Muslim Radicals

[Rasputin]

Radical Islam Finds Few Takers In The United States

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the United States has not been good for the radical Islam biz.

To put it another way, if it was entertainment, Variety would say radical Islam has not proven to be big B.O. (which stands for "box office," by the way). The Monitor reports:
The Islamist radicalism that inspired young Muslims to attack their own countries - in London, Madrid, and Bali - has not yielded similar incidents in the United States, at least so far.

"Home-grown" terror cells remain a concern of US law officers, who cite several disrupted plots since 9/11. But the suspects' unsophisticated planning and tiny numbers have led some security analysts to conclude that America, for all its imperfections, is not fertile ground for producing jihadist terrorists.

To understand why, experts point to people like Omar Jaber, an AmeriCorps volunteer; Tarek Radwan, a human rights advocate; and Hala Kotb, a consultant on Middle East affairs. They are the face of young Muslim-Americans today - educated, motivated, and integrated into society - and their voices help explain how the nation's history of inclusion has helped to defuse sparks of Islamist extremism.
And, indeed, the fact that this is a large and important chunk of Muslims in the United States often gets lost among the dramatic reports, pundit pieces, talk radio rants that have become the norm since 911. And that's understandable, given the American news/talk radio culture: attention is invariably focused on the most controversial or unusual elements (determining this is part of what goes into news decisions). And the context sometimes gets lost amid the alarm bells. MORE:
"American society is more into the whole assimilation aspect of it," says New York-born Mr. Jaber. "In America, it's a lot easier to practice our religion without complications."

In a nation where mosques have sprung up alongside churches and synagogues, where Muslim women are free to wear the hijab (or not), and where education and job opportunities range from decent to good, the resentments that can breed extremism do not seem very evident in the Muslim community. Since 9/11, however, concern is rising among Muslim-Americans that they are becoming targets of bias and suspicion - by law enforcement as well as fellow citizens. It's a disquieting trend, say the young Muslims - one that might eventually help radicalism to grow.

It's impossible to pinpoint the factors that produce home-grown terrorists, analysts say. But it's also impossible to ignore the stark contrast between the lives of Muslims in European countries where bombings have occurred and those of Muslims in America.

"What we have here among Muslim-Americans is a very conservative success ethic," says John Zogby, president of Zogby International in Utica, N.Y., whose polling firm has surveyed the Muslim-American community. "People come to this country and they like it. They don't view it as the belly of the beast. With very few exceptions, you don't see the bitter enclaves that you have in Europe."
The CMS goes into some detail, comparing and constrasting life in the United States and life in Europe. And then says reports this:
"The culture is qualitatively different [in the American Muslim community] from what we've seen from public information from Europe, and that actually says very positive things about our society," says Jonathan Winer, a terrorism expert in Washington. "We don't have large populations of immigrants with a generation sitting around semi-employed and deeply frustrated. That's a gigantic difference."
And then there's another factor that is sure to be more controversial:
The young Muslims interviewed for this story chose their words carefully, but their inference is clear: They worry that suspicion toward Muslims has been building since 9/11, and they suggest that US intervention in Iraq and its support for Israel cause angst among many Arab-Americans.

...A newer concern for America's Muslims is their standing in post-9/11 society. Many sense that the ground under their feet is shifting - and young people like Florida-born Radwan, in particular, feel it. A 2001 graduate of Texas A&M University, Radwan wanted to become a doctor and began working as a medical researcher. One month after the 9/11 attacks, he was let go - at the end of a three-month probationary period. Afterward, he says, he couldn't get even an interview for a job that used his biochemistry degree or research skills. Eventually he abandoned his hopes of a medical career and shifted to human rights work.

That experience leads him to suggest another reason the US hasn't seen European-style homegrown terror cells: the intense scrutiny the FBI has focused on Muslim-Americans. "That is good in the short term, but bad in the long term," he says. "The Bush administration policies feed resentment that ... will stay in the Arab- American psyche for a long time."
The FBI tells the Monitor that no one is targeted: its agents follow whatever leads they have. And, indeed it stands to reason that if the problem is radical Islam leads might take the FBI to look into areas involving Muslims in America.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Iran warns Muslims about U.S., Israeli "plots"

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader on Tuesday urged Arab and Muslim nations to be vigilant and stay united to stave off what he described as the "treacherous plots" of the United States and Israel.

