Tag Archives: Topic: Islam

Volokh Conspiracy: A generally very good discussion, I think, from a State Department online press conference on Sept. 27. One can debate whether or not some of the condemnation of certain kinds of speech might go a bit far (though it doesn’t go as far, I think, as the general condemnation of “denigration of religion” that I had earlier criticized). But that’s much less significant in this context, I think, than the detailed, repeated, and unembarrassed reaffirmation of free speech protection . . .

AP: Military action will be needed to push radical Islamists out of northern Mali where they have carried out amputations and public whippings since seizing control of the region earlier this year, a top U.S. official said.

Wall Street Journal (via Google): Thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims angry over an alleged derogatory photo of the Islamic holy book Quran on Facebook set fires in at least 10 Buddhist temples and 40 homes near the southern border with Myanmar, authorities said Sunday.

Religion Clause Blog: Russia’s Duma is considering amendments to the country’s criminal code to specifically outlaw causing of religious offense.

AP: Pakistan’s blasphemy laws may be used to punish Muslims suspected of ransacking a Hindu temple, an intriguing twist for a country where harsh laws governing religious insults are primarily used against supposed offenses to Islam, not minority faiths.

AP: A court in Moscow ruled Monday that an anti-Islam film that has sparked violent demonstrations around the world can no longer be shown in Russia.

Washington Post: Some are al-Qaeda operatives who saw fit to rebrand in the wake of last year’s Arab uprisings. Others are radical Islamists whose goal is to impose strict religious rule on a region in political transition. All are calling themselves Ansar al-Sharia — Partisans of Islamic Law.

Washington Post: A Coptic Christian priest in Egypt says Christians have fled their homes in a northern Sinai town after receiving threats from suspected Islamic militants. Father Youssef Sobhi says Islamic militants have verbally threatened seven Christian families in the town of Rafah on the Egypt-Gaza-Israel border.

Voice of America: Islamic demonstrators clashed with police outside the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thursday, during a rally against the video of a film made in the United States that disrespects the Prophet Muhammad.

ABC: Chancellor Angela Merkel says Islam has become a part of Germany and she is urging her fellow citizens to show tolerance for Muslims.

One News Now: Several Christians were at the festival in Wayne County, handing out leaflets and engaging people in conversations, when Muslims began throwing stones, bloodying some of them. But instead of jailing the attackers, attorney Rob Muise of the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) says police threatened the Christians with arrest if they did not cease their activities.

Sacramento Bee (AP): A Turkish court issued an order on Wednesday allowing authorities in the country to block Internet access to the anti-Islam movie that has sparked violent protests across the Muslim world, an official said.

FoxNews (includes video): The anti-Islam film trailer that the White House has repeatedly blamed for sparking unrest in the Middle East had nothing to do with the attack that led to the death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, that nation’s president said in a television interview.

National Post: The English language needs a moratorium on the word Islamophobia, a term often used to describe bigotry against Muslims. Unfortunately, it is also used reflexively to denounce critics of Islam, who contribute to a valuable and ongoing debate concerning the relationship between the West and the worldwide Islamic community.

The Church Report: Egyptian prosecutors referred to trial Tuesday a well-known radical Islamist who tore up an English copy of the Bible during a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against an anti-Islam film produced in the United States.

AP: Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said freedom of expression must be used responsibly in a speech Tuesday to the Clinton Global Initiative in New York that hinted at looming tensions in the newly-democratic nation.

AP: A court in Sao Paulo has ordered YouTube to remove clips of the video that has sparked protests across the Muslim world.

Catholic Culture: Angered by the release of a video critical of Muhammad, a mob ransacked and burned down a Lutheran church and other church property in Mardan, a city in northern Pakistan.

NY Times: The interview with President Mohamed Morsi published this weekend prompted more than 1,200 questions and comments on our Web site and a surge of interest on Twitter. Thank you to everyone who participated, and the authors — David D. Kirkpatrick and I — are taking the opportunity to answer some of the most central and thought-provoking questions here.

UPI: His supporters told BikyaMasr.com that while Saber was jailed for posting an anti-Islam video online, a Salafist television presenter who showed 15-minutes of the insulting video hasn’t been charged.

