Muslim Heretics Conference

A Danish publisher is in negotiations to buy Sherry Jones’s novel about the child bride of Muhammad, which was dropped by Random House in America and pulled from bookshops in Serbia.

The Jewel of Medina tells the story of Aisha, one of Muhammad’s wives, from the age of six to 18 when Muhammad dies. It was bought by Random House US for a reported advance of $100,000, but then dropped after the publisher was told by academics and security experts that publication was potentially more risky than Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and the Danish publication of cartoons of Muhammad.

Last week, Serbian publisher BeoBook withdrew 1,000 copies of the book from shops across Serbia, following protests from an Islamic pressure group. BeoBook also apologised for publishing the novel.

Now small Danish publisher Trykkefrihedsselskabets Library (Free Speech Library) is in negotiations with Jones’s agent over publication of The Jewel of Medina in Denmark. Co-owner Helle Merete Brix said that the fact that Random House was prepared to pay $100,000 for the book showed its quality, and that she was determined not to “bow to any censorship”.

She added: “I think that whether you are Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu or atheist you have to be able to bear insults. You can’t say ‘I’m a Muslim, and that means I should be above criticism’. You can freely insult Jesus Christ, you can mock other religions.”

Brix said that, following Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the cartoons of Muhammad in 2005, which prompted protests across the Muslim world, she felt it was “deep in the mentality of Danish people that we will not tolerate people saying ‘you can’t say or publish that’…There is a growing awareness in Denmark that we have to keep it the bastion of free speech that it has been for many years.”

Brix expects to conclude negotiations with Natasha Kern, Jones’s agent, on Friday. Trykkefrihedsselskabets Library was founded in 2004, and published four books last year. Brix herself is also the author of Towards Darkness: The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, which was published in April, and editor-in-chief of www.sappho.dk, a Danish site about free speech, radical Islam, culture and politics.

Danish publisher hopes to publish ‘inflammatory’ Islam novel | Books | guardian.co.uk

