Recent moves in Indonesia, including plans by one province to stone adulterers to death, have raised concerns about the reputation of the world’s most populous Muslin country as a beacon of moderate Islam.

The provincial assembly in the westernmost province of Aceh — at the epicenter of the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 170,000 people there nearly five years ago — this week decreed the ancient Islamic penalty of stoning to death for adultery.

(Photo: Indonesian Muslim women support sharia, 19 Sept 2006?Supri Supri)

The decision could still be overturned once Aceh’s new parliament is sworn in next month. But many, including Aceh’s governor, the central government in Jakarta, and local businessmen, are concerned about the impact a broadcast public execution by stoning could have on Indonesia’s international reputation.

The Aceh case is one of several showing how hardline Muslim groups are influencing policy in Indonesia. Local governments, given wide latitude to enact laws under Indonesia’s decentralization program, have begun to mandate sharia regulations, including dress codes for women.

One ethnic Chinese Indonesian businessman, a practicing Christian who asked not to be quoted by name, said he feared if the trend continued it could lead to capital flight by the wealthy Chinese, Christian minority. “A lot of regional laws are going in that direction. It’s already alarming the way it’s going. It’s a minority who are doing this, but the problem is that the silent majority just keep silent.”

Read the whole story here.

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If you don’t know anything about the Koran but want to learn, does it make any difference if you’re an American “dummy” or a French “nul”? That  isn’t meant to cast doubts about knowledge on either side of the Atlantic. But it does arise now that the French version of the American guide to Islam’s holy book has just been published in Paris.

The book at right is based on the original text at left, but it would be wrong to call it a translation. First Editions, the French publisher of the “Pour les Nuls” (”For Dummies”) books, took the U.S. original and asked a leading Paris-based Islam specialist, Franco-Algerian Malek Chebel, to adapt it for French readers.

Chebel, who has also just published his own translation of the Koran and an accompanying “encyclopedic dictionary,” explained at the book presentation here that he had to make several changes. The original text by Sohaib Sultan, now the Muslim chaplain at Princeton University, was fine for U.S. readers, he said. “There weren’t errors,” he explained, “but I had to make some fundamental changes. I told the editor, she checked with the American publishers and asked if they agreed. They went along with it. So I worked from that basis and the book became a French book.”

“Le Coran pour les Nuls” keeps large parts of the original “Dummies” text but has new sections on the Koran’s message. “I added implications of the Koran for today,” Chebel said. “What does the Koran say today? How can a Koranic verse be interpreted on the veil, on society, etc? I updated aspects of critical interpretation and rearranged some sequences of chapters.”

(Photo: Malek Chebel, 9 Sept 2009/Tom Heneghan)

“The Koran for Dummies” had a full chapter on jihad with subtitles like “Understanding Martydom” and “Looking at Jihad in Today’s World.” Chebel cut it out of the French version. He does discuss the concept and deplores suicide bombers, but does not highlight it. “I judged there was no place to discuss geopolitics, especially controversial issues, in a book on Islam,” he said.

Chebel has experience with rejigging such texts, having already adapted the “Islam for Dummies” book. He did even more radical surgery on that one. “In ‘Islam for Dummies,’ there was no Islam in France or Islam in Europe. ‘Islam for Dummies’ was Islam of Americans for Americans,” he said. “But France is the largest ‘Muslim country’ in the West. That wasn’t an error but something was missing.”

In the end, about half of the Koran book was changed in one way or another, said Vincent Barbare, head of First Editions. This isn’t always the case for the “Pour les Nuls” series. “There are some American books we don’t adapt but we write our own, not because the American book is bad but because the reality in America is not the same as ours,” he said.

(Images: Chebel’s new Koran translation and “encyclopedic dictionary)

“Take a dumb example,” Barbare said. “Last year we published Les Annees 60 pour les Nuls (The Sixties for Dummies). The American book is very very good, but it talks mostly about Vietnam and Kennedy, and not about the May ‘68 student protests in Paris or about General de Gaulle… On Islam, there was a lot that was in common. Malek read and found it was not disconnected from what we wanted to do.”

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(Photo:KAUST under construction near Jeddah, 19 Oct 2008/Asma Alsharif)

Saudi Arabia is launching its first co-educational high-tech university, but unless clerical influence is removed the state education system will not move into the modern age, analysts say.  King Abdullah has invited heads of state, business leaders and Nobel laureates next week to the opening of a technology university which has attracted top scientists and is meant to produce Saudi scientists and engineers.

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is the first institute in one of the world’s biggest oil exporters that is outside the reach of the education ministry, where clerics opposing cutting religious content have a strong say. Men and women will be able to mingle, a stark contrast to otherwise strict gender segregation in the Islamic kingdom.

