Saudis order 40 lashes for elderly woman for mingling

(CNN) -- A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house, according to local media reports.

According to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan, troubles for the woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, began last year when a member of the religious police entered her house in the city of Al-Chamli and found her with two unrelated men, "Fahd" and "Hadian."

Fahd told the policeman he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd, 24, added that his friend Hadian was escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman then arrested both men.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism and punishes unrelated men and women who are caught mingling.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, feared by many Saudis, is made up of several thousand religious policemen charged with duties such as enforcing dress codes, prayer times and segregation of the sexes. Under Saudi law, women face many restrictions, including a strict dress code and a ban on driving. Women also need to have a man's permission to travel.

Al Watan obtained the court's verdict and reported it was partly based on the testimony of the religious police. In his ruling, the judge said it was proved that Fahd is not Sawadi's son through breastfeeding.

The court also doled out punishment to the two men. Fahd was sentenced to four months in prison and 40 lashes; Hadian was sentenced to six months in prison and 60 lashes. In a phone call with Al Watan, the judge declined to comment and suggested the newspaper review the case with the Ministry of Justice. Sawadi told the newspaper that she will appeal, adding that Fahd is indeed her son through breastfeeding.

A top Saudi human rights lawyer, Abdulrahman Al-Lahem, volunteered to defend the woman and the two men and has been given power of attorney by them. He told CNN he plans to file an appeal in the case next week.

Efforts to reach Saudi officials at the Justice Ministry, religious police and other agencies were unsuccessful. A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington said he had no details on the case.

The case sparked anger in Saudi Arabia.

"It's made everybody angry because this is like a grandmother," Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN. "Forty lashes -- how can she handle that pain? You cannot justify it."

This is not the first Saudi court case to cause controversy.

In 2007, a 19-year-old gang-rape victim in the Saudi city of Qatif was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison for meeting with an unrelated male. The seven rapists, who abducted the woman and man, received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison.

The case sparked international outrage and Saudi King Abdullah subsequently pardoned the "Qatif Girl" and the unrelated male.

Al-Lahem, who has taken on many high-profile cases in recent years, represented the girl and received an award from Human Rights Watch last year. However, a travel ban issued by Saudi authorities kept him from traveling to London, England, to receive it.

Many Saudis hope the Ministry of Justice will be reformed. Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz announced in February a major Cabinet reshuffling in which many hard-line conservatives, including the head of the commission, were dismissed and replaced with younger, more moderate members.

The new appointments represented the largest shakeup since King Abdullah took power in 2005 and were welcomed in Saudi Arabia as progressive moves on the part of the king, whom many see as a reformer. Among ministers who've been replaced is the minister of justice.

The actions of the religious police have come under increased scrutiny in Saudi Arabia recently, as more and more Saudis urge that the commission's powers be limited. Last week, the religious police detained two male novelists for questioning after they tried to get the autograph of a female writer, Halima Muzfar, at a book fair in Riyadh, the capital of the kingdom.

Ballad of Jim Jones

Evangelist Tony Alamo agrees to return to Arkansas

By FELICIA FONSECA – 1 day ago

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Evangelist and convicted tax evader Tony Alamo waived his right to fight extradition to Arkansas after his arrest on charges that he took minors across state lines for sexual purposes.

Alamo appeared briefly Friday in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff. It will be at least a week before he is moved to Arkansas, said Debbie Groom, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office there.

The one-time rock promoter and street preacher was arrested by the FBI while leaving a Flagstaff hotel Thursday on charges of violating the Mann Act, usually used in interstate prostitution cases.

Federal prosecutors sought Alamo's arrest after interviewing six girls taken into state custody during a raid of his southwestern Arkansas compound Saturday.

An Arkansas judge ruled Friday there was probable cause to keep two of those six girls in foster homes, according to Julie Munsell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services. Custody hearings for the other four girls are scheduled for Monday.

Alamo told U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark E. Aspey he had legally changed his name to Tony Alamo from his birth name, Bernie Lazar Hoffman. He also said he was legally blind.

Court documents in the case were sealed.

Alamo was represented by a federal public defender but said he planned to hire his own attorney. The defense lawyer was then released from the case. He declined to comment.

Alamo has said that the age of consent is puberty and that there's a mandate in the Bible for girls marrying young.

"In the Bible it happened. But girls today, I don't marry them if they want to at 14-15 years old," Alamo told The Associated Press after the raid. "We won't do it, even though I believe it's OK."

