Parvez Rasool, a Kashmiri cricketer, was briefly detained in Bangalore on suspicion of carrying explosives, an incident which triggered anger in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley.

This is not an isolated case.

Earlier actor and model Tariq Dar, a Kashmiri Muslim, was mistakenly imprisoned in New Delhi for weeks for having terror links. But Dar was later found innocent.

Delhi University lecturer S.A.R. Geelani, a Kashmiri, was even awarded the death sentence in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case, but was later released.

Are Kashmiri Muslims, weary of decades of violence, treated unfairly by Indian authorities in different parts of the country?

The Kashmiri cricketer's detention did not go down well in the strife-torn region, where anti-India sentiment still runs deep.

Rasool's detention comes at a time when New Delhi has decided to resume peace talks with the leadership of the Himalayan region aimed at ending over 60 years of dispute.

Kashmiri travellers and traders who talk of being harassed after militant violence in any part of India, say such incidents are pushing ordinary people further away from the Indian mainstream.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chief of Kashmir's main separatist alliance All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, said he would be taking up the issue of Rasool's detention during his talks with New Delhi.

Tens of thousands of people have died during 20 years of anti-India insurgency in Kashmir. The strife has left nothing untouched in the scenic region, once the heart of Sufi Islam in the subcontinent and home to an easy-going society.

Kashmir's young chief minister, Omar Abdullah, said it is easy to see young Kashmiris as terrorists but urged New Delhi to handle the youth of his state carefully and help heal the wounds of violence.

Kashmiri sportsmen say these things humiliate people in Kashmir where violence between Indian troops and separatist militants has brought untold misery to the residents.

Does being a Muslim from Indian Kashmir invite suspicion in a predominantly Hindu country?

A decision by the German publisher Droste not to print a murder mystery about an honour killing because it contained passages insulting Islam has raised questions in Germany about religion impeding on freedom of speech.

Droste publishers said they would have published the book, entitled “To Whom Honour is Due”, had author Gabriele Brinkmann softened the tone in some sections In one, for example, an angry character tells another to dispose of a Koran using a crude phrase we would not reproduce here. “The author was not prepared to change the derogatory passages, which would have  been a condition for the publication,” Droste said in a statement on its website.

(Photo: The Merkez Mosque in Duisburg, Aug 21, 2009, Reuters/Ina Fassbender)

Little did they realise what a stir this decision would cause in Germany, which is sensitive to any compromise on freedom of speech and where security fears over Islamists have blocked several artistic ventures in recent years. “For me, it is about the principle. That is why I went public about this. I won’t hurry to be obedient and carry out self censorship,” Brinkmann told German media.  “Justified fear or cowardice?” asked the headline in the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.

Droste insists it is not worried about releasing books dealing with controversial themes, but refuse to publish books which insult peoples’ faith — whether Islam, Christianity or other religions. But Brinkmann points out that her book was a work of fiction, and it was clear that the opinions expressed by fictive characters were neither her own nor those of the publishers.

Furthermore, it is questionable if the company would have similary toned down any insults of Christianity, a religion that is regularly parodied and demonised in popular culture. Why not? Perhaps because insults against Christianity probably wouldn’t have carried the same security risks. Monty Python’s comedy The Life of Brian and Dan Brown’s best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code both provoked outrage among sections of the Christian community, but not death threats or violence.

Publisher Felix Droste himself admitted that he was concerned about a security risk that could arise to the company if it published the book, in light of the riots that broke out in several Islamic countries after cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper sparked outrage among Muslims.

How real is the risk?  Should artists, producers and publishers seek to anticipate any risk by avoiding any criticism or parody of Islam?  And regardless of security, to what extent should a society respect the religious sensitivities of one group if they begin to impede on its basic freedom of speech of all others?

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Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, locally known as Pandits, fled their ancestral homes in droves 20 years ago after a bloody rebellion broke out against New Delhi’s rule in India's only Muslim-majority state.

Now encouraged by the sharp decline in rebel violence across the Himalayan region, authorities have formally launched plans to help Pandits return home.

Will Pandits, who say they "live in exile in different parts of their own country" return to their homeland in Kashmir where two decades of violence has left nothing untouched and brought misery to the scenic region, its people and its once easy-going society?

Earlier this month, the government constituted a high level committee led by Kashmir's Revenue Minister, Raman Bhalla, which will monitor the return of displaced Hindus and effective implementation of New Delhi's rehabilitation package which includes financial assistance of 750,000 rupees for house  construction.

