Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Women stand in a doorway of a home in the village of Magrihawa in the Shravasti district of Uttar Pradesh. (Christie Johnston for the International Herald Tribune)

In India’s north, the worst place to be born a girl - International Herald Tribune, November 30, 2007

In India’s north, the worst place to be born a girl
By Amelia Gentleman
Published: November 30, 2007

MACHRIHWA, India: The birth of a boy in Machrihwa is celebrated with the purchase of sweetmeats, distributed with joy to fellow villagers.

The birth of a girl is, for the most part, not celebrated at all.

Women in this village are not eager to dwell on the subject, but many of those with daughters grudgingly admit that worse than the pain of childbirth was the misery of realizing that they had delivered a girl.

Juganti Prasad, 30, remembers the reproachful silence that settled over the room where she gave birth to her third daughter. Her mother-in-law handed her the child, and said curtly, “It’s a girl, again,” before leaving her.

“There was no one even to give me a glass of water,” Prasad said. “No one bothered to look after me or feed me because it was a girl.”

Bin Laden: Europe must quit Afghan war - Terrorism- msnbc.com, November 29, 2007

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden called on the Europeans to stop helping the United States in the war in Afghanistan, according to excerpts of a new audiotape broadcast Thursday on Al-Jazeera television.

Bin Laden said it was unjust for the United States to have invaded Afghanistan for sheltering him after the 9/11 attacks, saying he was the “only one responsible” for the deadly assaults on New York and Washington.

“The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance’s aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that,” the al-Qaida leader said.

Charles Onians/AFP — Getty Images

Protesters in Khartoum today demanded the execution of a teacher convicted of insulting Islam after her students named a teddy bear “Muhammad.”

Calls in Sudan for Execution of Briton, AP, New York Times, November 30, 2007

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear ”Muhammad.”

The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.

They massed in central Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace, where hundreds of riot police were deployed. They did not try to stop the rally, which lasted about an hour.

”Shame, shame on the U.K.,” protesters chanted.

They called for Gibbons’ execution, saying, ”No tolerance: Execution,” and ”Kill her, kill her by firing squad.”

The women’s prison where Gibbons is being held is far from the square.

Several hundred protesters, not openly carrying weapons, marched about a mile away to Unity High School, where Gibbons worked. They chanted slogans outside the school, which is closed and under heavy security, then marched toward the nearby British Embassy. They were stopped by security forces two blocks away from the embassy.

The protest arose despite vows by Sudanese security officials the day before, during Gibbons’ trial, that threatened demonstrations after Friday prayers would not take place. Some of the protesters carried green banners with the name of the Society for Support of the Prophet Muhammad, a previously unknown group.

Many protesters carried clubs, knives and axes — but not automatic weapons, which some have brandished at past government-condoned demonstrations. That suggested Friday’s rally was not organized by the government.

A Muslim cleric at Khartoum’s main Martyrs Mosque denounced Gibbons during one sermon, saying she intentionally insulted Islam. He did not call for protests, however.

”Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan. But we welcome imprisonment and expulsion,” the cleric, Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri, a well-known hard-liner, told worshippers.

”This an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars, teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad,” he said.

Michael Gerson - Thorns in the Congo - washingtonpost.com, November 30, 2007

Perhaps 4 million people have died in Congo from violence, hunger and preventable disease during the current conflict. Yet, unlike in Darfur, the cameras of the American media have seldom rolled.

However complex this war, there seems to be one ultimate cause. After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, many of the authors of those atrocities — Hutu soldiers and militia members — fled to eastern Congo behind a shield of French peacekeepers. These forces came to be known as the FDLR, which now counts between 6,000 and 10,000 troops, who are tightly organized, well funded by mining operations within Congo and as heartless as ever.

A Congolese children’s rights advocate estimates that thousands of FDLR troops are child soldiers. “All of their children are combatants,” he told me. And the FDLR’s ideology of mass murder is unchanged. Occupied villages are intimidated with mutilations and systematic rape — sexual violence so terrible the damage is sometimes beyond repair.

In the past, the governments of Congo and neighboring Rwanda have often been part of the problem — supporting one brutal militia or the other when it served their political purposes. But both nations seem to have tired of this game. This month, Congo and Rwanda signed a joint statement promising to oppose the warlords, with the goal of making eastern Congo a peaceful buffer zone instead of a source of instability.

High Court orders state to delay power cuts to Gaza - Haaretz, November 30, 2007

The High Court of Justice on Sunday ordered the state to delay its reduction of power supplies to the Gaza Strip by at least a week, pending a full presentation detailing the proposed operation.

The court’s interim decision follows petitions by 10 human rights groups against the state’s plan to reduce supplies of electricity, gasoline and diesel fuel to the coastal territory.

Nevertheless, the justices upheld the state’s plan to reduce fuel transfers to the Strip, as long as the humanitarian needs of Gaza’s residents were given primary consideration.

The Mascot - Mark Kurzem - Book Review - New York Times, November 30, 2007

To begin with, Alex now tells Mark, he is Jewish, something he has never revealed, even to his wife, a Roman Catholic. He remembers — he was probably 5, but doesn’t know his birth date — witnessing Nazi troops shooting his mother and bayoneting his baby brother and sister near their village in Belarus. To keep from screaming, he bit his hand. Believing his father dead, he fled into the forest but was caught — probably by the very soldiers who had murdered his family. They were about to shoot him, he said, when he begged for a piece of bread. One of them pitied him, and he was saved.

It is an anguished tale set in the morally gray zone between culpability and survival. The soldier discovered that the boy was Jewish — he was circumcised — and warned him to hide it. The others thought he was Russian and named him Uldis Kurzemnieks. They made him their mascot, a miniature soldier with a uniform decorated with Nazi insignia. As he traveled with them, he said, he witnessed atrocities, including hundreds of Jews being herded into a synagogue and burned alive. He became a propaganda tool, the Reich’s youngest Nazi, the subject of newspaper articles and a documentary.

Turkey Takes Publisher to Task Over Book Questioning God - New York Times, November 30, 2007

ISTANBUL, Nov. 29 — Turkish prosecutors on Thursday questioned the Turkish publisher of the book “The God Delusion,” by a British author, Richard Dawkins, after a young reader complained that it was offensive, the publisher said.

Erol Karaaslan, whose publishing house is Kuzey Publications, does not face formal charges at this point for bringing out the book, which is a best seller in the United States. But he was informed by prosecutors that a young reader from the neighborhood of Kadikoy filed a complaint against him under a law prohibiting “inciting hatred,” Mr. Karaaslan said in a telephone interview.

In Turkey, the government can open cases against authors or publishers based on complaints about content filed by private citizens, a far-reaching power that sharply limits freedom of expression and is an enduring part of Turkey’s rigid state-controlled past.

The rules have led to the prosecution of authors including Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for literature. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working to soften these rules as part of Turkey’s effort to join the European Union.

The book, which argues against the existence of God, upset the reader, who argued that it meets the criteria of “inciting hatred,” because it insults God and is offensive to Muslims, Christians and Jews in Turkey.