Basic Religion Test Stumps Many Americans

Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN Published: September 28, 2010

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.

That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”

Among the topics covered in the survey were: Where was Jesus born? What is Ramadan? Whose writings inspired the Protestant Reformation? Which Biblical figure led the exodus from Egypt? What religion is the Dalai Lama? Joseph Smith? Mother Teresa? In most cases, the format was multiple choice.

The researchers said that the questionnaire was designed to represent a breadth of knowledge about religion, but was not intended to be regarded as a list of the most essential facts about the subject. Most of the questions were easy, but a few were difficult enough to discern which respondents were highly knowledgeable.

On questions about the Bible and Christianity, the groups that answered the most right were Mormons and white evangelical Protestants.

On questions about world religions, like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, the groups that did the best were atheists, agnostics and Jews.

One finding that may grab the attention of policy makers is that most Americans wrongly believe that anything having to do with religion is prohibited in public schools.

An overwhelming 89 percent of respondents, asked whether public school teachers are permitted to lead a class in prayer, correctly answered no.

But fewer than one of four knew that a public school teacher is permitted “to read from the Bible as an example of literature.” And only about one third knew that a public school teacher is permitted to offer a class comparing the world’s religions.

The survey’s authors concluded that there was “widespread confusion” about “the line between teaching and preaching.”

Mr. Smith said the survey appeared to be the first comprehensive effort at assessing the basic religious knowledge of Americans, so it is impossible to tell whether they are more or less informed than in the past.

The phone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish in May and June. There were not enough Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu respondents to say how those groups ranked.

Clergy members who are concerned that their congregants know little about the essentials of their own faith will no doubt be appalled by some of these findings:

- Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.

- Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

- Forty-three percent of Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbinical authorities and philosophers, was Jewish.

The question about Maimonides was the one that the fewest people answered correctly. But 51 percent knew that Joseph Smith was Mormon, and 82 percent knew that Mother Teresa was Roman Catholic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

Saudi Arabia urged not to paralyze man as retribution punishment

By the CNN Wire Staff

August 21, 2010 4:18 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Amnesty International on Friday urged Saudi Arabian authorities not to paralyze a man as punishment for his having paralyzed someone else, allegedly during a fight.

The Saudi newspaper Okaz reported that the judge in the case had sent letters to several hospitals in Saudi Arabia asking if they could sever a man's spinal cord, as the man he allegedly stabbed had requested and, under sharia law, was his right to seek.

But such a punishment would amount "to nothing less than torture," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, acting director of the organization's Middle East and North Africa Programme. "While those guilty of a crime should be held accountable, intentionally paralyzing a man in this way would constitute torture, and be a breach of its international human rights obligations."

The paralyzed man, 22-year-old Abdul-Aziz al-Mitairy, told Okaz that the accused stabbed him in the back with a large knife during a fight more than two years ago. "The accused confessed to the crime in front of police, resulting in a general sentence of seven months," he told the newspaper.

During that time, the court in the northwest province of Tabuk debated how to carry out the surgery the paralyzed man was seeking as punishment for his alleged attacker, news reports said.

Riyadh's King Faisal Specialist Hospital, one of the kingdom's leading hospitals, responded that, from a medical perspective, it would not be possible for them to cause the injury by performing such surgery, Okaz reported.

But apparently at least one hospital said it would be possible. "According to one report, one hospital said it would be possible to medically administer the injury at the same place on the spinal cord as the damage the man is alleged to have caused his victim using a cleaver, during a fight more than two years ago, causing similar paralysis," Amnesty said in a news release.

It is up to the court to decide whether to impose the paralysis punishment or sentence the man to imprisonment, financial compensation, or flogging, it said.

The alleged attacker, who has not been identified publicly, "was convicted and sentenced following a trial where he was said to have had no legal assistance," Amnesty added.

International human rights law would consider such a sentence to be a violation of the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and to break the U.N. Convention Against Torture to which Saudi Arabia is a party, Amnesty said. It would also violate the principles of medical ethics adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, it said.

Other sentences of retribution in the kingdom have included eye-gouging, tooth extraction, and death in cases involving murder, it said.

