Condemned Christian woman seeks mercy in Pakistan
A Christian woman sentenced to death in Pakistan on charges of blaspheming Islam said on Saturday she had been wrongfully accused by neighbours due to a personal dispute, and appealed to the president to pardon her.
Asia Bibi, mother of four, is the first woman to be sentenced to death under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law which rights groups say is often exploited by religious extremists as well as ordinary Pakistanis to settle personal scores.
The 36-year-old farm worker was taken into custody by police in June last year and was convicted by a lower court on Nov. 8. She has been in prison since then, with her case drawing international media attention as well as appeals by human rights groups, and, according to Pakistani media, Pope Benedict.
“I told police that I have not committed any blasphemy and this is a wrong accusation, but they did not listen to me,” Bibi told reporters after meeting with Salman Taseer, governor of the central Punjab province where she is imprisoned. “I have small kids. I have wrongly been implicated in this false case,” she said in the prison, covered in a cloak that only revealed her eyes.
Taseer said he would take up Bibi’s case with President Asif Ali Zardari, who has the constitutional power to pardon her. “Inshallah (God willing) her appeal will be accepted,” Taseer said, adding that he had studied Bibi’s case and found that she had not committed any blasphemy.
“She is a helpless Christian woman. She can’t legally defend herself because she does not have resources. Implicating such helpless minorities in such cases amounts to ridiculing the constitution of Pakistan,” Taseer added.
On Friday, Zardari asked the ministry for minorities affairs to compile a report on Bibi’s case within three days after Pakistani media suggested the accusations stemmed from a village dispute.
German Chancellor Merkel honours Mohammad cartoonist at press award
Chancellor Angela Merkel paid tribute to freedom of speech on Wednesday at a ceremony for a Dane whose cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad provoked Muslim protests that led to 50 deaths five years ago.
Merkel, who grew up in Communist East Germany, recalled her joy over the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. “Freedom for me personally is the happiest experience of my life,” Merkel, 56, said at the conference on press freedom in Potsdam near Berlin.
“Even 21 years after the Berlin Wall fell the force of freedom stirs me more than anything else,” she said. She called press freedom a “precious commodity”.
Honoured at the event was Kurt Westergaard, who drew the most controversial of 12 cartoons of Mohammad which angered Muslims worldwide after appearing in a Danish paper in 2005. Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam to be offensive, and Westergaard’s cartoon portrayed Mohammad with a turban resembling a bomb. At least 50 people died in riots by enraged Muslims in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Aiman Mazyek of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany said in a statement: “Merkel is honouring the cartoonist who in our view trampled on our prophet and trampled on all Muslims.”
use this “Freedom” ideology for “holocaust” & “911″ and abot their interogation.. why double standard..wait ofr the time when we becom standard and benchmark of ytthe world , so your treacherous,cunning, twisty long-term, slow poisonous policies,to keep muslims undermined, submisive ,sorry for itslf..tiem never remains the same and yes history repeats itself you are one” we muslims are “One again” INSHALLAH!!
Qatari firm in talks to make Prophet Mohammad film
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.
Wonder how they will deal with the fact that he married a 6 year old girl, but he did wait till she was 9 before consumating the marriage – what a guy!
Is there a place for God’s Holy Mountain in Jerusalem?
Asher Frohlich’s painting of “God’s Holy Mountain” (at right) depicts a scene from an imagined future Jerusalem where Islam’s Dome of the Rock stands beside a rebuilt Jewish temple and worshipers of different faiths mingle in the courtyard.
Is this scene too good to come true?
The problem today, in the simplest of terms, stems from the fact that one spot in the heart of the old city of Jerusalem, is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Jews know it as the Temple Mount and Muslims call it al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). For more about the religious history of the complex, click here.
Today, a gilded dome stands above a rock where Muslims believe Mohammad rose to heaven. It is the same spot where a sanctuary known as the ‘holy of holies’ of two ancient Jewish temples is believed to have been located. Many Jews still pray for the temple to be rebuilt, a step some believe would then herald the return of the Messiah and a time of world peace.
A project launched this week hopes to pave the way, through theological research and debate, to a new outlook that would allow all religions to share the complex. Part of this ”vision” is explained in depth in an entry on the Washington Post Web site.
