“Egyptian Christians mourned their dead and berated the army on Monday after at least 25 people were killed when troops crushed a protest about an attack on a church in the worst violence since the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
Armored personnel carriers sped into the crowd late on Sunday to break up the demonstrators near the state television building. Videos posted on the Internet showed mangled bodies.
Activists said corpses had been crushed by the vehicles.
CAIRO — “On her first day to school, 15-year-old Christian student Ferial Habib was stopped at the doorstep of her new high school with clear instructions: either put on a headscarf or no school this year.
Habib refused. While most Muslim women in Egypt wear the headscarf, Christians do not, and the move by administrators to force a Christian student to don it was unprecedented. For the next two weeks, Habib reported to school in the southern Egyptian village of Sheik Fadl every day in her uniform, without the head covering, only to be turned back by teachers.
One day, Habib heard the school loudspeakers echoing her name and teachers with megaphones leading a number of students in chants of “We don’t want Ferial here,” the teenager told The Associated Press.”
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/10/08/8224222-christians-fear-islamist-pressure-in-egypt
“They don’t want Peace, they want Victory.”
“ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A court on Saturday sentenced to death an elite police guard who assassinated a leading secular politician he had been charged with protecting, a slaying that sent shockwaves throughout Pakistan and was seen as a clear marker of the growing religious intolerance and extremism in the country.
Judge Syed Pervez Ali Shah announced the sentence for the guard, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, in an antiterrorism court at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. “Nobody can be given a license to kill on any pretext,†the judge was quoted as saying after the conclusion of the trial, which was held under tight security.
The ruling was unusual in Pakistan; frightened justices in recent years have been cowed into releasing Islamic militants or letting them off with light sentences. The judgment was especially noteworthy in such a high-profile case against a man whose popularity only grew with his confession and defense of the killing on religious grounds.
Mr. Taseer was the governor of Punjab Province and one of the country’s most outspoken opponents of the country’s controversial blasphemy laws, which mandate a death sentence for anyone convicted of insulting Islam.”
“Iranian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani is currently on trial in Rasht, Iran. He has appeared in court three times this week and each time has refused to renounce his faith when asked to do so by the court. If he does not recant his Christian faith, he could be executed at any time (on or after Thursday, September 29).
The 11th branch of Iran’s Gilan Provincial Court has determined that Nadarkhani has Islamic ancestry and therefore must recant his faith in Jesus Christ.
When asked to “repent” by the judges, Yousef stated, “Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?” The judges replied, “To the religion of your ancestors, Islam.” To which he replied, “I cannot.”
If you want to do something about this, here is a quick way to send an email to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
http://secure.afa.net/afa/activism/TakeAction.asp?id=405
In the eyes of Islam, if your father is a Muslim, you are a Muslim. Forever. Or, you are an apostate to be killed.
“A Pakistani girl who says she was kidnapped and gang-raped faces a new threat: honor killings, a tradition here, but one that her family refuses to carry out
KARACHI, PAKISTAN — Kainat Soomro is a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who has become a local celebrity of sorts in her battle for justice in the Pakistani courts, a daring move for a woman of any age in this country, let alone a teenager.
She is fighting to get justice for a gang rape that she insists happened four years ago in Mehar, a small town in Pakistan.
“I was walking home from my school and I went to the store to buy a toy for my niece,” she said, staring at the floor of the office. “While I was looking at things a guy pressed a handkerchief on my nose. I fainted and was kidnapped. Then four men gang raped me.”
As she shared details of her days in captivity and multiple rapes, she kept repeating, “I want justice, I will not stop until I get justice.” After three days, she was finally able to escape she said. As she spoke, her father gently tapped her head. He said he tried to get Kainat’s alleged rapists arrested, but instead he was rebuffed by the police.
According to the Kainat family’s account, the tribal elders declared her kari, (which literally means black female), for losing her virginity outside marriage.
In Pakistan, women and men who have illicit relationships or women who lose their virginity before marriage are at risk of paying with their lives.
“These are matters of honor and the leaders call a jirga and they declare that the woman or the couple should be killed,” said Abdul Hai, a veteran field officer for the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. These acts of violence are most commonly labeled as “honor killings.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/pakistani-family-refuses-to-kill-daughter-who-was-raped-drawing-anger/245691/
“A suicide bomber attacked a Christian church packed with worshippers yesterday, killing himself and wounding at least 20 other people.
The blast at the Tenth Bethel Gospel Church in Solo, Central Java province, occurred just as people were filing out at the end of the service.
Indonesia has been hit by a string of suicide bombings blamed on groups linked to al-Qa’ida.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/suicide-bomber-attacks-indonesian-church-2360926.html
MANILA — “Suspected Muslim militants attacked government troops guarding a school construction site in a rebel stronghold in the southern Philippines on Sunday, igniting a clash that killed 12 gunmen and two soldiers, a marine commander said.
About 50 gunmen attacked a marine detachment in hilly Talipao town in Sulu province at dawn, setting off two hours of fierce fighting that killed 12 suspected militants and two soldiers, marine commander Col. Romeo Tanalgo said. Six other military personnel were wounded before the gunmen split and withdrew into the forest, he said.
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/09/24/7946410-14-killed-as-filipino-troops-clash-with-militants
NAIROBI: “A typical prize for a children’s contest might be a backpack, a lunchbox or maybe some toys. But not in Somalia.
Over the weekend, a Somali radio station run by the Shabab, the most powerful Islamist militant group in the war-ravaged country, held an awards ceremony to honor children who were experts at Shabab trivia and at reciting the Koran . The prizes? Fully automatic assault rifles and live hand grenades.
… the awards were handed out at the Andalus radio station in Elasha Biyaha, a small town near Mogadishu. The first- and second-place winners won AK-47 assault rifles, some money and Islamic books. The third-place winner got grenades.
“A Taliban suicide bomber on Tuesday killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, former Afghan president and head of the government’s peace council, a dramatic show of insurgent reach and a heavy blow to hopes of reaching a political end to the war.
The killing was a strong statement of Taliban opposition to peace talks, and as the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations will increase the apprehension of ordinary Afghans about their future as the insurgency gathers pace.
“A Taliban member who went to Rabbani’s house for peace talks detonated a bomb hidden in his turban,” a statement by the Kabul police chief’s office said.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/20/us-afghanistan-attack-idUSTRE78J3Y820110920
