Mithal Al-Alousi: Some people want to keep Iraq weak. They do not want Iraq to have powerful friends. They do not want Iraq to have room to operate on the international level. They do not want Iraq to receive economic support, or to be able to operate through international banks. They don't want Iraq to be able to send its sons to international universities – that new generation that will return with knowledge, and bring prosperity to our society. They do not want this for Iraq. Kuwait wants the great Iraq to have the same power as "beautiful" Kuwait – I don't want to call it a "beggar" country today... They want the Iraqi army to be less powerful than a military brigade, so they can always overcome it. Iran does not want Iraq to have any [regional] standing. It says that the Arab Gulf is Persian. Even in sports – if the term "pan-Arab games" is used, Iran objects and withdraws from the games. Iran has clear national expansionist ambitions. Iran's expansion can only be at the expense of Iraq. Iraq must fade away so they can control it.
Our neighbor Turkey – that Muslim neighbor, which is now ruled by an Islamic party and not by the army – cuts off the water supply to the Iraqis, knowing this spells drought for the fields, and harms the Iraqi citizens and their economy. The king of Saudi Arabia is the Guardian of the Two Holy Places, in Mecca and Al-Madina, but this does not prevent some [Saudis] from sponsoring terrorists, killers, and criminals. The Syrian regime, which heralds pan-Arabism, does not dare to fire a single bullet in the Golan Heights, or even mention the word "Golan," yet it has the audacity to kill Iraqis. More ...
When Yasser Arafat received the Nobel Prize, should Jews worldwide have rioted, issued fatwas demanding his murder and posted rewards for his execution? After all, Arafat was a self-acknowledged terrorist, complicit in the deaths of thousands of innocent Israelis, Jordanians, Lebanese and assorted others, including his own not-so-innocent followers who often fell out of Arafat’s inconsistent favour.
When the Wahhabi version of the Word of God is absolute, when the radical Muslim world (now dominant and in ascendance) countenances no alternative views, no variations of subjective interpretation and mandates death for such apostasy, then the knighting last summer of Sir Salman Rushdie does indeed smack of provocativeness. But how many prizes and decorations have been given to Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Who in the West should honestly not be provoked by this lauding of these foul-mouthed gangsters, of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust and demands the extermination of Israel, the only fully fledged democracy in the Middle East? Should not every Holocaust survivor and family, every Israeli, every freedom-loving individual everywhere be taking to the streets? Read more ...
As many readers may know, The Free Speech Protection Act, is currently being considered by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. The Act is essentially a federal version of New York State's "Libel Terrorism Protection Act," aka "Rachel's Law," designed to protect U.S. authors from superfluous, though legally enforceable, lawsuits in foreign jurisdictions. For those wishing to make a difference, a sample letter for a Congressman or Senator may be found here.
It is vitally important that this law pass, as Khalid bin Mahfouz and others have been using the rather absurd British libel laws to chill research into Saudi funding of terrorism and extremism.
Continuing our look at the upcoming 2008 Islamic Society of North America convention to be held in Columbus less than a month from now, we turn to one of the featured speakers at this year’s event - Hatem Bazian. Bazian is a former fundraising speaker for Kindhearts, a HAMAS front closed by the US government in February 2006 and is listed as a specially designated terrorist organization.
Bazian has long been a regular fixture at Islamic extremist events, making all kinds of incendiary remarks. Consider, for example, a statement he made at a May 1999 American Muslim Alliance conference in California. Read more ...
1995 ISNA Convention: Judaism "a most racist religion"
Continuing our look at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in preparation for their annual national convention to be held next month in Columbus, we examine today an address delivered by Hamza Yusuf Hanson at the 1995 ISNA convention. In Hanson’s speech, he identified Judaism as “a most racist religion”:
The Jews would have us believe that God has this bias to this little small tribe in the Middle of the Sinai desert and all the rest of humanity is just rubbish. I mean that this is the basic doctrine of the Jewish religion and that’s why it is a most racist religion.
Ah, yes, those ISNA conferences draw such interfaith moderates! Wonder how the folks at the Columbus Jewish Federation will feel about that one? Read more ...
Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons.
The photographs show masked Palestinian militants lifting jugs of milk and sacks of baby food from the entrance to one of the tunnels on the Gaza side of the border.
Israel insists that the tunnels, of which intelligence estimates indicate there are hundreds, are used to import small arms and advanced weapons like heavy mortar shells, anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles. The tunnels are also said to be the conduit via which the Palestinians receive the material used to build their Kassam rockets. Read more ...
A huge blast late Tuesday night rocked a training base run by Hamas in southern Gaza, and at least five people were hurt, witnesses and a health official said.
Ambulances raced to the scene of the blast, on the site of an evacuated Jewish settlement next to the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. The explosion could be heard all over the city.
It was not immediately known what caused the blast. Hamas had no comment, and the IDF said it had no knowledge of the incident.
Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Palestinian Health Ministry said two of the five wounded were in critical condition. He said all five were Hamas men. Read more ...
LAHORE: Tehreek-e-Islami Taliban Pakistan (TITP) has distributed a fifteen-days notice to several “un-Islamic” businesses in Kot Addu to shut down or face dire consequences.
The TTIP wrote threatening letters to owners of CDs shops, Internet cafes and cable service providers urging them to close down their activities.
Similarly, the group warned that women must wear hijab to ensure their safety.
Muzaffargarh District Police Officer (DPO) Shahzad Sultan told Daily Times that Rao Yasin, owner of Nomi Video Center, at Railway Road received one such letter.
Sultan said the police have increased the security though it could not independently confirm the group’s activities. Read more ...
Copenhagen - Seven Danish Muslim associations were planning to appeal to Denmark's highest court over the publication of 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked violent protests in 2006, reports said on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Islamic Society told Danish media that a lawyer was working on the appeal to the Supreme Court.
Earlier, a Danish district court and an appeal court had turned down cases filed against the former managing editor and cultural editor of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which published the cartoons in September 2005.
The Muslim associations maintain that Muslims were slandered when the prophet was depicted as a terrorist and war-monger, but both Danish courts ruled that the publication was not slander.
Islamic Society spokesperson Bilal Assaad said the groups were prepared to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, should the Supreme Court not support their case, news agency Ritzau said.
In February, Danish security police said they averted a plot to murder newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who made one of the 12 cartoons, depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
Leading Danish newspapers reprinted the cartoons after the plot against Westergaard was disclosed, sparking new protests. - Sapa-dpa
In June, the US Treasury Department listed the entire the Saudi-run “charity”, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a specially designated global terrorist entity for its active and longstanding role in financing international terrorism. Between 2002-2004, thirteen different Al-Haramain branches had been individually designated, including the US branch based in Ashland, Oregon, charged with providing funds to Al-Qaeda. This new announcement applies now to the entire organization worldwide.
One important element to note in connection with the recent Al-Haramain designation is that on at least two separate occasions it had used legal threats against US media organization to coerce retractions following reports of its ties to the international terror network – ties that are now considered well-established by both the US government and the media. Read more ...
An Afghan journalist who printed a translation of the Koran in a Persian dialect is on trial for blasphemy and could face the death penalty if convicted. But with threats from various powerful groups, he could face the same fate even if acquitted.
Ghaws Zalmay was arrested last November trying to flee to Pakistan after Afghanistan’s Senate backed a group of powerful Sunni clerics who were calling for his arrest. He was scheduled to have a third hearing in a Kabul court on Wednesday.
Zalmay, who was a spokesman for the Attorney General and head of Afghanistan's Journalists' Union at the time of his arrest, was charged with 13 counts of blasphemy. He is accused of having "written his own Koran" in Dari, one of Afghanistan's official languages. His two brothers and a friend were imprisoned, too, charged with helping him flee. Read more ...
Palestinian children on annual vacation can choose between Hamas or Islamic Jihad summer camps, both of which boast militia-style training, Koran classes, lessons on political prisoners
By Ali Waked
In the Gaza Strip, as in Israel, children are currently in the midst of summer vacation, and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s “summer camps” are in full gear. In the past few weeks, the Palestinian groups have been holding camps throughout the strip, some of them proudly displaying rockets and other weaponry.
Hamas alone is currently conducting no less than 300 summer camps for tens of thousands of children, and the focus is on familiarizing kids with the Palestinian towns and cities destroyed in 1948, as well as instilling religious fervor in them. The camps also feature sports and military-type trainings such as crawling under barbed-wire.
Islamic Jihad has also launched its own summer camps, offering some 10,000 children activities similar to those of Hamas. The kids study passages from the Koran and participate in quizzes on religious matters, with emphasis on the required commitment to political prisoners and Palestinian land. They also learn how to hold a Qassam rocket-launcher. read more ...
Can democracy survive the closing of a major political party – the ruling political party in the country? Imagine if the Supreme Court had convened to discuss banning the Democratic Party. Something no less momentous is happening in Turkey this week.
Turkey’s constitutional court convened last Monday to discuss charges that the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the ruling party in that country, should be closed down. The party is charged with trying to destroy Turkey’s secular government and impose Islamic law. Al-Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid estimates that the court should take “at least three to 10 days” to come to a decision.
Closing down political parties has long been a means by which Turkey’s highest court has protected the increasingly fragile secular system established in that country by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s. The court has shut down over twenty parties over the years – including the foremost proponents of the establishment of Islamic law in Turkey. The AKP is the linear descendant of the Nationalist Order Party (MNP), which the court shut down in 1971 because of its agitation on behalf of political Islam; the Welfare Party (RP), which was banned for the same reason in 1998; and the short-lived Fazilet Party (FP), which RP Parliamentarians established shortly after their party’s demise and was likewise closed down shortly thereafter.
The Turkish court has good reason to suspect that the AKP is working to undermine Turkish secularism and impose Islamic law over the country. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), while Mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s (and a prominent member of the Welfare Party), Turkey’s current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan railed against Turkish secularism. “If the people want it,” he declared, “of course secularism will go away. You cannot rule this people by force; you don't have the power to do that. This [i.e. secularism] cannot work in spite of the people.” And the people, he suggested, wanted Islamic law: “But the fact is that 99% of the people of this country are Muslims. You cannot be both secular and a Muslim! You will either be a Muslim, or secular!...For them to exist together is not a possibility! Therefore, it is not possible for a person who says ‘I am a Muslim’ to go on and say ‘I am secular too.’ And why is that? Because Allah, the creator of the Muslim, has absolute power and rule!” Read more ...
RAWALPINDI: Would-be suicide bombers could be using explosives “underwear briefs” rather than explosives jackets to evade “conservative” body searches, sources said on Wednesday.
Sihala Police College forensic lab sources told Daily Times that the study of recent suicide attacks showed that suicide bombers used “explosives-laden” under-garments, briefs in particular, to carry out the attacks.
The sources said that the explosives could weigh between five kilogrammes to seven kilogrammes, made deadly by adding glass splinters, metal ball bearings and bullets. The law enforcers normally search upper body parts sparing the “privates”, the sources said, hence assailants are increasingly using the lower body parts to dodge the searches. The sources said that forensic experts were trying to devise methods to pre-empt suicide bombing. The experts have achieved successes in “Post Bombing Investigation,” the sources said, adding that resources are sharpening “Pre Bombing Investigation” techniques.
• On June 4, 2008, Rep. Myrick sent a letter to Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates inquiring if the Department of Defense has reexamined its chaplain approval process for the military since the arrest and conviction of Abdurahman Alamoudi.
• On June 25, 2008, the Department of Defense (DoD) replied to Rep. Myrick with a letter and packet containing the DoD Inspector General’s (IG) evaluation report on the DoD Chaplain Program, which was finished in November of 2004. The packet also included the DoD guidelines for the appointment of chaplains for the military service.
The DoD IG report had five observations and suggestions to strengthen the DoD Chaplain Program. However, the concern is that Observation 3 was not adopted:
Observation 3 suggested DoD establish nonreligious criteria that would allow DoD to withdraw or remove a religious organization or its agent from participating in the DoD chaplain program. Such examples of non-religious criteria suggested were advocating the violent overthrow of the US Government, listed on a watch list of terrorist organizations, or conviction of a religious organization or its principal leaders in connection with terrorism. Observation 3 also included suggestions to use the FBI or other agencies to help screen religious organizations and their agents. The DoD rejected this observation because they said that it was “legally problematic” and the DoD was focused on individual merit of the prospective Chaplin, while the IRS “should remain the focal point for institutional merit” (IRC- 501 (c) (3) criteria). NOTE: DoD has adopted part of this observation, which includes: removal and rejection of chaplains and religious organizations that are under indictment or have been convicted of a terrorist related offense, or if the religious organization appears on the State Department list of Foreign Terror Organizations. Read more ...
A moment before beginning his supper, Masab, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, glances at the friend who has accompanied him to the restaurant where we met. They whisper a few words and then say grace, thanking God and Jesus for putting food on their plates.
It takes a few seconds to digest this sight: The son of a Hamas MP who is also the most popular figure in that extremist Islamic organization, a young man who assisted his father for years in his political activities, has become a rank-and-file Christian. "I'm now called Joseph," he says at the outset. Read more ...
Riad, 30 July (AKI) - A Saudi court has sentenced a chemistry professor to 600 lashes and 8 months in jail for a 'telephone relationship' with a female student.
The student, whose marriage allegedly broke down as result of the relationship got 350 lashes and 4 months in prison.
The academic, who worked in a teaching hospital in the south of the country was convicted on the basis of the student's husband's testimony, according to Arabic satellite TV station Al-Arabiya.
The student's husband claimed his marriage broke down in 2004 as a result of his wife's relationship with the academic, who has said he will appeal the sentences at the Supreme Council of Magistrates.
The academic also hopes human rights groups will back his case.
Police in Saudi Arabia have arrested a man working for the country's vice squad who is accused of having six wives, two more than allowed under Islamic law.
The 56-year-old Saudi, detained in the south-western province of Jazan near the border with Yemen, is being questioned over charges that he is married to three Saudi and three Yemeni women, Al-Watan newspaper reported.
The man is an employee with the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or religious police commonly known as the Muttawa, which is in charge of enforcing a strict Islamic moral code in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia.
He has denied the charge, claiming he has divorced two of his spouses, the newspaper said.
The province's governor has ordered the formation of a committee to look into the case, Al-Watan said.
Muslim men can keep up to four wives at a time under sharia, or Islamic law, which is applied in oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
WASHINGTON: The US, Israel and the Palestinians agreed in talks today to strive for a Middle East peace deal without any 'shortcuts', Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
The parties also regarded Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's announced resignation as an internal matter that would not dampen negotiations for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
“We will not opt for an option of partial agreements, shortcuts or anything short of a full agreement on all issues,” Mr Erekat told reporters after he and chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qorei held talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
There have been reports that Dr Rice, who is to travel to the Middle East next month, is anxious to get the two sides to agree on a document of understanding on some key issues, such as borders for a Palestinian state and the right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.
Such a document was on the cards ahead of the UN General Assembly session in September, some reports suggested, amid growing pessimism about a peace breakthrough before President George W. Bush leaves the White House in January 2009.
Without citing these reports, Mr Erekat said, “Let everybody understand that we are negotiating the issues of Jerusalem, borders, refugees, security, prisoners and water and we want to achieve an agreement on all issues or no agreement.”
“And this was agreed” at the trilateral talks, he said.
The Israelis and Palestinians committed to forging a comprehensive deal by the end of 2008 during a conference Mr Bush hosted in Annapolis, Maryland, in November.
Dr Rice, who has criss-crossed the Middle East since then to forge the deal, described the talks today as “very fruitful”.
She acknowledged the difficulty of achieving a peace deal by the end of the year as targeted, but she noted growing recognition that the Palestinian question should be resolved swiftly for regional security.
“The Middle East is not going to get better without the creation of a Palestinian state to live side-by-side with Israel in peace, security and democracy,” she said yesterday.
“It simply isn't going to get better. And so the question is, if not now, when?” she said.
In fighting Jihad, America's greatest challenge remains understanding and confronting the ideology that provides the basis for Jihadist terrorism. Efforts to clearly define this enemy ideology recently have been undermined by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and the State Department in promoting a "terror lexicon" that recommends federal government employees avoid terms such as "jihad," "jihadist," "Islamist," "mujahideen," and "caliphate" when addressing issues involving terrorism. The argument made by the DHS, NCTC, and others is that the use of such terms will aid in the "recruitment" of Muslims to join terrorist organizations, or will alternatively provide "legitimacy" to religious aspects of terrorist efforts.
