims, God bless them, but the Pashtun tribes must be aided after the Pakistan army devastated their homes in Waziristan in order to satisfy the US.
   What does the silence over Russian atrocities inside Chechnya mean, along with mutilating their bodies by tying them to tanks while the so-called free world gives its blessings and even secretly supports the aggression ? This is a Zionist crusade.
   What does the humiliation of Muslims in Somalia and killing 13,000 Muslims mean, along with torching Muslims' bodies? This is a Zionist-Crusaders war.
   I will remind Muslims to fear God and to save their brothers in the African Horn from the famine that hit them.
   What does the destruction of the infrastructure in Iraq mean and the tragedy that befell them mean? And the use of depleted uranium, besieging Iraq for years, causing the death of more than one million children which amazed all who had visited Iraq, including the Westerners themselves? It is a malicious crusade against Muslims.
   What does the reoccupation of Iraq mean by using lies and deception along with murder, destruction, detention, torture and creation of huge military bases to dominate the whole region? It is a Zionist crusade against Muslims.
   What about the continuous cultural domination through the setting up of radio stations and TV channels along with the Voice of America, London and others to continue the cultural domination of Muslims, combat our beliefs, change our values, encourage vice and even interfere with school curricula?
   How can we explain France's stance on the headscarf and the banning on wearing it at schools, its relentless dealing with the Muslim community and its plan to establish a TV channel in Morocco to combat Islamic awareness there? This is a Zionist-Crusader war.
   In conclusion, a war is under way to offend the messenger of Allah, his religion and his Umma (nation). The Muslim preparedness and their jihad should be on a par with these events. The duty of our Muslim nation over this Crusaders' campaign with its different aspects is to focus on supporting the prophet, his religion and the Umma to the best of our ability in all fields.
   Despite the numerous Crusader attacks against our Muslim nation in military, economic, cultural and moral aspects, but the gravest of them all is the attack against our religion, our prophet and our Sharia tenets. The epicentre of these wars is Baghdad, the seat of the khalifate rule. They keep reiterating that success in Baghdad will be success for the US, failure in Iraq the failure of the US.
   Their defeat in Iraq will mean defeat in all their wars and a beginning to the receding of their Zionist-Crusader tide against us. Your mujahidin sons and brothers in Iraq have taught the US a hard lesson while in the fourth year of the Crusaders' invasion, they are steadfast and patient and keep killing and wounding enemy soldiers every day.
   It is a duty for the Umma with all its categories, men, women and youths, to give away themselves, their money, experiences and all types of material support, enough to establish jihad in the fields of jihad particularly in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kashmir and Chechnya. Jihad today is an imperative for every Muslim. The Umma will commit sin if it did not provide adequate material support for jihad.
   O fellow Muslims, pay no heed for the number of the enemy and their arsenal of arms because victory is a gift of God while the enemy, praise be to God, is experiencing a critical situation.
A full Arabic transcript of the audiotaped message can be read on Aljazeera's Arabic website [ www.aljazeera. net/NR/exeres/271E CD8F-E577-4E BA-9824-E7BD0E EF5B10.htm. ]

We’ll strike US targets around world, says Iran

 
   The West Australian, om Washington and Teh�ran have escalated in the lead-up to today's deadline for Iran to halt uranium enrichment, with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warning of strikes against US targets around the world if Iran is attacked over its refusal to curb its nuclear program.
   "If the US ventured into any aggression on Iran, Iran will retaliate by damaging US interests worldwide twice as much as the US may inflict on Iran," Ayatollah Khamenei said.
   His statement adds to a campaign of defiance by senior Iranian officials in advance of a report today by the United Nations atomic watchdog, which analysts predict will cite Iran for defying UN Security Council demands to halt its uranium enrich�ment program.
   Ayatollah Khamenei's threat was given further clout by the head of Israeli military intelligence, Gene. Amos Yadlin, who was quoted by Haaretz newspaper in Jerusalem yesterday as saying Iran had bought North Korean long-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Europe.
  [Picture] Ayatollah Khamenei: Steps up warnings as deadline looms.
   While Iran's arsenal already could hit Israel, it now could threaten Europe and other Middle East nations, he said. Some of the missiles, which have a range of 2500km and are known in the West as BM-25, had already arrived in Iran, Gen. Yadlin said.
   They were originally manufac�tured in the Soviet Union and are able to carry a nuclear warhead.
   The heightened tensions between the US and Iran have helped drive oil prices to record highs and have sparked intense diplomatic meetings aimed at heading off greater destabilisation in the Middle East. This week, Iranian officials also threat�ened to cut oil production, export nuclear technology, bar international nuclear monitors, make their nuclear program entirely secret and quit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
   But Iran on Wednesday also sent its Vice-President to Vienna for llth-hour talks with the Interna�tional Atomic Energy Agency.
   While Bush administration officials have said they have no plans to attack Iran, they have repeatedly said they have not ruled out that step.
   US military experts are confident that US forces could carry out exten�sive airstrikes against Iranian targets, but disagree on how much of a set�back such raids would impose on the Iranian nuclear program.
   Iran says it will not stop enrich�ment, which it says is purely for civilian purposes.
   Washington, backed by Britain and France, has been pushing for sanctions if, as it expects, the nuclear watchdog reports that Iran has flouted UN demands.
   But Russia and China, the UN Security Council's other two veto-wielding permanent members, oppose any embargo.
   The stand-off with the West is expected to dominate talks between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her counterparts from NATO. #

Pell sees dark side of Islam’s holy text

 
   The West Australian, p 12, Friday, May 5, 2006
   SYDNEY: Australia's top Catholic clergy�man, Cardinal George Pell, says -the Koran is riddled with "invoca�tions to violence" and the central challenge of Islam lies in the strug�gle between moderate and extrem�ist forces as the faith spreads into a "childless Europe".
   Sydney's Archbishop said read�ing the Koran, the sacred text of Islam, was vital "because the chal�lenge of Islam will be with us for the remainder of our lives".
   In a speech to Catholic business people in the US, Dr Pell also said Western democracy was suffering a crisis of confidence as evidenced by the fall in fertility rates.
   "Pagan emptiness" and West�ern fears of the uncontrollable forces of nature had contributed to "hysteric and extreme claims" about global warming.
   "In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today, they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emis�sions," he said.
   Dr Pell said the September 11 terrorist attacks had been his per�sonal wake-up call to understand Islam better. He had tried to reconcile claims that Islam was a faith of peace with those that sug�gested the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims.
   While there was room for opti�mism in fruitful dialogue between faiths and the human desire for peace, a pessimistic response began "with the Koran itself.
   Errors of facts, inconsistencies, anachronisms and other defects were not unknown to scholars but difficult for Muslims to debate.
   "In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invo�cations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages," he said.
  [Picture] Violent reaction: Cardinal George Pell says while there is room for optimism in inter-faith dialogue, a pessimistic response begins with the Koran itself.
   Last year, Dr Pell courted con�troversy when he drew a link between Islam and communism. This most recent speech on Islam and Western Democracies was delivered in the US on February 4 but only appeared on the arch�diocese's website on Wednesday.
   Dr Pell said every nation and every religion, including Catholi�cism, had "crimes in their histo�ries". In the same way, Islam could not airbrush its "shadows".
   Claims of Muslim tolerance of Christian and Jewish minorities were largely mythical and he won�dered about the possibility of theo�logical development in Islam when the Koran was said to come directly from God.
   "Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant reli�gion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely lim�ited," he said.
   However, like Christianity, Islam was a living religion and the existence of moderate Islam in Indonesia was proof of the soften�ing impact of human intervention.
   But democracy and moderation did not tally and there were "many ways in which President Bush's ambition to export democracy to the Middle East was a risky business".
   To assist moderate Islam, Dr Pell said the world needed to understand the "secular sources of emptiness and despair and how to meet them, so that people will choose life over death". #

Cardinal Pell Committed To Dialogue With Muslims

 
   Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, www.sydney. catholic. org.au/News/ MR/200655_ 770.shtml , Media release, By + Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, May/5/2006
   Isolated suggestions that I am uninformed on Islam are clichés, smokescreens to distract, to divert attention rather than address basic issues which need to be discussed.
   Islamic terrorists are not a figment of anyone's imagination and the history of relations with Islam is full of conflict.
   I continue to be completely committed to dialogue with Muslims, to supporting moderate forces on all sides.
   I recommend that people read the Quran and my article in Quadrant (also on the Sydney Archdiocese website, www.sydney. catholic.org.au ) and judge for themselves.
   We need a lot of continuing dialogue, based on truth, history and the current situation. #

Intolerance shows ignorance of Islam

 
   Aljazeera Net (Arabic independent TV), http://english. aljazeera. net/NR/exeres/ 347E49BD- B8A3-47A1- AF19-5EBC40 5A8B9F.htm , By Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti, 10:29 Makka Time, 7:29 GMT, Wednesday May 10, 2006
   Eighty years ago, Marmaduke Pickthall, the British scholar of Islam and translator of the Quran, wrote: "It was not until the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they became more tolerant, and it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that they declined in tolerance."
   Tolerance was regarded as irreligious in the Christian world, but was an essential part of Islam, but it is no longer credited to Muslims.
   Nowadays, the more "religious" some Muslims regard themselves to be, the less tolerant they are. The cause is a troubling intellectual decline of the Islamic civilisation.
   While Muslims complain about the Western lack of understanding of Islam, this misconstruction in the interpretation of religious texts is unfortunately prevalent in the Muslim mind today.
   The conversion to Christianity by Abdulrahman, the Afghan recently pardoned from his death sentence after much pressure from the West, and its repercussions illustrate this confusion.

“If we followed Islam the way it ought to be, many of our problems in our homelands would not exist today.” Anwar Hussain, Canada More comments

   Killing a person because of his intellectual choice contradicts the essence of Islamic principles of freedom of faith and worship, repeatedly emphasised in the Quran and the practice of Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him.
No compulsion in religion
   Changing one's Islamic faith is a grave sin. It is a gross violation of the individual covenant with his God, but it does not, in any way, violate Islamic law.
   The Quran repeatedly condemns those who change their Islamic faith, and warns them of a severe punishment on the Last Day.
   But the Quran never prescribed a worldly penalty for apostasy. Therefore, if a Muslim wants to change his faith, so be it. Belief by definition emanates from the individual's heart. Islam is for brave believers, not fearful hypocrites.
   The Quran is unequivocal that faith is a matter of personal choice and conviction; therefore no compulsory power should be used to compel people to adopt a certain belief or prevent them from changing their faith.

One of the most unfortunate phenomena in Islamic culture today is the lack of distinction between morality and legality.

   The Quran says: "Let there be no compulsion in religion: truth stands out clear from falsehood" (2:256); "Say (O Muhammad): This is the truth from the Lord of you all. Then whoever wishes, let him believe, and whoever wishes, let him disbelieve" (18:29).
   Moreover, Muhammad was told in the Quran that his mission was to teach and preach, not to impose or compel: "remind them, for you are only a reminder. You are not a coercer over them" (88:21-22); "You are not one to overawe them by force. So admonish with the Quran those who fear My Warning!" (50:45).
   Following this Quranic guidance, Muhammad never punished people for abandoning Islam, even though some of his contemporaries renounced their faith repeatedly, as recorded in the Quranic condemnation of "those who believed, then rejected faith, then believed again, then rejected faith again, and went on increasing in unbelief ..." (4:137).
   This is clear evidence that Muhammad did not want to punish people on account of their spiritual and intellectual choice.
   Had there been a worldly punishment for apostasy in Islam, Muhammad would have been the first one to apply it. But he knew that he had no such authority from God.
   Consequently, judgment of the matters of faith should be left to God on the Day of Judgment.
Morality vs legality
   One of the most unfortunate phenomena in Islamic culture today is the lack of distinction between morality and legality.
   Judging a specific human behaviour in terms of right and wrong is relatively straightforward and easy. But to be comprehensive and practical requires us to go a step further and determine whether that behavior should be categorised as illegal or immoral.

Tolerance was regarded as irreligious in the Christian world, but was an essential part of Islam, but it is no longer credited to Muslims.

   This distinction is very important once people or institutions decide to react to something that they believe to be wrong. An action can be legal but immoral, or vice-versa.
   In Sharia (Islamic teachings) there is a clear distinction between morality and legality: nearlly all Islamic teachings fall under the category of morality.
   It is the responsibility of the individual believer to adhere to this morality in his personal life - a responsibility before God, not before people. No coercive means are to be used to impose Islamic morality.
   This is because any coercion of this kind will have negative consequences; it will corrupt the moral conscience of the individual by transforming him from a God-conscious believer to a state-fearing hypocrite.
   Islam wants the individual to be a servant of God, not a slave of the state. In Islam, all matters of faith and most of those of personal behaviours and preferences are of moral � not legal - nature.
   Only about one per cent of Islamic teachings fall under the category of legality. This category is a set of laws (family laws, civil laws, penal laws, etc) that the legitimate Islamic government must impose, by exercising the authority of the state.
   Only actions that harm other people or represent potential harm are a part of this category.
   This includes the punishment for murdering innocent people or stealing their property.
   It is generally agreed, in divine and secular laws, that the primary responsibility of governments is to protect people's lives and possessions.
   Unfortunately many Muslims today, including some self-appointed "scholars", do not clearly distinguish between morality and legality, a distinction that any keen student of law understands well.

Islam wants the individual to be a servant of God, not a slave of the state.

   This intellectual confusion allows some Muslim governments to intrude into personal convictions and preferences of their citizens, claiming that they are applying God's law.
   By doing this, they simply cover up their illegitimacy and irresponsibility by infringing upon people's rights, and delving into issues that are not within their area of jurisdiction in Islam.
Treason vs apostasy
   A question might arise: If the Quran explicitly affirms the freedom of faith, why is there all of this controversy about killing apostates? Good question.
   The problem starts with the misinterpretation of a few hadiths (sayings of Prophet Muhammad) suggesting capital punishment as a penalty for apostasy.
   However, what the Prophet meant by those hadiths had nothing to do with intellectual choices related to faith; rather it is the political treason and military sedition within the community, which Muhammad was concerned about as a part of his political responsibility.
   The source of this confusion is that the term "apostasy" (riddah in Arabic) was used in Islamic scripture with two distinct meanings: The first was private apostasy, which is an intellectual choice and has no punishment in Islam. All that Muslims are asked to do with a person who decides to renounce his faith is to remind him of the sacred covenant with his creator (God), and to advise him to repent.
   The other use of the term is related to politico-military apostasy, which includes violent rebellion against the social peace of the community and its legitimate leadership.

Had there been a worldly punishment for apostasy in Islam, Muhammad would have been the first one to apply it.

   Any person judged guilty of this crime is punishable under Islamic law, unless he repents and surrenders himself before he is caught by the authorities. This kind of apostasy is the equivalent of what we call high treason today.
   Betraying one's society, through acts of high treason and military rebellion against its peace and harmony, is punishable under all divine and secular laws. Islamic law is no exception in this regard.
   There are plenty of treacherous politicians and tribal leaders in Afghanistan today who are deservedly eligible for the punishment of high treason in Islamic law.
   Some of them are now among the "respected" leaders of the new Afghanistan. Abdulrahman is evidently not one of them.
   Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti is a Muslim scholar from Mauritania, living in the US.
   The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera. #

Pell ignites Koran controversy

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), By Paul Gray, pp 3-4, May 11, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: Cardinal George Pell has ignited nationwide controversy by highlighting the presence of violent texts within Islam, and urging Catholics to read the Koran.
   Responding to the controversy, the Cardinal said this week that "basic issues" must be addressed in the dialogue between Christianity and Islam. "Islamic terrorists are not a figment of anyone's imagination and the history of relations with Islam is full of conflict," he said.
   The Cardinal's comments were made as further examples of Islamic terrorism around the world were reported, including the savage murder of respected female journalist Atwar Bahjat in Iraq.
   Bahjat was stripped and then filmed as she was tortured and had her throat slowly cut by men dressed in army fatigues yelling "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest")
  [Picture] Cardinal Pell  
   Cardinal Pell said that dialogue with Muslims must be based on "truth, history and the current situation."
   Cardinal Pell said that the holiest book of Islam, the Koran, is replete with statements urging violence in the name of God.
   "In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages."
   Cardinal Pell's comments appear to open up a new chapter in the Muslim-Christian relations in Australia.
   Since September 11, 2001, many interfaith efforts have been made by moderate and tolerant forces both within the Muslim community and the churches to promote better mutual understanding and networking.

Pell urges reality-check in the ongoing dialogue with Islam

 
Continued from page 2
   Prominent members of the Australian Jewish community have also joined in this project.
   One outcome has been the Abraham Interfaith Dialogue, where dozens of representatives of the three "Abrahamic" faiths -Islam, Christianity and Judaism - have joined together for formal discussions and workshops and, in Victoria, two annual live-in conference weekends.
   The focus of these initiatives, so far, has been on exploring religious and philosophical principles which are held in common between the faiths, in the interests of advancing mutual co-operation.
   Cardinal Pell's remarks appear to take this process a step further, by openly focusing attention not just on the commonalities, but on the differences between Christianity and Islam. Critics of the Cardinal are saying that this is merely promoting ignorant attitudes towards Islam.
   However, the Cardinal has countered this argument by stating that people should read the Koran.
   Another new aspect in the Cardinal's argument is the need to promote Christian support for moderate forces within the Islamic communities, at the expense of Muslim radicals and those sympathetic to terrorism.
   "I continue to be completely committed to dialogue with Muslims, to supporting moderate forces on all sides," he said this week.
   In this respect, Cardinal Pell is in line with the views of many secular political thinkers throughout the West, who argue that collaboration with politically moderate forces within Islam is essential to combating terrorism.
   Despite clear evidence that this kind of reasoning lies behind the Cardinal's recent statements, he is likely to continue to be opposed by some critics who decry all mention of the religious underpinning of violence within Islamic culture.
   Also in Sydney this week, Parramatta Bishop Kevin Manning was given an Arabic Heritage League Award. Receiving the award, Bishop Manning told the Arabic Heritage League: "Your organisation is one which models the fact that Christians and Muslims work together for a common purpose.
   "It is in this context that the Arab Heritage League has a role to play in building harmonious relationships between our two communities," the bishop said.
   Bishop Manning also spoke of the need for interfaith dialogues, particularly Christian-Muslim dialogue. #

Ahmadinejad becomes pin-up boy for Muslims

 
   The West Australian, p 27, Saturday, May 13, 2006
   JAKARTA: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man at the centre of the showdown over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, doesn't look the part of a firebrand. But among many Muslims, he's fast becoming the poster boy for defiance.
   In Jakarta and elsewhere in the Muslim world, Mr Ahmadinejad is working to build a reputation as a leader unafraid to stand up to the West.
   To a cheering audience at the University of Indonesia on Thursday, he called Israel a tyrannical regime that one day would be destroyed.
   Many students held up posters of support.
   Before about 1000 students at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, on Jakarta's southern outskirts, he later lashed out at the "double standard" of the big powers, eliciting loud applause when he asked: "If nuclear technology is bad, why do they have it?"
   Despite the growing pressure on Iran to allow international inspections of its nuclear facilities or possibly face United Nations sanctions, Mr Ahmadinejad was on friendly ground in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
   "He impresses me," said Riswanto Hidayat, 21, who attended the rally at Islamic University.
   "He gives a voice to the opposition of Muslims to the arrogance of the United States."
   It is often an angry voice. In a letter to US President George Bush earlier this week, Mr Ahmadinejad brushed aside the concerns over Tehran's nuclear program.
   "We want to use technology for peace and the welfare of the Muslim people around the world," he said. "But they want to use it to invade other countries. This is the difference between us and them."
   Mr Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said he welcomes further negotiations. But he has just as frequently vowed not to kowtow to the West. #

READER'S DIGEST  |  JUNE 2006                                                                                         82

Body politics

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION (FGM) is illegal in Australia. However, some 50,000 women have migrated here from countries where FGM is practised. These include Horn of Africa nations such as Somalia and Sudan, where up to 90% of women undergo the procedure. Campaigners against FGM, which involves the cutting or removal of external female genitalia, are keen to stress that it is primarily a cultural rather than a specific religious practice.
   In Australia, local health workers report continuing support for FGM within some migrant communities. And now state education departments, led by Queensland, are introducing monitoring laws to stop schoolgirls being sent overseas to have the procedure done. A national awareness programme is also in place that will try to change attitudes.
   Eritrean-born Samia Baho, now 41, the first woman from the Horn of Africa to be employed in the welfare sector in Australia, is now the coordinator of the Family and Reproductive Rights Education Program (FARREP) in Victoria. FARREP workers visit hospitals and community health centres to assist migrant women, who often have difficult and especially painful labours and problems conceiving.
   The issue of FGM is complex and highly sensitive and cannot be dealt with in isolation, explains Baho. "FGM is about dignity. It's about your whole being. Imagine if your body has been one way since you were very young and then someone suddenly tells you it's wrong. It's very confronting. It's about giving these women back their confidence and self-esteem."
   One important challenge for FARREP has been to empower women while at the same time engaging the men from their communities in dialogue. "These women are more at risk if we educate them [by themselves] but then send them back to the same husband," says Baho. "Imagine knowing all your rights but not being able to exercise them."
   Changing cultural attitudes is a slow process. "Young men still say they wouldn't marry an uncircumcised girl," she says. "That's why we get the imams and priests involved in the education. They quote from the Koran and remind the men of women's rights."
   Baho says what is also disturbing is a new wave of refugees who include uncircumcised mothers arriving with daughters who have been circumcised. "The mothers know they are coming to a 'permissive' Western society and are worried that they will not be able to control their daughters."
   For more information on this issue, go to readersdigest. com.au .   HEIDI KRAUSE #

Guantanamo inmates riot

 
   Sunday Tasmanian, www.themercury. news.com.au , AFP, p 22, May 21, 2006
   Washington: GUANTANAMO inmates staged a fake suicide bid to lure US guards into a trap and attack them with fan blades and other improvised weapons, the commander of the US detention camp in Cuba said.
   Guards fired rubber bullets and six prisoners suffered minor injuries in what Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, called "the most violent outbreak" at the prison since it was opened in January 2002.
   The ambush was reported on the day a UN panel called on the United States to close the camp for al-Qaeda and Taliban "enemy combatants".
   Australian David Hicks has been held at the camp for more than four years since being arrested in Afghanistan. His father Terry Hicks yesterday said his son would not have been involved in the riot.
   Prison commander Harris said detainees smothered the floor with excrement and soapy water to make it slippery before guards rushed in believing they were saving a man who was seen preparing to hang himself.
   The guards were then attacked with "broken light fixtures, fan blades" and other improvised weapons, Harris said.
   The fighting lasted four to five minutes but it took about an hour to move all the prisoners and clear up the block, Harris said.
   Two real suicide bids were staged before the unrest. Harris said two inmates took an overdose of prescription drugs and were unconscious but in "stable" condition in the main hospital at the US navy base.
   Civilian lawyers who have visited the camp say there is widespread depression among the approximately 460 inmates.
   Harris said about 18 per cent of the inmates had "some form of mental issue" and between eight and 10 per cent had "serious mental issues".
   The UN Committee on Torture, in a report compiled after hearing evidence from senior US officials, yesterday called on the United States to close Guantanamo and any secret prisons it operates around the world.
   But Washington brushed aside charges that Guantanamo inmates were mistreated, insisting that interrogations carried out there were fully within US legal guidelines.
   "It is important to note that everything that is done in terms of questioning detainees is fully within the boundaries of American law," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. #

Dublin cathedral under police siege

 
   Sunday Tasmanian, AP, p 22, May 21, 2006
   Dublin:: ABOUT 40 Afghan asylum-seekers who have waged a six-day hunger strike yesterday threatened to kill themselves if police try to expel them from St Patrick's Cathedral.
   Mediators and human rights activists sought to broker a peaceful solution after 100 police, determined to end a protest that has shut down a major tourist attraction, surrounded the 13th-century Dublin landmark.
   The Church of Ireland, which owns St Patrick's, said the threat to commit suicide on church property was morally unacceptable. #

Iraqi unity forged at last

 
   Sunday Tasmanian, Reuters, p 22, May 21, 2006
   Baghdad: IRAQ'S parliament approved the country's new Cabinet yesterday, opening the way for the inauguration of a national unity government.
   Incoming Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the 275-member parliament that he would make restoring stability and security the top priority of his new administration.
   The milestone came just hours after a bomb killed 19 people and wounded 58 others among a crowd of Shi'ite labourers gathered to look for work in Baghdad's poor Sadr City district.
  [Picture] FEARFUL: A woman whose son was seriously injured in yesterday's blast in Sadr City gives way to tears as she waits at the hospital.  Picture: AP  
   Parliament's approval of the Cabinet, which should govern for the four-year term of the legislature, ended months of inertia that have seen sectarian bloodshed mount amid talk of impending civil war.
   The 37-member Cabinet, led by Prime Minister al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, took months of negotiations to form after the December 15 elections and will be made up of members from all of Iraq's religious, sectarian and ethnic groups.
   It will be Iraq's first constitutional government since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
   The new government can be sure of an enthusiastic welcome in Washington, where frustration with Iraqis' sectarian and ethnic haggling has grown since the election. #

Thai teachers set on by mob

 
   Sunday Tasmanian, p 22, May 21, 2006
   Thailand:: A THAI teacher who was beaten into a coma by a mob demanding the release of Islamic insurgents had only a slim chance of survival, her doctor said.
   About 200 villagers surrounded a school in Narathiwat province and took three teachers hostage to demand the release of the two suspected Muslim rebels.

Turkish truck crash kills 40

 
   Sunday Tasmanian, p 22, May 21, 2006
   Turkey: A SMALL truck packed with illegal immigrants from Afghanistan and Bangladesh crashed into a parked transport truck in southern Turkey yesterday, leaving 40 people dead and six others injured.

Islamic ‘hate books’ face ban

 
   The Sunday Times (Perth, W. Australia), p 32, May 21, 2006
   CANBERRA: THE Federal Government may ban the sale of "hate books" and outlaw the glorification of terrorism.
   Islamic books that support violent jihad can be sold because sedition and incitement laws do not specifically ban them, according to legal advice to the Australian Federal Police.
   But Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said this week the Government would consider strengthening legislation to outlaw the texts.
   However, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions said authorities could not stop sales and, according to security analysts, a ban on the books would achieve little because similar violent material could be found on the internet. #

Iran tags Jews and Christians

 
   The Sunday Times (Perth, W. Australia), p 38, May 21, 2006
   OTTAWA: Prime Minister John Howard has reacted with horror to a new Iranian law forcing Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges.
   The Iranian Parliament passed a law this week requiring all Iranians to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments", Canadian newspaper National Post has reported.
   The law, which has yet to be formally approved, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims - a yellow strip of cloth for Jews, a red badge for Christians and blue cloth for Zoroastrians.
   Mr Howard said he had not been formally briefed on the law, but if the report was true, it would be repugnant.
   "It obviously echoes the most horrible period of genocide in the world's history and the marking of Jewish people with a mark on their clothing by the Nazis, and anything of that kind would be totally repugnant to civilised countries," Mr Howard said.
   The UN is trying to resolve a standoff over Iran's nuclear program.
   Mr Howard's Canadian host and counterpart, Stephen Harper, said the new law should help firm the UN's resolve.
   "I would hope that as our allies wrest with the difficult issues surrounding Iran's apparent desire to obtain nuclear capacity, they will reflect carefully on the nature of a regime that would even contemplate such actions," Mr Harper said. #

[Pell’s points about Muslims valid, correct]

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), Letters to the Editor, p 6, May 25, 2006
Pell’s points valid
Speaking in the US in early February Cardinal George Pell of Sydney said:
   "These are also legitimate requests for our Islamic partners in dialogue: Do they believe that the peaceful suras [chapters] of the Koran are abrogated by the verses [in the later suras] of the sword? Is the program of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad's death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible?
   "Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Sharia law? Can we discuss Islamic history and even the hermeneutical [interpretative] problems around the origins of the Koran without threats of violence?"
   These are very valid points if there is to be useful dialogue in this country both within the Muslim community and between Muslims and non-Muslims. Geoff Taylor, Riverton
Pell is correct
Cardinal George Pell is right when he says that the Koran is riddled with invocations to violence. However it will surprise many to learn that the Bali bombers justified their actions with the verse in the Koran that asks believers "to do good and prevent evil deeds."
   Why this should be so is adequately explained by the New Statesman's cover story entitled "The Struggle for Islam's Soul," Ziauddin Sardar (July 18, 2005) which I recommend to all readers of The Record. Adrian Reutens, Ferndale

Bank in warning to Islamic grouping

 
   The Weekend Australian, by Richard Kerbaj, p 3, May 27-28, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: WESTPAC is demanding the leadership of the nation's main Muslim body prove that it was properly elected before it authorises new executives accessing the organisation's bank accounts.
   With five of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils' nine state bodies rebelling against the new eight-member board and insisting on fresh elections, the bank is demanding clarification about who is actually in charge.
   "We would like a copy of the minutes giving confirmation of the members elected and therefore their authority to appoint signatories to bank accounts," says a letter from the bank dated May 22 and marked "urgent action required".
   Westpac also warns AFIC, a key adviser to the Howard Government on the Muslim community which also helps run Islamic schools across the nation, that its main account is overdrawn by $230,000 and insists the problem be rectified "as soon as possible".
   The bank cites revelations in The Australian about the power struggle within AFIC that has divided the council since elections last month and adds: "We trust that the position will be satisfactorily and speedily resolved."
   The Westpac letter prompted AFIC's new secretary, Mohammed Berjaoui, to send an email to AFIC's nine member councils and their affiliates warning them that the bank may freeze the accounts.
   "There is also serious threat that the AFIC accounts could be frozen by the bank which would leave a number of AFIC schools in serious financial difficulty," his email says.
   AFIC derives most of its income from rent on land that houses its five Muslim schools across the country. Malek Fahd, AFIC's largest school in western Sydney, receives $11 million a year in public funds, more than any other private school in NSW. It also has schools in Brisbane, Perth, Canberra and Adelaide.
   The Weekend Australian revealed last week that five member organisations - including the powerful Islamic Council of Victoria and the Muslims Council of NSW - were pushing for a conference to overthrow the newly elected executive, claiming that last month's elections were invalid.
   Yesterday, AFIC failed in a bid in the Victorian Supreme Court to gag The Australian from publishing stories about the organisation after winning an interim injunction last week.
   Westpac refers to stories in The Australian about the disputed election.
   "It has come to our attention from newspaper media ... that the elections that were held end of April 06 for new AFIC board members may be in dispute.
   "We also note that there is a push 'for a special meeting next month to re-elect an executive committee'."
   AFIC's new president Rahim Ghauri threatened the dissenting councils with legal action, ordering them not to go ahead with a special meeting called to annul the council elections.
   But the email from Mr Berjaoui, the AFIC secretary, assures the five councils of their legal rights and calls on them to dismiss the president's "scare tactics".
   "To demonstrate that we are all living in a free and democratic country, where the constitutions and rules of governance are cherished and protected by the law... we will not be intimidated.
   "Be assured brothers and sisters that the decision to call this special congress by the five state councils has been approved by some of the best legal brains and we are very confident of our legal position." #

JI planned Holocaust gas attack in buildings

 
   The Weekend Australian, by Natalie O'Brien, p 5, May 27-28, 2006
   INDONESIA: INDONESIAN terrorists planned to attack Western targets by spreading hydrogen cyanide, a deadly gas used during the Holocaust, through the air-conditioning systems of large buildings.
   Details of the method of the proposed attack, designed to maximise the number of victims, were revealed in a 26-page training manual produced by members of Jemaah Islamiah, the terrorist group blamed for the Bali bombings.
   Hand-written in the Indonesian language Bahasa, the document expresses optimism that victims exposed to the poison gas will die within 30 seconds.
   But the plans went awry when police raided a JI safe house in the southern Philippines and discovered the training manual.
   The details have been revealed for the first time by Rohan Gunaratna, of the International Centre for Terrorism and Political Violence Research's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies.
   Dr Gunaratna said the document discussed several chemical gases, pesticides, narcotics and biological toxins. Among them were hydrogen sulfide, phosgene, chlorine and arsenic.
   "The chemical weapons section of the manual discusses fairly accurately the production of several highly potent agents that theoretically could cause the death of a large number of people," Dr Gunaratna said.
   "The document surveys several agents of disturbing potency and expresses considerable optimism and fascination with regard to how minuscule amounts of the respective agent are needed to kill a large number of people." In particular, when discussing one toxin, it said: "30ml of the agent can kill 60 million people, God willing.'
   The manual carried the most detail about hydrogen cyanide, also known as Cyclone B, which was used to kill millions of Jews during World War II. It suggested hydrogen cyanide be the killing agent of choice because of its ease of production and delivery. It was also easy to produce.
   Dr Gunaratna said the production and delivery methods described in the manual for chemical attack were accurate. The Australian Federal Police is setting up a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear data centre, which will be responsible for collating and co-ordinating the latest information on such threats, as well as strategies to combat them.
   Dr Gunaratna said a faction of JI that embraced al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden's ideals could be expected to search for "increasingly destructive means in order to keep escalating their struggle". But he said the manual revealed that JI was nowhere near ready for a chemical or biological attack.
   "At best the group may be able to mount a small-scale hydrogen cyanide attack that may succeed in killing a handful of individuals," Dr Gunaratna said.
   But he warned that it was just "a question of time" before they acquired the capability. #

US troops held over atrocities

 
   The West Australian, p 22, Monday, May 29, 2006
   LOS ANGELES: Several US Marines are in the brig at the giant Camp Pendleton in California and more are restricted to the base as two cases of Iraq war atrocities are investigated.
   One involves the possible murder of an Iraqi civilian in the town of Hamandiya on April 26 and an attempt to make him appear to have been an insurgent, US Marines officials said yesterday.
   The second case, which might amount to the worst US atrocity of the war, involves the slaughter of 24 unarmed men, women and children in Haditha on November 19.
   Investigators have already concluded that Marines killed the 24 after an insurgent bomb killed one Marine and injured several others.
   Haditha resident Aws Fahmi, who said he watched from his home as Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, recalled hearing neighbour Younis Salim Khafif beg in English for the lives of himself and his family.
   "I heard Younis speaking to the Americans, saying: 'I am a friend. I am good'," Mr Fahmi said. "But they killed him and his wife and daughters."
  [Picture] Lest they forget: A volunteer helps place 2758 crosses, Stars of David and Muslim crescents on Santa Monica beach, Los Angeles, on Saturday to remember Iraq war casualties as part of the US Memorial Day weekend.  Picture: Associated Press  
   Photographs of the bodies taken by a Marine intelligence unit have convinced investigators the civilians were defenceless and some were killed "execution-style", officials close to the investigation said.
   The pictures are said to show wounds to the upper bodies of the victims, who included six children. Some were shot in the head and some in the back.
   A US Government official said the pictures showed that Marines "suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership with tragic results".
   In the Hamandiya incident, an Iraqi was allegedly taken from his home and shot dead, officials said.
   Marines might have planted an AK47 automatic rifle and shovel near the body to give the appearance that he was an insurgent planting an improvised explosive device to detonate against US forces.
   More than a dozen Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment are being investigated in the Hamandiya killing. A dozen from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, are under suspicion for the Haditha killings.
   A report by an army general on the Haditha incident is expected within days.
   In London, the BBC reported that more than 1000 members of the British armed forces had deserted since the start of the war in Iraq three years ago.
   Last week, Labour Party MP John McDonnell told the House of Commons that the level of desertion had trebled since 2003.
   British MPs are debating a new Armed Forces Bill that would make refusal to participate in the occupation of another country punishable by a sentence of up to life in jail. #

