ORIGINAL: sadize

And with the extreme Christians calling a funeral a patriotic pep rally. Well of course it is at that point. How else could you deal with your son/daughter dying in war? If they died from cancer, drunk driver, hands of another, etc. it would surely be spoken about during the proceedings. Trying to make sense of it all is part of grieving.

Good people do good things, bad people do bad things. It takes religion to make good people do bad things.....

Church ablaze as cartoon protests continue across globe

· Pakistani demonstrators turn their ire on Christians
· Danish ambassador and aid workers quit country

Declan Walsh in Islamabad and John Aglionby in Jakarta
Monday February 20, 2006
The Guardian


Pakistani protesters enraged by caricatures of the prophet Muhammad set fire to a church in Sindh province yesterday as police battled with rioters in the federal capital, Islamabad.
About 400 people attacked the church in the city of Sukkur after accusations that a local Christian had burned pages from the Qur'an, local police said.

The outrage sparked by the cartoons showed no signs of dying down, with further protests in Jakarta and Istanbul.

In Islamabad, security forces tried to block the rally organised by the MMA religious alliance by cordoning off the city centre, detaining Islamist leaders and blocking the road from Peshawar, in North-West Frontier Province.
Hundreds of soldiers were posted outside the offices of the Norwegian mobile phone firm Telenor and American fast food outlets. But hundreds of youths clashed with the police, pelting them with paving stones and scurrying down alleyways to escape plumes of tear gas.

The Danish ambassador left Pakistan and advised fellow citizens to do the same, having closed the embassy on Friday. Danish aid workers in earthquake-hit areas have also left.

As in previous cartoon protests, many seemed as angry with their leader, General Pervez Musharraf, and his alliance with the American president, George Bush, who is due to visit Pakistan next month, as they were with the caricatures.

Rashid Hafiz, 22, handed out salt to protesters whose mouths were stinging from the tear gas. "The US and its allies are the terrorists of this world. Inshallah, we will crush them," he said. Abu Omar, a 41-year-old civil servant from Rawalpindi, had brought his five sons to the march, one as young as eight. The only way to end the riots, he said, was for the Danish government to hand over the cartoonist to "the Muslim community".

"Let us decide - either to forgive him or punish him with death. If America can decide the punishment for Osama, why can't we decide that?"

The latest protests came as Saudi newspapers yesterday ran full-page apologies by the Danish newspaper that first ran the cartoons. But Jyllands-Posten said unnamed businesses had placed the advertisement, using an apology issued by the newspaper late last month. The advertisements ran in three of Saudi Arabia's main newspapers, as well as the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat, which is distributed around the Arab world.

In Jakarta, hundreds of radicals attacked the American embassy, angry over the Muhammad cartoons, a statue depicting the prophet in the US supreme court and their perception that Washington wants to destroy Islam.

The 400 members of the Islamic Defenders Front arrived at the mission behind a banner reading: "We are ready to attack the enemies of the prophet." After shouting slogans and burning an American flag and a photo of George Bush, the protesters started throwing stones, rotten eggs and sticks at the perimeter gates. They then charged the gates, catching the 50 police officers off guard.

The windows of a guardpost were smashed but little other damage was done. The embassy claimed the incident was "premeditated" and "staged for television". Protests in Indonesia against the cartoons have been occurring daily, but were largely peaceful because most religious leaders preached moderation.

In Istanbul, tens of thousands of people joined a peaceful demonstration, chanting slogans against Denmark, Israel and the United States. The protest was organised by the Islamic Felicity party, whose leaders urged the world's 1.5 billion Muslims to "resist oppression".

See the cartoons at Wikipedia.

Government backs down on faith schools discrimination -16/01/06

The British government has backed down on proposals in its Equality Bill which would have allowed faith schools to discriminate by excluding pupils or 'subject[ing] them to any other detriment' on the grounds of their religion or belief.

Alan Johnson, secretary of state for the Department of Trade and Industry, is proposing an amendment to remove this provision at the Commons Report stage of the Bill today.

The change of position is being seen as a victory by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights and by the British Humanist Association (BHA), which lobbied against these provisions with the support of a range of parliamentarians.

The reversal will also be welcomed by those in Britain’s faith communities who wish to see a level playing field in public education and an end to discrimination.

The BHA says that this is the latest in a series of “welcome climb-downs” by the government over the powers of faith schools since the Bill was first introduced in the House of Lords in 2005.

