The discussion was organized by Arus Pelangi, a non-governmental group.

Scholars said that condemnation of homosexuality by Muslims is based on narrow-minded interpretations of Islamic teaching.

Siti Musdah Mulia of the Indonesia Conference of Religions and Peace said:

“There is no difference between lesbians and non lesbians. In the eyes of God, people are valued based on their piety…And talking about piety is God’s prerogative to judge. The essence of the religion is to humanize humans, respect and dignify them.”

Another speaker at the discussion, Nurofiah of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), said that heterosexuality is a social construction that has ultimately led the majority to ban homosexuality.

Several conservative Muslims also spoke at the discussion, but they condemned homosexuals.

Deputy chairman of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Amir Syarifuddin said:

“It’s a sin. We will not consider homosexuals an enemy, but we will make them aware that what they are doing is wrong.”

A representative of Hizbut Thahir Indonesia (HTI) asked the attending homosexual participants to repent and force themselves to return to the right path.

However, according to Jakarta, Siti Musdah Mulia, said homosexuality is from God and should be considered natural.

Last week, Paris Foot Gay said its members were victims of homophobia when Creteil Bebel, a team of Muslim players, refused to play them this month.

The French amateur league said it excluded Creteil for “refusing the match on discriminatory grounds.”

“It’s a permanent exclusion, they will never be reinstated,” league president Jacques Stouvenel said.

An announcement on the government Web site Thursday said the bill “may spark debate” but was needed to stop discrimination against gay couples. Current law only recognizes heterosexual marriages.

Prime Minister Sali Berisha said the move followed requests from rights groups. His Democrats, who control 74 of parliament’s 140 seats, are expected to easily pass the law.

The former Communist Balkan state, which joined NATO in April, has applied to be considered for joining the European Union.

Albania is mostly Muslim with large Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic minorities. Practicing religion was banned during the 1944-1990 Communist regime.

Moqtada Sadr made the call on Thursday during a seminar of clerics, police and tribal leaders.

There has been growing anti-gay violence in Iraq. Last month another Shiite cleric, Sattar al-Battat, repeatedly condemned homosexuality during Friday prayers, saying Islam prohibits homosexuality. Homosexual acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq.

The following week, the bodies of two gay men were found in Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City. Several days later, a third man was found dead on the outskirts of Sadr City. By the end of the month, another three bodies were found and police said four other men were found tortured but alive.

Amnesty International said that in addition to the violence in Sadr City, 25 suspected gays had been killed in recent months in Baghdad.

A group calling itself “Brigades of the Righteous” has posted signs around Sadr City listing the names of alleged homosexuals and threatening to kill them.

Moqtada Sadr’s spokesperson on Friday said that the cleric’s call for the eradication of homosexuality was not an endorsement of the violence.

“Al-Sadr rejects this type of violence,” said Sheikh Wadea al-Atabi. “And anyone who commits violence [against gays] will not be considered as being one of us,” al-Atabi said.

“The only remedy to stop [homosexuality] is through preaching and guidance. There is no other way to put an end to it,” he said.

In addition to Al-Sadr’s remarks Thursday, another Shiite leader at the meeting said that homosexuality “is a disaster that has come to the community,” and a tribal leader from Sadr City, said: “Everybody has to work to preserve the morals of young people from the corrupt phenomena of the West.”

Although the court found no evidence of direct funding for violent individuals, it was clear that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development had been sending money to Hamas after it was deemed a terrorist organization by the United States (in 1995).

It’s not a surprising conviction, but for the past few days a close friend of mine has been sending emails about the recent border closures in Israel. According to The Guardian, even essential food and medical supplies are not being permitted to cross the border into Palestine.

That means that the 80% of Palestinians entirely dependent on food aid have had close to nothing to eat for over two weeks.

I understand that laws against funding terrorist organizations are necessary, and the United States is entirely justified in prosecuting those who continue to send aid to violent organizations. But when the violent organization is also the government of a country it presents new problems.

Palestinian Americans will have trouble supporting their families back home if they can’t send money directly to the government (like many Jewish Americans do for Israel) and international aid organizations aren’t even allowed inside to spend the money they already have on the people who need help.

The conviction of Muslim leaders in Dallas may seem like a victory, but, it is indicative of a great quandary in American foreign policy. How do you support a people when their government is blacklisted and their borders are closed and controlled by an enemy nation?

The population of Palestine should not be punished for Hamas. As many Americans who didn’t vote for Bush know, it’s hugely unfair to blame a citizenry for a few years of bad government.

The article, titled “A flesh-eating bacteria and sexual abnormality,” appeared in al-Salam, a free publication available in businesses throughout Berlin.

“One never knows what kind of bacteria and germs are found on them,” it said of gay men.

The article contained quotes from people the publication said were authorities on skin diseases, and was accompanied by photographs of various skin infections.

The LGBT Association of Berlin-Brandenburg filed an official complaint with police this week.

“It is now being examined to determine whether it should be dealt with as defamation or incitement,” said association spokesperson Alexander Zinn.

Zinn also called on Germany’s large Muslim community to disavow the article.

Incitement against minorities, including gays, is illegal in Germany, but in the past similar cases were not prosecuted after Muslims complained that to do so would infringe on their religious rights.