  Shorts bring death in Iraq  

 
   The West Australian, p 22, Monday, May 29, 2006
   BAGHDAD: An Iraqi tennis coach and two of his players have been shot dead in Baghdad because they were wearing shorts, authorities said, reporting the latest in a series of recent attacks by Islamic extremists.
   Gunmen stopped the car carrying the Sunni Arab coach and two Shi'ite players, asked them to step out and shot them, said Manham Kubba, secretary-general of the Iraqi Tennis Union.
   Extremists had distributed leaflets warning people in the mostly Sunni neighbourhoods of Saidiyah and Ghazaliyah not to wear shorts, police said.
   No one claimed responsibility for the slayings, which come amid worries that Islamic extremism is spreading in the war-torn country.
   More than 30 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Saturday, including four who died when a bomb in a parked car exploded near a busy bus station in southern Baghdad.
   Seven people were wounded in the blast.
   A US Marine AH-1 Cobra helicopter crashed on Saturday and its two crew members were missing in Anbar province, a volatile area west of Baghdad where insurgents are active.
   Hostile fire was not suspected as the cause of the crash, the US military said. #

THE MEANING OF JIHAD

 
   The New Republic Online (U.S.A.), www.tnr.com/ blog/thep lank?pid= 19225 , The Plank, by Martin Peretz, June 03, 2006
   UNITED STATES of AMERICA: The New York Times this morning carries a story about how Muslim staffers on the Hill have organized the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association to educate their peers and the Congress about Islam.
   Inevitably, they have fixed on "jihad" as the most misunderstood concept in the Islamic vocabulary. The spokeswoman pointed out that jihad also means "inner spiritual struggle."
   So what! It's not inner spiritual struggle that offends us. It's murder.
   (Oh yes, and also the fact that organized Muslims are not often heard to condemn this oh, so innocent concept that kills.)
   This particular disingenuous parsing was also used by that Harvard senior who, a few years ago and egged on by especially tendentious and mischievous faculty, gave a speech at commencement exercises that was meant to extract the venom from the idea.
   The idiot propagandist at Georgetown, Professor John Esposito, once observed that jihad was also used when a town was trying to get itself cleaned up.
   But jihad is jihad, and the world is now spinning from so many jihads issued by so many Muslim clerics based on so many citations to the Koran and hadiths of the prophet that ordinary men and women will be excused for not taking the recherché explanations seriously and focusing on the jihads which shed blood, like the ones in Iraq and Indonesia and India and Israel and Egypt and the Philippines and Great Britain and Spain and (yes, even) France and, lest we forget, these United States of America, one clear morning just five years ago.
   Militant Islam and militant Arab nationalisms have a cohort of self-deployed apologists. I know one is not supposed to talk ill of the dead. But Peter Jennings was the most present among these.
   His career in this vein actually started at the 1972 Munich Olympics where, after the massacre of Israeli athletes, he reported on ABC that Palestinians were so desperate that one had to understand their, well, their desperation.
   Immediately after September 11, he did a TV show explaining how well women were treated in Islam. Of course, this was a non sequitur: It had nothing to do with the atrocities at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was also false.
   A new book, Warrant for Terror: Fatwas of Radical Islam and the Duty of Jihad by Shmuel Bar (Rowman and Littlefield), has just been published that clarifies these matters.
   Fatwas are intrinsic to the idea of jihad; they are its marching orders, so to speak ... and marching orders for suicide attacks, beheadings, mutilation of bodies, all of the techniques the jihadists use to call attention to their own crimes against human dignity.
   Yes, the author is an Israeli, a particularly knowledgeable one.
   As the United States might learn from Israel how to win an insurgency so also might we learn from Israelis who have watched the jihad phenomenon unfold for decades. #

Zarqawi calls for civil war

 
   The West Australian, p 22, Monday, June 5, 2006
   BAGHDAD: Iraq's most prominent insurgent leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has called for war between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims in place of his previous policy, which was to fight the US and its allies.
   Within hours, gunmen dragged 26 people off three minibuses, sorted four Sunnis to one side and shot the others, killing 21, including 12 high school students, and wounding one.
   Mayor Serwan Shokir said the incident occurred yesterday after the buses left his town of Qara Tappah.
   In the city of Basra, a Sunni religious group accused security forces of killing 12 unarmed worshippers in a mosque yesterday but police said they had returned fire and shot dead nine terrorists.
   Earlier, a suicide car bomber blew himself up in a crowded market in the city, killing 28 people.
   Al-Zarqawi exhorted Sunnis in a four-hour sermon, excerpts of which were played on Arab-language television at the weekend, to rise to the defence of their sect against Shi'ite enemies he called snakes and traitors.
   "Forget about those advocating the end of sectarianism and calling for national unity," he said.
  [Picture] Body find: A blindfolded skull lies in a mass grave that holds skeletons of people allegedly executed during the rule of Saddam Hussein.  Picture: Associated Press  
   Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, responded by saying the tapes came from a fanatic with a deranged mentality.
   "I don't think Iraqis would listen to these miserable words and reject reconciliation," he said.
   "Reconciliation is the hope of all Iraqis."
   However, political and sectarian divisions have prevented Mr al-Maliki from filling three security ministry posts in his 13-day-old Government. Talks were to continue on the issue last night.
   The call from al-Zarqawi, whose organisation al-Qaida in Iraq has claimed credit for the most deadly attacks on coalition forces and Iraqi civilians, coincided with an upsurge of violence in the country that made May the bloodiest month since the allied invasion in 2003.
   The Ministry of Health said 1398 bodies of civilians were taken to the central morgue in Baghdad alone, 243 more than in April. The count did not include soldiers or civilian victims of explosions, on whom autopsies are not usually conducted.
   Since 2003, at least 30,240 bodies had been taken to the morgue, most shot by gunmen who are seldom caught or prosecuted.
   US military commanders investigating reports carried by the BBC that US Marines killed civilians in the town of Ishaqi on March 15 said at the weekend that the troops had used "appropriate force" in the security operation.
   In other developments, 28 skeletons were exhumed from mass graves south of Baghdad at the weekend in preparation for trials against members of the toppled regime of Saddam Hussein over the suppression of an uprising in 1991.
   In Britain, the family of aid worker Margaret Hassan, who was murdered in Iraq, said yesterday that the British Government refused to communicate with her captors and that cost the Care Australia worker her life.
   Mrs Hassan, whose body has not been found, was kidnapped in 2004.
   Three men arrested in connection with her kidnap and murder are due to go on trial in Baghdad today. #

  Falafels added to banned list  

 
   The West Australian, p 22, Monday, June 5, 2006
   BAGHDAD: As purveyors of nothing spicier than the odd dash of chilli sauce, Baghdad's falafel vendors never imagined their snacks might be deemed a threat to public morality.
   Now, their simple offerings of ground chickpeas fried in breadcrumbs have gone the same way as alcohol, pop music and foreign films - labelled theologically impure by the country's growing number of Islamic zealots.
   In a bizarre example of Iraq's creeping "Talibanisation", militants visited falafel vendors, telling them to pack up their stalls by yesterday or be killed.
   At first, most laughed off the threat - then two were shot dead as they plied their trade.
   "They came telling us, 'You have 14 days to end this job' and I asked them what was the problem," said Abu Zeinab, 32, who packed up his stall for good on Saturday in al Dora, a hardline Sunni suburb.
   "I said I was just feeding the people, but they said there were no falafels in Mohammed the Prophet's time, so we shouldn't have them either. I felt like telling them there were no Kalashnikovs in Mohammed's time either, but I wanted to keep my life." #

London duo held in gas attack probe

 
   The West Australian, p 25, June 5, 2006
   LONDON: British police are questioning two brothers held on suspicion of being involved in a plot to pull off a chemical attack in London similar to the outrage on the Tokyo underground.
   Abul Koyair and Mohammed Abdul Kahar were seized during a raid on a terrace house in Forest Gate, east London, in the early hours of Friday.
   Mr Kahar was shot in the shoulder during the raid, which involved 250 police, MI5 officers and bio-chemical experts.
   Police said the raid was in response to specific intelligence. Detectives believe a plot was being hatched to use a chemical device in the UK but do not believe it was linked to the July 7 bombings in London last year.

Toronto raids net terror bomb suspects, cache of explosives

 
   The West Australian, p 25, June 5, 2006
   TORONTO: Intelligence agents and police arrested 17 people who had amassed a huge cache of explosives and were ready to bomb public targets, Canadian authorities said yesterday.
   Police said the 12 men and five juveniles, who were seized in weekend raids in the suburbs of Toronto and were believed to be Canadian citizens, had assembled three tonnes of ammonium nitrate and turned a mobile phone into a detonator.
   In 1995, two tonnes of the same chemical fertiliser packed in a truck destroyed the US Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
   Authorities would not identify the group's targets but a report in the Toronto Star said they included the Parliament buildings in Ottawa and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service offices in Toronto.
   Authorities denied a report that Toronto's mass transit system was a target.
   The suspects appeared in a Toronto court on Saturday charged under Canada's terrorism laws, passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
   Authorities divulged few details about the men, who all had Arabic names and ranged in age from 19 to 43, and would not discuss the juveniles. Most were young students or workers.
   Since the London public transport system bombings last July, Canadian authorities have warned of possible attacks amid anger in the radical fringes of the country's growing Muslim enclaves and the presence of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. They said they knew of clandestine contacts between Canadian Muslims and extremists, including two Muslim Americans arrested this year in Georgia on terrorism charges.
   "An attack on Canadian soil is now probable," Canada's spy agency warned Parliament last month. A top official of the intelligence service repeated the warning to Senators last week, emphasising the threat of home-grown terrorists.
   Police said the suspects had trained together outside Toronto.
   Luc Portelance, assistant director of operations for the intelligence service, said the accused "appear to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaida", although investigators had not found a link to the terrorist network. #

  Abbas vote plan 'illegal'  

 
   The West Australian, In Brief, p 27, June 5, 2006
   ISRAEL/PALESTINE: The Hamas-led Palestinian Government has rejected a deadline to accept a proposal that implicitly recognises Israel, saying yesterday that President Mahmoud Abbas' plan for a referendum on the matter was illegal.
   Mr Abbas has given Hamas until tomorrow to decide on the proposal or face a national referendum he is expected to win.
   Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said legal advice said referendums were "not permitted on the Palestinian land".
   But he said he would try to continue talks with Mr Abbas over the plan. #

Violence, intolerance are Islamic hallmarks: Pell

 
   The West Australian, p 9, Tuesday, June 6, 2006
   SYDNEY: Cardinal George Pell has angered Muslim leaders for a second time in a month, declaring Islam a much more warlike culture than Christianity.
   Sydney's Catholic Archbishop said Australia had not been changed much in the wake of September 11, 2001, but this could change depending "on how many terrorist attacks" Islamic extremists could "bring off successfully".
   "The million-dollar question" was whether intolerance was a modern distortion of Islam or arose out of internal logic.
   "It's difficult to find periods of tolerance in Islam. I'm not saying they're not there, but a good deal of what is asserted is mythical," he said.
   His comments came in an interview in Rome with the National Catholic Reporter.
   Cardinal Pell stirred controversy last month in a speech to US Catholic businessmen in which he asserted the Koran was riddled with "invocations to violence", and that, strictly speaking, Islam was not a tolerant religion.
   He said in the Rome interview he was willing to talk to hardline Islamic leaders in Australia, if ever that was a possibility, and wanted to develop a substantial agenda for dialogue with mainstream groups.
   Asked to elaborate on his assertion that Islam was not necessarily tolerant, Cardinal Pell said: "I'd be thinking about the general historical and political record of Islam.
   "Now, you might say that for a lot of our history, we weren't particularly tolerant either. To that objection, I'd say, 'Show me where they're tolerant'."
   Keysar Trad, president of the Islamic Friendship Association, said Cardinal Pell's statement that Islam fostered a warlike culture was terrible and totally untrue.
   "It shows that the person making the statement has absolutely no understanding of Islam," he said.
   The founder of the Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations, Kuranda Seyit, said Cardinal Pell appeared to hold a belligerent view of Islam based on a limited understanding of the concept of jihad.
   Cardinal Pell said US President George Bush's ambition to democratise the Middle East was risky because "you're likely to get extremists in, and they'll just change the rules".
   The President of Iran was democratically elected but was typical of the "worst of Islam".

Big cover-up exposes rifts in Indonesia

 
   The West Australian, p 26, Tuesday, June 6, 2006
   JAKARTA: The Indonesian Parliament is considering a ban on "pornoaksi", or porno action, a newly created offence so broad that it could include wearing a miniskirt or baring a navel.
   Kissing in public would be punishable by up to five years in prison. Dancing erotically could bring seven years. Exposing body parts that could be deemed erotic would be punishable by as much as 10 years.
   "If you wear something sensual or sexy, it will be considered pornography," said Gadis Arivia, a professor of human rights and Western philosophy at the University of Indonesia, who has helped organise opposition to the Bill. "It will criminalise a lot of women in Indonesia."
   Opposition to the measure has been especially strong in Bali, the predominantly Hindu island that depends heavily on tourism. Some worry that restrictions on attire could ban traditional Balinese dress and scare off foreign tourists accustomed to wearing revealing clothing.
   Opponents of the Bill point to the adoption of Islamic law in Tangerang, a city of two million next to Jakarta, as reason to be concerned.
   During a police sweep in February, Tangerang authorities arrested Lilies Lindawati, 35, a married waitress, as a suspected prostitute.
   The pregnant mother of two, who had been on her way home from work, was found guilty of prostitution because she had make-up and lipstick in her purse.
   Police called model Andhara Early in for questioning after she posed for Indonesia's first edition of Playboy. Investigators asked her to explain what she was doing in each of the five photographs in her eight-page spread. It made no difference that she did not pose nude or even topless.
   Advocates of the anti-pornography legislation say it is needed because existing laws are not "repressive" enough.
   Fauzan Alanshari, spokesman for the Indonesia Mujahideen Council, said that, under today's standards, people might become too accustomed to seeing sensual dress or behaviour.
   "People might say that breasts are not pornography because they get used to seeing breasts," he said. "People might lose their sensitivity. We need the Bill so that it will be more specific and thus it will be more repressive."
   President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has not taken a public position on the issue. But he recently stopped a singer from appearing at a presidential function because her navel was showing. #

IN SHORT
   The West Australian, Two letters, p 22, Thursday, June 8, 2006
   The people who have criticised Cardinal Pell for his outspokenness on the Koran's violent passages expressed by militant Islamists are either uninformed or feel safer hiding their heads in the sand.
   Who do they think is responsible for the ongoing persecution of the Christian minority (1.3 per cent of the population) in Pakistan, which is the worst in this Islamic nation's 60-year history? It certainly isn't Christians who have burnt down their own churches but militants in the name of Islam and sanctioned by the Koran.
   The situation has been so serious that Bishop Saldanha was summoned to an emergency meeting on security by Prime Minister Aziz. The sooner that fact is faced up to the better. Patricia Halligan, Mandurah.
[Crusades, Inquisition, heretic burnings]
   As an unbeliever I hate to quote scripture at Cardinal Pell, but considering his church's record of the Crusades, Inquisition and burning of heretics (read Church of England) in Queen Mary's reign I suggest he refrains from casting the first stone at Islam. Frank Smith, West Perth.

Court told of threat to behead PM

 
   The West Australian, p 26, Thursday, June 8, 2006
   TORONTO, Canada: Terror suspects planned to storm the Canadian Parliament and hold politicians hostage, and at least one wanted to behead the Prime Minister if demands to withdraw Canada's 2300 troops from Afghanistan were not met, according to prosecution statements read in court yesterday.
   The evidence summary said the group also planned to bomb power plants in Ontario and invade studios of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
   The statements offered the first details of the plot that police and intelligence agencies said they had disrupted in a series of raids last Friday. Twelve men and five teenage boys were arrested.
   Fifteen suspects appeared in court in the Toronto suburb of Brampton, shackled together and wearing prison T-shirts. Most were remanded for a bail hearing on Monday.
   The other two suspects did not appear because they are serving sentences at an Ontario prison for trying in August to smuggle weapons into Canada across the Peace Bridge from Buffalo, New York.
   Defence lawyer Gary Batasar said: "The allegations are very serious, including storming and bombing of various buildings."
   Mr Batasar, who represents Steven Vikash Chand, 25, also said: "There is an allegation apparently that my client personally indicated that he wanted to behead the Prime Minister of Canada (Stephen Harper)."
   The arrests, carried out by a team of 400 police, have added tension to the issue of US-Canada border security. Canadian politicians are furious over comments by some US politicians that the charges were evidence of the danger of terrorism moving south across the long, lightly guarded border.
   Canadian Liberal MP Mark Holland said: "I'm very concerned about the amount of play in the US that Canada poses as a gateway to terrorism. It's certainly not true."
   Mr Batasar portrayed the allegations as an attempt by the Government to frighten the public.
   "It appears to me that whether you are in Toronto or Ottawa or Crawford, Texas, or Washington DC, what is wanting to be instilled in the public is fear," he said.
   Several women in black Islamic dress came to watch the proceedings, but would not talk to reporters outside the courthouse.
   Also present was Tariq Abdelhal-een, father of Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, an alleged plot leader.

Vatican might wake up if Pell keeps warning

 
   Letter to The Editor, The West Australian, sent June 8, 2006
   Good on you Patricia Halligan (letters, 8/6) for backing Cardinal George Pell's forthright statements about the Koran's texts that are quoted by criminals masquerading as "religious" people.
   Cardinal Pell's remarks might wake up the dozy higher-ups in the Vatican and in Australia too that roadside bombs, suicide raids on Westerners and on others including Muslims, attacks on schools and theatres, and videotaped gruesome beheadings of people, will become commonplace around the world unless the public and their leaders wake up to the dangers of accepting such teachings and cultures into civilised society.
   Before his US February speech, widely reported in recent weeks, Cardinal Pell had been shocked enough to issue in January, here in Australia, a warning to gangs of youths of Middle Eastern descent not to target Christmas celebrations, after families were abused and gunshots fired into cars at a primary school's carols night in western Sydney. -- CathNews (from Church Resources, Australia), "Pell Tells Race Gangs That Christmas Is Sacred," www.cathnews. com/news/ 512/74.php , January 6, 2006
   In reply to Frank Smith's letter talking about the Crusades (a war to regain Christian lands), the Inquisition (indefensible, I grant), and the burnings of heretics (quite un-Christian, too), it is some decades since the Roman Catholic Church embarked on such campaigns.
   People pretending to be following divine law beheaded the aid worker Margaret Hassan, on video. Other beheadings are regular in Iraq and are taking place in Afghanistan and Indonesia.
   In Canada it is reported that a militant group had gathered ingredients for a bomb, and planned to storm Parliament House and behead the PM (newsitem 8/6).
   Wise citizens will check the facts about the Wahhabi leadership in Arabia, the Iranian ayatollahs, and the teachings of the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sharia law, before they denigrate modern-day prophets.

Obituary: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

 
   BBC, http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/middle_ east/505 8262.stm , June 8, 2006
   Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was Iraq's most notorious insurgent - a shadowy figure associated with spectacular bombings, assassinations and the beheading of foreign hostages.
   The Jordanian-born militant first appeared in Iraq as the leader of the Tawhid and Jihad insurgent group, merging it in late 2004 with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
   But most information on him was restricted to what his enemies and supporters have attributed to him.
   While many analysts argued he had used the Iraqi insurgency as a springboard to expand his operations, sceptics said his influence was exaggerated.
   In the style of Bin Laden, Zarqawi apparently released a number of audiotapes rallying support and challenge [? challenging] the US and its allies - but he only appeared in one video message, less than two months before his death.
   However, videotapes did appear in the name of Tawhid and Jihad - horrific footage showing the beheading of foreign hostages, with Zarqawi himself said to be the man wielding the knife.
Pretext for war
   In the run-up to the Iraq war in February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that Zarqawi was an associate of Osama Bin Laden who had sought refuge in Iraq.
   Intelligence reports indicated he was in Baghdad and - according to Mr Powell - this was a sure sign that Saddam Hussein was courting al-Qaeda, which, in turn, justified an attack on Iraq.
   But some analysts at the time contested the claim, pointing to Zarqawi's historical rivalry with Bin Laden.
   They had both risen to prominence as "Afghan Arabs" - leading foreign fighters in the US-backed struggle against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
   It was a far cry from Zarqawi's youth as a petty criminal in Jordan, remembered by those who knew him by his real name - Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayleh - as a simple, quick-tempered and barely literate gangster.
   But after the defeat of the Soviets, Zarqawi went back to Jordan in 1992 with a radical Islamist agenda.
Sentenced to death
   He spent seven years in prison there, accused of conspiring to overthrow the monarchy and establish an Islamic caliphate.
   Not long after his release under a general amnesty in 1999, he fled the country.
   Jordan tried him in absentia and sentenced him to death for allegedly plotting attacks on American and Israeli tourists.
   Western intelligence indicated Zarqawi had sought refuge in Europe.
   German security forces later uncovered a militant cell which claimed Zarqawi was its leader.
   Cell members told their German interrogators their group was "especially for Jordanians who did not want to join al-Qaeda".
   According to the German intelligence report, this "conflicts with... information" from America.
Kurdish connection
   The next stop on his itinerary was said to be his old stamping ground - Afghanistan.
   He is believed to have set up a training camp in the western city of Herat, near the border with Iran.
   Students at his camp supposedly became experts in the manufacture and use of poison gases.
   It is during this period that Zarqawi is thought to have renewed his acquaintance with al-Qaeda.
   Following the 11 September 2001 attacks and the US invasion of Afghanistan, he is believed to have fled to Iraq after a US missile strike on his Afghan base.
   US officials say that it was at al-Qaeda's behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar al-Islam - a group of Kurdish Islamists from the north of the country.
Sectarian strategy
   In October 2002, Zarqawi was blamed for the assassination of US aid official Laurence Foley in Amman.
   But it has been in Iraq, though, that he was said to have been most active.
   He was blamed for some of the first big insurgency attacks to shake Iraq following the US-invasion to overthrow Saddam.
   These included the truck bombing that killed 23 people including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello at the world body's headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003 and the blast in Najaf 10 days later that killed a senior Shia cleric and more than 85 others.
   A letter released by the Americans in February 2004 seemed to support their claim that targeting Shias is central to Zarqawi's strategy in Iraq.
   In it, Zarqawi appeared to share his plans for igniting sectarian conflict in Iraq as a means of undermining the US presence there.
   Within days of the letter's release, bomb attacks on recruiting centres for the Iraqi security forces had killed nearly 100 people.
   Another approach that sent shockwaves around the world was the beheadings of foreign hostages, which were posted on the internet in video footage attributed to the Tawhid and Jihad group.
   In some of them, Al-Zarqawi himself was said to be the man wielding the knife.
Bin Laden rival?
   The US military claimed to have injured Zarqawi in an assault in 2005. A statement released by al-Qaeda appeared to confirm this but said the injuries were minor.
   Several men alleged to be key aides of Zarqawi have also been killed or captured - but these appeared to have had no effect on his group's ability to operate.
   The US offered a $25m bounty on Zarqawi's head - the same sum they offered for Bin Laden himself.
   But in the last year, he seemed to have been able to move his campaign beyond Iraq's borders again, claiming responsibility for a triple suicide bombing in the Jordanian capital Amman in November 2005, as well as other attacks.
   Shortly afterwards, the al-Qaeda in Iraq group posted a web statement saying that it had joined five other insurgent groups in Iraq to form a new umbrella group, the Mujahideen Shura Council.
   It was also reported that Zarqawi was forced to step down as leader of his group.
   A leading Islamist who was behind the reports, Huthaifa Azzam, said some followers had been unhappy about Zarqawi's tactics and tendency to speak for the insurgency as a whole.
   But like so much else about Zarqawi's life, the true facts seem likely to remain shrouded in uncertainty. # [3 pictures]

Police probe indecent-dealing claim

 
   The Sunday Times (Perth, W. Australia), p 7, June 11, 2006
   PERTH: POLICE are investigating a case of indecent dealing involving a 10-year-old boy at a Perth mosque.
   The boy spent Friday night at the mosque in William St, Northbridge, with his father and some other people.
   Police were called about 8am yesterday after a complaint that the boy was indecently dealt with by a man staying at the mosque.
   The boy will be interviewed by Child Interview Squad detectives tomorrow.
   A man was arrested and interviewed by police, but last night no charges had been laid. #

Who's next? The US got its man. Now it must target the real threat in Iraq

 
   The Independent (London), http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ middle_east/ article756 016.ece , by Patrick Cockburn, June 11, 2006
   Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was never as important a figure in the insurgency as was claimed, and the manner of his death proved it, says Patrick Cockburn
   In the days before he was tracked down and killed by US laser-guided bombs, Iraq's most wanted man was living with almost no guards and only five companions, two of whom were women and one an eight-year-old girl, it emerged yesterday.
   The US military displayed the few tattered possessions of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, and those who died with him in the rubble of an isolated house half hidden by date palms outside the village of Hibhib in Diyala province, north-east of Baghdad.
   The ease with which Iraqi police and US special forces were able to reach the house after the bombing without encountering hostile fire showed that Zarqawi was never the powerful guerrilla chieftain and leader of the Iraqi resistance that Washington has claimed for more than three years.
   Amid the broken slabs of concrete and twisted metal was a woman's leopardskin-print nightgown, a magazine with a picture of Franklin Roosevelt and a leaflet apparently identifying a radio station in Latafiyah which might be a potential target for attack. It is not clear how long the little group had been in the house.
   Zarqawi himself was dragged dying from the ruins of his house by Iraqi police and strapped to a stretcher. "Zarqawi did in fact survive the air strike," said Major General William Caldwell, the US military spokesman. Covered in blood, he survived a few minutes after the Americans arrived and muttered a few unintelligible words. "Zarqawi attempted to sort of turn away off the stretcher," said Gen Caldwell. "They - everybody - re-secured him back on to the stretcher, but he died almost immediately thereafter from the wounds he received from the air strike."
   The only resistance encountered by American commandos was from local Sunni villagers in the village of Ghalabiya, near Hibhib, who thought the strangers were members of a Shia death squad. Villagers who were standing guard fired into the air on seeing the commandos, who in turn threw a grenade that killed five of the guards. American regular army troops later came to Ghalabiya to apologise and promise compensation to the families of the dead men.
   By the time he died, Zarqawi's list of enemies included the US, the Iraqi government, many of the Sunni tribes and insurgent leaders. The biggest surprise surrounding his death last week was that it took so long to happen. And the manner in which he died confirms the belief that his military and political importance was always deliberately exaggerated by the US. He was a wholly obscure figure until he was denounced by then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, before the US Security Council on 5 February 2003. Mr Powell identified Zarqawi as the link between al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein, though no evidence for this was ever produced.
   Indeed, Iraqi police documents, discovered later, showed that Saddam Hussein's security forces, far from collaborating with Zarqawi, were trying to arrest him. Arriving in Iraq in 2002, he had taken refuge in the mountain hideout of an extreme Islamic group near Halabja in Kurdistan, in an area which the Iraqi government did not control. As for al-Qa'ida, in Afghanistan Zarqawi had led a small group hostile to it, and was never a close adherent of Osama bin Laden.
   Over the past three years Zarqawi has had a symbiotic relationship with US forces in Iraq. After the capture of Saddam in December 2003, Zarqawi was once again heavily publicised by US military and civilian spokesmen as the pre-eminent leader of the resistance. The aimwas to show that by invading Iraq, President Bush was fighting international terrorism. The US denunciations, and videos of Zarqawi beheading Western hostages, combined to spread his fame throughout the Muslim world, enabling him to recruit men and raise money easily. But for all his vaunted importance, US spokesmen admitted that Zarqawi's suicide bombers concentrated almost entirely on soft targets, and were responsible for very few of the 20,000 American casualties in Iraq.
   It is difficult to track the movements of Zarqawi over the past three years, but until the summer of 2005 he appears to have lived in or around Ramadi in Anbar province west of Baghdad. The area is almost entirely Sunni, and largely under the control of the resistance, but increased US military activity in Ramadi last year reportedly forced him out. He was also heavily criticised by some other resistance groups and tribes for launching a sectarian war against the Shia which blackened the name of the insurgency at home and abroad.
   In moving to Diyala province, north-east of Baghdad, Zarqawi was in more danger. The province is divided between Sunni and Shia along with some Kurds, who have been fighting a ferocious local civil war. Yesterday, for instance, police found the severed heads of two Sunni Arab brothers in the small town of Khan Bani Saad near Baquba, in Diyala province, where they had been kidnapped a week ago.
   Also yesterday, and as if to demonstrate that there has been no let up since Zarqawi's death, one group, Ansar al-Sunna, posted a gruesome video showing militants interrogating and then beheading three Iraqis said to be part of a Shia "death squad". Such videos have become rare, so posting one now on a militant internet forum could be to show that the insurgency will remain as fierce as ever.
   It is not clear how far American or Iraqi government statements about how they located Zarqawi should be believed. It appears unlikely that he was meeting his lieutenants, as was first suggested, given that only two other men died with him.
   There are already signs that in propaganda terms, the US military - as well as the media - is missing Zarqawi as a single demonic figure who could be presented as the leader of the resistance. The myth of Zarqawi was attractive to Washington because it showed that anti-occupation resistance was foreign-inspired and linked to al-Qa'ida.
   In reality the insurgency was almost entirely home grown, reliant on near-total support from the five million-strong Sunni community. Its military effectiveness was far more dependent on former officers of the Iraqi army and security forces than on al-Qa'ida. They may also have helped to boost Zarqawi's fame, because it was convenient for them to blame their worst atrocities on him.
   One impact of the death of Zarqawi may be to lessen the threat of attacks in Jordan, his home country. It was he who was behind the bombing of hotels in Amman last year which killed 60 people. He was also the most unrelenting advocate in the resistance for attacks on Shia Muslims - 60 per cent of the Iraqi population - as heretics and enemies of the Sunni.
   The killing of Zarqawi is a boost for the newly formed government of Nuri al-Maliki, but Iraqis did not fail to notice that when announcing it, he stood at the podium between Gen George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador. "It showed the limits of Maliki's independence from the Americans," noted one Iraqi commentator. "It would have been better if they had let him make the announcement standing alone."
   Such moments demonstrate the gulf that remains in the Americans' understanding of what motivates so many Iraqis to take up arms against them. It also helps to explain why Zarqawi's demise may make very little difference to the strength of the insurgency. #

KOSOVO'S ETHNIC STRIFE CONTINUES. Final Status Quo

 
   The New Republic (U.S.A.), www.tnr.com/ doc.mhtml? i=20060626&s=kahn 062606 , by Jeremy Kahn, Posted to internet June.15.06 | Issue date June.26.06
   Kosovo
Seventy-year-old Svetislav Jovicic sits in the noonday sun on the dusty steps of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Orahovac and laments what his life has become. He used to own a winery in the lush green hills surrounding this south central Kosovo town, a place his ancestors have lived for more than three centuries. As a younger man, he played for an amateur soccer club, earning the friendship of many of his ethnic Albanian teammates. "For many, many years in Orahovac, everyone lived very well with Albanians," Jovicic says.
   But now, his winery is gone, destroyed by the Albanians who seized the land six years ago. His Albanian soccer buddies never visit anymore. Today, Jovicic lives as a virtual prisoner in the tiny warren of garbage-strewn streets that make up the town's Serbian enclave. Located just uphill from Orahovac's town center, the enclave's border with the surrounding Albanian neighborhood is demarcated by rolls of barbed wire that can be used to seal off the tiny ghetto in the event of ethnic violence. On a number of occasions since 1999, Albanians here attacked Serbs and their property. During major ethnic violence in March 2004, two Serbian Orthodox churches in nearby villages were burned to the ground. "Recently, it has been mostly peaceful, but it is not safe to go down," Jovicic says. He and other residents of the Serbian enclave fear they will be attacked if they wander into the town center. "They say it is open for free movement, but that is not the reality."
   The reality is bleak. Jovicic complains that there are no jobs for his children here; Albanians refuse to hire them. He subsists on the 40 euros per month he receives from international aid organizations. Faced with such conditions--and with the occasional waves of ethnic strife--many of Orahovac's Serbs have left, moving to new homes and new lives in Serbia. Once, the town had a Serbian population of more than 2,500. Today, 500 at most remain--all of them living within the enclave, guarded day and night by a contingent of Austrian soldiers.
   The Austrians are part of a 17,000-man NATO force that continues to keep the peace in Kosovo seven years after a NATO bombing campaign drove the Serbian military out of the province. Since then, Kosovo has been administered by a U.N. special representative, although the province has remained technically a part of Serbia. U.N.-brokered talks currently underway in Vienna between negotiators from Belgrade and Pristina are supposed to decide the province's "final status" by the end of the year--that is, whether it remains a part of Serbia, becomes its own state, or is offered something in between. While Serbian President Boris Tadi�c has proposed "more than autonomy, less than independence" for the breakaway province, most observers believe the negotiations will result in an independent Kosovo. When that happens, one of the most significant pieces of unfinished business from the 1990s humanitarian interventions in the Balkans will be concluded--but only on paper.
   In the United States, the American-led intervention in Kosovo is widely perceived as a success, especially by liberals who are fond of contrasting it to the mess President Bush has made in Iraq. NATO went to war in 1999 to end a brutal campaign of repression and ethnic cleansing against Kosovar Albanians launched by then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, in which at least 10,000 Albanians were killed. In this, the NATO campaign succeeded. But ending Milosevic's reign of terror was not the only goal of NATO intervention. For the last seven years, the United States and the international community have invested billions of dollars in Kosovo in the hopes of building a peaceful, democratic, and multi-ethnic society. "Failure to secure a multi-ethnic Kosovo would be a failure of our efforts over the last six years, and indeed, the last decade," Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told a congressional committee last year.
   Yet this multi-ethnic dream remains almost as distant as it was on the day NATO forces arrived. Freed from Serbian oppression, Albanians--who make up about 90 percent of Kosovo's 2.2 million people--have taken revenge on their Serb neighbors. They killed at least 1,000 Serb civilians during and in the immediate aftermath of the NATO bombing campaign, and, since then, as many as 100,000 Serbs have been driven from their homes. Those that remain, such as Jovicic, live in ghettos, their movement and ability to work severely restricted. Meanwhile, in northern Kosovo, which still hosts a large Serb population, ethnic Albanians live similarly precarious lives. Following the last major spasm of ethnic violence in March 2004, an uneasy calm has descended across Kosovo. Mainstream Albanian politicians, conscious that continued ethnic strife would hurt the chances for independence, say pleasant things about building multi-ethnic institutions and protecting the rights of the Serb minority. Beneath the surface, however, darker political currents swirl.
Albin Kurti does not look like a dangerous man. With his tousled brown hair, Elvis Costello glasses, and faded blue sweater, the 31-year-old sitting in the lobby of Pristina's Grand Hotel sipping a macchiato could pass for a typical Williamsburg hipster--or at least the talented computer science student he once was. But, to hear some tell it, Kurti poses a grave threat to Kosovo's future as a peaceful, multi-ethnic state.
   Kurti is something of a cult hero to the worldwide Albanian diaspora. As a student at the University of Pristina in the late '90s, he led an underground movement that organized sit-ins and other nonviolent demonstrations against Serbian control of the university. Sporting long hair and a mustache (think Yanni), he quickly became a recognizable face of opposition to Serbian power in Pristina. He later worked as an assistant to Adem Dema�i, the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the guerrilla group that was fighting to liberate the province from Serbia. During the NATO bombing campaign in 1999, Serbian police arrested Kurti. When Serb forces withdrew from Kosovo that summer, they took him and other Albanian prisoners with them. Kurti was held largely incommunicado for nine months and endured savage beatings at the hands of his jailers. Almost a year after his initial arrest, he appeared, hair and mustache shorn, in a Serb court, where he was tried and sentenced to 15 years for subversion and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. "Free Albin Kurti Now!" became a rallying cry among ethnic Albanians from Pristina to San Francisco. t-shirts and posters were printed with the slogan, and rock concerts were held to support the cause. International pressure for his release mounted, but with Milosevic still in power in Belgrade, Kurti remained in a cell. Only after Milosevic's ouster did his successor, Vojislav Kostunica, finally let Kurti go in December 2001.
   Back in Pristina, Kurti now leads Self-Determination!, a movement that claims thousands of supporters in 17 cities and towns throughout Kosovo. Self-Determination! is opposed to the U.N. presence in Kosovo and also to the final-status negotiations. "People don't want status, they want freedom," Kurti tells me. He argues that independence should not come through a negotiated settlement with Serbia--which, he says, has shown "no remorse, no repentance" for its persecution of Albanians during the '90s--nor through U.N. decree (a possible outcome if the Serb negotiating team walks out of the talks, as some think likely). Instead, he wants to hold an immediate referendum of Kosovo's citizens. "A referendum is democratic. The current situation is not democratic," he says. "The [U.N. special representative] makes a decision with four or five people and that decides the fate of 2.2 million people. What is democratic about that?"
   Kurti says he has no problem with the Serbian community in Kosovo--"we are fighting a system, not the people," he says--but he talks in paranoid tones about Serbia's continued designs on Kosovo. He speaks darkly of "50,000 spies--Kosovar Albanians--here working for Serbia." And he accuses the Serbs of using the final-status negotiations to continue Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing. From a blue folder he carries with him, Kurti produces a set of maps and points to areas where he claims Serbia is trying, through the final-status negotiations, to resettle Serbs. "They are trying to surround Kosovo Albanians, and they will be a backdoor for Serbia to seize territory," he says. He thinks Serbia wants to partition Kosovo. (The United States, its European allies, and Russia have all said that partition is not on the table.) "This will bring war! This will bring violence! We want to stop this," Kurti says, pointing emphatically at his maps.
   Kurti claims to be a fervent believer in nonviolence. And so far, Self-Determination!'s "actions," as he likes to call them, have indeed been peaceful. Kurti and his followers have held numerous protests outside the U.N. headquarters in Pristina, surrounded the compound with yellow tape reading crime scene--do not cross, blocked access to the compound with bales of hay, trashed U.N. flags, and spray-painted slogans on the compound's walls. Just last week, Kurti and more than 80 supporters were arrested for protesting outside the U.N. compound; Kurti got ten days in jail. They have also tossed rotten eggs at the motorcades of Serb politicians when they have visited Pristina. ("Here you do this and they call it radical. In Palestine, it would be ridiculous," Kurti says.) But some of Kurti's actions have moved in a more sinister direction.
   Next: "On April 14, Kurti led a demonstration of several hundred people in the western Kosovo town of Decani, blocking the entrance to the U.N. offices there to protest the U.N.'s decision to designate 800 hectares surrounding Decani's Serbian Orthodox monastery a 'protected zone.'"

