A mosque in southern Belgium has named a female Muslim professor to the post of imam, the first such a move in the northwestern European country.
"Hawaria Fattah has been granted the rank of imam," Abdel-Jalel Al-Hajaji, the curator of Al-Sahaba Mosque in the southern city of Verviers, told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, October 25.
"It is the first move of its kind in Belgium and Europe."
Chosen along with two male imams, Fattah, a mother of three, will supervise the preaching activities for women at the mosque.
"But she will not deliver the sermon of the Friday prayers or lead the prayers," stressed Hajaji.
"Her role will focus on supervising the preaching and guidance activities for women at the mosque." Read more ...
The imam of the Al Bader mosque in Meaux (Seine-et-Marne) was indicted Tuesday for regularly celebrating religious marriage before the civil marriage and for unemployment fraud, and placed under judicial supervision, according to a judicial source. A judicial inquiry was started the same day.
The imam, Nourdine Mamoun (33), a French citizen, was banned from meeting husbands and marriage witnesses, and from leaving the country.
He is suspected of having celebrated 8 illegal marriages from Jan. 2006 to Dec. 2007 and of having improperly received a monthly allowance of 930 euro from Assedic (the French unemployment agency) from Aug. 2007 till today. Read more ...
From November the UK government will begin working with the Federation of Student Islamic Societies in the UK and Ireland (FOSIS) to try to better understand Muslim students. This policy is likely to backfire given that FOSIS are unrepresentative of Muslim students and regularly give a platform to extremist speakers.
The Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) has announced plans to "commission a study exploring the views and attitudes of Muslim students in England" involving a poll of 1500 Muslim students and focus groups, overseen by a steering group consisting of representatives from the National Union of Students (NUS), the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and FOSIS.
FOSIS leaders are influenced heavily by a narrow form of political Islam, inspired by Islamist parties such as Jamaat-e-islami and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the group regularly gives a platform to extremist speakers at British and Irish universities.
In November FOSIS will give a platform to Dr Azzam Tamimi at universities in the UK and Ireland on at least three separate occasions. Tamimi will speak at the FOSIS Palestine Conference 2008 at Nottingham University on 1st November and two events at Trinity College in Ireland on "Islamic Revivalism in the 20th Century" and "Chronicles of Islamic Political Thought" on 7th and 8th November. Read more ...
The credit crunch and shareholder activists are not the only challenges business has to face. There are rather more dangerous protesters out there than the occasional hedge fund manager who wants some shares to go up.
Last week at Borders, the UK and Irish bookstore chain owned by Risk Capital Partners, we received several threats from an extremist Islamic group saying we would suffer if we sold the controversial novel The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones in our shops. Read more ...
He wages a sometimes lonely battle against voices on extremism and intolerance within the American Muslim community. But M. Zuhdi Jasser has again demonstrated why his voice so important with comments about - of all things - a video game.
On Monday, Sony announced a delay in the much-hyped release of the Playstation 3 game Littlebigplanet after realizing some background songs contained Quranic expressions. The game's release was delayed out of a concern the music might offend and anger some Muslim players.
Littlebigplanet is a game involving a fantasy world of limitless imagination and a character known as Sackboy.
Jasser gave a statement to Edge magazine, which focuses on the burgeoning gaming industry, to say the company over-reacted:
"Muslims cannot benefit from freedom of expression and religion and then turn around and ask that anytime their sensibilities are offended that the freedom of others be restricted. The free market allows for expression of disfavor by simply not purchasing a game that may be offensive. But to demand that it be withdrawn is predicated on a society which gives theocrats who wish to control speech far more value than the central principle of freedom of expression upon which the very practice and freedom of religion is based." Read more ...
Washington: The United States on Thursday condemned the sentencing of 12 leading Syrian dissidents sent to jail for advocating for freedom of expression and a democratic constitution in Syria.
A Syrian court sentenced 11 men and a woman to 2-1/2 years each in prison on Wednesday for political crimes.
"The United States condemns the sentencing of 12 members of the Damascus Declaration National Council to two and a half years in prison," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement.
The dissidents were arrested last year in a case that drew international condemnation, with the United States and European nations repeatedly calling for their release. Syrian-US are already strained after a deadly American raid on eastern Syria this week. Read more ...
HEBRON, West Bank -- The Palestinian Authority recently uncovered a massive underground tunnel belonging to Hamas in the southern West Bank city of Hebron as the Islamic movement attempts to expand its power struggle from Gaza to the territory controlled by the pro-Western and moderate PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
Hundreds of these tunnels exist in the southern Gaza strip and are used to smuggle a variety of items from Egypt including arms, animals, foodstuffs and ordinary everyday household items. Under Israeli siege the hermetically sealed and deprived territory relies on these to provide various necessities.
However, this was the first such discovery of such a secret tunnel in the PA controlled West Bank where Hamas is finding it increasingly hard to train its military wing and store weapons as the PA, backed by the Israelis, beefs up its operations against the group.
The tunnel's entrance was discovered under the home of a Palestinian family during a raid by Palestinian forces in the area. Read more ...
In June 2008, the Kuwaiti parliament reinstated the Committee for the Study of Negative and Alien Phenomena in Kuwaiti Society. The goals of the committee, whose members are mostly Salafi MPs, is to study "alien practices and other negative phenomena that are harmful to Kuwaiti society," and to find "effective ways to control them."
Since its formation, the committee has instructed the Kuwaiti Information Ministry to censure art, video games, and TV programs that "do not adhere to Kuwaiti traditions," such as Star Academy, the Arabic American Idol, which the country has banned, following the committee's order. The committee has also warned the Kuwaiti press against publishing photos and materials that "violate the values of Kuwait," and questioned the Minister of Health regarding a dance party organized by a hospital which involved "immoral mixing of the genders." Another issue that concerns the committee is transsexualism, which it considers dangerous and threatening to Kuwaiti society and "requir[ing] prompt and serious action."
The committee's actions have evoked a wave of protest from Kuwaiti MPs, intellectuals, and journalists, who cast them as an attempt by Islamists to impose their agenda and curtail the country's democratic freedoms. Satirical articles have been published ridiculing the committee's attempts to police Kuwaiti morals, and criticizing it for being preoccupied with dance parties and TV programs instead of tackling the country's real problems. Read more ...
DALLAS – Palestinian charities receiving millions of dollars from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) were controlled by Hamas throughout the time they received the Texas-based charity's money, a lawyer for the Israeli Security Agency testified Wednesday and Thursday.
That opinion is based on the presence of Hamas leaders and activists serving in "key leadership roles" on the committees and the committees' work advancing the terrorist group's goals, said the lawyer, testifying anonymously under the pseudonym "Avi." He has been accepted as an expert witness on Hamas financing and social programs based upon his years of research in Israeli criminal probes.
And his opinion is based further on the presence of internal Hamas documents and propaganda items hyping the group in charity offices - even schools.
Five former HLF officials are accused of conspiring to provide material support to Hamas, largely through donations to Palestinian charities, known as zakat committees, which prosecutors say are controlled by Hamas. Avi, expected to be the final prosecution witness, is tasked with proving that connection. Read more ...
Islamic courts will be able to decide how a Muslim couple divide their money and property and who gets the children
By Steve Doughty
Islamic courts have been cleared to deal with family and divorce disputes.
Sharia tribunals will be able to decide how a Muslim couple divide their money and property and who gets the children.
The sole proviso from Jack Straw's Justice Ministry is that a formal law court must rubber-stamp the ruling.
This would be in the form of a two-page form sent to a judge sitting in a family court. The divorcing couple would not need to attend.
The decision follows nine months of controversy over the role of tribunals run according to Islamic strictures.
In February, Downing Street slapped down the Archbishop of Canterbury when he suggested the rise of sharia law seemed 'unavoidable'.
But in July, Lord Phillips, who has since retired as Lord Chief Justice, said sharia principles could be the basis for resolving family and business disputes.
Muslim ministers have warned that sharia should not have an official role because it accords unequal status to men and women.
Giving more weight to evidence from men could hand them a greater share of property and enhanced custody rights.
Lawyers said yesterday that using the secretive family courts to endorse sharia decisions would draw a veil over matters of wide public interest.
Critics of the idea said yesterday advancing the role of Islamic tribunals would further marginalise isolated minority communities.
The endorsement of sharia was announced to MPs by Bridget Prentice, a junior justice minister.
She said the councils would still have no jurisdiction in England and that rulings by religious authorities had no legal force.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, provoked controversy when he suggested the rise of sharia law seemed 'unavoidable'
But Miss Prentice added: 'If, in a family dispute dealing with money or children, the parties to a judgment in a sharia council wish to have this recognised by English authorities, they are at liberty to draft a consent order embodying the terms of the agreement and submit it to an English court.
'This allows English judges to scrutinise it to ensure that it complies with English legal tenets.'
A consent order allows couples to have a 'clean break' divorce in which there are no long-term maintenance payments.
The orders can be approved only where a couple have negotiated and agreed all aspects of their break-up such as money, debts, property and children. The family court judge must decide whether the agreement is reasonable and ensure no side has been disadvantaged.
The great majority of consent orders are approved.
Barrister Neil Addison said yesterday: 'If the system works, the judge will not allow an agreement where there has been pressure on one party. He allows a consent order only if the agreement seems reasonable.
'However most mediation of disputes takes place in private and agreements are approved in open court. This is different - the original sharia law is secret and so is the judgment.'
Robert Whelan, of the Civitas think-tank, said: 'The problem with the Government's attitude is the big question over how far submission to sharia courts is voluntary among Muslim women.
'Women who live in some communities may have no option but to go to the sharia court. The case is then rubber-stamped by a family court without any of us knowing how the decision was reached.'
Islamic tribunals have authority to make decisions in business and financial disputes where both parties agree to accept arbitration.
Five sharia courts operate mediation systems under the Arbitration Act of 1996.
But financial disputes are less controversial because they are much less likely to raise problems over the status of women.
Egyptian police have arrested two relatives of an Islamic scholar who runs a U.S.-based center advocating for democracy and human rights in the Muslim World.
According to the International Quranic Center (IQC), officials arrested Mustafa Kamel Mohamed Ali Sunday. Ali is not politically or religiously active. But he is a cousin of IQC President Ahmed Subhy Mansour. Later, authorities arrested a second cousin who is who writes for the IQC.
Mansour, a former professor of Islamic history at Al-Azhar University, has managed to anger radical Islamists and the Mubarak government in Egypt. Mansour left Egypt after being fired from his job and jailed by the government.
According to the Center's post on the arrests, it's part of a troubling escalation in intimidating Mansour and his supporters through his relatives. Read more ...
Syrian leaders have recommended reforming laws under which criminals convicted of so-called “honour crimes” get lenient sentences.
The commission for family affairs – a government body – proposed the change last week at the end of a state-sponsored forum on honour crimes, the first of its kind in Syria. More than 100 civic, religious and government leaders as well as legal experts attended the conference in Damascus, which also drew support from the ministry of justice and the ministry of religious endowments.
Under Syrian law, men who catch a female family member engaging in adultery or other “illegitimate sexual acts”, or even in a “suspicious state”, are exempted from the standard punishments for murder and assault. Those convicted of murders deemed to be honour killings face only six months to a year in prison.
The conference called for the honour crime exemption to be eliminated from the statute books, so that individuals convicted of murder in honour-related crimes would face a minimum of 15 years in prison.
“Article 548 gives permission for half of the [Syrian] people to commit murder,” said family affairs commission chair Simwa Astor. “We want to eliminate this article… for the sake of the sovereignty of the law, and to protect human beings.”
A local TV station has pulled the latest National Republican Congressional Committee ad in the 5th Congressional District campaign, apparently because of disputes over Democratic candidate Parker Griffith's statements about "radical Islam," according to an NRCC spokesman.
WAAY-TV Channel 31 did not air the ad, which features black-and-white footage of several terrorist bombings and the Sept. 11 attacks before airing audio of Griffith saying, "We have nothing to fear from radical Islam."
NRCC spokesman Brendan Buck said the station told him that some of Griffith's words were taken out of context.
Station mangers at WAAY-TV Channel 31 did not return phone messages left Friday afternoon.
Buck said the NRCC is working with the station to clear up any misunderstandings and hopes to have to the ad back on the air early next week. Read more ...
