A new Indonesian horror movie about a menstruating ghost has run foul of the country's highest Islamic body.

Hantu Puncak Datang Bulan (The Menstruating Ghost of Puncak) made its debut in Jakarta and was quickly condemned by senior clerics in the mainly Muslim country.

I watched that horror movie... it contains sex scenes, violence and decapitation. I call on the film censorship board not to approve its screening, Indonesian Ulema Council official Amirsyah Tambunan told AFP.

Muslims have the right to watch the film but I suggest they don't because it contains scenes that are against Islamic principles, he added.

But Tambunan said he council, which is the highest Islamic body in the land, had no plans to pass a fatwa or religious edict forbidding Muslims from watching the film.

Update: Spirited Off

6th February 2010. Based on article from news24.com

An Indonesian production company said it had now withdrawn a film about a menstruating ghost from the cinemas following protests from conservative Muslims who considered it pornographic.

The film, Hantu Puncak Datang Bulan, has been put off indefinitely due to the controversy, said Evelyn Nainggolan, manager for K2K Production.

I was surprised by the brouhaha surrounding the film, Nainggolan said. The film has passed censorship and it's intended for adults.

It's the biggest day of the year for US advertising with companies spending between $2.5m and $2.8m to ensure their product is seen by the widest possible audience, but this year's Super Bowl Sunday threatens to be overshadowed by controversy over one of the 30-second slots.

The advert in question? A commercial on behalf of the evangelical Christian organisation Focus on the Family, featuring the University of Florida's star quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, which is expected to focus on her decision to ignore medical advice to have an abortion.

The almost $3m advert, which Focus on the Family says was paid for by donations, contravenes a network policy regarding the type of ads shown during the Super Bowl. Several online petitions have called on CBS to pull the ad and 2,288 people joined a Facebook group pointing out the hypocrisy by saying: Tell CBS Reject The Focus On The Family Ad Or Accept The UCC's! UCC refers to the United Church of Christ.

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T-shirt slogans supposedly condoning rape and featuring semi-naked and gagged women have 'outraged' Australian nutters.

An Australian website, run out of Los Angeles, allows designers to sell T-shirts with slogans such as It's not rape if you yell surprise, Rape, murder, arson … I like rape, and I want rape.

Menswear company Roger David has also been embroiled in the furore through two of its T-shirt labels. One T-shirt, by Los Angeles-based company Blood Is the New Black, shows a woman who appears gagged and roughed up. The other, by US brand Chaser LA, has two semi-naked women with a strip across their eyes. The image used by Chaser LA was largely copied from the 1974 Country Life album cover by British rock band Roxy Music.

The graphic T-shirts have angered women's groups, while a Facebook group called Roger David: NOT ok to promote violence against women! has more than 800 members.

Women's advocate and co-founder of the anti-exploitation group Collective Shout, Melinda Tankard Reist, says the T-shirts must be outlawed: [They are] mocking the serious crime of rape, she said. I don't think there has been any consideration of the message it sends sexual assault survivors.

They're taking messages you would normally find in pornography or the sex industry and mainstreaming them in what was once considered conservative menswear stores.  Is this how Roger David likes its women? Is this how it thinks women should be portrayed?

Chrystina Woody, a spokeswoman for Blood Is the New Black, suggested the T-shirts, as art, would spark debate. Art is meant to inspire and educate, and the meaning and interpretation is left in the hands of the viewer, she said via email.

The letters and emails come in a daily tide. Filth! they cry. Shame on you; You are a very sick person; The soul that sinneth shall DIE. For the past six months, the head of Glasgow's museums and art has been under siege from Christian fundamentalists, who have vowed to oust her from her job.

Dr Bridget McConnell, head of Culture and Sport Glasgow (CSG), the £100 million charity in charge of the city's culture, says she is alarmed by what she describes as a personal witch hunt against her.

It is almost like being physically abused, she said. You get knocked down by it every day and you pick yourself up, but then you come in the next morning and it happens all over again. It's attrition.

