The Muslim World

An Arabic-language production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play based on the writings of a young American woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer, premiered in Haifa, Israel last month. Corrie’s parents attended the performance, which took place on the fifth anniversary of her death.
“I can’t think of any more appropriate place to be... than with all of you. Even when we are back in the United States, our hearts are always very much here,” Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, told the audience. Her 23-year-old daughter, originally from Olympia, Washington, was killed in Rafah, Gaza, in March 2003 while trying to prevent a house demolition during a period of heightened violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Eyewitnesses report that she was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer, but a govern-ment investigation later cleared the army, which said it was operating in a security zone close to the Egyptian border. According to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 2,370 houses were destroyed by the Israeli army in Gaza between September 2000 – the start of the second intifada - and September 2004. The Arabic film by Haifa’s al-Midan theatre company, was an adaptation of the British original, a one-woman play based on the evocative emails and diary entries kept by Corrie before and during her time in Gaza.

Muslim leaders in South Korea are planning to establish the country’s first Islamic school, which will also accommodate non-Muslim students.
“We are preparing to open the school from March 2009,’’ said Secretary General of the Korean Muslim Federation (KMF) Kim Hwan-Yoon.
The school will be funded by a grant from Saudi Arabia, Kim said.
At a ceremony, Saudi Ambassador to Seoul, Abdullah Al-Aifan offered the KMF $500,000 to start construction work. Muslims make up only about 150,000 of South Korea’s 49 million population, according to official estimates. Buddhists account for 52% of the|
Population and Christians 20%. About 25.3% of citizens
profess to follow no particular religion.

Indonesia has said, the film Dutch parliamentarian, Geert Wilders plans to release about the Quran could derail interfaith dialogue and harm efforts towards global stability and peace. The film, called Fitna (Slander), is said to depict Islam’s holy text as a “fascist book” that “should be banned”, said The Jakarta Post. Wilders said the Quran is like Adolf Hitler’s best-seller Mein Kampf or My Struggle an autobiography and an exposition of Hitler’s ideology.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Kristiarto Soeryo Legowo said, “It is really inappropriate if (Wilders) presses on with his plan to release the film knowing it will offend Muslim communities”.

President George W. Bush, acknowledging that the U.S. needs to burnish its image in the Muslim world, has named a Texas entrepreneur as liaison to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Sada Cumber, who is a Muslim by faith, is the first U.S. special envoy to the inter-governmental organization, which represents more than 50 Muslim states and promotes Muslim solidarity in social and political affairs. Bush said the United States is misunderstood and that Cumber’s mission is to explain to the Muslim world that America “is a friend of freedom” and that the United States values the freedom of religion.

Muslim leaders in the United Kingdom issued an unprecedented appeal to world Jewry for closer relations. In a letter generated by the Muslim-Jewish study center at the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths in Cambridge, England. Muslim scholars acknowledged the gap in understanding that exists today between Jews and Muslims, and asked Jewish leaders to help them bridge it. Sheikh Michael Mumisa, a lecturer at the Woolf Institute, described the letter as the first in modern times sent to the Jewish community with the backing of scholars and Muslim leaders. “The message in this letter conveys to the Jewish community a genuine desire for mutual respect, for dialogue and deeper understanding,” he said. The letter to the world’s Jewish community, Mumisa said, is “a call for positive and constructive action that aims to improve Muslim-Jewish relations.” The letter notes that Judaism and Islam share core doctrinal beliefs, the most important of which is strict monotheism. That theological conjoining should in itself dictate greater communication, the signatories urged.

A funny thing happened in November 2007, when Britain launched a righteous protest over Sudan’s arrest of a British schoolteacher accused of insulting Islam by letting her students name a class teddy bear as Muhammad. The Sudanese ambassador was summoned and Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a protest. But it did not take long for someone to point out that Downing Street was standing on diplomatic quicksand: Britain itself has a law making blasphemy a crime. Thus began a period of collective soul-searching on free speech and secularism, traditional values and the church, that anoints Britain’s queen. It culminated in a 148-87 vote in the House of Lords to abolish the laws on blasphemy after a wrenching, two-hour debate last month. “The essential question is: Should we abolish Christian beliefs and replace them with secular beliefs? As long as there has been a country called England, it has been a Christian country, publicly acknowledging the one true God,” said Detta O’Cathain, a Conservative member of the House of Lords.” “The law on blasphemy will be abolished. And good riddance, is what we say,” Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said in an interview. “It’s an unusable law, as it stands at the moment, and in the past it’s been a very cruel law.”

A delegation of Muslim leaders met with Vatican officials on March 4, in a bid to organise a ground breaking summit for inter-faith dialogue later this year. Jean Louis Tauran, head of the Council for Inter-religious dialogue, will be hosting the two-day conference with Muslims from the UK, Jordan, Italy and Turkey who represent a larger group of high-profile Sunni and Shiite leaders from around the world, according to Italian news agency ANSA. The March 4 meeting is the result of an open letter, 138 Muslim leaders sent to Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and 25 other Christian leaders in October last year calling for Muslim-Christian collaboration for peace.

With thousands of displaced families sheltered in camps and old government buildings with no access to food or clean water, the northern city of oil-rich Kirkuk mirrors the situation across Iraq five years after the US invasion. According to the Displaced Families Organization (DFO), at least 30 percent of Kirkuk population, displaced and non displaced, are living in poverty. “People are starving and here in Kirkuk the violence that kills everyday Iraqis isn’t sectarian, but a fight to get enough food to survive,” says spokesman, Sheik Mahmoud Rahman. The UN Refugees Agency (UNHCR) estimates nearly 50,000 Iraqis, half of them women and children, were displaced in Kirkuk since 2003. Most of the internally-displaced people (IDPs) are settled in dilapidated areas with no access to food, clean water and healthcare.