The group says the initiative is “based on five years of research into the requirements for the precise location of a rebuilt Temple”. Its web site quotes a passage from Jewish law, called Halacha, to argue that a new, nearby location could be chosen to build a third temple, not in the spot traditionally regarded as the correct site but has been occupied by the Dome of the Rock since the 7th century:
“Halachically, it is possible to extend the area of the Temple Mount as noted in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 1:5, Shevu’ot 2:2),” the passage said. “A possible way of expanding the Temple Mount could be to build an earthen extension in a way that it becomes an integral part of the original mountain (Mount Moriah) and to sanctify that area per the methods described in Maimonides.”
Most interesting! I’ve never been to Jerusalem and this project sounds like a really great idea. Religion is certainly of of the most indispensable aspects of human life.
Audio editor
Islamic tone, interfaith touch in Obama’s speech to Muslim world
It started with “assalaamu alaykum” and ended with “may God’s peace be upon you.” Inbetween, President Barack Obama dotted his speech to the Muslim world with Islamic terms and references meant to resonate with his audience. The real substance in the speech were his policy statements and his call for a “new beginning” in U.S. relations with Muslims, as outlined in our trunk news story. But the new tone was also important and it struck a chord with many Muslims who heard the speech, as our Middle East Special Correspondent Alistair Lyon found. Not all, of course — you can find positive and negative reactions here.
Among Obama’s Islamic touches were four references to the Koran (which he always called the Holy Koran), his approving mention of the scientific, mathematical and philosophical achievements of the medieval Islamic world and his citing of multi-faith life in Andalusia. These are standard elements that many Islam experts — Muslims and non-Muslims — mention in speeches at learned conferences, but it’s not often that you hear an American president talking about them.
Two religious references particularly caught my attention because they weren’t the usual conference circuit clichés. One was his comment about being in “the region where (Islam) was first revealed” – a choice of past participle showing respect for the religion.
The other came when he said Jerusalem should be “a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.” The Sura al-Isra is the Koran chapter about Mohammad’s Night Journey to heaven, which tradition says started in Jerusalem on what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews the Temple Mount. It was an interesting way to cite Islamic tradition to say Jerusalem should be “a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together.” The interjection “peace be upon them” had both an Islamic tone and an interfaith touch.
Obama also gave the American Muslim population estimate — 7 million — that prompted him to tell a French interviewer earlier this week that the U.S. could be considered “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He didn’t repeat that phrase in his speech, however, possibly because the figures don’t back it up. Figures for Muslim populations are dodgy because many countries don’t keep such data. Recent estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million, so he’s taken about the highest figures around. If those figures are correct, the U.S. would still only rank only about 30th on the list of countries with the largest Muslim populations. That’s way down on this Wikipedia list, with Azerbaijan and Burkina Faso. That’s nowhere near the really big Muslim populations like the top three Indonesia (195 million), Pakistan (160 million) and India (140 million). Maybe that’s why his speechwriters backed off the “one of the largest” claim.
The end of the speech also had an interesting twist. Obama reached for one of the quotes from the Koran that Muslims cite most frequently when they call for tolerance among peoples: “The Holy Koran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”
But he followed it up with quotes from the other two Abrahamic religions: “The Talmud tells us: ‘The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.’ The Holy Bible tells us, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God’.”
A selection of religion reports: week of March 8
Reuters publishes many more reports on religion, faith and ethics than we can mention on the FaithWorld blog. We sometimes highlight a story here, but often leave an issue unmentioned because it was already covered on the wire, or we have neither the time nor any extra information for a blog post. Here’s a sample of some of the stories we’ve published over the past week:
Philippines says open to amending Muslim autonomy law 13 Mar 2009
China says willing to meet Dalai Lama’s envoys 13 Mar 2009
Jews ask pope for Holocaust studies in schools 12 Mar 2009
Turkey denies firing editor over Darwin article 12 Mar 2009
Pope says pained over “hate, hostility” against him 12 Mar 12 2009
Vatican forgives John Lennon for “more popular than Jesus” quip
When John Lennon said in 1966 that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus,” there was a furious reaction in the United States. Dozens of radio stations in the South and Midwest banned Beatles music and some concert venues cancelled scheduled appearances by the band. Their manager Brian Epstein quickly flew to the U.S. to try to quell the storm. Soon afterward, Lennon told a news conference in Chicago that he was sorry for making the comparison, although he added he still thought it was true. The Vatican, as far as I can see from online archives, stayed silent and aloof even thought it could hardly agree with or approve Lennon’s message.
