Abortion Rates Rising in Middle East

The increase in abortions in Arab countries has several different causes, including marrying later in life (for singles) and, for married couples, poverty and societal instability (including wars). Birth control can be difficult to obtain, especially for the unmarried, and abortions under non-sterile conditions are unavailable for many.

Number of abortions rising in Middle East, experts say

Borzou Daragahi (Los Angeles Times)

Malaysian city bans lipstick for Muslim women

(CNN)

Authorities in a northern Malaysian city have forbidden Muslim women from wearing bright lipstick and noisy high-heeled shoes, saying the directive is intended to prevent sexual assaults and “illicit sex….”

No word on how bright lipstick promotes sexual assault…

Netherlands: Thieves Diguising Themselves as Muslim Women

As though Muslims don’t get enough negative attention in The Netherlands, “fake Muslim women” are now stealing from Rotterdam pedestrians.

Pickpockets Dressing up a [sic] Muslim Women

(NIS)

Rotterdam markets have been pestered in recent weeks by East European pickpockets that dress up as Muslim women….

Egypt: Actor Accused of Apostasy for Portraying a Christian in a Movie

Dear idiots: Playing a doctor on TV does not make you a doctor. And portraying a Christian in a movie does not make you a Christian. It is ironic that the purpose of the movie in question was to promote religious tolerance.

EGYPT: Groups accuse Muslim actor Adel Imam of apostasy

(LA Times)

China: Tibetans and Hui Muslims Make Uneasy Neighbors

Tensions have been rising between Tibetans and Hui (ethnic Chinese Muslims), with the Hui as the victims.

Tensions rise between Tibetans, Chinese Muslims

Barbara Demick (Los Angeles Times)

… [I]n western China [...] a volatile ethnic stew is increasingly erupting into violence. Among China’s dozens of minorities, few get along as badly as Tibetans and Muslims. Animosities have played a major — and largely unreported — role in the clashes that have taken place since mid-March. During the March 14 riots in the Tibetan region’s capital, Lhasa, many of the shops and restaurants attacked were Muslim-owned. A mob tried to storm the city’s main mosque and succeeded in setting fire to the front gate. Shops and restaurants in the Muslim quarter were destroyed….

Egypt: Myriad of Meanings in InshaAllah

InshaAllah: It means “If Allah wills it.” It can also mean “maybe”, as in “Will this order be completed in time?” “InshaAllah.” Or it can be a polite way to say “No.”

With a Word, Egyptians Leave It All to Fate

Michael Slackman (New York Times)

… [T]here has been inshallah creep, to the extreme. It is now attached to the answer for any question, past, present and future. What’s your name, for example, might be answered, “Muhammad, inshallah.”

Albania: Women Who Wear the Pants in the Family

This NY Times article describes a different type of sex change wherein Albanian women would take an oath to remain virgins and would then adapt the role of family patriarch. They renounced womanhood, dressing as men, praying in the mosque with men and associating with men.

Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man

David Bilefski (New York Times)

Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex….

France: It’s Official – Court Blocks Annullment Over Virginity

The result of this “triumph” of human rights is that two individuals are now trapped in an unwanted marriage.

French court blocks annulling marriage over virginity

A French appeals court blocked the decision of a lower court to annul a marriage because the bride was not a virgin as she had claimed.

The ruling Friday in a case that has reflected the tension between Muslim social codes and French values effectively freezes the matter, leaving the marriage in force, until Sept. 22, when the same court will hear arguments on the substance of the case, an appeals court official said….

USA, TX: Publisher of Urdu Newspaper Threatened After Running Ad For Ahmadiyyah Event

Publisher draws criticism from Muslims
Coverage of sect by Urdu weekly is an insult to faith, some residents say

PURVA PATEL (Houston Chronicle)

Pakistan Times publisher Sheikh Najam Ali has been looking over his shoulder every day for a month since running an ad that proved controversial in the local Muslim community.

The ad, announcing a local Ahmadiyya celebration and describing the faith as Muslim, prompted death threats from anonymous callers, cancellations from advertisers and the removal of his papers in bulk from various distribution sites, he said….

Ali’s policy towards advertisers is one of non-discrimination, but some Pakistani immigrants seem unable to grasp the concept. The Ahmadiyyah are discriminated against and openly persecuted in Pakistan, and they would like to continue that tradiotion in Texas:

Ali should have known better than to run the ad in a paper read mostly by Muslims and Pakistanis for whom the mention of the Ahmadiyya faith raises memories of an age-old dispute, said Atif Fattah, the co-host of a local Muslim radio show, called Serat-e-Mustaqeem, or The Righteous Path.

For the record, the president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, Rodwan Saleh, notes that such intolerant attitudes are out of place in the US.

“In America, everybody has a right to exist and worship,” Saleh said. “What difference does it make if the Ahmadiyya group came and claimed whatever they claimed and asked to be part of the mainstream? What if this was a Jewish group or a Buddhist group?”

USA: Project Nur, a Liberal Alternative to the MSA

Campus Radicals: A New Muslim Student Group
Tries to Rouse the Moderates

JANE EL HORR and SANA SAEED (Wall Street Journal)

China: Orchestrating Olympic “Spirit” in Muslim Province

Faking the Olympic Spirit in China’s Muslim Region

Andreas Lorenz (International Spiegel)

The Olympic torch is in China’s far West and security is tight. Still, there are some who came out to celebrate the event — 200 invited guests and a handful of well-trained Uighar schoolchildren. Journalists were watched closely

Guantanamo: Kidnapping Common Criminals and Housing them for Years with Terrorist Fanatics Yields Predictable Results

Militants found recruits among Guantanamo’s wrongly detained

Tom Lasseter (McClatchy Newspapers)

… A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam – thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them – and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists….

Sudan: Rape as Weapon of Choice in Darfur

Rape is a way of life for Darfur’s women

(CNN)

Sudan’s Darfur crisis has exploded on many fronts — violence, hunger, displacement and looting — but United Nations peacekeepers say the biggest issue now affecting the region is the systematic rape of women and children….

USA: Muslim Women Allege Discrimination by Obama Campaign Over Hijab

Muslim woman: Scarf kept her from seat near Obama

Jeff Karoub (Associated Press)

A young Muslim woman said she and another woman were refused seats directly behind Barack Obama — and in front of TV cameras — at a Detroit rally because they wear head scarfs….

UAE: Royal Prince Allegedly on Film Torturing Man Over Bad Business Deal

Beaten with a nail-studded board; shot at; run over with an SUV — mess with Sheik Issa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of the Crown Prince, and bad things will happen to you …

U.S. man: Videos show torture by UAE royal

(Associated Press)

As a trusted adviser to a member of United Arab Emirates royal family, Texas businessman Bassam Nabulsi says he safeguarded the sheik’s most important documents: financial records, investment documents, and videotapes showing the sheik torturing people with a cattle prod and a spiked plank….