MOUNT HOLLY - Muslim gangsters terrorizing New Jersey streets were among the lot of thugs nabbed in recent sweeps and thrown into jail this week, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office said yesterday.
Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi, with Attorney General Anne Milgram at his flank, along with Jose Cordero, statewide director of Gangs, Guns and Violent Crime Control Strategies, said the Burlco Gang Task Force executed 22 arrest warrants on Wednesday.
Some big suspects — including eight gang members — were caught in the net of Operation Crew Cut. They included three recent murder arrests, three attempted murder arrests and a bank robbery.
The Muslims Over Everything (MOE) suspects included ranking gang member Michael Barrett, 28, of Mount Holly, who was arrested on prior drug distribution charges in Mount Holly and also charged Sept. 23 in Willingboro with possession of a .40-caliber handgun.
MOE member Anthony Pack, 20, was arrested in Burlington Township on June 19 for armed robbery of Beneficial Bank. Bernardi said Pack had a loaded .357 Magnum handgun in his car, $21,000 cash and a helping of crack cocaine. He’s slated for sentencing Dec. 19 in federal court.
n Bloods gang member Rashaun Turner, 21, of Edgewater Park, was arrested Sept. 24 for selling an M-1 carbine assault rifle in Edgewater Park, while another Bloods gangster, Antonio Streater, 25, of Camden, was one of three men nabbed in connection with the Aug. 16 double shooting at the Mount Laurel Marriott. Read more ...
AN al-Qaeda leader has called for US President George W. Bush and the Republicans to be "humiliated", without endorsing any party in the upcoming US presidential election, according to a video posted on the internet.
"O God, humiliate Bush and his party, O Lord of the Worlds, degrade and defy him," Abu Yahya al-Libi said at the end of sermon marking the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, in a video posted on the internet.
Libi, one of the top al-Qaeda commanders believed to be living in Afghanistan or Pakistan, called for God's wrath to be brought against Mr Bush equating him with past tyrants in history.
The remarks were the first comments from a leading al-Qaeda figure referring, albeit indirectly, to the US elections.
Muslim clerics often end sermons by calling on God to guide and support Muslims and help defeat their enemies.
In 2004 al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden issued his first video in more than a year just days before the elections to deride President Bush and warn of possible new Sept. 11-style attacks.
Bin Laden made little mention of Mr Bush's Democratic challenger John Kerry, telling Americans: "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe."
A Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) employee with 20 years' experience sued his employers alleging that he was demoted due to his pro-Israel political views. The board's counsel in the hearing has courted controversy by calling Hamas 'a liberation movement.'
The Local reported back in February 2008 that Lennart Eriksson, 51, after a 'long and relatively happy' career at the Migration Board (Migrationsverket), had been demoted from his post as head of an asylum assessment unit.
Eriksson sued the Board alleging that he was moved to a lower ranking position when his supervisor, Eugene Palmer, learned of his pro-Israel views expressed on his blog, Sapere aude!
"I want to defend freedom and democracy. I try to be humble and just. Therefore I must—as every good democrat must—defend Israel," read a passage on Eriksson's blog.
Palmer said at the time that after learning of Eriksson's controversial blog he was not alone in questioning whether it was appropriate for someone with Eriksson’s position at the Board to publicly express opinions about such a sensitive topic.
"Of course everyone has a right to any opinion. However, when holding an upper-level management position at the Migration Board, one must be careful about how one chooses to express private opinions in a public fashion," Palmer told The Local.
Staffan Opitz, representing the Migration Board at the hearing held at the district court in Mölndal, said during court proceedings on Friday, October 10th that Palestinian group Hamas should be considered a 'liberation movement'.
Opitz added that its founder Yassin was a 'Palestinian freedom-fighter', according to a report in Dagen, a Christian website.
The comments have further called into question the neutrality of the Migration Board.
Christian Democrat MP Annelie Enochson has now asked the foreign minister, Carl Bildt, what he intends to do to ensure that public authorities do not forward political agendas significantly different from government policy.
While conceding that it was not a minister's job to engage in the detail of how a public authority operates, Enochson pointed out that Hamas has been classified by the (Swedish) government and the EU as a terror organisation.
"The statement from the Migration Board is therefore not in line with current government policy," Enochson argued in a press release on Friday.
"The Swedish government stands for Israel's right to exist while Hamas through armed struggle wants to obliterate Israel and has the goal of liberating Palestine and Israel from the Jews. The question is whether it is the Migration Board's task to push its own foreign policy agenda."
The Migration Board's official position in the hearing at Mölndal district court, which concluded on Monday, October 13th, was that Eriksson's reassigment was due to poor performance and a lack of confidence in his abilities.
Lennart Eriksson hopes that the court will rule in his favour and force the Migration Board to nullify its decision and reinstate him.
He is also seeking damages of 100,000 kronor ($15,850) plus interest.
The verdict in the trial will be announced on Monday, November 10th 2008.
(IsraelNN.com) One of the senior Islamic legal authorities in the Palestinian Authority (PA), Sheikh Taiseer Tamimi, issued a fatwa ruling prohibiting Arabs who live in Jerusalem from voting in the upcoming municipal elections.
In the past PA clerics have urged Jerusalem's Arabs to not vote, but according to the Post this is the first official religious decree to this effect.
The Head of Algerian Muslim Ulemas Association, Sheikh Abderahmane Chibane, said he is clinging to his declaration qualifying the Syrian poet Adonis as “a pervert”.
Specialist advice is being given to Scotland Yard on how to reduce tensions between police and Muslims during the London Olympics because of growing concerns about the Games clashing with the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day, The Times has learnt.
Experts will also warn the Metropolitan Police to ensure that the planned commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Games does not offend local and travelling Muslims.
The recommendations have been made by inter-faith advisers to Scotland Yard, where antiterrorism police are preparing to combat any possible Islamic terrorist threat to the Games.
Community tensions in the lead-up to the games have already been raised by a controversial Muslim movement, Tablighi Jamaat, which plans to build Britain’s largest mosque and Islamic complex near the 2012 Olympic stadium site. Read more ...
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that a man who killed his second wife for allegedly having an illicit relationship with another received impunity on the pretext of an honour killing by the 'Jirga', the illegal tribal justice system on October 20, 2008. The Jirga has also ordered the other party who allegedly had the relationship with the deceased wife to hand over three girls together with 20 buffaloes as compensation to the husband. Police arrested the killer but soon released him and have respected the decision of the Jirga. Read more ...
Anti-Christian violence spills into Kenya as Somali Muslims attack in Nairobi.
NAIROBI, Kenya, October 27 (Compass Direct News) – Among at least 24 aid workers killed in Somalia this year was one who was beheaded last month specifically for converting from Islam to Christianity, among other charges, according to an eyewitness. Muslim extremists from the al Shabab group fighting the transitional government on Sept. 23 sliced the head off of Mansuur Mohammed, 25, a World Food Program (WFP) worker, before horrified onlookers of Manyafulka village, 10 kilometers (six miles) from Baidoa. The militants had intercepted Mohammed and a WFP driver, who managed to escape, earlier in the morning. Sources close to Mohammed’s family said he converted from Islam to Christianity in 2005. The eyewitness, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said the militants that afternoon gathered the villagers of Manyafulka, telling them that they would prepare a feast for them. Five masked men emerged, carrying guns, wielding Somali swords and dragging the handcuffed Mohammed. One recited the Quran as he proclaimed that Mohammed was a “murtid,” an Arabic term for one who converts from Islam to Christianity. Mohammed remained calm with an expressionless face, never uttering a word, said the eyewitness.
KARACHI, Pakistan - A 17-year-old Pakistani girl was mauled by dogs and shot to death in front of him over a land dispute disguised as a so-called "honor killing," her father said.
Female senators staged a walkout from the federal parliament Monday to press for action on better protections for women after a national newspaper published details of Tasleem Solangi's death.
"How long will women be buried alive and made to face hungry dogs? Women are not given their rights," opposition lawmaker Semi Siddiqui said.
Ibrahim Solangi, 28, has been in custody ever since Taslim's death in March and is awaiting trial on murder charges, said Pir Mohammad Shah, the police chief of the Khairpur Mirs district in southern Pakistan. Taslim's husband was also her first cousin.
Human rights groups say hundreds of women are killed by male relatives every year in Pakistan for alleged infidelity or other perceived slights to the family name, and activists say many more cases go unreported. Read more ...
KISMAYU, SOMALIA - Somali Islamists have stoned to death a woman accused of adultery in the first such public killing by the militants for about two years.
The 23-year-old woman was executed late on Monday in front of hundreds of people in the southern port of Kismayu, which the Islamist insurgents captured in August, witnesses said.
Guards opened fire when a relative ran forward, killing a child, they said.
“A woman in green veil and black mask was brought in a car as we waited to watch the merciless act of stoning,” one local resident, Abdullahi Aden, told Reuters.
“We were told she submitted herself to be punished, yet we could see her screaming as she was forcefully bound, legs and hands. A relative of hers ran towards her, but the Islamists opened fire and killed a child.”
The Islamists last carried out public executions when they ruled Mogadishu and most of south Somalia for half of 2006. Allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces toppled them at the end of that year, but they have waged an Iraq-style guerrilla campaign since then, gradually taking territory back. Read more ...
Samantha Maiden, Online political editor | October 30, 2008
KEVIN Rudd has reaffirmed Australia's opposition to the death penalty as the Bali bombers await execution, while describing the terrorists as callous murderers.
Risking the anger of victims' relatives in the lead-up to the execution, the Prime Minister has unequivocally stated the federal Government's position after backbenchers complained he needed to make it clear.
"Well, the Bali bombers are murderers,” he said today. “Many... have been affected by their murderous, cowardly and callous act. It's appalling.
“But I am not going to pretend to you that our policy on the death penalty has changed.”
The Government has also warned there may be an increased risk of terrorist activity in Indonesia as the execution looms, warning Australians to think carefully before travelling to the region.
Mr Rudd said his position remained clear - that Australia would not intervene to oppose the executions and would only make special representations on behalf of Australians facing the death penalty. He said he was not aware that Indonesia had advised Australia of the execution date.
"We are universally opposed to the death penalty,” he told Melbourne radio 3AW.
"We make no exception to that. That's been a bipartisan policy between us and the Liberals.
“Secondly, the other part of our policy is when any individual is convicted of the death penalty anywhere in the world, we the Australian Government only intervene in the case of Australian citizens.”
The Prime Minister's comments follow pressure from anti-death-penalty Labor backbenchers for the Government to state a clear position and the recent furore over WA Labor MP Melissa Parke's warning that the execution of the Bali bombers "will only decrease our human dignity" - a claim that angered victims' families.
Last year, Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland was forced to apologise to the families of Bali victims for speaking out against the death penalty for terrorists so close to the anniversary of the attacks.
Mr McClelland said at the time he was “very conscious ... this was a mistake I made” and “I would apologise for any hurt that any of those people may justifiably feel”.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said today speculation about the execution date of the Bali bombers only added to the suffering of the bombing victims' families.
“We have the understanding, from what the Indonesians have said publicly, that that (execution) is effectively imminent,” Mr Smith told ABC Radio today.
“It's entirely a matter for the Indonesian authorities, it's a matter for their judicial and legal processes.
“Every time the matter is referred to, the families of the victims of the bombing will just relive the agony of the loss of loved ones.”
Despite Labor's opposition to the death penalty, Mr Smith said: "We don't make representations on behalf of nationals of other countries, and we certainly don't make representations on behalf of terrorists” in relation to the death penalty.
“We don't see that in any way as being contradictory,” he told Sky News.
The Government has also warned there may be an increased risk of terrorist activity in Indonesia as the execution looms, warning Australians to think carefully before travelling to the region.
Mr Rudd said his position remained clear - that Australia would not intervene to oppose the executions and would only make special representations on behalf of Australians facing the death penalty.
He said he was not aware that Indonesia had advised Australia of the execution date.
Cindy Wockner in Semarang, Java October 30, 2008 12:00am
THE men who will form the firing squad that takes aim at the Bali bombers' hearts will be single and healthy and will have passed regular psychological checks.
They will also be good shots with a rifle -- most probably an SS1, using 5.5mm bullets.
This week they practised on police firing ranges shooting at life-sized cut-out targets of men as well as circles.