However, this tactical approach to create a "terror lexicon" to ban such terms used in federal government terrorism reports and the 9/11 Commission report undermines the strategic efforts to identify, understand, and confront the ideology that is the root challenge in a war of ideas against Jihad. And, as Bill West points out, it can also open the door to some unintended consequences for law enforcement.
Congressmen Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) has been an outspoken critic of such "terror lexicon" efforts, and was the leader of an amendment to the House of Representatives' 2009 Intelligence funding bill to prevent government funding from supporting such activities. On July 16, 2008, the House passed (by voice vote) House Resolution 5959 "Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009," which included Congressman Hoekstra's amendment (Section 507 'Jihadists'). Read more ...
BAHRAIN could soon follow a growing regional trend of Muslim men divorcing their wives by text message, if a family law is not implemented soon, women's rights groups warned yesterday.
They say that it is wrong that men could legally divorce their wives in such a spontaneous and inhumane way.
A family law should be introduced to ensure that husbands divorce their wives in an ethical manner and that they provide for them and their children, said Bahrain Women's Union member Fatima Al Rabea.
"If we have a family law, they will think about this. But now there is no protection," she said.
The union will submit its final draft for a family law by the end of the month.
The draft of the law, which is also called the Personal Status Law, aims to govern family matters and improve the situation of Bahrain's women.
It has been put together by the union, with submissions from various women's societies.
A Sharia Court in Malaysia recently ruled that a Muslim man legally divorced his wife by sending her a short messaging service (SMS) saying: "If you don't leave your parent's house, you will be divorced".
In another case, an Egyptian woman is seeking clarification from a court on whether her husband's declaration of divorce via text message was legally valid. Read more ...
Tehran, 29 July (AKI) - Sixteen Iranians who converted from Islam to Christianity were arrested on Tuesday in Malakshahr, on the outskirts of the central Iranian city of Isfahan.
The six women, eight men and two adolescents who were arrested were assisting in a conversion ceremony and baptism of three new members of the church at a private house that had been transformed into an evangelical church.
The owners of the home, an elderly couple, were allegedly beaten up before they were locked up in an unmarked lorry.
In April, 10 Christian converts were arrested in Shiraz.
The official evangelical churches in Isfahan received orders not to allow any Muslims to attend their ceremonies and not to facilitate in any way the conversions. Read more ...
A woman pretending to be pregnant walks up to a hospital in one of Iraq’s most dangerous regions and blows herself up.
Minutes later a man, also laden with explosives, attacks the rescue workers who rushed to the scene in Diyala province, north of Baghdad. Thirty-two people are killed and 52 wounded.
The co-ordinated bombings that ripped through the town of Baladruz in May are one of twelve attacks involving thirteen women suicide bombers to strike Diyala so far this year – a huge jump, signalling a new tactic by insurgents. US officials suspect that al-Qaeda has built a network of cells that recruit women and turn them into killers.
Women are the perfect weapon in a country where it is frowned upon culturally for a man even to approach a woman without her husband or father in tow, let alone frisk her for weapons at one of the many checkpoints that are the bombers’ favourite targets. In addition, it is easy to hide a vest packed with explosives under the traditional Islamic robes worn by women in Iraq without drawing suspicion. Read more ...
Over the week-end Muslim fanatics target a Christian school in the capital’s east side. Police evacuate the institute to protect students. Hundreds of police agents are now guarding it to prevent further violence.
By Benteng Reges
Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Police evacuated the Christian Theological Arastamar Institute (STT SETIA) which is located in an eastern district of the Indonesian capital after it suffered damages during clashes between Christians and Muslims over the week-end. At least 1,500 students were moved to nearby police headquarters and a local Christian-based political party. The situation remains critical and further violence between opposite factions cannot be ruled out.
“The school foundation urged us to intervene to protect people,” said East Jakarta District Police Chief Senior Superintendent. “For this reason we moved everyone out.”
Last night hundreds of residents from the village of Kampung Pulo had taken up arms threatening to storm the school after being instigated by an imam at a local mosque who claimed that a bunch of Christian gangsters were coming to “protect” the school after it was attacked on Saturday by a Muslim mob, causing damage to the building and hurting hundreds. Read more ...
WHERE: Saudi Consulate at 2045 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles, CA (Near W. Olympic & Sawtelle)
SAUDI ARABIA: World's greatest exporter of Terror.
Protest against: - Saudi funding of terror with petro-dollars - Saudi influence in American politics - Saudi influence in American schools - Saudi refusal to help ease high gas prices - Saudi promotion of terrorism and extremism through the construction and funding of radical mosques and madrassas in America
Event sponsored by the United American Committee and other groups involved in the anti-jihad resistance.
The Islamic Republic terror machine once again has taken off at the speed of light in Iran and exemplifies a depraved, clerical system of government, which legitimizes its depravity through a series of terror, fear and intimidation of Iranian people. With the additional handpicking of the newly selected members of the Islamic "Majles," the clergies have intensified their terror and war against the people of Iran and their insatiable appetite for another holocaust against the Jewish State, at all cost. The leaders of the Islamic Republic have gone completely mad.
The Islamic Republic has stationed revolutionary and militia troops to actively and deliberately prevent anyone from any demonstrations or objections against the totalitarian regime. They are planning to silence people by any means available to them. Read more ...
On Wednesday, July 23, District Judge Linda Morrissey denied motions by the Islamic Society of Tulsa, Mujib Cheema, and the North American Islamic Trust to dismiss Jamal Miftah's lawsuit against them. Miftah is suing Cheema, IST, and NAIT, as well as several other individual leaders in IST for assault and battery, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Earlier this year, Judge Gordon McAllister granted several motions to dismiss, but gave Miftah's attorneys 20 days to present an amended petition. It was this amended petition that was the subject of the latest motions to dismiss, which were denied.
We will keep you posted on developments. Here is a link to BatesLine's Jamal Miftah category, where you can catch up on the dispute between Miftah and IST regarding IST expelling him over his op-ed condemning terrorism in the name of Islam. Read more ...
THE death row Bali bombers want to be beheaded instead of being shot by a firing squad.
They are appealing to the Indonesian Constitutional Court on the grounds that death by firing squad is torture.
The three want to be beheaded in the way that capital punishment is carried out under strict Islamic law.
They will claim that prisoners can take too long to die when shot.
Their lawyers denied the move was a tactic to delay the executions, which authorities said were imminent.
Lawyer Mahendradatta said the issue was about ensuring due processes of law were followed when it came to irreversible punishment and not about saving the lives of Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra.
The lawyers will meet Attorney-General Hendarman Supandji tomorrow to complain that the latest appeal knockback by the Supreme Court was in the form of a letter signed by a court clerk and not a decision by judges.
Mr Mahendradatta said the Constitutional Court appeal would argue that death by firing squad could be torture. If the firing squad does not kill the prisoner immediately, the commander has what is known as an amnesty shot with his pistol.
"The regulation itself admits that there is a possibility that one shot is not going to kill the prisoner, which means it is torture," he said.
"The constitution says the right not to be tortured cannot be reduced under any circumstances.
"They (the bombers) are on the death sentence not torture.
"Amrozi and the others are ready to die, not only today but since they got the first verdict in Denpasar. But this is about the law and precedent."
Executions should be carried out only when all legal procedures had been followed properly, he added.
"If they want to execute Amrozi and the others, just go ahead -- but say it is in the name of revenge because if you want to execute them by the regulations then you have to follow all the procedures of the law."
Mr Mahendradatta said the Muslim Lawyer Team, which represents all three condemned men, would meet the Attorney-General and press him to make sure the law was followed.
"We are going to go to the Attorney-General to ask them to obey the law. I have never seen a situation before where a clerk makes a court ruling."
It is unlikely the Constitutional Court appeal would stop the executions. Authorities want the executions carried out before Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month, which starts in September.
Attorney-General Hendarman Supandji has previously said appeal or no appeal, the executions would go ahead.
Prosecutors in Bali, who are in charge of arranging the executions of the bombers who killed 202 people in 2002, say everything is ready and they're waiting for a date.
The three will be executed on Nusa Kambangan Island, off the coast of Central Java, where their jail is located.
Amsterdam, 29 July (AKI) - A court in The Hague has approved a request by Somali-born ex-MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali for witnesses to be heard in her claim for the Dutch state to pay for her security in the US, Dutch media reported on Tuesday.
The Dutch government stopped paying for Hirsi Ali's police protection after she moved to the US permanently last year.
An outspoken critic of Islam and advocate of women's rights, Hirsi Ali had to live under police protection in the Netherlands after receiving death threats. She now works for a conservative US think-tank.
"Hirsi Ali clearly had protection in the Netherlands because she was in danger and probably still is," a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations' security programme, Bibi Van Ginkel, told Adnkronos International (AKI).
"She has for some time been the voice and face of women's emancipation under Islam, and is clearly under some threat," Van Ginkel said.
Hirsi Ali's radical opinions expressed in her writings and lectures have "really insulted some people," she said.
But Hirsi Ali is a former MP and public figure, and the Dutch government should "try and arrange some kind of protection" in cooperation with the US authorities, she argued.
"The Dutch government cannot look the other way and shouldn't try and get out but find more of a solution than it has done," said Van Ginkel.
She said the Dutch government had provided some extra protection for Hirsi Ali at the beginning of her stay in the US.
Former Dutch deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm, Netherlands anti-terror chief Tjibbe Joustra and Justice Minister Ernst Hrsch Ballin, are among those Hirsi Ali has reportedly requested to be heard as witnesses.
The preliminary hearing is expected to be heard on two consecutive days later in this year. This could result in a full court case in which Hirsi Ali challenges the Dutch state to continue to pay for her security in the US.
In her orginal court application in May, Airsi Ali asked for eight witnesses to be heard, but on Monday the court said the number would initially be restricted to five.
A motion in the European Parliament to fund Hirsi Ali's US security failed in March to reach a quorum of half the deputies in the 785-member body.
Hirsi Ali has also set up a fund to finance her security in the US. "She has raised a considerable sum but it is not enough to pay for everything," Van Ginkel said.
Hirsi Ali wrote the screenplay for 'Submission', a controversial film criticising domestic violence towards Muslim women made by Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh.
A Dutch-Moroccan extremist Mohammed Bouyeri murdered Van Gogh in an Amsterdam street soon after the film was aired on Dutch television.
Hirsi Ali was given round-the-clock police protection after Bouyeri pinned a letter to Van Gogh's chest containing explicit threats towards her.
She has just written a children's book with Anna Gray, entitled 'Adan and Eva', about the impossible friendship between a Muslim boy and a Jewish girl.
Hirsi Ali's co-author is writing under a pseudonym, as she fears the book could put her life in danger. It is being translated into English, Danish, Spanish and Italian.
SOME stellar phrases dominated the election campaign last year. Australia faced a "fork in the road", said Kevin Rudd. As Prime Minister, he faces his own fork in the road. Rudd announced he was Multilateral Man, a modern social democrat leader who would forge a new foreign policy for Australia. Eschewing the Howard years, Rudd would apparently take us down a new, more inclusive road. He would fully embrace multilateralism as the best way to achieve global peace. But here's the thing. Multilateralism is not an inherent good. Sometimes its very inclusiveness ensures a rotten result.
That much was obvious at the confab in Durban in 2001 when a conference aimed at combating racism degenerated into a bigoted hate-fest against the US and Israel.
Non-government organisations in Durban handed out pamphlets depicting Israelis as modern-day Nazis and free T-shirts demanding the dismantling of Israel.
Even former US secretary of state Colin Powell - a good friend of the UN - walked out, declaring that "you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language".
Such was the moral bankruptcy at the Durban festival of hate, the then UN high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, refused to be part of the ceremony that tabled the forum's documents. Multilateralism, Durban-style, provided a platform, under the auspices of the international community, for anti-West Westerners and the most egregious abusers of human rights to rail against the West.
The Durban I debacle means that, if Rudd really is a sensible fusion between hardheaded realism and liberal idealism, as some have claimed, he will need to show that he can be choosy about multilateralism. And the measure of his commitment to multilateralism ought to go something like this. Meaningful multilateralism that actually achieves a common good is the aim.
Harmless multilateralism is understandable. Nothing gained, nothing lost. But oppressive multilateralism that allows repressive regimes to hijack agendas for their own cause to thwart real progress is unforgivable.
Rudd's test will be the next UN conference on racism.
Dubbed Durban II - as a follow-up to Durban I - the meeting next year in Geneva looks set to become a multilateral platform aimed at suppressing free speech in the name of preventing Islamaphobia.
How do we know? Let's start with who's in charge. That would be the UN's premier Human Rights Council which, as the preparatory committee for Durban II, elected Libya as its chair and includes Cuba, Pakistan and Iran. In multilateral land at the UN, Iran - a country whose leadership is openly committed to the destruction of Israel - will be involved in setting the agenda for the next global conference on racism.
The HRC was meant to be the answer to the UN's discredited former Human Rights Commission. Nothing has changed.
Next consider what's being said in the lead-up to Durban II. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference represents the most powerful voting bloc at the UN and many of its members happily sit on the Human Rights Council. In June, OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said "mere condemnation or distancing from the acts of the perpetrators of Islamophobia" is not enough. He wants Western nations to tighten basic freedoms of speech so there are no more cartoons or documentaries critical of Islam.
Other OIC members such as Pakistan and Indonesia, and of course Iran, also have free speech squarely within their sights.
Reasonable people agree that hate speech is abhorrent. But if hate speech were the real target of DurbanII, we should expect to hear denunciations of Holocaust inversion, where Israelis are treated as the new Nazis. Instead, under the cloak of hate speech and Islamophobia, the real agenda of many of the countries responsible for Durban II is stomping on criticism of Islam.
As hard-nosed realists, the OIC bloc knows how to exploit the multilateral idealists in the West.
Through sheer numbers they can and do throw around their weight to hijack agendas. One need only track the anti-Israel bias at Turtle Bay headquarters and the UN's other multilateral minions. At the HRC each year, special agenda item No8 is devoted to scrutinising one country: Israel. No other country. Just Israel.
Australia's former ambassador to the UN, Mike Smith, has denounced the "singling out of one country for criticism under a unique agenda item". But with other democracies silent on the issue, the unequal targeting of Israel prevails.
Gritty realism explains why OIC members adore UN conferences. It provides them with the perfect platform to invite anti-West Westerners to help promote their cause, ensuring worldwide media coverage on the evils of Islamophobia.
For them, multilateralism is a highly effective way to do business. And why wouldn't they rail against free speech?
The West has shown itself to be a faint-hearted supporter of its most cherished freedoms. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported on the latest supine surrender in The Netherlands, the home of tolerance. "On a sunny May morning, six plainclothes police officers, two uniformed policemen and a trio of functionaries from the state prosecutor's office closed in on a small apartment in Amsterdam. Their quarry: a skinny Dutch cartoonist with a rude sense of humour. Informed that he was suspected of sketching offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities, the Dutchman surrendered without a struggle."
If charged, the cartoonist who uses a nom de plume - Gregorius Nekschot - faces two years in prison.
This is precisely what many OIC members have in mind. And they have worked out that multilateralism is their best way to push their agenda against freedom of expression using the cloak of Islamophobia and the apparent legitimacy of the UN.
They prevailed at Durban I in 2001. Next year in Geneva they get another shot. Canada has already refused to be part of Durban II. So has Israel. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said: "France will not allow a repetition of the excesses and abuses of 2001." As European Union President, he has promised to withdraw if the hate-fest is repeated. The question is, what will other democracies do?
The US will have a new president in the lead-up to Durban II. If it is Barack Obama, he faces the same dilemma that confronts our Prime Minister. Both pitch themselves as a new generation of modern social democrats committed to multilateralism. If they are realists, they will reject Durban II as oppressive multilateralism. Being part of Durban II will give legitimacy to an agenda that looks destined to attack basic democratic freedoms. Dewy-eyed human rights activists, international lawyers and those on the jetsetting gravy train of multilateral shindigs will never admit it. But multilateralism for the heck of it is a one heck of a mistake.
