Friday, November 30, 2007

Calls in Sudan for execution of Briton

By Mohamed Osman

KHARTOUM, Sudan -- Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."

In response to the demonstration, teacher Gillian Gibbons was moved from the women's prison near Khartoum to a secret location for her safety, her lawyer said.

The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gibbons, who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.

They massed in central Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace, where hundreds of riot police were deployed. They did not try to stop the rally, which lasted about an hour.

"Shame, shame on the U.K.," protesters chanted.

They called for Gibbons' execution, saying, "No tolerance: Execution," and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad."

Gibbons' chief lawyer, Kamal al-Gizouli, said she was moved from the prison for her safety for the final nine days of her sentence.

"They moved this lady from the prison department to put her in other hands and in other places to cover her and wait until she completes her imprisonment period," he said, adding that she was in good health.

"They want, by hook or by crook, to complete these nine days without any difficulties, which would have an impact on their foreign relationship," he said.

Several hundred protesters, not openly carrying weapons, marched from the square to Unity High School, about a mile away, where Gibbons worked. They chanted slogans outside the school, which is closed and under heavy security, then headed toward the nearby British Embassy. They were stopped by security forces two blocks away from the embassy.

The protest arose despite vows by Sudanese security officials the day before, during Gibbons' trial, that threatened demonstrations after Friday prayers would not take place. Some of the protesters carried green banners with the name of the Society for Support of the Prophet Muhammad, a previously unknown group.

Many protesters carried clubs, knives and axes - but not automatic weapons, which some have brandished at past government-condoned demonstrations. That suggested Friday's rally was not organized by the government.

A Muslim cleric at Khartoum's main Martyrs Mosque denounced Gibbons during one sermon, saying she intentionally insulted Islam. He did not call for protests, however.

"Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan. But we welcome imprisonment and expulsion," the cleric, Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri, a well-known hard-liner, told worshippers.

"This an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars, teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad," he said.

Britain, meanwhile, pursued diplomatic moves to free Gibbons. Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke with a member of her family to convey his regret, his spokeswoman said.

"He set out his concern and the fact that we were doing all we could to secure her release," spokeswoman Emily Hands told reporters.

Most Britons expressed shock at the verdict by a court in Khartoum, alongside hope it would not raise tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain.

"One of the good things is the U.K. Muslims who've condemned the charge as completely out of proportion," said Paul Wishart, 37, a student in London.

"In the past, people have been a bit upset when different atrocities have happened and there hasn't been much voice in the U.K. Islamic population, whereas with this, they've quickly condemned it."

Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, accused the Sudanese authorities of "gross overreaction."

"This case should have required only simple common sense to resolve. It is unfortunate that the Sudanese authorities were found wanting in this most basic of qualities," he said.

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, a political advocacy group, said the prosecution was "abominable and defies common sense."

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies, which represents 90,000 Muslim students in Britain and Ireland, called on Sudan's government to free Gibbons, saying she had not meant to cause offense.

"We are deeply concerned that the verdict to jail a schoolteacher due to what's likely to be an innocent mistake is gravely disproportionate," said the group's president, Ali Alhadithi.

The Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim youth organization, said Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir should pardon the teacher.

"The Ramadhan Foundation is disappointed and horrified by the conviction of Gillian Gibbons in Sudan," said spokesman Mohammed Shafiq.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, said Gibbons' prosecution and conviction was "an absurdly disproportionate response to what is at worst a cultural faux pas."

Foreign Secretary David Miliband summoned the Sudanese ambassador late Thursday to express Britain's disappointment with the verdict. The Foreign Office said Britain would continue diplomatic efforts to achieve "a swift resolution" to the crisis.

Gibbons was arrested Sunday after another staff member at the school complained that she had allowed her 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Giving the name of the Muslim prophet to an animal or a toy could be considered insulting.

The case put Sudan's government in an embarrassing position - facing the anger of Britain on one side and potential trouble from powerful Islamic hard-liners on the other. Many saw the 15-day sentence as an attempt to appease both sides.

In The Times, columnist Bronwen Maddox said the verdict was "something of a fudge ... designed to give a nod to British reproof but also to appease the street."

Britain's response - applying diplomatic pressure while extolling ties with Sudan and affirming respect for Islam - had produced mixed results, British commentators concluded.

In an editorial, The Daily Telegraph said Miliband "has tiptoed around the case, avoiding a threat to cut aid and asserting that respect for Islam runs deep in Britain. Given that much of the government's financial support goes to the wretched refugees in Darfur and neighboring Chad, Mr. Miliband's caution is understandable."

Now, however, the newspaper said, Britain should recall its ambassador in Khartoum and impose sanctions on the Sudanese regime.

Source: AP
H/T: TFO / Atlas

Muslims Against Sharia call on British and other Western governments to impose immediate sanctions on Sudan. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband must stop "tiptoeing around the case" and confront Sudanese cavemen.


Order yours today!

Related: The CAIR Bears

U.S. man pleads guilty in bid to aid Hezbollah

DETROIT - A Detroit-area man on Thursday pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges after a failed 1998 attempt to deliver global positioning systems and night-vision goggles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Fawzi Assi, 47, pleaded guilty in federal court in Detroit to attempting to provide support to a terrorist organization under U.S. law, federal prosecutors said.

The guilty plea marked the latest twist one of the first prosecutions under a 1996 U.S. law that made it illegal to provide money or other aid to terrorists groups as defined by the U.S. government.

The U.S. State Department designated Hezbollah a terrorist group in 1997.

Assi, who has been held in federal prison for the past three-and-a-half years, now faces up to a 10-year prison term and a fine of up to $250,000, prosecutors said.

Assi was stopped in July 1998 when he attempted to board a flight from Detroit to Lebanon with two Boeing Co.-manufactured global positioning system kits, night vision goggles and a thermal-imaging camera.

In his plea, Assi said he was attempting to deliver the equipment to a person in Lebanon who he knew was buying the gear for Hezbollah.

In an earlier hearing, FBI agents testified that Assi had told them during questioning that he supported Hezbollah's goal of driving Israel out of southern Lebanon.

Assi fled to Lebanon shortly after his arrest in 1998. He returned to the United States and surrendered to authorities in May 2004.

"Anyone who gives money, technology or other material support to any terrorist organization will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy said in a statement.

Assi's lawyer, James Thomas, could not be reached for comment. As part of the plea deal with prosecutors, Thomas recommended that Assi be sentenced to between three and four years in federal prison.

At the time of his arrest, Assi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to the United States in 1978, was an engineer with Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford Motor Co.

Source: Reuters
H/T: Atlas

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Self-appointed enforcers of Islamic law spread influence in Egypt

By Miret el Naggar

CAIRO, Egypt — The self-styled enforcers of religious law issued frequent reprimands to Rasha el Kholy for not wearing a head scarf.

Sometimes her co-workers spoke to her as "concerned friends," and one colleague at the Cairo clothing factory where she worked gave her a CD of a sermon that emphasized the virtues of wearing the veil.

When that failed, the de facto morality squad lectured her on how to stand during prayers, on the need to pray more than the required five times a day and how she should limit her contact with Christian co-workers, Kholy said.

"It bothered me a lot because we were not friends," said Kholy, 36. "You're not doing it for my concern, you're really doing it just because you want to give me these pearls of wisdom that make you in some way a better Muslim than I am."

Self-appointed enforcers of Islamic law are becoming more common in Egypt, a Sunni Muslim nation with a population well above 70 million. Unlike the state-sanctioned morality police of conservative theocracies such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, Egypt's enforcers are ordinary people who take it upon themselves to offer religious "advice," often to strangers.

Unveiled women are the primary targets, but the enforcers also chastise Muslim men for dating, not observing prayer times or allowing their wives or sisters to wear revealing clothes.

Television preachers, Saudi religious literature and religious instruction in mosques all are encouraging practicing Muslims to offer such advice to others, even if unsolicited.

"People I barely knew started walking up to me, saying, 'You have beautiful hair and you're such a decent girl. Complete the perfect picture and get veiled,' " said Salma Nadim, 24, a telecommunications analyst in Cairo .

Egyptian officials have expressed alarm at the conservative Islamist reformation that's spreading across the Middle East and posing a challenge to the secular, authoritarian government of President Hosni Mubarak, one of the United States' closest Arab allies.

While Egyptian security forces regularly round up dozens of Islamist activists from organized movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, they're all but powerless to stop the street preaching that's now an everyday occurrence on the subway, at the airport, in the workplace and at sidewalk cafes.

Government-backed clerics fear that their relatively moderate brand of Islam is being replaced by a more militant version fueled by widespread political discontent at home and fury over what's seen as Western meddling in the Muslim world. To add insult to injury, sheiks who've devoted their lives to studying Islam's intricacies are finding themselves upstaged by religious vigilantes with no formal training.

"Preaching has its professionals who know religion and understand how to do their job," said Sheik Omar el Deeb, a senior cleric at Al Azhar, a venerable Cairo religious institute that's struggling to remain a touchstone for the Islamic world. "But for someone to appoint himself as a preacher, on public transportation or on the streets, and then order people to follow religion, could make people shun religion."

Several other Muslim countries are locked in internal struggles over the role of morality squads in public life. The difference is that enforcers in the other countries have full state support.

This year, Shiite Muslim Iran launched one of the widest crackdowns in nearly two decades, allowing paramilitaries and police to harass or detain hundreds of women for wearing snug clothing or not wearing the proper head scarves. Men were accosted if they sported long hair, sleeveless shirts or tattoos.

In the Palestinian territories, members of the militant Sunni group Hamas, which won parliamentary elections last January, banned certain musical instruments they deemed counter to Islam, while the rival Fatah party's newly appointed morality police arrested dozens of people for smoking or drinking during the Ramadan holy month of fasting.

