More about our friendly Muslim brothers

[Sam]

Friday, February 27, 2009

Charges Filed against Pakistani Kidnappers of Young Sisters
Police ignore arrest order, but lawyers hopeful 13-year-old can be returned to parents

By Jeremy Reynalds
Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

ISTANBUL (ANS) -- After months of legal deadlock, lawyers in Pakistan said they have new hope they can restore to her family a 13-year-old Christian girl who was kidnaped and forced to marry a Muslim.

According to a story by Compass Direct News, Saba Masih might be returned to her family, the lawyers said, if they can legally maneuver around Pakistani policemen who have stonewalled their attempts to pursue a kidnaping case against the captors. On Feb. 21 a Pakistani judge charged the suspects with kidnaping for the first time in the seven-month legal ordeal.

"The judiciary is one thing, the police are another," said Arfan Goshe, a lawyer who has taken on the custody case. "I will prove (the three accused men) kidnaped Saba so the judiciary will force the police to arrest them."

Compass said that on Feb. 21, Judge Mohammed Ilyas issued a First Instance Report (FIR) at a subordinate court in the Punjabi village of Chawk Munda against Amjad Ali, Muhammad Ashraf and Muhammed Arif Bajwa on charges of kidnaping, trespassing, and threatening the Masih family.

Attorney Goshe, a Muslim, said the three kidnappers trespassed onto the property of Yunus Masih, the father of Saba, and threatened to kill his family and burn down his house in late December.

Compass said the decision to file kidnaping charges marks a major shift of momentum in the case. In previous hearings judges have nearly always sided with the kidnappers - based on either dubious evidence or threats from local Islamists - in the Muslims' legal battle to retain custody of Saba and her 10-year-old sister Aneela. A court ruled the younger daughter could return to her family last September.

Compass reported that the two girls were kidnaped in June 2008 while traveling to visit their uncle in Sarwar Shaheed, northwest of Multan. Saba was married to Ali the next day. Bajwa and Ali registered a case with police on June 28 for custody of the girls based on their alleged conversion to Islam. The court granted them custody in July.

At nearly all the hearings, Compass reported, Muslim groups protested outside the courtroom against lawyers attempting to return Saba to her Christian parents. A traditional interpretation of Islamic law (sharia) does not allow non-Muslim parents to have custody of Muslim children.

Compass said despite the judge's decision to begin procedures for kidnaping charges, Chawk Munda police have not followed through with the FIR by arresting the three Muslims. The judge has contacted the local police station and ordered officers to register the kidnaping case against the three men, Goshe told Compass. He said he hopes police will file the FIR within the next few days.

"The police are favoring the accused party at this time," Compass reported he said. "Everybody knows (Saba) was abducted, and that the culprits are trying to threaten minorities everywhere."

But others are less optimistic the kidnappers will be arrested. Khalid Raheel, Saba's uncle, said he believes he may have to bribe the police. They would probably demand about 20,000 Pakistani rupees ($250), he said.

Compass said uncooperative police had also blocked the legal team's efforts to register charges before Saturday's ruling. As a result, the Christian family's lawyers filed a private complaint to the subordinate court of Chawk Munda, sidestepping the need for a police investigation to file charges that would be necessary at a normal criminal court.

Compass reported Goshe said the court is finally complying after months of deadlock because the multiple charges against the kidnappers cannot be ignored. Previous court hearings focused on Saba's alleged conversion to Islam to mitigate the charges of her kidnaping, but the judiciary could not ignore the three suspects' subsequent crimes of trespassing and attempting to burn down the Masihs' house, he said.

In January, Compass reported, lawyer Akbar Durrani of the Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) filed an appeal to register kidnaping charges against Ali, the husband of Saba. Durrani had tried to register these charges in December, but Judge Malik Saeed Ijaz refused the case since it was built upon the testimony of Saba's sister Aneela, whose status as a minor invalidated her testimony.