Bali bombs were God's will, says Bashir

 
   The Australian, www.news.com. au/story/0, 10117,19482 261-2,00.html , By Stephen Fitzpatrick and Patrick Walters, Additional reporting: Cath Hart, Simon Kearney, June 16, 2006
   TERRORIST leader Abu Bakar Bashir yesterday taunted Australia, saying the Bali bombing victims had to die "because it was God's will".
   As John Howard sent a terse letter to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono over this week's release of the radical cleric, Bashir insisted the terrorists behind the Bali bombings were "were not the killers, but only Allah's conduit" for the deaths.
   Bashir was released on Wednesday after serving 26 months of a 30-month sentence for condoning the first Bali attack, in October 2002, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
   The Prime Minister's four-paragraph letter told Dr Yudhoyono of the "very deep personal concerns and the distress" felt by Australians at the release of Jemaah Islamiah's spiritual leader.
  [Picture] Taunting ... Abu Bakar Bashir after his release this week / AFP  
   It comes just 10 days before the leaders are to meet on the Indonesian island of Batam, their first meeting since diplomatic tensions emerged over Australia's decision to grant visas to 42 Papuan asylum-seekers.
   But Bashir, speaking at an Islamic school in the central Java city of Solo, where at least two of the Bali bombers studied, warned Mr Howard to "stay out of Indonesia's affairs".
   "I urge the families of the victims, those who are not Muslims, to immediately convert to Islam so they can be saved and comforted by Allah," he said.
   Families of Bali bombing victims last night called on Mr Howard to do more to protest to Indonesia about Bashir's release.
   Peter Iliffe, whose 28-year-old son Joshua was killed in the 2002 bombings, said Australia had to stand up for itself. "I think we've got to take a much stronger stance. We seem to cower at whatever the Indonesians do, we seem terrified of offending them," he said.
   Don Howard, whose son Adam was also killed in Bali, said Bashir should never have been released and Mr Howard should try to do something to silence him. "Why should we have to put up with the rantings of an idiot," he said. "Now once he's out he wants to inflame the whole thing."
   In his letter, Mr Howard said Bashir's inflammatory statements on release "were affronting to the families of victims and all Australians". "While fully recognising and respecting the adherence to due process in the Indonesian courts in regard to (Bashir's) release, you would nonetheless appreciate the strength of the Australian people's reactions, particularly in view of his links to the 2002 Bali bombings," he wrote.
   Mr Howard also reminded Dr Yudhoyono that Indonesia had an obligation under UN Security Council resolution 1267 to restrict Bashir's movements and prevent him becoming a security risk.
   Mr Howard told Parliament most Australians were appalled that Bashir was now a free man, saying the national feeling was one of "hostility and disgust".
   He pledged that Australia was committed to working closely with Indonesia to combat terrorism, stressing that combined counter-terrorism efforts should be a focus of the leaders' next meeting.
   Australia's acting ambassador in Jakarta conveyed to Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda Australia's concerns over Bashir's release.
   Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said Mr Howard should ask Jakarta to put Bashir under 24-surveillance and to shut down the cleric's schools if they expressed "anti-Australian, anti-Western hatred".
   "The Australian Government spends a lot of time telling us that we should listen to Indonesian sensitivities - it is time that the Australian Government told Indonesia that they need to listen to Australian sensitivities," Mr Rudd said.
   Last night, the World Food Program announced it would no longer use Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, an organisation linked to Bashir, to distribute food to survivors of last month's earthquake in Central Java, which killed 6000 people. The move came after a protest from Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
   Turning on Mr Howard and George W. Bush, Bashir said the two world leaders must also convert to Islam if they were to be saved - a demand he previously put to hundreds of supporters on his return from Jakarta on Wednesday night. "My message for John Howard is that he should become a Muslim if he wants to be saved and avoid hell," Bashir said to cheers. "He also should not try to make war on Islam, because he will certainly lose."
   Bashir said there was a possibility he would visit the Bali bombers in their death-row cells in Central Java. #

Koran, respect non-Muslims, or strike off heads?

 
   Letter to The West Australian, Sent Sunday, June 18, 2006
   In spite of Mr Nahid Kabir quoting the Koran 109:1-6 (17/6) about tolerance advised in the Koran, who can forget the 300 mullahs recently gathering in Kabul and issuing a fatwa (condemnation) against the Afghan government for freeing a man who had avoided the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity?
   And who can forget these other verses of the Koran?
   8:12:- ... I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them. www.usc.edu/ dept/MSA/quran/ 008.qmt.html #008.012
   8:38 (or 40):- Make war on them until strife shall be at an end, and the religion be all of it God's.
   8:55 (or 57):- Lo! the worst of beasts in God's sight are the ungrateful who will not believe. www.usc.edu/ dept/MSA/quran/ 008.qmt.html #008.055 .
   The few tolerance verses in the Koran are abrogated (overridden) by the many verses advising persecution and violence. How do I know this? The failure of the Islamic world to issue fatwas against bloodthirsty leaders, such as those who sliced off the head of aid worker Margaret Hassan [Mistake: She was shot, not beheaded] and many others, including Iraqi police and soldiers, in Iraq.
   And recite:
   2:106 (or 100):- Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things? (And recite 4:84 and 16:103.)
   Then read the Hadith:
   9, 84:57:- Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.

Let me preach to Aussies: Bashir

 
   The West Australian, www.thewest. com.au/200606 26/news/ general/tw-news- general- home-sto 134514.html , By STEVE PENNELLS, pp 1 and 4, Monday, June 26, 2006
   YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia: Accused terrorist leader Abu Bakar Bashir is seeking permission to visit Australia to preach to the country's Muslims, saying it was his "duty and obligation".
   The hardline Indonesian cleric, who is believed by the West to be the spiritual head of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah, said many of Australia's Muslims were more devout than their Indonesian counterparts and had sought him out.
   In an exclusive interview with The West Australian at his Majelis Mujahadin base in Yogyakarta, Bashir also revealed plans to visit the Bali bombers, whom he called Muslim fighters, in their prison in Central Java - a move certain to outrage the Australian Government.
   His comments came as Prime Minister John Howard flew into Indonesia last night for talks with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in which the Bashir issue is certain to be raised.
   Bashir was released from prison two weeks ago to strong objections from Mr Howard. He was convicted of being part of a conspiracy behind the Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
   On his release, he claimed the deaths in Bali were "God's will" and the bombers were God's agents.
   Bashir said yesterday that his conviction over the bombings was a "misunderstanding".
   Australia has sought to have Bashir's movements restricted and 24-hour monitoring of his activities.
   But yesterday, he openly sought new supporters in earthquake-devastated Yogyakarta and indicated plans to tour Indonesia and rally support for the introduction of Sharia Islamic law in Indonesia.
   Bashir said Mr Howard's meeting with Mr Yudhoyono on the island of Batam today was "their own government business".
   "But I hope John Howard understands that I had nothing to do with the Bali bombing and that I knew nothing about it," he said. "It was just a misunderstanding. The courts are just making up stories.
   "So I hope John Howard respects Indonesia's laws and doesn't intervene because that is not good and could cause a split."
   He criticised the Prime Minister at length but praised former prime minister Paul Keating, saying he would not have interfered in his life like the current government had.
   Bashir has spent the days since his release preaching in small mosques across Solo and revealed plans yesterday to step back from his involvement with Al-Mukmin school in Solo, the alma mater of several of Indonesia's terrorists, so he could take his message across the country.
   Bashir's push for sharia law is an attempt to tap into the political powderkeg of sharia, which has sparked a passionate debate in Indonesian political circles in recent months.
   Speaking to a crowd of more than 5000 people on a field in Yogyakarta yesterday, just blocks away from areas devastated by last month's earthquake, he blamed them for the disaster, saying it was a warning that they had not been good Muslims.
   "The government sees the disaster from the scientific view and then they study it so then they can make a step forward and anticipate the another disaster. But disaster is not only scientific, it is also religious," he said. "It is punishment because they've turned around from the real Islam rules and that they don't remember Allah any more."
   He again baited Mr Howard, calling on him to convert to Islam, and criticised the Indonesian Government's non-Muslim ministers.
   The crowd, many of whom had travelled from across Indonesia and were separated according to sex, cheered Bashir and mobbed him as he left the stage.
   He broke into English once, pointing to The West Australian, the only Western face in the crowd, and demanding a conversion to Islam.
   Later, he told The West Australian that Australia was being controlled by "Americans and Jews" and needed to respect the rights of Muslims.
   "Poor Australian people, they know nothing about it - Muslims really want to live in peace as long as those people stop bothering the religion," he said. "If they are bothering about something else, Muslims will forgive them but if it's related to the religion, we are not sorry for them."
   Bashir said he would visit the Bali bombers soon.
   "Their cases are their own business. Not all the cases I agree with," he said.
  [Picture] Hardliner: Abu Bakar Bashir addresses a crowd of more than 3000 supporters in Yogyakarta yesterday.    Picture: Steve Pennells  
   "But Islam says that you have to take care of your brothers.
   "And that's not because of the politics or anything else. If they've done something wrong, we should talk to them and show them that what they were doing was wrong but still we have to help them.
   Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone would not comment on the issue yesterday saying any request by Bashir to enter Australia would be processed by the Immigration Department.
   But a spokeswoman for the department said Bashir's criminal convictions mean he would not pass the character test applied to prospective visitors to Australia.

Women queue for first chance to vote

 
   The West Australian, p 28, Friday, June 30, 2006
   Kuwaiti women turned out in force yesterday to vote for the first time in parliamentary elections in the oil-rich Gulf state after a heated campaign focused on electoral change and corruption.
   Women voters, who represent 57 per cent of the eligible electorate, started queuing in front of their designated polling stations from early morning.
   Outside Nafissa bint al-Hassan School, in Sabah al-Salem tribal district, which has the biggest number of eligible voters, women clad in black abaya robes lined up under a blazing sun.
   "I insisted on being the first to vote," Zahra Ramadan Benbehani, 54, who arrived in a wheelchair pushed by her daughter, said. "I am so happy that I could not sleep last night."
   Although two of the 10 candidates in her constituency were women, Ms Benbehani said she had voted for two "more capable" male candidates. "It is my choice and that of my family," she said. "No one dictated my choice of candidates."
   Twenty-eight women are among 249 candidates running for a four-year term in the 50-seat legislative body.
   Candidate Fatima al-Mutairi arrived at the polling station with a scarf bearing the colours of the Kuwaiti flag wrapped over her black abaya.
   "Even if I get only one vote, it will still be a testimony to tell the men and women of my country that I took on the challenge and that I have entered history," she said.
   In al-Jabirya district, 12km south of the capital, Buthaina Madi, a single businesswoman in her late 20s, was the first to cast her vote shortly before flying out of Kuwait.
   "I did not want to miss this historic chance despite my trip," she said. "This is an historic event and I do feel the victory achieved by Kuwaiti women."
   Mona al-Baghli, a mother in her 30s, said she wanted to be among the first women to vote in "this celebration of democracy".
   "This is our right and they have been very late in granting it to us," she said.
   Despite winning full political rights a year ago, some female candidates said they faced intimidation during the campaign. One of them said she had even received death threats which forced her to withdraw her candidacy.
   The election is being held against the backdrop of a political crisis between the Government and Parliament that led Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah to dissolve the chamber on May 21.

Father ordered honour killing

 
   The West Australian, p 28, Friday, June 30, 2006
   COPENHAGEN: A Danish court has sentenced Pakistani-born Ghulum Abbas to life in prison for the so-called honour killing of his 18-year-old daughter.
   The brother who shot her, Akhtar Khan, and two uncles each received 16 years in prison.
   Newlywed Ghazala Khan was gunned down in daylight as she stood beside her Afghan husband, Emal, in front of a provincial railway station in eastern Denmark. Her husband survived but now lives under police protection.
   "In the sentencing, the court considered that the murder of Ghazala and the attempted murder of Emal were carefully planned and committed by several people in collusion," the court said.
   The murder has sparked debate about the integration of a conservative Muslim community at odds with Danish society, months after the publishing of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper led to worldwide protests by Muslims.
   Police said family members decided at a meeting to kill Ms Khan because they did not approve of her marriage to her long-term boyfriend.
   The court said that when sentencing the father on Wednesday it had weighed that he had commanded the killing of his daughter and later repeatedly sought to kill his son-in-law at a hospital.
   On Tuesday, the court convicted nine people over the murder. Other family members and relatives were handed sentences of between eight and 16 years.
   They were all involved in a three-week hunt for the couple or had accompanied Khan to the scene of the crime. Some of those convicted face expulsion from Denmark after serving their sentences.

Religious Persecution in Saudi Arabia

 
   Annals Australasia (Sydney), annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , Asia-News, p 5, June 2006
A Catholic Indian priest was forced to leave Saudi Arabia. He was discovered by the religious police as he organised a prayer meeting in the lead-up to Easter. Arrested on 5 April, he remained in police custody for four days and on Saturday 8 April he left for India. The practice of any religion other than Islam is forbidden in Saudi Arabia. Meetings held privately in people's homes, among friends, are also banned.
   The priest, Fr George Joshua, belongs to the Malankara rite of Kerala (India). His visit to Catholic Indians in the Saudi Kingdom was planned with his bishop's permission.
   On 5 April, Fr George had just celebrated Mass in a private house when seven religious policemen [muttawin] broke into the house together with two ordinary policemen. The police arrested the priest and another person.
   The Saudi religious police are well known for their ruthlessness; they often torture believers of other religions who are arrested.
   Asia-News sources said there were around 400,000 Indian Catholics in Saudi Arabia who were denied pastoral care.
   Catholic foreigners in the country number at least one million: none of them can participate in Mass while they are in Saudi Arabia. Catechism for their children - nearly 100,000-is banned.
   Often, for feasts like Easter and Christmas, Catholics plan holidays in the Emirates, Bahrain or Abu Dhabi, where at least for once, they are free to attend Mass. - Asia-News.

Clash between Civilization and Backwardness

 
   Annals Australasia (Sydney), annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , Wafa Sultan (being interviewed on Al-Jazeera TV on February 21, 2006), p 13, June 2006
THE clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras.
   It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality.
   It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand.
   It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete. - Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychologist interviewed on Al-Jazeera TV on February 21 , 2006.

MIDDLE EAST: A positive response to the recent elections in Iraq, and hopes for a democratic future for the war-torn country.

MANY COMMUNITIES, ONE DEMOCRACY

     Annals Australasia (Sydney), annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , By KHALED FOUAD ALLAM, pp 15-16, June 2006
WE are beginning, paradoxically, to grow accustomed to a certain 'normalization' of the electoral process in Iraq. The December 15 elections consecrated a point of arrival for the democratization of Iraqi society.
   The statistical data are clear: the first of these is the 70 percent participation in the voting. Then there is the stark reduction of the terrorist threat during the voting process, and - contrary to what one might have expected - an enormous turnout at the ballot boxes in the zone of Fallujah, symbol of the Sunni triangle.
   Even Iran's Arabic television news outlet, al-Alam, which has a large audience among the Shiite Iraqis, emphasized the vast participation of all the components of Iraqi society. The definitive results on the composition of the new Iraqi parliament, whose members will remain in office for four years, will be made known in around two weeks.
   All this is undoubtedly a success, both for the Iraqi people and for the United States, in the face of those who disputed, and still dispute, the exporting of democracy, a question that is feeding a philosophical debate that will mark all the geopolitical transformations of the twenty-first century.

Annals happily offers its readers the following response by Khaled Fouad Allam to the recent elections in Iraq. It has always been our editorial policy to offer our readers both, or as many other sides of a question, as there are. In this instance the author proposes grounds for optimism in the wake of the Iraqi elections and suggests that the new Constitution offers hope for the future of democracy in the new Iraq. His views are commonly aired by supporters of the military intervention of the US and her allies in Iraq. Ed.

   In any case, the widespread participation in the electoral consultation and the success of the electoral process in spite of the dramatic lack of security in the country require a more profound interpretation.
   What is the mechanism by which, in wartime, a people feels called so urgently to the polls? In reality, we have undervalued the fact that, even though the tanks entered into Iraq, the premise of this was a precise American plan for the reformulation of the Iraqi nation, which most Europeans probably did not realize.
   And they also did not understand that this reformulation of the Iraqi nation - meaning the significance that the notion of Iraqi identity can assume - no longer passes through the equation of Iraqi identity with belonging to the Arab nation, but rather through the possibility granted to the Iraqi to be an integral part of the Arab nation, this time through community membership: Shiite, Sunni, or Kurdish.
   From the beginning, the Americans have kept in mind the fact that the Iraqi mosaic is a patchwork of ethnic-national communities - as, for example, the Kurds, who find their identity in the formation of a national Kurdish community - and confessional communities (Shiite, Sunni, and Christian) which can be multiethnic, because there are, for example, Christian and Sunni Kurds.
   The problem is structuring this communitarian universe through political construction, through the creation of new relationships, knowing that the nationalist Arab system, in the name of the Arab nation, made a 'tabula rasa' of all the other forms of membership, marginalizing the most important of these, beginning with the Shiites.
   The new constitution completely overturned the Iraqi political perspective, asserting in chapter 1, article 3, that Iraq is a multiethnic and multireligious country, that it is part of the Islamic world, and that its Arab population is part of the Arab nation.

Editorial Comment We suspect that events [in Samarra and elsewhere] have already overtaken our author, and that his thesis is regrettably untenable. If Iraq is not an Arab nation [as it isn't] and if Iraqi Arabs can be part of the Arab 'nation' even beyond Iraq's borders, well and good. This is not much different from Britons living in Australia retaining their UK citizenship. But when the Arab Nation [the Umma] is coextensive with the Islamic Nation [Umma] which is the antithesis of Democracy how secure can the other members of the so-called multi-Ethnic and multi-religious country of Iraq be in their 'democracy'? Shi'ites, Kurds and Christians speak Arabic, but they are not 'Arab'. And the Shi'ite, in the eyes of many Sunni, are not even Muslims. 'Ay,' as Shakespeare wisely warns, 'there's the rub'.

   The last sentence is the most important for gaining perspective on the change taking place in Iraq, and it explains in part the Iraqis' enthusiastic participation in the vote. The difference in comparison with the past is noteworthy: in reality, Iraq ceases to be an Arab nation or part of the Arab nation, but the Arabs of Iraq reserve the right to belong to this community even beyond Iraq's borders.
   Today, the Iraqi society that is being constructed makes itself visible to the world by participating in political elections, but the new nation must still be constructed, and no one can say today whether this will work or not. Because it will be precisely on the terrain of politics, of the forces in play and the game of alliances, that the new Iraqi society's capacity to define itself politically will be demonstrated. Politics is the very strange art of living together: but to practice it, the Iraqis need to rediscover their liberty, which was taken from them in the name of the nation, eliminating what a society is, meaning its ethnic, religious, and cultural complexity. I maintain that the Americans saw things properly in considering the communitarian perspective an obligatory step for the reformulation of Iraqi society.
   There remains a fundamental problem: the situation in Iraq, if it does work, will work only in the context of a homogeneous Middle East. If this new democracy remains surrounded by countries governed by antidemocratic forces, the risk is a weakening of what has just been constructed.
___________________
   A native of Algeria, KHALED FOUAD ALLAM is a sociologist and a specialist of the Muslim world who teaches at the University of Trieste and the University of Urbino as well as the Stanford program in Florence. In addition to his academic commitments, Professor Allam has been an editorialist and columnist for the national Italian newspaper La Repubblica since 2003.

Protestors Undermine Religious Rights Forum in Malaysia

 
   Religion Today Summaries, E-mail, Friday, June 30, 2006
   MALAYSIA: Hotels in Malaysia have refused to host a series of religious rights forums after angry protestors shut down an event on May 14 and accused the organizers of being "enemies of Islam."
   According to Compass Direct, Article 11, a coalition of 13 religious and human rights groups, had organized a series of forums to discuss constitutional rights and the dilemma created by a dual legal system incorporating both civil and sharia law.
   On May 14, police cordons and a crowd of roughly 500 demonstrators greeted participants arriving for a forum in Penang. Eventually police insisted that the forum be shut down, despite having issued an official permit for the event.
   "This incident shows how serious the breakdown in constitutional values is," National Human Rights Society deputy president and lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a speaker at the forum, told local reporters.
   "If we cannot speak on the constitution, where are we as a nation?"

   The Australian, p 17, June 30, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: [Former treasury secretary John Stone recently spoke at a Quadrant dinner on the topic of the "perils of Islamic culture". He said:]
   "So far as I can see, however, Muslims do not so much move out as move in.
   "In communities where large numbers of Muslims gather, non-Muslims are gradually driven out. It is then not long before there are established no-go areas where Muslim gangs flourish on the proceeds of drugs, extortion, armed robbery and so on.
   "In turn, as the host country's own laws are set aside in these no-go areas, there develop demands for the recognition of these areas as small states within the state, to be governed by sharia law, administered not by national courts but by sharia-type courts overseen by local imams.
   "In France, we have begun to see the ultimate expression of such developments. There, a public official is reported to have agreed to meet an imam outside the predominantly Muslim district of Roubaix which, according to the imam, was Islamic territory and closed to non-Muslims.
   "Similar demands can already be heard in Britain. To a more limited extent (so far) we have begun to hear them in Australia."

Nationality row topples Government

 
   The West Australian, p 26, Saturday, July 1, 2006
   THE HAGUE: Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has announced that his Government would resign after the smallest coalition member said it could no longer work with hardline Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk.
   He was to tender his resignation to Queen Beatrix yesterday, signalling the end of his three-year-old Government. The resignation was expected to trigger early elections, possibly in October.
   Mr Balkenende's announcement to Parliament in The Hague capped 36 hours of political drama centring on Ms Verdonk and her unsuccessful attempt to strip Somali-born MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali of Dutch citizenship.
   Ms Hirsi Ali, 36, rose to international prominence after writing the script for a film criticising the treatment of women under Islam - a film that prompted a young Muslim fanatic to murder the filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, in 2004.
   In May, Ms Verdonk threatened to strip Ms Hirsi Ali of her citizenship for applying under a false name when she first arrived in the country in 1992.
   Ms Hirsi Ali resigned as an MP but, after an international outcry, Parliament ordered Ms Verdonk to reconsider her decision.
   This week, she changed her mind.
   Ms Verdonk survived a no-confidence vote, but the parliamentary faction of the smallest member of Mr Balkenende's conservative coalition, the centrist D-66 Party, said it would not support any Cabinet that included her.
   The party's three ministers resigned and Mr Balkenende said that meant the rest had to follow.
   Ms Verdonk has introduced policies that forced citizenship classes for immigrants, jailed asylum seekers and deported illegal immigrants. Immigration to the Netherlands has halved since 2000.
  [Picture] Ayaan Hirsi Ali  
   On Tuesday, Ms Verdonk reluctantly reversed her decision to revoke Ms Hirsi Ali's passport, having found a loophole she hoped would avert the political crisis: under Somali law, Ms Hirsi Ali's false name was technically legal because it was her grandfather's name, Ms Verdonk argued.
   But Ms Hirsi Ali was forced to sign a statement acknowledging that she had misled Ms Verdonk by saying she had lied - essentially accepting blame for the whole affair.
   She is now in the US, where she is house-hunting after landing a job with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Row dissolves Dutch cabinet

 
   The Weekend Australian, Correspondents in The Hague, AFP, p 14, The World, July 1-2, 2006
   THE HAGUE: THE Dutch Government has resigned after losing the support of its junior coalition partner in a row over controversial Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk.
   Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende announced in parliament his Government would tender its resignation to the Dutch head of state, Queen Beatrix, overnight.
   The reformist D66, the junior coalition party that has just three ministers in the Government, effectively pulled the plug on Mr Balkenende when it withdrew its support in a row over Ms Verdonk's handling of the controversy surrounding the citizenship of Somali-born Islam critic and former MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
   Ms Verdonk, nicknamed "Iron Rita" for her tough stance on immigration, announced in May that Ms Hirsi Ali, a politician known for her criticism of Islam who admitted publicly that she lied about her name and birth date on her asylum application, could not keep her Dutch citizenship.
   Ms Hirsi Ali, 36, gained international attention in 2004 after Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist. Van Gogh had produced a controversial film written by Ms Hirsi Ali about the treatment of women under Islam.
   The resignation of the Government is likely to lead to new elections in October.
   However, there is also a slim chance the coalition parties will try to cobble together a minority government supported by various small opposition parties.
   Upon the D66 ministers' resignation, Mr Balkenende said the rest of the cabinet should also hand in their resignations.
   After enormous political pressure from parliament, Ms Verdonk softened her hardline position on Ms Hirsi Ali.
   On Tuesday she announced that Ms Hirsi Ali, who has since stepped down as a member of parliament for the WD party and plans to move to the US to work for a conservative think tank, could keep her Dutch passport.
   Ms Verdonk used complicated legal reasoning to justify her turnaround, concluding that Ms Hirsi Ali actually lied about lying about her name because she could legally use the name Ali under Somali law.
   The minister also produced a declaration signed by Ms Hirsi Ali in which she said she was to blame for the situation. However, Ms Hirsi Ali later told Dutch media that she signed the document under pressure because she wanted the affair to be over and that she needed a valid Dutch passport to complete her move to Washington.
   The mea culpa letter was the straw that broke the camel's back for the D66 party, which had already had several clashes with Ms Verdonk.
   The D66 Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic Affairs, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, told parliament his party's ministers "could no longer bear responsibility for the policies of the Immigration Minister".
   A poll carried out last Friday, before the latest controversy over Ms Hirsi Ali and Ms Verdonk erupted, projects that the opposition PvdA Labour party would be the winner if an election were held now, with 43 seats, while Mr Balkenende's ruling CDA Christian Democrats would lose eight seats to end up with 36.
   The current coalition would lose its majority, according to the poll, but the three left-wing opposition parties would not get a majority either. #

Scola centre backs dialogue in Cairo.

 
   The Tablet (RC paper, Britain), www.thetablet. co.uk/cgi- bin/citw.cgi/ past-00288 #ROME , July 1, 2006
   ROME: A VENICE-based research centre that promotes dialogue between religions, especially in the Mediterranean world, says its recent two-day conference in Cairo will help already warming relations between Christians, Muslims and Jews.
   More than 65 representatives of the three monotheistic faiths gathered in the Egyptian capital on 19 and 20 June to discuss fundamental rights in democratic societies.
   The Oasis International Studies and Research Centre - an institute founded in 2004 by Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Venice, and funded by Communion and Liberation, the ecclesiastical community of which Cardinal Scola is a member - sponsored the gathering.
   Participants included prominent church figures from the Vatican, Egypt, Algeria, Syria and Pakistan. Also on hand were representatives of the World Jewish Congress.
   A spokeswoman for Cardinal Scola, Marialaura Conte, told The Tablet that the gathering was not given high public visibility because of security concerns. However, a statement released this week said that the two days of discussions were frank and constructive.

History ignored

 
   The Sunday Times (Perth, W. Australia), Letter to the Editor, p 54, July 2, 2006
   IN the past 20 years, I have watched Western countries slowly being taken over by mainly Islamic and African races. Not only have these people rapidly expanded within their host countries, they have changed the entire structure and foundations of those countries.
   Now, unfortunately, this is being forced on the people of Australia by the likes of Judi Moylan, Petro Qeorgiou and vocal refugee activists, all of whom I'm quite sure have the best intentions at heart.
   But as we've seen with so many other experiments throughout history which started with the best intentions, most, like the stolen generation, have turned out to be disasters.
   What a shame the politicians who have changed our lives in such a short period did not have the decency to complete an in-depth study on other Western countries and the terrible effects mass immigration has had on their inhabitants.
   I lost a friend in New York in the World Trade Center attack and saw Muslims cheer over the sight of the smouldering ruins. I knew then what they had in store for us, confirmed in the Ball 2002 bombings, long before any invasion of Iraq.
   We are at war, whether we like it or not. We are taxed out of existence, our children get hooked on horrible drugs and become unemployable misfits, affordable housing climbs out of the reach, and jobs are rapidly lost to "foreign skilled workers".
   To top this off, it's only time before we too become another Western statistic of a major terrorist attack. ASIO can't get lucky all the time.
   All I ever wanted was to work hard and have a safe and happy life, never to hurt anyone. But people like Ms Moylan, Abu Bakar Bashir, Osama bin Laden and the likes have taken those rights away from me and I can never forgive them for that. M. MONROE, Victoria Park

Citizen test asks about our values

 
   The West Australian, By RHIANNA KING, EXCLUSIVE, p 4, Monday, July 3, 2006
   CANBERRA: The Federal Government is forging ahead with plans to impose a citizenship test on newcomers to Australia to ensure they understand the nation's history, values and way of life.
   The proposed test could be put before Cabinet by the end of the year.
   Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Andrew Robb confirmed he was preparing an Australian version of the test after spending the past two months looking at citizenship tests around the world.
   "I am consulting with a variety of experts and stakeholders to find appropriate, workable processes that would translate well into an Australian test," Mr Robb told The West Australian. "That process is nearly finalised and I'm starting to prepare something concrete for consideration by Cabinet."
   It is understood Mr Robb consulted tests from Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Canada and the United States in coming up with a version for Australia.
   Mr Robb mooted the idea in April, saying it would be in the interests of both the Australian community and prospective citizens if a test requiring them to demonstrate their commitment to the country was introduced.
   He said migrants should be asked to show a high standard of English and be knowledgeable about Australian history, laws and values.
   The concept was met with resistance by the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which warned it could exacerbate the skills shortage, while the Greens attacked it as a step back towards the White Australia policy.
   To get citizenship, people now have to show they understand the rights and responsibilities of being Australian citizens and have basic English.
   Britain introduced a citizenship test last year, with 24 questions based on the handbook Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship.
   Ethnic Communities Council president Ramdas Sankaran accused the Government of using migrants as a political football, saying they had bought up the issue of citizenship test as a diversionary tactic.
   "The Howard Government is again playing wedge politics to divert attention away from the Iraq war and their WorkChoice changes," he said. #

As more bombings rock Baghdad, al-Qaida leader warns of bloody retribution for Violations' against Sunni cities

Bin Laden threat to Iraqi Shi’ites

 
   The West Australian, p 6, Monday, July 3, 2006
   BAGHDAD: Osama bin Laden has threatened Iraq's majority Shi'ite population with bloody retribution if the "annihilation" of the country's Sunni Muslims continues.
   The al-Qaida leader, an adherent of the extremist Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam, delivered his most strident sectarian message in a new audiotape released on an Islamist website on Saturday.
   In his second pronouncement in two days, bin Laden accused Iraqi Shi'ites of siding with America and its allies in "violating" the predominantly Sunni cities of Ramadi, Fallu-jah and Mosul. He warned that Shi'ite areas would face "retaliation and harm" as a consequence.
   The threat was made public within hours of a car bomb ripping through a market in a predominantly Shi'ite district of Baghdad, killing at least 66 people in the bloodiest attack in Iraq for three months.
   Yesterday, three car bombs in Baghdad's central Karradah district killed at least killed three people and wounded 16. Three bystanders were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a convoy carrying lyad Jamaleddin, a Shi'ite MP with the Iraqi National List parliamentary bloc of former premier lyad Allawi.
  [Picture] City chaos: Hundreds gather around the scene of Saturday's car bombing that killed at least 66 people.   Picture: Associated Press  
   Saturday's blast fuelled fears of another upsurge in sectarian violence after a previously unknown Sunni group said it carried out the bombing in revenge for the killings of Sunnis by Shi'ites.
   The bombing came only days after the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, held out an olive branch to the Sunni minority dominant under Saddam Hussein, unveiling a feroad plan for national reconciliation.
   In the latest tape, bin Laden also warned that his fanatical followers would "punish" the US on American soil if it sent troops to Somalia following the Islamic takeover.

