Ethiopia jails hundreds in Muslim attacks on Christians over Koran rumour
An Ethiopian court has sentenced 558 people to jail terms ranging from six months to 25 years for attacks on Christians that displaced thousands and led 69 churches to be burned to the ground. More than 4,000 members of local Protestant denominations were forced to flee near the town of Asendabo, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) west of the capital, in March during a rare bout of religious violence.
Mobs of Muslim youths carried out week-long attacks on Protestants after rumours that desecrated pages from the Koran had been found at a church construction site. Authorities reported a single death from the attacks.
“They were punished for their involvement in instigating and participating in religious disturbances in western Ethiopia,” government spokesman Shimelis Kemal said of the court cases. Forty-four people were acquitted.
Regional officials told Reuters almost all the displaced people have returned to their homes, some of which were repaired with support from local Muslims. Authorities, keen to avoid further fall-out between the two groups, have held several meetings in the area and claim normalcy has returned.
In March, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi blamed a little-known local Muslim group of preaching intolerance in the region, and warned of growing religious tensions in the Christian-dominated country. “We knew that they were peddling this ideology of intolerance, but it was not possible for us to stop them administratively because they are within their rights,” he said.
The Horn of Africa nation is 60 percent Christian, a majority being followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and 30 percent Muslim. March’s attacks came as a major surprise in a country where most take pride in centuries-old coexistence and intermarriage.
via Hundreds jailed for religious attacks in Ethiopia, by Aaron Maasho.
Harun Yahya’s Muslim creationists tour France denouncing Darwin
France’s staunchly secularist educational establishment was shocked four years ago when schools around the country suddenly began receiving free copies of a richly illustrated Muslim creationist book entitled the “Atlas of Creation.” The book by Istanbul preacher and publisher Harun Yahya had come out in Turkey the year earlier. After the French Education Ministry warned teachers not to use it and held a seminar on how to deal with creationist pupils, the issue dropped out of the public discussion. But the Harun Yahya group has been spreading its view in France and is now holding a series of conferences on them. Here is my feature after visiting one of the first meetings in the current series:
AUBERVILLIERS, France (Reuters) – Four years after they first frightened France, Muslim creationists are back touring the country preaching against evolution and claiming the Koran predicted many modern scientific discoveries.
Followers of Harun Yahya, a well-financed Turkish publisher of popular Islamic books, held four conferences at Muslim centers in the Paris area at the weekend with more scheduled in six other cities.
At a Muslim junior high school in this north Paris suburb, about 100 pupils — boys seated on the right, girls on the left — listened as two Turks from Harun Yahya’s headquarters in Istanbul denounced evolution as a theory Muslims should shun.
“We didn’t descend from the apes,” lecturer Ali Sadun told the giggling youngsters. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, he said, was “the scientific basis to defend atheism.”
Harun Yahya, one of the most prolific publishers in the Muslim world, gave proudly secularist France a scare in January 2007 by mass-mailing thousands of free copies of his “Atlas of Creation” to schools and libraries across the country.
The Education Ministry quickly ordered headmasters to seize and hide copies of the large format book that, over 768 pages of glossy photographs and easy-to-read text, argues that all living things were created by God exactly as they are formed today.
Anti-Western messages grow among Afghanistan’s imams
Enayatullah Balegh is a professor at Kabul University and preaches on Fridays in the largest mosque in central Kabul, where he advocates jihad, or holy war, against foreigners who desecrate Islam. After a fundamentalist U.S. pastor presided over the burning of a copy of the Koran last month, there has been a growing perception among ordinary people that many of the foreigners in Afghanistan belong in just one category: the infidels.
“The international community and the American government is responsible for this gravest insult to Muslims,” Balegh told Reuters in the blue-and-white tiled Hazrat Ali mosque. “I tell my students to wage jihad against all foreigners who desecrate our religious values. We have had enough.”
Protests in Kabul against the Koran-burning have not become violent but there are many other mullahs in the overcrowded capital whose sermons are filled with criticism of the foreigners fighting and working in Afghanistan.
In Kabul’s northwest, firebrand Habibullah Asaam warns his congregation that all contact with non-Muslims is dangerous. “The Jews and crusaders can never be friends of Muslims, they are the despoilers of our society and culture,” he said during Friday sermons. Worshippers cried “Allahu Akbar” — God is greatest — in response.
“Those who want them here are cowardly Muslims. Women avoid wearing veils, men chase fashion and show off, it’s all because of the foreigners,” he said.
With few Dari or Pashto-speaking foreigners in the country, the messages broadcast from mosques by loudspeakers often pass unnoticed by the people they are condemning. But the extent and impact of anti-Western sentiment was brought into stark relief last week when a protest in normally peaceful Mazar-i-Sharif city in the north ended with the frenzied killing of seven foreign U.N. workers.
