Benjamin and Sharon Vogelenzang were accused of launching a tirade against white British Muslim convert Ericka Tazi, 60, at their hotel in Liverpool where she had been staying while she attended a course at a local hospital in March.

Tazi, who converted to Islam 18 months ago, said they had laughed at her when she wore a hijab on the last day of her stay and Dutch-born Benjamin Vogenlenzang, 53, had called the prophet Mohammed a murderer and likened him to Saddam Hussein and Hitler.

Sharon Vogelenzang, 54, admitted suggesting that the hijab was a form of bondage but said her views were based on media references to Muslim women.

The couple also told the court that Tazi had insulted their religion by calling Jesus Christ a minor prophet and said the bible was untrue.

After a two-day trial judge Richard Clancy at Liverpool Magistrates Court dismissed charges the hoteliers had used threatening, abusive or insulting words which were religiously aggravated, the Press Association reported.

Mrs Tazi

He said Tazi’s claim she had been abused for up to an hour had not been borne out by other prosecution witnesses.

Prosecutors defended bringing the case, saying they believed there had been sufficient evidence for a realistic chance of a conviction.

“We would like to thank all those who have supported us over the last nine months — our family, our friends, our church, and Christians from all around the world and non-Christians,” Sharon Vogelenzang told reporters outside court after the verdict.”As Christmas approaches we wish everybody peace and goodwill.”

veiled Egyptian students wearing the face-covering veil, known as the niqab,

Egypt’s top Islamic cleric is planning to ban students wearing the face veil from entering the schools of al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s premier institute of learning, according to an independent daily Monday.

A security official also told The Associated Press that police have standing verbal orders to bar girls covered from head to toe from entering al-Azhar’s institutions, including middle and high schools, as well as the dormitories of several universities in Cairo.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to the press, said the ban was for security reasons.

The moves appear to be part of a government campaign cracking down on increasingly overt manifestations of ultraconservative Islam in Egypt.

While a vast majority of Egyptian women wear the headscarf, only a few wear the niqab, which covers the face and is common in neighboring Saudi Arabia which practices the more conservative form of Wahhabi Islam. The trend seems to gaining ground in the Arab world’s most populous country.

There is no uniform religious opinion across the Muslim world about whether a head scarf — much less a face veil — is required.

The majority of Islamic scholars say the face veil is not required but is merely a custom that dates back to tribal, nomadic societies living in the Arabian desert before Islam began.

Sheik of al-Azhar Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi’s plans came to light when he told a middle school student in a class he was visiting earlier this week to take off her niqab.

Tantawi was inspecting al-Azhar’s schools at the start of the academic year to check on measures in place to stem the spread of swine flu, according to details of the visit published by the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Tantawi angrily told the girl that the niqab “has nothing to do with Islam and is only a custom” and made her take it off.

He then announced he would soon issue an order banning girls from entering al-Azhar schools wearing the niqab.

“Niqab has nothing to do with Islam…I know about religion better than you and your parents,” the cleric was quoted as telling the student.

Tantawi left Cairo late Sunday on a visit to Tajikistan and was not available for comments. Calls to his deputies went unanswered.

However, Abdel Moati Bayoumi, a scholar in an al-Azhar affiliated research center, said al-Azhar’s scholars would back Tantawi if he issues the order.

“We all agree that niqab is not a religious requirement,” Bayoumi said. “Taliban forces women to wear the niqab… The phenomena is spreading” and it has to be confronted, he added. “The time has come.”

Critics of the move, however, say the ban has little chance of being implemented. A previous directive by the minister of religious endowment to ban women preachers wearing the niqab from mosques was hotly contested. A ban on nurses wearing full veil was announced last year, but not enforced.

A researcher wearing the niqab prevented from using the library at the American University in Cairo in 2001 took her case to the Egypt’s supreme court and eventually won. The court ruled a total ban on the niqab to be unconstitutional.

The court did recommend that women wearing the niqab be made to uncover their faces before female security guards to verify their identity.

