May 22, 2012
By John Mitchell

Lady Gaga has responded to the increasingly volatile situation surrounding her “Born This Way” concert in Indonesia, saying on Twitter that she has been asked by authorities to censor her show and has received threats of violence from Islamic hardliners should it go on as planned.

Earlier reports indicated that Gaga’s planned June 3 concert at Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Stadium had been canceled after Indonesian national police refused to issue a permit, citing objections from Islamic groups who worried that Gaga’s performance would corrupt the nation’s youth. However, Gaga’s tour promoters are currently negotiating with government officials and police for the concert to go forward as planned.
“The Jakarta situation is 2-fold: Indonesian authorities demand I censor the show & religious extremist separately, are threatening violence,” Gaga tweeted Tuesday (May 22). “If the show does go on as scheduled, I will perform the BTWBall alone.”

Fifty thousand tickets for the show have been sold.

While Indonesia is a secular state governed as a multi-party representative democratic republic, it has the world’s largest population of Muslims, most of whom practice a moderate form of the religion. However, there are also more extremist fringe groups that have in recent years become increasingly vocal, particularly regarding Western entertainers visiting the country. Beyonc é, for example, was permitted to perform in Indonesia — the world’s fourth most populous nation — on the condition she agreed to dress more conservatively.

But these groups’ problems with Gaga extend beyond her wardrobe. The country’s top Islamic body, the National Ulema Council (MUI), has said it objects to the concert not only because of her provocative costumes, but because it considers her lyrics to be “blasphemous,” according to the AFP.

“Lady Gaga is considered an icon for liberal culture and Indonesia’s freedom is not without limits,” MUI official Asrorun Niam told AFP. “There are restrictions related to norms, morals and religion.”

A more militant group, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), said it would “create havoc” if the pop star’s performance went ahead, calling her the “devil’s messenger.” The Jakarta Globe reports the FPI have purchased 150 tickets to the concert, promising to enter the venue and stop the concert.

A spokesperson for FPI stressed that the group would not attack the audience, as their only target was Gaga and her crew. The group posted to its Facebook page a photo of a member wearing a turban and sunglasses to conceal his face, holding a ticket to the show with a caption reading, “We have gotten Lady Gaga tickets, not to watch but for us to enter. Whatever will be will be, we’re ready for the risk.”

“Hopefully, the concert is canceled,” the FPI has said. The group previously threatened to intercept Gaga in transit from the airport if she even enters Indonesia.

Despite the threats, lawyers representing Gaga’s tour production company reportedly met with Jakarta police today to negotiate the conditions necessary for the concert to go on as scheduled. A Jakarta police spokesman has said that for the concert to go ahead, concert promoters need to secure permits from the tourism ministry and the concert venue owner, in addition to ensuring Gaga “is dressed appropriately and does not violate cultural norms in this country.”

Gaga also encountered protests in the Philippines from conservative Christian groups ahead of her concerts in Manila, but seemed in good spirits despite the controversy, tweeting, “And don’t worry, if I get thrown in jail in Manila, Beyonce will just bail me out. Sold out night 2 in the Philippines. I love it here!”

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1685564/lady-gaga-islam-threat-indonesia-concert.jhtml

May 21, 2012
Wilfredo Amr Ruiz.
Muslim Chaplain, Attorney and Political Analyst

Former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama have persistently affirmed: “We are not at war with Islam,” trying to assure 1.7 billion Muslims that the military actions of the so-called “war against terrorism” do not constitute belligerence against Islam or Muslims.

This incessant message of denial is hard to swallow by many sectors of our society, and the world at large, since the United States has engaged in multiple wars of occupation in Muslim countries including Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, it conducts routine military incursions and bombardment campaigns on Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and other Muslim countries. Furthermore, thousands of Muslim citizens around the world are subjected to arrest without formal accusations or due process of law. Incarcerations and even torture takes place at a network of international secret prisons and “black hole” locations operated or accessed by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Unfortunately, in the American political arena there is also the perception that the government security and intelligence agencies and military apparatus are at war with Islam and Muslims. They substantiate this notion with continuous discriminatory and prejudiced policies affecting American Muslims and their institutions. Let us take, for example, the harsh experience New York Muslims are undergoing with the NYPD. They are subject to widespread and ongoing espionage policies from their own police department, which include the opening of dossiers based on ethnic and religious profiling. This openly unconstitutional practice is not based on suspiciousness of them committing crimes or being engaged in an ongoing criminal enterprise. Rather, the information recorded documents the restaurants they frequent, the books they check out, and even the times and places where they conduct their daily prayers.

