Jewish and Christian groups have unveiled three separate ad campaigns to counter what they claim is hateful speech toward Muslims contained within an advertisement posted at some New York City subway stations.
The new ads tout religious tolerance and offer support to the Muslim community.
"Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors," reads one. "Support peace in word and deed," reads another. [CNN] Read more
Something serious happened at the United Nations this September, and it should be getting a lot more attention than it’s gotten. A string of Muslim heads of state rose before the General Assembly at its annual summit and demanded that America and the West substantially abridge their notions of freedom and human dignity.
What they’re calling for, in various forms, is an international treaty banning the “defamation” of particular religions or their sacred figures. In practice, they want Western nations to outlaw the publication or broadcast of ideas that Muslims would likely find insulting to Islam or its prophet. [Forward Association] Read more
.... But not all agree with this in Europe, which has a history of curtailing speech the government deems offensive or disruptive. Governments here do not have constitutions that enshrine the rights of individuals to express themselves, and are looking for ways to legally prevent their citizens from criticizing Islam however crudely.
.... Unlike the United States, free speech is limited in Europe with numerous statutes that ban hate speech, blasphemy, Holocaust denial and even phrases deemed insults to bureaucrats and police officers. [USA TODAY] Read more
These pictures show a man being given seven lashes in Indonesia after being found guilty of gambling, punishable by whipping under the region’s strict sharia.
Dozens of people turned up to watch the beating in the highly conservative country, which took place after Friday’s prayers, reported AP.
Four men were sentenced to the punishment after being found playing dominoes for money in a local cafe. [The Huffington Post] Read more
.... The greater lesson for non-Muslims is that, if Islam’s most prominent thinkers—the many ulema, muftis, sheikhs, and “Islamic thinkers” like Naggar himself—tenaciously cling to Islam’s teachings even when they defy objective science (not to mention grossly defame Islam), surely they must cling to those other ironclad teachings that deal with “subjective” matters, from freedom of religion and freedom of speech, to hostility, jihad, and subjugation for the infidel.
At one point in the debate, Qemany made this connection when he likened the mentality that would give sick people camel urine to drink, to the mentality that attacked U.S. embassies and killed people. In both cases, blind obedience and/or fanaticism is at work—and all to Muhammad’s words, which advocated drinking camel urine for health no less than they banned mockery of the prophet. [The Algemeiner] Read more
.... The article causing a fury is Article 36 of the new Egyptian constitution (under the duties and freedom section) that states that both genders are equal, but there is a caveat, as long as Sharia law is not affected.
It reads, “The state is obliged to take all legislative and executive measures to entrench the principle of women’s equality with men in the fields of political, cultural life, economic, social and other areas without violating Islamic law (Sharia).”
Feminists have come out in anger, saying no two people can have an agreement on Sharia, making such a statement worrisome and threatening to gender equality. Pessimists in Egypt argue it is the natural product of a religious state in the making. [Women News Network] Read more
.... Western politicians and liberal journalists, who continually spout that Islam is a noble religion of peace, are in reality propagating a deception that they have been deceived into parroting.The impression is that the entire Quran promotes peace, love, equality and tolerance for all.
That is far from the truth. Most Muslims fully understand that the few Quranic verses that seemingly promote equality, peace and justice are more often than not overridden/ nullified by later verses that validate such things as terrorism and legalistic restrictions on routine human and women’s rights.
You must remember that the Koran has never undergone any changes unlike the Bible and other religions. It is claimed to be the word of god and can never be changed that is why the followers and preachers of Islam still have archaic 7th century views.
I just wish the media and the PC liberals would see the truth in Islam, it's a false totalitarian ideology. I always ask this question to the PC people; Go and live in a Muslim country where the government uses Islamic (Sharia law) and let me know how it went? Islam has a strong ideological dimension - it seeks to control all aspects of life, from politics to how you have sex with your wife. [News24] Read more
Categorized by theme, August's batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity. [Gatestone Institute] Read more
.... Outraged Arab Americans in Dearborn, Mich., demonstrated in favor of anti-blasphemy laws last week. They demanded an end to any expression that they find religiously offensive — and thereby proved to be embarrassingly clueless as to why many in their communities left their own homelands to come to America in the first place.
