Details to be announced _ by seafarer Shaikh appeal Many thanks to the gratifying number of readers who responded promptly to our "late extra" appeal sent as an enclosure in the last issue of SOF. The first responses came within 24 hours of the magazine's mailing, and they have continued to come in with almost every post. Many letters contained donations to Dr Shaikh's defence fund from. a few pounds to one of £100, and the first steps to mounting a full legal challenge to his treatment have now been taken.
To remind you, Dr Younus Shaikh is founderPresident of "Enlightenment", a Pakistan-based organisation working for human rights and affiliated to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). On October 4 he was arrested in Islamabad and charged with blasphemy for saying that Mohammed was not born a Muslim, and that his parents were not Muslims as they died before the Prophet founded the new religion. He has lost his job and a fundamentalist Islamabad paper, Khabrain, is campaigning for him to be sentenced to death.
Often in such cases the accused is murdered in police custody before the case is heard, so Dr Shaikh is in mortal danger.
The latest news is that his bail petition has been refused, but Amnesty International has adopted him as a Prisoner of Conscience. The South Asia Department of the UK Foreign Office has pressed Pakistan to change its blasphemy laws and is monitoring Dr Shaikh's situation.
The IHEU is running the campaign to alert the world to his fate, supported by SOF. Donations (payable to IHEU) and letters of support may be sent to the IHEU at 47 Theobalds Road, London WC1X 8SP. You can write to Dr Shaikh himself via that address or by email to campaign@iheu.org (and please send us a copy). You can also write to His Excellency General Pervez Musharraf via the Pakistan High Commission, London, thanking him for his recent attempts to improve the blasphemy laws and urging him to free Dr Shaikh.
The UK Foreign Office has replied helpfully to SOF readers who wrote to Robin Cook. the letter, signed by Barry Leiper of the South Asian Department, promises that the British High Commission in Islamabad “will monitor carefully proceedings against Dr Shaikh, and have raised his case with Dr Khalid Ranjha, the Punjab Law Minister, who registered our concern.” The letter continues: "We share your concerns about Pakistan's blasphemy laws and have repeatedly called for them to be repealed or abolished. Such a move would signal to the international community that Pakistan's Chief Executive, General Musharraf, is serious about improving human rights in his country. We were disappointed that the expectations created by General Musharraf's speech on human rights at the National Conference on Human Rights and Human Dignity on 21-22 April were unfulfilled.
The reversal of the small but significant steps he had proposed concerning the administration of the blasphemy laws reflects the unwelcome pressure brought on General Musharraf by some religious parties and groups." Mythtical reflections Richard Holloway was always a radical bishop and his radicalism became more outspoken as he moved closer to retirement. Now, in his new incarnation as Professor Richard Holloway, Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London, he is giving six public lectures on "The Myths of Christianity". The first three will have come and gone when you read this, but there is still time to book for "The Myth of Justification" (February 15), "The Myth of Resurrection" (March 1) and "The Myth of the Second Coming" (March 15), all at 5.30pm at St Andrew's Church, Holborn Circus.
Myth, says Holloway, is "a narrative device for conveying abstract truth; it is a kind of language that puts us in touch with archetypal realities at a profound level". Like all myths, the Christian myths "have to be subject to criticism and revision, so the series will attempt to offer a critical and revisionist approach to the claims of Christian theology". Details from Gresham College on 020 7831 0575.
Artist as activist Have just visited the Conrad Atkinson exhibition at Kendal's fine Abbot Hall art gallery. Atkinson made his name in the sixties as an artist who, as one commentator put it, "blended art and politics, conceptualism and activism to deal with social and political injustice".
That gave him an early reputation as an angry young agit-prop artist of the Left who appeared to believe that art and artists could change the world with a few brush-strokes. By the 80s he was parodying such simplistic hopes in a series of mock newspaper front pages, the best of which was a version of the Guardian which he called the Daily Consumernica - a blend of consumerism and Guernica. This carried articles headed "Reagan Tax Plan at Odds with Divine Spirit, Alleges William Blake", and "Michelangelo Questions Western Priorities on Famine Relief and Cash Cropping in Third World".
I emailed Atkinson to ask whether he thought his upbringing in an Irish Catholic mining town in Cumbria had left any permanent mark on his art. "The priest encouraged me to paint angels," he remembered, "though of course I preferred Disney figures. The church placed great store by images and my early talent to produce images was much encouraged. I might not have become an artist but for the church's respect for that ability." People ask him why he didn't go into the SOF 45 / January 2001 SOF 45 / January 2001 Conrad Atkinson’s Landmine (Princess Diana), 1996, hand-painted ceramic church and he answers "I'd rather be William Blake than the Pope. And when they say 'So why don't you just go into politics?’ I say I am in politics, but the reason I'm not a politician is the reason Blake wasn't a vicar." Centrepiece of the Kendal exhibition (which was due to close, I'm afraid, on December 22) is a series of beautifully crafted and painted porcelains in a sumptuous gilt frame. Look closer and you see that each piece is - a landmine. "We love our beautiful bombs", says Atkinson, "because they defend our way of life... In a postmodern scenario they are not simply weapons of destruction which cost $3 to make and $300 to deactivate, which will kill children at random for the next thousand years at the current clean-up rate - they also tell us something about our culture. They are not only political constructs but also economic, ideological and cultural constructs. They are the globalisation of culture as much as the golden Arches of McDonalds." Honoured Some Happy New Year Stop Press News! Readers will be delighted to learn that Lloyd Geering, inspiration of New Zealand Sea of Faith, topped the country's New Year's Honours List in New Zealand.
He has been made a Principal Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to religious studies - the only person given this award this year.
The New Zealand Herald (Dec 30) says: “Professor Geering said the honour recognised the importance of religious thought and practice and the fact that religion needed to undergo change, in the same way that all cultural traditions changed. "There's been a tendency in the secular world to think that religion is of no significance. Actually it is still of as great significance as ever it was, but it is taking new forms', he said".