Swedish Muslims Take Anti-Prophet Priest to Court

STOCKHOLM, April 22, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A top Muslim scholar said the minority would abide by the Swedish law in confronting a Christian preacher who insulted Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), urging his fellow Swedish Muslims not to take the law into their own hands or commit any violent acts to avenge the repulsive remarks of the Christian cleric.

“We beg those who threatened (Runar) Sogaard, in the name of Islam, to let Swedish law judge between him and us,” Hassan Moussa, the head of Sweden’s council of imams, wrote in the Expressen newspaper, according to Reuters Friday, April 22.

Celebrity evangelist preacher Runar Sogaard, in a sermon at Filadelfia church in Stockholm on March 20, repeated claims against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) – whose Birthday Muslims worldwide celebrated Thursday – saying the Seal of Prophets was “a confused pedophile” since his wives included a girl aged nine years old, alluding to the Prophet’s wife `Aisha.

The Muslim imam said that although Sogaard's comments “injured millions of Muslims all over the world, but they must not lead to violence like the murder last year of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh who was critical of Islam,” Reuters said.

“We assure all honest Swedes that the tragic developments we witnessed in Holland will not take place here.”

Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gosh, known for his criticism of Islam, was killed last November, allegedly by a Muslim extremist after he directed an anti-Islam script that trigged anger of the Muslim minority in the Netherlands.

Van Gogh made his film in collaboration with a controversial politician of Somali descent, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is a vocal critic of women’s treatment in Islamic countries and who was also under police protection after receiving death threats.

Marie Thorsensson, an official at Sogaard's church, told Reuters that the Christian preacher would not make any comment on the issue “except that the extract from his sermon is correct, but the sermon was not about Islam or Muhammad”.

Islam has become the second official religion in Sweden after Christianity, despite the fact that the Muslim community is a relatively new one, unlike that of other European countries such as France.

The first mosque was built in Sweden in 1976. The Swedish constitution allows Muslims to build mosques and Islamic schools.

Sweden also seats around 145 Islamic societies affiliated to three central Islamic unions, in addition to scores of mosques, praying halls and Islamic centers everywhere in the country.

`Aisha, before the Prophet proposed to her, was asked for marriage by Jubair ibn Mut`am, a fact which proves that she was mature enough for marriage, according to prevailing tradition at that time.

Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi, former President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, Garden Grove, California, that the age of `Aisha when she married Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was far from being confirmed.

“Historically, it is not confirmed that she was nine years old when she came in the household of the Prophet. There are various reports from age nine to age 24. Her maturity, knowledge, intelligence, and contributions during the life of the Prophet and afterwards all indicate that she was either an exceptional nine-year-old or must have been older than that.”

The Scandanavians will, if they are lucky, live to regret their socialist government's immigration policies. Nine years of age is the official marriagable age for girls in Iran. TODAY!

Here's Mark Steyn on the subject of TROP "Battered Westerner Syndrome" (snip)
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0802/steyn1.asp

"...the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that 65% of the country's rapes were committed by "non-Western" immigrants -- a category which, in Norway, is almost wholly Muslim. A professor at the University of Oslo explained that one reason for the disproportionate Muslim share of the rape market was that in their native lands "rape is scarcely punished" because it is generally believed that "it is women who are responsible for rape."

So Muslim immigrants to Norway should be made aware that things are a little different in Scandinavia? Not at all! Rather, the professor insisted, "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because their manner of dress would be regarded by Muslim men as inappropriate. "Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it." Or to modify Queen Victoria's wedding-night advice to her daughter: Lie back and think of Yemen.

France? Well, I can't bring you any ethnic rape statistics from the Fifth Republic because the authorities go to great lengths not to keep any. But, even though the phenomenon of immigrant gang rape does not exist, there's already a word for it: the "tournante" -- or "take your turn." Last year, 11 Muslim men were arrested for enjoying a grand old tournante with a 14-year old girl in a cellar.

Denmark? "Three quarters of rapes are carried out by non-Danes," says Peter Skaarup, chairman of the People's Party, a member of the governing coalition.