The new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, recently lectured the U.S. on its decadence and wants a global ban on the caricaturing of Islam. He, too, forgot that he once fled to the United States to be educated and employed and to freely say things that would have gotten him killed in his native Egypt. [National Review Online] Read more
.... Whilst Haqqani is right to point out the issues of poor governance and development in Muslim majority countries, his article grossly over simplifies the long term impact of colonisation and the years of western support for authoritarian regimes on the progress on democracy and development.
His comments on the lack of socio-economic development similarly ignore the advances that has been made in many Muslim majority countries such as Malaysia and Turkey, as well as in the contributions of European and America Muslims minorities.
Moreover, his negative appraisal of ‘Islamists’ gives little respect to the Arab Spring and the potential progress that may emerge from newly elected leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and An-Nahda in Tunisia. [ENGAGE] Read more
Students from the University of Reading Atheist, Humanist, and Secularist Society (RAHS) were forced to leave the Freshers' Fayre this week after they labelled a pineapple "Mohammed" and put it on their stall.
Staff from the Reading University Student Union (RUSU), as well as a number of Muslim students objected and asked the society to remove it, with a statement from the society stating that they were told "Either the pineapple goes, or you do". [National Secular Society] Read more
.... Turkey under Mr. Erdogan has emerged as the world's top jailer of journalists. Mr. Ghannouchi, meanwhile, has declared that, for Islamist parties, democracy is merely a steppingstone toward "the long-term objective of establishing an Islamic government."
These developments don't concern Mr. Ramadan, who waves away the "empty controversies" dividing the region's Islamists and secular forces. He wants to keep the focus on evil Western governments and corporations, on Guantanamo and America's security apparatus, on an endless litany of Israeli crimes. Railing against these demons made him a media darling during the first decade of the war on terror. But, for good or ill, much of the region has moved on. [The Wall Street Journal] Read more
.... on Tuesday evening, with no preventative measures in place, the video was projected onto the busy bridge and quickly attracted the attention of locals who gathered to try and stop people walking over the verses.
Tensions rose when the demonstrators called in young people from the city's housing projects to help them, and erected barriers to keep pedestrians away.
One young woman was slapped for putting her foot on a verse.
Police sent in a riot squad but the situation was peacefully resolved -- and the demonstrators dispersed -- after an imam appeared on the scene and called for calm. [The Local] Read more
Internal feuds are threatening to unravel the political party of Egypt’s ultraconservative Islamist Salafis, as pragmatists try to shake off the control of hardline clerics who reject any compromise in their stark, puritanical version of Islam.
The fight for leadership could paralyze the Al-Nour Party, which rocketed out of nowhere to become Egypt’s second most powerful political force, behind the Muslim Brotherhood. Together, the Brotherhood and Al-Nour embodied the rise of Islamists to prominence after last year’s fall of Hosni Mubarak. [Associated Press] Read more
.... it's an even worse form of bullying to arrest children on trumped up charges of "blasphemy." Yet this is happening, time and again, in several Muslim-majority states. The latest examples from Egypt are only the most recent.
That's what the push for a global anti-blasphemy ban—which will not and must not succeed—is ultimately designed to do: rationalize such oppressive restrictions in those Muslim-majority states where they actually apply.
And, in practice, that means religious minorities, including children, will inevitably be subjected to grotesque abuses. If this isn't a wake-up call for everybody who thinks they are committed to freedom and democracy, I don't know what will be. [The Daily Beast] Read more
Two Egyptian Christian children, Nabil Rizk, 10, and Mina al-Farag, 9, have been taken from their parents and arrested after a Muslim man accused the two youngsters of desecrating the holy Qur’an in a small village in Bani Sweif in the Nile Delta region.
They will face the public prosecutor on Sunday as the investigation begins.
According to reports, confirmed by local media, both secular and religious, the children are now facing an investigation for allegedly urinating on the holy book and putting it next to a mosque, al-Shorouk newspaper reported. [Bikya Masr] Read more
BURIED in a report that Defra – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – has granted £366,000 to an Islamic meat company in Norfolk is a reference to the recent opening of the Halal Pet Products Company, a misleading title as it only produces nosh for felines.
