Will the Pope be swayed by bus ads?

In the run up to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain, scheduled to take place later this month, a group called Catholic Women's Ordination (CWO) has unveiled a London bus ad campaign that features signs on the exterior of buses saying "Pope Benedict -- Ordain Women Now!"

The campaign cost the CWO ₤15,000 (Can. $24,332 / € 18,003) for a month's worth of ads. Pat Brown, a spokeswoman for the group, said, "We do not want to be disruptive, but I think the church has got to change or it will not survive."

Meanwhile, the Vatican has asked people planning to attend the Pope's public events in Britain not to bring alcohol or musical instruments. On the other hand, flags and folding chairs are encouraged.

On equality in the mosque

As some of you know, Katie and I have recently returned from a two-month trip to Europe. One thing that I love to do while travelling is to discover mosques where I can perform the Friday prayer. In Muslim countries, there are always well established mosques on hand. In non-Muslim ones, depending on how long a Muslim minority has been established there, there are either mosques that look like mosques, or there are buildings converted into mosques from other uses (such as a former cinema I found in Philadelphia), or temporary prayer facilities at university campuses. What's common between all of these places of worship is the welcome they extend to the Muslim worshipper and the sense of brotherhood that almost always emanates from them.

So imagine my surprise when, in Luton, England, I was told that, to the best of my interlocutor's knowledge, mosques there have no "arrangements" for women worshippers. He said there might be something at the university, but, at that stage, it was too late to check. It's always something of a shock to the system to find yourself amid the ultra-conservative Muslims of Luton. Never did I think, though, that the community, which has been in Britain for two or three generations, would continue the common South-Asian practice of excluding women from the mosque. Especially since Luton itself features Islamic schools with female students and women teachers.

My mosque in Dhaka has a women's section, albeit, from what I hear, a small, crowded one, with no view of the men's prayer halls. So Katie was able to attend the mosque in Bangladesh in 2006, but not in Britain in 2009.

After Britain came Belarus. Minsk, my native city, is home to a long-standing Tatar community, present there for over 500 years. There was a mosque in Minsk for most of this time but, tragically, it was first expropriated and then blown up by the city authorities under Communist rule. Since 1997, however, a new mosque has been under construction (very much a stop-go process; the small Belarusian Muslim community is short on funds). The building site features a make-shift structure that serves as a temporary mosque while construction continues. It's actually quite beautiful inside, and includes a women's section, although, again, a small one. Katie and I prayed at this mosque when we were in Minsk; the other places we went to in Belarus didn't have mosques, as far as we knew.

The big shock came in Turkey. Ostensibly, Turkish Islam is all smiles and all kindness. The Turkish Muslims we know are genuinely warm and kind-hearted people, ma sha' Allah. However, something about the way Islamic institutions are managed in Turkey is badly broken. In Istanbul, the mosque where I went for Friday prayer most weeks (because it was located close to the apartment we were staying in) had no women's section.

So one day, Katie and I went off in search of a place where the two of us could perform Friday prayer together. We went to two different mosques in another neighbourhood, and the results were even more surprising. It turned out that both those mosques did have women's sections, BUT those sections were taken over by men during Friday prayers. Thus, of the 35 congregational prayers a week, women could pray at the mosque 34 times. However, they were obliged to stay away for just one prayer, which just happened to be the most important one of the week. Compounding the double standards (if not outright hypocrisy) is the fact that, in one of those mosques, the Friday sermon was about the importance of family, while the prayer featured verses from the Qur'an about the importance of Friday prayer. Hello?

So it was quite comical (sadly so) to see an official from Diyanet, the Turkish governmental agency in charge of Islamic institutions, saying, after a mosque designed by a female architect opened, that Turkey should build more such mosques. That mosque is the first in Turkey designed by a woman, and the first to feature a women's prayer hall equal in size to the men's one. The joke lies in the fact that there is no move underway by Diyanet to admit women into the mosques which currently bar them from taking part in Friday prayer, even though they already have women's sections.

On our way home to Montreal, Katie and I stopped by the Muslim prayer rooms at Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul to perform the fajr prayer. The women's prayer room was spacious and well equipped, but infested with cockroaches. Not surprisingly, I didn't see any cockroaches in the men's one. Katie was glad to leave Turkey, and I don't blame her.