Well, you get the idea. Whether or not Muslim cultures are more prone to rape is a question we shall explore another day. What's interesting is how easily even this most extreme manifestation of multiculturalism is subsumed within the usual pieties. Norwegian women must learn to be, in a very real sense, less "exclusionary." Lebanese male immigrants, fleeing a war-torn wasteland and finding refuge in a land of peace, freedom and opportunity, are inevitably transformed into gang rapists by Australian racism...."

AND IN SUNNY AUSTRALIA.....

Let us all pray
By Andrew Bolt
14nov03

LET me tell you how two Christian pastors came to be on trial after discussing Islam in church, in a case that's so far cost them $100,000.

This will show how our shiny-eyed Equal Opportunity Commission can cause more religious strife than it solves. And helps kill free speech in doing it.

Diane Sisely, the EOC boss, was not happy last year. She hadn't found the many Muslim-hating racists last year she felt were out there, particularly after the September 11 attacks.

Sisely was ready for them – and armed. The Bracks Government, in an appalling attack on free speech, had passed its new racial and religious vilification laws, under which people could be jailed for speaking their minds.

But what did she find?

Peace and tolerance, according to the figures in her annual report, rather than the "dramatic levels" of hatred she'd warned of.

In fact, the EOC in the 12 months to June last year logged just five complaints of religious vilification in the entire state, covering all faiths and none.

Just five. Plus 72 complaints – including the trivial and try-on – of religious discrimination.

This wasn't good enough. And so Sisely, who said the low figures proved people were too scared to complain, took action.

Over the next year, her staff taught nearly 10,000 Victorians, particularly Muslims and Arabs, about our discrimination and vilification laws – and how to complain to her office. It seemed the EOC wanted more complaints.

And, early last year, Sisely hired May Helou.

I THOUGHT the EOC had to serve all Victorians equally. But in hiring Helou, Sisely risked giving the perception that the EOC sided with Muslims above all other religious groups.

After all, May Helou was the head of the Islamic Council of Victoria's support groups for women and for Muslim converts, and now sits on its executive.

The Islamic Council would have been delighted to see what work its official was now given by the EOC.

As an EOC bulletin says, Helou's job is to make sure "people from Arabic and Muslim communities are aware of their rights under anti-discrimination laws" and offer "support to people wishing to make a complaint".

But then she took a step that makes it look even more as if the EOC now doesn't just resolve complaints, but even incites them.

One evening, at the Islamic Council headquarters, Helou alerted several Muslim converts to a seminar on jihad to be run by a Melbourne Pentecostal church, Catch the Fire Ministries.

One of the converts, Jan Jackson, last month told a Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearing that Helou was worried the seminar would be full of Christians "without any Muslims present".

SHE said Helou asked her to go, and even rang her at home at 8.30 on the morning of the seminar to again ask: "Can you please go?"

Another convert, Malcolm Thomas, now the Islamic Council's secretary, told VCAT that Helou asked him to attend, too. A third, Yusuf Eades, said he couldn't be sure which Islamic Council leader asked him to go.

And so Catch the Fire – unknown to its leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah, and its speaker, Pastor Daniel Scot – had among the 250 Christians at its seminar three Muslims, all sent by Helou and a colleague, and seemingly ready to feel vilified.

Bingo. The speaker, Scot, was a Pakistani who had faced a death sentence in Muslim Pakistan for being a Christian, and had lived in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He was not only familiar with Muslim countries, but had read the Koran many times.

He certainly knew it better than did Jackson, as she admitted to VCAT.

As he talked, he cited passages in the Koran and Hadith that he said radical clerics used to justify armed jihad, looting, the killing of converts from Islam, the rape of captive women, lying for the faith and more.

(Catch the Fire's website lists the Koranic sources Scot used, and examples of Islamic leaders and scholars who interpret these verses in the way he warned of.)

When Scot finished, one of the converts, Thomas, stood and asked: how should Christians respond?

"Pray," Scot replied. Muslims "should be loved".

But the converts were still furious, and said they felt vilified and scared. Jackson said she didn't like the way the audience had laughed at the Koran, either.

One confronted Scot during a break, and Jackson left a message for Helou at her work about what she'd seen.

