Mission & Justice

Nuha Adlan; 8/5/08

A two-day conference on domestic violence ended yesterday with participants saying there is no justification in Islam for abuse of women and children. They also came up with a list of demands and recommendations to tackle the problem. Experts from across the Kingdom participated in five sessions of discussions at the first National Experts Meeting to Fight Domestic Abuse Against Women and Children, with all participants agreeing that Islam does not condone abuse and that the problem should be brought to an end. “Traditions that allow abuse should be brought to an end,” said Dr. Maha Al-Munief, executive director of the National Family Safety Program (NFSP), which organized the event. “We will start training courses for people who work with abuse victims… We need cooperation from all NGOs,” she said in a press conference held to announce the recommendations.

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Omar; 8/5/08

In two weeks, my wife will bring our child into the world. The unborn baby is happy now, nestled within its mother’s womb and somewhat protected from the violence and suffering that exists in Gaza. I am naturally worried for mother and child. When she delivered our last child, my wife developed several medical complications. Due to the blockade on Gaza, such complications can no longer be treated in local hospitals and medical facilities.If my wife were to have an acute problem during natural birth there would be no medication or treatment available, putting her and the unborn at considerable risk. In light of this, we decided a while back that she would have a Caesarean-section rather than natural child birth. C-sections, at least, are available in Gaza.

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8/5/08

A Malaysian court has allowed a convert to renounce Islam, a rare decision for the conservative Muslim-led nation. Othman Ibrahim, Penang Sharia Court judge, said he had no choice but to allow an application by Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah, a Malaysian citizen of Chinese origin, to renounce her faith and return to Buddhism. Apostasy, or renouncing one’s faith, is one of the gravest sins in Islam and a very sensitive issue in Malaysia where Sharia courts have rarely allowed such renunciations and have also jailed apostates”The court has no choice but to declare that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah is no longer a Muslim as she has never practised the teachings of Islam,” Othman told a packed courtroom on Wednesday.

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8/5/08

Frustrated aid groups rounded on Burma’s military rulers last night, accusing them of letting cyclone survivors die while the junta blocked urgent visa applications from disaster experts. The junta stalled on issuing visas to aid workers as millions of people were left homeless in the wake of Cyclone Nargis and tens of thousands of bodies piled up in the disaster zone.  The number of dead and missing soared past 60,000 yesterday, and was expected to climb as a vast swath of Burma’s inundated delta region remained cut off. Entire towns were swept away by the storm and ocean surge, leaving millions homeless and lacking food and clean water, triggering fears disease could push the death toll still higher.

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Paul Toohey; 8/5/08

Ted Mullighan came up with 46 recommendations to tackle child sex abuse in South Australia’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands. He might have stretched himself and made it 47.  The former Supreme Court judge exposed some seriously disturbing matters in his report. But there was one thing too unpleasant to touch: ending the permit system in those lands.  Mullighan would have done well heeding the words of 19th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham - words the judge probably knows because they relate to making sure the courts operate in the full public gaze.

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6/5/08

Sunni extremists have killed three prostitutes and wounded two others in a brothel attack in the northern city of mosul, Iraqi police said on Tuesday. The insurgents knocked on the apartment’s door Monday and shouted at the women that they had been warned before not to carry out prostitution, said a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The militants then opened fire on the apartment, he said, citing testimony from one of the wounded women.

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Tomer Zarchin; 6/5/08

The High Court of Justice issued an order Tuesday requiring the state to explain within 60 days why it refuses to overturn the citizenship law, which prevents Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs from gaining Israeli citizenship. The petition on the matter was submitted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and several individuals who were personally penalized by the law. Among the petitioners was also Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On.

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Muriel Porter; 6/5/08

Predictably, the Australian Christian Lobby has praised the Rudd Government for deciding to override the ACT’s planned gay marriage legislation. Most Christians will be grateful, the lobby’s managing director, Jim Wallace, has said. Yes, the mainline churches will openly or tacitly agree with him, and I imagine many individual Christians will, too. But not all Christians will be happy with this backdown and some of us feel quite dismayed. Not many will speak up, however, because they have been effectively silenced by the recent concerted conservative push that has made homosexuality the great taboo in the churches. My own church, the Anglican Church, stands on the brink of an international schism over the issue. Conservative forces, fuelled by right-wing American money and led by pugnacious African bishops spoiling for a fight with the West, have declared war on the Episcopal (Anglican) Church in the US and the Anglican Church of Canada.

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Paul Maley & Samantha Maiden; 6/5/08

The ACT Government has accused Kevin Rudd of pandering to the “extreme Christian Right” in its threat to scuttle the territory’s controversial civil partnerships bill. Yesterday, the ACT’s federal Labor members and senators were labelled hypocrites for failing to condemn the commonwealth after it threatened to disallow the bill on the grounds that it would mimic marriage. ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell accused the Prime Minister, a devout Christian, of “kow-towing” to the Christian lobby.

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Pia Akerman & John Wiseman; 6/5/08

Any move to extend the Mullighan Commission’s child sex abuse investigations into other Aboriginal communities in South Australia is set to face opposition from indigenous leaders. An indigenous community leader from the state’s southwest coast said it would be wrong to do so and would effectively brand all Aboriginal communities as “being sexual predators”. Kokatha Mula elder Bronwyn Coleman Sleep expressed her opposition to further investigations on the eve of commissioner Ted Mullighan’s report on child sex abuse on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands being tabled in the South Australian parliament.

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