A Sudanese woman who was punished for breaching (insert: what authorities say are) Islamic decency laws by wearing trousers has defied a travel ban by coming to France to publicise her new book.

Lubna Hussein was arrested in July and convicted of indecency charges in a case that made headlines worldwide. She was ordered to pay a fine or face a month in jail, but was spared an initial penalty of 40 whip lashes.

Her book, “Forty lashes for a pair of trousers”, has come out in French and will be translated into English, Arabic, Swahili and other languages.

(Photo: Lubna Hussein in Khartoum, 31 July, 2009/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallh)

Thousands of women have been convicted of offences similar to Hussein’s and sentenced to beatings in recent years under Sudan’s Islamic decency regulations.

“This law and practice deform the image of Islam. No one has been able to find a text in the Koran which justifies flogging a woman for the way she is dressed,” Hussein, wearing mauve trousers and jacket, told Reuters in an interview in Paris.

Read the whole interview here.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

More than two million Muslims gather this week for the annual haj pilgrimage to Islam’s holy city of Mecca, where Saudi authorities hope to minimize spread of the H1N1 virus and prevent any political demonstration.

(Photo: Saudi security official at a checkpoint between  Jeddah and Mecca, 21 Nov 2009/Caren Firouz)

The haj, one of the world’s biggest displays of mass religious devotion and a duty for Muslims who can perform it, has been marred in the past by fires, hotel collapses, police clashes with protesters and deadly stampedes.

This year, the mainly Sunni Muslim kingdom is battling Shi’ite Yemeni rebels after they raided its territory, an issue that raises fears of possible protests by fellow Shi’ite Muslims during the rituals. Saudi Arabia bans public protests.

Riyadh is also trying to prevent a spread of the H1N1 virus as the crowded rituals provide an environment for transmission of the disease. At least four pilgrims have died of the virus since the beginning of the haj season.

Read the whole story here.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: Russian Orthodox church in Moscow, 1 July 2009/Sergei Karpukhin)

A masked gunman entered a Moscow church and murdered a Russian Orthodox priest who had received death threats for converting Muslims to Christianity and criticizing Islam, prosecutors and church officials said Friday.  The killing could threaten delicate relations between the powerful majority Russian Orthodox Church, which has close ties to the Kremlin, and the country’s growing Muslim minority of about 20 million.

The gunman approached priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, in St Thomas Church in southern Moscow Thursday night, checked his name and then opened fire with a pistol, a spokesman for the investigating committee of the Prosecutor-General’s office said.

Sysoyev was from Tatarstan, a predominantly Muslim region of Russia on the Volga river. He was threatened after preaching to Muslims and Christians from other denominations. “I have received 10 threats via e-mail that I shall have my head cut off (if I do not stop preaching to Muslims),” Sysoyev stated on a television program in February 2008, according to Interfax. “As I see it, it is a sin not to preach to Muslims.”

“Islam is far from being a religion in the way we understand it,” he said in one of his video lectures posted on YouTube (here in Russian). “Islam can be rather compared with projects like National Socialism or the Communist party seeking to create God’s kingdom on Earth using humanly instruments,” he added.

Read the whole story here. See also Interfax Religion … RIA Novosti (with picture) …

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

A new poll by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows a modest rise in concern among Americans about the threat of Islamic militancy following the deadly shootings in Fort Hood, Texas, earlier this month. Here is a link to the survey.

The nationwide survey, conducted among over 1,000 Americans, found 52 percent were “very concerned” about the possible rise of Islamic extremism in the United States compared to 46 percent in April of 2007.

It also found that 49 percent were very concerned about the “rise of Islamic extremism around the world” compared to 48 percent in April of 2007.

The survey was conducted Nov. 12-15, a week after 13 people were killed in a shooting at the Fort Hood Army post. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim born in the United States to immigrant parents, has been charged with  murder in the case. U.S. intelligence agencies have said he tried to contact Islamists with suspected al Qaeda ties.

(Photo: Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the the suspect in  the mass shooting at the U.S. Army post in Fort Hood, Texas. REUTERS/Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences/Handout)

If you’ve ever been confused by Muslim names you read in the news or unsure who’s important in the Islamic world, help is near. A new book entitled “The 500 Most Influential Muslims - 2009″ lists prominent Muslims from different fields — politics, religion, women, media, even radicals — with informative short biographies explaining who they are. It starts with an overall “top 50″ list and then surveys the most prominent Muslims in their fields. Here it is in PDF.

The book, edited by Professors John Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin at Georgetown University in Washington, is the first in what is planned to be an annual survey of the top Muslim personalities around the world. It’s a joint effort by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Esposito is director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center and Kalin is spokesman for the Common Word dialogue initiative we’ve written about on this blog before.

