French Muslim Jailed for Punching Nurse Who Removed His Wife's Burqa

PARIS –  A Muslim man has been jailed in France for punching a nurse who tried to remove his wife's burqa during an emergency C-section.

Nassim Mimoune, 24, was earlier banned from the delivery room after calling a midwife a "rapist" when she tried to perform an intimate examination on his wife in a Marseille hospital on Monday, La Provence newspaper reported.

The pregnant woman, who had been having contractions for two days when she was admitted, begged her husband to allow the examination, but he threatened her with divorce.

Mimoune, a construction worker from Paris, was then taken away to view the childbirth from another room, but flew into a rage when he saw the nurse removing his wife's burqa.

He smashed open the locked door of the operating room and punched the woman in the face, telling her to replace his wife's Islamic veil.

He was arrested on a charge of assault while his wife delivered a healthy baby boy.

Jailing him Wednesday for six months, the investigating judge described him as putting, "his religious dogma above the laws of the Republic and his French citizenship."

Mimoune apologized in court for his actions and admitted that he had endangered his unborn child.

He said seeing his wife's veil lifted in front of a male health worker was like seeing her "bare-chested" in front of another man.

London - Muslim ‘Modesty Patrol’ Stalking Streets Of London

London - Borough officials, community leaders and police condemned a group of self-proclaimed vigilantes who took it upon themselves to patrol the streets of London confronting people they deemed as indulging in “non-Muslim” behavior.

Earlier this month, a group who had claimed an area in East London was a “Muslim area” had told people that alcohol was banned, or that they were dressed inappropriately.

The group, who dubbed itself a “Muslim patrol,” filmed the incidents and posted the footage on YouTube.

In one video, which was first published last week by the UK news portal The Commentator, the group could be seen destroying advertisements for H&M lingerie on bus shelters in the Whitechapel area of London.

“The Muslims have taken it upon themselves to command the good and forbid the evil and cover up these naked women,” one of the vigilantes says in the video.

Another video shows the group harassing members of the public for consuming alcohol. In one incident, a member of the public is told to dispose of a can of beer he is drinking.

The individual shown in the video is clearly shocked when he is told it is a Muslim area and that alcohol is “evil and banned” as they take his beverage away from him.

In yet another video, which begins with a logo stating that “Islam will dominate the world,” followed by a homophobic graphic, the group can be seen shouting at a man.

One member of the “patrol” shouts: “Hello mate, don’t you know this is a Muslim area?” He asks the man why he is dressed “like that” while another shouts “Homosexual! Homosexual.”

When the man, who appears clearly distressed in the video, asks why they are bothering him, the group hurls abuse at him.

“Because you’re walking through a Muslim area dressed like a fag. You need to get out of here.”

“You’re gay mate, get out of here you bloody fag. Don’t stay around here anymore.”

The self-styled group also stops people for dressing “inappropriately,” or for possessing alcohol near a mosque.

One young woman confronted by the group said she was appalled by their actions.

“This is Great Britain,” she said, to which the patrol can be heard saying, “We don’t care. It’s not so Great Britain, you understand? Vigilantes are implementing Islam.”

The London Metropolitan Police said that they are treating the incidents with “appropriate gravity,” adding that they are aware of the incidents and are increasing police patrols in the area.

“We are aware of incidents over the weekend of January 12-13, where members of the community had suffered harassment by as yet unidentified individuals stating the area was a ‘Muslim area’ and claiming to be a ‘Muslim patrol,’ a police spokesman said.

The police said it was engaging with a range of people in order to address the issue and find those responsible for the incidents.

“Patrols in the areas affected have also been increased in an effort to catch those carrying this out and to reassure the local community.

Officers have already been engaging with the communities of Tower Hamlets [Borough] including the businesses and mosques, and are working with local community leaders, influential people, local businesses and the local authority about what is being done, and can be done, to address concerns and identify those responsible,” the police said.

