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• Olympic Games, not to boycott, but to suspend
• The two faces of China
• Muslims free to convert in Europe?

Olympic Games, not to boycott, but to suspend

- Many people are dieing in Tibet in a cultural genocide done by China. This cannotnot be removed from our conscience. Is there any possibility to celebrate the rite of Olympic Games just as if nothing had happened? Could we accept and support the games of waterpole or football while a nation, a whole people, is military annihilated, and cancelled from earth? In spite of these arguments, in normal conditions, we could answer yes: sport owns its own worth, its own morality which cannot be confused with politics. However, as some fundamental human rights are menaced, things are different, and something must be done! We should not boycott the Games, something which has just be done in the past, and often exploited for political reasons; but certainly we should suspend them, at least until free world is not reasonably sure that fundamental rights and liberties have been restored. First of all, in Tibet.

The two faces of China

- On one side, a smiling face. Growing economics, an apparently free society, the Olympic games knocking at the door. One the other side, a despotic mug. This is China. Tibet wants its independence, and has been reclaiming it for decades. China is not going to grant it. For this reason, Chinese government is arresting monks, killing rioters for independence, and at the same time blaming the Dalai Lama to have built all this plot to boycott the Olympic Games. While Chinese economics is conquering half of the world, this wannabe classical liberal system is not developing any freedom but freedom to sweat low cost labour.
The lesson is very clear: just don’t trust freedom when it is conceded by a tyrant.

Muslims free to convert in Europe?

- Italy's most prominent Muslim Magdi Allam converted to Catholicism in a baptism by the Pope at a Vatican Easter service. Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor.
The Union of Islamic Communities in Italy - which Allam has frequently criticized as having links to Hamas - said the baptism was his own decision.
"He is an adult, free to make his personal choice," the Apcom news agency quoted the group's spokesman, Issedin El Zir, as saying.
Yahya Pallavicini, vice president of Coreis, the Islamic religious community in Italy, said he respected Allam's choice but said he was "perplexed" by the symbolic and high-profile way in which he chose to convert.
The Pope converts an European Muslim in Saint Peter. If Magdi Allam could leave Islam without being condemned to death, maybe religious freedom is possible even for Muslims. In Europe, at least. Will this simple action open the gates of a concrete religious freedom of Muslims around Europe? Will they be allowed to leave their religion if they want?