As the editors say in their introduction: “Influence in the Muslim world is particular to its context. There is not a clear hierarchy or organised clergy for Muslims to identify a leader, such as a patriarch for Orthodox Christians or a pope for Catholics.” They took a mix of factors into account in working out their top 50 list and have even asked readers to send in suggestions for next year’s list. You can vote for your candidate for “most influential Muslim” in the poll at the bottom of this post.

(UPDATE: The online poll has been closed after more than 1.8 million votes but comments are still open. See the results below.)

So who are the world’s most influential Muslims, according to this book? Here are the top 10:

1. King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, custodian of the two Holy Mosques
2. Grand Ayatollah Hajj Sayyid Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran
3. King Mohammed VI, king of Morocco
4. King Abdullah II bin Al Hussein, King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
5. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of the republic of Turkey
6. Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id al Sa’id, sultan of Oman
7. Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hussein Sistani, Marja of the Hawza, Najaf
8. Sheikh Al Azhar Dr Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, grand sheikh of the Al Azhar University, grand imam of Al Azhar Mosque
9. Sheikh Dr Yusuf Qaradawi, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars
10. Sheikh Dr Ali Goma’a, grand mufti of the Arab Republic of Egypt

(Photo: Saudi King Abdullah, 17 Nov 2009/Philippe Wojazer)

A few initial comments about these 10 and the other 40 (check the PDF for the full list):

– Lots of kings and sultans crowding the top of the full list, with Recep Tayyip Erdogan the highest elected politician (5th). “Influential” is clearly interpreted broadly here, including political, religious and other types of influence.

– The first solely religious leader is Iraq’s Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (7th), and even he has political power behind the scenes.

– Fethullah Gülen, who won an Internet poll on “the world’s top public intellectuals ” in Foreign Policy magazine last year apparently thanks to a click-in campaign by his supporters, still comes a strong 13th.

– The heads of Hezbollah (Seyyed Hasan Nasrallah, 17th) and Hamas (Khaled Mashaal, 34th) are also listed.

– The highest-ranking American (and highest-ranking convert, it seems) at 38th place is Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Hanson, founder of the Zaytuna Institutein Berkeley, California. Right after him comes the highest-ranking European, Sheikh Mustafa Ceric, grand mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

– Even Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist behind Islamabad’s nuclear program who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, gets ranked (46th).

(Photo: Abdul Qadeer Khan, 28 Aug 2009/Mian Khursheed)

Beyond the top 50, there are chapters on leading Muslims in different fields but no ranking. So Osama bin Laden is there under “radicals,” Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) under “arts and culture” and microcreditor Mohammad Yunus under “development”. There are short essays on Islam and the Muslim world. All in all, an excellent reference work.

What do you think? Who is the most influential Muslim in the world? To give us your own view, enter the name of your choice into the box below. The poll will automatically tally the answers and produce a top 10 according to the number of votes each person receives.

Muslim creationism is back in the news. There’s been a spate of articles in the U.S. and British press recently about the spread of this scripture-based challenge to Darwinian evolution among Muslims, mostly in the Middle East but also in Europe. The fact that some Muslims have embraced creationism, a trademark belief of some conservative American Protestants, is not new. Reuters first wrote about it in 2006 — “Creation vs. Darwin takes Muslim twist in Turkey” – and this blog has run several posts on the issue, including an interview with Islam’s most prominent creationist, Harun Yahya. What’s new is that these ideas seem to be spreading and academics who defend evolution are holding conferences to discuss the phenomenon.

(Photo: Portrait of Charles Darwin, 12 Feb 2009/Gordon Jack)

There are too many recent articles about Islamic creationism out there now to discuss each one separately, so I’ll have to just link to them in the … New York Times … Washington Post … Boston Globe … Slate … Guardian … National … Beliefnet … … Many of these articles highlight the role of Harun Yahya, the once secretive Istanbul preacher and publisher who has gone on a PR offensive in recent years and turned very media-friendly (as Steve Paulson describes in that Slate article). But as Michael Reiss, a London education professor and Anglican priest told the Guardian, “what the Turks believe today is what the Germans and British believe tomorrow. It is because of the mass movement of people between countries. These things can no longer be thought of as occurring in other countries.”