International organizations are not the only ones to protest. Outrage has been expressed by bloggers in Saudi Arabia over the sentence, which underscores the societal struggle in Saudi Arabia between hardliners, who hew to tribal justice, and progressives, who consider such verdicts to be draconian and bad for the country's international image.

The fact that newspapers and bloggers are questioning decisions by courts -- institutions traditionally considered above reproach -- is a relatively recent phenomenon in Saudi Arabia, where other such sentences have captured international attention.

"This case in Saudi Arabia is not the only case of its kind," said Akbar Ahmed, a former commissioner of justice in Pakistan who is chairman of the department of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington. "We see many cases like this -- stoning or beheading or cutting off hands or feet in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, which are very tribal."

Under Islamic law, compassion is an important virtue for any judge, Ahmed said. "However harsh the punishment would be in tribal law, an eye for an eye, the compassion element that must be exercised by the judge overrides it, and I'm afraid we don't see much of that in cases like this where, very often, the victim becomes twice punished," he added.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/20/saudi.arabia.paralysis/index.html?hpt=T2

Iran imposes media blackout over stoning sentence woman

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani will not be stoned, the regime has said, but family fear she will be hanged instead.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan Friday 9 July 2010 18.28 BST

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who has been convicted of adultery in Iran and sentenced to death. Photograph: AP

Iran has imposed a media blackout over the case of a 43-year-old mother of two who was sentenced to be stoned to death and whose fate is still unclear despite an apparent "reprieve".

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is still facing execution by hanging after being convicted of adultery, her son told the Guardian today.

Newspapers, agencies and TV channels in Iran have been banned from reporting Mohammadi Ashtiani's death sentence, despite an international campaign launched by her children, which has been joined by politicians and celebrities from all over the world.

The campaign, first highlighted by the Guardian last week, has failed to stop the Iranian authorities from pressing ahead.

Last night the Iranian embassy in London issued an opaque statement saying that Mohammadi Ashtiani would not be stoned to death. "According to information from the relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be executed by stoning punishment," it said.

The statement was not reported inside Iran and neither was the news of stoning death sentences for 15 other Iranians.

"It's not the first time we are banned from reporting a stoning case, but because of the sensitivity over Sakineh's case the censorship for her story is even stricter," said an Iranian journalist from Tehran who asked not to be named.

"We are banned from reporting any details about her case. If they think that it [stoning to death] is an Islamic rule, why are they afraid of it so much? I think that the statement issued by Iran's embassy in London is just to calm down the situation. Once the outrage has cooled off, they might hang Sakineh instead."

Iran has not stoned a woman to death since 2007 when the execution of Mahboubeh M sparked outcry in Iran. She had been forced to confess to adultery.

"They told her that they'll pour boiling water on her head if she refuses to confess that she had sex with another man except her husband," said Soheila Vahdati, a human rights activist in California. "They executed her in secret and we were all informed when her death sentence was completed."

Mahboubeh's story became known only when an official witness of her death revealed that she had been buried alive up to her shoulders while the guards stoned her to death.

A number of men have been stoned to death in recent years.

Mohammadi Ashtiani's son, Sajad, 22, who began the campaign to save her, said the embassy's statement has not stopped him worrying for his mother. "They just said that she won't be stoned, it doesn't mean that she won't be executed. She's still on death row."

A prisoner reprieved before stoning may be hanged, as was the case for Abdollah Farivar in 2008. Farivar, convicted of "illicit relationship outside marriage", was initially sentenced to death by stoning but later hanged when a campaign for his case attracted worldwide attention.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/09/iran-blackout-over-stoning-sentence-woman

An American Honor Killing

In a quiet suburban parking lot outside of Phoenix, a father floors the gas on his Jeep Grand Cherokee and heads straight for his 20-year-old daughter. His goal: to protect his family’s "honor." Yes, honor crimes have washed up on our shores.

By Abigail Pesta

http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/latest/honor-killings-in-america

Around the sprawling, sunbaked campus of Dysart High School in El Mirage, Arizona, not many people knew about the double life of a pretty, dark-haired girl named Noor Almaleki.