Then there's Saudi Arabia, where seemingly everyone has a story of an unpleasant encounter with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, also known as the Muttawa. The commission's members troll the kingdom's ubiquitous Starbucks cafes in search of unmarried couples on dates or for women who aren't clad in the mandatory black robe called an abaya.

In September, two Saudi women made headlines for pepper-spraying and beating up a morality officer in an attack they filmed with their cell phones. The women were hailed as heroes on several Saudi blogs and listservs.

Not all Egyptians oppose their country's emerging volunteer morality police. Many welcome their work as legitimate outreach, or da'awa, a cornerstone of Islam. Yet even supporters concede that the message can get lost in an overzealous delivery.

"A big part of my reaction depends on the attitude in which the message is delivered," said Ahmed Zahran, 22, a university student. "If they're trying to deliver a message in a good manner, without shaming you, then it doesn't make you turn them away."

Critics, on the other hand, regard the vigilantes' efforts as intrusive, offensive and hypocritical.

Mohamed Abdel Wahab, 21, a senior at an Egyptian fine arts university, said he was standing with a female friend one recent day when a stranger approached them and called their behavior "impious." The stranger invited Abdel Wahab to join him in prayer. Not wanting to cause a scene, the student politely answered that he'd think about it. Abdel Wahab never went; he considers the enforcers' focus on beards and veils to be superficial.

"You would never see one of them picking up garbage from the streets and throwing it in a garbage can, for instance," he said.

Kholy, who was the target of constant harassment at the clothing factory, left her job this year for unrelated reasons. But her bitterness lingers, and it's made her more defiant in her belief that no one has the right to question her relationship with God.

"At first, I thought they were really concerned about me, but then I realized that their advice didn't go deeper into spiritual issues or even toward building a stronger relationship between us. It was only about, 'Get veiled, get veiled, get veiled!'" she said.

In her view, the religious vigilantes are competing to show their piety. "Nowadays, everyone is holding a notebook, counting their merits and turning it into a race. If I convince you to get veiled, I'll get two pages of stars and smileys."

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Financial Jihad

EhrenfeldBy Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director of the American Center for Democracy. She has a 25-year track-record of following terrorist financing, especially Islamic radical groups and states. In the late 1980’ she identified how Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Iran bankrolled terrorism, and how they developed Islamic banking to advance the Islamic agenda.

Ehrenfed, a Ph.D. in criminology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has published hundreds of articles and 3 books on these issues. Her last book Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop It, documents who funds terrorism, as well as the expansion of radical Islam.

Funding Evil accused Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire from Jeddah, of funding terrorism. Mahfouz, who is notorious for using British libel laws to silence those who expose him, sued Dr. Ehrenfeld in a British court and she was ordered to destroy all copies of her book in England. She is now counter-suing Mahfouz in the United States.

A new short-form documentary film, The Libel Tourist, has just recently been released, documenting Dr. Ehrenfeld's experience.

Read more ...

Source: FrontPageMagazine.com
H/T: TFO

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Saudis: 208 Arrested in Different Plots

By Abdullah Shihri

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) --

More than 200 al-Qaida-linked suspects involved in different plots against the kingdom have been arrested in recent months in Saudi Arabia's largest anti-terrorism sweep to date, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

The ministry first reported the arrest of eight men, said to be linked to al-Qaida and allegedly planning to attack oil installations in the kingdom.

An Interior Ministry statement, carried by the Saudi Press Agency, said the eight were part of a terrorist cell led by a non-Saudi man, who was one of those arrested. The planned attacks were to take place in the eastern region of the country, which is home to Saudi's main oil resources.

The arrest of the eight "pre-empted an imminent attack on an oil installation," the statement said without naming the target or providing more details.

The ministry also said 22 other suspects were arrested for allegedly supporting the al-Qaida terror network. This group plotted to assassinate the country's religious leaders and security officials, it said.

The ministry also gave the following breakdown of other arrests:

_ 18 suspects, led by an alleged expert in launching missiles, were arrested separately. "They were planning to smuggle eight missiles into the kingdom to carry out terrorist operations," the ministry's said.

_ 112 Saudis were arrested for links and "coordination with outside circles" to assist in smuggling men to troubled areas — shorthand for Iraq and Afghanistan — for training, after which they would be brought back for attacks in the kingdom.

_ 32 men — both Saudis and non-Saudis — were arrested for providing financial aid to al-Qaida operations in the kingdom.

_ 16 men were arrested in the holy city of Medina for colluding to issue a publication propagating "misleading ideology" and criminal acts. The group also worked on helping volunteers go fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The ministry said a total of 208 were arrested.

The statement gave no timeline on the arrests of the separate groups.

Saudi Arabia, which has a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves, has seen a rise in attacks by Islamist extremists over the last few years.

The kingdom, which is the birthplace of Osama bin Laden, has been waging a crackdown on al-Qaida militants since a wave of attacks on foreigners in the kingdom in 2003.

In February 2006, two suicide bombers attacked the oil facility at Abqaiq on the east coast, killing two security guards and wounding eight foreign workers in an incident later claimed by the Saudi branch of al-Qaida.

The previous large sweep by the Saudi authorities was announced in April, netting 172 militants, including pilots they say were trained for oil refinery attacks using civilian planes.

In August, Saudi Arabia said it was setting up a 35,000-strong special force to protect its oil facilities due to the increasing threats against al-Qaida.

Source: AP

'We are at war with all Islam'
An interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali

By Mary Wakefield

Last Tuesday at nightfall, as the servants of democracy fled SW1, a young Somali woman stood spotlit on a stage in Westminster. Behind her was the illuminated logo for the Centre for Social Cohesion: a white hand reaching down across England to help a brown one up; in front, an audience of some of Britain’s biggest brains — politicians, editors, academics. She drew her shawl a little closer round her shoulders, looked up and said: ‘We are not at war with “terror”, that would make no sense.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said a voice at the back. ‘Terror is just a tactic used by Islam,’ she continued. ‘We are actually at war, not just with Islamism, but with Islam itself.’

Out in the dark began a great wobbling of heads. Neocons nodded, Muslims shook their heads; others, uncertain, waggled theirs anxiously from side to side: at war with all Islam, even here in the UK? What does that mean?

It would be easier in some ways to ignore Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to label her as bonkers — but it would also be irresponsible. She’s not just another hawkish hack, anxious to occupy the top tough-guy media slot — she has the authority of experience, the authenticity of suffering. In the spring of 2004 she wrote a film called Submission (an artsy 11-minute protest against Islamic cruelty to women) which was shown on Dutch TV. In November 2004 the film’s director, Theo van Gogh, was assassinated and the killer left a long letter to Hirsi Ali knifed into his corpse which said, in short: you’re next. But Hirsi Ali couldn’t be silenced. She has since written an autobiography (Infidel) about growing up a Muslim (in Somalia, then Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia), describing her circumcision, the beatings she received, her arranged marriage, her flight to Holland. She risks her life daily, speaking out against what she calls the ‘fairytale’ that Islam is in essence a religion of peace.

The other reason to take her seriously is that Hirsi Ali’s ideas about Islam (that it is unamenable to reform, and intrinsically opposed to Western values) are attracting attention worldwide. In Holland where, until 2006, she was an MP for the People’s Party for Freedom and Independence (VVD), the famous ‘pillarisation’ approach to immigration — where each new culture becomes a pillar upon which the state rests — has given way to a ‘new realism’, much more in tune with Hirsi Ali’s way of thinking, and in part because of her. In Britain and in America, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become a sort of popstar for neocons, and she now lives in Washington, and works as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.

But is she right? And what does ‘war with Islam’ mean? I went to find out; to meet Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the House of Lords on a bitter and blustery afternoon last week, bustling past the police, down the corridors of partial power, to the visitors’ room where she was waiting. We haven’t got much time, so can we dive straight into Islam? I ask. ‘Yes, absolutely, go ahead,’ she smiles. Up close she is disconcertingly beautiful, and fragile-looking. OK then, right. Well, you say that Islam is a violent religion, because the Prophet advocated violence. But isn’t that open to interpretation? I ask. Karen Armstrong, (a non-Muslim biographer of Mohammed) has said the Prophet was a loving man who’d have been horrified at 9/11.

‘Karen Armstrong is ridiculous,’ says Hirsi Ali in her quick, light voice — Africa still audible in the clipped consonants. ‘The Prophet would have not have disapproved of 9/11, because it was carried out in his example. When he came to Medina, the Prophet had a revelation, of jihad. After that, it became an obligation for Muslims to convert others, and to establish an Islamic state, by the sword if necessary.’

But there is such a thing as moderate Islam, I say. Muslims aren’t all terrorists. There are some like Ed Husain (author of The Islamist) who argue that there are many peaceful traditions of Koranic scholarship to choose from. Isn’t it a mistake to dismiss this gentler, acceptable branch of Islam?

‘I find the word “moderate” very misleading.’ There’s a touch of steel in Hirsi Ali’s voice. ‘I don’t believe there is such a thing as “moderate Islam”. I think it’s better to talk about degrees of belief and degrees of practice. The Koran is quite clear that it should control every area of life. If a Muslim chooses to obey only some of the Prophet’s commandments, he is only a partial Muslim. If he is a good Muslim, he will wish to establish Sharia law.’

But I don’t call myself a ‘partial Christian’ just because I don’t take the whole Bible literally, I say. Why can’t a Muslim pick and choose his scriptures too? Before Hirsi Ali can answer, the door to the waiting room flies open and a House of Lords doorman stands theatrically on the threshold. ‘You must stop this interview immediately!’ he says. Why? Is there a breach of security? A terrorist threat? ‘I have not received authorisation for it,’ he says. But we’re here with a peer, I say. I’m sure he has cleared it. ‘Please proceed to the waiting area in silence.’ So off we trudge to the foyer to sit by a fake fire — ‘it’s much nicer here, anyway,’ says Hirsi Ali kindly — and to continue our discussion about the superiority of the free, enlightened West in urgent whispers behind my rucksack.