U.S. House Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota), a Detroit native and the first Muslim elected to Congress, is visiting metro Detroit this weekend to raise money from local Muslims. Advertisement
Rep. Ellison will be speaking at a private fund-raiser for him in Shelby Township on Saturday at the home of Dr. Jukaku Tayeb, president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Tayeb said.
Born and raised as a Catholic in Detroit, Ellison converted to Islam while a student at Wayne State University. He moved to Minnesota for law school and was elected to Congress in 2006 in a victory that garnered international attention because of his faith.
Since then, another Muslim – U.S. Rep. Andre Carson (D-Indiana) – was elected to Congress after he won a special election in March.
Manama: A lawmaker demanded that the government immediately deny entry to homosexuals to eliminate indecency in Bahraini society.
Brotherhood MP Mohammad Khalid told Gulf News on Sunday the government should implement a parliamentary proposal approved early this year by the Lower House on the issue.
He also called upon the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to closely monitor saloons and massage parlours.
The lawmaker also urged the Vice Police to interfere and deport homosexuals involved in illegal activities, as well as intensify punishments for students involved in homosexuality. Read more ...
PAKISTAN Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani called on the US not to act "unilaterally" against Islamic militants in Pakistan.
Asked by CNN television about a suspected US missile strike on an al-Qa'ida leader in Pakistan, Gilani said he had told President George W. Bush at a White House meeting earlier on Monday that "unilaterally it should not be done".
"We must have more co-operation with each other and it's our job because we are fighting the war for ourselves," he said.
Gilani declined to directly accuse the US of being behind the missile attack which security officials in Pakistan said had targeted Egyptian militant Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, al-Qa'ida's top expert on chemical and biological weapons.
But he said that if it was proven to have been a US operation, it would be a violation of Pakistani sovereignty.
"Basically Americans are a little impatient. Therefore in the future I think we'll have more co-operation on the intelligence side and we'll do the job ourselves," he said.
Gilani was also asked by CNN about efforts to capture al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden, believed to be hiding along the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"My government certainly is doing its best," he said.
"There are two things. One is the will, the other is ability. We have the will but at the same time the militants are equipped with the most sophisticated weapons in the world and therefore we can't match that equipment and the training," he said.
"Therefore when there is US co-operation more on the defence side, we'll be able to have more capabilities of fighting." Source: The Australaian
Equality Now is urgently concerned about Kobra Najjar, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery who lost her final appeal for amnesty. Iranian women’s rights activists working on her case report that Kobra has exhausted all domestic legal remedies and that her execution by stoning could happen any time.
Kobra is a victim of domestic violence who was forced into prostitution by her abusive husband in order to support his heroine addiction. He was murdered by one of Kobra’s “clients” who sympathized with her plight. Kobra has already served 8 years in prison as an accessory to her husband’s murder. The man who murdered her husband also served 8 years in prison and is now free after paying blood money and undergoing 100 lashes, while Kobra faces imminent stoning to death for adultery - the prostitution her husband forced upon her.
Equality Now is also concerned about recent reports of seven other women and one man, all accused of adultery sentenced to death by stoning, whose executions are also reported to be possible at any time. In Iran, adultery is the only crime punishable by stoning.
Stoning violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Iran is a state party. The ICCPR clearly prohibits torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment. It also limits the imposition of the death penalty “only for the most serious crimes.” No criminal or other act warrants violent and inhumane punishments such as flogging and stoning. Moreover, adultery is a private act and should not incur criminal punishment. Protection from arbitrary or unlawful interference under the ICCPR has been found by the United Nations Human Rights Committee to include consensual sexual activity between adults in private. Recommended Actions
Please write to the Iranian officials below, calling for Kobra’s immediate release, the commutation of all sentences of death by stoning and the prohibition by law of all cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments in accordance with Iran’s obligations under the ICCPR. Urge the officials also to initiate a comprehensive review of the Civil and Penal Codes of Iran to remove all provisions that discriminate and perpetuate discrimination against women, including those regarding adultery and fornication, in accordance with Iran’s own constitutional provision for equality before the law.
His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi Head of the Judiciary c/o Ministry of Justice Park-e Shahr Teheran Islamic Republic of Iran Email: iripr@iranjudiciary.org, irjpr@iranjudiciary.com and info@dadgostary-tehran.ir Phone: +98 21 22741002, +98 21 22741003, +98 21 22741004, +98 21 22741005
Note: The contact information above may encounter delivery problems so please keep trying to send your message. Thank you for taking action!
Please also contact the Iranian embassy in your country. The following link may help you find the contact information: http://www.embassyworld.com/embassy/Iran/Iran.html
Bahrain: Embassy of Iran in Manama Tel: 722400, 722660 Fax: 722101
Canada: Embassy of Iran in Ottawa http://www.salamiran.org/ Tel: 613 2354726 Ext 225 Fax: 613 2325712
Denmark: Embassy of Iran in Copenhagen http://www.iran-embassy.dk Tel: 39160071 Fax: 39160075
Finland: Embassy of Iran in Helsinki Tel: (9) 6869240 Fax: (9) 6869241
Germany: Embassy of Iran in Frankfurt Tel: (0) 695600070, (0) 695600730 Fax: (0) 6956000728
India: Embassy of Iran in New Delhi Tel: (011) 3329600, (011) 3329601, (011) 3329602, (011) 3320491 Fax: (011) 3325493
Jordan: Embassy of Iran in Amman Tel: (6) 4641281, (6) 4641282 Fax: (6) 4641383
Kenya: Embassy of Iran in Nairobi Tel: (2) 720343, (2) 720796 Fax: (2) 713966
Lebanon: Embassy of Iran in Beirut Tel: (1) 821224
Malaysia: Embassy of Iran in Kuala Lumpur Tel: (3) 4514830, (3) 4514824 Fax: (3) 4562904
Norway: Embassy of Iran in Oslo http://home.eunet.no/%7Eiranamb/ Tel: 23 27 29 60 Fax: 22 55 49 19
Russia: Embassy of Iran in Moscow Tel: (95) 9177282, (95) 9170039, (95) 9178440 Fax: (95) 2302897
Sweden: Embassy of Iran in Stockholm Tel: (80) 7650829, (80) 7653174 Fax: (80) 7653119
Switzerland: Embassy of Iran in Berne Tel: (31) 3510801, (31) 3510802 Fax: (31) 3515652
United Arab Emirates: Embassy of Iran in Abu Dhabi http://www.iranembassy.org.ae Tel: (12) 4447618 Fax: (12) 4448714
United Kingdom: Embassy of Iran in London http://www.iran-embassy.org.uk/ Tel: 02072253000 Fax: 02075894440
United States: Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Washington, D.C. http://www.daftar.org/ Tel: 202 9654990 Fax: 202 9651073
Women's Action 29.1: March 2007
Please keep Equality Now updated on your efforts and send copies of any replies you receive to: Equality Now P.O. Box 20646, Columbus Circle Station, New York NY 10023, USA Equality Now Africa Regional Office, P.O. Box 2018, KNH 00202, Nairobi, KENYA Equality Now P.O. Box 48822, London WC2N 6ZW, UNITED KINGDOM info@equalitynow.org
A third of Muslim university students believe killing in the name of religion can be justified, a survey has revealed.
By Duncan Gardham
A study on the attitudes of students has found that 28 per cent said killing could be justified if the religion was under attack and another four per cent supported killing in order to "promote and preserve" the religion.
Over half, 53 per cent, said killing in the name of religion was never justifiable but among non-Muslim students that figure was 94 per cent.
While most students showed a typical generation gap where their parents were more religious than they were – 72 per cent – a significant 18 per cent said they were more strict in their religious observance than their parents.
The importance of sharia law to most Muslim was underlined by the 40 per cent who said they supported its introduction into law for Muslims in Britain, although 37 per cent opposed it.
A third of those surveyed supported the creation of a worldwide Muslim caliphate but 25 per cent opposed it and 42 per cent said they were not sure.
Half of the students said they would not be supportive of a friend who wanted to leave Islam.
Hannah Stuart, from the Centre for Social Cohesion, co-author of the report, said: "These findings are deeply alarming. Students in higher education are the future leaders of their communities yet significant numbers of them appear to hold beliefs which contravene liberal, democratic values. Read more ...
Muslim scholars have accused a Channel 4 documentary about the Qur'an of being "disappointing, misleading, even defamatory".
By Jessica Salter
In the documentary The Qur'an, film-maker Antony Thomas explored the history and message of the Qur'an, Islam's holy book and questioned how much Muslims and non-Muslims understood the text.
While the film which was broadcast earlier this month was praised by some critics as a masterpiece, it has angered a prominent group of Shia Muslims who say it made some "seriously inaccurate statements" about their branch of the faith.
In a letter to Channel 4 the scholars claim that there was an anti-Shia bias to the film because it promoted obscure or extreme views as the mainstream opinion. They said the programme accused Shias of believing that the Qur'an had been corrupted and that he said a central belief of the Shias, the imamate, was contrary to the Qur'an. Read more ...
LONDON: An umbrella organisation representing over 300 Hindu outfits in the UK on Sunday appealed to the government to probe into reports about British charities suspected of sending funds to terrorist groups in Pakistan that have been launching attacks against India.
The appeal by Hindu Forum of Britain (HFB) comes in the wake of serial bombings in Gujarat in which at least 45 people were killed.
The HFB requested Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to order a probe into reports of British charities sending funds to Pakistan-based terrorist groups. Read more ...
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas is moving to suppress an outbreak of violence in the Gaza Strip that began at the start of the weekend and left seven people dead.
Explosions, believed to be the work of the rival Fatah group, on Friday evening near Gaza beach killed five senior Hamas members and a child.
One of the explosions at an intersection was detonated by remote control as a car carrying the five Hamas leaders drove past.
It killed them instantly as well as six-year-old Serena Safadi, who was standing near the intersection.
Another bomb detonated at noon on Friday killed a Hamas official and a third explosion injured three people.
In response, Hamas launched a crackdown against Fatah, arresting up to 160 of its members in dawn raids on Saturday morning.
Gaza security police set up roadblocks across the coastal enclave, seized equipment and files from Fatah's news agency and raided about 40 Fatah-affiliated civic organisations. In one failed arrest attempt, police fired four rocket-propelled grenades at the home of a Fatah leader and exchanged fire with his guards.
Among those killed in Friday's blasts were senior members of Hamas' military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the most prominent of whom was Amar Musbah, the personal aide of the wing's commander, Mohammed Jabari.
Iyad al-Hayeh, the nephew of political bureau member Khalil al-Hayeh, and Nidal al-Mabayed, a high-ranking member of the Qassam Brigades, were also killed.
Fatah tried to deny any involvement in the attack, although scenes of its supporters celebrating news of the attacks were broadcast on Palestinian television.
News organisations received emails of unclear origin claiming that a Fatah offshoot known as the al-Awda (Return) Brigades set off the beachside blast. Hamas carried the statement on its websites, and its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, called it "proof that Fatah is not interested in dialogue".
The email claim could not be verified and Fatah officials said no such group exists.
The prospect of more violence seems likely after one Hamas leader was quoted anonymously in Palestinian media yesterday saying the attacks "will not go by in silence".
Dr Hayeh, speaking at his nephew's funeral, denounced Fatah as collaborators with Israel.
"The collaborators who did this must be hanged in Palestine Square and shot," he said, referring to Gaza City's main square. "The people who stand behind this are from Fatah."
Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said police had information on who was behind the attack.
Among those arrested was a cameraman for German television ARD, Sawah Abu Safeh, Palestinian officials said.
Other Hamas members were quoted accusing Palestinian Authority president and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas of seeking to start a civil war. Mr Abbas was due to visit Egypt for talks on the situation in the territories and national reconciliation efforts.
Hamas and Fatah have had an uneasy truce since June last year, when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip. The two had shared power in a short-lived coalition that broke apart when a US-backed attempt by Fatah to take control of Gaza was defeated by Hamas.
The split left Mr Abbas ruling the West Bank under emergency powers and Hamas under Mr Haniyeh, the democratically elected prime minister, in control of Gaza.
Tensions in Gaza cooled last month after Hamas reached a truce with Israel, which, despite scattered violations, has largely held.
TWO bombs have exploded in Istanbul, leaving at least 13 people dead, and some 70 others wounded, Turkish television reported.
The first bomb created a small blast in a telephone booth in the Gungoren neighbourhood on the western European bank of the Turkish city.
A second stronger explosion took place several minutes later a few metres away while a crowd began to gather at the site of the first blast, NTV reported.
The images broadcast by NTV showed scenes of panic, with people covered in blood and disoriented as they ran from the area of the blasts, littered with debris and shattered glass.
Teams of firefighters and emergency workers were dispatched to the scene and police established a security perimeter.
Local television stations had initially reported that the blasts were caused by a gas leak.
The city's governor, Muammer Guler, downplayed speculation that rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) could be responsible for the blasts, saying it was too early to say who was to blame.
He said officials would study the images filmed by surveillance cameras near the scene of the attacks.
In the past, numerous attacks in Istanbul have been blamed on the PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey and Western powers, which has been fighting since 1984 for independence for the Kurdish-majority southeast region.
Tiruchirapalli (PTI): Condemning the Friday's serial blasts in Bangalore, the Indian Union Muslim League has asked the media and public to not to brand the perpetrators of the deed as Muslims.
"I appeal to the media and the public not to brand the perpetrators of the Bangalore blasts as Muslims," State president of IUML K M Khader Mohideen told reporters here on Saturday night.
"These kind of people are neither Muslims, Hindus or Christians. The Centre and the state government should take steps to nab them quickly," he said. Read more ...
A young Saudi girl drove her brother’s car and was caught in the act. Notice, I have not made any reference to a “crime.” Necessary action was taken against her. What was the necessary action in this case? This involved interrogating the “wrongdoer.”
Notice again I have not made any reference to a “criminal.” Her guardian was summoned and was made to pledge that she would not repeat this “act.” She was set free and went home.
This news item, which was recently published in some newspapers, was not the first of its kind. Similar news items have been published, indicating there is an increase in the number of cases of women driving cars. So this story will not be the last. Read more ...
It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. No, not the States bunky, Canada! (OK, the States too!)
However, things are not so peachy keen in all parts of the world as this report from the Amsterdam bureau of the Religious News Blog suggests!
Are you ready for this kids?
Killing in the name of Islam is acceptable.... that's the view of one third of British Muslim students!
I kid you not!
What makes it even more hilarious, (if you can call it that) was that just the other day Britain was told “by a United Nations committee" (and reported first here on Perspective) to take firm action to combat ‘negative public attitudes’ towards Muslims.
(Gee, why are there "negative public attitudes" towards Muslims?)
The nine-member human rights committee also criticised some of the UK’s anti terror measures.”
But while it is a worthwhile to combat discrimination of any kind, one also has to be realistic. In this case that means recognizing and actively combating the very real threat formed by radical Muslims bent on spreading their hateful, violent version of Islam among those who want no part of it.
News from around the around the world shows that the so-called ‘purest’ forms of Islam — various extremist groups do not quite agree on which form that is — is incompatible with democracy, human rights — and indeed, modern life.
When angry Muslims engage in hateful and often violent protests throughout the world against cartoons, teddy bears, and whatever else they feel is an insult to Islam, no one — no person, no committee, and no government — will be able to change ‘negative public attitudes’ toward Muslims. -Ed.
The following news article illustrates the very real dangers the Western world faces from the rise in Islamic fundamentalism:
Almost one third of British Muslim students think it is acceptable to kill in the name of Islam, results of a poll show.
The findings shed light on the extent of campus radicalism and will raise concerns about extremism across British Universities.
The YouGov poll for the Centre for Social Cohesion also found that two in five Muslims at university support the idea of Islamic sharia codes being enshrined in British law, the Sunday Times has reported.
One of the report authors Hannah Stuart said the study’s findings came as an embarrassing blow to those who play down the threat of extremism within Britain’s campuses.
She said: ‘Significant numbers appear to hold beliefs which contravene democratic values.
‘These results are deeply embarrassing for those who have said there is no extremism in British universities.’
Fosis, the country’s largest Muslim student body criticised the report.
But Anthony Glees, professor of security and intelligence studies at Buckingham University, said: ‘The finding that a large number of students think it is okay to kill in the name of religion is alarming.
‘There is a wide cultural divide between Muslim and non-Muslim students.'
