Critic: New David Bowie video 'offensive' to Christians

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Forget “Let's Dance,” David Bowie, 66, is back and raising hell – if you will – with his new religion-themed music video “The Next Day,” the title track in his first studio album in 10 years.

Taking a page out of Madonna and Lady Gaga’s playbooks, Bowie’s latest offering is wrought with racy religious imagery and stars Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard and Oscar-nominated actor Gary Oldman. 

Directed by Fiona Sigismondi, the controversial video opens with a priest played by Oldman punching a street-urchin beggar in the face, then entering a club -- while perving at women’s backsides -- filled with less-than-saintly behavior. Cotillard embodies a prostitute-turned-saint while Bowie rocks out on stage as the Christ-like figure in robes, while nearly-naked folks dance provocatively around him. In the background, a Cardinal can be seen dealing in cash and a nun prays, all before the stigmata saturates the scene.

The contentious music clip, deemed “a bloody battle between the sacred and the profane,” was banned from YouTube for “violating terms of service” just a few hours after its release on Wednesday, and returned with an age restriction a little while later.

But some say Bowie’s creative vision mocks Christianity, and wish it was gone altogether.

“The video is offensive and distasteful. It is a misrepresentation of the multitudes of clergy who have given their lives to help hurting people. Undeniably, some clergy have misused their position, but to focus on these few is a character assault of their position and call,” Jay Lowder of Harvest Ministries told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “Bowie’s verse claiming ‘they work with Satan while they dress like saints,’ is to attribute God’s work through man as being sinister and evil in its origin. I find it hard to excavate any level of truth or reality from this video except Jesus was continually in the midst of those who were blind and sinful.”

Musician Norman Matthew said Bowie knew just what he was doing using religious imagery in his video.

“This type of imagery in music videos going back to Madonna's ‘Like A Prayer’ is so popular because it ruffles so many feathers and let's face it, controversy creates cash,” he said . “David Bowie wouldn't be on the lips of everyone at this very moment if he didn't break some new ground and unfortunately, flowers on the doorstep just doesn't get it done these days.”

Others argue that the famed rocker is simply expressing himself as an artist.

“As far as finding the clip offensive, I certainly do not. There are plenty of movies and shows on TV that are worse than this. It’s not real, it’s just a show or an act,” said Claude Zdanow, Founder and President of New York-based entertainment company, Stadiumred. “People need to lighten up… Music has always been influenced and built-up around things that stir people up and topics that people can relate too.”

And according to emerging songstress Erica Chase, music and art is the one place where boundaries can be pushed and rules can be broken.

“Artists have the ability to say what lay people and politicians often cannot because there is a demand for it,” she continued. “And religion encircles the great unknown: what is the purpose of this life and what happens after. Bowie and Gaga are just as uncertain as you and I about all that, so why can’t we enjoy a catchy song with an imaginative video to boot?”

A rep for Bowie did not respond to a request for further comment.

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Christian author takes on Muslim group's $30M suit- Is US military preparing to court martial Christians?

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  Mubarak Ali Gilani, the shadowy founder of Muslims of the Americas, is believed to be living in Pakistan. (Christian Action Network)

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  Christian Action Network vows to bring Gilani, founder of Muslims of the Americas, into a U.S. court if the $30 million defamation suit proceeds. (Christian Action Network)

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  Gilani, who is believed to be in his eighties, fires a weapon in a training video made by Muslims of the Americas. (Christian Action Network)

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  Muslims of the Americas has rural bases in several states, including South Carolina and New York.

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The shadowy leader of an American Muslim organization accused of running terror training camps in the U.S. could find himself being questioned under oath if his outfit follows through on its $30 million defamation suit against the Christian group that leveled the charges in a best-selling book.

Muslims of the Americas, a group founded in the 1980s by elusive Pakistani Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, is suing the Christian Action Network for defamation and libel following CAN’s recent publication of the book “Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamist Terrorist Training Camps Inside America.” Co-authored by CAN founder Martin Mawyer and Patti Pierucci, the book accuses MOA of “acting as a front for the radical Islamist group Jamaat al-Fuqra.”

In the suit, filed this year in federal court in Albany, N.Y., the Muslim group accuses Mawyer, Pierucci and CAN of "malicious, repetitious and continuous pronouncements and publication of defamatory statements against plaintiff."

"We're calling their bluff," said Mawyer. "I would have thought this would have been dropped a while ago, but I guess they feel they have to defend themselves to their own members."

Many of the book’s allegations are based on the claims of a former NYPD undercover informant who spent eight years posing as a member of the Muslim group, which has secretive bases in rural areas around the country, including Hancock, N.Y., and York County, S.C.

“We're calling their bluff.”

- Martin Mawyer, founder of Christian Action Network

The book alleges organized criminal activity on the part of MOA and claims profits from “street crimes, drugs, brothels, unemployment fraud and other offenses” have been funneled to Jamaat al-Fuqra. Part of the money has been used to establish a series of Jihadi training camps on American soil, according to the book.

