ISTANBUL, October 10 (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian Coptic Christian woman has been sentenced to three years in prison for failing to uphold her Islamic identity – an identity she didn’t know she had for over four decades.

Sisters Shadia and Bahia Nagy El-Sisi, both in their late 40s and residents of the small east Delta town Mit-Ghamr, were arrested and tried for claiming their official religious identity as Christian. Unknown to them, their religious identity officially changed 46 years ago due to their father’s brief conversion to Islam. Both are illiterate.

Shadia El-Sisi was tried for stating her religion as Christian on her marriage certificate and sentenced to three years in prison on Nov. 21, 2007. She was released two months later. Last Sept. 23 a judge also sentenced Bahia El-Sisi to three years in prison for “forging” her marriage certificate by stating her religion as Christian.

Their father, Nagy El-Sisi, converted to Islam in 1962 during a brief marital dispute in order to divorce his wife and potentially gain custody of his daughters, the sisters’ lawyer Peter Ramses told Compass.

Egyptian law is influenced by Islamic jurisprudence (sharia), which automatically awards child custody to whichever parent has the “superior” religion and dictates “no jurisdiction of a non-Muslim over a Muslim.”

If Bahia El-Sisi’s identity as a Muslim stands, then her religious status could potentially create a domino effect that would require her husband to convert to Islam or have their marriage nullified. Her children, too, would be registered as Muslims. Both women are married to Christians.

“All of their children and grandchildren would be registered as Muslims,” Ramses said. “[The ruling] would affect many people.”

Other sources said it is too soon to determine the fate of the sisters’ marriages and families, as neither of their cases have been finalized.

‘But I Am a Christian’

A few years after his conversion, Nagy El-Sisi returned to his family and Christianity. He sought the help of a Muslim employee in the Civil Registration Office, Ramadan Muhammad Hussein, who agreed to forge his Christian identification documents. Reversion back to Christianity for converts to Islam has been nearly impossible in Egyptian courts.

The daughters discovered they were still registered as Muslims when Hussein was arrested for forgery in 1996 and confessed he had helped El-Sisi obtain fake documents three decades earlier. El-Sisi was later arrested.

When the two daughters visited him in prison, they were detained and accused of forging their Christian identification documents, according to national weekly Watani. A criminal court gave them each a three-year prison sentence in absentia in 2000.

Shadia El-Sisi was arrested in August 2007, three days before her son’s wedding. Her first hearing was on Nov. 21, 2007 at the Shobra El-Khema criminal court; she asserted that she had no idea of her so-called conversion to Islam. Judge Hadar Tobla Hossan sentenced her to three years in prison.

Confronted with the sentence, Shadia El-Sisi kept repeating, “But I am a Christian. I am a Christian,” according to Watani.

She was in prison until Jan. 13, when Prosecutor-General Abdel Meged Mahmood retracted the sentence because she was unaware of her conversion by proxy and due to legal technicalities that voided incriminating evidence.

The advocacy group Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination also pressured the judiciary through a signature drive to release her from prison.

Bahia El-Sisi went into hiding following her sister’s imprisonment, but came out after news of her release. Legal experts believe that when Bahia El-Sisi’s case comes before the Supreme Court, her sentence will be retracted as her sister’s was, as their cases have no legal foundation.

Early in the morning of May 5, however, police arrested Bahia El-Sisi and held her in jail until her hearing on July 20, after which she was released pending the verdict.

On Sept. 23 she was sentenced to three years in prison for “forgery of an official document,” as her marriage license states her religion as “Christian.” Bahia El-Sisi was married years before learning of her father’s brief conversion.

Ramses will appeal to Egypt’s Supreme Court in next week. He said he worries the case could further erode the precarious situation of religious minorities in the Muslim-majority country of 79 million.

“How can the government say to [someone] who has lived 50 years in a Christian way that they must become a Muslim and their children must be Muslim and their whole family must all be Muslims?” he said. “This is very important for the freedom of religion.”

Egypt’s constitution guarantees freedom of belief and practice for the country’s Christian minority, which makes up 10 percent of the population. Islam, however, is the official state religion and heavily influences the government and court system.

The case is an example of the social pressure put on Egyptian non-Muslims to convert when one of their parents embraces Islam, despite the constitution guaranteeing equality, said Youssef Sidhom, editor-in-chief of Watani.