Compass said instead, the judge ordered Ali to pay a dowry of 100,000 rupees ($1,255) and allow her parents to visit, both required by Pakistani marriage protocol. Saba, however, relinquished her dowry, a prerogative provided by sharia. Her family suspects that she made this decision under threat.

Struggling Family

Compass said that attempts by Saba's family to contact and visit her have been thwarted by Ali's Muslim family members, despite a court order for visitation rights.

"We have heard nothing from Saba," said Raheel, her uncle. "Once we tried to visit her, and (Ali's family) ran after us and tried to shoot us. But the judges did not do anything."

The seven months of legal battling have taken their toll on Saba's family, Compass said. Her parents have eight children but have been unable to send their sons to school due to the ongoing costs of the case, even though CLAAS has undertaken it pro bono.

The girls' uncle has been trying to maintain the family's quality of life as they struggle to get Saba back and their legal options dwindle.

"This year I will try my best to help them and send them to a school," said Raheel.

Aneela continues to adjust to life back with her family, away from captivity. She is preparing to resume her schooling.

Common Crime

Compass reported that kidnaping and rape victims in Pakistan are often Christians, since the influence of sharia on the country's judicial system means they can be unofficially treated as second-class citizens.

Last month, Compass reported, Muslims allegedly abducted and raped another 13-year-old Christian girl. CLAAS reported that two men kidnaped Ambreen Masih in the industrial city of Sheikupura, located northwest of Lahore. Her attackers threatened to her keep silent, and she was abducted a second time this month before her parents discovered the crime, according to a CLAAS report.

The family filed rape charges against the two kidnappers in Sheikupura, but police officers have not yet taken legal action, according to CLAAS.

[Sam]

Friday, February 27, 2009

Islamic Lawyers Urge Death Sentence for Egyptian Convert

By Jeremy Reynalds
Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

ISTANBUL (ANS) -- In the latest hearing of a Muslim-born Egyptian's effort to officially convert to Christianity, opposing lawyers advocated he be convicted of "apostasy," or leaving Islam, and sentenced to death.

A story by Compass Direct News reported that more than 20 Islamic lawyers attended the Feb. 22 hearing in Maher Ahmad El-Mo'otahssem Bellah El-Gohary's case to obtain identification papers with Christianity designated as his religious affiliation. Two lawyers led the charge, Ahmed Dia El-Din and Abdel Al-Migid El-Anani.

"(El-Din) started to talk about the Quran being in a higher position than the Bible," one of El-Gohary's lawyers, Said Fayez, told Compass. "(El-Din said) people can move to a higher religion but not down, so people cannot move away from Islam because it is highest in rank."

Compass said memos submitted by opposing lawyers asserted that cases such as El-Gohary's form part of a U.S. Zionist attack on Islam in Egypt, that Christianity is an inferior religion to Islam and that Copts protect and defend converts from Islam at their own peril.

"We received 150 pages from them that talked about religion," Compass reported Fayez said. "We are not in a position to talk about religion, we are only talking about the law."

El-Gohary Beaten

El-Gohary was not present at the hearing, as attendance would put him at extreme personal risk, Compass said . He had planned to obtain papers authorizing attorney Nabil Ghobreyal to act as his proxy representation in court, but staff members at the registry office swore at and beat him, lawyers said.

Compass reported that Judge Hamdy Yasin was forced to adjourn the case until March 28 because El-Gohary did not obtain the necessary proxy representation documents.

"I am now in a position where I can't do anything else," El-Gohary, who has been in hiding, told Compass. "I have to go (to court) despite the danger. I believe God will protect me. It's a very hard decision, but I have to go."

Compass said Copts and Christian converts have to face such prejudice daily in the battle for their rights, he said.

"Our rights in Egypt, as Christians or converts, are less than the rights of animals," Compass reported El-Gohary said. "We are deprived of social and civil rights, deprived of our inheritance and left to the fundamentalists to be killed. Nobody bothers to investigate or care about us."