Both Muslims of the Americas -- made up primarily of African-American converts to Islam -- and the Pakistan-based Jamaat al-Fuqra, are guided by Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani, a highly controversial cleric who lived in the U.S. during the 1980s and who was the subject of an investigation by the late Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

In 2002, Pearl was in Pakistan on his way to a pre-arranged interview with Gilani when he was kidnapped by Al Qaeda and eventually beheaded in a brutal case that shocked the world. Gilani was questioned in relation to the investigation but released without being charged.

“Twilight in America” highlights some 17 purported terrorist training camps inside the U.S. Mawyer said he learned of the camps from NYPD informant Ali Aziz, who said one of the camps – often attended by 100 or more followers -- was only 30 miles away from the CAN office in Forest, Va.

Aziz allegedly passed on vital information to authorities about MOA’s plans, its activities across the U.S., and the powerful presence of Gilani.

“If Gilani told everyone, ‘Set yourselves on fire,’ everybody would burn themselves,” Aziz told www.christianaction.org. “This has been going on for 30 years. And people praise him. They give him money. They kiss his feet. It’s crazy.”

Despite the evidence presented in the book, neither MOA nor Jamaat al-Fuqra is currently designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.

"The chapters on the former undercover agent really put them over the edge, as their members knew who Ali Aziz was,” Mawyer told FoxNews.com. “It then became very difficult for the leadership to continue to convince the women and children on the compounds that they weren’t associated with terrorists. They had to sue us to protect the wealth that they derive from the thousands of members they have in the U.S. I fully expect us to win this lawsuit.”

Mawyer and Pierucci say in the book that MOA has been linked to 10 unsolved assassinations and 17 bombings since the 1980s, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Gilani, who describes himself as “Vice Chancellor of the International Qur’anic Open University, Imam of the Muslims of the Americas and a direct Descendant of the Holy Last Messenger [the Prophet Muhammed],” has previously been accused of inspiring so-called “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid and John Allen Mohammed, the Beltway sniper attacker who, with a young accomplice, killed 10 people during a brief reign of terror in October 2002.

Mawyer said if the civil suit goes to trial, he will move to bring Gilani to the U.S. and put him on the stand. For an organization that so jealously guards its privacy, that may be enough to drop the suit.

“I think they hoped that we would not have the money to fight it and it would serve the purpose of telling their own members, ‘See, we took care of that Martin Mawyer fellow,’” Mawyer said. “They say we have declared war on Islam, but I can tell you that is definitely not the case. This group is against Christians, Hindus, Hari Krishna, Jews, and any Imams who do not preach their strict view of Islam.”

MOA officials could not be reached, and the group's attorney, Tahirah Clark, did not return calls. But in a January statement on The Islamic Post website, the group’s official mouthpiece, Gilani denied claims he is a radical. He said he has weeded out militant Muslims who had infiltrated his inner circle, including a man he said was a hitman for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mawyer and the CAN have no intention of backing out of the legal fight with Muslims of the Americas, a group described by the Anti-Defamation League as “virulently anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers.”

“People’s concerns about home-grown terrorism have obviously been raised by the recent events in Boston,” said Mawyer. “They should know that this is the group that has led the way in the U.S. for 30 years.”

Paul Alster is an Israel-based journalist who blogs at www.paulalster.com and can be followed on Twitter @paul_alster

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CHRISTIANS TARGETED: Persecution Rises in Iraq With Islamists Unchecked

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  December 25, 2012: An Iraqi policeman stands guard outside the St. Joseph Chaldean church during a mass on Christmas in Baghdad.REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

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  Patriarch Louis Sako, leader of Iraq's largest Christian group, says his flock is being driven from the land liberate dby the U.S. (MidEast Christian News)arquivo fotografico

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The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq says that the number of Christian houses of worship there has dwindled alarmingly in the decade since the U.S. invaded and ousted Saddam Hussein from power.

There are just 57 Christian churches in the entire country, down from more than 300 as recently as 2003, Patriarch Louis Sako told Egyptian-based news agency MidEast Christian News. The churches that remain are frequent targets of Islamic extremists, who have driven nearly a million Christians out of the land, say human rights advocates.

“The last 10 years have been the worst for Iraqi Christians because they bore witness to the biggest exodus and migration in the history of Iraq.”

- William Warda, Hammurabi Human Rights Organization

“The last 10 years have been the worst for Iraqi Christians because they bore witness to the biggest exodus and migration in the history of Iraq,” William Warda, the head of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization told the news agency.

Many Christians live in the provinces of Baghdad, Nineveh, and Kirkuk, and Dohuk and Erbil, which are both in the autonomous region of Kurdistan. Warda said some 1.4 million Christians lived in Iraq prior to Hussein's ouster. Under the democratically-elected government that now oversees the war-torn, but oil-rich nation, Islamic extremists have been able to operate more freely.

“More than two-thirds [of Christians] have emigrated,” Warda noted.

One byproduct of regime change in the Middle East, whether at the hand of the U.S. military and its allies or demonstrators in the streets, has been a decline in tolerance for other religions, say experts. Only one Catholic church remains in Afghanistan, and it must be heavily protected. In Egypt and Libya, where demonstrators overthrew dictators in recent years, Christians have come under heavy persecution, say concerned advocates.