‘Christianity is different from Islam,’ says Hirsi Ali, ‘because it allows you to question it. It probably wasn’t different in the past, but it is now. Christians — at least Christians in a liberal democracy — have accepted, after Thomas Hobbes, that they must obey the secular rule of law; that there must be a separation of church and state. In Islamic doctrine such a separation has not occurred yet. This is what makes it dangerous! Islam — all Islam, not just Islamism — has not acknowledged that it must obey secular law. Islam is hostile to reason.’

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s eyes are now aglow. She is a terrific believer in reason. For her, Western civilisation is built on the bedrock not of Judaeo-Christian values, but of logic. After seeking asylum in Holland, she spent five years at Leiden university studying political science, absorbing the Enlightenment philosophers — Spinoza, Hobbes, Voltaire — and she mentions them fondly, as if they’re family. But there’s a steely side to her atheism, which says with Voltaire: Ecraser l’infâme! During a recent debate with Ed Husain, as Husain was explaining his moderate Islam, she began to laugh at him, saying: ‘When you die you rot, Ed! There is no afterlife, Ed!’ And it makes me wonder whether, for Hirsi Ali, Islam’s crime is as much against reason as humanity; whether she sees the point of spirituality at all.

Are you so sure you understand what is at the heart of Islam? I ask her. Isn’t there a peaceful prayerfulness — apart from the politics — that an atheist might not understand? ‘I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate,’ she says.

OK then, you talk about your conscience, and how your conscience was pricked by 9/11. But if there’s no God, what do you mean by a conscience? And why should we obey it?

‘My conscience is informed by reason,’ says Hirsi Ali, surprised I should ask. ‘It’s like Kant’s categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.’

I say, so let’s assume Islam is hostile and not open to reason, that it needs to be wiped out. The next question then is how? We can’t just ban it. Isn’t it destructive to curtail freedom so much in the interests of protecting it? Don’t you risk loving freedom to death?

Hirsi Ali looks at me with pity. ‘You, here in the UK, are in danger. Of course you can’t ban Islam outright, but you need to stop the spread of ideology, stop native Westerners converting to Islam. You definitely need to ban the veil in schools, and to close down Muslim schools because that’s where kids are indoctrinated.’

But, what about freedom of belief and free speech? I ask (with a nervous look at the doorman). And if you close down Muslim schools, don’t you, by the same logic, have to close all faith schools?

‘Islam is different from other faiths because it is not just a faith, it is a political ideology. Children learn that Allah is the lawgiver, and that is a political statement. You wouldn’t allow the BNP to run a school, would you?’

But if we crack down like this, won’t it make Muslims angry? I say, thinking about terrorists and my safety. ‘Well perhaps anger is no bad thing,’ says Hirsi Ali, thinking about ordinary Muslims, and their enlightenment. ‘Perhaps it’ll make Muslims more aware, help them question their beliefs. If we keep on asking questions, maybe Muslim women will realise, as I did, that they don’t have to be second-class citizens.’

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is on her favourite topic now (the subjection of women), leaning forward, gesticulating. And as she talks I realise (belatedly) what makes her different from her neocon pals. Whereas they seem motivated by fear of Muslims, she is out to protect Muslims from submission to unreason. When she speaks of a ‘war against Islam’, she’s thinking not of armies of insurgents, but of an ideological virus, in the same way a doctor might talk of the battle against typhoid. ‘Yes, I am at war with Islam,’ she says, as she gets up to leave, ‘but I am not at war with Muslims.’ It’s a crucial difference.

It’s teatime now and the House of Lords hallway is suddenly full of peers’ wives chattering, shaking their brollies. Sorry about all these women in headscarves, I say unnecessarily, as I shake her hand goodbye. ‘Don’t worry,’ says Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ‘It’s not the hijab, the headscarves are just to protect them against the rain!’ And she walks off, laughing.

Source: The Spectator
H/T: Storm'n Norm'n

As representatives of Islamic Reform Movement we obviously disagree with Hirsi Ali’s ideas about Islam (that it is unamenable to reform), but the lady has some valid points.

Sudan Charges British Teacher With Insulting Religion

Not so fast about naming your teddy bear Muhammad. You've committed the high crime of insulting religion and inciting hatred. What? Talk about living in the stone age, be thankful you don't live in the Sudan.

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sudan on Wednesday charged a British teacher with insulting religion and inciting hatred, a crime punishable by up to 40 lashes, six months in prison or a fine, after she named a class teddy bear "Muhammad," Reuters reported.

The charges come a day after a 7-year-old Sudanese boy said Gilliam Gibbons, 54, asked him as part of a school assignment what he wanted to call the stuffed animal and he said, 'Muhammad,' after his name, Reuters reported.

Source: Fox News

Update
Muslims Against Sharia urge Western government to put pressure on Sudan to drop all charges against Gilliam Gibbons

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Covering customs in Turkey

By Tulin Daloglu

The practice of women wearing headscarves is not unique to Islam. It exists in all Abrahamic religions. Yet in the Judeo-Christian world, it is no longer used by the mainstream to signify religiosity. It does exist and everyone respects it, but in terms of day-to-day life it is seen as an outdated custom — a marker of a different era.

For their part, Muslim women have several different styles to cover their hair. Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, is less concerned about showing her hair and neck. Turkey's first lady, Hayrunnisa Gul, believes that according to her faith she must make sure that no hair and no neck should be visible, as it could excite men. Mrs. Gul, who married a husband twice her age when she was 15 years old, now publicly represents the first majority-Muslim country that embraced secular democracy.

Read more ...

Source: The Washington Times
H/T: TFO

Annapolis is about Syria or should be

Source: IsraPundit

By Ted Belman

The key to solving American troubles in the ME is Syria, not Israel. You may recall that Saudi Arabia demanded that Syria be invited as the price for gaining its attendance and Syria was invited. There is no solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, or should I say the Israel/Arab conflict, unless and until the Arab countries are prepared to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and sign an end of conflict agreement. The former has been rejected and the latter is not even discussed.

America must stop and reverse the growing influence of Iran. The way to do this is to wean Syria away from Iran just as it weaned Egypt away from the USSR after the Yom Kippur War. Syria's ruling clique, the Alawites, above all, seek to perpetuate its regime. To this end, it manufactured an external enemy, Israel. Peace with Israel would threaten its regime. Better to keep them as an "enemy". Who cares about the Golan anyway. But Lebanon is another story. The Alawites would dearly love to have their way with Lebanon and the US would have no trouble with this if Syria was entrenched in the US camp.

Muslims Against Sharia in the Media - November '07

11/27/07
Dunner's: Sinking to a New Low
11/26/07
New English Review: Muslims against Sharia
11/19/07
No Apologies: Some Muslims Agree with Tancredo
11/15/07
Nice Deb: GWU Crapweasels Get Wrist Slap For Smearing YAF
11/14/07
Spanish Pundit: Saudi Arabia: Jihadoterror and petrodollars
11/13/07
FrontPage Magazine: Muslims Against Sharia
sherif-view: Phony Muslims Against Sharia
Hyscience: Islamofascism is to Islam what the Christian Identity Movement is to Christianity
Hyscience: Opinion: 'It's Radical Islam, Stupid'
Freedom's Zone: Opinion: 'It's Radical Islam, Stupid'
Dust My Broom: Muslims Against Sharia
Alice the Camel: Peace In Our Time...
Human Rights Service: 13.11.07: Muslims Against Sharia
11/12/07
Religio-Political Talk: Moderate Muslim (Reform) Site -- YES!
11/11/07
123beta: Muslims. Against. Sharia.
11/09/07
The Recliner Commentaries: Muslims against Sharia
11/06/07
Israpundit: Good Islamofascism Definition: Muslims Against Sharia
Democratic Peace: Muslims In The War On Islamofascism
11/05/07
Often Right, Rarely Correct: Further thoughts on "Islamofascism"
11/02/07
WEBSTER'S BLOGSPOT: Moderate Muslims Found!
11/01/07
ThisOneIsForAmerica: A Muslim "REFORMIST" wanted me to post this comment to my blog
Your Daily Paine: 1 Comment Posted

October

Somali Gets 10 Years in Ohio Bomb Plot

By Andrew Welsh-Huggins

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A Somali immigrant was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday for plotting to blow up an Ohio shopping mall with a man later convicted of being an al-Qaida terrorist.

Nuradin Abdi, a cell phone salesman before his arrest, pleaded guilty in July to conspiring to provide material support for terrorists. He will be deported to Somalia after serving the federal sentence.

In a 20-minute statement to the court, Abdi's attorney Mahir Sherif said his client apologized to the people of the United States, the people of Ohio and the Muslim community. He said Abdi regretted that his conviction might lead to problems for other Muslims.

"He apologizes for the things he thought about and the things he talked about and the crimes he pleaded guilty to," Sherif said. "He wants to make it very, very clear that he does not hate America."

Prosecutors said Abdi made threatening comments about the unspecified shopping mall during a meeting with two other suspected terrorists on Aug. 8, 2002, at a coffee shop in suburban Columbus.

Abdi and the two "could attack the mall with a bomb," Abdi told his friends as they sipped refreshments at the coffee shop, according to court documents.

One of the men with Abdi that day was Iyman Faris, who pleaded guilty in May 2003 to providing material support for terrorism. A Pakistani immigrant, Faris was convicted of plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The third man alleged to be at the meeting is Christopher Paul, a U.S. citizen who grew up in suburban Columbus. He was charged in April with plotting to bomb European tourist resorts frequented by Americans as well as overseas U.S. military bases, and his trial is scheduled for January 2009.