"Today, what is considered a success for the American administration and the Israeli regime is a loss to all Islamic nations," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told worshippers in a televised speech marking the start of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

Iran accuses the United States of destabilizing Iraq and condemns Washington for supporting Israel in its occupation of Palestinian territories and the war in Lebanon.

The Islamic Republic has not recognized Israel's right to exist since the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy. Washington broke ties with Iran shortly after the revolution.

"All the nations should be vigilant. Our nation, the Lebanese, Palestinian and Iraqi nations, the nations in the region, and other Muslim nations should be vigilant," Khamenei said, adding that they should all "retain their national unity."

"They should be cautious not to make a move which is in line with the fulfillment of the new hostile treacherous plots of the Americans and the Zionism," he said

The United States accuses Iran of backing insurgents in Iraq and of sponsoring terrorism, including the Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah group, both of which the Washington brands terrorist.

Israel also accuses Iran of backing terrorism and of threatening the Jewish state with its nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at building atomic bombs despite Iranian denials.

[Rasputin]

In `America Alone,' Steyn Sees Europe Overrun by Radical Islam

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Unlike his more stolid colleagues in the right-wing commentariat, Mark Steyn frequently draws from a seemingly bottomless bag of anecdotes about obscure jazz musicians, forgotten geniuses and long dead Broadway types to score a clever political point. He leaves his best rhetorical tools behind, however, in ``America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It,'' which joins Al Gore's ``An Inconvenient Truth'' in threatening apocalyptic events upon the world unless everyone comes over to the author's point of view within the next 90 minutes.

Unlike Gore, Steyn's concern is with the future of the cultural environment, not the physical. Birthrates in many European countries fall well below the replacement rate of 2.1 for every woman, compared to regions of the Muslim world where women typically bear seven children each. The result, Steyn posits, will be a dramatic shift in global power in the coming decades, with the chief beneficiary being radical Islam.

``How bad is it going to get in Europe?'' he asks. ``As bad as it can get, as in societal collapse, fascist revivalism, and then the long Eurabian night, not over the entire Continent but over significant parts of it.''

The United Nations statistics he cites do tell a stark tale of demographic woe for Europe. With a European Union average of 1.38 births per woman in the 25-member organization, Europe's population may fall by about 100 million from its current 460 million by mid-century, absent an uptick in the birthrate, a change in immigration policy, or both.

European Elites

Steyn's choicest attacks are reserved for a Europe run by closeted elites. For the past 60 years, he insists, they have sustained an environment of weak social contracts where the relationship between rights and responsibilities for a European and his or her government ``is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship.''

A European welfare state that promotes dependency and extended adolescence is, in Steyn's eyes, as grave a cultural sin as can be committed, leading to divided communities, large-scale violence and a wholesale replacement of Europe's dominant culture.

``In a childish infantilized self-absorbed society where adults are stripped of all responsibility, you need never stop playing with toys,'' he writes. ``We are the children we never had. The modern Western democracy is perfectly feminized in every respect except its ability to reproduce.'' (Next, he'll be blaming female literacy and near full female employment for the current confrontation.)

Snide Asides

Steyn is known in his humorous columns in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere for stuffing clever asides into places where no giggles have gone before. Yet in this book they're usually more snide than funny, often referring to the fictional ``Wackistan'' and its President ``Sy Kottick'' rather than developing a more involved commentary on the geopolitical consequences of Iran's nuclear research program.

Steyn's attacks on militant Islam are built to generalize, with little attention devoted to detailing internal theological or historical dynamics within the religion that may upset his thesis. And yet he criticizes secular elites in the developed world for failing to take religious belief seriously enough in the first place.

``It condescends to it,'' he writes, adding that in Europe's ``wholly secularized environment, the enduring religiosity of America is not just odd, but primitive.''

Steyn doesn't spend much time on American religiosity or on America for that matter, which makes the book's title even more overweening, except to write that the U.S. is probably fervent enough in its various faiths to withstand any onslaught from Islamic efforts within its borders.

