But in truth, in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption and delusion, for the support of depredation & oppression in the hands of the govt.

Jeremy Bentham 1748-1832

Jeddah   With Eid Al Adha being celebrated today, there was a virtual run on the main sheep market here yesterday. The market scene was chaotic as cars & pickup trucks sat bumper-to-bumper throughout the afternoon. Once on the eastern side of the Makkah Ring Road from Palestine St., it took more than 2 hours for drivers to reach the main market. Some shoppers, in anticipation of the jam, parked their vehicles by the roadside and walked to the market.

Thousands of animals will be offered as a sacrifice both by pilgrims & other Muslims for the feast today. The price of cattle is the same as last year, ranging from a minimum of SR150 to more than SR1,000. "There are more sheep available in the market than expected, mostly locally bred or from Sudan," Mohammed Homaid, who has run a sheep business in the market for over 6 decades, told Arab News. "My business booms this time every year, and what I earn in the few days before the Eid is my major income," he said.

Trader Ali Ghunaim, 54, said it was normal for prices to shoot up on the eve of the Eid due to high demand. The cost of Berberi sheep has gone up to SR450 from SR150, while a calf costs nearly twice the normal SR1,200.
"Likewise, prices of al-Naimi & al-Najdi sheep have risen by 50 to 100%" he said.
Market operators said prices of "Soukani" goats from Sudan exceeded SR1,000 now instead of the usual 450. "I find cattle prices more or less the same as last year," said shopper Abdul Aziz, a Saudi-born Palestinian. "I've gone in for 2 Saudi-bred sheep for SR500 each. People in the middle income group tend to go for breeds which cost not more than SR500. Look at the ones I've bought. They look quite healthy & meaty, and I bargained hard for the price," he added.

French Muslims boycott Eid lamb slaughter
2.11.03   Paul Michaud Arab News

French law severely reprimands the individual slaughter of sheep for the Eid feast for a number of reasons, above all concern to keep the slaughter of the animals sanitary. What French govt proposes instead, in the words of Jean-Jacques Delatte, in charge of veterinary affairs for the Seine-Saint-Denis dept, is "to slaughter the lambs ourselves, and do so under govt dictated sanitary conditions, after the Eid prayers on Tuesday, then deliver them the following day."
But, this falls on the second day of the Eid feast, and according to some Muslims this is not good enough, indeed has nothing to do with proper observance of the feast, which dictates that the moutons be made available the same day. Then too, they insist, "we should be able to slaughter them ourselves, otherwise the rite has no meaning really."

That's the feeling of Areski Saighi, head of family from the Seine-Saint-Denis dept, who said that, "I insist on slaughtering the lamb myself, that way I'm able to select the best animal possible, the one with the longest tail and whose eyes indicate that it is a healthy beast." Which is why he says that if he is unable to find a supplier of sheep who will allow him to select the animal he wants, then slaughter it himself, he will refuse to take part in the govt-administered plan, which, said Delatte, does nevertheless attract a number of clients, albeit in insufficient numbers to make the scheme pay for itself.
As a result of this year's boycott, which is expected to be more important than in the past, Delatte predicts only 800 sheep will find takers this year, which means, he says, that suppliers should find themselves with between 10,000 & 20,000 unslaughtered lambs that nobody wants simply because many French Muslim families will find a way of obtaining their lambs clandestinely in the black market.

We can't say it with red roses on Valentine's Day
2.14.02   Abdullah al-Fehaid & Naser al-Haqabani Arab News

Riyadh   The authorities have barred shops from selling red roses, teddy bears and greeting cards in celebration of Valentine's Day today. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue & Prevention of Evil has given shops all over the Kingdom 3 days to clear red-colored gifts normally used to mark the day in which lovers celebrate their love for one another. The action is based on a religious ruling, which states that Muslims can only celebrate 2 feasts, Eid Al-Fitr, which marks the end of fasting in the holy month of Ramadan, and Eid Al-Adha, which marks the culmination of the Haj.

The Higher Committee for Scientific Research & Issuing of Fatwas said Muslims are prohibited from celebrating or supporting Valentine's Day or other holidays contravening Islam. Valentine's Day, named after a Christian patron saint for lovers and celebrated on Feb. 14, has become a popular informal holiday in Asian countries. Sales of roses, chocolates and greetings cards surge as couples & suitors express their affection with presents.
However, the commission's head in Riyadh, Othman Al-Othman, said the authority had warned shops, hotels, restaurants and public parks a long time ago not to stage any special activities on Valentine's Day. A joint committee has been formed by the Riyadh governorate, the commission, police and the public prosecutor to conduct round-the-clock patrols to impose the ban, Othman said. Othman also warned drivers against decorating their cars with any red or other Valentine-associated items. In schools, teachers have been warning students during the past 2 weeks against wearing red clothes or displaying any item related to the occasion.

Jabir Al-Hakami, head of the commission in the Makkah region, said the commission has been geared up to enlighten young people on the dangers of blindly following worthless foreign customs. The ban has come into force following the efforts of the commission to stop the import of any articles used for practices that do not conform to Islamic values, he said. However, the ban will not be applicable to all imported red roses, but only to the flowers to be used on the Valentine's Day, Al-Hakami clarified.
Nevertheless, a famous restaurant in Jeddah published an advertisement in a mass circulation newspaper yesterday for a "very distinguished" dinner on Feb. 14. The invitation says nothing about Valentine's, but the colored ad features red roses.

In Kuwait, the Social Reform Society issued a statement yesterday denouncing concerts & other events held on the occasion of Valentine's Day. It also cited the fatwa by the Saudi scholars. But many Kuwaitis are undeterred. With king-size fluffy toys, tacky heart-shaped velvet vases, elaborately decorated chocolates, Kuwaitis are on a Valentine's Day buying mania sweeping across the Gulf country.
In shopping malls in & around the capital, Kuwaiti males & females of all ages are crowding stalls to splash out on saying it with artificial roses or any other ornamental expressions of love. Balloons hang everywhere, cardboard love hearts dangle from ceilings & shop windows, as the color red overpowers everything in celebration of the event.

The celebration also falls during "Hala February," Kuwait's annual shopping festival, which offers cultural & entertainment activities incl musical shows, and which is denounced by Islamist MPs for featuring "immoral practices."
Islamist MP Waleed Al-Tabtabai said "we object to and refuse the import of this Western practice … because at its origin it allows relationships between men & women outside marriage. "We found that the rush by the media & some department stores to promote this practice and utilize it for commercial marketing represents a danger to the Islamic identity of our Kuwaiti society," said Tabtabai, an outspoken critic of any occasion involving a mixing of the sexes. Tabtabai, who said only a small minority of people in Kuwait associated with Valentine's Day, called on the ministries of information & commerce to protect society from the "overpowering cultural globalization and the blind import of various types of Western culture, including Valentine's Day."

In the city's largest modern market, competition is so tight among the abundance of stalls that some owners complain of lower sales this year, despite the unmistakable obsession with Valentine's Day knickknacks. Though the enthusiasts were queuing up to buy, stall owner Masood Bitar insisted profits are down on last year.
"There are so many more stalls & shops selling Valentine things this year," he said, boasting his own arrangements which sell for between $6 & $60. Last year, Bitar said he made $2,000 a day in the run-up to Valentine's Day. "This year, I'm barely making 150 dinars ($500) a day," he groaned, blaming his losses on an occasion made too commercial.

Lebanon cleric advises 'modern Shiites'
Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah's liberal fatwas, or edicts, have shocked conservative Muslims around the world.
2.6.08   Borzou Daragahi L.A. Times

Beirut   The ayatollah has a simple piece of advice for any Muslim woman being abused by her husband: Hit him back.
"A woman can respond to physical violence inflicted on her by a man with counter- violence as a self-defense measure," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's senior-most Shiite cleric, wrote in a fatwa late last year that shocked conservative Muslims around the world.

Fadlallah long has been considered a leader of the most radical faction of Shiite Muslims in Lebanon. He endorsed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran and was accused of ordering, or at least encouraging, the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks here, a charge he and his supporters have denied.
He issued fatwas, or religious edicts, calling on the faithful to resist the United States, and urged Muslims to boycott American products.

But the 72-year-old cleric, who agreed to an interview recently in his South Beirut compound, has toned down his rhetoric in recent years. Instead, he espouses a more modest vision for the faithful than the ambitious agenda set forth by Iran, which considers itself the patron of Shiites worldwide and has been trying to increase its influence throughout the Muslim world.
"I don't see there is a unity in the situation of Shiites in the world," he said. He leaned forward, his piercing brown eyes becoming animated as he discussed religion, politics and international affairs. "I think the current Iranian president lacks diplomatic skills, and I think he creates problems for Iran," he said of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Fadlallah, whose black turban identifies him as a descendant of the prophet Muhammad, focuses on daily issues of concern to his followers such as parenting.
"One of the general principles in raising children is that parents should not consider their child as part of their possessions," he wrote in a ruling translated and placed on the English section of his website, english.bayynat.org.lb. "Instead, they should consider him God's trust that Allah . . . has put in their hands. This is done by loving the child, listening to him and respecting his mind."