The suspected plot was never carried out, and Sherif has maintained that Abdi was guilty at most of ranting about the United States' handling of the war in Afghanistan.

Prosecutor Robyn Jones Hahnert, however, told the judge that the case against Abdi went far beyond one angry comment. She said Abdi illegally traveled out of the U.S. to search for holy war training and provided stolen credit card numbers to buy equipment like laptop computers for use in terrorism.

"The United States is a country that welcomes people to question - that's what we're all about," Hahnert said. "But that questioning should not lead to criminal activity that can harm people."

Abdi's attorneys have said that the stolen credit card numbers were never used and that the Justice Department never alleged what organization they believed was running the training camp Abdi was accused of visiting, what Abdi intended to do with the training or whether he ever actually went.

A family spokesman said after the sentencing that the government exaggerated the facts against Abdi, knowing they would be hard to disprove.

"Since this was not a session where everybody has to bring their proof, they could have made any kind of statement," said Yusuf Abucar, a Columbus architect originally from Somalia.

Fred Alverson, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said Abdi agreed to a long statement of facts outlining the allegations as part of his plea deal.

Three charges were dropped as part of the agreement; Abdi could have received 80 years in prison had he been convicted of all the counts he had faced.

Faris told authorities about the mall plot conversation after he was taken into custody, and Abdi was arrested in November 2003. Abdi probably will receive credit for the four years he's spent in custody since then, Alverson said.

Source: AP
H/T: Atlas

Monday, November 26, 2007

1,500 Saudi militants go free after 'repenting'

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia, waging a crackdown on Islamist militants that has lasted for more than four years, has released some 1,500 jailed suspects after they "repented," a newspaper said on Sunday. The 1,500 were among about 3,200 militants with whom representatives of a government-appointed "advice committee" met around 5,000 times since it was formed three years ago, Al-Watan said, quoting committee member Mohammad al-Nujaimi.

The paper did not clarify if the remaining 1,700 detainees had refused to renounce the ideology of "taqfir" - branding other Muslims as apostates or infidels in order to legitimize violence against them.

The ideology is espoused by some militants who advocate the use of force to overthrow regimes deemed corrupt or unrepresentative and to establish a single Islamic state.

Nujaimi said the 1,500 militants who changed their views had renounced Saudi-born Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's call on his followers to "cleanse the Arabian Peninsula of polytheists."

The advice committee is comprised of more than 100 Islamic scholars, preachers and experts in Sharia law, in addition to 30 psychologists and social workers, the paper said.

Saudi Arabia has cracked down on suspected Al-Qaeda militants since they launched a series of deadly bombings and shootings in the oil-rich kingdom in May 2003.

Source: AFP

On Upcoming Annapolis Summit

Two points about Arab-Israeli conflict.

1. Judging by the amount of news coverage it gets, Arab-Israeli conflict is the central conflict of the Muslim world. However almost every other conflict in the Muslim world, i.e., Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Sudan, Yugoslavia, etc., each produced more Muslim deaths than the Arab-Israeli conflict. And most of the Muslim blood of the Arab-Israeli conflict is on Muslim hands.

2. An average Muslim living in Israel has more freedoms that an average Muslim living in a Muslim country.

Conclusion: any Muslim attacking Israel in the name of liberating Muslims (politically or otherwise) is either too blind to see the facts or has an ulterior motive. Most common motives being expansionism of Islamism or deflection of anger from autocratic regimes to the world's most convenient scapegoat, the Jews.

Justice Ministry: Saudi Gang Rape Victim Was an Adulteress

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The Saudi Justice Ministry announced that a girl gang raped by seven men and then sentenced to six months prison and 200 lashes for adultery had confessed to cheating on her husband, in its latest response to the negative international reaction to the incident.

The statement, which was carried by the Saudi Press Agency late on Saturday, confirmed that the flogging sentence against the rape victim would be carried out and condemned foreign interference.

"The Saudi justice minister expressed his regret about the media reports over the role of the women in this case which put out false information and wrongly defend her," said the statement. "The charged girl is a married woman who confessed to having an affair with the man she was caught with."

In 2006 a Shiite Saudi 19-year-old, known only as the "Girl from Qatif," said she had recently been married and met a high school friend in his car to retrieve a picture of herself from him. While in a car with him, two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area where others waited, and then she and her companion were both raped.

She was sentenced to prison and 90 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her and when her lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, appealed the sentence, he was removed from the case, his license suspended and the penalty doubled to 200.

The increase in sentence received heavy coverage by the international media and prompted expressions of astonishment from the U.S. government, while Canada called it "barbaric."

The Justice Ministry maintained, however, that the ruling was legal and followed the "the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad," noting that she had "confessed to doing what God has forbidden."

The ministry added that the woman and her husband were "convinced on the verdict and agreed to it."

The alleged rape has triggered a rare debate about Saudi Arabia's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no lawyers are present.

Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Judges — appointed by the king on the recommendation of the Supreme Judicial Council — have complete discretion to set sentences, except in cases where Sharia outlines a punishment, such as capital crimes.

That means that no two judges would likely hand down the same verdict for similar crimes. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence to death, depending on the judge's discretion.

The Justice Ministry's account of the incident differed substantially from that given by the woman and her lawyer and largely glosses over her rape by seven men, focusing instead on her plan to meet her lover for tryst in his car "in a dark place where they stayed for a while."

"Then they where spotted by the other defendants as the woman was in an indecent condition as she had tossed away her clothes, then the assault occurred on her and the man," the statement added.

Under Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, women are not allowed in public in the company of men other than their male relatives. Also, women in Saudi Arabia are often sentenced to flogging for adultery and other crimes.

The seven men convicted of raping the woman were given prison sentences of two to nine years. The initial sentences for the men convicted of the gang rape ranged from 10 months to five years in prison.

Source: Fox News
H/T: Dhimmi Watch

Muslims Against Sharia condemn Saudi Arabia and its institutionalized barbarism. We call on every woman in the West to contact their governments to pressure Saudi Arabia to abandon its barbaric practices.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Hezbollah adds new demand in Lebanon

By Hussein Dakroub

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Iran-backed Hezbollah on Sunday blamed U.S. interference for the Lebanese parliament's inability to elect a president and added a new condition for choosing the next head of state: The leader must support the powerful Shiite Muslim group's fight against Israel.

Hezbollah's demand is bound to further complicate efforts to elect a new president to replace Emile Lahoud, who stepped down midnight Friday, plunging the crisis-ridden country into a dangerous power vacuum after rival factions failed to agree on a successor.

"We want a president who believes in national participation and in the right to defend one's land and protect its people," Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheik Naim Kassem, said in a speech in south Beirut.

Hezbollah fought a guerrilla war against Israel's 18-year occupation of a border strip in southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. It sparked a 34-day war with Israel in the summer of 2006 after it killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others in a cross-border raid.

While Lebanon's U.S.-backed government does not have relations with Israel, it also does not seek to provoke fighting between the two countries.

Months of political haggling between Lebanon's rival politicians failed to find a compromise presidential candidate to succeed Lahoud, intensifying fears of street violence between Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's Western-backed government and the opposition led by Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran and Syria.

The departure of Lahoud, a staunch ally of Syria during his nine years in office, was a long-sought goal of the government installed by the majority in parliament who oppose Syria's influence in Lebanon. The government has been trying to put one of its own in the post and seal the end of Syrian dominance of Lebanon.

But Hezbollah and its opposition allies have been able to stymie the government's hopes by repeatedly boycotting parliamentary votes for a new president, as they did on Friday, leaving it without the required quorum. A new parliament session to elect a president has been set for Nov. 30.

In the absence of a president, Saniora's cabinet, which the opposition considers illegitimate, takes on executive power under the constitution.

"This government is illegitimate and unconstitutional. It doesn't exist, so it can't rule and it can't exercise the role of the presidency," Kassem said Sunday.

He also blamed U.S. "interference" for the lack of consensus in Lebanon.

"American interference, through which they tried to dictate conditions (for the new president), is what blocked the consensus and kept the elections from being held on time," he said.

The United States has said the new Lebanese president must be committed to implementation of international demands, a reference to U.N. Security Council resolutions that call for disarming Hezbollah, which Washington labels a terrorist organization.

But Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah earlier this month vowed to keep the group's weapons, saying no army in the world can disarm Hezbollah.

Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon in 2005 following Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination. Some in Lebanon accuse Syria of being behind the killing — a charge Damascus denies.

Source: AP

Iraqi Kurdistan schools will teach religions other than Islam

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Judged solely by one of the big, bold words on its cover, the book that Fadel Mahmoud clutched in his hands would be considered blasphemous in many parts of the Muslim world.

Most people in Kurdish northern Iraq believe that the Quran, the holy book of Islam, is the final word on religious life. Mahmoud and other teachers, however, are preaching a message of religious tolerance in hopes of preserving the region's relative stability.

The book in his hands is an introduction to Judaism written by an Arab.

Last month, the Kurdish Regional Government's Ministry of Religious Affairs began requiring its 19 campuses, from grade school to college, to broaden their curricula by including courses on comparative religion that better expose students to other religious thought, including Christianity and in some cases Judaism.

Read more ...

Source: McClatchy Newspapers
H/T: Dhimmi Watch

Muslims Against Sharia praise the decision of Kurdish Regional Government's Ministry of Religious Affairs to broaden religious horizons of Kurdish students.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

An Egyptian Makes the Case for America

By Mona Charen

When you begin reading the output of MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute (memri.org), you are at first blown back by the intensity of the hatred, deliberate lies and fantasy that characterize so much of the journalism from the Arab and Middle Eastern press. MEMRI dutifully translates it without comment. Here you can read transcripts of interviews with leading Arab commentators who explain that the United States is engaged in a war of extermination against Muslims, that Israel calls all of the shots in Washington, D.C., and that 9/11 was a hoax.

