A French Muslim who blocked a male doctor from performing an emergency caeserian on his wife has lost his bid to sue the hospital because his son was born handicapped, according to French press and radio reports. The court also ordered him to pay the court costs — €1,000 ($1,550) — because he kept the doctor from “performing the tests that could have prevented the serious neurological complications” that occurred. Coming shortly after the “virginity lie” controversy, this case has once again raised the question of if and how to accommodate religious demands from Muslims in France.

The law in French state hospitals is clear. Women can request women doctors and probably get them most of the time. But if the attending doctor that night is a man, as happened in this case, the woman — and in this case, her husband — have to accept that. When this woman went into labour in November 1998, the couple rushed to a hospital in Bourg-en-Bresse and a midwife examined her. She recognised a complication and called the doctor, but the husband physically blocked him for half an hour because he did not want a strange man touching his wife. By the time he gave in, it was too late for a caeserian and the baby had to be delivered by foreceps. Little Mohammed is now 100% handicapped.

The father sued the hospital for €100,000 in damages and €10,000 in personal compensation. The court rejected this and blamed the father, saying: “The child’s state is totally attributable to the attitude of Mr. Radouane Ijjou.”

The issue of Muslims demanding exceptions at state hospitals has been an issue in France since 2003, when the Stasi Commission (whose hearings led to the headscarf ban in state schools) heard doctors say a growing number of Muslim men refused to let male doctors treat their wives. There were stories of fistfights between husbands and doctors — including one non-fatal stabbing — and husbands driving from emergency room to emergency room searching for a female doctor to treat a wife in desperate need of medical attention. But while these stories appeared from time to time in the media, it was hard to get clear facts on specific cases. My impression was that there was a definate problem, with some very worrying cases, but it was not as widespread as the French media seemed to say it was.

This is a clear case that has gone through the legal system. I think the judge was 100% correct in not only rejecting this suit but throwing the blame back on that irresponsible father’s shoulders. He — and his wife, and especially his son — is the victim of a kind of folk Islam that confused cultural traditions with faith. Several Muslim scholars and chaplains I spoke to while researching other cases said they could have given him a litany of Koran quotes to prove that his wife’s and son’s health came first. One doctor I met once had the Paris Grand Mosque fax over a fatwa to convince a Muslim couple to perform an emergency abortion.

Have you seen cases of faith vs. health care clashes in your local media? Do they look like hearsay or are they well sourced? I think this is less serious than it’s made out to be, but when it’s serious — like in this case — it can be tragic.

The Netherlands has breathed a sigh of relief at muted reaction at home and abroad to a film critical of the Koran that seems to have done more for the standing of the prime minister than the populist who made it.

But there is still a sizeable audience in the country for the kind of anti-Islam, anti-immigration rhetoric first popularised by maverick politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 that is likely to keep Dutch politics fragmented and unstable.

One week after Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders posted his film “Fitna” on the Internet, read the analysis of the reaction by our chief correspondent in the Netherlands, Emma Thomasson.

“Our goal is nothing other than working peacefully for our society’s future, the future of our children, but also the future of the Netherlands. Muslims in the Netherlands love this country — they of course criticise some developments, as any citizen. The Netherlands is our country and we will try together with our compatriots to find the right tone … to finally get away from the ongoing polarisation in society, so that we can finally get on with our daily lives and don’t have to be afraid of each other.” — Mohammed Rabbae, Chairman of the National Moroccan Council of the Netherlands

The day after Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders showed his anti-Koran film on the Internet, warning of Islam as a threat to Western civilisation, Dutch-Moroccan leader Rabbae had separate messages for his compatriots in the Netherlands and for fellow Muslims abroad. Speaking to Dutch and foreign journalists in the El Ouma mosque in Amsterdam, he sought to assure the Dutch that Muslims considered themselves part of society, had no sympathy for violent extremism and respected the law and the constitution. “What people feel threatened by also threatens us. What threatens Westerners also threatens us. There is no difference,” he said.

He urged Muslims abroad to respect this. “We want to tell our Muslims brothers and sisters abroad, in the Middle East, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia etc, that we as Muslims in the Netherlands are best positioned to analyse the situation in the Netherlands, and to determine the response to Wilders and others … I am appealing to our brothers and sisters abroad to follow our strategy, not to frustrate our strategy by any violent incidents or an attack to a Dutch embassy,” he said.

“Looking for conflict with the Netherlands there is looking for conflict with us. We are indivisibly Dutch, indivisibly citizens of this country.”