Some time later, the converts met Helou at the EOC and decided to complain to the EOC about the pastors.

But how manufactured was this complaint? After all, if Helou and her colleague hadn't asked the converts to monitor the seminar, no Muslims would have been there to feel offended or frightened.

WORSE, the EOC, whose staff member incited this complaint, now had to act as the neutral "umpire" in conciliation talks between the converts and pastors.

Stranger still, Helou not only was a member of the EOC that was trying to conciliate this case, but was a leader of the Islamic Council that officially joined the converts in their complaint.

Let me stress that Helou herself was not involved in the conciliation, and three months ago left the EOC. I do not say she acted deceitfully, against EOC rules or with improper motives.

She may well have prompted the complaint in her role with the Islamic Council, not the EOC. But the conflicts of interest here are disturbing. It is tyrannical for a state body to be both prosecutor and judge, or, at least, conciliator. And an EOC official shouldn't organise complaints involving a group of which she is a member. That is unfair – and dangerous.

The EOC conciliation talks failed, and so Nalliah and Scot must now defend their right to free speech in a VCAT hearing that has dragged on for four expensive and draining weeks.

This heated legal battle has inflamed passions on both sides. The Islamic Council badly wants to win and says Muslims around the world are watching.

MEANWHILE, Christians even in the United States and England have claimed that the pastors are persecuted, and VCAT's hearings are filled with sternly praying folk.

What a tribute to the EOC and to the Government's foul laws against free speech, which were actually meant to spread religious tolerance, not inspire such conflict and oppression.

But let's look at the bright side. The converts have given Sisely three more complaints to add to her little list. In the discrimination industry that seems to count as a success.

LOL! "Almighty allah". Luckily, this story only applies to the State of Victoria, which has a Premier of Lebanese descent. He's about as popular now as a dose of the asian flu.
Muslims in Australia number approx 450,000 out of a population of 20 million. Aussies are waking up. (And speaking up.)
But it doesn't matter where islam goes, trouble comes along with them.

"Don't Turn a Blind Eye to Terror In our Midst (snip)

The extent to which Middle Eastern crime gangs have moved into the drug market is breathtaking. They are now the main suppliers of cocaine in Sydney and are developing markets in southeastern Queensland and Victoria. They are leading suppliers of heroin in and around the inner city, southwest Sydney and western Sydney.

But what sets the Middle Eastern gangs apart from all other gangs is their propensity to use violence at any time and for any reason. Unlike their Vietnamese counterparts, Middle Eastern crime gangs roam the city and are not confined to Cabramatta or Chinatown. And even more alarming is that the violence is directed mainly against young Australian men and women. It is plain that violent attacks on our young men and women are racial as well as criminal.

Quite often when taking statements from young men attacked by groups of Lebanese males around Darling Harbour, a common theme that emerges is that the violence is racially motivated: the victims are attacked simply because they are Australian.

I wonder whether the inventors of the racial hatred laws introduced during the golden years of multiculturalism ever contemplated the possibility that we, the silent majority, would be the target of racial violence and hatred. I don't remember any race-based charges being laid in conjunction with the gang rapes of southwestern Sydney in 2001, where race was clearly an issue and racial slurs were used to humiliate the victims.

Unbelievably, a publicly funded document produced by the Anti-Discrimination Board, titled The Race for Headlines, was then circulated. It sought to not only cover up race as a motive for the rapes but to criticise any accurate reporting on this matter in the media as racially biased. It worries many operational police that organisations such as the ADB, the Privacy Commission and the Council for Civil Liberties have become unaccountable and push agendas that don't represent the values that this great country was built on.

Many have heard of the horrific problems in France with an unprecedented outbreak of crimes among an estimated 5 million Muslim immigrants. Middle Eastern males now make up 45,000 of the 90,000 inmates in French prisons. There are no-go areas in Paris for police and citizens alike. The rule of law has broken down so badly that when police went to one of these areas recently to round up three Islamic terrorists, they went in armoured vehicles, with heavy weaponry and more than 1,000 armed officers – just to arrest a few suspects..."

http://www.hvk.org/articles/0104/64.html

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