Weekend News Roundup

Today's roundup includes and article about King Abdullah's new preppy boarding school in Jordan. For any expat who is dissatisfied with the school options offered in their overseas locale (especially in the Middle East), this school just might turn out to be a great alternative to sending the kids far off, to the the U.K. or U.S.A. for boarding school. Also, a cleric is suing over Egypt's new ban on female genital mutilation; an Egyptian newsman has been missing for four years with neither clues nor media attention; And the usual on the Muslim Brotherhood, Human Rights and Censorship articles.

(Not Deerfield Academy.)
Can Arab Preppies Save the Middle East?

...For Abdullah Ibn Hussein, now known as His Majesty King Abdullah II, the carefree years he spent at Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts (class of 1980) were formative. Deerfield introduced Abdullah to a much broader range of friends than is normally available to young Arab princes; and the character-building crucible of dormitory life taught him Yankee egalitarianism, self-reliance and how to clear dishes from the dinner table.

In 2006, he lured Deerfield's then headmaster Eric WidmerDeerfield teachers from the green hills of New England to his semi-desert realm with a heady challenge: Create a new generation of Middle Eastern leaders from all backgrounds and faiths whose commitment to global citizenship would help transform the region. King's Academy opened this fall with about 100 students — the first co-educational boarding school in the Middle East. (Victoria College, a boys boarding school founded by the British in Alexandra in 1902, was nationalized and effectively gutted by the Egyptian government in 1956.) Though the students now hail mainly from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and elsewhere in the Arab Middle East, King's hopes to eventually attract students from Israel and the West as well.

F.G.M.:
Cairo's Litigious Cleric

Fighting Secularism in Court

CAIRO, Egypt -- Amid a widening cultural war between secular and fundamentalist Muslims, a conservative cleric here is pushing his own courtroom offensive against everything he deems un-Islamic.

More than a decade ago, Yusuf El-Badry -- religious scholar, former parliamentarian and onetime mosque preacher in New Jersey -- pioneered the practice of suing ministers, poets, academics and religious scholars in Egypt's courts to promote his strict interpretation of Islam. The approach was simple and often effective: use Egypt's legal system, which is based on Western and Islamic law and is mostly independent, to counter what he sees as a dangerous wave of secularism.

Last month, Mr. El-Badry went to court to contest a government ban on female circumcision, a popular practice here. Meanwhile, a recent libel ruling in his favor has Cairo's intellectual elite up in arms.

EGYPT:
The Forgotten Man

Despite appearances, Helal, a senior editor at Egypt’s leading daily, the Arabic-language Al-Ahram, seems no closer to returning home than he did on the sweltering summer day of August 11, 2003. That afternoon, Helal was said to have headed home from a routine day at Al-Ahram. And then he simply vanished. No one has heard from him since, and there are few clues as to his fate.

Despite Egypt’s shoddy human rights and press freedom record, the “enforced disappearance” or murder of a journalist is rare. One involving senior staff at a prominent, pro-government paper such as Al-Ahram—its chief editor is appointed by President Hosni Mubarak—is unheard of. Helal’s family and a few journalists have searched for answers to no avail, and Egypt’s vast security apparatus claims it hasn’t been able to crack the case. The near-total absence of information about his fate has perplexed and unsettled Egyptian journalists.

Whatever role Egyptian security may or may not have played in Helal’s disappearance, many observers find it difficult to believe that the authorities have no information about the editor’s fate. Egypt’s multilayered security apparatus is among the most sophisticated and omnipresent in the region, employing thousands of agents and informants. The area where Helal was said to have gone missing is regarded as one of the most secure in the entire city.

On August 11, 2007, the silence continued as the fourth anniversary of Helal’s disappearance passed largely unnoticed. Before his death, Nobel laureate Mahfouz wrote a short, dream-like narrative about a missing man, whom biographer Stock identified as Helal. In “Dream 151”—included in the compilation Dreams of Departure translated by Stock—the author writes: “Under the tree we would sit with him, for evenings of both enjoyment and of learning, when once he excused himself in order to take his medicine. He went up to his flat—but didn’t come back. When one of us went to check on him, he found the apartment locked up tight from the outside. So began a fruitless search for him in all his haunts, as anxiety gripped us all equally—those who loved him, and those who hated him, and those who were indifferent to him, as well. Meanwhile, at our mosque, the imam led the Prayer for the Absent on the soul of the one who was no longer seen.”

Unmasking Egypt's Islamists?

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has some explaining to do.

On Human Rights, U.S. Seems to Give Egypt a Pass

Democracy campaigners in Egypt say that while Washington may criticize Egypt’s human rights failings, it does little to follow up to ensure results.

With Mr. Nour in prison and Mr. Ibrahim on the run, with a human rights organization recently shut down, with journalists being imprisoned, with arrests of those out of step with the government, there is little evidence that Egypt — or any other nation in the region — is under any real American pressure for democratic reforms and human rights.

An explanation on why the sky was so overcast earlier this week here in Cairo: "Black Cloud" Of Pollution Hits Cairo Once Again

Cairo, Egypt (AHN) - Several Egyptian cities are suffering from what people are calling "the black cloud" for the ninth year in a row. The rice peel burning season has started and cities like Cairo and Delta region cities Gharbiya and Domiyat are being hit hard. Farmers claim that they burn the rice peels because the government doesn't supply them with any other options.

Cairo is one of the most polluted cities worldwide.

A recent study found the burning of leftover waste causes 36 percent of Cairo's pollution, industrial exhaust contributes to 32 percent, car exhaust accounts for 26 percent, while agriculture disposal burnings add only 6 percent to the problem.

Discovering Egypt's hidden treasures

“In Egypt, anything is possible, with a little bit of money,” says John Fareed, a partner in U.S.-based marketing firm Fareed & Zapala. Half-Egyptian, Fareed summered in Egypt as a child and still travels there frequently for work. When last in Cairo, he took a private tour with an independent guide who checked out well with his hotel concierge. After visiting a few of the major attractions, the guide brought him to a working archaeological dig, and for an extra fee of approximately $40, got him access inside and permission to shoot flash photography.

TODAY'S ANCHOR CHAT: HODA KOTB

So both your parents were born in Egypt, were you born in Egypt?

Hoda: No I was born in Oklahoma. Grew up some in Morgantown, West Virginia, and mainly in Alexandria Virginia. And we went overseas back and forth. We lived in Egypt for a year, and Nigeria.

CENSORSHIP:
Crackdowns On Bloggers Increasing, Survey Finds

Government repression in some countries has shifted from journalists to bloggers, with the vitality of the Internet triggering a more focused crackdown as blogs increasingly take the place of mainstream news media, according to Lucie Morillon, Washington director of the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

"Countries that were not sentencing journalists to prison terms anymore have been doing it these last months for bloggers. This is the case in Egypt and Jordan," she said yesterday as the group released its sixth annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index. Egypt ranked 146th and Jordan 122nd in press freedom among the 169 countries for which data were available.

Iceland topped the list for press freedom in the survey, and Eritrea ranked last.