Jerome Corsi’s anti-Obama book, “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” claims the Illinois senator is a dangerous, radical candidate for president. The book is a compilation of all the innuendo and false rumors against Obama – that he was raised a Muslim, attended a radical, black church and secretly has a “black rage” hidden beneath the surface.

In fact, Obama is a Christian who attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

The Obama campaign picked apart the book’s claims in a rebuttal titled “Unfit For Publication,” to be posted on the Obama campaign’s rumor-fighting Web site, FightTheSmears.com. The title is a play on the book Corsi co-authored against 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s military service called “Unfit For Command.”

“Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago,” said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. “His is just one of what will likely be many more lie-filled books rushed to print this election cycle, which are cobbled together from debunked Internet sources to make money and advance a partisan agenda. We will respond to these smears forcefully with all means at our disposal.”

Corsi’s book is off to a swift start and is No. 1 on The New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction best-seller list, even though Obama’s campaign would argue the book should be listed as fiction.

Obama’s campaign says the book is full of factual inaccuracies that include the wrong date for the Obamas’ marriage. Corsi also writes that Obama left much of his family background out of his autobiographies – his father’s polygamy and alcoholism, his sister’s birth in Indonesia and that his then-fiance Michelle accompanied him on a visit to Kenya – but the campaign points out page numbers from “Dreams From My Father” where Obama discussed all those things.

In “The Obama Nation” – the title is a twist on the word abomination – Corsi catalogs various allegations that have haunted Obama on right-wing blogs and anonymous e-mails.

Corsi suggests, without a shred of proof, that Obama may be using drugs today. Obama has acknowledged using marijuana and cocaine as a teenager but says he quit when he went to college and hasn’t used drugs since.

Corsi makes an issue of the fact that, before he quit smoking cigarettes, Obama didn’t want it widely known that he smoked. “If Obama takes pains to hide his smoking from us, what else does he take pains to hide?” Corsi asks in the book.

Corsi also dwells on Obama’s mother marrying Obama’s African father and later marrying someone from Indonesia – whom Corsi describes as “a second man of color to be her mate.” The Obama campaign says the description is one of many examples of Corsi’s “offensive language” in the book.

He claims Obama received extensive Islamic religious education as a boy in Indonesia, education that was only offered to the truly faithful. Actually, Obama is a Christian and as a boy he attended both Catholic school and Indonesian public schools where some basic study of the Koran was offered.

He accuses Obama of wanting to weaken the military even though Obama’s campaign calls for adding 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Corsi defended raising the issue of drugs without any evidence.

“I don’t need more,” he said. “I’m putting this question forward. I’m putting the evidence forward. Voters can make up their own minds.”

Corsi writes for World Net Daily, a conservative Web site whose lead headline Thursday was “Astonishing photo claims: Dead Bigfoot stored on ice.”

In a series of Web posts several years ago, Corsi said Pope John Paul II was senile and unconcerned about sexual molestation of boys, referred to Islam is “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion” and suggested Kerry was secretly Jewish.

Corsi apologized for the remarks and now says he didn’t mean them and was simply trying to provoke discussion.

“Obama Nation” is published by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster that is run by Mary Matalin, the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Corsi readily acknowledges the political goal of his book. He considers Obama a “radical leftist” who should not be elected president. Corsi said he has no plans to work against Obama with groups comparable to 2004’s Swift Boat Veterans for Truth but said he would be willing to consider it.

Kerry has set up his own Web site, http://www.truthfightsback.com , to push back against accusations from Corsi and others.

Mazen Asbahi started as the campaign’s outreach coordinator on July 26, and he resigned in a letter to the campaign Monday. He said he was stepping down “to avoid distracting from Barack Obama’s message of change.”

Asbahi, an associate at the Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin, said in his letter that he served on the board of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Fund for a few weeks, but resigned “as I became aware of public allegations against another member of the board.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the other board member during Asbahi’s tenure in 2000 was Jamal Said, imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois. The Justice Department named Said as an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fundraisers. The case ended in a mistrial. The newspaper said the connections were first exposed by an Internet newsletter.

Obama, who is a Christian, has been fighting false Internet rumors that he is a Muslim. Asbahi, in a post on the Obama campaign blog last week, said that had created “added sensitivities” between the campaign and the Muslim community, and he encouraged Muslims and Arab-Americans to get involved.

The campaign previously conducted outreach to the community through its interfaith outreach program and the Muslim American outreach desk at the Democratic Party. Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the campaign is searching for a new volunteer coordinator to replace Asbahi.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter, said Asbahi was a victim of Internet rumors.

“This incident just shows how Islamophobic the political climate is right now,” Walid said. “Baseless smears about a Muslim with a very good reputation was used to marginalize not only him but the community from the political process.

“If someone like Mr. Asbahi can’t be vetted to work for the Obama campaign, then who can?”

A message was left Wednesday afternoon for Asbahi by The Associated Press seeking comment.

Al-Medina daily says the Commission for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which employs the religious police, was told Friday of a large gathering of young men at a rest house in Qatif, in eastern Saudi Arabia.

The paper says scores of men were initially arrested but only 21 remain in detention.

Homosexuality is seen as a sin in Islam and prohibited in Saudi Arabia and most other Muslim nations. In the conservative kingdom, the offense can be punished by flogging or prison.