Saudi court sentences 75-year-old woman to lashes

A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives, drawing new criticism for the kingdom's ultraconservative religious police and judiciary.

The woman's lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday that he would appeal the verdict against Khamisa Sawadi, who is Syrian but was married to a Saudi.

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Islam Needs to Prove It's a Religion of Peace
Muslims can start with a new Quranic scholarship that rejects radicalism.

Scholars in the most prestigious Islamic institutes and universities continue to teach things like Jews are "pigs and monkeys," that women and men must be stoned to death for adultery, or that Muslims must fight the world to spread their religion. Isn't, then, Mr. Wilders's criticism appropriate?

Instead of blaming him, we must blame the leading Islamic scholars for having failed to produce an authoritative book on Islamic jurisprudence that is accepted in the Islamic world and unambiguously rejects these violent teachings.

So, Islamic scholars and clerics, it is up to you to produce a Shariah book that will be accepted in the Islamic world and that teaches that Jews are not pigs and monkeys, and that declaring war to spread Islam is unacceptable, and killing apostates is a crime. Such a book would prove that Islam is a religion of peace.

Mr. Hamid, a former member of an Islamist terrorist group, is an Islamic reformer and senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies

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Campaigners will seek arrest of Islamic radical
Campaigners from the Centre for Social Cohesion have pledged to seek an arrest warrant for Dr Ibrahim Moussawi, an Islamic extremist, who is due to visit Britain this March.

The think-tank said the Home Office would be "beyond hypocrisy" if it allowed Dr Ibrahim Moussawi into Britain just weeks after barring Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, because of his alleged anti-Muslim views.

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