Evidently, the constant Islamophobic discourses have resonated to the military branches, resulting in the offering of multiple training courses with discriminatory, bigoted and offensive materials. Some of these academic materials recently discovered are taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., in which mainstream Muslim persons and organizations are characterized as radical, violent extremists. The course even calls for treating the Muslim civilian population the way the Japanese were dealt with at Hiroshima, with nuclear attacks on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and wiping out civilians. It promotes a total war on Islam affirming that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. The military training course participants are encouraged to think of themselves as a “resistance movement to Islam.” Other various training courses with xenophobic and bigoted content offered to the FBI have also been exposed. These are not isolated and unique classes, but multiple trainings held at numerous venues to hundreds of military officers and intelligence agents that are responsible for the safety and security of our nation. Notwithstanding the military and FBI’s promises to review their courses and purge the training curriculums of Islamophobic materials, we need ask ourselves: How many other courses (most of them classified as “Secret”) have been offered and, perhaps, are still being offered in these highly secured and secret agencies without public exposure?

The sad reality is that our nation has institutionalized vigilance based on stereotypical ethnic and religious profiling. Let us just examine for a moment the recent incident at Fort Lauderdale International Airport, where an 18-month-old toddler, a daughter of American parents of Middle Eastern descent, was ordered off a plane by Jet Blue Airline’s officials who claimed she was on the TSA’s “no fly” list: a list obviously fed with the names of people selected based on ethnic and religious profiling. The toddler case is not the only one of its kind, as another 500 American citizens are also in these puzzling and sinister lists in the absence of due process. The lists are not only ineffective, but openly unconstitutional because individuals are included without notification or being told why they are on the list and without the chance to rebut the basis of their inclusion.

What will our political leaders do to try to erase the idea that the Nation is engaged in a war against Islam and Muslims? The major challenge they confront in this task is that the more time elapses, the more discrimination, oppression, persecution and injustices cements against American Muslims and their institutions.

President Obama still has the option and opportunity to rise to the occasion and confront this most delicate situation at the level it merits. He might, perhaps, start cleaning and straightening the Executive Branch from head to toe. The president should take steps that truly guarantee the elimination of racial and religious profiling exercised by law enforcement agencies and should swiftly end all the futile wars on Muslim countries once and for all. Perhaps, he should follow the Executive Order he signed back on Jan. 22, 2009, mandating the “Closure of Detention Facilities at Guantanamo” and the “Immediate Review of All Guantanamo Detentions.” Only such decisive actions will sustain the hollowed presidential words: “We are not at war with Islam.”

Follow Wilfredo Amr Ruiz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AnalistaInter
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wilfredo-amr-ruiz/we-are-not-at-war-with-islam_b_1530297.html

Religion News Service | By David Finnigan Posted: 05/21/2012
LOS ANGELES (RNS) After lobbying from Muslim and Sikh leaders, the Los Angeles Police Department has agreed to modify its information-gathering program on suspicious activities after the New York Police Department came under fire for spying on local Muslims.

Since 2008, the LAPD has used the federal Suspicious Activities Reporting (SAR) program to file reports on potential terrorist-related actions, such as someone photographing certain buildings. Sikh and Muslim leaders said the LAPD’s Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau should ensure that future suspicious activity reports are prompted by actual behavior with apparently genuine criminal or terrorist elements.

Under the new guidelines, information that’s gathered on what later is determined to be innocent behavior, but still remaining in SAR files, will be erased from counterterrorism databases.

“SAR is a reality,” said Muslim Public Affairs Council President Salam Al-Marayati, who worked with the ACLU, the South Asian Network and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund on the program changes. “We’re removing noncriminal behavior from SAR reporting, and data on innocuous behavior is being purged.”