This presents an interesting contrast to the reaction of some Danish Muslim leaders who went to the Middle East seeking support from fellow Muslims for their protests against the Prophet Mohammad cartoons. We know what that lead to. Rabbae stresses his Dutch identity as much as his Muslim identity and tells fellow Muslims abroad to respect the way Dutch Muslims have chosen to react to the Wilders film. There have been verbal official protests in the Muslim world and some loud street demonstrations, but so far not the violence seen after the Danish cartoons were published.

It seems a bizarre tool in the hands of security officials, but German authorities believe a cartoon comic strip can help them get their message across to young people who might be tempted to flirt with militant Islamism. The unusual experiment in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state, has stirred international interest from as far away as the United States and Japan, according to the team behind the idea.

The comic is aimed at 12-16 year-olds and has been distributed in mosques and to every secondary school. “The reactions are almost entirely positive,” said Thomas Grumke, the interior ministry official who first thought up the hero Andi, his Muslim girlfriend Ayshe and the rest of the characters, including a militant imam and two young men who fall under his influence.

The story, which can be downloaded here in German, is interspersed with short passages of text addressing key issues and terms like sharia, jihad and the difference between Islam and Islamism. On that last point, it says: “Islam is a monotheistic religion (a belief in one all-embracing God), which is closely related to Judaism and Christianity. By contrast, Islamism is a political ideology which poses as ‘true Islam’ and wants to realise this as a binding, guiding principle for state and society. This ideology is directed against the free democratic order and thus is unambiguously extremist.”

Ayshe, the feisty, headscarf-wearing Muslim girl in the story, is able to quote the Koran in defence of her relationship with non-Muslim Andi. When her brother’s friend Harun tells her this is forbidden by Allah, she fires back: “What a lot of nonsense. It says in the Koran we should be gracious and friendly towards those who don’t fight us because of our faith.”

Grumke said the feedback from Muslim girls has been that they are drawn to Ayshe as someone who is both devout and assertive.

He acknowledged that stereotyping is an issue when using the comic format, but he said figures like the militant imam in the story, who advocates fighting and killing non-Muslims, are not unrealistic. “This preacher has a stereotypical beard and clothing. Not every preacher has looks like that, but he may well do, and the likelihood is very high that he looks like that.”

The comic initiative was launched by the NRW interior ministry’s department for protection of the constitution - Verfassungsschutz in German. Essentially it is a domestic intelligence agency which can use covert surveillance methods to track militants, but its boss Hartwig Möller told Reuters its role is about much more than just preventing attacks.

“Isn’t it just as dangerous if there’s a religious community which doesn’t practise violence but which in the long term wants to change our society, to abolish our democracy, and which is seeking free room in which to establish their standards, which aren’t compatible with the constitution, where sharia would be introduced which isn’t in line with our legal system. Isn’t that just as dangerous?” he asked in a telephone interview.

Aiman Mazyek, general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany , said the basic approach of the comic was right, but he regretted the authorities hadn’t consulted the Muslim community beforehand. The NRW ministry said it was prepared with the help of Islamic experts.

For more detail, read the Reuters feature and then let us know what you think. Is this the right message, and the right vehicle, for preventing young Muslims from embracing al Qaeda-inspired violence?

Just when relations between the Vatican and Muslims were improving, Pope Benedict has taken a highly symbolic step that could set them back again. On Saturday evening, at the Easter Vigil Mass, he baptised seven people including one of Italy’s best-known Muslims. Magdi Allam, the new convert, is deputy director of the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera and an outspoken critic of radical Islam. The Egyptian-born journalist, who has lived in Italy since his university days, was one of the few Muslims who defended the pope after his controversial Regensburg speech in 2006. Allam’s outspoken articles have already prompted death threats from Islamists and he lives under constant guard. Announcing the surprise move only an hour before it took place, the Vatican stressed the Catholic Church had the right to baptise anyone who wanted to join it and that all were equal in the eyes of God.

That is certainly true, but such a high-level conversion can’t be seen outside its wider context. Islam considers conversion to another religion a grave insult to God. In some Muslim states including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan, it is punishable by death. Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity pictured at right during his trial for apostasy, only escaped death in 2006 because of an international outcry; he found refuge in Italy. Not all Muslims agree with this. An Italian Muslim spokesman, for example, stressed that Allam’s conversion was a personal decision and only questioned why Benedict chose to make his baptism such a public event. He could have been baptised in his local church without all the publicity, he said. This high-visibility baptism looks likely to provoke protests from Muslims in some parts of the world and raise questions about Benedict’s intentions.

