Never mind that it could play into the same sort of frenzy set off by false reports of flushed Qurans.

A Muslim inmate says prisoners around the country are regularly mistreated by their jailers because of religious faith. The Supreme Court is considering his case Monday.

The issue in the inmate's lawsuit is whether he can sue prison officials for allegedly confiscating two copies of his Quran and his prayer rug.

Abdus-Shahid M.S. Ali, a convicted murderer, says the books and rug are among the personal items that have been missing since 2003, when he was moved from a federal penitentiary in Atlanta to a facility at Inez, Ky.

Muslim inmates have been subjected to "very hard times and bad treatment" at the hands of federal, state and local prison employees because of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ali says in court papers.

Ali is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison for committing first-degree murder in the District of Columbia.

So we know the true nature of the guy making the complaint -- he is a cold-blooded killer. I guess that doesn't stand in the way of his being a good Muslim, does it? Religion of Peace and all that.

Ali says the items he turned over to prison officers in Atlanta for shipment never arrived at Inez.

In the Supreme Court, the question is whether federal prison officials qualify as law enforcement officers and are therefore exempt from suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946. The statute bars liability claims against law enforcement officers involved in detaining property. Two lower federal courts ruled against Ali.

Besides the two copies of the Quran and the prayer rug, Ali is missing stamps and other personal items worth $177 that he says weren't sent along to Big Sandy penitentiary in Kentucky.

Gee, growing up my family moved at six times -- and every time, something got lost in transit. My complete medical records for the first six years of my life were lost by the Department of Defense when they were shipped from Naval Hospital Balboa to Naval Hospital Bethesda, though the rest of the family records arrived just fine. Sounds like the same thing here. But I guess you can get more press claiming confiscation than simple loss.

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I hold a certain ambivalence towards the death penalty. On the one hand, I have deep concern over its use upon the innocent. At the same time, I recognize that some crimes are, by their very nature, so heinous that no other penalty is adequate to express society's outrage. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that some offenders -- and not just murderers -- clearly forfeit the presumption of a right to life by the very nature of their crimes.

And that is where I come to this case, which transfixed the nation this summer, and the community of faith that struggles to deal with it.

The United Methodist Church here is the kind of politically active place where parishioners take to the pulpit to discuss poverty in El Salvador and refugees living in Meriden. But few issues engage its passions as much as the death penalty.

The last three pastors were opponents of capital punishment. Church-sponsored adult education classes promote the idea of “restorative justice,” advocating rehabilitation over punishment. Two years ago, congregants attended midnight vigils outside the prison where Connecticut executed a prisoner for the first time in 45 years.

The problem, of course, with the whole "restorative justice" concept is that there is no real way of making whole the victims and the community in certain cases. And that is precisely the problem in the case at hand.

So it might have been expected that United Methodist congregants would speak out forcefully when a brutal triple murder here in July led to tough new policies against violent criminals across the state and a pledge from prosecutors to seek capital punishment against the defendants.

But the congregation has been largely quiet, not out of indifference, but anguish: the victims were popular and active members of the church — Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. On July 23, two men broke into the family’s home. Mrs. Hawke-Petit was strangled and her daughters died in a fire that the police say was set by the intruders.

The killings have not just stunned the congregation, they have spurred quiet debate about how it should respond to the crime and whether it should publicly oppose the punishment that may follow. It has also caused a few to reassess how they feel about the punishment.

Yeah -- the liberal "principle" at work here gets really hard to stand by when it hits too close to home. All of a sudden one is forced to reexamine what one believes when the hard, cold reality and unspeakable evil intrudes. Sure, ideas like "restorative justice" sound great in theory -- especially when one talks about property crime -- but it doesn't work when you have three dead loved ones to deal with. They are not going to be restored.

At the heart of the debate are questions about how Mrs. Hawke-PetitÂ’s husband, William, who survived the attack, feels about the death penalty. The indications are conflicting. Sensitive to his grief, many of the churchÂ’s most ardent capital punishment opponents have been hesitant to speak against the capital charges brought against two parolees charged with the killings, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes.

“I’m treading lightly out of respect for the Petit family,” said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Stephen E. Volpe, a death penalty opponent. “I do not feel we, in this church, ought to make this tragedy the rallying cry for anything at this point.”

Yeah -- but if this was some other family from some other church, would you be more than willing to do so? If so, then that is either a sign that you are unwilling to stand by your principles when they are inconvenient, or that you know that they are wrong but unwilling to own up to that reality. After all, if you really believe that your position is coming out of the Gospel, then you need to proclaim it when it is hard, not just when it is easy -- unless it is less about the Gospel and more about a political agenda sugar-coated with a veneer of religion.

