c. 2006 Religion News Service

In Britain, Little Sympathy With Muslims’ Reaction to Cartoons

LONDON (RNS) A newly published opinion poll indicates the British public has little sympathy for Muslims angered by cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad that have been printed in European newspapers.

The YouGov survey for the Sunday Times newspaper (Feb. 12) showed 88 percent of the more than 1,600 men and women who were interviewed thought the violent protests the 12 Danish caricatures sparked around the world were a “gross exaggeration.”

Some 58 percent vented their own fury over the placards some Muslim protesters carried during a demonstration in London, one of which demanded, “Behead those who insult Islam.” More than three-fourths _ 76 percent _ said the police should have arrested those carrying offensive or provocative banners.

Scotland Yard police insisted their priority at the time was public safety and that film and photographs would be examined later to determine whether any charges should be made. One protester, a convicted drug dealer, was sent back to prison for parole violation after he was photographed wearing a suicide bomber-style vest.

The Sunday Times poll was published a day after an estimated 5,000 Muslims, many waving posters calling for unity against Islamophobia, staged a peaceful demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square. Some 500 police officers patrolled the event.

But the global violence attending the publication of the cartoons has already left many Britons pessimistic about the future of relations between Muslims and the rest of the population. Only 17 percent of respondents in the Sunday Times poll said they believe Muslims can co-exist with others peacefully in Britain.

The vast majority of the interviewees said tensions will get much worse, and 87 percent expect further attacks by Islamic groups along the lines of the July 7 suicide bombings of three London underground trains and a bus that left 52 dead, plus the four Muslim bombers.

The Sunday Times said its survey showed that “where foreigners stir up racial and religious hatred, 81 percent of (British) people think they should be sent back to their own countries, even if to do so would endanger their lives.”

_ Al Webb

Anti-Muhammad Graffiti in West Bank Sparks More Conflict

JERUSALEM (RNS) A graffito sprayed on the wall of a West Bank mosque set off a series of violent clashes between angry Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.

The graffito, which read “Muhammad is Swine,” was discovered Sunday (Feb. 12) on the mosque of the village of Nebi Elias, east of the city of Kalkilya. Israeli news reports quoted a Palestinian who said he saw a man wearing a yarmulke, or Jewish skullcap, enter a car with Israeli license plates around the time of the incident.

Angry Palestinians threw stones Sunday at passing Israeli cars, injuring a Jewish woman, and at Israeli soldiers. When rubber bullets failed to disperse the crowd, the soldiers used live ammunition, wounding two Palestinians.

The incident occurred at a time when tensions in the Middle East are particularly high, due to worldwide Muslim outrage over Danish cartoons depicting the likeness of the Prophet Muhammad.

Palestinians last week stormed the offices of the European Union in Gaza and burned the Danish flag in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, but these protests had mostly subsided in recent days.

Arab leaders warned that the graffito linking Muhammad with an animal Muslims regard as unclean could spark a new round of violence that could spread throughout the Middle East.

“This is a serious moral escalation and attempt by the (Jewish) settlers to set the area alight while blatantly offending the prophet Muhammad and millions of Muslim believers,” Israeli Arab Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi told the newspaper Ha’aretz on Sunday.

_ Michele Chabin

Israeli Debate Over Kosher Whiskey Creates Little Buzz Among U.S. Jews

(RNS) A debate in Israel over the kosher merits of whiskey has failed to dampen the spirits of kosher drinkers in America.

The head of the rabbinate in Bnei Brak, an ultra-religious community near Tel Aviv, recently said whiskey is not kosher since it is aged in barrels that once produced non-kosher wine, according to YNet News, an English-language Web site affiliated with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Israel’s chief rabbinate, which provides the import permits for kosher food, will have to take up the issue, according to the Web site.

But supervisors of kashrut in America say they can’t understand what the fuss is all about. This issue was debated decades ago, they say, when authorities argued whether the amount of wine that could seep into whiskey through its processing was negligible.

Every certification organization was “totally familiar” with how whiskey is made, as well as the surrounding questions of kashrut, the Jewish dietary law, said Rabbi Avrom Pollak, president of Star-K, an international kosher certification group headquartered in Baltimore.

Star-K has long followed a policy that does not certify whiskey that is either produced or finished in wine casks that have been used for non-kosher wine. However, in recommending items to consumers that it does not specifically certify, the group takes the majority Orthodox consensus _ permitting whiskeys made in wine casks, but recommending against whiskeys finished in wine casks, because of the intention to integrate the wine flavor, Pollak said.

Since its policy has long been laid down, the debate in Israel “will have absolutely no impact on us whatsoever,” Pollak said.

The New York-based Orthodox Union, the largest kosher supervisors in the world, also does not certify whiskeys made or finished in wine casks, said Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO and rabbinic administrator of the group’s kashrut division, which certifies more than 6,000 plants from Coca-Cola to Hershey’s.

_ Rachel Pomerance

Quote of the Day: Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo

(RNS) “She doesn’t have the theatrical instinct that he has. She is more of a Methodist, and he is more theatrical.”

_ Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, comparing the speaking styles of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a United Methodist, and former President Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, after the couple spoke at Coretta Scott King’s funeral. Cuomo was quoted by The New York Times.

MO/RB RNS END