One in Four American Muslims Condone Suicide Bombings

A new survey of American Muslims has shown that one in four American Muslims believe that it is sometimes acceptable to commit suicide bombings on innocent civilians to protect your religion. Note how this is an indorsement of bombing innocent civilians, and not military targets.

Vatican tries to stop child abuse documentary airing on Italian TV

Bishops in Italy are putting pressure on Italian television's public broadcasting corporation, RAI, in an attempt to stop the broadcasting of BBC documentary examining the systematic cover up of child sex abuse cases involving members of the Church by the current Pope himself. The documentary claims that the current Pope ordered the renewal of measures specifically designed to protect those priests guilty of child abuse by relocating them and by pressuring victims into keeping quiet.
The Panorama documentary has already become one of the most watched videos on the Italian Google video, but now Catholic bishops are trying to prevent it from reaching an even larger audience.
The secret measures only came into the spotlight in 2003 when they became the focus of much media examination. When the documentary was shown in Britain, it caused the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy -O Conner to complain to the BBC about their decision to show it.

17 year old girl stoned to death for loving boy of different religion

A 17 year old girl was dragged from her home by eight men in Iraq and stoned to death for thirty minutes until she was dead. The girl was condemned to death by members of her own family and religious leaders for carrying on a relationship with with Sunni Muslim boy, ( she belonged to the Kurdish 'Yezidi').
As the stoning took place, a security force stood by and watched. An Amnesty International spokesman said that they frequently receive reports of honour killings like this one from Iraq, usually carried out by male relatives who feel that a female has somehow shamed the family by erring from their religious doctrines. Retaliatory attacks have already begun, as 23 Kurds were killed by Sunni insurgents last week. The victim's boyfriend is allegedly in hiding following the murder.

Mormon women in court over child torture charges.

Two Mormon women, Deidre Carrington and Maria Keable, have appeared in court charged with the torture of children in their care. The pair forced the children to eat red-hot chillies, punched and kicked them, gagged them, and whipped them with nettles, in order to instill discipline in them. The children, some as young as two years old, were awoken at 5am each morning to say prayers and read scripture. After this, they would be forced to do hours of housework, facing physical abuse as punishment if this was not done to a satisfactory standard. Ms Carrington responded by saying that 'she was a member of the church and had strict principles to teach the children how to work and be obedient.'

Group cleared over Iran murders

Iran's Supreme Court has acquitted a group of men charged over a series of gruesome killings in 2002, according to lawyers for the victims' families. The vigilantes were not guilty because their victims were involved in un-Islamic activities, the court found. The killers said they believed Islam let them spill the blood of anyone engaged in illicit activities if they issued two warnings to the victims. The serial killings took place in 2002 in the south-eastern city of Kerman.

According to their confessions, the killers put some of their victims in pits and stoned them to death. Others were suffocated. One man was even buried alive while others had their bodies dumped in the desert to be eaten by wild animals. The accused, who were all members of an Islamic paramilitary force, told the court their understanding of the teachings of one Islamic cleric allowed them to kill immoral people if they had ignored two warnings to stop their bad behaviour.

Lawyers for the victims' families say the Supreme Court has five times overturned the verdict of a lower court that found all the men guilty of murder. Now the Supreme Court is reported to have acquitted all the killers of the charge of murder on the grounds that their victims were all morally corrupt.

Aids Victims Risk Lives

Thousands of Aids and HIV patients are risking their lives by refusing medication in favour of holy water. The controversial treatment is offered by a church in Ethiopia which claims to have cured hundreds of believers.

The church claims that more than a thousand people have been cured in the past two years. Head priest Father Geberemedhen says "We don't allow patients to take medication if they want to receive holy water". That means they must stop taking the antiretrovirals which prevent the disease taking hold, and prolong the life of those who carry the HIV virus.

Religious students hold woman capture after 'brothel' accusations

Religious students in Pakistan have taken a woman prisoner after accusing her of running a brothel. The students also kidnapped two of the woman's relatives, and later, two police officers in retaliation for the arrest of two teachers from the school. The woman was forced to apologise and promise to live a 'pious life, ' 'in the name of God.' After her release, the woman spoke of the rough treatment she had been given. "They tied me, my daughter and daughter-in-law and my six-month-old grand-daughter up with rope," she said.
The woman denied running a brothel. Instead, she claimed she had rented a room to a woman, without knowing what it was to be used for. "I don't think Islam allows anyone to beat a woman and drag her through the streets like a dog," the Associated Press news agency quoted her as saying.
A spokesman for the students said that they had acted to stop the spread of obscenity, and that they considered the apology to represent a victory against Pakinstani liberals.