At the same time, there is a widespread belief that Mrs. Hawke-Petit was opposed to capital punishment. Having her killers put to death would be the last thing she would want, many say.

“It’d be so dishonoring to her life to do anything violent in her name,” said Carolyn Hardin Engelhardt, a church member who is the director of the ministry resource center at Yale Divinity School Library. “That’s not the kind of person she was.”

At least two church members say they think that Mrs. Hawke-Petit endorsed an anti-death-penalty document known as a Declaration of Life. The declaration states a personÂ’s opposition to capital punishment and asks that prosecutors, in the event of the personÂ’s own death in a capital crime, do not seek the death penalty. The documents have been signed by thousands of people, including Mario M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, and Martin Sheen, the actor.

“She was a nurse and she would not cause harm to anyone,” said Lucy Earley, a congregant who notarized at least a dozen declarations during an appeal at the church and said she thought Mrs. Hawke-Petit’s was among them.

Declarations of Life are often kept with a personÂ’s will or other important papers; sometimes they are filed with registries. But it could not be independently determined whether Mrs. Hawke-Petit had signed one. Although the familyÂ’s home was heavily damaged in the fire and no independent copies have surfaced, death penalty opponents both inside and outside the church have kept trying to find one. A clear indication that Mrs. Hawke-Petit rejected capital punishment could help them mobilize, they say, not only in the Cheshire case but also on behalf of the nine people on ConnecticutÂ’s death row in Somers.

The opponents also say that a signed declaration by Mrs. Hawke-Petit opposing capital punishment could help counter the public outrage to the killings — outrage that has pressured state officials to suspend parole for violent criminals.

I'm about to make a really terrible sounding statement -- the views of Jennifer Hawke-Petit (or her daughters, or her surviving husband and other family members) on the death penalty are at best tangentially relevant to the eventual sentence given in this case. When prosecuted, the case will not be prosecuted in her name -- it will be prosecuted in the name of the people of the state of Connecticut, recognizing that the offense committed was not just against her and her family, but also against society as a whole. Indeed, the question is what do the people of Connecticut view as an appropriate punishment for the horrific events that took place this summer -- views quite clearly expressed in support of the death penalty.

But I put a different question to those anti-death penalty ideologues who urge that the victim's views should be the overriding factor in determining the sentence for murder -- if a victim left behind some clear demand for the execution of their murderers, would you be equally passionate in demanding that execution be the only option at sentencing? If their clearly articulated religious views supported the death penalty, would you insist that they be the guiding force in this case? Or would you argue, in typical liberal fashion, that your views are so much more compassionate and humane and advance than theirs and that your views must therefore override the wishes of the victim? You don't need to answer -- we already know.

Still, if proof of Mrs. Hawke-PetitÂ’s sentiments did surface, it would have little standing in court, lawyers and prosecutors say.

“Our job is to enforce the law no matter who the victim is or what the victim’s religious beliefs are,” said John A. Connelly, a veteran prosecutor in Waterbury who is not involved in the Cheshire case. “If you started imposing the death penalty based on what the victim’s family felt, it would truly become arbitrary and capricious.”

Michael Dearington, the state’s attorney who is prosecuting the suspects in the Petit killings, said he did not know whether Mrs. Hawke-Petit had signed a Declaration of Life. Asked if he knew Dr. Petit’s views on the death penalty, he replied, “I have a no comment on that.”

Interestingly enough, the article goes on to indicate that Dr. Petit is in support of the death penalty in this case. That creates an interesting problem for those who talk about "restorative justice", because it appears that the one surviving victim may have a very different view of what it will take for justice to be done. And while there is an anecdote regarding the use of the Prayer of St. Francis at the memorial service for his murdered family, and his struggle with the word pardon, let us not forget that forgiveness and justice are not mutually exclusive concepts in the Christian tradition, or in the American legal system.

I'm going to stop the fisking at this point. I do so for two reasons.

1) Much of the rest of the article constitutes a rehashing of the same issues raised earlier. and a focus on some genuinely good and decent works of the congregation. Frankly, I admire much of what is reported here, and do not doubt the people of the congregation are men and women of faith seeking to follow the Gospel. While I disagree with them on some points (in particular the death penalty issue), I respect them and mean nothing in the way of disrespect for them in anything I have written.