At school, she was known as a fun-loving student who made friends easily. She played tennis in a T-shirt emblazoned with the school mascot — a baby demon in a diaper. She liked to watch Heroes and eat at Chipotle. Sometimes she talked in a goofy Keanu Reeves voice. She wore dark jeans, jeweled sandals, and flowy tops from Forever 21. She texted constantly and called her friends "dude." In other words, she was an American girl much like any other.

But at home, Noor inhabited a darker world. She lived a life of subservience, often left to care for her six younger siblings. Noor's father, 49-year-old Faleh Almaleki, was strict and domineering, deeming it inappropriate for her to socialize with guys, wear jeans, or post snapshots of herself on MySpace. Her responsibility was to follow orders, or to risk a beating. From her father's perspective, the only time Noor's life would ever change would be when she married a man he selected for her — back in his homeland of Iraq. Noor, however, had a different vision for herself. Having lived in the U.S. for 16 years, she held dreams of becoming a teacher, of marrying a man she loved, and, most importantly, of making her own choices.

On a cloudless, breezy afternoon in late October 2009, her father set out to end those dreams. As Noor walked across a suburban parking lot to a Mexican restaurant with a friend — a 43-year-old woman named Amal Khalaf — Faleh Almaleki gunned the engine of his Jeep Grand Cherokee and bore down on his 20-year-old daughter and her companion. The women took off running but were no match for the SUV, already traveling close to 30 miles per hour. Suddenly Amal turned, held up her hands in a futile attempt to stop the Jeep, and froze. Moments later, the vehicle struck the women, tossing them into the air. Amal hit the pavement; Noor landed on a raised median, in a patch of pebbly landscaping. Faleh wasn't done, though. Swerving onto the median, he ran over his daughter as she lay bleeding, fracturing her face and spine. Then, he reversed and sped away.

Passersby heard the roar of the engine, screams, the impact of the bodies as they hit the Jeep's grill. They saw the women lying on the ground, their sandals scattered across the lot. A witness called 911, and emergency vehicles converged. Amal's condition was stable; Noor was comatose.

Local police characterized the incident as an attempted "honor killing" — the murder of a woman for behaving in a way that "shames" her family. It's a practice with deep, tenacious roots in the tribal traditions of the Middle East and Asia. (The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women die annually from such crimes.) Women are stoned, stabbed, and, in the recent case of a teenage girl in Turkey, tied up and buried alive. But honor killings in America are a chilling new trend. In Texas, teen sisters Amina and Sarah Said were shot dead in 2008, allegedly by their father, because they had boyfriends. That same year in Georgia, 25-year-old Sandeela Kanwal was allegedly strangled by her father for wanting to leave an arranged marriage. Last year in New York, Aasiya Hassan, 37, was murdered in perhaps the most gruesome way imaginable: She was beheaded, allegedly by her husband, for reportedly seeking a divorce. And this past spring, 19-year-old Tawana Thompson's husband gunned her down in Illinois, reportedly following arguments about her American-style clothing.

Amazingly, honor killings in the U.S. have been largely ignored by the national media. That's because these incidents are typically dismissed as "domestic" in nature — a class of crime that rarely makes the headlines. Since the murderer is a member of the woman's family, there's no extended investigation to capture the public's attention. Also, the family of the perpetrator rarely advocates for the victim, due to either fear or a belief that the woman got what she deserved. "From the family's point of view, if the goal is to end rumors about their female relative, the last thing they want is to have the press talk about the case," says Rana Husseini, a human-rights activist and author of Murder in the Name of Honor. Still, the lack of media coverage or public outcry cannot erase the evidence: Honor killings have washed up on our shores.

While there's little doubt that what Noor endured can only be classified as an "honor crime," the characterization brings up strong emotions in her closest friends. "Noor did nothing dishonorable!" insists Adhikar Dhakal. Appalled by his friend's fate and determined that no other American girl should face the same situation, he and others have established a Facebook group devoted to Noor, with nearly 4,000 members. Every day people post messages of outrage and support, making the fight against honor crimes a growing movement in this country, with increasingly passionate followers.