So now we're in Perrysburg, Ohio, visiting my in-laws. Katie and I got married at the mosque here, the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo (see picture), in 2005. This is probably the most equitable of all purpose-built mosques I've seen anywhere in the world when it comes to ensuring women's access to prayer facilities. The prayer hall is simply divided down the middle with a low barrier; men have half the space, while women have the other. The barrier is high enough to ensure modesty, yet not high enough to create a sense of segregation. Men and women have equal access not just to the prayer space, but to the other elements of the mosque, such as the high dome and the stained-glass windows, that give it beauty and help in the contemplation of the Divine.

As Jimmy Carter reminded us last month, "it is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population." It is high time for us Muslims around the world to start paying much more attention to the Prophet's (peace be upon him) injunction: "Do not prevent the maid-servant of God from going to the mosque" (Bukhari).

[This post was written in Perrysburg.]

Murder in Dresden

Egypt has recently witnessed a wave of demonstrations over the Islamophobic murder in Dresden of Marwa el-Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian pharmacist who had been living there with her graduate student husband and her son.

Last year, in a dispute over a swing in a public park, of all things, the murderer, a Russian immigrant from Perm named Alex W., yelled out "terrorist" and "Islamist whore" at Marwa, the reason being that she was wearing a headscarf. She took him to court for the insults, and, in November 2008, Alex was fined €780 (TL 1,687 / US$ 1,087) for his actions. There are different versions of what happened next. According to the Guardian, Alex appealed the verdict; according to Wikipedia, it was the public prosecutor who lodged the appeal, since he considered the penalty meted out to Alex to have been too light.

Then, on 1 July, the appeal was heard. Marwa was called to the witness stand to testify, following which the 28-year-old Alex grabbed a knife, approached her, and stabbed her 18 (!) times, killing her on the spot in front of her three-year-old son. When her husband, Elvi Ali Okaz, ran over to help his stricken wife, a policeman shot at him, critically wounding him. Apparently, the policeman couldn't tell which one was the husband, and which the attacker. Marwa was three months pregnant when she was killed.

The most mind-bogglingly unbelievable fact in this tragedy is that Alex was not prevented from bringing his knife into the courtroom, even though he was the defendant! You'd think that, at an appeal, a defendant could possibly have a grudge against the plaintiff, wouldn't you? You'd think that the state would want to ensure the plaintiff's safety, wouldn't you? Well, in this case, no such thing was done. The result is a family destroyed.

The second thing is this. Even after such a clearly horrific case of murderous hatred against an innocent Muslim, the only motivation being that she was a Muslim, the German government is reluctant to treat it as such. According to the Guardian, Thomas Steg, the vice-spokesman of the German government (apparently, the spokesman is too important to be making a comment on this matter) said that "In this case... the circumstances are not sufficiently clear enough to allow a broad political response. Should it be the case that this was anti-foreigner [and] racially motivated, [the government] would condemn it in the strongest possible terms."

So there you have it. IF it were to be proved that Alex hated Marwa for being different, ONLY THEN would the government condemn her murder "in the strongest possible terms". And do notice how Steg mentioned the hatred of foreigners and people of other races as potential (though apparently unproven) motivating factors, but did not say a word about the actual cause, proven by Alex's words: the hatred of Islam and Muslims, that is, Islamophobia. Alex had been taken to court not for calling Marwa a "dirty foreigner" or a "dirty black" or anything of the sort. No, he called Marwa (who was actually quite fair-skinned) an "Islamist whore" a few months before killing her. The fact that the Merkel government refuses to admit this simple fact is unconscionable.

The lack of clear, unequivocal condemnation of the murder not only by the German government, but also by other German politicians, as well as the German media, has led Aiman Mazyek, the secretary general of the Central Council of Muslims (of Germany) and Stephen Kramer, the secretary general of the Central Council of Jews, to issue a joint statement calling for more attention to be given to the murder.

