WISE: Womens Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity

The Power of Muslim Women

The most influential Muslim women from around the world hashed out the problems of the Muslim world. Now comes the solutions.

Dilshad D. Ali (BeliefNet.com)

European Union: Racial Violence, Ethnic Discrimination Documented

Racial violence and bias plague EU, report says

David R. Sands (Washington Times)

Racial violence and ethnic discrimination in housing, education, employment and law pose major problems throughout the 25-nation European Union, according to a new report released yesterday by the bloc’s racism-monitoring agency.

Tracking the scope of the problem is difficult because many European nations fail to provide even basic data on racial violence and other forms of discrimination, according to the latest annual survey by the Vienna, Austria-based European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia.

“Certain immigrant and ethnic-minority groups continue to be particularly vulnerable to racist and xenophobic victimization — both at the hands of the general public and at the hands of public officials,” the report said.

Vulnerable groups include “asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants, Roma, Jews and Muslims…”

Mistaken Identity: Kidnapped by the CIA

The Wronged Man

Dana Priest (Washington Post)

Unjustly Imprisoned and Mistreated, Khaled al-Masri Wants Answers the U.S. Government Doesn’t Want to Give

Khaled al-Masri was supposed to have been disappeared by black-hooded CIA paramilitaries in the dead of night. One minute he was riding a bus in Macedonia, the next — poof — gone. Grabbed by Macedonian agents, handed off to junior CIA operatives in Skopje and then secretly flown to a prison in Afghanistan that didn’t officially exist, to be interrogated with rough measures that weren’t officially on the books. And then never to be heard from again…

Pakistan: Misbah/Molly to be Returned to British Mom

This decision by the Pakistani court surprised me. It shocked the mother, too. I’d be very interested to learn the reasoning behind the decision. But since Misbah has made it clear that she doesn’t want to return to the United Kingdom with her mother, I see more problems ahead.

Pakistan judge orders girl, 12, back to mother in Scotland

Paul Kelbie (Independent News)

The 12-year-old girl who prompted an international search and a legal battle after she ran away from home in Scotland to live with her father in Pakistan has been ordered to return to Britain.

Molly Campbell, also known as Misbah Rana, walked out of school in Stornoway in the Western Isles last August and flew to Pakistan with her elder sister, triggering a custody battle between her estranged parents.

Although Molly has publicly claimed that she wants to stay with her father, a High Court judge in Lahore decided this week that she should be returned to her mother…

Iran: Death, the Ultimate Censorship

Mr. Rafiq certainly knows how to make enemies.

Iran issues fatwa on Azeri writer

Frances Harrison (BBC News)

One of Iran’s most senior clergymen has issued a fatwa on an Azeri writer said to have insulted the Prophet Muhammad.

The call on Muslims to murder Rafiq Tagi, who writes for Azerbaijan’s Senet newspaper, echoes the Iranian fatwa against Indian writer Salman Rushdie.

It was issued by the conservative Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fazel Lankarani.

The writings of Rafiq Tagi sparked recent demonstrations outside the Azerbaijani embassy in the Iranian capital, Teheran…

…[T]he Azeri writer [is accused] of portraying Christianity as superior to Islam and Europe as superior to the Middle East…

And, not only is Mr. Rafiq in trouble with Ayatollah Lankarani; he has problems in Azerbaijan, too:

…An Azerbaijani court sentenced the writer Rafiq and his publisher to two months in jail for an article which was illustrated by the same cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad originally published in Denmark that caused outcry in the Muslim world.

Psiphon: Outsmart the Government Censors

This privacy software, called PsiPhon, would actually be installed on the computer of someone who is in a “free” country.  Then the person who is logging in from China or Saudi Arabia or whereever would use a link to access the “free” computer and use it as a proxy to surf the net, to blog or whatever.  No history, cookies, or internet cache would be stored on the surfer’s PC. So, unless the “un-free” user knows someone well enough to get them to install this software, they cannot take advantage of this new way to beat the system.  Also, I couldn’t tell from this article if there are any cyber security vulnerabilities for the person who is hosting the software.

Anyway, I’m all for anything that enables the exchange of information.  I hope it works.

Web Tool Said to Offer Way Past the Government Censor

Christopher Mason (NY Times)

[A] team of political scientists, software engineers and computer-hacking activists, or “hactivists,” have created the latest, and some say most advanced tool yet in allowing Internet users to circumvent government censorship of the Web.

The program, called psiphon (pronounced “SY-fon”), will be released on Dec. 1 in response to growing Internet censorship that is pushing citizens in restrictive countries to pursue more elaborate and sophisticated programs to gain access to Western news sites, blogs and other censored material…

Learn more about PsiPhon at:

http://psiphon.civisec.org/

Turkey: Would-be Assassin of Pope John Paul Seeks Audience with Benedict

Sure. That’ll happen…

Man who tried to kill John Paul asks to meet Pope

(Reuters via Yahoo)

The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 wants a day’s leave from jail to discuss theology with Pope Benedict when he visits Turkey this week, his lawyer said on Monday.

“I (Mehmet Ali Agca) asked the Turkish government to release me for one day so that I can discuss theological issues with (Pope) Ratzinger,” Agca said in comments passed on by his lawyer Mustafa Demirbag at a news conference.

“I want to discuss with him religious and mystic issues,” Demirbag quoted Agca as saying.

