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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SARMAN who wrote (249958)	11/28/2007 8:18:57 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Dutch lawmaker planning film criticizing the Quran The Associated Press Published: November 28, 2007 THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A Dutch conservative lawmaker said Wednesday he is making a film to highlight what he describes as "fascist" passages in the Quran, his latest high profile criticism of Islam. The interior and justice ministers said they were concerned, but believed they had no authority to prevent the lawmaker, Geert Wilders, from screening his film. Wilders plans to depict parts of the Quran he says are used as inspiration "by bad people to do bad things." Less than 10 minutes long, the film is expected to air in late January. It will show "the intolerant and fascist character of the Quran," said Wilders, whose anti-Islam campaign helped his Freedom Party win nine seats in parliament in last year's election. In the past, Wilders has said that half the Quran should be torn up and compared it with Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf." He has claimed the Netherlands is being swamped by a "tsunami" of Islamic immigrants. Today in Europe Putin at center of Russian elections Sarkozy vows to arrest and try 'shooters' in riots War crimes case weighs on Poland Immigrants from Muslim countries number about 1 million of the country's 16 million people. Wilders' planned broadcast is reminiscent of the film "Submission" — a fictional study of abused Muslim women with scenes of near-naked women with Quranic texts engraved on their flesh. "Submission" director Theo van Gogh was shot and had his throat slit by a Muslim extremist on an Amsterdam street in 2004. Prominent Muslim critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the screenplay, was threatened in a note left on Van Gogh's body. She now lives under round-the-clock protection in the United States. Justice Ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said the government is "taking measures" before the broadcast of Wilders' film. He declined to elaborate. "Based on the discussion, the ministers have expressed concern," Van der Weegen said. "But at the same time (they) have said that Mr. Wilders has freedom of expression." Wilders said he is not afraid of reprisals if his film angers Muslims. "I have lived with 24-hour protection for three years," he said. "I will make the film and see what reaction it creates." Dutch Muslim leaders did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

To: SARMAN who wrote (249958)	11/28/2007 8:22:43 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Islam and the modern world don't mix Published: 28 November 2007 Gillian Gibbons sounds like a nice woman. She is in her 50s, a teacher from Liverpool with grown-up children, and earlier this year she decided to put her experience to use in one of the most troubled parts of Africa. In August, she started teaching at an independent primary school in Sudan, where she seems to have been popular with her young pupils; she followed a national curriculum course designed to teach them about animals and asked a seven-year-old girl to bring her teddy bear into class. Everything seemed to be going well until last weekend, when Ms Gibbons was arrested and found herself in prison in Khartoum, accused of a crime so horrendous that it carries a penalty of up to six months in jail or 40 lashes. Her "offence" was to name the teddy bear after the Prophet, even though the name was chosen by her young charges themselves. According to the school's director, Robert Boulos, the children came up with eight names and voted overwhelmingly for Mohamed. Several parents promptly complained to the authorities, leading to Ms Gibbons' arrest on Sunday. The state-controlled media centre in Sudan reported that charges were being prepared under article 125 of the criminal code, which covers insults against faith and religion. Once again, secular people around the world are left reeling at the capacity of Islam to discern "insult" in the most innocuous behaviour. At one level, this sequence of events is preposterous; I'm sure there are plenty of genuine crimes to worry about in Sudan without wasting time pursuing a woman whose good intentions are manifest. But the significance of the case goes beyond the individuals concerned, highlighting aspects of Islam as it is currently practised in countries such as Sudan and Saudi Arabia – and promoted in some European mosques – which are incompatible with the modern world. One is the role of honour, which has repeatedly been used to legitimise furious over-reactions to everything from the naming of a toy to instances of women and gay people demanding autonomy over their bodies. Ever since the outcry over The Satanic Verses nearly two decades ago, I have watched Muslim men (they almost always are men) use the claim that their honour has been insulted as an excuse for disgraceful and frequently criminal behaviour. Salman Rushdie "insults" the Prophet: burn his books. Danish cartoonists display a lack of respect for Islam: attack Danish embassies. A British Muslim girl wants to marry the "wrong" man: kill her for shaming the family. A Saudi rape victim complains that her attackers got off too lightly: increase her sentence (for being in a car with a man who wasn't her husband) to 200 lashes. In the latter instance, Saudi officials have responded to an international outcry by claiming that the woman has admitted an extra-marital affair and therefore the sentence is fully justified. She has "confessed to doing what God has forbidden", according to a statement on Monday from the Saudi justice ministry, which also attacked "foreign interference" in the case. The Saudis have not been driven to use such punishments by the Iraq war, and they are not untypical of sentences passed in other countries under Islamic law. The stark fact is that the notion of "honour" and the violence linked to it cannot co-exist with the modern idea of universal human rights. It encourages men to create oppressive laws which do not recognise individual liberties, and to break the law in states where those liberties have been acknowledged. I have never claimed that Islam is the only religion that does this, and