Muhammad with a bomb

Prophetic fallacy

Guardian Unlimited Thursday February 2, 2006 Comment Agnès Callamard

The fact that a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his turban is offensive to many Muslims should not be used as an argument for restricting freedom of expression, writes Agnès Callamard
In September 2005, a Danish newspaper published 10 cartoons, including one depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his turban.There were immediate protests within Denmark and the situation has recently escalated to the point where Danish goods are being boycotted, Scandinavian aid workers have been pulled out of Gaza and ambassadors have been recalled.One striking feature of these events is the remarkable absence of sensible dialogue. Instead, there have been a series of accusations and counter-accusations, variously defending the absolute right to free speech and calling for apologies and censorship in the name of religion.The right to freedom of opinion and expression is a fundamental right that safeguards the exercise of all other rights and is a critical underpinning of democracy.As international human rights courts have stressed, it is applicable not only to "information" or "ideas" that are favourably received but also to those that offend, shock or disturb.Article 19's analysis of this case is that, in the absence of a specific intention to promote hatred, criminal or other censorship measures against the newspaper would not be legitimate.We recognise that the cartoons were offensive to many Muslims, but offence and blasphemy should not be threshold standards for curtailing freedom of expression.Blasphemy laws protect beliefs as opposed to people. Restrictions on freedom of expression which privilege certain ideas cannot be justified. At the same time, international human rights law does protect the right of everyone to hold beliefs, and to be free of violence or discrimination.These events, however, raise broader issues of free speech and human rights that have so far not been addressed sufficiently. Societies throughout the world have failed to address discrimination against religious minorities.Western societies risk a serious escalation of intolerance and discrimination against Muslims while unequal treatment of religious minorities in many other societies, including in the Middle East, is well documented.Governments and a range of other actors have a very important role to play in addressing and preventing discrimination and violence, and protecting the right to equality.Legal restrictions on speech can at best form a small part of the response to intolerance. The putting into place of a range of positive measures to promote equality and combat intolerance and prejudice must also be part of the strategy.Responsible media, for example, have a social and moral obligation to combat intolerance and to ensure open public debate about matters of public concern.In this case, serious and informed debate about the issues raised by the cartoons, involving a multiplicity of voices, both religious and secular, would have been helpful.This responsibility rests with media in all countries affected by these events. Governments also have a key role to play in ensuring that sensible, solution-oriented perspectives are put forward.Instead, the "dialogue" has far too frequently been characterised by inflammatory headlines, political speeches and other measures to escalate tensions and highlight divisions.Indeed, the war of words and acts is reminiscent of global reactions to the US-led war on Iraq or Iran's nuclear programme. Reading the headlines, one could be forgiven for thinking that Samuel Huntington's clash of civilisation is upon us.Twelve Danish journalists came to London two weeks ago to discuss the cartoons with Article 19 and other NGOs. Our discussions then reflected our concerns of the dangers that a deterioration of the situation would pose, as well as possible means of avoiding such dangers.Unfortunately, the set of events that has unfolded since then has validated our concerns rather than our hopes.Our societies need to find more sensible ways to address situations like this, which highlight global differences of opinion.Free speech, the involvement of a diversity of voices, well-informed public debates and a responsible media are central to this.

Agnès Callamard is executive director of Article 19, a human rights organisation focusing on the defence and promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide.

Religion in the UK
Full coverage - Muslim Britain
An internalised image
Muslim students 'being taught to despise unbelievers as filth'
Cartoons and portraits of Prophet Mohammad 1
Cartoons and portraits of Prophet Mohammad 2

A Persian name

Cruise baby name has many meanings, expert says

Sat Apr 22, 2006 10:49 AM BST
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It's a Nubian tribe, the word for "rose" in Persian, the "sun" in Sanskrit and, oh yes, it's also an obscure variation on the Hebrew name Sarah and refers to form of an Alpaca's wool.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes may have gotten more than they bargained for naming their daughter Suri when she was born on Tuesday, according to language expert Paul JJ Payack, head of the Global Language Monitor, a group that studies word use.
Payack said he found at least five meanings for Suri, including the name of a Nubian tribe on the Sudanese-Ethopian border. The tribe is known for the ceremonial clay plate inserted into the lower lip of Suri girls after their lower teeth have been extracted.
Suri also refers to the sun in Sanskrit, an ancient Indo-European language in which the word's meaning sometimes is translated as "lord" or "ruler."
Moreover, Suri is the name for the wool of the Andean Alpaca.
In Persian, it means rose, though not necessarily a red rose, as Cruise and Holmes said through their spokesman when the birth was announced.
Payack said Suri was also a relatively rare variation of the biblical name Sarah, which means "lady" or "princess."
Combined with the child's last name, which in English means to move or go along, especially in an unhurried or unconcerned fashion, Payack added that Suri Cruise could translate to: "The ruling Nubian sun princess unhurriedly moving along wearing a rose-colored blanket."

being taught to despise unbelievers as filth

The Times April 20, 2006 By Sean O'Neill
Muslim students 'being taught to despise unbelievers as filth'