Three squads of 12 marksmen, plus a commander and a senior member, will soon be chosen to shoot Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra, possibly this weekend.
They will be executed on Nusa Kambangan Island, near the town of Cilacap.
Almost 1000 police are on standby in Central Java to deal with potential trouble.
Police were conducting road blocks and ID and vehicle checks of cars coming and going from Cilacap.
The firing squads will be chosen from Brimob -- the Brigadier Mobile Brigade -- part of the paramilitary police in the Central Java region, closest to where the executions will take place.
The headquarters of the Central Java region is the city of Semarang, about six hours' drive from the execution site.
Members of Brimob were conducting their regular shooting and target practice this week. At first they fired from 100m, then moved to 75m and 50m. They fired standing and kneeling.
As target practice is part of their normal routine, commanders say they don't need to do anything special to qualify for a firing squad, because everyone in the squad can shoot well.
Brimob's Central Java chief, Commissioner Wahyudi Hidayat, said the firing squads would be chosen from 1870 candidates.
Commanders knew their members well and would choose the squads.
"All of Brimob has been trained to do jobs like the firing squad," he said. "We don't have any specific team . . . because everybody must be trained to do it.
"We just do normal basic Brimob training and we have shooting training almost every day."
Brimob's national commander, Insp Gen Sylvanus Yulian Wenas, said no one ever refused firing squad duty unless they were ill. Squads were chosen at the last minute. He laughed at the suggestion they would need special training.
"If it's only for shooting Amrozi, why do we need to practise? Every person in the squad can do it," he said.
Of the 12 shooters in each squad, only three have live bullets in their weapons -- so no one knows who fires the fatal shot.
Firing squad members aim at reflectors pinned over a prisoner's heart.
Should a prisoner survive, the commander has an "amnesty shot" to the head with a revolver.
In practice this has not happened in any recent execution in Indonesia.
A gang of five men beat a Somali teenager to death because of a row over Muslims drinking alcohol, a court heard today.
Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim, 17, was repeatedly hit across the head with a samurai sword, baseball bat, machete and metal pole after being chased in Sefton Park, Liverpool, in March this year.
The teenager became embroiled in the fight after accompanying his cousin, Ahmed Mahamoud Ahmed, 16, to a "straightener" – a one-on-one fight – with the alleged killer Ali Mohammed, 19.
Liverpool crown court heard how Mohammed is believed to have accused Ahmed of breaking Muslim rules by drinking alcohol and held him down while a friend hit his head with a bat.
The 16-year-old boy was chased home where his mother's car windows were smashed, said Tim Holroyde QC, prosecuting.
The next day, Ahmed was lured to the fight - where Mohammed, his two brothers Khadar, 23, Essa, 22, and two cousins lay in wait, it was claimed. Read more ...
CAIRO // While the Quran permits a husband physically to discipline his wife should she disobey him, a recent wave of rulings by Islamic scholars are encouraging women to fight back.
This week, Sheikh Abdel Hamid Al Atrash, who heads the committee for fatwas, or religious edicts, at Al Azhar University in Cairo, Sunni Islam’s highest institute, ruled that women are entitled to use violence to defend themselves from abusive husbands.
“A wife has the legitimate right to hit her husband in order to defend herself,” the independent daily Al Masry Al Youm quoted Sheikh Atrash as saying on Monday. “Everyone has the right to defend themselves, whether they are a man or a woman … because all human beings are equal before God.”
Sheikh Atrash’s fatwa comes on the heels of similar rulings by religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Last week, Saudi Sheikh Abdel Mohsen Al Abyakan was quoted by Shams, a Saudi newspaper, urging women to resort to “the same kind of violence” their husbands use against them, whether it be with a leather strap or a wire cable.
Sheikh Abyakan confirmed his views on a popular Muslim website. Read more ...
Not content with banning women from wearing trousers, Malaysia's top Islamic council now wants a ban on yoga, according to a report on state news agency Bernama.
The National Fatwa Council's Deputy Director-General Othman Mustapha told reporters after a seminar on Islamic jurisprudence on Thursday that the announcement would be made soon.
Professor Zakaria Stapa of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's Islamic Studies Center told the seminar on Wednesday that Muslims who had taken up yoga should stop practicing as it could damage their faith, Bernama said.
Last week the Fatwa Council decreed that tomboyish behavior by girls, including wearing trousers, was immoral as it may lead to the practice of lesbian sex.
Another interesting wrinkle in this ongoing saga - if you will, is the appearance of Abukar Arman and Abukar Osman (Balle) business partner Abdinur Mohamud on the scene (or, more accurately behind the scenes).
Since the apple doesn’t usually fall far from the tree, finding Abdinur (who works for the State of Ohio Dept of Education) is not all that unusual. Where we found him is ...
In this 2006 video, Abdinur is seen leading a protest against a visit by a South African ambassador - which is mind you, perfectly legal in the Shari’a free USA. The uniqueness, if you will comes when we see Abdinur pictured with a Columbus Mayoral Staffer (Community Relations Commission-New Immigrant Initiative) employee named Abdirizak Farah. Read more ...
Jacqui Smith said coming to the UK is a "privilege"
A "presumption in favour of exclusion" is being introduced to make it easier to prevent extremists entering the UK, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said.
Ms Smith said it would now be up to the individual concerned to prove they would not "stir up tension" in the UK.
For the first time a list of the names of those excluded - including so-called "preachers of hate" - will be published and shared with other countries.
Since 2005 230 people have been barred from entering the UK.
About 80 of them are religious extremists.
Ms Smith said: "Through these tough new measures I will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country. Read more ...
On April 3, 2008 Representative Keith Ellison [D, MN] the nation's first Muslim Congressman, introduced Resolution 1078 to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. [These writers have published extensively about Keith Ellison's Islamist ties see for example, Keith Ellison, The Wahhabist Choice for Congress, http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=ellison110406.htm]
The resolution calls for the implementation of a Global Marshall Plan which will "demonstrate the commitment of the United States to peace and prosperity," stating that it, "must operate within the ethical framework of generosity and magnanimity, not merely of instrumentality, and to be successful and must be perceived as more than a new attempt to extend influence into the world." [source, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.RES.1078.IH:]
Rather than originating domestically, it is rather a German led initiative funded by companies and individuals, who describe their mission as, "The state of the poor, the gap between north and south, cultural conflicts, security and environmental issues; these are all the problems which ask for an improved and binding global framework that brings the global economy into harmony with environment, society and culture..." [source, http://www.globalmarshallplan.org/what/index_eng.html] Read more ...
In a recent conference, I was faced with a recurring question: Will there be a third Palestinian uprising? Although seemingly uncomplicated, the question is loaded, and exceptionally important. I rushed through the answer, knowing fully that one cannot address such a multilayered query in two minutes or less.
A “third uprising” implies that the second uprising has already folded. But has it? Or did it simply lose momentum, sense of focus and direction, or were its energies squandered — as a popular uprising — on factional disputes and internal division? Surely some of the visible leaders in guiding the uprising, or intifada, in its initial stages are no longer involved in the current stage. One cannot simply speak of one cohesive intifada if many of the players have switched sides or changed roles, or are absent altogether.
To approach this subject more practically, the first intifada, that of 1987, would too have to be scrutinized, and thoroughly so. Read more ...
MAHMOOD RAQI (PAN): A Taliban local commander killed on Saturday night in Tagab district of central Kapisa province when he was planting a roadside landmine.
Major General Mutiullah Safi, Kapisa police chief told Pajhwok Afghan News on Sunday the commander was planting a land mine in Sherkhil area of Tagab district at night when it exploded.
A local resident in Tagab who wanted to be anonymous and introduced himself as member of armed Taliban confirmed that Ali Nazar was killed while he was planting mine.
He told Pajhwok Afghan News on the phone that U.S and French forces patrol on the road and he wanted to plant mine for them. Read more ...
DUBAI // Internet blocks imposed in the UAE and other Middle East countries are failing to stop young people from seeing the censored websites, security experts were told yesterday.
A survey of internet habits showed that many young people in the region have used proxy servers or software to get around censorship, suggesting that blocks imposed in the UAE and other countries are little deterrent to a generation that has grown up with technology. The results of the survey were released at the National Security Summit, which ended yesterday.
More than two-thirds of the 16-to 35-year-olds surveyed said they had used the internet to communicate with people it would normally be considered culturally inappropriate for them to interact with, such as members of the opposite sex. Read more ...
In Washington D.C., when you go to the main city subway station (Metro Center), you will be surrounded by numerous advertisements showing images of Washington D.C. destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. The source of these images is the same source as images promoted on Jihadist web sites in May 2008. On May 29, 2008, the Daily Mail and other media reported that "SITE also released a computer-generated image, showing Washington D.C. in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, which reportedly appeared on an Islamist forum."
In both the D.C. subway advertisements and the Jihadist web sites, the images come from a "game" being promoted by the D.C.-area based Bethesda Softworks entitled "Fallout 3." Bethesda Softworks is located in Rockville, Maryland, a mere 18 miles from the White House in Washington, D.C. Bethesda Softworks' new software "game" Fallout 3 portrays "the Capitol Wasteland in and around Washington, DC," which the government-funded Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has agreed to advertise in the DC subway system used by over 800,000 government workers and individuals every day. This is the same "game" that Jihadists have obtained an image from to post on their websites of a destroyed, crushed America. (Note: while the D.C.'s Metro Center ads are not the exact same Fallout 3 image referenced in reports about Jihad websites, they are very similar Fallout 3 images of a destroyed Capitol building and other D.C. landmarks. The Fallout 3 image of the destroyed Capitol building on Jihad websites is promoted as free "computer wallpaper" on the Bethesda Softworks website.) Read more ...
In the final days of the 2008 Presidential election season – with just 6 days now remaining until voters cast their ballots – both campaigns are carefully maneuvering to gain an edge, while still others are singularly focused on just "getting out the vote." Regardless of the outcome desired by these activists, there seems to be one unified message across the American political spectrum these days: Participate in our democratic system.
However, one college's Muslim student organization has sought to air a completely different message regarding the election: that of the Islamists.
A student named Farhad Akbari posted an essay on the internal Yahoo! Group of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at San Diego Mesa College on October 14. In his post, "The Issue of Voting," Akbari delves into the election, warning his fellow group members of the fate in store for those who cast a ballot for "a person who fights Islam, governs contrary to Islam, and is himself a kafir [infidel or unbeliever]…" Akbari does not reserve this treatment for any specific candidate. Rather, he holds both major party candidates in equal regard. Read more ...
DALLAS – Cradle-to-grave social support - from kindergartens to medical supplies to aid for needy families - helped Hamas win the hearts and minds of Palestinians and vault the terrorist group to power, an Israeli security official said Monday.
"Avi," a lawyer with the Israeli Security Agency, was accepted as an expert witness on Hamas' financial infrastructure in the trial of five men accused of illegally funneling millions of dollars to the terrorist group. He was allowed to testify anonymously for security reasons. Spectators were cleared from the courtroom before his testimony and a camera feeding the proceedings to a second courtroom was covered.
Avi described his research into Hamas' finances and social systems in the course of Israeli investigations dating back to 2000. He prepared a Power Point presentation showing how Hamas social programs serve Palestinians throughout all phases of the life cycle. Hamas runs kindergartens, primary and high schools and universities, Avi said. They provide medical supplies and cash support for the families of men imprisoned by Israel, killed by Israeli soldiers or who died carrying out terrorist attacks. Read more ...
September 11, 2001, will live in infamy, but February 26, 1993, should also cause Americans to shudder. On that day 15 years ago, Islamic militants tried to topple the World Trade Center; six people in the building were killed, over a thousand injured. It was the first time the world network of Islamic terrorists had struck on American soil. Most Americans missed the message.
Andrew McCarthy's Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad is a comprehensive, meticulous, and impassioned reminder of that message. As lead prosecutor in one of the most notorious terrorism cases in U.S. history, no one is better equipped than McCarthy to recount the details of the ensuing trial that condemned Islamist kingpin Omar Abdel Rahman to a lifetime in a supermax prison. Equal parts historian, storyteller, and prophet, McCarthy relates the case's background magnificently. He begins with a penetrating history of the jihad movement: its origins in the Afghan-Soviet war, the CIA's involvement in fostering an environment that in turn spawned al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, and the policy failures and institutional incompetence of our government, which eventually allowed a terrorist cell led by Rahman, the Egyptian "blind sheik," to conduct the recruitment, planning, and training for a major attack right here on our shores. Read more ...
