Jewish and Muslim leaders were united on Wednesday in their condemnation of a German court’s decision to in effect outlaw the circumcision of boys after a judge deemed that the religious practice amounted to bodily harm.

Representatives of the two religious communities called the ruling insensitive and discriminatory, saying it was an attack on centuries of religious tradition.

A judge at a Cologne court said that the circumcision of minors went against a child’s interests because it led to a physical alteration of the body, and because people other than the child were determining its religious affiliation.

Religious leaders said the court had stepped into a minefield with its decision, which undermined their religious authority and contravened Germany’s constitution.   »»» guardian.co.uk

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President-elect Mohamed Morsi is to name six vice-presidents, including a woman and a Christian, as he seeks to fulfill a promise of inclusive government, his aides said Tuesday.

The Muslim Brotherhood has also reached some agreements with the army on the powers that Egypt’s first Islamist president will hold and the fate of the dissolved Islamist-led parliament.

Sameh Essawi, an aide to the president, said Tuesday that an advisory panel of six vice-presidents would include a woman, a Christian and others drawn from non-Brotherhood political groups.

The official Al-Ahram newspaper reported Tuesday that Mr. Morsi was considering Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, or Hazem Beblawi, a former finance minister, as prime minister.

“Most of the cabinet will be technocrats,” an aide added.   »»» National Post (Canada)

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Eruption of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state early this month not only threatens to derail the country’s democratic transition but also brought to light the plight of Rohingya Muslims. According to reports, Muslims account for about four percent of the total population of around 60 million in Myanmar, a resource-rich nation strategically positioned at Asia’s crossroads between India and China, Bangladesh and Thailand.

These Muslims were of Indian, Chinese and Bangladeshi descent entered Myanmar during British colonial rule which ended in 1948. The provenance of the Rohingya Muslims is as difficult to trace as that of many of Myanmar’s other ethnic groups.However, they appear to be a mixture of Arabs, Moors, Turks, Persians, Moguls and Pathans.

According to the United Nations Myanmar’s government counts more than 130 ethnicities in the country. The Rohingya Muslims are not on that list. They have been denied citizenship and are subjected to “forced labor, extortion, restriction on freedom of movement, the absence of residence rights, inequitable marriage regulations and land confiscation.

The United Nations described them as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, and “virtually friendless” among other ethnic groups in Myanmar.   »»» Sailan Muslim (Sri Lanka)

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A U.S. federal grand jury on Thursday charged Javier Alan Correa with violating the civil rights of members of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn. that has been the target of previous anti-Muslim attacks.

Correa is charged with “intentionally obstructing by threat of force the free exercise of religious beliefs and one count of using an instrument of interstate commerce to communicate a threat to destroy a building by means of an explosive device,” the feds said in a press release.

Correa allegedly used a cell phone to call the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro and left a message saying there was going to be a bomb in the building on the 10th anniversay of the September 11 terrorist attacks. “Listen up you fucking Muslim bitches, go back to your fucking dirty fucking country, fucking Muslim fascists, get the fuck out of here,” he allegedly stated.”   »»» TPM Livewire

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A class urging senior US military officers to wage “total war” on Islam wasn’t just the work of one misguided teacher. According to an inquiry ordered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was the result of “institutional failures in oversight and judgment” at one of the military’s top educational institutions.

Those are the results of a months-long, military-wide review into the US armed forces’ educational programs, prompted by a series of Danger Room articles on counter-terrorism training that sought to portray the world’s billion-plus Muslims as enemies of the United States.

The worst of those courses was taught at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. Titled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” the course began years ago as an inoffensive examination of the roots of violent extremism. But in later years, the class was “modified to adopt a teaching methodology that portrayed Islam almost entirely in a negative way,” said Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesman for Gen. Martin Dempsey, the nation’s top military officer.

The instructor of the course, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, spent weeks arguing that the US was at war with the Islamic faith. In planning for that war’s next phases, Dooley invited his students to use the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, and to target the “civilian population wherever necessary.”   »»» Wired.com

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The Nation magazine has a special issue entitled “Islamophobia: Anatomy of an American Panic” with articles examining different aspects of Islamophobia in the US. Several of the articles can be read on the magazines Website at no cost.