“This is a sick environment that we struggle to change,” Sidhom stated. “According to what is taking place here freedom is protected and provided for Christians to convert to Islam while the opposite is not provided.”

Egyptian courts have continued to discriminate against Christians who have one Muslim parent, according to human rights reports, as the judiciary gives them no choice but to convert to Islam.

On Sept. 24 an Alexandria court awarded custody of 14-year-old Christian twins to their Muslim father even though the twins said they were Christians who wanted to stay with their mother. Egyptian civil law grants child custody to their mothers until the age of 15.  

Report from Compass Direct News

NEW DELHI, October 10 (Compass Direct News) – After police in the eastern state of Orissa confirmed this week that Maoists killed Hindu nationalist leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a Hindu extremist group circulated allegedly forged documents in an attempt to implicate a local church in the Aug. 23 murder.

The Hindu Jagaran Samukhya (Society for Revival of Hinduism or HJS) circulated documents saying the plan to kill Saraswati in Kandhamal district was made at a meeting at Bethikala Church on May 25 attended by 17 people following a briefing and command from religious leaders, the Press Trust of India news agency reported yesterday.

Local Christian leaders responded by saying they will file defamation charges.

“We will file both civil and criminal defamation cases against the person who made such allegations,” Father Joseph Kalathil from the Catholic Archbishop House in Bhubaneswar and the Rev. Fr. Prafulla Ku Sabhapati, president of the Bethikala Parish Council of Kandhamal, said in a statement. “Not only our signatures were forged, the contents of the documents were also fabricated.”

On Oct. 6 Orissa state police confirmed that Maoists killed Saraswati, a day after the chief of the Orissa unit of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist, Sabyasachi Panda, told NDTV 24X7 news that his organization was behind the murder.

The Maoists killed Saraswati because he was a key leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), Panda told the channel. The VHP, he said, used non-tribal traders’ money to build VHP’s youth wing, Bajrang Dal, and ran a campaign against Christians, falsely accusing them of forced conversions and killing cows, considered holy by Hindus.

“This forced us to attack him,” Panda said. “We left two letters claiming responsibility for the murders. But the [Chief Minister Naveen] Patnaik government suppressed those letters. It is a BJP [Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party] government; they will support the VHP. The state government made it look like Christian groups were responsible for the attack. The Christian community in Orissa does not have any Maoist organization supporting them here.”

There were also reports, however, of the Orissa police having arrested three tribal Christians in connection with Saraswati’s murder. The Indian Express reported that the three had confessed their involvement.

A representative of the Christian Legal Association told Compass that according to sources, the police had tortured the three Christians to pressure them to confess a crime they did not commit.

After the assassination of Saraswati, Hindu extremist groups blamed local Christians and began attacks on them, their houses and their churches. The worst violence against Christians in modern India erupted in spite of the Orissa police and media stating on the day of the murder that suspected Maoists killed Saraswati.

According to the All India Christian Council, more than 60 people have been killed, more than 18,000 injured and around 4,500 houses and churches destroyed in the “retributive” violence. Two Christian women, including a nun, were also gang-raped. The violence, which later spread to at least 14 districts of Orissa, has left more than 50,000 people homeless.

Attacks Continue

Orissa’s Kandhamal district remained tense even 48 days after the violence began.

Yesterday about 15 houses were burned down by a mob in the Lansaripalli village in Kantamal Block of neighboring Boudh district, The Hindu reported. The attackers came from the Gochhapada area of Kandhamal district.

“Thursday’s was the third incident in Boudh district,” added the daily. “More than 100 houses were burnt down in two separate attacks in the past few days.”

On Wednesday (Oct. 8), a mob burned and looted at least 25 houses belonging to Christians in the Balligada village under Daringbadi police station in Kandhamal’s Nuagam Block, Father Ajay Singh of the Catholic Archdiocese of Bhubaneswar told Compass.

On Tuesday (Oct. 7), over five houses were torched in Jalespanga area under Phiringia police jurisdiction in Kandhamal. Another house was burned in the Sujeli village of G. Udayagiri Block the same day.

The Hindu also said the more than 16,000 Christians living in various relief camps were not returning to their villages, fearing attacks on them if they refused to convert to Hinduism.

