Indonesia: Court upholds blasphemy law

Indonesia’s constitutional court upheld a controversial blasphemy law Monday that critics say limits religious freedom in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, ruling that the law is vital to religious harmony.

The 1965 law was challenged by a coalition of rights groups and civil society organizations who consider it discriminatory. But it is supported by religious conservatives, including the radical Islamic Defenders Front, which had gathered at the court and threatened to protest if the judges didn’t uphold it.

Although the law recognizes six official religions in the country – the standard forms of Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism – rights activists say it discriminates against minority religions, including Muslims whose beliefs differ from the mainstream.

The vast majority of Indonesia’s 235 million people are moderate Sunni Muslims.

Opponents say the law, which carries penalties of up to 5 years in jail and allows the government to ban groups that "distort" the official religions, should be struck down because it limits religious freedom – which is constitutionally protected in this secular country.

This has nothing to do with protecting other religions. Even the Govt defended the blasphemy law because:

The consequences [if the law is annulled] are that people, figures, could establish new religions, declare new prophets, new angels.

Oh, what a problem…

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• Christianity’s Surge in Indonesia (time.com): A religious revolution is transforming Indonesia. Part of the spiritual blossoming entails Muslims embracing a more conservative form of faith, mirroring global trends that have meant a proliferation of headscarves and beards in modern Islamic capitals. More surprising, though, is the boom in Christianity — officially Indonesia’s second largest faith and a growing force throughout Asia. Indeed, the number of Asian Christian faithful exploded to 351 million adherents in 2005, up from 101 million in 1970, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, based in Washington, D.C. … Not everyone, though, is celebrating Christianity’s boom. Some Muslims view the faith as an unwanted foreign influence, even though Islam, too, is an imported religion.  The surge is mostly coming from Evangelical and specially Pentecostal.
• Indonesia court upholds blasphemy law (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Indonesia blocks faith law change (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Indonesia Upholds Controversial Blasphemy Law (nytimes.com).

Russia: prosecutor charges HuT members with terrorism in Bashkortostan

”The suspects deliberately performed clandestine anti-Russian and anti-constitutional activities. They incited religious hatred by propagating their doctrines among the population, recruited new followers and prepared and disseminated extremist information,” the Russian Prosecutor General’s office said today.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, which calls itself a political party, is not classified as a terrorist organisation by the United States.
The group, which seeks to unite all Muslim countries into a unitary Islamic state, claims that it seeks to achieve its goals through peaceful means.
Russia, however, accuses the movement of having links to radical Islamist groups in Chechnya, and it was placed on a list of banned organisations by the country’s Supreme Court in 2003.

HuT is the same group that held an act in Indonesia to push for a “Global Caliphate”, have posted propganda extremist videos on Youtube (with mentions to European colonialism and support for Palestinian terrorists) and have incited war on the West.
Not only the Urals has seen a growth in HuT activities. Central Asia is seeing also a growing influence of this group, after receiving ex-jihadists from Afghanistan.
Related links:

1. Bashkortostan | Wikipedia
2. HuT America: Preaching hate, building a caliphate | IPT.  While HT (the “Party of Liberation”) says it is committed to advancing radical Islam by nonviolent means, it advocates violence (see here, here and here) and its prominent alumni include terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Abu Musab Zarqawi along with suicide bombers.
3. HuT’s activities in the United States: The Jamestown Foundation.
4. Hibz ut-Tahrir al-Islami | GlobalSecurity.org.

Afghanistan: Italian medical workers released

This is an update on this story:

Afghan authorities have released three Italian medical workers who had been detained for a week, clearing them of allegations that they were part of a Taliban plot to kill a provincial governor.

The Afghan intelligence service announced on Monday that the three Italians, as well as five Afghan employees of the Italian aid group Emergency, were freed on Sunday because they were no longer believed to be part of the alleged plot.

A sixth Afghan employee remained in custody.

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• 3 Italy aid workers freed in Afghanistan (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Afghanistan Frees Italian Aid Workers (online.wsj.com)
• Italian medical workers detained in Afghanistan freed (ctv.ca)

Spain: 16-year-old girl removed from class for wearing the “hijab”

The girls with their hair hidden in “solidarity” with Najwa.

El Mundo:

Najwa Malha, the 16-year-old Muslim girl who was removed from class for wearing the ‘hijab‘ (headscarf), has not come to school today. As her father has reported this morning, Mohammed Malha, the child is suffering from severe pressure and is getting psychological counseling.

The girl is depressed because he fears she will be excluded from the Institute Camilo Jose Cela , in the Madrid suburb of Pozuelo de Alarcón. Today the Institute’s School Board meets to study if they modify the rules of procedure specifying that “inside the building is not allowed to use caps or any other garment that covers the head.”