The third annual interfaith Passover Seder meal at University Congregational Church in Seattle was a “bring your own wine” event. Tables for 300 guests were impeccably set with goblets and fresh flowers; two kinds of charoset (a pasty blend of fruit and nuts prepared according to both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic styles); two kinds of horseradish (raw and sauced); and baskets of matzo. The tables buzzed with lively conversation.
Rabbi Ted Falcon stood at the front with a guitar player and two singers. He is a trim, white-bearded man who is constantly making jokes, but he also has an air of underlying seriousness, intensity, even melancholy.
“OK,” he said. “We’ll begin on page 22 of your handout.” After two days of watching Falcon lead services, I had learned that he never begins on page one. He is likely to start on page 22, continue on page 11 and move on to page two.
“The Haggadah takes us on a spiritual journey,” he says. “We learn to be freed from our inner pharaohs, travel in our wilderness and form our own dreams of the Promised Land.”
The participants at this event—which sold out three weeks before—were Jews, Christians and Muslims. Many came from Bet Alef, Falcon’s “meditative synagogue” that meets in one of Seattle’s suburbs. Some belonged to University Congregational Church, which was led by Pastor Don Mackenzie until his retirement in June. Others belonged to an experimental congregation led by Sufi Muslim teacher Jamal Rahman and known as the Interfaith Community Church. (Rahman calls it a church, he says, for “lack of a better term”; it’s for people who meet on Sundays to explore their “spiritual paths” together, he explains.)
Falcon not only invited members of these three congregations to the Seder but asked Mackenzie and Rahman to speak. And Falcon didn’t want generic spirituality talk from them; he wanted Mackenzie to mention Jesus or Paul and Rahman to refer to Muhammad and the Qur’an.
This kind of interfaith gathering is an increasingly common phenomenon across the U.S. Interaction between people of different faiths is hardly new, but a qualitative shift occurred after September 11, 2001, says Kathryn Lohre, assistant director of Harvard University’s Pluralism Project. “There was a strong interfaith resurgence, driven by the desire of many people, perhaps Christians especially, to get to know their religious neighbors.”
Lohre says grassroots efforts have sprung up in many places. The old-style interfaith roundtables in which academics or religious leaders gathered to discuss their theological differences in formal meetings have given way to more informal efforts. These are often led or developed by laypeople, as in the case of the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago, the Faith House in Manhattan, Women Transcending Boundaries in Syracuse and Daughters of Abraham in Detroit. People meet to take part in service projects, talk about family, share holiday celebrations or eat ethnic food.
For Rabbi Ted Falcon, Pastor Don Mackenzie and Brother Jamal Rahman, formal and informal meetings have led to deep friendships. They call themselves the Three Interfaith Amigos. The three men host the Interfaith Talk Radio show in Seattle, meet weekly for mutual spiritual direction and have embarked on writing a book together. Not only has their friendship grown over the years, but their congregations have become closer. A member of Falcon’s synagogue leads the Gregorian chant group at Rahman’s congregation. A meeting at any of the three congregations will likely include members of the other two.
“When we first started, the three of us were like three circles touching,” Falcon says. “But over time, our circles have become more interlocked. We are still distinct circles, but we share more and more together.”
In Seattle, the work of the Three Amigos has spawned the Northwest Interfaith Community Outreach, led by business executive John Hale. This organization helps to sponsor interfaith events and encourages what it calls interspiritual communication. Hale has a salesperson’s easy smile and ready handshake—he seems like a man who would be comfortable in a corporate boardroom. So it was a little surprising and even unsettling to hear him speak the language of contemporary spirituality. Raised as a Presbyterian, Hale says that his upbringing “lacked nourishment,” a nourishment he didn’t find until he converted to Catholicism and discovered interfaith work.
For Hale, interfaith work involves both a conversation and a way of life. “It is heart work,” he says, “not head work.” The image that Hale likes—adapted from Meister Eckhart—is that each faith is a house with a basement. Deep in the basement is a trap door. If you go deep enough, you fall through the trap door into the shared river that flows beneath all faiths, the source of them all.
Hale’s assertion of oneness would likely make Lohre at the Pluralism Project cringe. Many people, she notes, think interfaith conversation means “moving toward relativism.” But “the assertion that ‘at root all religions are the same’ just isn’t true. If you do any kind of careful comparative religion, you understand just how different religious traditions are.” People do not need to adopt the rhetoric of “oneness” in order to care about their religious neighbors, Lohre argues. Relying on that approach misses the complexities of the various religions.
The Three Amigos would in some ways accept and in other ways reject Lohre’s point. “The question of boundaries is absolutely essential,” Falcon insists. “I must find a way to connect with another faith without taking on its identity. What we are doing is acknowledging other faiths as legitimate paths to a shared universal.” The three recently discussed a newspaper editorial that criticized Christian groups for holding Seders in their churches—as if the Seder is a tradition possessed by Christians. The three agreed with the critique. Their own interfaith Seder, they noted, is a Jewish celebration, led by a Jewish rabbi, but with interfaith elements.
The three are also dissatisfied with the kind of interfaith service in which participants try to find a lowest common denominator of faith. Far more intriguing and satisfying to them is offering hospitality to one another in their respective congregations and working with one another on common projects. When they speak at one another’s events, they speak from their own Jewish, Christian or Muslim tradition. They cite their own sacred texts and tell stories from their own traditions.
Nevertheless, the Three Amigos also tend to blur the boundaries. For example, Mackenzie has asked Rahman and Falcon to help him serve the elements of communion at a service at University Congregational. For him, it is deeply meaningful to have Rahman and Falcon holding the baskets of bread as the congregation comes forward to share in this central Christian ritual. It links the three men and the three faiths together. It is important to note that the UCC has a tradition of open-table fellowship at communion and that at University Congregational the elements are called “the bread of life” and “the cup of blessing.” This communion service does not focus on the christological distinctives of the meal the way that many other Christian services would.
Falcon said that, for him, being part of a Christian communion service at the church felt like being on sacred ground. Sharing bread and wine is very much a part of Jewish culture, and he has himself hosted the sharing of bread and wine with his two friends in many other contexts, including the moment of entrance into the celebration of Shabbat. He said that though he would not hold a communion service in his synagogue, he believed he could participate in communion without taking on a Christian identity. Falcon likens faith and faith traditions to vehicles—when he is in Mackenzie’s church, he is temporarily riding in that vehicle. That doesn’t mean the vehicle becomes his, but he can ride along in it for a while without compromising his own. Likewise, he can invite others to ride in his vehicle.
Mackenzie observes, “I think Christians have misunderstood the Great Commission. When Jesus says, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations,’ we think he means go and make Christians of all nations. But he doesn’t say that. To be a disciple of God means to be a disciple of love. Maybe he means that we are called to help people find the way of love.” Mackenzie, who was a Presbyterian minister before serving at University Congregational, cherishes the theological and ecclesial freedom he finds in the UCC and believes that it has helped to foster the deep interfaith relationship he has with Falcon and Rahman.
The Three Amigos also emphasize that they are all members of Abrahamic traditions. Their shared ancestor makes possible a conversation about oneness or about what Rahman calls their “large and dysfunctional family” that would be more difficult to conduct with those outside the Abrahamic faiths. The three are in conversation with Hindus and Buddhists, but “for now,” Rahman says, “we have a lot of work to do to heal the rifts in our own family.”
The Three Amigos have not shied away from difficult conversations. The height of personal conflict came in the still-unfinished process of writing a book together. “There was,” says Falcon, “a line written by Jamal about which I said, ‘If that line is in the book, then I am not in the book.’” As Rahman recalls it, the line was about the security wall built by Israel: “The wall may keep out suicide bombers, but it cannot keep out the cries of oppression and injustice that could break through a thousand walls.” For Falcon, who grew up in a passionately Zionist family, and who remembers that his grandfather planted a tree for him in Israel every year on his birthday, that particular sentence was too one-sided—it failed to recognize the suffering on both sides that is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The two resolved the issue by agreeing never to sign one-sided statements issued by their communities. Whenever a request comes to sign a petition or a public letter, they refuse if the issues are presented in a way that takes into account only one side of the story.
Rahman is a slight Bangladeshi man, a third-generation Sufi teacher with an infectious, musical laugh. He teaches about Islam primarily through stories, humor and quotations from the Qur’an and the poet Rumi. He is a Sunni Muslim who believes that he is called to serve Seattle’s unchurched. While not hawkish, he does highlight the suffering of Palestinians and issues a strong condemnation of Israel’s policies. “What kept us talking, what allowed us to wander into this territory and stay while we tried to understand each other better, was that we were already longtime friends,” says Falcon. “We had a lot invested in our relationship.”
The Three Amigos’ experience is emblematic of a larger reality in the U.S. today, says Haim Beliak, a Reform rabbi who is a member of several interfaith associations and a board member for the Progressive Jewish Alliance in the Los Angeles area. Because Christians and Jews in particular have been in conversation now for many decades, a level of trust has been built. Serious conversations about Israel and Palestine can take place between them because they have a history that is distinct from the tradition of Christian anti-Semitism. The challenge now is to include Muslims in such discussions and thereby resist what Beliak sees as a tendency in some quarters for Jews and Christians to pit themselves against Muslims by emphasizing a “Judeo-Christian” tradition. “When I hear that phrase,” Beliak says, “I feel as if I were being speared by the hyphen.”
Recently, Mackenzie, Falcon and Rahman reflected on who was showing up at interfaith events and who wasn’t. They acknowledged that it is often easier to communicate across the lines of faith than to communicate with members of their own traditions who are suspicious of interfaith work. Falcon is ordained in the Reform tradition, but his synagogue is unaffiliated; he invented the term “meditative Reform” to describe the kind of Judaism he practices. Rahman designates himself a Sufi teacher, which places him to a certain degree outside conventional Muslim structures—though those structures are comparatively loose.
On the Christian side, the three acknowledged that they have their own biases against conservative Christians, whom they tend to see as narrow-minded and prejudiced against Muslims. In response, the Amigos decided to attend together a service at Christian Faith Center, a megachurch with two campuses in Seattle, led by pastor Casey Treat.
During his sermon on the day the Three Amigos visited, Treat remarked that “Christians and Jews share the same God, but Allah is a different matter.” Mackenzie and Falcon both gasped. After the service, Rahman, Mackenzie and Falcon were invited to Treat’s office. Rahman used the occasion to say to him, “I don’t think Jesus would have said what you did about Muslims.”
Rahman, Falcon and Mackenzie later worked with members of Treat’s congregation on a Habitat for Humanity project for a local Muslim family. One important lesson from the experience, Rahman says, was the recognition that while he, as a Muslim, feels wounded by the behavior of many Americans, he is not alone in that feeling: many Christians also carry wounds. By understanding this mutual woundedness, the Three Amigos say, they have become much more patient when they confront people who disagree with their interfaith work. Instead of responding with anger or accusation, they try to ask more questions.
They used this insight when Rahman was asked by the director of Camp Brotherhood, an interfaith retreat center with a long history in Seattle, to donate a copy of the Qur’an that would be placed in the center’s chapel alongside the Bible and the Torah. The proposal turned out to be controversial among the camp’s board members, so the idea was dropped—and the board ended up removing all holy books from the chapel, something the three were not happy about. But instead of responding angrily and forgoing their association with Camp Brotherhood, the three have continued to try to meet with the board members to find a mutually agreeable solution.
Lohre of Harvard is convinced that informal interfaith efforts like that of the Three Amigos will continue to grow. If such efforts had been merely a reaction to September 11, they would have faded long ago. But because so many people are now involved in interfaith friendships and because so many interfaith activities have involved young people, interfaith work is not likely to vanish—and the relationships can only deepen. The most successful groups, Lohre says, provide acts of service and hospitality as well as activities for people of different generations.
Not everyone is prepared to applaud such encounters. Anxiety about the loss of “shared values” is heard from many corners, leading some people to turn inward. And interfaith conversations are clearly in their early stages—they have not yet been a force in stopping wars, nor have they succeeded in shutting the doors of Guantánamo or in healing the wounds in the Middle East. But thousands of people have had concrete encounters with neighbors who belong to a different religious faith.
One often hears quoted in interfaith circles these words of God from the Qur’an: “O humankind, we have created you out of a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that you might come to know one another.” At this point in history, coming to know one another remains a critical task.