But there are other voices, too. There are figures within the Muslim world who make the case for democracy, liberalism (small l) and historical accuracy better than we do. Actually, that isn't terribly hard. We are so internally riven, so crippled by
political correctness and so guilty about our success that we do not make the case for ourselves very well at all. Besides, those unfamiliar with the level of fantasy and invention in the Arab press are ill equipped to fight the battle where it needs to be engaged.

Magdi Khalil, on the other hand, an Egyptian/American writer, really seemed to score points when he appeared on Al Jazeera last month to debate Mahmoud Al-Mubarak, a Saudi expert on international law. They began with the resolution Congress passed (over the administration's objections) condemning the Armenian genocide 100 years ago. Mubarak heaped contempt on the United States, asking, "Who if not Congress legislated laws in 1848, permitting the annihilation of the Indians?" and what of "Andrew Jackson, whose portrait is on the $20 bill, considering the killing of Indians a duty, and he even mutilated corpses of Indians?"

The United States, Khalil responded, "has made mistakes in the past with regard to the blacks and the Indians, but it has paid the price and acknowledged its mistakes. Hundreds of books in America acknowledge what happened to the blacks and the Indians." Museums have been erected, he added, telling the stories of these events. Yet, in Turkey, it remains a crime to say that genocide was committed against the Armenians.

When Mubarak cast the usual (for a Saudi) aspersions on the historicity of the Holocaust ("the alleged Holocaust"), Khalil wheeled on him. "The two greatest genocides of the 20th century are the crimes of annihilating the Armenians and the Holocaust. Despite this, not a single Arab or Islamic country acknowledges this or denounces the Turks. Unfortunately, they cast doubt about it and refer to it as 'accusations.' The events of the Holocaust took place 50-60 years ago, yet you deny them. So what do you do with regard to ancient history, most of which has been distorted in Arab and Islamic countries? … If you deny the history of 50, 60 or 90 years ago, for which there are still living witnesses, what will you do with ancient history?"

"The discourse coming out of the Arab and Islamic region is a disgrace," Khalil argued. "In Darfur and south Sudan, severe human rights violations occur — ethnic cleansing, the murder of millions and rape. Yet no one but the West exposes what is happening in south Sudan and Darfur. … It is the West that attacked Serbia. It is the West that established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It is the West that protects the independence of Kosovo."

At this juncture, the moderator (if you can call him that) was impelled to interrupt. "With regard to Darfur, are you trying to convince the Arab world that the American wolf, as Dr. Al Mubarak has called him, is shedding a tear over what is happening in Darfur? … There is oil in Darfur, and they don't care about all the Arabs and Muslims put together."

Khalil responded: "That's all nonsense. That deceiving propaganda is all around you — oil and all that. Do you know how much was spent on Iraq? Even if America were to take Iraq's oil for the next 200 years, it would not compensate for what it has spent on Iraq. You are used to spreading delusions, lies and deceiving propaganda. Give us one example when you supported human rights in any country?"

This is a steep uphill climb. So much of what is ladled out to Muslim readers and listeners is distorted and extremist. Yet every opportunity for debate and free exchange should be embraced. The truth will out in the end.

To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Source: Yahoo News
H/T: Gramfan

Thursday, November 22, 2007

5 Die As Bus Explodes in Russia

By Sergei Venyavsky

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) - A passenger bus caught fire and exploded in Russia's troubled North Caucasus Thursday, killing at least five people and wounding 12, emergency and police officials said.

Investigators said they considered terrorism the likely cause. The incident took place in the North Ossetia region which is plagued by violence from feuding criminal groups, remnants of Chechen separatist fighters and other militant groups that target government and police. But authorities did not point to any specific group that is suspected.

Read more: AP

11 years for refusing to testify to grand jury in Hamas funding case

CHICAGO: A former professor accused of taking part in a Palestinian terrorist network was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison Wednesday for refusing to testify before a U.S. grand jury.

Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 49, a former associate professor of business at Washington's Howard University, was taken into custody by federal marshals immediately after the sentencing, during which prosecutors warned that he might flee.

Ashqar was convicted earlier this year of criminal contempt and obstruction of justice for refusing to testify in 2003 before a grand jury investigating the Palestinian militant movement Hamas.

He and co-defendant Muhammad Salah were acquitted of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy aimed at bankrolling Hamas in its violent attacks on the government of Israel. But prosecutors presented telephone records showing that Ashqar was in contact with Hamas leaders.

The judge found that Ashqar's refusal to testify was motivated by a desire to "promote terrorism." That toughened the federal sentencing guidelines and guaranteed that he would get a stiff sentence.

One defense attorney called the length of the sentence "obscene."

In a passionate statement before sentencing, Ashqar painted a grim picture of the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and said some of his own relatives had been killed or jailed.

He said he would rather go to prison than betray his people.

"The only option was to become a traitor or a collaborator, and this is something that I can't do and will never do as long as I live," he said.

While Ashqar accepted his sentence stoically, a woman identified by defense attorneys as Ashqar's mother-in-law screamed furiously at the prosecutors in Arabic. She later collapsed in the lobby and was taken to a hospital.

Defense attorneys said the judge imposed an unusually stiff sentence given the complex political background. In addition to 135 months in prison, he was given a $5,000 (€3,375) fine.

"This is an obscene sentence," said Michael E. Deutsch, an attorney for Salah, who was convicted of lying on a document and sentenced to 22 months in prison. Deutsch said five years was the most he had expected.

Deutsch noted that another man, Sharif Alwan, who refused to testify before a grand jury in the same investigation was sentenced to two years.

Ashqar attorney William Moffitt compared his client with Nelson Mandela, who served 27 years in South Africa.

But U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald told reporters the sentence "may be on the high end, but it should be."

Source: AP
H/T: Jihad Watch

Terrorist supporter gets 11 years! Happy Thanksgiving indeed!

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Claim: U.S. training known terror leader

Author says 9 other senior jihadists currently in American course

A known terrorist leader and nine senior members of a major terror organization are enrolled in two U.S.-run military training courses underway in the Middle East, according to the author of a new book.

WND's Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein, author of the recently released "Schmoozing with Terrorists," said yesterday he discovered the known terrorists are enrolled at a U.S. course in the West Bank city of Jericho that is training about 300 members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah security forces. Another course began earlier this month in Ramallah.

The U.S. has been running bases in Jericho to train Fatah militias since the late 1990s. Over the years, the U.S. also has provided Fatah militias with arms, reportedly including thousands of high-powered assault rifles during the past year alone.

In August, the State Department announced the U.S. will begin new training courses for Fatah militias in an effort to bolster Abbas against Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip in June when the terror group easily defeated American-backed Fatah forces in the territory.

The U.S. training programs include courses in the use of weapons. They are being partially funded with a $86.5 million grant approved by Congress in April and are slated to be infused with more funds from a $400 million grant President Bush asked Congress to approve last month ahead of next week's U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian summit in Annapolis, Md.

Read more ...

Source: World Net Daily
H/T: Atlas

Flying imams win round 1

I'm sure most people are aware of the "Flying imams" that were arrested here in Minneapolis last November.

Their actions were aggressive in nature, a reasonable person in a post-9/11 world would come to the conclusion that the authorities should be made aware of these fellows. And that's exactly what happened.

I personally believe these 6 were not a threat. However, I also believe these 6 were out of line, and deliberately provoking the public to see what kind of a reaction they would get. I also believe they were looking for wealth through litigation. I don't believe these 6 are honorable men in any way.

Six Muslim imams arrested on a U.S. Airways jet in Minneapolis last November after a passenger raised suspicions about their pre-flight prayers and boarding activities won an early victory Tuesday in their federal lawsuit against the airline and the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

The full story can be found in the Star Tribune

Six imams kicked off flight win a round in court

A judge rejected a move to dismiss the imams' suit in a case that spurred a national debate about security and religious freedom.

By Dan Browning

Six Muslim imams arrested on a U.S. Airways jet in Minneapolis last November after a passenger raised suspicions about their pre-flight prayers and boarding activities won an early victory Tuesday in their federal lawsuit against the airline and the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery's opinion and order rejected almost all of the defendants' arguments for dismissal. She said the question of whether airport officers had probable cause to arrest the men must be determined by the objective facts they had available at the time.

Over the past year, the case has triggered a firestorm of debate about security concerns vs. religious rights. The imams have argued that they were removed because of religious and ethnic bias. The airline says they were ejected solely because of security concerns raised by passengers and crew members.

Frederick Goetz, one of the imams' attorneys, praised the judge's decision, saying "This has always been a straightforward civil rights case. You had six individuals ... doing absolutely nothing wrong. They prayed in the airport and got arrested. That's unconstitutional, and they deserve redress."

Attorneys for the airport commission could not be reached for comment Tuesday. U.S. Airways said Tuesday evening that it was studying the order. "We continue to stand by the actions of our crew members and employees, but at this point we can't say anything definitive about next steps," said spokeswoman Andrea Rader.

According to a police report, the men were arrested because three had one-way tickets and no checked baggage; most had requested seat belt extensions; a passenger reported that they had prayed "very loudly" before the flight and criticized U.S. involvement with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and they were seated widely throughout the aircraft.

Montgomery said it is "dubious" that a reasonable person would conclude from those facts that the imams were about to interfere with the crew or aircraft. She said the plaintiffs had stated a plausible claim that MAC officers violated their constitutional rights.

Ahmed Shqeirat, Mohamed Ibrahim, Didmar Faja, Omar Shahin, Mahmoud Sulaiman and Marwan Sadeddin were arrested as they returned home from the North American Conference of Imams. Ibrahim lives in California, the others in Arizona.

Faja, Sadeddin and Shqeirat said they saw an older couple watching the other imams as they prayed. They said the man placed a phone call.