The initiative is driven by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's package of 16,000 million rupees last year for the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Hindus living as migrants in several parts of the country, mostly in Jammu, the Hindu-dominated winter capital of the state.

Many Hindus who fled Kashmir have sold their homes or lost their kin in the violence that has also killed more than 47, 000 people including Muslim militants and civilians.

Some Pandit groups who have opposed the initiative are demanding a separate, guarded homeland within the Kashmir Valley while others complained that authorities are not meeting their security concerns.

In the largest migration since the 1947 partition of the subcontinent into mainly Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan, nearly 250,000 Kashmiri Pandits left for safer places in India after a bloody insurgency broke out in 1989.

In the past, Pandits have been deterred by a series of attacks by suspected militants. At least 209 Hindus have been also killed since 1989.

Though Kashmiri separatists have made fresh appeals urging Hindus to return to the Valley, they have asked them to live side by side with Muslims rather than in "security zones".

Bhalla says 15,000 families have agreed to return and at least 200 apartments have been contracted so far.

Will Kashmiri Pandits return to their homes in Kashmir, where still almost daily gun battles, between troops and Muslim rebels, and occasional bomb explosions take place?

(PHOTO: A Kashmiri Pandit holds a lighted earthen lamp at a shrine in Khirbhawani, 30 km east of Srinagar May 31, 2009. REUTERS/Danish Ismail)

Murder and persecution of women and children accused of being witches is spreading around the world and destroying the lives of millions of people, according to United Nations officials, civil society representatives from affected countries and non-governmental organization (NGO) specialists working on the issue.

(Photo: An ojha, or witch doctor, in India’s northeastern state of Assam, 7 Sept 2006/Utpal Baruah)

“This is becoming an international problem — it is a form of persecution and violence that is spreading around the globe,” Jeff Crisp of the U.N.’s refugee agency UNHCR told a seminar organized by human rights officials of the world body in Geneva.

Aides to U.N. special investigators on women’s rights and on summary executions said killings and violence against alleged witch women — often elderly people — were becoming common events in countries ranging from South Africa to India. And community workers from Nepal and Papua New Guinea told the seminar, on the fringes of a session of the U.N.’s 47-member Human Rights Council, that “witch-hunting” was now common, both in rural communities and larger population centres.

Read the whole story here.

Click here for a statement to the meeting by the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

Following are three Reuters videos about children and women beaten and killed on suspicion of practicing witchcraft. These are disturbing documents but they provide background to the issue being debated at the United Nations in Geneva.

The first video (12 Sept 2008) shows the fate of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo accused of sorcerery and bringing bad luck to their families:

This video (22 May 2008) reports on eleven mainly elderly people suspected of being witches being burned to death in western Kenya:

In this video from Bihar state in India (28 March 2008), a woman accused of witchcraft is tied to a tree and beaten in her village:

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More than five years after a Muslim insurgency erupted in southern Thailand, the conflict remains shrouded in mystery, with no credible claims of responsibility for the bloodshed in a once independent Malay Muslim land with a history of rebellion to Buddhist Thai rule.

On June 8, gunmen burst into a mosque and killed 10 people as they prayed. Thailand blamed separatist insurgents for the bloodiest attack this year in the mainly Muslim region bordering Malaysia where nearly 3,500 people have died in violence since 2004. But the head of the world’s biggest Islamic body urged Thailand to protest its Muslim minority after local residents put the blame on military-backed elements.

(Photo: Thai Muslims pray at a funeral after the mosque attack, 9 June 9 2009/Surapan Boonthanom)

Reuters correspondent Martin Petty toured the area last week in the wake of the attacks. He talked to a woman who narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet in Yala.  She said she doesn’t know who wanted her dead or why. Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra blamed mafia-style smuggling gangs for the violence, but security analysts believe homegrown separatist groups — with little or no ties to al Qaeda or other regional militant networks — are behind the violence.

The Thai government hopes to stem the violence by pouring $1.58 billion in development funds into the region. But many residents told Petty it won’t make a difference, because the people are stuggling to keep their Malay-Muslim identity – not to boost local fisheries, rubber and palm oil industries.

A better idea would be to withdraw the 30,000 soldiers deployed in ther region and scrap an emergency decreee that grants the military broad powers of arrest with immunity from prosecution, they say.

(Photo: Soldiers guard a village after a police raid on a suspected militant hideout on June 18, 2009. REUTERS/Surapan Boothan)

The three provinces were part of an independent Malay Muslim sultante annexed by Buddhist Thailand a century ago and its people have long resisted Bangkok’s attempts to assimilate them.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has just issued a report on the insurgency and says in its summary:  “This struggle, nominally between a Thai Buddhist state and a Malay Muslim insurgency, targets civilians of all religions. More than 3,400 people have been killed since the violence surged in 2004. There are more dead Muslim victims than Buddhists, and many of the slain Muslims were marked as ‘traitors’ to Islam.”