The Christian Century

How do Muslims see Barack Hussein Obama? They have three choices: either as he presents himself – someone who has “never been a Muslim” and has “always been a Christian“; or as a fellow Muslim; or as an apostate from Islam.

Reports suggests that while Americans generally view the Democratic candidate having had no religion before converting at Reverend Jeremiah Wrights’s hands at age 27, Muslims the world over rarely see him as Christian but usually as either Muslim or ex-Muslim.

Lee Smith of the Hudson Institute explains why: “Barack Obama’s father was Muslim and therefore, according to Islamic law, so is the candidate. In spite of the Quranic verses explaining that there is no compulsion in religion, a Muslim child takes the religion of his or her father. … for Muslims around the world, non-American Muslims at any rate, they can only ever see Barack Hussein Obama as a Muslim.” In addition, his school record from Indonesia lists him as a Muslim

Thus, an Egyptian newspaper, Al-Masri al-Youm, refers to his “Muslim origins.” Libyan ruler Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi referred to Obama as “a Muslim” and a person with an “African and Islamic identity.” One Al-Jazeera analysis calls him a “non-Christian man,” a second refers to his “Muslim Kenyan” father, and a third, by Naseem Jamali, notes that “Obama may not want to be counted as a Muslim but Muslims are eager to count him as one of their own.”

A conversation in Beirut, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, captures the puzzlement. “He has to be good for Arabs because he is a Muslim,” observed a grocer. “He’s not a Muslim, he’s a Christian,” replied a customer. Retorted the grocer: “He can’t be a Christian. His middle name is Hussein.” Arabic discussions of Obama sometimes mention his middle name as a code, with no further comment needed.

“The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia,” reports Tamara Cofman Wittes of the Brookings Institution from a U.S.-Muslim conference in Qatar, “that certainly speaks to Muslims abroad.” Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times found that Egyptians “don’t really understand Obama’s family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name ‘Hussein,’ it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations.”

Some American Muslim leaders also perceive Obama as Muslim. The president of the Islamic Society of North America, Sayyid M. Syeed, told Muslims at a conference in Houston that whether Obama wins or loses, his candidacy will reinforce that Muslim children can “become the presidents of this country.” The Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan called Obama “the hope of the entire world” and compared him to his religion’s founder, Fard Muhammad.

But this excitement also has a dark side – suspicions that Obama is a traitor to his birth religion, an apostate (murtadd) from Islam. Al-Qaeda has prominently featured Obama’s stating “I am not a Muslim” and one analyst, Shireen K. Burki of the University of Mary Washington, sees Obama as “bin Laden’s dream candidate.” Should he become U.S. commander in chief, she believes, Al-Qaeda would likely “exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror … to galvanize sympathizers into action.”

