Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Heba Saleh, Pleas for condemned Saudi ‘witch’, BBC, February 14, 2008

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

‘Undefined’ crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih’s conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.

(Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty)

Muslims in Karachi torch a Danish flag in protest at the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed

Newspapers defy Muslim fanatics to support Kurt Westergaard, TOL, Feb. 13, 2008

Denmark’s three main newspapers will take the provocative step today of reprinting a cartoon showing the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb instead of a turban after the arrest yesterday of three suspected Islamic terrorists for plotting to murder the artist.

The cartoon by Kurt Westergaard was one of 12 depicting the prophet which triggered riots around the world leading to dozens of deaths when they first appeared in 2005. The violent backlash demonstrated starkly the incendiary interface between Islam and the boundaries of freedom of expression in Europe.

Mr Westergaard, who has spent three months moving between secret addresses while security services tracked the alleged plotters, was back at work yesterday to draw a self-portrait for today’s editions. It shows him still clutching his pen and a Danish flag, but he is obscured by a dark and bloody cloud featuring Arabic script which declares: “Glorious Koran.”

Muslim leaders in Denmark appealed for calm last night as police interviewed a Danish citizen of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians about plans for the “terror-related killing” of Mr Westergaard, 73, who said that he expected to live the rest of his life under threat of death.

Franco Origlia / Getty Images

Sarkozy Ignites Church and State Debate, Newsweek International Edition, Feb. 18, 2008

Being an Honorary Canon of The Basilica of Saint John of Lateran is an honor enjoyed by French leaders since Henri IV. Most dont care much Presidents François Mitterrand and Georges Pompidou skipped the trip to Rome altogether. Not so current President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been gaining a reputation as France’s chief sermonizer. Last December, as he received his title, he made a long speech to the gathered clerics, expounding on “Frances essentially Christian roots.”

“A man who believes is a man who hopes,” said the president. “And the interest of the republic is that there be a lot of men and women who hope.” He advocated a new “positive secularism” that “doesn’t consider religions a danger, but an asset.” And he declared, “In the transmission of values and in the teaching of the difference between good and evil, the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor.”

Those are fighting words in strictly secular France.