On Saturday, scores of female university students protested outside al-Azhar university dormitory calling for the repeal of the decision banning fully veiled women from entering. There were similar demonstrations at Cairo University.

Sheik Safwat Hijazi, a scholar and preacher, said he would personally sue anyone who prevented his daughter or wife wearing full niqab from going about her daily life, including entering government offices.

“Preventing a woman from wearing what she wants is a crime,” Hijazi said. “Whoever says the niqab is a custom is not respectable.”

Hossam Bahgat, of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the series of government decisions against the niqab are “arbitrary” and while designed to combat extremism, only end up being discriminatory against women.

“The (veiled female students) are barred from government subsidized housing and nutrition because they are considered extremists,” he said.

Before I ever saw an Acoustic Research speaker, I tried many other brands. I thought Bose were pretty good, and for a long time they were my favorite. Even now, when I am listening to music quietly to avoid disturbing my girlfriend, I turn off the Acoustic Research speaker and plug in my Bose headphones. But still, nowadays my whole house is wired with Acoustic Research speakers which pipe music to any corner that I want, any time.

It started when I was a teenager growing up in the 70s. This was a long time before there was such a thing as Acoustic Research speakers, or many of the other bands that are popular today. What I had was a pair of second hand speakers which I had inherited from a friend, when he bought his new stereo. He seemed to not think that they were good enough for his use anymore, but for me they were amazing. They had all of the bass that a teenager wants, and a mellow tubey sound that I still find tasteful. Unfortunately, they had many weaknesses including a torn speaker cone that buzzed, and very low treble fidelity. But still, I did really like them, and they did a good job for me all the way through college.

You can even use an Acoustic Research speaker to hear sound outside, as I have done. I have a wireless Acoustic Research speaker which plays music to the patio whenever I am entertaining. It saves me the trouble of having to bring out a boom box, and the sound quality is simply sensational. All of my guests have complemented the good fidelity that an Acoustic Research speaker provides, and many of them have gone on to buy them themselves. I say that they have good taste in sound.

Swiss businessman Guillaume Morand erected a minaret atop the chimney of his office building

In a country where failing to use official, region-specific trash bags can incur a hefty fine, defying a architectural ban on minarets is practically an act of terrorism. 

But that didn’t stop Swiss businessman Guillaume Morand, who protested last month’s constitutional amendment banning minarets by building one atop the chimney of his office in the city of Lausanne.

Morand, who owns a chain of shoe stores, told the AFP news agency that the ban is shameful, and blamed liberal parties for failing to counter what he described as right-wing scare tactics. The Swiss People’s Party, which spearheaded the initiative to ban minarets on mosques, released an aggressive campaign including posters of women in face-covering burkas and minarets shaped like rockets.

The ban was all the more scandalous, Morand said, given that Switzerland encourages Arabs to “visit the country and to spend their money here.”

Morand joins prominent Jewish leaders and the Vatican in condemning the referendum last month, when 53% of Swiss voters went to the polls to decide whether to outlaw the construction of any more minarets, although only four mosques in Switzerland have them. The amendment passed with 57% of the votes.

The Independent of London reported Monday that a group of prominent Swiss intellectuals is already preparing an initiative to overturn the ban, although many have speculated the new amendment will be struck down anyway by the European Court of Human Rights.

The Vatican backed a statement by the Swiss Bishops’ Conference calling the decision “a great challenge on the path of integration in dialogue and mutual respect.”

Moreover, the statement said, the vote “will not help the Christians oppressed and persecuted in Islamic countries, but will weaken the credibility of their commitment in these countries.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that European Jews have also come out strongly against the ban, pointing out that in the past, bans and regulations were imposed on synagogues as well.

“Precisely because the Jewish community has firsthand experience of discrimination, it is committed to active opposition to discrimination and to action in favor of religious freedom and peaceful relations between the religions,” two Swiss Jewish groups declared in a statement.

