From the ALL cultures / religions are EQUAL files

DailyTimes.com.pk
Many Muslims outraged at woman leading Friday prayers
CAIRO: Muslims in the Middle East on Saturday angrily denounced prayers led by a woman in New York City the day before as a violation of Islam. One Egyptian newspaper, Al-Messa, reported the news of Amina Wadud leading Friday prayer services on its front page, with the emphatic headline: "They are tarnishing Islam in America!" It referred to Wadud as "the deranged woman." A female Islamic law professor condemned the act as apostasy, explaining that a woman's body "stirs desire" in men. Some suggested the event was a U.S. conspiracy to mold traditional Islam into a secular American religion. Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, led the Islamic prayer service before a mixed congregation of 80 to 100 men and women at an Anglican church. Three mosques had refused to hold the service, and an art gallery backed out after receiving a bomb threat. Organizers of the prayer said it was intended to draw attention to the inequality faced by Muslim women. "Women were not allowed to (have) input in the basic paradigms of what it means to be a Muslim," Wadud said after the service, adding that while the Quran puts men and women on equal footing, men have distorted its teachings to leave women with no role other than "as sexual partners." But in the conservative Middle East, Wadud's prayer service was frowned on. In Saudi Arabia, Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik spoke out against the New York event in Friday prayers at a Riyadh mosque. "Those who defended this issue are violating God's law," he said. "Enemies of Islam are using women's issues to corrupt the community." Sheik Sayed Tantawi, head of Egypt's Al-Azhar mosque, the leading Sunni Muslim institution, said Islam permits women to lead other women in prayer but not a congregation that includes men. Soad Saleh, who heads the Islamic department of the woman's college at Al-Azhar University, considered the act an apostasy, which is punishable by death in Islam. "It is categorically forbidden for women to lead prayers (if they include men worshippers) and intentionally violates the basics of Islam," she said. Explaining why only men lead prayers, she said: "The origin is that the woman's body, even if veiled, stirs desire." The most conservative Muslims also warn that women should not raise their voices as the sound can be seductive. ap

DailyTimes.com.pk
Indian actress who married Bombay don claims asylum
LISBON: Bollywood actress Monica Bedi, who was detained in Portugal in 2002 for using a fake passport, appealed on Saturday for the right to asylum in Portugal, saying in a newspaper interview that she fears she will be tortured if returned to her native India.“I will certainly be tortured. Life does not exist for me in India. People want to kill me, they have carried out protests demanding that I be hung,” she told the weekly newspaper Expresso.Bedi was arrested in Lisbon in September 2002 along with her companion Abu Salem, one of India's most wanted men who is accused of masterminding a series of bombings that ripped through Bombay's commercial district in March 1993 killing more than 250 people.India has sought their extradition ever since the two were arrested. Authorities in predominantly Hindu India believe the bombings -- India's deadliest -- were carried out in retaliation for the deaths of hundreds of Muslims in riots that took place months earlier following the demolition of the Ayodhya mosque by Hindu nationalists.Bedi, who has starred in 30 movies, has completed a two-year jail sentence in Portugal but has been kept behind bars at a Lisbon jail while her extradition case was processed.She told Expresso she only discovered Salem's true identity after she married him in a Muslim ceremony in 2000, the same year she met him. Bedi was born a Hindu but says she has since converted to Christianity. afp