Mainstream Muslims tend to tiptoe around this topic. An Egyptian supporter of Obama, Yasser Khalil, reports that many Muslims react “with bewilderment and curiosity” when Obama is described as a Muslim apostate; Josie Delap and Robert Lane Greene of the Economist even claim that the Obama-as-apostate theme “has been notably absent” among Arabic-language columnists and editorialists.

That latter claim is inaccurate, for the topic is indeed discussed. At least one Arabic-language newspaper published Burki’s article. Kuwait’s Al-Watan referred to Obama as “a born Muslim, an apostate, a convert to Christianity.” Writing in the Arab Times, Syrian liberal Nidal Na‘isa repeatedly called Obama an “apostate Muslim.”

In sum, Muslims puzzle over Obama’s present religious status. They resist his self-identification as a Christian while they assume a baby born to a Muslim father and named “Hussein” began life a Muslim. Should Obama become president, differences in Muslim and American views of religious affiliation will create problems.

FrontPage Magazine

The Islamic siege of India

By Dr Gautam Sen

India is undergoing outright warfare, with its cities bombed at will and massive infiltration across its borders. The Pakistani rationale for cutting India down to size has rarely faltered since 1947 and echoes a much older Islamic tradition. It stretches back a millennium and reasserted itself the moment British usurpers of Islamic rule were expelled by Hindus. Of course the Anglo-American imperialists and cold warriors actively incited this diabolical outcome because they assumed Islam would be an ally against Soviet communism and Nehru’s India would not. The Arabs in general and the Saudis in particular eventually become co-conspirators in the project to restore Islamic primacy in the Indian subcontinent even if Hindus were to continue ruling it nominally as vassals. They correctly perceive that the ability to control and deploy India’s economic and demographic assets will allow them to challenge the Christian West. The Saudis are the main source of the catalytic funding for the jihad that is threatening to break India’s political will and evidently succeeding. The Chinese also became active after the mid-1950s in arming Pakistan and, more recently, encouraging its bombing campaign of Indian cities to curb the economic advance of India, which it regards as an irritating, lowly rival.

Within India, some mosques and madrasas are the fifth column that provides critical support for the aggression that it is encountering. Their role is to cultivate passive and active support for the Islamic onslaught. It entails ensuring that most Muslims refuse to co-operate in efforts to interdict Islamic terrorists by remaining silent spectators while the murderous bombings continue, provide safe havens in impenetrable Muslim areas for terrorists and a vital element of local manpower to the Pakistani and Saudi agencies engaged in terrorist activities. The deployment of Muslim votes strategically is also an important aspect of their overall goals in order to make it impossible for important Hindu families (rather than the nominal political organisations that they preside over) to survive politically without their consent. The economic sabotage of counterfeit currency produced by Pakistani government agencies is another aspect of the Islamic onslaught that has the virtue of making Indians themselves defray the cost of jihad.

Indian themselves are profoundly complicit in the project that seems destined to destroy their country and their civilisation. Two underlying factors that have facilitated the rapid expansion of the Islamic onslaught against India are its political culture and constitutional arrangements. The first is the product of the bumbling imbecility of the Gandhian project that de-legitimised the whole notion of self-defence, on which all societies are founded and to which the most important Hindu text is almost exclusively addressed. And it was Pandit Nehru whose arrogance and intellectual mediocrity accentuated and institutionalised this Gandhian self-destructiveness in India’s political culture and national psyche. India’s constitutional arrangements, again the product of the wilful ignorance of its leaders, created a parliamentary democracy after independence that guaranteed to highlight and deepen every division among its citizens. In a presidential system, by contrast, Indians would have been compelled to begin overcoming their multiple identities and the potential divisions they incubated because the constituency for president would have been a national one.

India now exhibits all the political and psychological symptoms of a defeated society. The unprecedented protests in Jammu have been greeted with surprise across the board precisely because they are exceptional. But the overall situation in India is dismaying, with virtually its entire political class overawed by the intimidatory truculence of Islam, anxious not to provoke even if it entails conceding the most fundamental norms of Indian society. The ascendant media, harbouring crude Western aspirations and their concomitant political interests, and elite higher education institutions dominated by Christians are gleefully nurturing a deracinated Indian establishment. Their purpose is to exercise influence over India by completely dominating its intellectual life and of course continue saving souls in the way it has done successfully by Christianising South Korea. The Islamic onslaught against India provides them with a window of opportunity, by keeping India off balance and preventing the emergence of a self-confident indigenous elite that might resist its imperialist designs. This is why Islam and Christianity co-operate cynically over what is becoming the spoils of a broken-backed India, postponing their own competition with each other until they have destroyed all traces of the civilisation of the Hindus first.

The economic success of India in recent years and the resulting additional resources at the disposal of the Indian State are not relevant to the grievous outcome threatening it. These huge resources are actually being used for electoral bribery or stolen and to purchase arms that have little relevance for the prosecution of the deadly internal war against Islamic and other forms of terror. Some of the terrorists have clearly formed a seamless political alliance among themselves, with the Naxalites publicly declaring support for Pakistani terrorists and no doubt benefiting from Pakistani largesse. It may also be hazarded that many individuals, media outlets and alleged human rights organisations are mere fronts for terrorists and the evidence is in the public realm in some important instances. The armaments being purchased with uncharacteristic purposiveness by the entire political class has some bearing on potential external threats to Indian security, but one suspects that the alacrity with which they are undertaken has much to do with spin-offs that result from bribes. But most relevant of all is the failure of India’s politicians to engage with conviction against internal terror by deploying appropriate resources and motivating trained personnel instead of hobbling them in the performance of their duties because of apprehensions about losing Muslim votes.