For her part, Noor has come to represent the profound complexities faced by young women with one foot in suburban America, the other in Middle Eastern tradition. This past spring, I traveled to Arizona in an effort to shed light on why a father would try to kill his own daughter for being too American — a father who, in the case of Faleh Almaleki, had recently become a U.S. citizen himself.

It's a crisp, sunny morning in March when I arrive in Glendale, the Phoenix suburb where Noor grew up. Local newscasts are taken up with the story of two women who were attacked by a swarm of bees. A memorial service is being held for hometown hero Lori Piestewa, a Native American who was killed at the start of the war in Iraq. The air is sweet with the smell of orange trees, now in full bloom.

Noor's friends aren't too eager to talk to me. I'm not surprised. Although honor crimes aren't officially sanctioned by Islam, they're associated with predominantly Muslim countries, and there's concern that any discussion of them will prove inflammatory, even dangerous. Noor's closest friends, I learn, are also angry at the press over local news items containing misinformation about Noor. Several reports said she wanted to be a model; others said she'd moved in with her boyfriend. In fact, the truth about Noor is far more poignant.

At Dysart High School, Noor's photography teacher, Jim Heinrich, stands beside a poster of his classroom rules (No. 1: Wonder a lot!). The school's population of 1,700 students is like a United Nations: Mexican, Pakistani, Iraqi. "Students rarely bring who they are at home into the classroom," he tells me. He describes Noor as "quiet, funny, and productive" in class.

Mary Ancell, who ran the school bookstore where Noor worked, remembers laughing with her on the job. "One day we were working on the computer and she mistakenly deleted herself from the school system," she says. "But we got her back the next day." Then she pauses, and begins to cry.

Leilani Llewellyn, a high school friend, says she and Noor would sit in history class and chat — about guys, clothes, music, whatever. Noor liked the bands Oasis and Rise Against; the Snoop Dogg song "Ballin'" made her laugh. Jeffrey Peck, another friend, says Noor helped him through some "tough times" with his girlfriend in high school, but didn't talk about her own problems.

Susan Poland, who runs the school's Key Club, a community-service program, recalls that Noor would hint at threats from her father to send her back to Iraq (where, he said, she would "learn to be a good girl"), but no one really took him seriously. In the winter of 2007, however, during Noor's senior year, her father made good on his threats, taking her out of school for a trip to his homeland.

Noor's friends have different versions of what transpired, but it's clear that marriage was on the agenda. Friends say her father had had enough of Noor asserting her independence and talking to American guys, so he and her mother tricked her into traveling to Iraq, telling her they needed to visit a sick relative. Only upon arrival did Noor learn of the real reason for their trip: to marry her off.

It's unclear whether a wedding actually took place. Some friends say she only attended an engagement ceremony; others tell me they believe she did get married, albeit against her will. Still others say Noor was given a choice of five brothers, but her parents didn't like the one she chose, so the wedding was called off. Noor's parents, in police documents, maintain that a marriage did, in fact, occur. Whatever the case, Noor returned to Arizona a few months later without a husband, and moved back in with her family. She missed her younger siblings, friends say, and her parents needed help caring for them.

The Almaleki home is located in a Phoenix subdivision called Paradise Views. It's a comfortable-looking place that suggests the family was at least making a go of the more tangible aspects of the American dream. Although unemployed at the time of the parking-lot incident, and with a purported gambling habit, Noor's father had previously found work as a truck driver. Noor's mother had been hired by a company in California to help prepare American soldiers for cultural differences they would face in the Middle East — an incongruous career path, given her struggle at home to perform such a role in her own daughter's life. On the day I visit, the blinds are drawn. It's a Sunday and the neighborhood is silent. Palm trees and fuchsia flowers line the streets; in the distance, blue-gray mountains loom.

