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Anti-Arab graffiti stuns Maryland churches

By Erin Donaghue

It was Jan. 13, a Tuesday evening, when parishioners at the Sts. Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church on River Road first noticed the graffiti. It was scrawled in blue spray paint on a back entryway to the church — according to officials there, a dimly lit area that would make it an easy target for vandals.

Written across the door was a Star of David and the words "Israel forever — Arabs never." The incident has shocked congregants at the Potomac church, which draws many parishioners who are of Middle Eastern descent. While the services are conducted in English, much of the chanting is in Greek or Arabic.

"I was stunned," said Bethesda resident Joanne Demchok, a parishioner at the church. "Why would someone do something like that?" According to the Rev. George Rados, a priest there, the incident was most likely tied to the recent conflict in Gaza. Israel launched an offensive into Gaza late last month, drawing widespread criticism from humanitarian groups, in response to rocket fire.

Source: [Gazette.net]

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Report: Senior Saudi cleric OKs 10-year-old to marry

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) A pan-Arab newspaper quotes Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric as saying it is OK for 10-year-old girls to marry.The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper also quotes Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Baz, the country's grand mufti, as saying that those who believe women should not marry before the age of 25 are following a "bad path."

His comments during a lecture Monday come as Saudi human rights groups are fighting to put an end to marriages involving the very young. The groups are pressing the government to define the minimum age for marriage.

On Sunday, the government-run National Human Rights Commission condemned marriages of minor girls, saying such marriages are an "inhumane violation."

Source: [MSNBC]

Guerilla Street Artist Princess Hijab Hits Paris

I admit, the title put me off a little. Princess Hijab? But when I looked through her flicker albums, I was blown away. Princess Hijab is an anonymous 20-year-old guerilla street artist based in Paris, who began her “noble cause” of “hijab-ising” advertisements in 2006. She does this by using spray paint and a black marker to cover women’s faces and bodies in ads, or by pasting “hijab ad” posters everywhere she goes.

There’s no way of knowing if Princess Hijab is a hijabi. Or even a Muslim. And although I don’t really ‘get’ art, I find her work fascinating. According to her profile page on Art Review:

She takes the veil/ hijab/ chador, which a number of French citizens believe is incompatible with the main principles of French secularism and would prefer it to remain in the private sphere, and brings it firmly into the public sphere.

Source: [Muslimah Media Watch]

As Taboos Ease, Saudi Girl Group Dares to Rock

By Robert F. Worth

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album cover photographs. Even their jam sessions are secret, for fear of offending the religious authorities in this ultraconservative kingdom. But the members of Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, are clearly not afraid of taboos.

The band’s first single, “Pinocchio,” has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s MySpace page. Now, the pioneering foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs — inside private compounds, of course — and recording an album.

“In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” said the group’s lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. (Like other band members, she gave only her first name.) “Maybe we’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.” In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different.

Source: [NY Times]

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Mufti: Let men and women pray together

SYDNEY -- The Mufti of Australia wants to allow men and women to pray together in the country's mosques, a break with tradition observers say may anger some Muslims.

Sheik Fehmi Naji el-Imam argues that separating the sexes in mosques is a cultural matter, not a religious one required by the Koran, The Age reports. He plans to propose the change at the Australian National Imams' Council meeting in December.

He told the newspaper he is trying to respond to complaints from Muslim women that the religion discriminates against them. "It is good to hear the complaints of the sisters, and to try to find some solution to their concerns," he said. "My duty is to propose, to discuss and try to convince. I can't guarantee the outcome."

Source: [UPI]

Madaba mosque fosters peaceful coexistence

By Jumana Al Tamimi

Dubai: A newly built masjid in a Jordanian city was named Al Maseeh Eisa Bin Mariam (Jesus Christ Son of Mary) in a bid to show Muslims and Christians can coexist. This comes amid what many Jordanians and Muslims describe as increasing enmity between Islam in the West.

Surprised

"In this way, we want to emphasise that Jesus is loved by all Muslims," the masjid's imam, Jamal Safarati, was quoted as saying in press reports. "Muslims don't disagree on that," he added.

Verses from the Quran dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ have been inscribed on the facade of the mosque, which was inaugurated three months ago. The masjid was built a short distance from a church in the small city of Madaba, 30km southwest of Amman.

Source: [Gulf News]

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Fiction meets fact in Hebron film

By Tim Franks

It is an ordinary story, in an extraordinary setting. Hebron is the site for what its Israeli makers claim is the first fictional feature film ever to be shot in the city. The city has become a byword for some of the sharpest tensions on the West Bank. It is the only West Bank city where Jewish settlers live in the midst of Palestinians.

The plot of Graduation is slender: it tells the story of a young Palestinian woman called Ayat, who is played by 23-year-old actress Yousra Barakat. Ayat is attempting to reach her college graduation on the night of the Jewish festival of Purim. The Palestinians in the centre of the city are under curfew, so that the Jewish settlers can hold their Purim parade - a wild whirligig of coloured lights, loud music, fancy dress and feverish dancing.

Ayat decides, along with her younger brother, to break the curfew. Theirs is an attempted journey past roadblocks, sealed entrances and checkpoints, and past soldiers and settlers. The film's director is Yaelle Kayam, a 28-year-old from Tel Aviv and graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem.

Source: [BBC]

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Saudi cleric favours one-eye veil

Two-eyed look remains too seductive for Sheikh Habadan

A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.
Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.

The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies. The niqab is more common in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but women in much of the Muslim Middle East wear a headscarf which covers only their hair.

Sheikh Habadan, an ultra-conservative cleric who is said to have wide influence among religious Saudis, was answering questions on the Muslim satellite channel al-Majd.

Source: [BBC]

On Beirut's Hamra street, all are welcome

By Borzou Daragahi

Through their apartment windows or from just over the tops of their newspapers, the artists, writers, students, journalists and lawyers peered at the beefy armed men. They had come before, grimacing young toughs wielding Kalashnikovs, their legs dangling over the sides of pickup trucks, swaggering along the sidewalks, festooning streetlights with their flags.

This time it was the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah and its allies, gangs of less disciplined gunmen who burned buildings and terrorized their enemies. But others had tried to impose their will here before, in the one part of this city that has refused to bow to narrow-mindedness and embraces the country’s political and religious melting pot.

Unlike the rest of Lebanon, Beirut’s Hamra Street doesn’t belong to Sunni or Shiite or Christian or Druze. In a Middle East characterized by extremes of poverty or wealth, radical Islamic fundamentalism or compulsive Western-style consumerism, decrepit slums or gated Persian Gulf fortresses, Hamra Street stands out.

Source: [LA Times]

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Gunmen kidnap Iraqi Chaldean Catholic archbishop

MOSUL, Iraq -- Gunmen kidnapped the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul on Friday in the northern Iraqi city and killed his driver and two companions, police said. "He was kidnapped in the al-Nour district in eastern Mosul when he left a church. Gunmen opened fire on the car, killed the other three and kidnapped the archbishop," said provincial police spokesman Brigadier-General Khaled Abdul Sattar.

An assistant to Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, the Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad and spiritual leader of Iraq's Catholics, said they had heard that three people had been killed and they did not know the fate of the archbishop, Paulos Faraj Rahho.

Christian clergy targeted

A number of Christian clergy have been kidnapped or killed, and churches bombed in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.Last June gunmen murdered Catholic priest Ragheed Aziz Kani and three assistants in Mosul, 240 miles north of Baghdad, after stopping his car near a church in the eastern part of the city.

Source: [MSNBC]

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