The Church Report: BAUCHI, Nigeria – A suicide car bomber blew himself up outside a Catholic church in a remote part of northern Nigeria on Sunday, killing himself and at least two other people and wounding several, a Reuters witness said.

AP: Radical Islamists in control of northern Mali are becoming “increasingly repressive,” amputating limbs, whipping people in the streets and stoning to death a couple accused of adultery, a human rights group said Tuesday.

AP: Kuwait’s highest civilian court Tuesday rejected a government bid to rewrite the Gulf nation’s election rules, giving an apparent boost to the rising power of opposition groups led by Islamists.

AP: Former President Bill Clinton says the followers of Islam shouldn’t resort to violence when they hear their faith challenged in an increasingly diverse and Internet-connected world.

AP: President Barack Obama told world leaders Tuesday that attacks on U.S. citizens in Libya “were attacks on America,” and he called on them to join in confronting the root causes of the rage across the Muslim world.

Raymond Ibrahim at Middle East Forum: Two Christians living in the Islamic world under arrest and awaiting execution—the one charged with apostasy, the other with blasphemy—were just released . . . The fact is, there are many more Christians imprisoned in both countries for apostasy and blasphemy. Unlike Nadarkhani and Masih, however, the Western mainstream has never heard of these unfortunate Christians. And that’s the whole difference.

Washington Times: As the U.N. General Assembly convenes this week in New York, several leaders of mostly Muslim nations are suggesting that the world body consider sanctions on blasphemy, amid widespread protests against an amateur movie that denigrates Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

CNSNews: Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told CNN’s “Situation Room” last week that if freedom of speech in the United States provokes people in the Muslim and Arab world to take actions against Americans then “maybe we do need to rethink how much freedom is okay.”

AP: The Pakistani government on Monday distanced itself from an offer by one of its Cabinet ministers to pay $100,000 to anyone who kills the maker of an anti-Islam film that has sparked violent protests across the Muslim world.

LifeSiteNews: While administration at Mother Teresa Catholic secondary school says it allowed the prayer space to be created after a group of Muslim students lobbied for it last year, the move comes in obedience to Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Equity and Inclusive Education (EIE) policy which mandates this type of “religious accommodation” for all schools, whether public or Catholic.

AsiaNews.it: Tegal District leaders and Catholic representatives hold special meeting. Sister Madeleine rejects accusations and reiterates her schools’ policy, from kindergarten to high school. Muslim parents with children in Catholic schools agree, defending the latter’s independence.

Al-Monitor: Christian residents of Egyptian border towns Rafah and Al-Arish have so far refused to leave the city, as a local church had advised, after they received leaflets containing messages threatening to blow up their property if they do not leave within 48 hours.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy quoting the UN Secretary General: All human beings have the inalienable right to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly. These are very fundamental rights. But, at the same time, this freedom of expression should not be abused by individuals. Freedom of expression should be and must be guaranteed and protected, when they are used for common justice, common purpose. When some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected in such a way. So, my position is that freedom of expression, while it is a fundamental right and privilege, should not be abused by such people, by such a disgraceful and shameful act.

Religion Clause Blog: In Pakistan on Saturday, police told a court that their investigation in the widely followed blasphemy case against a Christian girl, Rimsha Masih, has shown that there is no evidence that the girl has committed blasphemy.

Education News (includes video): In late March 2008, on a local New York City show called “Inside City Hall,” the venerable African-American entrepreneur and politico, Percy Sutton, told host Dominic Carter how he was asked to help smooth Barack Obama’s admission into Harvard Law School 20 years earlier. The octogenarian Sutton calmly and lucidly explained that he had been “introduced to [Obama] by a friend.” The friend’s name was Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, and the introduction had taken place about 20 years prior. Sutton described al-Mansour as “the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men.” The billionaire in question was Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal . . .  For deeper background into why bin Talal might have been helping Obama, read Frank Miele’s excellent piece in the unlikely Daily Interlake of Kalispell, Mont.

McClatchyDC.com: The divide in world opinion over what constitutes free speech will be on display again next week at the United Nations, where heated arguments over a proposed blasphemy law were an annual feature for the past decade.