Grand ayatollahs, the highest-ranked clerics in the Shiite hierarchy, have the right to interpret primary religious texts and serve as marja, or source of emulation, for their millions of followers in countries with large Shiite populations such as Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India and Bahrain.
Most search for a niche. Khomeini espoused a highly politicized version of Islam; Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Iraq advocates piety, modesty and good deeds.
Fadlallah's fatwas and statements seem more like daytime talk show fodder.
"Sistani is very popular in the Shiite world, but he's not involved in the daily lives of Shiites," said Fadlallah's aide, Hani Abdullah. "This is why Fadlallah is more of a reference for modern Shiites."

On gender issues in particular, he takes positions that raise eyebrows among his conservative counterparts, such as questioning the conventional Islamic prohibition on female judges and challenging the traditional view that a woman's place is in the house and the man's in the workplace.
"The belief that it is disgraceful for the man to manage household tasks is derived from the social culture and not from Islam," he says in a statement on his website. "Personally, I think that no woman would be obliged to bring her social life to a standstill just because she is being occupied with her children."
Also from his website: "Knowledge is a merit for man and woman equally, and the importance of acquiring it is identical to both of them."

A statement from Fadlallah's office said he opposed a man "using any sort of violence against a woman, even in the form of insults and harsh words."
He also has addressed issues such as cloning and plastic surgery.
"Mostly his fatwas are on the side of modernity and progress," said Fawwaz Traboulsi, a Lebanese historian and journalist. "He's very influential, and he's got a lot of money."
His most liberal rulings and attempts to distance Lebanese Shiites from Iran's policies have angered some Shiite clerics close to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

Fadlallah was once Hezbollah's spiritual leader, but now the two camps compete for donations from wealthy Shiites, who traditionally have given more money to him.
"There's a real rivalry with Nasrallah, who has become both a military and religious leader," Traboulsi said. "Many conservative Hezbollah clerics are reacting against Fadlallah's rulings."
Fadlallah appears to have eased his anti-American stances, even though he and others suspect U.S. operatives were behind an attempt on his life in 1985, apparently as retaliation in the belief that he had ordered the Marine barracks attack. The massive car bomb near his home killed more than 80 people in an apartment block, but he was unhurt.

He is critical of the Bush administration but takes pains to underscore that he's not anti-American. He recently answered a question about astronomy and Ramadan posed by a U.S. Marine, a decision criticized by other clerics. He was among the first religious leaders in the Middle East to condemn the Sept. 11 attacks.
But Fadlallah remains a staunch critic of Israel, once describing the Jewish state as "a conglomerate of people who come from all parts of the world to live in Palestine on the ruins of another people."

Gaza City   Palestinians marked another sombre Eid Al Adha holiday Monday, with no end in sight to their 28-month uprising for freedom and hundreds of pilgrims related to suspected resistance activists blocked by the Israeli occupation army from reaching the Muslim Holy City of Mecca.
A sure sign fewer people would be feasting in Gaza City were the almost empty sheep markets, where people traditionally buy animals for sacrifice to mark Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God. Sheep farmer Salim Abu Arab said people simply did not have the money. "Last year, I sold 250 sheep, this year only 150," he complained.

Gaza has been almost entirely sealed off since the start of the intifada, or uprising, and Palestinians often refer to it as the "world's largest prison". Thousands of people who once worked in Israel are now unemployed and the Palestinian statistics bureau has said two-thirds of people here & in the West Bank are living below the poverty line.
Many Palestinians questioned by AFP said they could not afford to make the traditional Eid Al Adha sacrifices this year. Umm Ashraf Shallouf, 55, said she no longer had the will to live even since her son was killed by Israeli soldiers. "Life has no meaning since he died. The situation is getting worse & worse. My husband is unemployed and I had no money to buy holiday clothes for the children."

Gaza City resident Anwar Queider, echoed her complaints. "I am not the only one; this year, there is no festive atmosphere and there's almost nobody in the stores. "How can we celebrate when every day more people are killed?" asked the 40-year-old, who said he had had no income since his downtown shop caught fire & burned down in an Israeli raid. "20 years of hard work up in smoke," he said. "This morning, my son asked for some money. I didn't have the heart to tell him I didn't have any."

This year, the Palestinians said Israel had blocked most relatives of suspected activists from undertaking the annual pilgrimage, a journey able Muslims are required to make at least once in their lives. Palestinian local affairs minister Saeb Erekat said Wednesday that Israeli authorities had barred 600 Palestinians from the West Bank and another 400 from the Gaza Strip from leaving for the pilgrimage through border crossings with Jordan & Egypt.
Palestinian religious affairs ministry head Mahmud Nayrab said 1,500 Palestinians had been barred and accused Israel of practicing "collective punishment." "We are denied the most basic rights, the freedom to practice our religion. Pilgrimage is one of the pillars of Islam and every Muslim has the right to undertake it," he told AFP. "The ban placed on the parents of martyrs is part of the collective punishments that Israel is applying."

Palestinians regularly refer to those killed during the intifada as "martyrs," although the term is most often used to describe suicide bombers. Saudi Arabia's official SPA news agency reported that of the 1,000 "martyrs' relatives" whose pilgrimage trips were funded by King Fahd, only 121 made it to the Holy City of Mecca Saturday

Al Jazeera TV barred from covering Hajj
2.11.03   AP Jordan Times

With the Hajj, or pilgrimage, reaching its climax Monday, it was among the top items on all Arab TV stations, incl Al Jazeera. However, Al Jazeera has been airing Saudi TV video footage and reading studio-prepared reports. A Saudi official, who refused to be identified any further, confirmed the station's visa requests had been received and denied, but would not say why.
Al Jazeera, which began operating in 1996, is often described as the CNN of the Arab world, but the American cable channel has been able to air live reports from Mecca several times a day on its intl service. Al Jazeera has annoyed many govts in the region by airing views of opposition figures and openly criticising domestic & foreign policies.

Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Qatar in Sept. and demanded an apology from the Qatari govt. None has been forthcoming thus far. In addition to the Hajj, Hilal said that "our journalists were also banned from covering the GCC defence & foreign ministers meeting in Jeddah Saturday." The meeting concerned the Iraqi crisis.
Al Jazeera reported the hajj ban to its audience with each report Monday on the pilgrimage, and Hilal said the station's policy was to inform its viewers of decisions by any govt to bar it from covering major events. "It's our right to tell our audience why we are not there, not because we forgot or didn't feel like it, but because we were not allowed," Hilal said.

Al Jazeera has covered the Hajj for the past 3 years, but never has had a bureau or permanent correspondent in Saudi Arabia. In August, Jordan recalled its ambassador to Qatar and closed Al Jazeera's bureau there after a diplomatic row over a program Jordan said was insulting to the Royal Family. The Jordanian ambassador returned to Qatar 3 months later.
Al Jazeera's bureaus in Kuwait & Algeria also remain closed. The channel's bureau in Ramallah, in the West Bank, was temporarily closed 2 years ago over the broadcast of a promotion the Palestinian Authority said was insulting to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Hilal, frustrated by such closures and banning, remains, like Al Jazeera, defiant. "I don't understand how Saudi Arabia could ban a station that is watched by 30 million Arabs," Hilal said. "This is professionally frustrating … but banning is not going to make us review our independent editorial policy."

Why non-Muslims cannot visit Makkah
2.14.02   edited by Adil Salahi Arab News

Having said that, we may add that the prohibition gives a clear indication that God wants to keep Makkah a city for worship & security. As such it cannot be transformed into a tourist resort. That is totally unacceptable. The same applies to Madinah which has been restricted to non-Muslims by none other than the Prophet himself. When God & His Messenger decree something, the only thing open to us is to obey their decree

Q   Is it obligatory for a person working in Jeddah to do the tawaf of farewell every time he travels home on his annual leave?
A   No, that is not required. The tawaf of farewell is required at the end of the pilgrimage. So, if a resident of Jeddah offers the pilgrimage, he or she should do the tawaf of farewell at the end of their pilgrimage, like all pilgrims who come from outside Makkah.
When a person leaves Jeddah to go home, he leaves it without having to visit Makkah. If he fears that he may not come back and wishes to make his final day in Jeddah one of worship, and he goes to Makkah for tawaf or Umrah, that is a highly rewarding action, but it is a matter of his own choice.

Q   Sometimes we are at a loss how to defend the Prophet against detractors who may accuse him of different things. This is due to our lack of knowledge. Recently, someone was accusing the Prophet of being a womanizer, having married 11 women incl a child of 9 years.
Could you please explain the truth in all this, so that we could answer such people?

A   There is no doubt that Prophet Muhammad had the most immaculate history. He was the perfect example for mankind to emulate.
However, people who are devoid of faith & knowledge will always talk, sometimes with ignorant hostility, trying to show him in an unfavorable light.

The truth about the Prophet is a shining example of the highest standard of morality. There is nothing in his history that we may wish to hide or for which we need to seek justification.
Having said that, I would like to add that it is true that the Prophet married a total of 11 wives, but his marriages were for very good reasons. You need only to remember that he lived with his first wife, Khadeejah, for 25 years without marrying a second wife, although polygamy was the norm in his society. Later, after her death, he married others, sometimes on instructions he received from God, and at other times as he felt the benefit or the need to do so.

His marriages had social, legislative or political reasons. It is also true that Ayshah was much younger than him when he married her, but we must not judge this according to our norms, but to the norms of the society in which he lived. I have written a book, Muhammad: Man & Prophet, on the Prophet's life, and I have shown that Ayshah's age at the time of her marriage was nearer 18.
If you require a full study of the Prophet's life, you need to read at length.