Since July, when a row broke out over an art exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) featuring homosexuality and religion in which comments were written on a Bible, Dr McConnell — whose organisation funded the exhibition — has been targeted by an organised group of protesters. Related Links

She has received up to 2,000 letters, e-mails and phone calls attacking her and objecting to the art show. There have been petitions and personal visits to her office. Her office has been routinely picketed by groups with a loud hailer, calling upon her to repent, and her staff have been harassed.

Police are known to be concerned at the targeting of Dr McConnell and on at least one occasion officers had to be called to demonstrations outside the art gallery when staff were seriously intimidated.

On a website linked to an English organisation called Christian Watch, www.csgwatch.com, the campaigners openly declare their intention is to have Dr McConnell removed from her post.

The controversy began last summer as a result of an exhibition called sh[OUT]!, which contained works by renowned artists such as David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe, and had as its theme the representation of gay people in art. The exhibition was part of a wider contemporary art programme on themes including violence against women and sectarianism. A secondary exhibition within sh[OUT], called Made in God's Image, invited visitors who felt excluded from the Bible, especially on the ground of sexual orientation, to record their names in its margins.

But some people recorded doodles and obscenities. The Bible was placed behind glass but the story reached the newspapers where, in Dr McConnell's view, it was distorted by parts of the media to suggest that people were being actively encouraged to deface the Bible. The story was picked up by the international media and stirred outrage around the world. The majority of people who are complaining didn't see the exhibition, but were responding to the Daily Mail story, she said.

On the website set up by Christian Watch, www.csgwatch.com, the protesters state their aim is to stop the city supporting events and programmes that insult Christ, the Bible, Christians and to have Bridget McConnell removed from her position.

Australian Labor MP Amanda Rishworth is urging music videos portraying women as 'sex objects' be censored and should be individually rated or banned from children's viewing hours.

She warned that without tough intervention the nation could be left with a generation of women with low self-esteem and body-image issues.

The call received support from the professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University, Clive Hamilton, who described the imagery in some music videos as almost pornographic.

Ms Rishworth, a psychologist, will introduce a private member's motion in Federal Parliament calling for further debate on the objectification of girls in mainstream media: There is no silver bullet - the industry does need to consider content and what ratings they are giving it. She said a rating of PG or M could give parents a guide to what was appropriate for their children.

This is not about being a prude...BUT...about providing good role models, Ms Rishworth said. It's more than just sex, it's about the role women play in them. She said scantily clothed women in the clips were gyrating around men and giving suggestive looks. Many just looked like props for men, she said.

Prof Hamilton said there was nothing wrong with some censorship to protect the innocence of young girls: It's been clear for some years that the wall between music videos and pornography is becoming thinner.

A Senate report on sexualisation of children in the contemporary media made several recommendations in 2008, including urging broadcasters to review their classification of music videos with regard to sexual imagery.

In its never-ending campaign to decide what adults can see and hear, Morality in Media (MIM) is squaring off against web hosting company GoDaddy.com over its upcoming commercials for Super Bowl XLIV.

According to news reports, GoDaddy.com commercials will again appear during the Super Bowl game, which this year airs Feb. 7 on CBS at 6:30 p.m. EST, MIM President Robert Peters said in a press release.

It is no secret that GoDaddy.com loves to 'push the envelope' when it comes to the content of its ads, Peters continued, and it would appear that this year's Super Bowl ads may push as close to the indecency line as CBS network 'censors' will allow, which could be as close as CBS thinks it can get away with. Sure looks like lesbian strip performances to me.

Not content merely to fan the flames of homophobia, Peters also goes after GoDaddy.com for hosting legal adult websites.

But the content of [GoDaddy.com's] Super Bowl ads is not the only problem. GoDaddy.com also provides services to businesses that distribute over the internet, free of charge and without proof of age, hardcore adult pornography that depicts, among other things, urination, fisting (sticking a fist into the vagina), double penetration (sticking two penises into a female's anus [sic]), bondage, incest, teen sex, rape and bestiality.