Sulaiman helped Sadeddin, who is blind, board the plane and escorted him to his seat in row 4 before going to his own seat in row 9. Another passenger switched seats with Sadeddin so Sulaiman could assist his friend. Shahin was seated in first class. The others were seated in rows 25 and 21.

Police boarded and asked the imams to exit the plane, which they did. They were later ordered to get their carry-on baggage and were taken to the airport police precinct. After several hours, federal agents interviewed them, cleared them of wrongdoing and said they could leave. U.S. Airways refused to book new flights and they departed on Northwest.

Some of the controversy around the lawsuit was defused in early August when "John Doe passengers" were removed as one of the suit's targets.

Montgomery, considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, said the facts they alleged "support the existence of an unconstitutional custom of arresting individuals without probable cause based on their race."

She rejected the defendants' attacks on a variety of the imams' legal claims, including false arrest, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Montgomery did strike a couple of claims made by the imams, slightly narrowing their case. But Goetz said his clients were happy with the ruling.

"They'll have their day in court on certainly the most significant issues," he said. "You don't arrest people because of their faith. You don't arrest people because of their national origin. That's just fundamentally wrong."

Dan Browning • 612-673-4493

Dan Browning • dbrowning@startribune.com

Source: Star Tribune
H/T: Atlas



Ann Montgomery
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award


The Dhimmi Award

Islamist Child Abuse


H/T: Atlas

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Radical cleric faces extradition to US

al-MazriLONDON: Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who faces charges related to a hostage-taking in Yemen in 1998 during which an Australian tourist was killed, could be extradited to the US.

A British court ruled last night that Hamza, who has one eye and a hook for a righthand, could be extradited to face terrorism charges including trying to set up an al-Qa'ida training camp in Oregon.

Egyptian-born Hamza, 49, serving a seven-year jail term in Britain for inciting his followers to murder non-believers, is wanted by US authorities on 11 charges.

Hamza, who applauded the attacks on New York and Washington of September 11, 2001, faces charges that he was involved in plotting the taking of 16 Western hostages in Yemen in 1998.

Four of the hostages, Australian tourist Andrew Thirsk and three Britons, were killed when the terrorists used the hostages as human shields during a gunfight that broke out after Yemeni forces launched a rescue attempt.

The US indictment accuses Hamza of attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, from 1999 to early 2000, and supporting al-Qa'ida and the Taliban.

If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of up to 100 years in prison.

London's City of Westminster Magistrates Court approved the extradition, but that decision has to be ratified by Britain's Home Secretary.

Source: Reuters
H/T: America's Truth Forum

Profiles of American Islamofascists: Omar Abdel-Rahman (a.k.a. The Blind Sheikh)

American IslamofascistCAIR, in its 1996 book, entitled 'The Price of Ignorance,' in a section which listed "incidents of anti-Muslim bias and violence," CAIR included the trial of Abdel-Rahman. Cited in the book were Abdel-Rahman's lawyers, who had called the trial "far from free and fair." (Jake Tapper, Salon, "Islam's flawed spokesmen," September 26, 2001)

While teaching theology at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, where he received his doctorate in Islamic law, Rahman began to develop a following amongst the school's more radical students. As well, he became a spiritual adviser to Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), a religiously-charged political institution calling for the violent overthrow of the "secular" Egyptian government and the implementation of shari'a law; he would assume control of the organization in 1980. In 1982, Rahman was charged with being a co-conspirator to the October 6, 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He had written the fatwa (religious ruling) that sanctioned the murder. (Lawrence Wright, 'THE MAN BEHIND BIN LADEN,' September 9, 2002)

Abdel-Rahman is serving a life sentence in prison for his role as the spiritual leader of the group responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the predecessor of Al-Qaeda, Maktab al-Khidmat (Afghan Services Bureau). He had been involved with the group since the mid-80s, throughout the Afghan jihad, along with Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam (bin Laden's mentor), and Ayman al-Zawahiri (the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad). (Fred Burton, STRATFOR, "Consequences of the 'Blind Sheikh's' Eventual Death," December 20, 2006)

"Jihad in the name of God is the fountainhead of everything." (Abdel-Rahman's mantra, Caryle Murphy and Steve Coll, Washington Post, 'The Making of an Islamic Symbol,' July 9, 1993)

Destroying Sharia With Islamic Tools

Hasan MahmudBy Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Hasan Mahmud, the Director of Sharia Law of the Muslim Canadian Congress. He played a vital role in the successful movement against the Toronto Sharia Court. The court had been established in 1991 (and functioning since then) with the blessing of Ontario law and was banned in 2003 when the Ontario Government enacted a new law banning all faith-courts. He has authored books, debates, 2 docu-dramas and a docu-movie on Sharia. He has also spoken on Sharia in various conferences in Europe and North America.

FP: Hasan Mahmud, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Mahmud: Thank you and Salam to all.

FP: You are a Muslim and not a very great fan of Sharia. Tell us why.

Mahmud: Because as a Muslim I want good for all humanity and because I have seen what Sharia contains and does to our women and non-Muslims. Human rights are more divine than scriptures and are not negotiable even in the name of God. Human rights are not to pass the test of scriptures; it is scriptures that have to pass the litmus test of human rights. Sharia fails there miserably, Muslim women are primary victims of Sharia, how can I be its fan? After all, people’s faith, life, right and dignity are not anybody’s toy to play with.

Examples of laws prove what Sharia actually is. Here is one from Law #344 of Codified Islamic Law Vol 1 – “Witness for a husband is not a condition to divorce his wife”. This law violates Sura Twalak verse 2 of the Qur’an that instructs to keep two witnesses of divorce. Another example is Law #914 C from Codified Islamic Law Vol 3 - Head of Islamic State cannot be charged for Hudood cases (murder, theft, robbery, adultery, drinking etc.). The same law is in Hanafi Law page 188 too. As a Muslim how can I not protest this is violation of justice? Can you imagine more than three thousand raped women were in prison for “illicit sex” for ten to fifteen years by Pakistan’s Hudood (Sharia) Ordinance #7 of 1979 amended by Law #20 of 1980 that says proof of adultery and (emphasis mine) rape is confession of the accused or eye-witness of four male adult Muslims (the women could not prove rapes by this “proof”)?

Can you imagine an Iranian woman appealing to the Sharia court to order her husband to beat her not everyday but once a week? Can you imagine many minor raped girls are publicly beaten by shoes and whips in Bangladesh by decree of informal Sharia Courts? Can you imagine hundreds of such cruelty is regularly reported in Muslim world but not a single of the world’s top Sharia-Bolsheviks is known to protest effectively? It is shocking to see tons of such unjust laws established as Allah’s Law.

It is shocking to see most of Sharia-supporters never read the laws and most of Sharia-leaders speak and write of justice but never show the laws. There was never any empirical study on the impact of Sharia on non-Muslims and Muslim women (more than half of world-Muslims), nor were they consulted to frame these laws. There is not a single female Sharia-Imam in Muslim history. The result was predictable. Sharia emerged not as a benign law book but malignant inspiration of creating a global Islami State which is diametrically opposite to the Islamic faith system. The West must realize any Sharia-supporter not only has to believe in a global Islamic state but also try for it. Supported by powerful, resourceful and cunning players it conquered most of Muslim-majority countries and now poses the deadliest cultural threat human civilization ever faced. The now defunct Canadian Sharia Court was its pinnacle of success in West. How many Americans know that the blueprint of American Sharia Court was created as early as in 1991by TAM (The American Muslims)?

Lest we forget the speed of a caravan is the speed of its weakest camel. Muslims will never progress if Muslims women don’t. On the other hand human civilization cannot progress if Muslims don’t.

FP: Can you talk a bit about Divine Law and Islamic State.

Mahmud: There is no “divine law” to run states. There are six thousand plus laws in Shafi’i Sharia, a similar number in Hanafi Sharia, about fifteen hundred in three volumes of Codified Islamic Law. But the Qur’an has only five or arguably seven social laws. The Hadises give us another few dozens, that’s it. Then where do the thousands of other laws came from? Surely from non-divine sources. Now, if you drop a drop of milk in a pond can you call it a pond of milk? Actually Sharia Laws were derived from at least eleven sources; of those ten are human and worldly sources.

The presence of at least five major sets of Sharia laws conclusively proves they are not divine because God is one. Many Sharia laws are not only different from each other but also contradictory. Look at this - Maliki law punishes pregnant widows or unmarried women to death for illicit sex. So Amina Lawal Kurami in Nigeria and Zafran Bibi in Pakistan were sentenced to death for adultery by lower courts. But when international pressure mounted the supreme courts acquitted both of them by applying Hanafi law that says pregnancy is not proof enough for adultery. So, death in one law and complete acquittal in the other for the same “crime”! What type of divinity is this?

About an Islamic State it is enough to say that Islam’s business is not to create an “Islamic State” but a “State of Islam” (peace). The very concept of “Islamic State” is simply anti-Qur’anic - look at Ana’m 107:- “We made thee (The Prophet) not one to watch over their doings, nor art thou set over them to dispose of their affairs”. One of the main legacies of “Islamic Khelafat” is rampant killing of Muslims by Muslims, conspiracy, betrayal, power-struggle, war, battle, assassination, revolt, counter-revolt, harassing scholars and scientists and solid patriarchy. We have documents of Sharia court of Alexandria and Istanbul (Shikayat-E Dafteri) of past “Islamic States” – it is heartbreaking to see how “Islamic States” tortured Muslim women in the name of “Allah’s Law”. You can imagine the condition of nonMuslims therein. Human rights in present “Islamic States” is not encouraging either. Sadly, in the names of “Islamic State”, “Allah’s Law”, “Islamic Justice”, “Complete Code of Life” etc we Muslims are made to live in an unreal romantic world that costs us heavily. And most often we are driven by hate, not love. You should see the syllabus of Pakistan schools and even Al Azhar University. The amount of hate to nonMuslims taught to our kids in present “Islamic States” is dangerous.