Q   Is there an English translation of the book Asbab Al-Nuzool by Imam Al-Suyooti? Where I can get it?
I hope to translate Sayyid Sabiq's book Fiqh Al-Sunnah into my Tamil mother tongue. I need to get in touch with his publisher or his family.
Could you also let me know your opinion of Imam Al-Ghazali's book Ihyaa Uloom Al-Deen, as I have received contradictory information about it.

A   I am not aware that Asbab al-Nuzool has been translated into English.
Sayyid Sabiq's book has been published in Arabic by many publishers. However, one of them may hold the copyrights. The best way is to get hold of a copy and write for information about contacting the author's family, without mentioning your intention of translation. When you have received the contact address, you may write to the family concerning copyrights.
al-Ghazali's book is a very good one. However, the main criticism some scholars outline about it is that it includes many Hadiths which are poor on authenticity. Otherwise, there is no doubt that the book is very useful.

Q   Imam Al-Bukhari lived in Bukhara which is over one thousand miles from Makkah & Madinah. Bearing in mind that at his time there was no printing press and no fast means of transport, how come he managed to collect his great volume of books, which is said to have comprised just under 600 thousand Hadiths. He included in his Sahih only 7,275. As such, is he not a rejecter of Hadith?
A   It is true that Al-Bukhari was born in Bukhara, which is a very long way away from Makkah & Madinah. However, he started traveling in pursuit of Hadith study at an early age. His travels took him to many centers of learning, incl Baghdad, Kufah, Basrah, Syria and Hijaz. He studied under a very large number of teachers and scholars, said to number more than one thousand teachers.
When he selected the Hadiths to include in his Sahih, he was in Madinah. It took him 16 years to make his selection. He wanted to include only the most authentic. When he made up his mind about a Hadith, he would offer the prayer of istikharah, and would only include it if the sign was favorable. As such, his book is considered as the most authentic work of human beings.

It is certainly the most authentic after God's book, the Qur'an. It seems that our reader has heard some things about Imam Al-Bukhari which paint him in bad colors. If so, he should read some reliable works before making any judgment. There is no doubt that Imam Al-Bukhari was a model scholar who served Islam most sincerely and produced a most reliable work. May God shower His blessings on Imam Al-Bukhari

references  
Hugh Ross rational faithful G.E. Moore Godchecker new biblical origins Robin Lane Fox
"Man's essence is its desire to be God"
Sartre
new biblical origins Barrows Dunham Upton Sinclair Richard Dawkins Daniel C. Dennett A.C. Grayling Ian Hacking Sam Harris Christopher Hitchens David Mills Carl Sagan Victor Stenger Jamie Whyte Charles Williams skepticism

… In the modern world, adherence to Sharia law reduces intellectual, political and scientific power of a people and renders them weak so they can be ruthlessly exploited economically, politically and militarily, so they can be used by Great Powers as a destructive force against secular states.
That is precisely the case with this Empire of Western & Arab Establishments run by the Americans. It is not love for Muslims that causes the Empire to back the fundamentalists, openly in Afghanistan and then Bosnia, covertly in Kashmir & Chechnya, openly in Kosovo & Macedonia, openly & covertly in Palestine. It is not love for Muslims that is behind the Empire's secret alliance with the Iranian destroyers of Iran and its open love affair with the Saudi destroyers of Arabia.

Operatives of the US-led Empire understand the power of pride and shame in Muslim cultures. They say to Muslims: "To be great again you must do what you did 14 centuries ago. Sharia has 'all the elements that are really required … '" In this way, they push many people to look backwards.
'We are going on a trip,' say the Muslims. 'Shall we perhaps take the Land Rover?' 'On no,' say the Imperialists, 'No, no, you take this 1300 year old camel. It is really all you need … ' Meanwhile, Imperialists fly first class.
Societies which look backwards self-destruct. That is a law of history. You can't go home again because home is no longer there. You can love the past, or you can hate it; in any case, hopefully you will learn from it. But you cannot live in the past. When people try, it is not the past they get but a present which is terrible.

  ³   For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

  ⁴   For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

  ⁵   Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

Romans 13 KJV   ¹

The question of whether there is a God

A man asked Mr. K. whether there is a God.
Mr. K. said:

“I advise you to consider whether, depending on the answer, your behavior would change. If it would not change, then we can drop the question.

If it would change, then I can at least be of help to the extent that I can say, you have already decided: you need a God.”

Bertolt Brecht; Stories of Mr. Keuner

Atlanta   Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant. Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.
With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."
In that spirit, the Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms, backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ, already take on such cases for free.

The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians. Evangelicals have been suspended for wearing anti-gay T-shirts to high school, fired for denouncing Gay Pride Month at work, reprimanded for refusing to attend diversity training. When they protest tolerance codes, they're labeled intolerant.
A recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 64% of American adults, including 80% of evangelical Christians, agreed with the statement "Religion is under attack in this country."
"The message is, you're free to worship as you like, but don't you dare talk about it outside the four walls of your church," said Stephen Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Assn. Center for Law and Policy, which represents Christians who feel harassed.

Critics dismiss such talk as a right-wing fundraising ploy. "They're trying to develop a persecution complex," said Jeremy Gunn, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.
Others fear the banner of religious liberty could be used to justify all manner of harassment.
"What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn't mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn't work?" asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay rights group Lambda Legal.

Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different, a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.

ed. retraction [ " … homosexuality as a lifestyle choice. In fact, he does not have a stance on that issue. As the article noted, he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race, gender and other inborn traits. He asserts that antidiscrimination policies regarding homosexuality are different because they protect people based on conduct. Baylor's organization seeks to exempt religious groups from those policies. ]

Christians are fighting back in a case involving Every Nation Campus Ministries at California State University. Student members of the ministry on the Long Beach and San Diego campuses say their mission is to model a virtuous lifestyle for their peers. They will not accept as members gays, lesbians or anyone who considers homosexuality "a natural part of God's created order."
Legal analysts agree that the ministry, as a private organization, has every right to exclude gays; the Supreme Court affirmed that principle in a case involving the Boy Scouts in 2000. At issue is whether the university must grant official recognition to a student group that discriminates.

The students say denying them recognition, and its attendant benefits, such as funding, violates their free-speech rights and discriminates against their conservative theology. Christian groups at public colleges in other states have sued using similar arguments. Several of those lawsuits were settled out of court, with the groups prevailing.
In California, however, the university may have a strong defense in court. The California Supreme Court recently ruled that the city of Berkeley was justified in denying subsidies to the Boy Scouts because of that group's exclusionary policies. Eddie L. Washington, the lawyer representing Cal State, argues the same standard should apply to the university.
"We're certainly not going to fund discrimination," Washington said.

As they step up their legal campaign, conservative Christians face uncertain prospects. The 1st Amendment guarantees Americans "free exercise" of religion. In practice, though, the ground rules shift depending on the situation.
In a 2004 case, for instance, an AT&T Broadband employee won the right to express his religious convictions by refusing to sign a pledge to "respect and value the differences among us." As long as the employee wasn't harassing co-workers, the company had to make accommodations for his faith, a federal judge in Colorado ruled.

That same year, however, a federal judge in Idaho ruled that Hewlett-Packard Co. was justified in firing an employee who posted Bible verses condemning homosexuality on his cubicle. The verses, clearly visible from the hall, harassed gay employees and made it difficult for the company to meet its goal of attracting a diverse workforce, the judge ruled.
In the public schools, an Ohio middle school student last year won the right to wear a T-shirt that proclaimed: "Homosexuality is a sin! Islam is a lie! Abortion is murder!" But a teen-ager in Kentucky lost in federal court when he tried to exempt himself from a school program on gay tolerance on the grounds that it violated his religious beliefs.

In their lawsuit against Georgia Tech, Malhotra and her co-plaintiff, a devout Jewish student named Orit Sklar, request unspecified damages. But they say their main goal is to force the university to be more tolerant of religious viewpoints. The lawsuit was filed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit law firm that focuses on religious liberty cases.
Malhotra said she had been reprimanded by college deans several times in the last few years for expressing conservative religious and political views. When she protested a campus production of "The Vagina Monologues" with a display condemning feminism, the administration asked her to paint over part of it.

She caused another stir with a letter to the gay activists who organized an event known as Coming Out Week in the fall of 2004. Malhotra sent the letter on behalf of the Georgia Tech College Republicans, which she chairs; she said several members of the executive board helped write it.
The letter referred to the campus gay rights group Pride Alliance as a "sex club … that can't even manage to be tasteful." It went on to say that it was "ludicrous" for Georgia Tech to help fund the Pride Alliance. The letter berated students who come out publicly as gay, saying they subject others on campus to "a constant barrage of homosexuality."
"If gays want to be tolerated, they should knock off the political propaganda," the letter said.

The student activist who received the letter, Felix Hu, described it as "rude, unfair, presumptuous" and disturbing enough that Pride Alliance forwarded it to a college administrator. Soon after, Malhotra said, she was called in to a dean's office. Students can be expelled for intolerant speech, but she said she was only reprimanded.
Still, she said, the incident has left her afraid to speak freely. She's even reluctant to aggressively advertise the campus lectures she arranges on living by the Bible. "Whenever I've spoken out against a certain lifestyle, the first thing I'm told is 'You're being intolerant, you're being negative, you're creating a hostile campus environment,' " Malhotra said.