Can the Thai government win hearts and minds with its planned development initiative? Or will a region that is battling to keep its ethno-religious identity and way of life in a borderless world continue to see  violent paroxysms such as this month’s mosque attacks, until the governmetn comes up with a broader plan that addresses deep-seated grievances?

Here are links to Petty’s latest stories about the south:

Cloud of suspicion hangs over Thai south schools — June 22

Thai insurgents recruit from Islamic schools — June 22

Thailand’s Muslim south gripped by fear – June 19

Money won’t stop south Thai violence, Muslims say — June 18

The murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller has been condemned by prominent groups and activists on both sides of this divisive and emotive issue.

But the language used by some opponents of abortion rights who reviled Tiller for his work providing late-term abortions remained very strong.

Take this statement by Dr. James Dobson, founder of the conservative evangelical group Focus on the Family.

“We are shocked by the murder of George Tiller, and we categorically condemn the act of vigilantism and violence that took his life,” Dobson said in a statement. He went on to say that the perpetrator must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

But he also said: “Tiller recently faced serious charges related to the killing of babies in violation of the law, by the most grotesque procedures administered without anesthetics or compassion.  We profoundly regretted the outcome of his legal case, believing the doctor had the blood of countless babies on his hands.  Nevertheless, he was exonerated by the court and declared ‘not guilty’ in the eyes of the law. That is our system, and we honor it.”

Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion rights group Operation Rescue, made Dobson’s strongly-worded comments about the “blood of countless babies” seem moderate by comparison. Terry didn’t even condemn the murder but he expressed concern about Tiller’s soul in his statement.

“George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God,” Terry said.

Most of the opposition to abortion rights in the United States is faith-based and the movement has been led mostly though not exclusively by evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics.

Opponents of abortion rights regard the procedure as murder, though virtually all of the U.S. based activists insist that their fight must be done within the parameters of the law. That is why even the staunchest of opponents such as Dobson say that those who kill abortion doctors must be held accountable for their crimes.

But some supporters of abortion rights have long argued that the language used by opponents — with terms such as murder, blood-stained, destroy or holocaust frequently evoked — create an atmosphere that fosters violence. This angle was raised today on various U.S. news programs such as the Ed Show on MSNBC. Tiller himself had been shot before by an abortion opponent and his clinic was bombed in 1985.

If you really think abortion is mass murder why would you work within the law to stop it?

What do you think? Has strong language dangerously enflamed abortion passions on the ground in the United States? But if you equate abortion with murder or mass murder shouldn’t you be able to say so freely? Should the deplorable actions of the very few stifle free speech for others on this issue?

(Photo credit: Anti-abortion demonstrators unfurl a giant sign on the side of North Table Mountain in Golden, Colorado August 26, 2008 referring to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. REUTERS/Rick Wilking (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008 (USA)

Why did the murder of a preacher in a Sikh temple in Vienna spark riots in the faraway Indian state of Punjab, in which thousands took to the streets to torch cars, trains and battle security forces?

The root cause may lie in India's caste system that Sikhism officially rejects, but that still grips swathes of India's billion-plus people, including in Sikh-dominated Punjab state in northwestern India.

"Via Vienna, Sikh caste war returns, sets Punjab aflame" ran the headline of the Hindustan Times.

The preacher, Guru Sant Rama Nand, 57, was killed in a gurdwara in the Austrian capital in an attack by six men armed with knives and a gun.

He was from the Dera Sach Khand, a religious sect separate from mainstream Sikhism that has a large support base of Indian Dalits, or "untouchables", and other lower castes.

The leader of Dera Sach Khand, Guru Sant Niranjan Das, 68, was wounded in the attack.

The thousands who went on the rampage in Punjab on Monday were mainly Dalits. Authorities have imposed a curfew in parts of the state, in which three protesters died on Monday in clashes with security forces.

The Dera Sach Khand sect was inspired by the 15th century spiritual leader Ravidas, himself from a lower caste. It differs from mainstream Sikhism, for example, in that it reveres living gurus such as Sant Niranjan Das. Some pious Sikhs find this concept offensive.

Traditional Sikhism recognises 10 gurus who led the community from the founding of the faith by Guru Nanak in the late 15th century. The 10th guru named the religion's holy book, known as the Guru Granth Sahib, as his successor.