Meanwhile, Najwa will receive the solidarity of their colleagues and this morning, five children have gone to school with his head covered (four with the ‘hijab’ and one with a hood). “We’re going to support her whatever the risks “, has assured 14-year-old Fatima, a Spanish of Moroccan origin aged 14, whose father says he is supportive of this protest, but that he is not pushing her, as was reported yesterday by the center.

Her father, Jarid, says that “everyone can go to school dressed as he pleases. There is no rule.” Latifa, another youth who has come to class with her hair covered, said: “We do this to show solidarity with Najwa. We try to help her not to feel alone.”

As reported yesterday, the parents and their daughters could not attend their classes and were instead taken to a study hall, after going to school with their head covered in solidarity with the child.

According to the digital newspaper ‘Andaluspress.com’ , these children, Spanish nationals with Muslim origin, were able to enter their class yesterday, but after the break, around 11.30 hours, the three young women with ‘hijab’ were removed and taken to a study hall.

According to the father of one of the girls, the school admonished them that “they were just asking for trouble” to appear with their head covered in class. However, this family maintains that “it is their right” to do whatever they want and that their response has been that “have a duty to take because they are Muslim.”

The parent said that since then, the Institute has not allowed them to return to class and even gave them a warning, explaining what happened. In this situation, parents today have decided to accompany the students to ask for explanations and see what happens to their daughters.

When came to light the case of the 16 year-old who had her entry banned, the Director of the Institute Camilo Jose Cela de Pozuelo de Alarcón said that at “all time” they had complied with “the right to education” of the student and referred to the Article 32 of the Rules of Procedure of the Centre, which states that “inside the building is not allowed to use caps or any other garment that covers the head.”

The Education Department of the Community of Madrid said on Friday that the department is respecting the internal regulations of each school, which are approved by the School Councils. Furthermore, that respect is already reflected in the Organic Law of Education (LOE) and the Decree of Coexistence prepared by the Community of Madrid.

Education Department’s sources who have been in contact with the center ensure that the School Board could repeal section of its rules prohibiting wearing a headscarf in class.

Moroccan Workers’ Association (atime) criticized the decision that prevents Najwa from going to class for wearing the ‘hijab’ (veil) and requested the urgent intervention of the Department of Education of the Community of Madrid.

Najwa, of Moroccan family but a Spanish national, has ensured that she would use the Islamic headscarf “whatever happens.” The youth took this decision against her parents, who tried to persuade her not to wear it.

About her motives, Karam said it was “an act of submission” to her God, which, in her view, must be respected, but she also said that she wears it because she likes to.

ABC:

Najwa didn’t appear in the center, although her father did: “I came to submit a medical report because she has yet to enter a psychiatric facility. She has a deep depression.” She has spent the night in the hospital Puerta de Hierro. “This afternoon, her doctor will decide whether she is entering it or not.”

As of yesterday, “with rumors that are going to b expelled and the pressure of today she is getting worse. Since then, she neither eats nor sleeps, is really bad,” said his father.” “Now”, he continued, we are more worried because of her health that because of her schooling. Mohamed repeated to the media that Najwa is entitled to wear the” hijab “guaranteed in Article 16 of the Constitution.

Oh, well, so if another teenager wants to go naked because the religion of the “naked saints” tells her to, are we also going to let her attend class because if not “she would need counselling”?

This girl wears it because she thinks it’s cool and possibly as a rebellion. But what really is strange in this case (as some commenters noted in the article) is that she is doing something because of her deep commitment “whatever happens”, but then, when she is removed from class, she feels depressed. Isn’t that a little bit strange?

There is another fact to highlight: Spanish Government wants to forbid the presence of crucifixes from public schools  and now this girl  (and her companions) wants to use a non-Christian (Muslim) religious symbol against the express regulation of the school. Speaking about equlity of religions.

Lastly, the School Board has teachers, parents and schoolchildren as members. The rule was mainly stablished, as in other schools, perhaps to prevent people from having a dirty hair and transmiting and spreading lice between the schoolchildren.

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• Girl, 16, banned from school for wearing hijab in Spain (telegraph.co.uk)

Syria: columnist for Govt daily Al-Thawra blames US, Israel for Moscow bombings

Ibrahim Za’ir, columnist for the Syrian government daily Al-Thawra, stated

that the U.S. had carried out the attacks with the aim of forcing Russia into making concessions to help resolve the crisis with Iran, and also to push Russia into signing the arms reduction treaty: “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that regional and international elements may have been behind the criminal operation that caused… the killing of 40 innocent civilians…

“Like the innocent victims of terror operations in Moscow, Dagestan, and other places in the world, the perpetrators of these operations also did not know the political goals of the operations [that they carried out]. [These perpetrators are] young men or women, in the full flower of their youth, who have been brainwashed with hatred and whose minds have been filled with elements of religious and ideological consciousness removed from the textual context of the books [holy to] the monotheistic religions – particularly [those] of the religion of Islam [i.e. the Koran] that bans the killing of innocents.