A Georgia Tech spokeswoman would not comment on the lawsuit or on Malhotra's disciplinary record, but she said the university encouraged students to debate freely, "as long as they're not promoting violence or harassing anyone."
The open question is what constitutes harassment, what's a sincere expression of faith — and what to do when they overlap.
"There really is confusion out there," said Charles C. Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, which is affiliated with Vanderbilt University. "Finding common ground sounds good. But the reality is, a lot of people on all sides have a stake in the fight."

Mina, Saudi Arabia   Thousands of Muslim pilgrims rushing to complete a symbolic stoning ritual during the hajj tripped over luggage Thursday, causing a crush in which at least 345 people were killed, the Interior Ministry said.
The stampede occurred as tens of thousands of pilgrims headed toward al-Jamarat, a series of three pillars representing the devil that the faithful pelt with stones to purge themselves of sin.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said 345 people were killed. Dr. Abbasi, a Red Crecent doctor at the scene, put the number of injured at 1,000.

Haj reflections: day 2
2.11.03   Siraj Wahab Arab News

All the pilgrims who have performed Haj before that I have spoken to are overwhelmed by the changes that have taken place over the last 2 decades in the 2 holy cities. They are amazed at the road network, often winding at times through a series of tunnels, and the smooth flow of pilgrims from their countries into Makkah, Madinah, Mina and Arafat.
"Everything is very well-organized. Come to think of it, managing over 2 million people year after year is and always will be a logistical challenge. The Saudis have not only measured up to it but have done an excellent job," said Dr. Mohammed Sharawy from Los Angeles. This is his 8th Haj.

In the past, the journey to the 2 holy cities was full of adventure, pitfalls and even at times danger. There were no airplanes landing at the Haj Terminal in Jeddah. Traveling the long distance to the holy cities usually meant being part of a caravan. According to one writer, there were 3 main caravans for pilgrims: The Egyptian caravan originating in Cairo, the Iraqi one from Baghdad and the Syrian one which, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, originated in that city, modern Istanbul, and collected pilgrims along the way and then proceeded to Makkah from Damascus.
"As the journey took months if all went well," the writer notes, "the pilgrims carried with them the provisions they needed to sustain them on their trip. The caravans were elaborately supplied with amenities & security if the persons traveling were rich, but the poor often ran out of provisions and had to interrupt their journey in order to work, save their earnings and then go on their way. This resulted in long journeys which, in some cases, spanned 10 years or more."

After regularly angering many of its customers, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) has now let this year's pilgrims down as well. Many pilgrims bought prepaid "Sawa" chips through relatives & friends working here in the Kingdom. The chips should have enabled them to keep in touch with their families at home and also should allow the people at home to keep in touch with those performing Haj.
But simply speaking, there is no network. Either STC did not set up enough communication towers or there is insufficient bandwidth to cope with the tens of thousands of calls from one area. The whole purpose of the prepaid chips has thus been defeated and money has been spent for nothing.

Even though thousands of would-be pilgrims have been turned back at Makkah's checkpoints because of no permits, there are still too many unauthorized pilgrims performing Haj. In the absence of proper accommodation, they sleep under bridges & on roads, obstructing the movement of traffic, bringing everything to a standstill and frustrating both the public & the police.
The unauthorized pilgrims are also responsible for unhygienic conditions in the areas where they rest, sleep and eat. They seldom throw trash into bins. "They are jeopardizing the health of other pilgrims but they don't realize that. We cannot be strict with them. After all they are the guests of Allah. They have to realize what they are doing themselves," said one annoyed official at the Haj Ministry.

According to the official, it is easy to avoid the checkpoints at all places. For example, he says, an illegal pilgrim will get off the bus or car just before a checkpoint and will take a long detour into the desert to get to the other side of the checkpoint before boarding another vehicle and continuing his journey. More checkpoints only mean more breaks.
"They have learned to beat the system," the official said, wringing his hands.
We have arrived at Arafat. The minarets of Nimira Mosque are magnificent, rising up from the plains. It is 11 am and the sun is beating down but the pilgrims are unperturbed. They continue reciting the talbiyah with even greater vigor. Like them, my eyes are filled too for no obvious reason. Nobody makes the effort to stop the tears from trickling down. Everybody is very emotional.

2 million pilgrims and yet every pilgrim is alone in his own way. We have a plan to climb the Mount of Mercy or Jabal Al-Rahmah, where the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) delivered his unforgettable farewell sermon, enunciating far-reaching religious, economic, social and political reforms. We wonder if we will succeed in doing so.

Describing the standing (wuquf) scene at Arafat is a very tough task. It reminds me of the Englishwoman, Lady Evelyn Cobbold, who became a Muslim & took the name of Zeinab. In her Haj journal, she wrote: "It would require a master pen to describe the scene, poignant in its intensity, of that great concourse of humanity of which I was one small unit, completely lost to their surroundings in a fervor of religious enthusiasm.
Many of the pilgrims had tears streaming down their cheeks; others raised their faces to the sky that had witnessed this drama so often in the past centuries. The shining eyes, the passionate appeals, the pitiful hands outstretched in prayer moved me in a way that nothing had ever done before, and I felt caught up in a strong wave of spiritual exaltation. I was one with the rest of the pilgrims in a sublime act of complete surrender to the Supreme Will which is Islam."

In the midst of all this religious fervor, a crisis unfolded. A young couple brought their 3 month old infant with them. The father was carrying the baby when the young couple became separated in the crowd. At first it did not seem too serious, but within half an hour the sun came out and the infant began to grow hot.
Seeing the father & child in distress, we helped by removing the baby's sweater and carrying the child in order to give the father a much needed rest. But no matter what we did, the poor baby was miserable. He wanted his mother to feed him and give him comfort, but she was lost in all the white. 2½ hours later we had to move on and the baby was still miserable. Small children are out of place among the Haj pilgrims.

It is 5 p.m. At sunset the pilgrims will begin to move toward Muzdalifah. For all, a wonderful but extremely long & arduous day will be over.

More than 1,000 feared dead as Egyptian ferry sinks in storm
2.4.06   M.K. Stack, H. Hamalawy, J. Charbel L.A. Times

Cairo Rescue teams scoured the dark waters of the Red Sea for survivors after an Egyptian ferry carrying more than 1,400 people sank in stormy weather early Friday. A day later, just 324 survivors had been found, along with nearly 200 bodies. Most of the rest of the passengers were feared lost.
Saudi and Egyptian ships combed the chilly waters, but the ferry had been missing for 10 hours by the time rescue efforts got underway. There was no way to know for certain yet what caused the ferry to sink, but high winds and sandstorms plagued the Red Sea area when the boat disappeared.

Survivors told reporters that a fire broke out early in the voyage; at least one said he heard an explosion. The ferry was also heavy with hundreds of cars, and there weren't enough lifeboats to save all the passengers, an Egyptian presidential spokesman said.
"The fire happened about an hour or 90 minutes into the trip, but they decided to keep going," survivor Nabil Zikry told AP. "It's negligence."
President Hosni Mubarak "called for a swift investigation into what happened, and this will happen parallel to the rescue efforts," spokesman Suleiman Awad told state television. "This is not the first incident that happened, and we need to investigate why this happens. Is it a technical failure, a breach of safety regulation or what?"

After the slow start, rescue efforts appeared to be hampered by confusion. Egyptian authorities at first turned down British and American offers to send ships to aid the hunt for survivors. A British warship on patrol nearby had already turned toward the scene when Cairo called it off. As the hours passed, however, the Egyptian govt reversed its decision and asked for help.
Frantic families huddled at the Egyptian port town of Safaga, where the ferry had been due to arrive before sunrise Friday. The boat was making the 120-mile crossing from the Saudi port of Duba to Egypt, carrying mostly Egyptian workers who journey to the oil-rich Persian Gulf state to make a living. Many struggling Egyptians opt for the water crossing on their visits home because it is cheaper than flying.

At least 2,000 friends and family members milled near the gates of the port Friday night, waiting in anger and confusion for news of their loved ones. Officials wandered through the crowd, reading the names of passengers. The atmosphere was chaotic and tense; riot police were deployed in case of unrest.
"We don't know anything yet," said 47-year-old Arabic teacher Hassan Suleiman Youssef. After seeing news of the ferry disaster on television, Youssef had driven to Safaga hoping for word of his brother-in-law, who was on his way home after guiding pilgrims in the Muslim rite of hajj. "No one told us if he's dead or alive," said Youssef, standing near the port in traditional robes. "We are still waiting."

Survivors fumed about spending nearly 24 hours in the water before help arrived. "Around me people were dying and sinking," survivor Ahmed Elew told AP. "Who is responsible for this?"
The ship is believed to have sunk about 57 miles from the Egyptian port of Hurghada. A team of federal investigators was immediately airlifted to Safaga to open an investigation of the sinking. Along with experts from air and marine ports security, 5 forensic specialists and 20 doctors were present to begin identifying the bodies.

The 35-year-old boat, which was used in Europe for years before being sold to the Egyptian owner, El Salam Maritime, was carrying more than 1,100 Egyptians and almost 100 Saudis. There were also Syrians, Palestinians and at least one passenger each from the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Canada, Sudan and Yemen.
A spokesman for El Salam in Cairo said it was inspected every 48 hours in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The ship was in good repair, said fleet manager Mamdouh Oraby.
"It looks abnormal because there was no distress message," Oraby said by telephone. "With the new, modern communication system, it's hard not to give any signal or message. It looks like it went down quickly."