The police are urging anyone who has been a victim of the vigilantes, or anyone who knows the perpetrators, to come forward.

The Tower Hamlets Council told The Jerusalem Post they are “proactively working with partners in the community and police” to monitor for further incidents and take appropriate action.

“This is an isolated incident by a few individuals whose actions go entirely against the council’s and community’s ethos of One Tower Hamlets. We are proud of the community cohesion in our borough and know that the vast majority of residents believe that people from all backgrounds should be treated with dignity and respect,” a Tower Hamlets spokesman said on Monday.

Alan Green, chair of the Tower Hamlets Interfaith Forum said, “The behavior of the very few people who call themselves the ‘Muslim patrol’ does not represent the vast majority of Muslims living in Tower Hamlets.

These are troublemakers seeking to undermine the mutual respect which is at the heart of our diverse and vibrant borough and ensures that people of different faiths and view-points can live harmoniously together.”

A London Muslim Center spokesman said, “We wholly condemn their behavior.

They are not welcome in our community. We deplore the actions of a small minority who sow discord within our communities. It has no place in our faith, neither in its teachings nor practices.”

The Muslim Council of Britain, a Muslim community representative organization, told the Post that the group was an unrepresentative minority.

“We cannot comment on the veracity of this video, particularly as the website [The Commentator] you refer to revels in trading anti-Muslim stories. Nevertheless, if the contents of this is true, then we would urge the police to intervene; we do not condone such vigilantism.”

‘Immodest' Girls Beat Up Iranian Cleric ‘”You are badly covered,” an Iranian cleric told two girls. “Cover your eyes,” one said before kicking him. He was hospitalized.

An Iranian Muslim cleric was hospitalized for three days after being kicked and beaten up by two girls, one of whom he warned was “badly covered.”

The incident in northern Iran was reported by the country's Mehr News Agency, whose outlook can be understood by the fact that it is owned by the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization.

The report was picked up first byBloomberg News, which noted that the regime in Iran often sends out police to enforce strict Islamic dress codes, especially in the summer when women may be prone to wearing less covering.

The cleric, Hojatoleslam Ali Beheshti, told Mehr he was on the way to a mosque when he admonished one of the girls.

She startled the cleric with her feminist reply, “Cover your eyes.” He stood his ground and repeated the warning, and the girl and her friend teamed up to promptly hurl insults at him and then followed up with a few kicks while pushing him.

“I fell on my back on the floor,” Beheshti said. “I don’t know what happened after that, all I could feel was the kicks of this woman who was insulting me and attacking me.”

After recuperating for three days in the hospital, Beheshti said he was carrying out his religious responsibility by “commanding right and forbidding wrong” and that he would risk attacks by women, despite experiencing what he “the worst day of my life.”

Mehr told its readers that there have been previous attacks on Muslim clerics by women.

Iranian police crack down on "immoral" dress

From Al Arabiya:

Police in Tehran are conducting a new crackdown on women wearing mandatory headscarves improperly or in “vulgar” dress, the city’s police chief said, according to media reports on Saturday.

Such operations, which see police screening foot and vehicle traffic at major junctions and shopping centers, are conducted fairly often in Iran.

The latest one was ordered days ahead of the May 4 second round of parliamentary elections, and as the onset of warm spring weather prompts Iranian women to don lighter clothing.

The police chief, Hossein Sajedinia, said the crackdown was “asked for by the people,” the Fars news agency reported.

Women wearing “bad headscarves, bad dress, and model-type women in vulgar dress”would be stopped, he said.

Typically, such women are fined or detained in police stations until relatives collect them hours later with more modest clothing.

Sadejinia said that companies importing “illegal clothes” that do not comply with Islamic dress standards would be given a warning or closed.

In Saudi Arabia, there are special religious police to do things like this. In Iran, the regular police are enforcing (current understandings of) Islamic law.