Swiss Jewry, the statement said, “takes seriously the fears of the population that extremist ideas could be disseminated in Switzerland. But banning minarets is no solution — it only creates in Muslims in Switzerland a sense of alienation and discrimination.”

The American Anti-Defamation League also released a statement condemning the ban as a “populist political campaign of religious intolerance.”

“This is not the first time a Swiss popular vote has been used to promote religious intolerance,” the statement read. 

“A century ago, a Swiss referendum banned Jewish ritual slaughter in an attempt to drive out its Jewish population,” it said. “We share the … concern that those who initiated the anti-minaret campaign could try to further erode religious freedom through similar means.”

The executive director of the American Jewish Committee said the group stands “firmly against these rabble-rousing politics in the name of pluralism and democracy.”

The book, edited by Michael Luongo, is the first and only gay themed American book ever to be translated into Arabic. The tour begins at Lebanon’s Beirut Book Fair where Luongo will be signing the book today at the Arab Diffusion. After Lebanon, Luongo will travel through Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt, among other countries during his six week tour.

“I’ve had conversations for the past two years about presenting this book in the Middle East, but until now, that just hasn’t happened,” said the 41 year old editor, noting he had tried to present the book at the Emirates Airlines Book Fair in the past.

“Ironically, the Arabs who were part of the Fair said yes, but the Europeans, afraid of controversy, said no. Homophobia is complicated, isn’t it?” So far in Lebanon, there has been a positive reaction, and Luongo said even a member of the Saudi government bought a copy of the book and asked about possibly presenting it in Riyadh.

The book has been a consistent gay travel best seller in the United States and was originally published by Haworth Press in 2007, until the company was bought by Routledge/Taylor & Francis in 2008.

In 2009, the Lebanese publishing company Arab Diffusion launched the book in Arabic. This itself was not without controversy as the publisher used the Arabic word “shaz” in its translation for gay, a word meaning “different” but which can also mean “pervert,” and historically used to mean gay. The lost-in-translation problem made headlines across the globe, including in the New York Post’s Page 6 gossip column. Arab Diffusion has agreed to recover the book using the more sensitive word “mithlee” a modern Arabic literal translation of homosexual.

“It was a real headache at first, and unintentional on the part of the publisher, and there were also issues of using a word more likely to escape Middle Eastern sensors since it can be interpreted in different ways,” said Luongo. “But when I talked with Middle Eastern civil rights groups they said it brought up in a very strong way, the problems they have with terminology in the Arabic language and the media coverage of gay rights issues. So that is at least a positive outcome.”

Gay Travels in a Muslim World is an edited collection, with stories by Luongo and several other authors, some of them gay Western men who have traveled in the region, and gay men from Muslim countries. Featured writers include Jeff Key, a gay U.S. soldier who had been in Iraq, and Parvez Sharma who directed the movie A Jihad for Love, a film about gays in Muslim countries. Afdhere Jama of the gay Muslim news site Huriyah, wrote the book’s foreward. Luongo writes on Afghanistan, and areas covered in the book are as diverse as suburban Los Angeles, Morocco, Egypt and Bangladesh. Luongo’s own travels have taken him through most of the Muslim world, including the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Luongo is an adjunct professor at New York University, where he teaches travel writing, and is also a freelance journalist, having written for many publications in the United States and Europe.

“I think that it is necessary to look at these issues directly, rather than second hand. The Middle East and Muslim countries are also full of things we can’t always explain from a Western perspective and even words like ‘gay’ don’t properly define what is going on.”

Luongo has been surprised by the negative, but also with the overwhelmingly positive responses he gets from the new Arabic version. “Some people thought I was crazy, when trying to get this into Arabic, but I think ultimately it creates a positive dialogue on these issues in this region, in a way meant to reach across audiences, since these are at heart travel stories about connecting to regions that as a whole Americans, gay and straight, avoid.

