Tag Archives: Topic: Islam

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.

Free Beacon (embeds video): White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday the violent protests throughout the Middle East are not directed at the United States or U.S. policy but are a response to a YouTube video . . .

KXAN: UT bomb threat deadline passed, evac continues Duluth News Tribune: Universities in Fargo and Texas evacuated after bomb threats Post-Tribune: Threat made at Valparaiso University

BBC: Protesters in Khartoum entered the US compound, while the German and UK embassies were also attacked. The US compound in Tunis was also breached by protesters, who started a fire in the car park as police fired shots. There were further clashes in Yemen and Egypt. One person in Lebanon has died.

AP: Thousands of Kashmiri Muslims protested Friday against an anti-Islam film, burning U.S. flags and calling President Barack Obama a “terrorist,” while the top government cleric here reportedly demanded Americans leave the volatile Indian-controlled region immediately.

Christian Science Monitor: The violence in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen show the results of American ideals clashing with those of nascent Arab democracies. Caught in between are American Muslims.

Catholic Culture: Violent actions against blasphemy in the Muslim world are symptoms of a dangerous pathology with strategic implications,” said Thomas Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project and the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University. “At its root is the view, widely accepted among Muslims abroad, that anyone who offends Islam must be punished, either by the state or private actors.”

Catholic Culture: “Yesterday’s events in Libya and Egypt point to what is at stake,” he said. “We need to be respectful of other religious traditions at the same time that we unequivocally proclaim that violence in the name of religion is wrong.”

CNSNews: The organization representing the world’s Islamic nations on Wednesday condemned the attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt, saying it had consistently warned that “the abuse of freedom of expression” in a way that “hurt[s] the religious sentiments of Muslims” could have grave consequences

Australian: PAKISTAN has blocked access to an anti-Islam film as security measures beefed up around US diplomatic missions, following attacks on American consulates and embassies in Libya, Egypt and Yemen.

Chicago Tribune: Authorities in Afghanistan have ordered that YouTube’s website be blocked indefinitely to stop Afghans watching a U.S.-made film that insults the Prophet Mohammad which has sparked unrest elsewhere, government sources told Reuters on Thursday.

Forbes: After a protest at the American embassy in Egypt and the killing of four Americans, including ambassador Christopher Stevens, at the embassy in Libya, fingers were pointed at a bizarre YouTube trailer for a film called “The Innocence of Muslims.”

Wall Street Journal: Anti-American protests resumed in Egypt Thursday and spread to Yemen, where hundreds of young men breached the outer security rings of the fortified U.S. Embassy, battering a guard post with pick axes and setting vehicles aflame.

Boston Globe (AP): Federal authorities have identified a southern California man once convicted of financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official said Thursday.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: That’s what MSBNC contributors Mike Barnicle and Donny Deutsch, the University of Pennsylvania’s Prof. Anthea Butler (Religious Studies), and of course the Egyptian government argue with regard to the movie that mocks Mohammed . . .

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: From yesterday’s Opinion Juris post by Prof. Peter Spiro, one of the leading international law scholars in the country . . . As the regime of international human rights grows thick, however, that justification should no …

AP: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked a Florida preacher Wednesday to withdraw his support of the anti-Muslim film blamed for fueling the fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Reuters: Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called on all Muslims to back the rebels in Syria, saying the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad would bring them closer to the ultimate goal of defeating Israel, according to an audio recording posted on the Internet on Thursday.

NY Times: Turmoil in the Arab world linked to an American-made video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad spread on Thursday to Yemen, where hundreds of protesters attacked the American Embassy, two days after assailants killed the American ambassador in Libya and crowds tried to overrun the embassy compound in Cairo.

The HIll: A group of House conservatives is calling for foreign aid to Libya and Egypt to be stripped from a six-month federal funding bill set for a vote on Thursday.

YNetNews: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi asked the Egyptian embassy in Washington to take legal action in the United States against makers of a film attacking the Muslim Prophet Mohammad, the official state news agency said on Wednesday.

ABC: Somalia?s new president survived an assassination attempt on his second day in office when two suicide bombers blew themselves up Wednesday while trying to gain access into a heavily guarded hotel that is his temporary residence, officials and witnesses said.

CNSNews: On Sept. 11, the day Americans remembered the 2001 terror attacks on U.S. soil, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued a statement condemning “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.”

Google News (AFP): Iran has condemned a film insulting Islam that sparked a deadly protest in Libya killing the US ambassador, while Iranian media reported an anti-US protest over the movie would take place in Tehran on Thursday.

Google News (AP): An Israeli filmmaker went into hiding Tuesday after his movie attacking Islam’s prophet Muhammad sparked angry assaults by ultra-conservative Muslims on U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya, where one American was killed.

ArsTechnica.com: The government of Afghanistan has banned the YouTube page of the deeply offensive and anti-Islamic video, known as “Innocence of Muslims.”

Wall Street Journal: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood Wednesday issued angry denunciations of a U.S.-produced film that insults the Prophet Muhammad, raising fears that a new wave of violent protests will follow Tuesday’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic installations in Cairo and Benghazi.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy (embeds video): And same for all of you who mock young earthers, or devout Scientologists, or believers in miracles — and all who say that, for instance, racist or sexist religious beliefs are contemptible — and maybe even all those who, even politely, contend that rival religions’ views are wrong and will deny salvation to the holders of those views: The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. So says the Secretary of State, in quite categorical terms.

Wall Street Journal: Does President Obama want Israel to bomb Iran before the election? If we had more faith in this Administration’s competence, we’d be tempted to think so.

The Hill: Mitt Romney on Wednesday stood by a statement issued by his campaign criticizing the Obama administration over its handling of violent protests at American diplomatic missions in the Middle East, saying, “President Obama has demonstrated a lack of clarity as to a foreign policy.

AP: The American embassies in Algeria and Tunisia warned of more protests Wednesday, following attacks by protesters

Fox News: Protesters angered over a film that ridiculed Islam’s Prophet Muhammad fired gunshots and burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing one American diplomat, witnesses and the State Department said. In Egypt, protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner.

Reuters: The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three embassy staff were killed as they rushed away from a consulate building in Benghazi, stormed by al Qaeda-linked gunmen blaming America for a film that they said insulted the Prophet Mohammad.

Gatestone Institute: The same week that Republican convention delegates unanimously voted for a platform provision stating that judges should not consult foreign law or customs to guide them in interpreting American law, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled on the convoluted case of a bogus Muslim marriage which set the stage for a potentially bigamous Muslim marriage.

The Independent: A Christian girl who was detained after being accused of burning pages of the Koran in Pakistan has said she is scared for her life and fears “anyone who might kill us”.

HAARETZ: The White House’s response marks a new low in relations between Netanyahu and Obama, underscored by the fact that this is the first time Netanyahu will visit the U.S. as prime minister without meeting Obama.