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Miss
World to return to Nigeria Julia Morley,
the Miss World president, said she intended to return to the west
African nation with the winner for a show in the southeastern city
of Port Harcourt "as soon as possible" Contestants
had been due to take part in a fashion show in the city on November
23 but the event was cancelled in the wake of the rioting, she said.
"The Port
Harcourt people planned a wonderful event with all the girls wearing
the ethnic African fashions. They are wonderful gowns," Morley
told The Associated Press. "I would like to go back, and I
will take Miss World with me." Morley said
she regretted the violence, which broke out after a Nigerian newspaper
published an article suggesting Islam's founding prophet would have
approved of the pageant. But she said
the competition, which is scheduled to go ahead in London on Dec.
7, was not to blame. "It had nothing to do with us," Morley
told Sky News, referring to the article written by Isioma Daniel,
a Lagos-based fashion writer with This Day newspaper. "Nobody
can help violence if a journalist says something detrimental about
Prophet Mohamed, which is insensitive," said Morley. "This
is a young girl. One can't help feeling sorry that she wrote what
she did. But it did not concern us. We are sorry that somebody said
that, but we cannot be responsible for somebody's opinion."
Daniel suggested Islam's founding prophet, Mohamed, would have approved
of Miss World and might have wanted to marry one of the contestants.
The newspaper
issued an apology, but rioting broke out Nov. 20 when Muslims burned
down a This Day office in the northern city of Kaduna. More than 200
people were killed in the city, and rioting also briefly spread
to the capital, Abuja. Morley said she regretted the violence, but
insisted it had not been insensitive to try to stage the pageant
in Nigeria. "It is a young democracy," she said. "Christians
and Muslims, 122 million of them, live really well together,"
Morley added, and said problems were limited to states in the north
of the country where Shariah was observed. More than 80 women are
competing to become Miss World. Morley said
Tuesday she was confident of securing the participation of some
of the women who had earlier boycotted the event because of rulings
by Islamic courts sentencing women to death by stoning for having
sex outside of marriage. In South Africa,
SABC news reported Wednesday that the 2002 winner of the Miss Junior
Africa title, Karen Lourens, would replace Miss South Africa, Vanessa
Carreira, in the pageant. Sun International,
the owners of the Miss South Africa pageant, cancelled Carreira's
participation in the international contest on logistical grounds
last month. Carreira subsequently said she was pleased not to be
going to Nigeria because she opposed the abuse of women in that
country. The South Korean
contestant, Jang Yu-kyong, said Tuesday she had withdrawn from the
contest because of the rioting. Miss Canada Lynsey Bennett, who pulled out of the contest following the rioting, announced Tuesday she had decided to re-enter. (AP) Fatwa
for This Day's young journalist? The fatwa,
or religious edict, calls for the death of Isioma Daniel of This
Day newspaper for saying that the Prophet Mohamed may have approved
of the Miss World contest and may have even wished to marry one
of the beauty queens. It was issued
by the deputy governor of Zamfara state in northern Nigeria and
calls on Muslims to consider it their religious duty to kill the
journalist. But Islamic
leaders and scholars within Nigeria and in other leading Muslim
countries disagree over the validity of the fatwa. Some say it is
legitimate, others say it has no standing as the journalist is not
a Muslim and has anyway apologised for the comments which caused
offence. The Nigerian
Government has said it will not allow a death sentence to be carried
out on Isioma Daniel over the article, which sparked religious riots
in northern Nigeria last week. It has, however, denounced the article
she wrote as irresponsible. The decision on the decree followed
discussions deputy governor Alhaji Mahmud Aliyu held with 21 Islamic
youth organisations, according to Kaduna state radio in northern
Nigeria. Zamfara was
the first of Nigeria's mainly-Muslim states to adopt Islamic law.
Addressing
a rally in the state capital, Gusau, Alhaji Mahmud said the Koran
supported the death penalty for those who blasphemed the Prophet
Mohamed. He recalled that a similar fatwa had been passed on the
writer Salman Rushdie by Iranian clerics in 1989 for blasphemy,
but other Islamic leaders in Nigeria take a different view. Reuters news
agency reported that the main Muslim organisation in Nigeria, the
Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, had accepted an apology by
the newspaper involved. The Council
was reported by the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper to be examining
the fatwa before making a final judgement on its validity. The examination
was looking particularly at the fact that the subject of it was
not a Muslim and that the newspaper had apologised. Outside Nigeria,
the reaction has been mixed. An official of the Saudi Ministry of
Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Saad al-Saleh, said: "They have no
right to kill if the person expresses regret and apologises, as
it is considered repentance." But the Secretary-General
of the Council of Imams and Preachers in Kenya, Sheikh Mohammed
Dor Mohammed, said that the fatwa was legal. He added that it was
valid for a fatwa to be declared against a non-Muslim who insulted
the Prophet. President Obasanjo's
government is against the fatwa. "The federal government under
the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will not allow such
an order in any part of the federal republic," Information
Minister Jerry Gana told AFP news agency. The use of
fatwas to punish those deemed guilty of blasphemy or causing offence
has been controversial in recent years. A Saudi cleric issued a
fatwa against a Kuwaiti singer for putting the opening chapter of
the Koran to music. In December 2000, the Bangladesh High Court ruled that fatwas were illegal and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called in 1998 for the banning of death fatwas. But the religious edicts remain part of Islamic law and still have considerable influence on Muslims.
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