The ban would make the Netherlands, where 1 million out of 17 million people are Muslim, the second European Union country to ban the burqa after France, and would apply to face-covering veils if they were worn in public.

The ban will also apply to balaclavas and motorcycle helmets when worn in inappropriate places, such as inside a store, Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters, denying that this was a ban on religious clothing.

Few Muslim women in the Netherlands wear the Arabic-style niqabs which leave the eyes uncovered and Afghan-style burqas that cover the face with a cloth grid. Academics estimate the numbers at between 100 and 400, whereas Muslim headscarves which leave the face exposed are far more common.

The coalition has agreed to submit a new law to parliament next week stipulating that offenders would be fined up to 390 euros ($510), the ministry said.   »»» Brunei News

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Bloomberg said police have stopped showing officers “The Third Jihad,” a 72-minute movie that has been branded inflammatory by some Muslim organizations and was produced by a conservative group called the Clarion Fund.

“Somebody exercised some terrible judgment,” he said in Albany, the state capital. “As soon as they found out about it, they stopped it.”

The criticism was unusual for Bloomberg, who in recent months has vigorously defended the police department’s counterterrorism efforts after an Associated Press investigation exposed a secret program to gather intelligence on Muslim neighborhoods.   »»» The Associated Press

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“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. … This is the war you don’t know about.”

This is the feature-length film titled “The Third Jihad,” paid for by a nonprofit group, which was shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department.

In January 2011, when news broke that the department had used the film in training, a top police official denied it, then said it had been mistakenly screened “a couple of times” for a few officers.

A year later, police documents obtained under the state’s Freedom of Information Law reveal a different reality: “The Third Jihad,” which includes an interview with Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, was shown, according to internal police reports, “on a continuous loop” for between three months and one year of training.

During that time, at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film.

News that police trainers showed this film so extensively comes as the department wrestles with its relationship with the city’s large Muslim community. The Police Department offers no apology for aggressively spying on Muslim groups and says it has ferreted out terror plots.

But members of the City Council, civil rights advocates and Muslim leaders say the department, in its zeal, has trampled on civil rights, blurred lines between foreign and domestic spying and sown fear among Muslims.

“The department’s response was to deny it and to fight our request for information,” said Faiza Patel, a director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which obtained the release of the documents through a Freedom of Information request. “The police have shown an explosive documentary to its officers and simply stonewalled us.”   »»»  Sailan Muslim (Sri Lanka)

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The exhibition, which opens on Thursday, is the first in any museum in the world to focus on the pilgrimage, which was already ancient when Muhammad completed his journey in the early 7th century. From 20,000 such travellers in 1932, in one week last year just under three million people undertook the hajj.

As non-Muslims, neither the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, nor the lead curator, Venetia Porter, can ever set foot at the sites or experience the rituals the exhibition describes. “In a way that’s the point of the exhibition,” MacGregor said. “The hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam, and the only one which non-Muslims are not welcomed to observe or share. The purpose of the British Museum when it was founded was to enable its visitors to understand the world better, and this must surely meet that objective.”   »»» The Guardian (U.K.)

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Of the world’s 50 or so Muslim-majority states, only about half a dozen allow for amputations and at least one of those countries – Pakistan – has never carried out the penalty in practice

That veiling is mandatory under shari’ah law

Women are simply advised by the Qur’an to wear modest clothing and – like men – to lower their eyes and maintain their chastity

That suicide bombing is permissible under sharia law

Most interpreters of the Qur’an understand it to forbid suicide. The first suicide bombing by Muslims was carried out in 1983 during the Lebanese civil war

Stoning is mentioned in the Qur’an

Stoning is not mentioned as a punishment in the Qur’an. It was institutionalized on the basis of hadiths (reports about Muhammad) which were themselves not written down until more than a century after his death and many of which are suspect.

Capital punishment for apostasy is mentioned by the Qur’an

The Qur’an repeatedly warns believers who abandon their faith that they will have to account to God in the afterlife, but it does not provide for their punishment on earth.   »»» The Guardian (U.K.)

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Today, the Salafis have around 25 percent of the seats in Egypt’s first free parliament, where no party has won a decisive majority.

Despite competing with them, it seems that the Muslim Brotherhood will in fact benefit most from the emergence of Salafis. The Egyptians, as well as the West, are now obliged to choose one of two religious parties: the elegant Muslim Brotherhood or the “backward”, bearded Salafis.

What is really concerning about the Salafis is not their strict social program, but the possibility of their political change. This reminds us of the Jihadist movements in Afghanistan, where the Salafis merged with the Brotherhood in Afghan camps during the 1980s and 1990s and created a new creature; namely “al-Qaeda”. In the future, the Salafis will become more radical and demanding in the political sphere. They will make demands that the ruler cannot implement, and then call for his exit as a religious duty.

I fear that the less politically aware Salafis might push their movement towards increasingly hard-line positions, in competition with the Muslim Brotherhood. In turn, this will make Salafi politics more radical, which we will see in the Egyptian scene over the next four years.    »»» Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English)

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In the last two years mosques or construction sites have been vandalized in Gatineau, Ottawa, Montreal, Hamilton, Waterloo, and Vancouver. The Outaouais Islamic Center in Gatineau, Quebec, was vandalized twice last week – following two earlier attacks – with attempts to smash windows, set cars on fire and the spraying of hatemessages. Another mosque in Aylmer, Quebec received a letter asking Muslims to leave Canada.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney
condemned these attacks, as did B’nai Brith Canada and the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Quebec
authorities stepped up vigilance and search for the culprits. They had nabbed teenagers for the earlier attacks. »»»Menafn.com

Canadian laws impose stiffer penalties for hate-related violence.