‘ You are God's trusted soldiers who will liberate the ummah (Islamic nation).’ OSAMA BIN LADEN

   In a clear sign that he wanted to deliver his verdict on recent international developments, bin Laden gave his blessing to the new al-Qaida leader in Iraq and backed the Islamic fundamentalists who had seized power in Somalia.
   He told militants in both countries: "Your Muslim nation is looking for you and praying for your victory. You are their hope after God. You are God's trusted soldiers who will liberate the ummah (Islamic nation) from the serfdom of the crusaders in our countries."
   Bin Laden again released his message without video images. He is thought to have opted for audiotapes after US forces used a video released by Abu Musab Zarqawi to help track down and kill the terrorist leader. #

Mullah leads renewed Taliban reign of terror

 
   The West Australian, p 23, Monday, July 3, 2006
   KABUL: The camera pans in on a black-turbaned mullah, who solemnly signs a slip of paper and hands it to the young fighter sitting beside him. It turns out to be the recipient's own death warrant: the slip identifies him as Suicide bomber 116.
   Off goes yet another volunteer to die in the Taliban's increasingly savage campaign against coalition troops in Afghanistan, but the cleric who sends him on his way remains alive and very dangerous. Mullah Dadullah Akhund, the ruthless fanatic in charge of the Taliban's new campaign, is fast becoming to Afghanistan what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was to Iraq. Just like al-Zarqawi, his starring role in propaganda DVDs has successfully drawn in scores of suicide bombers and thousands of fighters to the cause. And just like al-Zarqawi, his fondness for beheadings means his followers fear him almost as much as his enemies.
  [Picture] Mullah Dadullah  
   Mullah Dadullah has developed almost mythological status among his compatriots, which is partly why he was dispatched by the Taliban leadership to front a recruitment campaign for jihad in the seminaries of northern Pakistan. His success can be seen in the surge in suicide bombings, school burnings and ambushes that have killed more than 100 Afghan civilians and at least 40 coalition soldiers this year. Mullah Dadullah boasts that he has 200 suicide bombers awaiting his orders.
   Afghan villagers testify that increasing numbers of Taliban fighters are roaming the countryside with impunity, warning local people not to co-operate with coalition troops. To emphasise the point, one of Mullah Dadullah's videos shows his fighters slitting the throats of six men accused of spying for the Americans. Mullah Dadullah is aged about 40 and is said to come from the Kakar tribe in the Kandahar region, which is renowned for its fighting prowess. He lost a leg after stepping on a landmine shortly after joining the Taliban in 1994.
   Despite the disability he became renowned as a fearless fighter, leading battles against the Northern Alliance throughout the 1990s. In 1998, he massacred hundreds of civilians during a campaign to "pacify" the ethnic minority Hazaras. It was too much even for Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's one-eyed spiritual leader, who relieved him of his command.
   But soon he was back in battle though, his reputation so fearsome that Taliban radio would often report his presence on the front lines, even when he was days away from the fighting, to unnerve opponents. Having escaped to Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, he helped rebuild the movement from there and was recently promoted to Taliban military commander. #

Muslims who reject extremism

   News Weekly (Australia), Letter from Dermott Kelly, St Georges, South Australia, p 19, Dated July 8, 2006, received July 7, 2006
   My question is directed to Dr Sharif Shuja, who wrote the article, "Islam: Why Indian Muslims reject extremism" (News Weekly, October 22, 2005).
   He said that Indian Muslims rejected extremism because they had equal opportunity in Indian society and because they had many positive role models.
   What, then, is his explanation for the home-grown terrorists in Britain, Canada and Australia?
   Is it a lack of equal opportunity and positive Muslim role models in these societies, or because these societies lack the moral conservatism of Indian society?

Honour killings rise brings alarm

 
   The West Australian, p 20, Tuesday, July 18, 2006
   LONDON: The rising number of defiant women being killed to avenge the traditional "honour" of ethnic families is causing alarm in Britain.
   The rising trend came to light after the brother and cousin of Samaira Nazir, 25, were sentenced to life imprisonment last week for her barbaric murder.
   Ms Nazir, a recruitment consultant in Southall, west London, was killed in April last year after rejecting a marriage arranged by her Pakistani family. She was strangled with a silk scarf, stabbed 18 tunes and had her throat cut.
   Her nieces aged two and four were made to watch the murder and were found spattered with her blood.
   Diana Nammi, co-founder of the London-based International Campaign Against Honour Killings, said the number of women seeking help from her organisation had risen from 50 to 200 in the past year.
   "The number of honour killings has gone up because more women are realising that they have rights," she said.
   The organisation had saved at least a dozen lives in a year, she said. The women were all Muslim, mostly from Afghan, Iranian and Kurdish families.
   "Believe me, many of these women were in danger," Ms Nammi said. "Sometimes, families were paying for bounty hunters to look for them."
   Between 1993 and 2001, there were 109 known "honour killings" in Britain after relatives of the victims decided that the women had brought dishonour on their families through relationships disapproved of or for rejecting arranged marriages. In 2004, Scotland Yard detectives began to re-examine 81 cases in London that they suspected could have been "honour killings".
   In one case, a young woman in Bradford was believed to have been kidnapped and murdered by her family after a love song was dedicated to her on a radio station.
   In 2003, Heshu Yones, 16, of Acton, west London, bled to death after her father cut her throat. He had been "disgusted and distressed" by her relationship with a Lebanese Christian student. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
   Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, said of the phenomenon: "It occurs more and more as people migrate to Britain from the rural, tribal areas of the Indian subcontinent. They bring the customs with them."

Iranian human rights lawyer jailed

 
   Aljazeera Net (Arabic independent TV), http:// english. aljazeera. net/NR/ exeres/E08 EA014-1B3D- 45CC-A440-F96 9876A0 869.htm , 16:54 Makka Time, 13:54 GMT, Tuesday, July 18, 2006,
   IRAN: Abdolfattah Soltani, an Iranian human rights lawyer, has been sentenced to five years in jail on charges of disclosing confidential information and opposing the regime.
   Soltani, a colleague of Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel laureate, was arrested a year ago while defending two people accused of spying on Iran's nuclear programme.
   The judiciary said he had shared confidential case details with outsiders.
   Soltani said: "I have been cleared of spying charges, but received four years for disclosing confidential documents and one year for propaganda against the system.
   "Neither my lawyers or I were called for the court session mentioned in the verdict. [...]

Mass Enslavement of Christians in Spain

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , by Hugh Thomas, p 5, Received August 7, 2006, Dated July 2006
JUST as the entire population of Carthage had been enslaved after its capture by Rome, so, in the early eighth century, the swift conquest of Visigothic Spain by the Moors was followed by mass enslavements of Christians.
   Thirty thousand Christian slaves are said to have been sent to Damascus, as the prescribed fifth of the booty due to the Caliph after the fall of the Visigoths.
   These slaves were fortunate, since the Koran allowed the killing of all males in cities which resisted, and merely the enslavement of their wives and children.
   Years later, Willibald, a Kentish pilgrim to the Holy Land, was helped by a Spanish 'Chamberlain to the King of the Saracens,' who may have been a survivor of these.
   In Medina it was for a long time easy to meet Christian slaves of Spanish origin.
   Abd ar-Rahman III, the most gifted of the caliphs in Cordoba, in Spain itself, employed nearly 4,000 Christian slaves in his palace of Madinat az-Zahra, outside that city.
   The great al-Mansur, Grand Vizier of that caliphate in the late tenth century, launched over fifty attacks on Christian territories, from all of which he brought back slaves: 30,000, it is said, after his conquest of Leon.
   When he died, at Medinaceli in 1002, his friends lamented that 'our provider of slaves is no more.'
   As late as 1311 Aragonese ambassadors at the General Council of the Church at Vienne claimed that there were still 30,000 Christian slaves in the kingdom of Granada. ... - Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870, Picador, 1997, p.37.

Early Muslim Conquests

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , by Chase F. Robinson, p 9, Received August 7, 2006, Dated July 2006
EARLY Muslims were less religious missionaries than they were religiously motivated imperialists.
   From the perspective of Muslim Arabs, then, God was delivering them from the 'ignorance' of pre-lslamic Arabia (the Jahiliyya), and installing them as rulers of most of the known world:  between ca. 645 and 715 AD, Islamic rule was established in a great swathe of lands that stretches from present-day Mauritania and Spain to the borders of India.
   Christians and Jews, by contrast, now belonged to obsolete faiths, and although their religious practices were tolerated (and occasionally even encouraged), their exercise of any political authority was unthinkable, since it would have perverted God's will
   ... compared to their prosperous, cultured and cosmopolitan neighbours in Byzantium and Sasanian Persia, the conquering Arabs were barbarians, just as Germanic tribesmen had been barbaric compared to the Roman societies they had overrun two centuries earlier.
   Their political role had been marginal in a region dominated by two superpowers, and they possessed no learning to speak of; if they claimed anything, it was only fearlessness, reckless abandon, and 'obstinate impetuosity', which is as good a translation for 'Jahiliyya' as any. - Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography, Cambridge University Press, 2003

Fighting for justice after the death of Javed, aged 19

CATHOLIC YOUTH MURDERED IN PAKISTAN

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , Catholic Life column, by JOHN PONTIFEX, p 13, July 2006
A  PAKISTAN bishop has given an impassioned account of his struggle to achieve justice for the family of a man allegedly bludgeoned to death for failing to convert to Islam.
   Javed Anjum, 19, was visiting his mother's family in eastern Pakistan when he was reportedly lured to an Islamic school (madrassa) and called upon to renounce his Catholic faith.
   It is alleged that when he refused, he was severely beaten before being taken to a police station close to where the incident took place in Toba, 50 miles from Faisalabad city.
   Mr Anjum then dramatically revealed on video camera the identity of his attackers - an Islamic leader. Moments later, he lost consciousness and died.
   In his account of the tragedy, Bishop Joseph Coutts of Faisalabad told a conference in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, that two years on from the attack, the case was in risk of disintegrating despite compelling prosecution evidence.
   Bishop Coutts, who confirmed the youngster in a ceremony only a few years ago, spoke of the 'struggle for justice' at the event organised by Aid to the Church in Need, the Catholic charity for persecuted and poverty-stricken Christians.
   According to reports, the man held chiefly responsible for the death was the rector of the madrassa in Toba, and that a prosecution was brought resulting in a trial.
   But the Church-funded lawyer fighting Mr Anjum's case has received threats, as have his wife and three young children who have fled to safety to the southern Pakistan city of Karachi.
   Bishop Coutts has intervened amid growing fears that the case could be quashed by Islamist-led intimidation and bribery of the courts.
   Mr Anjum's father worked for a brigadier in the Pakistani army and Bishop Coutts has appealed to him to help bring justice for his grieving employee.
   Speaking after the conference, Bishop Coutts said: 'We must keep up the pressure for justice.' He added: 'These Islamic groups are very powerful. They can make it look like an accident.'
   Bishop Coutts said: 'They must admit that they have done something wrong. They must admit that they have committed murder. This is against their religion.'
   The bishop said that the Muslims needed to be reminded that it was against their religion to bring about a conversion 'by compulsion'.
   But he added: 'These Muslims believe that if you convert somebody to Islam, you have reserved a place for yourself in heaven.'
   Bishop Coutts was speaking at a conference on religious freedom, coinciding with the launch of a book in Portuguese about persecution and discrimination.
   Among the other speakers was Dom Willem de Smet OSB, a Benedictine former President of ACN, who has served in monasteries and churches as far afield as Haiti and Syria.
   For information about Aid to the Church in Need in Australia contact Philip Collignon on 02-9679-1929. #

Who started this clash; started this war?

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , Words of Wafa Sultan in an Al-Jazeera TV interview of Feb 21 "06, republished on p 13, July 2006
HOST: Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not Bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don't mind...
   Wafa Sultan: The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: 'I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger.' When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to stop this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.
   My colleague has said that he never offends other people's beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them 'Ahl al-Dhimma,' another time he calls them the 'People of the Book,' and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians 'those who incur Allah's wrath.'
   Who told you that they are 'People of the Book'? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them 'those who incur Allah's wrath' or 'those who have gone astray," and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?
   - excerpts from an interview with Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan, aired on Al-Jazeera TV, February 21, 2006.

MIDDLE EAST
Michel Aoun's Pivotal Role in Lebanon's Future

THE PHOENIX ROUTS THE LION

 
By PAUL STENHOUSE    Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , pp 15-17, issue of July 2006
ON October 13, 1990 Syrian soldiers occupied the ruins of the Lebanese Presidential Palace at Baabda, Beirut, after General Michel Aoun, the Prime Minister, had been forced to surrender and to take refuge in the French Embassy. With his wife and two young children Dany Chamoun, leader of the National Liberal Party, who had stood virtually alone in his support for General Aoun, was brutally murdered a week later, on October 21st, 1990. No one doubted the responsibility of Damascus - and the murders were seen as a warning to Lebanese politicians not to challenge Syrian control in the 'post-Aoun' future.
   A few days later, The Washington Post quoted an adviser to pro-Syrian President Hrawi [who succeeded Rene Mouawad assassinated on November 22, 1989 only 17 days after his appointment by Syria as Lebanese President] who paraphrased a message sent by President George Bush Snr to Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad.
   The message supported Syria's aerial bombardment of Baabda and eventual take-over of Lebanon, in return, it should be said, for Syria's dubious support against Saddam Hussein during the 1990-1991 war in the Persian Gulf against Iraq:    Michel Aoun, a Maronite Catholic, had been appointed Prime Minister of Lebanon on September 23rd 1988 by the then out-going President Amin Gemayal whose term of office expired fifteen minutes later. Even though the appointment was in accord with the Constitution, opposition from Syria and Syrian allies in West Beirut, especially Selim al-Hoss the former Prime Minister, resulted in rival governments being set up: one under al-Hoss in [Muslim] West Beirut, and the other under General Aoun in [Christian] East Beirut.
  [Picture] General Aoun, Commander of the Lebanese Army, in Beirut in August 1988, less than a month before his appointment as Prime Minister.  
   On October 13 - a dark day for Lebanese democracy and independence - the pretence of Syrian benevolence towards its militarily weak neighbour was dropped, and the face of the rapacious Syrian lion (Assad means lion, or a beast of prey, in Arabic) was bared for all to see.
   Had Aoun said, as Mahler is supposed to have said in a moment of depression at the relative lack of success of his symphonies in his lifetime 'My time will come,' he would have been right.
   He had been right when he wrested power from the militias that controlled most of Lebanon. He seized the port of Beirut from the Christian militia, the Forces Libanaises, in February 1989. Then he blockaded the illegal ports controlled by pro-Syrian Druze and Shi'ite militia. This was the first time that the Lebanese Government had succeeded in controlling these areas since the phony Syrian-backed civil-war broke out in 1975.
   As soon as Aoun showed signs of asserting Lebanese sovereignty over Lebanese territory, Syria responded by shelling East Beirut. Aoun then did what President Suleiman Frangieh should have done in 1976 - declared openly that Syria was the problem and demanded the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon. Despite the devastation wreaked by the Syrians over the next six months of open war, and the exodus of over a million people from Beirut, the mood across confessional boundaries was defiant and exultant. The Washington Post declared:

  The Muslim Brotherhood  

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , p 22, issue of July 2006
GIVEN that political subjugation of non-Muslims is built into Islamic law, and that the M[uslim] B[rotherhood] desires to return to 'classical Islam,' it is not surprising that the organization was the fountainhead from which all Sunni terrorist organizations have flowed.
   Its offspring include AI-Qaeda, HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gamaat Islamiyyah, the Philippine Abu Sayyaf group, and the Algerian Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) and Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
   Between 1992-1998, the Algerian terrorists murdered an estimated 200,000 people.
   Today, according to Italian security agencies, and as reported by Kathryn Haahr-Escolano of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, GSPC cells in Italy not only target Italy, but 'employ a dual-track approach to planning terrorist attacks and provide support infrastructure - safe houses, communications, weapons procurement and documentation - to GSPC networks in other European countries.'
   The ties of all these terrorist groups to the MB are evident from their identical strategies and overall Islamist agenda, and they often carry out joint operations.
   -- Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen, FrontPageMagazine.com , June 16, 2006.

  Not banned in Australia  

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , p 24, issue of July 2006
IN Egypt, where the [Muslim Brotherhood] was founded in 1928 and later banned, the Brotherhood worked under the Islamic doctrine of "concealment" [kitman] in order to "Islamize" the country.
   In the 1930's and 1940's, the MB collaborated with the Nazis. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the MB chief in British Mandate Palestine, strongly supported Arab links with the Nazis, particularly in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, where he backed the shortlived pro-Nazi regime of Rashid All al-Gailani in 1941.
   In Egypt too, the MB orchestrated riots, occupied police stations and attempted coups d'etat.
   Following their failed 1954 attempt to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser, MB loyalists fled Egypt to the universities of Saudi Arabia, where they were granted business monopolies to finance their future reemergence; in 1961 the sympathetic King Sa'ud even funded their establishment of the Islamic University in Medina.
   In October 1981, an MB offshoot group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
   In the last decade alone, MB offspring including Gama'a al-Islamiya and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades repeatedly attacked Western tourists, killing hundreds and wounding many more.
   Since the history of the MB is full of instigating civil wars and committing atrocities in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Algeria, their expansion and success elsewhere is destined to wreak more havoc and destabilize every nation in which they are allowed to operate freely.
   -- Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen, FrontPageMagazine.com , June 16, 2006.

  Islam and the Slave Trade  

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , p 30, issue of July 2006
CARAVAN routes across the Sahara had existed from recorded times, and slaves formed a part of Africa's export trade to the Mediterranean from pre-Roman to modern times.
   But a new dimension to that trade occurred with the expansion of Islam in the 8th century. As the Islamic world spread into India and the eastern Mediterranean, Islamic merchants came to play an ever more important part in the African slave trade.
   The frontier zones of the sub-Saharan savannas, the Red Sea region, and the east coast ports on the Indian Ocean in turn became major centers for the expansion of Muslim influence.
   From the 9th to the 15th century a rather steady international slave trade occurred, with the majority of forced migrants being women and children.
   Some six major and often interlocking caravan routes and another two major coastal regions may have accounted for as many as 5,000 to 10,000 slaves per annum in the period from 800 to 1600 A.D.
   The primary route remained North Africa, followed in order of importance by the Red Sea, and the East African trades.
   - Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, OUP, 1986, pp.10-11.

  Stop Bombing Lebanon  

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , p 34, issue of July 2006
AS we go to press Israel has commenced bombing Beirut and South Lebanon in her efforts to eliminate the leadership and military resources of the Shiite Hizballah [Party of God] militia based in south Lebanon.
   Annals deplores this escalation of hostilities. Lebanon -an unwilling host to the Shiite militia whose indiscriminate shelling of Israeli settlements and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers has provoked this response - is a soft target, and the Israelis have over-reacted on this, as on other occasions, to provocation. Like many other countries, they seem still to have difficulty in identifying their real enemies.
   The Holy Father has spelled it out: 'the Lebanese have the right to see the integrity and sovereignty of their country respected, the Israelis the right to live in peace in their State, and the Palestinians have the right to have their own free and sovereign homeland'. Ed.

  The Children's Crusade [1212 AD]*  

 
   Annals Australasia, annalsaust ralasia@nareg. com.au , p 39, issue of July 2006
THE [Children] Crusaders from France experienced a nearly similar fate [to those from Germany]; a very slender portion of them returned: the rest either perished in the waves, or were preyed upon by two Marseilles merchants, Hugh Ferrers and William Porcus, who carried on a trade with the Saracens, of which the sale of young boys formed a considerable part.
   No opportunity for an advantageous speculation could be more favourable; they offered to transport to the East all the pilgrims who arrived at Marseilles, without any kind of charge for the voyage; assigning piety as the motive for this act of generosity.
   This proposition was joyfully accepted; and seven vessels, laden with these pilgrims, set sail for the coast of Syria. At the end of two days, when the ships were off the isle of St. Peter, near the rock of the Recluse, a violent tempest arose, and the sea swallowed up two of them, with all the passengers on board.
   The other five vessels arrived at Bugia and Alexandria, and the young Crusaders were all sold to the Saracens or to slave-merchants.
   The caliph bought forty of them, all of whom were clerics, and caused them to be brought up with great care in a place set apart for the purpose: twelve of the others perished as martyrs, being unwilling to renounce their religion.
   None of the clerics purchased by the caliph, according to the account of one of them who afterwards obtained his liberty, embraced the worship of Mahomet - all, faithful to the religion of their fathers, practised it constantly in tears and slavery.
   Hugh and William having at a later period formed the project of assassinating [the Emperor] Frederick, were discovered, and perished in an ignominious manner, with three Saracens, their accomplices, receiving, in this miserable end, the wages due to their treachery.
   Pope Gregory IX afterwards caused a church to be built in the island of St. Peter, in honour of those who were shipwrecked, and instituted twelve canonships to provide for the duties of it.
   In the time of Alberic the spot was still pointed out where the bodies cast up by the waves were buried. * The Children's Crusade, a popular movement which arose spontaneously, with little support from the clergy, with the intention of recovering Jerusalem for Christians. This account is furnished by the Chronicle of the Cistercian monk Alberic which ends in 1241 AD; it is confirmed by the Augustinian Thomas of Champré [1201-1270 AD] and the English Franciscan Roger Bacon [1214-1294 AD]. See Michaud's History of the Crusades, trans. W. Robson, vol. 3, London 1852, Appendix p. 445.

Mel Gibson DUI incident

 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit), http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/ Mel_Gibson_ DUI_incident , Date of occurrence July 28, 2006
   [NOTE: Except for the "mugshot," do NOT click the internal links.  ENDS.]
   MALIBU, California, U.S.A.:
  [Picture] Mel Gibson's mugshot from his July 28, 2006 arrest for DUI.   
   On July 28, 2006, at 2:36am PDT,^[1] American actor, director, and producer Mel Gibson was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence while speeding (87 miles per hour in a 45-mph zone) in his 2006 Lexus LS 430^[2] on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California.^[3] The arrest was supported by blood-alcohol testing reported as "0.12%" (the state's legal limit is 0.08%) and an open container, 750ml at 75% full, labeled "Cazadores Tequila".^[4] During the incident, Gibson was described as cooperative until arrested, then became threatening, shouting anti-Semitic remarks and asking "Are you a Jew?" to the arresting officer, Deputy James Mee, who is Jewish^[5]; more officers met the patrol car at the station, and Gibson reportedly made anti-social remarks to other officers.^[4][6] On balance, there was no report of what the officers said that could have angered Gibson, but he was described as "cooperative" until told he was being arrested for drunk driving by Deputy James Mee. Gibson was videotaped by Sgt. T. Palmer upon reaching the police station.^[4] He asked her, "What are you looking at, sugartits?" Mel Gibson's bail was set at $5,000, he was released near 9am PDT^[1][7] and driven 10 miles in a marked patrol car ^[8] to retrieve his Lexus sedan.
   The incident almost immediately prompted a small media frenzy (in both the regular news media and satrical shows), becoming somewhat infamous almost overnight and prompting two separate public apologies from Gibson. #

Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks cited in official police report

 
   SFGate.com , www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/n/a/ 2006/07/31/ entertainment/ e143903D69. DTL&type= politics , By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ, Associated Press Writer, (AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report), Monday, July 31, 2006
   LOS ANGELES (AP), (07-31) 15:15 PDT: An official police report on Mel Gibson's arrest on drunken driving charges substantiates claims that he made anti-Semitic remarks and threatened a deputy, a law enforcement official said Monday.
   On Monday, Sheriff's Department officials sent prosecutors their case, which also says a tequila bottle was found in Gibson's car when he was pulled over on the Pacific Coast Highway.
   Gibson had released a lengthy statement Saturday apologizing for saying "despicable" things to sheriff's deputies when he was arrested, but he did not elaborate. The entertainment Web site TMZ.com had reported that the sheriff's department was considering eliminating the anti-Semitic remarks from its official report.
   The report forwarded to prosecutors cites Gibson as making disparaging comments about Jews, according to the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
   TMZ reported that Gibson said, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and asked the arresting officer, "Are you a Jew?"
   The district attorney's office confirmed prosecutors had received the case and it was under review. A tentative arraignment date was set for Sept. 28.
   A sheriff's spokesman Monday defended the department's handling of the case.
   "In that case file will be (Gibson's) statement, will be our report, will be everything pertinent to his blood-alcohol level. We have done our job," sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore told reporters Monday at department headquarters. "We hope we've done it with not only professionalism and intelligence, but held to the highest standard of legal and moral imperative."
   The Sheriff's Department, he said, was "convinced because of our investigation and because of his own self-illuminating statement that he will be convicted of driving under the influence."
   In his statement, Gibson said he has struggled with alcoholism and taken steps "to ensure my return to health."
   The actor was "participating in an ongoing program to deal with this," Gibson's publicist, Alan Nierob told The Associated Press on Monday. "The guy is trying to stay alive."
   The questions about whether police were covering up Gibson's remarks came partly because Gibson has a relationship with Sheriff Lee Baca. He has dressed in a sheriff's uniform to film public service announcements for Baca's Star Organization, a charity group that raises scholarships for children of department employees. Gibson also donated $10,000, Whitmore said.
   Gibson was arrested after deputies stopped his 2006 Lexus LS 430 for speeding at 2:36 a.m. Friday. Whitmore said deputies clocked him doing 87 mph in a 45 mph zone.
   A breath test indicated Gibson's blood-alcohol level was 0.12 percent, Whitmore said. In California, a driver is legally intoxicated at 0.08 percent.
   Gibson posted $5,000 bail and was released hours later.
   Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, called Gibson's apology "unremorseful and insufficient." Prominent Hollywood talent agent Ari Emanuel called for an industry boycott of Gibson in a blog posted Monday.
   "At a time of escalating tensions in the world, the entertainment industry cannot idly stand by and allow Mel Gibson to get away with such tragically inflammatory statements," he wrote. "People in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line.
   "There are times in history when standing up against bigotry and racism is more important than money."
   This is not the first time Gibson has faced accusations of anti-Semitism. Gibson produced, directed and financed "The Passion of the Christ," which some Jewish leaders said cast Jews as the killers of Jesus. Days before "Passion" was released, Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson, was quoted as saying the Holocaust was mostly "fiction."
   Gibson, 50, won a best-director Oscar for 1995's "Braveheart," and starred in the "Lethal Weapon" and "Mad Max" films, among others.
   In recent years, he has turned his attention to producing films and TV shows through his Icon Productions. The hundreds of millions of dollars he made producing the 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ" has given the star the ability to finance his own films, giving him a measure of independence from the major studios.
   His next movie is "Apocalypto," about the decline of the Mayan empire. It is being distributed by The Walt Disney Co. #

Fundamentals Of Israel And Hizbollah Are The Same

 
   From an Unusual Suspect to The Editor, The Guardian Weekly (Britain), 119 Farringdon Rd, London EC1R 3ER, England, UK, weekly.letters@ guardian.co.uk , sent on August 2, 2006
   Dear Sir/Madam,
   FUNDAMENTALS OF ISRAEL AND HIZBOLLAH ARE THE SAME
   Thanks for Brian Whittaker's solid reporting in "Scale of Lebanon's human crisis emerges" (July 28-Aug 3). Since he wrote this the position has worsened, with Israel changing from probing raids to heavy bombing, calling a bombing halt, then pushing ground troops into Gaza as well as into Lebanon, demanding an international peacekeeping force!
   Hizbollah, which has helped precipitate this disaster for ordinary people, has a seemingly endless stock of poorly-navigated rockets (from Russia, maybe?) to rain upon Israel, thus hardening the resolve of Jerusalem's leaders. Israel's bombers have destroyed a three-storey house sheltering women and children, killed families fleeing, and hit United Nations observers.
   Commentators ought to remember that the religious traditions of both Israel and Hizbollah seem to have common roots. Both have the divine command to seize land, to strike terror into the hearts of the inhabitants, to utterly destroy those living there, and "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
   These parallels came as a surprise to me after the Bali bombing raised my awareness. The leaders of the West act as if they did not know this.
   They also act as if they don't want to know that in the 1930s there were three terrorist gangs operating among the religious minority then in Palestine, the Jews. They murdered non-Jewish Palestinians and British troops and police who were there under a League of Nations mandate.
   These terrorists' atrocities included garrotting two British soldiers, and blowing up the British headquarters in the King David Hotel.
   Readers who doubt the scriptural background for divine orders for destruction of cities, and trees, extermination of people, terror, and "an eye for an eye" ought to read the Hebrew scriptures Numbers 21:2-3, 2 Kings 3:25, Joshua 11:20, Deuteronomy 11:24-25, and Exodus 21:23-25.
   For parallel teachings turn to the Koran 7:3, 59:5, 9:123 (or 124), 8:12, and 5:45 (or 49), also supposedly from Heaven. (These are sample readings -- there is more!)
   Could someone tell me why the Islamic people of Palestine seem to have forgotten that their Arab forebears stole the land from the Christians, and why the Jews have forgotten that their own Bible tells them that originally they stole the land from Canaanites, Jebusites, and other peoples?
   The ordinary Israeli Jews and the ordinary Arabs ought to remember that for about 50 years the American political-military complex has been backing Israel with billions of dollars and armaments, and other powers have been backing the Islamic suicide bombers, but hatred has not worked yet! #

Palestinian Christians caught between ‘extremists’

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), By Karin Kloosterman, CNS, Pages 1 and 4, August 3, 2006
   TEL AVIV, Israel (CNS) - Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank and Israel expressed anger after Israeli airstrikes in Qana, Lebanon, left 65 civilians dead in the largest attack against Hezbollah since the war began mid-July.
   Jacob Zakharia, a Palestinian Melkite Catholic living in Jerusalem's Old City, said that Palestinian Christians are most affected by the conflict.
   "We are sandwiched between extreme Jews and extreme Muslims," Zakharia said.
   Like many, Zakharia expected an Israeli aerial cease-fire following the July 31 Qana attack. "I heard half an hour ago on the radio that Israel was bombing again," Zakharia told Catholic News Service on July 31.
   Israeli forces carried out aerial attacks in southern Lebanon on July 31, hours after the government agreed to a 48-hour halt while investigating its bombing in Qana. But a representative from the Israeli Defence Forces said, "This was not a cease-fire. There was a partial suspension of certain aerial activities."
  [Picture] Tragedy: Red Cross workers move the body of a child killed in an Israeli air raid on the village of Qana in southern Lebanon on July 30. Some 60 civilians, including at least 37 children, died.    Photo: CNS/Zohra Bensemra, Reuters.  
Caught between extremists
   Meanwhile, Zakharia said Israel doesn't care about its neighbours in the Middle East.
   "Israel has very sophisticated bombs and bombardment tactics. They don't care about their neighbours," he said. "They respect only who is powerful."
   Father Youssef Saadeh, a Palestinian parish priest at St John the Baptist Church in Nablus, West Bank, said he believes US President George W. Bush and the American government is supporting Israel and its airstrikes against Hezbollah militants.
   "As Arab people, we need justice and rights. This airstrike is a very good example for how Mr Bush is a bad man, so is his government. I think Mr Bush told the Israelis to bomb Qana," said Father Saadeh. "How can we speak about the peace and love of Jesus when the Israeli soldiers send their bombs and kill many children and young men in this city," he said.
   The Bush administration says it supports a long-lasting Middle East cease-fire that would address the root of the ongoing conflict, rather than a quick-fix halt to the war.
   Franciscan Father Quirico Calella, who lives in the northern Israeli city of Acre, said he is just relieved to see only smoke and not tragedy after a Hezbollah rocket landed near a parishioner's home on July 30. "We hope for us and for Lebanon," Father Calella said. #

From Europe to ‘Eurabia’

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), by Barry Morgan, Vista liftout page 2, August 3, 2006
In 1969 Pope Paul VI warned against the western world's obsession with material gain. Perth writer BARRY MORGAN reflects on the increasingly-evident consequences of the Western world's ever declining birth rates.
   God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it." - Genesis 1:28
The significance of God's blessing, in the very first chapter of the Bible, appears to have escaped most of today's Christians; fertility has become something to be avoided, a stumbling block on the way to material success; but not so the members of Islam.
   The followers of the prophet have no such inhibitions and the consequences are now becoming too obvious to ignore. So rapidly is the influence of Islam spreading, particularly in once-Christian Europe, that some commentators are now calling it 'Eurabia.'
   It is yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences formulated in 1936 by US sociologist Robert Merton.
   Merton identified five sources of unintended consequences, the third of which occurs where the individual or group through "wilful ignorance" wants the intended consequence of an action so much, that they purposely ignore any unintended effects.
   For forty years or so the West's obsessive pursuit of 'self and 'things' at the expense of its fecundity has seemed to work; at least in a material sense. Over the decades our material standard of living has increased enormously. But the trade-off has been an ever-decreasing birth rate. Paul VI warned against this as early as 1968, but then few wanted to listen; now the results can no longer be ignored.
   On its own the declining birth rate of the West is problematic enough, but coupled with the far greater fecundity of Muslim populations it literally poses a threat to the continued existence of Europe. The maths are simple. The Muslim birth rate is three times higher than the non-Muslim.
  [Picture] The grand mosque: Followers of Islam gather outside a mosque, which can accommodate 1 million worshippers, to recite prayers.    PHOTO: CNS  
   Also the European non-Muslim birth rate is well below the replacement rate. Like everywhere else in the West, a demographic time bomb that has been ticking for decades looks increasingly close to going off.
   In his recent book The West's Last Chance Tony Blankley spelt out the problem. Thirty years ago there were only a few hundred thousand Muslims in all of Europe; today there are over 20 million and unlike the rest of the population their numbers are rising fast. If it continues, this massive demographic shift will have enormous cultural, social and legal implications.
  Not long ago historian Bernard Lewis predicted, 'Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century'  
   Already some are saying the situation is beyond redemption. Not long ago historian Bernard Lewis predicted: "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century."
   Another historian, Bat Ye'or, expresses the same view in her book Eurabia, saying that the decline has gone too far to be arrested.
   Recent surveys of British Muslims found that more than 60 per cent wanted a change to Islamic Sharia Law.
   It was under Sharia law in Nigeria that in October 2001, a mother of four, Safiya Hussaini, was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and recently another mother Amina Lawal also received the same sentence for the same 'crime'.
  [Picture] Mecca pilgrims: Thousands of pilgrims from all over the world visit the Ka'aba in the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.    PHOTO: CNS  
   It was also Sharia law that sentenced Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan to death for the 'crime' of converting to Christianity.
   If Western libertarians, always quick to exaggerate and criticise Christianity for perceived abuses, have complained about these things they have been very muted.
   It was only through the intervention of Pope Benedict XVI and US Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice that Rahman's life was spared and he was able to migrate to the relative safety of Germany.
   He might be safe in Europe, but one wonders will his children? Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, a London based international expert on Islam and adviser to governments, relates what has been happening for some time.
   He tells of a documentary on Britain's Channel 4 in 2003 showing a government school in a suburban Islamic stronghold that now teaches only an Islamic syllabus. All students have to study the Koran, and non-Muslim girls have to cover their heads.
   In 2002 Britain introduced pensions that comply with Sharia law. In a March 2005 edition of The Guardian , Adam Jay reported the capitulation of Lloyds, once a bastion of British financial hegemony, to the new financial realities. One month after introducing an Islamic current account, it launched a home finance product compliant with Sharia law.
   While the once-Christian West gives every sign of having entered its dotage, the opposite is happening in the Middle East. Iran's birthrate far outstrips the West's anaemic efforts. Proportionately, it has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, millions of them apparently eager to embrace "martyrdom".
   During the Iran-Iraq war, it was Iranian youth, many of them children, who marched through Iraqi minefields to clear the way for the following army.
   Islam controls four fifths of the worlds oil reserves, much of it in Iran, but with such an abundance of cheap energy Iran recently embarked on a project to build 54,000 centrifuges to enrich enough uranium for numerous nuclear warheads.
   Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made his intentions quite clear. In a recent article, reporter Amir Taheri tell's how Ahmadinejad is convinced he has been chosen by the Hidden Iman, a messianic Shia figure who went into "grand occultation" in 941 AD. He claims he has been chosen by the Iman to provoke a "clash of civilisations".
   Interestingly some of the most forthright statements on dealing with this situation have come from Pope Benedict.
   Both before and since his accession to the papacy he has made it clear that, while intending no offence to other religions, his role is to defend and strengthen Christianity.
   He has also made it clear that at this moment in history, the struggle revolves around the battle for the soul of Europe in a pre-eminent way.
  Iran's birth-rate far outstrips the West's anaemic efforts. It has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, millions of them eager to embrace 'martyrdom'  
   In late 2003 while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, the semi-official Jesuit magazine La Civilta Cattolica published a scathing criticism of the mistreatment of Christians in Islamic societies.
   It pointed out "for almost a thousand years Europe was under a constant threat from Islam, which twice put its survival in serious danger".
   The Cardinal has criticised multiculturalism, "which is so constantly and passionately encouraged and supported", because it, "... amounts to an abandonment and disavowal of what is our own".
   It seems that in its current anaemic state Christianity is not up to the challenge of a revitalised Islam. Now, Pope Benedict has called for a rejection of secularist relativism; a moral disease that has gradually white-anted the West's Christian foundations and inheritance.
   Islam is very much on the Church's agenda and we'll be hearing a lot more about it in the future. #

Cultural arguments no defence for rape

 
   The Weekend Australian Review, by Shakira Hussein, "Books," p 12, August 5-6, 2006
THE subtitle of Paul Sheehan's account of the horrific series of gang rapes committed in Sydney by the Pakistan-born K brothers describes it as the story of "Four young girls, six brothers and a cultural time bomb".
   The K brothers were not content with the physical violation of their teenage victims; through their determined testing of every weakness in the legal system, they continued to torment them for years afterwards.
   Feminists have long criticised the legal system's failure to deliver justice to rape victims. Despite shield laws meant to preclude interrogations about the victims' sexual history, defence lawyers continue to insinuate that a woman's personal conduct is somehow responsible for sexual violence committed against her.
   A veteran journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald, Sheehan does not deliver the most incisive critique of this situation but it is a denunciation that needs to be made often and loudly. He rightly rejects almost all of the K brothers' various defence ploys: that the girls consented to sex; that they had misidentified one or more of their attackers, that the brothers were insane, and that the trials were an Islamophobic conspiracy by Australian authorities.
   Yet he is happy to accept (as explanation if not mitigation) a last-minute claim by a defence lawyer that his client was a "cultural time bomb", conditioned into violent misogyny by his upbringing in Pakistan's conservative North-West Frontier Province. Moreover, Sheehan wonders "how many other cultural time bombs were ticking" among Australia's Muslim population.
  [Picture] Standing tall: A defiant Tegan Wagner  
   I'm no apologist for prevailing Pakistani gender norms. I've visited Pakistani women's refuges and legal aid offices, the frontline in the struggle against a legal system that allows rape victims to be imprisoned for adultery and honour killings to be settled with the payment of blood money. Women going about their everyday lives know that their gender renders them vulnerable to violence and wrongful imprisonment. The North-West Frontier Province, in particular, on occasion scared five types of hell out of me.
   And yet ... and yet. Although Pakistan's legal sanctions against rape are inadequate, the social sanctions are still powerful. Precisely because the consequences of rape are even more devastating than in Australia, it is regarded as a crime of the utmost severity.