AP: In its boldest development in a generation, the Louvre Museum has a new wing dedicated to Islamic art, a nearly (EURO)100 million ($130 million) project that comes at a tense time between the West and the Muslim world.

Breitbart News is doubling its reward–to $100,000–for one of the missing pieces of Barack Obama’s past, which may be the key to understanding his collapsing Middle East policy: the “Khalidi tape,” a video kept under wraps by the Los Angeles Times since April 2008.

Reuters: Legal limits and social pressures against religion have risen to the point where three-quarters of the world’s population live in states where practicing their faith is restricted in some way, a new study said on Thursday.

New York CBS Local: On the region’s subways and buses, most ads we see don’t get much attention. But that may change with a pro-Israel ad that will soon grace MTA property which reads: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh offers more details about a video that has circulated on the Internet. See also this earlier Alliance Alert Post: Obama’s DOJ Can’t Say Criticizing Religion Will Remain Legal | Congressional Testimony Video

Washington Post: The Iranian government, determined to limit Western influence and defend itself against cyberattacks, appears to have laid the technical foundations for a national online network that would be detached from the Internet and permit tighter control over the flow of information.

Reuters: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday the maker of an anti-Islam film that triggered violent protests across the Muslim world abused his right to freedom of expression by making the movie, which he called a “disgraceful and shameful act.”

Ahram: Coptic Christian schoolteacher sentenced to six years in jail for posting cartoons on Facebook deemed insulting to Islam, Prophet Mohamed and President Morsi.

Richard M. Salsman at Forbes: The so-called Arab Spring” of 2011 – in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya – was supposed to entail an overthrow of Arab tyranny, autocracy, and militarism, in favor of political freedom, reasoned deliberation, and lawful government. But that’s only what the democracy-obsessed Western media claimed at the time; it was never the likely outcome for those who knew what majority opinion had been in the Middle East for these many past decades. The opinion has been poisonously Muslim, its results both savage and brutal. What a hoax was the “Arab Spring.”

The Hill: A human-rights group criticized the White House on Tuesday for asking Google to consider taking down a controversial anti-Muslim video. Meg Roggensack, a senior adviser for Human Rights First, argued the request undercut the government’s responsibility to protect free speech.

Gatestone Institute: Protests over an American-made anti-Islamic YouTube film, Innocence of Muslims, have spread to Europe. Muslim rioters have clashed with police in several European cities, and more demonstrations are being planned. The protests are part of widespread anger across the Muslim world about the amateur film, which ridicules Islam and depicts the Muslim Prophet Mohammed as a fraud, a madman and a sexual deviant. Muslims in many European countries are calling on governments to outlaw the controversial film. They are also pressing elected officials to enact anti-blasphemy laws that would criminalize the criticism of Islam. As most European countries lack American-like First Amendment protections, the momentum is building for the imposition of legal curbs on free speech when such speech is perceived to be offensive to Islam.

Religion Clause Blog: As previously reported, in June the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated 19 criminal contempt citations issued by a Minnesota federal district court against a Somali Muslim defendant who, for religious reasons, refused to stand when the court convened and recessed.

AP: Indonesians enraged over an anti-Islam film hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta on Monday, marking the first violence in the world’s most populous Muslim country since outrage exploded last week in the Middle East and beyond.

Franc24.com: France announced Wednesday it will close 20 embassies across the Muslim world on Friday after French weekly Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed naked, amid growing unrest over an anti-Islamic film that has left dozens dead.

National Review has embedded the video. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez refuses to confirm that the DOJ will not take any action to outlaw criticism of any religion.

allAfrica.com: Rokhaya*, a 23-year-old university graduate who earlier this year was forced to marry a 48-year-old rich man, agrees: “Polygamy is hell and a pack of lies.”

Washington Post: Indonesians are calling for the producer of an anti-Islam film to be punished by the United States.

Fox News: Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov wrote on Twitter Tuesday that access to the online video sharing site will be blocked in Russia if its owner, Google, fails to abide by a court order banning the showing of the film that was produced in the U.S. and mocks Muslims and the prophet Muhammad.