Yes, this happened in the old U.S. of A: Journalists Briefly Face Charges in Arizona

PHOENIX, Oct. 19 -- The two owners of the nation's largest chain of alternative weekly newspapers were arrested and jailed late Thursday after publishing the contents of a grand jury subpoena seeking, among other information, details on each and every reader who logged on to a Phoenix newspaper Web site since 2004.

This afternoon, after local residents and national First Amendment advocates voiced outrage over what they viewed as an effort to intimidate a newspaper critical of a local official, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced that no charges would be filed against the executives or their reporters and that a special prosecutor hired to investigate the newspaper for possible criminal violations is being fired.

The arrests of Michael Lacey, 59, executive editor of Village Voice Media, and Jim Larkin, 58, the chain's chief executive, followed an Oct. 18 article that appeared under their bylines in Phoenix New Times, the company's Phoenix newspaper. The article included a copy of the grand jury subpoena that had been issued in August seeking information about reports the newspaper had published concerning Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's real estate holdings.

Arpaio, sometimes called "the toughest sheriff in America," had long been the focus of Phoenix New Times articles, including revelations of unusual deaths in the sheriff's jails. The article on his real estate holdings included a notation of the sheriff's home address.

In addition to reporters' notes and other documents on the internal workings of the newspaper, the grand jury subpoena demanded "the Internet Protocol address of anyone who accessed the Phoenix New Times Website from January 1, 2004 to the present," and the site users visited "prior to coming to the paper's website."

The subpoena also told the newspaper executives that disclosure of any grand jury proceeding, including receipt of the subpoena, was a crime. When the newspaper published an article about it, the two executives were arrested.

An Assault on Media Diversity and Democracy

...Bush's chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has initiated a scheme to radically rewrite media ownership rules so that one corporation can own the daily newspapers, the weekly "alternative" newspaper, the city magazine, suburban publications, the eight largest radio stations, the dominant broadcast and cable television stations, popular internet news and calendar sites, billboards and concert halls in even the largest American city.

This "company-town" scheme, which would be achieved by lifting current limits on media cross-ownership, is the long-held dream of media moguls such as NewsCorp's Rupert Murdoch and Tribune Company-buyer Sam Zell. With one FCC vote, media billionaires will be able to become media multi-billionaires by controlling the entire communications landscapes of major metropolitan areas -- and by extension whole regions and states.

Weekend News Roundup - Egypt

Egyptians Have Cornered the Squash Racket

Squash, at least in the U.S., is a game associated with men's clubs and prep schools, so the idea that the world's best squash players hail from Egypt, an impecunious country not known for its sporting tradition, seems remarkable. But it's true. As the U.S. Open Squash Championship is under way in New York, the top-ranked player in the world is Amr Shabana of Giza, Egypt. His countryman Ramy Ashour, who just turned 20, is ranked second. All told, five Egyptians are in the top 20 of the Professional Squash Association's world rankings.

EGYPTIANS MARK RAMADAN WITH PRAYER AND ZEST

Some Egyptians host sahour parties where friends and relatives pack into homes often decorated in brightly colored fabrics to give them the look of a traditional tent. There, they eat, drink, and celebrate from midnight until 4 a.m. Others pay top dollar to attend swanky "tents," as these fabric-walled spaces are known, at posh restaurants or hotels.

But most average Egyptians head to places like the sprawling mosque and market complex of old Islamic Cairo. There they eat the sahour staple dishes: mashed bean, known as fool , and milk that is called zabadi. Even there, prices are high during the holiday. A cup of tea can cost more than $1, about six times the normal price.

Sahour revelry was in full swing this weekend around the historic Sayyidna al-Hussein Mosque, where the head of the prophet Muhammad's grandson is supposedly kept. (It is believed to have been cut off in a famous Islamic battle in Iraq.)

Some Ramadan street beggers really aren't that poor

Muslims struggle with obligations and annoyances

Throughout the Muslim world during Ramadan -- the Islamic holy month, which ends this week -- 'tis the season for giving and deceiving.

In Cairo, street begging increases exponentially during Ramadan, when the destitute emerge from the shadows to cash in on the holiday spirit. Among the true have-nots, however, are sophisticated professional begging networks that make many Muslims think twice before donating.

In Egypt, many Muslims say they struggle with how to fulfill their religious obligation of charity without feeling conned or pressured by the beggars who take over traffic intersections, loiter outside mosques, stuff their hands into rolled-down car windows and recite tales of woe. The more daring sometimes waltz right into apartment buildings, posing as gas company representatives who've come to check the meter and collect a holiday bonus.

(Child refusing to let me take a photo, unless she's paid to go away.)



Last Year's Violence Hangs Over Eid Celebrations in Egypt

The Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr has already begun in many countries. Egypt will mark the holiday on Saturday, but the celebrations connected to the Eid will continue for several days. This year, there is apprehension in Cairo after the events of last year's Eid al-Fitr, when a mob of young men rampaged through the crowds of downtown revelers, assaulting women and trying to tear off their clothes. VOA's Challiss McDonough has more from the Egyptian capital.

In Egypt, A Son Is Readied for Succession

Egyptians have never experienced a democratic transfer of presidential power. As Hosni Mubarak, 79, begins the 27th year of his rule this month, many say they expect Mubarak's family and ruling party, military officers and security officials to decide on his successor.

Egypt's National Democratic Party is now the only party legally eligible to field a presidential candidate; an independent candidate would need to secure approval to run from commissions dominated by ruling party members.

If power passes to Gamal Mubarak, Egypt would join Syria, Jordan and Morocco -- the latter two officially kingdoms -- on the growing list of modern Middle East dynasties in which sons have taken over from fathers in governments of elites backed by the military and security services. In Libya and Yemen, sons are also seen as the leading candidates to succeed their fathers.

Most Egyptians call Gamal "Jimmy." Educated in Egypt, Gamal, 43, left a job as an investment banker in London in 2000 to return home, and took a post as head of the ruling party's policy committee. He married for the first time this year.

Across the Middle East, the sons who assumed power in the 1990s and earlier this decade did so while promising greater freedoms than their fathers allowed.

"It never happens," said Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University. "People always think, 'He uses the Internet and he speaks good English and therefore he won't be like his parents,' but it never seems to work out that way," Lynch said by telephone.

AS EGYPT CRACKS DOWN, CHARGES OF WIDE ABUSE

The regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is in the midst of one of its largest crackdowns against public dissent in a decade.

Seven journalists have been given prison sentences in recent weeks; more than a thousand activists of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's most popular political opposition, languish in jail; and labor organizers involved in a wave of strikes at government-owned factories have been detained.

On Sunday, fighting between rival Bedouin clans in the Sinai Peninsula quickly spiraled into a riot targeting the police and President Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP). While local grievances sparked the fight, regular reports of widespread police brutality and torture fed anger in the Sinai, where locals called for the police chief's resignation, and are fueling public outrage around the country.

The Egyptian government says police abuse and torture here are isolated incidents and that the guilty are prosecuted. In an interview with a local newspaper earlier this year, Gen. Ahmed Dia el-Din, an assistant to the interior minister, accused the media of sensationalizing police abuses to stir up opposition to the government.

Those words have been followed in recent months by efforts to silence those who complain. In September, the government closed the Association for Human Rights and Legal Aid after it helped bring a case against the government over a political activist, Mohammed al-Sayyed, who died in police custody.