Girls Like You By Paul Sheehan Pan Macmillan, 388pp, $32.95

   Even in the most conservative areas of Pakistan, most men are not rapists. Sheehan is correct in noting that the K brothers' Pashtun culture is "not noted for its embrace of feminism", but as a feminist researcher, I have relied heavily on the generosity of Pashtun men and youths who acted as unpaid assistants. They did not share my values but they did not attempt to impose their own. I cannot imagine any of them as potential "cultural time bombs".
   Given the total lack of empirical evidence that Muslim men in Australia are any more likely to commit rape than anyone else, Sheehan's willingness to endorse the idea that a Muslim upbringing conditions one to sexual violence is a dangerous and repellent slur. Rapists and their lawyers can be expected to come up with far-fetched explanations for their crimes; the mystery is why Sheehan should choose to join them.
   Centring discussions of rape around ethnicity and religion is as dangerous to Australian women (of whatever background) as it is to Muslim men. The K brothers may have manipulated the Australian legal system more skilfully than most, but the flaws they exposed were longstanding and symptomatic of inadequacies in Australian social attitudes to sexual violence.
   Defence lawyers continue to monster rape victims in court because, at least some of the time, such tactics work. And they work because plenty of Australians still believe that a woman who is drunk, or wearing alluring clothes, or who goes to a man's home or hotel room, is not entirely to be trusted if she later claims to have been raped.
   Many Muslims do indeed have repellent ideas about rape but so do significant numbers of non-Muslim Australians. That Australia deals with such sexual violence infinitely better than does Pakistan is no excuse for failing to address our own shortcomings.
   Like many women all over Australia, I cheered at the sight of one of the K brothers' chosen prey, Tegan Wagner, standing tall and gorgeous outside the courthouse to tell them that they had not won, and that she had no cause for shame. She reminded me of another beautiful and defiant woman, Mukhtaran Mai, a Pakistani village woman who was sentenced by a tribal council to be gang-raped as punishment for an alleged sexual transgression by her younger brother. As with Wagner, Mai stood firm against powerful men, including the Pakistani president; she was not the one, she said, who should be ashamed.
   So I was disturbed to learn from Sheehan's book that Wagner attended last year's Cronulla riot, which she saw as a protest against predatory behaviour by Muslim men. After all she has been through, I don't blame her for taking a dim view of such behaviour.
   But if Mai had been on the beach that day, she would have been treated no differently to the other Muslim females present. Her scarf would have been torn from her head, she would have been threatened, and in the tirade of racist slanging there would have been no chance for her and Wagner to find out just how much they had in common.
   At a time when alliances across cultures and religion have never been more important, neither racist riots nor racialised analyses of crime provide any way forward. Sheehan's 1998 book Among the Barbarians was dedicated "for the colour-blind". I look forward to the day when he decides to join their ranks. Shakira Hussein is editor of Shalom Pax Salam. #

Humanity BETRAYED

 
   The Weekend Australian, review of a book by Gordon Corera, pp 19 and 28, August 19-20, 2006
PAKISTANI SCIENTIST A. Q. KHAN CONFESSED IN 2004 THAT HE HAD SOLD NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY TO IRAN AND NORTH KOREA. TODAY, SOME OF THAT TECHNOLOGY COULD BE IN THE HANDS OF OTHER RADICALS, YET HIS COUNTRY CONTINUES TO PROTECT HIM. GORDON CORERA EXAMINES THE DANGERS OF THE NUCLEAR BLACK MARKET
IN the story of the spread of nuclear technology during the past 30 years, the elusive figure at Abdul Qadeer Khan casts a blurred bat unmistakable shadow over proceedings. From Pakistan's clandestine program - born in an era of shifting nuclear sands and driven by fear of India - to today's equally unstable international security environment, Khan is the sometimes visible but often unseen thread drawing together what may otherwise seem like a disparate array of events in the story of the spread of nuclear weapons.
   It was he more than any other individual who undermined the idealistic structure of Atoms for Peace - of supporting nuclear power generation while discouraging the spread of weapons -- fashioned by US president Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. Former CIA director George Tenet has reportedly described Khan as "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden", a label richly deserved given that Khan has wreaked havoc on attempts to contain one of the greatest threats facing the world today: the spread of nuclear technology. [***]
   The rings of proliferation among states, of which Khan was but one part, continue to operate, spreading and perfecting illicit technology, trading on each other's comparative advantage. In 2003, the British Joint Intelligence Committee assessment found that North Korea's missile export program was continuing apace, with Pyongyang looking for new customers and offering upgrades to established customers. There are reports that North Korea has been secretly helping the Iranian nuclear program since the 1990s. It was also reported that in October 2005 Iran encouraged North Korea in its nuclear program by offering oil and natural gas.
   Iran reportedly hoped to spread the pressure over nuclear development to other countries rather than see it focused on Tehran alone: the same motive that may have driven Khan in his early years of spreading technology. Iran also has explicitly threatened to pass on its nuclear technology. The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Al Khamenei, told Sudanese officials last April that his country was "prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists".
   Even Pakistan remains active. In May 2005 the US indicted a Pakistani military supplier for running a clandestine nuclear technology procurement network in conjunction with a South Africa-based Israeli. A July 2005 European intelligence report warned that Pakistani efforts to procure for its nuclear program were continuing, with the range of materials and components being ordered dearly exceeding the amount required for spare parts or replacements for its program. The same aluminium tubing that Khan bought for Libya was still being bought. Could someone - possibly the state itself - still be selling?
   Though it may have burned the brightest, Khan's network operated within a wider constellation of proliferators. Khan's great innovation was to offer a full service, providing all the required designs and access to the businesses that could supply the parts, allowing states short cuts through the development and purchasing process. Khan was also unique in shifting his work from state control to the private sector. But although his network may be out of action, others may now attempt to grab some of its share in this very lucrative market
   A European intelligence report listed hundreds of front companies and institutions involved in proliferation, including more than 200 from Iran. Intelligence agencies continue to see indications of people in the marketplace looking for equipment and, given the huge riches on offer, where there is demand, chances are that people will try to meet it.
   The non-proliferation system that was constructed in the mid-'70s in response to India's nuclear testing was designed to prevent the spread of technology from Western states to developing countries. But since a broader array of countries have themselves developed nuclear technology, it has become much harder to prevent them from exporting their know-how to others.
   Countries can now buy, sell and share technology among themselves, rather than needing to start programs from scratch, or import material, or steal plans from the West, as Khan and Pakistan were forced to do. The exposure of the Khan network is unlikely to halt the growth of these activities. This secondary proliferation has happened for a long time with missile technology, but its emergence in the nuclear field under Khan is a serious worry, particularly when states such as North Korea are involved. It threatens to shatter the non-proliferation system. It is unclear whether the wreckage will produce a new, workable system or a world of many more nuclear states.
   Edited extract from Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A. Q. Khan Network, by Gordon Corera (Scribe, $30). Corera is a BBC journalist specialising in security issues. #

Terror and the black market

 
International underground weapons networks are essential for extremists, writes Gordon Corera
   The Weekend Australian, by Gordon Corera, "Inquirer" section, p 28, August 19-20, 2006
SOME sellers in the nuclear black market are amateurs trying to make a quick buck; others are far more dangerous. A serious fear is that organised crime recognises the profits and could move in to fill the vacuum. As international organised crime networks increasingly overlap and even merge with terrorist networks, this could be a route for terrorists getting hold of technology or nuclear material.
   There's little doubt of al-Qa'ida's desire for nuclear weapons, and the more states there are with the bomb and the more technology and material there is in the marketplace, the more likely it is that al-Qa'ida will succeed in its ambition.
   Since the early 1990s, Osama bin Laden has been seeking nuclear material, but the cylinder he received proved to be useless. Another individual in Sudan tried to get material for al-Qa'ida but was probably scammed into buying low-grade reactor fuel or other useless material. In 1998, bin Laden said that getting hold of unconventional weapons was a "religious duty". Terrorists are unlikely to be able to develop their own infrastructure to produce fissile material. The Japanese terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo tried to develop nuclear weapons but lacked the scientific expertise to fulfil its ambition.
   So if terrorists get hold of a weapon, it will likely be from a state. Buying or stealing has always been a fear when it comes to the nuclear stockpiles of the former Soviet Union and Pakistan. In late 2001, this possibility was beginning to look very real. A CIA source called Dragonfire warned that al-Qa'ida already had its hands on a weapon, to be detonated in New York.
   Events on the ground in South Asia compounded the growing anxiety. As US troops and intelligence operatives swept through Kabul in October 2001, they found startling new details of al-Qa'ida's ambitions regarding nuclear weapons, and the role of Pakistan. The speed of the Taliban's fall meant that safe houses were abandoned still filled with documents that offered a huge intelligence haul. They revealed al-Qa'ida's capabilities and intentions had been seriously underestimated. It was further along with its biological weapons program than had been previously thought.
   What really set off alarm bells was that the documents found in Kabul made clear that Pakistani nuclear scientists had met the Taliban and al-Qa'ida to discuss the development of nuclear devices. One of the men who had met them was Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a scientist whose zeal had caught former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's eye in Multan in 1972. After being shoved aside by Khan, he moved to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, rising to become the director for nuclear power. But he also became increasingly radical and religious.
   He wrote a book entitled Doomsday and Life after Death. In 1999 he was forced out of the nuclear establishment amid increasing concern over his views (including advocating the transfer of nuclear technology and materials to other countries) after he protested against Pakistan signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
   Another scientist who went with Mahmood to Afghanistan, Chaudhri Abdul Majeed, had retired from Pakistan's nuclear program in 2000.
   After the two men left Pakistan's program, they founded a charity called Umma Tameer-e-Nau, which carried out relief work in Afghanistan. Mahmood's sympathies for the Taliban were well known and when he was visiting Kabul in 2000, bin Laden is reported to have heard of his presence and sent an al-Qa'ida operative to his hotel to arrange a meeting. A second meeting with bin Laden occurred in August 2001 in a Kabul compound. Mahmood's son said: "Osama asked my father, 'How can a nuclear bomb be made, and can you help us make one?' " According to the White House, during a follow-up meeting, an associate of bin Laden indicated that he had nuclear material.
   No one is sure of the exact nature of the conversations and how much advice Mahmood may have given, although his son says he declined to help.
   If the Taliban had not been overthrown, the relationship could have moved forward. When it emerged Mahmood had met bin Laden as well as Mullah Omar and discussed nuclear weapons, there was panic in Washington. CIA director George Tenet raced to Islamabad. Pakistani officials stressed that nothing sensitive had been passed on, but there were suspicions other scientists had been to Afghanistan. There was no evidence that al-Qa'ida had fissile material for a weapon and there seemed to be a realisation that a dirty bomb might be more feasible than an actual nuclear bomb.
   Mahmood and Abdul Majeed were arrested by Pakistani intelligence officers on October 23 along with the entire UTN board, which had ties to the Pakistani military: former military intelligence chief General Hamid Gul was reported to have been UTN's "honorary patron".
   Gul met Mahmood in Kabul the same month Mahmood met bin Laden, although Gul said he knew nothing of contacts with bin Laden, according to reports filed by Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl shortly before he was killed. Mahmood was interrogated jointly by the CIA and ISI and failed six lie-detector tests.
   But for all the fears of nuclear leakage from Pakistan, Islamabad was not confronted about Khan. There were too many other priorities and too much still to learn about the network.
   The tremendous danger posed by the nexus between the development of weapons of mass destruction by states and the desire for those weapons by non-state terrorist groups was fast becoming the new orthodoxy in Washington. After the surprise attack of 9/11 and fear that the next attack might involve unconventional weapons, a new forward-leaning policy was formulated.
   This policy put the greatest emphasis on stopping states from developing weapons of mass destruction rather than closing down the networks that might be supplying them: hence the identification of Iraq, Iran and North Korea in George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech in January 2002. The Bush White House never had much faith in traditional arms control regimes and treaties, with their universalistic principles, perceiving them as ineffective and too focused on process rather than results, in turn constraining US action. The problem was dangerous regimes, not dangerous weapons. #

THE STORY SO FAR

 
   The Weekend Australian, Source: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USA, "Inquirer" section, p 28, August 19-20, 2006
   Abdul Qadeer Khan's early exposure to nuclear technology while in Europe showed him how to establish uranium enrichment in Pakistan and set up his global proliferation network.
   1936: Khan is born in Bhopal, part of British India. Immigrates with his family to Pakistan in 1952.
   1961: Khan moves to Europe to complete his studies, eventually receiving a PhD in metallurgical engineering in Belgium in 1972. He begins work at the Physical Dynamic Research Laboratory (known as FDD), a subcontractor for Ultra Centrifuge Nederland, the Dutch partner in the Urenco uranium-enrichment consortium. Dutch intelligence begins to monitor Khan, concerned by his unusual requests for technical information.
   1974: India conducts its first nuclear test. Khan writes to then Pakistan prime minister ZulfikarAli Bhuttoto offer his services to Pakistan.
   1975: Pakistan begins buying components for its uranium-enrichment program from Urenco suppliers. Khan is transferred from enrichment work with FDD as Dutch authorities become very worried about his activities. Khan leaves FDO for Pakistan with copied blueprints for centrifuges and other parts. Gas centrifuges offer a way to maximise the form (U-235) of refined uranium, the process known as enrichment, needed to generate power or make bombs.
   1976: Khan begins centrifuge work with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He is given control over Pakistan's uranium-enrichment programs. Khan founds the Engineering Research Laboratory.
   1978: ERL develops working prototypes of Pakistan-1 (P-l) centrifuges, adapted from the German G-l design Khan worked with at Urenco. Pakistan enriches uranium forthe first time at his facility at Kahuta. A more advanced P-2 model is developed later.
   1980s: Khan acquires blueprints for a tested Chinese nuclear bomb. ERL is renamed Khan Research Laboratories by then president Zia-ul-Haq. Pakistan produces enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. Khan reportedly begins to develop his export network and orders twice the number of components necessary for Pakistan's program. This transition from importer to exporter apparently is missed by Western intelligence. Pakistan and Iran are suspected of signing a secret agreement on peaceful nuclear co-operation.
   1990: An Iraqi memo, found during inspections in 1995, indicates Khan may have offered to sell Iraq a nuclear bomb design in 1990 and that Iraq may have rejected it as a suspected sting.
   1992: Pakistan begins missile co-operation with North Korea. Within Pakistan, KRL will develop the Ghauri missile, an adaptation of the North Korean No-dong design. Khan could have used this connection to transfer nuclear technologies to North Korea.
   Mid-1990s onwards: Khan makes at least 13 visits to North Korea before his public confession in 2004. He is suspected of having met a top Syrian official in Beirut to offer assistance with a centrifuge enrichment facility. Khan begins to transfer centrifuges and components to Libya.
   1998: India detonates a total of five devices in nuclear tests on May 11 and 13. Pakistan responds with six nuclear tests on May 28 and 30.
   2001: Libya obtains 1.8 tonnes of uranium hexafluoride, the gas used to feed enrichment centrifuges. Khan is forced into retirement because of suspected proliferation. Libya receives blueprints for nuclear weapons plans, reportedly of Chinese origin.
   2004: Khan makes a public confession on Pakistan television. He is pardoned soon after by President Pervez Musharraf and has been under house arrest since. The Pakistan Government claims Khan acted independently. The Libyans warn US officials that some components they ordered had turned up.
Source: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the US
www.ProliferationNews.org . #

Diaspora Jews urged to find collective voice

 
   The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), www.theage. com.au/news/ arts/diaspora- jews-urged- to-find- collective- voice/2006/ 08/27/115661 7211738.html ; By Dewi Cooke, August 28, 2006
   MELBOURNE: Prominent Melbourne barrister Robert Richter, QC, has called on the Jewish community to speak out when Israeli Government policies adversely affect the Jewish diaspora.
   Mr Richter, speaking at a session of the Age Melbourne Writers' Festival yesterday, said author and commentator Antony Loewenstein, whose controversial book My Israel Question was the subject of the forum, had been, in a sense, a "truer and closer friend" to Israel than those who believed they "had the ear" of Israel's Government.
   "Diaspora Jews need to take a stand," he said. "It's not good enough that they have a private audience with the Israeli leader. They ought to be saying some pretty loud things and not just murmuring approval."
   In his book, Loewenstein canvasses an assertion that there is an unspoken understanding in the Jewish diaspora to avoid criticism of Israel and its policies.
   Mr Richter, who lived in Israel until he was 13, said there was no longer a question of whether Israel had a right to exist. But when some of the country's actions meant anti-Semitic sentiment was directed towards those living outside the Jewish state, the diaspora community had the right to criticise, he said.
   Loewenstein also writes that the Jewish lobby in Australia works to stifle debate around Israel and particularly its actions in the occupied territories.
   To this, barrister and human rights activist Julian Burnside, QC, said: "One of the most important elements in any community . . . is the genuine possibility of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. There are no ideas that are off limits and no questions that are illegal." #

Malaysian Prime Minister Calls For Restrictions On Evangelising Muslims

 
   The West Australian, www.barnabas fund.org/ archivenews/ article.php? ID_news_ items=211 , August 29, 2006
   MALAYSIA: Most of Malaysia's 16 states have laws which prohibit the propagation of other religions amongst Muslims. Recently Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has called for the remaining four states which do not have these laws to introduce them. The debate about the supremacy of Islamic and Secular law and religious freedom has come to the fore given the publicity for the Lina Joy case, and some Muslims are trying to force Malaysia closer to becoming an Islamic state. Badawi is regarded as a moderate, but is coming under increasing pressure from Islamists.
   Article 11(1) of the Malaysian constitution states that: "Every person has the right to profess and practice his religion and subject to Clause (4), to propagate it". This article is subject to Article 11(4) which says "State law and in respect of the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Lubuan, federal law may control or restrict the propagation of any religious doctrine or belief among persons professing the religion of Islam." This means that states within Malaysia have passed laws which make it an offence to persuade, influence or incite a Muslim to follow another religion and to send or deliver publications about non-Islamic religions to a Muslim. The proselytizing of non-Muslims faces no similar obstacles, as Islam is given a privileged position in Malaysia and other religions do not have the same protection.
   There are four states which have not passed this law; they are Federal Territories (Kuala Lumpur and Lubuan), Penang, Sabah and Sarawak. Badawi has argued that these states should also adopt restrictions on the propagation of non-Islamic religions amongst non-Muslims. He recently said, "Why are they still not doing it? Those states that have not (passed such laws) should consider it. Take whatever action is needed." Badawi regards freedom of religion not as a right that needs to be protected, but rather as a source of conflict. He thinks that the free discussion of non-Islamic religion will provoke the majority and lead to discord. Badawi is also responding to the calls of Islamists who have grown more and more vocal in demanding tighter restrictions on non-Muslim religions and a more prominent role for Islamic law.
   In 2004 Badawi decreed that the Malay language version of the Bible should have "Not for Muslims" printed on the cover and that it should only be distributed in Christian churches and bookshops.
   Badawi believes that clamping down on the rights of members of the minority religions will prevent ethnic and religious conflict. However, empowering Islamists by accepting their demands will lead to much greater conflict in the future. It must be understood that the real threat comes from the Islamists, not from religious minorities who merely wish to be able to freely worship as they choose. Malaysia is at a crossroads and Badawi must do everything in his power to ensure that Malaysia takes the path towards becoming a country where human rights are protected.
   Help and support Barnabas Fund by clicking here - [Link] . Copyright © Barnabas Fund - 29th August 2006 #

‘Stupid’ Palestinians told: Don’t blame Israel

 
   The West Australian, p 24, Thursday, August 31, 2006
   GAZA CITY: A senior member of the extremist Hamas organisation which holds power in the Palestinian Parliament has broken a taboo by calling on Palestinians to stop blaming Israel for all their ills and look instead at their own failures.
   Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas Government's official spokesman, said Palestinians had been "attacked by the bacteria of stupidity".
   "The anarchy, chaos, pointless murders, the plundering of lands, family feuds - what do all of these have to do with the occupation?" he asked in an opinion article published in the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam.
   "We have always been accustomed to pinning our failures on others and conspiratorial thinking is still widespread among us."
   Mr Hamad was particularly scathing about the failure of Palestinians to make a success of their possession of the Gaza Strip after Israel effectively surrendered the territory a year ago.
   He wrote: "When you walk around in Gaza, you cannot help but avert your eyes from what you see - indescribable anarchy. Large families carry weapons in tribal wars against other families.
   "The reality in which we are living in Gaza can only be described as miserable and wretched, and as a failure in every sense of the word."
   His description resonates with what many outsiders find when they leave the orderly roads and fields of Israel and cross into the Gaza Strip, a dirty, crowded coastal area teeming with 1.4 million people.
  [Picture] FLASHBACK JANUARY 1; Mess of their own making: Palestinians bombed a United Nations workers club in Gaza City, leading to a UN withdrawal.  
   There is plenty of evidence to support Mr Hamad's view that the kidnapping, lawlessness and social chaos are, at least partly, home-grown.
   He said his article was his private opinion. But it is a sign of growing division between Hamas members living in the Palestinian territories and its leadership in Damascus.
   The exiles insist that militants continue to fire Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel. But the rockets have killed only four Israelis, yet hundreds of Palestinians have died in Israeli retribution. #

Cardinal challenges Muslims to defend persecuted Christians

 
   CathNews (from Church Resources, Australia), www.cathnews. com/news/ 609/3.php , September 1, 2006
   MELBOURNE: Muslims must speak up for the rights of Christians in Islamic countries and work with Christians towards a "mutual witness" to the shared values of peace and justice, British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said in Melbourne last night.
   "This is a vital principle of sacred hospitality, and it is vital for the relationship between Christians and Muslims," The Age quoted the Cardinal as saying.
   "Where Christians are being denied their rights or are subject to sharia law, that is not a matter on which Muslims in Britain or in Australia should remain silent," Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor added.
   "Where religious rights of minorities are disrespected in the name of Islam, the face of Islam is tarnished elsewhere in the world."
   Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor was speaking at the opening of the Australian Catholic University's new Asia-Pacific Centre of Inter-religious Dialogue - along with Mehmet Ali Sengul, honorary president of the Australian Intercultural Society.
   The whole point of interfaith co-operation was to uphold religious freedom, he said.
   The challenge for each religion was to keep its exclusive claims while overcoming ignorance and learning respect.
   "What is good is growth towards mutual understanding, but also a mutual witness to values we share - peace and justice - and that's not insignificant."
   Meanwhile, in Malaysia, the nation's Star reports that the Syariah (Shariah) Court has turned down a former Catholic's attempt to return to Christianity after his conversion to Islam because he had used the wrong process.
   The court this week ruled that Kenneth Wong Chun Chiak should file a summons and statement of claim instead of the notice of application supported by the affidavit he had filed.
   However, the court agreed to hear Mr Wong's application if he filed it again.
   In his application, Mr Wong, who took on the name Kenny bin Abdullah when he converted to Islam in 2001, said he never practised Islam after his conversion. Instead, he had continued to be a practising Christian.
   His affidavit did not say why he converted to Islam.
   Mr Wong said he had publicly announced that he was no longer a Muslim through a statutory declaration on 1 March this year.
   In his application, Mr Wong said that he was seeking a declaration to have his name removed from the list of Muslim converts in order to be able to marry a non-Muslim woman and to live as a non-Muslim.
   SOURCE: Cardinal pleads for rights (The Age, 1/9/06)
Petition filed wrongly (Malaysian Star, 31/8/06)
   LINKS (not necessarily endorsed by Church Resources)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster
Australian Catholic University
   ARCHIVE: No joy for Malaysian Muslim convert to Catholicism (CathNews, 25/8/06)
Melbourne Muslim leader challenges Pell to debate (CathNews, 26/7/06)
Pell affirms commitment to dialogue with Muslims (CathNews, 8/5/06)
Pope challenges Islam on religious freedom (CathNews, 16/5/06)
Pope talks Islam dialogue with world's cardinals (CathNews, 24/3/06)
  HAVE YOUR SAY   Click here    #

Middle East Bishops condemn "Christian Zionism"

 
   CathNews (from Church Resources, Australia), www.cathnews. com/news/ 609/4.php , September 1, 2006
   JERUSALEM: In its extreme form, the Christian Zionist program identifies the Gospel with "the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism" and is "detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel", says Jerusalem bishops in a hard-hitting statement.
   The statement, signed by Catholic Latin Patriarch, Cardinal Michel Sabbah (pictured), and leaders of the Syrian Orthodox, Episcopal and the Evangelical Lutheran churches in Jerusalem, directs its attack at a belief among some Christians that the defence of the State of Israel is in accordance with Biblical prophecy.
   The "Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism" describes Christian Zionism as "a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel."
   "In its extreme form, it laces an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ's love and justice today," the Christian leaders said.
   "We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation," the statement continues.
   The statement goes on to reject what it describes as "the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organisations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral preemptive borders and domination over Palestine".
   "This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of the world," said the statement.
   Instead of advancing "racial exclusivity and perpetual war", what is needed is "the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ," the bishops say.
   The statement calls upon Christians everywhere to pray for the Palestinian and Israeli people, "both of whom are suffering as victims of occupation and militarism."
   "We call upon all Churches that remain silent, to break their silence and speak for reconciliation with justice in the Holy Land," the Christian leaders added.
   "Justice alone guarantees a peace that will lead to reconciliation with a life of security and prosperity for all the peoples of our land. By standing on the side of justice, we open ourselves to the work of peace - and working for peace makes us children of God," the statement concludes.
   According to the Washington Post, Christian Zionists form a growing part of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, the Jewish state's main ally.
   SOURCE: Religious Leaders' Statement on Christian Zionism (Zenit, 30/8/06)
   LINKS (not necessarily endorsed by Church Resources)
Michel Sabbah
Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem
Christian Zionism (Wikipedia)
The Episcopal Diocese Of Jerusalem
   MORE STORIES: Holy Land churches attack Christian Zionism (Washington Post 31/8/06)
Religious Leaders' Statement on Christian Zionism (Catholic Online 31/8/06)
Religious Leaders' Statement on Christian Zionism (Indian Catholic 31/8/06)
  HAVE YOUR SAY   Click here    #

Rosa Brooks: Criticize Israel? You’re an Anti-Semite!

 
   Los Angeles Times, www.latimes. com/news/ opinion/ sunday/ la-oe-brooks 1sep01,0,465 7959.column? coll=la-util- opinion-sunday , by Rosa Brooks, rbrooks@latimes columnists.com , Opinion - Sunday Current, September 1, 2006
   How can we have a real discussion about Mideast peace if speaking honestly about Israel is out of bounds?
   UNITED STATES of AMERICA: EVER WONDER what it's like to be a pariah?
   Publish something sharply critical of Israeli government policies and you'll find out. If you're lucky, you'll merely discover that you've been uninvited to some dinner parties. If you're less lucky, you'll be the subject of an all-out attack by neoconservative pundits and accused of rabid anti-Semitism.
   This, at least, is what happened to Ken Roth. Roth — whose father fled Nazi Germany — is executive director of Human Rights Watch, America's largest and most respected human rights organization. (Disclosure: I have worked in the past as a paid consultant for the group.) In July, after the Israeli offensive in Lebanon began, Human Rights Watch did the same thing it has done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Congo, Uganda and countless other conflict zones around the globe: It sent researchers to monitor the conflict and report on any abuses committed by either side.
   It found plenty. On July 18, Human Rights Watch condemned Hezbollah rocket strikes on civilian areas within Israel, calling the strikes "serious violations of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes." So far, so good. You can't lose when you criticize a terrorist organization.
   But Roth and Human Rights Watch didn't stop there. As the conflict's death toll spiraled — with most of the casualties Lebanese civilians — Human Rights Watch also criticized Israel for indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Roth noted that the Israeli military appeared to be "treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone," and he observed that the failure to take appropriate measures to distinguish between civilians and combatants constitutes a war crime.
   The backlash was prompt. Roth and Human Rights Watch soon found themselves accused of unethical behavior, giving aid and comfort to terrorists and anti-Semitism. The conservative New York Sun attacked Roth (who is Jewish) for having a "clear pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel bias" and accused him of engaging in "the de-legitimization of Judaism, the basis of much anti-Semitism." Neocon commentator David Horowitz called Roth a "reflexive Israel-basher … who, in his zest to pillory Israel at every turn, is little more than an ally of the barbarians." The New Republic piled on, as did Alan Dershowitz, who claimed Human Rights Watch "cooks the books" to make Israel look bad. And writing in the Jewish Exponent, Jonathan Rosenblum accused Roth of resorting to a "slur about primitive Jewish bloodlust."
   Anyone familiar with Human Rights Watch — or with Roth — knows this to be lunacy. Human Rights Watch is nonpartisan — it doesn't "take sides" in conflicts. And the notion that Roth is anti-Semitic verges on the insane.
   But what's most troubling about the vitriol directed at Roth and his organization isn't that it's savage, unfounded and fantastical. What's most troubling is that it's typical. Typical, that is, of what anyone rash enough to criticize Israel can expect to encounter. In the United States today, it just isn't possible to have a civil debate about Israel, because any serious criticism of its policies is instantly countered with charges of anti-Semitism. Think Israel's tactics against Hezbollah were too heavy-handed, or that Israel hasn't always been wholly fair to the Palestinians, or that the United States should reconsider its unquestioning financial and military support for Israel? Shhh: Don't voice those sentiments unless you want to be called an anti-Semite — and probably a terrorist sympathizer to boot.
   How did adopting a reflexively pro-Israel stance come to be a mandatory aspect of American Jewish identity? Skepticism — a willingness to ask tough questions, a refusal to embrace dogma — has always been central to the Jewish intellectual tradition. Ironically, this tradition remains alive in Israel, where respected public figures routinely criticize the government in far harsher terms than those used by Human Rights Watch.
   In a climate in which good-faith criticism of Israel is automatically denounced as anti-Semitic, everyone loses. Israeli policies are a major source of discord in the Islamic world, and anger at Israel usually spills over into anger at the U.S., Israel's biggest backer.
   With resentment of Israeli policies fueling terrorism and instability both in the Middle East and around the globe, it's past time for Americans to have a serious national debate about how to bring a just peace to the Middle East. But if criticism of Israel is out of bounds, that debate can't occur — and we'll all pay the price.
   Back to Human Rights Watch's critics. Why waste time denouncing imaginary anti-Semitism when there's no shortage of the real thing? From politically motivated arrests of Jews in Iran to assaults on Jewish children in Ukraine, there's plenty of genuine anti-Semitism out there — and Human Rights Watch is usually taking the lead in condemning it. So if you're bothered by anti-Semitism — if you're bothered by ideologies that insist that some human lives have less value than others — you could do a whole lot worse than send a check to Human Rights Watch. #