Sikhism does not recognise caste, but "the clash in a Vienna gurdwara and the mob fury are yet another manifestation of simmering discontent that Dalits in Punjab feel due to increasing social inequality and oppression in a society that was supposed to be free of it," writes the Times of India.

In the relatively prosperous state, "caste prejudices and biases remain steeped among followers of Sikhism...facing-off in a festering, endless dispute over rights, rituals and religion."

In such a context, the appeal of sects such as the Dera Sach Khand is easy to understand.

"The legitimacy given to these deras and the steady weaning away of the faithful from the gurdwaras has often rattled the Sikh clergy and its more hardline followers pitting them against the deras," writes the Indian Express.

The caste conflict may have been the cause of the Vienna attack as well.

"Caste has moved beyond India with Indian diaspora as the latter does not move as individuals but takes its cultural baggage along," Vivek Kumar, who teaches sociology in New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, told the Times of India.

According to some reports, the attackers objected to the temple allowing a living guru to speak in the presence of the holy book.

But Vienna police say they are still unclear on what motivated the kiling.

The temple which was attacked is newer than Vienna's two other Sikh temples and had been gaining popularity, but so far there had been no hostilities between the different groups in Vienna, said Bernhard Fuchs, an ethnologist at Vienna university.

And the city's two other Sikh temples have distanced themselves from the attack and condemned it as against the basic tenets of the Sikh faith.

"The foundation of Sikhism besides brotherly love and care for others, is also the principle of non-violence," they said in an open message.

"Based on these principles, the Sikh religious community in Austria therefore reject all act of fanaticism and condemned this outrageous attack in the strongest term."

The tension in France because of the Gaza conflict has taken a new twist with a charge by three Muslim youths that Jewish militants had beaten them up because one of them had thrown away a pro-Israel pamphlet. The focus until now has been on rising anti-Semitic attacks, presumably mostly by Muslims angered by Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, but this puts another layer of complexity on the story. The attack happened almost a week ago, on Thursday Jan. 8, but the details are still unclear and the versions being put out don’t match up.

According to the victims’ account, about seven youths from the Ligue de Défense Juive (Jewish Defence League) were distributing the pamphlets on Jan. 8 outside Janson de Sailly, a leading lycée, secondary school, in a chic district of Paris, and handed one to a pupil of North African Arab origin.  When he threw it away, the JDL militants beat up him and one or two other youths of Maghrebin origin who came to help him. The lycée pupil and two others then filed a complaint with the police against the Jewish militants and police are now investigating the incident.

An LDJ spokesman flatly denied any link to this attack and said it does not distribute these pamphlets outside of lycées, only at universities. On its website, it was less clear, saying only that it “denounces the aggression against two pupils of the Janson de Sailly lycee. The LDJ rejects every form of violence.” The LDJ spokesman said his group had the same name and logo as the militant Kach movement banned in Israel and the Jewish Defence League banned in the United States — in both cases because they were suspected terrorist organisations — but had nothing to do with these groups.

CRIF, the umbrella group of Jewish organisations that has been at the forefront publicising a wave of anti-Semitic attacks here since Israel began its assault on Gaza on Dec. 27, has denounced the attack and urged police to track down “the authors of this act and punish them as the law foresees.” It noted the victims were French of Maghrebin origin but said nothing about the background of the attackers.

The Grand Mosque of Paris said on Wednesday afternoon that only two of the three pupils attacked at Janson de Sailly were of Maghrebin origin and urged an especially thorough investigation “if the racist character of this attack is proven.”

Although the attack occurred on Thursday Jan. 8, Le Monde broke the story on the afternoon of Monday Jan. 12 and the public prosecutor confirmed police were investigating late on Tuesday Jan. 13. “The aggressors have not been identified and the investigation is continuing,” a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said.

Political scientist Samuel Huntington, whose controversial book “The Clash of Civilizations” predicted conflict between the West and the Islamic world, has died at age 81, Harvard University said on Saturday. You can see our story here.

In his 1996 “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” which expanded on his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Huntington divided the world into rival civilizations based mainly on religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Confucianism and said competition and conflict among them was inevitable.

His thesis was one of the most influential, controversial and widely debated in foreign affairs circles in the past decade or so.

His focus on religion rather than ideology as a source of conflict in the post-Cold War world triggered broad debate about relations between the Western and Islamic worlds, especially in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

Huntington famously asserted that “Islam has bloody borders.”

“In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame,” he wrote. ”This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines.”

