Tag Archives: Topic: Islam

Forum 18: Sharofat Allamova, a Protestant from Urgench in north-western Uzbekistan, has been given one and half years of corrective labour, after being convicted under criminal charges brought for the “illegal production, storage, import or distribution of religious literature”

RT.com: Youth gang riots in the Swedish capital Stockholm have entered fifth straight night. Hundreds of mostly immigrant teenagers tore through the suburbs, smashing windows and burning cars in the country’s worst outbreak of violence in years.

Baptist Press: Iran’s treatment of its Christian minority has come under fresh scrutiny in recent months with some harsh reports on the country’s human rights record.

The Sun: Last night Muslim sources identified Adebolajo – who is claimed to be from a devout Christian family but converted to Islam in 2003 – as the man in The Sun’s video taken minutes after the soldier was hacked to death.

LankaWeb: According to our Press Department, U.K., on 18 May 2013, the Worldwide Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat and Fifth Khalifa, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, addressed a Special Reception held to celebrate the opening of the one of the biggest Mosque – Baitur Rahman Mosque in Vancouver, Canada.

Fox News: The American pastor jailed in Iran for his Christian faith has managed to get a letter out to his global supporters, thanking them for their prayers while confirming the brutality of his conditions.

Andrew Harrod of Front Page at The Legal Project: Speaking at a conference in Milan, Italy, on May 8, 2013, that city’s archbishop, Cardinal Angelo Scola, called for the abolition of blasphemy laws worldwide.  Such a step would significantly help protect globally the freedom of speech and religion desperately needed by Christians in particular while countering Islamic fanaticism with freedom.

AP: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that a decision by election overseers to disqualify his top aide from next month’s presidential race is an act of “oppression” and that he will take the case to the country’s supreme leader.

Catholic Culture: In recent weeks, Islamist rebels who assumed power in the Central African Republic in March have kidnapped the rector of the cathedral in the nation’s capital as well as the archdiocesan chancelloor.

AP: A Myanmar court sentenced seven Muslims to prison Tuesday – one of them to a life term – in the killing of a Buddhist monk amid deadly sectarian violence that was overwhelmingly directed against minority Muslims but has not led to any criminal trials against members of the country’s Buddhist majority.

Breitbart: The United States on Monday denounced what it called a spike in anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe and Asia, pointing to restrictions and violence against Muslims including the faith’s minority sects.

CNSNews: As the State Department prepares to release its annual report on international religious freedom Monday, a key issue for many Americans concerned about religious persecution is whether it will blacklist a handful of particularly egregious violators – or, as in previous years, ignore the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Religion Clause Blog: Today’s Deutsche Welle reports that in Afghanistan’s Parliament, lawmakers have withdrawn a bill that would have instituted a number of protections for women.  The action came after  religious parties complained that the proposed law was un-Islamic.

The Independent: report published by the Office for National Statistics revealed that the percentage of people following a Christian faith dropped from 71.7 per cent in 2001 to 59.3 per cent in 2011. More than one in 10 under 25s in the UK now describe themselves as Muslim.

MLIVE.com: “Detroit is where the Nation of Islam started. Detroit is almost considered now, a dead city. So we’ll come back to Detroit where we began and look at the condition of Detroit, pool our resources and try to buy properties in Detroit and start rebuilding one of the greatest cities in America where we’re concerned.”

Reuters: In France, the path to radical Islam often begins with a minor offence that throws a young man into an overcrowded, violent jail and produces a hardened convert ready for jihad

Middle East Forum: The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: “Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam.”

Catholic Culture: Halki seminary, opened by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1844 and closed by the Turkish government in 1971, remains closed despite calls by President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and others to reopen it.

AP: In the judiciary’s latest face-off with Egypt’s Islamist rulers, the country’s top council of judges decided Wednesday to suspend its participation in a government-backed judicial reform conference following a renewed push by lawmakers on a controversial bill that would force thousands of their colleagues into retirement.