France 24 television interrupted my Easter lunch en famille to interview me about this and their main question was whether it was a response to Osama bin Laden’s threat against the pope. That assumes a U.S. campaign-style readiness to react that is miles or centuries away from the way the Vatican works. Easter is the traditional time to baptise adult converts. Allam had to go through a long period of study before being accepted for baptism. Benedict had to know about this at least several weeks ago. In his article in Corriere (see below), Allam mentions a meeting with Benedict where he told him of his intention to convert and the pope said he would gladly baptise him. But Allam does not mention the date.

If challenged, the pope would probably first say that both Christianity and Islam are missionary religions for which conversion is legitimate as long as the person makes the choice to change religions freely. What is objectionable, he would argue, is proselytism, i.e. aggressive efforts to win converts (”stealing sheep”, some clerics would say). There are progressive Muslims who will agree with this view intellectually, but probably few would be comfortable with it.

If Benedict were pressed to explain this step further (which is not, by the way, something that we journalists get to do that often!), I think he would say that differences about conversion would be a perfect topic to discuss in the new Catholic-Muslim Forum that was just launched two weeks ago. The experts in this dialogue could explain each faith’s view of religious freedom, personal commitment and divine will. Over the course of several meetings, maybe several years, they might come to a better understanding of the relationship between individual believers and faith communities. Maybe such discussions could even influence leading Muslims to take a broader view of religious freedom, leading to greater liberty for Muslims and for the non-Muslims living in Islamic countries. Seen this way, the question to ask at the next opportunity (when? maybe in the papal plane to the United States on April 15?) is: “Holy Father, did you baptise Allam to put the issue of conversion firmly on the agenda for the Catholic-Muslim Forum talks?”

But a lot of water can flow down the Tiber and the Nile between now and then. No matter how matter-of-factly the Vatican may try to present Allam’s baptism, the new Catholic has pulled no punches in his apologia. In a front-page article in today’s Corriere entitled La Mia Scelta (My Choice), Allam wrote that his mind “has been freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimises lies and deception, violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission to tyranny, permitting me to join the authentic religion of Truth, Life and Liberty”. He knew this could put him in even more danger, but said: “I realise what I am going up against but I will confront my fate with my head high, with my back straight and the interior strength of one who is certain about his faith.”

The Islamist death threats against him in recent years had led him to ask “about the attitude of those who publicly issued fatwas denouncing me, a Muslim, as an ‘enemy of Islam’ and a hypocrite … a liar and a defamer of Islam, in this way legitimising a death sentence against me. I asked myself how it was possible that someone like me, who was working strenuously and with conviction for a moderate Islam, who stood up and denounced extremism and Islamic terrorism, ends up being condemned to death in the name of Islam and on the basis of the Koran. I had to recognise that … the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual.”

Wow… this is the “message of Regensburg” all over again. In that speech, the pope quoted a Byzantine emperor asking what the Prophet Mohammad had brought the world but things “only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. After that sparked off violent protests in the Muslim world, Benedict protested that he had only quoted the emperor and that did not mean he shared that view. But a pope speaking in public is not a professor debating in a seminar room. Rightly or wrongly, words, contexts and interpretations got amalgamated then and will be mixed up again now. If anyone out there seriously thinks this baptism, the Regensburg speech and Allam’s article won’t be rolled into one by commentators (Muslims and non-Muslims alike), please let me know how high you’d like to place your bet.

Talk about complicated… Who should do what in this situation? Should the pope be more of a diplomat or should he put Catholic priorities above all others? And how should Muslims react to this? These are important issues for this embryonic Catholic-Muslim dialogue and it would be interesting to hear what you think about this.

Geert Wilders certainly knows how to get maximum publicity for his views. Nobody has seen his film “Fitna” about the Koran yet, but the expectation that it will be scathing about Islam and its holy book means it’s being talked about from the Netherlands to Indonesia. I just did a search for Reuters output on it to catch up on the story (see below) and was surprised to see how strong the drumroll preceding it has become just since the beginning of March. And we still have until the end of the month before it comes out… Do you have any predictions on what impact it will have?