When the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano came out with a nostalgic look back at the Beatles on the 40th anniversary of their 1968 White Album on Saturday, it lead off the article with Lennon’s famous quote and promptly shrugged it off. “The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a ‘boast’ by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up with the legend of Elvis and rock and roll,” it wrote. The Beatles’ music was creative and original, even more so than their haircuts and clothes, and has stood the test of time, it said. The Italian-language original has now been overtaken on the OR website by the latest edition, but an English translation will certainly pop up somewhere (on Zenit?).
At the risk of possibly over-interpreting an arts page story, I wonder what all this says about the ridiculing of religious leaders. The uproar back in 1966 was mostly from the U.S. “Bible Belt” and the Vatican seems to have been quiet. Would it be the same today? At the Catholic-Muslim Forum in Rome three weeks ago, the two sides agreed in a statement about religious minorities that “their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subject to any form of mockery or ridicule.” Muslim countries, which were not very vocal on the international scene back in the 1960s, are now working hard at the United Nations to push through a global blasphemy law.
What do you think would happen today if a rock band claimed to be more popular than Jesus? Or Mohammad?
See what happened to John Lennon, then be careful of what you think, do or how you live…….
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Bali bombers: martyrs or monsters?
Did the “Bali bombers” end up as martyrs or monsters? That’s what many must be wondering after the three young men convicted of the Bali nighclub bombings in October 2002 were executed in the dead of the night last weekend in an orange grove on Java.
The run-up to the executions turned into a media circus. The three men from the Jemaah Islamiah group – Imam Samudra, Mukhlas, and Amrozi — were interviewed extensively by domestic and foreign media before they faced a firing squad last Sunday. They were defiant to the end, calling for more attacks like the one they perpetrated that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. They had, in fact, become media celebrities and the public was fascinated with them. But as monsters or martyrs?
Mainstream Indonesia was nervous and unhappy about the public spectacle that “infuriated relatives of the victims and prolonged their pain”, the Jakarta Post said.
Foreign Minister Hasan Wirajuda said the executions should not have been so publicised. “Perhaps that’s the cross we have to bear in an open and democratic Indonesia,” he said, using an interesting metaphor when speaking about Islamists. Thousands of people poured onto the streets for the funerals after the bodies were flown by helicopter to their home towns. People chanted “Goodbye Syuhada (heroes)” and “allahu akbar” as the bodies of Mukhlas and Amrozi were taken to an Islamic boarding school where Jemaah Islamiah’s spiritual leader Abu Bakr Bashir led prayers.
The feared revenge attacks have not taken place, though Australia said it has credible information that militants may be planning some. Jemaah said the Bali attacks were intended to deter foreigners as part of drive to make Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, part of a larger Islamic caliphate.
But leaders of the two main Muslim organisations — Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah who together account for nearly three-quarters of Indonesia’s 230 million people — know there is very little support for that among the Indonesian people who generally practice a tolerant brand of Islam.
“The bombers show a wrong nature of Islam,” Din Syamsuddin, chairman of Muhammadiyah told the Jakarta Post. “The use of violence and attacks cannot be tolerated in our religion. “Glorifying the three Bali bombers as mujahid is a grave mistake. It stems from a delusion that such an honor can be achieved through bombings and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great),” said Masdar F. Mas’udi, deputy chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).
Educated muslim leaders should do more to spread the real essence of islam to backward places where these idiots were born.Rich gulf countries like Kuwait ,U.A.E ,Qatar and Saudi Arabia should do more to promote their relegion and the true teachings of islam instead of leaving it upto hardline ignorant muslim clerics whose only talent is brainwashing other ignorant people.These people are fighting a war which has nothing to do with relegion and everything to do with political agenda’s they know this and yet they claim that their fight is in the name of relegion.Nobody is converting anyone here.Nobody is killing muslims for the futherment of western relegions ,no jews in israel are capturing palestinians and forcing them to change relegions ,no americans in iraq are capturing foriegn fighters and sending them to cuba for catechism classes….no.. relegion is not the agenda here…OIL,LAND,ARMS,MISSILE DEFENCE SYSTEMS,POWER,rich capatalists whose only fear is their money might run out.wake up muslims stop reducing islam to a petty excuse to blow up innocent people.Educate the uneducated and begin to fight this war on a more sophisticated level.No one will ever take you seriously otherwise…
Afghan journalist gets 20 years for insulting Prophet Mohammad
The sentencing of an Afghan journalist to 20 years in jail for distributing an Internet article that said the Prophet Mohammad had ignored the rights of women has raised questions about freedom of expression and possibly the rising influence of hardline Islamists in war-ravaged Afghanistan. But is there politics at play here as well?
