Exloring Life Eternal

(1) The number of churches that were burned, and the number of people that were killed in Saturday's riots in Nigeria has now been upwardly adjusted to 30 churches (from 15), and 17 people (from 15). This article is especially interesting in that it quotes from several Christians about how they plan to respond to the Muslim attacks on their community.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200602210563.html

(2) On Sunday, 2 churches and 1 Christian school building were attacked and burned by cartoon protesters in Sukkur, Pakistan. So far, the Pakistan government, which was accused by Christians of a deliberately slow response to the attacks, has charged 22 people in the incident. This article, which interviews the Catholic Archbishop of Karachi, provides a good summary of both the immediate incident, and its broader context of ongoing problems with the Pakistani blasphemy law and last November's burning of 3 other churches by Pakistani Muslim mobs.

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Religion&loid=8.0.267541088&par=0

(3) I think this editorial by a Pakistani Muslim has correctly seen who will benefit the most from the way Muslims have reacted to these cartoons (non-Muslim majority nations).

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C02%5C22%5Cstory_22-2-2006_pg3_3

(4) Pakistan has also asked the 57 nations of the Organization of Islamic Conference to convene a special meeting about the cartoon crisis. This meeting would appear to have the goals of getting (1) the "EU to adopt necessary legislative measures against “Islamophobia”" and (2) try to get the UN to pass a "resolution aimed at prohibiting defamation of prophets and faiths".

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Religion&loid=8.0.267686128&par=

(5) Meanwhile, the Danish Prime Minister has defended, in every detail, how his government has handled the crisis,

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=a625c3e3-e66d-4c75-bf7f-81b42c25f903&k=23483

The Slovak Foreign minister has stated that the EU should be more "vigorous" in it's defense of the Danes.

http://www.slovakspectator.sk/clanok.asp?cl=22545

(6) In terms of actual protests, yesterday's call by Iran for cartoon protests to stop may be having some effect, as today there were only comparatively small protests in Pakistan (2,000) and Iraq (10,000). This article also discusses the reasons for the continuing unstable situation in Libya, where 11 died in protests last week, why a Saudi paper published some of the cartoons in late January, along with some other interesting new bits of information.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1140562213286&call_pageid=968332188854&col

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This is being posted roughly 1 week after the date in the header. Now, the cartoon phenomena has died down, but now division within Islam is being prominently displayed in Iraq.