Fr. Singh from the Bhubaneswar Archdiocese told Compass that over 12,000 Christians from various relief camps had moved out of Kandhamal to other districts and states, as they feared more attacks.

Supporting Violence

The president of the VHP, Ashok Singhal, told Zee News channel on Sunday (Oct. 5), “What Hindu organizations including the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, India’s chief Hindu nationalist group] are doing in Orissa is all legal and is the reaction of the murder of VHP leader Saraswati, who was like Jesus Christ to us.”

In an interview with The Week magazine (Oct. 5), Singhal said that Hindu youth are “ready to die and, if necessary, to kill. [Their] patience is ebbing.”

Singhal added that a “Hindu uprising” had begun, “and the political parties will have to rethink and reinvent themselves, for their own existence. If there is no arrangement for Hindus’ security, they’ll do it on their own. The Hindus will not die. If that self-defence is militancy, so be it … the Hindu never went around the world for suzerainty or to convert ... now they are here, undermining us. That causes anger. In fact many want to fight back this harvesting of Hindus.”

In addition, a leader of the Bajrang Dal in the southern state of Karnataka admitted to supporting recent attacks on churches while speaking to The Week magazine. “We supported those who attacked the churches, as it is a justified fight,” Bajrang Dal convenor Mahendra Kumar said.

The violence in Orissa spread to several other states, including Karnataka, where around 20 churches were destroyed and 20 Christians were attacked in the recent weeks.

As many political parties and rights groups have demanded a ban on the Bajrang Dal for attacking Christians and churches in Orissa and other states, the federal government ruled by the United Progressive Alliance has mandated the National Integration Council to give its recommendations, reported the Times of India today.

The Bajrang Dal, however, warned that any such move would have “grave consequences” for the government politically, saying there was “no legal ground” for such an action.

There are 897,861 Christians in Orissa, which has a population of 36.8 million.  

Report from Compass Direct News

Supponiamo di voler contare banalmente i record di una tabella. Un primo metodo potrebbe essere ciclare i record della tabella:

miaTabella t;
int contatore;
;

while select t
{
contatore++;
}
Info("Numero record:"+int2str(contatore));

Anche se è una “fatica” inutile dato che possiamo sfruttare il metodo “count” che comprime il codice:

miaTabella t;
int contatore;
;

select count(recId) from t;
Info("Numero record:"+int2str(t.recId));

ATTENZIONE!
Ci sono alcuni casi in cui non è possibile però usare il metodo count(). Mi trovo, infatti, nella situazione di dover contare i record di una tabella raggruppata per uno specifico campo come in questo esempio:

mioCampo:
2
2
7
7
7
9

I record contati non dovrebbero essere 6, ma il risultato che vorrei ottenere è 3 ovvero il conteggio della tabella raggruppata per quello specifico campo:

mioCampo:
2
7
9

In questo caso il count() dei record darebbe come risultato 1.

select count(recId) from miaTabella group by mioCampo;
contatore = miaTabella.recId;
risultato: contatore = 1;

questo perché viene fatto il raggruppamento per ogni valore trovato nei record e subito il count, ovvero,  raggruppo per 2 con count = 2, poi raggruppo per 7 con count = 9, infine raggruppo per 9 con count = 1.
In questa siamo costretti a ciclare i record come segue:

while select miaTabella group by mioCampo
{
cntatore++;
}

In questo caso il contatore restituisce il numero di record della tabella gia raggruppata, ovvero 3.

- Recorded in Bhukari, as quoted from Prophet Mohammed(Peace Be Upon Him)

I have a confession. I'm a real nerd. I love research and am prone to read books that few people in their right mind would read for fun.

Several years ago, I read a book entitled, Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. The book derives its title from research suggesting that more Americans are bowling than ever before. Yet group bowling opportunities are on the decline. An increasing number of people are choosing to bowl alone.

People in today's world are extremely busy. Quality relationships are taking a back seat to hectic schedules and prevailing loneliness. Research shows that most Americans lack life-giving relationships with family and friends. Yet God didn't intend for us to live life alone. Scripture suggests that flying solo through life harms us spiritually. Recent studies suggest that social isolation harms us physically.