The massive ferry was carrying 1,317 passengers, along with 97 crew members, when it sank, Oraby said. The craft offered varying accommodations, depending on the fare paid. Passengers could buy tickets for Pullman seats, the deck or first- and second-class beds.
The ferry, called Al Salam Boccaccio 98, was registered in Panama. Egyptian regulations prevent any boat older than 25 years from flying the Egyptian flag, said Bassem Faisal, an operations manager in another Egyptian maritime company.
"What some companies do is go and register their ships in Panama or Cyprus, where regulations are very much relaxed," he said. "As for the Egyptian authorities, they can do nothing if the ship's registration papers are legal."

With public outrage mounting, a longtime member of the ferry's staff appeared on Egyptian state television to counter criticism.
"Accidents happen. We shouldn't jump to conclusions that there was something wrong with the ship," said former ferry medical unit head Dr. Emad Atriss. "I don't want the Egyptian people to lose confidence in the Egyptian means of transportation. Corruption or not, these are people's lives we're talking about. Corruption does not extend to taking out people's lives," he said.

A similar ferry sinking in the same area of the Red Sea killed 470 people in 1991 after the ship struck a coral reef. It took rescuers 9 hours to respond to an SOS message.
A report by Egypt's Ain Shams University later concluded that a lone ship and a single helicopter were the only crafts hunting for survivors for the first 24 hours. The tragedy quickly brought a worldwide outpouring of sympathy. In Wash.D.C., the White House issued a statement saying President Bush "extends our deepest condolences for the loss of life." "Our thoughts and prayers are with all Egyptians and citizens of other nations who suffered losses in this terrible accident," it continued. "U.S. stands ready to assist govts of Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the process of rescue and recovery."

1,000 feared lost on doomed Egyptian ferry
2.4.06  Mariam Fam AP

Safaga, Egypt  Rescue boats picked up at least 362 survivors from an Egyptian ferry that caught fire and sank in the Red Sea, apparently so fast there was no time for a distress signal. But more than 1,000 missing passengers and crew were feared drowned, officials said Saturday.
Transport Minister Mohammed Lutfy Mansour said investigators were trying to determine whether the fire, which he described as "small," led to the sinking. He denied there were explosions.
Weather may also have been a factor. There were high winds and a sandstorm overnight on Saudi Arabia's west coast.

The ship sank in the dark hours of Friday morning while ferrying people and cars between the Saudi port of Dubah and Egypt's port of Safaga. Survivors said a fire broke out, got out of control and an explosion was heard.
Egyptian rescuers had pulled 340 people out of the sea by Saturday morning, Egypt's Red Sea province governor Bakr el-Rashidi told AP.
Saudis vessels searching in their waters have retrieved another 22 survivors, 20 Egyptians and two Saudis, a Saudi govt official told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Hundreds of relatives desperate for news of their loved ones tried to push their way into Safaga, where survivors from "Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98" ferry were being brought ashore. Port officials were not distributing lists of survivor names to the crowd, which repeatedly tried to break through a line of helmeted police with sticks.
"No one is telling us anything," said Shaaban el-Qott, from the southern city of Qena, who waited all night for news of his cousin. "All I want to know if he's dead or alive."

A spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak said the ferry did not have enough lifeboats, and questions were raised about the safety of the 35-year-old, refitted ship that was weighed down with 220 cars as well as the passengers.
Many survivors said the fire began about 90 minutes after departure, but the ship kept going. Their accounts varied on the fire's location, with some saying it was in a storeroom or the engine room.
"Fire erupted in the parking bay where the cars were," said passenger Ahmed Abdel Wahab, 30, an Egyptian who works in Saudi Arabia. "We told the crew: 'Let's turn back, let's call for help,' but they refused and said everything was under control. "We heard an explosion and five minutes later the ship sank," he added.

Wahab claimed that as passengers began to panic, "crew members locked up some women in their cabins." A martial arts trainer, Wahab said he spent 20 hours in the sea, sometimes holding on to a barrel from the ship and later taking a life-jacket from a dead body, before he was hauled onto a rescue boat.
Ahmed Elew, an Egyptian in his 20s, said he went to the ship's crew to report the fire and they ordered him to help put it out. At one point there was an explosion, he said.
When the ship began sinking, Elew said he jumped into the water and swam for several hours. He said he saw one lifeboat overturn because it was overloaded with people, but eventually got into another lifeboat.
"Around me people were dying and sinking," he said. "Who is responsible for this? Somebody did not do their job right."

Mubarak flew to the port of Hurghada, about 40 miles further north, to visit survivors in two hospitals, Egypt's semi-official Middle East News Agency reported. Some survivors were taken from the ferry's lifeboats, others from inflatable rescue craft dropped into the sea by helicopters, and others were pulled from the water wearing life jackets, said al-Rashidi.
Rescue efforts appeared to have been confused. Egyptian officials initially turned down a British offer to divert a warship to the scene and a U.S. offer to send a P3-Orion maritime naval patrol aircraft to the area. In the end, the Orion, which has the capability to search under water from the air, was sent, but the HMS Bulwark was not, said Lt. Cdr. Charlie Brown of the U.S. 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain.

Four Egyptian rescue ships reached the scene Friday afternoon, about 10 hours after the ferry likely went down nearly 60 miles off the Egyptian port of Hurghada. The ship left Dubah at 7:30 p.m. Thursday on the 120-mile trip to Safaga, where it was scheduled to arrive at 3 a.m. It disappeared from radar screens between midnight and 2 a.m. and no distress signal was received.
The ferry was carrying 1,200 Egyptian and 112 other passengers as well as 96 crew members, the head of Al-Salaam Maritime Transport Co, Mamdouh Ismail, told AP. The passengers included 99 Saudis, three Syrians, two Sudanese, and a Canadian, officials said. It was not clear where the other passengers were from.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians work in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries. They often travel by ship across the Red Sea, a cheaper option than flying. The Saudi port of Dubah is a major transit point for them. But some on board the ferry were believed to be Muslim pilgrims who had overstayed their visas after last month's hajj .
The agent for the ship in Saudi Arabia, Farid al-Douadi, said the vessel had the capacity for 2,500 passengers. But the owner's Web site said the ship could carry 1,487 passengers and crew.

A ship owned by the same company collided with a cargo ship at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal in October, causing a stampede among passengers trying to escape the sinking ship. Two people were killed and 40 injured.

Crowd trashes offices of Red Sea ferry firm   Relatives of drowned victims say company not forthcoming   2.6.06   AP

Safaga, Egypt  Relatives of passengers on a ferry that sank in the Red Sea attacked the offices of the ship’s owners Monday, throwing furniture into the street and burning the company’s sign. Riot police fired tear gas to restore order.
The relatives are desperate to know whether their loved ones were among the more than 1,000 who drowned and they say El Salam Maritime still has not released the victims’ names. They also accuse Egypt’s govt of mishandling the rescue.

The Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98 sank in the Red Sea early Friday on its way from Saudi Arabia to the Egyptian port of Safaga. Only 401 of the more than 1,400 people on board are known to have survived. Most of the passengers were low-income Egyptians returning from working in Saudi Arabia other Persian Gulf countries.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians work in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, many of them from impoverished families in southern Egypt who spend years abroad to earn money. They often travel by ship to and from Saudi Arabia.

Hundreds of people took part in the attack early Monday on the company’s offices in this Red Sea port. The crowd threw everything in the offices into the street and set fire to a large picture of one of the company’s ferries. They also tore down the company’s sign from the front of the building.
Riot police who were guarding the nearby port gates arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd with tear gas. Afterward, one civilian was seen holding his head in pain. It was not immediately known how he was injured. Some rioters set fire to tires on roads leading to the port.
Governor of Red Sea province Bakr al-Rashidi told AP he was not aware of the violence. Independent Egyptian newspapers have accused Mubarak’s govt of protecting the ship’s owner, who they say is close to a top govt official.

Fire broke out in the ship’s parking bay as it was about 20 miles from the Saudi shore, survivors said Sunday. The crew decided to push across the Red Sea to try to reach Egypt’s shores 110 miles away.
As it burned, many passengers moved to one side of the ship. An explosion was heard, and high winds helped topple the unbalanced vessel.
Initial offers of help in the rescue effort from U.S. & Britain were rejected, and 4 Egyptian ships reached the scene only by Friday afternoon, about 10 hours after the ferry was believed to have capsized.

Survivors came forward Sunday with more tales of crew errors before the sinking.
Khaled Hassan, a 27-year-old survivor from the village of al-Dhobiyah near Luxor who was traveling home after working in Kuwait, said he saw the ship’s captain jump into a lifeboat as passengers were left behind. His story could not be verified.
Abdul Muhsin Rayan, a 35-year-old from Sohag who had been working in Saudi Arabia, said as smoke engulfed the ship, crew members told the passengers not to put on life jackets that were nearby, because that would panic women and children.
“From the captain on down, no one gave us any instructions on what to do,” he said from a hospital bed.

