High Court Rejects Case Against Girl in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani court ordered the police to withdraw blasphemy charges against a Christian teenager on Tuesday, lawyers said, bringing an end to a contentious case that had gripped the country and sown fear in its Christian minority population.

The girl, Rimsha Masih, who comes from an impoverished family of sweepers, was arrested in August after Muslim accusers said she had been holding a burned copy of the Noorani Qaida, a religious textbook used to teach the Koran to children.

Relatives and human rights workers have said that the girl, 14, has Down syndrome and should therefore be exempt from the blasphemy laws.

On Tuesday, Justice Iqbal Hameed ur Rahman, who heads the Islamabad High Court, stated in his judgment that there was no evidence for the charges against Ms. Masih. In his 15-page judgment, he urged extreme caution in matters related to blasphemy and criticized the practice of fake blasphemy accusations against non-Muslims.

“The case against Rimsha Masih is finished,” said Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, one of her lawyers. “Justice has been served.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES 

Christians Under Siege in Syria

In January 1945, my mother, too young even for school, joined millions of other ethnic Germans fleeing westwards from Breslau as the Red Army advanced. My forefathers had lived in this region of Silesia (German since 1242) for at least nine generations that I know of. The forced repatriation – a process that might now be called ethnic cleansing – of my mother’s family and millions of other civilians from groups whose nationality would in future be inextricably linked to their ethnicity, was largely overlooked in the euphoria that swept the world at the end of World War II.

They never returned.

Now we are witnessing another wave of civilian displacement in the Middle East with hundreds of thousands of Christians being forced to flee  as they are banished from their 2,000 year old homelands in today’s remarkable surge in Arabian people power.

Their fate has been largely forgotten as the global media attention has moved on from Egypt and Libya and encamped in Syria to watch the terrible bloodshed in Damascus, Houla, Aleppo and Homs. Innocent people on all sides are enduring awful hardship, death and torture; civil war does not discriminate between young and old, rich or poor. In the ghastly bloodletting we are now seeing, no one seems safe from the prospect of sudden death and destruction of property.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE INDEPENDENT (UK)

Christian Life in Northern Nigeria

Nigeria’s militant Islamist group, Boko Haram, and the security forces have been accused by Amnesty International of committing widespread atrocities in the mainly Muslim north.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden”, is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state.

On Sunday, a church was bombed, leaving eight people dead in Kaduna, one of the cities affected by the conflict. Although Boko Haram has not said it carried out the attacks, it has claimed responsibility for similar bombings across northern and central Nigeria.

Obadiah Diji, youth leader of the Christian Association of Kaduna, gave the BBC an account of how life has changed in the city.

Obadiah Diji:

I have lived in Kaduna city nearly all my life – and I am filled with sadness when I look how sharply divided it has become along religious lines.

Muslims live in areas where there is a Muslim majority; Christians where there is a Christian majority. So, the two groups lead separate lives, with little social contact.

It was not always like this. We once took pride in the fact that Kaduna was cosmopolitan and welcoming of everyone.

Although there were differences, Christians and Muslims lived together. We were in an out of each other’s homes. Our children went to the same schools, learning from each other about their respective religions and cultures.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE BBC 

Protests over anti-Islam film and Muhammad cartoons – as it happened

Summary

We’re going to conclude our live blog coverage for the day. Here’s a summary of where things stand:

• At least 19 were killed in Pakistan and 160 wounded in clashes during protests over an anti-Islam web video. Smaller such protests played out across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.

• An estimated ten thousand demonstrators rallied in Benghazi, Libya to call for peace and the disbandment of extremist groups.As midnight local time approaches the demonstrators had moved into multiple compounds associated with Ansar al-Sharia and other radical groups. No violence has been reported.

• A rights group said Syrian forces had targeted and killed an opposition videographer in Hama. Sixteen others were reportedly killed in the assault. The Local Coordination Committees put the number killed in Syria Friday at 117.

• An Israeli soldier and three reported assailants were killed in clashes at the border in the mid-Sinai region. One of the assailants may have detonated a suicide belt.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE GUARDIAN 

Hard-Line Muslims Test Indonesia’s Tolerance

In the city of Bekasi, Indonesia, outside Jakarta, a handful of Christians head to Sunday worship. But before they can reach their destination, they are stopped and surrounded by a large crowd of local Muslims who jeer at them and demand that they leave.

This is the Filadelfia congregation, a Lutheran group. They are ethnic Bataks from the neighboring island of Sumatra who have migrated to Bekasi, and they have been blocked from holding services on several occasions. Recently, a journalist who demonstrated in support of the congregation was beaten by an angry mob.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim majority nation and has drawn praise for its evolution into a vibrant democracy. It’s a country of more than 17,000 islands, with more than 300 ethnic groups who speak about 740 languages. But recent cases of persecution of religious minorities have led some to question whether Indonesia is still living up to its reputation for pluralism and tolerance.

FULL ARTICLE FROM NPR 

Muslim groups: ‘Third Jihad’ should cost NYC commissioner his job

New York (CNN) – Two prominent Muslim civil liberties groups called for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to resign on Thursday because of his participation in a film that they say paints all Muslims as terrorists.

“Involvement with ‘Third Jihad’ sends a clear message that the NYPD’s dealings with New York’s diverse Muslim communities are based on bigotry and blanket suspicion,” the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) stated in a press release.

Muslim activists say “The Third Jihad,” a documentary about radical Islam, vilifies the American Muslim community and teaches police officers to suspect Muslims as terrorists.

Muslim activists are also calling for Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Brown to resign, saying that he first denied and only later admitted that Kelly was interviewed for the film.

“They were not telling the truth about their involvement in the propaganda film against Muslims,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), adding that New York “deserves people they trust who do not discriminate against people.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK POST 

A Devout Christian Has His Anti Muslim Prejudice Challenged

I have always prided myself on being open-minded and fair, so it was with both surprise and shock that I read Mona Shadia’s weekly column, “Unveiled: A Muslim Girl in O.C.”

I almost couldn’t believe what I was reading: A Muslim telling me, a Christian, that she and people of her religion give some credence to Jesus.

Shadia refers to passages within the Koran regarding Jesus that reflect the very same beliefs that I hold.

 Because, like most Americans, I hold deep-seeded preconceptions and prejudices, I first read the column with more than a little skepticism. I couldn’t help but think, “Is she putting me on? What’s her game?” I couldn’t help but remember Muslims scoffing at my Bible, and now one of them says they include Jesus Christ in theirs?

As I read, I remembered an imam I saw on TV who told his flock, not only before him, but to the whole Muslim world, not to tell the truth to the infidels, we Christians, because we are not worthy, that in fact it is the Muslims’ duty to mislead and lie to the infidel.

When I read the column again, I thought, “This couldn’t be what that imam meant. Shadia couldn’t/wouldn’t be putting this in print for all the world to see it she didn’t believe it, if it didn’t have some level of truth to it, knowing she could and perhaps would, by those Islamic radical terrorists, be killed for saying such things that go against Muslims and their/her religion and their sacred bible, the Koran.”

You might want to know that I have been one of those individuals who since 9/11 felt justified in believing that Muslims are a people never to be trusted, especially after hearing that imam. I have seen and heard things that has reinforced and ingrained this belief very deeply.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE DAILY PILOT

The Rise of Moderate Islam in the Middle East

As we wait for the Salafi leader Kamal Habib at the Cairo Journalists’ Union, a sudden panic comes over me. I’ve just noticed that my translator, Shahira Amin, an Egyptian journalist, is wearing a sleeveless top and that her hair is uncovered. In my experience, Salafis, adherents of a very strict school of Islam, take a dim view of such displays of femininity. I recall a time in Baghdad when a Salafi preacher cursed me for bringing a female photographer to our interview, and an occasion in the Jordanian city of Salt when another Salafi leaped from his chair and thwacked his teenage daughter on the arm when she accidentally entered the room without covering her face from my infidel eyes.

I’ve heard reports that Habib is not the hard-liner he was in the 1970s, when he co-founded the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad, or the 1980s, when he was jailed in connection with the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. He gave up politics after a decade in prison, but in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, he has reinvented himself as a leader of a more moderate party. He’s held press conferences at the union, so presumably he’s had to make his peace with women who don’t cover their hair.(See pictures of a jihadist’s journey.)

But I fear he may draw the line at a sleeveless top.

I needn’t have worried. When Habib arrives, he shouts a jolly greeting from across the room and then bounds over.
FULL ARTICLE FROM TIME MAGAZINE

Evangelical Leaders See Secularism as a Far Greater Threat Than Islam

Despite many who have criticized Islam, Evangelical leaders around the world say they do not see Muslims as as much of a threat to their faith as secularism and popular culture.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted the survey during what it called a “geographically representative” meeting of global evangelical leaders last year in South Africa.

The survey indicated 47 percent of respondents say Islam is the main threat to evangelical Christianity, but 71 percent put secularism in that category.

Luis Lugo is director of the Pew Forum. “To put it in context, it is not as though it is not seen as a threat, it is just that secularism in its associated practices tend to be seen as much more of a threat,” he said.

FULL ARTICLE FROM VOA NEWS 

A Coptic Evangelical’s Reason for Backing the Muslim Brotherhood

CAIRO // Rafik Habib likes to finish his days at a Costa Coffee shop near his home in Rehab City on the outskirts of Cairo. He drinks an espresso, reads the newspapers … and defends the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamist organisation needs little help from one man: surveys show it has support from at least 15 per cent of Egyptians. But Dr Habib is an exception. He is a Coptic Christian intellectual who crossed sectarian lines to join the Brotherhood’s newly established Freedom and Justice Party as third-in-command.

“A large segment of Muslims think it was a good step, except some Salafis,” he says in his sparse office dotted with 1970s furniture.

“But the Christian community in general has refused my choice, and especially my decision to join as a founder.”

Some of his detractors have said his position in the group is merely cosmetic, but Christians have been more vitriolic, calling it an act of treason.

For Dr Habib, 52, it was one of the most difficult political decisions of his life.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NATIONAL