‘The solution is to stop talking about celebrating diversity and focus on integration and assimilation.’
The research saw 1,400 Muslim and non-Muslim students questioned and more than 20 universities were visited. It was discovered that extremist preachers regularly gave speeches that were inflammatory, homophobic or bordering on antisemitic.
The research found that 55 per cent of Muslim students thought Islam was incompatible with democracy!
The report also found that 40 per cent of recipients said it was unacceptable for Muslim men and women to associate freely; 25 per cent said they had little or no respect for gays.This figure was higher (32%) for male Muslim students.
Among non Muslims, the figure was only 4%.
A third of Muslim students interviewed supported the creation of a world-wide caliphate or Islamic state.
On top of this, a number of terrorists have been radicalised at British universities. Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a flaming jeep into a building at Glasgow airport last year and died of his burns, is believed to have been radicalised while studying at Anglia Ruskin university, Cambridge.
If Britain is an indicator of what we will eventually have in store for us here in North America then things are not looking good! Almost a quarter of British Muslims say the London bombing attacks can be justified because of the Government’s support for the ‘war on terror’.
The shocking 23 per cent figure is the equivalent of 370,000 of the 1.6m Muslims living in the UK.
And it is almost double previous opinion polls suggesting 13 per cent believe the atrocity, which claimed 52 innocent lives, could be justified.
It will re-ignite the debate over whether the Government and Muslim leaders are doing enough to tackle extremism.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E ! and as a paperback H E R E !
Turkish women protesting shariah laws and headscrafs
Ozer Aksoy
*VP of The Turkish World Congress, 821 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY USA*
Headscarf is more than a piece of cloth: Pinned carefully to conceal the neck, throat and hair, Islamic headscarf has become the unmistakable symbol of political Islam. This is why secular people have been insisting on keeping it out of the universities and government institutions, as the secular laws require.
I read Mark Mackinnon's article "Traditional head scarf unveils new rifts in Turkey" (Globe, July 22, 2008) with interest. There seems to be a chaos of concepts 'and I mean it in the nicest possible way' involving the dichotomies secularism and Islam, modern law and Islamic canon (Sharia,) the elites and the uneducated, the periphery and the center, black Turks and white Turks, old guard versus Islamic reformers, and more. I urge your readers to gain a deeper understanding of dichotomies before jumping into evaluating the recent issues about Turkey. Let’s see if I can shed some light on all this. Read more ...
A man who had hit his wife in a parking lot and fractured her nose, because she had rolled up her veil due to the heat, was sentenced to two years in prison, 18 months of which are suspended, in a court in Marseilles.
The prosecution demanded eight months in prison, three of which to be suspended.
Ali Nassakh (30), of Algerian nationality, was placed in detention.
A passerby alerted authorities after seeing the young woman's bloodied face. She burst into tears when he husband testified that she had banged her head on a car parked nearby.
The young woman claimed compensation. To the investigators she had said she had explained to her husband that "in our religion the husband doesn't have a right to tell his wife to do what he wants."
Poll attacked over claim that a third of Muslim students think killing in the name of religion is justified and 40 per cent support sharia law in the UK
By Jamie Doward
Almost third of Muslim students on Britain's campuses believe killing in the name of religion can be justified, according to a controversial survey described as the most comprehensive of its kind.
The poll, conducted for Islam on Campus, a new report from the Centre for Social Cohesion think-tank, also found that 40 per cent of those interviewed supported the introduction of sharia law for British Muslims.
But the findings have been fiercely attacked by student groups which described the poll's methodology as 'deeply flawed' and accused the report's authors of isolating Muslims.
The YouGov survey found that 32 per cent of Muslim students polled said killing in the name of religion was justified, compared to 2 per cent of non-Muslims. A third of those polled said they supported a worldwide Islamic caliphate, or government, and more than half - 54 per cent - supported the idea of having their own political party at Westminster. Just under a quarter did not believe men and women were equal in the eyes of Allah, while 25 per cent said they had little or no respect for homosexuals.
'These findings are deeply alarming,' said Hannah Stuart, the report's co-author. 'Students in higher education are the future leaders of their communities. Yet significant numbers of them appear to hold beliefs which contravene liberal democratic values.' Read more ...
ITALIAN daily La Repubblica today received a death-threat letter aimed at Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi which contained a bullet, the newspaper's website reported.
The letter, which also proclaimed “Allah is Great”, vows to “hit” Mr Berlusconi as well as the speakers of Italy's upper and lower parliamentary chambers, Renato Schifani and Gianfranco Fini, the website said.
According to the left-leaning title, a similar letter was received by the right-leaning daily Libero yesterday in Milan.
In January, a letter threatening Mr Berlusconi and his brother Paolo – containing two bullets – was received by the Milan daily Il Giornale.
Mr Berlusconi, while prime minister in 2001, infuriated Muslims and appalled Western diplomats with remarks asserting the superiority of Western civilization over Islam.
By Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im | Harvard Univ. 324 pp. $35
For more than 20 years, Islamists in Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt and other Muslim countries have campaigned for popular support by presenting sharia, or Islamic law, as the antidote to authoritarian rule, injustice and repression.
Westerners often wonder how Muslims possibly can believe such claims. We recall the Taliban blowing up ancient statues and preventing girls from going to school in Afghanistan. We think of authorities in Saudi Arabia and Iran cutting off hands for theft and stoning women to death for adultery. Read more ...
[Article by Saudi academic and writer Hamzah Qablan al-Muzayni: "Back to Square-One"]
Al-Hayat newspaper published on 15 July 2008 a report about a plan drawn up by the Islamic Call and Guidance Council of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which includes in its membership several government authorities. The newspaper said that the council presented this plan as: “A preemptive step to limit the dangers of the phenomenon of terrorism against the Saudi society… Its aim is to fortify the youths against falling victims to the schemes of the ‘misguided group,’ and represents a precautionary step aimed at enlightening the members of the society about the corruption of the course of the ‘misguided group,’ and the deviation of their behaviour. This is because of the need of the society for skilful plans to limit this phenomenon, especially as the members of the misguided group are carrying out operations that lead to killing and destruction.” Read more ...
A bomb squad officer defuses a live device in Ahmedabad, India. At least 45 people were killed in a series of up to 16 explosions across the city.
Denis Campbell, Haroon Siddique and agencies Sunday July 27 2008
The death toll from yesterday's wave of bombings in the Indian city of Ahmedabad has risen to 45, a government official said today.
Jaynarayan Vyas said 161 people were injured when 16 separate small bombs went off in several parts of the city, which has a history of violent clashes between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority. He also said that 30 people had been arrested in connection with the explosions, which came a day after seven synchronised explosions rocked the southern city of Bangalore, the hub of India's burgeoning information technology industry, killing two and wounding five others.
Yesterday's attacks in Ahmedabad happened in two waves early in the evening local time. Some of the devices were hidden in lunchboxes or bicycles. The first series exploded near busy market places. The second, about 20 minutes later, went off in and around a hospital where casualties were being taken. At least six people died there.
'We saw a blue bag near the trauma centre, and before we could react we saw it explode in a shine of blinding light, and some 40 people were hit by flying shrapnel,' said Vipul Patil, a doctor at the Dhanwantari hospital.
The side of a bus was blown off and its windows shattered while another vehicle was engulfed in flames.
Prithviraj Chavan, a junior in the prime minister's office, called yesterday's bombings "deplorable" and said they were set off by people "bent upon creating a communal divide in the country". That is the sort of language officials tend to use when blaming Islamic militants suspected of being behind a series of coordinated bomb attacks across the country in recent years. Targets have included mosques, Hindu temples and trains.
'Anti-national elements have been trying to create panic among the people of our country. [The] blasts in Ahmadebad seem to be part of the same strategy,' the federal home minister, Shivraj Patil, said.
Several television stations said they had received an email claiming responsibility from a group called the Indian Mujahideen at the time of yesterday's blasts. The same group said it was behind bombs in Jaipur, western India, in May that killed more than 60 people. The email made no mention of Friday's bombings in Bangalore, according to reports.
Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state, which includes Ahmedabad, condemned the blasts as "a crime against humanity" and said the group or groups behind them were "using a similar modus operandi all over the country". The state government home Minister Amit Shah said: "The government had received a threat email, and we are probing it."
Tension between Hindus and Muslims is acute in Gujarat, a relatively wealthy state. It was the scene of riots in 2002 that left about 2,500 people dead. They were triggered by a fire on a train packed with Hindu pilgrims that killed 60 passengers. The cause was never proven, but Hindu extremists blamed the deaths on Muslims and reacted by rampaging through Muslim areas.
QUESTION: What are issues and recommendations for solutions that are unique to Muslim Americans?
1. A Law against harrassment of a Muslim women wearing Hijab at the Airport, DMV and other public arenas.
2. Institute a Law to allow Muslim Employees to take a hours off from work for Friday Jummah Prayer.
3. Make the 2 Eid's, recognized National Holidays on Calendars with days off from work.
4. Optional Halal meals in federal buildiings, public schools and colleges.
5. Provide prayer areas suitable for Salah and Jummah, in public and private facilities. (i.e. Malls, Airports, Universities and government buildings.)
6. Organize a Muslim American group to assist in recommendations for US foreign policy affecting majority Muslim countries.
Muslims Against Sharia denounce efforts of "Muslims for Obama" to impose Sharia-style rules on Americans. We recommend that "Muslims for Obama" immediately change their name to "Muslim fundamentalists for Obama." If "Muslims for Obama" wish to leave in a country that enforces these rules, they can be easily accommodated in several places outside the United States.
If you don't understand any of these, I invite you to a meaningful, enlightening dialogue to dispel any doubts. Please do e-mail me. Please do not carry around with you wrong impressions. Wrong impressions can be and have been fatal.
1. Use your 'Fitnah' (beauty and overtures of allurement) to win the heart of your husband.
All women have the ornaments that Allah blessed them with. Use the beauty Allah - Azza wa Jal - has bestowed you with to win the heart of your husband.
2. When your husband comes home, greet him with a wonderful greeting.
Imagine your husband coming home to a clean house, an exquisitely dressed wife, a dinner prepared with care, children clean and sweet smelling, a clean bedroom - what would this do to his love for you? Now imagine what the opposite does to him.
3. Review the characteristics of the Hoor Al-Ayn and try to imitate them
The Qur'an and Sunnah describe the women in Jannah with certain characteristics. Such as the silk they wear, their large dark eyes, their singing to their husband, etc. Try it, wear silk for your husband, put Kohl in your eyes to 'enlarge' them, and sing to your husband.
4. Always wear jewellery and dress up in the house.
From the early years, little girls have adorned themselves with earrings and bracelets and worn pretty dresses - as described in the Qur'an. As a wife, continue to use the jewellery that you have and the pretty dresses for your husband. Read more ...
A newspaper editor has received death threats from militant groups for publishing a cartoon of a radical woman Islamic leader encouraging her pupils to wage holy war.
Najam Sethi, chief editor of the Daily Times, one of Pakistan’s most respected English language newspapers and its sister paper Daily Aaj Kal, now moves under heavy security after ultra-conservative Islamic elements warned him of serious consequences if he did not repent. His house in Lahore is now guarded by six army commandos.
The threats were provoked by the publication of a cartoon in Aaj Kal depicting Umme Hassan, principal of a radical women’s madrassa, in a veil “educating” female students to wage jihad and embrace martyrdom.
Ms Hassan is the wife of Abdul Aziz, the prayer leader of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, who was jailed after the mosque was stormed by Pakistani troops last year. The madrassa she headed was demolished in the operation in which more than 100 people, including 11 soldiers, were killed. Addressing a rally on the anniversary of the Red Mosque raid in Islamabad last week, Ms Hassan declared that the cartoon was blasphemous, equating it with Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Read more ...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage against an Islamic civil rights group over its use of a portion of his show in which he called the Quran a "book of hate."
Savage sued the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, for copyright infringement and racketeering lawsuit late last year, claiming the group violated his rights by using a segment of his "Savage Nation" show in a letter-writing campaign to get advertisers to boycott the program. In the broadcast used by CAIR, Savage also called the Muslim holy book "a throwback document."
In her ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said people who listen to a public broadcast are entitled to use excerpts for purposes of comment and criticism. She also said no evidence was presented to show that advertising on the show's broadcast was affected by CAIR's actions.
The racketeering element of the lawsuit alleged that CAIR was not a civil rights group, but a political organization with ties to terrorist groups. CAIR denies those claims, saying it opposes terrorism and religious extremism.
In an interview with The Associated Press after he filed the lawsuit in December, Savage said he was referring to Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his violent brand of Islamic extremism in the broadcast, not about the religion in general.
Savage's attorney, Daniel Horowitz, told the San Francisco Chronicle he plans to file a new racketeering suit.
Now why would a Muslim say such a thing? It's all about Israel, right? Wrong. Note, for example, this exposition of Qur'anic antisemitism from IslamOnline. In it, Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr, the former Head of the Fatwa Committee at Cairo's Al-Azhar (which the New York Times praised after 9/11 as a beacon of moderation), invokes Qur'an verses to claim that the Jews "used to fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah" and "love to listen to lies." He accuses Jews of "disobeying Almighty Allah and never observing His commands (invoking Qur'an 5:13 to show that Allah has cursed them); "hiding the truth"; "giving preference to their own interests over the rulings of religion and the dictates of truth"; "wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them"; and more. He says that Jews "feel pain to see others in happiness and are gleeful when others are afflicted with a calamity," and that "their impoliteness and indecent way of speech is beyond description." He says that "it is easy for them to slay people and kill innocents. Nothing in the world is dear to their hearts than shedding blood and murdering human beings." For "they are merciless and heartless"; "they never keep their promises or fulfill their words"; "they rush hurriedly to sins and compete in transgression." And much more. Read more ...
Cairo, 25 July (AKI) - The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has launched a discussion forum on Facebook, the popular social networking website.
A group of young Muslims decided to put the Muslim Brotherhood on Facebook after they received the go-ahead to do so from the Brotherhood's second-in-command, Muhammad Habib.
The creators of the project decided to call themselves an "electronic student cell of the Muslim Brotherhood" and their aim to to push for the return of an Islamic Caliphate [a Muslim state]."
The Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed by the Egyptian government, which accuses the group of encouraging violence in order to establish an Islamic state.
This new youth wing decided to choose the Internet as a way to spread their message. Read more ...
In his letter regarding the controversy over cartoons offensive to Muslims ("Why We Don't See Islamic Cartoons," July 18) reader Shahid Kinnare asks each offending cartoonist to consider if "he could survive" if the subject of his work were changed to the Holocaust. The answer is yes. Although a cartoonist who produces a cartoon that uses the Holocaust in an offensive way would no doubt be harshly criticized, the cartoonist wouldn't be murdered and there wouldn't be riots by enraged Jews outside embassies. In fact, a number of newspapers recently reproduced, without incident, some despicable cartoons published in Iran concerning the Holocaust.
Alan S. Ritterband Philadelphia
We do enjoy humor based upon religious figures, i.e., how many jokes begin "There was a rabbi, a priest and a minister"? And we see no harm in humorous criticism of the disconnect between Muhammad -- Islam's founder and prophet of peace -- and the terrorists who kill and maim in Muhammad's name. Is it the cartoonists or the terrorists who are committing the blasphemy?
Jonathan Kahnoski Sunriver, Ore.
Letter writer Tom Lawrence's theory -- that the decision of Muslims to live in a Western society is theirs and, as a result, they need to accept the societal traditions of those countries needs close scrutiny in the context of the constitution of a democratic country. At stake isn't whether the decision of Muslims to live in a Western society is theirs but whether a Western society, such as the U.S., protects the religious rights of any group so that the citizens of that group have a right not to be offended by other groups.
B.K. Shah Pearl River, N.Y.
In America, I am allowed to insult whomever and whatever I like. Islam is no more immune from criticism or mockery than Christianity, Judaism or Scientology. In 1987, an "artist" (a term I use loosely) displayed a photograph "Piss Christ," depicting a crucifix in a glass of urine. There were many complaints and much negative press, but at no point did the artist need to fear for his life. Jews and Christians might not be happy to see their religious figures mocked, but they understand that in a free society such actions must be permitted.