Sayed Perwiz Kambkhash, 23, a reporter for the newspaper Jahan-e-Naw (“New World”), was sentenced to death in January for insulting the Prophet after his arrest a few months earlier in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The trial reportedly took five minutes and he was not allowed to offer a defense. The appeals court commuted that sentence to 20 years.
Death sentences for blasphemy sound like something the Taliban would impose, but Mazar-i-Sharif is far from being a Taliban redoubt. It was once a stronghold of the old Northern Alliance, which backed by U.S. firepower, ousted the Taliban from power after the Sept. 11 suicide airliner attacks. The capital of Balkh province, Mazar-i-Sharif, is home to the Shrine of Hazrat Ali, the “Blue Mosque” revered by Shias. The dominant language is Persian (Uzbek is also spoken) and ties with Iran have traditionally been strong. The Pashtu-speaking Taliban, who are Sunnis from eastern and southern Afghanistan, have little to do with that part of the country.
But could they have some influence after all? The journalist watchdog group Reporters Without Borders said the case has exposed the extent to which judges have been vulnerable to pressure from Islamists. The case also come at a politically intriguing time. President Hamid Karzai’s administration has begun quiet talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia, aimed at finding a political solution to a conflict that has become more intensified seven years after the 9/11 attacks.
To complicate the issue even further, the jailed journalist’s brother has linked the case to his own writings that have been critical of local politicos and warlords.
So here’s the question Afghan watchers will be looking at in the weeks to come. Is Kambkhash’s case a sign of hardline Islam becoming ascendant in Karzai’s Afghanistan after an initial period of tolerance? Or is he a pawn in the incessant political skirmishing among tribal warlords?
Novel about Mohammad’s wife published — what comes next?
The Jewel of Medina, a novel about the Prophet Mohammad’s child bride Aisha already linked to an arson attack in London, was rushed into U.S. bookstores on Monday in a bid to head off any other violence. Author Sherry Jones says it’s a respectful account of Aisha’s life but Random House baulked at publishing it after being warned it could offend Muslims and provoke violence from a “small, radical segment”.
Publisher Eric Kampmann, president of the Beaufort Books company whose London office was firebombed, told Reuters that the surprise measure would help change the discussion about the book. “We felt that, given what was happening, it was better for everybody… to let the conversation switch from a conversation about terrorists and fearful publishers to a conversation about the merits of the book itself,” he said.
Comments from Muslims in Britain about The Jewel of Medina have been mixed, with some approving a vigorous protest and others saying their views have evolved since the Rushdie affair. Comments on blogs since the novel went out to U.S. bookshops range from those criticising it as a “flawed jewel”, those (like Ayaan Hirsi Ali) cheering the publisher for not caving in and those urging Muslims not to be provoked even by this “distorted picture of Aisha”. Some, citing a review saying it’s just a “second-rate bodice ripper-style romance”, wonder what the fuss is all about.
People who protest violently against a book usually haven’t read it and have no intention of doing so. This was the case with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses — and has been with many other books that had nothing to do with Islam. So is Kampmann’s strategy a smart move or a naive attempt to get hotheads to read first and shout later?
Whatever one may think of this book, all praise to the publishers for daring to respond to terrorist blackmail by publishing it. It’s a pity other British publishers are so cowardly. There is another solution: publish on the dark web –through Tor. This is the solution adopted by another writer of another novel about Mohammad the Prophet (Peace be unto him) which seeks to set the record straight about what his teachings were about women and sex. “The Daughters of Fatima” is based on a modern, liberated woman, Gemma Thompson, who founded a string of “Shedonist” clubs for women to re-discover erotic pleasure: a Fatwa was placed on her when an underground Shedonist club was discovered in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. Rather than succumb, however, Gemma used the Fatwa to try to rescue a girl from the fundamentalists who had taken over the Swat valley…
This novel was praised by all who read it as beautifully and powerfully written: it is now appearing in serial form, chapter by chapter on Shedonists@wordpress.com
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