In the months after Noor's return from Iraq, the mood in the Almaleki household was heavy with tension. Noor dutifully looked after her siblings and completed the schoolwork necessary for her high school diploma, but by May 2008, the family was in full crisis. Noor's father had found a photo of her with male friends on MySpace, and he didn't like it. The situation became so heated that she started talking about moving out. One day, when Noor took the family car to visit a cousin, her father reported it stolen. When she learned what he'd done, she left the car on the side of the road and walked away. According to police records, her father wanted to file criminal charges against Noor to "teach her a lesson," telling police she was "disgracing the family" and that it didn't "look good" that she was moving out. Eventually she did move in with a friend. But after repeated run-ins with her father, and after learning that her mother was casting "spells" on her host family, she gave up and returned home.

Noor's 20th birthday, in February 2009, became a breaking point. After another family fight — this one in the middle of the night — she phoned a friend to come and get her. The friend, who asked not to be identified, describes a tumultuous scene: Noor came running out the door wearing her pajamas and carrying a purse — and, oddly, a roll of gift wrap. As her father chased her across the lawn, Noor jumped into the backseat, and the friend raced away.

A few minutes later, the girls met up with another friend in the parking lot of the local Westgate Mall. There, all three in their pajamas, they leaned against their cars and burst out laughing at the absurdity of the situation. "I asked her what was up with that gift wrap," Noor's friend recalls. "She laughed and said, 'I don't know. I just had it in my hand!'" That night, Noor moved in with the friend who had picked her up, ultimately enlisting the police to protect her as she retrieved her things from the family home. "She loved that," her friend tells me. "The police helped her out."

And in the spring of 2009, Noor got her own apartment. Her friends helped her furnish it with a new mirror and a cloudy TV they found on Craigslist for $25. The next few weeks brought happier times. "We rented videos at midnight wearing zit cream," one of her friends tells me, smiling. "We drank more Mocha Joes from Burger King than water." To pay the rent, Noor worked at a local Chipotle; she'd also begun attending Glendale Community College.

I meet Noor's close friend Adhikar Dhakal at that same Chipotle. A thoughtful, handsome student at Arizona State University, Adhikar reminisces about how Noor hated the brown cap she had to wear as an employee at the restaurant. He smiles at the memory. Noor worked hard to support herself, he says, noting that she sent photos to a couple talent agencies to try to earn money, possibly as an extra on a movie set— but not, as the local press reported, to become a model. He calls Noor "the most perfect person" he has ever known.

When Noor's parents learned where she was working, they started showing up and insisting that she move back home, so she got a job across town, as a hostess at Applebee's. They turned up there too, leaving her no choice but to abandon that job as well. With no source of income, she was forced to return home once more.

The final blowup came that summer. In June 2009, longtime family friend Amal Khalaf awoke to find Noor sleeping in the family's van, parked in the driveway. Noor said her parents had hit her; Amal, a mother of four, took her in. To Noor's family, this was the ultimate indignity: Their daughter had chosen to live with another Iraqi family instead of her own.

On July 20, Noor's parents entered Amal's home unannounced and began banging on Amal's bedroom door. Amal dialed 911. After that, Noor's father started regularly harassing the family. Amal's husband, Reikan, explained to him that Noor was free to live where she chose. "This is America," he said, according to police records. "This is the freedom we have."

To complicate matters further, in the weeks that followed, a romance developed between Noor and Amal's son Marwan (with Marwan even claiming at one point that the two were engaged). When Noor's father found out, he threatened that if she did not leave that house, "something bad was going to happen." Noor filed for a restraining order, but seems never to have finalized the paperwork.

On October 19, the day before her father headed for her in the parking lot, Noor sent dozens of text messages to friends, making plans and reminiscing. "Hey dude," she wrote to a pal at 2:47 p.m. "Do you have plans for Halloween? I'm throwing a party ... You should dress up and come. Bring people."

At 2:23 a.m., she sent a more sentimental note to a childhood friend: "Dude I felt very blah a while ago so I went driving ... by my old house in Glendale and my old school. I remember being a cute little kid and wearing a backpack. Remember wearing our Jansport backpacks? You had the nice one with flames lol. Jerk. I wanted to be hot like you and have flames lol."