“But the planners of the terror operations know full well how to exploit the religion to accomplish their unique goals. It is they who are the most distant from Islam and its commandments… [The fact is that] the leader of the terror operations in the Caucasus, who was killed by Russian intelligence about a month before the recent Moscow operations, was… Sa’id Buryatsky, a Russian whose real name is Alexander Tikhomirov, who was connected to several foreign intelligence networks, particularly the American CIA.

“The U.S.’s condemnation of this does not mislead us. Many terror organizations have weapons and explosives… manufactured by the U.S. and Israel, sent to them via Georgia and other countries close to the U.S.

“Against this backdrop, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s trip to Venezuela to sign 30 agreements with President Hugo Chavez can be understood. Several U.S. and Western newspapers [saw these agreements] as Russia’s response to Washington, and as an indirect accusation against it, vis-à-vis the two Moscow subway bombings… [Washington had] hoped that this terror operation would pressure the Russian leadership to make many concessions in all things regarding the signing of the Strategic Missile Arms Limitation Treaty – SALT II [sic][1] with Russia not demanding that the U.S. stop its missile defense project in Eastern Europe and change its position towards Iran, and [forcing] Russia to impose harsh sanctions on Iran [in accordance with Washington's wishes]…

Syria, that country which is a dictatorship and which is giving Scud missiles to Hizbullah.

Somalia: 4 Christian Orpahanage Workers Beheaded by Al-Shabab

Link.

The four of them were offered to renounce Christianity and go back to Islam but none of them accepted. Four martyrs more.

Egypt: Acid attack on Dina el-Gowhary, convert to Christianity

To know the backgroung of this story, click here.

Dina el-Gowhary, the 15-year-old Egyptian Muslim-born girl who converted to Christianity, was subjected to an acid attack, the latest in a string of failed attempts by Muslim fanatics against her and her father, 57-year-old Peter Athanasius (Maher el-Gowhary), who converted to Christianity 35 years ago. Several Fatwa’s were issued calling for the “spilling of his blood,” which makes their lives in constant danger in the face of the reactionaries and advocates for the enforcement of Islamic apostasy laws, which call for the death of a convert.

Dina said that three weeks ago as she ventured out from their hiding place in Alexandria with her father to get some bottled water, her jacket was set on fire due to acid being thrown at her. “My father quickly took my jacket off before the fire reached my arms. Ever since then I am terrorized to go out in the street, with or without my father.”

Through an aired interview with Freecopts advocacy Dina addressed an open letter to President Mubarak of Egypt begging him to save her and her father and allow them to leave Egypt.

She said that she had written previously to President Obama, who got her message and responded to it (AINA 11-17-2009). It was reported that the el-Gowharys met with the US Committee on International Religious Freedom on their last visit to Egypt in January 2010, and that they have asked for asylum in the United States (Fox News video).

No international outrage, as ever.

That asylum, Mr Obama. When will it be given?

Europe: The halal market grows

This is Beurger King Muslim, a fast-food clone with an important difference: it is halal, serving hamburgers and fries that conform to Muslim dietary laws.

“I used to go to McDonald’s once a week, but all I could eat was the Filet-O-Fish sandwich,” said Ms. Guenineche, a fashionable French-Algerian girl in low-slung jeans and a tight top who, despite wearing her long hair loose, eats only halal. “Now I come here.”

American fast-food restaurant chains have long tailored their menus to local tastes and habits around the world, but one market they have largely missed is the growing Muslim population in Europe, five million strong in France alone. Europe’s observant Muslims have had to thread their way through a world laden with pork-filled wursts and bloody beefsteaks, taking meals outside their homes at the occasional kebab shop instead.

Now there is Beurger King Muslim, whose name is a play on that of the famous American hamburger chain and the French slang word “beur,” which means “Arab.” The restaurant’s logo is a globe with a burgundy ring around it and the Arab world covered by the letters BKM, which are also the initials of the restaurant’s three founders, Morad Benhamida, Abdelmalik Khiter and Majib Mokkedem.

But not only in France the halal market is booming. UK’s largest supermarkets chain has launched halal meat counters:

Store manager Emma Grant, said: “Demand in the store for Halal products is high and customers are delighted with the quality of the foods they can find here. The launch of the new counter means greater local choice and convenience for new and existing customers.”

This is the second Halal Meat Counter that the Birmingham-based National Halal Food Group has opened for Tesco customers within the region. Chief Executive Muhammed Yaquoob, said: “The launch of the counter in Hodge Hill means that customers can readily obtain a range of high quality meats which meet specific spiritual requirements.

Well, the market is just answering to new demands. This is just another evidence of the change that is happening. I don’t think forbidding it is the solution, despite being a result of the application of Sharia Law. Whatever the reasons for opening halal shops and restaurants, this could be just another cause of “ghettoizing” more the Islamic communities. This has two consequences: radicalization and lack of assimilation in the country.

Photo | Facebook.