Weekly independent paper Soutelomma said 2 other ferries owned by the company had sunk in the past 10 years, without the govt properly investigating or putting the company’s owner on trial. Mustafa al-Bakri, part of a delegation of 20 members of parliament who went to Safaga, said lawmakers would try to investigate why Egyptian officials received no distress call from the ship.
He also said the same company operated ships involved in past tragedies, including one that sank last year. Mubarak spokesman Suleiman Awad said the ferry did not have enough lifeboats and an investigation was under way into the ship’s seaworthiness.

But Transportation Ministry maritime section chair Maj. Gen. Sherin Hasan said there were more than enough lifeboats for the number of passengers on the ferry. El Salam Maritime issued a statement declaring it complied “with all the international safety regulations and treaties and (was) certified to make international voyages.”

Maiduguri, Nigeria   Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings.
It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa’s most populous nation. An AP reporter saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and setting him ablaze.
In Libya, the parliament suspended the interior minister after at least 11 people died when his security forces attacked rioters who torched the Italian consulate in Benghazi.

Right-wing Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli resigned under pressure, accused of fueling the fury in Benghazi by wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with one of the offending cartoons, first published nearly five months ago in a Danish newspaper.
Danish church officials met with a top Muslim cleric in Cairo, meanwhile, but made no significant headway in defusing the conflict.
And in what has become a daily event, tens of thousands of Muslims protested, this time in Britain, Pakistan and Austria, to denounce the perceived insult.

But it was in Nigeria, where mutual suspicions between Christians and Muslims have led to thousands of deaths in recent years, that tensions boiled over into sectarian violence. Thousands of rioters burned 15 churches in Maiduguri in a 3 hour rampage before troops and police reinforcements restored order, Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said. Security forces arrested dozens of people, Iwendi said.
Christian Maiduguri resident Chima Ezeoke said protesters attacked and looted shops owned by minority Christians, most of them with origins in the country’s south. “Most of the dead were Christians beaten to death on the streets by the rioters,” Ezeoke said. Witnesses said three children and a priest were among those killed.

Nigeria, with a population of more than 130 million, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south. Thousands of people have died in this West African country since 2000 in religious violence fueled by the adoption of the strict Islamic legal code by a dozen states in the north, seen by most Christians as a move to impose religious hegemony on non-Muslims.

The Danish cartoons, including one showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse, have set off sometimes violent protests around the world. After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed the caricatures in September, other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe, followed suit, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.

But Nigeria has been spared much of the violence seen elsewhere in the world, though lawmakers in the heavily Muslim state of Kano burned Danish and Norwegian flags and barred Danish companies from bidding on a major construction project. Kano lawmakers also called on the state’s 5 million people to boycott Danish goods.

With Saturday’s deaths, at least 45 people have been killed in protests across the Muslim world, according to a count by The Associated Press.
In the violence in Libya, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif el-Islam Gadhafi said four of the 11 dead were believed to have been Egyptians or Palestinians.
“Setting the consulate on fire was a mistake, but using excessive force was the most tragic response,” the younger Gadhafi said, explaining the suspension of Interior Minister Nasr al-Mabrouk.
Gadhafi expressed pride, however, that the demonstrators were behind Calderoli’s resignation when “other Arab states refused or lagged behind in taking revenge for insults to their religion.”

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi blamed the riots in Libya, Italy’s former colony, on “thoughtless action by our minister,” the Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.
Calderoli said he wore the shirt to show “solidarity to all those who were hit by the blind violence of religious fanaticism.” He said he did not intend “to offend the Muslim religion nor to be the pretext for yesterday’s violence.”
In Cairo, Bishop Karsten Nissen, of Denmark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, met with Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of al-Azhar University, the world’s highest Sunni Muslim seat of learning. Tantawi said the Danish prime minister must apologize for the drawings and further demanded that the world’s religious leaders, including him and Pope Benedict XVI, should meet to write a law that “condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets.” He said the United Nations should then impose the law on all countries.

In response, Nissen did not address the issue of a global law but said it was impossible for Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to apologize for what a newspaper had published.
“I have brought to his excellency (Tantawi) the apology of the newspaper, but our prime minister did not draw these cartoons. Our prime minister is not the editor of this newspaper. He cannot apologize for something he did not do,” Nissen said.

In central Pakistan, four people were wounded when shots were fired during another protest over publication of the controversial cartoons. The shooting occurred as protesters pelted police with stones and tried to block a road in the town of Chiniot in the central province of Punjab, a local police official told Reuters.
He said it was unclear whether police or protesters fired the shots. Clerics at mosques across Pakistan condemned the caricatures at Friday prayers.
“Give enough power to the Muslim countries and enable them to take revenge,” said Qari Saeed Ullah, a prayer leader in Islamabad.

Five people have been killed in Islamic Pakistan this week during violent demonstrations against the satirical cartoons. Earlier, a Pakistani cleric was placed under house detention after announcing a $1 million bounty for killing one of the cartoonists who drew the caricatures, as thousands rallied across the country and authorities arrested scores of protesters.
In Denmark, where the prophet drawings were first published in September, the govt said Friday it had temporarily closed its embassy in Pakistan following the violent protests this week.
Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Denmark for “consultations” about the caricatures, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, prayer leader at the historic Mohabat Khan mosque in the conservative northwestern city of Peshawar, announced the mosque and the Jamia Ashrafia religious school he leads would give a $25,000 reward and a car for killing the cartoonist who drew the prophet caricatures, considered blasphemous by Muslims.
He also said a local jewelers’ association would give $1 million, but no representative of the association was available to confirm the offer.
“Whoever has done this despicable and shameful act, he has challenged the honor of Muslims. Whoever will kill this cursed man, he will get $1 million from the association of the jewelers bazaar, 1 million rupees ($16,700) from Masjid Mohabat Khan and 500,000 rupees ($8,350) and a car from Jamia Ashrafia as a reward,” Qureshi told about 1,000 people outside the mosque after Friday prayers.
“This is a unanimous decision by all imams (prayer leaders) of Islam that whoever insults the prophets deserves to be killed and whoever will take this insulting man to his end, will get this prize.”

Qureshi did not name any cartoonist in his announcement and did not appear to be aware that 12 different people had drawn the pictures. The crowd outside the mosque burned a Danish flag and an effigy of the Danish prime minister.
The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten first printed the prophet drawings by 12 cartoonists in September. The newspaper has since apologized to Muslims for the drawings, one of them showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse.
Other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe but also some in the United States, have reprinted the pictures, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.

A spokesman for Jyllands-Posten did not want to comment on Qureshi’s offer.
“We are not going to discuss this with that kind of people,” Tage Clausen said.
The cartoonists have gone underground and lived under police protection since the conflict started escalating last year. The president of the Danish Journalist Union, Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard, who is a spokesman for the cartoonists, would not say whether security surrounding them had been increased.

In Islamabad, former President Clinton criticized the drawings but said Muslims wasted an opportunity to build better ties with the West by mounting violent protests.
“I can tell you most people in the United States deeply respect Islam ... and most people in Europe do,” he said

Muhammad cartoons rile Calif. college
3.1.06   Gillian Flaccus AP

A student panel discussion that included a display of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons descended into chaos, with one speaker calling Islam an "evil religion" and audience members nearly coming to blows. Organizers of Tuesday night's forum at the UCIrvine said they showed the cartoons as part of a larger debate on Islamic extremism.
But several hundred protesters, including members of the Muslim Student Union, argued the event was the equivalent of hate speech disguised as freedom of expression. Although there were numerous heated exchanges, no violence was reported.

The panel, which included one Muslim speaker, was sponsored by the College Republicans and the United American Committee, a group that says it promotes awareness of internal threats facing America.
During the discussion in a nearly packed 424-seat campus auditorium, 6 cartoons were displayed: 3 depicting Muhammad and 3 anti-Semitic cartoons.

The discussion got off to a contentious start with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an invited guest, boycotting the event and calling the United American Committee a "fringe group."
Tensions quickly escalated when the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the conservative Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, said that Islam was an "evil religion" and that all Muslims hate America.
People repeatedly interrupted the talk and, at one point, campus police removed two men, one of them a Muslim, after they nearly came to blows.

Later, panelists were cheered when they referred to Muslims as fascists and accused mainstream Muslim-American civil rights groups of being "cheerleaders for terror."
"I put out a call to Muslims in America: Put out a fatwa on (Osama) bin Laden, put out a fatwa on (Abu Musab) al-Zarqawi," said panelist UAC spokesman Lee Kaplan. "Support America in the war on terror."

Thousands of Muslims worldwide have protested, sometimes violently, after the cartoons were published in a Danish newspaper and in other European newspapers. Islam widely holds that representations of Muhammad are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.
Former Muslim Student Union president Osman Umarji equated the decision by the student panel to display the prophet drawings to the debasement of Jews in Germany before the Holocaust.
"The agenda is to spread Islamophobia and create hysteria against Muslims similar to what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany," said Umarji, an electrical engineer who graduated from Irvine last spring. "Freedom of speech has its limits."

College Republicans vp Brock Hill said his group had a First Amendment right to display the cartoons. "We're not going against Islam whatsoever," he said. "This is about free speech and the free marketplace of ideas."
Mohamed Eldessouky, 20, a criminology student who attended the discussion, said he was disappointed because he felt the panel and the audience were biased against Islam.
"I entered it with an open mind, but I thought it was totally biased. I thought the panelists would be more balanced. I think it did more harm than good," he said.
Lauren Chramosta, 18, a freshman, said she didn't know much about Islam and attended hoping to learn more. "It was helpful to listen to different views," she said. "But I think (the Muslim panelist) was shut down so many times that he didn't get a fair shake."