Marwa has been dubbed Shahidat al-Hijab (the Headscarf Martyr) in Egypt. Some people have scoffed at the title, saying it's divisive and not reflective of reality, since Marwa's life should not be reduced to her clothes. Personally, I think "Headscarf Martyr" is, in fact, a very appropriate title for her. She was a woman with a diverse range of interests, but she was killed for one thing: for being a Muslim who was not afraid to stand up for herself. She was killed for wearing a headscarf and refusing to bow to fear. And that makes me proud to be her brother in faith.

That is not to say, though, that anger should be allowed to carry the day. At Marwa's funeral in Alexandria on 6 July, mourners chanted things like "Germans are the enemies of God." That is going way too far. I can understand the distress that something like this brings, but we should always distinguish between people with blood on their hands and the society those people come from or live in. Just as the existence of Muslim murderers does not make everyone in Muslim countries the "enemies of God", so equally the existence of a German or, in fact, a Russian murderer does not make Germans or Russians into God's enemies. This much should be obvious.

However, just as many in the West call for introspection in Muslim societies (and sometimes rightly so) when a terrorist calling himself a Muslim kills innocent people, so should Germany and Russia, Dresden and Perm, take a deep breath and think for a minute about where things have gone wrong, and what could be done to improve them, starting, perhaps, from trying a bit harder to see your neighbour for the human being she is.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

Today we are all Palestinians

Today was the 16th day of Israel's murderous Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. In order to stop Hamas and other rockets that, over the last several years, have killed 13 Israelis (including three children), the Israeli government has, to date, killed over 800 Palestinians. According to Palestinian Ministry of Health figures accepted by the UN, as of 8 January, the Israeli offensive had killed 257 children and 56 women. And who knows how many of the men killed by Israel were civilians? So who is the terrorist?

I am certainly not taking any kind of ambiguous stance towards the killing of civilians. When Hamas or another Palestinian militant group kills even one Israeli civilian, that is wrong. But what happens when Israel blatantly kills hundreds of Palestinian civilians in a few days? When are we all going to admit that an innocent Palestinian life is just as precious as an Israeli one? When are we going to proclaim loudly that killing a hundred Palestinians is no less evil than killing one Israeli?

As we are told by our Creator in the Qur'an,

We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people (Qur'an, 5:32; Abdullah Yusuf Ali's interpretation).

This is something that Hamas would do well to remember. But, in the current circumstances, these words from the sacred text of Islam apply especially to those who are mentioned in them in the first place. Over the years, the thing that has angered me the most about Hamas is their refusal to draw a distinction between the Israeli armed ("defence") forces and Israeli civilians. According to Hamas's logic, since most Israelis, at one time or another, serve in the armed forces, they are all legitimate military tactics. This interpretation, IMHO, very clearly runs counter to the long-established Islamic tradition of limiting warfare to clear military targets. However, Israel, which, despite its occupation of Palestine, has, for decades, been claiming the moral high ground on the issue of terrorism, is now, quite obviously, deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians in order to make Hamas look bad in the eyes of its civilian supporters.

This is an exceedingly slippery slope. Pretty much the only sympathy Israel enjoys outside the US is related to its civilians coming under attack every once in a while from Palestinian extremists. It has now proven that it is willing to do the same to the Palestinians, and on a massively higher scale. It may well be that the only well wishers Israel will have left if it continues down this path are going to be American Republicans.

Meanwhile, the mood on the streets of the world is decidedly pro-Palestinian. A demonstration here in Montréal, which my wife and I attended yesterday, drew "almost 10,000 people" according to the normally pro-Israeli Gazette. This time around, even the Gazette looked decidedly pro-Palestinian. And in London, somewhere between 4,000 and 15,000 pro-Israeli, largely Jewish, demonstrators, demanded a cessation of hostilities.

Olmert said to the Israeli Cabinet today that "Israel is nearing the goals which it set itself." If that goal is the destruction of Hamas, Israel has, in fact, taken a step back. If it is a secure future for Israel, Olmert has taken one giant leap back. One can only hope that he'll come to his senses.

Bahrain appoints Jewish ambassador

Bahrain broke several barriers at once in late May by appointing a Jewish woman to be its new ambassador to the US. Houda Nonoo, a member of the Shura Council for three years before the appointment, has thus become Bahrain's and the entire Arab world's first Jewish ambassador. Nonoo is also the first female Bahraini ambassador to the US, and the third woman to become a Bahraini ambassador to any country.