“That the book is available in Arabic for anyone to read within these regions is a breakthrough. A place like Lebanon is considered liberal and a no-brainer for the book, but friends have told me the Arabic version is sold now in bookstores on Mutanabi Street in Baghdad, perhaps the most dangerous place for gays in the region. That is a miracle in itself.”

Ismail Bostanov

The Deputy Chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Stavropol, Ismail Bostanov, was murdered in the city of Cherkessk on Sunday (September 20). Interfax quoted a law enforcement source in Karachaevo-Cherkessia as saying the attack took place when Bostanov’s was stopped at a traffic light and unidentified attackers opened fire on him. Bostanov was killed and his son was wounded and hospitalized (Interfax, September 20). According to other reports, the attack took place at a gas station (RIA Novosti, September 20). Bostanov was reportedly traveling back from a mosque in Ust-Dzheguta, south of Cherkessk, with his son when the attack occurred (www.newsru.com, September 20).

Bostanov was the Deputy Chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Stavropol for over 20 years and rector of the Islamic Institute in Karachaevo-Cherkessia for more than 10 years (www.gazeta.ru, RIA Novosti, September 20). In December 2006, three masked attackers broke into Bostanov’s home in Cherkessk, knifed and shot him and with firearms and beat up his wife. However, investigators at the time concluded that attack was part of an attempted robbery because the raiders stole money from Bostanov’s house (Kommersant, September 21).

Ismail Berdiev, who is the mufti of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and head of the Coordination Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus, said yesterday that he is convinced that Bostanov was killed by “Wahhabis” -the standard term used by local officials in the North Caucasus, both governmental and religious, for Islamist rebels and their sympathizers. “And who else could it have been -he was not a businessman, so that it could have entered someone’s mind to kill him for the sake of money,” Berdiev told Interfax, adding that Bostanov was known in Karachaevo-Cherkessia as “an active fighter against the spread of Wahhabi ideology.” Berdiev expressed particular indignation over the fact that Bostanov’s murder took place on the Muslim holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan (Eid Al-Fitr started Sunday, September 20, in most Arab and Muslim countries as well as in North America and Europe). “It simply beggars the imagination that someone dared to commit this heinous crime on such a holy day,” Berdiev said (www.newsru.com, September 20).

The Islamist rebel website Kavkaz Center reported Bostanov’s murder, describing him as a “murtad” (apostate) and an “evil enemy of Allah” who “carried out an anti-Islamic policy as rector of the ‘Islamic Institute.’” However, the website’s report did not include a claim of responsibility for the attack (www.kavkazcenter.com, September 20).

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov condemned Bostanov’s murder and urged all Muslims to unite against Wahhabism. “What has happened today proves again that all Muslims must act against Wahhabism,” he said in a statement. “If we want to stem this evil, the fight against it must be tough and continued.” Kadyrov said Bostanov was a deeply religious man and noted that the murder occurred during Ramadan. “He held an exceptionally principled position on reactionary Wahhabism and extremism. There were assassination attempts on his life before but they did not break his will or frighten him. In his sermons he led an uncompromising struggle against those who use Islamic slogans to commit cruel murders, terrorist acts and discredit our religion,” he continued. Kadyrov conveyed his condolences to Bostanov’s relatives (RIA Novosti, September 20).

However, Kommersant reports today that many of Bostanov’s relatives and friends do not believe that “Wahhabis” killed him. “Ismail-khadzhi was not involved in witchcraft or other activities censured by both official Islam and the Islamic underground,” the newspaper quoted one of the people gathered near the slain cleric’s home on Sunday. “As for the criticism [he] directed at the Wahhabis, all the imams rail against them, but they are not killed for it,” the relative suggested. According to Kommersant, relatives of Bostanov said he had not recently received any threats (Kommersant, September 21).