The fires of Hell are real and eternal, Pope warns

Hell is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, the Pope has said.

Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, Benedict XVI said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to “admit blame and promise to sin no more”, they risked “eternal damnation — the Inferno”.
Hell “really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more”, he said.

Muslim pupils kill teacher

Muslim pupils at a secondary school in northeastern Nigeria beat a teacher to death today after accusing her of desecrating the Koran. Oluwatoyin Olusase, a Christian, was adjudicating an Islamic Religious Knowledge exam at the school in Gombe state when the incident occurred. The students attacked her outside the school compound after the exam and killed her, witnesses said.

At least 15,000 people have died in religious, communal and political violence in Africa's most populous country since 1999, when Nigeria returned to democracy after 30 years of almost unbroken military rule.

Three jailed for beheading girls

Three Islamic militants convicted of decapitating three Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia and dumping their bloodied heads in villages were sentenced yesterday to between 14 and 20 years.
The alleged members of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network left a note close to the bodies vowing more killings to avenge the deaths of Muslims in sectarian violence on Sulawesi island.

"Wanted - 100 more heads," said Judge Lilik Mulyadi, reciting the letter. "Blood must be paid with blood, lives with lives, heads with heads."

Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation, has been hit by a string of terrorist attacks targeting Christians and nightclubs, restaurants and foreign embassies.

Seven civilians killed in car bomb attack in Baghdad.

In yet another attack on citizens in Iraq, a car bomb exploded in a Shia area. The attack targeted Shia Muslims who had gathered at an open air grill to celebrate a religious festival. Seven were killed and a further twenty six were wounded in the attack. Elsewhere in the capital, a further seven civilians were killed when gunmen opened fire on a bus.

Indian Muslim Group Calls for Beheading of Writer

An Indian Muslim group, All India Ibtehad Council, has called for the beheading of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen. The group has offered a reward for her beheading of 500, 000 rupees, (roughly £6000.)
Nasreen's 'crime' is to have written a novel which deals with the story of a Hindu family who suffer persecution at the hands of Muslims in Bangladesh. The book is considered blasphemous by Muslims in India, and Nasreen was driven out of her home in 1994 as a result.
The president of the group, Taqi Raza Khan, said that by writing the story, she had 'put Muslims to shame.' He did, however, offer her a way out of her decapitation; the bounty will be lifted as soon as she "apologises, burns her books and leaves".

Catholic school bans fund-raising for Comic Relief

Students at St Paul's Catholic College in Burgess Hill in Sussex have been told not to participate in Red Nose Day because some of the money raised might be used to support charities that supply contraception or recommend abortion – activities that conflict with the school's so-called "Catholic ethos". Much of Comic Relief's work is done in Africa, where Aids is a major problem and it is considered vital that condoms are made available. The Catholic Church, though, opposes such life-saving methods.

Laura McCann, a policy and briefing officer for the Catholic Education Service, said "We have been assured by Comic Relief that no money at all goes to abortion charities. Three to five per cent goes to family planning measures. Schools are welcome to take part but they should make clear they don't want their donations to go towards reproductive health."

Women and children shot in bus massacre

Nine people, including four women and two teenage girls, were shot through the head yesterday in one of the most shocking attacks so far in Thailand’s worsening Islamic insurgency.
The victims were passengers on a commercial minibus in the far south, where more than 2,000 people have been murdered over the past three years.

According to the police, the dead included teachers, students, traders, farmers and a soldier. All were Buddhists, apart from the Muslim driver. Victims of the three-year Islamic insurgency have included monks, teachers and soldiers from the Buddhist north of the country, as well as Muslim villagers.

It is assumed that the aim of the attacks is to drive out Buddhist migrants and establish the three southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani as an independent sultanate.

14/03/07 Pope reaffirms Catholic Values

The pope releases a 140 page document reaffirming the 'fundamental values' of the Catholic faith. In particular, this takes the form of repeating his opposition to gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia, and marriages for priests. The pope states that 'these values are not negotiable.'

08/03/07: SAUDI RAPE VICTIM SENTENCED TO 90 LASHES.

A woman in Saudi Arabia is gang raped at knife point fourteen times. According to Islam, she has brought great shame to her family by being the victim of rape, and so her brother beats her. Following the ordeal, the woman is sentenced to ninety lashes for the crime of being alone with a male to whom she was not related.