Bahraini Jews are said to number 37 people among about 530,000 Bahraini citizens (the country's total population is about 1,047,000 people). Bahrain is the only Gulf Arab country with any Jewish citizens. Manama has one synagogue, which was abandoned after the establishment of Israel, but is now once again in use.

Nonoo's ancestors moved to Bahrain from Iraq over a hundred years ago. Her family has been active in public affairs in Bahrain for several generations.

According to Nonoo, Bahraini Jews are religiously observant: "We keep Rosh Hashana and Pessah and the other holidays in our homes". It seems, though, that there are no rabbis within the community; Nonoo once flew a rabbi over from Britain for her son's bar mitzvah.

Nonoo said she would serve in her position "first of all as a Bahraini" (BBC, ArabianBusiness.com, Jerusalem Post).

I think this is a great step towards the re-normalisation of the role of Jews in Arab and Muslim society.

What would be even more impressive is if Israel had an Arab Muslim Israeli citizen serve as ambassador to Egypt or Jordan (it has already had two Arab Muslim consuls in the US).

Bardot convicted of inciting racial hatred

The former actress Brigitte Bardot has been found guilty of inciting racial hatred against Muslims. The court in Paris where Bardot, 73, was convicted has fined her €15,000 (Canadian $23,531; US $23,157).

The conviction stems from a statement made in a letter to Nicolas Sarkozy (then the French Interior Minister) in December 2006, in which she called Muslims "this whole population that is destroying us, destroying our country...." The reason for her anger at Muslims was that they usually do not stun animals before slaughtering them (Белорусские новости; Le Point).

My mother on the niqab

To celebrate the first anniversary of Notes on Religion, I asked several people to contribute articles on religion-related issues that they find important.

To start off the series, here's an article by my mother, Maria Tchooudkhouri (Chowdhury), who lives in Toronto, where she works as a pharmacy technician. She was born near Čavusy, Belarus, and has lived in Ukraine, Bangladesh and Kuwait. She has an MSc in geography from the Belarusian State University in Minsk. My mother runs a Russian-language blog on life in Toronto, called "Toronto through My Eyes".

When Culture Is Mistaken for Religion

By Maria Tchooudkhouri

When I walk to work, sometimes I meet a woman dressed fully in black, her face fully covered, not even her eyes showing. Her hands in black gloves hold her young child.

Another picture is from TV. A church somewhere in North America. Colourfully dressed people singing, then starting to dance, to clap, some of them jumping, twisting and screaming.

What is common between these two cases, besides people being religious?

The people in them are following the cultural, ethnic traditions of their respective ancestors, mistaking cultural elements with religious norms. Thinking that those elements are the norms.

In the deserts of the pre-Islamic Middle East, women had to carefully cover themselves from the burning sun, harsh wind, sand and dust to preserve their beauty. When Islam was introduced, the teaching of modesty in clothing was interpreted according to local cultural tradition.

With the spread of the religion, cultural elements from the Middle East were adapted far beyond the region. Covering the face became a symbol of religiousness for some people. Some Muslims and non-Muslims alike think that, if a woman is fully covered, she is a more "real" Muslim than those with open faces, not to mention those who wear non-traditional chlothes.

But let's not forget -- religion teaches us modesty, and not a rejection of our identity. Our face is our identity, given to us by God. We have the right, and probably even the obligation, not to hide it.

Editor's note: Notes on Religion does not necessarily agree with the views expressed by guest authors.

Dunkin' Donuts gives in to anti-Palestinian prejudice

After pressure from the right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin, Dunkin' Donuts has cancelled an online ad featuring TV host Rachael Ray wearing a keffiyeh.

Malkin described the piece of Arab men's headdress as "a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists".

According to Dunkin' Donuts, "no symbolism was intended" by the silk keffiyeh. Malkin has praised the company for its decision, saying that the picture of the scarf could have led to "the mainstreaming of violence" (BBC).

So my question is: what was Timothy McVeigh wearing when he perpetrated his terrorist act? And if he was wearing a shirt and trousers, should everyone now stop wearing shirts and trousers? Come on now.

If you disagree with Dunkin' Donuts's decision, please contact them.