(Photo: Harun Yahya, 21 May 2008/Osman Orsal)

Over the weekend, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt hosted a conference on “Darwin’s Living Legacy: An International Conference on Evolution and Society” with the British Council. The simple fact of holding a conference on Darwin in the heart of the Middle East, where his theory of evolution is widely rejected, is already noteworthy. According to the Guardian’s Riazat Butt, Nidhal Guessoum, professor of physics and astronomy at the American University of Sharjah, told the conference that only three Muslim or Muslim-majority countries out of a possible 22 taught evolution. Another participant, astronomer Salman Hameed, who is professor of integrated science & humanities from Hampshire College in Massachusetts, wrote on his informative science-and-religion blog Irtiqa: “It is incredible that this conference is taking place in Egypt. I don’t know what will be the reaction here. Simply by its location, it may remove some of the stigma regarding evolution in the Muslim world, or it may end up generating a backlash. Frankly, I have no idea about the reaction.”

In an update on Sunday, Hameed wrote: “There have been some anti-evolutionary comments made in the sessions that dealt with religion and evolution - but overall, the reception seems to have been quite positive - both in Egyptian newspapers and among the local participants.”

(Photo: Salman Hameed/Irtiqa)

As a example of what they’re up against, another participant was Zaghloul El-Naggar, a leading proponent of the theory that the Koran foresaw scientific theories and discoveries, including the Big Bang and a possible cure for AIDS. He was quoted prominently in a recent Al-Jazeera report on the discovery of the 4.4 million year old skeleton known as Ardipithicus or “Ardi.” The report claimed that the find disproved Darwinian evolution — the opposite of what scientists said about the spectacular discovery of the most complete early hominid specimen we have.  The report only appeared in Al-Jazeera’s Arabic-language television channel, which is very popular in the Middle East, and not in its English-language broadcast. “The presence of El-Naggar totally polarized the debate and evoked an equally polarizing reaction from the audience,” wrote Hameed, who promised further posts from the conference ending today.

Last month, Hameed’s Hampshire College hosted a conference on Darwin and Evolution in the Muslim World. Webcasts of presentations there can be found on the conference website.

What do you think? Is the spread of creationism among Muslims a matter for concern? Is it the same as the battle between creationism and science in Christianity?

Here’s the video of the Al-Jazeera report, with subtitles in English added by critics of its presentation:

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

A top politician in Japan’s ruling Democratic Party has praised Buddhism while calling Christianity “exclusive and self-righteous” and Islam only somewhat better.  Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa made the remarks after meeting the head of the Japan Buddhist Federation, a group traditionally close to the rival Liberal Democratic Party, which was trounced by the Democrats in an August election.

Christianity “is an exclusive and self-righteous religion. And society in the United States and Europe, which are based on Christianity, are at a dead end,” the Nikkei newspaper quoted Ozawa as telling reporters after the meeting. “Islam is better, but it is also exclusive.”

(Photo:Buddha statue at Todaiji Temple in Nara, western Japan, 29  Oct 2008/Itsuo Inouye)

Ozawa, seen by some as the mastermind behind the Democrats’ election win, had kinder words for Buddhism, which along with Shinto is the dominant religion in Japan, although many people take a mostly secular and eclectic view.  Christians are a tiny minority and Muslims are few in Japan.

“Buddhism teaches us from the starting point of how human beings should be, their state of mind and way of life,” he said.

Religious organisations can pack clout in Japanese politics because of their ability to mobilise voters, but politicians tend to shun public remarks about people’s beliefs.

Then-prime minister Yoshiro Mori caused a furore in 2000 when he referred to Japan as a “divine nation with the emperor at its centre”, stirring memories of the state Shintoism that helped to mobilise support for Japan’s wartime military aggression. He later apologised publicly.

(Photo: Ichiro Ozawa, 27 Feb 2009/Yuriko Nakao)

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

A film about the Prophet Mohammad backed by the producer of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Matrix” is under discussion, a Qatar media firm said Sunday, with the aim of creating an English-language blockbuster for the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.

Filming of the $150 million movie is set to start in 2011, with Barrie Osborne as its producer, Almoor Holdings said. Almoor said the film - in which the Prophet would not be depicted, in accordance with Islamic strictures - was in development and talks were being held with studios, talent agencies and distributors in the United States and Britain.

Alnoor said it aimed to attract the “best international talent” to star in the motion picture.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

When Pope Benedict issued his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth) in July, he addressed it to “the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, the lay faithful and all people of good will”. That list puts Catholics first, but it gets around to a wider audience by the end. Maybe because of that sequence, most of the discussion about the document has been in Catholic circles.

