An armed Islamic movement calling itself the “Brigade of Muslims” released a statement on Saturday threatening Egypt’s Coptic Christians and asking them to pay tribute.

“Egypt is an Islamic country and will be ruled according to Shariah,” the statement added.

The movement threatened all Egyptian media professionals who “mock religion and Islamic rule,” adding that it has a special list of media professionals and their persistence in mocking will result in the “shedding of their blood in the ugliest way.”   »»» global.christianpost.com

Groups like this remind us that Islamic extremists suffer from the same spiritual perversion as Protestant Puritans in the American Colonies and Catholic Inquisitioners in the late 15th century. They ignore orthodox teaching and practice vigilante justice that involves tormenting and killing anyone (even their own co-religionists) who do not follow their own misinterpretations of religious doctrine. These self-appointed judges and executions claim to practise “jihad” (the struggle to conquer one’s base self, to protect Muslims and to establish the rule of Islam). In fact, they practise “fasad” (by spreading commotion, turmoil, terror, injustice, sedition and other forms of mischief).

In the Qur’an, Allah says this about fasad: “Those who break the covenant of Allah after ratifying it, and sever that which Allah ordered to be joined, and (who) make mischief in the earth: Those are they who are the losers.” (Q. 2:27)

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The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is being sued for religious discrimination. And for good reason. The government watchdog agency was created in 1998 to officially promote and protect religious freedom abroad, but it actually suppresses religious freedom, rather than supporting it. It should be shut down.

In 2009 Safiya Ghori-Ahmad, an American lawyer from Arkansas, fluent in Urdu and Hindi with a master’s degree in international development, accepted a USCIRF position as a South Asia policy analyst. The Commission hired her to conduct research on South Asia’s human rights and religious freedoms. According to the complaint, four weeks after she’d been offered the job, and after she had already left her previous job at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the offer was rescinded. Instead, she was given a temporary 90-day position that began in late July 2009.

The suit alleges that the Commission withdrew its job offer because Ghori-Ahmad is Muslim. She was told, she says, that the job couldn’t start because of a hiring freeze—but she saw others hired during that same period. Once on the job, according to the suit, her supervisor told her that Commissioner Nina Shea “would be upset that USCIRF had hired her because she was Muslim and had been affiliated with a Muslim organization,” and then “suggested ways that Ms. Ghori-Ahmad could limit the negative impression her beliefs and background would create with members of the Commission.” The suit claims that the supervisor recommended that she push back her start date to avoid certain commissioners and “call in sick” on days when certain commissioners might be in the office, to avoid running into them. This supervisor also allegedly told her to “downplay her religious affiliation,” and “emphasize that she was a mainstream and moderate Muslim” who “didn’t even cover her hair.” Legal briefs also claim: “Internal USCIRF email and discussions make clear that Ms. Ghori-Ahmad’s national origin and religion drove USCIRF’s ultimate decision to rescind its job offer. For example, Shea wrote that hiring a Muslim like Ms. Ghori-Ahmad to analyze religious freedom in Pakistan would be like ‘hiring an IRA activist to research the U.K. twenty years ago.’”    »»» Boston Review

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Before the recent French intervention in Mali began, 412,000 people had already left their homes in the country’s north, fleeing torture, summary executions, recruitment of child soldiers and sexual violence against women at the hands of fundamentalist militants. Late last year, in Algeria and southern Mali, I interviewed dozens of Malians from the north, including many who had recently fled. Their testimonies confirmed the horrors that radical Islamists, self-proclaimed warriors of God, have inflicted on their communities.

First, the fundamentalists banned music in a country with one of the richest musical traditions in the world. Last July, they stoned an unmarried couple for adultery. The woman, a mother of two, had been buried up to her waist in a hole before a group of men pelted her to death with rocks. And in October the Islamist occupiers began compiling lists of unmarried mothers.

Even holy places are not safe. These self-styled “defenders of the faith” demolished the tombs of local Sufi saints in the fabled city of Timbuktu. The armed groups also reportedly destroyed many churches in the north, where displaced members of the small Christian minority told me they had previously felt entirely accepted. Such Qaeda-style tactics, and the religious extremism that demands them, are completely alien to the mainstream of Malian Islam, which is known for its tradition of tolerance.    »»» 

The radical Islamists in Mali, like their Taliban and al-Qa’eda counterparts in other lands are deviant Muslims who pervert the plain teachings of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him). The so called “Islamist” countries they want to establish are a twisted and hateful distortion of the nation-state that the Prophet established in Medina as a model for Islamic society. As the Prophet himself said;

“Beware of extremism in religion because that was the only thing that destroyed those before you.”

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Though wealth creation is the primary goal taught by top businessmen, social impact is considered to be a more fulfilling outcome for others. Money is not timeless, but what you do with that money can be. The light you instil in the uneducated, the medicine you provide to the ill, or the food and water you provide to the malnourished is far more enduring than the car you drive or the house you buy. Most advocates of social entrepreneurship believe that creating a business with a social impact leaves much more than just a humble footprint behind.

The concept of social entrepreneurship however is not new despite the recent rise in press coverage. It has existed since the 6th century and one particular group was taught the importance of such business: Muslims.

Muslims live their lives in accordance to the teachings of their founder, Muhammad, who led his life as a humble merchant and was the “trustworthy one” by all those who knew him. His teachings and examples of business dealings were strongly linked to humanitarian values where the poor, the sick and orphans took precedence. He acknowledged the suffering of people in surrounding environments and continually created solutions for them while creating a system that would ensure their care long after his passing.