Muslim teacher in NY loses job because of hate campaign

Debbie Almontaser, a Yemeni-American teacher who led the drive to set up a new public school in New York called Khalil Gibran International Academy, was forced to resign her position as principal before the school opened its doors to new students. The reason was a campaign of Islamophobia unleashed by a group that called itself the "Stop the Madrassa Coalition". The group was, in some ways, orchestrated by the Islam basher Daniel Pipes.

The school's mission was to teach Arabic as a foreign language. Almontaser's plan was to have a student body that would be half Arab-American. In all other respects, the Gibran Academy was to be a regular New York public high school. Moreover, in its emphasis in Arabic, the school was similar to dozens of other schools in New York that stress a particular language, such as Spanish or Russian.

The campaign against the Gibran Academy (named after a Lebanese Christian poet) broke out when Pipes wrote an op-ed in the New York Sun, in which he argued that "Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage." He also called the planned school a "madrassa", which is simply the Arabic word for "school" but, as Pipes knows very well, means an "Islamic seminary" in English. More recently, Pipes has admitted that his use of the word "madrassa" was "a bit of a stretch" and a tool he used to "get attention".

Attention he did get: a group of people, including Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a trustee at City University of New York, gathered around Pipes, and formed the above-mentioned coalition. Having very little information about the planned school to go on, the Coalition to Stop the Madrassa dug into Almontaser's past and her personal activities, and used the information obtained to smear her online and in the media. What motivated them was a desire to stop what Wiesenfeld referred to as "soft jihad", that is, the promotion of "radical Islam", in Pipes's words, through "the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like". In other words, the mere teaching of Arabic was construed by the group as equivalent to the promotion of "radical Islam".

What helped the Coalition clinch its case was an interview with the New York Post, in which Almontaser explained that the word "intifada" meant "a shaking off". She was asked about the shirts because some teenaged members of an Arab-American women's group she belonged to had been seen selling T-shirts that said "Intifada NYC" on them. The Post misquoted Almontaser as saying that the girls selling the T-shirts had been "shaking off oppression".

That was too much for the city's Education Department to bear, and Almontaser was asked to resign by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, who added that she had until 8:00 am the next day to resign, because Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted to announce her resignation "on his radio show". Almontaser resigned, but filed a lawsuit to try to get her job back. A panel of federal judges has recently ruled that the New York Post has misreported the comments she had made to the paper.

The school did open under the direction of a different principal, Danielle Salzberg, who does not speak Arabic and soon made a name for herself with her authoritarian methods. Meanwhile, Almontaser has been assigned to a school inspection job, and has been allowed to keep her principal's pay of US $120,000 (Canadian $121,722) per year. The Coalition to Stop the Madrassa, for its part, continues to protest against the existence of the school (New York Times).

Changing your gender in Iran

In Iran, homosexual acts are a crime punishable by death. However, there is a way out for homosexuals who want to live with members of the same sex: getting a sex change operation. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued an edict allowing sex change operations after coming to power in 1979. Since then, Iran's Islamist government has recognised sex change as legal upon recommendation by a doctor. The government covers upto half the cost, and the change is marked on one's birth certificate. Iran now has the second-highest annual number of sex change operations in the world.

According to Hojjatol Islam Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, the cleric in charge of sex change in Iran, the procedure is as permissible by Islam as "changing wheat to flour to bread". However, according to Kariminia,

The discussion is fundamentally separate from a discussion regarding homosexuals. Absolutely not related. Homosexuals are doing something unnatural and against religion. It is clearly stated in our Islamic law that such behaviour is not allowed because it disrupts the social order.

Nevertheless, it is often homosexuals who resort to sex change in Iran. They often do so after facing taunts from colleagues and passers-by, and also from a wish to have an open relationship with their same-sex partner, who is no longer same-sex after the surgery.

The Iranians who undergo sex change operations often face opposition from their parents; Iranian society is not nearly as accepting of the procedure as the government is. Negar, a 27-year-old woman who was once a man named Ali Askar, says that her father tried to kill her to keep her from going through with the surgery. She subsequently left home and had to work as a prostitute to make ends meet.

