The driver, according to this report, parked without warning – then used a fluorescent jacket as an improvised prayer mat. He took off his shoes, knelt down facing Mecca, and began to chant.

The prayer session held up the bus for more than five minutes with no-one able to get on or off.

Mercifully, there were no randy animals on board the No 24 bus when the driver stopped to pray

Passenger Gayle Griffiths, 33, complained to Transport for London about the bizarre incident on the No 24 bus in Gospel Oak, north London. She had boarded the bus a few minutes earlier on her way home from work.

She said:

I have done the journey a million times before but I was in a hurry to get home to pick my little girl up from school. We had just picked up and let off people at a bus stop and moved off again when the driver stopped the bus very suddenly.

He got out of his cab, leaving the engine running, and walked towards the middle exit door. He laid out a fluorescent jacket on the floor and I thought that somebody must have been sick and he was covering it up. But then he took off his shoes and began praying. I was gobsmacked and quite bewildered.

Miss Griffiths said the bus driver didn’t give the passengers any explanation as to what he was doing. He hadn’t addressed the passengers at all. I didn’t say anything and nor did anyone else. I thought it would all be over in 30 seconds but it went on for over five minutes.

It even went through my mind that this might be some sort of terrorist attack with the bus blown up because I had heard that suicide bombers prayed before attacks.

Everyone was looking round in a mix of shock and amazement. It was truly bizarre, ludicrous and aggravating.We are delayed often enough as it is in London. We live in a multi-cultural society but there is a time and a place for prayer and the middle of a journey with a busload of passengers is not it.

Transport for London said it had apologised to all the passengers for the delay to their journey and said all Muslim drivers are being reminded that they should pray during statutory rest periods rather than hold up services.

A TfL spokesman said:

The bus company, London General, has had a word with the driver as this is not something that should be happening. TfL apologises to passengers for any inconvenience this may have caused them.

He added:

We understand that there is some flexibility in the Muslim faith as to the times of day that drivers can pray. TfL and the individual bus operating companies acknowledge and value the diversity of their staff.  As diverse employers, TfL and the bus operators provide suitable prayer or quiet rooms at garages and other key locations for staff who wish to practise their faith.

We have asked London General to remind drivers who have a requirement to pray to use these facilities during their rest periods.

In March, 2008, The Sun carried a story that London bus driver Arunas Raulynaitis, a Muslim, had turfed passengers of a bus in Slough so that he could pray, and said distressed passengers thought he might be a fanatic. An subsequent investigation by the bus company found that Raulynaitis had actually used his statutory rest break to engage in a conversation with Allah, and there was no question of him breaking any rules.

The Sun issued an apology.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn

The crime – which took place yesterday in the suburb of Athis Mons – comes as the French government faces growing calls for the controversial garments to be banned.

President Nicolas Sarkozy himself has described them as a “security risk”, saying they provide the perfect cover for criminals or terrorists.

Innocent shoppers ... or robbers in drag?

Now those fighting for the ban claim the robbery – which is the first of its kind in France – shows how useful the burqa is as a disguise.

It took place at around 10.30am, when two robbers carrying pistols entered the main post office bank building in Athis Mons, which has a large immigrant Muslim community, mainly from North Africa.

Once inside they ordered a bank clerk to take out the equivalent of £4,000 in cash by pointing a pistol at him. After ten minutes they fled to a nearby car park and escaped.

Police fear that they will not be able to identify the robbers on CCTV cameras. Said one detective:

It was a perfect disguise. Their faces and bodies were completely covered.

The robbery led to Le Parisien, the main daily paper in the French capital, to ask:

Will this first robbery using a burqa re-launch the debate about the Islamic veil being worn in public places?

A government committee has already recommended that burqas should not be allowed in civil buildings and on public transport, and a full ban could follow.

Britain is no stranger to burqa crime.

Last November two robbers – dressed in full-length women’s burkhas – pistol-whipped a post office manager during a daylight raid in Bradford.

The attackers bundled their 38-year-old victim into the premises as he opened the shop.

They brutally struck him on the head with the butt of a handgun when he was unable to open a safe.

But the raiders then panicked and fled empty-handed when they saw a customer peering through the window of the post office, in Oak Lane, Manningham.

Last summer a robber dressed from head to toe in a traditional Muslim woman’s burqa raided a travel agent, and also made off with thousands in cash.

And in 2008, a 6ft 6in robber hidden beneath a burqa was involved in a £200,000 raid on a jewellery store in Smethwick, West Midlands.

You can read more about burqa villainy here.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn

Pastor John Renken, 37, founded the church which doubles as a mixed martial arts academy. Its motto is:

Where Feet, Fists and Faith Collide.

