Woman Mistakes Herself for Christian

Is it important to find out the religious affiliation of your ancestors? It is if you live in Egypt.

An Egyptian court has sentenced a woman to three years in prison because her father converted to Islam briefly 45 years ago. Under Egyptian law, religion is passed to children from the father.

Shadia Nagui Ibrahim, 47, a Christian, was charged with fraud for putting Christianity as her religion on her marriage certificate, even though she was unaware that her father's conversion in 1962 had made her officially Muslim. [Link]

George Bush Wrote a Book (No, Really!)

Professor George Bush was the first cousin of the president's great-great-great-grandfather, and the author of a book critical of Islam’s founder.

“The Life of Mohammed” went out of print a century ago, and there it was expected to remain, in perpetuity. But in the early 21st century, it was reissued by a tiny publisher simply because of the historical rhyme that a man with the same name occupied the White House. The first George Bush never witnessed the Second Coming, but now his book was enjoying an unexpected afterlife.

Predictably, it enraged some readers in the Middle East, where rage is an abundant commodity. In 2004, Egyptian censors at Cairo’s Al-Azhar Islamic Research Academy denounced the book by President Bush’s “grandfather” as a slander on the prophet, and the State Department was forced to issue a document clarifying the family relationship. [Link]

Aussies Proud of Ancestors' Convictions

Australian mufti Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali said on a talk show that Muslims are more entitled to live in Australia than people of British ancestry, because "We bought our own tickets." This only amused Prime Minister John Howard.

Mr Howard laughed off the spiritual leader's convict comments.

"I think it will bring a wry smile to the face of Australians who don't actually feel the least bit offended that many of our ancestors came here as convicts," Mr Howard told reporters in Sydney.

"It's almost a badge of honour for many Australians." [Link]

George Bush Not That Offensive to Muslims

From The (Calcutta, India) Telegraph:

Bush 'ancestor' book

Cairo, June 23 (Reuters): Censors at al-Azhar, Cairo’s centre of Islamic learning, today passed a 19th century biography of Prophet Mohammad by a scholar portrayed in the Arabic media as an ancestor of President George W. Bush.

The Academy for Islamic Studies, which censors religious books, had recommended last year that the government ban The Life of Mohammad by American scholar George Bush, first published in 1830 and reissued in the US in 2002.

[snip]

The censors did not give a reason for retracting the ban.

Last year, newspaper articles had criticised the book’s account of early Islamic history and quoted Bush as saying Muslims spread Islam by force and persecuted Christians, for example. At least one of the newspaper articles came with large photographs of George W. Bush and his father, former President George Bush, and references to the Bush family.

The genealogical link between the author of the book and the President could not be confirmed by the book’s US publishers or the Bush family. Family trees of the Bush family on the Internet do not include the author, who was a prominent biblical scholar and preacher.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

A book released last year argued that both George W. Bush and John Kerry are descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. Small world.