When Regina Setiadi moved from Indonesia to the Gulf last year, she left her Bible, crucifix and rosary behind. “I thought that here in the Middle East there’s no church,” the 37-year-old Catholic, who now lives in Doha, Qatar, told Al Jazeera.“I thought we have to pray secretly at home.” But now, after decades of worshipping in borrowed spaces, Qatar’s growing Christian community is celebrating, albeit quietly, the opening of the country’s first church since pre-Islamic times. For Christians, the milestone is a validation of their growing community, comprised of expatriate workers mainly from South Asia and the Philippines. For others, the church symbolises a step forward for rapidly developing Qatar, a tiny oil-rich country bidding for the 2016 Olympics. “The church will send a positive message to the world,” said Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, Qatar’s minister of energy and industry. The Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, will serve Doha’s Catholic community, which comprises 90 per cent of the city’s 150,000 and growing Christian expatriate population.

The BBC has promised that its journalism will remain impartial after unveiling a £25 million Arabic television news service funded by the Government. Designed to compete against Al-Jazeera and other satellite channels, BBC Arabic Television is seen as a major intervention in the battle to win hearts and minds in the region. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office agreed to fund the first UK state-backed international television channel after the BBC said it was failing to reach a potential audience of 100 million viewers. The Arabic-language service will also operate as a BBC website and be available on mobile phones and hand-held computers.

Concern is mounting in Saudi Arabia over the treatment of women in public after yet another woman, this time a businesswoman, was detained by Saudi police on February 4. Yara, was detained after she was found sitting with a male colleague at one of the outlets of a popular coffee parlour, Starbucks in Jeddah. She was arrested by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The detention has caused other businesswomen to be concerned about whether they will end up in the same predicament.
“Promoting virtue should not be happening this way,” said Lamia Al-Atas, who holds a Ph.D in psychology. “It should be done in a kind way without threats or instilling fear. Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) treated women with great kindness.
Yara’s husband Hatim said that Yara grew up in the US to Jordanian parents and moved to Saudi Arabia eight years ago. They now have three children: Sarah, 14, Rayan, 7, and Rakan 3. “She has had Saudi nationality for eight years when we came back from America,” said Hatim. “She is now a main partner in The Financial Investment Company and considered to be the fifth licensed Saudi woman business executive in the Kingdom. She was preparing to establish a new office in Riyadh (at the time of her arrest) and that required her to travel about three times every week. I do not have the time to accompany her each time.”
Hatim is referring to the Saudi law that requires women to travel with their legal male guardian. Yara said that the commission members charged her with wearing makeup, not covering her hair and “moving suspiciously” while sitting with an unrelated man.

Some 3000 Afghan students will be offered seats in the Sheikh Zayed University which opened here last month. The University was built on a generous grant by the late UAE President, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. This world-class institution of higher learning was inaugurated by Hamdan Mussalam Al Mazroui, Chairman of UAE’s General Authority for Islamic Affairs and Awqaf. Located at Khost province, 200 kms away from the capital Kabul, the Zayed University was built at a cost of $4.8 million. The university will offer courses in medicine, engineering, agriculture, technology, Islamic studies, arts, literature and education.

Wrapping up of its 20th conference here last month, the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs called for drafting an international law against offending heavenly religions. In a final communiqué issued at the end of the conference, the Council strongly condemned Israel’s acts of destruction and changes at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. In the statement titled “Societal Security Elements in Islam” the conference highlighted Islam’s concern for security of all people living in Muslim countries. The statement said that ensuring security for Muslims in the world requires cooperation to achieve a number of goals including confronting the phenomena of extremism, fanaticism and terrorism which harmed the image of Islam. The conference warned against exploiting religion for material gains and called for promoting the role of joint values and principles among divine religions in spreading security, justice, equality and respect of others.

Leila El Solh, vice- chairman of Alwaleed Bin Talal Humanitarian Foundation in Beirut, was awarded the Pontifical Medal by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. The medal was in recognition of the achievements and efforts made by the Foundation, chaired by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, to encourage tolerance between different religious faiths and social groups in Lebanon and promote religious dialogue. The Foundation was set up on July 19, 2003, and its headquarters overlooks Riad El Solh Square. In a very short time, the Foundation has managed to reach many of the areas in Lebanon in need of humanitarian support for development projects to fight poverty. Leila was the first woman in Lebanese history to hold a Cabinet position when she was appointed minister of industry in 2004. She is the youngest daughter of the late Prime Minister, Riad El Solh.

Pope Benedict XVI has baptized Muslim-born critic Magdi Allam who converted to Roman Catholicism in an Easter vigil mass at St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican city last fortnight. “To the Catholic Church, anyone has the right to be baptized who is making a fully free choice after a deep personal quest and adequate preparation,” Vatican Spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement. Allam, a 55-year-old Italian journalist of Egyptian origin, adopted the name of Cristiano. Living in Italy for 35 years, he has said he was never a very devout Muslim. As an editorial writer and deputy publisher of Corriere della Sera, he is known for his harsh criticism of Islam and Muslims and is a strong supporter of Israel. He blames the Palestinians, rather than the Israeli occupation, for the continuous conflict in the Middle East.