This fella, Mr Penn, defeated his opponent, Mr Sanchez, at the conclusion of an Xreme Ministries fight

According to The New York Times, Renken’s ministry is one of a small but growing number of evangelical churches that have embraced mixed martial arts – a sport with a reputation for violence and blood that combines kickboxing, wrestling and other fighting styles – to reach and convert young men, whose church attendance has been persistently low.

Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events in cages.

The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing.

Said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle:

Compassion and love – we agree with all that stuff, too. But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.

The outreach is part of a larger and more longstanding effort on the part of some ministers who fear that their churches have become too feminised, promoting kindness and compassion at the expense of strength and responsibility.

Said Ryan Dobson, 39, a pastor and fan of mixed martial arts who is the son of lunatic James C Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a prominent evangelical group:

The man should be the overall leader of the household. We’ve raised a generation of little boys.

These pastors say the marriage of faith and fighting is intended to promote Christian values, quoting verses like “fight the good fight of faith” from Timothy 6:12. Several put the number of churches taking up mixed martial arts at roughly 700 of an estimated 115,000 white evangelical churches in America. The sport is seen as a legitimate outreach tool by the youth ministry affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches.

Sanchez v Penn

Fighting as a metaphor has resonated with some young men.

Mike Thompson, 32  – fighting name “Fury” – is a former gang member and student of Renken’s who until recently had struggled with unemployment. He said:

I’m fighting to provide a better quality of life for my family and provide them with things that I didn’t have growing up.Once I accepted Christ in my life I realized that a person can fight for good.

The trend, though, has its critics. Said Eugene Cho, 39, a pastor at Quest Church, an evangelical congregation in Seattle:

I don’t live for the Jesus who eats red meat, drinks beer and beats on other men.

And Robert Brady, 49, the executive vice president of a conservative evangelical group, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, agreed, saying that the mixed martial arts motif of evangelism:

So easily takes away from the real focus of the church, which is the Gospel.

Many black churches have chosen not to participate.

Men ages 18 to 34 are absent from churches, some pastors said, because churches have become more amenable to women and children. Said Tom Skiles, 37, the pastor of Spirit of St. Louis Church in Arnold, Mo:

We grew up in a church that had pastel pews …The men fell asleep.

In focusing on the toughness of Christ, evangelical leaders are harking back to a similar movement in the early 1900s, historians say, when women began entering the work force. Proponents of this so-called muscular Christianity advocated weight lifting as a way for Christians to express their masculinity.

Paul Burress, 35, a chaplain and fight coach at Victory Baptist Church in Rochester, said mixed martial arts had given his students a chance to work on body, soul and spirit.

Win or lose, we represent Jesus. And we win most of the time.

According to Earth Times, the farther a country leaves poverty behind, the greater the difficulty it has finding young men wanting to train as priests.

Is this Filipino Catholic priest, pictured sprinkling holy water on a baby Bengal Tiger on World Animal Day in 2008, about to be poached? (AP Photo/Aaron Favila.

Australia used to recruit Catholic pastors from Ireland and other parts of Europe where affluence was yet to prevail. They have stopped coming and now congregations look to India, the Philippines, even Spanish-speaking South America, to put someone in the pulpit.

Before flying off to India on a recruitment drive, Brian Heenan, a Catholic bishop in the north-east city of Rockhampton, said:

It’s not a new thing for a country like Australia to be welcoming priests or missionaries from another nation to help us sort of fulfil our priestly ministerial needs.

As was the case with the Irish last century, the offer is a short-term contract with an option to stay for life.

So these priests will come, please God, for maybe two years or three years and if all is going well they’ll probably go back to India and others will come and take their place.

A quarter of Australia’s 21 million people profess to be Catholic. But only seven per cent of Catholics in their 20s regularly attend Mass.

Seminaries have closed for want of seminarians. And only a third of seminarians stay the course and become priests.

Catholicism is in retreat in Australia faster than perhaps anywhere else in the world.

Heenan said:

There are so many opportunities available for young people once they have finished their education. And I think they find those much more attractive than going off to a seminary or a training college, where the rate of recompense or pay is very ordinary.

According to this report, Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta.

The hole from which the girl's body was dug

Her father and grandfather have since been arrested and are due to face trial over her death. Her mother was also charged but has since been released.

Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant.

Medine had first been reported missing 40 days earlier.

The informant told the police she had been killed following a family “council” meeting.

Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for fraternising with the opposite sex.

A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried.

An official involved in the case said:

The report is blood curdling. According to our findings the girl, who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood, was alive and fully conscious when she was buried.

It also emerged that Medine had repeatedly tried to report to police that she had been beaten by her father and grandfather days before she was killed.

