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   From: cayoung61-#spamblock*-@hotmail.com   
      
   "Omega" <2121@insightbb.com> wrote in message   
   news:29pke.195$Is4.161@attbi_s21...   
      
   http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBure   
   us\archive\200505\FOR20050519a.html   
      
   This is in the category of "consider the source."   
      
   This message is meant to influence as well as inform.   
      
   ***   
      
      
   Saudis Shred Bibles, Rights Campaigners Claim   
   By Patrick Goodenough   
   CNSNews.com International Editor   
   May 19, 2005   
      
   (CNSNews.com) - Bibles found in the possession of visitors to Saudi Arabia   
   are routinely confiscated by customs officials, and in some cases copies   
   allegedly have been put through a paper shredder, according to religious   
   rights campaigners.   
      
   Reports from the Islamic world of the abuse of Bibles and other items   
   important to Christians emerge from time to time, but generally have little   
   impact - in contrast to the wave of Muslim anger sparked by a Newsweek   
   report, since retracted, of Koran desecration by the U.S. military.   
      
   "The Muslims respect the Koran far more than Christians respect the Bible,"   
   says Danny Nalliah, a Sri Lankan-born evangelical pastor now based in   
   Australia.   
      
   During the 1990s, Nalliah spent two years in Saudi Arabia, where he was   
   deeply involved with the underground church.   
      
   "It's a very well-known fact that if you have a Bible at customs when you   
   enter the airport, and if they find the Bible, that the Bible is taken and   
   put in the shredder," he said in an interview this week.   
      
   "If you have more than one Bible you will be taken into custody, and if you   
   have a quantity of Bibles you will be given 70 lashes for sure - you could   
   even be executed."   
      
   Nalliah had not himself seen a Bible being shredded but said the practice   
   was widely acknowledged among Christians in the kingdom.   
      
   Abuse of Christians and their symbols was not restricted to the destruction   
   of Bibles, he added.   
      
   A friend of his, a fellow Christian in Saudi Arabia, told him of witnessing   
   a particularly unpleasant incident involving a Catholic nun.   
      
   The man had been in the transit lounge at the airport in Jeddah - the   
   gateway to Mecca, used by millions of Hajj pilgrims each year - when a nun   
   arrived at the customs desk.   
      
   "Some fool [travel agent] had put her on a transit flight in Jeddah. You   
   don't do that to a Catholic nun, because she's going to be tormented."   
      
   "They opened her bag, went through her prayer book, put the prayer book   
   through the shredder ... took the crucifix off her neck and smashed it,   
   tormented her for many minutes."   
      
   Eventually another Muslim official objected to their conduct, came across   
   and "rescued" her, pointing out to the customs officials that she was not   
   entering the country but only in transit and would be leaving on the next   
   plane.   
      
   Briefed beforehand about the risks, Nalliah said he did not carry a Bible   
   when he arrived in the kingdom in 1995.   
      
   Subsequently, however, he took possession of hundreds of Bibles that had   
   been smuggled into Saudi Arabia to be used by believers there.   
      
   Nalliah said he had a close call one morning when armed members of the   
   notorious Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of   
   Vice - the religious police, or muttawa - hammered at his front door at 1   
   a.m.   
      
   With 400 smuggled Bibles "sitting on the dining room table," he believed his   
   life to be in serious danger. "That was a crime equal to rape, murder, armed   
   robbery, and in Saudi Arabia you get the same punishment," he said - the   
   death penalty.   
      
   Nalliah said he had prayed earnestly and, in what he could only describe as   
   a miracle, the men left without entering his home.   
      
   'Contraband'   
      
   Claims of Bible desecration in Saudi Arabia have been made by others.   
      
   "One Christian recently reported that his personal Bible was put into a   
   shredder once he entered customs," the late Nagi Kheir, spokesman for the   
   American Coptic Association and a veteran campaigner for religious freedom   
   in the Middle East, wrote in an article several years ago.   
      
   "Some Christians have reported that upon entering Saudi Arabia they have had   
   their personal Bibles taken from them and placed into a paper shredder," the   
   U.S.-based organization International Christian Concern said in a 2001   
   report.   
      
   In its most recent report on religious freedom around the world, the State   
   Department made no reference to Bible destruction, but said they were   
   considered contraband.   
      
   "Customs officials routinely open mail and shipments to search for   
   contraband, including ... non-Muslim materials, such as Bibles and religious   
   videotapes," it said. "Such materials are subject to confiscation, although   
   rules appear to be applied arbitrarily."   
      
   In a 2003 report on Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Commission on International   
   Religious Freedom, an independent watchdog set up under the 1998   
   International Religious Freedom Act, said: "Customs officials regularly   
   confiscate Bibles and other religious material when Christian foreign   
   workers arrive at the airport from their home countries initially or return   
   from a vacation."   
      
   Inquiries about the legality of Bibles and about the shredder claims, sent   
   to the Saudi Embassy in Washington and the Saudi Information Ministry in   
   Riyadh, were not answered by press time.   
      
   Koran vs. Bible   
      
   After Nalliah left Saudi Arabia in 1997, he went to the U.S. and took part   
   in the lobbying effort on Capitol Hill in support of what eventually became   
   the International Religious Freedom Act, signed into law the following year.   
      
   He heads an evangelical ministry in Australia, where late last year he and a   
   colleague became the first people to be found guilty under a controversial   
   state religious hatred law, after Muslims accused them of vilifying Islam   
   during a post-9/11 seminar for Christians.   
      
   Nalliah said this week it did not surprise him that Muslims have reacted   
   strongly to the claims that U.S. interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay base,   
   where terrorism suspects are held, had thrown a Koran into the toilet.   
      
   While Bible scholars say the Bible is written by men who were inspired by   
   God, Muslims believe the Koran is "the copy of an original that is sitting   
   in heaven, and has been sent down [by revelation to Mohammed]."   
      
   The book is seen as something sacred in itself, he explained, its words   
   having come "directly from Allah. That's why they are so mad when they think   
   something [unseemly] is being done to the Koran."   
      
   A Muslim will never keep a Koran at ground level, for instance.   
      
   The Pentagon says a January 2003 memo issued to U.S. personnel at Guantanamo   
   Bay instructed them to "ensure that the Koran is not placed in offensive   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)