Compass said El-Gohary, 56, has been attacked in the street, spat at and knocked down in his effort to win the right to officially convert. He said he and his 14-year-old daughter continue to receive death threats by text message and phone call.

But he also has received text messages, he said, of encouragement from other Muslim-born converts too fearful to take a similar stand.

"Everyday I get calls from people who have converted but are secret," El-Gohary told Compass. "They ask me every day about what is happening, because it affects their future."

The danger to himself and his daughter has led El-Gohary to suggest that he will probably likely leave Egypt, but not until the case is over.

"He wouldn't go without doing this trial, he doesn't want to leave before it is finished," said attorney Ghobreyal. "Because it (conversion) is his right, then he will do whatever he likes."

El-Gohary said he feels a responsibility to witness about God and Jesus. "I have to do what I am doing for the sake of God and the sake of the converts, to the glory of God," Compass reported he said.

He decided to legally change his religious affiliation out of concern over the effects that his "unofficial Christianity" has on his family, saying he was particularly concerned about his daughter, Dina Maher Ahmad Mo'otahssem. Though raised as a Christian, when she reaches age 16 she will be issued an identification card stating her religion as Muslim unless her father's appeal is successful.

Compass said at school, she has been prohibited from attending Christian religious classes offered to Egypt's Christian minorities, and been forced to attend Muslim classes. Religion is a mandatory part of the Egyptian curriculum.

Encouraging Signs

Despite setbacks, delays and the anger on display in the courtroom, El-Gohary and his lawyers reserve optimism not only about the future of the case but the future of the country as well.

"There is evidence and signs on the horizon that are very encouraging, that there will be a time in the future that equal rights will be achieved," Compass reported Fayez said. "People have started to ask for their rights and demand to have the freedom of religion. This is a good sign."

Mohammed Hegazy, the first Muslim-born Christian convert to attempt to have his new religion officially registered, is also in hiding after receiving death threats.

Compass said despite a constitution that grants religious freedom, legal conversion from Islam to another faith remains unprecedented. Hegazy, who filed his case on Aug. 2, 2007, was denied the right to officially convert in a Jan. 29, 2008 court ruling that declared it was against Islamic law for a Muslim to leave Islam.

Compass said the judge based his decision on Article II of the Egyptian constitution, which endorses Islamic law, or sharia, as the source of Egyptian law. The judge said that, according to sharia, Islam is the final and most complete religion and therefore Muslims already practice full freedom of religion and cannot return to an older belief such as Christianity or Judaism.

[Sam]

From the Apostolic Report

United Nations Resolution Against Blasphemy Aimed at Protecting Islam

Pakistan and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which presently includes 57 nations, introduced a resolution to the United Nations on “Combating the Defamation of Religion.” The measure first passed in 1999, and now the United Nations wants to make the non-binding resolution binding for all member states. While the resolution was amended to include religions other than Islam, the United Nations seems to have become much more sympathetic to Islam, citing ” . . . the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minoritieis in the aftermath of 11 September 2001.”

In short, such a resolution, would make it illegal in the United States to speak against Islam (and presumably other religions) in any way that could offend the sensitivities of practitioners.

Opponents say that this would trump the United States’ Constitution by violating our First Amendment right to free speech. Under this resolution, discussing the connection between international terorrism and Islam could become a crime.

The binding resolution could be introduced as early as March.

[Sam]

and, how about this?

http://www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com/...n-america.html

[Praxeas]

If that were here that man would be tossed in prison as a child rapist. These guys are sick sick sick

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Praxeas

If that were here that man would be tossed in prison as a child rapist. These guys are sick sick sick

And yet our society would be little different if good people hadn't risked their lives like those lawyers and stared down angry mobs to press their case for justice.

If something like this would have happened here - I'm afraid the good lawyers would be hanging from the nearest tree while their "Christian" supporters were doing an inventory of the ramen noodles stocked up in their basements.