Last week, the government arrested two political activists – Mohammed al-Dereini and Ahmed Mohammed Sobh, both members of Egypt's tiny Shiite minority – following their recent efforts to expose torture in the Egyptian prison system. Mr. Dereini's 2006 book, "Hell's Capital," chronicles torture in Egyptian prisons and includes firsthand accounts from his time in jail in 2004-2005.

"Is police torture a bigger problem today? There's no question," says Gasser Abdel Razek, the director of regional relations for Human Rights Watch. "Fifteen years ago, we used to say that this or that police station is bad, or if that you were an Islamist and you got picked up after a bombing, you could count on being tortured. Today, I can't name a single police station that's good. And the victims are middle-class, they're educated, they're homeless. It doesn't make any difference."

One case that caused particular shock and revolution was the death of a 13-year-old boy, Mamduh Abdel Aziz, after he was taken into police custody in August in the delta town of Mansoura. He was charged with theft. The boy died in hospital, four days after he was beaten while in police custody. Before his death, the nearly comatose boy was shown on a video posted to Youtube.com with extensive burn wounds in his genital area.

Mr. Razek, like many Egyptian human rights activists, says the spread of torture was a natural consequence of the government's use of violent interrogations against alleged Islamist militants in the 1980s. What became standard doctrine for the country's antiterrorist police units spread throughout the system as officers shifted to other jobs in the police force.

"It became a culture. We have two generations of police who were brought up to use torture against Islamists. But if it's allowed and seen as effective, it spreads," says Razek.

Razek says there has only been one successful torture prosecution of a police officer in Egypt this year, and argues that police violence is systemic, not isolated.

"We've seen dissent spreading beyond those who are politically organized, for instance, the labor unrest; so the regime feels it needs to make its people afraid to control its fate," he says. "I'm not talking people agitating for democracy, but people who are worried about feeding themselves

BROTHERHOOD’S POLITICAL PLATFORM BANS CHRISTIANS, WOMEN FROM PRESIDENCY

CAIRO: The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's powerful opposition movement, has laid down its first detailed political platform, which would bar women and Christians from becoming president and establish a board of Muslim clerics to oversee the government, reminiscent of Iran's Islamic state.

The body recalls the system in Iran, where clerical councils have final say on a wide range of political issues and can even vet candidates running for president and parliament.

Bahy Eldin Hassan, head of Cairo Center for Human Rights, said the new platform shows the Brotherhood has added “vocabularies of democracy and human rights [to their rhetoric]. But the content remains the same as the old generations.’’

Weekend News Roundup

Vagabondblogger hopes the first article answers all your questions regarding Islam and space travel. As usual, the regular dose of censorship, and F.I.S.A. related articles are also included.


ISLAM:
HOW DOES AN ISLAMIC ASTRONAUT FACE MECCA IN ORBIT?

Allah is watching – even in outer space. And that poses a problem for a devout Muslim astronaut who is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian rocket this week.

Imagine trying to pray five times a day in zero gravity while having to face an ever-shifting Mecca hundreds of miles below. How do you ritually wash yourself without water? And, now that it's Ramadan, how do you fast from sunrise to sunset when you see a sunrise and a sunset every 90 minutes? Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a Malaysian astronaut, must decide before the Oct. 10 launch.

Five times a day (before sunrise, at midday, in late afternoon, after sunset, and at night), earth-bound muezzins call Muslims to prayer. A spaceship traveling 17,400 miles per hour orbits the earth 16 times in a day. Does that mean praying 80 times in 24 hours?

The next problem: Where is Mecca?

The attitude while at prayer is also an issue. In zero gravity, the sequence of the praying postures – standing, bowing, kneeling, and prostrating oneself – is difficult at best.

Before worship, a Muslim must perform ritual washing – cleaning face, hands, arms, feet, and hair. The problem: Water on the ISS is so precious that even sweat and urine are recycled.

Then there's diet. Pork and alcohol are forbidden. Animals to be consumed for food must be slaughtered in a particular way. All food must be halal (allowed by Islamic law). But how can the astronaut know if the food aboard the ISS is halal?

Meals raise another complication. Ramadan – the holy month during which Muslims abstain from all earthly indulgences (including eating) during daylight hours – doesn't end until Oct. 13.

Laughing at "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"

An ex-senator that opposes individual rights of women; a pundit that calls people "faggots" and considers Islam a "cult"; a Christian scholar who is considered a "polemicist" and an "Islamophobe" by conservative Christians themselves; and an intellectual who has received millions from "far right" organizations since 2001, are rising up for the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities in the Muslim world. This laughable spectacle is called the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. It will be coming to a university near you on October 22 - 26.

CENSORSHIP:
Bono speaks out against torture - and gets censored

Archbishop Tutu barred by U. of St Thomas because of criticism of Israel

Now it’s official: winning the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t protect you from charges of anti-Semitism if you criticize Israeli human rights violations. Neither, apparently, does being one of the most compelling voices for social justice in the world today, or even getting an honorary degree from and giving the commencement address at Brandeis.

Minneapolis/St.Paul’s City Pages just reported that members of the St Thomas Justice and Peace Studies program were thrilled when Bishop Tutu agreed to speak at the University– but administrators did a scientific survey of the Jews of Minneapolis, which included querying exactly one spokesperson for Minnesota’s Jewish Community Relations Council and several rabbis who taught in a University program– and concluded that Tutu is bad for the Jews and should therefore be barred from campus.

To make matters worse, when Cris Toffolo, the chair of the Justice and Peace Studies program told Tutu what happened and warned him of a possible smear campaign, she was immediately demoted.

Utah mine investigation documents should not be public, agency says

(CNN) -- Court proceedings of the investigation into the collapse of Utah's Crandall Canyon mine should not be made public, argue attorneys for the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

The documents included MSHA's response to a federal lawsuit filed in Utah earlier this week by news organizations, including CNN, The Associated Press, The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News.

The suit seeks to stop the investigation into the mine incident until a judge decides whether the proceedings should be open to the public. It also asks for a temporary restraining order to stop investigators from conducting closed proceedings.

The suit also demands that a transcript of all closed hearings be released immediately.

On August 6, six miners were trapped when the Crandall Canyon mine caved in. Their bodies have not been recovered. Three other people, including an MSHA inspector, died as they attempted to rescue the trapped miners August 16.

Cubans go to unusual lengths to post blogs

HAVANA (Reuters) - When 32-year-old Yoani Sanchez wants to update her blog about daily life in Cuba, she dresses like a tourist and strides confidently into a Havana hotel, greeting the staff in German.

That is because Cubans like Sanchez are not authorized to use hotel Internet connections, which are reserved for foreigners.

WHEN US-MADE 'CENSORWARE' ENDS UP IN IRON FISTS

ONI researchers are conducting tests that have so far found censorship in 24 of 40 countries. Testing involves local users in each country trying to access various websites. Certain patterns and failure messages emerge, indicating which filtering system a country uses.

The software companies involved sell this technology primarily to private companies in the US and abroad. Companies use these tools to keep employees from accessing pornography sites and websites infected with viruses.