NEW YORK, Oct 28, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The Clarion Fund, a non-profit organization committed to educating the American people about national security issues, called on the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to end its smear campaign against the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West.
"CAIR, an organization that refuses to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah, cannot refute the accuracy of Obsession so it has decided to attack The Clarion Fund in hopes of discrediting the film," said Raphael Shore, the producer of Obsession and the founder of The Clarion Fund.
To coincide with the anniversary of 9/11, The Clarion Fund distributed 28 million DVDs of Obsession as an advertising insert in 70 papers across the country. In response, CAIR has organized a smear campaign to attack Obsession in the media as hate speech. This defamatory claim is designed to distract the public from examining the threat of radical Islam. Read more ...
On Sunday, Arab News reported, "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis, Robert M. Kimmitt, U.S. deputy secretary of the Treasury, said at a press conference held at the U.S. Embassy here yesterday." The newspaper went on to note that "[Mr. Kimmitt] said that experts in the U.S. Treasury Department are currently learning the important features of Islamic banking."
As it happens, for the better part of a year we at the Center for Security Policy have spent a fair amount of time trying to teach U.S. Treasury Department and other government "experts" about what is euphemistically called "Islamic banking" but better known as Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF). In meetings with Mr. Kimmitt and other top Treasury officials, my colleagues and I have presented all they really need to know about the "important features" of this growth industry.
Specifically, we shared with them a detailed legal memorandum written by one our experts - David Yerushalmi, an attorney specializing in securities law who is deeply knowledgeable about the comprehensive theo-political-legal code that authoritative Islam calls Shariah. Mr. Yerushalmi's memo makes a compelling case that there is both civil liability and criminal exposure associated with SCF.
This is so because, at its core, Shariah is sedition: It explicitly espouses the violent overthrow of all secular governments and constitutions - including those of the United States - in favor of a global Islamic theocracy. The Yerushalmi memo makes clear that Shariah advisers - who play a central role in this industry as it falls to them to determine whether transactions are Shariah-compliant or not - and/or the companies that employ them appear to be involved in one or more of the following: racketeering, antitrust violations, consumer and securities fraud or material support for terror. Read more ...
INDONESIAN police are investigating a wealthy Muslim cleric who married a 12-year-old girl and is reportedly planning to wed others aged seven and nine, a spokesman said today.
Pujiono Cahyo Widiyanto, a 43-year-old businessman and cleric from the Central Java city of Semarang, has courted nationwide controversy over his decision to marry the girl, who comes from a poor family.
Mr Widiyanto has defended the marriage, which is his second, saying the girl had already reached puberty.
"We are investigating the case. We are now gathering witnesses and then we'll look for evidence on what laws the man might have broken, and we'll follow up from there," national police spokesman Abubakar Nataprawira said.
The Jakarta Post daily reported Mr Widiyanto could be charged under a 2002 child protection law for forcing or trading a child into sex and for marrying below the legal minimum age of 16.
Child protection activists have also called for Mr Widiyanto to be charged with child trafficking.
"I'm very concerned, disappointed and angry. Such cases often happen in the villages where daughters are married off young because their families are facing economic troubles," Seto Mulyadi, chairman of the national child protection commission, said.
Mr Widiyanto has been backed by some high-profile Muslim figures, including Hilman Rosyad Syihab, the deputy head of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), according to the Detikcom online news service.
Islam allows for marriage regardless of whether a girl has reached sexual maturity, Mr Syihab was quoted as saying.
"It is not a problem under Islamic law," Mr Syihab said.
Detikcom also said Mr Widiyanto is planning to marry two more girls aged seven and nine.
Nearly 90 per cent of Indonesia's 234 million people are Muslim, most of whom practise a moderate strain of the religion.
From correspondents in Birmingham, United Kingdom | October 28, 2008
FOUR men arrested last week during raids in the central English city of Birmingham have been charged under anti-terrorism laws and will appear in court today, police said.
Three of the men, aged 29, 30 and 34, all from the city, were charged with engaging in conduct with the intention of assisting in the commission of acts of terrorism, West Midlands police said late yesterday.
A fourth man, aged 31, also from Birmingham, was charged with failure to disclose information relating to an act of terrorism.
A fifth man arrested in the raids on October 21 was released without charge.
Britain has been on heightened alert since suicide bombings on London's public transport network in July 2005 left 56 dead, including the bombers.
The country's terror threat level is currently at "severe", the second-highest of five levels.
TZIPI Livni's call for a snap election after her failure to hold Israel's fractious coalition government together is a setback for the Middle East. Seemingly on the cusp of becoming Israel's second female prime minster after Golda Meir, Ms Livni refused to concede to the demands being made by the ultra-orthodox Shas party in return for political support. By the recent standards of Israeli politics, it was a courageous decision, even though it plunges the region into even more uncertainly.
Ms Livni's failure to form a government removes any chance that US President George W. Bush will leave office with his legacy enhanced by at least the outline of a peace deal with the Palestinians. And it could leave his successor with a poisoned chalice. Opinion polls favour the right-wing Likud party led by Benjamin Netanyahu to form the next coalition government. The election of Mr Netanyahu, who is adamantly opposed to Palestinian statehood, could delay the peace process indefinitely and lead to an increase in violence by the hardline Jewish settlers and militants among the Palestinians.
A staunch secularist who believes the best chance for the survival of the Jewish state is for Israel to get out of much of the occupied territories and the West Bank, Ms Livni was considered the best hope of advancing the peace process with the Palestinians. But instead of building on the progress being made on several fronts, including the ceasefire deal with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the normalisation of relations with Syria, Israeli politics is likely to remain in the doldrums until elections are called in February.
Ms Livni used her clean image to win the Kadima party primary vote after Ehud Olmert was forced to resign over a corruption scandal, but getting enough parties to come on board to form a government eluded her. Israeli commentators criticised her for failing to live up to her promise of standing for a "different kind of politics". But the blame does not rest entirely with her. Israel is burdened by a fractious political system in which small parties backed by narrow interest groups demand huge concessions as the price of offering political support. When Shas demanded an exorbitant increase in support for child welfare payments and an undertaking that an undivided Jerusalem ruled by Israel was not negotiable, Ms Livni called the party's bluff.
Much will depend on whether Israeli voters see Ms Livni's failure to form a government as a sign she lacks the experience needed for an assignment as tough as Israel's next prime minister, or as someone who refuses to compromise on matters of principle. Ms Livni's best hope is that the vast majority of secular Israelis, who are tired of seeing government policy held hostage by fanatical groups, will put their trust in her rather than opt for the failed approach of Mr Netanyahu and his hardline supporters.
A PAKISTANI Taliban commander accused of launching cross-border attacks in Afghanistan was among 16 people killed in a suspected US missile strike, a senior official said.
The commander, Haji Omar Khan, died when at least two missiles slammed into a training camp in the South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border, local administration official Mawaz Khan told AFP.
"The death toll has gone up to 16 as six more bodies have been recovered from the site. Senior Taliban commander Haji Omar died in the strike,'' Khan said.
US halts ground raids into Pakistan
Another government official quoting local sources said up to 20 people were killed, mostly Pakistani Taliban fighters, adding that a team was on its way to the area to investigate.
The strike was the latest in a series on militant safe havens in Pakistan's tribal areas that have raised tensions between Washington and Islamabad, a frontline ally in the US-led "war on terror".
Khan was active in attacks against the border, local residents said.
The slain commander was a senior member of the group of veteran Taliban chieftain Jalaluddin Haqqani, residents added. Many of the recent US missile strikes in Pakistan have targeted Haqqani and his followers.
A religious school operated by Haqqani was targeted in another suspected US missile strike on Thursday, killing 11 people.
Haqqani was one of the most prominent Afghan commanders who fought the Soviet Red Army between 1978 and 1989. He subsequently became close to Mullah Omar, the leader of the 1996-2001 Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
AMERICAN military helicopters attacked a farm in eastern Syria close to the border with Iraq yesterday, killing eight people, the Syrian Government said.
There was outrage in Damascus and the Foreign Ministry summoned the US and Iraqi envoys to protest about the operation.
Four American helicopters targeted a civilian building under construction, firing on the workers inside shortly before sunset, according to a government statement carried by the Syrian state news agency. The structure was at al-Sukkari farm, 8km inside the Syrian border.
They “opened fire on workers inside the building, including the wife of the building guard, leading to the (death) of eight civilians,” the statement said.
A resident of a nearby village reported that the aircraft flew along the Euphrates into the area of farms and several brick factories.
Some of the helicopters landed and troops got out of the aircraft and fired on a building, the resident told the Associated Press, adding that at least one of the dead was a construction worker. After the attack, the helicopters headed for Iraq, state media said.
While the Pentagon did not confirm the attack, a US military spokesman said that the raid targeted a network of foreign fighters based at the farm. “We are taking matters into our hands,” the unnamed US official said.
America accuses Syria of failing to do enough to stop militants, including al-Qaeda operatives, from infiltrating over the border. The Bou Kamal border area, close to the farm in eastern Syria, is the country’s main crossing point into Iraq.
Farhan al-Mahalawi, the mayor of the Iraqi border town of Qaim, said that US helicopters had struck a village on the Syrian side of the border. He said that the village had been surrounded by Syrian troops.
An Iraqi security source in Baghdad also confirmed that eight people had been killed. The Syrian Government claimed that four children were among the dead.
Suleiman Ghadban, head of the hospital in Bou Kamal, said: “The hospital received seven bodies aged between 16 and 50 and three wounded, including the mother of the (deceased) family.”
The Syrian government statement said: “Syria condemns this aggression and holds the American forces responsible for this aggression and all its repercussions.
“Syria also calls on the Iraqi Government to shoulder its responsibilities and launch an immediate investigation into this serious violation and prevent the use of Iraqi territory for aggression against Syria.”
Last week the commander of US forces in western Iraq said that US troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border.
Major-General John Kelly told reporters that Iraq’s western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight thanks to good policing by security forces in those countries but that Syria was a “different story”.
“The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side,” Major-General Kelly said. “We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement.”
The US military was helping to build a sand barrier and ditches along the border, he said, adding: “There hasn’t been much, in the way of a physical barrier along that border for years.”
Walid al-Muallem, the Syrian Foreign Minister, accused the US this year of not giving his country the equipment that it needed to prevent foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq. He said that the US feared Syria could use such equipment against Israel.
The US has long viewed Syria as a destabilising country in the region but in recent months Damascus has been trying to change its image and end years of global seclusion.
President Assad has pursued indirect peace talks with Israel, mediated by Turkey, and says that he wants direct talks next year.
Syria has agreed to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon, a country that it used to dominate politically and militarily, and has worked harder at stemming the flow of militants into Iraq. European, US and Arab officials have increased their visits to the country.
The reported attack comes at a particularly sensitive time, however, as Baghdad and Washington struggle to sign an agreement to allow US troops to stay in Iraq beyond this year.
Neighbouring countries, including Syria and Iran, have voiced concern that such an accord would enable the US military to attack other countries from Iraqi territory, a charge that US officials deny.
The head of the BBC, Mark Thompson, has finally admitted what many of us have long known: that his organization treats Islam more respectfully than it does other religions. In a speech to a religious think tank, Thompson claimed the BBC has to treat Islam with greater sensitivity because Muslims are a minority in Britain and aren’t fully integrated into society.
The BBC’s “sensitivity” has for several years manifested itself in news reports that offer excuses for Islamist terrorism, most commonly by linking radicalization to British and American foreign policy. The failure of many Muslims to integrate, while acknowledged by Thompson, is invariably blamed by the BBC on poverty, injustice, and racism on the part of less enlightened sections of the British public. And the words “Muslim” and “Islam” are invariably omitted from stories about honor killings and forced marriages; such crimes are instead framed as issues for Britain’s “Asian community” to address, to the consternation of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim British Asians alike. Read more ...
CAMDEN, N.J. - Computer hard drives hold some important evidence in the trial of five men accused of planning an attack on the Army's Fort Dix.
Prosecutors contend they contain inspiration - rather than plans - for attacks.