Cmdr. Blake Chow of the LAPD’s counterterrorism bureau called the changes an “example of our ability to reach out to the people we work with. There’s a little bit of (information) regrouping. We’re still going to be collecting suspicious activity reports. The program is still as robust as it is now.”

Al-Marayati told RNS that unlike the problems with the NYPD’s spying on Muslim groups, the Los Angeles reforms reflect police wanting to work with mosques and not view Muslims with suspicion.

“The community engagement model can work; it’s more effective,” said Al-Marayati. “The mosques have rejected the al-Qaida ideology of death — that’s why it’s even more important for law enforcement to partner with the mosques.”
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/lapd-muslim-surveillance-modification_n_1534480.html?ref=email_share

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent

LONDON | Tue May 22, 2012 9:04am EDT

LONDON (Reuters)- When Malaysian cyclist Azizulhasni Awang opted to postpone his Ramadan fast until after the London Games, the decision was all about going for Olympic gold.

Anything that might jeopardize the chance of a medal for the 24-year-old at his second Olympics had to be dealt with sensibly, he says. And going without food and drink between sunrise and sunset every day for four weeks is just too risky.

“We need to train, we need food, fluids, water,” he told Reuters during a training session at a velodrome in Melbourne with team mate Fatehah Mustapa, who will become the first Malaysian woman cyclist to ride at an Olympics.

“We’ve trained really, really hard … to strive for the gold medal, so we’re not going to waste it. This Olympics is really important for me and Fatehah. You think we’re going to sacrifice that?”

The coincidence of Ramadan this year with the London Olympics, which starts on July 27, a week into the month-long Muslim fast, has thrown up a dilemma for the estimated 3,000 Muslim athletes expected to compete.

The Ramadan fast is a time when Muslims are required to abstain from food and drink during daylight hours. Athletes are allowed to defer their fasts until a later date, but many Muslim sportsmen and women from cultures or countries where not fasting is frowned upon may well honor the holy month.

MUSCLE POWER, SPIRITUAL STRENGTH

Medical experts say that, theoretically at least, a reduction of food intake during Ramadan could deplete an athlete’s liver and muscle glycogen stores. This is likely to lead to a drop in performance, particularly in sports requiring muscle strength.

Foreseeing potential problems and working far ahead of time, the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) nutrition working group convened a meeting in 2009 to review the evidence.

They came to the conclusion that Ramadan fasting could be problematic for some athletes in some sports, but the likely overall impact of Ramadan on London 2012 is far from clear.

Ronald Maughan, a sports scientist from Britain’s Loughborough University who chaired the IOC working group, agrees some physical changes are likely.

However, he also noted that observing the Muslim holy month involves mental and spiritual discipline, the effects of which should not be underestimated.

“Some individual Muslim athletes say they perform better during Ramadan even if they are fasting because they’re more intensely focused and because it’s a very spiritual time for them,” he told Reuters.

“Their faith gives them strength and Ramadan is an integral part of that faith.”

Maughan led a team of scientists who reviewed more than 400 research articles on Ramadan and selected those relevant to sporting performance. They found that “actual responses vary quite widely, depending on culture and the individual’s level and type of athletic involvement”.

“There are often small decreases of performance, particularly in activities requiring vigorous and/or repetitive muscular contraction,” the team wrote in the review, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) this month.

But they concluded that in most situations “Ramadan observance has had only limited adverse consequences for either training or competitive performance”.

ENDURANCE

Still, experts say Azizul and Fatehah’s concerns, that fasting could dim their chances of standing on the podium at the end of their competition, are well-founded.

Jim Waterhouse, a sport and exercise science professor at Liverpool John Moores University in Britain, laments that so few studies have been done that give direct insight into how Ramadan-observing athletes may fare during the Olympics.

He suggests looking at other similar research on fasting, such as in soccer players, or in people who are sporty but non-athletes.

A study in the BJSM in 2007 which looked at two Algerian professional soccer teams found that players’ performance declined significantly for speed, agility, dribbling speed and endurance during the Ramadan fast.

Nearly 70 percent of the players thought their training and performance were adversely affected.

Another study published in the BJSM in 2010 concluded that “Ramadan fasting had an adverse effect on performance, albeit small in magnitude, during 60 minutes of endurance treadmill running” by moderately trained Muslim men.