Sir Zafrullah Khan, the former Pakistani politician and diplomat, says that according to the Qur’an, “The object of the Islamic economic system is to secure the widest and most beneficent distribution of wealth through institutions set up by it and through moral exhortation. Wealth must remain in constant circulation among all sections of the community and should not become the monopoly of the right.”   »»» Guardian Social Enterprise Network

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Pakistan’s Supreme Court yesterday dismissed a final attempt to reopen Rimsha Masih’s blasphemy case, bringing a close to the legal proceedings on the matter.

On 20 November 2012, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) ordered that the case against Rimsha Masih, the young Christian girl accused of blasphemy the previous August, be thrown out. Her accuser’s lawyers filed an appeal against the decision last week and this was heard yesterday by a bench of three judges, including the Chief Justice himself.

The Supreme Court is the highest court in Pakistan so the prosecution has now exhausted its appeal options.   »»» Independent Catholic News

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The Saudi king has granted women seats on the country’s top advisory council for first time. The move heralds a much anticipated step for women to get a foothold in a country where men dominate the political system and ultraconservative Islamic law tightly controls female daily life.

“The decision is good but women issues are still hanging,” said Wajeha al-Hawaidar, a prominent Saudi female activist. “There are so many laws and measures that must be suspended or amended for normal women to be dealt with as grownups and adults, without a mandate from guardians.”

The nation’s official news agency said that King Abdullah issued two royal decrees granting women 30 seats on the Shura council, which has 150 members plus a president. The council reviews laws and questions ministers, but doesn’t have legislative powers. All members are appointed by the king and serve four-year terms.

Since 2006, women have been appointed as advisers only.

The king’s decrees come as part of his incremental steps toward modernisation.

In 2009, the king inaugurated the first university where male and female students share classes. He also granted women the right to run for office in the 2015 municipal elections for the first time and where candidates would not need the approval of a male guardian to run or vote.   »»» guardian.co.uk

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Minister of Culture Hadia Tajik concludes that the hijab (Muslim head scarf) will not become part of the Norwegian police uniform or be used in the court system in the near future.

Despite the Norwegian Faith and Ethics Policy Committee’s recommendation to make the hijab legal to wear for police officers and judges while at work, Tajik rejected the committee’s proposal in Parliament Monday.

A majority of 12 out of 15 members of Norwegian Faith and Ethics Policy Committee suggested to permit the use of hijab in the Norwegian police force and among judges, but according to Tajik no changes wil be made to the current ban in the near future.   »»» Norway Post

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Moctar Touré was strapped to a chair, blindfolded, his right hand bound tight to the armrest with a rubber tube. A doctor came and administered a shot. Then Mr. Touré’s own brother wielded a knife, the kind used to slaughter sheep, and methodically carried out the sentence.

“I myself cut off my brother’s hand,” said Aliou Touré, a police chief in the Islamist-held north of this divided nation. “We had no choice but to practice the justice of God.”

Such amputations are designed to shock — residents are often summoned to watch — and even as the world makes plans to recapture northern Mali by force, the Islamists who control it show no qualms about carrying them out.

After the United Nations Security Council authorized a military campaign to retake the region last week, Islamists in Gao, Mr. Touré’s town, cut the hands off two more people accused of being thieves the very next day, a leading local official said, describing it as a brazen response to the United Nations resolution. Then the Islamists, undeterred by the international threats against them, warned reporters that eight others “will soon share the same fate.”

Trials are often rudimentary. A dozen or so jihadi judges sitting in a circle on floor mats pronounce judgment, according to former Malian officials in the north. Hearings, judgment and sentence are usually carried out rapidly, on the same day.

“They do it among themselves, in closed session,” said Abdou Sidibé, a parliamentary deputy from Gao, now in exile here in the capital, Bamako. “These people who have come among us have imposed their justice,” he said. “It comes from nowhere.”    »»» NYTimes.com

These so-called “Islamists” are evil people. They are renegades, heretics and blasphemers. They practice their own brand of justice, there is no due process of law–not even due process of shari’ah law. Their actions are contrary to the plain words of Allah in the Qur’an as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and exemplified in the Prophet’s life. The Prophet taught that justice has to be tempered with mercy. He said:

“Beware of extremism in religion because that was the only thing that destroyed those before you.”

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Canadian judges should decide on a case-by-case basis whether women can wear the niqab, a full-face veil, while testifying in court, but a blanket rule on the issue would be “untenable,” Canada’s top court said on Thursday.

The decision said lower courts must consider, among other things, the harm that could come if Muslim women who wear the niqab feel discouraged from reporting offenses.

But the ruling also said that where a witness’s credibility is central to the case, “the possibility of wrongful conviction must weigh heavily in the balance.” Judges must also consider the sincerity of a witness’s religious beliefs.

The case turns in part on the value of facial expressions in court. Government lawyers argued that facial cues can reveal deception and are thus important when cross-examining witnesses. The appellant argued that untrained people cannot detect deception using facial expressions, and that in any case, a niqab does not obscure the wearer’s eyes or tone of voice.   »»» Reuters FaithWorld

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When the Muslim Public Affairs Council arranged to hold its annual convention at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., this Saturday, leaders of both organizations believed it would be a bold demonstration of progress in interfaith relations.

But now the organizers of the convention have had to call in the local police department and private security guards after a conservative Christian group posted an article accusing All Saints, an Episcopal (Anglican) church, of harboring Muslim extremists, and the church received a barrage of hate mail.

“I’ve been called names all my life from the ultraconservative reactionary position,” the church’s rector, the Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr., said in an interview on Thursday, “but this is a level of demeaning that I’ve not seen before. Demeaning not just of me, but of the Muslim faith, of this organization, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran. It tells me that there’s a culture of fear in America, a perversion of Christianity which has turned it into the religion of fear, which it of course is not.”    »»» NYTimes.com

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