Persecution Increases in Uzbekistan

 
   Barnabas Fund, www.barnabas fund.org , info@barnabas fund.org (Britain) , September 2, 2006
   During August Barnabas Fund received reports from Uzbekistan indicating increasing persecution of Protestant church leaders and their families, many of whom have now gone into hiding. This follows a surge of anti-Christian activity in Uzbekistan over several months. It is believed that this is linked with the 15th anniversary of Uzbekistan's independence, today, 1st September.
   A well-known church leader and evangelist, Sergey Hripunov, was given a week to leave the country with his wife and children. This is the second incident of deportation of a church leader from Uzbekistan in a month. The leader of a church started by Sergey Hripunov was given only 24 hours to leave the country with his wife and two children, the youngest of whom was only two weeks old. They were given no reason for the order, nor was there a court order accompanying it.
   Around 24^th August a group of Christians were arrested in the town of Termez by the Security Services. Some of the Christians, including women and children, were beaten. The following day some of the group were released, but six men were kept under arrest. Officials have as yet given no information as to why the Christians were arrested. One of the men detained was a Ukraine national, called Yuri Stefanko, visiting some friends in Uzbekistan.
   In another incident in August a group of Uzbek Christians, mostly young men but also including a pregnant woman, were arrested in Surhandarya. The men were beaten and detained in jail.
   Earlier in August the government introduced an increase to fines for unregistered religious activity. Anyone caught sharing their faith will now face fines between 200 and 600 times the minimum monthly salary. This is an increase on the current fines which stand at 50 to 70 times the minimum monthly salary. According to some reports their church minister will also face a fine. If a person continues to share their faith and is caught a second time they, and their church minister also, will face a prison sentence of three to eight years.
   Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Fund, comments, "In the context of increasing general repression in Uzbekistan, Christian leaders and their families are being targeted as if they were violent criminals to be restrained in the run-up to independence celebrations. I ask Christians around the world to pray that the Uzbek authorities will recognise that the peaceable activities of Christian believers are no threat, but rather a source of positive help to society."
Prayer
   Please pray for Uzbek Christians as they face this increased oppression and uncertainty. Thank the Lord for the optimism and hope they have at present. Pray that the celebrations of Uzbekistan's independence will pass by peacefully and that anti-Christian activities will now decrease. Pray that Christians in Uzbekistan will be able to turn to the Lord in this time of trial and see it as an opportunity to grow in patience, endurance and deeper faith.
   Pray for the six Christians detained in Termez, that they will be released. Pray that while they are in prison they will be well treated. Pray also for peace for their families as they await information about their loved ones. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Barnabas Fund works to support Christian communities around the world where they are facing poverty and persecution. #

Muslim leaders warn of riots

 
   Daily Telegraph (Brisbane), www.news.com. au/story/0, 23599,2033 1211-2,00.html , By Luke McIlveen and Steve Gee, 02:36am, September 02, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: ISLAMIC leaders are trying to gag Prime Minister John Howard from speaking out against Muslims who refuse to integrate, threatening that any criticism of their culture could lead to another race riot.
   But Mr Howard refused to back down - writing exclusively in today's Saturday Daily Telegraph that he believes a minority of Muslims must do more to fit in here.
   The head of Mr Howard's own Muslim advisory council, Dr Ameer Ali, yesterday tried to shut down debate on whether Muslims should learn English and treat women as equals by raising the spectre of the shameful Cronulla riots.
   Dr Ali warned: "We have already witnessed one incident in Sydney, in Cronulla. I don't want these scenes to be repeated because when you antagonise the younger generation they are bound to react."
   Mr Howard also angered young female Muslim leader Iktimal Hage-Ali, who claimed he was targeting "a minority within a minority". Their criticisms came after Mr Howard said on Thursday that some Muslims refused to learn English and did not want to integrate.
   A defiant Mr Howard writes today that some Muslims are not doing enough to adhere to Australian customs of equality for women and a "fair go" for all.
   "Ninety-nine per centy of the Islamic community of Australia has integrated and is part of the Australian community," he said.
   "But I've said before there is a small section, and that is self-evident, that is unwilling to integrate and it's up to all of us to try and overcome that resistance."
   Standing by his remarks yesterday, Mr Howard refused to apologise and warned those who are unwilling to fit in would be further marginalised.
   "You can't get anywhere unless you learn English. It's the language of the nation. It's the passport to your future," he said.
   "You can't get a job, you can't progress, you can't do anything without English and there can't be any compromising on that."
   But Ms Hage-Ali, also a member of the Prime Minister's advisory group, said many non-Muslim immigrants also failed to learn to speak English.
   "It is a religious group that he has identified. Muslims are already a minority, so effectively he is talking a about a minority within a minority," she said.
   She said there were not enough free classes teaching new migrants English.
   "There are resources but they cost money. How can they afford the fees?" she said. "I can't imagine an 80-year-old grandmother running out to learn English."
   Speaking at the opening of a school hall at Eastwood Heights, Mr Howard said it was imperative that all migrants embraced "Australian values".
   He denied targeting only Muslims, saying: "I haven't singled out anybody in particular."
   Of the Muslim leaders offended by his comments, Mr Howard said: "They are missing the point and the point is that I don't care, and the Australian people don't care, where people come from." #

Howard warned of Muslim backlash

 
   The West Australian, By ANDREW PROBYN, ELOISE DORTCH and GRAHAM MASON, p 2, Saturday, September 2, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: The chairman of the Federal Government's Islamic advisory council has warned John Howard that he risks Cronulla-style riots if he continues accusing Muslims of not integrating into Australian society.
   Ameer Ali issued the prediction after the Prime Minister said some sections of the Islamic community were refusing to accept Australian culture and were not recognising equality of the sexes.
   "We have already witnessed one incident in Sydney recently in Cronulla, I don't want these scenes to be repeated because when you antagonise the younger generation, younger group, they are bound to react," Dr Ali said.
   Simmering tensions between Lebanese youths and white Australians in Sydney boiled over in December when 5000 people rioted on the beaches of Cronulla.
   Men of Middle Eastern appearance were attacked during hours of violence, with revenge attacks continuing for days.
   Mr Howard yesterday stood by his calls for migrants to integrate by learning English rapidly.
   "There's a small section of the Islamic population which is unwilling to integrate and I have said generally all migrants, they have to integrate," he said.
   The row over Mr Howard's comments came as an international expert on terror group Jemaah Islamiyah said the religious extremists from Indonesia viewed Perth as a "safe haven".
  [Picture] Caution: John Howard with Islamic advisory council chairman Ameer Ali, who has warned of repercussions from Mr Howard's comments on integration.  
   Kumar Ramakrishna, who will give the keynote address at the 2006 Regional Terrorism and Security Conference in Perth next week, said the terror group, believed to behind the 2002 Bali bombings, enjoyed support among Perth's 20,000-strong Muslim community.
   "I think WA was seen as a place where they could hide out from security forces and scrutiny from the rest of South-East Asia," Dr Ramakrishna said. "It wasn't anything operational, it was basically a safe haven so to speak where they could he low."
   Dr Ramakrishna, acting head of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said that despite being targeted by Jakarta, Jemaah Islamiyah still boasted members who had "strategic potential".
   "If JI were a coherent entity, Perth would be strategic from a point of view of fundraising," he said.
   "But if you conduct an attack in Perth, you stir up a hornet's nest, security forces would clamp down and that would be the end of potentially a lucrative safe haven."
   Dr Ramakrishna said the greatest chance Australians had of being killed or hurt in a terror attack instigated by Jemaah Islamiyah would be overseas.
   "If they can't hit Australians in Australia, they will hit Australians, or Singaporeans, or Americans in Indonesia, or the Philippines or wherever the chance arises," he said. #

Muslim protest validates PM's call for full integration

 
   The West Australian, Editorial, p 18, Saturday, September 2, 2006
John Howard's call for Muslim migrants to integrate fully with Australian society is bound to raise the usual objections among the politically correct. But, ironically, it was validated by a Muslim spokesman not long after it was made.
   The chairman of the Government's new Muslim advisory committee, Dr Ameer Ali, is reported to have responded by warning of more Cronulla-type riots unless the Prime Minister toned down his rhetoric on the issue. Implicit in this warning was an acknowledgment that some Muslims do not regard themselves as fully integrated members of society and resent being criticised for this.
   In other words, the effect of the criticism of Mr Howard's remarks was to show that they were well founded. And if Dr Ali finds the Prime Minister's view offensive, then he invites the conclusion that he doesn't support integration for Muslims.
   Mr Howard's comments were noteworthy because Australians generally do not single out groups on the basis of their ethnic origins or then-religion. After all, this is a nation built on migration and the mix of people from all parts of the world is part of its distinctive identity.
   The point he made was that, against the pattern of Australia's history of migration, some Muslim migrants refuse to accept their adopted nation's values and resist integration. He defined full integration as accepting Australian values, learning English and understanding that in certain ways, such as the equality of men and women, Australia was different from the countries of origin of some migrants.
   By any measure, this was a reasonable statement of the broad expectations the community is entitled to have of migrants. Mr Howard also made the point, as he was obliged to do in the name of fairness and truth, that most Muslims were appalled by extremism.
   But he raised, albeit indirectly, the question that lurks, often unasked, in discussions about separatist migrants: Why would people who disdain this nation and its values and don't want to be a part of society in any meaningful way want to come here in the first place? The answer to that is a mystery and their presence here a self-jcontradiction. And that gives rise to potentially damaging speculation about whether some people come here with hostile intentions rather than to enjoy the opportunities and freedoms this nation offers, in contrast to the countries of origin of some migrants.
   Dr Ali should understand that Australia has a history of successful migration, mainly from European nations at first and then from Asia, with each new wave of arrivals not only being absorbed into society but also enriching and contributing massively to its economic and cultural development. This did not mean abandoning old cultures, far from it for many migrant groups. But it meant embracing Australian values, and making unequivocal commitments to their new country.
   Australia asks no more than that of the migrants it welcomes, nor should it as a free society. If Dr Ali has a problem with that, he should ask himself why some Muslims should be seen as being a special case in the face of migration history.
   Muslims who come here are entitled to share in the Australian ideal of a fair go. But they should all understand that this is supposed to work both ways. #

‘Britain allows me to be who I am’

 
   The Tablet (RC paper, Britain), www.thetablet. co.uk/artic les/8535/ , by Theo Hobson, September 2, 2006
   BRITAIN: Ibrahim Mogra is the acceptable face of British Islam – a mainstream Muslim who rejects the perverted beliefs of terrorists. Yet while he accepts that secular pluralism is a good thing, offering him freedom, his discomfort over the freedoms it renders others highlights how complex a relationship Islam has with this country
   Like the attitude of many people in Britain towards Islam, mine is becoming increasingly ambiguous. I am alarmed that extremist militant groups still seem to be plotting mass murder in Britain, but I am also taken aback by reports of growing alienation among young Muslims: according to a recent Channel 4 poll, only half of British Muslims consider Britain their country, and a third of Muslims aged between 18 and 24 would rather live under sharia law than secular British law.
   On the other hand, I am increasingly aware of the more complex reality: many Muslims are peace-loving; if they feel alienated from British culture, this is not because they are fanatics but because they are repelled by many of our culture’s hedonistic excesses. But is there a full acceptance of the sovereignty of secular British law, and the principle of cultural freedom?
   Ibrahim Mogra, from Leicester, is one of Britain’s respected mainstream imams, chairman of the Interfaith Relations Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain and antidote to Abu Hamza. He is a slight, softly spoken man in his late thirties. He is sometimes labelled a liberal by fellow Muslims, which begs all sorts of questions.
   Leicester’s Muslim minority is on the brink of becoming a majority, he tells me, and the evidence is unmissable. Every minute we seem to pass another mosque; he points out the site of a recently demolished church awaiting a new mosque, and  a church that has just been bought by a mosque. His local mosque is not nearly large enough to accommodate the Friday faithful, who spill out on to a large piazza in front. “See that bench? I was praying next to that last week.”
   Mogra was born into the Indian community of Malawi; he arrived as a student to join family already living in Leicester. He studied in Lancashire, then briefly in Cairo, then at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, before teaching at a Muslim school. Since 2002 he has also done voluntary work for the Muslim Council of Britain, chairing the Mosque and Community Affairs Committee, before the Interfaith Relations Committee.
   There have been no serious cases of militancy in Leicester’s mosques, he says. “If someone was preaching hate in one of our mosques, the congregation wouldn’t sit back and tolerate it, they would want to do something about it, to stop it.”
   But Muslim leaders have often failed to curb extremism; and haven’t they, and many, come close to justifying violence? “We have always said very clearly that two wrongs don’t make a right. Even if Muslims are being butchered in other parts of the world, that gives no one the right to butcher people on the Underground [scene of the London bombings on 7 July last year]. That message has gone out very, very loudly.”
   Has that message really been unequivocal throughout the Muslim community of Britain? “Yes, on the whole – there are more than 1,200 mosques and only a handful have been problematic. We have condemned terrorism very clearly from day one, without any ifs or buts, unconditionally. However, when we condemn atrocities it is important for us that we also address the reasons why people carry them out. That is not to justify, it’s to look at the surrounding issues.But there’s no two ways about it. The murder of innocents is wrong.”
   There is still a minority in this country that disagrees, and twists Islam into an evil ideology, isn’t there? “There’s a small number of Muslims who have a perverted understanding of Islam, who consider themselves at war with Britain because of its foreign policy.”
   What can be done to stop this cult of violence? “These people are attracted to violence by the ongoing international conflict – the bombers of 7/7 left videos in which they say that they are at war with their own country because of what’s happening around the world.”
   Imam Mogra appears to believe that foreign policy that Muslims find questionable comes first, before militant extremism, rather than being an added-on justification. “If you take that policy out of the equation, these hate preachers will not have much ammunition to win recruits. So there has to be genuine effort to resolve these international issues: Palestine has been ignored for more than five decades.”
   Another factor, I suggest, is that the terrorists seem to hate British culture. He pauses. “I’ll be very honest with you. There is so much in British culture that is beautiful, which has to be embraced by all. However there are a few things that I as a Muslim, along with other non-Muslims, find unacceptable. For instance, this growing culture of binge drinking, this culture of yobbish behaviour, of drug abuse. But the hatred is of the evil actions, not of the individuals – as a Muslim I’m not allowed to hate anyone.”
   One can condemn these things, and yet also affirm the principle of pluralism, of cultural freedom. Isn’t there a danger of British Muslim culture emphasising the downside of pluralism and forgetting the positive side? “Yes, we often tend to focus on the negatives. But this is true on the other side as well: there’s a lot more emphasis on the negatives displayed by some Muslims than on the positives displayed by the majority.”
   Something worrying secular Britain is the idea that Muslims want to reject secular liberalism in favour of sharia law, and that they believe the Qur’an overrules secular law. “Sharia simply means the path of obedience to God. There are four sources for sharia law. The Qur’an is complemented by the Traditions of Muhammad, peace be upon him, and then we have [the] consensus of scholars, and analogy, which helps scholars to derive new laws for contemporary issues. Every Muslim should have his or her life governed by sharia in a personal capacity. In some Muslim countries the government might want to implement sharia law, but that’s not always the case.” Should it be implemented in those countries? “It’s up to the people. Do I want sharia to be implemented in Britain? No. I am happy to be ruled by sharia law in my personal life, and by UK law in my public life.”
   But surely the original concept of sharia law is that it is one thing, totally comprehensive? “Even in Muslim countries, non-Muslim citizens have always been exempt from aspects of it. Sharia caters for other religions to follow their own laws, adapting to circumstances.”   So in practice a British Muslim follows sharia law within a certain confine – of compatibility with secular law? “In the vast majority of cases there is no conflict at all, but unfortunately the potential problems are always highlighted, and the beautiful things about sharia are never spoken of. Sharia says that when I cook a meal I should cook a little extra and share it with my neighbour.”
   Yet there are some laws that are simply unacceptable to most modern-minded people, aren’t there? “Yes, there are aspects of the original understanding of sharia that contemporary liberal societies feel are outdated – capital punishment is normally seen in that way, for example. But within the mechanism of sharia there are so many aspects built into it that try to avert the final judgement. For example, the accusation of adultery requires four eyewitnesses to the act, making it almost impossible to get a conviction.”
   So in practice there are different interpretations of sharia law – and he favours more liberal interpretations? He treads carefully: “I think in some instances less compassion is shown when a sharia judgement is passed than there ought to be, than sharia itself requires.”
   But in Britain there is no question of punishment for adultery at all – secular law rules out the possibility of sharia law being implemented. “I would not want an alternative system of sharia law for British Muslims, and if there was an offer from the Government I would accept it possibly only in relation to some aspects of family law, principally marriage and divorce, and inheritance.”
   But don’t many Muslims see Britain as essentially immoral because its secular law allows people the freedom to do things that Muslims see as immoral? “If people want to go out and get drunk, or have relations before they are married, that is their choice. But we also have a collective responsibility as citizens to ensure that our societies do not disintegrate, and Islam tries to offer an example of a better way of living.
   But lots of non-Muslims are offended by pornography, promiscuity and so on. The question is whether Muslims accept that these things are a side-effect of freedom. “Yes, these things are a side-effect of our liberal culture.” Which is a good thing? “For those who want to live like that, fine.” No, I counter: it’s a good thing in an absolute sense. For example, it is a good thing that society allows people to have sex before marriage, rather than trying to outlaw it. “Because my religion says that people should not have sexual relations unless they are married to each other, I cannot say that that is a good thing. But I can say that it is the free choice of those who want to live like that.” Can’t he agree that it is a good system of law that protects people’s freedom to do such things? “Anything that my religion condemns as a sin I cannot endorse as a good thing. Had it been a good thing for society, God would not have categorised it as a sin. We Muslims have never called for a ban on premarital sex in Britain, and we never will, but we say it is wrong.”
   I try another tack: he would rather live in Britain than in Iran, say? “There is no country I would rather live in than Britain. Britain allows me to be who I am, to practise my religion. Secular pluralism is good on the whole, but not because it allows sex before marriage.”
   Does he favour constitutional reform, including disestablishment? If all were equal under a secular constitution, wouldn’t there be less cause for resentment? “I think we should now move towards bringing all religions on board. I don’t have a problem with Anglican bishops being in the House of Lords, because they represent a religious group, and we have many things in common – and that is surely a good thing. I would say, keep the bishops in there, and let’s also have imams, rabbis, pundits in there, and representatives from other faiths.” But surely a lot of younger Muslims feel excluded, and the creation of an explicitly secular state would remove any excuse for resentment? “I don’t see that as the dominant cause of feelings of exclusion. I don’t see why equality should be achieved by exclusion of bishops when it could be achieved by inclusion of others.”
   Theo Hobson is a specialist writer on religious affairs. 
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   © The Tablet Publishing Company #

The Schools That Divide The Nation

 
   Evening Standard, London, by Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, September 4, 2006
   BRITAIN: Once there were tens. Then there were hundreds. Now Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Branch, speaks of thousands of militant British Muslims, indoctrinated and radicalised in British mosques and madrassas like the Jameah Islameah school in Sussex raided at the weekend.
   This is not, primarily, because of the influence of a handful of a few "preachers of hate". Islamic extremism has spread in Britain thanks to a particular brand of multiculturalism encouraged by this Government. And until ministers tackle it - especially the influence of Muslim faith schools - all their new efforts to build cohesion will come to very little.
   The context goes far beyond Britain. Contemporary Islam has burst out of its colonial restraints. Once colonialism removed power, jihad and territorial control from Islam, it was left a benign force focusing on prayer and good deeds. But contemporary Islam has reverted back to early Islam, with all its theological rage against the non-Muslim world. Issues like Iraq and Afghanistan have become valves for expressing this anger and hatred against Britain and the West.
   Increasingly, it is the values and culture of Islam which define the identity of British Muslims. A senior British Muslim leader has defined Muslim identity as: creed, sharia and umma.
   The Islamic creed is non-negotiable. Those who do not share this creed are despised as kafir (infidels). Hatred of non-Muslims is preached in many British mosques.
   Meanwhile Islamic law, sharia, is deemed by the majority of Muslims unalterable. Its medieval formulations cannot be updated. Yet it is this discriminatory law which many British Muslims wish to see enforced.
   Finally the umma, the worldwide community of Muslims, is the primary focus of loyalty. It represents the political as well as the religious. Muslims have a duty to defend each other. This defensive jihad is what leads Muslims to go and fight in places such as Iraq.
   It might seem paradoxical that the UK, which has granted Muslims greater freedoms than any other Western country, should be the greatest Western incubator of Islamist violence. The explanation lies not only in the radicalisation of Islam but also in the Government's policy on multiculturalism.
   There is a positive aspect to a multiculturalism where people share and enjoy each other's cultures. But the UK's well-meaning policy of validating every faith and ethnic community culturally, in a depoliticised way, is na�ve when it comes to Islam. For Islam does not separate the sacred from the secular: it seeks earthly power over earthly territory. The result is that already the UK has reached the stage of parallel societies, where purely Muslim areas function in isolation.
   Worse, this is about to be made semi-official. In West Ham a gigantic mosque is planned by the radical Tablighi Jamaat group. The London Thames Gateway Development Corporation says that the new mosque will make West Ham a "cultural and religious destination". This will be nothing less than an Islamic quarter of our capital city. But has anyone asked the people of West Ham? The non-Muslims? The moderate Muslims such as Barelwis and Sufis? The Muslim women? And shouldn't the Government be looking into why a movement claimed as inspiration by a number of convicted terrorists should be allowed to control a whole community?
   One must feel grateful for the police's interception of terrorist plots. Yet we must tackle the root causes, rather than dealing with this threat simply by vigilance and appeasement. Giving in to the demands of Muslim extremists will not turn them into liberals loyal to the UK. They will simply want further concessions.
   This is now the Government's dilemma. With the launch of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion last month, it recognised that it must address the development of separate societies. Privately, ministers are deeply worried.
   Yet at the same time the Government seems fixated on empowering an ultra-conservative Muslim leadership embodied by the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Association of Britain. It says sharia will never be permitted in Britain, yet it has allowed sharia-compliant mortgages, and admits that many British cities have sharia councils.
   Just as important, communities minister Ruth Kelly has already excluded faith schools from the remit of her examination of integration and cohesion. Yet many Islamic schools are known to nurture values that are radically different from those of the prevailing society.
   Faith schools have a long and noble tradition within the British Isles. Christian denominational schools as well as Jewish schools continue to play an important role in community cohesion. Whether Islamic schools can fill such a role is highly questionable.
   Has the time come to say no to Islamic schools, whilst allowing the others to exist, even though this may seem unjust? Or should we consider a new kind of school where all children can study core subjects together in the same environment, with religious teachers - be they mullahs, rabbis or priests - instructing the children in their own faiths?
   I believe Islam needs different treatment from other faiths because Islam is different from other faiths. It is the only one which teaches its followers to gain political power and then impose a law which governs every aspect of life, discriminating against women and non-believers alike. And this is ultimately why a naive multiculturalism leads not to a mosaic of cultures living in harmony, but to one threatened by Islamic extremism.
   Most British Muslims are not supporters of terrorism. Some have embraced Western liberal values and society. Others are peaceful but simply prefer to live in their own separate community. Mainstream figures such as Shahid Malik MP have courageously called for British Muslims to fight against extremism.
   But unless all of us, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, join forces against the kind of multiculturalism which has nurtured extremism, we may eventually find that whole swathes of London and other cities have become "cultural and religious destinations" dominated by Islamic extremists - men who would remove the very freedoms so many moderate British Muslims now appreciate. #
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   Jersey - Le Jardin, La Rue a Don, Grouville, Jersey, JE8 9GB Tel: 700600, Fax: 700601, E-Mail: bfjersey@ barnabas fund.org
   New Zealand - PO Box 8107, Symonds Street, Auckland 1150, New Zealand. Tel: (9) 368 1071 or 0800 008 805, E-mail: office@ barnabas fund.org.nz
   United Kingdom - Barnabas Fund, The Old Rectory, River Street, PEWSEY, Wiltshire, SN9 5DB, UK. Tel: +44(0)1672 564938, Fax: +44(0)1672 565030, E-mail: info@ barnabas fund.org
   USA - Barnabas Fund, PO Box 6336, McLean, VA 22106-6336, USA. Tel: (703) 288-1681, Fax: (703) 228-1682, E-Mail: bfusa@ barnabas fund.org
   International Website: www. barnabas fund.org #

Habib sues over detention

 
   The Sydney Morning Herald, www.smh.com. au/news/ national/ habib-sues- over- detention/ 2006/09/05/ 115722211 4626.html , 1:23PM, September 5, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: The case brought by freed Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib against the Commonwealth might be the first civil suit to test the legality of national security secrecy laws.
   Mr Habib is claiming damages for wrongful detention in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Guantanamo Bay after being detained for three years. He was released in January last year.
   At a preliminary Federal Court hearing today, Justice Rodney Madgwick flagged a constitutional issue in regard to secrecy laws passed in 2004, after the Government's lawyers raised the prospect of evidence being declared secret.
   Justice Madgwick was told evidence was being sought from both national and international security agencies for the case.
   The new secrecy laws direct courts to suppress any information once a certificate is ordered by the Attorney-General.
   The laws are broad, covering information relating to or affecting national security, or even a case involving a witness whose "mere presence" might be related to national security. They have been used in criminal cases, but the court heard yesterday the Habib action would be the first civil suit to be affected.
   Justice Madgwick rhetorically asked how a court could ever find against a declaration by the Attorney-General, and whether that would contravene the constitution.
   Mr Habib's barrister, Ian Barker, QC, raised the conflict inherent in the role of the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, who is both an officer of the Commonwealth - being sued by Mr Habib - and the man who signs the secrecy directives about evidence in his case.
   Mr Barker said Mr Ruddock had the capacity to "make life difficult" for his client's case.
   While he was not accusing anyone of bad faith, he said that, given the Attorney-General's involvement in the case, any declaration ought to be made with "considerable caution".
   The Commonwealth is planning to try to strike out Mr Habib's case, which is months away from a hearing. #

Cult of the FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBER

 
   The Sunday Times Magazine (Perth, W. Australia), sattlerd@ sundaytimes. newsltd.com.au , By KEVIN TOOLIS, pp 12-15, September 10, 2006
   The Palestinian Muslim men who blow themselves and others up are promised 72 dark-eyed virgins for their gruesome acts. But what's in it for the female suicide bombers? And why are a growing number of women turning themselves into terrifying weapons of war? KEVIN TOOLIS went to the world's only jail for failed suicide bombers to find out.
AT 2pm on October 4, 2003, 29-year-old Palestinian lawyer Hanadi Jaradat walked into a seaside restaurant in the Israeli port city of Haifa. Co-owned by Jews and Christian Arabs, Maxim stood as a symbol for coexistence. The woman sat down and ordered a chicken kebab. The restaurant was busy. It was a Saturday and the tables were crowded with families.
   After eating her meal she stood up, walked into the middle of the room and stood between the Zer Aviv and the Almog families. Reaching into her left pocket she pressed the safety switch that would arm the suicide-bomb vest she wore beneath her brown jacket and knee-length blue skirt. Two seconds later she pressed the detonator in her right pocket and blew herself and everyone around her to pieces.
   The bomb-maker had packed chopped-up pieces of a metal scaffolding bar around the explosives that sprayed around the restaurant like machine-gun fire.
   The aftermath was, in the words of Haifa's chief of police Nir Mereish, a vision of hell. Some of the dead sat macabrely propped upright at their tables while others, including children and babies, had been slammed with the force of an express train against the walls. All that remained of Hanadi was her head.
   Hanadi was a new weapon of war in the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict - the female suicide bomber. The attack on Maxim was one of the worst suicide bombings ever, even in the grisly history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with 21 people killed and scores more horribly injured. What made it all the more cruel was the cold ruthlessness of the bomber.
   How could a young woman like Hanadi, who seemingly had everything to live for, kill herself and all those families? How could any woman do that? Male suicide bombers are promised 72 dark-eyed virgins in the gardens of paradise. But what awaits a female suicide bomber on the other side of the detonator?
   Across the Arab world, every female suicide bomber has a special sexual allure. Each is hailed as a Virgin Queen, a glorious innocent who gives herself and her body to God to take revenge on the Jewish enemy.
   Poems are written, posters are printed and pop videos made. Within days of the Maxim attack, little trophy cards with her picture - labelled "Hanadi the Bride of Haifa" - were being handed out in the slums of Gaza.
   As suicide bombings have spread out from the Middle East, it has found newer and more deadly adherents, such as Hanadi. No one now knows who, or what sex, the next suicide bomber will be.
   For the past three years, I have been investigating Hanadi's story to try and find out why Palestinian women become suicide bombers. [..., a total of 4 pages.]

[Says one thing, does another.]

 
   To the Australian Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. John Howard, Canberra, from an Unusual Suspect, September 10, 2006
   Hate books; Colour Codes For Non-Muslims In Iran (going nuclear); Australians Pay For Islamic Training
   Islamic 'hate books' face ban
   The Sunday Times (Perth, W. Australia), p 32, May 21, 2006
   CANBERRA: THE Federal Government may ban the sale of "hate books" and outlaw the glorification of terrorism. [...]
   But Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said this week the Government would consider strengthening legislation to outlaw the texts. [...]
   Iran tags Jews and Christians
   The Sunday Times (Perth, W. Australia), p 38, May 21, 2006
   OTTAWA: Prime Minister John Howard has reacted with horror to a new Iranian law forcing Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges.
   The Iranian Parliament passed a law this week requiring all Iranians to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments", Canadian newspaper National Post has reported.
   The law, which has yet to be formally approved, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims - a yellow strip of cloth for Jews, a red badge for Christians and blue cloth for Zoroastrians. [...]
   Bank in warning to Islamic grouping
   The Weekend Australian, by Richard Kerbaj, p 3, May 27-28, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: WESTPAC is demanding the leadership of the nation's main Muslim body prove that it was properly elected before it authorises new executives accessing the organisation's bank accounts.
   With five of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils' nine state bodies rebelling against the new eight-member board and insisting on fresh elections, the bank is demanding clarification about who is actually in charge. [...]
   AFIC derives most of its income from rent on land that houses its five Muslim schools across the country. Malek Fahd, AFIC's largest school in western Sydney, receives $11 million a year in public funds, more than any other private school in NSW. It also has schools in Brisbane, Perth, Canberra and Adelaide. [...]

Howard attacks terror war ‘pussyfoots’

 
   The Australian, www.theaustralian. news.com.au/ story/0,20867, 20389178- 601,00.html , by Dennis Shanahan, political editor, Page One, Monday, September 11, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: JOHN Howard has called on moderate Muslims to speak out more often against terrorism and declared it is no good "pussyfooting around" about Islamic terrorists.
   The Prime Minister believes Australians have a sensible, uncowed view of terrorism and that everyone, including Muslims, knows Islamic extremists are responsible for the threat and the tougher security laws that entails.
   "People in Australia are in no doubt that extreme Islam is responsible for terrorism," Mr Howard said in an interview with The Australian to mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the US that killed nearly 3000 people, including 10 Australians.
   US President George W. Bush will mark the anniversary by visits to the attack sites - in New York, where the two World Trade Centre towers stood; Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and the Pentagon, just outside Washington DC.
   He will save his formal remarks for a televised Oval Office speech due to air on Tuesday morning, Australian time.
   Mr Howard, who has sent a letter of condolence to Mr Bush on behalf of the Australian people, will attend a ceremony at the US embassy in Canberra today.
   The al-Qa'ida terrorist group taunted the West last week by releasing a video of Osama bin Laden meeting 9/11 hijackers, in a move calculated to maximise fear ahead of the anniversary.
   Speaking over the weekend, Mr Bush assured Americans that the US was relentlessly hunting down suspected terrorists in order to avoid a new attack.
   He said that while the country was safer, "America still faces determined enemies". "We must take the words of these extremists seriously, and we must act decisively to stop them from achieving their evil aims."
   Mr Howard said that it was illogical for civil libertarians to attack the Australian Government for changes to its security laws because terrorists - "Osama and his grisly band" - were responsible.
   "I accept that in a free society you have to justify reductions in people's liberties. I accept that, bearing in mind my starting point is that the most important human right is the right to life," he said.
   Mr Howard, who was in Washington when the Pentagon was hit by a hijacked plane, said at the time that he knew something enormous had occurred but did not know who was responsible or what the consequences would be.
   "I knew ... the world was quite never going to be the same again. You couldn't escape the realisation that this was something like nothing else," he recalled. He had met Mr Bush the day before the attacks, and "George Bush and I didn't talk about terrorism on September 10, 2001". The Prime Minister said Australians had "adjusted in a very sensible way" since then.
   "They understand things have changed, they accept the need for new laws, they support those laws but they are getting on with their lives and doing the things we want to do while having in the back of our minds there may be one day a terrorist attack which (will) inflict mass casualties on this country," Mr Howard said.
   "That's the mood of the people, that's how they think. You can't down tools and stay at home and stop going to the football or the cricket or stop travelling on trains or aircraft.
   "It doesn't alter what I do and shouldn't alter what I do."
   Mr Howard was criticised two weeks ago for suggesting a small minority of Muslim immigrants refused to learn English or integrate into Australian society.
   But he told The Australian that despite the criticism, people, including moderate Muslims, knew extremists were the common thread of terrorism.
   "We shouldn't pussyfoot around. No decent, genuine Muslim would support terrorism," he said. "We are not attacking Muslims generally but you have to call terrorism for what it is - it is a movement that invokes in a totally blasphemous and illegitimate way the sanction of Islam to justify what it does."
   Mr Howard also said he thought it would help more if "on occasions they (moderate Muslims) should come out and be more critical of terrorism".
   "We are confronting people who would deny our human rights," he said.
   When people were subjected to searches or reduced liberty, he said, "the people who should be blamed are the terrorists, not the Government. The terrorists have made it necessary".
   "I find it amazing civil libertarians run around and attack me, or (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair or attack the police," Mr Howard said.
   "We haven't done it. We are the instruments of the changed circumstances in people's lives, but the cause is the terrorist threat."
   Mr Howard said the September 11 attacks had fundamentally changed politics in Australia. "We have invested $8.3billion in enhanced security and I wish we could have spent it on something else. But who has made it necessary? Osama and his grisly band," he said. "I don't talk up the terrorist threat; I just call it as it is." However, Kim Beazley accused the Government yesterday of not doing enough for national security. #

PM launches fresh attack on Muslims

 
   The West Australian, by RHIANNA KING, Page One, Monday, September 11, 2006
   CANBERRA: Relations between the Federal Government and Australian Muslims tave plummeted to new lows, with John Howard renewing his attack on sections of the Islamic community for being "hostile to Australia's interests".
   The Prime Minister's defiant comments will be aired tonight on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.
   They come just days after he was warned he risked Cronulla-style riots if he continued to criticise Muslims far not integrating into Australian society.
   "(There is) a section of the Islamic population which will not integrate ... (and) does have values and attitudes which are hostile to Australia's interests," Mr Howard told the ABC's Four Corners program.
   "I would like the rest of the Islamic community to join the rest of the Australian community in making son that the views and attitudes of that small minority do not have adverse consequences.
   "Once you start pinpointing, there will be some anger in the community. But you can't allow this small group to dominate the community."
   The escalation in tensions between the Federal Government and Australian Muslims came as a new poll revealed almost two in every three Australians believed the world was less safe now than before the September 11 attacks.
   The ACNielsen poll showed half believed a terrorist attack in Australia was more likely than it was in 2001.
   A majority of Australians also believed the Federal Government was paying enough respect, or more than enough, to civil liberties in its response to the threat of terrorism.
   Women and older Australians, in particular, believed the world was less safe. Younger voters polled are not as gloomy - 48 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds fear the world is less safe, while 43 per cent believe the risk of terrorism has intensified.
   The poll will further strain relations with Australian Muslims, which have been on a knife-edge since Mr Howard said last month that sections of the Islamic population were "very resistant to integration".
   Those comments saw Ameer Ali, the chairman of the Government's Islamic advisory council, warn that riots could erupt if Mr Howard continued to single out Muslims.
   Mr Ali issued a fresh warning yesterday for Mr Howard to watch his words.
   "There are other communities in which you find people who aren't learning English, who aren't integrating," he said. "And to be fair to the Muslim community, we should also refer to those other people."
   Daawah Association of WA president Sufyaan Khalifa said Mr Howard was going out of his way to attack Muslims.
   "This is not going to help Muslims who are living here or in the wider community, it will only cause more hatred," he said.
   "We would like sincerely to know what does he mean by 'Australian values', and how does he foresee integration?"
   A spokesman for Labor leader Kim Beazley said Mr Howard had no right to ask Muslims to adopt Australian values when he was betraying those values by encouraging foreign workers into the country on skilled migrant visas.
   On the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, Mr Howard said the air force could be ordered to shoot down a hijacked plane in the event of a September 11-style terrorist attack.
   "I hope it remains completely hypothetical, but, in the end, one has to do that," he said. "But let us hope and pray that that doesn't ever arise." #

Pope rejects faith spread by the sword

   Lecture by Pope Benedict XVI, September 12, 2006
   REGENSBERG, Germany: [...] Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus ... addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
   Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."
   The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. [...]