Despite its immense financial resources, the parameters of Saudi school and university education are governed by religious strictures and many subjects are off-limits for women to study.

While KAUST enjoys almost unlimited funds, sophisticated equipment and is run by an independent board, most Saudi schools and universities have curriculums still dominated by religion, despite reform efforts begun after the September 11 attacks of 2001.

Read the whole story here.

See also Saudi Comedy Enters the Debate Over Education Reform.

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U.S. author Robert Wright traces the history of God and suggests that it might all point to the unfolding of something divine, though perhaps not in the sense that most people of faith would envision.

In his just published “The Evolution of God,” Wright takes his readers on a thought-provoking journey through the spiritual beliefs of our hunter-gatherer ancestors to the development of the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. You can see my interview with Wright here.

Wright’s engaging book covers a lot of ground and it certainly raises many questions that may be of interest to readers of this blog. I’m just going to throw a few of them out here — trust me, there could be many, many more.

1. RELIGION AND SCIENCE:

Has religion in the past given rise to science? The Polynesians that Captain James Cook encountered in the 18th century tried to predict the weather by looking at the night sky – and often succeeded. They believed this was divinely inspired  but as Wright notes:

“The apparent explanation is that both the night sky and the prevailing winds change seasonally. So there was indeed a correlation between stars and weather; the Polynesians just had the wrong explanation … Still, this is the way scientific progress often starts: finding a correlation between two variables and positing a plausible if false explanation. In this sense, ’science’ dates back to preliterate times.”

2.  MONOTHEISM AND INTOLERANCE/TOLERANCE

Wright argues that “scriptural interpretaion is obedient to facts on the ground” and that “… monotheism turns out to be, morally speaking, a very malleable thing, something that, when circumstances are auspicious, can be a fount of tolerance and compassion.”

3. A PURPOSE-DRIVEN HISTORY?

Acadamic history in the West has, for the most part, long since abandoned the view that the march of history is also the march of progress. But Wright raises the possibility that the unfolding drama of human history has been one of moral progress and that this might — just might — point to divine guidance.

“What might qualify as evidence of a larger purpose at work in the world? For one thing, a moral direction in history. If history naturally carries human consciousness toward moral enlightenment, however slowly and fitfully, that would be evidence that there’s some point to it all,” he writes.

Wright is well aware that many people will take issue with this thesis, especially in light of the horrors of the 20th century. Critics could also point to the rocky start of the 21st century with the Sept 11 attacks, the war in Congo, the depths of corporate greed … well, the list could be almost endless. In Wright’s America, secular humanists on the left have decried Wall Street’s behavior and almost all of the policies of the past administration of President George W. Bush; religious conservatives have seen almost nothing but moral decline since the 1950s and 1960s.

But as Wright told me:  “I think the fact that we have such a dim view of the 20th century is itself a sign of our moral progress.”

There is much more to this book including a history of God — or one might say the changing or conflicting image of God in the human mind — that is ground in material conditions, culture and politics. Much of it involves an on-going discussion on growth of “non-zero-sum” relationships in the world and the notion of “moral imagination” or “our capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of another person” as Wright describes it.

But what do you think? Are there signs that humanity has made moral progress and could it be a sign of something divine?

(Author Photo by Barry Munger)

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The percentage of Americans who believe Islam encourages violence has declined and very basic knowledge about the faith has shown modest increases, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Thirty-eight percent of those polled believed Islam was more likely than other faiths to encourage violence, down from the 45 percent who held this view two years earlier.

Most Americans — 58 percent – also believe Muslims are discriminated against. In fact, they see them as a group second only to gays and lesbians in terms of the discrimination they face. These findings suggest unexpected empathy for a community whose leaders often claim they are regarded with suspicion and hostility.

The survey also reports that Americans are generally learning more about Islam and that increasing familiarity with the religion correlates with a decline in belief that Islam promotes violence.

The poll’s findings, released ahead of the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, come against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s attempts to reach out to the Islamic world and eroding public support for the war in Muslim Afghanistan as U.S. combat deaths there rise to record levels.

You can see a link to the survey here and you can see our report here.

(Photo: Minaret of Zurich’s Mahmud Mosque, 23 May 2007/Christian Hartmann)

The Swiss Council of Religions, which is composed of leaders from the country’s Christian, Jewish and Islamic organisations, has issued a statement rejecting a proposed ban on minarets. A group of right-wing anti-immigrant politicians has gathered more than 100,000 signatures to support the so-called Minaret Initiative, saying the minarets threaten law and order. The vote is due on November 29.

The Swiss federal government has warned that the referendum vote was organised legally but a ban would violate international human rights and the country’s constitution. “Such a ban would endanger peace between religions and would not help to prevent the spread of fundamentalist Islamic beliefs,” its Department of Justice and Police said in late August.

