Author: Mick Hartley

in the Middle East. Huge protests were held in Syria and Iran, organized mostly by the police, since any protest unauthorized by the government is forbidden in those dictatorships. The Danish embassy in Lebanon was burned down, which is an act of war. Danish companies were attacked in many Muslim countries, without this unduly disturbing the other member countries of the European Union. Quite the contrary: Many people said that Jyllands-Posten was a xenophobic paper, which is untrue, and that Denmark was a racist country, which is equally untrue. (During the last war, when the Nazis asked the Danish to hand over the Jews, the Danes were the only ones in Europe, along with Bulgarians, to refuse.)

In February of last year, the director of the daily France Soir, Jacques Lefranc, decided to publish the cartoons in France. He was immediately fired. It was in protest against Mr. Lefranc’s firing that I in turn decided to publish the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo. Our front-page headline was “Mohammed Overwhelmed by Extremists,” and had a drawing by Cabu of the prophet, covering his eyes with his hands and crying, “It’s hard to be loved by idiots.” I invited my colleagues from the daily and weekly press to republish the Danish cartoons, too. Most of them published some of them; only L’Express did in full.

Before publication, I was pressured not to go ahead and summoned to the Hôtel Matignon to see the prime minister’s chief of staff; I refused to go. The next day, summary proceedings were initiated by the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France to stop this issue of Charlie Hebdo from hitting newsstands. The government encouraged them, but their suit was dismissed.

After the cartoons appeared, the Muslim groups attacked me by filing suit against me on racism charges. President Jacques Chirac, who campaigned for this just-completed trial, offered them the services of his own personal lawyer, Francis Szpiner. Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Grand Mosque, who always took orders from the Élysée, was apparently not convinced this case was necessary; he told me as much several times. But Mr. Boubakeur was under pressure from the fundamentalists at the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France), who had come to dominate the French Council of Muslim Worship, which he heads, and Mr. Chirac. Why? Only he knows. We can only guess. Probably to nurture his friendships in the Middle East and win arms contracts for France, while at home playing to Muslim public opinion that’s supposedly in thrall to fundamentalism.

From Reuters:

Two Sudanese women have been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery after a trial in which they had no lawyer and which used Arabic, not their first language, the rights group Amnesty International said.

Sadia Idriss Fadul was sentenced on February 13 and Amouna Abdallah Daldoum on March 6 and their sentences could be carried out at any time, the London-based group said in a statement released late on Monday.

North Sudan implements Islamic sharia law.

“The women had no lawyer during their trial and were not able to defend themselves, as their first languages are those of their ethnic groups,” Amnesty said.

Both women are from non-Arab tribes but the proceedings were in Arabic and no interpreter was provided, Amnesty said. Their trial took place in central Al Gezira state.

“One of the women, Sadia Idriss Fadul, has one of her children with her in prison,” Amnesty said.

Faysal el-Bagir, a Sudanese human rights activist, said sentences of death by stoning were rare, “but we have heard that in this area there have been other such judgments.”

The male accused in Fadul’s case was let off because there was not enough evidence against him. Witnesses are usually required to gain a conviction and forensic tests are not normally used in such cases.

Under Sudan’s penal code, anyone who is married and has sex outside wedlock shall be punished by execution by stoning. If they are unmarried, they are lashed, Amnesty said.

El-Bagir said that in another case in Sudan’s western Darfur region about two years ago, a woman sentenced to death by stoning had her punishment reduced to lashing after a public campaign by rights activists.

Here’s the original Amnesty report.

no relation to that of Paris. France has never had anything to say. The French are the most implicated in the affair — and nothing, not a single word. But simple apologies, showing that one feels affected by what happened here, would make a big difference. To be unable to do this when one was so deeply implicated only makes the situation get worse. It is up to France to think about it. It is up to France to decide. If a French representative came to Kigali to present apologies to Rwandans, it would make an enormous difference. This is what Rwandans are expecting.

Apologise? The French? To a country that’s recently changed its official second language from French to English?

[Thanks JR]

Here’s a follow-up to that Palestinian TV interview with the children of suicide bomber Rim Al-Riyashi (“one should talk about the innocence of children”), from Palestine Media Watch (via Solomonia):

Hamas TV broadcast today a video dramatization of the four-year-old daughter of female suicide bomber Reem Riyashi singing to her dead mother and vowing to follow in her footsteps. The video clip ends as the little girl picks up sticks of explosives from her mother’s drawer.