Repressive governments also turn to these American systems, not only to filter out porn and viruses, but also to block political, religious, and other websites.

A Websense spokeswoman denies the firm has sold software to Iran, which would be illegal.

ONI also found in 2005 that Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, countries with Internet censorship, use SmartFilter. The company wouldn't confirm or deny.

"We are a US organization that adheres to US rules. We only do business with organizations and countries we are approved to do business with," says Mr. Chatterjee.

That position is echoed by Blue Coat Systems Inc., whose sales materials have boasted that Internet access across Saudi Arabia is "monitored and controlled" by its technology.

Moves are afoot in Washington to take a harder line against censorware exports. High-profile congressional hearings last year examined the roles of Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco in helping China censor the Internet. Rep. Christopher Smith (R) of New Jersey has introduced the Global Online Freedom Act, a bill that would, among other things, study the feasibility of restricting censorware exports.

There is some debate over whether such filtering software merits real concern. In Burma, the regime ultimately decided to shut off the country's Internet access after it appeared unable to selectively filter out antigovernment communication.

Internet-censorship tools can be defeated with the use of proxy servers. But many people living under repressive government are not going to hear about, or dare to try, methods to get around Internet fire walls, say experts.

"Some people say [censorware] is ineffective because dissidents can get around it," says Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and anticensorship activist. "I say political control doesn't have to be 100 percent to be effective. Controlling the ability of the vast majority of the population to see outside information is still very effective for the goals of the totalitarian regime."

F.I.S.A.
Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm

Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

The allegations could affect the debate on Capitol Hill over whether telecoms sued for disclosing customers' phone records and other data to the government after the Sept. 11 attacks should be given legal immunity, even if they did not have court authorization to do so.

In May 2006, USA Today reported that the NSA had been secretly collecting the phone-call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by major telecom firms. Qwest, it reported, declined to participate because of fears that the program lacked legal standing.

In a statement released after the story was published, Nacchio attorney Herbert Stern said that in fall 2001, Qwest was approached to give the government access to the private phone records of Qwest customers. At the time, Nacchio was chairman of the president's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

"Mr. Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request," Stern said. "When he learned that no such authority had been granted and that there was a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process, including the Special Court which had been established to handle such matters, Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."

Weekend Roundup Preview - All Egypt Edition

So many articles have appeared this week concerning Egypt. Some about social problems, others focusing on Ramadan, the movie/ T.V. industry and then, as usual the Muslim Brotherhood. So Vagabondblogger has decided to dedicate this post to Egypt. You will find people living on roofs for lack of affordable housing, a film industry hoping to rise up again, Ramadan as experienced in Egypt, the woes of the Muslim Brotherhood, and last but not least animal rights - not all in that exact order. For the full articles, click on the links.


Some Live It Up: Life on Cairo Rooftops

CAIRO (Reuters) - Like thousands of other people in Cairo, Ashraf Ali, 33, has lived his whole life on a downtown roof.

Seven floors above the dirt and din of Cairo's streets, he enjoys a cool September breeze that sweeps over the one-room clapboard hut he shares with his wife and two children.

"In the summer we eat, drink, and sleep out here," he said, gesturing towards the dusty rooftop, where the rent is less than $1 a month. "It's better than living down there."

Some Cairo roof-dwellers enjoy makeshift toilets, standpipes, even baths. For others, there is no running water and little protection from scorching summer sun or winter rains. Of this 'sub-class', the luckier ones can rely for water and toilets on the hospitality of better endowed neighbors in flats 'below'.

Living on rooftops, analysts say, is often a convenient solution to Cairo's housing problem.

Cairo struggles to remain a city of action

Egyptian film was long a focal point of Arab culture. Today, it's mostly for the brave.

For decades, Egyptian film served as the cultural glue that held the Arab world together. Cairo produced extraordinary and artful cinema as well as popular entertainment. But movies like the "The Aquarium" or 2005's "The Yacoubian Building" have become rare. Rapidly shifting values, economics and technologies have combined to erode Cairo's status as capital of the Arab film business.

Though Egyptian censors rarely rule over movies the way they do in, say, Iran, audience members and critics have managed of late to cow producers and directors into producing mostly bland comedies without kissing, fighting, arguing or politics, called "cinema nazima," or proper cinema. Amid such grim realities, a small core of actors and directors is struggling to revive film in this "Hollywood of the Orient."

Other Arab countries have begun moving in on Egypt's status. Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has become home to the best post-production facilities in the region. Syrians began producing television series in an edgy vérité style that has made them popular. Lebanese have all but taken over the market for the filming of music videos.

Satellite channels, like Saudi-based MBC, began filling the airwaves with American movies subtitled in Arabic. "On one hand [satellite] did help by spreading the movies and exposing more people to them," said Hana Rahman of Waleg.com, which covers the film and music business in the Arab world. "But it has also hurt the business, because now the Arab audience has awakened to the fact that there are better movies, quality-wise and story-line-wise."

The Western onslaught also shifted tastes among those with access to satellite television. Film critics complain that many of the new Egyptian movies are little more than bad imitations of Hollywood. One, "El-Turbini," mimics "Rain Man." Another, "Mafia," resembles any American, B-grade action flick.

"The business needs new blood, creative minds and more young people," said Rahman. "It also needs more awareness that audiences aren't stupid. They are not just looking for something that makes them laugh. They need something serious that reflects more of our reality and the problems we are struggling with in the Middle East."

Decline of a major playerMOVIES first came to Egypt in 1896, thanks to visiting European artists. By 1927 the country produced its first native-made, full-length silent movie, "Layla," followed by its first talkie, "High-Class Society," in 1932. By the 1970s, Egypt produced 80 movies and many more series each year, and the Egyptian Arabic dialect became the universal tongue of the Arab world.

But decay set in. Some blame the cultural shift following the 1967 war with Israel, which discredited Arab nationalism and launched a wave of Islam now cresting throughout the Arab world. The industry suffered other blows with the advent of video in the 1980s and satellite technology in the 1990s. Elegant theater houses fell into disrepair. Production houses shuttered. Not until the late 1990s did it start to make something of a comeback, in the form of multiplex theaters inside new shopping malls. New production facilities opened in the shiny new desert suburbs. But by then, the Middle East had become more insular, religious and intolerant. The conservative values of the oil-rich Persian Gulf have risen to challenge the laid-back attitudes of Egypt and Lebanon.

Viewers and Islamic political activists also began hauling filmmakers into court. Director Youssef Chahine, Egypt's most famous director, was criticized for using his movie "The Emigrant" as a vehicle for depicting the life of Joseph. Islamic activists repeatedly sued the prominent actress Yousra for her alleged lack of morals throughout the 1990s. Adel Imam, star of "The Yacoubian Building" and widely considered the greatest living Egyptian actor, has been threatened by Islamists for decades. Waked, who appeared in George Clooney's "Syriana," was threatened in August with banishment from Egyptian films after appearing alongside an Israeli actor in a Tunisian production.

Though "Yacoubian," which traced the lives of more than a dozen characters living in a Cairo apartment house, was among the most successful Egyptian films ever made, it also encountered tremendous resistance. Opinion columnists claimed that it defamed Egyptian society. Members of parliament demanded that scenes depicting sexual harassment, homosexuality and torture be cut or that the film be removed from theaters. In some cases, theater owners themselves trimmed scenes they thought inappropriate. The pressure sent a chill through the industry. Prominent female actors, like Hanan Turk, began donning the Islamic headscarf in films.