These include Moustafa Bayoumi, “Fear and Loathing of Islam”, Jack Shaheen, “How the Media Created the Muslim Monster Myth” (subscription only), Petra Bartosiewicz, “Deploying Informants, the FBI Stings Muslims”, Laila Lalami, “Islamophobia and Its Discontents”, Abed Awad, “The True Story of Sharia in American Courts”, Ramzi Kassem, “The Long Roots of the NYPD Spying Program”, Max Blumenthal, “The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate”, and Laila Al-Arian, “When Your Father Is Accused of Terrorism”.   »»» Islamophobia Watch

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A delegation from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Construction and Development Party, and the Political Parties’ Coordinating Committee visited the Copt Christian Diocese of Sohag, in Upper Egypt.

The delegation was met by Bishop Bakhoum, Bishop Wissa, Father Mina, Father Yusuf and Rev. Sameh Nosehi, together with a number of other prominent Coptic personalities. The meeting discussed views regarding presidential candidates.

Bishop Wissa, of the Ancient White Monastery, assured that Christians do not fear the Muslim Brotherhood, because their history with Copts has always been honorable.

Moreover, Alaa Seddiq, Construction and Development Party Secretary in Sohag, said that Islamic Reference guarantees the rights of all Egyptians, “There is no difference between Muslims and Christians; we are all equal. We are brothers. But the former regime played on sectarian notes, dividing the nation.   »»» Ikhwanweb

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Norwegian far-right leaders told the court trying Anders Behring Breivik on Tuesday that the mass killer was right to fear his nation’s “planned annihilation” by Muslims, even if his method of combating it was wrong.

Breivik killed 77 people on July 22, first detonating a car bomb outside government headquarters and killing eight, then gunning down 69 people, mostly teenagers, at the ruling Labour Party’s summer camp on Utoeya Island.

He argued his victims deserved to die because they supported Muslim immigration, which he said is adulterating pure Norwegian blood.

“The constitution has been cancelled, we’re at war now,” Tore Tvedt, the founder of far-right group Vigrid told the court.

“When they get their will, the Nordic race will be exterminated,” he said of Muslim immigration.

Breivik’s defence team called Tvedt and other far-right supporters to the stand to support their argument that Breivik is sane since his ideology is shared by others, even if their numbers are few.   »»» Reuters

There are currently 106,735 Muslims living in Norway, out of a total population of 4,973,000 – 2.1%. Clearly there is still some way to go before the country is “taken over by Muslims”.

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An agreement between a separatist Tuareg rebel group and the Islamist group Ansar Dine to create an Islamic state in northern Mali has hit a snag over how strictly to impose Islamic law, an official of the Tuareg group said Tuesday. The separatist National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad wants a moderate form of Shariah, while Ansar Dine would like a more hard-line version.   »»» NYTimes.com

Shari’ah is NOT a codified set of laws. It is a juridical system and its specific implementation varies from one place to another–just like the various forms of Common Law in English-speaking countries whose legal systems were based on the British system and like the various forms of Civil Law in French-speaking countries whose legal systems are derived from French law.

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A bill that would protect the rights of workers who wear religious-oriented clothing at work was overwhelmingly passed by the California Assembly on Tuesday, May 28.

AB 1964 now goes to the State Senate, where its proponents hope it will pass before the Legislature adjourns at the end of August. Then it would go to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature.

The bill, dubbed the Workplace Religious Freedom Act of 2012, essentially would not break new ground but would clarify the federal Fair Employment and Housing Act, said Rachel Linn, spokeswoman for Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, author of the measure.

This clarification could prevent an employer from being sued by workers who believe their freedom to wear religious-oriented clothing was being impinged, Linn said.

“This does not change much, but we wanted to help employers by making what’s in federal law more clear,” Linn said. “”We talked to a lot of lawyers who’ve said this could decrease the amount of litigation.”

The bill, which moved through several assembly committees with little opposition, was supported by a broad collation of religious affiliations, including Muslim, Sikh, Catholic and Jewish organizations as well as the American Civil Liberties Union.   »»» Press-Enterprise (U.S.)

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