CNSNews: Two months after the Obama administration released $250 million in aid to Egypt in what Secretary of State John Kerry called “a good-faith effort to spur reform,” the country is witnessing a surge of anti-Israel sentiment, much of it stoked by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

Religion Clause Blog: In Bible Believers v. Wayne County, (ED MI, May 14, 2013), a Michigan federal district court dismissed a suit for declaratory and injunctive relief and nominal damages brought by a group of traveling Christian evangelicals who were escorted away by police and threatened with dsorderly conduct citations at last year’s Arab International Festival in Dearborn, Michigan.

Catholic Culture: Islamists who recently marched on the nation’s capital wish to “topple the government” and “trigger chaos by means of violence,” the nation’s leading prelate told Aid to the Church in Need.

American Freedom Law Center: A Michigan federal judge today dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought by several Christian evangelists who were violently assaulted by a hostile Muslim mob while preaching at an Arab festival last year in Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest Muslim population in the United States.  Video of the Muslim assault went viral on YouTube.

AP: An Egyptian Christian teacher detained over charges of insulting Islam has been released on bail on Tuesday, her lawyer said.

Christian Institute: An MP has praised a cross-bench Peer’s attempts to curb the growth of quasi-legal systems in the UK, which discriminate against women.

Washington Post: Egyptian security officials say a Coptic Christian who stabbed his wife for converting to Islam has killed himself by jumping out of a fourth-story courthouse window.

Religion Clause Blog: Naharnet today reports that a court in the Saudi Arabian city of Khobar has sentenced two men for helping a young woman, identified only as “the girl of Khobar”, convert to Christianity and flee to Sweden.

Boston Globe: Amnesty International has called on Egyptian authorities to release a Coptic Christian schoolteacher held for contempt of Islam.

Andrew Harrod at The Legal Project: Yet again depictions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad are causing controversy. The French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo has published a special edition released in January 2013 entitled La Vie de Mahomet, 1ère partie: Les débuts d’un prophète (“The Life of Muhammad, Part One: The Debut of a Prophet”; part two will follow in June 2013). Press reaction in both France and Germany, however, has not been uniformly welcoming, demonstrating once more a media aversion to open examination of Islam.

Public Discourse: Uncover and halt the activity of illegally functioning places of worship”; “Uncover and halt the distribution of religious literature and informational materials of religious content in non-approved locations”; “Uncover and halt the carrying out on the territory of the country of illegal missionary activity.” These are three of 74 measures in a draft Plan to implement Kazakhstan’s proposed new State Programme to Counter Religious Extremism and Terrorism for 2013-2017, in its final stages of preparation and seen by Forum 18 News Service. The State Programme with its Implementation Plan would require video-cameras in all places of worship and teaching on “traditional religions” to become a compulsory school subject. The General Prosecutor’s Office in the capital Astana – which is preparing the State Programme – refused to discuss it with Forum 18. “Religious activity across the board will be more and more restricted,” one member of a religious minority told Forum 18.

Christian Post: The mass exodus of millions of Christians from one part of the Islamic world to another as the result of persecution by Muslims has reached epidemic proportions, says a Middle East and Islam expert. In fact, Christians may completely disappear from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt, warns the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Big News Network: Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has decried Buddhist monks’ attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, saying that killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable”.

Globe and Mail: While the Christian faith continues to dominate Canada’s immigrant profile, its proportion has been steadily fading. Where more than 78 per cent of immigrants to Canada prior to 1971 identified themselves as Christians, that proportion has dropped to 47.5 per cent among those who arrived over the past five years, the survey found.

Rod Dreher at the American Conservative: Do, do, do read Andrew Doran’s TAC essay today about how US Mideast policy toward Iraq and others is destroying Christianity in the land of its birth. Note well this . . .

Baptist Press: More than 52,000 letters have been written to American pastor Saeed Abedini, commending him for his strong demonstration of faith as he languishes in an Iranian prison. The Web-based campaign was launched by the American Center for Law and Justice ahead of Abedini’s 33rd birthday May 7.

Reuters: Suspected members of the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram armed with machineguns laid siege on the north-eastern town of Bama on Tuesday, freeing over 100 prison inmates and leaving 55 people dead, the military said.

The Times of Israel: Jews are currently permitted to ascend to the volatile holy site, but police forbid them from worshiping there.

Reuters: In France, the path to radical Islam often begins with a minor offence that throws a young man into an overcrowded, violent jail and produces a hardened convert ready for jihad.

