Bartholomew's Notes

Also: UK Home Office has “policy to remove political dissidents to Uzbekistan”

From Forum 18:

A Baptist has been sentenced to two years correctional labour, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Nikolai Zulfikarov was yesterday (29 November) sentenced under Uzbekistan’s Criminal Code for “teaching religious doctrines without special religious education and without permission from a central organ of administration of a religious organisation, as well as teaching religion privately”. Zulfikarov, who led the five member Khalkabad unregistered Baptist church, was also sentenced to pay the state 20 per cent of his earnings over the next two years…

The persecution of religious minorities in Uzbekistan is a subject which Forum 18 has covered in length over the past few years.; it’s a sorry tale of harassment and persecution.

One question follows: if an obscure and harmless Baptist leader has to endure persecution like this, how will the Uzbek regime treat a political dissident? We can easily guess: June 2005 saw a massacre of protestors, and two months ago a young critical Uzbek journalist named Alisher Saipov was murdered in Kyrgyzstan after being harassed by Uzbek agents (although Kyrgyzstan now claims Hizb ut-Tahrir did the deed). Most notoriously, an Uzbek member of Hizb ut-Tahrir named Muzafar Avozov was boiled to death in 2002, and his mother sentenced to six years hard labour when she made a fuss (the sentence was commuted to save embarrassment for Donald Rumsfeld when he made a visit).

Given all this, it is very shocking to read about the ongoing threats by the British government to deport a political dissident named Jahongir Sidikov, and a Home Office statement confirming that

…it is Home Office policy to remove political dissidents to Uzbekistan, if the independent judiciary has deemed an asylum claim to have no basis.

Sidikov is an activist for secular Democratic ERK Party of Uzbekistan, which is led by Muhammed Salih (a man with an interesting taste in music, if his website is anything to go by). Sidikov was very close to being deported last week; it seems that this was postponed at the last minute, but since then there has been no word.

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Christianity:

19 November 2007:

…Formally, Putin met with church hierachs from Russia, as well as Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asia, to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the restoration of the Moscow Patriarchate and discuss a number of church-state issues. Church leaders sought, however, to dissociate themselves from politics ahead of Monday’s meeting.

…”The Church distances itself from political struggle,” said [Patriarchal spokesman Vladimir] Vigilyansky. He conceded, however, that priests could be calling on their parishioners to vote for a particular party depending on their own political leanings, adding that he personally wanted Putin to remain in office for a third term.

After the event, the church officials were positive about the meeting with Putin and said there was no direct discussion of how Orthodox believers would or should vote. Varfolomei, Archbishop of Rovno and Ostrog, in Ukraine, said that during the meeting Patriarch Alexy II expressed his hope that Putin would continue his role as the country’s leader.

Islam:

22 November 2007:

“At a working meeting of the Council of the Muftis, its members instructed Abdul-Vahed Niyazov, the head of the Islamic Cultural Center, to organize a Muslims in Support of President Putin movement and ensure its membership in the National Movement in Support of President Putin,”

Judaism:

3 December 2007:

Russia’s chief rabbi Berel Lazar has voted in the State Duma elections at the Russian Consulate General in New York where he is on a working trip.

…He said he has “never advocated any particular party, because campaigning by a religious official for any political group contradicts the Jewish understanding of God’s Law.”

However, this should be compared with an earlier report, from 27 January 2005:

Just before the sun set over Auschwitz on January 27, ending the international ceremonies that marked the 60th anniversary of the notorious death camp’s liberation, President Vladimir Putin of Russia stepped forward to receive a medal from a man who claims the title of chief rabbi of Russia. Lazar, a Lubavitch Hasid known for his close ties to Putin’s Kremlin, awarded Putin the so-called Salvation medal as a symbol of “the Jewish people’s gratitude” to Russia for liberating the camp.

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The BBC World Service’s Reporting Religion has an interesting report on a visit by Franklin Graham to Hong Kong; some local Christians are wary over “the rise of the religious right in Asia” and wonder whether a big-name foreign evangelist is really needed. Graham himself, however, hopes the event will lead to further advances into mainland China.

While Graham enjoys a reception put on by Hong Kong Home Affairs Minister Tsang Tak-sing, the note of caution comes from Rev Ralph Lee, the General Secretary of the mainline Hong Kong Christian Council:

This Billy [sic] Graham “festival” (or the “crusade”, I would say), it tells [us] the new trend is emerging. China being an atheist, or a Communist, country, is going to the religion or the religious bodies or people who are happy to work with them.

Our mission and vision is more than just evangelic meetings and prayers. We [are] concerned [with] social and political development and of which we might be critical or uncooperat[ive] with the government. So it is easier [for the government] to work with them than with the mainline churches.

According to the presenter, Lee sees the new trend as “the rise of the religious right”.