But Peters isn't finished. No MIM press release is complete without an utter bastardization of the Constitution.

Now, it may be that GoDaddy.com is often not aware that a website it is providing one or more services to is offering for sale hardcore adult pornography on the internet. It may also be, depending on the nature of the service, that GoDaddy.com would have a defense under the law.

But if GoDaddy.com, knowing the hardcore nature of a website's content, provides some of its services to a site which is later charged with violating internet obscenity laws, I think GoDaddy.com could be charged with aiding and abetting (or facilitating) violations of these criminal laws.

In Scott Stewart's supernatural action thriller, Legion, which opens in the US on January 22, actor Paul Bettany portrays a machine-gun toting Archangel Michael who cuts off his wings and proceeds to help protect the unborn child of actress Adrianne Palicki at a remote diner on the edge of the Mojave desert on Christmas Eve.

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) has described the film as blasphemous, saying that it mocks the faith.

According to TFP, in the film, Michael - a rebel angel - becomes the hero in a fight against Gabriel and his hosts who are bent on destroying humanity because of God's anger.

The film presents a complete inversion of roles: instead of defeating Satan and the rebel angels in the great heavenly battle, the movie presents Saint Michael as the fallen angel who revolts against God, said TFP: Saint Michael's downfall was caused by his wish to save humanity when God, finding the human race no longer worthy of Him, decides to end humanity's existence.

TFP has called for individuals to let Sony know that they are insulted by the film.

Actor Dennis Quaid said that he liked the script because it was twisted: I don't think it is going to be on the Vatican must-see list.

Legion puts a negative spin on Christianity, said the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in a press release. ... [it] promises to be an abortion of a movie.

Indigenous Australian leaders have expressed 'outrage' at an Aboriginal dance routine by Russian ice dancers Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin.

The Russian world champions perform in dark-skin bodysuits adorned with leaves and white body paint markings.

Indigenous leader Bev Manton has decried the ripping off of Aboriginal culture as offensive and disrespectful. From an Aboriginal perspective, this performance is offensive, Mrs Manton writes in an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald: Our dance, our ceremony, our image - and, importantly, how they are depicted - are sacred to Aboriginal Australians. Interest must be expressed in a way that is respectful. The ripping off of our art and songs is not, and nor is this depiction of my culture, she wrote.

A BBC News presenter has been subjected to a deluge of personal abuse after fronting a documentary about one of the most controversial events in recent Indian history.

Sonia Deol was forced to delete her page on the Facebook website amid a barrage of criticism from fellow Sikhs over her film about the Indian army storming the Golden Temple in Amritsar, one of the faith's most holy shrines, in 1984.

Now protesters are planning a mass boycott of the licence fee in disgust at what they see as a slur on the controversial religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was killed in the raid.

Many Sikhs consider him a saint and are furious that in Ms Deol's documentary, 1984: A Sikh Story, he was described as a militant. They also claim he was depicted in the film in a similar way to Osama Bin Laden.

Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi ordered the assault on June 4, 1984, after Bhindranwale and up to 500 armed supporters took refuge in the holy site, apparently fearing arrest amid rising Sikh-Hindu tensions. Around 500 people died in the ensuing battle, which some Sikhs now refer to as our 9/11. As troops moved in, Bhindranwale's followers fired missiles at Indian tanks.

The BBC has received 52 complaints about the documentary, which attracted 1.3 million viewers and was billed as Ms Deol's emotional journey back to India in a bid to discover how such an attack could ever have taken place.

However, community TV station The Sikh Channel says it received more than 8,000 calls to a phone-in about the film. Channel owner Davinder Singh Bal said: The documentary contained many sweeping statements and didn't attempt to uncover the truth of what happened. Our viewers were not happy. BT said that our exchange was going into overdrive. The BBC is not responding to the Sikh community and we are thinking about organising a campaign to invoke the non-payment of licence fees by the 700,000 Sikhs in Britain.

