“BAGHDAD:At least 40 women have died this year at the hands of religious vigilantes in the southern city of Basra, the police chief said Sunday, describing the discovery of mutilated bodies accompanied by dire notes warning against “violating Islamic teachings.”

“The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior,” Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in this oil-rich city some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Iranian border and 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad.”

Those who behind these atrocities are organized gangs who work under cover of religion, pretending to spread the instructions of Islam, but they are far from this religion,” Khalaf said.”

Via the Herald Tribune >

The people who committed these murders included notes saying that the women were killed for un-Islamic behavior.

“NEW DELHI (AP) 

Police in eastern India killed at least three people when they opened fire on a group of hard-line Hindus who set fire to a police station during ongoing clashes between Hindus and Christians, officials said Friday.

The killings, which occurred Thursday in a remote corner of Orissa state, bring the death toll to four since violence broke out on Christmas Eve when long-standing tensions between the Hindu majority and the small Christian community erupted over conversions to Christianity.

The Hindus had attacked the police station in the Kandhamal district’s Brahmangaon village, complaining of a lack of protection after a group of Christians burned down several Hindu homes in an apparent retaliation for earlier Hindu attacks on churches.

About 19 churches, most of them small mud and thatch buildings, have been ransacked and burned since Monday and several homes destroyed, including that of Radhakant Nayak, a member of India’s upper house of parliament and a Christian leader in the area.

The state’s chief minister, Naveen Patnaik, told reporters Friday that three people were killed in the violence at the police station, but provided no other details.

Patnaik also called for more federal forces to be dispatched to the area after local police and a curfew failed to halt the violence. On Thursday the federal government said it was sending a 300-strong paramilitary force to the region.

At least 25 people, belonging to both Hindu and Christian communities, have been arrested for suspected involvement in the violence, Superintendent of Police Narsingh Bhol told The Associated Press by phone.

India is overwhelmingly Hindu but officially secular. Religious minorities, such as Christians, who account for 2.5 percent of the country’s 1.1. billion people, and Muslims, who make up 14 percent, often coexist peacefully.

Is “often coexisting peacefully,” often enough? Is it too much to ask that they always coexist peacefully? If that’s not a possibility, maybe we should consider that the world might be better without religions. Three dead due to religious violence is 3 too many… no matter the frequency. 

 Via AP > 

“Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply “disappeared” as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

Word reaching dissidents hiding out on the border suggested that as well as executions, some 2,000 monks are being held in the notorious Insein Prison or in university rooms which have been turned into cells.

There were reports that many were savagely beaten at a sports ground on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were heard crying for help.

Others who had failed to escape disguised as civilians were locked in their bloodstained temples.

There, troops abandoned religious beliefs, propped their rifles against statues of Buddha and began cooking meals on stoves set up in shrines.”

Read more at Daily News > 

“JAKARTA, Indonesia — A dozen Christian men were convicted Thursday and sentenced to up to 14 years in jail for beating to death and beheading two Muslims to avenge the government executions of three Christians in Indonesia last year.

Five other Christians received eight-year terms for burying the pair, who were set upon by a mob as they drove though a Christian neighborhood on Sulawesi island a day after the Sept. 22, 2006, executions of Fabianus Tibo and two other Christian militants.

The three executed Christians had been found guilty of leading a militia that killed at least 70 Muslims during a 1999-2002 religious war on the island that led to the deaths of at least 1,000 people from both faiths.”

Full article here (WashingtonPost.com) >

“ONE in four young American Muslims thinks suicide bombing of civilians is justified to defend their religion, at least sometimes, according to a new report.

The survey by the authoritative Pew Research Centre finds that American Muslims are generally middle class and mostly mainstream, but Muslims under 30 are more prone to radical ideas.

The survey, one of the most exhaustive of American Muslims, found that only 25 per cent thought the US war on terrorism sincere, and only 40 per cent believed that Arabs carried out the September 11 attacks.

American attitudes are relevant because the Muslim communities there are the most similar to Australia.”

Read more @ the Age >

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - “Hamas gunmen fatally shot six bodyguards from the rival Fatah movement and mistakenly ambushed a jeep carrying their own fighters, killing five. In all, 16 people were killed in the bloodiest day of Palestinian infighting since violence broke out in the Gaza Strip four days ago.”

“Israel launched an airstrike at a Hamas building after the organization’s militants launched barrage after barrage of rockets at Israeli towns. Palestinian officials said at least four gunmen were killed.”

“In four days of fighting, 41 people have been killed and dozens more have been injured. Most of the dead have been from Fatah.”

From Fox News >

“As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad as “an abhorrent murder” and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.

Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.”

From the Daily Mail >

Adults killing each other over religion is sad. But when the young die needlessly, tragedies like this become even harder to understand and explain to oneself. Why did this young girl need to die?

“Five people, including two Muslim children, have been killed by suspected Islamic rebels in separate attacks in Thailand’s violence-torn south, police have said.

A group of militants ambushed a motorcycle late on Friday (local time) and shot dead a 45-year-old Muslim man and his two children, an 11-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy, in Yala, one of three Muslim-majority provinces.

Also in Yala, a 37-year-old Muslim man was hacked to death by militants in public view at a market late Friday, police said.

They also found the body of a man in a river in the province.”

“Police said several hundred Muslim women and children also blocked a highway in Yala on Saturday as they continued their sit-in for the third consecutive day to demand authorities release suspected militants.

About 20 kilometres away from the sit-in, hundreds of Buddhists also took to the streets, demanding the Muslims end the road blockade.”

“More than 2,100 people have been killed in the ongoing insurgency in the three south provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.

The Muslim-majority provinces were once an autonomous sultanate, until the region was annexed by mainly Buddhist Thailand a century ago.

Separatist unrest has erupted periodically ever since.”

From ABC News Online >

What strikes me about this article - besides the death and suffering of presumably innocent people - is the distinctions made between groups of people on the basis of their religious beliefs (Buddhists vs. Muslims). The article gives very little information about the motives behind these deaths but repeatedly labels the victims and the perpetrators by their religious affiliation. Would these people be fighting and killing each other if religion didn’t exist?

Dawkins would be happy to know that the phrase “Muslim children” in the first sentence did actually make me cringe this time…

“Secondary school pupils in north-eastern Nigeria have killed a teacher after apparently accusing her of desecrating the Koran, police say.

The teacher, a Christian, was attacked after supervising an exam in Gombe city. It is not clear what she had done to anger the students.

The authorities, concerned that communal unrest could break out, have ordered all the city’s schools to shut.

Similar accusations sparked riots in neighbouring Bauchi State last year.

At least 15,000 people have been killed in religious, communal or political violence since the country returned to civilian rule in 1999.”

From BBC >

“Does believing that “God is on our side” make it easier for us to inflict pain and suffering on those perceived to be our enemies? If we think God sanctions violence, are we more likely to engage in violent acts?

The answer to both those questions, according to new research, is a resounding “yes,” even among those who do not consider themselves believers.”

“”I think many people use God as their justification for violent and aggressive actions,” Bushman said. “Take the current conflict in Iraq as an example. Bush claims that God is on his side. Osama bin Laden claims that God, or Allah, is on his side.”

History is replete with other examples of wars fought in the name of God, involving nearly every religion on the planet.”

From ABC News >

Absolutely fascinating, *scientific* research supporting what, by now, should be obvious to any person with even the most basic, elementary knowledge of history.