The Al Aqsa TV children’s program shows a child actress playing the daughter, watching Riyashi preparing the bomb and asking her mother, “Mommy, what are you carrying in your arms instead of me? A toy or a present for me?” She later sees a TV news story about her mother’s suicide mission and death, and realizes her mother had been carrying a bomb.

“Only now, I know what was more precious than us . . . ” she sings of the bomb.

Although she misses her mother, she vows to follow in her footsteps. The video ends as she opens her mother’s drawer and picks up the sticks of explosives her mother had left there.

The video clip is here.

h Korea “is gradually asking for higher prices.”

Using North Korea’s formal name, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, or DPRK, he said the North Korean demand that they have in hand the $25 million previously frozen in a Macao bank before they would shut down the Yongbyon facility “is only a symptom of a trend.”

As if on cue, the next day a North Korean newspaper published in Tokyo asserted: “The stark reality is that even after the ’13 February’ agreement, the DRPK and the United States are still in hostile relations.” The DPRK, the Choson Sinbo continued, “has consistently maintained its position that the United States should physically prove that it has changed its hostile policy.”

Experienced Korea hands explained that meant withdrawing American military forces from South Korea and Japan, abrogating the US security treaties with Japan and South Korea, negotiating a peace treaty to replace the truce that ended the Korean War of 1950-53, ending all financial sanctions on North Korea, and establishing full fledged diplomatic relations.

None of which, it has to be said, should be much of a surprise. Not that the talks were actually making progress anyway.

that a Christian teacher had also desecrated the Koran, which prompted riots in which at least five people were killed.

In fact, the teacher had confiscated the Koran from a pupil who was reading it in class.

Thankfully the BBC are able to put this into perspective for us:

Religious differences have long been used to justify all kinds of violence in Nigeria, our reporter says.

In reality it is often fuelled by ethnic or political conflicts and competition for resources, which can be fierce, given that so many people live in poverty, he says.

Nothing to do with Islam then. It’s all about poverty….

I’m off for a few days. Back on Thursday.

Not at all what you’d expect from the media coverage:

Most Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll published today.

The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.

One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll by Opinion Research Business. In Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped and one in three said members of their family had fled abroad. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.

Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month.

And some anecdotal evidence to back up the feeling that things may be getting better:

Karadeh used to be an affluent shopping area of Baghdad. It boomed for a while after the American invasion as goods flooded into Iraq after years of sanctions. But as sectarian violence intensified, the store fronts became shuttered and shell-pocked.

In a vote of confidence in the surge by US troops, the shops were reopening last week. Hareth Salah, a 24-year-old student, said he had stopped attending courses at his technical college when the surge began last month.

“One of my friends was killed by the terrorists,” he said, “but now there are a lot more Iraqi army checkpoints and I’m feeling more secure. I feel better; I can go out and do my shopping. More people have opened their stores and the markets are open longer.”

Put your braces together and your boots on your feet…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYtjC-nDVUw&w=425&h=350]

To what extent has reggae invaded the consciousness of the white youth in Britain? Well the first thing that emerges is that by accepting reggae the skinheads have rejected something else. That rejection is a rejection of the middle class with its existential mystical hippie-style music, which is unable to cater to the social needs of the skinheads….

Blimey, you mean, skinheads didn’t like hippies? It’s London, 1970, and the sociologists are out in force…

in charging her with hurting the religious feelings of people and an arrest warrant was issued. Although she anticipated that she may have faced a jail term of up to two years, Nasrin felt it was very likely that she would have been murdered in jail; she went into hiding. After two months she was granted bail and left the country.

And now:

An Indian Muslim group has offered a 500,000 rupee (11,319 dollar) bounty for the beheading of controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen.

The president of the All India Ibtehad Council said on Friday he had declared the reward for anyone who carried out the “quatal” or ”extermination” of the “notorious woman.”

“Taslima has put Muslims to shame in her writing. She should be killed and beheaded and anyone who does this will get a reward from the council,” Taqi Raza Khan said in a statement received in the northern city of Lucknow. […]

There was no immediate comment from Nasreen who has lived in self-exile in Europe and the United States, but has lately been living in India.

Nasreen has been spending most of her time in Kolkata, state capital of the eastern state of West Bengal which shares the same language and much of the culture of Bangladesh.

But she has also faced problems in India. In 2004, an Indian Muslim cleric offered a reward of 20,000 rupees to anyone who ”blackened” her face, an action considered a grave insult.

They really don’t like women with minds of their own, do they?