Dr Sadhu Singh, chairman of the Council of Sikh Temples, said many viewers were angered that the BBC showed him [Bhindranwale] looking like Bin Laden. He said: They used pictures of him wearing a turban and holding a gun. To someone who doesn't know what Sikhism is about, it would be very misleading.

A BBC source said Ms Deol's documentary was never intended to be an investigation, saying: It was her personal journey, a look at her reaction to rediscovering her faith as a Sikh. It was for a mainstream channel, BBC1 and there's only so much you can say in an hour. A lot of the attacks on Sonia have been because people think that the documentary reflected her views on Bhindranwale, but she did not give her opinions about him at all.

Details of trucks filled with explosives and European terror networks emerge in Jyllands-Posten newspaper plot case.

US citizen David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen and native of Pakistan, are already in police custody for their alleged roles in the plot against the newspaper in retribution for its printing of the Mohammed cartoons.

Additional conspiracy charges were recently filed against Ilyas Kashmiri, who has been identified as a leader of terrorist organisation Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI) in Pakistan and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major in the Pakistani military. Neither man is in police custody.

According to documents released by US authorities, Headley met Rehman and members of the Lashkar terrorist group in Pakistan. Rehman is said to have introduced Headley to Kashmiri who allegedly came up with the idea of the truck bomb. Kashmiri is also reported to have put Headley in contact with various associates in a number of European countries who could provide Headley with money, weapons and manpower for the newspaper attack.

Police have launched a terrorism investigation in Paris after two men tried to set fire to an Algerian feminist playwright and actress, who stars in a play said to portray Muslim men in an unflattering light.

The attackers are reported to have sprayed Rayhana, known only by her first name, with petrol and threw a lit cigarette in her face. The petrol did not ignite, possibly because of the extreme cold.

Rayhana is appearing in and directing her own play about the oppression of women in Algeria. She was walking to a theatre in a north-eastern suburb of the city when she was insulted in Arabic and attacked. A fortnight ago, she was approached in the same area by two men who said: We know who you are, you miscreant whore. This is a warning.

Detectives are examining the 'possibility' that she was attacked by a radical Islamist group, although her play is equally critical of the treatment of women by radical Islam and secular authorities in Algeria.

A pressure group for the rights of women of North African origin, Ni Putes, Ni Soumises (neither whores, nor submisssives), has called for a demonstration of solidarity with Rayhana outside the theatre.

Following the attack, the playwright staggered into an upmarket restaurant but was refused help. She carried on to the theatre, La Maison des Metallos, and took part in that night's performance. Her sell-out play A Mon Age Je Me Cache Encore pour Fumer, (At My Age, I Still Hide To Have A Smoke), is about a group of women who chat about their lives during a visit to a spa.

Muslim leaders in Italy are demanding the removal or destruction of a priceless 15th century fresco in Bologna that they say offends Islam by showing Muhammad being cast into the flames of Hell.

The row over The Last Judgment by Giovanni da Modena, in Bologna Cathedral, could threaten the already strained relations between the Roman Catholic Church and members of Italy's Muslim community.

The recently established Union of Italian Muslims has written to the Pope and Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, the outspoken conservative Archbishop of Bologna, complaining that the fresco shows clearly Muhammad, the founder of Islam, among those condemned to burn in eternal flames.

The protesters said that Giovanni da Modena had shown Muhammad being thrown into hell, completely naked, with a snake wrapped around his body and a demon next to him about to torture him. They said that Muslims had never depicted Jesus or the Virgin Mary on the walls of a mosque.

In the letter they called for the barbarous fresco to be removed from the wall of the Bolognini chapel, inside the 14th-century cathedral of San Petronio.

Adel Smith, the head of the Union of Italian Muslims, appealed to the many thousands of Italian Muslim residents of Bologna to attend a rally outside the main mosque in Rome.