That is even worse, but it is an aspect of Iran that Western media rarely discuss.

Saudi Arabia to Give Australian 500 Lashes, Jail for Blasphemy

Insulting the friends of the founder of Islam earned an Australian national 500 lashes and a year in jail in Saudi Arabia last month.

Mansor Almaribe, a resident of southern Victoria state, was arrested by religious police on November 14 in Medina while participating in the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca known as the hajj. His eldest son Jamal told The Melbourne Agenewspaper that Almaribe was reading and praying in a group at the time.

Family members told Australian media that Saudi officials accused the 45-year-old of insulting companions of Islam's Prophet Muhammed; blasphemy is considered a serious offense in Saudi Arabia, which is governed under Shari'a (Islamic) law.

No information is available about exactly how or when he insulted them, or even which companions of Muhammed he allegedly had insulted. 

He was convicted Tuesday and sentenced to two years in prison and 500 lashes. The court later reduced the sentence to "only" one year in jail, in the presence of an Australian consular official who attended the proceedings.

The maximum number of lashes ever allowed to be used as a sentence under Jewish law during the time of the Holy Temples was 39, and that was to be delivered under the supervision of a medical doctor, in sets of three, so as to ensure the convicted person did not die as a result. 

A sentence of 500 lashes is considered equivalent to a death sentence.

Another son of Almaribe, Mohammed -- named for the very prophet on whose behalf he is set to be tortured -- has expressed fears for his father's safety. "Five hundred lashes on his back, and he has back problems," he told theAustralian Broadcasting Corporation. "I wouldn't think he'd survive 50." Almaribe, a father of five, suffers from diabetes and heart disease.

Australian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Neil Hawkins has appealed to Riyadh for leniency, according to Canberra's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. "The Australian government is universally opposed to corporal punishment," the department in a statement.

Approximately 300,000 Muslims now live in Australia, and there are over 100 mosques, according to an Australian government website.  The Arab community in Australia, numbering more than 210,000, is "diverse and includes many high-profile and successful members," the site notes.

Iran outlaws water fights

In Iran, they have now outlawed water fights as yet another immoral mixing of the sexes.

A water fight in a Tehran park on Friday, thought to have been organized through social media websites, was broken up by police who arrested several of the revelers, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Sunday.

"Some of these by police on Friday," Ahmadreza Radan, Tehran's deputy police chief, told Mehr.

Mingling between sexes outside marriage is banned in Iran and conservatives in the Islamic Republic have been scandalized by scenes of dozens of youngsters spraying each other with water in public.

Various websites have posted photographs of girls and boys in wet clothes throwing water balloons, firing water guns and splashing each other with water from bottles after the first water fights were reported in the capital a few weeks ago.

The fights have since spread across the country despite warnings from authorities.

...

Conservatives say the water fights must be stamped out to prevent what they say is the corruption of Iranian youths, much of which is blamed on a deliberate "soft war" by the West conducted through TV, films and pop music.

I don't particularly enjoy the water fights, and I recognize the potential for immodesty that comes with them (when I was a summer associate in law school, there were some firms that drew approbation by holding 'wet t-shirt contests'). But arresting the revelers seems a bit much. And blaming them on the West is paranoia. 

Muslim Brotherhood advocates Egyptian modesty police

Call adds to concerns among liberals that the country is going Islamic after attacks on Muslim mystic tombs, Christians.

 

Officials of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's leading Islamic group, have called for the establishment of a Saudi-style modesty police to combat "immoral" behavior in public areas in what observers say in another sign  of a growing Islamic self-confidence in the post-Mubarak era.

In the political sphere, the Brotherhood led a successful drive to get voters to approve a package of constitutional amendments. On the street level, at least 20 attacks were perpetrated against the tombs of Muslim mystics (suffis), who are the subject of popular veneration but disparaged by Islamic fundamentalists, or salafis. After some initial hesitation, Islamic leaders have publicly praised the revolution.