Stenhouse opposes law on vilification

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), by Paul Gray, pp 1 and 5, Thursday, September 14, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: Radical Islamists are using a controversial Victorian law against religious vilification to silence their critics, says influential priest and publisher Fr Paul Stenhouse MSC.
   Fr Stenhouse, editor of Annals Australasia magazine, warns that "critical appraisal by non-Muslims of Islamic law and custom" is being prevented in Victoria under pain of being hauled through the courts tad charged with vilifying a religion.
   This is a dangerous interference with free speech, he suggests.
   "It is self-evident that a democracy must permit the free and open discussion of ideas, and that necessarily includes religion and politics," Fr Stenhouse says.
Influential priest scholar rejects vilification law
   The Victorian anti-vilification law has been supported by representatives of the Catholic Church in Victoria, and of other Christian churches. A complaint against two Protestant ministers under the law by the Islamic Council of Victoria was supported by the Catholic Church in Melbourne.
   In a cover article titled "Standing Up to the Islamists" in the September edition of the conservative intellectual magazine, Quadrant, Fr Stenhouse says most religions, including Catholicism, recognise and welcome frank discussion of their beliefs. Some Muslims in Australia do not, he says.
   "Islamists and even some moderate Muslims refuse to allow any discussion of the message allegedly handed down to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel, and incorporated in the Qur'an, or of the prophethood of Muhammed."
   Christians and other non-Muslims have an obligation and a right to look hard at the sacred books of the Muslims "when fanatical and violent Muslims base their religious and racial violence against non-Muslims on these texts," he says.
   In the article Fr Stenhouse also calls for reappraisal of the conditions under which chairs of Islamic studies in Australian universities are funded by Islamic states.
   "Could a non-Muslim competent in Arabic language and literature be eligible for such a chair?" he asks. "Could a Christian or a Jew?"
   Fr Stenhouse says to his knowledge, no Islamic academic in an Australian university has yet come forward calling for openness in discussion and argument on Islamic beliefs and traditions that affect non-Muslims.
   Fr Stenhouse says that while Muslims living in Australia enjoy equal legal rights with other citizens, Islamic societies on the other hand "will not tolerate this extension of equality under the law to non-Muslims."
   He says that the "tolerance" allegedly enjoyed by non-Muslim minorities in Spain between AD 711 and 1492 is "an urban myth along the lines of alligators in the New York sewers."
   Saudi Arabia today, he says, "will not even extend citizenship to foreign Muslims who work to keep its petro-dollars and euros flowing."
   Fr Stenhouse blames the Saudi Arabian promotion of the Wahhabist version of Islam for much of the threat to peace and stability in non-Muslims societies today.
   He says the "virus" of Wahhabist ideology is promoted worldwide using the annual pilgrimage to the Haj, the holy places of Mecca and Medina which lie in Saudi Arabia.
   Saudi Arabian religious police have stamped out all alternative versions and practices of Islam within their borders and will not allow Muslim visitors to pray at holy Islamic sites of which the Wahhabists disapprove, Fr Stenhouse says.
   "The extremist Wahhabis continue to use Islam as a lever to peddle their particular form of Arabism - what Western fellow travellers would call their 'culture"' Fr Stenhouse writes.
   Fr Stenhouse says that Western policy since September 11, 2001 has also been mistaken.
   He says the invasion of Iraq and US support for Israel's attack on Lebanon were tragic tactical errors.
   "Imposing 'democracy' on countries unwilling to accept it, or unprepared for it, in order to bring a region vital to the West's economies under 'control' by the West or its surrogates, all in the name of helping the peoples of the region to fulfil their destiny, is at best a pipe-dream and at worst a nightmarish scenario that must eventually backfire." #

Benedict “deeply sorry” for Muslim outrage but violence continues

 
   CathNews (from Church Resources, Australia), www.cathnews. com/news/701/ 17.php , September 18, 2006
   This week CathNews presents the top stories from 2006. This story was originally published on 18 September.
   Pope Benedict told pilgrims yesterday that he is "deeply sorry" for the reaction to his quoted remarks of a medieval ruler who criticised Islam but violence continues with the killing of an Italian nun in Somalia and the firebombing of several churches in the Middle East.
   "I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims," the Pope told pilgrims yesterday at his Castelgandolfo summer residence, according to a Reuters report.
   "These, in fact, were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought," the Pontiff said.
   "I hope this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with mutual respect."
   The comments, part of his regular Sunday Angelus blessing, came at his first public appearance since making the comments on Tuesday.
   New Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, had earlier announced on Saturday that the Pope was sorry Muslims had been offended and that his comments had been misconstrued.
   In Iran, theological schools closed on Sunday in protest at the Pope.  Etemade Melli newspaper reported that senior clerics demanded an immediate apology. The English-language Tehran Times called his remarks "code words for the start of a new crusade".
   Morocco withdrew its ambassador to the Vatican on Saturday, calling the Pope's remarks "offensive", while Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi called on the Vatican to "take full responsibility over the matter and carry out the necessary steps to rectify the mistake."
   The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the country's main Shiite political bodies, had also called for the Pope to apologise "clearly and honestly".
   Iran, Indonesia call for calm
   However, former Iranian President Khatami and current Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Susilo endeavoured to calm the situation, warning against jumping to conclusions about the meaning of the Pope's remarks in which he quoted criticism of Muhammad by 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus.
   The emperor had said everything Muhammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
   "I hope that the reports in this regard are misinterpreted as such remarks [as reported in the press] are usually made by uninformed and fanatic people but my impression of the Pope was rather an educated and patient man," Khatami said after his return to Tehran from a two-week visit to the United States, according to AsiaNews.
   Speaking from Havana, Cuba, Indonesian President Yudhoyono said that "Indonesian Muslims should have wisdom, patience, and self-restraint to address this sensitive issue. ... We need them so that harmony among people is not at stake".
   Protests and violence continue
   However, protests and violence continue in some parts of the Muslim world. Some 200 Iranian clerics and seminary students gathered on Sunday in Qom, 135 kilometres south of the capital Tehran, to protest against what they called the Pope's anti-Islamic remarks.
   In protest against the Pope's remarks, the country's clergy seminary centre said all seminaries throughout the country would be closed on Sunday.
   In the West Bank two churches suffered damages when stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown at them.
   In Somalia, gunmen shot and killed an Italian nun at a children's hospital in Mogadishu on Sunday in an attack that drew immediate speculation of links to Muslim anger over the Pope's recent remarks on Islam.
   A nun from the Missionaries order identified her as Sr Leonella Sgorbati, born in 1940, in Piacenza in northern Italy.
   The Catholic nun's bodyguard also died in the latest attack apparently aimed at foreign personnel in volatile Somalia.
   The bodyguard died instantly, but the nun was rushed into an operating theatre at the hospital after the shooting.
   "After serious injuries, she died in the hospital treatment room," doctor Ali Mohamed Hassan told Reuters. "She was shot three times in the back."
   A high-level Islamist source told Reuters the attack may well be linked to the controversy over Pope Benedict's recent remarks about holy wars, which have been taken by many Muslims as an attempt to portray their religion as innately violent.
   On Friday, a prominent hardline Mogadishu cleric called for Muslims to "hunt down" and kill the Pontiff for his remarks.
   "Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," Sheikh Abubukar Hassan Malin told worshippers at a mosque in southern Mogadishu.
   "We call on all Islamic communities across the world to take revenge on the baseless critic called the Pope," he said, according to a Swissinfo report.
   Muslim reaction in Australia
   Meanwhile, in Australia, the Sunday Herald-Sun reports that a spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria says that the Vatican's friendly ties with Islam could be at risk under Pope Benedict XVI.
   Islamic Council spokesman Waleed Aly said: "I just hope this isn't an indication that there's going to be a worsening of relations between the Muslim world and the Vatican.
   "One of the things Muslims appreciated about Pope Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was the incredible amount of work he put into interfaith relations, particularly with Muslims."
   But Mr Aly said the Australian reaction to the Pope's comments had been slight.
   SOURCES: Amid criticism and violence the first balanced views about the Pope's speech appear (Asia News, 17/9/06)
Pope sorry for Muslim remark (The Age, 17/9/06)
Vatican, Islam ties at 'risk' (Herald Sun, 18/9/06)
Gunmen shoot elderly nun dead (Australian, 18/9/06)
Italian nun slain in Somalia, speculation of Pope linkAdd story to my swissinfo panel (Swiss Info, 17/9/06)
Italian nun killed in Somalian hospital (RTE, 17/9/06)
   LINKS (not necessarily endorsed by Church Resources)
Holy See
Provisional text of Pope's speech at University of Regensburg, Faith, Reason and the University, Memories and Reflections (Radio Vaticana, 13/9/06)
   ARCHIVE: Benedict tells priests to serve Christ and be His voice (CathNews, 15/9/06)
Religious violence contrary to God's nature, Pope says (CathNews, 14/9/06)
No chance of world without reason, says Benedict (CathNews, 13/9/06)
Benedict says learn Gospel from Africa and Asia (CathNews, 11/9/06)
Benedict heads home to Bavaria, Germany (CathNews, 8/9/06)
   4 Jan 2007
  HAVE YOUR SAY   Click here   

As Muslims take offence around the world, it’s worth revisiting... 

What Benedict really said

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), Page One and page Vista 3, September 21, 2006
 By Paul Gray
   Pope Benedict XVI's speech at the University of Regensburg in Germany, which this week provoked controversy in the Islamic world, was a logical continuation of the theme reported on the front page of last weekend's edition of The Record.
   "Benedict urges religious revival in world 'rapidly going deaf"' said the front-page headline, which reported on the first leg of the pontiff's six-day visit to his homeland in German Bavaria. That report, based on the Pope's address to a quarter of a million people at a fairground in Munich, highlighted the Pope's emphasis on the importance of combating secular values in the West today.
  [Picture] The face of anger: Kashmiri activists belonging to the Muslim League shout slogans during a protest against Pope Benedict XVI in Srinagar, capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, on September 15.    Photo: CNS /Fayaz Kawi/ Reuters  
  [Picture] Outrage: Pakistani Muslims chant slogans to condemn Pope Benedict XVI for making what they regard as derogatory comments about Islam during a rally in Multan, Pakistan, on September 15.    Photo: CNS/Mian Khursheed/Reuters  
   [The people pictured carried placards, the slogans including: "We accept the challenge of debate with malicious pope," "Jihad is our way", and "Jihad is the hump of Islam." The banner pictured read "Mr. Pope, be within your limits. Jamat E Islam. Mumtazabad town."] ***

Cardinal Pell responds on Benedict Islam furore

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), p 5, September 21, 2006
   SYDNEY (NSW) Australia: Cardinal George Pell of Sydney defended Pope Benedict after the controversy following the Holy Father's speech at Regensburg in Germany during his visit there last week. He said: "It is a sign of hope that no organised violence has flared here in Australia, following Pope Benedict's recent comments.
   "No one compared the Pope to Hitler or Mussolini (as in Turkey) or called for his murder as Sheik Malin did in Somalia. No group like the League of Jihadists in Iraq promised "that the soldiers of Mohammed will come sooner or later to shake your throne and the foundations of your state".
   "However the violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world justified one of Pope Benedict's main fears. They showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence.
   "Our major priority must be to maintain peace and harmony within the Australian community, but no lasting achievements can be grounded in fantasies and evasions.
   "The responses of Sheik al-Hilali, Australia's mufti, in particular, and even Dr Ameer Ali of the Prime Minister's Muslim Reference Group were unfortunately typical and unhelpful. It is always someone else's fault and issues touching on the nature of Islam are ignored.
   "Sheik al-Hilali often responds to criticism by questioning the intelligence and competence of the questioner or critic. So too with the Pope, whose speech he claimed was not what was expected of a holy person and indeed "the Church needs to re-examine its thoughts about someone who doesn't have the qualities or good grasp of Christian character or knowledge".
   "Dr Ameer Ali's published reply was more surprising as it called on Pope Benedict to be more like Pope John Paul II than Pope Urban II, who called the First Crusade. In fact the Pope's long speech was more about the weaknesses of the Western world, its irreligion and disdain for religion and he explicitly rejected linking religion and violence. He won't be calling any crusade.
   "Today Westerners often link genuine religious expression with peace and tolerance. Today most Muslims identify genuine religion with submission (Islam) to the commands of the Quran. They are proud of the spectacular military expansion across continents especially in the decades after the Prophet's death. This is seen as a sign of God's blessing.
   "Friends of Islam in Australia have genuine questions, which need to be addressed, not regularly avoided. We are grateful for those moderate Moslems who have spoken publicly. But as Andrew Robb, Parliamentary Secretary on Multicultural Affairs, told Muslim clerics last weekend evil acts done falsely in the name of Islam around the world "need to be addressed, not swept under the carpet."
  [Picture] Response: An Anglican church after it was hit by a firebomb in the West Bank city of Nablus on September 16.    Photo: CNS/Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters  

Logic versus the grenade

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), Letter by Edward Khaemba, CSSp., Beagle Bay Mission, Broome , p 8, September 21, 2006
   BROOME (Western Australia): I have read Pope Benedict's address in Germany and find nothing to cause uproar among our brother Muslims.
   Pope Benedict went further, saying: "God is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature... Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats."
   These are general comments that had nothing to do with setting on fire two churches in the West Bank, attacking a church in Tubas with firebombs and, more disgustingly, destroying the interior of a 170-year-old church in the town of Tulkarem - in other words destroying our history.
   I invite those involved to reread Pope Benedicts speech, to understand it, then come forward for a dialogue which could lead to reconciliation.
   We cannot have dialogue if we lack understanding of the contents of this particular speech delivered by the Pope during his visit to Germany.
   Not all terrorists are Muslims and not all Muslims are terrorists. I consider Islam as a good religion because it is a message of peace.
   Jihad does not mean war and I believe the Islamic word for war is 'Harb.' Jihad means to struggle, strive or to work for something with determination.
   Our Missionary work is Jihad and this is summarised in Luke 4:18 - 19 when at the beginning of Jesus' work he says, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has appointed me to bring good news to the poor..."
   Hence working in a difficult environment with the poor, giving donations for those in need for the sake of God and many more acts of good are the struggles in our day to day life.
   Terrorists are hijacking the word Jihad for their own purposes and not those of Allah. Pope Benedict has already expressed deep sorrow about the angry reaction sparked by his speech about Islam and holy war. He has gone further to clarify that these did not express his personal thoughts but were a quotation from a medieval text.
   What else does the Muslim community want from him? The protests around the world simply justify this quotation on violence and the refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments. I won't support and encourage dialogue with a society where people use threats and violence to intimidate others.

Seminary became a mosque, and perhaps more

 
   The Record, page Vista 1, By Tony Evans, September 21, 2006
Mark Cross - no longer the Cross of Christ
   Evidence of the decline of Christianity in Europe, once the cradle of the Faith, can be witnessed almost daily from reports and opinion in the press, on television, and in the many authoritative books recently published. One notes an article in a British paper by a journalist which opens with the statement that the Catholic Church in Britain is facing its greatest challenge since the Reformation.
   Over the last thirty years attendances at Mass have slumped by 40 per cent, Baptisms by 50 per cent and Catholic marriages by 50 per cent and so on. The editor of the UK Catholic Herald, writing in the national press, lays much of the blame with the 'intellectually lazy' English hierarchy.
   Influential British journalist, Melanie Phillips, in her recent book Londonistan, argues that the country has turned into a global hub of radical Islamic jihad and that the Church of England specifically (though certainly not exclusively), has "..an instinct for self-immolation ..it abases itself particularly towards those ideologies that are out to destroy it."
  [Picture] Old boys reminisce: The author, at right, and his elder brother in front of Mayfield College Chapel before it was gutted and sold to a developer.    Photo: courtesy, Tony Evans  
   To avoid deep depression it is tempting to listen to the counter argument that all this is unnecessarily alarmist, racially divisive, and exaggerated for political reasons. This fleeting temptation for me at least, is quickly banished by recent television aerial shots of a police swoop on a Muslim college in the heart of East Sussex which was suspected of harbouring jihadist training courses. Here, in one television image was encapsulated the stark reality of the decline of the Catholic Church in Britain in the face of the rise of Islam.
   What was not mentioned in the news reports was that the college at Mark Cross had been, when I knew it, the junior seminary of the vast and highly populous diocese of Southwark. My school, Mayfield College, was a neighbour of the seminary three or four miles distant. A couple of my school friends transferred to Mark Cross and went on to become priests - one of whom, now retired -1 keep in contact with.
   The annual cricket and rugby matches between the two colleges were special events; I well remember playing cricket against the novices in those grounds where, in these times, the 'novice' terrorists were suspectedof training. The two colleges were designed by the same architect and financed by the same benefactor. The two chapels were especially beautiful, built in the mid-nineteenth century gothic revivalist style.
   We proudly thought our chapel was the finest, and later when I re-visited the school in the 1970s it seemed even more of the jewel that it always was, tastefully decorated with wall paintings and statuary, a 'privileged' altar, a fine pipe organ and much more which remain forever in my memory.
   It was there that I learned to serve Mass and where the Mark Cross priest-professors would sometimes come to join our chaplain on special occasions.
   Now, neither college exists as a Catholic institution. Mark Cross is a Muslim school under suspicion, and Mayfield has been sold to a development consortium which plans to convert the main buildings into superior flats. Our chapel, once grade A listed, has been gutted, the furnishings removed and the organ dismantled, and lying in neglected pieces according to an eye-witness.
   Only the Muslims know what the Mark Cross chapel has been used for.
   This decline of Catholic life in England in the face of the advance of Islam is not some imaginary episode, or an alarmist thesis invented by pessimistic writers like Melanie Phillips or Damian Thompson of the Catholic Herald.
   It is unarguable and never better illustrated by the tragedy of Mayfield College and Mark Cross in East Sussex. And it has lessons for Australia too.

Muslim commentator attacks Benedict’s critics

 
   The Record page Vista 3, by Paul Gray, September 21, 2006
A n influential Australian Muslim writer has defended the right of Pope Benedict to express his theological opinions, and criticised fellow-Muslims for responding violently to the Pope's words during the controversial Regensburg address, in which the Pope quoted 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus.
   Waleed Aly, a regular newspaper commentator and director of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said the Pope's address was an academic address and "had nothing to do with affronting Muslims."
   In a column in Melbourne's The Age newspaper, Aly reacted caustically to the threats of violence against the Pope made by some of his fellow Muslims.
   "Some Muslims clearly interpret Benedict to be quoting Manuel with approval, and take offence at the suggestion that Islam is inherently violent," Aly wrote.
   "The response is to bomb five churches in the West Bank, and attack the door of another in Basra. In India, angry mobs burn effigies of Pope Benedict.
   "In Somalia, Sheikh Abu Bakr Hassan Malin urges Muslims to 'hunt down' the Pope and kill him, while an armed Iraqi group threatens to carry out attacks against Rome and the Vatican."
   "There," Aly commented sarcastically. "That'll show them for calling us violent."
   Mr Aly said some elements in the Muslim world are looking avidly for something to offend them. "At some point, the Muslim world has to gain control of itself. Presently, its most vocal elements are so disastrously reactionary, and therefore so easily manipulable." #

Action and prayers needed for Sudan

 
   The Record, Catholic News Service, p 10, September 21, 2006
Church leaders join pleas for to save Darfur population
   As people around the world joined peace rallies, concerts, prayer vigils and even a "yogathon" to press for action to bring peace to Darfur in Sudan, the head of the US bishops' international policy committee and others pleaded for more efforts to "end the killings, rape and wanton destruction."
   Events in dozens of cities drew tens of thousands of people on or around September 17, which was designated by peace groups as Global Day for Darfur.
   Bishop Thomas G. Wenski of Orlando, Florida, the committee head, said despite hopeful signs of a peace agreement in the spring conflict has been mounting among rebel groups, the Sudanese military and its proxy militias, known as the Janjaweed. The offensive "has trapped innocent and defenceless civilians in the middle of the fighting," Bishop Wenski wrote in a statement released on September 15 in Washington.
   And with the deteriorating situation, it has become "a deadly challenge" to deliver humanitarian aid to the 2.5 million people who have fled their homes and another million who are at risk of starvation, he said. A dozen aid workers have been killed since June.
  The offensive “has trapped innocent and defenceless civilians in the middle of the fighting," Bishop Wenski wrote in a statement.”  
   He warned that the cycle of violence in Darfur threatens to spiral completely out of control. "With more people being displaced, an already alarming state of insecurity that has hampered efforts to deliver humanitarian aid may degenerate completely" he said.
   Bishop Wenski said the US bishops support a resolution authorising the United Nations to take over an inadequately equipped and understaffed peacekeeping effort by the African Union, and the appointment of a special envoy to focus diplomatic attention on a lasting solution.
   In New York, Franciscan Father Michael Perry, consultant on Africa for Franciscans International, urged people to call members of Congress, write letters to the White House, pray and to educate others about the situation in Darfur.
   In a letter to Franciscan friars and "partners in ministry" Father Perry explained that more than 400,000 people have died in Darfur and another 300,000 face the immediate prospects of hunger and starvation.
   "Darfur is the size of France and has a population of over 6 million," he wrote. The war began in 2002 as a local revolt by farmers and others against the government's abuse of rights and its failure to provide protection from marauding raiders. Although the government and the main rebel group signed a peace agreement in May, neither side has respected it, Father Perry said.
   In recent months the government has progressively blocked international aid agencies from delivering food and medical supplies to civilians who have been forcibly displaced by helicopter gunships, bomber planes and military forces. Rebel groups also have committed atrocities and not respected cease-fire agreements, he said.
   At one of the September 16-17 weekend's many Darfur events, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said at a London rally that the situation in Darfur is "catastrophic in terms of the violence, the murders, the displacement of people." -CNS #

Benedict’s speech

 
Pope rejects faith spread by the sword    The Record by Pope Benedict XVI, pp 12-13, September 21, 2006
   REGENSBERG, Germany:
Here is the text of the lecture given by Pope Benedict XVI at Regensberg on September 12.
IIt is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn.
   That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves.
   We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties.
   Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience.
   The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole.
   This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
   I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.
   It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an.
   It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
   In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.
   Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
   The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.
   Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."
   The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident.
   But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry. At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?
  [Picture] The lecture: Pope Benedict XVI lectures on faith and reason at the University of Regensburg in Germany on September 12. A quotation from a Byzantine emperor that the Pope used in this talk has provoked outrage in the Muslim world. The Pope said on September 17 that he is "deeply sorry" that Muslims were offended by the quotation he used.   PHOTO: CNS  
   I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the word". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, reason, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason.
   John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis.
   In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry. In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy.
   Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115).
   Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature.
   Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.
   In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit.
   In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. ...�mm
   This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.
   As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlike-ness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf.
   Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "λογικη λατρεία" worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).
   This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today.
   Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe.
   We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
   The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenisation of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age.
   Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the program of dehellenisation: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.
   Dehellenisation first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought.
   As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word.
   Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself.
   When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this program forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.
   The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenisation, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative.
   When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this program was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
  [Picture] The response: A Palestinian from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade attends a Sept. 15 rally in Gaza to protest against remarks regarding Islam made by Pope Benedict XVI.    PHOTO: CNS  
   In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenisation.
   Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenisation: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality.
   In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific.
   What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalised by the impact of the natural sciences.
   This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature.
   On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
   This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity.
   A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.
   I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self.
   But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective.
   The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical.
   In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
   Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenisation, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures.
   The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux.
   This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed.
   True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.
   And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age.
   The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit.
   The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.
   In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
   Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid.
   Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.
   At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based.
   Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.
   Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss".
   The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby.
   The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God" said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.
   Note: The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional. #

  Creed of the sword  

 
    ISLAM HAS TO ACCEPT THAT ITS MILITANTS  
    FIND SUPPORT FOR VIOLENCE IN THEIR  
    FAITH'S TEACHINGS AND SHOULD  
    PURSUE REFORM, WRITES MARK DURIE  
   The Weekend Australian, by Mark Durie, pp 17-18, September 23-24, 2006
THE world has witnessed a flood of reaction this week to Benedict XVI's Regensburg lecture, a reaction that has gone well beyond words, with attacks on churches in Gaza, the West Bank and Basra, and apparently the killing of an elderly Italian nun in Mogadishu, together with her guard. Some have called for the Pope to be executed. According to Britain's Daily Mail, Anjem Choudary of the British Muslim organisation al-Ghurabaa, was leading a rally outside Westminster Abbey when he asked for Catholicism's supreme leader to be subjected to capital punishment, and Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin has declared that the Pope should be hunted down and killed "on the spot".
   Australia's Cardinal George Pell weighed into the debate, suggesting that violent responses to the Pope's September 12 lecture demonstrate the link "for the Islamists" between religion and violence.
   On the other hand, no less a figure than the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, issued a statement on the official Saudi news service, defending Muslims' divine right to resort to violence: "The spread of Islam has gone through several phases, secret and then public, in Mecca and Medina.
  Most people are understandably afraid to come to their own conclusions about violent passages in the Koran, lest they find themselves demonising Muslims  
   God then authorised the faithful to defend themselves and to fight against those fighting them, which amounts to a right legitimised by God. This... is quite reasonable, and God will not hate it"
   Saudi Arabia's most senior cleric also explained that war was never Islam's ancient founder, the prophet Mohammed's, first choice: "He gave three options: either accept Islam, or surrender and pay tax, and they will be allowed to remain in their land, observing their religion under the protection of Muslims." Thus, according to the Grand Mufti, the third option of violence against non-Muslims was only a last resort, if they refused to convert or surrender peacefully to the armies of Islam.
   Abdel went on to urge people to read the Koran and Sunnah (the record of Mohammed's teaching and example) for themselves, pointing out that the Koran, Islam's equivalent of scripture, has been translated into many of the world's languages: "Those who read the Koran and the Sunnah can understand the facts."
   On this at least the Archbishop of Sydney and the Saudi Grand Mufti do agree, for in an address earlier this year, Pell also urged people to read the Koran.
   Accessing the facts: So what are these facts contained in the Koran and Sunnah that the Grand Mufti would have us read? As it happens, reading the Koran is not without its difficulties. There is, for a start, the thorny problem of context. The Koran gives little help with this: it does not mark off specific passages one from another and its 114 chapters (suras) are not laid out in chronological order.
   The keys to unlocking the context for individual passages of the Koran can be found in the life of Mohammed, the Sunnah. The sources for the Sunnah are the traditions (hadiths), of which Sunnis recognise six canonical collections, and biographies of Mohammed (sira literature). Although the volume of this material is considerable, it is now largely available in English translation, much of it on the internet
   In addition to the inherent difficulty of the sources, many secular Westerners rely on certain crippling preconceptions. One is the often-heard mantra that "all religions are the same". Another is the claim that "anyone can justify violence from any religious text". This idea stretches back at least to Rousseau, who considered any and all forms of religion to be pernicious.
   Either of these views, if firmly held, would tend to sabotage anyone's ability to investigate the Koran's distinctive take on violence.
   There is another obstacle, and that is Western culture's own sense of guilt and suspicion of what it regards as Christian hypocrisy. to Rousseau, who considered any and all forms of religion to be pernicious.
   Any attempt to critique some of Islam's teachings is likely to be met with loud and vociferous denunciations of the church's moral failings, such as its appalling track record of anti-Semitism. And did I mention the crusades? Finally, the reality is that Muslims adhere to widely varying beliefs and practices. Most people are understandably afraid to come to their own conclusions about violent passages in the Koran, lest they find themselves demonising Muslims. to Rousseau, who considered any and all forms of religion to be pernicious.
   But does the Koran incite violence, and how does its message compare with the Bible?
   The Koran: It is self-evident that some Koranic verses encourage violence. Consider for example a verse which implies that fighting is "good for you": "Fighting is prescribed upon you, and you dislike it. But it may happen that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. And Allah knows and you know not." (2:216)
   On the other hand, it is equally clear that there are peaceful verses as well, including the famous "no compulsion in religion" (2:256). to Rousseau, who considered any and all forms of religion to be pernicious.
   Resolving apparently contradictory messages presents one of the central interpretative challenges of the Koran. Muslims do not agree today on how best to address this. For this reason alone it could be regarded as unreasonable to claim that any one interpretation of the Koran is the correct one.
Continued - Page 18 | More reports - Pages 18,19 and 25'
Islam: creed of the sword
   Nevertheless, a consensus developed very early in the history of Islam about this problem. This method relies on a theory of stages in the development of Mohammed's prophetic career. It also appeals to a doctrine known as abrogation, which states that verses revealed later can cancel out or qualify verses revealed earlier.
   The classical approach to violence in the Koran was neatly summed up in an essay on jihad in the Koran by Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Hamid, former chief justice of Saudi Arabia: "So at first 'the fighting' was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory: (1) against those who start 'the fighting' against you [Muslims] ... (2) And against all those who worship others along with Allah."
   At the beginning, in Mohammed's Meccan period, when he was weaker and his followers few, passages of the Koran encouraged peaceful relations and avoidance of conflict: "Invite [all] to the way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious." (16:125)
   Later, after persecution and emigration to Medina in the first year of the Islamic calendar, authority was given to engage in warfare for defensive purposes only: "Fight in the path of God those who fight you, but do not transgress limits, for God does not love transgressors." (2:190)
   As the Muslim community grew stronger and conflict with its neighbours did not abate, further revelations expanded the licence for waging war, until in Sura 9, regarded as one of the last chapters to be revealed, it is concluded that war against non-Muslims could be waged more or less at any time and in any place to extend the dominance of Islam. Sura 9 distinguished idolaters, who were to be fought until they converted - "When the sacred months are past, kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in every place of ambush" (Sura 9:5) - from "People of the Book" (Christians and Jews), who were to be given a further option of surrendering and living under Islamic rule while keeping their religion: "Fight ... the People of the Book until they pay the poll tax out of hand, having been humbled." (Sura 9:29)
   The resulting doctrine of war was described by the great medieval philosopher Ibn Khal-dun: "In the Muslim community, the holy war [jihad] is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and the [obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force." (The Muqaddimah)
   The popular Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and al-Jazeera television personality, in July 2003 invoked the classical dogma of the Dar al-Harb or "domain of war" that encompasses all the regions of the world in which Islam is not yet dominant. In the Dar al-Harb the lives and possessions of non-Muslims are muba'a, or "licit", making them a legitimate target for military action: "It has been determined by Islamic law that the blood and property of people of Dar al-Harb is not protected... in modern war, all of society, with all its classes and ethnic groups, is mobilised to participate in the war, to aid its continuation and to provide it with the material and human fuel required for it to assure the victory of the state fighting its enemies."
   All this explains Sheikh Abdel Aziz's response to the Pope's speech. Alluding to the distinction between the Meccan and Medinan periods of revelation, the Grand Mufti invoked the doctrine of Sura 9:29 (cited above), that fighting against People of the Book continues until non-Muslims convert or surrender.
   Today most Muslims acknowledge the religious legitimacy of "defensive jihad" -- including the Palestinian struggle --but many appear to reject the idea of offensive, expansionist jihad. Most would emphasise the defensive aspects of Mohammed's numerous military campaigns, claiming that his attacks on others were only to pre-empt future aggression against Muslims. It is also often asserted that Mohammed's military exploits were context-specific responses to the unique situations he encountered in his lifetime, and not binding on later generations of Muslims.
   However the idea of a purely defensive jihad is hard to reconcile with the phenomenal military expansion of Islam in its first 100 years. For centuries the validity of the doctrine of expansionist jihad just seemed self-evident to Muslim scholars, as it was validated by the military victories it had delivered across the greater part of the Christian world, as well as Zoroastrian Persia and Hindu India.
   The New Testament: It is not difficult to find examples of religious violence in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. When Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, he was instructed by God to destroy all who dwelled within its walls.
   The New Testament takes a completely different approach. Throughout the New Testament there is a systematic rejection of religious violence. The key to this is Jesus' message that his kingdom was spiritual and not political. Jesus explicitly and repeatedly condemns the use of force to achieve his goals: "Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." (Matthew 26:52)
   As Jesus goes to the cross, he renounces force, even at the cost of his own life: "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." (John 18:36)
   The Sermon on the Mount elaborates several aspects of Jesus' non-violent ethic. Retribution was no longer acceptable (Matthew 5:38), enemies were to be loved, not hated (Matthew 5:43), the meek will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5) and Jesus' disciples should rejoice when they are persecuted (Matthew 5:10).
   The Koran's advice on responding to persecution is very different. The phrase "persecution (or trial) is worse than slaughter" (2:191, 217) implies that anything that impedes the spread of Islam, or which could cause Muslims to abandon their faith, is worse than killing the persecutors. At one point Christ says: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34) This is sometimes cited as evidence for Jesus' militancy, but the statement occurs in an extended passage where Jesus is advising his disciples on the inevitability of persecution. The sword he refers to is the one that will be raised against them.
   Jesus' take on violence is reinforced by the apostles Paul and Peter, who urge Christians to show consideration to their enemies, renouncing retaliation, living peaceably, returning cursing with blessing and showing humility to others (Romans 12:14-21, Titus 3:1-2, Peter 220-24).
   They also allow that the (most likely pagan) civil authorities will need to use force to keep the peace and this role should be respected (Romans 13:1-7, Peter 2:13-17).
   This is an extension of the earlier Jewish position that Jews should submit to the rule of law in whichever country they find themselves, even if the king is a pagan (Jeremiah 29:4-7).
   The New Testament supports the just use of force as a proper function of the state, whatever its religious identity. Thus it is not a specifically religious or sacred act to go to war, or to use force to implement justice. It is just a matter of public duty, one aspect of the ordering of society that God has established for the common good.
   If only Christians had maintained this New Testament position down the centuries, the world would have been a better place.
   The invention of "Christendom" in the fourth Christian century and the influence of a centuries-long battle against the Islamic jihad ultimately led to aberrant theologies being developed that regarded warfare against non-Christians as holy in nature.
   This doctrine of holy war was applied in ways that led to horrific abuses.
   Thankfully these have been universally denounced in the modern era as incompatible with the gospel of Christ.
   The New Testament's teachings on the state continue to sustain the more than 300 million believers who live in more than 60 countries where Christians are persecuted. In none of these countries has persecution resulted in Christian terrorism or violent Christian insurgencies aimed at overthrowing civil authorities. On the contrary, China's 70 million Christians remain loyal to their nation and Government, despite 50 years of the most intense oppression. In Nepal it is the Maoists who have been engaging in terrorism, not the 500,000 indigenous Christians.
   The example of the IRA, so often cited as Christian terrorists, illustrates the Christian position, because the IRA's ideology was predominantly Marxist and atheistic.
   IRA terrorists found no inspiration in the teachings of Christ.
   The need for reform: Islam has not yet come to a consensus about how Muslims should conduct themselves under non-Muslim rule. There is no consensus that a just war should not be conceived in sacralised terms as a jihad. There is no consensus that the earlier, more peaceful verses of the Koran take priority over the later, more violent ones. There is no consensus that the old program of military expansion should not be resumed if and when it becomes practical to do so. There is no consensus that non-Muslims should be allowed to discuss the Koran and the life of Mohammed without becoming the target of intimidation, and subjected to accusations of ignorance, incompetence or racism.
   The Muslim world is incredibly diverse and such a consensus may never be developed. Nevertheless it must be attempted. The important work to achieve this consensus is under way, but it remains to be completed, and any debate that can hasten the development of a less sacralised approach to the use of force within Islam deserves everyone's wholehearted support.
   Dr Mark Durie is an Anglican vicar and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities.