This is an interesting turn-around: in the past the general impression was of mainline churches cautious and compromised by accommodation with the Communist regime, while brave and principled underground evangelical Churches kept themselves pure. Certainly, some conservative evangelical leaders in China have over the years shown incredible fortitude in the face of persecution and imprisonment. However, it now appears that as the Chinese government sheds its militant atheism and Communism, its conflict with conservative churches is lessening – and continued authoritarianism is no bar to détente. This undermines the thesis that increased Christianisation in China would lead to increased democratisation – an argument that informs David Aikman’s Jesus in Beijing, his 2003 book that contains a lot of useful information but which draws some very questionable conclusions (as I wrote way back on day two of this blog).

The BBC report also introduces Wu Chi-Wai, of the Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement. Wu estimates that 95% of churches in China are evangelical, and he tells us that this success is due to the fit between the Gospel and local culture: in particular, the Chinese respect for tradition accords well with the concept of the “inerrancy of the Bible”. However, the presenter also tells us that Wu is aware of surveys which suggest that conversions at mass events are often temporary, and that some Christians are questioning whether Franklin Graham is needed.

The visit is being coordinated by Dr Cecil Chan, and is being advertised under the slogan “New Life! New Power!” The report notes that Billy Graham held meetings in China in the past, but these were always in churches rather than open-air affairs. It is worth remembering that the Grahams are held in affection by Chinese evangelicals, and that Billy and Ruth Graham both held supportive meetings with prominent evangelical dissidents

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Human Rights Watch has the latest on “Qatif Girl”, the young rape victim who was sentenced to 90 lashes for being in a car with a male non-relative, and whose punishment was increased to 200 lashes when she first appealed:

On November 27, Okaz newspaper published an interview with Judge Dr. Ibrahim bin Salih al-Khudairi of the Riyadh Appeals Court, in which he said that he would have sentenced her to death. The Riyadh Appeals Court, and possibly Judge al-Khudairi, is the court that will consider an appeal that the Saudi woman said she intends to file.

The desire to kill women is a bit of a fetish with al-Khudairi; back in 2002 he was calling for the death of a Tunisian singer known as Zikra:

A popular Arab singer, against whom a Saudi cleric has called for the death penalty for comparing her sufferings to those of the Prophet Mohammad, has denied showing a lack of respect for the Muslims’ revered prophet, a newspaper reported.

…Al-Hayat quoted Sheikh Ibrahim al-Khudairi, a judge at Riyadh’s Islamic High Court, as saying the singer’s remarks were “an act of apostasy which deserves punishment by execution.”

Al-Khudairi is also in favour of enforced divorce when relatives disapprove of a marriage between two people of different social status – an issue which Qatif Girl’s now-suspended lawyer Abdul Rahman al-Lahem has previously tackled:

Al-Khudairi said that according to Islamic religious law, even if a man and woman are incompatible in status they are nonetheless permitted to marry and live together in peace if their relatives consent to this. He added, however, that in a case in which a relative of the husband or of the wife is opposed to the marriage, and such opposition might cause rivalry or damage, Saudi law follows the Sunna of the Prophet – that is, in order to prevent conflict, it requires that the marriage be ended, in order to safeguard the lives and the future of their children, and also in order to prevent likely damage to the tribe of either the husband or the wife.

He also believes that the US Arabic television station al-Hurra “spreads corruption and those working with it are American agents”, and that therefore it is forbidden to watch it.

Meanwhile, HRW has condemned the two official statements published in English by the Saudi Ministry of Justice as an attempt to “demonize” Qatif Girl. The statements – whose authors are too delicate to use the word “rape”, preferring “assault” or “the incident” – maintain that the woman was having a tryst with a lover when the two of them were set upon by a gang. They also tell us that her husband complained to the police after she “admitted the incident,” suggesting that he colluded with her prosecution. I blogged the statements here.

The Ministry of Justice apparently believes these details put its sadistic plans for the rape victim in a better light. Of course, they don’t, and wouldn’t even if they were true – which they’re not. In fact, the woman only met the man because he had a photo of her which she wanted to reclaim, and her husband has stood by her. A recent interview with Qatif Girl in the UK Independent has further details:

“The criminals started talking about it [the rape] in my neighbourhood. They thought my husband would divorce me. They wanted to ruin my reputation. I was trying to fix something by getting the photo back and something worse happened.”

…Against her attackers’ expectations, the girl’s husband did not divorce her when news of the attack reached him; instead he sought justice through the courts.

Her husband recalls the frustration of seeing his wife’s attackers walking free. “Two of the criminals were walking around in our neighbourhood right in front of me. They attended funerals and weddings. They [the police] should have arrested them out of respect for us. I called the police and told them, ‘Find me a solution. The criminals are out on the street. What if they try to kidnap her again?’ The police officer said, ‘You go find them and investigate’.”

The police were reluctant to act because the woman and her husband are Shia Muslims. Her husband was outraged by the judges’ attitude at the original trial:

Her appalling treatment was summed up in one exchange between her husband and the judges at the first sentencing. “It was like she was the criminal,” he remembered. “When the judges passed down the sentence, I asked them, ‘Don’t you have any dignity?'”

Qatif girl also faces the possibility of being tried through shariah courts, and she has already survived one attempt to murder her by her brother.

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