'Polygamy' soaps irk feminists in Egypt

Cairo: Egyptian pro-women groups are disappointed that several TV serials being shown on local and Arab TV feature polygamy as a recurrent theme.

"I have been working in the field of women's welfare for more than 20 years and I have never seen so many polygamists in Egypt as portrayed in TV dramas," said Eman Beibers, the chairperson of the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women.

At least seven television serials with polygamists are on the air waves every night of Ramadan - when viewing rates in the Arab world peak.

Breaking the Fast With Family, Friends And Late-Night Fun

The sun slipped behind the high-rises on Haram Street. Drivers hit their gas pedals and their car horns, alternately bullying and joking their way through lanes crowded with fellow Cairenes, all racing to reach home before sunset signaled the end of the day's fast during this holy month of Ramadan.

In one Haram Street apartment, Maii Younis placed pigeons in a skillet to brown, handling the birds carefully to keep their rice stuffing from bursting forth. Her daughter Sally, 21, circuited between kitchen and dining room, laying out the china, talking to her mother and guests, and using the kitchen phone to make plans to go out with friends after the family meal.

In Cairo and other cities all around the Middle East, authorities held torches to ancient cannons to signal, as has been done for centuries, that the sun had set -- and that Muslims who had fasted from dawn to dusk for Ramadan could now begin their evening meal, or iftar.

At intersections, do-gooders thrust packets of dates and cups of water toward those who hadn't been able to make it home in time.

Before dawn, the cycle began again. A drummer moved down Haram Street, pounding to wake up the people in time for a last meal before sunrise began the day's fast.

"Wake up! Wake up!" he cried, calling out to residents by name as he moved past in the dark.

In her bed, Sally slept on.

The Ramadan Experience in Egypt

Nocturnal diversions

Most bars and nightclubs close for the month, admittedly, but some of those that stay open rather more sensibly knock alcohol off the menu altogether, or -- operating in secret -- raise the price. One regular customer of a famous downtown café complains of the alcohol policy: "for years I've met my friends and sometimes done my work here, largely because I can have a beer at a reasonable price. But in Ramadan they stop serving beer, and this always puzzles me because it's not like I become someone else during Ramadan -- why should customers change their preferences for a month and then return to normal?" He added that one bar in Emadeddin stays open "after a fashion" but raises prices to an exploitative degree. Barmen, like Hani, acknowledge that Ramadan is an appropriate time to take off, mainly for religious reasons, but says it presents people like himself with a huge financial problem that they must prepare for in advance: "what if one hasn't saved money for this forced vacation? Then finding alternative work becomes necessary, and work isn't always available on the spur of the moment."

Abu Radi, almost 50, has been working in a downtown bar for 15 years, and he used to have a one-month job in a sandwich joint during Ramadan: "of course the pay isn't even comparable, because at the sandwich place you don't get tips. Some barmen stay at home for the month, but I can't afford to do that." Abu Radi's suggestion is that bar owners should pay their staff, even if they reduce the pay by half: "that way they don't lose much and they get to keep their staff, too. Then again, every employer knows it would be easy to get a replacement if the worst came to the worst." For Henna, a nightclub waitress for eight years and her family's main support, the business of finding a month's work to make up for the loss of income is even harder: "I was working as a maid when my neighbour offered me a job at the kitchen of a restaurant, he said, which turned out to be a nightclub; and I was eventually promoted to waiting tables. I'm earning more than I ever have. I used to save for it, too, but it's not so easy for a girl to find work for a month."

According to one young man who works in a five-star hotel bar, however, "those working in tourist zones wish the whole year were Ramadan. Restrictions on alcohol bring in so many more customers, you see." Samir, a liquor store attendant, says the restrictions on alcohol are understandable and normal by now, pointing out that stores do not even open during the day out of respect for the faithful. Egyptians eager to drink must peruse illegal stores like those located in the suburbs of Shubra, but, he adds, they should be aware of the high risk of alcohol poisoning. Perhaps a cup of tea in Khan Al-Khalili is not so bad after all.

ANIMAL RIGHTS:
Egyptian city to resume shooting stray animals despite protests

CAIRO, Egypt - The population of stray dogs in Cairo's twin city of Giza will once more be controlled by shooting and poisoning the animals because it is cheaper than sterilization, the municipal veterinary department announced.

In an interview Saturday with the flagship state-owned daily Al-Ahram, department head Dr. Abdullah Badr said that it was simply too expensive to implement a sterilization program.

"It is necessary to return to the traditional ways of killing dogs with bullets or poison," he said "This method is used around the world particularly in developing countries."

The discovery of dogs carcasses in upscale neighbourhoods and near the famed Pyramids of Giza in May provoked an uproar and petitions to the government from local and international animal welfare organizations to end the traditional methods of controlling strays.

He said due to numerous complaints from citizens and reports of dog bitings, a wide ranging campaign to shoot the animals would begin next week.

"We can't wait to receive the necessary funding for the sterilization operations, we are faced with an imminent danger to our children," he added, saying that local animal welfare organizations had not lived up to their commitments to provide funding for the process.

Nadia Montasser of the local chapter of the People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals was shocked at the decision and said that local organizations would soon take action over the matter.

CENSORSHIP:
Cairo Moving More Aggressively To Cripple Muslim Brotherhood

CAIRO -- After imprisoning or prodding into exile Egypt's leading secular opposition activists, the government is using detentions and legal changes to neutralize the country's last surviving major political movement, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Brotherhood leaders and rights groups contend the government is clearing the stage of opponents in politics, civil society and the news media ahead of the end of the 26-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who is 79. Egyptians widely expect the transition to be tense and that Mubarak's son Gamal will be a top contender.

In August and September, police raided the homes and meetings of Brotherhood leaders, putting behind bars five of the 12 officials in the group's decision-making guidance council. Two have since been released for health reasons.

Prosecutors have also accused two Brotherhood members of parliament of seeking to revive the group, and police jailed 14 mid- and top-level managers vital to communications in an organization that some Brotherhood officials estimate includes 200,000 members. Egyptian security forces have jailed more than 1,000 rank-and-file members over the past year, according to the Brotherhood; 167 remain in prison.

The Brotherhood was founded in 1928, the year Mubarak and Akef were born, and the government banned it in 1954. Egyptian administrations have alternated between trying to co-opt the group and trying to crush it. Imprisonment during crackdowns in the late 1960s helped radicalize Ayman al-Zawahiri and others, who split from the group in the 1960s and 1970s to start violent movements including Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which later merged with al-Qaeda.

Since the 1970s, the Brotherhood has sought to position itself as a moderate force in Egypt's political life. Its leaders say Egypt should be a civil rather than religious state.

The administration's moves are "designed to basically institutionalize the campaign against the Brotherhood and make sure it will not be allowed to either compete with the ruling party or threaten Mubarak's new successor," said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

By 2006, with Hamas's victory in Palestinian elections leading U.S. officials to have second thoughts about democracy in the Middle East, and the U.S. military presence in Iraq growing ever more troubled, American priorities in the Middle East shifted again, from promoting democracy to maintaining allies.