As the government's case against the men carried into its third day on Thursday, jurors saw jihadist videos and evidence of visits to terrorism-promoting Web sites found on computers seized from some of the men's homes.
It was the second straight day heavy on videos in the courtroom. Jurors were shown others on Wednesday, including some of U.S. troops being felled by snipers in Iraq.
Defense lawyers say the men were not planning to attack, but that a paid government informant tried to make it look like they were. And they argue that seeing unsightly videos or visiting Web sites does not prove their clients were planning anything. Read more ...
Tarek Heggy's booming voice, Arab charm, and considerable reputation all preceded him. However, I was not prepared for the quiet soulfulness and seriousness with which he graced my home. Tall, trim, warm, effusive, energetic--but also refreshingly business-like, Tarek reminded me a bit, (but only superficially), of Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, whom she memorialized in her wonderful book, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World. Like Leon, Tarek is also a sophisticated citizen of the world and a very successful businessman; unlike Lagnado's cherished Leon, Tarek is a voracious and dedicated reader and the author of many books and countless articles.
Of course, Tarek is a Muslim, not a Jew. He was born in Port Said, Egypt and grew up in the 1950s and 1960s when that city was more cosmopolitan than it now is. Tarek told me that he wept the last time he visited his childhood city because "the women are now all wearing sheets, down to the ground and away from their bodies so that no shape shows," and there is "hate, only hate blaring from the loudspeakers of every mosque." Read more ...
A recent report by the Hamburg intelligence service - the Office for the Protection of the Constitution [Verfassungsschutz] - stressed the hostility of the neo-Nazi North German Action Office toward “Anti-Islamification” efforts in Cologne. At the North German Action Office’s [Aktionsbüro Norddeutschland], “campaigns” page website, links are featured with titles such as “National Socialists in Lower Saxony,” “Free! Social! National!,” and “May 1 - Day of struggle for national Socialism.” The Hamburg domestic intelligence report noted the neo-Nazi group’s repeated allusions - commonplace in Nazi “analyses” - to the American “east coast,” which are meant to characterize “Jewish” domination of America and, by extension, the world. And in a statement published on its website (German link) September 25, 2008, five days after an “Anti-Islamification Congress” was banned by Cologne municipal authorities, the North German Action Office elucidated its solidarity with the global jihad:
Inasmuch as it is a determined opponent of the western-plutocratic one-world policy, we regard Islam, globally considered, as an ally against the mammonistic dominance of the American east coast. The freedom of nations is not threatened by Islam, but rather by the imperialism of the USA and its vassals from Jerusalem to Berlin.
Such concordance between Nazism and jihadism reflects an historical continuum evident since the advent of the Nazi movement. This nexus was already apparent in Hitler’s own observations from 1926, elaborated upon over the following decades by both the Nazi leader, and other key Nazi officials, and ideologues. Not surprisingly, there are two predominant, recurring themes in this discourse: jihad as total war, and the annihilationist jihad against the Jews. Read more ...
Besides their well-known penchant for anti-Semitism, misogyny and nihilistic violence, Muslim extremists are also gaining a disturbing reputation among British security agencies as collectors of child pornography.
According to a report on The Times website last week, police in Great Britain are discovering that their investigations into Muslim terrorism are leading them into the depraved world of child sexual exploitation. The reverse is also occurring with child protection officers encountering people who are “preparing to carry out terrorist acts.”
At one time, the link between the two deviant behaviours was considered so strong that security officials considered establishing an anti-terrorism project involving child welfare experts, but never followed through because Scotland Yard’s hands were too full with other terrorist investigations.
But demand is growing in Great Britain for the setting up of such a task force that could help security agencies understand the terrorist mindset and prevent future attacks. Read more ...
RIYADH: The US government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis, Robert M. Kimmitt, US deputy secretary of the Treasury, said at a press conference held at the US Embassy here yesterday.
Kimmitt, who is on an official visit to the Kingdom, also held discussions with Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf. Today, he is scheduled to meet Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) Gov. Hamad Al-Sayari, Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) Gov. Amr Al-Dabbagh, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company, and Saudi investors and bankers. He said that the agenda for the G-20 summit to be held in Washington on Nov. 15, has to be carefully prepared since important topics are to be discussed in just one day. “I am not sure that Islamic banking will also be itemized in the agenda, but it is a subject that is often dwelt in the public and private sectors,” he noted. He said that experts in the US Treasury Department are currently learning the important features of Islamic banking.
However, he added that his country is focusing on activities of various governments and central banks in tackling the economic issues. He pointed out that the member countries in the G-20 also includes Islamic countries such as Indonesia and Turkey, besides the Kingdom which has been a member for the past 10 years. Representatives from these countries could present their experiences of Islamic banking in the light of the prevailing situation.
He hoped the G-20 summit will provide an effective platform for the member countries to exchange their views on the current economic problem and lay out a plan for the countries to draw out their respective national plans to ease the situation.
Commenting on his meeting with Al-Assaf, Kimmitt said the items that could be included in the agenda were also discussed. “The geographical representation from member countries would provide a broader view of the crisis and would also benefit the non-member countries through their experiments,” he added.
The G-20 summit, said Kimmitt, was proposed by Europeans which was readily accepted by President George W. Bush, who is seeking a common response to the global crisis.
Spelling out the purpose of his visit to Saudi Arabia, Kimmitt said that he has been associating with the Kingdom for more than two decades, but this is a significant visit since he was coming to the Kingdom at a time when there is a threat to the global financial market. “It’s an opportunity for me to present the US perspective ... and hear from the Saudi leadership on the current situation in the Kingdom and in the region,” he said, adding that even at a time of crisis, US wants to stress its commitment to tell the countries in the region of the US open investment policies.
Pointing out that a good number of American investors are coming to the Kingdom, Kimmitt said the US government expects reciprocation in the same manner. The deputy secretary is slated to visit the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq where he would meet the leadership and investors on similar lines.
By Cindy Wockner and Gita Athika October 23, 2008 12:00am
THE youngest son of one of the Bali bombers has been named after Osama bin Laden, in a twisted tribute to the mastermind of the September 11 atrocities.
Bomber Mukhlas' wife Farida binti Abas yesterday revealed her husband had written to her from jail urging her to bring up their third child in the image of the al-Qaeda kingpin.
Baby Usamah, now aged five, was born after his father and his cohorts Imam Samudra and Amrozi were jailed for the 2002 bombings that murdered 88 Australians.
Asked yesterday if she was indeed raising their third child in bin Laden's image, Farida said: "I think what he meant is what the children think about Islam.''
And asked if she was encouraging Mukhlas's children to be like him, she said: "Mukhlas' sons are my sons too, so the prediction of what they are going to be when they grow up, I leave to Allah.''
As she nursed Usamah yesterday, Farida said she was proud of her husband.
She denied he was a terrorist.
"He is not a terrorist, he is a mujahadin,'' she said.
"A mujahid is somebody who fights based on the Koran, that's what their father is doing.''
Farida also revealed it was she who encouraged him to recently marry a second wife in jail so he would not suffer loneliness.
And women are apparently lining up to marry Mukhlas' little brother, the smiling assassin Amrozi, with their lawyers saying they have a list of 10 would-be wives to add to his recently married second wife.
Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra this week lost their appeal against the firing squad and Indonesia is preparing to execute them by the end of the year. The lawyers have vowed another legal challenge.
On October 14, 2008, clerics from 28 religious groups in Pakistan held a conference at the Jamia Naeemia madrassa in Lahore. The conference was organized by the Muttahida Ulema Council of Pakistan. In a fatwa agreed by consensus, the clerics declared suicide attacks inside Pakistan to be haram, or forbidden in Islam.
The following are excerpts from the 21-point declaration issued by the clerics and distributed to journalists at the end of the conference:
"The world of Islam, especially Pakistan, is confronted by such heartrending, dangerous and miserable situations; [the Ulema] express sorrow and anger at the activities of the enemies of Islam which are full of... cruelty, force and despotism, [and] strongly urge Pakistan's residents not to be sad about these situations... they should be ready to confront the shared conspiracies of President [George] Bush, the U.S., India, Israel... and Afghanistan, the child in their arms....
"A great responsibility is thrust upon the Ulema and saints to confront the rulers and their allies who, with the help of our enemies and our own army, are [using] attack planes on our own people to bloody and destroy humans, Pakistanis, homes and farms. The need of the hour is for the Ulema and mystics to come out of their monasteries and chambers... and to provide scholarly, intellectual and awareness leadership to the residents of Pakistan.... Read more ...
A PROMINENT youth worker has used the funeral of a young Lebanese man shot dead on Wednesday to appeal for other young men in Sydney to turn from a life of crime and empty machismo.
"All we seem to do is just turn against each other. That's why we're just dropping like flies," Fadi Abdul-Rahman told hundreds of mourners at the funeral of Mustafa Assoum, 26, at Lakemba Mosque.
Mr Assoum, a volunteer youth worker at Abdul-Rahman's youth centre, was shot dead at Warwick Farm early on Wednesday.
Mr Abdul-Rahman spoke to the congregation, which included Mr Assoum's wife, his four-year-old son and four-month-old daughter, about the perils of crime.
"When you stand before Allah it's not your macho that will make a difference. Not your dollars, not your castles, not all your cars … Learn from Mustafa."
Mr Assoum was murdered two months after the funeral for another young Lebanese-Australian man from Lakemba, who died from bullet wounds.
Kalid Dib, 25, from Lidcombe, was killed by a security guard during an abortive armoured van robbery in Parramatta in August.
Outside the mosque Mr Abdul-Rahman called on society to prevent more killings in the Lebanese-Australian community.
Oct 24 09:31 AM US/Eastern By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) - Palestinian militant group Hamas has passed on a "personal" letter to captive Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit from his family, his father Noam and a Hamas spokesman said on Friday.
It was the first letter to reach him from his family, although Schalit has been able to send a trickle of messages home since he was snatched by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid near Gaza in June 2006.
The letter was given to the soldier last month, Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha said.
Noam Schalit said the letter was "personal" and did not detail its contents.
Taha said Noam Schalit gave the letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who gave it to Qatari officials. Qatar passed it onto Syrian officials, who gave it to Hamas leader Khaled Mashal.
Mashal transferred it to the group's militant leaders inside the Gaza Strip, Taha said.
In the past, Hamas militants have allowed Noam Schalit to send a pair of eyeglasses to Gilad, who also holds French citizenship.
Taha said passing on the letter was a "humanitarian gesture" but said there were no plans, so far, to allow more mail to pass between the family and their captured son.
Egyptian-mediated efforts to arrange a prisoner swap have stalled over bickering between Hamas and Israel over the numbers of Palestinian prisoners Hamas demands that the Jewish state should release in exchange for Schalit.
DALLAS – Successful terrorist organizations throughout history have used social wings as a means of building popular support, an internationally-recognized terrorism expert said Thursday. Bruce Hoffman, a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and a former Scholar-in-Residence at the CIA, testified in the trial of five men accused of funneling millions of dollars to social support organizations controlled by Hamas.
Hoffman's testimony did not delve into specific charges or evidence against the former officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). Rather, Hoffman was a prosecution expert, outlining the structure of terrorist movements like Hizballah in Lebanon and the Irish Republican Army. Terrorist organizations that do not have a social arm, said Hoffman, historically are the "least consequential."
"Is charity in the hand of a terrorist organization a good thing or a bad thing?" asked federal prosecutor Barry Jonas. "Absolutely a bad thing," said Hoffman, author of Inside Terrorism.
Charity by terrorist organizations is different from those of truly charitable organizations because a terrorist organization's deeds are "self-serving." In other words, Hoffman said, terrorist organizations perform charitable work in order to "exercise control over the population." For example, most terrorist groups with social arms run or support schools and hospitals. That allows them to indoctrinate the local population and gain their support. Read more ...
There has been great wailing and gnashing of teeth recently in the immigrant Muslim community about an alleged “terrorist attack” at a Dayton, Ohio mosque and another “attack” on a female Muslim college student in Chicago. From the way its been reported, one would have easily imagined that the weapons of mass destruction not found in Iraq had somehow made their way to Ohio to be unleashed on the mosque.
Sensing a prime opportunity to play the victim card in their never ending campaign of propaganda, some Muslims charged that these “attacks” were the direct result of the explosive new documentary on radical Islam entitled Obsession, which very convincingly likens the jihadist agenda in western countries to Nazism.