Recent political victories by anti-immigration forces in Sweden and Belgium support Steyn's thesis of rising cultural confrontations in Europe. Whether this trend radically changes the world beyond all conceivable recognition remains a matter for debate.

[Rasputin]

Australia fury at cleric comments

Australia's most senior Muslim cleric has prompted an uproar by saying that some women are attracting sexual assault by the way they dress.
Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali said women who did not wear a hijab (head dress) were like "uncovered meat".

But he has now apologised for any offence caused by his comments, The Australian newspaper reports.

Leading Muslim women condemned the comments and PM John Howard said the remarks were "appalling".

"The idea that women are to blame for rapes is preposterous," Mr Howard told reporters.

In a statement released on Thursday, Sheikh Hilali said he had been quoting another, unnamed, source and did not mean his words to condone rape.

"I unreservedly apologise to any woman who is offended by my comments. I had only intended to protect women's honour," the statement published in The Australian said.

"Women in our Australian society have the freedom and the right to dress as they choose.

"Whether a man endorses or not a particular form of dress, any form of harassment of women is unacceptable."

A spokesman for Sheikh Hilali earlier said the quote had been taken out of context and referred not to sexual assault, but to sexual infidelity.

The sermon was targeted against men and women who engaged in extra-marital sex and did so through alluring types of clothes, he said.

Ban threat

The leader of Australia's largest Islamic organisation has threatened to ban the cleric from teaching at Lakemba Mosque in Western Sydney.

Tom Zreika, president of the Lebanese Muslim Association, which owns the mosque, said he condemned Sheikh Hilali's words.

"The board [of the LMA] has unlimited powers in respect of his teachings in the mosque. We can do anything that's required to prevent him from teaching in our mosque. If you haven't got the backing of Australia's largest and most established Islamic organisation then you are out on a limb," he is quoted as saying in The Australian.

But Mr Zreika said the LMA had yet to fully review the contents of the sermon and Sheik Hilali should be offered the benefit of the doubt until any offence had been proved.

A copy of the cleric's comments delivered in a sermon to some 500 worshippers in Sydney last month during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was initially published in The Australian.

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside... and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?" he asked.

The uncovered meat is the problem, he went on to say.

"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred," he added.

Sheikh Hilali also condemned women who swayed suggestively and wore make-up, implying they attracted sexual assault.

"Then you get a judge without mercy... and gives you 65 years," he added.

Sheikh Hilali's critics have previously accused him of praising suicide bombers and claiming the attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 were "God's work against oppressors".

High-profile case

The BBC's Nick Bryant in Sydney says the cleric's latest comments are seen as particularly insensitive because Sydney was the scene six years ago of a series of gang rapes committed by a group of Lebanese Australians, who received long prison sentences.

Finance Minister Peter Costello called on Muslims to condemn the speech.

"If you have a significant religious leader like this preaching to a flock in a situation where we've had gang rapes, in a way that seems to make it justifiable, then people that listen to that kind of comment can get the wrong idea," he said.

"They can actually think that it's not as bad as it is."

A number of leading Muslim women have already spoken out against the sermon, describing it as repulsive and offensive.

Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward said the comments could be an incitement to crime.

"Young Muslim men who now rape women can cite this in court, can quote this man... their leader in court," she told Australian media.

She added that the cleric should be deported for inciting rape.

[Rasputin]

یکی از رهبران مسلمان استرالیا که اخیرا حجاب زنان را با گوشت بدون حفاظ مقایسه کرده بود و خشم سازمان های طرفدار حقوق زنان و برخی از سیاستمداران را برانگیخته بود، تا مدت سه ماه از وعظ ممنوع شد.
شیخ تاج الدین الهلالی امام جمعه مسجد لاکمبا در سیدنی، اخیرا در مجلس وعظ خود گفته بود زنانی که حجاب اسلامی ندارند مردان را به تجاوز جنسی تحریک می کنند، این سخنان طوفانی از اعتراض در استرالیا برانگیخت.

انجمن مساجد سیدنی که امام جمعه مسجد لاکمبا را "ممنوع المنبر" کرده است می گوید که این ممنوعیت سه ماهه فرصتی به وی خواهد داد تا در باره تاثیر سخنان جنجال برانگیز خود تامل کند.