The Council statement, the first it has made on a political issue since it was formed in 2006 to foster interfaith dialogue, denounces the bid as an affront to the tradition of diversity in the multilingual Alpine country. Here are some excerpts from the statement:

“The Swiss Council of Religions decisively rejects the Minaret Initiative. The Council, which consists of leaders from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, is dedicated to protecting religious peace in Switzerland and to strengthening trust among the churches and religious communities. The Minaret Initiative would bring about just the opposite. It instrumentalizes religion for political aims and engenders mistrust among the populace…

“Switzerland has known cultural diversity for a long time. It is part of its history and characteristic of the Swiss identity. The people of this country have developed rules and systems of coexistence in the course of a long common history. The resulting rules are such an integral part of the cultural tradition of the country that its people are hardly aware of them in explicit terms; and at the center of this democratic self-image lies in the recognition of the freedom of each individual within the framework of a legal order that is equally binding for all…”

(Photo: Steeple and minaret in Wangen bei Olten, 7 August 2009/Michael Buholzer)

“The dialogue among the churches and religious communities of Switzerland shows that differences of religion, culture, tradition, and social-political views do not preclude a deep common belief that all people share the same inalienable dignity. The fundamental rights to the freedom of belief and conscience apply equally to all. The right to construct mosques and minarets can therefore not be made to depend on whether religious minorities enjoy the same religious freedoms in other countries. Answering injustice with further injustice would be a betrayal of Swiss values…

“The minaret initiative does not solve any problems. On the contrary, it only contributes to suspicion, mistrust, and aggression against people of Muslim faith…

“The signatures gathered for the referendum initiative lend expression to the people’s fears and concerns. What messages will be preached in the mosques? Is Islam more than just a religion? What significance do human rights, democracy and rule of law, and the equality of men and women have from a Muslim point of view? Does Islam seek the status of an exception in Switzerland due to its religious precepts? These questions and others like them will be asked and require discussion…”

Swissinfo.ch has an interesting interview with Council Secretary Markus Sahli that starts right off with the question — what does this interpretation of religious freedom mean for the debate over women wearing Muslim headscarves?  “The headscarf issue is a difficult one. The Council has come to the conviction that one cannot give an overall answer to this question. One must respond to it case by case…”

According to the Basler Zeitung, the Swiss government is concerned that the November 29 referendum could spark protests in the Muslim world and is preparing an information campaign to explain it abroad. The issue has not aroused much interest in Muslim countries so far, it says, so there are no plans now to start an information campaign that might only draw attention to the issue.

(Photo: Istanbul protest against Swiss publication of Prophet Mohammad cartoons, 10 Feb 2006/Ahmet Ada)

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An Afghan journalist, sentenced to death for blasphemy, reduced to 20 years’ jail on appeal, has been set free and is living in exile in an undisclosed country, a media watchdog has said.  Perwiz Kambakhsh, 24, a reporter with the Afghan Jahan-e Now daily, was sentenced to death in January 2008 by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

(Photo: Kambakhsh at a Kabul court hearing, 21 Oct 2008/Omar Sobhani)

Kambakhsh was arrested and imprisoned for downloading and distributing an Iranian article from the Internet that said the Prophet Mohammad had ignored the rights of women. Under Islamic law — stipulated in Afghanistan’s constitution — blasphemy is punishable by death.

In a statement on its website, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for press freedom, said Kambakhsh’s lawyer had confirmed to them Monday his release and that President Hamid Karzai had signed a pardon several weeks earlier. Karzai’s office was not immediately available for comment.

The arrest and sentencing of Kambakhsh drew criticism from a number of Western nations, the Afghan media and rights groups. FaithWorld has followed this story closely from his death sentence in January 2008, the October 2008 appeals verdict of 20 years in jail and appeals to President Hamid Karzai last March to pardon him.

Read the whole story here.

Here is an interview with Kambakhsh that Reporters without Borders recorded in a Kabul detention centre in February 2009:

Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese woman arrested in Khartoum for wearing trousers despite the country’s Islamic decency regulations, was found guilty of indecency on Monday and ordered to pay a fine or go to jail for a month. She was spared the possibility of 40 lashes for wearing trousers at a party in July with 12 other women. Ten of the other women arrested with her have pleaded guilty and have been whipped.

Read the whole story here.

Hussein’s case was seen as a test of Sudan’s Islamic decency regulations, which many women activists say are vague and give individual police officers undue latitute to determine what is acceptable clothing for women.

After the verdict, Hussein said: “I will not pay the money, and I will go to prison.”

Scuffles erupted at a protest before the court session even began between women supporters and Islamists, who shouted religious slogans and denounced Hussein and her supporters as prostitutes and demanded a harsh punishment for Hussein.