FP: The violence in Muslim societies has deep roots in Islamic scriptures. Hindus, Jews and Christians have come out of their scriptural violence. Their methods have obviously not worked for Muslims. Why?

Mahmud: The violence of suicide-bombing, beheading, the present form of Jihad etc. occupies the world’s media and mind. But the systemic cold violence (that hardly sheds blood) of scripture destroys more human lives. See, the Atharbaveda of Sonaton religion still contains "verses" of burning widows alive with dead husbands; the Old Testament chapter Deuteronomy still contains verses of terrible violence. As it will be self-betraying to say the Qur’an does not have violent verses, as we don’t have to be apologetic for that, as the Qur’an addressed real life and as there was violence in reality, the Qur’an encouraged past Muslims by particular violent verses that are absolutely irrelevant today. I firmly believe that as none can answer all questions of any religion we must stop questioning if a path to peace is available and established. About violent verses we apply the magic word that lead us to peace today - “Matter of Past”, period.

Our path of coming out of scriptural violence is different due to many complex reasons including changed global environment, past legacy, colonial effect, issues like Palestine-Israel, Middle Eastern kings, Middle East policy of the West, failed secular democracy in almost all Muslim majority countries, profuse finance to establish Sharia in Muslim world, pretty successful lobbywork in the West (specially in Europe) to penetrate Sharia, etc. Our failure is Himalayan when we legitimize wife-beating “with tooth brush”. But some Western irresponsible media-people and writers are no less on the other side. What we need is criticism to correct, not to punish. Fanning the fire may be enjoyable but there is danger in it.

The personal behavior of the Prophet is erroneously included as essential and eternal part of Islam. Unfortunately lots of violence is recorded in Hadises (Prophet’s Examples). As it takes more to lead people by message of love, many clergies take the easier route of using hateful Hadises to control the Muslim mass who are ignorant but emotional, poor but honest and illiterate but simple. Surprisingly, there is a Sharia law that says a Muslim becomes apostate if s/he denies any of the Hadises. Then the law of death to apostates is to follow. It is extremely difficult to break this taboo. We try to educate Muslims of their right to totally or partially accept or discard any book other than the Qur’an and still remain Muslims.

The most difficult hurdle is our Sharia-leaders. When we struggled against the Canadian Sharia Court they called us apostates. While we are trying to come out of scriptural violence the father of modern political Islam Maolana Mawdudi proposes that creating Hindu-State in India is permissible even if Muslims are ill-treated, war-prisoners can be killed or “given in somebody else’s possession by sale….handed over individual Muslims as slaves” and sex with war-captives is permissible (Munir Commission Report page 225, Tafhimul Quran 47:4 and Chapter 4, p. 340). When we claim the Qur’an is against slavery the chief Saudi educationist says slavery is “an integral part of Islam” and we know nothing about Islam (WorldNet daily 10 Nov 2003). These are resourceful and powerful people – you may imagine what our kids are learning from such leaders of Sharia-Islam.

FP: What way do you see out of these chains that Islam is imprisoned by some Muslim leaders? Can it be done with Islamic tools?

Mahmud: Yes, indeed. With Islamic documents and case-history we can undo many Sharia Laws. Creating one single crack on Sharia in believers’ minds is the first step and we can do it with Islamic tools. Humankind is basically curious. When Muslims will find out the rest, Political Islam will be crippled. This is a battle of ideas, guns and cannons will make it only worse. Lest we forget man never committed cruelty so completely and so cheerfully as when he did it to please his god – (Pascal). Historically god’s soldiers never listened to call of humanity; they worship through violence.

So, to be acceptable to Muslim-mass an Islamic tool has no substitute. A scholar is no scholar if he reads a thousand books but cannot harvest human welfare from them. We do have lots of Islamic scholars who developed the Islamic method of coming out of violence. Unless that is done Muslims in particular and humankind in general will continue to suffer in this respect. We can discuss it more effectively with detailed Islamic mechanism and dynamics with a Sharia-leader. We tried a lot but they don’t come. The palace of Sharia can be smashed by one single stroke of Sura Anam 48:-“We send the messengers only to give good news and to warn”. We have great Islamic tool to refute Sharia-documents and prove that Islam is a personal religion; separation of religion from state-machine is its essence.

FP: Your brave and noble struggle in fighting against Sharia has obviously come at a great personal cost. Can you talk a bit about it? How much have you had to fear for your personal safety?

Mahmud: I am only trying to encourage human rights in Muslim society by Islamic tools. My book, drama and movie on Sharia are doing well. Honestly, I don’t care much about my safety – what has to be done has to be done. We are in a mess today because maybe our forefathers cared for their safety a little too much. Yes, Muslim Canadian Congress received many threats. When we were struggling against the Canadian Sharia Court I also received personal threats from the world’s most powerful Sharia-supporters - the Canadian Intelligence has a file on it. When I discussed it with my wife she told me “You are doing the right thing – don’t submit to any threat no matter what”. Isn’t it superb from a busy professional who maintains Islamic Hijab, member of mosque and was a voluntary teacher of Islamic school? Honestly, I don’t care much about my safety – what has to be done has to be done for our next generations. We are in a mess today because maybe our forefathers cared for their safety a little too much.

FP: Hasan Mahmud, thank you for joining us.

Mahmud: Thanks and Salam to all.

Gender apartheid in Iran

Half A Man
Notes on gender apartheid in Iran


By Akbar Ganji

Iran's political-legal system is founded on apartheid, on unjust and untenable discrimination among members of society. Social opportunities and privileges are not distributed on the basis of merit, but according to such indefensible criteria as race, religion, and allegiance to the political regime. While some are deprived of certain basic human rights and the chance to benefit from their talents and efforts, others are afforded “special rights.” They benefit handsomely from coveted social opportunities and privileges. One of the most glaring fault lines of this apartheid system is gender. In Iran, women suffer every injustice and deprivation endured by Iranian men, and gender injustice as well.

Source: Boston Review - article continues ...
H/T: Right Truth

The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam

Written by Robert Spencer and Phyllis Chesler

DID YOU KNOW THAT:

• A Muslim man in Iran cut off his 7-year-old daughter's head because he suspected she had been raped by her uncle?
• Many little Muslim girls have their genitals cut out – without anesthesia – in order to destroy their sexuality and make them “pure”?
• Daughter and wife beating are routine in the Muslim world. Over 90 percent of Pakistani wives, for instance, have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually – for offenses like cooking an unsatisfactory meal, or for failing to give birth to a male child?
• In Iran the legal age for marriage is nine years old, and in an Afghan refugee camp virtually all the girls over second grade were married?
• Women who are raped in Muslim countries often end up being punished while the rapist gets off free?
• All a man has to do to divorce his wife is say, “I divorce you” three times – and then she is a single woman without support and without her children, who are usually taken by the father?6

To read more click here>>

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Taliban Torture, Execute 5 Afghan Police

By Noor Khan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Taliban militants tortured five abducted policemen in southern Afghanistan and then hung their mutilated bodies from trees in a warning to villagers against working with the government, officials said Sunday.

The discovery of the bodies came as officials said that recent violence and clashes had left at least 63 other people dead across Afghanistan.

The officers had been abducted two months ago from their checkpoint in southern Uruzgan province, said Juma Gul Himat, the provincial police chief. The Taliban slashed their hands and legs and hung the bodies on trees Saturday in Gazak village of Derawud district, he said.

"The Taliban told the people that whoever works with the government will suffer the same fate as these policemen," Himat said. "This village is under Taliban control. There are more than 100 Taliban in this village."

Two tribal elders received the bodies of the policemen on Sunday, he said.

Read more ...

Muslims Against Sharia condemn the murderers responsible for torture and execution of Afghan police officers.

Our prayers are with the victims of this atrocity. We send our condolences to their loved ones.

May the perpetrators be caught swiftly.


Source: AP

Profiles of American Islamofascists: Riad Abdelkarim

American IslamofascistFormer Board Chairman of CAIR-Florida, former National Board member of CAIR, former Executive Committee member of CAIR-Los Angeles (CAIR-California), former Coordinator for CAIR's (dissolved) Independent Writers Syndicate (IWS), and former Secretary of IAP's (dissolved) sister organization, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)

Abdelkarim served as the Secretary of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) in 2000, and shortly after HLF was shut down by the United States government, Abdelkarim founded KinderUSA in May of 2002. (Testimony of Steven Emerson before the U.S. Senate Committee of Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, 'Money Laundering and Terror Financing Issues in the Middle East,' July 13, 2005)

On May 5, 2002, Abdelkarim was detained by the Israeli government, which claimed he was using the charity that he founded and Chaired, KinderUSA, to "transfer money to sponsor suicide bombings." (Media Monitors Network, 'My Ordeal as a Captive in Israel,' June 12, 2002)

Source: CAIR Watch

Friday, November 16, 2007

A Grim Milestone Ignored

By Patrick Poole

The establishment media is seemingly obsessed with “grim milestones” in the War on Terror, as the Associated Press reminds us this past weekend. But in the next week those same establishment media outlets will probably stand mute when yet another “grim milestone” is reached – the 10,000th attack by Islamic terrorists and militants since 9/11, which is responsible for approximately 60,000 dead and 90,000 injured.

The chronicler of this bloody tally is Glen Reinsford, editor of TheReligionofPeace.com, who began compiling and updating daily a detailed list of reported incidents of violence and terrorism around the world targeting non-Muslims and Muslims alike. Because of space limitations he only posts the past two months worth of attacks on his websites main page, though he has archived all of the incidents from past years (2001-2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007). He also maintains a banner graphic with the updated number of attacks, which people can post on their own websites.