“It depends on the sport,” says Azizul. “If you come from skilled sport it doesn’t matter, but we (cyclists) require quite a lot of energy. I did try fasting last year during training. For the first one or two days it’s not really a huge decrease of performance, but after that I felt really flat.”

GETTING THE TIMING RIGHT

Some experts have wondered whether changing the timing of some events might be a way forward.

A Muslim 100 meters runner who is observing Ramadan and whose race is in the early part of the morning is unlikely to be particularly badly affected if he or she has been able to eat and drink up until sunrise, for example.

“But suppose you’re a decathlete and your competition starts first thing in the morning and ends at 8pm. With no food or drink in that time, that’s a long hard day, especially if it’s hot,” said Maughan.

Waterhouse notes that with many non-Muslim athlete also taking part in London 2102, and with peak television viewing times a key factor in scheduling events, changing timetables to accommodate Ramadan would be “fraught with difficulty”.

For now, his core advice would be to follow Azizul and Fatehah’s lead and postpone fasting until after the event.

“It’s very difficult to see that a person who is a strong adherent to Ramadan could maintain a proper program of preparation for something as important as an Olympic event while fasting,” he said. “It just doesn’t fit in with the physiology.”

(Additional reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/22/us-oly-ramadan-performace-idUSBRE84L0GR20120522?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

May 21, 2012
A big religious feeling deserves a big house of worship. Algeria is set to get its own mega-mosque with the tallest minaret in the world.
Almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower, the $1.3-billion mosque will stand on 20 hectares of land and will be capable of hosting 120,000 worshippers within its prayer room. Its minaret will soar 270 meters high.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said he wanted to “leave his mark” and enter history with this epic building.
The construction is currently underway in the city of Algiers, as the foundations began to be laid on Sunday. The building is due to be completed in 2015. China State Construction Engineering Corporation will build the mega-mosque, Al Arabiya reports.
It will also feature a library containing one million books and manuscripts, a museum and a research center.
The new mosque will be one of the world’s largest. Only those in Saudi Arabia’s Mecca and Medina, one in Iran’s Mashhad and one in Bhopal, India are capable of welcoming more worshippers. One of Europe’s biggest mosques is situated in Grozny, Russia’s Chechen Republic.
The world’s highest mosque resides on the 158th floor of the tallest manmade structure – the 830-meter Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
The world’s tallest mosque is currently the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco. Its minaret is 210 meters tall. The Prophet’s Mosque in the city of Medina is 105 meters high.
Source: http://rt.com/art-and-culture/news/chinese-algeria-tallest-largest-mosque-785/

May 20, 2012
The Associated Press

(AP) ISLAMABAD – Pakistan blocked the social networking website Twitter for much of Sunday because it refused to remove tweets considered offensive to Islam, said one of the country’s top telecommunications officials.

The tweets were promoting a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, said Mohammad Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication’s Authority. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.

The government restored access to Twitter before midnight Sunday, about eight hours after it initially blocked access. It was unclear whether the government reversed its decision because of action by Twitter or because of public criticism it received for its censorship.

Yaseen said Sunday afternoon that Pakistan’s Ministry of Information Technology had ordered the telecommunications authority to block Twitter because the company refused to remove the offending tweets. In contrast, Facebook had agreed to address Pakistan’s concerns about the competition, he said.

The ministry informed Yaseen to restore access to Twitter Sunday evening, but he did not know what led to the decision.

Officials from Twitter and Facebook were not immediately available for comment.

A top court in Pakistan ordered a ban on Facebook in 2010 amid anger over a similar competition. The ban was lifted about two weeks later, after Facebook blocked the particular page in Pakistan. The Pakistani government said at the time that it would continue to monitor other major websites for anti-Islamic links and content.

Even when Twitter was blocked Sunday, many people based in Pakistan continued to use the website by employing programs that disguise the user’s location. There was widespread criticism of the government’s action by those on Twitter, who tend to be more liberal than average Pakistanis.

“Another cheap moral stunt by Pakistan,” tweeted liberal Pakistani columnist Nadeem Paracha.