If Theo van Gogh had produced an anti-Christian or anti-Jewish movie, he would be alive today. If "Satanic Verses" had been about Judaism, Salman Rushdie wouldn't have spent years in hiding under a threat of death. So do not lecture me about "sensitivity" toward Islam until its followers are willing to demonstrate tolerance toward dissent.
Islamofascism: A new study confirms our "ally" Saudi Arabia is still poisoning young Muslim minds with anti-Western textbooks. So? Its hate-filled graduates are enrolling at our colleges.
The Hudson Institute reviewed the 2007-08 textbooks distributed by the Saudi Ministry of Education and found that, despite promised reforms, the kingdom still teaches students to "hate the infidels."
The texts assert that it's "permissible" for a Muslim to kill an "apostate," an "adulterer," a "homosexual," as well as non-Muslims practicing "polytheism," or Christianity.
The violent ideology is introduced in a religion textbook in the first grade and reinforced and developed in following years of the public education system, culminating in the 12th grade where a text instructs students that it's their religious duty to do battle against infidels in order to spread Islam. Read more ...
“Stand with your brother, should he be oppressed or oppressor” -- (Old proverb in the Arab world used by contemporary Jihadists)
Seven years after 9/11 the ongoing confrontation between the free world and the forces of Jihadism seems to be revealing another broader more dangerous dimension: the emergence of an undeclared solidarity between regimes and organizations which --despite their enmity for each other -- come together to destroy freedom and obstruct its spread.
This transnational brotherhood is increasingly revealing itself in international relations, despite the assurances of Western diplomats and academics that such a de facto web, do not really exist. While lobbying efforts in the West are attempting to convince the public that the ideology of Jihadism doesn’t exist and that Democracies’ foreign and economic policies are at the roots of terrorism, stunning evidence proves the opposite. Not only Jihadism is alive and thriving, but it is influencing a much larger bloc of countries.
Four years after identifying the Darfur drama as a genocide under international law many around the free world are yet to absorb the power of Jihadism in international relations. Today’s Sudan crisis will only open their eyes to what many in the diplomatic and academic elites are feverishly attempting to camouflage. While many have been arguing that the free nations of the world face a cohort of regimes that sympathize with and support the Jihadist networks, many others -- on the apologist side- have been arguing that there is no such thing as Transnational Jihadism. Read more ...
JERUSALEM - A leading member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization oversaw a delegation yesterday to visit recently freed Palestinian terrorist child-killer Samir Kuntar, calling the convicted murderer "beautiful," and a "pure and clean" hero.
Palestinian Liberation Organization ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki, a senior member of the Fatah Central Committee, yesterday led the delegation – which included other PLO and Fatah members – to visit Kuntar in Lebanon's Druze Mount village of Abayeh. Read more ...
FORT HUACHUCA - Some of the most dangerous detainees in American custody in Iraq have established sharia courts within the compounds in which they are held and have tried and executed fellow detainees who refused to join them, the Army’s senior military police officer said Wednesday. Read more ...
Iran is planning a mass execution of 30 people convicted of murder and drug trafficking, a press report said on Saturday.
"Thirty people convicted of murder, drug trafficking, illegal relationships... will be executed on Sunday at dawn," the Aftab newspaper quoted Tehran's prosecutor office as saying.
It would the largest mass execution in the Islamic republic in recent years.
Human rights groups have accused Iran of making excessive use of the death penalty but Tehran insists it is an effective deterrent that is carried out only after an exhaustive judicial process.
Iran has so far hanged at least 126 in this year, according to an AFP count.
Amnesty International reported that in 2007 Iran applied the death penalty more often than any other country apart from China, executing 317 people during the year.
Capital offences in the Islamic republic include murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and adultery.
A SEPARATISTS group has warned of fresh attacks in China during the Beijing Olympics and taken credit for a May bus bombing in Shanghai.
A group monitoring terror threats on the internet said that Commander Seyfullah of the Turkestan Islamic Party claimed credit for several attacks in China less than a fortnight out from the start of the Olympics.
"Through this blessed jihad in Yunnan this time, the Turkestan Islamic Party warns China one more time," Seyfullah says in a video statement dated July 23, according to a transcript from the Washington-based Intel Center.
"Our aim is to target the most critical points related to the Olympics. We will try to attack Chinese central cities severely using the tactics that have never been employed," he continues.
The warnings come just a day after Chinese police claimed they cracked a terrorist cell planning to attack Shanghai Stadium, the venue where the Australian men's soccer team will open its Olympic campaign on August 7.
Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Tancred said it took any terrorist threat "very seriously" but remained confident in the Chinese government's security plans for the Games.
"The safety of the athletes is paramount to us and there is a security force of 110,000 in China so we are not concerned about any terrorist threat in this country," he told AAP from Beijing today.
"We think with the size of the force they have and the knowledge they have, we think they will counter any terrorist problem that might arise.
"There is a very strong presence in the streets in Beijing with the army and the police. There are people that are stationed throughout the Olympic precinct 24 hours a day and I really can't see how any terrorist is going to crack the Chinese defences."
Australia is sending a team of more than 430 athletes to the China for the Olympics and they will be supported by a staff of 319 officials, including a medical team of 75.
Commander Seyfullah claimed credit for the May 5 Shanghai bus bombing which killed three; another Shanghai attack; an attack on police in Wenzhou on July 17 using an explosives laden tractor; a bombing of a Guangzhou plastic factory on July 17; and bombings of three buses in Yunnan province on July 21.
According to global intelligence analysts Stratfor, the Turkestan Islamic Party is another name used by the Islamic Party of East Turkestan (ETIM), an ethnic Uighur and Muslim separatist group seeking to create an independent state out of China's westernmost, heavily Muslim Xinjiang province.
The United States, China and other countries have designated ETIM a terrorist group.
A group of 40-50 Chechen men broke into the Nordbybråten asylum transit center in Våler, Østfold, Norway Thursday night. Equipped with bats, steel bars and knives, the men arrived in cars, climbed over the fences and broke in through locked doors and gates. The men went room by room and hunted down Kurds and Arabs, men, women and children.
23 people were wounded in the planned and coordinated attack, seven of them seriously, the youngest being 11. A lot of damage was done to the center, including broken windows, doors and furniture.
The head of the center, Ole Morten Lyng, says that there have been episodes between Kurdish and Chechen people at the center the past few years, at an individual level, and that this was probably a revenge act. He says that there have never been comparable episodes to this one.
In 2005 the police was called to Nordbybråten several times after a group of Chechen residents wanted to enforce Sharia laws at the center.
One of the center's neighbors says that the police was called in Wednesday night after a fight between two Chechen women and a Kurdish woman. According to some reports this was a trivial argument which brought about the attack. The neighbors want the center closed down, which they say is making their lives miserable, but feel that they are not being listened to.
The residents of the asylum center say they are afraid and that they don't feel they get enough protection.
Police had meanwhile arrested five local Chechens aged 25-35. The perpetrators might be deported from the country.
In its latest filing before the federal district court in Dallas on behalf of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and its affiliate organization, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) in the Hamas-terrorism financing case, the ACLU has made a noteworthy admission.
Rather than deny that there is copious evidence tying ISNA and NAIT to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the brief argues that such evidence is merely dated. In a curious footnote on page 7, the reply states:
Assuming the authenticity of documents' dates, the most recent documents to mention either ISNA or NAIT are dated 1991, Gov. Exhs. 3-3 and 3-85, but the majority of the documents are older. Almost all of the numerous exhibits that purport to show financial transactions and that contain any mention of ISNA or NAIT are dated 1988 and 1989 (there are two dated 1990), almost a decade before the majority of the overt acts the government alleges in support of its conspiracy charges against the HLF defendants. Read more ...
On May 22, 2008, the reformist Arab website www.elaph.com posted a comprehensive interview with Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef. In the interview, 'Akef discussed the Egyptian domestic scene, and presented the Brotherhood's position on democracy and on the status of the Copts and women in Egypt. He expressed support for the resistance in Iraq and Palestine, and for the activities of Al-Qaeda.
'Akef's statements evoked harsh criticism among clerics and politicians both inside and outside Egypt, who perceived them as praise for bin Laden and his terrorist activities. Faced with such critical reactions, 'Akef attempted to qualify his position with respect to bin Laden, explaining that bin Laden's ideology was based on violence and that the Muslim Brotherhood movement opposed all violence, except when directed against occupation. He also denied any connection between his movement and Al-Qaeda, which he called "a figment of Americans' imagination." Read more ...
As a Muslim, I am continually mystified by our nation’s inability to foster an environment conducive to a real “contest of ideas” between Muslims. This ‘”intra-Muslim contest” is arguably the linchpin of an effective counterterrorism strategy and possibly the most important debate of the 21st century. The infamous January 2008 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memorandum, “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations of American Muslims” only stifles progress in this debate. It absurdly admonishes government employees and thought leaders to avoid terms like Jihadist, Islamist, and Salafist.
More recently, buried in media coverage last week over the debate concerning the 2009 Intelligence Authorization Act of 2009 (H.R. 5959) was discussion over the Hoekstra Amendment (A004) which simply “barred the use of funds to prohibit or discourage the use of the phrases ‘jihadist’, ‘jihad’ ‘Islamo-fascism’, ‘Caliphate’ ,‘Islamist’ or “Islamic terrorist” within the Intelligence Community or the Federal Government.” “Mainstream media” who did mention the amendment spun it in ways which only catered to the Islamist mindset, stating that these terms are felt by so-called experts to cause “religious offense” and “are frequently applied incorrectly.” So who is to determine their ‘correctness’ – a small group of Islamist advisors? Where does that leave the war of ideas? Read more ...
Fast food restaurants have employee dress codes not only for appearances, but for hygiene and safety. With that in mind, this case is sounding a lot like the case of the women wanting to wear Islamic attire in a Midwestern tortilla factory. The local health inspector isn't going to take kindly to long sleeves potentially brushing perishable food, and/or the grill and fryer oil, to say nothing of guidelines for hand-washing (see also: the debate over short sleeves in British hospitals). Then there is the matter of long attire and the potential need to make a quick exit in the event of a fire or robbery.
There are many functional reasons for demanding standardized attire, but there is also the matter of allowing special treatment for a small part of the work force. And would the uniform issue be the end of the demands for accommodation? For example, would these women refuse to make a burger with bacon? Read more ...
Some commentators believe Mr Justice Eady is single-handedly creating a new, tougher, law of privacy in Britain.
But his actions are having the opposite effect in the U.S. - where there are plans for new laws to protect freedom of speech.
The spur was a 2004 case in which a Saudi billionaire used our courts to sue an author for libel over a book which was published in the U.S. and sold just 23 copies here.
In Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, the author Rachel Ehrenfeld alleged Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz helped fund Osama bin Laden.
Mahfouz could have sued in America, where almost all his books were sold - but instead chose Britain, where the libel laws are generally agreed to offer far less protection to writers.
Mr Justice Eady ruled against Dr Ehrenfeld, ordering her to pay £30,000 damages.
As a result, senators have introduced the Free Speech Protection Act to shield writers from libel suits brought in foreign courts.
ROME: Executions jumped by a third in Iran and quadrupled in Saudi Arabia last year, causing the total number of executions around the world to rise yet again in 2007, a human rights group reported Thursday. It said China remained far in front as the world's top executioner. The Rome-based Hands Off Cain, which campaigns to stop the death penalty, said that while countries were increasingly renouncing the death penalty, more people were put to death in 2007 than in either of the previous two years.
In all, the number of executions increased last year to at least 5,851, compared with 5,635 in 2006 and 5,494 in 2005, the group said in its annual report. The United States remained the only country in the Americas that carried out death sentences in 2007, but the country hit a 13-year low in the overall number of executions it performed putting 42 people to death, 11 less than in 2006.
The gradual trend of abolishing capital punishment continued, with 49 countries retaining the death penalty, compared with 51 in 2006 and 54 in 2005. Only 26 countries that have capital punishment on their books actually used it in 2007, down from 28 in 2006, the report said. China alone accounted for at least 5,000 executions, the rights group estimated, based on reports by the media and other human rights groups.