March 19: Danish PM condemns views of Dutch film-maker

March 19: Dutch brace for movie backlash (video)

March 18: NATO seeks Afghan support on anti-Koran film

March 18: Dutch anti-Islam filmmaker refuses to be silenced

March 17: Ramadan wants Muslims to ignore far-right Dutch film on Koran

March 14: Indonesia says Dutch anti-Koran film threatens harmony

March 14: Dutch warn EU of possible anti-Koran video backlash

March 14: Dutch draw on past crises to deal with Islam film

March 12: Iranian minister urges Dutch to ban Koran film

March 10: Cartoonist says Dutch must show anti-Koran film

March 9: Afghans threaten attacks on troops over cartoon

March 6: Dutch raise threat level ahead of anti-Koran film

March 6: Cartoon and Koran film part of “Crusader war:” Taliban

March 6: Dutch fear terrorism ahead of new Koran film

March 5: Dutch PM seeks French help over anti-Islam film

March 5: Anti-Koran Dutch film “propagates hate” -Pakistan

March 5: Dutch want Koran film shown but fear reactions: poll

March 3: Dutch cabinet may seek ban for Koran film - paper

Geert Wilders doesn’t do things by halves. The anti-Koran film that this far-right politician has been working on in recent months will be finished very soon. He doesn’t know if any Dutch broadcaster will touch it because of the controversy it has already stirred up. So he has arranged to have “Fitna” put out as a webcast as well. That should ensure that the film can be seen all around the world and not just in the Netherlands.

“It is very good news,” Wilders told us , adding that the film would “definitely be finished this week.” After that, he has to negotiate with Dutch television programmes to see who — if any — will broadcast it. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende appealed last month for restraint over the film and Iran has urged the Netherlands to prevent this “provocative and satanic act on the basis of European Convention on Human Rights.”

The Dutch foreign and justice ministers met Wilders on Wednesday to warn him of the possible consequences of showing his film, including possible charges against him for hate speech. According to the Volkskrant daily and NOS television, Wilders called the meeting “one hour of pure intimidation” and left it determined to work “full speed ahead” on his project.

Nobody has yet seen a 15-minute film about the Koran, which Wilders calls a fascist book, but it has already led to anti-Dutch protests and outraged Muslims worldwide. Clips purporting to be his film have appeared on YouTube, prompting a blockage in access to the popular site in Pakistan that temporarily closed it down worldwide.

A network of Muslim communities in the Netherlands is planning to hold an “open mosque day” around the country when the film is screened to appeal for calm and dialogue. Politicians and celebrities have taken out full-page newspaper adverts to pledge their commitment to tolerance and social harmony.

A survey by TNS Nipo institute last December found two-thirds of those polled thought the film was a bad idea and three-quarters believed the film could sour relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Some people say the media should ignore politicians like Wilders and not give him a platform to spread his views. But he can use the Internet to broadcast his film directly to anyone who clicks on the site. What do you think is the best way for the media to deal with a story like this?

Karen Armstrong, the best-selling British writer and lecturer on religion, has given a long interview to Reuters in Islamabad after addressing a conference in the Pakistani capital. A former Catholic nun who now describes herself as a “freelance monotheist,” she has written 21 books on the main world religions, religious fundamentalism in these faiths and religious leaders such as Mohammad and Buddha. Her latest book is The Bible: A Biography. The short version of what she said is in the Reuters story linked here. We don’t publish the Q&A text of our interviews on our news wire, but we can do it here on the blog.

Q:You were last in Pakistan in 2006. What brought you back this time?

A: There is a really poignant hunger here, as well as in other parts of the Muslim world, to hear a friendly Western voice speaking appreciatively of Islam. It is a sad thing for me that this should be such an unusual event, but given the precarious state of relationships between so-called Islam and the West it seems something that is important to do.

Q: Pakistan seems to be a crucial place for the future of Islam at the moment. How do you see the impact of events in Pakistan in terms of developments in Islam as a whole?

A: Pakistan is on the frontier of this present struggle, in a sense. It’s right on the border there, with Afghanistan. It’s a country born of displacement. I think it’s not so much important for the future of Islam as important for the future of the world. What happens here will be very decisive in how the so-called war against terror proceeds in other regions. This is, after all, a frontier that that has for years cooperated with the West and is now reaping a grim harvest for that cooperation from its extremists.

It is a nuclear power. And it is a country born out the horrendous events of the partition of India, with a really difficult question to ask: How do you become a secular Muslim state? If there are no Muslim symbols in your country, why on earth are they here? Interestingly enough, the kind of conversations I have about this topic remind me very much of conversations I had in Israel, another secular state born out of displacement and tragedy. Israeli friends who are adamantly secular have said to me that if there are no Jewish symbols or no Jewish feel to this secular state, then what on earth are we doing here?