The next day, Noor and Amal were in the local welfare office when Noor's father suddenly appeared. In a panic, Noor texted a friend, "I'm with my aunt at the welfare place and guess who walks in? My dad!!! I'm so shaky!" She then added, "My dad is a manipulative asshole. I've honestly never met anyone with so much evil." Amal didn't think it was a coincidence that Noor's father had just shown up, and she directed Noor to ask an employee if they could exit through a rear door. "He will probably just spit on me and leave," Noor said. And then, just as suddenly, he was gone.

As the two women were leaving, Amal scanned the parking lot. With Noor's father nowhere in sight, they started walking across the lot toward Carolina's Mexican restaurant.

After Noor and Amal were hit by the Jeep, police began a manhunt for the driver of the car. They started at the Almaleki family home, where a Domino's Pizza truck had just turned into the driveway. Noor's teenage brother Ali was there with several siblings, according to police reports. He said he hadn't spoken to his father since that morning, and that he didn't want to "get involved."

Police also spoke with Noor's mother, Seham, who was on her way home from her job in California. When a detective said that her husband had struck Noor and Amal with his car, she grew angry, saying in reference to Amal, "This woman is a liar. She is dirty." The detective then said that Noor was "close to dying," and Seham appeared to misunderstand. "Thank you. Thank you," she said. "That's what she needs. This is what Amal needs." The detective decided that Noor's safety could be in jeopardy and declined to disclose her location. A frustrated Seham shouted, "I'm a danger? We are Muslim. We can't kill our daughter!" The police stationed officers outside Noor's hospital room.

In the days that followed, Noor underwent spinal surgery, but remained unconscious, unresponsive, and unable to breathe on her own. As she struggled for life, police records indicate that her family tried to help her father flee abroad. Noor's mother picked up a prescription for him at a pharmacy, and cell-phone records showed that Ali, despite what he initially told the police, had, in fact, spoken with his father on two different occasions within minutes of the crime. However, both Ali and his mother denied knowing of Faleh's whereabouts.

Faleh had escaped south to Mexico. From there he flew to London, where he was finally picked up by customs officials. Nine days after the crime, he was back in the States and being interviewed by detectives. In that conversation, he admitted striking Noor and Amal, saying, "I lost control" and that it was "kind of an accident." But he denied trying to murder his daughter. "Why would I do it with a vehicle?" he asked. It would make more sense to "buy a gun," he reasoned. He went on to say that in his culture, a daughter should not leave home, should not be too "Americanized." The detective reminded him that Noor was an adult and that, by law, she could live where she wanted. Later, Faleh equated Noor to a "small fire" that needed to be extinguished in order to keep the family home from burning down.

At the hospital, during a supervised family visit, a police officer observed that Noor's heartbeat nearly doubled when her mother touched her and spoke in Arabic. A nurse ordered Noor's mother not to touch her daughter again.

Around 7 a.m. on November 2, 2009, Noor was pronounced clinically brain dead. Several hours later, at her family's request, she was disconnected from life support. At 11:54 a.m., her heart stopped beating.

"I’m not a criminal. I didn’t kill someone randomly. I didn’t break into someone’s house. I didn’t steal,” Noor’s father protested to his wife in a November jailhouse phone call, recorded by the police. Suggesting that his wife get protestors to demonstrate at an Iraqi consulate, he added, “For an Iraqi, honor is the most valuable thing.” Later, he lamented, “No one messed up our life except Noor.... No one hates his daughter, but honor is precious...and we are a tribal society. I didn’t kill someone off the street. I tried to give her a chance.”

“Honestly, you rushed into it,” his wife countered. But later she agreed with her husband, telling him, “You are not a criminal. I know how good-hearted and compassionate you are.”

Faleh suggested that his wife look for a “loophole” for his defense: “You know, clans, tribalism, something like that.”

“I hope we can say you have a psychological problem,” she replied. “You have to tell them, ‘I’m suffering because of the war’ and stuff like that.”

As of press time, Faleh Almaleki was in jail awaiting a trial date, charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault, and leaving the scene of a serious-injury accident — charges to which he has pleaded “not guilty.” His wife and son Ali, as well as his cousin Jamil, faced possible charges for aiding a fugitive. (Faleh told police that Jamil had sent him money in Mexico, a claim Jamil denies.) Amal Khalaf was still recuperating from a fractured pelvis.