“What is clear is that the mass exodus of Christians in the Middle East - including Iraq - has been caused by radical Islam - whether by Islamic governments, terrorist organizations, or extreme Islamists," said Tiffany Barrans, international legal director of the American Center for Law and Justice. "We examined the issue in Iraq in a 2011 report from our European affiliate. At that time, we determined that Al Qaeda had been strategically targeting Iraqi Christians - even issuing a warning to all Christians to leave the country.

One of the most dramatic cases of Christian persecution came in late October of 2010, when Al Qaeda members laid siege to Our Lady of Deliverance Church in Baghdad, killing 58 and wounding 78 in a bloodbath Pope Benedict XVI denounced as “ferocious.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also condemned the attack, calling it an attempt to drive more Christians out of the country.

“This tragic event sent a powerful message to Christians in Iraq - they are in grave danger and should leave the country," Barrans said. “Iraq’s hostility toward Christianity is well documented. Tragically, Iraq is another example of a country where the government does not tolerate Christians or other religious minorities.”

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CHURCH CRACKDOWN:China's Christians Alarmed Over Mounting Persecution

Christians and human rights advocates are alarmed over an aggressive crackdown on house churches in China, where the faithful are forced to call their gatherings "patriotic" assemblies or sent to prison where they can face torture, according to a new report.

Cases of the government persecuting Christians rose 42 percent last year, amid a three-phase plan by Beijing to eradicate the home-based churches, according to China Aid, a Texas-based human rights group. Experts say the Communist Party in China has long felt threatened by any movement that galvanizes a large sector of the population, fearing it could wield political clout. But the nation has become more systematically hostile to worshippers, according to Bob Fu, China Aid founder and president.

“This is very serious stuff.”

- Bob Fu, founder and president, China Aid

“There have been new tactics of persecution as well, especially with the government using secret directives and memos with long-term, step-by-step strategies to eradicate house churches,” Fu told FoxNews.com. “This is very serious stuff.”

Last year, the government mounted a new three-phase approach designed to wipe out unregistered house churches by forcing them to join the official "Three-Self Patriotic Movement" and stop defining themselves as churches. The phase included having China's State Administration for Religious Affairs secretly investigate house churches and create files on them, the report found. The current wave of crackdowns, which began midway through 2012, is part of the second phase, according to Fu.

Fu said the government is using a wide array of subtle and ham-handed tactics to persecute Christians, targeting house church leaders and churches in urban areas.

“Instead of using law enforcement officials directly to attack churches, last year we found they used a softer approach,” he said. “They used utility companies, service committees and neighborhood committees to terminate contracts with rental facilities and cut off electricity and water [to the churches].”

Those semi-official agencies, including industrial and commercial affairs departments, used various excuses to “harass, interfere and ban” church services.

“In most cases, they did not take anyone into custody, or detain or sentence, and even if a person was in custody, he was quickly released,” the report found. “The unrelenting persecution of Shouwang Church in the past nearly two years has been conducted in this manner. For example, landlords were pressured to terminate lease agreements with church members, church members who had purchased real estate were unable to take possession of them, church leaders were placed under house arrest and church members were evicted — all of which was done to make it impossible for the house church to operate normally so that it would eventually disband.”

At least 132 cases of persecution affecting 4,919 Christians, including 442 church leaders, were reported last year, up from 93 cases and 4,322 Christians in 2011, respectively. The number of people detained (1,441) and sentenced (9) also increased from the year earlier, the report found.

A total of 62 cases — the highest countrywide — were reported in Beijing, according to the report, affecting 934 Christians, followed by 11 cases in Xinjiang in northwest China that affected 382 Christians. Fu said the systematic targeting of the estimated 80 million Christians living in China has become commonplace.

“It has almost become routine and that’s the danger,” Fu said. “And when the Chinese government purposefully uses this kind of soft approach, the foreign media in Beijing won’t be able to report it and the government is essentially taking advantage of the passive obedience by the church folks. If it happened to other social groups, there would be large demonstrations.”

Fu said his most pressing goal is to educate the millions of people in the United States and China who are unaware of the rampant persecution.

“Many people, especially in China, don’t even know there are really hundreds and thousands of their fellow Christian brothers being persecuted,” he said. “If a country like China shows it does not respect its own citizens and their most basic freedoms, we should be on alert and take more action from our side in the United States to advance that.”

Fu, a 45-year-old scholar and activist born in China, ran a house church himself in Beijing until he and his wife, Heidi, were arrested for doing so in 1996. He fled to the United States a year later and made national headlines last year while championing the plight of Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer and dissident who fled house arrest to take refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing as then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Washington for talks with Chinese officials.

Fu described himself as Chen’s “ambassador” at the time and was instrumental in China’s ultimate decision to grant Chen, his wife and the couple’s two children, U.S. visas in May. Chen, 41, remains in New York and speaks with Fu on a regular basis, he said.

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