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Cambridge University Library’s collection of Islamic manuscripts dates from the origins of Arabic scholarship in Cambridge in the 1630s when the University founded a Professorship in Arabic and William Bedwell donated a Qur’an to the Library. Since that time the collection has grown in size and diversity to over 5,000 works, including the collections of Thomas Erpenius, J.L.Burckhardt, E.H.Palmer and E.G. Browne. These manuscripts shed light on many aspects of the Islamic world, its beliefs and learning.   »»» tabsir.net

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The British Library has lent the copy of the Holy Qur’an to the British Museum for the exhibition: Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, which is set to open to the public on Jan. 26.

The Ma’il Qur’an is the oldest object to go on public display as part of the British Museum’s major exhibition dedicated to the Haj, the pilgrimage to Makkah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.   »»» Arab News

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Muslims throughout their history never allowed the killing of non-combattants, even in the midst of wars such as the Crusades. There is no respected Islamic scholar anywhere in the Muslim world who would support the attacks of Boko Harm on innocent Christians. The Qur’an gives protected status to Christians who live among Muslims, and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) has forbidden the destruction of churches. Islam does not condone collective punishment of groups that may have in its midst actual enemies. Only those who perpetrate violence can be dealt with by violent means.

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Police told the BBC that one person was killed, 10 arrested and that part of the mosque was still burning.

It follows a separate attack on a different mosque in the city on Monday.

In recent weeks, southerners, who are mostly Christians or animists, have been the targets of deadly attacks by the Islamist Boko Haram group, which operates in the mainly Muslim north.

The attack is the latest in a spiral of sectarian violence that has seen many southerners living in the north flee their homes.

Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka blamed the violence on leaders who put their own religion above national unity.

“When you get a situation where a bunch of people can go to a place of worship and open fire through the windows you’ve reached a certain dismal watershed in the life of that nation,” he said in a BBC interview.

“There’s no question at all, whatsoever. Those who have created this faceless army have lost control of that army.”   »»» BBC News

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Ennahdha condemns these slogans which do not represent Islam’s spirit or teachings, and considers those who raised them as a marginal group. It also denounces certain European lobbies’ alarmist declarations and attempts to tarnish the image of Tunisia and the achievements of the revolution using islamophobia and anti-semitism as pretexts for their campaign.
   »»» Ikhwanweb

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The leader of the group, Gimba Kakanda, who spoke to Daily Trust, said, “We are protecting our fellow Christian brothers and sisters to show the world that our leaders cannot use religion to divide us. We want to send a signal by coming here to protect Christians that we are one and we can stand to protect one another”.   »»» allAfrica.com

Boko Harm, a radical, so-called “Muslim” sect that has claimed responsibility for church bombings has demanded that all Christians leave Northern Nigeria. They violate the commandments of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him), who have said that Christians must be allowed to live in peace among Muslims and that Muslims must do eveything in their power to protect the Christians’ lives, honour and property.

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After congratulating Pope Shenouda III, Ezzat stressed: “Throughout history Egyptians have participated in the building of the nation disregarding religious differences between Muslims and Christians. Unfortunately the ousted regime had worked hard inciting sedition between both factions preventing positive interaction, forbearance and the spirit of acceptance between them. Islam ordains that there be mercy and respect between all divine (Abrahamic) religions present in the country“.

He stressed: “Following the revolution, the people’s genuine kindness was able to surface along with that of the MB; we extend our warmest wishes to our Copt brethren on the birthday of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH)”.

A delegation from the MB and the MB-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) visited the Margergus Church in North Cairo conveying warm wishes to the Copts there.   »»» Ikhwanweb

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Although the ruling was announced just recently on December 4, the number of veiled TV hosts has notably escalated, ending the repression of freedom of attire formerly enforced by authorities.

The case of veiled TV hosts goes as far back as 1970, when Kariman Hamza wore the veil while presenting her TV show. The number increased in 2002 when 5 TV hosts working on the Alexandria channel 5 were prevented from appearing on their shows because of their veils.

In 2003, 6 veiled female hosts were also banned from appearing on air including 2 from the Nile News Channel, And 2 from the English Nile TV channel. All in all 24 veiled TV hosts were banned from appearing on the screen before the revolution.

Since 1965, state TV had maintained a secular look, not allowing female anchors to appear with any religious symbols despite no written statement banning the veil.

Many veiled hosts were reduced to roles behind the camera for wearing the veil working on audio, while others handed in resignations for being denied the right to appear on air wearing their veils. State television and radio had banned them hosts such as Kamelia el Araby from appearing. Former chairman Hassan Hamed had announced that any contracts would be annulled in the case of TV hosts choosing to wear the headscarf.

In fact, 95% of graduates majoring in radio and television in journalism in Egypt wear the headscarf, causing a gap in the number of those able to be part of the work force.   »»» Ikhwanweb

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