Noor’s brother Ali, in a Facebook discussion group about his sister, says, “The media has drawn this image that Noor, RIP, was a saint, and my Dad was the Devil. Don’t believe the reasoning behind this as ‘Too Westernized.’... Nobody will understand what went on in this house to drive my dad to this level of insanity.”

In fact, there are many aspects of Noor’s story that millions of immigrants in America would understand. The story of the next generation shedding the customs of the old country is part of the American experience. Rudabeh Shahbazi, an Iranian-American TV personality in Phoenix, knows this all too well. She grew up in the U.S. but spent summers in her father’s homeland of Iran. “It’s hard to know what’s appropriate in both worlds,” she says. “Are you too American, or not American enough?”

Noor’s MySpace page remains frozen in time. Beneath her portrait, there’s a frowning emoticon, next to the words “Mood: disappointed.” Her last update to the site came just five days before her father ran her down. Says her friend Nuha Serrac, an Arizona State University student, “I sincerely believe Noor would have forgiven her father. One of her most amazing characteristics was her kindness.”

Noor’s legacy lives on, via the Web.

Natasha Yousif, a student at Arizona State, is a member of Noor’s Facebook group, and was so moved by her story that she decided to get a small tattoo in her honor. I meet with Natasha before I leave Phoenix, and she lifts her blouse to show me a crescent moon and star on her upper abdomen, with Noor’s name in Arabic underneath.

“‘Noor’ means light in Arabic,” she tells me.

Abigail Pesta is the editor-at-large of Marie Claire.

Priest accused of having 'erotic dungeon' surrenders

May 22nd, 2010

12:15 PM ET

[Updated 12:15 p.m. ET] A Polish-born priest accused of sexually abusing minors in his parochial residence in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has turned himself in, state officials said Saturday.

State security officials said Marcin Michal Strachanowski, 44, surrendered to authorities Friday night in the village of Realengo.

State Civil Police had issued a "preventative arrest" warrant against Strachanowski on Thursday. The priest is accused of handcuffing a minor in 2006 and forcing him to perform sexual acts at his home in the Divino Espirito Santo church in Rio de Janeiro's west zone, the officials said.

In a press statement, the Rio de Janeiro archdiocese said it has suspended Strachanowski from his duties and that in addition to the criminal inquiry, the church has called on a ecclesiastic tribunal to oversee a canonical trial.

"The archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro laments the incident, especially for the people involved, especially for the possible victims, and clarifies that the mentioned clergyman already finds himself suspended of his parochial functions," the statement said.

According to Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, the priest could not be found Friday morning.

The newspaper reported that a 16-year old alleged victim told investigators that after being frequently raped by the priest, he was forced to remain silent and was threatened regularly.

Citing court statements, the newspaper reported that criminal Judge Alexandre Abrahao Dias Teixeira said police investigations revealed the profile of a man with a "compulsive attraction to having sex with adolescents" and that he had allegedly turned his parish residence into an "erotic dungeon" where he forced boys to have sex with him.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/22/priest-in-brazil-accused-of-having-erotic-dungeon/?hpt=T3

Alabama Evangelist Anthony Hopkins Gets Life For Dead Wife In Freezer

05/21/10 11:13 AM |

MOBILE, Ala. — An Alabama evangelist who authorities say terrorized his family while preaching at revivals has been sentenced to life plus 51 years in prison after being convicted of killing his wife and storing her body in a home freezer.

Circuit Judge John Lockett imposed the sentence Thursday on Anthony Hopkins, 39, who showed no remorse during the proceeding. He got the maximum sentence of life for murder and additional time for convictions including sodomy and sexual abuse.

Assistant District Attorney Ashley Rich called Hopkins "evil of the worst kind."

She said he taught the eight children in his home things about the Bible that were not true and that helped him get away with his crimes for years.

During Hopkins' trial in April, prosecutors said he killed his 36-year-old wife, Arletha Hopkins, in 2004 after she caught him molesting a girl, then stuffed her body in a freezer at their home in north Mobile. Investigators discovered the body in 2008 after a young woman abused by Hopkins told child advocates about it, authorities said. Police arrested Hopkins while he was preaching at a revival in the south Alabama town of Jackson.