2) It hits too close to home. Jennifer Hawke-Petit, you see, was a friend of my wife's when they were growing up in Pennsylvania. She attended the couple's wedding, and the baptism of Hayley, their oldest daughter. She worked for Jennifer Hawke-Petit's father for a time. The events of this summer caused much anguish around our home, and much talk the victims and their families. I choose to honor those things revealed by not speaking of them more publicly in this forum.

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Rather than allow the traditional flag-folding ceremony as an option at the burial of our nation's veterans, the long-standing tradition has been banned by a government bureaucrat? Why? Because of a complaint over a reference to God.

Flag-folding recitations by Memorial Honor Detail volunteers are now banned at the nationÂ’s 125 veterans graveyards because of a complaint about the ceremony at Riverside National Cemetery.

During thousands of military burials, the volunteers have folded the American flag 13 times and recited the significance of every fold to survivors.

The first fold represents life, the second a belief in eternal life, and so on.

The complaint revolved around the narration in the 11th fold, which celebrates Jewish war veterans and “glorifies the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

The National Cemetery Administration then decided to ban the entire recital at all national cemeteries. Details of the complaint werenÂ’t disclosed.

Administration spokesman Mike Nacincik said the new policy outlined in a Sept. 27 memorandum is aimed at creating uniform services throughout the military graveyard system.

He said the 13-fold recital is not part of the U.S. Flag Code and is not government-approved.

And, of course, we can't have anything that isn't in the Flag Code. So let's ban the ceremony by government fiat. As I recall, though, the Flag Code also bans disrespectful burning of the flag. I guess that some speech is just a little more equal than other speech.

But most distressing is that a single complaint has resulted in the destruction of a long-standing tradition, and its denial to those who find comfort in the ceremony at a time of loss. Wouldn't a reasonable approach have been to require that the family be asked as a part of the funeral arrangements whether the ritual was welcome?

Veteran volunteers are planning a little civil disobedience on this one.

Here's a petition to overturn this assault on religion in our veteran's cemeteries.
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Now we can argue over whether or not the response to receiving the books is the correct one, but I think this situation raises a different question that is being overlooked.

Two dozen Oklahoma lawmakers plan to return copies of the Quran to a state panel on diversity after a lawmaker claimed the Muslim holy book condones the killing of innocent people.

The books were given to Oklahoma's 149 senators and representatives by the Governor's Ethnic American Advisory Council.

* * *

[Council Chairperson Marjaneh] Seirafi-Pour said the gift was a way to introduce the council to lawmakers so they could use it as a resource to "serve their offices and constituents." Oklahoma lawmakers also received a copy of the Bible earlier this year from The Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.

Now did anyone catch the troubling detail in the excerpt? If you didn’t, go back and look again. The books were given to the legislators by an official governmental panel. Why was that? Isn’t that a violation of the constitutional separation of mosque and state? How much government money was spent procuring the books and distributing them to the legislators? Were the sacred texts of other religious groups also distributed by the Governor’s Ethnic American Advisory Council, or did they specifically act to establish Islam as the state religion of Oklahoma? Do Buddhists, Hindus, and other religious believers qualify as second-class citizens in the eyes of these multi-culti buffoons, if their books were not also distributed to enable legislators to “serve their offices and constituents”? Given the large population of Native Americans in Oklahoma (certainly outnumbering Muslims), were Cherokee and other tribal religious texts also put into the offices of legislators?

And donÂ’t try to compare that to the gift of the Bibles, because those came to the legislators from a private organization, not an arm of the government. These Qurans came with the official imprimatur of the executive branch.

Where is the freakinÂ’ ACLU on this one, folks? Or do the rules that apply to Christians not apply to Muslims?

UPDATE: I just came across this information regarding the distribution of the Qurans.

Gov. Brad Henry's Muslim advisory council is offering personalized Korans to lawmakers to mark the state's centennial, with each copy to be embossed with the Oklahoma state seal and the recipient lawmaker's name. The all-Muslim group — plain-vanilla-named the American Ethnic Advisory Council — asked lawmakers to notify it if they didn't want a Koran, which the group described as "the record of the exact words revealed by G-d through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad." So far, 24 have declined.

Of course, it's the rejection of the Korans that's making headlines, not their state-sealed if privately funded distribution. No one asks what the Koran has to do with Oklahoma's centennial, for Pete's sake; or why a government organization is proselytizing about "the exact words" of Allah; or how those words in that book sound to non-Muslims leery of Islam's age-old message to convert, submit or die. In our weird world, it's not the Islamic message that's branded hateful or even insensitive; it's the person who rejects it. This is the technique that usually shuts people up.

If this is correct, the books themselves are privately funded – but still being distributed by a government panel. This still seems to be creating a “mosque and state” problem to me.