That year, Egypt picked off the secular opposition through arrests and intimidation. Ayman Nour, who came in a distant second to Mubarak in the 2005 presidential election, was sentenced to five years in prison on what supporters said were trumped-up charges of forging signatures on campaign documents. The third-place finisher in the race also was jailed but released.

Egypt Arresting Brotherhood Students In Recent Crackdown

Cairo University, the oldest general university in Egypt, founded in 1908, has launched investigations into 122 students, linked to the Brotherhood.

Helwan University, another public university in the capital, has suspended 44 students. Other universities are following these examples, with 23 at Monofiya University and 17 under investigation at Ein Shams university, the Brotherhood's website reported.

Some students are under investigation for charges such as "putting up decorations for the holy month of Ramadan."

Weekend News Roundup

Notable articles from the past week.


ISLAM:

Good Muslim Immigrants

Here's an interesting -- and not always in a good way -- article from Der Spiegel on American Muslims. Its thesis is that American Muslims have responded in a positive and potentially empowering way to the challenges of post-9/11 America because the United States has a better immigration policy than European nations.

But a some of the language is problematic and just plain odd. Like the bit where the writer claims that "America's new Muslim immigrants now find themselves being associated with [black] people who were traditionally viewed as America's losers" because they now vote almost entirely for Democrats. Huh? There's an odd whiff (or should that be stink) of elitism that runs through the article, as in: Wealthy, educated immigrants are good; working class, uneducated immigrants, bad.

Equally perplexing is the way the writer simply sweeps away the entirely different reason for Muslim immigration to Europe. Yes, immigrant Muslims in America tend to be better educated, perhaps, but they are also significantly smaller in number. The Muslim "ghettoes" that the author criticizes were created when countries like Germany and France "imported" large numbers of cheap, unskilled workers from countries like Turkey to solve their labor shortage problem in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

And as Der Spiegel itself documents in this 2004 article, these immigrants were then treated like guest workers with no rights, and not integrated into the society or given a path to citizenship. So it should hardly be a surprise that they're more alienated and at odds with mainstream Germany.

So, fine, it is indeed a "better" immigration policy to embrace the people you invite into your country to do your dirty work. Maybe American Muslims can teach Republicans to apply that lesson to certain other immigrants in this country.

News Flash: Muslim Denounces Terrorism!

Audah chose to issue his attack on Bin Laden on the Cornerstone program of Middle East Broadcasting, one of the prominent Arab satellite channels seen throughout the Arab world, on Sept. 14, coinciding with the sixth anniversary of 9/11 as well as the start of the holy month of Ramadan. That qualifies as pretty vigorous. He also has posted the letter on his website, in Arabic as well as English, which I reckon qualifies as a form of sustainment.


Sex in the Muslim World

A Dutch playwright tackles the intimate lives of Muslim women in ‘The Veiled Monologues.’

Sept. 28, 2007 - Five years ago actress and director Adelheid Roosen starred in the Dutch adaptation of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.” Roosen has long been in the Dutch theater avant-garde—she’s the founder of a performance group that commissions work from immigrant Muslim women—so all that frank talk about the female anatomy made her wonder what kind of stories Islamic women would have to tell. The result is “The Veiled Monologues,” which, like its “Vagina” sister, weaves together dozens of interviews of women talking about eroticism and sex, as well as arranged marriage, rape and female circumcision.

Roosen’s monologues are indeed taboo-breaking, if not downright shocking. There is a tale of incestuous sex with cousins and uncles. There is a woman who refers to her vagina as “my zebra.” Strawberry bubblegum is used to illustrate a detailed discourse on the hymen. And the play is crammed with wisecracks, such as “Until you marry, your vagina is your parents’ property, so that your husband will receive it as a closed box.” When audiences ask Roosen what they can learn from “The Veiled Monologues,” she often quotes one of the women she interviewed, who said, “You Western women no longer want to be treated as women. You have been emancipated without bringing along your uterus.” Take that, ladies of America.


CENSORSHIP:
Egypt: U.S. Concern Over Rights Group

The White House expressed concern about what it called setbacks on press freedom and civil society in Egypt. “We are deeply concerned at the government’s recent decree authorizing the imminent closure of the Association for Human Rights Legal Aid,” an independent rights group, said Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, “as well as the conviction and sentencing of several newspaper editors.” An Egyptian court sentenced three journalists from the opposition newspaper Al Wafd to two years in prison after they were convicted of publishing lies about the justice minister, judicial sources said.

Prisons to Restore Purged Religious Books


WHY CHINA SHUT DOWN 18,401 WEBSITES

But this campaign seems more indiscriminate. In recent weeks, police nationally have been shutting down Internet data centers (IDCs), the physical computers that private firms rent – from state-owned or private companies – to host websites offering interactive features, say industry insiders. "With the approach of the Party Congress, the government wants the Internet sphere silent, to keep people from discussing social problems," says Isaac Mao, one of China's first bloggers, who is now organizing a censorship monitoring project. "Shutting down IDCs is a quick and effective way of shutting down interactive sites."

To avoid being blocked, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in China and individual websites have been disabling chatrooms, forums, and other interactive features that might provide a platform for viewpoints unacceptable to the authorities.

F.I.S.A. Related (Big Brother):

Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.

The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country.

The activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They also expressed concern that such personal data could one day be used to impede their right to travel.

"The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society," said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska.

The DHS database generally includes "passenger name record" (PNR) information, as well as notes taken during secondary screenings of travelers. PNR data -- often provided to airlines and other companies when reservations are made -- routinely include names, addresses and credit-card information, as well as telephone and e-mail contact details, itineraries, hotel and rental car reservations, and even the type of bed requested in a hotel.

The records the Identity Project obtained confirmed that the government is receiving data directly from commercial reservation systems, such as Galileo and Sabre, but also showed that the data, in some cases, are more detailed than the information to which the airlines have access.

He said that travel records are among the most potentially invasive of records because they can suggest links: They show who a traveler sat next to, where they stayed, when they left. "It's that lifetime log of everywhere you go that can be correlated with other people's movements that's most dangerous," he said. "If you sat next to someone once, that's a coincidence. If you sat next to them twice, that's a relationship."

Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about "politically charged" opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, "they had them printed out on the table in front of me."

From WIRED:

Homeland Chief Blogs
By Noah Shachtman

Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has a blog. And it's just as sharp and incisive as you'd expect from the leader who coordinated the lightning-quick federal response to Hurricane Katrina, underplayed the terror threat to New York, and brought us security alerts based on the feelings in his gut.
Scott McNealy, Chairman of Sun Microsystems, once said, “Privacy is dead, get over it.” He was referring to the unprecedented ability of people and organizations to access information about any one of us.

Privacy is certainly not dead, but our society must go the second mile to protect it. The question that my Department faces is how to do that in our post-9/11 world where the need for greater security is paramount.
Speaking of Chertoff and his gut, I just can't resist...