Initially, part two of the Equality Bill also exempted faith schools from new duties not to harass pupils, but after lobbying this provision was removed.

At the time, education secretary Ruth Kelly, a Roman Catholic, commented: “We recognised [that] we went too far in exempting faith schools from the harassment as well as the discrimination provisions of the Bill.”

Ms Kelly, who has been associated with the secretive religious movement Opus Dei, is presently in hot water over the number of registered sex offenders teaching in schools in England and Wales, and her own role in one contested case.

Hanne Stinson, executive director of the British Humanist Association, says that she recognizes that “some exemptions are needed to protect the legitimate activities of religion and belief bodies, but in the interests of human rights and equality, they should be as narrowly drawn as possible.”

In particular, recent opinion polls have demonstrated the public unpopularity of religiously and culturally segregated schooling.

But the government’s Bill outlawing religion and belief discrimination in other walks of life avoids this issue, and prime minister Tony Blair has pushed hard for schools run by religious groups – sometimes very narrow ones – to have a key role in Labour’s controversial education reform platform.

The question of admissions, where discrimination will remain lawful, is a particularly contentious one.
The heads of the large faith communities in the UK all back religiously based schools and say that they can form part of a mix of options in a plural society.

But on a TV programme last year Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Engand and Wales, and Tom Butler, Anglican Bishop of Southwark, both admitted that they would be unhappy with Christian children attending a Muslim school.

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks also said that he needed to reflect on the consequences of segregating Jewish children or removing them from mixed schools – the likelihood that children from Muslim and other backgrounds would grow up without first-hand knowledge of the Jewish experience.

The BHA says that rightly outlawing discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief in other areas of life while simultaneously encouraging it in schools makes no sense. This is a view supported by teachers’ unions and by the UK Christian think-tank Ekklesia.

Machete killings fuel Indonesia's religious hatred

Jihadists are being blamed for beheading of two Christian schoolgirls, reports Dan McDougall

Sunday November 20, 2005
The Observer


First light is the most captivating time of day as you cross the vastness of the Indonesian archipelago.
Set against the blood-orange horizon, the echoing call of the muezzin shakes you from your dreamlike state as men file to morning prayers in bleary-eyed procession. Islanders arch their backs against heavy carts laden with fresh jackfruit and laughing children in white uniforms dawdle to school.

But in the central towns of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi events of the past few weeks have destroyed the frivolity of the pupils' daily journeys.

Three weeks ago, four cousins from the tightly-knit Christian community, Theresia Morangke, 15, Alfita Poliwo, 17, Yarni Sambue, 17, and Noviana Malewa, 15, were brutally attacked as they walked to the Central Sulawesi Christian Church High School by men wearing black ski masks. Three of the girls were beheaded. Noviana, the youngest, survived, despite appalling machete wounds to her neck.

The headless bodies of her cousins were dumped beside a busy nearby road. Two of the heads were found several kilometres away in the suburb of Lege. The third, Theresia's, was left outside a recently built Christian church in the village of Kasiguncu.

A week after the attack, a day after Alfita's funeral, two other Christian girls, Ivon Maganti and Siti Nuraini, both 17, were shot by masked men as they walked to a Girl Scouts' meeting. They and Noviana are still critically ill in hospital. All six were Christians in a predominantly Muslim community.

And yesterday police in Sulawesi said two young women had been attacked on Friday by black-clad assailants on motorbikes armed with machetes.

A 20-year-old woman died and her friend was injured. Police said it was too early to tell if the latest attack was linked to the deadly sectarian unrest simmering between the region's majority Muslim and minority Christian communities. Hostilities last broke out in 2001, ignited by rumours that a Muslim girl had been raped by a Christian, attracting the widespread attention of Indonesia's militant Islamists.

To jihadists across the archipelago and beyond, Poso's tensions were a call to arms against the region's 200,000 Christians. By the summer of 2001, with little attempt by the government to halt their migration, thousands of militants, mainly from outlawed groups such as Laksar Jihad and Jemaah Islamiyah, had travelled here with weapons, military training from Afghanistan and a mission to drive out the infidels.

Within months, it was war as the Christians armed themselves, finally prompting the government to send in the military to keep the two sides apart. Thousands died in the following year, and more than 60,000 families fled their homes. For the past four years, despite a high-profile police and military presence and a 'peace deal' between Christians and Muslims, the troubles simmer on.