This called for immediate investigation, and sure ’nuff, the company has a website where an explanation is given for the need for Halal fare for Muslim-owned pussies. [The Freethinker] Read more
Members of a Calgary Muslim association appear to have removed marital advice from a website that suggested “lightly hitting” one’s wife in “extreme cases of disobedience” after a query about the content was made by Metro.
The posting dated Sept. 29 on muslimsofcalgary.ca appears to be an English-translated summary of two books written in Arabic by Sheikh Mohammed Abdelhaleem Hamed, titled “How to Make Your Husband Happy” and “How to Make Your Wife Happy.”
Other websites that have published the translation suggested a University of Alberta students’ association created it in the late 1990s; however, members of that group had not been reached at press time. [Metro Toronto] Read more
.... During a debate, the representatives of the U.K. pointed out that during World War II, Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" had not been banned, and said that Britain "would maintain and fight for its conception of liberty as resolutely as it had fought against Hitler."
Despite their principled stand, the liberal democracies ultimately lost the fight and have since implemented some of the restrictions on speech they once opposed.
If leaders of liberal democracies now don't even want to put up a fight, what are the odds that they will win the battle this time? Before giving in entirely, as Ms. Ashton appears to have done, they might first consider the cost of defeat. [THE WALL STREET JOURNAl] Read more
Two Coptic Christian children Nabil Nagy Rizk, 10, and Mina Nady Farag, 9, were arrested, Tuesday, for insulting religion in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Beni Suef, after the imam of their local mosque filed a complaint against them.
By order of the prosecution the two boys are now being held in the Beni Suef juvenile detention pending further investigation on Sunday. Ibrahim Mohamed Ali, the village imam, accused the children of tearing up pages of the Quran. [Ahram Online] Read more
.... Speaking about the report, religious expert Tim Jensen from the University of Southern Denmark said, “Danes may see the blasphemy law as helping integration because it promotes the acceptance of a multicultural and multi-faith society.
But it can also be problematic if it reflects a belief that the feelings of religious people have a special status and require special protection,” the Berlingske news agency reports. [IceNews] Read more
Ikea has apologised for airbrushing women out of the Saudi version of its furniture magazine - which was previously identical across the world.
The Swedish manufacturer said today that it regrets the decision to delete all woman and most girls from the Saudi printed edition and website, after questions were raised over the company's commitments to gender equality.
A comparison of the Saudi version alongside its other catalogue shows exactly the same photographs of interiors and products - but with all women erased. [MailOnline] Read more
.... The issue was put to a vote after Ismail Okur, the chairman of the Botkyrka Islamic Association (Islamiska föreningen i Botkyrka), filed a petition with the city in January demanding permission to allow public prayer calls at the mosque.
In an interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagen, Okur said earlier generations of Muslim immigrants "did not dare" to press the issue, but that he represents the "new guys" who are determined to "exercise their right to religious freedom" in Sweden.
Okur said: "We have lived our whole lives in Sweden. We have paid taxes. We have been exemplary citizens. We have given a lot to Sweden. Now we want to get a little back. Now we want to have religious freedom." [Gatestone Institute] Read more
.... So the question which naturally arises is on what, exactly, do Baroness Warsi and her British government colleagues intend to “cooperate” with the OIC? What “mutual goals” does the UK government think it has with an organization which seeks to limit universal human rights, curb freedom of expression, and establish its headquarters in the capital city of a UN member sovereign country?
The trouble with this kind of diplomacy is that it only works when both sides share the same perceptions of its intent. Otherwise, in a part of the world where “speak softly” is usually interpreted as a sign of weakness, it can be seen as acquiescence to the kind of agenda one would expect the British government to reject rather than encourage. [The Commentator] Read more
Ikea is being criticized for deleting images of women from the Saudi version of its furniture catalogue, a move the company says it regrets.
Comparing the Swedish and Saudi versions of the catalogue, free newspaper Metro on Monday showed that women had been airbrushed out of otherwise identical pictures showcasing the company's home furnishings.
The report raised questions in Sweden about Ikea's commitment to gender equality, and the company released a statement expressing "regret" over the issue. [Associated Press] Read more