اما نخست وزیر استرالیا می گوید این اقدام علیه شیخ الهلالی کافی نیست.

بسیاری از مردم استرالیا از جمله برخی از رهبران مسلمانان خواستار اخراج شیخ الهلالی از مسجد شده اند.

روز جمعه بار دیگر سخنان شیخ الهلالی در گفتگو با یک خبرنگار جنجال برانگیز شد؛ وقتی خبرنگار از وی پرسید که آیا مایل به استعفا هست وی پاسخ داد: " وقتی اول از همه دنیا را از وجود کاخ سفید پاک کردیم." به هنگام اين اظهارات تعدادی از هواداران آقای الهلالی برای او دست زدند.

سخنان وی در نماز جمعه مسجد لاکمبا موجی از اعتراضات و از جمله زنان مسلمان را برانگیخت به ویژه آن که شش سال پيش سیدنی شاهد چندين مورد تجاوز جنسی توسط گروهی از استراليايی های لبنانی تبار بود.

با این حال وی در سخنانی که در یک روزنامه از وی منتشر شد از" همه زنانی که از سخنان وی آزرده خاطر شده بودند"، عذر خواست.


کميسيون ضد تبعيض جنسيتی دولت استراليا اعلام کرده است که چنين سخنانی می تواند تحريک به ارتکاب جرم خوانده شود



وی تاکید کرد که سخنانش به خوبی تعبیر نشده است و گفت که زنان در جامعه استرالیا دارای آزادی و حق انتخاب نوع پوشش خود هستند.

رهبران مسلمانان استرالیا تصیم گرفته اند تا عذرخواهی رسمی آقای الهلالی را بپذیرند. اما هنوز برخی از استرالیایی ها می گویند که این عذرخواهی کافی نیست و باید وی عواقب چنین سخنانی را متحمل شود.

پیش تر، مسئول کميسيون ضد تبعيض جنسيتی دولت استراليا گفته بود که چنين سخنانی می تواند تحريک به ارتکاب جرم خوانده شود

[Rasputin]

Australia's top Muslim cleric has been barred from preaching for up to three months, after comparing immodestly dressed women to "uncovered meat".
Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali's comments, suggesting that women who did not wear a headscarf attracted sexual assault, have caused a storm of protest.

Sydney's mosque association said the suspension would give the cleric time to consider the impact of his words.

But Australian Premier John Howard said the action was insufficient.

Many people - including some Muslim leaders - have called for the cleric to be dismissed from office.

Sheikh Hilali sparked more controversy on Friday when, asked by reporters if he would resign, he responded: "After we clean the world of the White House first."

His comments, made outside his mosque in Sydney after Friday prayers, prompted a round of applause from supporters.

Apology

Sheikh Hilali's comments about women's dress were delivered in a sermon to some 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALI
Born in Egypt
Aged 64
Imam in Sydney
Appointed mufti of Australia in 1989


Controversial mufti
Australian press furious
Edited transcript
But it was not until they were published in The Australian newspaper on Thursday that a wave of anger was unleashed.

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside... and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?" Sheikh Hilali is quoted as asking during the sermon.

The uncovered meat is the problem, he went on to say.

"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab [headscarf], no problem would have occurred," he added.

Sheikh Hilali has since apologised for his comments, which he said had been misinterpreted and taken out of context.

"I unreservedly apologise to any woman who is offended by my comments. I had only intended to protect women's honour," he said in a statement published in The Australian.

"Women in our Australian society have the freedom and the right to dress as they choose," he added.

Muslim leaders decided to accept his apology and said that no action would be taken against the cleric.

I think what he's done is so unacceptable

PM John Howard


Send us your views
Mosque Association president Tom Zreika said the board was "basically satisfied with the notion that certain statements made by the mufti [were] misrepresented".

"We felt the three months away would give him time to mull over what's been said," Mr Zreika told reporters.

But many other Australians feel more action should be taken against Sheikh Hilali.

"I believe that unless this matter is satisfactorily resolved by the Islamic community, there is a real worry that some lasting damage will be done," Prime Minister John Howard told Australian radio.

"I think what he's done is so unacceptable and so out of line with not only mainstream Australian opinion but... mainstream Muslim opinion."