The 2010 Facebook controversy sparked many in Pakistan’s liberal elite to question why Pakistanis could not be entrusted to decide for themselves whether or not to look at a website. Some observers noted that Pakistan had gone further than several other Muslim countries by banning Facebook, and said it showed the rise of conservative Islam in the country.

There were a handful of protests against Facebook back in 2010, often organized by student members of radical Islamic groups. Some of the protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing the competition page to be posted in the first place.
Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57437835/pakistan-blocks-twitter-over-anti-islamic-material/

When Adil Imdad’s 28-year-old cousin died of cancer in Ohio two years ago, the family’s grief was compounded by the absence of Muslim ritual following her death. There was no imam nearby to handle the religious customs that were called for. There was no Muslim funeral director to supervise the washing of the body in the appropriate way. And there was no Muslim cemetery where the family could lay her to rest.

Imdad, an environmental and geotechnical engineer in St. Louis, also was disturbed by the funeral costs. He found that in St. Louis, Muslim families — many of them newly arrived immigrants and refugees — couldn’t afford the $5,000 and $7,000 for burial services.
So he began taking night classes at St. Louis Community College, graduating last spring with a certificate of specialization in funeral directing. As Imdad awaits his state licensing exam next month, he is hosting a fundraiser this evening at Daar-ul-Islam mosque, 517 Weidman Road, to raise money for what he says will be Missouri’s first Muslim funeral home.

“The community is growing, and things are going well for Muslims in St. Louis now,” Adil said. “But this is one area where we are way behind.”
Muslim communities in Kansas City, Columbia and Jefferson City maintain small funeral facilities, often inside mosques, for washing bodies of the deceased. But until now, Missouri Muslims buried their loved ones in Muslim sections of Christian cemeteries, relying largely on non-Muslims to guide them through the process of death.
As the Muslim population of the U.S. has grown, so has the need for Muslim-specific services like funeral homes and cemeteries. According to a 2011 survey, the number of mosques in the U.S. has grown 74 percent since 2000. In the St. Louis area, where there was once a few mosques, there are now 14 of varying sizes.
FINDING A CEMETERY
Jay Hardy, the owner of Jay B. Smith Funeral Homes in Maplewood and Fenton, said that in the 1970s, he handled one or two Muslim burials a year. Today that number is up to three or four each week, he said.
One reason for the jump, Hardy said, was the influx of Bosnian Muslims to St. Louis in the 1990s. In August, the Bosnian Islamic Center in Lemay bought a large plot of land in the old Odd Fellows Cemetery on Broadway, making it the first Muslim cemetery in St. Louis, said Imam Enver Kunic.
Burial fees in other cemeteries, “were too high,” Kunic said. “We had to do this for us.”
Gary Laderman, a religion professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and author of “Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America,” said that in the latter half of the 19th century, just as the funeral industry was taking shape after the Civil War, American Jews began to build their own branch of the business.
“It was about how they could control their own dead and ensure they were buried according to their ideals and expectations,” said Laderman. “And more recently we’ve seen other communities producing their own funeral directors, producing their own professionals or volunteers, who are increasingly involved in the disposition of their dead.”
Hardy acknowledged that logistical problems exist when a non-Muslim funeral home handles a Muslim funeral. Islam and Judaism share many ritual elements in the preparation and interment process. Embalming, for instance, is forbidden. And bodies should be buried before sunset on the day the person died, or at least within 24 hours. The timing often creates scheduling problems for funeral homes that are not dedicated specifically to Muslims or Jews.
“More times than not, (interment in 24 hours) doesn’t work out,” Hardy said.
Most of the work of preparing a Muslim body for burial is traditionally done by the family. The ritual is very simple: The body is washed in a prescribed way, then wrapped in pieces of white cotton cloth, called kafan. People who handle the body, including those who lower it into the grave, also should wash in a particular way.
Other restrictions about how a body is placed in the ground are sometimes at odds with public health laws, and there can be logistical problems with timing, for instance, if a cemetery is not prepared to open a grave at 6 p.m. on the day of death.
COST CONTROL
Mufti Asif Umar, the imam at Daar-ul-Islam, said keeping costs down for families was also at the heart of his support for Imdad’s Muslim funeral home idea. The average adult funeral, before the cost of burial, was $6,550 in 2009, the National Funeral Directors Association’s most recent numbers.
“We have a lot of needy in our community, people who can’t afford burial fees,” Umar said. The mosque’s burial fund, which members can tap into if they need help with funeral costs, is one of its most important collections, he said.
Anna Crosslin, executive director of the International Institute of St. Louis, said the cost of burials for refugees in St. Louis is a problem but says newer arrivals often benefit from funds raised by immigrants who have lived in St. Louis for some time. But she said those efforts can fall short.
“There are language and cultural barriers within Muslim communities, even within mosques, that may limit how much this can help everyone,” Crosslin said.
But Mohammed Hussein, a radiation oncologist from Washington, thinks practicing the correct religious rituals surrounding death should be a priority for American Muslim communities. In his spare time, he is a funeral director and travels around the country encouraging Muslims to come together and properly mark the end of life when it comes. He has served as something of a mentor to Imdad and recently donated a hearse to his future funeral home.
In Muslim countries, death and burial are “treated as a purely religious affair,” Hussein said. In the U.S., when someone invests in mortuary school and various other funeral-related degrees, certificates and licenses, “naturally, they want to make a living of it.”
But much of what a mortuary student who studies subjects like embalming and body restoration is irrelevant to Muslim funerals (open caskets are barred in Islam).
Imdad said that aside from small expenses for materials like soap and cotton shrouds, his funeral services will be free for the community. He estimates that with a deal he has arranged with the new Bosnian cemetery, he’ll be able to cut the total cost of preparation, funeral and burial down to less than $2,000.
After months of studying such Muslim funeral texts as “Funerals: Regulations & Exhortations” and “A Brief Summary About the People’s Violations in Funerals,” Imdad said he is ready to help ease people’s burdens during a trying time in their lives.
“Helping people satisfies something inside you,” he said. “When they pray for you later, you know it comes from their inner heart.”
Source: http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/muslim-funeral-home-will-be-first-in-area/article_72c44e0e-ea11-5eb5-a8a3-78f4b2c85ae8.html#ixzz1vMJuxyDS