there are anomalies in British law – the archaic offence of blasphemy is an example – which reminds us of a time when Christians reacted just as violently to what they perceived as "insults". In the past, Catholics and Protestants took turns to slaughter each other as Sunni and Shia are doing now, but Christianity has to a large extent been secularised. Not as much as I'd like – there's still a way to go on homosexuality and abortion – but there is no doubt that the influence of Christian churches has dramatically declined. At the heart of this process is an alteration in the status of religious texts. The Old Testament is full of hair-raising injunctions and barbaric punishments but I don't know anyone, apart from a few extremists on the Christian right, who takes it seriously. The idea that a single book written centuries ago has unique authority – in effect, a veto over all other ideas – makes no sense in societies where intellectual curiosity is valued and encouraged. Yesterday Inayat Bunglawala, assistant general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, criticised the arrest of Ms Gibbons in Sudan and described it as a "quite horrible misunderstanding". But during a public debate in London two weeks ago, he refused my invitation to condemn unequivocally the practice of stoning women to death for adultery. It had happened during the lifetime of the Prophet, he said, "so you are asking me to condemn my Prophet". This is a very clear example of the pre-modern and modern sensibilities clashing head-on. No book or person has a monopoly on truth, and I certainly don't regard Muhammad, Jesus or Marx as beyond criticism. But while Muslim scholars are prepared to argue about interpretation, they have this in common: they all agree on the primacy of the Qu'ran and the hadith. Even the suggestion that the text needs to be reformed, which she has denied making, was sufficient to force Taslima Nasreen to flee her home country, Bangladesh, and seek refuge in Sweden. She recently moved to India, hoping to find more tolerant attitudes among Indian Muslims, and is now being hounded from one city to another by angry mobs. It is not enough in these circumstances to claim that Islam is a religion of peace, and dismiss all the things non-Muslims don't like – honour killings, relentless assaults on free speech, and now an accusation of blasphemy related to a teddy bear – as aberrations. The mores of the seventh century have no relevance in modern life, especially in the arena of sex where decisions about who to sleep with are widely regarded as a personal matter. The damage that is being inflicted daily on the image of Islam doesn't come from people like me, who are constantly accused of Islamophobia, but practices such as forced marriage, honour killings and heated denunciations of "Western" values. I can't think of any secular country where a rape victim or a well-meaning British teacher would find themselves threatened with flogging.

To: SARMAN who wrote (249958)	11/28/2007 8:23:42 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Muslim crucified, two Buddhists beheaded in Thailand: police by Rapee Mama Wed Nov 28, 11:12 AM ET NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) - A Muslim military informant was shot and crucified, while two Buddhist men were beheaded Wednesday by suspected Islamic separatists in Thailand's restive south, police said. ADVERTISEMENT The Muslim man, a 58-year-old who belonged to a government-backed militia, was shot and then stabbed so badly that he was nearly decapitated, police Lieutenant Khanchitthol Kreunor told AFP. Suspected rebels then drove six-inch nails through his head, arms and legs to attach him to two pieces of wood, which were laid out like a cross in the middle of a road in Rueso district of Narathiwat province, near the southern border with Malaysia, he said. Khanchitthol said police found a note written in Thai and left near the cross, reading: "This is what the infidels deserve. The soldier dogs must meet this end." "The victim was attacked and killed in such a grisly way because they knew he was a military informant. This is to terrify the people," Khanchitthol said. About two hours later, two Buddhist fishmongers aged 20 and 61 were shot and then beheaded in another district of Narathiwat, police said. The killings came after a month of spiralling violence in the region, which has seen more than 2,700 killed since separatist unrest erupted four years ago. Thailand's southernmost provinces were an ethnic Malay sultanate until the Buddhist kingdom annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension. Monitoring group Intellectual Deep South Watch said last week that November has been one of the most violent months this year. Thailand's new army chief, General Anupong Paojinda, had announced last month that he was bolstering the 30,000 government forces in the region to try to clamp down on the violence. The military has also requested massive spending increases to buy new weaponry, including a dozen fighter jets already ordered from Sweden, saying it needs the hardware to battle the insurgency. But near-daily shootings, bombings and ambushes continue to hit southern Thailand despite the military crackdown, arrests and a raft of peace initiatives by the army-backed government. Attacks have become increasingly brutal, with corpses sometimes mutilated or savagely stabbed. Corpses are often left in streets or other public areas where passersby find them. The government also relies heavily on paramilitary forces like the one that the latest Muslim victim belonged to. Many villages have lost any faith that the government can protect them and have begun to organise their own sectarian vigilante forces. Rights groups and analysts have voiced alarm at the trend, saying such forces only increase tensions among communities and hamper efforts to make security forces more accountable. Despite the rampant violence, few people have been prosecuted over the unrest. In June, the government began raiding villages and making mass arrests, but courts last month ordered authorities to free 384 young men who had been held without charge in what the army said was a job training programme. The army said it feared the men were susceptible to recruitment by separatists, but finally obeyed the court orders to free them on November 18.