A spokesman for the cardinal said that it was absurd to suddenly discover after 600 years that our most famous treasure is offensive to the Islamic religion.

Don Oreste Leonardi, prefect of the sacristy of Bologna Cathedral, said that the identification of the figure in the fresco in tiny Gothic writing was so small that it is almost invisible.

He said that the fresco, painted in 1415, was one of Bologna's greatest treasures, and the artist had merely reproduced the popular medieval vision of Hell.

The Union of Italian Muslims says that it has a large following and that the painting is unacceptable to Muslims throughout the world. In its letter to the Pope it said: It constitutes an even graver offence to the religion than that caused by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.

Signor Smith said that the problem had started in the Middle Ages with Dante, Italy's national poet, who had placed Muhammad in the ninth circle of Hell in his Inferno. He demanded that the teaching of Dante be suspended in Italian schools in immigrant areas.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York said several images of the Prophet Mohammed were removed from a collection.

The New York Post said that the removal of the images from the museum's Islamic collection comes after a number of conservative Muslims opposed the inclusion of the Mohammed images based on their religious beliefs.

The critics reportedly wanted the images removed because images of the Prophet Mohammed are not acceptable in their religion.

A source with inside knowledge of the museum told the Post the Metropolitan's decision to pull the controversial images reflects the museum's apparent policy to avoid criticism.

Danish police have shot and wounded a man at the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked an international row.

Westergaard was at home in Aarhus when a man broke in armed with a knife. Police arrived and shot the man after Westergaard pressed a panic alarm.

Police said he was shot in the knee and the shoulder after threatening officers who tried to arrest him. Preben Nielsen of Aarhus police, said the man was seriously hurt but his life was not in danger.

Danish officials said the intruder was a 28-year-old Somali linked to the radical Islamist al-Shabab militia.

Police said the man had entered Westergaard's house armed with a knife and had shouted in broken English that he wanted to kill him.

Westergaard said he had grabbed his five-year-old granddaughter and run to a specially designed panic room where he raised the alarm.

He has now been taken to a safe location, but said defiantly that he would be back, the newspaper reported.

Update: Charged

3rd January 2010. See article from news.bbc.co.uk

A Somali man has been charged with trying to kill a Danish artist whose drawing of the Prophet Mohammed sparked riots around the world.

The suspect, who was shot by police outside cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's home in the city of Aarhus on Friday, was carried into court on a stretcher.

Police say he broke into the house armed with an axe and a knife.

The suspect, who denies the charge, was remanded in custody. Police say he has links with Somali Islamist militants.

The radical al-Shabab group in Somalia hailed the attack.

Kurt Westergaard Sept 2006 I locked myself in our safe room and alerted the police. He tried to smash the entrance door with an axe, but he didn't manage Kurt Westergaard

Al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Muhamud Rage told AFP news agency: We appreciate the incident in which a Muslim Somali boy attacked the devil who abused our prophet Mohammed and we call upon all Muslims around the world to target the people like him.

Update: Mohammed Cartoons Reprinted

9th January 2010. Based on article from theaustralian.com.au

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has published reproductions of controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by Kurt Westergaard, the victim of attempted murder last week.

In an article on Westergaard, the daily printed small versions of six out of the 12 drawings by the Danish cartoonist that had infuriated Muslims around the world when Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten first published them in 2005.

Several of the drawings were seen as linking Islam and the Prophet Mohammed to terrorism and suicide bombings, including the turban bomb cartoon.

Update: Cartoon Apologist

1st February 2010.  Based on article from mediawatchwatch.org.uk

Pakistan's Daily Mail carries a story claiming that the Norwegian ambassador to Pakistan has strongly regretted the re-publication of the Turbomb Motoon in the pages of Aftenposten.

Robert Kvile allegedly is of the view that the Norwegian government would strive to reform understandings and to devise a strategy to stop such practices in future.

Kvile had been summoned to the office of the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Hamid Saeed Kazmi.