On the other hand, Shahin, the mother of 21-year-old Anahita (formerly a man named Anoosh) is happy with her decision to become female. According to Shahin,

A boy will always just get married and leave his mum, but a girl stays, a girl is always yours and will never leave, and now I will never experience the sadness that occurs when a boy leaves. I always wanted a daughter and I think it's a gift from God that I finally got one.

Anahita's brother Ali Reza is not so sure, though. "I have had a brother for many years. I can't just suddenly accept him as my sister. If I refer to him as my brother he gets upset. But it's hard for me to believe this," he complains. Nevertheless, Anahita is engaged to her boyfriend, and has found that the sex change has enabled her to live in peace. "Now when someone is attracted to me, it is as a girl," she says (BBC).

Turkey legalises headscarves at universities

The Turkish parliament voted earlier this month to lift the ban on the wearing of headscarves on university campuses. The ban was put in place in 1991 through the constitutional court's decision that heascarves worn at state-owned universities violated the separation of religion and the state. The constitutional provision that allowed the court to reach that conclusion has now been repealed. The issues does not seem settled yet, though, since the new constitutional amendment may face a court challenge (Wall Street Journal).

Nevertheless, this is a very important step for Turkey to have taken, and it proves that the country is actually moving towards being a genuine democracy.

Pope prays for peace

In his annual "Urbi et Orbi" (to the City and the World) speech, Pope Benedict XVI has called for a peaceful resolution of conflicts raging in Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Africa and other places. He also spoke out against terrorism, and against violence towards women and children.

The Pope called on politicians to "seek and find humane, just and lasting solutions" to conflicts that are "destroying the internal fabric of many countries and embittering international relations". The Pope also prayed for consolation to be given "to those who live in the darkness of poverty, injustice and war" (BBC).

Secret funeral held for Aqsa Parvez

The family of Aqsa Parvez, the 16-year-old Muslim Canadian girl who was allegedly strangled recently by her father, moved her funeral on 15 December without informing other mourners of the fact. As a result, when Aqsa's friends and teachers gathered at the Islamic Centre of Canada in Mississauga in the afternoon, they were told that the funeral had already taken place, and that Aqsa had already been buried.

According to an employee of the mosque bookstore, "this was all just set up as a decoy for the media". The bookstore worker said this an hour and a half before the funeral was scheduled to begin, which lends credence to this version of events. Many mourners were left frustrated by the sudden move.

The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) later held a vigil in honour of Aqsa. According to CAIR-CAN spokeswoman Maryam Dadabhoy,

We're not here to talk about religion or culture – it has nothing to do with it – we're just here based on the fact that she lost her life and we just want to work towards stopping this from happening in the future

Farheen Khan, president of the Toronto chapter of the Council for the Advancement of Muslim Professionals (CAMP), said that "there's a certain stigma attached to reaching out" to victims of domestic abuse within the Muslim community in Canada, and that more needs to be done "to build that awareness that there are services – that this doesn't have to be the way it has to end" (Globe and Mail).

Hiding from mourners certainly doesn't make Aqsa's family look good. May justice prevail in this case.

Gibbons back in England after 8 days in prison

The British teacher at the centre of the teddy bear naming row in Sudan is now safely back in England. After successful negotiations carried out with the Sudanese government on her behalf by Lord Ahmed and Lady Warsi, Muslim members of the British House of Lords, Gillian Gibbons was pardoned by President Omar al-Bashir. She promptly flew back home, accompanied by the two peers.

Upon her return, Gibbons, 54, said, "I'm just an ordinary middle-aged teacher in search of adventure and I got a bit more of an adventure than I bargained for." She also encouraged someone to take up her position at the Unity Primary School in Khartoum, while she herself plans to start looking for a new job soon.

Muhammad Abdul Bari, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that the 15-day sentence received by Gibbons had been "a gross overreaction".

Meanwhile, Khalid al-Mubarak, a spokesman for the Sudanese Embassy in London, "It is an unusual case, which came about as a misunderstanding which was not managed well in the early stages" (Los Angeles Times).

Thank God common sense has prevailed. My congratulations to Mrs Gibbons, her family, and the two peers.

Afghans' views on women

In a survey conducted in October and November 2007, a majority of Afghans revealed that they favour many freedoms for women, but still want them to wear the burqa (PDF here).