World Net Daily: The prosecutor general requested that the eight defendants be arrested by Interpol and handed over to Egyptian authorities. The news agency said prosecutors decided to charge the defendants after reviewing accusations that the defendants helped in the production and online promotion of movies defaming Islam and Muhammad.

Wall Street Journal: Mitt Romney said Palestinians don’t want peace with Israel and that establishing a Palestinian state is far easier said than done, according to additional sections of a recently surfaced videotape that have already caused a headache for the Republican presidential nominee.

Washington Post: A court in southern Egypt has sentenced a Coptic Christian teacher to six years in prison for posting on his Facebook page drawings that it ruled insulted Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and comments deemed an affront to the country’s president.

LFPress.com: Ontario Education Minister Laurel Broten gave the thumbs-up on Monday to a Catholic high school in London that plans to open a Muslim prayer room for some of its students.

The Church Report: Pastor Terry Jones, who received global attention in 2010 when he threatened to burn a copy of the Koran, has been barred from entering Germany.

Pakistan Today: An Islamic group headed by influential cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Friday demanded Pope Benedict XVI apologise to Muslims over inflammatory remarks he made in 2006.

Catholic Culture: Ahmed Abdullah, a Muslim cleric also known as Abu Islam, desecrated a Bible during a 9/11 protest outside the United States embassy in Cairo, according to a report from the Assyrian International News Agency.

AFP: Several Christian leaders are being held in protective custody in Niger after demonstrators angry at an anti-Islam film ransacked a major Catholic church, a local journalist said Sunday.

Catholic Culture: In a September 15 address, Pope Benedict XVI explained why a commitment to religious freedom is a requirement for stability in the Middle East.

SMH.com.au: Both sides of Parliament have united to condemn the violent protests in Sydney, saying Australians would be shocked and sickened by the riots.

Global Post: The rage over a US-made anti-Islamic video spread to Europe over the weekend, when clashes took place between protesters and police in several cities even as mainstream Muslim community leaders joined European governments in condemning violence sparked by the film.

Religion Clause Blog: The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has added a page to its website titled “What You Should Know about the EEOC and Religious and National Origin Discrimination Involving the Muslim, Sikh, Arab, Middle Eastern and South Asian Communities.

Reuters: Crude oil should be at least $150 per barrel, Iran’s oil minister was quoted as saying on Sunday, and the sanctions-hit country’s OPEC governor said current oil prices were not high enough to threaten the world economy.

Rasmussen: Voters overwhelmingly rate protecting freedom of speech as more important than not offending other nations and cultures despite claims that the latest outbreak of anti-American violence in the Middle East is due to an amateur YouTube video that mocks Islam.

Business Insider: An armada of U.S. and British naval power is amassing in the Persian Gulf in the belief that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program.

Kelly Boggs at Baptist Press: The right to free speech and the unrealistic expectation to never be offended cannot coexist,” rightly observed Philip Sharp. It seems, however, that the “unrealistic expectation” cited by the retired U.S. Army Ranger and author is being viewed increasingly as a right.

Jonah Goldberg at National Review: Over at MSNBC, a riot of consensus broke out when contributors Mike Barnicle and Donny Deutsch as well as University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler all agreed that the people behind the video should be indicted as accessories to murder.

WorldNetDaily: The Egyptian military official said today that Islamic groups are threatening to slaughter “the whole Christian Coptic community” in the city of Naja Hamadi, located about 60 miles from Cairo. Naja Hamadi contains a large Coptic community.

Christian Institute: Sharia law is undermining the “concept of judicial equality” at the expense of the vulnerable, a prominent peer has warned. Baroness Cox says Britain no longer operates “under a single legal code” and that Sharia is “effectively a parallel quasi-legal system operating within some Muslim communities”.

John Hawyard at Human Events: Now we’re allowing a sham effort by sinister forces in the Middle East to present a movie very few people have actually seen – the YouTube videos under assault are its trailers – as the cause of coordinated attacks to drag us into an agonizing debate over how much freedom of speech we should be prepared to give up.

CNSNews: Separate statements made Thursday by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed the nub of the issue that has sparked anti-U.S. protests in many Muslim countries – the incompatibility between shari’a and the First Amendment.