AP: Myanmar President Thein Sein, nearly one year after sectarian violence first exploded under his watch, vowed Monday his government would do everything it can to protect the rights of minority Muslims living in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

American Freedom Law Center: After more than two years of intense motion practice and discovery, the City of Dearborn has agreed to enter into a settlement that includes a public apology for arresting several Christian missionaries who were peacefully preaching to Muslims at the Dearborn Arab International Festival in 2010.

Andrew Harrod of Front Page Magazine via The Legal Project: A Bruges, Belgium criminal court convicted a man for shredding a Koran on March 6, 2013. The court imposed a four-month prison sentence and a 600 euro fine upon him. He now additionally faces a revocation of a previous suspension of an 18-month prison sentence for having set a fire in a wood. This case highlights yet again the greater restrictions on speech in free societies outside of the United States and how these restrictions can limit open debate about Islam.

Religion Clause Blog: Yesterday in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, three people were killed and at least 50 were injured in clashes between security forces and demonstrators who are demanding a blasphemy law with provision for the death penalty.

DW.de: A major study of attitudes towards religion says Germans approve of openness towards other religions. But many are still suspicious of Islam. Former German President Christian Wulff earned much praise but also much criticism when said in a speech during his tenure, “Islam is also a part of Germany.”

Washington Times: Gaza “modesty police” are out in full force, and have arrested more than 40 in April alone, driving fears that Hamas-inspired Islamic fundamentalism is taking over the region.

Religion Clause Blog: The Pew Forum yesterday released a 226-page report titled The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society. Based on surveys in 39 countries between 2008 and 2012, it examines the social and political views of Muslims around the world. Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary . . .

Reuters: Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries, but they disagree on what it includes and who should be subject to it, an extensive new survey says.

AP: Despite significant improvements since the hard-line Taliban ruled Afghanistan, religious freedom remains poor, especially for minorities, and Afghans still can’t debate religion or question prevailing Islamic orthodoxies without fear of being punished, a U.S. commission said in a new report on Tuesday.

AP: Anti-Muslim violence flared anew in central Myanmar on Tuesday as angry mobs destroyed two mosques and set fire to hundreds of homes and shops in unrest that injured at least 10 people in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

Fox News: The American pastor jailed in Iran for his faith has been placed in solitary confinement and may now be suffering organ failure, according to family members in Iran who are increasingly alarmed at his deteriorating health.

Human Events: Christians throughout the Islamic world are under attack. Unlike Muslim attacks on Christians, which are regularly confused with a myriad of social factors, the ongoing attacks on Christian churches in the Muslim world are perhaps the most visible expression of Christian persecution under Islam.

AP: Wirathu has become the figurehead of a virulent strain of religious nationalism being spread by some of the most venerated members of Burmese society: Buddhist monks. Their core message is that Buddhists must unite against a growing Muslim threat.

HurriyetDailyNews: “If Atatürk did not establish this republic, would you occupy your position? What country’s citizen would you be? What number would you be among the wives of a sheik?” Genç told Şahin from his ranks April 25, Anatolia news agency reported.

Patrick Buchanan at The American Conservative: What benefit do we derive as a people to justify the risks we take by opening up America to mass migration from a world aflame with hatred and hostility over race, ethnicity, culture, history and faith? Why are we bringing all of the world’s quarrelsome minorities, and all the world’s quarrels with them, into our home? What we saw in Boston was the dark side of diversity.

Christian Post: More than half of evangelical Christians (52 percent) view Islam as “essentially a violent religion,” a new report from Barna Group reveals, though only about a quarter (26 percent) of all American adults feel the same way.

NTD Television: Human Rights Without Frontiers, an international NGO based in Brussels, presented its latest report on freedom of religion and belief around the world at the European Parliament on Tuesday.

Telegraph: The Islamic Society of North America, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has published an article that calls Andalusia – the hottest bit of Spain – a “paradise” that will return when “the only victor is Allah.”

Forum 18: As part of its controls on free speech in the area of religion, Kazakhstan’s government agency controlling religion – the Agency of Religious Affairs (ARA) – is stepping up pressure on religious communities to instruct their members not to speak about their faith with others in public, Forum 18 News Service has found. The ARA has already instructed people to report such individuals to the police.