>>>…..foreigners in Afghanistan belong in just one category: the infidels.
U.S. pastor unbowed, vows new anti-Islam protest
A militant fundamentalist Christian preacher in Florida whose burning of a Koran triggered deadly riots in Afghanistan is unrepentant and defiantly vows to lead an anti-Islam protest outside the biggest mosque in the United States. The planned demonstration could further inflame tensions over the Koran burning, which led to two days of protests in Afghanistan that included the killings of U.N. staff and stoked anti-Western sentiment in parts of the Muslim world.
“Our aim is to make an awareness of the radical element of Islam,” Pastor Terry Jones told Reuters in an interview on Saturdayat the church he leads in the college town of Gainesville, Florida. A picture of the burning Koran was on his computer screen. “Obviously it is terrible any time people are murdered or killed. I think that on the other hand, it shows the radical element of Islam.”
Jones, a former hotel manager turned pastor who claims the Koran incites violence, said he will go ahead with a protest on April 22 in front of the largest mosque in the United States, located in Dearborn, Michigan.
President Barack Obama denounced the act of burning a Koran but did not mention Jones by name. “The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House on Saturday. “However, to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity.”
Jones provoked an international outcry last year over his plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He backed down after pleas from the U.S. government and other world officials, but then presided over a March 20 mock trial of the Koran that included a torching of the book. It barely drew media attention but Internet footage reverberated across the Muslim world.
Read the full story by Yusila Ramirez here.
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Extreme fundamentalist U.S. pastor is focus of Muslim outrage – again
A extreme fundamentalist Christian preacher in Florida who caused an international uproar last year by threatening to burn the Koran has put himself back in the spotlight after incinerating Islam’s holy book — again with deadly consequences.
Thousands of protesters in northern Afghanistan, enraged over news that the Florida pastor Terry Jones had overseen a torching of the Koran, stormed a United Nations compound on Friday, killing at least seven U.N. staff. A suicide attack hit Kabul and a violent demonstration against Koran-burning rattled the southern city of Kandahar on Saturday.
Jones, the 58-year-old head of a small fringe church in Gainesville, Florida, drew worldwide condemnation in September over his plans to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Several people were killed in protests then in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world.
Jones eventually canceled that event under intense pressure from the U.S. government, the Pope, and other global leaders. But he has remained an outspoken critic of Islam, and says parts of the Koran can lead to violence and terrorism. On March 20, he presided over what he called an “International Judge the Koran Day” in which he supervised the burning of the book in front of some 50 people.
Video posted on the website of his Dove World Outreach Center church showed a kerosene-soaked book going up in bright flames in a metal fire pit similar to those often found in backyards and patios, but located inside the church.
Read the full story by Kevin Gray here.
Here’s a Reuters video on the Mazar-i-Sharif attack:
The only ones deserving of the words “Extreme” and “Fundamentalist” are the nut jobs in Afghanistan.
Ethiopia’s religious divides flare up in Muslim attacks on Christians
The hollow chants of “Allahu Akbar!” reverberating from a distance seemed innocuous at first for Abera Gutema, who ventured home quietly from his shop just a short distance away. Moments later, a large, angry mob of machete-wielding Muslim youths descended on his family’s dwelling and chased him out, before burning and looting his property.
Abera, a Christian, escaped through a back door, clutching his infant son Eyoel in one hand. By the time the smoke cleared, all that remained of his hard-earned belongings had been reduced to rubble, not to mention the theft of 100,000 birr — his lifetime savings.
“They were our friends, our neighbours with whom we shared everything,” said Abera, his eyes watering with tears. “I never thought that this day would ever come.”
Abera was one of more than 4,000 members of local Protestant denominations displaced by a rare bout of religious violence earlier this month when Muslims staged a week of attacks in an area about 300 km (200 miles) west of the capital. According to official figures, Ethiopia is about 60 percent Christian and 30 percent Muslim, with smaller faiths making up the remainder.
Local imams say the incidents were sparked when word came out that Muslim labourers working at a construction site at a Protestant church claimed to have found pages from the Koran used as toilet paper. Despite appeals for restraint, they say an angry mob quickly gathered as calls for attacks blared from the loudspeakers of nearby mosques.
A total of 69 churches, a Bible school and an office were eventually burned to the ground, and one Christian was killed.
Exorcisms and charlatans flourish in impoverished Gaza
The shabby room in a one-story house in suburban Gaza was shrouded in darkness, and only the mutterings of a bearded exorcist broke the silence. A man lay stretched on a grubby mattress, writhing, as the faith healer recited Koranic verses to chase away an evil spirit. “Get out, you demon,” the exorcist, who calls himself Sheikh Ali, threatened the spirit. “Get out or I will burn you.”