Indonesia: Female Human Rights Activists Under Assault

Female activists face violence

Hera Diani (The Jakarta Post)

Jakarta:  A study by the National Commission on Violence against Women from November 2005 through August 2006 showed that women human rights defenders are much more vulnerable to violence and discrimination than their male counterparts… [I]t found they are vulnerable to sexual violence, including rape, sexual torture, sexual harassment and stigmatization.

Rape is an especially effective weapon, and thus rape or threats of it are employed often…

Saudi Arabia: Clinic Opens for Victims of Rape, Sexual Assault

This is a step in the right direction.

Of course, this being Saudi Arabia, medical and forensic tests on rape victims can only be conducted with the approval of a judge. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envision evidence being lost due to delays and bureaucracy. First the victim has to get herself (or, possibly, himself) to the clinic. Then, she has to get a court order.

But, like I said, it’s a start.

Saudi clinic to examine sexual assault victims

Mariam Al Hakeem (Gulf News)

A specialised clinic to conduct tests on those who were raped or subjected to sexual assault was opened at the medical centre here yesterday.

Opening of the clinic, the first of its kind in the kingdom, is widely regarded as one of the steps being taken by the Saudi authorities to stem the rising number of sexual assault cases in the kingdom…

UK: A Parallel Legal Universe for Jews, Muslims

Increasingly in the United Kingdom, the religious are turning to their own forms of arbitration rooted in Sharia and Jewish law. The decisions made in these quasi-courts are binding under English Common Law if the parties all agree to arbitration within these judicial systems.

The end of one law for all?

Innes Bowen (BBC News)

Ethnic and religious courts are gaining ground in the UK. Will this lead to different justice for different people?…

… Islamic and Jewish law remains confined to civil matters. But the BBC’s Law in Action programme has learned that the Somali court hears criminal cases too.

One of the most serious cases it has dealt with was the “trial” of a group of young men accused of stabbing a fellow Somali.

“When the suspects were released on bail by the police, we got the witnesses and families together for a hearing,” says Aydarus. “The accused men admitted their guilt and apologised. Their fathers and uncles agreed compensation.”

See also:

Sharia law is spreading as authority wanes

Joshua Rozenberg (Daily Telegraph)

Sharia’s great strength was the effectiveness of its penalties, he said. Those who appeared before religious courts would avoid re-offending so as not to bring shame on their families.

Some lawyers welcomed the advance of what has become known as “legal pluralism”…

Flying While Muslim: Do Not Upgrade that Ticket at the Counter

Muslims defend behaviour of six imams booted from US flight

(Agence France Press)

A prominent US Muslim rejected allegations that six imams forced off a domestic flight had positioned themselves on the plane like the hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, said a Washington Times report painting the six men’s seating arrangements and loud pre-boarding praying as suspicious “mischaracterized” the situation which led to the imams being handcuffed by security officials and pulled from the US Airways plane on November 20…

…The Washington Times reported that the men, who were on their way to Phoenix, Arizona from a conference, moved around and changed their original seats for new ones — two in first class at the front of the plane, two in the center on the exit row and two in the back…

…That was “a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attack …,” the newspaper said.

“That would alarm me,” it quoted an anonymous federal air marshall as saying.

But Bray said the explanation was simple: two of the men upgraded their seats to first class at the gate while two others tried but couldn’t upgrade; and the other two changed seats so that one of them who is legally blind but was seated alone could sit with the other.

“He wanted to be somewhere where somebody could help him,” Bray said.

Iran: In the Crosshairs

Hat tip to homeyra and naj for their posts on Scott Ritter’s interview with Amy Goodman in which he shares his impressions on Iran and provides advice on rapprochement to the Bush administration (which they will ignore).

(Naj was kind enough to provide highlights from the interview.)

Full text from Democracy Now: Scott Ritter on “Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change”

Muslims in China: Hui and Uighur

China Uses Muslims to Woo Partners

(IslamOnline.net)

Chinese authorities are loosening restrictions on a section of its 20-million Muslim minority in an effort to win hearts in the Middle East, where it seeks to strengthen trade and oil ties.

“When I graduated from high school, in 1986, the situation was very difficult,” a woman running an Islamic girls school in Tongxin, a Hui Muslim-majority county in Ningxia, told Reuters.

“Now the religious policies are more relaxed. We can go ahead without fear,” she added, refusing to be named.

Hui Muslims are estimated at nearly 10 million of China’s sizable Muslim minority of 20 millions…

Too bad this tolerance is not being extended to the Uighurs, a Turkic people who inhabit Xinjiang in western China.

China ‘crushing Muslim Uighurs’

(BBC News)

China has been accused by two US-based human rights groups of conducting a “crushing campaign of religious repression” against Muslim Uighurs.

Europe: Roma Struggle Against Violence, Persecution

Violence and persecution follow Europe’s downtrodden minority across the continent

Eight million Roma find political voice in face of evictions and mob attack

Ian Traynor (The Guardian)

Miha Strojan was tending to his sick mother when the mob arrived. Wielding clubs, guns and chainsaws, several hundred villagers converged on the cottage in a clearing in the beech forest with a simple demand. “Zig raus [Gyppos out],” they called in German, deliberately echoing Nazi racist chants. “Bomb the Gypsies.”

It was the last Saturday of last month, when the mob terrorised the extended family of more than 30 Roma, half of them children, into fleeing their clearing a mile over the hill from the farming village of Ambrus in eastern Slovenia…

Bolivia: Embracing the Whip

Bolivia goes back to the whip

Lucy Ash (BBC News)

Native American community justice is making a comeback under Bolivia’s first indigenous president with the emphasis on the whip…

“…It’s much better to give someone a few lashes and be done with it.” (Francisco Espejo, village elder)