Fifteen years later, tensions between India and Pakistan are near the boiling point in the wake of last month’s attacks in Mumbai by Islamist militants; an Israeli military offensive has killed more than 300 people in Gaza over the last three days in the deadliest violence in the territory in decades; hundreds died in Muslim/Christian clashes in Nigeria last month; and the United States finds itself bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But next month America will swear in its first black president, a Christian whose Kenyan father had an Islamic background. And there has been an outburst in recent months of inter-faith dialogue and initiatives, including at the street level in tense places such as Nigeria.

What do you think? Are civilizations doomed to clash, especially if they are divided by religion? Or can cooler heads prevail?

There’s one thing you have to say about the World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace — when they disagree about something, they don’t mind saying so. The final session of their third conference in Paris on Wednesday was the stage for an exchange of dramatic charges and counter-charges abut the perennial problem of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The atmosphere was tense in the UNESCO conference room where the 3-day session took place and several participants spoke up to calm down their more agitated colleagues. Since this was the only session the media was allowed to witness, it would have been easy to conclude that the imams and rabbis needed to seek peace among themselves first before preaching it to others.

(Photo: An imam in Berlin, 3 Aug 2007/Fabrizio Bensch)

But there were actions that spoke louder than words in the hall. Several participants were frowning as the finger-pointing progressed. Others turned to the nearest participant of the other faith to chat. At one point, a rabbi in his Hasidic black hat and coat walked over to an imam wearing a karakul hat, embraced him warmly and sat down for a lively talk. A television camera would have had a field day contrasting the words and the deeds in evidence there.

(Photo: A rabbi in Debent, Russia, 17 Sept 2007/Thomas Peter)

At the news conference ending the session, the organiser Alain Michel announced there had not been enough time to agree on a final resolution — a sign of a serious disagreement, as any reporter who has covered summit meetings could tell you. But he proceeded to say the meeting had agreed to set up a steering committee that would work out joint statements whenever there were major acts of violence in the name of religion. Names of the committee members were read out and all seemed to be satisfied that this was progress. Here is my news report about the meeting and here’s the official programme.

When it came to question time, I couldn’t help asking how they expected us to think of them as imams and rabbis for peace when they fought so much during the debate. Several got up to defend the meeting, saying they had made progress and it was only natural that there should be tension when it came to Israel and Palestine. Several participants came up to me afterwards, during the lunch, to give their view on why the meeting was more constructive than it seemed to be.

(Photo: Yahya Hendi)

The question elicited several nice quotes. “The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom,” said Yahya Hendi, the Palestinian-born Muslim chaplain at Georgetown, a Catholic university in Washington. “Blunt talk is not against the process, it’s part of the process,”said Rabbi Tsion Cohen of Shaar-HaNegev in Israel, who added that his community was near Gaza and often got hit by missiles from there.

A rabbi and an imam — both from outside the Middle East — pulled me aside to say basically the same thing about their respective sides. There’s a Middle East view and an international view (the rabbi called it the “diaspora view”) at discussions like this, and the occasional Middle Eastern clash is hard to avoid.

Rabbi David Rosen, president of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, said that freewheeling session would have been better at a different time. “It’s not a bad thing if you do that at the beginning of the program. People feel they got it off their shoulders, they made their point and they get on to more practical things,” he said. Despite the programme, the meeting worked, he said, because it showed that imams and rabbis can meet and work with each other, contrary to a general impression many people have that they are fundamentally opposed. “It is not only possible but imperative for Islam and Judaism and their leadership to live in mutual respect.  That’s the real significance of this meeting.  Tha’ts the message that needs to get out,” he said.

(Photo: David Rosen)

Imam Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, an Italian Muslim leader, participated both in this meeting and in the Common Word conference with Catholic experts at the Vatican last month. He told me the imams and rabbis should keep their focus more narrowly on religious issues and not politics, as he said the Common Word group did. “We want to be involved in politics but not follow a political agenda,” he said. “We have to stick to our role” (as religious leaders). That last quote echoed a comment made by a rabbi during the open discussion.

(Photo: Yahya Pallavicini)

Rosen made another interesting point. Opening the conference on Monday, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade invited the imams and rabbis to hold their 2009 congress in Dakar. Wade is the current president of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and an interfaith meeting hosted by him could draw some high-level participation from across the Muslim world.

There are quite a few dialogues between imams and rabbis going on in different countries but they don’t seem to be that well known. We’ve written about some of them here. Are you surprised to hear there may soon be joint Jewish-Muslim declarations denouncing terrorism? Do you think they will succeed in doing this?