Weekend News Roundup

Well this week's Roundup is mostly Egypt. Stories cover urfi marriages (also discussed in the book, Muhajababes), F.G.M.(again); to crackdowns on the press, the Muslim Brotherhood, and a human rights organization. Muslims in America covers new State Department bloggers, blogging for America. Censorship covers the Egyptian stories as noted earlier, plus book removals from U.S. prisons, which was included in last week's Roundup, and my favorite new topic - spying on Americans - the new F.I.S.A. Law recently passed by our spineless congress. I am not going to go over the "Don't taser me, bro!" episode, even though I think it was a form of censorship, and another example of the police over reacting. If I have to see the video again, I'm going to start screeching!


EGYPT:

YOUNG EGYPTIAN COUPLES IN A HURRY TIE TEMPORARY KNOT

Concern grows over use of a secret, unrecognized 'urfi' marriage that many couples feel allows them to be alone and to engage in sexual activity.

In Egypt, a Rising Push Against Genital Cutting

KAFR AL MANSHI ABOU HAMAR, Egypt — The men in this poor farming community were seething. A 13-year-old girl was brought to a doctor’s office to have her clitoris removed, a surgery considered necessary here to preserve chastity and honor.

The girl died, but that was not the source of the outrage. After her death, the government shut down the clinic, and that got everyone stirred up.

“They will not stop us,” shouted Saad Yehia, a tea shop owner along the main street. “We support circumcision!” he shouted over and over.

“Even if the state doesn’t like it, we will circumcise the girls,” shouted Fahmy Ezzeddin Shaweesh, an elder in the village.

Slideshow

Interview With a Young Egyptian

My parents at home don’t know that I work in F.G.M., and if they find out, they’ll kill me. ...

MUSLIMS IN AMERICA:
For State Dept., Blog Team Joins Muslim Debate

Two Arab-Americans have been hired to post on blogs and Internet forums in an effort to improve America’s image.

Some analysts question whether the blog team will survive beyond the tenure of Karen P. Hughes, the confidante of President Bush who runs public diplomacy. The department expects to add seven more team members within the next month — four more in Arabic, two in Farsi and one in Urdu, the official language of Pakistan.

The team concentrates on about a dozen mainstream Web sites such as chat rooms set up by the BBC and Al Jazeera or charismatic Muslim figures like Amr Khaled, as well as Arab news sites like Elaph.com. They choose them based on high traffic and a focus on United States policy, and they always identify themselves as being from the State Department.

CENSORSHIP:
EGYPT EXTENDS CRACKDOWN TO PRESS

The arrest of Ibrahim Eissa and three other opposition journalists is the latest signal of tightening government control, reflecting anxiety over presidential succession.

Egyptian and foreign human rights activists say the crackdown on the press is unprecedented in recent Egyptian history. While state harassment comes with the territory for independent journalists, never before have four editors been tried and convicted at the same time.

Mr. Said, the political scientist, argues that the current crackdown reflects the cycle of Egyptian politics since independence.

"Towards the end of regimes they engage in harassment of opposition leaders, close newspapers and so forth," he says. "It's like in September 1981 when [Anwar] Sadat arrested many politicians of many political persuasions." Shortly after that, Sadat – then president – was assassinated. "That's why many people are calling what's happening now the winds of September," says Said. "These are the last years of Mubarak's life, and whenever the government feels it has to ensure a favorable successor, it does this."

GOVERNMENT BANS MUSLIM Brotherhood's ANNUAL RAMADAN EVENT

CAIRO: The government has banned the Muslim Brotherhood's largest annual social gathering for the first time in 20 years, part of a concerted crackdown against the country's opposition, the group's leadership said Sunday.

Every year, the Brotherhood invites a diverse group of some 1,500 people to one of Cairo's five-star hotels for a gala dinner during Ramadan.

The government has also targeted organizations unrelated to the transfer of power. Earlier Tuesday, authorities closed the Association for Human Rights Legal Aid, which had been involved in the first lawsuit against a state security officer for torture.

Egyptian officials said the group had received funding without the necessary permission, but fellow human rights groups said the closure was related to the torture case, which ended with the officer's acquittal on Sept. 5. Associated Press.

AS STATE CLOSES PROMINENT HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP, ACTIVISTS FEAR FURTHER CRACKDOWN

Noha Atef, the editor of the advocacy website www.tortureinegypt.net, agrees. According to her, the shut down of such a prominent legal aid organization is meant to have a chilling effect on human rights advocacy in Egypt.

“This association is very active and has defended many torture victims, so it is only logical that the government would come after them,” she says.

“The state wants to send a message to other civil society groups — they say ‘this was one of the biggest groups and we can just dissolve it whenever we want.’” she adds “That this can happen to a big organization with a lot of its own lawyers — how do you think normal people who don’t have a team of lawyers with them will feel about standing up against torture?”

Bush Calls for Expansion of Spy Law

Critics Right and Left Protest Book Removals

The federal Bureau of Prisons is under pressure from members of Congress and religious groups to reverse its decision to purge the shelves of prison chapel libraries of all religious books and materials that are not on the bureau’s lists of approved resources.

The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of some of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, sent a letter on Wednesday to the bureau’s director, Harley G. Lappin, saying, “We must ensure that in America the federal government is not the undue arbiter of what may or may not be read by our citizens.”

Weekend News Roundup

MUSLIMS IN AMERICA:

Samaha (Blog) - ISNA: Invasion of The ISNA Deaniacs

Around me I could hear whispers of “Howard Dean” and I watched the youth all around me, all wide eyed, explaining Howard Dean to their parents, aunts and uncles.

It was quite interesting watching these fidgety late teens and twenty-something year olds turning their heads, looking towards the door anxiously awaiting Howard Dean. This was it - this right here, this vibrant young enthusiasm was what differentiated my generation from theirs. Not because they are Deaniacs, mind you, but because within these wide eyes you can see hope. You can see the innocence and yes the good naivety that none of us should ever have lost. You can see in their eyes the hidden solutions that they all carry to all of the problems of the world. You can see the simplicity of it all but somehow, somehow you just can’t see far enough to be able to touch it or grasp it, to feel it again.

Around this room sat future congresspeople, representatives, activists, philanthopists, and maybe even a future president. In this room sat our fidgety hope for a better tommorow and maybe a not so impossible world peace.

I should make note that ISNA itself insists that it is non-partisan and had invited republicans to this event but had no takers on the republican invitees - so the panel before us consisted of democrats. ~Way to go republicans~

He asked of us for the sake of America to get into politics “For the sake of America I need you to run for yourselves.”

That my friends was “The Take Back America Rally”

Charitable Tradition in Transition

Key edicts of Ramadan, which began yesterday at sunset, are to fast and promote good conduct. The devil is said to be shackled, making it easier than during the rest of the year to perform good deeds and give charity.

Mukit Hossain, 47, a telecommunications worker and Muslim activist in Northern Virginia, said holiday charity is deliberately done more publicly because Muslims are eager to build bridges after Sept. 11.

Community Times magazine, Lady Liberty, a Fellaha?

OnFaith from the Washington Post presents:
The Muslims of Jesus Camp

ISLAM:
Islam's Up-to-Date Televangelist

Secular critics say Khaled, the son of a doctor, is fostering a religious revival rather than modern reform. Wael Abbas, a leading Egyptian blogger, said Khaled is the "first step to Islamization. He's charismatic and the girls like him. But Egypt is becoming more conservative as a result of him. More girls have started to wear veils."