Federal agents and Arkansas state police who raided the headquarters of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in the town of Fouke removed six girls ages 10 to 17. They said they were seeking evidence that children there had been molested or filmed having sex.

Alamo and his wife Susan formed a commune near Saugus, Calif., in the 1960s after preaching in Los Angeles. Susan Alamo died of cancer in 1982, and Alamo claimed she would be resurrected, keeping her body on display for months.

Alamo was convicted of tax-related charges in 1994 and served four years in prison after the IRS said he owed the government $7.9 million.

C'mon, is there vote really THAT important?

Most Americans Believe in Guardian Angels More Than Half of Americans Say Guardian Angels Watch Over Us

By DAN HARRIS
Sept. 18, 2008

More than half of all adults, including one in five of those who say they are not religious, believe that they have been protected by a guardian angel during their life, according to a new survey by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion.
The survey polled 1,700 respondents of diverse religious faiths: evangelical Protestants, black Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews.

Researchers found that a belief in guardian angels, affirmed by 55 percent of respondents, is a phenomenon that crosses religious, as well as regional and educational lines.

"While I knew there were a lot of people who had such [beliefs in angels]," said Rodney Stark, a professor of social sciences and co-director for studies of religion at Baylor University, "I wasn't prepared for the frequency of it."

But the results, to be published in Stark's new book, "What Americans Really Believe," underscore the fact that the United States is a religious nation. A June 2008 poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 92 percent of Americans believe in God.
John Ortberg, senior pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California, who holds degrees in both psychology and divinity, believes in angels.

"A lot of times when people hear about angels, they think about these cartoon figures with wings, halos and harps," Ortberg said. "I don't think that's the idea. I think the idea is that we live in a spiritual reality and these are spiritual beings that God's created and we call them angels."
In the Bible, angels are portrayed as messengers, many of whom have the ability to intervene in human lives. Psalm 91 makes textual reference to angels as physical guardians: "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways."

Guardian angels have long been a pop culture staple -- starring in film classics like "It's a Wonderful Life" and the popular television series "Touched by an Angel."

An August 2007 Pew poll found that 68 percent of Americans believe that "angels and demons are active in the world"; 20 percent say they've had an encounter with an angel or a devil.
People may not be thinking necessarily about angels with wings, but instead about a loved one who has gone before them.

"My guess would be … that something has happened. People were in an auto wreck and there was some event that saved their lives and they interpret it as a guardian angel," Stark said.

On some online message boards about angels, many people discuss the role that they say angels play in their lives.
"I believe that my father, who died years ago, is one of them. My grandmother is one of them," one person commented.
"Without God and without his angels who have protected me in my life, I wouldn't be here, so it's a major impact," one person wrote.

Ortberg explains how angels may serve as a type of intermediary to better connect people to God.

"Sometimes I think people can be fascinated by angels and talk about them because angels are less threatening than God," Ortberg said. "The idea of a God who is holy and can hold people accountable can be a little scary."
Many established religions officially teach that miracles only took place during biblical times, but the fact that so many Americans believe that angels play an active role in their lives suggests that many have reinterpreted church teaching and engage in what one theologian has called "casual mysticism."
"There is a real and huge part of the human condition that we want to know that the spiritual is real, that there is a divine presence in our lives," Ortberg said, "and talking about angels is a very important expression of that hunger."

Do not forget. Muslims are stupid too!

Saudi cleric wants death for TV "sorcerers"

14 Sep 2008 09:52:38 GMT
Source: Reuters
RIYADH, Sept 14 (Reuters) - A senior Saudi cleric has said purveyors of horoscopes on Arab television should face the death penalty, a paper said on Sunday, days after another cleric argued death for TV owners.

"Sorcerers who appear on satellite channels who are proven to be sorcerers have committed a great crime ... and the Muslim consensus is that the apostate's punishment is death by the sword," Sheikh Saleh al-Fozan told al-Madina daily.

"Those who call in to these shows should not be accorded Muslim rites when they die," the prominent cleric added.

Many of the hundreds of Arab satellite channels have sprung up in recent years specialise in horoscopes and other advice to callers on solving problems that is seen as "sorcery".

In their capacity as judges, clerics of Saudi Arabia's austere form of Islam often sentence "sorcerers" to death.

Fozan, a member of the Higher Council of Clerics, was responding to a controversy ignited by a Council colleague, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, who said last week that owners of Arab TV shows should be tried and face death over some shows.