House of Representatives' Members Voting Against Hoekstra Amendment: Rep. Neil Abercrombie [D, HI-1] Rep. Jason Altmire [D, PA-4] Rep. Robert Andrews [D, NJ-1] Rep. Joe Baca [D, CA-43] Rep. Brian Baird [D, WA-3] Rep. Tammy Baldwin [D, WI-2] Rep. John Barrow [D, GA-12] Rep. Xavier Becerra [D, CA-31] Rep. Howard Berman [D, CA-28] Rep. Robert Berry [D, AR-1] Rep. Sanford Bishop [D, GA-2] Rep. Timothy Bishop [D, NY-1] Rep. Earl Blumenauer [D, OR-3] Rep. Madeleine Bordallo [D, GU-0] Rep. F. Allen Boyd [D, FL-2] Rep. Nancy Boyda [D, KS-2] Rep. Robert Brady [D, PA-1] Rep. Bruce Braley [D, IA-1] Rep. Corrine Brown [D, FL-3] Rep. George Butterfield [D, NC-1] Rep. Lois Capps [D, CA-23] Rep. Michael Capuano [D, MA-8] Rep. Russ Carnahan [D, MO-3] Rep. Andre Carson [D, IN-7] Rep. Kathy Castor [D, FL-11] Rep. Donna Christensen [D, VI-0] Rep. Yvette Clarke [D, NY-11] Rep. William Clay [D, MO-1] Rep. Emanuel Cleaver [D, MO-5] Rep. James Clyburn [D, SC-6] Rep. Steve Cohen [D, TN-9] Rep. John Conyers [D, MI-14] Rep. Jim Cooper [D, TN-5] Rep. Joe Courtney [D, CT-2] Rep. Robert Cramer [D, AL-5] Rep. Joseph Crowley [D, NY-7] Rep. Danny Davis [D, IL-7] Rep. Susan Davis [D, CA-53] Rep. Peter DeFazio [D, OR-4] Rep. Diana DeGette [D, CO-1] Rep. Rosa DeLauro [D, CT-3] Rep. Norman Dicks [D, WA-6] Rep. John Dingell [D, MI-15] Rep. Lloyd Doggett [D, TX-25] Rep. Michael Doyle [D, PA-14] Rep. Donna F. Edwards [D, MD-4] Rep. Thomas (Chet) Edwards [D, TX-17] Rep. Keith Ellison [D, MN-5]* Rep. Rahm Emanuel [D, IL-5] Rep. Anna Eshoo [D, CA-14] Rep. Bob Etheridge [D, NC-2] Rep. Eni Faleomavaega [D, AS-0] Rep. Sam Farr [D, CA-17] Rep. Bob Filner [D, CA-51] Rep. Barney Frank [D, MA-4] Rep. Charles Gonzalez [D, TX-20] Rep. Raymond (Gene) Green [D, TX-29] Rep. Raul Grijalva [D, AZ-7] Rep. Luis Gutierrez [D, IL-4] Rep. John Hall [D, NY-19] Rep. Phil Hare [D, IL-17] Rep. Jane Harman [D, CA-36] Rep. Alcee Hastings [D, FL-23] Rep. Brian Higgins [D, NY-27] Rep. Maurice Hinchey [D, NY-22] Rep. Ruben Hinojosa [D, TX-15] Rep. Mazie Hirono [D, HI-2] Rep. Paul Hodes [D, NH-2] Rep. Rush Holt [D, NJ-12] Rep. Michael Honda [D, CA-15] Rep. Darlene Hooley [D, OR-5] Rep. Steny Hoyer [D, MD-5] Rep. Jay Inslee [D, WA-1] Rep. Jesse Jackson [D, IL-2] Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee [D, TX-18] Rep. William Jefferson [D, LA-2] Rep. Henry Johnson [D, GA-4] Rep. Stephanie Jones [D, OH-11] Rep. Paul Kanjorski [D, PA-11] Rep. Marcy Kaptur [D, OH-9] Rep. Patrick Kennedy [D, RI-1] Rep. Dale Kildee [D, MI-5] Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick [D, MI-13] Rep. Ronald Kind [D, WI-3] Rep. Dennis Kucinich [D, OH-10] Rep. Ray LaHood [R, IL-18] Rep. James Langevin [D, RI-2] Rep. Rick Larsen [D, WA-2] Rep. John Larson [D, CT-1] Rep. Barbara Lee [D, CA-9] Rep. Sander Levin [D, MI-12] Rep. John Lewis [D, GA-5] Rep. Daniel Lipinski [D, IL-3] Rep. David Loebsack [D, IA-2] Rep. Zoe Lofgren [D, CA-16] Rep. Nita Lowey [D, NY-18] Rep. Carolyn Maloney [D, NY-14] Rep. Edward Markey [D, MA-7] Rep. Doris Matsui [D, CA-5] Rep. Carolyn McCarthy [D, NY-4] Rep. Betty McCollum [D, MN-4] Rep. James McDermott [D, WA-7] Rep. James McGovern [D, MA-3] Rep. Kendrick Meek [D, FL-17] Rep. Gregory Meeks [D, NY-6] Rep. George Miller [D, CA-7] Rep. R. Bradley Miller [D, NC-13] Rep. Alan Mollohan [D, WV-1] Rep. Dennis Moore [D, KS-3] Rep. Gwen Moore [D, WI-4] Rep. James Moran [D, VA-8] Rep. Christopher Murphy [D, CT-5] Rep. Patrick Murphy [D, PA-8] Rep. John Murtha [D, PA-12] Rep. Jerrold Nadler [D, NY-8] Rep. Grace Napolitano [D, CA-38] Rep. Richard Neal [D, MA-2] Rep. James Oberstar [D, MN-8] Rep. David Obey [D, WI-7] Rep. John Olver [D, MA-1] Rep. Solomon Ortiz [D, TX-27] Rep. Frank Pallone [D, NJ-6] Rep. William Pascrell [D, NJ-8] Rep. Edward Pastor [D, AZ-4] Rep. Ronald Paul [R, TX-14] Rep. Donald Payne [D, NJ-10] Rep. Collin Peterson [D, MN-7] Rep. Earl Pomeroy [D, ND-0] Rep. David Price [D, NC-4] Rep. Nick Rahall [D, WV-3] Rep. Charles Rangel [D, NY-15] Rep. Silvestre Reyes [D, TX-16] Rep. Laura Richardson [D, CA-37] Rep. Ciro Rodriguez [D, TX-23] Rep. Mike Ross [D, AR-4] Rep. Steven Rothman [D, NJ-9] Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard [D, CA-34] Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger [D, MD-2] Rep. Timothy Ryan [D, OH-17] Rep. John Salazar [D, CO-3] Rep. Linda Sanchez [D, CA-39] Rep. Loretta Sanchez [D, CA-47] Rep. John Sarbanes [D, MD-3] Rep. Janice Schakowsky [D, IL-9] Rep. Adam Schiff [D, CA-29] Rep. Allyson Schwartz [D, PA-13] Rep. David Scott [D, GA-13] Rep. Robert (Bobby) Scott [D, VA-3] Rep. Jose Serrano [D, NY-16] Rep. Joe Sestak [D, PA-7] Rep. Albio Sires [D, NJ-13] Rep. Ike Skelton [D, MO-4] Rep. Louise Slaughter [D, NY-28] Rep. Adam Smith [D, WA-9] Rep. Victor Snyder [D, AR-2] Rep. Hilda Solis [D, CA-32] Rep. Jackie Speier [D, CA-12] Rep. John Spratt [D, SC-5] Rep. Fortney Stark [D, CA-13] Rep. Betty Sutton [D, OH-13] Rep. Ellen Tauscher [D, CA-10] Rep. Bennie Thompson [D, MS-2] Rep. C. Michael Thompson [D, CA-1] Rep. John Tierney [D, MA-6] Rep. Edolphus Towns [D, NY-10] Rep. Niki Tsongas [D, MA-5] Rep. Tom Udall [D, NM-3] Rep. Christopher Van Hollen [D, MD-8] Rep. Nydia Velazquez [D, NY-12] Rep. Peter Visclosky [D, IN-1] Rep. Timothy Walz [D, MN-1] Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz [D, FL-20] Rep. Maxine Waters [D, CA-35] Rep. Melvin Watt [D, NC-12] Rep. Henry Waxman [D, CA-30] Rep. Peter Welch [D, VT-0] Rep. Robert Wexler [D, FL-19] Rep. Lynn Woolsey [D, CA-6] Rep. David Wu [D, OR-1] Rep. John Yarmuth [D, KY-3]
House of Representatives Members Abstaining from Voting on Hoekstra Amendment: Rep. Leonard Boswell [D, IA-3] Rep. William Delahunt [D, MA-10] Rep. Jo Ann Emerson [R, MO-8] Rep. Luis Fortuno [R, PR-0] Rep. Wayne Gilchrest [R, MD-1] Rep. Al Green [D, TX-9] Rep. Eddie Johnson [D, TX-30] Rep. Frank Lucas [R, OK-3] Rep. Eleanor Norton [D, DC-0] Rep. Bobby Rush [D, IL-1]
A SYDNEY charity that admitted channelling aid through an Islamic organisation banned in Australia for its alleged terror links was yesterday raided by the federal police.
It was also attacked by one of its directors for failing to scrap a fundraising appeal that has been under investigation.
AFP and NSW Police counter-terrorism agents seized computer files and financial records from Muslim Aid Australia's headquarters in Lakemba, Sydney's Muslim heartland, during a seven-hour raid.
The police action was prompted by The Australian's revelations this month about the charity's connection to Interpal, a humanitarian network proscribed by Australia and the US.
British-based Interpal, also known as the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, has been cleared by the British Charity Commission of terror links, but failed three years ago to have its proscribed status revoked by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
MAA executive director Mohammed Taha Alsalami, who was interviewed by the AFP, said last night he was shocked that his organisation had failed to pull from its website a fundraising appeal that links its charity work to Interpal.
When told by The Australian of the "Gaza Crisis" appeal banner still bearing the logo of MAA and Interpal, Dr Alsalami said it was wrong to persist with the fundraiser.
"It's a shock that it's still there," said the former member of the Howard government's Muslim reference group.
"It shouldn't have been there in the first place. This whole matter is very sensitive now."
Dr Alsalami said he expected MAA staff - including executive director Iman Partoredjo, who is believed to be in Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage - to co-operate with the authorities.
He confirmed the AFP had already interviewed many of MAA's staff members.
"We have to abide by the law, and there's no question about that," he said.
"If there was any wrongdoing it should appear."
Dr Alsalami, one of five MAA board members, maintained he had little to do with the day-to-day operations of his group. He refused to say whether he was considering stepping down from his role.
In a series of reports this month, The Australian revealed that MAA had admitted distributing aid in the Palestinian Territories through Interpal, which was banned by then foreign minister Alexander Downer in 2003, three months after it was proscribed by the US for being "part of a web of charities".
It was suspected of raising funds and co-ordinating fundraisers on behalf of the Palestinian organisation Hamas.
Mr Downer added Interpal on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Consolidated List, which names banned groups and people.
It is a criminal offence under the Charter of the United Nations Act for Australian individuals or organisations to deal with groups identified by DFAT's Consolidated List.
Breaching the act can result in a maximum 10-year prison sentence and fines of more than $275,000 for individuals andmore than $1.1 million for organisations.
The Australian Council for International Development, the charity-industry body, launched an investigation into MAA after Mr Partoredjo, retracted an earlier admission to The Australian about working with Interpal.
ACFID's executive director Paul O'Callaghan said last night that his body was still investigating MAA.
The NSW Government, through its Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing, is also investigating MAA.
Following are excerpts from a birthday party organized by Al-Jazeera TV for released Lebanese terrorist Samir Al-Quntar. Al-Jazeera TV aired this segment on July 19, 2008
Interviewer: Brother Samir, we would like to celebrate your birthday with you. You deserve even more than this. I think that 11,000 prisoners – if they can see this program now – are celebrating your birthday with you. Happy birthday, brother Samir.
Samir Al-Quntar: Thank you.
Interviewer: Go ahead... There is a picture here... If the camera can show this... Let's cut it... Does the camera show this clearly or not? We have a picture here... This is the sword of the Arabs, Samir. Don't cut the picture, cut on the side.
Samir Al-Quntar: Here's Abu Qassam [Marwan Barghouti]. Interviewer: Marwan is here. Samir Al-Quntar: Abu Qassam is here with Ahmad Sa'dat. That's our prison warden...
Interviewer: This one?
Samir Al-Quntar: Yes.
Interviewer: What is the warden's name?
Samir Al-Quntar: His name is... Never mind.
Interviewer: This is when you were released. Here you are with Wafiq Safa. Samir Al-Quntar: Yes, this is Wafiq Safa. This is the most beautiful picture – with Hassan Nasrallah. This is the most beautiful picture. There cannot be anything more beautiful. Me and the secretary-general – the most beautiful picture of me ever taken.
Clashes between guards and prisoners at a jail in Syria have resulted in many deaths, a human-rights group says.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 25 people had been killed after military police fired live bullets at Islamist inmates.
The Syrian authorities have not yet commented on the situation, which remains unclear. One inmate told the BBC he believed more than 25 had died.
Prisoners said the clashes were sparked by raids in which guards beat inmates.
They said the guards had also desecrated copies of the Koran. Read more ...
Frontpage Interview's guest today is Linda Ahmed, one of the founders of Muslims Against Sharia. She is also co-chair of the new campaign Stop Honorcide, launched on Mother's Day 2008 on behalf of victims of honor killings.
FP: Linda Ahmed, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Ahmed: Thank you very much for having me here.
FP: Tell us about your new campaign, Stop Honorcide.
Ahmed: As you probably know, honor killings or honorcides are common in non-Western cultures. Even fairly westernized countries like Turkey have a huge honorcide problem. When non-Westerners move to the Western countries, they bring with them their traditions, honorcide being one of those "traditions".
Unfortunately Western media is downplaying honorcide problem in the West for fear of offending immigrant populations. You don't hear names like Amina & Sarah Said, Aqsa Perves, Morsal Obeidi, or Hatin Surucu on evening news. Read more ...
Despite the depraved content of the Arabic version of Al Jazeera, which openly supports terrorism, the municipally-owned cable system in Burlington, Vermont will continue to carry the slicked-up, sanitized English version: Vermont Cable System To Continue Carrying Al Jazeera English. Read more ...
A story that is disturbing for a chain of reasons has just come out from our national broadcaster. On the BBC's website yesterday, headlined 'Muslim concern at stop and search' the site leads with the news that:
'Muslims in Scotland have expressed unease about the use of "stop and search" procedures at Glasgow Airport.'
In any season this is a story likely to spread irritation among the British public.
But on reading through it emerges that the 'Muslims' expressing 'unease' at being searched at Glasgow airport are actually the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF). Readers might remember that this group was exposed last month, prior to its launch, as a Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisation whose members are, as lecturer in Divinity at Glasgow University Amanullah de Sondy put it, likely to:
'further [reinforce] isolationist approaches to education and hamper attempts at building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims.' Read more ...
The U.S. State Department has left it up to Fairfax County whether to continue leasing county buildings to the Islamic Saudi Academy, a local Islamic school that has operated in Alexandria and Fairfax for more than 20 years.
Textbooks used by ISA were recently found by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to promote religious intolerance and violence.
"The [State Department] has not objected to the [Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia] leasing the property in question for the Academy," reads the letter to Fairfax Board chairman Gerry Connolly on behalf of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
Although the county board voted in May to renew the school's lease, they reconsidered after the allegations by the USCIRF were released. Since the school is leased through the Saudi Arabian government, Fairfax asked the State Department to weigh in, a request that agency has now denied.
"No authorization from the Department to renew the lease is required," the federal response reads, putting the ball firmly in Fairfax County's court.
As of press time, county supervisors had not indicated what their next step might be. Read more ...
Instead of condemning extremists, too many Muslim leaders are protecting them by hiding behind the supposed peaceful nature of 'jihad'
'Had there been Nobel Prizes in 1000, they would have gone almost exclusively to Muslims." These are the words of Martin Kramer, a Jewish scholar of Islam and Arab history, published in the Jerusalem Post on Dec. 31, 1999.
The question that perplexes the world today is not just, "what happened to Muslim civilization and what caused its catastrophic decline in the millennium that followed?" but also, "why can't Muslims recover?"
The recent exchange in the Citizen between two Muslim letter writers provides us with an answer. Read more ...
Human rights and secularism, says Ahmed An-Na'im, create a space for protest. And, surprisingly, the lawyer, who is originally from Sudan, sees in the Muslim law system, the Sharia, the third pillar of a humane civil society. Interview by Edith Kresta
The Sudanese born Abdullah Ahmed An-Na'im teaches law at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Active in the fields of civil, human and international rights, he sees the Islamic Sharia as an important point of reference for him. The Muslim law system, which dates back to the seventh century, must, in his opinion, always be open to being questioned.
It can, however, even today, provide answers through fresh interpretations, which each person must be prepared to carry out for him or herself. The Sharia is not, according to him, to be thought of as a national law, but rather as a frame of moral values similar to that provided for Christianity by the Ten Commandments.
"One must engage with a situation as it actually is," says An-Na'im, "so religion is certainly going to play an important role in social development in Islamic countries". The lawyer is currently working on a project entitled "The Future of the Sharia", which is looking at the effects of modern global conditions on Islamic societies. He has come to Berlin at the invitation of the Irmgard Coninx Foundation. Read more ...
It is really sad, shocking and shameful when a convicted murderer is decorated as a hero. Shame on Lebanon's leaders, parties, dignitaries, politicians and officials for welcoming Samir Kuntar as a hero – in the process boldly and evilly distancing themselves from the hopes, aspirations, education, and culture of their own people. By doing so they have alienated themselves from the majority of the Lebanese people and negated the deeply Lebanese rooted standards and criteria for what is wrong and what is right, and for what is good and what is evil.
They are stupidly blemishing the actual peaceful image of Lebanon and the historic role of the Lebanese people as lovers and advocates for peace, democracy, coexistence and multicultural principles. In the eyes of the majority of the Lebanese people, Samir Kuntar is a convicted murderer and not a hero.
In May 2006, when I first introduced American readers to the Muslim Brotherhood strategic plan known as "The Project" (including the first complete English translation of such, published here at FrontPage), very little was known about the document beyond what had been reported in the European press and Swiss journalist Sylvain Besson’s book, La conquête de l'Occident: Le projet secret des Islamistes (Paris: Le Seuil, 2005).
We knew at that time from Besson's research that the document had been recovered from the home of Yousef Nada, the head of the Al-Taqwa Bank in Lugano and the de facto Foreign Envoy for the international Muslim Brotherhood movement, during a raid of his compound in November 2001 investigating Al-Taqwa's involvement in terrorism financing. The strategic plan has received considerable discussion and analysis in the Western intelligence community ever since. As Besson notes in his book, Nada admitted that the document was genuine but declined to elaborate about the circumstances of its drafting. Read more ...
News reports indicate that last week's World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid ended with something less than the Kumbaya atmosphere both organizers and attendees had envisioned.
According to the reports, a presidential advisor from the United Arab Emirates urged attendees "to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism," adding "I can speak to pacifists but not bellicists, who are in favor of war."
Rabbi Marc Schneier, chairman of the World Jewish Congress in North America, responded, saying "Israel is not a political issue... If you want to understand Judaism, then you need to understand that Israel is a core issue of our religion."
Jay Rosenbaum of Temple Israel in Lawrence, N.Y., went further, telling a New York Sun reporter that the comments were anti-Semitic, representing "the same old rhetoric that has led to more hatred and the building of a wall between the Jews and the Muslims for the last 60 years." Read more ...
WASHINGTON, July 22 (UPI) -- Indonesia is one of several Southeast Asian nations that are following the lead of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and launching programs to rehabilitate jailed Islamic extremists -- known as deradicalization.
But according to experts and two recent studies, Indonesia's deradicalization program -- a much smaller and less formalized affair than those run by its neighbors Singapore and Malaysia -- does not try to get the extremists to break with their radical, political interpretation of Islamic ideology, but rather to renounce violence, specifically suicide bombings and other mass casualty attacks on civilians.
The program "doesn't try to deradicalize them (in the sense of abandoning their interpretation of Islam) -- they're trying to get them to renounce violence," Zachary Abuza told United Press International.
Abuza, a professor at Simmons College in Boston, has long studied Islamic terrorism in the region and is the author of a forthcoming essay comparing all three nations' programs.
A study published last week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point comes to a similar conclusion. Read more ...
Republicans always claim the mantle of the anti-Jihadists. And for the most part, they are.