Consider one more example from Bowling Alone. Researchers surveyed thousands of individuals, asking questions about their health habits and their social connections. The study tracked the physical health of these people over their lifetime and found that people who had poor health habits (drug and alcohol abuse, lack of exercise, poor eating practices, little sleep) but strong relationships actually lived longer than people with excellent health habits but no quality friendships. Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? As John Ortberg says, this study suggests that it's better to eat Krispy Kreme donuts with your friends than to eat broccoli by yourself!

Understand God's Word

God's wired us to be at our best when we have healthy relationships with others. The Bible has much to say about what Christ-centered friendships should look like.

• Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
• Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Ephesians 6:2)
• Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. (Romans 12:10)
• Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. (Romans 12:15)

Consider the powerful community exemplified by the early church:

• They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. (Acts 2:42, 46)
• You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. (Acts 20:20)

Put Your Faith Into Action

At West Side, hundreds of people have found that connecting with others in a small group setting has allowed them to thrive as part of God's family. Small groups are one of the primary ways we live out Scripture's command to help each other grow spiritually.

Research shows that a majority of Americans suffer from loneliness and social isolation. That's not the way God designed life in His kingdom. Dive into a small group... we have numerous short-term groups for you to "test drive" before making a commitment. If you'd like more information about joining a small group, click here to indicate your interest.

• If crisis hit, who would you call?
• Who are you celebrating and who's burdens are you sharing?
• Do you have a friend who's challenging you to grow in your faith?
• Are you part of a community that honestly discusses how biblical faith is lived out?

Get connected and watch God take your faith to the next level. After all, it's better to eat Krispy Kreme donuts with your small group than broccoli by yourself.

For Further Study

Take some time between now and Sunday to read the following Scripture passages and reflect on the power of God's community:

Acts 2
Romans 12

for a previous post, (see VH1 Hip Hop Honors)

I ran into

Oh hell yes.

Ladies,

...(and some gentlemen)

may I present to you The Oakland Raiders' very own Drew Carter.

yum.

Why is he so fine?

Hey Nupe/Color!...If that's the case this drives his stock waaaaay up.

And you know he's skrong.

You know how I feel about that.

Love,

*Ms. Officer

Thanks guys!

We are sorry for not keeping you informed enough. We are now going to be more active and show to the Lindens that we need things to CHANGE TODAY.

I've been a fan of Karin Jurick's work for a while now.  Recently she started a new weekly painting activity.  She posts a reference every Wednesday and you get a week to try drawing or painting it.  The blog is called Different Strokes from Different Folks.   I thought it was a wonderful way to get our art group members present and past to participate in this or some other weekly activity and to share our efforts here.

This morning we met for the first time with this new agenda.  The plan is to spend an hour on each effort and we do this once a week.  It's festival season in Dhaka once again.  Id finished a few days back and currently Durga Puja is being celebrated.   We selected this photograph from todays edition of Daily Star. You can see the results below.  

 [gallery]

Fired with enthusiasm we started on a second one which will be completed next thursday.  In the meantime, Harriet, Maria, Crystal, Ratna and Tiffany - how about posting your work too?

Click here to see My Girl Thursday on Facebook!

Fans will only have to wait until next month for 'Prospekt’s March’, a new collection of Coldplay songs, some recorded during, but not used, for Viva La Vida.

The core of the E.P. will be a new version of 'Lost’ featuring Jay-Z plus the new song 'Glass of Water’ that has already made its way into the Coldplay setlist.

Missing is the song 'Luna’, recorded with Kylie Minogue. Its release shall now become one of the all-time collectible Coldplay bootlegs.

Prospekt’s March tracklisting is:

Life In Technicolour II
Postcards From Far Away
Glass Of Water
Rainy Day
Prospekt's March / Poppyfields
Lost +
Lovers in Japan (Osaka Sun remix)
Now My Feet Won't Touch The Ground

(from: www.music-news.com)

• Boys and Groups - A humorous look one man's avoidance of community and the consequences
• Coming Back - A classic Willow Creek drama about the power of a small group ("a small group of what?")
• Hold the Light - A song by Caedmon's Call about a small group providing hope
• Flying Solo - Some things just shouldn't be attempted alone!

Have you ever been part of a great small group?  What made it great?  (Share your story in the comment section.)