"This is incredibly worrying to many Egyptians," Maye Kassem, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo (AUC), told The Media Line. "The salafis were always undercover in Egypt and now they are emerging as a political force. They are getting too vocal."

Newly freed from the political strictures of the Mubarak era, Egypt has turned into a battleground between those who envision a liberal, secular state and those who advocate various shades if Islam. The conflict mirrors those taking place elsewhere in the region. In Bahrain, unrest has evolved into a conflict between Sunni- and Shiite Muslims and the US has pulled back from supporting Libyan rebels over concerns they are dominated by Islamists.

Issam Durbala, a member of the Brotherhood's Shura council, told the Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Youm on Sunday, that he supported the establishment of a virtue police, or Hisbah, which had existed in medieval Islamic societies to oversee public virtue and modesty, mostly in the marketplace and other public gathering spaces.

But he seemed to stop short of advocating a force along then lines of that which operates in Saudi Arabia today under the auspices of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. It enforces a dress code, separation of sexes and the observances of prayer times.

"The new police must have a department with limited authorities to arrest those who commit immoral acts,” Durbala told the newspaper.

Nevertheless, liberal, secular Egyptians, who led the protests that brought down President Hosni  Mubarak and ushered in a new but as yet undefined era in Egypt, regard the proposal as the latest sign that Islamists are emerging as the dominant force in the country.

Sa'id Abd Al-Azim, a leader of the salafi movement in Alexandria, attacked Egyptian "liberals" for waging a media campaign against his movement.

"Despite the attacks against the salafi movement, it is constantly advancing – untouched by the attack," Abd Al-Azim told Al-Masry Al-Youm. "If the Christians want safety they should submit to the rule of God and be confident that the Islamic sharia [law] will protect them."

But it was not only Islamic fundamentalists who foresaw a growing role for Islam in Egypt. In an editorial published in the New York Times April 1, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the country's leading religious figure, condemned the attacks saying they harmed Islamic unity.  But he said the world must expect a more Islamic, albeit tolerant, Egypt.   

"Egypt is a deeply religious society," Gomaa wrote. "It is inevitable that Islam will have a place in our democratic political order … while religion cannot be completely separated from politics, we can ensure that it is not abused for political gain."

Last Tuesday, Egypt's foreign minister, Nabil Al-Arabi, said his country was interested in "opening a new page with all countries, including Iran," which he said was "not an enemy state." Egypt and Iran have not enjoyed full diplomatic relations since 1979, when Iran's Islamic revolution took place and Egypt signed a historic peace treaty with Israel and gave shelter to the ailing Shah of Iran. On Wednesday, Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi welcomed the Egyptian overture and said he hoped to witness an "expansion of ties" between the two countries.

Nagib Gibrail, a Coptic attorney and head of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights, said the Egyptian revolution had been kidnapped by Islamist radicals.

"There are areas in Egypt where Christian girls can't walk outside after eight o'clock in the evening for fear of being kidnapped," Gibrail told The Media Line. "Moderate Muslims should be more scared than Christians. It is very worrying that the military regime hasn't issued a statement declaring Egypt a secular state." 

Maye Kassem of AUC said parliamentary elections should be postponed in order to allow smaller liberal opposition groups to properly organize. Parliamentary elections are to be held by September, with presidential elections following a month or two later, according to a timetable announced by the government last week.

"We need a longer transition period," Kassem said. "Otherwise, we will revert to a dictatorship which is not what we were fighting for."  

In a four-page essay titled "The Tsunami of Change," American-Yemeni cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, an Al-Qaeda propagandist, referred last week to the popular protest movements sweeping the Arab world.

"I wonder whether the West is aware of the upsurge of mujahedeen activity in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria and Morocco?" Al-Awlaki wrote in the English language Al-Qaeda magazine Inspire. "The mujahedeen around the world are going through a moment of elation.”