But when a supporter of jihad and terrorism comes to the midst of the G.O.P., that anti-jihadist/counterterrorist mantle comes crashing down. The Republican Party simply refuses to denounce pan-Islamists in its midst I've detailed that repeatedly on this site, from Michigan and Ohio GOP officials hanging out with and praising CAIR to pan-Islamist Grover Norquist's puppetmaster machinations at the Bush White House.
Now, the G.O.P. has an interesting opportunity to finally show it means business against terrorism . . . in the California gubernatorial race. Since Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is term-limited and elections for the new guy are being held in November 2010, some candidates are already setting up shop.
On the G.O.P. side, one of those is the notorious former Congressman Tom Campbell. Saturday's Wall Street Journal reports that Campbell stepped down as Dean of the business school at U.C.-Berkeley and launched an exploratory committee. Sadly, this will go beyond mere "exploration." Campbell is running for Governor of California. Read more ...
WASHINGTON - Two years after protracted American-Saudi negotiations persuaded the State Department that the Saudis would remove religious intolerance from their national textbooks, a new study finds the books still portray non-Sunni Muslims as the enemies of true believers.
The report from the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute finds that the Saudi textbooks are filled with the austere supremacism of the Wahhabi sect of Islam, despite promises from the Kingdom in 2006 to alter them. For example, a textbook for 10th graders on Islamic jurisprudence not only says it is permissible in Islam to murder a homosexual, but recommends the methods for doing so: burning alive, stoning, or throwing oneoff a high building. Read more ...
"Whoever Cooperates With [Terrorists] Or Responds to Their Appeals Is Regarded As A Criminal"
'Okaz: "The Ministry of Interior has announced the arrest of 520 extremists, the dismantling of their [terrorist] cells, and the foiling of their criminal plan. What is your view of all this?"
Sheikh Saleh bin Muhammad Al-Luhaidan: "May Allah bring success to the country's senior officials and security personnel who ambushed these evil and dangerous [terrorists] cells. [These terrorists] are not interested in the good of this country, but seek to harm it. Anyone who loves this kingdom is glad that the sources of evil are [captured] and its cells are eradicated..."
The Islamic Society of North America's (ISNA) roots in the Muslim Brotherhood have been strengthened by newly declassified FBI memos and from a second, highly unlikely source.
The records, recently obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism through Freedom of Information Act requests, show that FBI agents investigated a parent organization to ISNA, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), during the mid 1980s.
The FBI investigation concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood members who founded U.S.-based groups had risen to "leadership roles within NAIT and its related organizations," including ISNA, "which means they are in a position to direct the activities and support of Muslims in the U.S. for the Islamic Revolution." The FBI memo also said that:
Within the organizational structure of NAIT, there have been numerous groups and individuals identified as being a part of a covert network of revolutionaries who have clearly indicated there (sic) support for the Islamic Revolution as advocated by the AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI and his government as well as other fanatical Islamic Shiite fundamentalist leaders in the Middle East. This faction of Muslims have declared war on the United States, Israel and any other country they deem as an enemy of Islam. The common bond between these various organizations is both religious and political with the underlying common goal being to further the holy war (Islamic Jihad). Read more ...
LONDON (AP) - Britain's highest appeals court is scheduled to decide this week whether a divorced woman and her son should be deported to Lebanon, where she claims her abusive husband will gain custody under Sharia law.
The case will address the issue of Islamic law and the extent to which Britain is obliged to provide asylum to those wishing to flee countries that practice it.
Lawyers acting for the 34-year-old woman are expected to tell the House of Lords on Monday that her human rights would be violated if she were forced to return to Lebanon. They plan to argue that she has a right to a family life that will be lost in Lebanon.
According to Sharia, or Islamic law, that operates in Lebanon, a divorced mother can only have custody of her children until their seventh birthday. After that, the father can claim custody, and the mother will only be awarded visitation rights. Read more ...
Obama's campaign has created a Muslim liaison, according to two sources familiar with the move.
The sources said the job was likely to be filled by Haim Nawas, a Jordanian-American who filled a similar role for the campaign of General Wesley Clark in 2004.
The job is complicated by the fact that Obama has been forced repeatedly to deny that he is Muslim, a situation that grates on some Muslim-Americans.
Nawas wrote in 2005 that the Bush Administration should take a more nuanced approach to public diplomacy directed at Muslim women.
"We need to recognise that the social structure in the Muslim world is very different from America's," she wrote. "American women need to understand that what is best for them is not necessarily what is best for Muslim women. Advocacy of women’s rights in the Muslim world must show sensitivity to local political realities."
The creation of the position comes as Obama builds out a more traditional, constituency-based campaign structure than he had in the primary.
Neither Nawas or the campaign immediately responded to questions about the hire.
UPDATE: An Obama aide confirmed that the job had been created, but said the campaign had not made a final decision on who would fill it.
Chelyabinsk, July 22, Interfax - Eighty percent of Muslim literature published in Russia reflects ideas and principles of wahhabism, islamologist Roman Silantyev said.
"It contains appeals not to observe laws of non-Muslim states (and Russia is a non-Muslim state), to liquidate peoples with other religious convictions," Silantyev told journalists at the Chelyabinsk Interfax press center.
According to him, the same can be referred to informational sources as "many of them are financed by wahabis and promote ideas of radical Islam.'
Silantyev believes the key problem is that certain Islamic leaders are identified with all Russian Muslims.
"We often see that a Muslim leader speaks out with radical statements or threats and serve them up as an opinion of the significant part of Muslims. While the reputation of the leader is often questioned," the islamologist said.
He reminded, "according to the information of Russian general prosecutor's office, people's court twice condemned co-chairman of Russia's Mufti Council Nafigullah Ashirov for robbery and disorderly conduct."
LAHORE, Pakistan (ROD) July 18th: The corpse of a Christian youngster Peter 19 has been hauled out of a canal after he was brutally beaten to death in an 'honour killing' for courting a Muslim girl of 19, whose name is kept secret and Christian boy’s name is changed due to some security/ legal reasons. This gruesome episode took place here at Lahore, Pakistan, ROD has learnt.
Interfaith marriages between Christians and Muslims are allowed by the Islamic sharia. But such interfaith wed locks are totally unacceptable and strongly opposed by the fanatic Islamic clerics and common hard line Muslims, according to local customs. The relationship of love developed between them through mobile phone chatting. Read more ...
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is indifferent to Omar Khadr's plight because the Guantanamo Bay prisoner is "brown-skinned" and a Muslim, the leader of one of Canada's largest Islamic groups said Monday.
Harper's resistance to calls to repatriate the Canadian citizen shows he is pandering to Islamophobes, said Canadian Islamic Congress president Mohamed Elmasry.
"In this case, Mr. Harper is playing politics because of the backdrop of Islamophobia in this country," Elmasry said.
"This is where a leader comes in, to say this is really wrong and I have to correct that wrong by bringing this person (back to Canada) even if I lose some political points with Islamophobes." Read more ...
Elected officials and straphangers called on the MTA yesterday to pull the Islamic subway-ad campaign being promoted by a controversial Brooklyn imam whom federal officials have linked to acts of terrorism.
The push to promote Islam on the rails this September, in a $48,000 ad campaign sponsored by the Islamic Circle of North America, was reported in The Post yesterday.
"I strongly believe the MTA should pull the ads," said Rep. Peter King (R-LI), a ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee. "They are especially shameful because the ads will be running during the seventh anniversary of September 11, and because the subways are considered a primary target of terrorists."
Although the group says the ads - which will coincide with the holy month of Ramadan - aim to educate non-Muslims and reach out to those interested in joining the faith, many are incensed that Imam Siraj Wahhaj was chosen as the pitchman in a YouTube video for "The Subway Project."
In 1995, federal officials named Wahhaj an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to blow up city landmarks, although he was never formally charged. Read more ...
OSAMA bin Laden's driver was so close to al-Qaeda's inner circle he knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the September 11 attacks, a war crimes trial has been told.
Salim Hamdan's lawyer says the Yemeni, who was held for nearly seven years before his trial, was simply a paid employee of the fugitive al-Qaeda leader, a driver in the motor pool who never joined the militant group or plotted attacks on America.
But prosecutor Timothy Stone told the six-member jury of US military officers who will decide Hamdan's guilt or innocence at the trial at Guantanamo Bay that Hamdan had inside knowledge of the 2001 attacks on the US because he overheard a conversation between bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
"Virtually no one knew the intended target, but the accused knew," Mr Stone said.
Mr Hamdan, a father of two with little education, entered a not guilty plea to charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism on Monday, the opening day of the first US war crimes trial since World War II.
He could face life in prison if convicted.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. US officials have never stated it was shot down although rumours saying that abound to this day.
Prosecutors have said Hamdan had direct access to al-Qaeda's leaders. Mr Stone told the jury Hamdan earned the trust of bin Laden during a trial period from 1996 to 1998 and helped him flee after attacks on US embassies in east Africa in 1998 and the September 11 attacks.
"He served as bodyguard, driver, transported and delivered weapons, ammunition and supplies to al-Qaeda," Mr Stone said.
Hamdan is being tried in a hilltop courthouse at the US navy base in Guantanamo Bay, which has been a lightning rod for criticism of the US since early 2002, when it began housing a prison camp to hold alleged Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from the battlefields of Afghanistan.
Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent | July 23, 2008
A PALESTINIAN resident of Jerusalem last night commandeered a bulldozer and rampaged along the street outside the hotel in which US presidential candidate Barack Obama was due to stay today, in the second such attack in three weeks.
The driver was shot dead and up 16 people injured, most suffering from anxiety, in what Israeli police described as a terror attack. Police named the driver as Ghassan Abu Tir, from the East Jerusalem of Umm Tuba. He is a relative of a jailed Hamas MP.
The attack appeared to replicate a rampage on July 2, in which three people were killed when another Arab resident set off through a city street in a larger bulldozer, crushing several cars and overturning a bus.
Yesterday's incident was over within five minutes. The driver was shot first by an Israeli civilian, then by a border police officer. Several cars were severely damaged along with at least one bus that was struck by the bulldozer.
The attack took place less than an hour before the area surrounding the luxurious King David Hotel was due to be sealed off before Senator Obama's brief stay in Israel. The Democratic presumptive nominee was to arrive in Israel this morning hoping to win over Jewish voters, after gaining critical ground in his quest to establish his foreign policy credentials during a whistle-stop visit to Iraq.
He had on Monday used a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to reaffirm his commitment to a pullout of US troops from Iraq by 2010 if elected president in November.
As he left Iraq for neighbouring Jordan, Senator Obama's office said in a statement: "The Prime Minister said that now is an appropriate time to start to plan for the reorganisation of our troops in Iraq -- including their numbers and missions. He stated his hope that US combat forces could be out of Iraq in 2010."
He has pledged to withdraw US troops within 16 months of taking office. The time frame now being touted by Mr Maliki is only slightly shorter than that. Analysts predicted that the meeting with Mr Maliki, which highlighted the confluence of Senator Obama's Iraq policy and Iraq's own aspirations for US troop withdrawal, would boost the Democrat's credibility as a prospective world leader in a week when his every move is receiving close attention. It has also potentially complicated his Republican rival John McCain's main argument against him: that a withdrawal timeline would be tantamount to surrender and would leave Iraqis in dangerous straits.
While in Iraq, the Illinois senator gave significant ground on the White House-sponsored troop surge, which he opposed when it was implemented last year, but now concedes has contributed to improvements in security across Iraq. Senator Obama told US media he had not anticipated the convergence of the US troop surge, the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided they had had enough of al-Qa'ida, and the ceasefire by Shia militia. "So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct," he said.
Iraq has been a key point of difference between Senator Obama and Senator McCain, who opposes a US withdrawal along a prescriptive timeline and was a staunch advocate of the surge.
Courting the influential US Jewish bloc and a 60 million-strong pro-Israel Bible belt has also been a critical campaign goal , with both men increasingly turning their attention towards touchstone issues for Israel in the region. Senator Obama will meet five Israeli leaders and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during just over 24 hours in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Israel has lived the past sixty years more intensively than any other country.
Its highs – the resurrection of a two-thousand year old state in 1948, history's most lopsided military victory in 1967, and the astonishing Entebbe hostage rescue in 1976 – have been triumphs of will and spirit that inspire the civilized world. Its lows have been self-imposed humiliations: unilateral retreat from Lebanon and evacuation of Joseph's Tomb, both in 2000; retreat from Gaza in 2005; defeat by Hizbullah in 2006; and the corpses-for-prisoners exchange with Hizbullah last week.
An outsider can only wonder at the contrast. How can the authors of exhilarating victories repeatedly bring such disgrace upon themselves, seemingly oblivious to the import of their actions?
One clue has to do with the dates. The highs took place during the state's first three decades, the lows occurred since 2000. Something profound has changed. The strategically brilliant but economically deficient early state has been replaced by the reverse. Yesteryear's spy masterminds, military geniuses, and political heavyweights have seemingly gone into high tech, leaving the state in the hands of corrupt, short-sighted mental midgets.
How else can one account for the cabinet meeting on June 29, when 22 out of 25 ministers voted in favor of releasing five live Arab terrorists, including Samir al-Kuntar, 45, a psychopath and the most notorious prisoner in Israel's jails, plus 200 corpses? In return, Israel got the bodies of two Israel soldiers murdered by Hizbullah. Even The Washington Post wondered at this decision. Read more ...
An otherwise unremarkable hearing in the Fairfax County, Virginia, general district court last Thursday marked an ominous trend with respect to the cherished American judicial principles of the rule of law and equality before the law. The hearing on four misdemeanor charges against Dr. Mustafa Ahmed Abbasi featured all of the usual players - judge, bailiff, clerks, prosecutors, police officers, criminal attorneys, and defendant - but with one notable addition to the judicial drama, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
CAIR’s intervention in the Abbasi case is a manifestation of a larger campaign against law enforcement to use political alliances and legal threats to intimidate police in cases involving Muslim defendants and to establish separate and preferable treatment for Muslims in the American legal system. Read more ...
An Islamic group plans to blitz 1,000 subway cars with advertisements this September in a campaign being promoted by a Brooklyn imam whom federal officials have linked to a plot to blow up city landmarks.
The group says its mission is to explain the true nature of Islam to non-Muslims who believe the religion is bent on acts of violence - but Siraj Wahhaj, the inflammatory imam who appears in a promotional YouTube video for the project, has defended convicted bomb-plotters and called the FBI and CIA the "real terrorists."
US Attorney Mary Jo White even named Wahhaj one of 170 unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the thwarted plan to blow up a slew of buildings.
"In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam," Wahhaj said in one of his sermons.
The stark, black-and-white ads of the Subway Project promote Islam with the goals of clearing up long-held misconceptions about the faith and reaching out to those interested in becoming Muslim, according to the Islamic Circle of North America, the group behind the campaign. hind the campaign. Read more ...
JERUSALEM – Members of the most active West Bank terror organization are set to serve in security forces being deployed to protect Sen. Barack Obama during his trip to the West Bank tomorrow, WND has learned.
Obama is due to visit Israeli officials in Jerusalem and leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah as part of a wider Middle Eastern and European tour that includes Jordan, France and Germany.
According to security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Obama's Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Obama, particularly in securing the perimeter during a scheduled meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Brigades is listed as a terror organization by the U.S. State Department. The group took credit along with the Islamic Jihad terror organization for every suicide bombing in Israel between 2005 and 2006 and is responsible for thousands of shootings and rocket firings. Statistically, the Al Aqsa Brigades perpetuated more terrorism from the West Bank than Hamas, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.
Brigades leaders, speaking to WND on condition of anonymity, confirmed they will participate in protecting Obama as official members of the PA's security forces.
Many Brigades members, including the group's chiefs, serve openly in Fatah's Force 17 presidential guard units and the Palestinian Preventative Security Services; hundreds of Force 17 and Preventative officers are slated to secure Ramallah during Obama's visit there.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades members are slated to serve in a third ring of security forces patrolling the periphery of Abbas' Ramallah compound during the Palestinian leader's meeting with Obama.
The Israeli Defense Forces, working with U.S. security coordinators, will protect the main West Bank highway Obama's convoy will use to approach Ramallah. Security for Obama will be largely turned over to the Palestinians once he enters Ramallah, although security plans are being heavily coordinated with the U.S.