But in the pope’s back yard, i.e. in Italy, the message has attracted a wider audience. In a rare reaction from a non-Christian organisation, the Italian Muslim association Comunità Religiosa Islamica (CO.RE.IS.) Italiana has welcomed the encyclical and drawn parallels between its outlook and that of Islamic economic and social thinking. CO.RE.IS presented its reaction on the occasion of the Ecumenical Day of Christian-Islamic Dialogue in Italy on Tuesday. Following are some excerpts:

“The recent financial crisis, that witnessed an almost worldwide economic crash, should constitute a further confirmation of the impossibility of establishing a presumed society of wellbeing only upon market rules, excluding any transcendence, any metaphysical and religious perspective, as the pontiff has well expressed it … Just like the market cannot find in itself the meta-principles that would discipline it according to nature and to the function that God has entrusted to man on earth, money and capital cannot constitute a value in themselves, regardless of the finality of actions and of the realities that underlie their use…

“Islamic ethics, from its origins, develops the common principles of the Abrahamic civilisation as a whole aimed at providing ‘joint satisfaction in material and spiritual needs’. For example, the Islamic ban on loans with interest (ribâ) also existed in ancient Christianity. As early as the 4^th and 5^th centuries, the Fathers of the Church, both Greeks and Latins, ardently opposed it based on both the Old Testament and the Gospel… “In the centuries that have passed, the West has wished to forget the economic principles present in religions, basically considering them to be, in modern times, a heritage of archaic thought. However, it is not about ‘turning back’ to some anachronistic and ideal restoration, but to consider, as Benedict XVI has done in his appeal, the real contribution that a religious sensibility can concretely offer in fields such as the economy.”

(Photo: CO.RE.IS Vice President Imam Yahya Pallavicini/CO.RE.IS)

CO.RE.IS says it is not using Caritas in Veritate to call for Islamic law in Western countries, but for an appreciation of religious views also inherent in Islam:

“Rather than implement parts of the sharîa within the current economic order, it is actually a matter of asking legislators to consider with due attention the contribution that economists, financial experts, technical advisors and those knowledgeable in Islam could give for a wider vision of the problems connected to the process of globalisation and governance. It is, therefore, not a matter of inserting Islamic rules into a world that could never entirely be Muslim but to benefit also from the knowledge found in the Islamic perspective on the economy.”

The document argued that an Islam understood according to its true principles and not through the extreme versions often presented by radicals had a contribution to make to the current economic discussion.

“Islam far from any fundamentalist distortions can offer something more, a vision that is not merely ‘moral’, founded on principles of equality and of the search for good for all humanity, and principles that go beyond the simple material plane… “

Therefore, as the pope says, the laws have to create boundaries for an anarchic economy… It is equally important to refer to the supra-personal Truth of God and of his Doctrine of Revelation, beyond any empty formalism: ‘Caritas’ yes but ‘in Veritate’.'Without sincere intentions, the very same Islamic model could in fact risk being manipulated and become counterproductive. The demand by certain radical movements to reinstate an alleged Islamic ‘neo-caliphate’ is extremely far from the true orthodoxy founded on the acceptance of reality as a manifestation of the divine Will and on the intelligence of being able to adapt the eternal spiritual principles to the various eras and continuously evolving situations…

(Photo: Muslims pray at Rome’s mosque, 16 Sept 2008/Chris Helgren)

“We Italian and European Muslims are fully aware of the fact that humanity today needs a new approach to face the challenges of an increasingly globalised and impersonal world, and we fully share the pontiff’s call to not passively accept the globalisation phenomenon, but to maintain our responsibilities even when the impersonal markets give the illusion that the sincerity of intentions can be left to one side.”

Do you think there are parallels between the economic and social teaching of Catholicism and Islam?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: Afghans protest at parliament building in Kabul, 25 Oct 2009/Ahmad Masood)

Afghan police fired into the air on Sunday to break up a protest by thousands of people who had gathered in the capital, Kabul, to protest against what they said was the desecration of a copy of the Koran by foreign troops.

Protesters, claiming foreign forces had burned a copy of Islam’s holiest book during a raid in Maidan Wardak province last week, blocked traffic in Kabul for more than an hour. A spokeswoman for U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said none of their troops were involved in the incident and blamed the Taliban for spreading a false rumor that a copy of the Koran had been burned.

Thick plumes of smoke rose above the crowd as protesters set fire to a large effigy of what they said was U.S. President Barack Obama. “Death to America. Down with Israel,” chanted one man at the rally, which was organized mainly by university students. Others threw stones and clashed with police but no casualties were reported.

“No to democracy. We want just Islam,” said one banner carried by protesters, many of whom shook their fists in the air.  Captain Elizabeth Mathias, a media officer for U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, said the Taliban were trying to undermine foreign troops by spreading the rumor. “We did not burn a Koran … It is unfortunate that the protesters believe a Taliban rumor,” Mathias said, adding an investigation had been carried out.

Read the full story here. Below is the Reuters video showing what a protest like this looks like:

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld