Another good day for free speech

Last July, a court rejected a libel case against a Danish politician who had accused some Islamic Faith Community members of treason when they travelled to the Middle East to publicize a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

This blog hailed it as a good day for free speech. Well today was yet another good day for free speech as the cartoon that sparked violent protests was reprinted today.

Danish Muhammad cartoon reprinted

Danish newspapers have reprinted one of several caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad which sparked violent protests across the Muslim world two years ago.

They say they wanted to show their commitment to freedom of speech after an alleged plot to kill one of the cartoonists behind the drawings.

Campaigners for freedom worldwide should rejoice at the move by the newspaper, which was emulated by national television and other newspapers also showing the cartoon. The editor's say that they will always remain defiant:

"We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend."

It is good to see that the over-the-top p.c. madness has not reached every newspaper in the world!

ABC's Shari'a Row

The Archbishop of Canterbury has clearly overstepped the mark, once again, with his latest misunderstanding of the nature of Islam. However, Conservative MP Mark Pritchard is surely equally mistaken to suggest that the church should not get involved in politics.

The Bible is full of political guidance with contemporary significance on issues as diverse as education and economics, criminal justice and land reform, welfare and international relations — and, indeed, immigration and social cohesion. Rowan Williams' mistake was not his getting involved in politics, but his apparent confusion over some fundamentals of religion.

Britain's Islamic Rule

Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.

The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law.

In actual fact, the latest guidelines reflect no change on the old guidelines, about which we commented last April.

The Conservatives are surely right to accuse the Government of offering preferential treatment to Muslims, and of setting a precedent that will lead to demands for further changes in British law, as we noted last year:

Presumably there are also (or soon will be) implications for things such as pension rights and exemption from death duties? Once the state recognises these, surely it is only a matter of time before "legislative creep" forces a change in the law upon us.

Like the rest of the Islamic world, our once-Christian country now has one law for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Allāhu Akbar?

Do You Laugh Or Cry?

Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?

Well, obviously, no. But that doesn't mean we should ban the classic fairy tale Three Little Pigs or its digital retelling, Three Little Cowboy Builders, does it?

Unless, of course, you're a politically correct government agency paranoid that Muslim fanatics are about to burn down your building or call for your death. In which case, you would be quite right to be concerned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues" and would be "too offensive" to the Muslim community.

As the book's creative director, Anne Curtis has said, does that mean that secondary schools can not teach Animal Farm because it features pigs? Once again, it is quite clear that some religions animals are more equal than others.

Source: BBC

Free Speech Under Threat

Apologies to everyone who has visited during the past week, expecting to find new comment for discussion and debate. I started a new job and had hoped to be able to continue blogging but have been to do anything very much on the computer at all! Life should settle down again in about a week though whether I'll be able to keep up the daily posts remains to be seen. So if anyone is interested in joining a team of bloggers for The Difference, do contact me via email.

In the meantime, my most recommended blog post of the past week is Archbishop Cranmer's British blogger to be arrested?:

While British mosques are free to distribute books and other materials that contain hate and disdain towards non-Muslims (and do so with impunity); and imams quote from the Qur’an vast passages which preach hatred, violence and paedophilia (and do so with impunity), a British blogger is to be arrested for daring to criticise Islam and Islamism. ...

It is actually difficult to see how Lionheart may be arrested for stirring up racial hatred, but there may be prima facie evidence under the Religious Hatred Bill . This could easily be deployed to challenge what may be termed the ‘Counter-jihad’ blogosphere. And even more concerning is the fact that as we move towards a ‘harmonised’ legal system throughout the EU, Lionheart could be arrested in the UK under an EU warrant and extradited to any EU country province which happened to find his writings ‘xenophobic’.

The End of Isolationism

Here we are, back again, after a very pleasant family Christmas. Quite clearly, the most significant event of the last couple of days — indeed, arguably of the year — is the assassination of Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

While The Sun headline, The Day Democracy Died, somewhat overstates the importance of yesterday's dramatic turn of affairs, it makes all the more pertinent the Taleban negotiation question, initially raised this week with the expulsion from Afghanistan of the acting head of the EU mission and the UN official criticised for having contact with the Taleban. For, peace and reconciliation are rarely if ever possible without dialogue. Yet, as the Conservative MEP Nirj Deva has written on ConservativeHome, western governments are now going to have to face the uncomfortable truth of "the dastardly and stealthy role the military regime in Pakistan has consistently played in perpetuating Islamic terrorism, both inside the country and in the wider international community."

The New Great Game is set to dominate the twenty-first century just as surely as the original British-Russian rivalry dominated Central Asian politics in the nineteenth. Sadly, for all the lives that will continue to be lost in what has become an internationalised conflict, there is no reason to suppose that the outcome this time will prove any more decisive or lasting than it was before.

St George's Cross Offensive

I don't normally blog about football, but a Turkish lawyer has filed a complaint to UEFA, asking the Union of European Football Associations to cancel the three points Inter Milan earned in their recent win against Fenerbahce in the Champions League match. The reason? The celebratory shirt for Inter's centenary worn by the team consists of a big red cross on a white background, a symbol of the city of Milan. This has apparently reminded the Turks of an emblem of the order of the Templars, which is therefore deemed offensive to Muslims.

Oh, please! Whatever next... After Turkey is allowed to join the European Union, is England to redesign Saint George's Cross?!

Teddy Teacher's Homecoming

The Mail's leader says all that is needed over "how Britain has allowed itself to be manipulated and humiliated by a deeply amoral and tyrannical regime" over the Muhammad bear incident:

We have allowed Sudan's rulers to present themselves as behaving mercifully. The two peers who flew to Khartoum will be seen as representatives of our Parliament bending the knee.

The appeasing Foreign Office has been as hopeless handling Mrs Gibbons as it has in preventing the genocide in Darfur.

The Sudanese government, with its Janjaweed militia allies, have murdered 200,000 of their own citizens, and displaced 2million more. But despite endless international hand-wringing, the situation in Darfur is as bad as ever.

Meanwhile, Britain is one of the most generous donors to Sudan. Over the past five years, ministers have provided £333million in aid to the country; this year, we are giving another £110million.

Yet in return, we have neither managed to stop the obscenity of Darfur, nor apparently can we even protect our citizens from politically inspired malice.

Rather than kow-towing to this dreadful regime, we should cut off aid flows, insist that the UN stops dithering and puts a proper peacekeeping force on the ground, and enforce real sanctions on the country.

Dictators will never understand appeasement. Only strength of purpose.

On Blasphemy & Genocide

Personally, I'd have opted for forty lashes instead of 15 days imprisonment, but maybe Gillian Gibbons didn't have a choice over her punishment for allowing her pupils to name their class bear Muhammad after one of the seven-year-olds in their class — it would have made a far better photo for the world's media.

Given the Government's reaction to genocide in Sudan (not to mention the capture of our servicemen by Iran earlier this year), it is hardly surprising that they have done so little to intervene in what is essentially a political struggle between the various factions that have long been vying for control of the country.

What's In Another Name?

At half-term my daughter had the privilege of looking after the class teddy, Rosie Reading Bear, and then writing in the bear's diary about what they did together. Six-to-seven-year-old pupils at Khartoum's Unity High School, an independent school for Christian and Muslim children in Sudan following the British national curriculum, were allowed to choose their own name for their bear and came up with a shortlist of eight of their favourite names, including Abdullah, Hassan, and Muhammad. Twenty out of the 23 children voted for Muhammad. Three months later, certain parents have complained to Sudan's Ministry of Education that this is an insult to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, resulting in the arrest of their British teacher, Gillian Gibbons from Liverpool, and the temporary closure of the school for fear of reprisals. Her punishment could be up to six months in jail, forty lashes, or a fine.

You couldn't make it up, could you?! Reminds me of another Muslim country, where parents are unable to give their children Christian names. I wonder if anyone has considered punishing the twenty mischievous children responsible for naming the bear.

Anyone care to suggest what lesson the pupils may have learnt from the whole affair?

Alternatives To A Pound Of Flesh?

Treasury minister Kitty Ussher today launches a three-month consultation into issuing Islamic "sukuk" bonds, which are compliant with the prohibition on interest found in Shari'a law. The government's goal is to introduce the bonds in next year's budget with the view to establishing the UK a key world centre in the development of Islamic finance, a market started just five years ago with the first $600 million bond issue by the Malaysian Government and now estimated to be worth $400 billion globally.

Coinciding, as it does, with the ongoing global impact of America's sub-prime lending crisis and warnings that repossessions in the UK will keep on rising over the coming months, perhaps it is time for Christians to revisit the Biblical injunction against interest† and consider whether this is a product that we should use. For, as Thomas Aquinas famously observed, "To take usury for money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not exist, and this evidently leads to inequality which is contrary to justice."

When Jesus applied the Old Testament teaching against taking interest for his disciples in the Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:34-36), his concern was that we might be kind and merciful. One of the issues, as Pope Gregory IX noted in the thirteenth century, is whether the lender shares in the risk associated with the loan or profits irrespective of what happens to the borrower. When you see the likes of Theo Paphitis, Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones investing their thousands in novel business ventures on Dragon's Den, you are witnessing the start of a relationship between lender and borrower as it is in the dragon's interests to ensure the entrepreneur makes the most of the borrowed funds. In contrast, when you or I visit the bank to negotiate a new mortgage, the bank is effectively able to ignore the needs of the borrower thereafter as they and their anonymous shareholders will profit whether or not we are able to make our monthly repayments.

The Islamic bonds, sukuks, are asset-based and tend to be used in conjunction with a structure where lease rental income provides a profit for the sukuk holders or where the profit share provides a return. In either case, the sukuk holder not only profits from the income generated from the underlying asset, but also holds a proportional ownership in it, so consequently assumes all rights and obligations for the maintenance of the asset. Here, at least there is shared risk, yet it still lacks the proximity of relationship seen in the Dragon's Den.

Once the Government has introduced the legislative framework to allow such bonds, promising to entrench London as "a global gateway to Islamic finance," perhaps Christian businessmen could devise a new set of financial institutions that would enable people to borrow and invest in a way that both shares any risk equitably and cultivates closer community relationships?

† See Ex 22:25, Lev 25:35-37, Dt 23:20-21, Lk 6:34-36

Dialogue Or Debate?

Do not miss Adrian Pabst's comments in today's IHT on last month's Common Word letter, which are worth quoting from fairly extensively:

To suggest, as the authors of "A Common Word" do, that Muslims and Christians are united by the same two commandments which are most essential to their respective faith and practice - love of God and love of the neighbor - is theologically dubious and politically dangerous.

Theologically, this glosses over elementary differences between the Christian God and the Muslim God. The Christian God is a relational and incarnate God. Moreover, the New Testament and early Christian writings speak of God as a single Godhead with three equally divine persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This is not merely a doctrinal point, but one that has significant political and social implications. The equality of the three divine persons is the basis for equality among mankind - each and everyone is created in the image and likeness of the triune God.

As a result, Christianity calls for a radically egalitarian society beyond any divisions of race or class. The promise of universal equality and justice that is encapsulated in this conception of God thus provides Christians with a way to question and transform not only the norms of the prevailing political order but also the (frequently perverted) social practices of the Church.

By contrast, the Muslim God is disembodied and absolutely one: there is no god but God, He has no associate. This God is revealed exclusively to Muhammed, the messenger (or prophet), via the archangel Gabriel. As such, the Koran is the literal word of God and the final divine revelation first announced to the Hebrews and later to the Christians.

Again, this account of God has important consequences for politics and social relations. Islam does not simply posit absolute divisions between those who submit to its central creed and those who deny it; it also contains divine injunctions against apostates and unbelievers (though protecting the Jewish and Christian faithful).

Moreover, Islam's radical monotheism tends to fuse the religious and the political sphere: It privileges absolute unitary authority over intermediary institutions and also puts a premium on territorial conquest and control, under the direct rule of God.

The scary thing is, if I were to ask you whether you thought modern, Western society more closely resembled a relational society or a centralised, controlling one, I think you'd agree we're closer to the latter. Perhaps we really are at risk of losing our Christian roots after all?

Cash For Muslims

In an effort to tackle extremism among young British Muslims in "ungoverned spaces" such as internet chat rooms, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears is to give £70m of tax-payers' money to set up websites to encourage young Muslims to talk about their identities and grievances.

Nice work if you can get it ... and we thought it was just oppressive governments such as Sudan's that offered cash incentives exclusively to Muslims! Of course, we are assured, this funding in no way discriminates against people of other faiths. Yet, as with providing a successful service to prisoners or some of the country's most needy children, or simply expressing one's faith through the wearing of small items of jewellery at school or in the workplace, this does come across as yet another case of double standards and a playing field in serious need of levelling.

What next ... state-funded madrasahs?

Our Arabian "Shared Values"

With Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells suggesting that Britain and Saudi Arabia could unite around our "shared values," I thought I'd see what this year's Country Report on Human Rights Practices said about Saudi Arabia:

The following significant human rights problems were reported: no right to peacefully change the government; infliction of severe pain by judicially sanctioned corporal punishments; beatings and other abuses; inadequate prison and detention center conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention, sometimes incommunicado; denial of fair public trials; exemption from the rule of law for some individuals and lack of judicial independence; arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, and correspondence; and significant restriction of civil liberties--freedoms of speech and press, including the Internet; assembly; association; and movement. The government committed severe violations of religious freedom. There was a widespread perception of serious corruption and a lack of government transparency, as well as legal and societal discrimination and violence against women. Other religious, ethnic, and minority groups faced discrimination. There were strict limitations on worker rights, especially for foreign workers.

Which somewhat explains why the likes of the Jerusalem Post are upset at America's First Lady, Laura Bush, donning the hijab in Saudi Arabia — as they conclude, it's not exactly a symbol of the freedom and liberty that her husband claims to have spent his presidency trying to introduce to the Middle East.

Irrespective of the cultural significance of the headscarf, Dan Hannan is surely right to observe about King Abdullah's state visit:

"When a free democracy lowers its standards in order to accommodate a sleazy autocracy, the former is diminished and the latter magnified. We are, all of us, slightly cheapened by the readiness of our leaders to appease a handful of rich men. And don’t fall for any nonsense about British jobs, by the way. We pay the same price for Saudi oil that other purchasers do, and they the same price for our luxury goods. Our foreign policy is not, or at least ought not to be, synonymous with the interests of BAE Systems."

I for one am looking forward to the new complete English translation of The Thousand and One Arabian Nights, undertaken by Cambridge University's Professor Malcolm Lyons and due to be published next year, the first since Burton's in 1885.

Muslim Desecration Silence

I am willing to bet that if a Christian leader had incited 500 villagers to invade the local mosque, plaster dung on its walls, and cut the loudspeaker wires to prevent the call to prayer from being heard, Muslims worldwide would be in uproar and every newspaper front page would have covered the story. If the Christian leaders had subsequently been forced into signing a humbling apology, again, we still wouldn't hear the end of it as the incident would continue to be raised for months afterwards.

That you probably have not heard any report of just such an incident carried out by Muslims against a church in Pakistan, goes to show the difference in treatment given by the media to the two religions and puts last week's Common Word letter in context.

Muslims Apologize After Desecrating Village’s Christian Church

Muslims have submitted a written apology to Christians in a place called Gowind on October 12; two days after about 500 Muslims stormed New Apostolic Church in this village near the India-Pakistan border.

Shouting slogans against Christians, the Muslims cut the loudspeaker wires and plastered dung on the walls while 20 Christians were at an evening prayer service. They were protesting the church’s use of its own loudspeaker to broadcast its morning service. Muslim clerics then issued calls over mosque loudspeakers for a “social boycott” of Christians.

However, three Muslims — Daler Khan, Haji Yaseen Gardor and Tariq Mehar — signed the apology at the local police station while another 100 Muslims stood outside. The apology states : “We apologize to the Christians for desecrating the church and hurting their religious sentiments.”

Source: Le Journal Chrétien

Young Love Under Shari'a Law

Do you remember your first kiss? Having posted about Britain's appalling teenage pregnancy rates under the heading "Teenagers Looking For Love?" earlier today, I thought you might like the following news story, which perhaps sheds a little extra light on the worldview of the Muslim leaders who penned last week's Common Word letter:

A young Muslim couple tried to speed off when Malaysian police caught them making out in their car but got into an accident, causing a five-car pile up, a report said Wednesday.

A police patrol car spotted the couple locked in an intimate embrace late Monday in their car parked at a hypermarket in Muar town in southern Johor state, The Star newspaper said. As the patrol car neared them, the couple sped out of the car park onto a main road and collided with a passing car, causing three other vehicles to crash, the report said.

Unmarried Muslim couples found alone together in a private place can be charged for "khalwat," or "close proximity," which is a crime under Malaysia's Islamic laws and carries a jail sentence of up to two months.

Before you ask, the 2000-2005 adolescent fertility rate for Malysia is 1.5% compared with our 2.7%, so the Shari'a law doesn't seem to put too much of a dampener on young love(!)

Source: Fox News

Iran Has The Last Word

Is there not a degree of irony that, while the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has now welcomed last week's "Common Word" claims by 138 of the world's top Muslims that Islam is a religion of "peace", Iran's top cleric, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has urged Muslim countries to boycott a US-sponsored international peace conference on Palestinian statehood next month?

Muslim Leaders' "Common Word" Letter

This week's letter, "A Common Word Between Us and You," by 138 of the world's most powerful Muslim clerics, scholars and intellectuals to leaders of the worldwide Church is being hailed by many as something of a miracle. However, such a response is not just overly optimistic but hopelessly naive.

In a display of supposedly unprecedented unity, the letter calls for peace between Christians and Muslims, arguing that the most fundamental tenets of Islam and Christianity are identical: love of one (and the same) God, and love of one's neighbour.

There are two crucial points to make in response. Firstly, the Muslims who penned the 29-page statement are in fact seeking a one-way dialogue on their own terms: "As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes." Yet, as the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, quoted by Archbishop Cranmer, rightly notes:

"What the Qur’an condemns, we do not believe. Whatever our doctrine of God, there are fundamental issues that must be addressed, such as refugees fleeing because of their faith and because of persecution ... But what I would stress is that dialogue between partners must be conducted in the integrity of each faith. One partner cannot dictate the terms on which dialogue must be conducted ... We may disagree about the nature of God but there are many other important areas of dialogue as well. There is justice, compassion, fundamental freedom, freedom to express beliefs, persecution of peoples. All these are matters of dialogue. Only one of them, the need for peace, is mentioned here."

Secondly, there is more to Islam than simply "peace" — there is also "jihad." And to quote the new Baroness Cox biography, "Eyewitness to a broken world" by Lela Gilbert:

"A key development in the concept of jihad is contained in this verse in the Koran:

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor the Last day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Prophet, nor acknowledge the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians), until they pay the jizya (tax) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Sura 9:29, Medina)

... It must be noted that there are other verses in the Koran that speak of peace and respect for other people, especially "People of the Book" — Jews and Christians... However, traditional Islamic teaching has resolved any inconsistency between the verses of peace and the verses of war by adopting the principle of "abrogation", whereby the later revelations of the Prophet abrogate, or override, the earlier revelations. Unfortunately, this means that the more aggressive militaristic interpretations of jihad, associated with violence and terrorism, prevails over peaceable interpretations.

The most fundamental tenets of Christianity have given rise to Western democracy as we know it. Yet the most fundamental tenets of Islam set it on a course of conflict with what we all believe (believers and unbelievers alike) on a whole range of human rights issues, from the freedom of religion to equality of the sexes. As Baroness Cox warned earlier this year, "The time has come to draw a line in the sand: to say that, while we in Britain value cultural diversity and enshrine the principle of tolerance, we must also ensure that such values and principles are not used in ways that destroy the fundamental freedoms on which our democracy is built."

Is Pakistan Really Democratic?

If you are lucky enough to see any real news today (i.e. anything besides Gordon Brown's decision not to give us a general election), you might chance upon report from Pakistan that President Pervez Musharraf has won a controversial presidential vote — controversial because the country's Supreme Court has yet to decide whether the General was able to stand while still serving as the head of the army.

Although Musharraf has again given an "offer of reconciliation to all political parties," Pakistani Christians are now saying that the election commission rejected the nomination of their presidential candidate, Joseph Francis, the leader of the Pakistan Christian National Party, citing article 42 Pakistan's constitution, which bars non-Muslim candidates from running for president. At a time of heightened religious tensions, with violent attacks against churches and some Christians being threatened to convert to Islam, if the president is serious about wanting to create stability in the country and "to eliminate terrorists and eradicate extremism," he will need to work not just with his political rivals but also with the country's religious minorities. Given that Musharraf is one of the West's strongest regional allies in the New Great Game (aka what used to be called the "fight against terrorism"), one can but hope that quiet diplomatic pressure will be exerted to persuade the one-time coupe leader to include all Pakistani citizens in his "National Reconciliation Plan."

Conservative Muslims May Be Right

When it comes to issues such as the importance of family and marriage in society, Christians can find that they have more in common with people of other faiths than they do with people of no faith. So, although you may not find me agreeing with Muslims on any points of theology, the Conservative Muslim Forum may well be right in their response to the Globalisation and Global Poverty Policy Group's report An Unquiet World:

"Regardless of the foreign policies of the United States, hostility to Iran is not in Britain's national interest. A constructive engagement with Iran offers many possibilities for progress... Instead of joining the United States in demonising Iran, Britain should assist Iran in addressing these legitimate security concerns in a manner that improves our security rather than weakening it."

In the current issue of The Difference, Christopher Catherwood argues that neither a military strike nor economic sanctions would be likely to provide a solution to the threat posed by Iran:

"To attack Iran would be to unite all Iranians against us, even those who might otherwise be deemed progressive. An attack on Iran would also, the experts claim, be logistically almost impossible to win, as the relevant nuclear material can be hidden in thousands of underground places all over the country, even if the two major installations could successfully be taken out in a large-scale strike.

But if we cannot attack Iran, and the hardliners and even moderates seem to want a nuclear capability, what can the West do? Russia refuses to get involved, as it considers anybody who damages the US or its interests as its friend, however dangerous they might be. Not only that but if Iran’s neighbours, including a majority Shia Iraq, refused to operate sanctions, then no matter how harsh the financial measures the rest of the world might want to impose, they would be unlikely to provide a solution."

So, what options are left? Well, as the GGPPG intimated in An Unquiet World, there is the possibility of applying diplomatic pressure through India which, despite having voted twice against Tehran at the IAEA, maintains a strategic relationship with Iran and "is extending ties to other countries in the region with an equal interest in restraining Iran, including Saudi Arabia. The Saudi kingdom is India’s largest provider of oil and is home to an estimated 1.5 million Indian nationals. As important, it is one of the few Islamic theocracies viewed favourably by the West, which has worked for a demilitarised Kashmir and has supported India’s observership in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference."

As this blog argued earlier in the year, there is also an opportunity for America to undermine the mullahs' theocratic regime and promote democratic reform by lifting economic sanctions. So, to answer the question about whether or not to engage with Iran, I am inclined to agree with the CMF that while we should continue to oppose Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions, our approach "should be one of negotiation and mutual dialogues, not threats" and "our primary goal should be assisting in the strengthening of Iranian state institutions to avoid any risk of the transfer of nuclear technology to non state actors."