For the most part second generation immigrants- this crowd demanded to know why the media chose to ignore these outrageous ”hate crimes” against their community and why, for example, they are not accorded the same high profile status usually reserved for synagogue and church attacks. Its almost as if they believed that entire media apparatus should have suspended its round the clock coverage of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in order to cover these alleged crimes. Read more ...
Prominent conservative activist and Middle East expert Daniel Pipes took the podium last night in front of an audience of more than 50 people inside the Laboratory Sciences Building with a speech titled “Vanquishing the Islamist Enemy and Helping the Moderate Muslim Ally.”
Pipes’ views on the threat of Islamism—or the view that Islam is not only a religion but also a political ideology—have been met with controversy from people across the political spectrum.
According to sophomore Caleb Posner, the events manager for the Conservative Leadership Association, which hosted the speech, Pipes’ words are always truthful.
“What he says is 100 percent grounded in fact and is the product of incredible scholarship,” Posner said. “However, what he says is often politically incorrect at times.”
Pipes’ address centered on what he believes is the immediate need to confront radical Islam before it significantly impacts Western democracy and the Western way of life.
Pipes quickly made the distinction that not all Muslims are Islamists and that to classify all as such would be erroneous. He later did state, however, that based on his research and surveys, one in every eight Muslims worldwide is an Islamist, equaling about 150 million Islamists. Read more ...
One of the pillars of the future totalitarian state in 1984 is the practice of doublethink, which Orwell defined as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. … To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.”
As it happens, this is a precise description of exactly what’s been going on in many parts of Europe in recent years, as multicultural ideology has been confronted by realities about Islam that, in a doublethink-free world, would send that ideology crashing to the ground in flames.
For a case in point, I will refer the reader to an episode I’ve mentioned previously in this space — an Oslo debate last November at which the deputy chairman of Norway’s Islamic Council, Asghar Ali, refused to reject the death penalty for gays. When Senaid Kobilica, the head of the Islamic Council (which represents 60,000 Muslims), was asked where he stood on the question, he replied that he couldn’t give a definitive answer until he got a ruling from the European Fatwa Council. This week it was reported that he’s still waiting. Read more ...
PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has dismissed Iran's bid to stand up for Iraq as hypocritical, accusing it of cross-border meddling that has only harmed Iraqis.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said a draft US-Iraq security pact was aimed at keeping Iraq weak to help the US “pillage” the country.
Interior Minister Ali Kordan said Tehran opposed any document that threatened Iraqi interests.
“I think the Iraqis can defend their interests without the Iranians, thank you very much,” Rice told a press conference in Mexico when asked to comment on the remarks.
“That hasn't been the happiest relationship, ever,” Rice said during a visit to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
“What the Iranians were doing was arming special groups in the south who were killing innocent Iraqis. So frankly I don't take these comments very seriously,” said Rice, alongside Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa.
Rice then reiterated that “this is a good agreement,” referring to the security pact that has been the subject of months of difficult negotiations with the Iraqis.
“It's an agreement that both protects our armed forces and will allow them to continue to support the Iraqis as they consolidate the gains that they have made on the security side,” Rice said.
It is also “totally respectful of Iraqi sovereignty,” she added.
The draft deal to replace a UN mandate expiring this year calls for US combat forces to withdraw by the end of 2011 and includes US concessions on jurisdiction over its troops accused of “serious crimes” while off duty or off base.
Iraq's cabinet decided on Tuesday to seek certain revisions to the accord, triggering warnings from top US military and political figures about the risks of not agreeing a deal.
Rice said she had no update on the talks involving the agreement from US diplomats in Iraq, because she has been busy with talks with Espinosa, which have focused on drug-related crime as well as economic and trade issues.
During a meeting in Jordan with his counterparts from Iraq, Turkey and Gulf Arab countries, Kordan, Iran's interior minister, said: “Iran opposes any document that goes against the will of Iraqis and their leadership.
“Iran opposes any document that would threaten Iraq's interests,” Kordan said.
He did not elaborate, but was apparently referring to the draft security accord.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today the pact seeks to keep Iraq weak to help the US “pillage” the country.
The US has accused Iran of “undermining” the deal.
RECAP: Sunrise Equities failed, leaving at least 150 investors in Chicago devastated. About $80 million of their money is missing. The Illinois Secretary of State is investigating, as is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sunrise’s CEO, Salman Ibrahim, was reportedly seen recently on the streets of Lahore, Pakistan. Ibrahim is said to be a Taliban sympathizer. Barack Obama has long ties to Ibrahim and Sunrise Equities, which gave him free office space in his 2004 campaign for US Senate.
CHICAGO - 24 October 2008 - (The Bench) - Just hours before this was to be posted, The Bench received an urgent - and disturbing - email. It alerted us to the premature death of one of the peripheral players in this drama, the larger drama of the implosion of Sunrise Equities.
Reported dead is radio talk show host Rehan Sheikh, a friend of The Bench. In his early 40s, he is believed to have died suddenly from unknown causes sometime between Thursday night, October 16 and Wednesday noon, October 22. There is a lot of mystery surrounding his death; the time, even the day, of his death is unknown.
Sources tell The Bench that Rehan suffered “two heart attacks” shortly after eating at a Pakistani restaurant on Devon Avenue in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood, where he was a well-known and controversial figure.
The cause of death is unknown, but some in the community strongly suspect murder by means of deliberate food poisoning.
Rehan, a Pakistani immigrant to the US, drove a Yellow taxicab, but was better known as the host of radio talk show “Dil Se,” which aired every Sunday from 11:00 p.m. to midnight on WBCI 1240 AM in Chicago. Dil Se was an Urdu language talk show that covered current events of interest to Chicago’s Indian and Pakistani community.
The show’s topic on the night of Sunday, September 21, 2008 was Sunrise Equities, the missing $80 million and missing Sunrise CEO Salman Ibrahim. The Bench had the pleasure of sitting in the studio during that night’s live broadcast. Fluent in English, Rehan had no problem fielding the occasional caller who spoke English. All of the callers were very emotional about the Sunrise topic. You do not have to understand Urdu to get the emotion that poured from the callers that night.
Before and after that broadcast, Rehan spoke off-air about the Sunrise crisis. Among the things he related then, and at other times (some of which The Bench gets from reliable sources), was that Mohammed Tariq Siddiqui told him in April of this year that Salman Ibrahim was “going to vanish.” Siddiqui’s words were proved prophecy; about four months later, Ibrahim went missing along with $80 million and fellow Sunrise personnel.
ROCKED by allegations of political meddling and misconduct, officials at the troubled war-crimes tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have announced that charges have been dropped against five terror suspects the Pentagon has said are dangerous al-Qaeda operatives.
All five allegedly had ties to terror kingpin Abu Zubaydah, the Saudi-born militant believed to have been a recruiter for al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
Zubaydah has not been indicted but reportedly gave evidence against the five that led to their charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism.
Four of the men, whose charge sheets were expunged from the Pentagon's records even before the announcement of their dismissal, were reported accomplices of "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla. He was convicted last year on identical charges in Miami.
The Pentagon judge overseeing the Office of Military Commissions as convening authority gave no reason for dropping the cases.
Commissions spokesman Joseph DellaVedova said the charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they could be refiled. The five men will remain imprisoned.
The Pentagon has said victims of anti-US terrorist attacks and their families will be allowed to attend trials and hearings in Guantanamo Bay of the suspected perpetrators from next month. Families will be allowed to travel to Cuba towards the end of the trial of Yemeni Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul, due to start on Monday.
A senior judicial figure in Iran has cast doubt on reports that Tehran will stop executing juveniles.
Deputy prosecutor general Hossein Zebhi told a newspaper that under Sharia law only a murder victim's family could commute a death sentence.
He had suggested last week that judges were being told to stop imposing the death penalty on young offenders.
Iran has been widely condemned for being one of the few remaining nations to execute offenders aged under 18.
Amnesty International says at least six youths have been executed in Iran this year alone.
Mr Zebhi was quoted by the daily Etemad-e Melli newspaper as saying: "The principle of retribution... is not up to the government, rather it is up to the private plaintiff."
"Only if the next of kin give their consent can there be a reduction in the punishment," he added.
Blood money
His earlier comments suggesting a possible ban on juvenile execution had been welcomed by human right campaigners, including Amnesty International.
Critics say Iran's practice of handing down the death penalty to juvenile offenders - those aged under 18 at the time of the crime - is explicitly banned by the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Tehran is a signatory.
Many convicted juvenile offenders have been on death row for years, as negotiations continue over whether victims' families will accept blood money - cash to avoid execution.
It's about time. Chicago investment firm, Sunrise Equities, shut their doors back in mid-August, leaving investors confused, worried and angry. Salman Ibrahim, CEO, and other officers vanished. They left Chicago - and probably the US - with about $80 million of investors' money. Most investors have been totally destroyed by the scandal, and now, finally, two months later, the "Illinois Secretary of State's office filed a temporary order of prohibition against the missing CEO and president of a shariah-compliant investment firm."
"A spokesman for Jesse White's office said state investigators have gathered sufficient evidence to believe there was a violation of securities law."
"Sufficient evidence," they say, casually. How about this for sufficient evidence: CEO and top officers vanish; doors locked; phone calls not being returned; investors not getting scheduled check. What the hell was the State of Illinois waiting for?
Let me veer onto a side street for a moment. Perhaps the Illinois Secretary of State was afraid of being called a religious bigot for going after a Muslim company. I'm being sarcastic, of course, but believe it or not,there really are lunatics out there who accuse me and other writerswho are covering this of targeting Sunrise Equities. The Bench, and others writing about it, have noted that the investors - most of whom are Muslim - have been violated. We believe and hope that they get relief and justice. This is a case of Muslims being screwed by fellow Muslims. How, then, is it bigoted to simply report that?
Chicago Journal continues:
"Investors noticed something awry when they stopped receiving monthly disbursement checks from the investment firm in August. The firm's corporate officers and employees also stopped returning investors' calls, which investors said was highly unusual."
Sure, but not "unusual" enough, apparently, for the State of Illinois to jump on right away.
"The temporary order names Sunrise Equities Inc. and Sunrise Management II. The firm also did business as the Sunrise Development Group and Sunrise Development Inc., with addresses at 6355 N. Claremont, 1000 W. Monroe and 1023 W. Madison.
"In addition to Ibrahim, the order lists company founders Amjed Mahmood, of Des Plaines, and physician Mohammed Akbar Zahid, of Chicago. Both appear on the company's Web site as the senior vice presidents of construction and community relations, respectively. Saquib Anwar, also named as a "respondent," is listed as an employee and sales agent of Sunrise.
"The temporary order alleges that Ibrahim and others failed to register securities and committed fraud in the sale of securities."
The Chicago Journal also noted that, "No one has seen or heard from Salman Ibrahim, the president and CEO of Sunrise Equities since August. Salman, whose last known address is the 5600 block of W. Eddy, has been accused of allegedly bilking hundreds of investors from West Ridge's Indian-Pakistani community and from around the world. Investors' losses are estimated between $50 million and $80 million."
MUSLIM convert Joseph Terrence Thomas has been found guilty of falsifying his Australian passport but was acquitted of accepting $US3500 and an airline ticket from terrorist group al-Qa'ida.
A Victorian Supreme Court jury today found the 35-year-old Melbourne man not guilty of accepting funds from a terrorist organisation after deliberations of just two days and a week-long trial.
But the jury did find Mr Thomas guilty of falsifying his passport after he put a fake Pakistani entry visa over the top of a Taliban visa he obtained to get into Afghanistan before the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Mr Thomas wept as the verdict was read and hugged family members.
He has been released on bail.
Prosecutors had argued the former taxi driver knowingly took an airline ticket and cash from senior al-Qa'ida member Kahled bin Attash while trying to get out of Pakistan in 2003.
But defence lawyers maintained Mr Thomas was desperate to get home and believed the money was a donation from Taliban-sympathetic families in Pakistan.
They also said he only altered his passport because he feared for his life and believed a Taliban government visa in the post September 11 world was a "one-way ticket" to Guantanamo Bay.
In a highly unusual trial, most of the evidence put forward by the prosecution against Mr Thomas was from Mr Thomas himself via a series of interviews he did with the ABC's Four Corners program that was broadcast in 2006.