Lebanon apologizes for Danish mission attack   Muslim protests over Muhammad caricatures persist across the globe; Death toll from Afghan cartoon protests rises.
2.6.06   AP

… Afghanistan:   Hundreds of Afghans clashed with police and soldiers Monday in the central city of Mihtarlam. One person was killed and four wounded, officials said. Police fired on the demonstrators after a man in the crowd shot at them and others threw stones and knives, according to a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. In Kabul, hundreds of young men, many wielding sticks, marched through the capital and attacked the Danish embassy with stones, smashing windows.

Iraq:   Several thousand Iraqis in the south rallied to demand severing all ties with countries in which the caricatures were published. The protest witnessed the burning of Danish, German and Israeli flags and an effigy of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Protesters called for the death of anyone who insults Muhammad and demanded withdrawal of 530-member Danish military contingent operating under British control.

India:   The main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir came to a standstill as shops, businesses and schools shut down for a day to protest the caricatures. Dozens of protesters torched Danish flags, burned tires and shouted slogans in several parts of Srinagar. Protesters also hurled rocks at passing cars, but no one was reported hurt. In the capital New Delhi, riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of students from Jamia University, who chanted slogans and burned a Danish flag.

Indonesia:   Muslim protesters hurled rocks and broke windows at a Danish consulate in Indonesia as anger over the drawings spread to cities across the world's most populous Muslim nation, witnesses said. About 100 people took part in the rally at the consulate in Surabaya, the country's second largest city, witnesses said. Protests were also held in the capital, Jakarta, and at least two other cities.

Australia:   Muslim leaders demanded an Australian newspaper apologize after it published one of the cartoons. The News Corp.-owned Courier-Mail, the biggest newspaper in the Queensland state capital of Brisbane, apparently became the first newspaper in Australia to publish one of the Danish caricatures on Saturday despite warnings from Muslim groups.

… Apart from fueling protests, the controversy has also had an impact on foreign relations. On Monday, Iran announced it cut all trade ties with Denmark because of the cartoons. Iran imports some $280 million worth of goods a year from Denmark.   …

Islamabad   Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf called on Saturday for a review of controversial Islamic laws that human rights groups say are discriminatory against women and non-Muslim minorities. Speaking at a convention on human rights, Musharraf said the strict Islamic laws passed under the military dictatorship of late General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1979 should be studied afresh to ensure they were not misused.
"The nation should not shy away from re-examining the Hudood Ordinance by scholars, lawyers and legislators within the teachings of the Holy Koran," the official APP news agency quoted Musharraf as saying. "Islam says we must reach a decision through discussion … why should a discussion be opposed on an ordinance which is the creation of human mind," he added.

One of the most controversial provisions of the Hudood laws states that a woman must have 4 pious male Muslim witnesses to prove a rape, or face a charge of adultery herself. Men & women found guilty of adultery face stoning to death or 100 lashes. Secular political parties, civil rights and women's groups say rape and other violent crimes against women have soared since the passage of Hudood laws.
The private Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) says the incidence of rape could be higher than the one every 2 hours reported in the local media. But successive govts have failed to change the laws because of stiff opposition from Islamist groups.

Musharraf took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and vowed to turn Pakistan into a moderate, progressive Muslim nation. He said his general's uniform, which he has pledged to take off at the end of this year, had helped him take bold steps on human rights issues.
Critics say he had little to show for his efforts because of strong opposition from hardline Islamist groups. December 2003, Musharraf survived 2 assassination attempts blamed on militants linked to al Qaeda who are angry over his support for U.S. led war on terror.

Musharraf said the country's blasphemy law should also be reviewed. The blasphemy law prescribes the death penalty for insulting Prophet Mohammad, other prophets and holy books, but rights groups say it is often used to settle personal scores. "The blasphemy law needs to be looked into so that justice is done and it is not misused to victimize the innocent," Musharraf said.
Most convictions are thrown out on appeal to higher courts, but several Christians & Muslims accused of blasphemy have been killed by religious fanatics inside prisons or police stations.

Musharraf also called for a law banning honor killings, in which male relatives kill women deemed to have brought disgrace on their families by having a relationship with a man, or marrying without consent or bringing an inadequate dowry. "Although honor killing is illegal, the passage of law banning it would lend more strength to Pakistan's efforts to do away with the intolerable practice," he said. Every year, hundreds of women are killed in the name of honor in feudal-dominated rural Pakistan but most go unreported.

Coup by religious extremists threatens Pakistan, Khan says   Sports hero turned politician speaks out
11.14.07   Saeed Shah The Globe and Mail

Lahore, Pakistan   From his hiding place, Imran Khan, one of Pakistan's most respected and high-profile political leaders, warned yesterday that the country is threatened with an Iran-style takeover by religious extremists because democrats have been crushed.
"If he keeps clamping down on the democratic movement and makes it impossible for us to function, I think it won't even be the religious mullahs [who take over]. It will go to a further extreme. The extremists that are rising in places like in Waziristan and Swat [in northwest Pakistan], they're not interested in the democratic process. That's why it's very important for the democratic movement to succeed."

Khan, sports hero turned politician, has been on the run from the military government of General Pervez Musharraf since a state of emergency was declared 11.3.07. Khan was swept up along with thousands of opposition leaders and human-rights activists, but managed to give police the slip. He has been moving from one place to another to avoid detention.
In a telephone interview from a secret location yesterday, he called on the White House to cut its ties to Gen. Musharraf, describing as "total eyewash" his recent announcement that elections will be held by early January.

"The Bush administration has alienated 160 million people, just to protect one guy. … It shows they're just not worried about human beings. It's just for their interests. It's self-defeating. Washington should not be surprised at the anti-Americanism.
It's the same situation which happened in Iran, where they backed an unpopular dictator right to the end. And the democratic movement turned out to be anti-American in the end. And the more oppression he [the Shah of Iran] did, he killed off all the moderate forces. The only organized forces left were the mosques and the religious militants. It's going to head the same way now [in Pakistan]."

Khan led the Pakistan cricket team to World Cup glory in 1992 as the culmination of a 20-year career as one of the sport's most talented players. Despite his film-star looks and the idolization he enjoyed from his cricketing days, when he entered the murky world of Pakistan politics a decade ago, he found the going tough.
With a mission to clean up the corruption that has tainted all the country's govts, his party, Tehreek-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice), was a marginal player until he joined forces with a coalition of other opposition parties this year. Since then, he has emerged as one of the most articulate and powerful anti-Musharraf voices in Pakistan.

He said that Gen. Musharraf's move to crush dissent puts the country at risk. Today, Khan risks arrest by emerging publicly for the first time since the emergency was imposed. He said he plans to address students at Punjab University in his hometown of Lahore in an attempt to inspire a grassroots campaign to oust Gen. Musharraf.
Students have not come out on the streets in Pakistan for 30 years. Khan said dissent is now appearing on campuses.
"To launch the movement, you need to get the students mobilized. You will see that this [movement] will not stop now."

He was damning of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's strategy of negotiating with Gen. Musharraf over a power-sharing deal, while ostensibly being in the opposition.
"The reason why Musharraf is sitting there is because the opposition played a terrible role ... by Benazir talking to Musharraf," Mr. Khan, 54, said. By yesterday, Ms. Bhutto appeared to have finally cut her ties to the general. Mr. Khan said that a united opposition could defeat the regime but he remained concerned about Ms. Bhutto's sincerity.

He said: "A one-point agenda is the only way to get rid of a dictator. If Benazir agrees, then it's all over. The elections are completely discredited. At the moment, she's used the opposition to strengthen her bargaining position. That's really a worry, that's why the suspicion is there."
And then, someone said something to Mr. Khan at the other end of the line. "They're saying I have to move quickly from here." And with that, he was gone.

Newspapers republish Muhammad caricatures
2.1.06   Angela Charlton AP

Paris   French and German newspapers on Wednesday republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have riled the Muslim world, saying democratic freedoms include the "right to blasphemy."
The front page of the daily France Soir carried the headline "Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God" along with a cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods floating on a cloud. Inside, the paper reran the drawings.
"The appearance of the 12 drawings in the Danish press provoked emotions in the Muslim world because the representation of Allah and his prophet is forbidden. But because no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society, France Soir is publishing the incriminating caricatures," the paper said.

Germany's Die Welt daily printed one of the drawings on its front page, arguing that a "right to blasphemy" was anchored in democratic freedoms. The Berliner Zeitung daily also printed two of the caricatures as part of its coverage of the controversy.
The Danish daily Jyllands-Posten originally published the cartoons in September after asking artists to depict Islam's prophet to challenge what it perceived was self-censorship among artists dealing with Islamic issues. A Norwegian newspaper reprinted the images this month.

The depictions include an image of Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, and another portraying him holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black rectangle. Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet to prevent idolatry.
Angered by the drawings, masked Palestinian gunmen briefly took over a European Union office in Gaza on Monday. Syria called for the offenders to be punished. Danish goods were swept from shelves in many countries, and Saudi Arabia and Libya recalled their ambassadors to Denmark.