Lohaidan, who is the head of Saudi Arabia's Islamic sharia courts, told Saudi radio: "I want to advise the owners of these channels that broadcast programmes with indecency and vulgarity and warn them of the consequences ... They can be put to death through the judicial process."

He was referring to comedy shows and soap operas airing in Ramadan, a month of fasting when Muslims are supposed to focus on God. Critics say Ramadan has become an orgy of food and television consumption once the fast ends at sunset.

Fozan said entertainment channel owners should be "banished" but stopped short of advocating the death penalty for them.

"The position of Muslims and their rulers about these channels is that they should be talked to and if they continue airing depravity and shamelessness they should be banished from this place and others brought in their place."

Turkish soap operas that became hugely popular in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries this year provoked a storm of anger among Saudi conservatives who fear the spread of secular culture in the key U.S. ally.

The government's official advisor on religious affairs, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdelaziz Al al-Sheikh, said in July it was not Islamically permissible to watch the Turkish serials.

The owners of Arab entertainment channels, including MBC, ART, Orbit, Rotana and LBC, are mostly Saudi royals and businessmen closely allied to them.

Concerned about the country's international image, some key members of the Saudi royal family have promoted liberal reforms. The clerics fear plans to limit their extensive influence in what is the world's largest oil exporter. (Reporting by Andrew Hammond; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Guess that's the end of the College Republicans

Judge says UC can deny religious course credit

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 13, 2008
(08-12) 17:25 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.

Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC's review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts - not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.

Otero's ruling Friday, which focused on specific courses and texts, followed his decision in March that found no anti-religious bias in the university's system of reviewing high school classes. Now that the lawsuit has been dismissed, a group of Christian schools has appealed Otero's rulings to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

"It appears the UC is attempting to secularize private religious schools," attorney Jennifer Monk of Advocates for Faith and Freedom said Tuesday. Her clients include the Association of Christian Schools International, two Southern California high schools and several students.

Charles Robinson, the university's vice president for legal affairs, said the ruling "confirms that UC may apply the same admissions standards to all students and to all high schools without regard to their religious affiliations." What the plaintiffs seek, he said, is a "religious exemption from regular admissions standards."

The suit, filed in 2005, challenged UC's review of high school courses taken by would-be applicants to the 10-campus system. Most students qualify by taking an approved set of college preparatory classes; students whose courses lack UC approval can remain eligible by scoring well in those subjects on the Scholastic Assessment Test.

Christian schools in the suit accused the university of rejecting courses that include any religious viewpoint, "any instance of God's guidance of history, or any alternative ... to evolution."

But Otero said in March that the university has approved many courses containing religious material and viewpoints, including some that use such texts as "Chemistry for Christian Schools" and "Biology: God's Living Creation," or that include scientific discussions of creationism as well as evolution.

UC denies credit to courses that rely largely or entirely on material stressing supernatural over historic or scientific explanations, though it has approved such texts as supplemental reading, the judge said.

For example, in Friday's ruling, he upheld the university's rejection of a history course called Christianity's Influence on America. According to a UC professor on the course review committee, the primary text, published by Bob Jones University, "instructs that the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events" and evaluates historical figures based on their religious motivations.

Another rejected text, "Biology for Christian Schools," declares on the first page that "if (scientific) conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong," Otero said.

He also said the Christian schools presented no evidence that the university's decisions were motivated by hostility to religion.

UC attorney Christopher Patti said Tuesday that the judge assessed the review process accurately.

"We evaluate the courses to see whether they prepare these kids to come to college at UC," he said. "There was no evidence that these students were in fact denied the ability to come to the university."

But Monk, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said Otero had used the wrong legal standard and had given the university too much deference.

"Science courses from a religious perspective are not approved," she said. "If it comes from certain publishers or from a religious perspective, UC simply denies them."

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

Pussy!! A complete and total Pussy

Atheist changed his mind

By SUE NOWICKI
snowicki@modbee.com

last updated: August 16, 2008 08:33:03 AM
Recent books by "new atheism" authors Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have made headlines and put arguments against the existence of God back into the culture wars.

But a shock to atheist proponents -- comparable to a massive California earthquake -- came in 2004 when renowned atheist and philosophy professor Antony Flew of England said he had changed his decades-long stance and acknowledged that God exists.

His book "There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind" (Harper One, $24.95) was published late last year and details his beliefs.