The photo above, by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah, shows Hussein leaving the court wearing her trousers. Do these seem indecent to you?

UPDATE: Sudan’s conviction of Hussein for indecency violates international law and is emblematic of wider gender discrimination there, the United Nations human rights office says.

Following is a short video of Hussein surrounded by supporters shouting “freedom, freedom” as she enters the court:

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Muslims should avoid prayers that call for the destruction of non-Muslims, an influential Saudi cleric has said.

“Praying for the ruin and the destruction of all infidels is not permitted because it goes against God’s law to call upon them … to take the righteous path,” Sheikh Salman al Awdah told Dubai-based MBC Television channel.

Many mosque imams and preachers in some Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, close their Friday sermons with prayers that call for the destruction of Islam’s enemies, especially Israel and its allies.

Awdah is a director of the Arabic edition of the website Islam Today and he has a number of TV shows and newspapers articles. In 2007, he publicly denounced Osama bin Laden and urged him to abandon violence, a rare move among clerics in his native Saudi Arabia who have avoided direct criticism of the al Qaeda leader.

See the whole story here.

(Photo: Worshippers listen to a sermon in a Baghdad mosque, 23 Oct 2006/Namir Noor-Eldeen)

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Beer, which as an alcoholic beverage is forbidden in Islam to its believers, has long had it easy in mainly Muslim Malaysia. The country’s population of 27 million is made up of about 55 percent Malay Muslims and mainly Chinese and Indian ethnic minorities who practice a variety of faiths including Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. The personal right of the non-Muslims to drink alcoholic beverages is legally recognised, a sign of tolerance despite the special status of Islam under Article 11 of the Malaysian constitution.  So beer is not difficult to find in convenience stores, supermarkets and entertainment outlets.

(Photo: Beer drinkers, 20 July 2009/Nguyen Huy Kham)

But this easygoing attitude towards beer has hit the rocks of late amid what some suspect has been a growing religiosity of the country’s Muslims.  Last month, 32-year old Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarnor very nearly became the first woman to be caned in Malaysia for drinking alcohol under rarely enforced Islamic criminal laws.  Caught drinking beer in a hotel lobby in the eastern state of Pahang by religious enforcement officers, she was sentenced to six strokes of the cane and a fine.  This was possible because Malaysia practices a dual-track legal system. Muslims are subject to Islamic family and criminal laws that run alongside national civil laws.

A Malaysian Islamic appeals court judge ordered a review of Kartika’s sentence, but a public debate is still raging. Opinions are divided even among Islamic scholars with some questioning what the exact punishment for the offence, which isn’t specified in the Quran, should be. Others are in full support and believe that Kartika’s sentence was mild.

(Photo: Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 21 Aug  2009/Zainal Abd Halim)

This was not the first time beer has run foul of Malaysia’s Muslims.  The opposition Islamist party grabbed headlines last month when it insisted on full implementation of an alcohol ban for Muslims in the country’s most developed state of Selangor ,which it governs. The call by the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) did not amuse its die-hard secular partner, the mainly ethnic Chinese Democratic Action Party. A war of words erupted between the two parties.

Anger towards beer has in fact been known to have turned literally explosive. In 2000, a cult group known as Al Maunah raided a military armoury, then mounted grenade attacks against a Hindu temple and a Carlsberg brewery.

Beer has been a major target, but not the only subject drawing the wrath of some Muslims in the country. The Islamist PAS last month protested against a planned concert by the band Michael Learns To Rock, believing it an insult to allow the act to perform during the fasting month of Ramadan.

The government has also employed regulations to similar effect, namely in the recent ban against Muslims from attending a concert by U.S. hip hop band The Black Eyed Peas. The government later did a U-turn on the restriction.

Malaysians can watch music videos on satellite television with any problem. It is not impossible to spot Muslims in pubs and nightclubs drinking alcohol despite strict Islamic laws. These contradictions are difficult to explain. Some feel it’s part of a natural and continuing struggle among Muslims trying to balance faith and modernity. Others believe the majority of Muslims in the country are turning towards greater conservatism, which bodes ill for tolerance in this mainly Muslim but still multi-religious country.

(Photo: The Black Eyed Peas, 6 July 2009/Denis Balibouse)

Add to that an increasingly intense political battle between the ruling United Malays National Organisation and the opposition PAS for the support of the majority Malays ahead of the next election due by 2013. With each party trying to outdo the other on who is the better champion of Islam, Malaysian beer lovers could be forgiven for wondering whether the taps will one day run dry.

What’s needed is for Malaysians of all religions to sit down and talk to each about these issues more often and honestly. Thirsty work, but nothing that cannot be resolved over several pints of orange juice.

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