Pupils protest as college linked to Iran puts fundamentalist text on curriculum, reports our correspondent

MUSLIM students training to be imams at a British college with strong Iranian links have complained that they are being taught fundamentalist doctrines which describe nonMuslims as “filth”.
The Times has obtained extracts from medieval texts taught to the students in which unbelievers are likened to pigs and dogs. The texts are taught at the Hawza Ilmiyya of London, a religious school, which has a sister institution, the Islamic College for Advanced Studies (ICAS), which offers a degree validated by Middlesex University.
The students, who have asked to remain anonymous, study their religious courses alongside the university-backed BA in Islamic studies. They spend two days a week as religious students and three days on their university course.
The Hawza Ilmiyya and the ICAS are in the same building at Willesden High Road, northwest London — a former Church of England primary school — and share many of the same teaching staff.
They have a single fundraising arm, the Irshad Trust, one of the managing trustees of which is Abdolhossein Moezi, an Iranian cleric and a personal representative of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme religious leader.
Mr Moezi is also the director of the Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, a large mosque and community centre that is a registered charity. Its memorandum of association, lodged with the Charity Commission, says that: “At all times at least one of the trustees shall be a representative of the Supreme Spiritual Leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Both the Irshad Trust and the Islamic Centre of England Ltd (ICEL) were established in 1996. Mr Moezi’s predecessor as Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative, another cleric called Mohsen Araki, was a founding trustee of both charities.
In their first annual accounts, lodged with the Charity Commission in 1997, the charities revealed substantial donations. The Irshad Trust received gifts of £1,367,439 and the ICEL accepted an “exceptional item” of £1.2 million.
Around the same time, the ICEL bought a former cinema in Maida Vale without a mortgage. Since then it has received between £1 million and £1.7 million in donations each year which, it says, come from British and overseas donors. The centre declined to say if any of its money came from Iran.
Since 2000, its accountants have recorded in their auditors’ report on the charity’s accounts that they have limited evidence about the source of donations.
The links between the two charities and Iran are strong. The final three years of the eight-year Hawza Ilmiyya course are spent studying in colleges in the holy city of Qom, the power base of Iran’s religious leaders.
The text that has upset some students is the core work in their Introduction to Islamic Law class and was written by Muhaqqiq al-Hilli, a 13thcentury scholar. The Hawza Ilmiyya website states that “the module aims to familiarise the student with the basic rules of Islamic law as structured by al-Hilli”.
Besides likening unbelievers to filth, the al-Hilli text includes a chapter on jihad, setting down the conditions under which Muslims are supposed to fight Jews and Christians.
The text is one of a number of books that some students say they find “disturbing” and “very worrying”. Their spokesman told The Times: “They are being exposed to very literalist interpretations of the Koran. These are interpretations that would not be recognised by
80 or 90 per cent of Muslims, but they are being taught in this school.
“A lot of people in the Muslim community are very concerned about this. We need to urgently re-examine the kind of material that is being taught here and in other colleges in Britain.”
Mohammed Saeed Bahmanpour, who teaches in both the Hawza and the ICAS, confirmed that al-Hilli text was used, but denied that it was taught as doctrine. He said that, although the book was a key work in the jurisprudence class, its prescriptions were not taught as law. When he taught from it, he omitted the impurity chapter, he said.
Dr Bahmanpour said: “We just read the text and translate for them, but as I said I do not deal with the book on purity. We have left that to the discretion of the teacher whether he wants to teach it or not.
“The idea is not to teach them jurisprudence because most of the fatwas of Muhaqiq are not actually conforming with the fatwa of our modern jurists. The idea is that they would be able to read classical texts and that is all.”
Dr Bahmanpour said that Mr Moezi had no educational role at either the ICAS or Hawza Ilmiyya. Mr Moezi has been the representative in Britain of Ayatollah Khamenei since 2004 when he also succeeded Mr Araki in the role and as a trustee of the ICEL and the Irshad Trust.
The Islamic centre’s website reports Ayatollah Khamenei’s speeches and activities prominently and one of the first sites listed under its links section is the supreme leader’s homepage.
A spokeswoman for the ICEL also confirmed its links with the Iran’s spiritual leadership but said the centre was a purely religious organisation.
Middlesex University, which accredits the ICAS course but not the Hawza Ilmiyya, said: “The BA in Islamic studies offered by the Islamic College of Advanced Studies is validated by Middlesex University.
“This means that Middlesex ensures that the academic standards of this particular programme are appropriate, the curriculum delivers to the required standards, learning and teaching methods allow achievement of standards.”
THE DOCTRINE
‘The water left over in the container after any type of animal has drunk from it is considered clean and pure apart from the left over of a dog, a pig, and a disbeliever’
‘There are ten types of filth and impurities: urine, faeces, semen, carrion, blood of carrion, dogs, pigs, disbelievers’
‘When a dog, a pig, or a disbeliever touches or comes in contact with the clothes or body [of a Muslim] while he [the disbeliever] is wet, it becomes obligatory- compulsory upon him [the Muslim] to wash and clean that part which came in contact with the disbeliever’
From the al-Hilli text