By Jeffrey Fleishman,
Los Angeles Times
May 18, 2012

CAIRO — A mechanic hammered a fender and boys wandered amid tin and rust as Adham Bishr, his opinions flaring on an agitated afternoon along the Nile, said Egypt’s next president should give him a job, not tell him how to worship God.

Men gathered around Bishr in a scrap of shade, arguing over inflation and politics before disappearing into the grit and anger of a neighborhood at Cairo’s edge. The men, mostly unemployed drivers, mill hands and laborers, want work; their sons, college students with dim prospects, wonder whether the future will bring enough money to take a wife.

“I don’t care about how much Islam is in the government,” said Bishr, laid off years ago from a sugar factory. Before that, during decades when Egypt paid unlivable wages, he built roads in Iraq and welded metal in Saudi Arabia. “I want a president who will rebuild our country. We need to rise again to greatness.”

Egypt is hobbled by economic turmoil, poor healthcare, failing social programs and lack of security. The top candidates in the presidential election that begins Wednesday have addressed these concerns, but the issues have often been eclipsed by passion over how deeply Islam should permeate a new constitution and government.

The election will set the trajectory and tenor of an untested political Islam emerging from more than a year of Arab uprisings. It’s a struggle between ultraconservatives and liberals over whether Egypt should lean toward the fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia or the moderate inclinations of Turkey. The discourse is driven by influential scholars and clerics who invoke piety as a political barometer.

Most Egyptians agree that Islam should guide national policy. But men like Bishr — among the more than 40% of Egyptians who live on less than $2 a day — fear that the elite’s preoccupation with religion and talk of reviving centuries-old caliphates are diversions from the country’s entrenched problems. Such sentiment is shared miles away in well-to-do cafes frequented by the young professionals.

“We need to get the economy on its feet,” said Shady Ghoneim, an electronics importer who supports leading secular candidate Amr Moussa. “Foreign investors won’t come back unless they can trust a moderate president.”

The landmark vote promises to end an era of autocratic rule that began in 1952, when Gamal Abdel Nasser led a military coup that freed Egypt from colonial rule. Since then, the nation has known only military men as its presidents, including Hosni Mubarak, overthrown in last year’s revolt. The question is whether the Arab world’s most populous state is prepared to deliver an Islamist to the palace.