At the age of 15, Flew broke with his parents' faith -- his father was a Methodist minister -- and proclaimed he was an atheist. At Oxford, he attended weekly meetings of C.S. Lewis' Socratic Club, where he disagreed with his fellow philosopher's Christian views. In 1950, Flew wrote the essay "Theology and Falsification," which was the most widely reprinted philosophical publication in the past half century.

Flew's books, among them "God and Philosophy," "The Presumption of Atheism" and "How to Think Straight," have been among the standard-bearers of atheism.

But the philosopher said in his new book that he always believed in "following the argument no matter where it leads."

For Flew, it was the modern science of DNA and the refutation by Gerry Schroeder of the "monkey theorem" that changed his mind regarding evolution and intelligent design. In his final public debate in 2004, Flew said, "What I think DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together."

The monkey theorem defends the possibility of life arising by chance rather than by design by saying that if you have a multitude of monkeys banging on computer keyboards, you will eventually end up with a Shakespeare sonnet.

Schroeder pointed to an experiment conducted with six monkeys and a computer in a cage. After one month, the monkeys had produced 50 typed pages, but not a single word -- not even "a" or "I". Schroder then said even if the entire universe was converted to computer chips that put out trials at a million times a second, "you will never get a sonnet by chance."

Flew writes, "Why do I believe (in God), given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than half a century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science."

It's important, however, to point out that Flew's belief is in "the God of Aristotle," which Flew said is compatible with the Judeo-Christian tradition. He is a deist -- one who believes God created the universe, but doesn't intervene in personal life, although he is open to that possibility. Flew said his mind change "had no connection with any of the revealed religions. ... In short, my discovery of the Divine has been a pilgrimage of reason and faith."

The book got a scathing review in the New York Times, calling into question the 80-plus-year-old Flew's mental capacity and saying he was being manipulated by co-author Roy Varghese and an editor, both Christians.

The charges are ludicrous, Varghese said from his home outside of Dallas this week.

"You cannot manipulate a British philosopher. I guarantee that. They are as independent as they can be," said Varghese, a native of India.

He was first introduced to Flew in the 1980s, when the well-known atheist participated in conferences that included atheists and theists. Even before 2004, Varghese said he saw some shifts in the philosopher's thinking.

"The scientific ideas that were prominent in his heyday is that life came from a primordial soup, that life was always here," Varghese said. "Then came the big bang theory. (Flew) said in 1992 that the current cosmological consensus about the origin of the universe having a beginning was an embarrassment to atheists. That had a big influence on him."

The author said Flew's shift from atheism to deism is huge.

"Tony Flew was pushing the envelope as far as atheism," Varghese said. "Most of the atheists were basically knocking the arguments for God's existence. What Flew did was come up with innovative arguments against the existence of God. It was not a counterargument. No one had ever posed that kind of argument before. He said the very concept of God was incoherent.

"So for a person who was on the vanguard of atheism dramatically changing is pretty dramatic. It's like Einstein saying that he was entirely wrong about the theory of relativity. Or Darwin saying that evolution doesn't exist. It at least deserves a second look.

"I hope people will come away from the book believing that God exists."

EIGHT MORE YEARS!! EIGHT MORE YEARS!!

WASILLA, Alaska — Shortly after taking office as governor in 2006, Sarah Palin sent an e-mail message to Paul E. Riley, her former pastor in the Assembly of God Church, which her family began attending when she was a youth. She needed spiritual advice in how to do her new job, said Mr. Riley, who is 78 and retired from the church.
“She asked for a biblical example of people who were great leaders and what was the secret of their leadership,” Mr. Riley said.

He wrote back that she should read again from the Old Testament the story of Esther, a beauty queen who became a real one, gaining the king’s ear to avert the slaughter of the Jews and vanquish their enemies. When Esther is called to serve, God grants her a strength she never knew she had.

Mr. Riley said he thought Ms. Palin had lived out the advice as governor, and would now do so again as the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee.

“God has given her the opportunity to serve,” he said. “And God has given her the strength to carry out her goals.”

Ms. Palin’s religious life — what she believes and how her beliefs intersect or not with her life in public office in Alaska — has become a topic of intense interest and scrutiny across the political spectrum as she has risen from relative obscurity to become Senator John McCain’s running mate.

Interviews with the two pastors she has been most closely associated with here in her hometown — she now attends the Wasilla Bible Church, though she keeps in touch with Mr. Riley and recently spoke at an event at his former church — and with friends and acquaintances who have worshipped with her point to a firm conclusion: her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it has come a conviction to be God’s servant.

