Imam Who Preaches Non-Violence Arrested For Beating Up His Wife

Hard to believe a man who worships the Religion if Peace would beat up his wife, isn't it?

A Muslim imam who lectures on non-violence and advises the German government on interfaith issues has been arrested in Germany for beating up his wife.

Sheikh Abu Adam, 40, is now on remand in Munich while his wife, 31, is being guarded by police.

She was allegedly assaulted so badly that she suffered a broken nose and shoulder and numerous cuts and bruises.

Media reports claimed the woman, who has borne one of his ten children, wanted to live a more 'western' lifestyle and was allegedly attacked after telling her husband.

The police said they received a call from a lawyer hired by the victim.

Adam is alleged to have shouted a verse from the Koran at his wife as he beat her.

The line said: 'Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them.

'As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.'

The imam is said to have refused to let police officers into his home, but they forced their way past him because they feared the woman's life was in danger.

Sheikh Adam is the Egyptian imam of the Darul Quran Mosque in Munich.

He is facing charges of causing grievous bodily harm and could face a jail term if convicted.

A week ago, he held a lecture at the city's Catholic University entitled 'An Islam which distances itself from violence'.

I'm starting to think these imams are a bit phony.

Saudi Girl Gets 90 Lashes and Prison for Bringing Cell Phone to School

Thought I was being harsh when I took my kid's DS player away for a week after he snuck it into his backpack and brought it to school. Get a load of these savages in Saudi Arabia.

A 13-year-old girl has been sentenced to 90 lashes and two months' prison in Saudi Arabia after she took a mobile phone to school.

A court ordered the girl to be flogged in front of her classmates following an assault on the school principal, according to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan.

After the assault she was discovered to have concealed a mobile phone, breaking strict Saudi regulations banning the use of camera-equipped phones in girls' schools.

Al-Watan said a court in the northeastern Gulf port of Jubail had sentenced the girl to 90 lashes inside her school, followed by two months' detention.

The punishment is harsher than tha dished out to some robbers and looters.

HILLARY'S IMAGINARY ACHIEVEMENTS

I suppose that I am in a position to comment on Hillary Clinton's claims that she played a significant role in what is called the Northern Ireland "peace process" since I was one of many others involved at that time. In my case I was trying to oppose the appeasement of terrorism that was being planned. Let me assure you that she is lying through her teeth when she alleges she contributed anything of substance. It was husband Bill - that dear friend of terrorist scum like Arafat - who worked alongside Irish PM Ahern and UK PM Blair - and this unholy trinity then did their bit to twist the arms and in other wats cajole democrats to enter a political arrangement with murdering IRA terrorists. Hillary made the tea and talked to pointless left-wing womens groups.

ROP Rides Again

THE PRICE OF FAITHLESSNESS
Iran to Punish Apostasy with Death
Apostasy -- or the formal renunciation of religion -- is already punishable in Iran with death. But now, Iran wants to make the death penalty for apostasy part of the penal code. The European Union is concerned and has asked Iran to reconsider.

The European Union this week sent a letter to authorities in Iran expressing its concern over a proposed change to the penal code that would make apostasy punishable by death.

The EU is responding to news that the Islamic Republic is planning to subject "apostasy, heresy and witchcraft" to the Hudud -- the body of fixed punishments assigned to crimes that are considered violations of the "claims of God." Other Hadud crimes include alcohol consumption, theft, highway robbery and illegal sexual intercourse.

As the news agency Reuters reported earlier this week, the EU, which opposes the death penalty as a matter of policy, expressed "acute concern" over the proposed penal code revision.

"These articles clearly violate the Islamic Republic of Iran's commitments under the international human rights conventions," Slovenian leaders, who currently head the rotating EU presidency, wrote in a statement.

"The EU calls upon the Iranian authorities, both in government and parliament, to modify the draft penal code in order to respect the obligations."

The death penalty has already been applied to apostates in Iran -- but this was never, since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, institutionalized as a matter of legal practice.

Iran typically dismisses Western criticism of its legal system, claiming that Islamic law is fundamentally different.

The main concern seems to be arising from the Baha'i faith, which forms a religious minority in Iran but, unlike Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism, is not officially recognized by the regime.

On Thursday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the Baha'i community in Germany is particularly worried about the fate of three Iranian Baha'i, who were arrested in 2006 in the southern Iranian city of Schiras for having founded a center for Baha'i children and youth. They were sentenced to four years imprisonment and are said to be in a secret service rather than normal prison.

At the beginning of February, the EU officially protested the sentence and expressed its concern about the "worsening situation for ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, in particular that of the Baha'i." The Iranian court defended its decision on the basis that the Baha'i, in promoting their faith, were spreading propaganda "against the Islamic regime."

The Baha'i faith developed out of Shia Islam in the 19th century and its followers have been subject to discrimination for generations.