Forum 18: Within 48 hours of a claim by Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev that “religious freedom is fully secured”, seven members of a small Pentecostal Church – four of them in their sixties – were given heavy fines for meeting for Easter Sunday worship. The leader, Aleksandr Balaev, was fined the equivalent of six months of his pension, he told Forum 18 News Service. Galina Gileva, who is 73, complained that during the raid police “brought me to such a position of stress that I suffered a heart attack”. The raid on the Church in Zhaskent was one of four recent raids on religious worship. Lt-Colonel Nikolai Narkhov, head of Karabalyk Police in Kostanai Region, refused absolutely to answer Forum 18′s questions as to why about 15 police officers and officials raided a Jehovah’s Witness meeting, seizing religious literature.

Financial Times: The Muslim Brotherhood is set to open offices inside Syria for the first time since the organisation was crushed there decades ago, in an apparent effort to capitalise on the increasingly Islamised rebellion.

Religion Clause Blog: As previously reported, last year in the case of R v. N.S., the Canadian Supreme Court held that whether a Muslim woman could be required to remove her niqab (full face veil) while testifying in court in a preliminary hearing should be decided by balancing concerns about trial fairness with religious freedom rights of the witness.

Ongoing attacks and retaliations by Muslims and Christians in Nigeria’s violent, religiously-and-ethnically-mixed Middle Belt has left more than 100 dead and dozens of properties destroyed since March of this year.

Religion Clause Blog: In Britain yesterday, in the House of Commons, MP Kris Hopkins opened a debate on Sharia Law, questioning whether the government planned to recognize and provide resources for Sharia councils.

WorldNetDaily: Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, said Abedini’s physical condition is worsening amid the continued beatings from prison guards. “Following a brief visit from family members today, we have learned Pastor Saeed continues to suffer from the effects of a brutal beating one week ago and continues to be denied medical care,” Sekulow said.

AP: The legal adviser of Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi resigned Tuesday, alleging that the Muslim Brotherhood has monopolized decision-making and encroached on the governing of the country.

Ed News: Up to 74 girls in Afghanistan have been treated after a suspected poisoning attack at their school, officials said yesterday.

EurasiasiaNet.org: The recent conviction of Turkish virtuoso pianist Fazil Say on charges of blasphemy is sending a troubling message to secular Turks that the Turkish government values religious expression only if it conforms to authorities’ views on religion.

Religion Clause Blog: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom yesterday released a 13-page special report titled Protecting and Promoting Religious Freedom In Syria.

Religion Clause Blog: USCIRF wants the U.S. to question violations of religious freedom and human rights in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Bangladesh.

AP: Bishop Boulos Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church and John Ibrahim of the Assyrian Orthodox Church were abducted as they traveled from the Turkish border to the city of Aleppo on Monday.

Christian Science Monitor: Earlier this month, residents of a Christian neighborhood in Gujranwala did something unprecedented when their settlement was attacked by Muslims: They fought back.

Daily Mail: Hymns have been dropped from assemblies at a Church of England school which has also introduced separate prayer rooms for girls and boys to cater to its mostly Muslim students. Daily assemblies at Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College, where 75 per cent of pupils are Muslim, are not based specifically on the Bible, but may make reference to it alongside other religious texts.

Boston Globe (AP): Egypt’s main opposition group and judges vowed Monday to step up their fight against plans by the Islamist-dominated legislature to debate a bill critics say aims to impose Muslim Brotherhood control over the courts.

Miami Herald: Controversial bills that would prohibit the use of Islamic law being applied in state courts, make the death of an unborn child a separate crime from an offense committed against the mother, and ban abortions based on an unborn child’s gender or race passed the Florida House Thursday.

Ken Blackwell at Townhall: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood’s governing majority, is not actually crucifying the nation’s Christians. But they are nonetheless actively persecuting Coptic Christians who are said to be one-tenth of the population of the largest Arab country. A photograph of two young men set afire during recent demonstrations is pretty striking.

AP: A look at recent major attacks attributed to the radical Islamic extremist network known as Boko Haram . . .