The end is not necessarily going to take the shape of an invasion by the rapist Pakistan army across the Punjab towards Delhi. In fact, India’s demise and the retreat of Hindus will express itself as an accentuation of trends and processes already underway, with occasional dramatic departures that underline the calamity unfolding. The expulsion of the Pandits, which failed to truly exercise even India’s official nationalists, is a harbinger of the shape of things to come. Hindus are likely to face expulsion from areas dominated by Islam though some of it will occur and is occurring in a huge swathe of eastern India because Hindus are voluntarily abandoning Muslim areas for fear of consequences if riots occur. These areas then come under implicit Pakistani rule under the guise of the autonomy of Sharia practices and constitute bases for militant activity against adjacent areas outside the immediate control of Islam. As the political balance changes in favour of Islam, the Indian political class will behave even more supinely, in a pattern that has already become well established, further sealing the fate of India. And with each success Islam will demand more, as it has increasingly begun to do dramatically in less than four years.

The first major Indian city likely to come under the total sway of Islam is Kolkata since its demographics are changing rapidly, with whole areas being abandoned by Hindus and becoming ‘no-go’ Muslim areas. Bangladesh, which is contemptuous of Hindu India as a pushover denies the very notion of infiltration because its Muslims never accepted the legitimacy of the partition settlement. They believe that the Assam, West Bengal that Jinnah originally demanded, should and will belong to the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh. On this India’s communists apparently concur with them! And if Bangladesh is able to frighten Hindu India there is little hope for it in the face of enhanced joint Saudi-Pak subversion that evidence of each Indian retreat is already encouraging. Each terrorist bombing illustrates the helplessness of India and the ease with which Hindus can be overawed by a handful of determined mass murderers.

(The writer taught at the London School of Economics ” Political Science

for over two decades. He is the co-author of Analyzing the Global

Political Economy, Princeton University Press, 2008.)

http://cryingforfreedom.indiainteracts.com/2008/08/25/the-islamic-siege-of-india/

CAIRO (AFP) — Maher al-Gohari converted to Christianity 30 years ago, but the Muslim-born Egyptian only recently took the decision to make his conversion public.

The 56-year-old former policeman has put applied to the Higher Administrative Court to have his religion changed from “Muslim” to “Christian” on his official ID card.

In Egypt, citizens are required to carry their personal ID cards at all times. Without an ID card, one has no access to basic services.

It’s ony the second time this year that such a request has been made in a country where converting to Christianity, while not illegal, is practically impossible.

In January, a court rejected a request by a Christian convert from Islam, Mohammed Higazi, to have his new religion written on his identity card.

The following month however, a court decision authorised 12 converts to Islam who then reverted to Christianity to have their original faith marked on their ID cards.

In Higazi’s case, the judge based his decision on Sharia, Islamic law, to prove that one cannot convert to an “older religion”.

“Monotheistic religions were sent by God in chronological order… As a result, it is unusual to go from the latest religion to the one that preceded it,” the judge said at the time.

The Higher Administrative Court is due to hear on September 2 the case of Maher al-Gohari, whose chosen Christian name is Peter Ethnassios, and who has been in hiding after receiving death threats from his family.

“I was forced to leave my family home where I have lived with my mother and daughter,” he told AFP.

“My family has threatened me with death after the press published reports about the legal request I made,” he continued.

The rage felt by members of his family, many of whom belong to the police forces, comes from the fact they feel “dishonoured” by his choice and consider him an apostate, a crime in Islam, he said.

“I never insulted Islam. I simply wanted my rights and wanted the state to treat me according to the belief I have chosen,” said Gohari, after years of keeping his conversion to himself.

Gohari, graduated from the police academy himself 34 years ago, said he was attracted by Christianity but had trouble being accepted by several churches who refused to baptise him for fear he was an undercover spy for the Egyptian security services.

He was eventually embraced by the Greek Orthodox Church, having since turned to the Coptic Church which boasts the largest Christian community in the Middle East, and whose members account for six to 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people.

After two failed marriages, Gohari found love the third time round with a Muslim woman who converted to Christianity.

His daughter from a previous marriage as well as his new wife’s own two girls, all consider themselves Christian.

His 14-year-old daughter Dina is officially considered a Muslim and has to study the Koran at school.

Gohari first announced his conversion on a television programme.

“My younger brother knew about it but since then he’s been waiting for outside my building … with a gun,” he said. “He wants to kill me.”

After January’s court decision rejecting Higazi’s official conversion, Gohari’s case will once again test the issue of freedom of religion in Egypt, and even in Muslim countries.

A year ago, Ali Gomaa, Egypt’s grand mufti (the government appointed interpreter of Islamic law) decreed that Muslims were free to change their religion despite an opposite trend in the Islamic world, where apostasy is sometimes punished by death.

The fatwa, or religious decree, was never officially implemented.

The presence of a religion field on ID papers has been highly criticised by the New York-based Human Rights Watch as being at the root of discrimination against converts to Christianity and members of religious minorities.

AFP: An Egyptian Muslim’s long journey towards Christianity

East Meets West: Encountering Islam
Tariq Ramadan talks about Muslims in Europe. Azhar Usman is a Muslim Comic. Lupe Fiasco is a Muslim Hip Hop Artist. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a critic of Islam. Ausma Khan publishes Muslim Girl Magazine.

Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss-born philosopher who travels throughout the Islamic world trying to build bridges between European Muslims and conservative clerics. He’s the author of “In the Footsteps of the Prophet” and tells Steve Paulson that Muhammed’s life offers many lessons for today’s Muslims.
Azhar Usman is a Muslim stand-up comic and part of the “Allah Made Me Funny” Comedy Troupe. He tells Jim Fleming that he sees himself as belonging to a long tradition of socially conscious comedians. And we hear excerpts from his comedy routine.
Lupe Fiasco is a rap star and a devout Muslim. His debut album “Food and Liquor” was nominated for 3 Grammy Awards. Fiasco talks about his music and his faith with Anne Strainchamps, and we hear selections of his music.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a famous critic of Islam. Born in Somalia, Hirsi Ali emigrated to the Netherlands where she served in the Dutch Parliament. She and Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh made a film called “Submission” which so offended some Muslims that a fanatic killed Van Gogh and called for the death of Hirsi Ali, who now lives in the United States. She talks with Steve Paulson about why she believes Islam is inherently incompatible with Western values.
Ausma Khan is an international human rights lawyer and editor of a magazine called “Muslim Girl.” She tells Anne Strainchamps about the topics covered in the magazine and how it can help young Muslim women talk with their parents.

Public Arts : East Meets West: Encountering Islam (2008-08-23)

by Vincent Gioia

Persecution of Christians and Jews is not new in this world. Although such condemnation for religious beliefs goes back thousands of years, Nazi Germany developed it into an art form with the wholesale murder of Jewish people. Of course, the Nazis didn’t limit atrocities to Jews, they spread their horror around but Nazis were mainly interested in eliminating the Jewish population.

In their hatred of Jews, they were not alone; Muslims aided and abetted the Nazis since they shared a belief system that relegated Jews to the category of “dogs and apes”, as the Koran teaches Islamic adherents. However, unlike the Nazis, Muslims disdain all religions other than Islam. While Muslims complain bitterly about any perceived insult to Islam and any acts of disrespect for the Koran, it is not only accepted but prescribed by Islam to destroy the Holy Bible and those who worship the word of God as opposed to the Islamic reverence of Allah.

Muslims have succeeded in intimidating much of the world so that by actual and the threatened violence the Western World accepts restrictions on freedom of expression lest Muslims be offended. The prime mover of this pressure on the world is the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). With the help of endless petrodollars and fear of violating political correctness, the OIC has managed to have their way across the globe; they have also become the largest lobbying body of nations within the United Nations and are urging an anti-Christian and Jewish agenda with full force.

The Organization of the Islamic conference has actually succeeded in attaining passage of UN resolution in the General assemble called “Combating Defamation of Religions.” This harmless sounding title is in reality a deceptive name for targeting men and women of faith who speak out in any way against Islam or reveal the atrocities committed in the name of Islam on behalf of Allah. If Muslims had their way, not only would discrimination against Christians and Jews be practiced universally but any proclamation of a faith other than Islam would be punishable by imprisonment or even death. Supreme Court Justice Scalia said in a recent dissent, “America is at war with radical Islamists”; in this he was not only correct, he was issuing a warning to the world that to overlook or ignore the intrusion on civil rights by these enemies of freedom would result in the worst form of tyranny not seen since the Nazi regime.

As the American Center of Law and Justice wrote recently:

“We are seeing worldwide persecution of Christians as part of the radical Muslim mission to “take the world for Islam” - by purging Christianity from the face of the earth.

“In Saudi Arabia, a Muslim father violently cut out his young daughter’s tongue and burned her alive upon learning she had become a Christian. In Africa, a leading Gospel singer was seized, stuffed into a cargo box - with a single hole for air - and left for a month to go crazy or die. After two years, she was released, fled her captive country, and was granted political asylum in Denmark. In Iran, a couple was tortured for reading the Bible. Two men in Algeria were tried and convicted for possessing Christian books. And today we face extremely dangerous threats everywhere because of the one posed by the OIC.”

Dr. Andrew Bostom, editor of the book The Legacy of Jihad about Islamic anti-Semitism, warns that the 57 Muslim nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference are trying to impose Islamic blasphemy law — which includes the death penalty for those who “blaspheme” the Muslim prophet Muhammad — as the universal standard across the world. These sentiments of the OIC were repeated more brazenly by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. During a sermon in response to the Danish Muhammad cartoons which were published February 2006, Qaradawi demanded action from the United Nations in accordance with Sharia-based conceptions of blasphemy: “…the governments [of the world] must be pressured to demand that the U.N. adopt a clear resolution or law that categorically prohibits affronts to prophets-to the prophets of the Lord and his Messengers, to His holy books, and to the religious holy places.”

Not Only Is Freedom Of Speech Threatened By Muslims, So Is Religion - Commentary: The Post Chronicle

An octogenarian with 86 wives, Pa Bello Mohammed Abubakar, has dismissed the fatwa (death sentence) passed on him by a foremost Islamic group, the Jamatu Nasril Islam.

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Pa Abubakar

The JNI had on Thursday reportedly given Abubakar, a prince from the Masaba ruling house in Bida, four days to repent and revert to four wives, failing which he stood condemned according to Islamic law.

The JNI’s Central Fatwa Committee, in the statement signed by its chairman, Sheikh Usman Abubakar Babantunle, and Secretary-General, Abdulkarim Mu’azu, stated that any Muslim who married more than the approved number of wives at a time either by mistake or out of ignorance could choose four of the lot and ask for Allah’s forgiveness. The report, which quoted Babatunde as saying that Abubakar challenged any Muslim scholar to produce any order restricting marriage to only four wives, stated, “He would wish to also know that there is punishment that Allah (S.W.T) has prepared here in this world or the hereafter for any Muslim who has transgressed this boundary to have more than four wives.”