The group is small right now with only 3 members and 10 lenses. The lenses are pretty darn cool though. Vintage magazine ads, wrestling programs, autographs, sheet music, and old hollywood magazines are covered in the lenses so far.

So, if you are a fellow lensmaster and have written a lens that would fit in this group, go on over and submit the lens or lenses and I'll take a peak at them for you. Not only will I add you to the group but I'll read and rate your lens for you too.

Just click this link to visit Ephemera and Paper Collectibles Group

Obviously not. But by teaming up with friends, colleagues from work, mates from university or your sports club or other people with whom you feel a connection, many single euros quickly turn into a sum that can make a difference. You have been able to donate for social projects via betterplace for quite some time now – BUT now, however, groups get a space of their own where they can dedicate themselves together and on a long term basis for one or several charitable projects. Finally!!!

This can be your local pub, as well as the bingo ladies, the alumni from University, or the stamp collectors.

The team “surfers from Munich” (yes, you can actually surf in Bavaria) are a great example: Together they support a project in Bali, an orphanage which was founded by their fellow surfer Brad and his Balinese wife Siska. Some of them could see by themselves in Bali that it wasn’t dedication that was missing for the orphanage to grow and offer more space to more kids – but money. It’s a pleasure to have the surfers from Munich, our first group, on betterplace.org!

You can bring your own project to the site, like the surfers did, but you don’t have to: There are over 300 projects from all around the world on the platform to choose from.

Why wait? Register your team now and invite your friends!

]]> http://iamarf.wordpress.com/?p=309 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:41:19 +0000 iamarf http://iamarf.fr.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/cck08-networks-groups-nodes/ Life struggles to emerge from the inexorable increase of entropy stated by the second law of thermodynamics with two legs: groups and networks.

As usual, we tend to dichotomise the discussion.

Groups and networks are synergic. Nodes are not a sort of dimensionless points but have structure. Internal structure of nodes is related to their functionality within the network.

Nodes "are" groups. I mean, Nature creates groups to function as nodes in networks.

Nodes require internal structure and hierarchical organization to function. Networks grow spontaneously, or better said, chaotically. Our world is entirely made of chaotically grown networks made of structured nodes.

How do we build a car today? I read of a new chinese car which is chinese because its conception and the management of the industrial process took place in China. However, the various systems that compose the car are manufactured in US, Germany, Austria, China and some other places. The car will be assembled in south Italy. This is the trend. Today you buy a car of a given brand but more then 50% of that car has been designed, built and assembled not by the brand you choose but by a worldwide network of suppliers. Do you need brakes for a new car? Well, you have to choose among all the available brake manufacturers and you will connect to those who will be able to provide the brakes you need at the lowest cost. The nodes of this industrial network are companies. Companies are highly structured groups of people. All the employers of a company are members of a group organized in a strictly hierarchical way. The company, in order to function behaves as a node in a network characterized by a very well defined set of rules. However, the network grows chaotically.

Our society is made of communities, ranging from minuscule villages to very large metropolis. All these communities are very structured groups of people. There have always been communications among communities, even a long time ago. Our society have been always shaped as a network of communities. But the network of communities grows spontaneously. Villages and towns rise because of a very complex blending of factors. Nobody has planned the whole distribution of towns in a country. Scaring experiments, such as in the implementation of communism, have been made but they all ruined in human tragedy.

The world of open source is a network of software developers. Each developer acts as a node in this network. Each developer is a human being, that is an extremely complex group of cells organized in a set of very complex structures.

The most complex of these structures is the brain which in turn is a network whose nodes are nervous cells. A single nervous cell is a very structured group of macromolecules.

And so on.

Our discussions are always too anthropocentric. We believe to take fundamental decisions about the use of groups or network. It is not so. Things happen. Just happened that way before us. And they will happen despite us.

This does not means that we are condemned to be passive observers of our destiny. Not completely. The world changes continuously, evolves continuously and we find ourselves in the mainstream of evolution but, fortunately or unfortunately, we have consciousness and we are able to take decisions.

Here it is important to improve our understanding of the relationships between networks and groups because the world use both of them. I would like to understand better the role of groups as nodes in networks.

I would like to understand better the balance between chaos and structures which produce stable stratified networks, despite the second law of thermodynamics.