The Jyllands-Posten, which received a bomb threat over the drawings, has apologized for hurting Muslims' feelings but not for publishing the cartoons. Its editor said Wednesday, however, that he would not have printed the drawings had he foreseen the consequences. Carsten Juste also said the international furor amounted to a victory for opponents of free expression.
"Those who have won are dictatorships in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, where they cut criminals' hands and give women no rights," Juste told AP. "The dark dictatorships have won."

Demonstrations and condemnations across the Muslim world continued. The Supreme Council of Moroccan religious leaders denounced the drawings on Wednesday.
"Muslim beliefs cannot tolerate such an attack, however small it may be," the statement said.
In Turkey, dozens of protesters from a small Islamic party staged a demonstration in front of the Danish Embassy. About 200 riot police watched the crowd from the Felicity Party, which laid a black wreath and a book about Muhammad's life at the gates of the embassy building.

Despite the show of solidarity among Europe's newspaper editors, not all Europeans appreciated the drawings. Norway's deputy state secretary for foreign affairs, Raymond Johansen, said they encourage distrust between people of different faiths.
"I can understand that Muslims find the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the Norwegian weekly … to be offensive. This is unfortunate and regrettable," Johansen said on a visit to Beirut.
There was also anger in France, which has Western Europe's largest Muslim community with an estimated 5 million people. Mohammed Bechari, president of the National Federation of the Muslims of France, said his group would start legal proceedings against France Soir because of "these pictures that have disturbed us, and that are still hurting the feelings of 1.2 billion Muslims."

French govt spokesman Jean-Francois Cope struck a neutral tone, saying France is "a country that is attached to the principle of secularism, and this freedom clearly should be exercised in a spirit of tolerance and respect for the beliefs of everyone."
France Soir, which is owned by an Egyptian magnate, has been struggling to stay afloat and bring in readers in recent years. French theologian Sohaib Bencheikh spoke out against the pictures in a column in France Soir accompanying them Wednesday.
"One must find the borders between freedom of expression and freedom to protect the sacred," he wrote. "Unfortunately, the West has lost its sense of the sacred."   [ aka superstition ]

Beirut rioters attack church   Muslims outraged over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad target a Christian community and Danish Consulate. Some see Syria's hand.
2.6.06   Megan K. Stack L.A. Times

Beirut   Thousands of Muslims rioted in downtown Beirut on Sunday, setting fire to the Danish Consulate, attacking a prominent Maronite Catholic church and smashing car and shop windows in protest against the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in Western newspapers. The pandemonium took a sectarian turn as demonstrators cut an angry path through a predominantly Christian neighborhood.
It was the first time in days of protests around the world that Muslims, who consider the caricatures blasphemous, took their anger out on another community. For Lebanese, the rioting was an unsettling echo of a 15-year civil war fought along religious lines.

The riots came a day after similar unrest flared in the Syrian capital, causing some here to question whether Syria could be latching on to the controversy, and generalized anti-Western sentiment, for political purposes. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora suggested that the riots in Damascus were "a lesson to some in Lebanon to do the same." There was no immediate response from Damascus.
In Beirut, where religious tensions have fueled generations of political violence, rioting dragged on for hours in the Christian neighborhood of Achrifiyeh, leaving at least 30 people injured and one dead, AP reported.

Interior Minister Hassan Sebaa offered his resignation later Sunday in an emergency Cabinet meeting, as accusations mounted that security forces were too slow to respond to the mobs. Wielding hammers, rocks and wooden clubs, Muslim demonstrators packed the streets, chanting slogans against Jews and America. Many of the demonstrators marched calmly, but others set cars and trash cans on fire, smashed a police car into the side of a church and uprooted trees.
As they moved through the streets toward the Danish Consulate, some demonstrators spray-painted slogans on storefronts and ripped down commemorative posters of Gibran Tueni, the critic of Syria and Christian newspaper publisher who was assassinated in December.
"This is not violence, this is the right of every Muslim to fight for the prophet," said Ali Allameh, a bearded cleric whose hair was tied back with a bandanna. "Those who insult the prophet are not people, are not human beings. They're pigs and chimpanzees. Even pigs are better than these people."

The demonstrations in Beirut were the latest venting of outrage in a conflict between freedom of the press and religious sensitivities. European governments defend the publication of the cartoons, one of which depicts the prophet Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb, by citing freedom of the press.
But many Muslims took the satire as hard evidence that Judeo-Christian cultures in the West exhibit a lack of sensitivity toward Islam, to the point of animosity. Islamic tradition forbids any artistic rendering of the prophets, including Jesus and Moses.

Denmark, which reportedly had evacuated its consular offices in Lebanon in anticipation of a Muslim backlash, urged its citizens to leave the country. Meanwhile, anger continued to ripple around the globe, with protests in Afghanistan, the West Bank, Iraq and New Zealand.
Iraq's Transportation Ministry froze contracts with Denmark and Norway, and a radical group in Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad, threatened attacks against non-Muslims. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, speaking on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer," said he was "personally offended" by the cartoons being reprinted in the European press last week, but appealed for calm. The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September.
"I would ask my fellow Muslims around the world that the prophet Muhammad is much greater, much greater a prophet [than] to be insulted by these cartoons," Karzai said. "And we, as Muslims … God instructs us to forgive."
This morning, however, one person was killed and two were wounded when shooting erupted at a protest in the eastern Afghan town of Mehtarlam, Reuters news agency reported.

Syrian protesters set fire to the Norwegian and Danish embassies in Damascus on Saturday. U.S.   Norwegian govt placed the blame for that rioting squarely on the Syrian govt for failing to protect the embassies.
"It's totally unacceptable, and we are going to raise the question with the United Nations because this is a violation of international law," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told Reuters.
Syria blamed Denmark for the violence. Danish govt should have apologized for the caricatures, published in the Danish independent newspaper Jyllands-Posten, said an editorial in Syria's state-run daily newspaper. The Danish prime minister and Jyllands-Posten apologized last week if the cartoons gave offense, but upheld the newspaper's right to print them.

But many observers quietly questioned how intense unrest could possibly erupt in a country as tightly controlled as Syria, unless there was tacit approval from the regime. Attempts to stage similar demonstrations over the Palestinian uprising and the war in Iraq have been brutally squashed in recent years. Many Lebanese suspected Syria's hand in the streets of Beirut on Sunday. After sending soldiers into Lebanon during the civil war, Damascus remained the de facto ruler of its neighbor for years before withdrawing its soldiers last spring. Even now, many Lebanese complain of Syrian meddling and blame Damascus for a string of political assassinations, including the death last year of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a bombing that also killed 22 others on a Beirut street.

A U.N. commission investigating Hariri's assassination has implicated top Lebanese and Syrian security officials.
"These are people who want to destabilize the country," said Lebanese Tourism Minister Joseph Sarkis, who drove through the Christian neighborhoods under armed guard to appeal for calm as the riots quieted down. "They are receiving orders from the source we all know to provoke a clash between the communities."
Lebanon's Grand Mufti Mohammed Rashid Kabbani also blamed infiltrators for the violence, which he called an attempt to "harm the stability of Lebanon."
Lebanese have been warning for months that Syria might try to provoke unrest by tampering with Lebanon's delicate religious balance.

"Syria wanted to make another war in Lebanon, and they want the war to be between Christians and Muslims again," said 34-year-old sales manager Michel Saouma. "So they did this thing to show the world that the people of Lebanon cannot live by themselves."
Of the more than 170 protesters arrested, 76 were Syrian, Reuters reported. An additional 38 were Lebanese, 35 were Palestinian and 25 were stateless Bedouins. As the riots raged, many Muslim clerics appealed to the crowd for calm. One Muslim stood in front of a Greek Orthodox church to protect it from the mob.
Meanwhile, a 2,000-strong security force fired off hundreds of canisters of tear gas, shot live rounds into the air and sprayed water cannons.

When the demonstrators finally were pushed out, Christians gathered in the streets, still hazy from tear gas and smoke. Some of them wept from anger as they swept up the chunks of broken glass. Many described the rioting as an assault on their faith, and an unwelcome reminder of the battles of religious militias during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.
"Why bring it here? We have nothing to do with it," said 43-year-old truck driver Salim Seoud. "We feel awful about what happened in Denmark, but why bring it to the streets of Lebanon? We're trying to get away from these kinds of problems."
Some accused the Lebanese government of leaving them at the mercy of the mob. The demonstration had been publicized for days, with leaflets and calls from mosques.

"This is very dangerous. It shows that they could do anything, go to any home, kill anybody," said Johnny Kairouz, a 25-year-old who works at an advertising agency. "The internal security failed at the easiest test they've had. This was open and planned, and it could have been prevented."
Solemn and defiant, Christians flocked to the damaged church by the hundreds. A woman with a rosary prayed silently over a shattered window; inside, altar boys and priests prepared for an evening Mass. But on the street, young men waved flags that are symbols for civil war militias. The scene was a stark contrast to a year ago, when Hariri's assassination drove thousands of Lebanese into the streets, chanting for religious tolerance and unity against the Syrians.

"They came for the Danish Consulate, but it became Christian against Muslim. We thought there was national unity, but there is no national unity," said 29-year-old hairstylist Elie Diab, who stood outside the church while chants rang into the night. "If they want to confront us, we're ready to fight face to face," Diab said. "If we are forced to fight, we will. We have enough weapons, thank God."
He turned to the man next to him, an older gentleman in a tweed jacket. "There's no Christian that doesn't have a weapon at his place, isn't that true?" Diab asked.
"Of course," the other man replied.