As news of the beheadings was reported around the world, government officials in the capital, Jakarta, denied Islamic militant involvement, suggesting instead they were the work of Poso's criminal elite to incite religious conflict so they could profit from aid and divert the security forces' attention from tackling crime and corruption.

But independent political analysts such as Sidney Jones, of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, claimed that the killings could only have been carried out by local Islamic extremists linked to regional terrorism networks already blamed for bombings in Bali and Jakarta in recent months.

The beheadings and shootings were not the only attacks on Christians in the Poso region this year. A bomb in Poso's largest Christian market killed 22 people and injured 70 last May. A second bombing last week critically injured a young mother who was among 11 Christian passengers in a van.

Noviana's devastated mother, Nur, 46, blames those attacks and the attempt on her daughter's life on Muslim extremists intent on bringing back large-scale violence to Poso. 'My daughter is fighting for her life because she is a Christian. This has nothing to do with local gangsters; it is about religion. But they won't be able to provoke us, we don't want another war. We want justice, not vengeance. We are suffering enough.'

On the western approaches to Poso, buffaloes luxuriate in muddy fields behind filthy roadside stalls piled with mango and dried flatfish. There is little evidence of rice farmers in traditional coolie hats, only Muslim men in prayer caps. There are no churches, but the domes of small mosques dot the wide horizon of the town. Many look half-built, their distinctive forms merely outlined by exposed metal rods, making them look more like rusting bird cages. Paramilitary police patrols, known as Brimobs, rumble by, the boots of bored soldiers dangling over the edge of their American-made pick-up trucks.

Stretched across the corrugated façade of a roadside shack, a faded black flag displays Laskar Jihad's symbol of blood-red crossed scimitars. Inside, a group of men are smoking Kreteks, Indonesia's ubiquitous clove cigarettes, and watching badly dubbed imports of Western movies. The stall outside suggests they are raising funds for the earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir, but their collection tins are empty.

'Do you recognise it?' asks Usman, the youngest man, smiling at the flag. 'It's been there for years. Nobody seems to want to take it down. We're not terrorists, but we have little respect for Christians. Indonesia should be an Islamic country without the impurities of Christianity or Hinduism. There are no churches here. The beheadings of these schoolgirls suits the Christians. Perhaps they did it to show Muslims as monsters.'

An older man, his yellowing face an mass of wrinkles, hacks and coughs in the recesses of the shack and smiles a toothless grin. 'Assalamu alaikum [may peace be with you],' he says, pointing at my sunglasses which he offers to exchange for an ancient hand grenade.

To many, the distinctive smell of Kreteks is the embodiment of all things Indonesian. Here in this remote corner of Sulawesi it is clear that a love for the weed is one of the few things uniting Christians and Muslims. Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic country and most of its 190 million Muslims practise a tolerant version of the faith, but hardline groups are on the rise.

In recent months, the country's highest Islamic body issued a fatwa condemning liberal Islamic thought, and radical groups stepped up campaigns to prevent the country's 20 million Christians from building churches, as well as announcing plans to stem the influx of Balinese Hindus to major cities such as Jakarta and Yogyakarta.

In Bekasi, West Java, people claiming to be members of the extremist Islam Defenders Front have prevented three churches from holding services since September, claiming that they did not have the required permits. Two weeks ago, 500 members of the churches held a service in the street but were confronted by a mob of 200 Muslim extremists. Only a heavy police presence prevented a battle between them. Both sides are now taking their dispute to the courts.

Professor Dien Syamsudin, chairman of Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Indonesian Muslim organisation, said: 'Muslims have long been suspicious of Christian proselytisation because of the rapid growth in the number of Christians in the past few years. Christians have the same concerns about Muslims. This perception needs addressing or it could lead to national disintegration.'

Christians see the attacks on the schoolgirls in Poso as part of a calculated campaign by Laskar Jihad, which subscribes to the same militant Wahhabi creed as al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and the Taliban and claims to have 10,000 fighters. It has dedicated itself to defending its beliefs across Indonesia.

When the first Laskar commandos arrived in Sulawesi in 2001 they were received by the provincial governor and the head of the local parliament, underscoring their support at the highest levels of government. From direct infusions of cash to fund the fighters to phone calls to local military commanders to prevent crackdowns, sympathisers have ensured that the Laskar Jihad can operate with impunity. Ask anyone in the government about their existence around Poso and you get a flat denial.