Q: At the moment, many Western politicians seem to take a quick fix approach to Pakistan: give full support to President Musharraf, close down the madrasas, send in troops into the tribal areas. Do you thing these policies can be effective against something as hard to grapple with as a religious movement?

A: Well, I’m not sure that this all is religious, to be perfectly honest. Some of this trouble up in the tribal areas is much more to do with tribal honour than it is to do with Islam per se. But I think military force is never an answer. Surely we have learned this just by looking at what has happened in Iraq and in the Middle East. There the military option has opened up a can of worms and another set of disasters. I think what we need to do is not do this short-term business of supporting one politician one day, another politician another day, busing somebody else in as our own candidate chanting the word democracy, as though it was some kind of saving mantra, when what is needed is a much longer term view, a less self-interested view, less of an ability to just use a country to further our Western policies in a region and (rather) see what is actually good for the country as a whole.

This is getting to look like a striptease…

The far-right politician Geert Wilders, whose planned anti-Koran film has the Netherlands holding its breath, has revealed that his long-awaited opus will be delayed by two months. There had been speculation he might show it in his party’s broadcasting slot on Dutch television on Friday evening. Viewers instead got shots of Wilders walking along a beach repeating his complaints about Muslims (shown a few minutes into this Dutch TV interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali). For more on his views, he’s here and here spelling them out in English.

The 10-minute movie is now due out in March, Wilders said in an interview in Saturday’s De Telegraaf. This comes after a rising chorus of concern about possible protests against the film and a call from Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende for restraint and reports that Dutch embassies were preparing to evacuate Dutch citizens abroad if things got out of hand.

The Rotterdam daily NRC Handelsblad smelt a rat. “Geert Wilders says he’s making a film. Nobody has seen it yet. But his plan has kept the media and politicians in its grip for two months now,” it commented. “In terms of political PR, Geert Wilders is putting on a great show… Wilders can dominate the news because journalists and politicians are sytematically allowing themselves to be taken hostage by him. Without a loudspeaker, there is no platform. Without political reactions, there is no series to watch.”

Is it that simple? Are the media being taken hostage by politicians like Wilders?

Concern is mounting in the Netherlands as the country prepares for a film about the Koran by a far-right populist known for his hostility to Islam. It reached the point last Friday that Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende publicly appealed for restraint. A former Malaysian ambassador in The Hague has said the reaction could make the 2006 Danish cartoon controversy look like “a picnic.”

Geert Wilders, who wants to ban the Koran as a “fascist” book and has warned of a “tsunami of Islamisation” in the Netherlands, has proceeded with the film despite warnings from the Dutch justice and foreign ministers. (We blogged on this last November when the warnings came). It’s not clear when it will be broadcast, but it is expected soon. Wilders has denied reports that it will be shown on Friday Jan. 25. There is already a spoof on YouTube.

The last Dutchman who made a film critical of Islam, Theo van Gogh, was murdered by an Islamist radical in 2004. That unleashed a violent anti-Muslim backlash in the Netherlands. Caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a Danish daily sparked off violent protests in the Muslim world.

With that in mind, the Dutch government has been considering the possible reaction this time around and what to do about it. According to media reports, “these include quick evacuation of Dutch citizens from Muslim countries. The government is expecting riots, flag burnings and boycotts, and has informed municipalities and police to be ready for such eventualities.” Last Saturday, about 200 Christians from various churches met in Zwolle to pray “for calm and tolerance” when the film comes out.

Ehsan Jami, a Dutch-Iranian who launched a Committee of Ex-Muslims last September, has said he is working on a film about the life of Mohammad due out in February or March.

The Danish cartoon controversy was a frontal clash of cultures, with European editors and officials saying free speech was inviolate and Muslim leaders calling for punishment for blasphemy. The Dutch prime minister tried to strike a balance between these views on Friday, saying:

“The Netherlands has a tradition of freedom of speech, religion and beliefs. The Netherlands also has a tradition of respect, tolerance and responsibility. Unnecessarily offending a certain belief or group has no place in that.” He said the government wanted “a free and unhindered debate, and respect in dealing with each other flow from both traditions, and the cabinet shall uphold both traditions and calls on everybody to do so.”

All this concern swirls around a film that nobody has yet seen and whose title is not even known. Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born Muslim academic who now teaches in Rotterdam, called it “a movie-provocation about which everybody is talking while nobody knows anything!” He added: “Silence will be the best response.”

Are we headed for another head-on clash? Or do you think that Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe have moved towards better cooperation when one side feels provoked?