The question now is whether Khaled represents a fad or an enduring trend. Khaled is most popular among the middle and upper classes. Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper described him as a "Pied Piper" leading Arab youth "to an unknown destination -- much to the discontent of the town elders.

From Finding Radical Islam to Losing an Ideology

LONDON, Sept. 11 — For four years, Maajid Nawaz, a British Pakistani university student, was imprisoned in Egypt, enduring months of solitary confinement and the screams of those being tortured.

Mr. Nawaz left Britain on his fateful trip to Egypt on Sept. 10, 2001, for a year abroad to study Arabic. In April 2002, he was charged and sentenced by the Egyptians for spreading the beliefs of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic group that is legal in Britain but banned in Egypt and other countries because it calls for the overthrow of governments in the Muslim world.

Calls in Britain for the banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir usually stress that the group is a gateway for some Muslims to turn to terrorism. As Mr. Nawaz puts it, “Hizb ut-Tahrir spearheaded the radicalization of the 1990s and cultivated an atmosphere of anger.”

Mr. Nawaz is the product of a third-generation British Pakistani family. His father recently retired as an oil engineer, and his mother works in a bank; they live in Essex, a middle-class area south of London.

When he was growing up, Islam seemed like an irrelevant, “backward village religion,” he said. That attitude changed when he was 16.

On a rare visit to a mosque, he met a Bangladeshi student, a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, who he said preyed on his confusion about his British Pakistani identity.

Miscellaneous:
Reprieve for the Pint and the Ounce

BRUSSELS, Sept. 11 — Britons and the Irish can still down a pint of beer, walk a mile, covet an ounce of gold and eat a pound of bananas after the European Union ruled today that the countries could retain measurements dating back to the Middle Ages.

Under a previous European Union plan, Britain and Ireland would have been forced to adopt the metric system and phase out imperial measurements by 2009. But after a vociferous antimetric campaign by British skeptics and London’s tabloid press, European Union officials decided that an ounce of common sense (or 28.3 grams) suggested that granting a reprieve was better than braving a public backlash.

They also feared that forcing Britain to abolish the imperial system would have damaged European Union trade with the United States, one of three countries, including Liberia and Myanmar, that have not officially adopted the metric system.

A British grocer, Steve Thoburn of Sunderland, became known as the “metric martyr” when he was convicted in 2001 of measuring fruits and vegetables in pounds and ounces instead of kilograms. A court gave him a six-month conditional discharge. He died of a heart attack in 2004 just days after learning that his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against a conviction for using nonmetric scales in his market stall had been rejected.

Under the European Union decision, they can retain miles on road signs, and pubs may continue to serve pints of beer. Other goods must be sold in metric quantities, but retailers can display imperial equivalents.

CENSORSHIP:
'Breast-Feeding Is Obscene'

'This is a death announcement for freedom of press in Egypt'

"This is a death announcement for the freedom of press in Egypt," Eisa said.

Qandil said the "severe" verdict would not weaken him.

Hafez Abu Seada, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, said: "This is something very unique to Egypt," he said.

"I have never seen, at least in the last five years, any country that jails four editors in one day.

For China's Censors, Electronic Offenders Are the New Frontier

Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries

But prison chaplains, and groups that minister to prisoners, say that an administration that put stock in religion-based approaches to social problems has effectively blocked prisoners’ access to religious and spiritual materials — all in the name of preventing terrorism.

“It’s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer,” said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian group. “There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.”

The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions. There are nine titles by C. S. Lewis, for example, and none from the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth and Cardinal Avery Dulles, and the influential pastor Robert H. Schuller.

Weekend News Roundup

Anyone who has lived in Ohio, along I-75, and had to travel north towards Toledo, could not miss the huge mosque, out in the middle of nowhere. It was there when we moved to Findlay, Ohio in 1987. At that time, it must have been quite a sight for anyone traveling the highway, as the minarets could be spotted miles away. The Christian Science Monitor has an article this week about the mosque, it's history and the community.

Just like last week I have ignored articles that I just decided not to include in my post. If you have a complaint - tough! Vagabondblogger gets fed up with the news sometimes, thus leading to total frustration and temporary insanity.

Check out the Weekend News Update - Prelude, from yesterday for a few censored comics and a photo essay on the "Violent Femmes" - the Taliban's effeminate side.

For the full article, please click on the links (as usual.)

MUSLIMS IN AMERICA:

A MOSQUE IN AMERICA'S HEARTLAND

The Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, Ohio, has roots going back 75 years has shaped a faith for today.

PERRYSBURG, OHIO - From Interstate 75, the sight is striking: A gleaming white mosque with twin minarets in the classical Islamic style rises out of the Ohio countryside.

One of the accomplishments of the center as it grew over the years has been forging a flourishing community (550 families) from Muslims of 23 nationalities, as well as both Sunnis and Shiites. From the start, people were expected to keep ethnic or sectarian differences out of the mosque.

"We try to knock down this kind of division and to teach mainstream Islam," says Imam Farooq Aboelzahab, an Egyptian trained at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The imam says he had a lot to learn himself when he arrived in 1998.

"I had to learn from the last imam how to be more open-minded, more flexible, and to compromise on little things and focus on important issues," he adds.

Abandon Stereotypes, Muslims in America Say

The United States must stop treating every American Muslim as somehow suspect, leaders of the faith said at their largest annual convention.

Leaders of American Muslim organizations attribute the growing intolerance to three main factors: global terrorist attacks in the name of Islam, disappointing reports from the Iraq war and the agenda of some supporters of Israel who try taint Islam to undermine the Palestinians.

American Muslims say they expect the attacks to worsen in the presidential election and candidates to criticize Islam in an effort to prove that they are tough on terrorism.

Ex-Diplomat Testifies for Muslim Charity

From 1993 to 1999, Abingdon was consul-general in Jerusalem, and like others he was under orders not to have contact with Hamas.

Abingdon said the Israelis provided intelligence to the CIA, and defense attorney Nancy Hollander asked him if he found the Israeli information reliable. "No," he answered, and she asked why not.

"I feel the Israelis have an agenda ... they provide selective information to try to influence U.S. thinking," he said.

CENSORSHIP:

How to access blocked websites - Top 10

Weekend News Roundup - Prelude

A few tidbits to chew on, while you're waiting for the Weekend News Roundup. Two Opus comics that were censored from major U.S. newspapers, such as the Washington Post. You never know, even the hijab or burkini in a comic strip could cause trouble. And as for burkhas, ever wonder why the Taliban demanded that women wear them? Could it be they felt threatened? You'll have to check out the photo essay below, to see where Vagabondblogger is coming from.


CENSORSHIP:
Opus, the censored comic

Opus, Burkini comic



Violent Femmes: The Taliban's Secret Photos
A Magnum photo essay. During his coverage of the fall of Afghanistan's Taliban regime in 2002, photographer Thomas Dworzak discovered a stash of pictures showing male Taliban members in curious, effeminate poses.


If player / video doesn't work you can view it at here at Slate.