                                                                                                        THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN   SEPTEMBER 23-24 2006 — 17

LIVE BY THE WORD, DIE BY THE WORD

 
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS HIGHLIGHTED ISLAM'S LINKAGE OF RELIGION WITH VIOLENCE, ARGUES EDITOR-AT-LARGE PAUL KELLY
THE contentious speech by Benedict XVI and the statement by Australia's George Pell signal a decisive change of attitude in the complex debate over the connection between Islam and violence. In his muscular statement this week, the Cardinal did more than defend the Pope. He did more than lament the Muslim violence directed against the Pope and the Catholic Church.
   The essence of Pell's statement was that such violence demonstrated one of the Pope's main fears: that for many Islamists there is a link between religion and violence. This is an inflammatory subject that many opinion makers want to keep off the agenda.
   Pell charged Australia's Islamic leaders, mentioning by name Australia's mufti, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, and the federal Government's Muslim Community Reference Group chairman Ameer Ali, with refusing to address the issues and seeking instead to blame somebody else, in this case, the Pope.
   Hilali, in effect, said the Pope was not a good Christian while Ali was contemptuous in likening Benedict to Urban II, who called the first crusade. These are moderate Muslim leaders.
   "Friends of Islam in Australia have genuine questions which need to be addressed, not regularly avoided," Pell said. He was supported by Prime Minister John Howard, who expressed concerns about the global reaction in terms of "demonstrations and threats of violence".
   The Pope and Pell articulate an emerging Catholic view about Islam. They believe the core issues are not being confronted: the link between Islam and the state and between Islam and violence. The test is whether Islam accepts religious tolerance and whether it rejects violence. They believe Islamic doctrine and practice in parts of the world today demands such a discussion.
   The Pope, in a highly academic speech at the University of Regensburg, criticised Western secularism's abandonment of God. But in the prelude to his theme he alluded to another issue gaining traction in the church: concern at the sustained advocacy of violence with the Koran and reliance on the Koran by some Islamic scholars and clerics to justify violence. (This is related to growing persecution of Christians in Muslim nations.)
   The Pope's anecdote about the 1391 conversation between Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on Christianity and Islam was not an aberration. Maybe its inclusion in the speech was poor Vatican staff work and a political mistake. But the anecdote reflects the Pope's concerns since the emperor was alarmed about Mohammed's advocacy of Islam "by the sword".
   Both the Pope and Pell have been studying the Koran. In his remarkable Florida speech in February, titled Islam and Western Democracies, Pell outlined at length the dilemma the West faces with Islam. It is trapped between the optimistic and the pessimistic views of Koranic teaching.
   The optimists say: "Jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving", and that its extension to terrorism is "a distortion". Optimists stress Islam's ties with Judaism and Christianity, the great diversity within Islam, divergent interpretations of the Koran, and the role of Indonesia and Turkey as successful democracies within Islamic societies.
   Turning to the pessimistic side, Pell says: "In my own reading of the Koran I began to note down the invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages."
   Pell draws the standard distinction between the chapters written during Mohammed's time at Mecca, when he was without military power and hoping to win the people (including Christians and Jews), and at Medina, where he established the first Muslim state and began to spread Islam by conquest and coercion.
   Pell says many of the latter "verses of the sword" are assumed to abrogate the earlier verses. He finds that "the predominant grammatical form in which jihad is used in the Koran carries the sense of fighting or waging war".
Live and die by the word
He concludes it is "difficult to recognise the God of the New Testament in the God of the Koran". He says the historical record shows "the claims of Muslim tolerance of Christian and Jewish minorities are largely mythical" as revealed in "the history of Islamic conquest and domination in the Middle East, the Iberian peninsula and the Balkans".
   Pell says the Koran is seen to come directly from God, unlike the Bible, a human project informed by divine revelation. As a result, many Muslim leaders reject efforts to reinterpret the Koran, some such scholars being threatened with death. Pressure from the West bolsters such rigidity, with the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia telling pilgrims that "there is a war against our creed" waged under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
   For Pell, this betrays the flaw in President George W. Bush's pro-democracy stance. Freedom to vote cannot cancel the centuries-old influence of religion and culture. The vote cannot guarantee a secular state or religious tolerance. The vote cannot eliminate culture. The heart of Pell's argument is that religion is a pivotal influence on the behaviour of Muslims. The idea that religion may shape personal behaviour is a revolutionary idea in today's secular West Yet how else can Islam be comprehended?
   If religion is a pivotal influence, then a religious debate is essential. This is what the Pope and Pell want: a religious debate with Muslims about the meaning of Islam. This is also a revolutionary notion today because Western progressive secularism is either hostile to religion or not interested in religion. As a consequence, progressive secularists deal with Muslims on every basis except the meaning of their religion. Slight problem.
   Pell lists the questions that need to be addressed. In so doing he recognises that the way Muslims see their religion is important for Australia's future. How do they interpret the Koran? What are their views about its invocations to violence? How does Islam relate to the secular state? Will Muslim majorities in Europe, when they arrive, follow Mohammed's dictum and introduce Islamic laws? Any such dialogue, according to Pell, proceeds on the admission that every faith, including Christianity, has crimes in its past.
   There are risks in having such a debate Indeed, it may be better to avoid the debate just as Australia's media, sensibly and responsibly, avoided publication of the Danish cartoons. The difference however, is that a genuine debate is not designed to mock Islam but to sort out how Islam and the West can coexist.
   As Howard said, Australia's Muslim leaders have every right to criticise the Pope. But they should understand the questions he raises are legitimate and, in intellectual terms, deserve a serious reply, not just insults. These questions will not disappear. On the other hand, criticism of the Pope in Australia saw none of the violence that occurred in many other nations. This suggests a responsible Muslim leadership and that should be acknowledged. Such restraint needs to be maintained and that is a community-wide obligation.
   The more muscular stance of the Catholic Church can help if it encourages genuine dialogue Yet it will be seriously counter-productive if it damages relations between two great religions. #

Pope's comments should be the start of something big

 
   The Weekend Australian, ausletr@news corp.com.au , by Reuel Marc Gerecht, p 18, September 23-24, 2006
BENEDICT XVI nailed two facts about Islam that are contributing factors to the faith's very rough entry into modernity. The prophet Mohammed, the model for all Muslims, established the faith through war and conquest.
   His immediate successors, the Rightly Guided Caliphs, whom traditional and radical Muslims cherish, reinforced Islam's identity as a victorious faith through the rapid creation of a world empire.
   Christianity was also at times spread by the sword and its use of that sword against non-believers and heretics was more savage than any Muslim imperialist's.
   But Christianity was not born to power. Jesus is not a conqueror. And the image of God in Islam, which the Pope underscores by talking about the Muslim philosopher Ibn Hazm, is a cleaner expression of unlimited, almighty will than it is in Christianity.
   When radical Muslims take a hold of this divine fearsomeness, it can untether itself quickly from conventional morality, thereby allowing young men to believe that the slaughter of women and children isn't an abomination. In that sense, Muslim jihadism, as with fascism, rewrites our ethical DNA, turning sin into virtue.
   The Pope doesn't tell us how we should proceed to counter the defects he sees in Islam. He should, since that would begin a real, painful but meaningful dialogue, which will surely cut both ways between the West and Islam.
   We need to stop treating Muslims like children and viewing our public diplomacy with Islamic countries as popularity contests. Given what's happened since 9/11, a dialogue of civilisations is certainly in order.
   To his credit, Benedict has at least tried to approach the invidious issues that will define any helpful discussion.
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Journal. This is an edited extract from a piece in The Wall Street Journal on September 21.

Unclear and present danger

 
   The Weekend Australian, ausletr@news corp.com.au , by Patrick Walters, p 25, "Inquirer" section, September 23-24, 2006
The public is still not fully aware of the gravity of the threat posed by Islamist extremists, Britain's anti-terror supremo tells Patrick Walters
BRITAIN'S top counter-terrorist cop has no doubt the nature of the threat has changed dramatically. Peter Clarke, Scotland Yard's 51-year-old head of counter-terrorism, talks with quiet resolution about the challenge of Islamist terrorism and how it has turned British policing upside down.
   People often say to Clarke how well placed the British authorities must be to deal with Islamist terror given their long experience of Irish Republican Army killers.
   No, he responds emphatically. It's a whole new ball game with no defined rules of engagement or carefully delineated boundaries.
   "The current terrorist threat is almost the reverse of all those parameters," Clarke said in Canberra this week.
   "What we see is global in origin, global in ambition, global in reach. The networks are loose, they are fluid and they are incredibly resilient," Clarke told a security conference.
   Defeating the threat demands a level of resources, including sustained surveillance, unprecedented in modern law enforcement "Unless you have pace and scale on your side, you will fail to deal with these terrorist conspiracies that we are currently seeing," he stressed.
   Clarke tells Inquirer the threat posed by radical Islamists in Britain is growing in scale and complexity. "I think the only sensible conclusion is that it is ... because if you look at the pace of terrorist activity since 9/11, it's clearly unabated and there appears to be a consistency, almost a regularity, in the attack patterns.
   "I don't want to sound unnecessarily gloomy, but I don't see many positive signs in terms of it being diminished."
   He points out that British authorities have managed to foil four or five attacks in the past 12 months. But the "sad probability" is that another attack will get through at some time.
   Clarke brings nearly 30 years of experience to his role as national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism investigations, having joined the Metropolitan Police in 1977 with a law degree from Bristol University.
   His postings included a stint in the late 1990s as commander of the royalty and diplomatic protection department, with responsibility for the security of the royal family, before taking on his present job at New Scotland Yard in 2002.
   Since 9/11 there has been a four-fold increase in the number of Metropolitan Police officers dedicated to investigating terrorism. In the next few weeks there will be a shake-up as Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch merges with the force's special branch to form a dedicated counter-terrorism command.
   "That will be quite a historic change. It's a big move for us to do that," Clarke says. "That will create a single large department as big as many medium-sized police forces in the UK, which will greatly enhance our capabilities."
   The Metropolitan Police will co-ordinate other counter-terrorism units across Britain's 43 separate local police forces, building surveillance, intelligence and analytical assets.
   Clarke says Britain's experience of Islamist terror, including last year's London bombings and the recently thwarted plot to blow up airliners flying to the US, is driving far-reaching changes in the way police now operate.
   It used to be that police would only intervene in the final stages of a terrorist plot, making arrests at or near the point of attack, with the strongest possible weight of evidence to put before a court However, Clarke says the scale of the threat means "we can no longer afford to wait until that moment".
   "It's a complete shift in scale. Mentally we have had to completely change our response in terms of interdiction and intervention to prevent an increased risk to the public."
  [Picture] Emphatic: The problem is global, Clarke told the homeland security summit in Canberra.  
   Clarke says earlier action to pre-empt a mass casualty attack also dictates the need to engage closely with local communities as a key element of counter-terrorism strategy. He believes the British public is still not fully aware of the gravity of the threat posed by Islamist terror groups. This is despite the fact there are now 90 people awaiting trial on terrorism charges.
   "We have a whole series of trials which over the coming months and years will unfold in the UK. When that hard evidence is produced the public are able to see what has been planned over the last months and years, that will contribute to their understanding of the threat"
   When Metropolitan Police discovered a cache of military training equipment in the Finsbury Park mosque in January 2003, it took three years before the authorities could inform the public of the find because of contempt issues. "From a law enforcement perspective, the scale of these investigations is simply immense. The level of investigative activity has never been higher," Clarke says.
   He acknowledges that the number of people of interest to British authorities looking "right across the span of terrorist activity" is now in the thousands. These included at one end of the spectrum people prepared to mount attacks themselves, and at the other those who might simply facilitate travel or supply forged documentation, or those may one day join the jihadist cause.
   "The numbers of people we have to be interested in are in the thousands [but] I am not saying that we have thousands of people under surveillance or that there are thousands of terrorists in the UK."
   International co-operation between law enforcement authorities is critical and transnational intelligence sharing is growing all the time.
   "What we are looking at is a global movement that operates across borders. They are extremely mobile. Travel is a key feature of how terrorists are planning and organising themselves."
   Clarke says Britain is working closely with Pakistani authorities to better understand the extent of links with British groups, including the 2005 bombers.
   The July disruption of a plot to blow up airliners travelling to the US involved the arrest of 17 suspects, of whom 11 have now been charged with conspiracy to murder.
   Clarke warns it is vital that the aviation industry examines the implications of the foiled plot for air travel.
   The plotters had been planning to smuggle liquid explosives on board several planes.
   "I can't go into details about the methodology except to say its very innovative. That will give a clue to the fact that now in response ... new protective measures are required. The methodology is such that there must be an enduring threat to air transport."
   So a serious threat to aviation safety remains which has to be addressed?
   "Absolutely," comes the reply. #

Benedict reaffirms respect for Muslims

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), Catholic News Service, Page One, Thursday, September 28, 2006
Following Islamic controversy Benedict XVI renews his commitment to dialogue
· CNS
  [Picture] Pope Benedict XVI shakes hands with Bosnia-Herzegovina's ambassador to the Vatican, Miroslav Palameta during a meeting with ambassadors of Islamic nations and Italian Islamic leaders at the Pope's summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, on September 25. The Pope assured Muslims that he respected them and was committed to dialogue.   Photo: CNS/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters  
   CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy: Meeting with Islamic ambassadors and representatives, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his deep respect for Muslims, pledged to continue dialogue, and said Islamic and Christian leaders should cooperate to curb violence.
   "Faithful to the teachings of their own religious traditions, Christians and Muslims must learn to work together, as indeed they already do in many common undertakings, in order to guard against all forms of intolerance and to oppose all manifestations of violence," the Pope said.
   "As for us, religious authorities and political leaders, we must guide and encourage them in this direction," he said.
   The unprecedented encounter at the Pope's summer residence on September 25 was designed to soothe Muslim resentment over a recent papal speech that cited a historical criticism of Islam and the concept of holy war.
   The Pope later distanced himself from the quoted material and said he was sorry Muslims had been offended.
   Addressing the Islamic representatives at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope alluded only briefly to the earlier speech. Instead, he focused on assuring Muslim communities that his papacy was not backtracking on the dialogue opened by the Second Vatican Council and developed in large part by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
   The Pope expressed his "esteem and profound respect" for Muslim believers and said he wanted to continue to build bridges, especially between Muslims and Christians.
   Productive dialogue, he said, will be based on mutual knowledge, which "with joy recognizes the religious values that we have in common and, with loyalty, respects the differences."
   He said historical animosities should be left behind. The lessons of the past, he said, should help Christians and Muslims seek "paths of reconciliation" that lead to respect for individual identity and freedom.
   In that regard, Pope Benedict cited Pope John Paul on the important issue of reciprocal respect for religious rights, quoting from a speech the late Pope delivered to Muslims in Morocco: "Respect and dialogue require reciprocity in all spheres, especially in that which concerns basic freedoms, more particularly religious freedom."
   The Pope said that in the current world situation it was imperative that Christians and Muslims join to promote human dignity and the rights that flow from that dignity.
   "When threats mount up against people and against peace, by recognising the central character of the human person and by working with perseverance to see that human life is always respected, Christians and Muslims manifest their obedience to the Creator," he said.
   The Pope closed his talk by recalling that Muslims worldwide were about to begin the spiritual month of Ramadan, and he prayed that they be granted "serene and peaceful lives." When he finished, he was warmly applauded.
   The meeting, arranged with unusual urgency by the Vatican, was a formal audience and not a closed-door exchange of opinions. In attendance were ambassadors from 22 predominantly Muslim countries and 19 other Islamic representatives based in Italy.
   After words of welcome by the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, French Cardinal Paul Poupard, the Pope delivered his talk in French; the Vatican immediately made available translations in Arabic, English and Italian. Afterward, the Pope greeted those present individually, then posed for a photo and left the hall.
   The papal talk was broackai on the Arab television network Al-Jazeera.
   Before the meeting, the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said the encounter was a sign that dialogue was returning to normal after a moment of misunderstanding.
   The spokesman said the Pope's speech on September 12 at the University of Regensberg in Germany might even turn out to be "providential" for dialogue.
   "We hope the tension and suffering of the past days make everyone understand the urgency of a renewed dialogue that is positive, trustworthy, capable of looking at problems in depth, and ready for 'self-criticism,' as the Pope said," Father Lombardi said.
   "If this happens, the speech in Regensburg, with its intellectual courage ... will have been fruitful, perhaps even providential," he said. #

Nun worked for victory of love: Pope

 
   The Record (R.C. Perth W. Australia weekly), Catholic News Service, pp 1 and 4, Thursday, September 28, 2006
   Pope Benedict XVI said a missionary nun slain in Somalia exemplified the "logic of Christianity" by working for the victory of love over hatred.
   The Pope's comments on September 24 came exactly one week after the nun, Consolata Sister Leonella Sgorbati, was gunned down with her bodyguard as she left the children's hospital where she worked in Mogadishu.
   Somali authorities arrested one suspect and two potential witnesses to the slaying, which came amid rising tensions in the Muslim world over a recent papal speech on Islam.
   [It is] not known if the killing was connected to Muslim criticism of the pope's speech.
   Addressing pilgrims gathered for a noon blessing at his summer residence outside Rome, the pope spoke about the Gospel's encouragement of peacemakers.
   "These words bring to mind the witness of so many Christians who, with humility and in silence, giving their lives in the service of others for the cause of Jesus Christ, work concretely as servants of love and therefore as artisans of peace," the pope said.
   He said some, like Sister Sgorbati, are asked to make the supreme sacrifice of their own lives.
   "This sister, who served the poor and the little ones for many years in Somalia, died pronouncing the word 'forgiveness.' Here is the most authentic Christian witness, a peaceful sign of contradiction that demonstrates the victory of love over hatred and evil," he said.
   Most Islamic leaders in Somalia have condemned the killing, emphasizing that Sister Sgorbati was dedicating her efforts to the Somali people. The 65-year-old nun had worked in Africa for 35 years and had been in Somalia since 2001.
   According to a nun who was with her after she was shot, Sister Sgorbati murmured, "I forgive," three times before dying. Her funeral was Sept. 21 in Nairobi, Kenya. #

A martyr for love

 
   The Record, Letter from Deirdre Lyra, of Maida Vale, p 8, Thursday, September 28, 2006
   A long serving Catholic nun devoted to working in a charity hospital in Somalia (19/9) is shot and killed two days after a hardline Mogadishu cleric urged Muslims to hunt down and kill those who insult Islam following the Pope's controversial remarks, about their religion last week.
   The unanswered question is who is the criminal and who is the victim?
   In a rational, civilized society a criminal is arrested, brought to justice and peace is maintained, or with anarchy, terrorism prevails.
   The Catholic nun serves a humanitarian cause in the Christian way, while unprovoked, her Muslim killer avenges his religious beliefs. Is this not the same question referred to by the Pope's original remarks ?
   The Catholic nun bears witness to her faith in an act of love and service. She is a true martyr. #

Myth v History

 
   The Record, Letter from M.J. Gonzalez, of Willetton, p 8, Thursday, September 28, 2006
   Brian Toohey, in his article in The West of September 25, (Time to cool religious tempers), notes that "it did not take long for various commentators to note that the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, was sacked during the fourth Christian crusade..."
   According to my secular enclycopedia, the fourth crusade was, indeed, initiated by Pope Innocent III but he "was deeply disappointed by the events of the crusade".
   Venetians and Frenchmen were the main components of the force and they (for totally non-religious reasons) decided to attack the Adriatic seaport of Zara, which was an important rival of Venice.
   Pope Innocent prohibited the expedition to do this, but it was undertaken in spite of this and Innocent excommunicated all participants. Zara was captured and "thoroughly pillaged".
   The Venetians then "suggested that the expedition now direct its efforts against Constantinople" and Pope Innocent "again issued a reprimand to the crusaders which they again disregarded:  they captured Constantinople... and spent three days pillaging it." ..."They ransacked and raped."
   I think that this knowledge presents quite a different face to that portrayed by the "popular" version that some like to hold up when the whole subject of the crusades comes up. #

Executions trigger riots

 
   The Record, Catholic News Service, p 9, Thursday, September 28, 2006
  [Picture] Indonesian Catholics gather outside the cathedral in Ujungpandang, Indonesia, to protest the execution of and pray for Fabianus Tibo, Marinus Riwu and Dominggus da Silva.    PHOTO: CNS  
Three Catholic men executed in Indonesia, triggering riots
The three Catholic men convicted of murdering 200 Muslims during sectarian riots in Central Sulawesi province in 2000 were executed by firing squad on September 22, triggering rioting in other provinces.
   Father Jimmy Tumbelaka, spiritual counsel for Fabianus Tibo, 60, Dominggus da Silva, 39, and Marinus Riwu, 48, said on September 22 the three "were executed early this morning at about 1.50 am"
   The priest spoke to UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand, by phone from Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi province.
   For the execution, he said, the men were handcuffed and tied to chairs. Da Silva and Tibo allowed themselves to be blindfolded, but Riwu refused, added Father Tumbelaka, parish priest for Poso, the town where the 2000 riots occurred.
   Father Tumbelaka recounted that the men were taken out of solitary confinement in Palu's Petobo jail at 11.30 pm. Media reported the execution was carried out amid tight security on the outskirts of Palu.
   Da Silva's body was buried at the public cemetery in Palu but was exhumed and buried in his native village of Waidoko at the request of his family. Tibo and Riwu were buried in Beteleme, according to their wishes.
   Father Tumbelaka said police and prosecutors rejected the men's last request, that their bodies be taken to St Mary Church in Palu for a Mass to be said by Bishop Joseph Suwatan of Manado.
   "That is really inhuman. It is against human rights," he said.

The Vatican expressed its “deep disappointment” at the executions, saying an act of clemency would have helped the process of reconciliation in Indonesia.

   But "we will hold a requiem Mass" led by the bishop "even without their bodies," he added.
   Media reported from Palu that the Mass was celebrated at 11 am. Three empty coffins were placed in front of the altar at St Mary Church.
   The Vatican expressed its "deep disappointment" at the executions, saying an act of clemency would have helped the process of reconciliation in Indonesia.
   "This is very sad and painful news. Every time a death penalty is carried out marks a defeat for humanity," Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, told reporters.
   In a written statement issued on September 23, the Vatican noted that several papal appeals had been made to the Indonesian government to spare the lives of the three condemned men.lt said the appeals had been made on humanitarian grounds, inspired by the Church's teaching on the death penalty, but also keeping in mind the "particular nature of this painful case."
   The statement said harmonious relations between religions, a long tradition in Indonesia, would continue to distinguish the country.
   After the funeral, no disturbances were reported in Palu, where police security was tight.
   However, in Atambua, a predominantly Catholic area in West Timor, an estimated 9,000 people protested the execution.
   The mob burned the prosecutor's and district court offices and stoned and damaged 50 other sites, including shops, houses, a market, government offices and a prison.
   About 200 prisoners escaped as a result.
   Bishop Anton Pain Ratu of Atambua and several Catholic priests tried unsuccessfully to divert the mob to Immaculate Conception Cathedral in a bid to calm the rioters.
   They were able, however, to lead the mob to the town square.
  [Picture] Bishop Joseph Suwatan of Manado, Indonesia, says a memorial Mass for three Catholics.    PHOTO: CNS  
   There, in the presence of security officers, the prelate urged the mob not to commit acts of anarchy.
   Supporters of the executed men say they were framed by the masterminds of the Christian-Muslim clashes in and around Poso from December 1998 to December 2001. Hundreds of people died in the violence, with estimates ranging as high as 2,000.
   No Muslims have been prosecuted for their role in the violence.
   Father Frans Rao, the vicar general of the Maumere Diocese, said that for years efforts have been made to have the death sentences of the three men commuted, but the authorities ignored these requests.
   "We should stay calm and keep praying for the three condemned men so that they will be resolute in their last minutes," he said at an interfaith service.
   Hasan Chalik from the Muslim community also spoke: "Our effort to abolish (the) death penalty in this country must continue. It will never stop." -CNS #

Turkey to join EU?

 
   The Record, By Simon Caldwell, Catholic News Service, p 10, Thursday, September 28, 2006
British cardinal questions whether European Union should admit Turkey
   LONDON: A British cardinal has questioned whether predominantly Muslim Turkey should be admitted to the European Union.
   Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster said he had concerns that Turkey's Islamic culture meant that the country would not integrate easily into a continent with a Christian heritage.
   In a radio interview, the cardinal challenged the position of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has consistently argued for Turkeys accession to the European Union on the grounds that its exclusion would be damaging.
   "There may be another view that the mixture of cultures is not a good idea," Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor told BBC Radio 4's Today program on September 21.
   "I think the question is for Europe: Will the admission of Turkey to the European Union be something that benefits a proper dialogue or integration of a very large, predominantly Islamic country in a continent that, fundamentally, is Christian?
   "I speak also in a sense for the people of this country, 70 per cent of whom say they are Christian, whether they practise or not, because they realise although we are a secularist country, at the same time, I believe, there is a deep yearning for God," the cardinal said.
   In the last 10 years Turkey, which became an associate member of the European Community in 1964, has undertaken reforms to improve its human rights record and strengthen its democracy.
   Last year, Turkey was able to begin accession talks with the European Union.
   Turkey's population is 99.8 percent Muslim, and restrictions on the practice of Christianity still exist.
   Months before his election as Pope Benedict XVI, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expressed grave doubts over the wisdom of allowing Turkey to join the European Union, citing cultural and religious differences.
   Since his election, the Vatican has made clear that it is neutral on the question of Turkey's EU membership.
   The United States and NATO, of which Turkey is a member, are both in favour of Turkey joining the European Union. -CNS #

The Perils Of Islamic Culture

 
   On Target, by Peter Ewer, p 3, September 29, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: Former treasury secretary John Stone recently spoke at a Quadrant dinner on the topic of the "perils of Islamic culture". (The Australian, , June/30/06, p. 17). Stone said:
   "So far as I can see, however, Muslims do not so much move out as move in.
   "... as the host country's own laws are set aside in these no-go areas, there develop demands for the recognition of these areas as small states within the state, to be governed by sharia law, administered not by national courts but by sharia-type courts overseen by local imams.
   "In France, we have begun to see the ultimate expression of such developments. ...
   "Similar demands can already be heard in Britain. To a more limited extent (so far) we have begun to hear them in Australia."
   Writers in this journal have said much the same thing, before Stone.

Three More Attacks On Iraqi Churches In Baghdad And Mosul

 
   Barnabas Fund, www.barnabas fund.org , info@barnabas fund.org (Britain) , www.barnabas fund.org/ archivenews/ article.php? ID_news_ items=226 , September 29, 2006
   IRAQ: The latest anti-Christian violence in Iraq saw a car bomb outside a cathedral in Baghdad which killed 2 and injured at least 17 others, and two attacks on a church in Mosul.
   On the morning of Sunday 24th September a cathedral of the Ancient Church of the East suffered a double attack apparently designed to maximise casualties. Firstly there was a small explosion under the car of the church minister as worshippers were leaving the church. Shortly after this, a much larger car bomb exploded on the other side of the narrow street seemingly intended to target the crowd who had gathered to help with the casualties caused by the first attack. These two explosions resulted in two people being killed, one a security guard for the church and the other a child. There were also at least 17 injured, of whom 9 were members of the church. Two of these remain in a critical condition. The cathedral itself was badly damaged.
   On the same day at 11.15 a.m. in Mosul a church was attacked when armed men fired around 80 shots. There was no service in progress at the time and no one was killed or injured. Some damage was done to the eastern part of the church building and some windows were broken. Christians courageously went to the church for an evening service later in the day. Two days later on Tuesday 26th September the same church was attacked with rockets and an explosive device detonated outside a door. There were no casualties.
   The violence may be linked to the uproar in response to the Pope's speech on the 12th September which was followed by a bomb attack on a church in Basra in Iraq on Friday 15th September. www.barnabas fund.org/ archivenews/ article.php? ID_news_ items=223#1
   Terrorist groups in Iraq also made threats to Christians following the Pope's speech. www.barnabas fund.org/ archivenews/ article.php? ID_news_ items=225#1
   It should also be noted that the latest three attacks have fallen with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began last Sunday. Ramadan is often a time when Christians experience greater hostility from Muslims. Some Islamists in Iraq have called for more violence during Ramadan.
   Largely unreported in the Western media, attacks on Christians in Iraq have been occurring frequently. As a small minority Iraqi Christians are very vulnerable. They do not have militias to protect them like other ethnic and religious groups in Iraq.
   Barnabas Fund's International Director, Dr Patrick Sookhdeo commented,
   "The attacks in Mosul and Baghdad came just days after an attack on a church in Basra. Whether in the north, the centre or the south of their country, Iraqi Christians are facing hostility and violence. This is an ongoing situation, made worse by the anti-Christian threats issued by some Islamist groups in Iraq after the Pope's speech on 12th September. For example Al-Qaeda in Iraq said, "We will destroy the cross, then all that will be accepted will be conversion or the sword (death). May God enable us to slit their throats." The fact that we are now in Ramadan is also exacerbating the situation. We need to pray for the protection of Iraqi Christians, particularly on Fridays and Sundays, the two most dangerous days of the week for Christian minorities."
Prayer Points
1. Pray for the families of those who have been killed and for those who were injured in this attack. Thank the Lord for the courage of the Iraqi Christians continuing to gather for worship despite these attacks.
2. Pray that both Muslim religious and political leaders in Iraq and also Western governments will work to protect Iraq's Christian minority.
3. That there will be no other attacks on Iraqi Christians, particularly today (Friday) and this coming Sunday. #

EDITORIAL
Pope Benedict and Violence in the name of Religion

THE REGENSBURG ADDRESS

     Annals Australasia, annals australasia @nareg. com.au , By Paul Stenhouse, pp 3-4, September 2006.
NO one reflecting on Pope Benedict's address in Regensburg, Germany on September 12, should be daunted by the furor that has erupted in some Islamic circles. The reaction which has all the appearance of being stage-managed, is intended to deter anyone [Muslim or non-Muslim] who \sishes to engage in fruitful dialogue about the teachings of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Like all such transparent ploys, it will prove to be counter-productive.
   The media beat-up didn't help mitigate the reaction. On the contrary it accompanied the furor through all its phases: 1. speech; 2. outrage, 3. disclaimer; 4. more outrage ['world-wide,'usually]; 5. explanation of context; 6. demands for apology; ~, further disclaimers; 8. threats and abuse; 9. polite explanation and regret; 10. continuing insult and abuse. The Holy Father cannot have been surprised, but he would certainly have been disappointed at the reaction his gently probing address at Regensburg University provoked. Unleashing hatred and abuse may satisfy extremists' appetite for media attention, but that is no substitute for intellectual debate or polite disagreement.
   The Pope's address needs no defence by us, but it may help offset some of the media hype to note that last Tuesday was the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11 when for the sake of Islam and in the name of Allah Islamic terrorists hijacked and flew three commercial airliners filled with commuters into the Twin Towers in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington. They also hijacked Lnited Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco and were responsible for the death of all its passengers when the plane crashed in Somerset County Pennsylvania.
   This tragic event must have been on the Pontiff's mind as he spoke to the audience of academics, students and prominent intellectuals - principally scientists - at his old University in Regensburg.
   He was not addressing a mob of skinheads at Wembley Stadium.
   He raised the question of Jihad, and spreading faith through violence, in the context of a dialogue between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian, on the subject of Christianity and Islam and truth. At the time the emperor was a hostage of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I and was forced to participate in the Ottoman campaign that captured Philadelpheia, the last Byzantine enclave in Anatolia.
   The Pope quoted the Emperor's remarks about Muhammad's spreading the faith he preached by the sword, as a lead-in to the dialogue on the relationship of violence and religion. Manuel II did not say that Muhammad was 'evil and inhuman,' nor did the Pope, despite misleading media reports to the contrary. This dialogue, the Pope noted, had been edited by Professor Theodore Khoury who stressed the difference between the Byzantine-Christian and Muslim teaching on the nature of God, as a key to understanding it.
   The Pope's address to the assembled intellectuals was a call for a return to rationality - for reason and faith to come together in a new way. Reason must not be deaf to the Divine, but neither must religious culture exclude rationality. Theology, said the Pope, must be seen as 'inquiry into the rationality of faith'.
   He concluded his address by inviting his partners 'in the dialogue of cultures' to 'this breadth of reason,' and a new vision of a common humanity. To rediscover the breadth of reason, the Pope said, is the 'great task of the university'.
   It is the great task of all of us. Sadly his invitation was met by unreason and fanaticism; insult and personal vilification. He was described as 'ignorant,' ill-informed,' 'shameless,' 'insult[ing],' and 'revivfing] the mentality of the crusades'. His remarks were called 'derogatory,' 'lackfing] in wisdom,' 'wrong,' and 'distorted'. Indian Muslims burnt him in effigy.
   Media comparisons of the Pope's address with the Cartoons of Muhammad compounded the beat-up and betrayed a depth of anti- Catholicism and irrationality that did nothing to advance the cause of reason and harmony.
   Not all Islamic ears are deaf to the Pope's calls for dialogue and understanding, however. There are grounds for optimism and hope amid the debris of insults and personal abuse that were media highlights over the past few weeks.
   A majority of Muslims knows instinctively, as the Pope knows, that 'The Way of Violence,' is not 'The Way of God'. They want to find a way out of the violence in the name of religion that is spiralling out of control in numerous Islamic societies around the world and being increasingly exported to the West. The Pope's address certainly touched on a nerve. He made it clear that he had no intention of offending anyone - least of all good Muslim people whose only desire is to be left alone to raise their families, and to practise their religion in peace.
   But that nerve which responds to questioning of Islamic teaching and practice especially as it affects non-Muslims, by angry outbursts and threats of violence, needs to be deadened - not sensitised by opportunistic extremists - if sanity and peace are ever to prevail.
   A question for the Pope's critics. Abd al-Rahman Ibn Muhammad known as Ibn Khaldun, considered one of the first sociologists, is the author of the Muqaddimah, [Introduction] justly regarded by informed Muslims as a masterpiece. This famous philosopher and statesman lived from 1332-1406. He was born in Tunis and died in Cairo, where he is buried in the Sufi cemetery. He travelled to Morocco, Spain, Damascus and other parts of the Muslim world. He attempted to understand non-Islamic societies where religion and politics are not linked.
   Ibn Khaldun says that Jews and Christians find it difficult to grasp the nature of Islam because in Judaism and Christianity there is no divine obligation to use force to make other people submit to their authority, as in Islam.¹ In fact, as Ibn Khaldun puts it, mulk or Sovereign Power [best exemplified in the Shar'ia] 'is characterised by coercion'. ²
   When can we expect to have blanket media coverage of the world-wide anger of Islamists against Ibn Khaldun?
___________________
1.  J.H.Kramers, Analecta Orientalia, Leiden 1956, vol 2, p. 181
2.  Muhammad Mahmoud Rabi' The Political Theory of Ibn Khaldun, Leiden EJ Brill, 1967, pp. 137, 144. #