It is the end of a long road for Mr Thomas who was first convicted of receiving funds from a terrorist organisation and holding a false passport in March 2006 and was jailed for a maximum of five years.
He was the first Australian to be convicted under the nation's anti-terrorism laws introduced after September 11.
But his conviction was later quashed by the Court of Appeal, which ruled that an Australian Federal Police interview with Mr Thomas in Pakistan in 2003 was conducted under duress and was therefore inadmissible.
Nine months later, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, armed with the ABC interview detailing his exploits in Afghanistan, went back to the Court of Appeal and was granted a retrial.
Lawyers for the 35-year-old made unsuccessful trips to the Court of Appeal and the High Court to stop the retrial going ahead.
During last week's trial, the jury was shown more than two hours of footage on a wide-screen television above the witness box as a subdued Mr Thomas watched from the dock.
The court had heard the 35-year-old recount to ABC journalist Sally Neighbour how he went to Afghanistan in 2001 to fight for the Taliban in their civil war against the Northern Alliance.
Mr Thomas stated he met Osama bin Laden while training at the al-Qa'ida camp in Afghanistan but still maintained he didn't know it was a terrorism camp at the time.
"He (Bin Laden) was very polite and humble and shy," Mr Thomas said. "He seemed to float across the floor."
Counsel acting for Mr Thomas, Jim Kennan, stated throughout the trial that Mr Thomas was just trying to get home from a region that had changed dramatically after the September 11 attacks.
Mr Kennan said his client's actions were "the height of naivety" and believed the money was coming from local Pakistani families who were Taliban sympathises and wanted to help him get home.
"You may think he was a stupid naive young man to go and fight for the Taliban and try to stop the civil war," he told the jury. "But that is not an offence and it doesn't make him a member of al-Qa'ida."
Mr Kennan also said prosecution case was "riddled with doubts", based on speculation not inference and they did not have any hard evidence against his client.
"You are the ones with the power to do justice for Mr Thomas in this case," he told the jury last week.
AUSTRALIA has made an honour payment to the family of Afghan tribal governor Rozi Khan who was shot dead in a confused firefight. The speedy burial of Governor Khan meant no post-mortem examination was possible and it would probably never be known whether he died from shots fired by Australian troops, defence chief Angus Houston said.
But, he said, in accordance with Afghan culture, an honour payment had been made to the dead man's family to help maintain sound relations with Mr Khan's followers.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said it was a violent and confusing event which led to the death of a respected tribal leader in the town of Tarin Kowt on September 18.
"As an Australian patrol was passing through a rural settlement on their way to achieve a separate objective, they came under fire from multiple sources," Air Chief Marshal Houston told a Senate budget estimates committee hearing today.
The soldiers fired back in self defence.
"During this protracted night-time engagement, a group of five armed men that included Mr Khan approached the patrol from the direction of some of the firing.
"Believing these men were a threat, we appear to have engaged the group that included Mr Khan."
International Security Assistance Force and Australian inquiries had been unable to determine the exact details of the engagement including who killed Mr Khan.
The governor's immediate burial, required by local custom, prevented forensic examination.
"Following negotiations in accordance with Afghan culture, an honour payment has been made to Mr Khan's family to help maintain our good relationship with Rozi Khan's followers," Air Chief Marshal Houston said.
The amount paid was unspecified.
Australian inquiries determined civilians in the area were anxious and uncertain as there had been Taliban activity the day before and again that evening.
The Taliban had also threatened to kill one of the locals in the vicinity and that caused guards on compounds to be nervous and agitated, prompting the initial contact.
"On the night he was killed, Mr Khan was not aware that coalition forces were involved in the engagement and he was moving to assist members of his militia that he believed to be under attack by the Taliban," Air Chief Marshal Houston said.
The defence chief said he was confident Australian troops acted in accordance with the right to self defence under their rules of engagement.
Over at Family Security Matters, Center for Security Policy Vice President Christopher Holton lays out why calls for Sharia-compliant finance in the wake of the recent banking crisis is more ominous than they might seem.
Holton reacts to last weeks comments from Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who told a conference in Jerusalem last week that the economic crisis is an opportunity to "profit from the crisis to bring about the triumph of the (Islamic) nation, which holds the spiritual and material resources for victory."
Among those in Qaradawi's audience were Hamas chief Khalid Meshaal and a top adviser to Iran's spiritual leader Ali Khamenei. And Qaradawi, who the U.S. will not allow into the country, has issued fatwas justifying suicide bombing, including attacks on American soldiers in Iraq.
So what's that got to do with Islamic financing? Holton answers:
"Under sharia, there are eight approved forms of charity to which Muslims are expected to tithe through the system of zakat. Of those eight categories, four can be interpreted as supportive of violent jihad.
It is no wonder that the three largest Muslim charities (Holy Land Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation and Global Relief Foundation) in the United States were shut down due to ties to terrorism."
That's not all. Holton notes a number of overseas banks found to have worked with terrorists, including Bank Al-Taqwa, which allegedly handled millions of dollars tied to terrorist groups ranging from Hamas to Al Qaeda. Whether the concept catches on remains to be seen, but it's good someone is raising the alarm. Read more ...
DALLAS – When jurors deliberate the fate of five former officials at the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), they'll have something jurors in last year's mistrial didn't have.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis admitted into evidence three exhibits from the Palestinian Authority (PA) that were seized by Israeli soldiers in 2002. Among them is a letter to the head of the PA General Intelligence office identifying the Ramallah Zakat committee as belonging to Hamas.
That's significant because the Ramallah committee is among the Palestinian charities that received HLF contributions. The defendants are charged with conspiring to provide material support to Hamas by routing millions of dollars to the terrorist group through a group of charities known as zakat committees.
The evidence was admitted after attorneys argued outside the jury's presence Monday morning. After that, an Israeli intelligence officer testifying under the pseudonym "Major Lior," discussed how some of the evidence was obtained. Israel raided PA offices after a spate of terrorist attacks in Israel, he said. He did not describe the documents in detail. Read more ...
DALLAS – The prosecution in the Hamas-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) schooled an attentive jury Tuesday on the significance of previously-admitted exhibits.
FBI Agent Lara Burns, who testified last month, returned to the stand, providing jurors with prepared "schedules" which assembled existing exhibits into easy-to-read grids. The grids listed individuals and Palestinian charities – or zakat committees – alleged to be under Hamas control with relevant corresponding exhibits. Federal prosecutor Barry Jonas questioned Burns about these "schedules," offering a story of how HLF connects to the zakat committees and to Hamas. Jonas focused on Hamas-linked committees to which HLF continued sending money after Hamas was designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government.
The defendants are accused of conspiring to provide material support to Hamas. Prosecutors say as much as $12 million was sent from HLF to the terrorist group until the Treasury Department shut HLF down in December 2001. Defense attorneys say HLF donated money to charity for needy Palestinians.
Since the prosecution began presenting its case September 23, jurors have been introduced to dozens of characters and well over 100 exhibits featuring wiretaps, videotapes and internal documents, nearly all of which originally were in Arabic. Tuesday's review session seemed designed to help the jury put the evidence together. Read more ...
The hugely popular video file-sharing site YouTube has changed politics, the law and society in general, in ways people are just beginning to understand. The power of YouTube, and sites like it, hasn’t escaped the attention of Muslim terrorists and their supporters. For example, Hamas recently launched a YouTube inspired site called AqsaTube (complete with a ripped off version of the American site’s red logo). Instead of the cute cat clips and stealth campaign videos you’ll find on YouTube, however, AqsaTube is “devoted entirely to propaganda and incitement,” according to the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. (IITIC)
In true Web 2.0 fashion, Amir Mizroch, the News Editor at The Jerusalem Post, broke this story on October 13 at his personal blog rather than in the pages of his own newspaper. He wrote:
“[AqsaTube’s] contents, like those of other Hamas websites, are a reflection of its ideology and strategy. They include videos inciting against Israel, glorifying terrorism (the “resistance”) and preaching the doctrines of radical Islam. There is also a link to Hamas’s satellite channel, Al-Aqsa TV, which increases the number of its viewers and enables it to bypass restrictions on its broadcasts...” Read more ...
Since taking over the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Hamas has ruled the territory like a personal kingdom, bolstering its own authority, ruthlessly crushing its opposition, and generally undermining the notion that Palestinians are ready to inherit a single, unified state alongside Israel. According to a September report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank, none of these factors are likely change any time soon.
Warning that “in Gaza, new realities are taking hold,” the ICG report, titled “Round Two in Gaza,” concluded that “reversing the drift toward greater Palestinian separation, both political and geographic, will be a difficult and, at this point, almost hopeless task.” Because Hamas has spent the past few years consolidating its rule, moreover, there is little reason to believe that the terror group will be dislodged from the Gaza Strip.
To understand why Hamas’s power is all but uncontested, one need only look back to this August, when the organization launched a campaign of repression and intimidation against its rivals. First, Hamas warned that Palestinian clans and militias would not be allowed to operate without approval of the ruling regime – a move that effectively neutered the opposition. Soon thereafter, Hamas assaulted a leading clan, the Fatah-aligned Hilles, and accused it of masterminding a July bombing that killed five Hamas field commanders. The message was received. In due course an even larger pro-Fatah clan, Dughmoush, pledged that it would obey Hamas laws. Read more ...
The FBI removed all mention of the controversial term “honor killing” from the wanted poster of a double-murder suspect after FOXNews.com ran a story announcing the use of the term.
Yasser Abdel Said, wanted for the murder of his two daughters, has eluded authorities for almost a year. The bodies of the young women - Sarah Said, 17, and Amina Said, 18 - were discovered in the back of a taxicab in Irving, Texas, on New Year's Day.
According to family members, Said felt he was compelled to kill his daughters because they had disgraced the family by dating non-Muslims and acting too "Western."
The girls’ great aunt, Gail Gartrell, has always called the case an “honor killing.” And for a few days - until last Friday - the FBI publicly agreed.
“The 17- and 18-year-old girls were dating American boys, which was contrary to their father's rules of not dating non-Muslim boys,” The FBI "wanted" poster read early last week. “Reportedly, the girls were murdered due to an 'Honor Killing.'” Read more ...
AFGHANISTAN'S appeal court sentenced an Afghan journalist to 20 years in jail, commuting an earlier death sentence, for distributing an Internet article that said the Prophet Mohammad had ignored the rights of women.
Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter with the Jahan-e Now daily, was sentenced to death in January by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
The arrest and sentencing of Kambakhsh, also a university student, drew criticism from a number of Western nations, the Afghan media and rights groups. Kambakhsh downloaded an Iranian article from the Internet and distributed it to friends.
"The court has sentenced Perwiz Kambakhsh to 20 years jail for the crime he has committed.
But this is not the final hearing, he has the right to appeal," judge Abdul Salaam Qazizada told the court.
Source: The Australian
Afghanistan's Appeal Court Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
Meera Jagannathan, Staff Writer Published: Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Robert Spencer said he has received death threats and is often called an “Islamophobe.”
So Spencer, director of the Web site jihadwatch.org and author of eight books on jihad and Islam, came to UNC on Monday to spread his message and clear up what he deems are some popular misconceptions of his views.
His site is affiliated with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative foundation that advocates for the “defunding” of the national Muslim Students Association, saying it has a radical agenda.
The lecture was co-sponsored by the College Republicans and the Committee for a Better Carolina, who paid $3,000 to bring him to campus. About 40 students and community members attended.
Spencer began his lecture with a brief history of the jihad movement. He said he was trying to raise awareness of the threat to freedom posed by violent jihad.
But he emphasized that he was not trying to paint all Muslims as jihadists.
“There are so many Muslims n this world who have no interest in this program,” he said. “But there are still many who are jihadist.”
Spencer cited the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education as an example of how the U.S. has made inroads to racial equality, and said jihadist supremacy ideals are undermining that progress.
“We are at a point in the United States where this brotherhood is threatening to roll that all back,” Spencer said.
After his talk, Spencer took questions.
One audience member asked Spencer how his ideas differed from Islamophobia. He said his fear of jihad is not irrational; it is substantiated by jihadists who have explained their supremacist ideology on record.
“These people said that they are going to destroy Western civilization,” Spencer said. “I like Western civilization.”
Many at the lecture seemed impressed by Spencer’s talk.