Second, why is an “Ethnic American” group composed solely of Muslims? Even if, as Diana West notes later in the column, it was intended to be a group to be composed of members of the "Middle East/Near East community", why are there no Arab Christians or Middle Eastern Jews? Why doesn’t its name clarify what “ethnic Americans” it is intended to “advise” about if it is intended to be an exclusively Muslim group? Could it be intended to disguise the “mosque and state” violation in question?

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Some folks just need to get over themselves.

A halloween decoration is stirring up controversy in Chicopee.
Kelly lynch is a self-proclaimed witch and has been studying witchcraft since she was a child.

She's offended by this decoration of a witch hanging from a noose.

Lynch was so put off that she went straight to the owner's front door and asked him to take it down.

"He told me that people should lighten up, and that it's a halloween decoration," said Kelly Lynch "to have that as your only halloween decoration, it's kind of odd."

The owner refused to take it down.

Lynch says it's no laughing matter and is calling it a hate crime against her religion and to the entire community.

Lynch is threatening to protest if he neighbor doesnÂ’t take it down. ThatÂ’s her right.

Just as it is his right to have whatever Halloween decorations he wants.

And to add a second witch effigy – tied to a stake atop a pile of kindling. And to douse it with lighter fluid and set it alight during Lynch’s attempt to intimidate him into silence.

Private property and personal choice – they are beautiful things about this country. Don’t let a witch like Kelly Lynch take them away.

UPDATE: But in this case elsewhere in the country, the grievance-mongers win after bringing government pressure based upon spurious claims of racism.

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Rock the Casbah! Rock the Casbah!

Kashmiri Muslim children pose for a photograph on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr at Eidgah in Srinagar, India.

And a little fun for my fellow Clash fans.

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One of the problems with Ann Coulter is that when she is right she manages to offend folks. Take the most recent flap in which she said something correct in a way that sounds just awful.

Conservative author Ann Coulter finds herself in the middle of a firestorm once again after remarks on a CNBC television show in which she said Jews need "to be perfected" and suggested the nation would be better off if it were all-Christian.

Appearing on "The Big Idea" with host Donny Deutsch on Monday, she said Christians were tolerant of racial diversity but that it "would be a lot easier" for Jews if they were to become Christians.

Deutsch, who described himself as a practicing Jew on the show, was clearly dismayed by the remarks, which he called "hateful" and "antisemitic," according to a transcript published on the Web by Editor and Publisher.

Yep, that’s our Ann – managing to put her foot in her mouth even when she expresses a view that is well-within the realm of Christian orthodoxy.

The problem is, of course, that she said what she said in a way that does not communicate it well.

What she should have said is that we Christians believe that the coming of Christ as the Messiah perfected the Covenant of the Old Testament and transformed it into something new. That is, of course, the message of the New Testament, which emphasizes salvation by faith and not by a rigid adherence to the Law of the Old Testament. As such, Christianity can be legitimately said to be “perfected Judaism”.

However, Coulter is wrong in how she communicates one point. We as individual Christians are not perfected – indeed, as one pop theology cliché states, Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven. As a more abstract theological statement, coming from one of the great theologians of the Reformation, would have it that we are covered by Christ’s righteousness, but are not ourselves righteous due to our sinful human nature. That is why I consider Coulter’s way of phrasing her point to have been very sloppy, to the point of unintentional offensiveness – but it is not anti-Semitic.

This brings me to two other points that I view as quite important. The Christian Scriptures include Jesus’ call to “make of all disciples”. As such, it is our baptismal mission to preach to and convert others. It is our hope that every person will truly embrace Christ in faith – to come under the Covenant made perfect by the death and resurrection of God Made Flesh. And yes, that includes the Jews, who we were the first people to hear the Gospel message and many of whom, we are told in the Book of Revelation, will accept Christ as their Savior in the last days as they recognize that the words of the prophets are fulfilled in him. And those things, my friends, are essential elements of Christianity – not the “be nice to everyone, help others” notions of pop theology that I heard proclaimed as “Real Christianity” by some of the scripturally and theologically ignorant talking heads as I prepared for school today.

And IÂ’d like to close with the thoughts of commentator and blogger Debbie Schlussel, who is herself a proud observant Jew. She notes that she actually knows An Coulter, and based upon that knows that Coulter is not an anti-Semite. She also points out that the beliefs expressed by Ann Coulter should offend her fellow Jews no more than the beliefs of Jews should offend Coulter and others.