“Just be amazed at the umbrella of this church here, where God is going to send you from this church,” Ms. Palin told the gathering in June of young graduates of a ministry program at the Assembly of God Church, a video of which has been posted on YouTube.

“Believe me,” she said, “I know what I am saying — where God has sent me, from underneath the umbrella of this church, throughout the state.”

Janet Kincaid, who has known Ms. Palin for about 15 years and worked with her on some Wasilla town boards and commissions when Ms. Palin was mayor here, said Ms. Palin’s spiritual path, from the Assembly of God to Wasilla Bible, has had a consistent theme.

“The churches that Sarah has attended all believe in a literal translation of the Bible,” Ms. Kincaid said. “Her principal ethical and moral beliefs stem from this.”

Prayer, and belief in its power, is another constant theme, Ms. Kincaid said, in what she has witnessed in Ms. Palin. “Her beliefs are firm in the power of prayer — let’s put it that way,” she said.

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Ms. Palin had been baptized Roman Catholic as an infant, but declined to comment further.

“We’re not going to get into discussing her religion,” she said.

In the address at the Assembly of God Church here, Ms. Palin’s ease in talking about the intersection of faith and public life was clear. Among other things, she encouraged the group of young church leaders to pray that “God’s will” be done in bringing about the construction of a big pipeline in the state, and suggested her work as governor would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with God.”

She also told the group that her eldest child, Track, would soon be deployed by the Army to Iraq, and that they should pray “that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”

Larry Kroon, who has been the presiding pastor at Wasilla Bible for the last 30 years, declined to describe Ms. Palin’s beliefs or the role she plays in the church, but suggested that she is more of a back-bencher than a leading light.

“Todd and Sarah come in as Todd and Sarah — they’re very discreet about it,” he said, referring to Ms. Palin’s husband.

One of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.
“A lot of churches are about music and media and having a big profile,” Ms. Morgan said. “We are against that. That is why it is so attractive to politicians because they can just sit there and be safe.”

“We’ve gotten a lot of their people when the other churches get too extreme,” Ms. Morgan continued. However, she added, “If you lift your hands when we’re singing, we’re not going to shoot you down.”

Mr. Kroon (pronounced krone), a soft-spoken, bearded Alaska native, said he was convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the task of believers is to ponder and analyze the book for meaning — including scrutiny, he said, for errors and mistranslations over the centuries that may have obscured the original intent.

It is that analysis, he believes, not anything he preaches, that makes most people in his church socially conservative, he said.

“I trust my people can go out with that and they can deal with an issue such as abortion — any issue out there — whether it’s in the public arena, or in the hospital room with their relative dying of cancer, because they will be equipped with a biblical perspective that will enable them to react in that situation,” said Mr. Kroon, who described himself as “pro-life.”

“Our congregation would tend to be conservative, and it’s not because I’ve told them to be,” he said.

Some Jewish groups have raised concerns since the announcement of Ms. Palin’s selection to the Republican ticket that discussions in the Wasilla Bible Church might go beyond conservatism. Last month, a leader in the group Jews for Jesus, which advocates converting Jews to Christianity — but which has been accused by some Jews of anti-Semitism — spoke at the church. The speaker, David Brickner, spoke enthusiastically about the “miracle” of conversions in Israel by the group’s missionaries.

The church has also come under fire among some gay advocacy groups for promoting an upcoming Focus on the Family conference in Anchorage dealing with the so-called curing of homosexuality.

The Wasilla Bible Church, which draws 800 to 1,000 people for Sunday service, itself is discreet to the point of self-effacement. Only a single small sign on the gravel road leading up to the property declares the name. On the three-year-old building itself, which looks more like a warehouse than a cathedral, a large cross over the rear entrance is the only declaration of purpose.

People who know the church and its parishioners say that the mix of simplicity and quirkiness is common in Alaska, where many people have moved over the years and left their pasts and old church lives behind.

Homegrown churches like Wasilla — started in the early 1970s by a handful of families, including Ms. Morgan’s, during the construction boom in building the Trans-Alaska pipeline — have become singularly Alaskan. Mr. Kroon still remembers the days of a single room with a wood-burning stove that he would have to fire up before services.

Mr. Kroon said the Alaskan spirit of go-it-alone individuality gives the church a mix of joiners and resolute nonjoiners. The church offers full-immersion water baptism, which some people want and others do not.

“I have people who’ve been here since I got here, and they still say, ‘Don’t put me on the membership roll,’ ” he said. “There’s definitely a cultural element.”