Sophomore political science major Jason Sutton, a member of both the College Republicans and the Committee for a Better Carolina, said he thought Spencer was very knowledgeable.
“I was impressed with not only his depth of knowledge but his breadth of knowledge,” he said.
Joe Moss, visiting from Tampa, Fla., said Spencer is his hero.
Although Spencer has seen negative reactions at other campuses from Muslim student groups, UNC’s Muslim Student Association did not attend the event.
Aisha Saad, the association’s outreach chairwoman and former opinion editor for The Daily Tar Heel, said in an e-mail that the association chose not to take part in the Spencer lecture.
“We do not see it setting the stage for a productive discourse but rather falling into a circular discussion that perpetuates stigmatized and superficial conceptions of a diverse community,” Saad said.
Despite critical reception of his ideas, Spencer said he will continue to speak his mind.
“I’m willing to take the heat for doing this,” he said. “I’m willing to be called names and so on.”
A JURY has retired to consider its verdict in the trial of a Melbourne man accused of receiving funds from al-Qa'ida.
Joseph Terrence Thomas, 35, has been on trial in the Victoria Supreme Court since last Tuesday.
He is accused of receiving $US3500 ($5000) and a plane ticket from the terrorist organisation al-Qa'ida, and having a false passport.
Most of the evidence put before the trial comes from interviews Thomas had with ABC journalist Sally Neighbour in 2005 for the Four Corners program, and interviews with Fairfax Media journalist Ian Munro in early 2006.
Thomas, from Werribee, travelled to Afghanistan in March 2001, originally with his wife and child, to train with the Taliban to fight in the civil war.
He ended up in an al-Qa'ida camp but says he didn't know it was run by the terrorist group until he saw Osama bin Laden at the camp for the first time, before September 11.
The jury of 12 retired at 1.30pm (AEDT) to deliberate.
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent | October 21, 2008
INDONESIA'S Constitutional Court has thrown out an application by the Bali bombers to have their death sentences conducted by a method other than firing squad.
The death-row trio had argued that death by shooting would constitute torture and they would prefer beheading, lethal injection, hanging or some other means.
The court's decision would not have had any automatic effect either way on the imminent executions of Amrozi, Ali Ghufron or Imam Samudra, since the institution is not directly linked to the criminal justice system.
Only the parliament, when formulating new law, is required to take heed of constitutional court rulings - the Supreme Court, the country's highest criminal justice arena, is not so obliged.
However Attorney-General Hendarman Supandji has said he would give details on Friday regarding his plans for the three terrorists' executions.
The decision now clears the way in a broad sense for Mr Supandji to proceed.
The men will most likely be executed in secret on their prison island of Nusakambangan, off southern Java. The bodies of the two brothers, Amrozi and Ali Ghufron, will then be taken to their home village of Tenggulun, in East Java, while Imam Samudra's - real name, Abdul Azis - will be taken to West Java, hundreds of kilometres away.
The men's lawyers, led by long-time advocate Ahmad Michdan, called witnesses during the weeks-long trial including Catholic priest Charlie Burrows, who attended the recent firing squad deaths of two Nigerian heroin smugglers.
Father Burrows testified that the two men in his care had taken more than seven minutes to die after the firing squads responsible for dispatching them appeared not to have scored a direct hit on the heart.
Law reform commentators both inside and outside Indonesia have warned that the bombing trio's convictions are already unsound, since they were obtained under anti-terrorism laws passed after the 2002 Bali nightclub atrocity, which claimed 202 lives including those of 88 Australians.
The Supreme Court has already ignored a prior Constitutional Court ruling on this matter, when the bench on the latter court found that existing criminal law should have been used to obtain convictions in the case, rather than the retrospective application of the anti-terrorism legislation.
Even the bombers' lawyers, including Mr Michdan, accept that the men would be found guilty under the correct laws - for which the death penalty would also apply - but have argued Indonesia's still-shaky rule of law would be undermined by executing them under the wrong legislation.
Fellow defence strategist Wirawan Adnan said after the decision yesterday that "Amrozi's execution is not our immediate concern; the main thing here is that this is a constitutional issue".
He pointed to the court's advice to the Government, in its 76-page ruling, that the legislature consider alternative methods of execution that could guarantee a quick dispatch.
Mr Wirawan said afterwards that this should mean beheading became the norm.
What does Joe Biden know that the rest of us don’t? He’s predicting that, if elected, President Barack Obama would be “tested” within six months of taking office. I’m thinking it would be more like six days or six weeks.
The sooner the better would be a factor for anyone seeking to initiate trouble, considering that the new president would not have his administration in place long enough to find out how the whole thing works.
For example, Syria currently has an estimated 6-8,000 troops massed on the North Lebanese border. Hezbollah, an Iranian puppet, is virtually a nation within a nation so far as Lebanon is concerned. It initiated the war against Israel two years ago.
On October 17, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made it known that the Bush administration would “never permit Syria to intervene militarily in Lebanon.” The problem with that is (1) Rice will not be Secretary of State after January 20, 2009; (2) the U.S. does not have the military power to intervene on the ground in Lebanon if Syria attacked; and (3) the last time troops were sent to Lebanon, it was 1983 and several hundred Marines were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked their barracks.
Except for showing up offshore during the last Lebanon-Israel war to evacuate U.S. citizens trapped in Beirut, the likelihood of U.S. military involvement in the next war is slim to none.
So what does Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak suggest? He recently recommended resurrecting the 2002 Saudi plan that offered pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from all lands captured since the 1967 war. That would include the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and the Golan.
Here’s what happened when Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000; a war in 2006. Withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 has resulted in constant, daily rocket attacks. Jerusalem was founded by King David over three thousand years ago. Despite being conquered and re-conquered over the centuries, it was and is the capital of Israel, no matter what anyone says. As for the Golan Heights, it’s a perfect place for artillery if you happen to be a Syrian general making war on Israel.
Why these captured lands were not annexed years ago is a question a lot of people have asked without getting a good answer. What we do know is that every Israel effort to swap “land for peace” has proven to be a disaster.
Israel remains a flashpoint in the Middle East simply because the despots who run the nations in the region have found it convenient to denounce its only democracy. Now, however, it’s definitely less convenient and the reason for that is Iran. Even though its economy is in the toilet, Iran continues to fund terrorists in Lebanon and Gaza while pressing ahead to become a nuclear power.
Imagine if Saudi Arabia announced it was going to recognize Israel’s sovereignty and open up formal diplomatic relations? What if Egypt went along? And Jordan? And the Gulf states? Maybe even Iraq? All of a sudden, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran are the ones that are isolated.
It would, in effect, make life more difficult for a lot of volatile, difficult to control bad guys. It is not as far-fetched as it may seem. The last thing Saudi Arabia and Egypt, among others, want is to find themselves threatened by a belligerent, aggressive, nuclear Iran. And the only nation in the region that could inflict a lot of hurt on Iran is Israel.
Considering that the U.S. under a President Obama would significantly draw down its forces in Iraq and likely reconsider its commitments in Afghanistan, the leaders of nations in the Middle East are going to have to come up with some kind of plan. That could be hastened by another Lebanon-Israel war while Syria sneaks in the backdoor to regain control of Lebanon.
I hope Joe Biden is wrong. I suspect he’s right. Stay tuned.
Obsession DVDs got CAIR hot under the hijab, but this new documentary will get their burqa in a bunch.
By Patrick Poole
A few weeks ago Bridget Johnson reported here at Pajamas Media about the jihad against free speech being waged by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) against the national DVD distribution of copies of the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, in more than 70 papers. Not only has CAIR filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission against the group sponsoring the campaign, the Clarion Fund, but they have also demanded that the IRS investigate the organization’s tax-exempt status, claiming that the Clarion Fund is a front group for an Israeli organization. The evidence they have provided, however, is little more than the guilt-by-association variety.
I will only pause momentarily to note the outrageous hypocrisy of CAIR calling anyone else a front for foreign organizations, especially after an FBI agent testified two weeks ago in a federal terrorism finance trial in Dallas, identifying CAIR as a front group for the terrorist organization HAMAS and the international Muslim Brotherhood.
But if Obsession gave CAIR heartburn, a new documentary by the same director, The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America, will undoubtedly give them kidney stones. Read more ...
Europa21 – is the only portal in Poland that specializes in problems of radical Islam, terrorism, Middle East and European politics.
News you can read here are rarely seen in main Polish media. Opinions are excluded from mainstream press. But they are all about what Europe is facing in 21st century... ...even it is politically incorrect.
The portal is run by nongovernmental non-profit organization – Foundation Europa 21 with main goal to defend democracy.
There are many forms of terrorism, and violence is just one of them. The non-violent, incremental strategies used to achieve the Muslim Brotherhood’s goal to “sabotage the west from within” are more insidious and more likely to be successful than violence. Though non-violent radicalism takes many forms, one of the most dangerous forms is the effort to stifle free speech through the use of foreign defamation law suits.
A main case in point is that of Rachel Ehrenfeld. She is an Israeli-American counter-terrorism expert, and is internationally recognized. In 2003, she authored the book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop it. In it, she asserted that Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker and billionaire helped finance Al Qaeda. To support her claim, she cited official government documents from France, Britain, and the United States.
Rachel’s book was written, published, and distributed in America, and was targeting an American audience. However, through the Internet, approximately 23 books were sold in the United Kingdom. This was sufficient for British courts to acknowledge jurisdiction when Mahfouz decided to sue Rachel for defamation in the British courts. Read more ...
Some Islamic leaders have loudly proclaimed that the current economic crisis proves the superiority of their religion and way of life over capitalism and liberal democracy. As usual they are in a complete state of denial about the moral, intellectual and economic bankruptcy of the fundamentalist world-view they hold which is rooted in Islamic law. Here are a couple of examples of their empty boasts.
“The collapse of the capitalist system, which is based on usury and securities rather than commodities in markets, shows us that it is undergoing a crisis and that our integrated Islamic philosophy – if properly understood and applied – can replace the Western capitalism,” Qatar’s Gulf Times quoted an influential Sunni cleric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as saying recently. He is a spiritual leader of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood.
"The school of Marxism has collapsed and the sound of the West's cracking liberal democracy is now being heard," supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went further and said that the current financial crisis is a form of divine retribution that marks "the end of capitalism." Read more ...
A Saudi court began formal legal proceedings on Monday against about 70 militant suspects ahead of the first trials of al-Qaeda sympathisers who waged a campaign of violence in the US-allied monarchy.
Security was tight around Riyadh’s general court where 10 judges began viewing the case against the men prepared by prosecutors. It was not clear when the trial would begin.
”All the people involved are implementers, inciters and supporters,” al-Riyadh newspaper said, adding they may include men who fought in Afghanistan, Iraq and militants extradited to Saudi Arabia recently from other countries. Iraq handed over eight Saudi prisoners last month.
”Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” began a campaign to destabilise the US-allied Saudi government in 2003 with two suicide bomb attacks on foreign housing compounds in Riyadh.
Around 264 people died in the violence.
Led by Saudis who took part in militant activities in Afghanistan and other hotspots, the violence was brought to a halt by Saudi security forces in co-operation with foreign experts in a counter-insurgency campaign that won plaudits in the west.
The last major attack was a failed attempt to storm the world’s largest oil processing plant at Abqaiq in February 2006.
The authorities have arrested hundreds over the past year on suspicion of trying to revive militant cells.
Saudis are thought to form the largest contingent among foreign Islamists fighting US troops and the Shia-led Iraqi government in Iraq.
RECAP: Sunrise Equities failed, leaving at least 150 investors in Chicago devastated. About $80 million of their money is missing. The Illinois Secretary of State is investigating, as is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sunrise’s CEO, Salman Ibrahim, was reportedly seen recently on the streets of Lahore, Pakistan. Ibrahim is said to be a Taliban sympathizer. Barack Obama has long ties to Ibrahim and Sunrise Equities, which gave him free office space in his 2004 campaign for US Senate.
worried and angry. Salman Ibrahim, CEO, and other officers vanished. They left Chicago - and probably the US - with about $80 million of investors' money. Most investors have been totally destroyed by the scandal, and now, finally, two months later, the "Illinois Secretary of State's office filed a temporary order of prohibition against the missing CEO and president of a shariah-compliant investment firm."