The choices Egyptians face among the top candidates are clear and symbolize the contentiousness over how to move beyond Mubarak’s legacy.

Moussa, a former foreign minister, promises to offer a secular balance against a parliament controlled by Islamists. He is challenged by Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a liberal Islamist straining to appease both moderate and ultraconservative sensibilities, and Muslim Brotherhood hopeful Mohamed Morsi, who has broken the group’s facade of tolerance by veering toward hard-line clerics who command millions of votes.

Morsi’s place of third or fourth in the polls indicates that respondents, about 40% of whom say they are undecided, are suspicious of the Brotherhood and seek a candidate less driven by religious dogma than enshrining a civil state. That’s true for Bishr and the men of the Tora neighborhood, which echoes with tales of prosperity denied.

“I don’t want to become an unemployment statistic,” said Yasser Hamed, a third-year business student at nearby Helwan University. “I hope to be an accountant at a bank or a big company, but right now I sell cement with my father.”

Bishr took part in last year’s uprising in Tahrir Square. Most of his friends did not, and Tora, like many working-class and poor neighborhoods, watched from the outskirts as revolutionaries rallied and history unfolded. Fathers and mothers here hustle for handyman jobs and subsidized bread; they want Egypt kept out of wars and enough household money to fix broken shutters and sagging walls.

“The poor should be the first priority,” said one man. “Egyptians are merciful,” said another. “We already have Islam in our hearts.”

Bishr listened, sharing cigarettes and watching faces. He’s had no work for too long a stretch; a hole in his pants was sewn with mismatching thread and unfilled hours of a long afternoon awaited him. A man in a too big suit carrying a laptop bag hurried past. Moments later, Nabil Mohamed, a truck driver with occasional work, took a seat next to Bishr in the shrinking shade.

“We need a tough president to bring order and get us back to life,” said Mohamed, sweat on his neck, a ring of keys in his hand. “Egyptians are protesting too much. We’re not listening to one another and if we don’t stop we’ll collapse.”

The neighborhood had fewer people when Mohamed was a boy. Houses were only a story high and the highway along the Nile was not so wide. But fishermen and farmers came to Cairo for better lives. Mosques were built, the neighborhood grew, and it never mattered who the presidents or local preachers were because none of them lifted Mohamed’s life beyond anything but a struggle.

Two of his sons went to college; two did not. None have jobs.

“This election should be about allowing my sons to be creative so they can show what they’re capable of,” he said.

“Too many politicians are trying to hide behind the curtain on Islam. Religion is between God and each individual. It’s not the domain of politics. These politicians are harming Islam more than anything else.”

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
Amro Hassan of The Times’ Cairo bureau contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-egypt-election-islam-20120518,0,7383501.story

By Lisa Bryant
May 16, 2012

PARIS, France – War crimes tribunals in The Hague are hearing cases against former Bosnian-Serb military commander Ratko Mladic and former Liberian president Charles Taylor.

Radko Mladic is facing 15 charges:

Counts 1, 2: Genocide, Complicity in Genocide for a campaign to destroy Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats.
Count 3: Persections on political, racial and religious grounds.
Counts 4, 5, 6: Extermination and Murder of Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats or other non-Serbs.
Counts 7, 8: Deportation and Unlawful Attacks for the forcible transfer of Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats or other non-Serbs.
Counts 9 to 14: Terror and Unlawful Attacks.
Count 15: Taking of U.N. Hostages.
??Two decades after the start of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s civil war, Ratko Mladic — the man accused of some of its worst atrocities — went on trial Wednesday in The Hague.

Mladic’s trial started with opening arguments by the prosecution. The former Bosnian-Serb general faces 11 counts of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. He strongly rejects the accusations, and the court has entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf.

Dressed in a grey suit, the 70-year-old Mladic gave a thumbs-up as he entered the court room. He appeared defiant as prosecutor Dermot Groome related some of the war’s bloodiest atrocities in graphic detail, using pictures and video clips.

One of the crimes of which Mladic is accused is a 1995 bombing of a Sarajevo market that killed more than 30 people and wounded more than 70 others. Groome read out a witness account of the incident.