When asked what prompted him to begin such a labor-intensive undertaking, Reinsford identifies the tepid response to Islamic terrorism by otherwise outspoken Muslim groups, with one organization particularly in mind:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations. After 9/11, I kept an eye on them and was quite disgusted by their lack of moral perspective. They complain about issues that affect Muslims which are quite trivial, on average, compared to what is happening in the name of their religion. They do occasionally denounce terror in a general, somewhat ambiguous, sense but there is an obvious lack of passion. Their real interest is themselves.

Reviewing the list of recent incidents, it is surprising how many “smaller” attacks occur daily, which the establishment media pass with only a casual mention. While high profile attacks, like the one last week in Baghlan Province, Afghanistan that killed 75 and wounded at least 100 (many of them school children), receive plenty of attention, smaller incidents, such as the attack last week on a hotel in Baramulla, India that killed one, rarely register with the Western media.

Because Reinsford relies on the establishment media for his numbers, the true number of attacks and their victims are underreported:

In my case, I use published media reports from reputable sources on the Internet, such as the Associated Press. None of the information comes from rumor or word of mouth. Every bit of it can be verified through publicly-available sources. If anything, I undercount the attacks.

In his explanation of his methodology, he notes that he doesn’t include combat-related statistics, and acknowledges that the death toll may increase in the days and months following the attack as victims die from their injuries, which almost never get reported. The list also doesn’t account for the genocide in Darfur committed by the Islamist government in Sudan and their Janjaweed marauding militias, which the UN estimated last year had resulted in 400,000 dead and 2 million displaced.

With such seemingly incomprehensible carnage, I ask Reinsford if there were any particular incidents that stand out, and he identified three (qualifying that he could easily identify 15 more):

  • Nadimarg, India (3/23/03), dozens of Hindu villagers roused out of their beds and machine-gunned by Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) Islamists.

  • Beslan, Russia (9/3/04), some 350 people slaughtered by Islamic militants - half of them children.

  • Malatya, Turkey (4/18/07), three Christian Bible distributors are tied up, tortured for hours then gruesomely murdered by men who acted explicitly in the name of Islam.

For me, a September 2006 Washington Post article stands out concerning an attack targeting Shi’ite women and children stands out, when a Sunni suicide bomber detonated a kerosene fuel bomb filled with ball bearings (for added effect) ripped through a crowd waiting in line to buy fuel. The Post described the horrific scene:

The horrific blast sent women engulfed in flames screaming through the streets. Two preteen girls embraced each other as they burned to death, witnesses said. Later, wailing mourners thronged the scene of the blast, which was strewn with the shoes of victims and a woman's bloodied cloak, and voiced doubt that the reprisal violence would ever end.

While many Muslim organizations in the West expend considerable effort portraying themselves as victims of Western “Islamophobia”, very little is said by those groups about the fact that many of the countless victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims themselves. There are certainly no public protests by organizations like CAIR in recognition of those Muslims murdered and maimed by Muslims, though they are quick to cite the number of civilians accidentally killed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (though Reinsford notes that while 225 Iraqis were killed in collateral damage incidents in 2006, there were 16,791 Iraqi civilians killed by Islamic terrorists that same year).

Reinsford says that the skewed perspective of ignoring the toll Islamic terrorism takes on Muslims stems from a failure by Muslim leaders to recognize the glaring problems that are resident in the heart of their own community:

Yes, most of the victims of Islamic terror are Muslim, yet there is very little outrage on the part of the Islamic world to terror, relative to, say, a Muhammad cartoon or an "insult to Islam" by a public figure. What does this tell us about the priorities of Islam? In fact, sympathies for terrorists run much higher than many people realize. Even those that do truly disagree with violence (and there are many) somehow avoid taking any sort of responsibility for ending it by convincing themselves that it has nothing to do with Islam. Obviously it has everything to do with Islam, and the unwillingness on the part of Muslims in the West to provide moral leadership against Islamic extremism will ensure that the terror continues for a long time.

With some of the biggest figures in the Islamic religious establishment preaching jihad beamed around the globe on Islamic satellite networks, and countless websites offering jihadist tracts, YouTube hosting a veritable smorgasbord of videos documenting terrorist incidents, and Internet forums dedicated to networking would-be jihadists and encouraging violence, it might be that Islamic extremists are a minority, but they clearly have dominated the conversation. And it is doubtful that the situation will change as long as that remains the case.

Fortunately, there are some Islamic leaders willing to speak out consistently and forcefully against Islamic extremism and the non-stop acts of terrorism, but the establishment media rarely gives them notice, let alone a hearing, preferring instead the cacophony of CAIR and those extremists who offer weak condemnations of terrorism, yet defending its justification and denying its true causes.

Meanwhile, the deadly toll continues to roll unnoticed by the establishment media. But Glen Reinsford is still there continuing his grim task keeping us all aware of how pervasive and unrelenting the problem of Islamic terrorism really is.

Source: FrontPage Magazine
H/T: The Intelligence Summit

Blog Archive


FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed

Followers

Copyright Muslims Against Sharia 2008. All rights reserved. E-mail: info AT ReformIslam.org
Stop Honorcide!



Latest Recipients of
The Dhimmi Award
Dr. Phil
George Casey


The Dhimmi Award


Previous Recipients of
The Dhimmi Award




Latest Recipient of the
World-Class Hypocrite Award
Mainstream Media


World-Class Hypocrite Award


Previous Recipients of the
World-Class Hypocrite Award




Latest Recipient of the
MASH Award
Dr. Arash Hejazi


MASH Award


Previous Recipients of the
MASH Award




Latest Recipient of the
Yellow Rag Award
CNN


Yellow Rag Award


Previous Recipients of the
Yellow Rag Award




Latest Recipient of
The Face of Evil Award
Nidal Malik Hasan


The Face of Evil Award


Previous Recipients of
The Face of Evil Award




Latest Recipients of the
Distinguished Islamofascist Award
ADC, CAIR, MAS


Distinguished Islamofascist Award


Previous Recipients of the
Distinguished Islamofascist Award




Latest Recipient of the
Goebbels-Warner Award
ISNA


Goebbels-Warner Award


Previous Recipients of the
Goebbels-Warner Award




Muslm Mafia



Latest Recipient of the
Evil Dumbass Award
Somali Pirates


Evil Dumbass Award


Previous Recipients of the
Evil Dumbass Award




Insane P.I. Bill Warner
Learn about
Anti-MASH
Defamation Campaign

by Internet Thugs




Latest Recipient of the
Retarded Rabbi Award
Shmuley Boteach


Retarded Rabbi Award


Previous Recipients of the
Retarded Rabbi Award




Latest Recipient of the
Mad Mullah Award
Omar Bakri Muhammed


Mad Mullah Award


Previous Recipients of the
Mad Mullah Award




Stop Sharia Now!
ACT! For America




Latest Recipient of the
Demented Priest Award
Desmond Tutu


Demented Priest Award


Previous Recipients of the
Demented Priest Award




Egyptian Gaza Initiative

Egyptian Gaza




Note: majority of users who have posting privileges on MASH blog are not MASH members. Comments are slightly moderated. MASH does not necessarily endorse every opinion posted on this blog.



HONORARY MEMBERS
of

Muslims Against Sharia
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
Hasan Mahmud

ANTI-FASCISTS of ISLAM
Prominent.Moderate.Muslims
Tewfik Allal
Ali Alyami & Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia
Zeyno Baran
Brigitte Bardet
Dr. Suliman Bashear
British Muslims
for Secular Democracy

Center for Islamic Pluralism
Tarek Fatah
Farid Ghadry &
Reform Party of Syria

Dr. Tawfik Hamid
Jamal Hasan
Tarek Heggy
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser &
American Islamic
Forum for Democracy

Sheikh Muhammed Hisham
Kabbani & Islamic
Supreme Council of America

Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh
Nibras Kazimi
Naser Khader &
The Association
of Democratic Muslims

Mufti Muhammedgali Khuzin
Shiraz Maher
Irshad Manji
Salim Mansur
Maajid Nawaz
Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi
& Cultural Institute of the
Italian Islamic Community and
the Italian Muslim Assembly

Arifur Rahman
Raheel Raza
Imad Sa'ad
Secular Islam Summit
Mohamed Sifaoui
Mahmoud Mohamed Taha
Amir Taheri
Ghows Zalmay
Supna Zaidi &
Islamist Watch /
Muslim World Today /
Council For Democracy And Tolerance
Prominent ex-Muslims
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Magdi Allam
Zachariah Anani
Nonie Darwish
Abul Kasem
Hossain Salahuddin
Kamal Saleem
Walid Shoebat
Ali Sina & Faith Freedom
Dr. Wafa Sultan
Ibn Warraq

Defend Freedom of Speech

ISLAMIC FASCISTS
Islamists claiming to be Moderates
American Islamic Group
American Muslim Alliance
American Muslim Council
Al Hedayah Islamic Center (TX)
BestMuslimSites.com
Canadian Islamic Congress
Canadian Muslim Union
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Dar Elsalam Islamic Center (TX)
DFW Islamic Educational Center, Inc. (TX)
Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (Closed)
Ed Husain & Quilliam Foundation
Islamic Association for Palestine (Closed)
Islamic Association of Tarrant County (TX)
Islamic Center of Charlotte (NC) & Jibril Hough
Islamic Center of Irving (TX)
Islamic Circle of North America
Islamic Cultural Workshop
Islamic Society of Arlington (TX)
Islamic Society of North America
Masjid At-Taqwa
Muqtedar Khan
Muslim American Society
Muslim American Society of Dallas (TX)
Muslim Arab Youth Association (Closed)
Muslim Council of Britain
Muslims for Progressive Values
Muslim Public Affairs Council
Muslim Public Affairs Council (UK)
Muslim Students Association
National Association of Muslim Women
Yusuf al Qaradawi
Wikio - Top Blogs