He added that although Abubakar “refered to the Holy Quran Suratun Nisa’I, in which Allah says women of your choice, two, three or four… vividly, he is ignorant of the proper meaning of this verse according to the Standing Fatwa Committee of JNI.”

However, in a telephone interview with our correspondent, Abubakar said he was not moved by the threat. He declared, “I am fully aware of the death threat, but I am not shaken. If I believe that Allah is the giver of life and He alone can take life, I should not be cowed by any threats to my life.”

A defiant Abubakar challenged the Moslem Ummah or jury, as well as others who believe that his action was contrary to the teachings of Islam, to come out with proofs. He said, “There is nowhere in the Quran, or any religious scripture for that matter, where it is said that any man can take another person’s life.” He also described those who issued the death threat as anti-Islam.

Abubakar also lamented what he observed as the frequent misinterpretation of doctrines by religious leaders, most of whom he accused of using religion for their own selfish interests. “God has used me to affect many lives positively. Therefore, no death threat can take me away from the path of truth, justice and honour,” he said.

The Secretary-General of the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Dr. Abdul Lateef Adegbite, was said to be out of the country when our correspondent visited his office on Friday.

Also, the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro, and the Force spokesman, Mr. Agberebi Akpoebi, could not be reached for comment as they were said to have travelled out of Abuja. Attempts to reach the Minister of Information, Mr. John Odey, and officials of the Presidency were also futile.

But the spokesman of the Niger State Police Command, Mr. Richard Oguche, told our correspondent on the telephone that the police would protect Abubakar from harm. He said, “It is our duty to protect lives and properties. He has the right to life and there is no law that permits that he should be killed. If a group of persons threaten his life, we cannot fold our arms and allow him to be killed.”

The Punch: JNI’s death threat: I’m not moved – Man with 86 wives

He is one of the world’s foremost scholars of Islam and the Middle East. Bernard Lewis shares his thoughts on Iraq, “Islamofascism,” the roots of terrorism, and the two biggest misperceptions about the Muslim faith.

From the Jan./Feb. 2008 issue of Foreign Policy: “A World Without Islam,” by Graham Fuller.

Remove Islam from the path of history, and the world ends up exactly where it is today.

Foreign Policy: What do you see as the biggest misperception about Islam?

Bernard Lewis: Well, there are two. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, predominates. It depends when and where. I would call them the negative one and the positive one. The negative one sees Muslims as a collection of bloodthirsty barbarians offering people the choice of the Koran or the sword, and generally bringing tyranny and oppression wherever they go. And the other one is the exact opposite, what you might call the sanitized version, which presents Islam as a religion of love and peace, rather like the Quakers but without their aggressiveness. The truth is in its usual place, somewhere between the extremes.

FP: Do you believe in the “clash of civilizations” theory of Samuel P. Huntington, that the Islamic world and the West are destined to butt heads?

BL: Well, I don’t go into destiny; I’m a historian and I deal with the past. But I certainly think there is something in the “clash of civilizations.” What brought Islam and Christendom into conflict was not so much their differences as their resemblances. There are many religions in the world, but almost all of them are regional, local, ethnic, or whatever you choose to call it. Christianity and Islam are the only religions that claim universal truth. Christians and Muslims are the only people who claim they are the fortunate recipients of God’s final message to humanity, which it is their duty not to keep selfishly to themselves—like the Jews or the Hindus or the Buddhists—but to bring to the rest of mankind, removing whatever obstacles there may be in the way.

So, we have two religions with a similar self-perception, a similar historical background, living side by side, and conflict becomes inevitable.

FP: You write in your chapter about radical Islam that most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and that most fundamentalists are not terrorists. That’s not self-evident to everyone, so can you just explain it a little further?

BL: Naturally we hear about the acts of terror. Nobody ever wrote a headline saying “a million people went peacefully about their business yesterday and did nothing.” Terrorism is very much the news of the moment and it is also the threat of the moment. It is a real menace, and I don’t wish to understate that or diminish it in any way. But if one assumes that that’s all there is to Islam, that’s a grave mistake, because terrorism only comes from one brand of Islam, and even that one brand of Islam is not entirely committed to terrorism. But for a terrorist movement, you do need mass support.

FP: I noticed that you use the term “Islamofascism” in the conclusion of your book. That term has been hotly debated. What do you think? Is it harmful or useful?

BL: Well, I don’t use it; I discuss it. I think one has to confront that this is a term that is used. I don’t like it because it’s insulting to Muslims. They see it as insulting to link the name of their religion with the most detestable of all the European movements. It’s useful in the sense that it does distinguish real Islam from “Islamofascism,” but I still feel that the connection is insulting, and I prefer to use the term “radical Islam.”

FP: A lot of analysts, and this is especially something you hear from political leaders in the Muslim world, say that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism—that these are completely separate issues. Is that a view that you subscribe to? Some people say that terrorism is largely caused by occupation or a response to U.S. policy, not Islam.

BL: Well, I can’t subscribe to it since the terrorists themselves claim to be acting in the name of Islam. There was one Muslim leader who said, not long ago, that it is wrong to speak about Muslim terrorism, because if a man commits an act of terrorism, he’s not a Muslim. That’s very nice, but that could also be interpreted as meaning that if a Muslim commits it, it doesn’t count as terrorism.

When a large part of the Muslim world was under foreign rule, then you might say that terrorism was a result of imperialism, of imperial rule and occupation. But at the present time, almost the whole of the Muslim world has achieved its independence. They can no longer blame others for what goes wrong. They have to confront the realities of their own lives at home. A few places remain disputed, like Chechnya and Israel and some others, but these are relatively minor if you’re talking about the Islamic world as a whole.

