Cleric: Babies Sans Burqas “Incite Male Senses”

Religion roundup:

• A Saudi cleric, Sheikh Abdullah Daoud, is calling for all Muslim baby girls to be covered with a veil or even a burqa. Daoud delivered a fatwa on the topic on Islamic al-Majd TV, stressing his belief that the veil would protect female babies from being sexually molested.

burqa-baby

• I guess the advice came too late for five-year-old Lama al-Ghamdi. She was recently raped and tortured to death by her own father, Saudi Arabian preacher Fayhan al-Ghamdi. Remarkably, he has been spared a death sentence or even a lengthy prison term after agreeing to pay “blood money” to the slain girl’s mother. According to a medical report, Lama had been tortured with whips, electric shocks, and an iron. She had broken arms, a broken back, and a fractured skull.

• Former New Birth Missionary Baptist members in Atlanta are suing Bishop Eddie Long. They allege that the megachurch pastor encouraged them to invest money in a Ponzi scheme despite the fact that he’d been told the investor was running a three-million-dollar capital deficit. SEC officials say that Long’s protégé, Ephren W. Taylor, promised to use investments for charity and to help economically challenged areas, but that Taylor instead diverted the funds to pay other investors, as well as personal expenses.

• Mehmet Şahin, who argued against the public praise given by young Turkish-Dutch Muslims to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, has received death threats. Subsequently, he and his family fled their home “for their safety,” on the advice of Arnhem mayor Pauline Krikke. After his televised disapproval of the anti-semitic remarks made by the teenagers, Dutch Muslims accused Şahin of being a Mossad agent. Residents of his primarily immigrant neighborhood circulated a petition to pressure Şahin into moving away permanently.

• A prominent Alabama clergyman, the Rev. Terry Greer, 54, made a brief court appearance on Thursday, after being charged with murder in the slaying of his 52-year-old wife and the attempted murder of their 18-year-old-daughter. Greer is senior pastor of the Gardendale-Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church near Birmingham.

[Image via freethoughtblogs]