Religion of Peace™

Via Spiegel International

A Challenge That Will Go Unanswered

They may start killing each other in the streets over this one.

If Pakistan is so angry, give back our aid
Pakistanis have every right to voice their anger at the award of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie.

Equally, the rest of us have every right to express our anger at the deeply offensive response of Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, Pakistan's religious affairs minister who invoked the world's 1.5 billion Muslims and said: "If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammed, his act is justified."

C'mon, dude, be a leader, offer yourself as an example.

He later "clarified" his words, but we all know exactly what he was up to. And what of the Labour peer Lord Ahmed, who responds by saying Rushdie has "blood on his hands".

1000 to 1 he won't lead by becoming a splodeydope, either.

Some people like Rushdie's novels, others don't. Some say he's smug, others say he's delightful.

Yes, he has cost this country a lot in protecting him and through him, a core value of freedom of speech. But unless there is a strange and violent back-story we didn't know, Sir Salman hasn't the smallest drop of blood on his hands.

If Pakistan is so offended, however, there is a dignified way to deal with the problem.

Last year, Tony Blair went to Lahore to praise its "enlightened moderation" and to announce a rise in our aid budget to Pakistan from £236 million to £480 million.

If this is tainted money, it can presumably be returned.

They'll Surely Be 'Angered'

Here's something that's sure to get the mullah's and acolyte's knickers in a knot. All of the whining, protests and fatwa or two that have come about since Salman Rushdie was knighted five days ago, has had a chilling effect: Rushdie's book, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, has experienced a growth in sales.

Home secretary defends Rushdie knighthood
John Reid today insisted Britain stood by the knighthood awarded to Salman Rushdie and would not apologise for the honour, despite anger in some Muslim countries.

The issue was "sensitive", the home secretary said following a speech in New York, but the protection of people's right to express their opinions in literature, argument and politics was "of overriding value to our society".

The British high commissioner in Islamabad, Robert Brinkley, has expressed concern to Pakistan's government over remarks supposedly made by the minister for religious affairs, Mohammed Ejaz ul-Haq, which appeared to justify suicide bombings as a response to the knighthood.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said Mr Brinkley had expressed "deep concern about what the minister of religious affairs is reported to have said".

Iran has also stepped up protests over the a knighthood for Rushdie, whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses prompted a fatwa calling for his assassination.

Iran's state radio reported today that 221 of the country's 290 MPs signed a statement condemning Rushdie's knighthood.

Yesterday Iran's foreign ministry summoned the British ambassador to complain about the award.

An Iranian foreign ministry official, Ebrahim Rahimpour, told the ambassador, Geoffrey Adams, that the decision to award the honour to the author was a "provocative act" that had angered Muslims, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

Speaking in New York, Mr Reid noted that some Christians were angered by film The Life of Brian, and some Jewish people were upset when Mel Gibson made films, but that this had to be tolerated.

"We have a set of values that accords people honours for their contribution to literature even if we don't agree with their point of view," he said. "That's our way and that's what we stand by."

He added: "We have very strong laws about promoting racial intolerance.

It sure would be nice if these PC nitwits would get it through their heads that Islam, like any other relgion (or anti-religion), is not a race.

It isn't a free-for-all. We've thought very carefully about it.

"But we have a right to express opinions, and a tolerance of other people's point of view, and we don't apologise for that."

Rushdie went into hiding for a decade after Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for the author's assassination. The Iranian government distanced itself from the fatwa in 1998, declaring that it would not support the edict, but could not rescind it. He received the knighthood for services to literature in the Queen's birthday honours list published on Saturday.

Ahh, Khomeini, the spiritual leader. Here's a classic example of Khomeini's spiritual leadership.

The row over the honour has done no harm to sales of The Satanic Verses, nearly 20 years after it was first published in 1988.

The book was today ranked 12th in UK book sales by Amazon. It is the only book in the top rankings not published very recently.

On the US version of Amazon the book ranked 73rd.

Religion of Peace™

There's more.

Will This Be An 'Affront' To Islam?

Salman Rushdie has amassed for himself a fair number of distinctions over the years, among them the Booker of Bookers prize, the Whitbread novel award (twice), the James Tait Black memorial prize, and a fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini calling for his immediate assassination.

Yesterday, however, came the big one: a knighthood recognising the services to literature of one of the world's most lauded - and most divisive - literary grandees. "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way," the newly-minted Sir Salman said in a statement.

The announcement signals a belated endorsement by the British establishment, 18 years after the author was forced to go on the run after The Satanic Verses was condemned as blasphemy by Iran's late spiritual leader. Britain broke off diplomatic relations over the incident; Rushdie himself had to live in hiding for a decade.

That strange sound you hear is Khomeini roaring from his special place in Hell.