FP: Iraq, which used to be ruled by a Sunni ruler, is now being governed by Shiites. What does that mean in the context of Islamic history?

BL: I think it means a great deal. But what is important in Iraq is not that it’s being ruled by the Shiites, but that it’s being ruled by a democracy, by a free, elected government that faces a free opposition. It proves what is often disputed, that the development of democratic institutions in a Muslim Arab country is possible. A lot of people say, “No, it’s impossible. It can’t work. They can’t do it.” Well, it’s difficult, but it’s not impossible, and I think Iraq proves that. What is happening in Iraq I find profoundly encouraging. Of course, it is the ripple effect from Iraq that is causing alarm among all the tyrants that rule these countries [in the region]. If it works in Iraq, it could work elsewhere, and this is very disturbing [for tyrants].

FP: As someone who has spent so much time studying the Ottoman Empire, the history of Islam, and the region, is the future of Islam something that has a deep meaning to you personally? Where do you see the Muslim world headed in the next decade?

BL: I’m not a religious person. But I find things that are good and encouraging. Islam over the last 14 centuries has brought dignity and meaning to millions of drab and impoverished lives. It has created a great civilization that has gone through several different phases in several different countries. It is now going through a major crisis, and it could go either way. It could descend into a fanatical tyranny, which would be devastating for Muslims and a threat to the rest of the world. Or they may succeed in developing their own brand of democracy. When we talk about the possibility of democracy in the Islamic world, it doesn’t have to be our kind. Our kind results from our own history and institutions. It’s not a universal model. They can, and I think will, develop their own brand of democracy, by which I mean limited, civilized, responsible government. And there are signs of that.

Bernard Lewis is professor emeritus at Princeton University and the author of dozens of books, most recently Islam: The Religion and the People (Upper Saddle River: Wharton School Publishing, 2008), coauthored with Buntzie Ellis Churchill.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4455&print=1

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Dr. Qanta Ahmed’s journey into the heart of Islam began as a spur-of-the-moment decision to practise medicine in Saudi Arabia.

Despite misgivings about women - even doctors - being treated as invisible in the country, the 40-year-old assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina says she took a chance and stayed there for two years.

Reflecting on her experiences almost decade later, she sees her memoir, “In the Land of Invisible Women,” as part of a needed “jihad of the pen” by articulate, moderate Muslims. Her hope is that a book written by a Muslim who grew up in the West can, in some small way, bridge the divide of understanding between the Middle East and Western culture.

“One of the central errors westerners are constantly assaulted with is the use of this term jihad,” she says in an interview at her condominium overlooking Charleston’s peaceful Ashley River. “The central jihad for all of us is to constantly improve and be the best we can be and try to adhere to some very pure ideals.”

She also hopes it might help dispel what she says is a misconception that Islam advocates violence.

“This is absolutely heinous and false,” she says. “Islam values life above anything. We are taught in the Quran that man’s right to life exceeds even God’s rights on man.”

Ahmed’s “In the Land of Invisible Women,” will be published next month by Sourcebooks Landmark.

“The book is important because in this country, in the sound-bite generation, stereotypes pretty much prevail,” said Sourcebooks Inc.’s Tony Viardo. “When Americans in general think of Muslims, really the radical Islam aspect of it comes to mind. Where we think this book is really important is that is humanizes Muslims and builds bridges between the two cultures.”

Ahmed, who is of Pakistani descent, was born in Britain and had advanced medical training in the United States.

In Saudi Arabia, she found a land with tremendous wealth, but one where women remain largely invisible, even highly trained female doctors working side-by-side with male colleagues. It is a land where women must, in public, be shrouded in an abbayah, a flowing robe; where women can’t drive and must have a male relative or guardian’s permission to travel.

She stayed in Saudi Arabia from 1999 through 2001, leaving in the months after the 2001 terror attacks. She writes of her anger in seeing highly trained physicians laughing and others buying cakes and celebrating the news of 9-11.

But she also found a connection she had never known to a religion she had practised her entire life after going on the Hajj to the holiest sites of Islam.

There is much confusion about that religion, she says.

In modern Islam, she says, “you see so very few articulate moderate voices coming out. Where are the movies? Where is the music? Where is the poetry? Where are the books to counteract some of this (violent) ideology?”

A decade ago, Ahmed, a pulmonologist and sleep specialist, had to decide about her future when her visa to practice medicine in the United States expired. She wanted to practice in the Middle East because its medicine was more American than in her native Britain. She told a recruiter she would go anywhere but Saudi Arabia.

But then came an offer to practise medicine in a modern hospital drawing patients from all of Saudi Arabia. She took it, despite initial misgivings about living in a land of strict religious rules where the death penalty is administered by decapitation.

“‘What’s a year?”‘ I remembered thinking to myself, as I had signed the contract recklessly, flicking through pages ignoring bold capitals announcing the death penalty,” she writes. “In a thoughtless flourish I found myself now subject to the laws of Saudi Arabia, decapitation included.”

Ahmed says it was a paradox to live in a land with such rigid laws but one that was enthralling and spiritual.

She made the Hajj to Mecca, the journey every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it is obligated to make at least once.

Many make preparations months and even years in advance. Ahmed went almost by chance, deciding only a week before when a colleague convinced her that she might never get another chance.

Approaching the Ka’ba, she felt small among the tens of thousands of pilgrims.

“The next thing you notice is the diversity of race and physical features and age and nationalities and languages, and that’s when I immediately felt at home,” she says. “If you don’t quite fit in with the culture or you don’t fit in quite with the family where you come from, you have a place you fit in spiritually.”

The Canadian Press: Women doctor shares journey into heart of Islam