“When I got to that place, or rather a few steps before, I saw a great mess and commotion,” said Groome. “There was blood all over the place, flowing in the streets. Bits of human flesh scattered around. Bits of clothing torn and scattered all over.”

The prosecution claims Mladic helped mastermind a brutal “ethnic-cleansing” campaign to drive Bosnian Muslims and Croats from land that the perpetrators wanted only for Serbs. Among the most horrific charges against him relates to the killing of roughly 8,000 men and boys in the city of Srebrenica.

Captured a year ago, Mladic is the last of the major figures to face trial for the Bosnian conflict. Mladic’s boss, former Bosnian-Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, is already on trial before the Hague tribunal.

The opening of the Mladic trial coincided with the appearance of former Liberian president Charles Taylor before another court in The Hague. In a rambling address, Taylor claimed witnesses for the prosecution had been paid and coerced to testify against him.

Judges found Taylor guilty last month of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone.

Judges are scheduled to sentence Taylor later this month. Both the defense and prosecution are expected to appeal.
Source: http://www.voanews.com/content/mladic_trial_opens_in_the_hague/666720.html

May 16, 2012
By ERIC BELLMAN

JAKARTA—American pop star Lady Gaga will likely have to cancel her Indonesian concert scheduled for next month after police declined to give the necessary permit following protests by some Islamic groups who say she dresses provocatively.
Though the June 3 “Born This Way Ball” concert had already sold out of its more than 50,000 tickets, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said the event had been denied the police permit necessary for such a large gathering.

“Their permit had been denied,” he said Tuesday. “They have no permit to do the show, so it would be illegal” if organizers tried to proceed.

Big Daddy Entertainment Group, the Indonesian company promoting the concert, couldn’t be reached to comment Tuesday.

Associated Press

Lady Gaga is scheduled to perform in Jakarta on June 3.
.While Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country, the Southeast Asian nation of 240 million has long been seen as moderate and largely secular. A small but vocal—and sometimes violent—minority has at times sought to impose its will, serving as a sort of moral police for the country.

Some have been protesting since last week that Lady Gaga’s skimpy clothing and suggestive dance moves and lyrics shouldn’t be promoted in Indonesia because it is a Muslim nation. Hard-line groups with a history of violent protest have even threatened to use physical force to keep the artist out of the country. Worried that they couldn’t guarantee security, Jakarta police recommended the permit for the show be denied, and Tuesday the National police decided to comply, said Mr. Amar.

While fringe groups are often able to disrupt or even block smaller gatherings in Indonesia, their move to derail the Lady Gaga concert looks likely to be the first time they have been able to stare down a big Western star. In the past year, top names such as Stevie Wonder, Justin Bieber and Kylie Minogue have performed in Indonesia without incident.

“The fundamentalists get upset when an artist is going to dress sexy,” said Hasief Ardiasyah, Jakarta-based associate editor of Rolling Stone Indonesia. “In the past year or so, there has been an increase in high-profile acts that have come to Indonesia, but none of them have had problems like this.”

The frequent public demonstrations of some conservative Muslims against what they see as Western influences in Indonesia, and their support of new laws—such as prohibitions on pornography and local-government initiatives to restrict gambling, alcohol and other activities frowned upon by more religious residents—have brought them occasional victories with local governments and in the courts, Parliament and other public offices.

In February 2011, one of Indonesia’s biggest local stars was sentenced to prison for making sex tapes that triggered a national outcry and a public debate about morals when they were leaked onto the Internet. Nazril Irham, lead singer of a popular band called Peterpan, was sentenced to 3½ years in jail and fined $28,000 for two blurry, homemade sex videos seen by Internet users across Indonesia. Meanwhile in 2010, the editor in chief of Playboy Indonesia started a two-year prison term for publishing pictures of scantily clad women.

Despite those episodes, foreign direct investment has continued to flow into the country, which is widely seen among Western investors as one of the world’s most promising emerging markets.

—Yayu Yuniar contributed to this article.
Write to Eric Bellman at eric.bellman@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page A10 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Indonesia Blocks Gaga After Islamists Protest.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577405850044767754.html?mod=googlenews_wsj