59% of Afghans (including 51% of Afghan men) strongly support the idea of women voting. 27% (30% of men) support the idea somewhat.

38% of Afghans (including 23% of Afghan men) strongly support the idea of women working outside the home. 29% (32% of men) support the idea somewhat.

31% of Afghans (including 19% of Afghan men) strongly support the idea of women holding government office. 29% (27% of men) support the idea somewhat.

60% of Afghans (including 52% of Afghan men) strongly support education for girls. 29% (33% of men) support the idea somewhat.

At the same time, 49% of Afghans (including 56% of Afghan men and 42% of Afghan women) strongly support the idea of women wearing the burqa. 28% (29% of men and 27% of women) support the idea somewhat. Meanwhile, 4% of Afghan men and 11% of women are strongly opposed to the idea.

Muslim peers hope to secure teacher's freedom

The British Muslim peers Lord Ahmad and Lady Warsi are planning to visit Sudan on a private initiative to try to secure the release of Gillian Gibbons, a British teacher currently serving a 15-day sentence for insulting religion over the permission she gave her students in September to name a teddy bear Muhammad. The pupils named the bear Muhammad after one of their own number. The affair went to court after a member of the school staff complained to the Sudanese education ministry. The peers hope that President Omar al-Bashir and the chief justice of Sudan will find it possible to hand Gibbons over to their fellow Muslims, without appearing to bow to pressure from the British government.

The student named Muhammad, whose name landed his teacher at the centre of the controversy, has spoken out in support of Gibbons. He admitted that naming the bear Muhammad had originally been his idea. His family described Gibbons as "very nice".

Nevertheless, there was a demonstration against Gibbons in Khartoum after Friday prayer today. The protesters demanded a harsher punishment than the 15-day prison sentence Gibbons is serving. In fact, some of them chanted slogans such as "No tolerance -- execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad" (BBC).

I sincerely hope that Lord Ahmad and Lady Warsi's mission to Khartoum will succeed. They're wise to have come up with a face-saving exit strategy that will hopefully allow Gibbons to go back home and put the ordeal behind her.

For the people who want Gibbons dead, though, I can't find the right words. Their ignorance and lack of human empathy is simply astounding. This whole sordid story reminds me of the plight of the Bangladeshi cartoonist Muhammad Arifur Rahman who got in serious trouble both with noisy Islamists and with the interim government after authoring a cartoon in which a little boy gives his cat's name as "Muhammad the Cat" after being told by a mullah to place Muhammad before any name. There, too, some demonstrator's bayed for Arif's blood, even though the poor guy was just making fun of overzealous preachers who'd like all men in Bangladesh to present themselves as Muhammad So-and-So.

Muhammad the Cat, Muhammad the Bear... are these attacks on the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)? A moment's reflection would tell us they're not. And yet there are plenty of people in various Muslim countries who jump at the opportunity to holler and shout until they're blue in the face, demanding the death of one person, the imprisonment of another, etc. etc. Why so much insecurity? Do they think the Prophet Muhammad can be hurt by someone naming a toy bear after him, even intentionally? The Prophet refused to invoke God's punishment on people who had their children throw stones at him until he bled. Instead, he prayed for the guidance of those people. So what have these noisy crowds, who claim to be defending the Prophet, learned from his life and deeds?

The Prophet (pbuh) was gentle even to a man who urinated in the middle of the mosque in Medina. We have to take a long and hard look at ourselves and ask whether we live up to the Prophet's example, or even try to live up to it.

Taslima forced to leave Kolkata

The Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who had been living in exile in Kolkata for the last three years, has moved to Jaipur, Rajasthan after an Indian intelligence agency informed her that it was too dangerous for her to remain in Kolkata. According to an unnamed intelligence officer, "she agreed to leave after some initial grumbling." Eearlier, as many as 43 people were wounded in a riot caused by Muslim protesters calling on India to expel Taslima from its territory (BBC).

It's sad that the Indian government can't ensure the safety of its guests, but, at the same time, it makes sense for Taslima to get out of West Bengal for a while and stay in a place where little is known about her. But then she might as well move back to Norway, where she lived before Kolkata. It's a shame that the space for dissent in South Asia seems to be shrinking in many parts of the region.

Anti-Taslima protesters riot in Kolkata

Protesters led by the All-India Minority Forum, a group dominated by Muslims, have barricaded several major streets in Kolkata and attacked the policemen who had been sent to dispersed them. The rioters are demanding that the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who has been accused on insulting Islam in her homeland, be expelled from India. According to the All-India Minority Forum, Taslima had "seriously hurt Muslim sentiments" by calling for revisions to the Qur'an, an accusation she denies. The protesters also wanted to express their disaffection with the recent violence in the Nandigram region of West Bengal.

According to Kolkata's chief of police, Gautam Chakrabarty, "the protesters started pelting policemen with brick bats and acid bottles in several places." As a result, the army was called in to restore order. Idris Ali, an All-India Minority Forum leader, said that agents provocateurs working for West Bengal's Communist government had caused the violence in order to discredit the protests. However, Biman Bose, the leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), countered the accusation, saying of the protesters, "they have planned the trouble, they must take the blame for this mayhem" (BBC).

Frankly, Ali's attempt to blame the Communists for the riot looks pathetic. I think Indian Muslims have a lot to learn from North American Muslims: arguments should be countered with arguments, books with books, not with riots. If someone disagrees with Taslima's views, they should challenge or criticise her in the press or in books of their own that attempt to disprove what Taslima makes out to be true. Instead, when literary criticism and political disagreement takes the form of a riot, with protesters throwing stuff at the police, the first victim is sanity.

Rape victim faces 200 lashes in Saudi Arabia

A Shi'ite Saudi woman who was raped 14 times by a group of seven Sunni Saudi men has been herself sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes. The rapists, meanwhile, were given prison sentences ranging from two to ten years.

The woman's crime, according to the appeals court that doubled the number of lashes she was originally sentenced to receive, was that she had ridden in a car with an unrelated man. The reason the court doubled her sentence and added a jail term is that, according to them, she had tried to manipulate the judicial system through the media. The appeals court also doubled the rapists' jail sentences. Originally, the perpetrators were supposed to serve between a year and five years in prison.

The appeals court has also withdrawn the licence of the victim's lawyer, which means he that he is now barred from practising his profession (BBC).

The only word that occurs to me is "disgusting". On second thought, there are many choice words you could describe the actions of the Saudi court with, including "deranged", "apalling" and "highly, exceptionally un-Islamic".

According to the Qur'an, someone who has been found guilty of adultery should be flogged a hundred times. Now, the person who is to be flogged has to be found guilty of actually having engaged in extra-marital sex, not of merely being in the same enclosed space as an unrelated member of the opposite sex. So to sentence the victim of rape to twice the punishment prescribed by God for a confirmed adulterer or adulteress simply defies belief. On the other hand, this is Saudi Arabia we're talking about.

Bouchard-Taylor Commission hears about religion in Drummondville

On 6 November, the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, which is canvassing public opinion in Quebec concerning reasonable accommodation, held a session in Drummondville, a city of about 67,000 in the Centre-du-Québec region.

During the session, the commission heard from some Catholics who argued against the province's plan to drop the teaching of Catholicism at public schools in favour of the teaching of religion as a general subject. Gilbert Deshaies, a Drummondville resident, stated that "religious thought should be forged in a child before he submits his faith to criticism."

On the other hand, Lionel Émard, a Catholic priest, argued that it was not the role of the state to promote a certain religion, but rather the responsibility of the relevant religious community itself.

Aziza Aboulaz, an immigrant from Morocco, aimed to counter the negative image of Islam held by some by informing the audience that she did not have to get her husband's permission to address the commission, and that she had a car which she could drive. She also said she had worked in the banking sector in Morocco for 15 years. On the other hand, she asked what she called Muslim fundamentalists to be more realistic in the demands they made from Quebec society at large.

Finally, Gérard Malo, a World War II veteran, spoke out against what he considers to be a moral decline in the province. According to him, this decline has set in due to consumerism and a reduction in religious observance. In this regard, he said Christians had a lesson to learn from Muslims, who pray "a lot and well". Malo finished by praising God in six different languages (Radio-Canada).