Bostanov’s murder was denounced by the leaders of Russia’s religious establishment. The Council of Muftis of the Russian Federation issued a statement saying that Bostanov’s killers were among “the violent enemies of Islam and mankind” (Interfax, September 20). Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill conveyed his condolences and support to Russia’s Muslim leaders and said Bostanov’s murder was aimed at intimidating traditional Muslim leaders but it would only strengthen their desire for peace and accord in society (www.ruvr.ru, September 21). Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Berl Lazar, expressed his condolences to Bostanov’s family and Russia’s Muslim community and said he was convinced that representatives of all of Russia’s traditional religions would unite to demand “maximally harsh measures against the bandit [rebel] underground” and their accomplices (Interfax, September 21).

Whoever murdered Ismail Bostanov and whatever their motive was, the killing took place against the backdrop of escalating insurgent violence in the North Caucasus. Two members of the anti-extremism center of Ingushetia’s interior ministry were shot to death and another wounded in an attack Sunday. Interior ministry sources said the attack took place at 12:15 p.m., local time, on the Kavkaz federal highway near the village of Gazi-Yurt in Ingushetia’s Nazran district, when unidentified gunmen fired on a car in which the ministry employees were traveling (ITAR-TASS, September 20). RIA Novosti reported today that the three Ingush policemen shot in the attack were brothers and that all of them died on the spot (RIA Novosti, September 21).

On September 19, attackers first shot up and then blew up a high-voltage electric power line on the outskirts of the Ingush city of Karabulak. On September 18, a bomb exploded in front of a freight train in Karabulak. The train was not derailed and no one was hurt in the blast. On September 17, a bomb detonated as a police patrol car was passing by in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district. Two policemen were hurt in the blast and hospitalized. The previous day, September 16, there were reports of two powerful explosions and subsequent gunfire in Ordzhonikidzevskaya, but there were no details about how many people were wounded or killed, if any, in those incidents. Three insurgents were reportedly killed in a shootout with police in the city of Nazran on September 14 (www.kavkaz-uzel, September 19).

On September 19, an anonymous Federal Security Service (FSB) source was quoted as saying that among the three rebels killed in a security operation in Dagestan’s Kizlyar district that day was Abdullah Saadullaev, a Sharia judge aka Daud who was the “right hand” of the Dagestani rebel “emir” Umalat Magomedov. The source claimed Daud was found with letters addressed to various businessmen in Dagestan threatening them and ordering them to hand over 100,000 Euros or more (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, September 19).

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Majed El Shafie

Every three minutes a Christian is being tortured in the Muslim world, and in 2009 more than 165,000 Christians will have been killed because of their faith, most of them in Muslim countries, according to a human rights organization that is visiting Israel starting Sunday.

“Hamas digs up the bodies of Christians from Christian burial sites in the Gaza Strip claiming that they pollute the earth,” said Reverend Majed El Shafie, President of One Free World International (OFWI), who will head a delegation of human rights activists, members of parliament from Canada and religious personalities.

During their visit to Israel the delegation will hold a conference on human rights and persecuted minorities at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. The conference will provide new statistics on the persecution of minorities in Muslim countries.

El Shafie said that between 200-300 million Christians are being persecuted in the world, 80 percent of whom lived in Muslim countries and the rest in communist and other countries.

Members of the delegation will meet with Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon and Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat in the hope of enlisting Israel to champion their cause.

OFWI is a human rights organization whose headquarters are located in Toronto, Canada. The organization numbers some 3,000 members, divided into 28 branches that are active in countries all over the world, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Iran.

El Shafie, 32, was born in Cairo to a distinguished Muslim family of lawyers and judges. Through a Christian friend he was exposed at an early age to hatred toward the Christian minority in Egypt.

He decided to convert to Christianity, wrote a book about it and as a result became an outcast and a victim of oppression.

In 1998 he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured and condemned to death.

El Shafie managed to escape, fled to the Sinai, where a Beduin family hid him for two months, and crossed the Israeli border on a jet-ski. He was arrested in Israel and was imprisoned for over a year in Beersheba, until he was released through the assistance of the UN, Amnesty International and the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, which managed to obtain political asylum for El Shafie in Canada, where he emigrated. He founded OFWI in 2004.