There are a lot of demons to chase in this poverty-riddled Palestinian enclave, say a growing number of Koranic exorcists who have set up shop in Gaza, offering to end the torments of their sometimes highly disturbed patients. The growth of exorcist clinics is seen by some as a sign of rising religious fervour among ordinary Palestinians. Hamas, the Islamic militant group that runs Gaza, however, is increasingly concerned that many exorcists are simply charlatans.
Nobody knows how many exorcists are here, but Hamas investigators say they uncovered 30 cases of fraud last year alone. There have also been complaints that healers are using dark magic to cast spells on their clients, and the police say they have found evidence of sexual abuses committed during these sessions.
“We caught some suspects red-handed, practicing exorcism, using magic to separate married couples and other things, under the pretext of helping people,” said Lieut. Col. Abdel-Baset Al-Masri, head of Hamas’s police investigation unit. “It was all an act of deception and exploitation. Some people handed over fortunes and one woman gave all her jewellery to one of these exorcists.”
The idea of demonic possession exists in many religions, and belief in the existence of demons and spirits, known as jinns, is widespread among Muslims, but many mainstream clerics doubt they can possess the human body, and disapprove of the work of the so-called Koranic clinics. Sheikh Ali begs to differ. He says jinns can wreak havoc on human relations, driving a wedge between married couples or causing women to be infertile, and he says his work shows they can also take up residence in a human body.
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U.S. pastor who threatened to burn Koran plans British visit
An American Christian preacher who rose from obscurity to cause global uproar this year by threatening to burn the Koran says he plans to visit Britain to speak at an event hosted by a far-right anti-Islamist group.
Anti-extremist groups have urged the British government to ban entry to Florida Pastor Terry Jones, whose threat to burn Islam’s holy book on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks provoked widespread condemnation.
Britain’s Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa May said on Sunday she would be looking into the case.
On his website, Jones said he been invited to a rally held by a group called the English Defense League (EDL) in the town of Luton, north of London, in February.
“During the protest, Dr Terry Jones will speak against the evils and destructiveness of Islam in support of the continued fight against the Islamification (sic) of England and Europe,” the website said.
The EDL has staged protests in towns and cities across Britain against Islamic extremism since its formation last year and many of its demonstrations have led to violent confrontations with opponents and police. Just under three percent of Britain’s population of around 62 million describe their religion as Muslim.
Read the full story here. See also our previous postings on Jones and his Koran-burning plan:
Dangerous though this man’s opinions undoubtedly are, unless there are indications of him doing anything other than expressing those views whilst in the UK, we cannot refuse him entry. If organisations such as the EDL are allowed continued existance within the country then we cannot complain when others express comparable opinions, it’s hypocritical. With the EDL’s previous history I would think the rally would be heavily policed anyway, negating the need for any scaremongering fanfare over Dr. Jones visit.
Wilders’s anti-Islam film screened in Dutch court
The hate trial of Dutch anti-Islamist politician Geert Wilders, who will have a powerful shadow role in the Dutch government, resumed on Wednesday with a showing of his controversial film that criticises the Koran.
The screening in court of Wilders’s 2008 film “Fitna,” which accuses the Koran of inciting violence, threatened to interrupt the trial for a second time in a week when defence lawyer Bram Moszkowicz objected to comments from presiding judge Jan Moors.
When one complainant said she did not wish to see the film, which accuses the Koran of inciting violence, Moors said: “I can understand that” — prompting a sharp response from Moszkowicz who said such a remark is simply not allowed. Moors stressed he was not expressing any judgement over the film.
Monday’s proceedings had to be halted when Wilders, after invoking his right to remain silent, accused judges of “scandalous” bias and demanded they be replaced. The court rejected the claims on Tuesday, the same day that Dutch Christian Democrat MPs approved a coalition pact with the Liberals that relies on support from Wilders’s anti-Islam Freedom Party.
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Jewish settlers replace Korans burnt in West Bank
Jewish settlers on Tuesday gave new copies of the Koran to Palestinians in a West Bank village whose mosque was burned in an attack blamed by Palestinians on militants in the settler movement.
Several copies of Islam’s holy book were scorched in the arson attack and threats in Hebrew were scrawled on the wall of the mosque of Beit Fajjar early on Monday. Suspicion immediately fell on settler militants opposed to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, in which some settlements would be turned over to a Palestinian state.
“This visit is to say that although there are people who oppose peace, he who opposes peace is opposed to God,” said Rabbi Menachem Froman, a well-known peace activist and one of a handful of settlers who went to Beit Fajjar to show solidarity with their Muslim neighbors.
Froman and other liberal Jews and Palestinians who advocate coexistence held a demonstration by a busy West Bank highway junction, displaying banners saying: “We all want to live in peace.” But fewer than 20 people turned out.
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Whether we are many or few, one man, with God, makes a majority.