Various high-profile Al Aqsa Brigades terrorists serve in Fatah's security forces, including those in Ramallah. The current chief of Fatah's Force 17, Abu Hayyet, is accused by Israel of planning or involvement in at least 10 deadly terror attacks, according to Israeli security officials.
Abbas previously appointed senior Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades leader Mahmoud Damra as commander of Force 17, a major, U.S.-financed Fatah security force. Damra, who was arrested by Israel last November, was on the Jewish state's most-wanted list of terrorists.
The chief of the Brigades in Ramallah also serves in the Preventative Security Services.
Both Israeli and Palestinian security officials, speaking to WND, said there was no known threat to Obama.
Al Aqsa Brigades members doubling as PA security officers previously participated in security for other visiting U.S. officials without incident.
One Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades member who doubles as a PA security force officer and who is set to protect Obama, joked if there was any threat to the presidential candidate it will come from Israel:
"Maybe the Israelis will try something because of Obama's policy on Israel, which the Zionists don't like, but we will certainly protect Obama. We are professional security forces," the Al Aqsa member said.
Israel's Shin Bet Security Services released for publication that it had arrested six Arabs – two of them Israeli citizens and the other four Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem – for attempting to set up an al-Qaida cell with plans to shoot down Bush's helicopter during the president's recent visit to Israel.
THREE death-row Bali bombers will be executed "as soon as possible," Indonesia's attorney general said today after the Islamic militants declined to seek clemency from the President.
Hendarman Supandji said he hoped that so-called "smiling assassin" Amrozi, his brother Mukhlas and Imam Samudra would be executed before the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan in September.
The three bombers face death by firing squad for their roles in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians and three New Zealanders.
"We want it as soon as possible," Mr Supandji he said.
"Legally they can be executed because they won't submit a request for clemency. The legal effort is finished."
Families of Australian victims say they have been told by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) that the executions are imminent.
Indonesia's Supreme Court recently dismissed the trio's final legal challenge.
The country appears to be ramping up its use of the death penalty, despite a global push to eliminate state-sanctioned executions.
Three prisoners were executed at the weekend, including a mother and son who murdered a family 20 years ago.
Indonesia has now executed six prisoners in less than a month. It resumed executions in June after a 14-month lapse.
Mr Supandji said he could not give a specific time for the bombers' executions.
"It could be next month, or the end of this month or the end of next month," he said.
"It depends on the process from Denpasar District Court, the prosecutor's office and the Attorney General's office. My hope would be before the fasting month."
Mr Supandji said as far as he was concerned the bombers had waived all rights to seek clemency from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"We have offered it in writing to them and to their families and both have refused it," he said.
Some Australians who lost family members in Bali say they will celebrate the bombers' executions but others remain opposed, including former Adelaide magistrate Brian Deegan who lost his son Joshua.
Mr Deegan has written an open letter to Indonesian authorities saying "no good, only harm" will come from the executions.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark today said she did not support the executions, despite the "heinous crimes" of the three.
Indonesian human rights campaigner Usman Hamid said he suspected Indonesia was using the rash of recent executions to deflect attention from a corruption scandal inside the Attorney General's office and other government agencies.
"There is an increasing number of cases about bribery (among) the law enforcement officials ... the law enforcement agencies are (suffering a) crisis of their credibility," Mr Hamid said.
"Law enforcement agencies ... and the Government are trying to use the cases of (the) death penalty ... to have more credibility.
"This is wrong. If the Government wants to be seen as a strong government, with a strong law enforcement process, it should ... reform the judiciary, reform (the) prosecutors."
BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown will today increase the pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear programme by condemning as "totally abhorrent" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threats against Israel.
Tehran faces a series of sanctions against its oil and gas industries unless it halts attempts to develop its atomic capability within two weeks, senior British diplomats said last night.
Mr Brown is to use a speech to the Knesset in Jerusalem - the first by a British Prime Minister - to make his strongest attack so far on the Iranian regime while pledging an “unbreakable partnership” with Tel Aviv.
“To those who question Israel’s very right to exist and threaten the lives of its citizens through terror, we say: the people of Israel have a right to live here, to live freely and to live in security,” he will say.
“And to those who believe that threatening statements fall upon indifferent ears, we say in one voice: that it totally abhorrent for the President of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world.”
Mr Brown will say Tehran must end its nuclear ambitions or face concerted international action. “Iran now has a clear choice to make: suspend its nuclear programme and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response not of one nation but of many nations.”
Sanctions aimed at disrupting Iranian oil refineries and gas facilities are being prepared in case Iran fails to respond satisfactorily to demands that it suspends uranium enrichment within two weeks, senior British sources said.
The Prime Minister’s remarks are part of a coordinated effort to increase pressure to accept a so-called “freeze for freeze” offer, under which further international action is suspended in return for a moratorium on enrichment.
Javier Solana, the European Union’s special envoy, said that Iran had made insufficient progress during talks with Saeed Jalili, its chief nuclear negotiator, over the weekend. The US, which sent a representative to the talks for the first time, said that Iran now faced the prospect of confrontation unless it accepted the offer.
Mr Brown’s speech to the Knesset comes at the end of his first visit to Israel as Prime Minister, during which he also sought to add impetus to restarted peace talks with the Palestinians.
Speaking with President Abbas in Bethlehem, Mr Brown pledged an additional £30 million package of economic and security help for the Palestinian National Authority.
He said that the security wall erected by Israel was “graphic evidence of the urgent need for justice for the Palestinian people” and called on Tel Aviv to stop the spread of settlements.
“We want to see a freeze on settlements. Settlement expansion has made peace harder to achieve,” the Prime Minister said. “It erodes trust, it heightens Palestinian suffering, it makes the compromises Israel will need to make for peace more difficult.”
His appeal came as a human rights group released a video of an Israeli soldier shooting a rubber bullet at a Palestinian man who had been arrested and bound during a demonstration against the wall that Israel has built inside the West Bank to stop attacks on its territory.
ISRAEL plans to build a new city for Arab citizens in the Galilee region, the first housing project of its kind since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.
The proposal for the city, whose location has still to be determined, was made by Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit and approved by the cabinet yesterday, local media reported.
"There is a need to broaden the range of opportunities available to the non-Jewish population," Sheetrit was quoted as saying.
"My aspiration is for a new Arab city in the Galilee, where young couples can buy a house, just like in any other city in the world."
Israel's population of more than seven million people includes about 1.2 million Arabs, most of whom live in the north, in older Arab towns and villages that tend to lack modern infrastructure and adequate building space.
But while Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank since it occupied the territory in the 1967 war, the development of new Arab housing within its internationally recognised borders has lagged.
"Israel has never built a new Arab or Palestinian village within its borders. It would definitely be the first," said Suhad Bishara, a lawyer with Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel.
Israeli Arabs remain divided on the question of whether the construction of the new city is the best response to their growing housing crisis, with some fearing the new project could lead to further segregation.
"This is a way for them to ease the pressure on Jewish settlements and towns," Mr Bishara said.
"Within the Arab community I doubt this is what we need."
Many also fear that the new city could drain educated middle and upper income residents from existing towns and villages.
The project, which has the backing of the prime minister and the housing minister, will now go to the preliminary planning stage.
A committee, which will include Arab representatives, is expected to present its conclusions by the end of the year.
In a stunning development, and no doubt shamed by my repeated exposes about the long trail of Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and HAMAS enthusiasts and Muslim Brotherhood extremists that have come through the Noor Islamic Cultural Center over the years, we are pleased to announce that Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy will be speaking at Noor this coming Saturday, July 26 from 7-9pm (event flier below and full size flier here). Curiously, nothing as of yet has appeared on the Noor website about this important community event. Read more ...
CAIRO - Fatima Gabie Hassam chuckled with joy after a court ruling granting her the right to claim part of her husband’s estate. “I’m celebrating on Madiba’s birthday,” Hassam told South Africa’s The Times on Sunday, July 20, referring to former South African president Nelson Mandela.
“I’m the happiest woman in the whole wide world.”
Hassam, a mother of four, won a court ruling to amend legislation to allow widowed Muslim women to claim part of their husbands’ estate.
Hassam’s husband died in 2001, leaving her penniless and without any right to his estate. Read more ...
Feminist Outspoken Minister Skalli explains Moroccan Women Rights developments.
New Civil Law enacted in Morocco improved women positions within the family. A large improvement in the areas of divorce, alimony, education and minimum age of marriage for young women. The situation of women in Polisario camps, guerrilla group for an independent western Sahara, are suffering greatly and the western aid is being diverted to black markets in the regions , enriching Polisario leadership at expense of civilian refugees. Read more ...
Accusing the government of trying to build a 'compliant British Islam', a radical Islamic group in the UK has launched a campaign to stop young Muslims being corrupted by Western 'liberal values'.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, which former Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted to ban in Britain, has planned campaigns against Western 'attacks' on Islam.
The move comes as Hizb ut-Tahrirs British arm flayed government plans to combat Islamic 'extremism'. The government had decided to set up a panel of 20 Islamic experts to counter warped interpretations of the Koran and to advise youngsters on key Muslim issues and how 'that fits in with being a citizen in the UK'.
The Islamic group, which describes itself as a global Islamic political party, alleged that the authorities in UK were trying to build a 'compliant British Islam', and complains that the state was involved in an Islamophobic campaign.
''The current smears against Islam and the Sharia, the filthy cartoons defaming our beloved Prophet and the calls in Holland to ban the Koran are part of the propaganda used as part of the war on Islam, commonly called the war on terror,''
Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Taji Mustafa was quoted as saying by the Sunday Express.
''It is a supremacist war that aims to force one system, capitalism, and secular liberal values on the whole world,'' he stressed.
According to the British tabloid, the radical group claims young people in particular have been subject to an intense Islamophobic campaign and believes they are at greatest risk from the corrupting influence of Western liberalism, which it brands the cause of binge drinking, gun and knife crime, yo-culture and teenage pregnancies.
ALLEGED Bali bombings mastermind Hambali will face trial before a US military commission by the end of the year, with prosecutors saying the case against him is well advanced.
As relatives of the 88 Australians killed in the 2002 Bali attacks await the execution in Indonesia of the three men who carried out the nightclub bombings, the chief prosecutor of the US military commissions, Colonel Larry Morris, said prosecutors were on track to charge Hambali this year.
Colonel Morris declined to say exactly what charges Indonesian-born Hambali would face, but he told The Australian they would include ``substantive'' and conspiracy offences.
"A substantive offence is a traditional common-law crime, such as murder, as well crimes that depict the collaboration of these individuals,'' he said.
Hambali was arrested in Thailand in 2003. In 2006, it was announced he had been moved to Guantanamo Bay where he awaits trial along with 13 other so-called high-value detainees, including alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Colonel Morris said prosecutors had yet to make a final determination about which attacks Hambali would be charged over.
Hambali is alleged to have financed the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people.
US officials also suspect him of involvement in the 2003 Jakarta Marriot bombings, and plots to attack Western missions, including the Australian high commission in Singapore.
It is claimed he was the link between al-Qa'ida and Indonesian terror group Jemaah Islamiah. Colonel Morris said prosecutors had yet to decide if they would try Hambali separately or with three other detainees accused of conspiring with Hambali in a string of terror attacks across Southeast Asia.
But Colonel Morris's predecessor, Colonel Mo Davis, cast doubt on the progress of the Hambali trial, saying the controversial military commissions were probably doomed.
"My best guess is that their days are probably numbered ... It's become such a polarising symbol around the world that I don't know that you could ever fix it to a point where it would ever have credibility,'' Colonel Davis told The Australian.
But Colonel Davis said even if the commissions were abandoned, authorities would find another way to try Guantanamo's so-called "worst of the worst''.
"You're not going to see any of the high-value detainees walking the streets soon,'' he said.
A leading John McCain surrogate stirred controversy Friday after defending the Iraq war in particularly stark terms, telling reporters "the Muslims have said either we kneel, or they're going to kill us."
Bud Day, who was a prisoner of war with McCain in Vietnam and often advocates for the Arizona senator's presidential bid, made the comments during a conference call with Florida reporters organized by the Florida Republican Party.
The Miami Herald has posted audio of the call
"I don't intend to kneel, and I don't advocate to anybody that we kneel, and John doesn't advocate to anybody that we kneel," he also said.
Asked to respond to Day's comments, the McCain campaign issued a short statement from spokesman Michael Goldfarb.
"The threat we face is from radical Islamic extremism," he said. Read more ... Source: CNN
Muslims Against Sharia call on Senator McCain to explain to Col. Day the difference between Muslims and Islamists. If in the seventh year of the War on Terror, someone is to ignorant to understand that difference, presidential campaign is the last place he should be.
State school pupils are set to be taught Islamic traditions and values in compulsory citizenship lessons.
The move - part of a package of initiatives announced by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears yesterday - is designed to curb extremism.
Education campaigners warned however against giving Islam a privileged position over other faiths.
Other plans announced by Miss Blears also drew criticism - including a state-funded panel of Islamic scholars and theologians to provide community leadership.
Prominent Muslims said this scheme was naive because Government endorsement would erode the credibility of those taking part, especially among the young and disaffected.
Another measure will see Muslim children being taught citizenship lessons by imams in mosque schools - in the hope that they will be better equipped to resist extremist messages.
Many Muslim youngsters in the UK attend evening classes at madrassah schools attached to mosques, where imams give instruction in the Koran and Islamic history.
Ministers want imams to stress that the Koran places a duty on all Muslims to be good neighbours, carry out voluntary work and play an active part in civic society. Read more ...
MOSCOW -- Russia's highest Muslim council on Saturday issued a protest against a ban on some Islamic publications considered by the authorities to be "extremist."
The Council of Muftis "has taken a decision to request that the relevant institutions of the Russian Federation carry out a repeat analysis of the books," the council said in a statement.
Starting last year, the authorities have compiled a regularly updated list of publications seen as breaking sweeping new laws against extremism. Most of the banned books are linked to Islam.
The council said it was "seriously concerned" that there was no official committee to analyze the literature and accused the experts who compiled the list of doing so "tendentiously and subjectively."
The Council of Muftis, which represents Russia's 20 million Muslims, on Saturday also called for a "balanced" approach in a criminal inquiry against a Moscow editor accused of publishing one of the banned books.
MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) - Federal prosecutors say they should not be forced to drop references to al-Qaida and jihad from the indictment of 5 men accused of plotting to attack soldiers on Fort Dix.
Lawyers for the men last month asked a judge to delete such language, saying it was "inflammatory" and was included in earlier court filings to incite prejudice against the defendants.
In a response filed Friday, government lawyers said the terms in question are central to the case, arguing that jihadist principles caused the defendants to undertake the criminal conduct. Read more ...
PARIS - The suspected head of a group providing funding to Islamic extremists in Uzbekistan was charged in France after being extradited from the Netherlands, a source familiar with the case said on Saturday.
Irfan Demirtas, of Turkish and Dutch origin, was accused late Friday of funding terrorism by French judges Thierry Fragnoli and Philippe Coirre and placed in custody, the source said.
Demirtas was one of 10 people arrested in May in a crackdown led by France on people suspected of helping fund the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was formed in 1998 and claims to be linked to Al-Qaeda.
Eight arrests took place in a suburb of the eastern French city of Mulhouse and in the central Rhone region, one in the Netherlands and one in Germany. One suspect was later released in France. Read more ...
Global power is their goal, and they are willing to slaughter innocents to get there. A group of ultra-radical Islamists are training in the Gaza Strip, and SPIEGEL ONLINE met with one of their leaders.
By Ulrike Putz
It's not easy to find a place to meet the man who goes by the name of Abu Mustafa. A number of places were agreed on and jettisoned. Finally, after hours of cruising around Gaza City with Abu Mustafa's driver, the call came. The meeting would take place on the beach. There are enough people on the beach that one doesn't attract so much attention, the caller explained. How absurd this notion was would soon become clear.
Most people don't stick out on the beaches of Gaza to the degree that Abu Mustafa does. He picks his way across the sand on crutches, his leg wrapped in a cast up to his thigh. The Pakistani clothes he wears are also foreign -- and the white shirt that hangs to his knees makes walking on crutches even more difficult. Finally he slumps in a plastic chair. "Peace be upon you," he says quietly, welcoming his guest. Read more ...
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