Her mother, Immihan, said after the body was discovered in December:

She tried to take refuge at the police station three times, and she was sent home three times.

Medine’s father is reported as saying at the time:

She has male friends. We are uneasy about that.

Although honour killings are not infrequent in Turkey, the especially gruesome manner of Medine’s death has shocked the nation.

Official figures have indicated that more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.

Hat Tip: PaulEd and Alan H

Leo Igwe, pictured last year in London

Ukpabio, whose church had been carrying out a campaign of terror against “child witches”, demanded 200 billion naira ($.1.3 million dollars) in damages after Igwe and others staged seminars and conferences to oppose her witchcraft-related child abuse campaigns.

She, and several of her church members claimed that gatherings organised by the Nigerian Humanist Movement and other child rights groups infringed their rights to spread the gospel.

At one of the conferences last year, church members disrupted proceedings, and assaulted Igwe.

In an email to the Freethinker, Igwe said:

Today [Feb 4] the Federal High Court struck out the case brought against me and other child rights campaigners including the government of Akwa Ibom state. Last November Ukpabia and some of her church members went to court seeking to enforce their rights to believe in God, Satan and witchcraft. They asked the court to order us to award them damages for ‘unlawful and unconstitutional infringement of their rights’.

For the second time, Helen and her lawyers were not in court. So the lawyer leading the defence team, Barrister Madaki  asked the court to strike out the case due lack of diligent prosecution. And the court granted his request.

Mad evangelist Helen Ukpabio

He added:

The striking out of this case is a welcome development. It is a victory for justice, human rights and the rule of law in Nigeria. This decision by the court is a vindication of the child rights campaigners and the great work they are doing to save the lives of children abused and abandoned in the name of witchcraft in Nigeria.

It is a clear evidence that Helen Ukpabio and her church members have no case.

They instituted this court action to stop their arrest and prosecution for the attack on us on July 29 in Calabar.

Nigerian Humanist Movement and its partner groups will continue to work and campaign to eradicate all forms of human rights abuses in the name of witchcraft.

The National Secular Society, according to this report, complained to the Judicial Complaints Office after Mrs Blair – a judge who is a devout Roman Catholic – suspended a six month sentence on Shamso Miah for breaking a man’s jaw in a bank.

You be the judge: is Cherie Blair completely off her trolley?

Miah, 25, broke the customer’s jaw during the violent “queue rage” attack after a row erupted about who was next.

Wrote Terry Sanderson, NSS President:

We think this is discriminatory and unjust and we wish to make a formal complaint about it. ‘The man was incredibly violent and broke someone’s jaw for no apparent reason. She [Blair] said that he would have got a six month sentence but was suspending it because he was a religious man and would know he was doing wrong, which we feel implies that a non-religious person wouldn’t know it was wrong.

The complaints office has acknowledged his letter and confirmed that it is going to investigate the case.

Sanderson added:

We strongly feel that this kind of consideration should not play any part in sentencing. The idea that someone who is religious gets a lighter sentence is outrageous.

The indications are that people are losing their religion very fast in this country, so it would disadvantage many people if they were treated more harshly in court than people who go to church.

Last month Inner London Crown Court heard how Miah left prayers at his East Ham mosque to go to a bank where he became involved in an argument with Mohammed Furcan.

Furious Miah grabbed Furcan and punched him in the face. The thug then ran outside but Furcan chased after him and demanded to know why he had been struck.

Miah punched him again – knocking him to the ground and breaking his jaw.

When he was arrested, the thug told police he had acted in self-defence. But the bank’s CCTV footage showed he was the aggressor.

The unemployed first-time offender, from Redbridge, north-east London, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Sentencing him, Mrs Blair – who practices law under her maiden name of Cherie Booth – said that violence on the streets had to be taken seriously.

She told him:

I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before.You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank.  You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.

Miah was sentenced to six months in jail, suspended for two years, and was ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn

The cover of Hijrah magazine

Although it’s the cover story on the latest issue of Hijrah, and is entitled “How the Kangaroo was born Making Tesbeeh to Allah”, we were unable to access the article itself to discover the reasoning behind this mind-boggling revelation.

If anyone out there can provide the text, please send it to us.

The Australian Islamist Monitor says:

Since the dawn of time, animals have been both revered and demonised by humans. Some were viewed as bringing luck and others pestilence and other such ills. But this begs the question, what religious practices do our native Australian animals adhere to?

In the light of the Hijrah feature, it wonders:

Does this mean that all marsupials follow in Allah’s path from birth, or do they follow some other practice altogether?