Defense attorney Jeff Deen said his client admits putting his wife's body in the freezer, but he doesn't know how she died.

"There's evidence in the trial that it could've been by natural causes, and it needs to be explored on appeal," Deen said.

The two oldest children in the Hopkins home are now grown. The six youngest are living with relatives in Georgia.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/21/alabama-anthony-hopkins-sentenced_n_584898.html

Religious persecution is widespread, report warns

(CNN) -- The numbers are shocking: 12,000 people killed in a cycle of violence between Christians and Muslims stretching back more than a decade.

The location: Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, lying on the continent's fault line between the largely Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.

The number of people convicted and sentenced for the killings: Zero.

That's just one of many stark assessments about the level of religious persecution around the world today in a huge new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The report names more than two dozen countries as offenders. Some engage in what's classically thought of as religious persecution.

Egypt, for example, not only imprisons members of the Baha'i faith and members of minority Muslim sects, but also has some fired from their jobs, kicked out of universities and barred from having bank accounts, driver's licenses, even birth certificates, according to the report.

Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, export "extremist ideology," the commission charges. But the kind of religious persecution seen in Nigeria and some other countries is "equally egregious," the report says. "Many governments fail to punish religiously motivated violence perpetrated by private actors," it says, warning that "impunity... often leads to endless cycles of sectarian violence."

It calls Nigeria "a tragic case in point," saying that in the most recent outbreak of killing in Nigeria's Jos State several months ago, 500 "men, women and children were hacked to death with machetes and then dumped into wells.

"Not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria's ten years of religious violence," the report claims.

The commission did have limited praise for Nigeria's government, saying that when an USCRIF team went to the African nation in March, it found officials "attentive and even grateful for its concerns."

The Ministry of Justice filed 41 prosecutions while the American team was in Nigeria, the report said. Even so, the commission recommended that the United States include Nigeria on a list of 13 nations called "countries of particular concern" which engage in "severe violations of religious freedom."

CNN has reached out to the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria for comment, but has so far not received a response to the report.

The other countries were North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Iraq. (Commissioners were not unanimous in including Iraq on the list.)

That's five more countries than are on the State Department's "countries of particular concern" list from its 2009 report on religious freedom. That list doesn't include Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Vietnam.

The list is similar to one compiled recently by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, but not identical. The Washington-based think tank put out a global survey of restrictions on religion in December. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Egypt, Myanmar/Burma, the Maldives, Eritrea, Malaysia and Brunei topped that list of countries with the most government restrictions on religion.

More than two out of three people around the world live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion, the Pew Forum concluded.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom studied only 28 countries, but since it is a congressionally mandated body, its recommendations can have significantly more impact than those of the Pew Forum.

Designation as a "country of particular concern" can prompt concrete action from the United States, such as restrictions on arms exports or other trade.

But in reality, the government often waives or circumvents sanctions on countries of strategic importance, such as Saudi Arabia and China, a chart in the USCRIF report shows.

The commission report also has a watch list of countries which "require very close attention." That list includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.

It recommends that three other countries -- Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka -- be "closely monitored."

Many of the incidents which worry the commission made international headlines in the past year, including China's crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in the west of the country, and Iran's labeling its domestic political opponents "enemies of God" -- a capital offense.

But others are ongoing problems that often attract little attention, such as Eritrea's harrassment of Orthodox Church members and Jehovah's Witnesses, or the imprisonment of Buddhists and Protestants in Vietnam.

The report also criticizes the United States government itself for not doing enough to fight the problem.

"Neither prior Democratic nor Republican administrations, nor the current administration, have been sufficiently engaged in promoting the freedom of religion or belief abroad," the commissioners charge.

The commission based its report on visits to some of the countries at issue, meetings with bodies such as the European Union and the Vatican, news reports and the findings of government agencies and international organizations ranging from the American Islamic Conference to the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society.

The paper published Thursday is the 11th annual report since the commission was established by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.