About an hour's drive inland from Poso lies Tentena, a Christian stronghold where people blame violent Islamists for the attacks on the girls and the bombings. The town is disfigured by the gutted remains of Muslim houses whose occupants were driven out by Christians at the height of the Poso conflict. Others still bear blood-red spray-painted crosses, the marks of the 'Red Squad' which emerged out of the region to fight its own 'Holy Crusade' against Poso's Muslims when violence first broke out in the region four years ago.

Here, in the sweltering heat, the atmosphere is far from industrious. The yellowing bloodshot eyes of many local people suggest a love of tuak, a powerful palm wine drunk by the litre. Many carry guns in full view of the police.

For peaceful Christians many of them refugees from Poso, the existence of Ninja-clad attackers brings back memories of 2001 when hundreds of masked Muslim men stormed one Christian village after another, firing automatic weapons, tossing petrol bombs and home-made grenades into houses and ordering terrified residents to get out for good. They killed anyone who dared to resist.

'The people of the world called the beheadings of these girls barbaric,' says David, a lay preacher in the town. 'Pope Benedict led prayers in Rome for the safety of Christians here, but few governments have expressed real concern. We are on the verge of another jihad.

'Almost all the religiously motivated aggression this year has been directed against Christians: schoolgirls murdered as the army turns a blind eye. But the government would rather talk of gangsters, not jihadists, carrying out the attacks. I want to know why most of the weapons carried by these militants are army issue.'

To Christians such as David it is 'unthinkable' that the military could have failed to end the attacks. Similar failures can be discerned in other Indonesian hotspots, including Maluku, and the west Kalimantan town of Sambas, where Christians have also been targeted. Claims of army complicity are rife among Christians, who regularly accuse the military of turning a blind eye to the Islamic militia in the area and the smuggling of weapons from the mainland.

Others point to a lack of prosecutions for attacks on Christians and talk darkly of militant training camps in remote valleys, as if to say the next mass slaughter is just around the corner. 'There is a pattern,' says Mona Saroinsong, co-ordinator of the Protestant Church Crisis Centre in Manado, north Sulawesi. 'There have been other attacks apart from the beheadings and shootings and none of the aggressors has been found. The attackers operate in small groups, each with a specific task and area to cover, and wear black masks to avoid being identified. Another similarity with previous attacks is that the head of the police was elsewhere when the killers struck.'

The girls' relatives and friends are demanding justice. A number lobbied the House of Representatives in Jakarta last Thursday, demanding that its members support all efforts to ensure that the murderers are caught.

'We are asking security personnel to finally get serious about investigating the case,' said the group's spokesman, David Malewa, Noviana's brother. 'We are not going to take revenge and have already forgiven the people responsible for the deaths. But can't the state give us a little justice?'

Their demands intensified after five suspects, including a former military police officer, were released for lack of evidence. Three have since been re-arrested, but have yet to be charged.

The Poso police chief, Muhammad Soleh Hidayat, said the investigation was being held up because the only witness was Noviana, who is too ill to be questioned and remains under close guard at a police hospital. 'Our priority is to save her life. It would be inhuman to insist on questioning her,' he said.

Stories of slaughter have become commonplace since the collapse of three brutal decades of dictatorship by President Suharto in 1998. His repression curbed religious and ethnic hatreds. Restraint has now all but vanished in towns such as Poso, with horrifying results.

The beheadings there, other religious attacks and the bombings in Bali make Christians and foreigners living in Indonesia increasingly worried about their safety.

5 States Consider Bans On Protests at Funerals
Proposals Aimed at Anti-Gay Demonstrations

By Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 30, 2006; Page A09


"They'll chant and make snide remarks, they have all these signs that say 'Thank God for dead soldiers,' 'Thank God for body bags,' " said Patriot Guard member Rich "Stretch" Strothman, a Wichita resident. "They'll throw the flag on the floor and wipe their feet on it. . . . We go under request from the families, we're not counter-protesters."

ORIGINAL: SilverSeven


I don't know totally where I stand on what to do about this sort of thing. As Voltaire said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. I've always been a follower of that, but when you're deliberately provoking people who are grieving for lost family or friends, I almost feel that you're abusing the priviledge enough to have lost that right. Voltaire also is attributed to have said, "common sense in not so common". Even so, I'd be loath to take away freedom of speech under any circumstance, no matter how bad someone abuses it.

Maybe there could be a law that states that you have every right to say absolutely anything you want at anytime, BUT if you are deliberately attacking or provoking any specific person, you have no legal recourse if that person decides to mop the floor with your head.....