One of the more amusing comments below the AIM post came from Red Rose:

A dog pictured "praying" in a Buddhist temple

The only animals I could imagine that might pray to Allah would be camels. Possibly indocrinated by early Afghan settlers. Other Aussie animals might worship Allah as there is a resemblence between male Mohammedans and male animals. They harbour a propensity to copulate with every female in sight and father hordes of offspring … I really don’t think Aussie animals worship Allah. They have more sense. They are not stupid.

By the way, the new magazine is appealing for contributions from Muslims across globe. In the light of the sheer barminess of its baby kangaroo feature, what articles do you suggest Hijrah should publish in future editions?

To the person submitting the funniest suggestion goes the prize of a year’s free subscription to the print edition of the Freethinker. Closing date for entries is February 11.

Hat tip: Dr Cancerman

MORE than 8,000 people have signed a newly-launched online petition to protest against the Pope’s planned four-day visit to Britain later this year – and the number is rapidly rising.

The petition, organised by the National Secular Society (NSS), reflects the dismay sparked by Pope Ratzinger’s remarks about Britain’s equality legislation and is being seen as a taster of what awaits the Pope on his visit to Britain.

Terry Sanderson, President of the NSS, said:

The taxpayer in this country is going to be faced with a bill of £20-million for the visit of the Pope, a visit in which he has already indicated that he will attack equal rights and promote discrimination.

Later this week, according to The Times, the society will launch its Protest the Pope coalition made up of gay groups, victims of clerical abuse, feminists, family planning organisations and pro-abortion groups, who will hold demonstrations throughout the visit.

Ratzinger auditions for the leading role in a remake of Nosferatu

Sanderson said he would appeal to “anyone who feels under siege from the Vatican’s current militancy” to take part.

Stephen Hughes, a British MEP, speaking at a meeting of the European Parliament’s Socialists and Democrats in Rome, criticised the Pope’s concern that the Equality Bill would restrict religious groups from acting in accordance with their faith.

As a Catholic, I am appalled by the attitude of the Pope. Religious leaders should be trying to eradicate inequality, not perpetuate it. Instead of criticising the UK’s plans to improve its legislation, the Pope should ensure that existing EU legislation is properly applied in the Vatican.

Naomi Phillips, for the British Humanist Association, also slammed the old bigot:

Equality laws do not impose unjust restrictions on religious freedom.

And Peter Tatchell, the human rights campaigner and gay activist, warned that the Pope’s remarks were an attack on the legal rights granted to gay people:

His ill-informed claim that our equality laws undermine religious freedom suggests that he supports the right of Churches to discriminate in accordance with their religious ethos. He seems to be defending discrimination by religious institutions and demanding that they should be above the law.

Please sign the petition here. While 8,000 signatures is impressive, we need a great many more to show the government how deeply this planned visit is resented – particularly as it is us who will have to foot the bill for this despicable depot’s malevolent presence.

AFTER failing in his attempt to remove an atheist winter solstice sign placed last year at Illinois’ State Capitol, a religious zealot has now brought a law suit against Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White alleging that the sign was tantamount to “hate speech”.

William J Kelly

Illinois comptroller candidate William J Kelly, described as a “conservative activist” – or nutter, if you prefer – got his knickers in a twist over the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Winter Solstice which read:

At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

When the sign was posted last December, Kelly called it “hate speech,” and said he did not believe it was appropriate for a sign that “mocks” religion to be placed next to the Capitol’s Christmas tree and nativity scene.

When he tried to remove the sign on December 23, Kelly was escorted from the Illinois State Capitol building by police.

According to this report, on Thursday of last week Kelly’s attorney filed the lawsuit for declatory relief and permanent injunction, stating that the Freedom from Religion’s sign violated the US Constitution’s Establishment Clause.

Said Kelly:

It’s a slam dunk case because it’s hate speech, OK? That sign was hate speech. It had no business being there. The state of Illinois is liable for this because anyone who saw the sign would have assumed… that this was the State of Illinois’ official position.

The suit alleges White improperly approved the sign for the building.

But the Secretary of State’s office spokesman Dave Druker said:

We acted appropriately. Our job is to protect property within the Capitol Building.

The Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation has placed the sign in several state Capitol buildings across the country.

As to Kelly’s claims that the sign mocks religion, foundation co-President Dan Barker said in December:

He’s kind of right, because the last couple of sentences do criticize religion … But that kind of speech is protected …

Barker added:

The foundation does not approve of the nativity scene. We atheists believe that the nativity scene is mocking humanity by suggesting that those who do not believe in Jesus will go to hell. But notice that we are not defacing or stealing nativity scenes because we disagree with their speech.

Last year was the second that the Freedom from Religion sign had been at the Illinois State Capitol.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court. A hearing has not been set.