To wit: That we, as Jews, don't accept the full Christian Bible, and therefore, it's the Christian belief that we need to be fully accepting of it. She said "That is what we [Christians] believe we are--perfected Jews."

Why should that offend me? I've had brunch with Ann, and we've had many conversations through e-mail, etc. During all of that, she's never once told me she's offended that I believe that I am part of the Chosen People. To you far-left Jews and other uber-liberals who want to rush off and call Ann an anti-Semite, that means that we as Jews believe Christians and Hindus and Bahai Faithers (and definitely, Muslims) are not Chosen. Does that make me a religious bigot? Nope. It just means I actually believe in my religion. Just like Ann does. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Would that such common sense will prevail here – though given that Coulter (of whom I am not a great fan, by the way) has been the subject of an unrelenting witch hunt by liberals intent upon ridding the media of the popular columnist and commentator, I doubt that it will do so among those most intent upon stirring up another faux scandal involving a conservative pundit.

UPDATE: Jewish group says Christians can't claim their faith is correct without being anti-Semitic. Sounds mighty intolerant, anti-Christian, and bigoted to me. After all, they are daring to say that Christians are wrong in what they believe and need to believe something else to be correct -- just what they are condemning Ann Coulter for doing.

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At least if they insist that the “survival of the world” is at stake.

The "survival of the world" is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other, leaders of the Muslim world will warn the Pope and other Christian leaders today.

In an unprecedented open letter signed by 138 leading scholars from every sect of Islam, the Muslims plead with Christian leaders "to come together with us on the common essentials of our two religions" and spell out the similarities between passages of the Bible and the Koran.

The scholars state: "As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes."

Excuse me, but the last time I checked it was Muslims who have been attacking Christians since the time of Muhammad, waging war on us on account of our religion, oppressing us, and driving us out of our homes. Remember – much of the Middle East and all of North Africa was Christian in the year 600 AD – but by 700 AD it was Muslim.

Only the heroic stand of Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 stopped the advance of the Islamic horde into Western Europe – and it took another seven-and-a-half centuries to reclaim Christian Spain from the clutches of the Moors.

Constantinople, the Christian city of the first Christian emperor, is today in a Muslim land and its cathedral, Hagia Sophia, has never been returned to the hands of the Christian faithful from whom it was stolen by the Turks in 1453.

As late as the 1600s, Muslim troops stood at the gates of European cities, threatening to impose their rule and their faith upon the Christian inhabitants thereof.

Today, Christians in the Muslim world – where they are not forbidden entirely – live an existence as a persecuted minority with second-class citizenship. Just this week, one such Christian was murdered for the crime of selling Christian books in Gaza, and he is only one of the hundreds who will be martyred at the hands of Muslim fanatics this year.

Peace with Islam? I’d love to see it. But the problem here is not the Christians – it is the followers of Islam, and the cancerous forces of violence that are drawn from the Quran itself, that are the problem. Until the Muslim faith gets its own house in order, peace is impossible.

I, for one, applaud the stand taken by this courageous British churchman who knows quite well the true nature of Islam and the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The first reaction to the letter, from the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, a leading Anglican expert on Islam, appeared to be critical.

Dr Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, welcomed the Muslim scholars' deisire for a dialogue, but said that the appeal was based on the Muslim belief in the oneness of God.

"What I would say to that is that Christians uphold belief in one God vigorously but our understanding of the oneness of God is not the Muslim understanding," he told The Times. "We believe in God as source from whom everything is brought into being. Jesus is God's word and presence for us but is also human."

He added: "One partner cannot dictate the terms on which dialogue must be conducted. This document seems to be on the verge of doing that."

Peace between us? Yes. But it must be a true peace, not a Munich-style “peace in our times” with an aggressive enemy that seeks out ultimate destruction.

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CanÂ’t the dead be allowed to rest in peace? Or does latter-day dhimmitude mean that long dead Christians must make way for freshly dead Muslims?

A row has erupted over a plan to dig up a third of a million bodies from an historic east London cemetery to make way for a new Muslim burial site.
Tower Hamlets council in London is considering reopening the Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park in Mile End to answer a long-running campaign for a Muslim graveyard in the area.

The park, off Bow Common Lane, was deconsecrated as a Church of England cemetery by Parliament in 1966, after being deemed full with about 350,000 bodies buried there.

Yeah – the creation of Eurabia continues, as the heritage of Christian Europe is again disrespected and destroyed. That this is even being considered is shameful

But don’t worry – soon the Parliament will act to stop. . . the criticism of the destruction of part of the heritage of Great Britain by declaring it hate speech and punishing folks critical of the rape of the dead to provide special privileges for Muslims.

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