"I know how strongly many Islamic community people felt about those comments yesterday, how damaging they saw them in terms of Australian-Islamic relations," added Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward.

"I think the pressure should not be taken off just because he has agreed to be silent for three months."

Sheikh Hilali has courted controversy in the past, claiming in a 2004 sermon that the September 2001 attacks in the US had been "God's work against oppressors".

[Rasputin]

The path of the prophet

In a lecture at the University of Regensburg, in Germany, last month, Pope Benedict XVI talked about "jihad" as holy war and about using religion as an excuse for destruction and death. He quoted from a debate in the 14th century between Manuel II Paleologos, emperor of the Byzantine Empire, and a Persian cleric. "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The immediate response in the Muslim world was one of outrage. In the end, the pontiff was forced to apologize, and maybe revisit his ideas about Islam.

Such episodes aren't new. They emphasize the ignorance about the life of Muhammad ( 570-632 ) that is rampant in Western civilization. To what extent is the average educated person familiar with the Koran? The Torah and the New Testament, in contrast, and even the Talmud are far more familiar. At the core of the so-called war on terror, and in general the tension concentrated on the Middle East and exacerbated by the crisis in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the misconception, suggested by the pope in Germany, that Islam is a religion of fanaticism and not a theology based on justice and decency. Judaism and Christianity, too, have gone through radical periods of intolerance and depreciation. The list of examples is too long: from Mas ada to the Crusades, from the sect of the Essenes to the edicts of expulsion of ethnic groups from Spain, Portugal, and England.

In Arabic the name Muhammad means "the praised one." A child of a well-to-do family, he was a merchant turned military figure at a time of tribal tension. His Koranic revelations came in a cave, and he proclaimed himself prophet of Islam in 610. Eventually, through conquests and treatises, he unified Arabia, organizing his followers around his revolutionary vision of faith. Yet details about his ordeal and succession remain in confusion. Muslim biographies of Muhammad abound, from recorded oral tradition collectively known as Hadith to the "Sirah Rasul Allah" ( "The Life of the Apostle of God"), by Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar, and more contemporary biographies like "The Sealed Nectar," by Saifur Rahman al- Mubarkpuri. (Of course, first and foremost is the Koran itself.) In the West , countless profiles of Muhammad have been published, including works by William Muir and Martin Lings. These are often the byproduct of outsiders eager to serve as bridge between cultures. This isn't a handicap: Sir Richard Burton, translator of "The Arabian Nights" and "Kama Sutra," was British, for instance; and Lafcadio Hearn, an American, wrote stories about Japan recognized as a key to understanding the Japanese psyche.

Thus, the fact that Eliot Weinberger's increased curiosity toward the Muslim world is due, in large measure, to George W. Bush's intolerance ought not to be seen as an impediment. He's known as a translator of Octavio Paz into English and for editing a superb compendium of Jorge Luis Borges's nonfiction. But 9/11 appears to have redefined his career, in part because he's a New Yorker, and perhaps as a result of his Jewish ancestry. Last year he released a volume of chronicles of Bush mishaps called "What Happened Here." And now he's producing a lyrical silhouette (a pamphlet, really) of Muhammad based on quotations from the Koran and other material, including the Hadith.

Unfortunately, Weinberger's "Muhammad" is rather useless. Eager to move away from the type of rhetorical disquisitions that tarnish rather than enlighten, he offers a succinct portrait of the prophet, mechanical, without pathos, ahistorical, and empty of context. Plus, he expurgates the military endeavors, making the prophet's life look like an Andalusian tale of wonder and redemption.

Karen Armstrong's "Muhammad" is drastically different. A former nun whose oeuvre focuses on the three major Western religions -- Armstrong, who lives in London, has written more than a dozen works on topics ranging from Buddha and mysticism to Genesis and a brief history of Islam -- she offers a panoramic perspective, meticulously following the path of the prophet from birth to death while analyzing the theological, social, economic, military, and cultural forces shaping him. As she pursues her objective, she explains the link between Islam and Christianity and Judaism, for, as Armstrong puts it, "you could not be a Muslim unless you also revered Moses and Jesus."

This is her second book on Muhammad (the first one came out in 1992) and is part of the "Eminent Lives" series released under the aegis of Atlas Books. Readers will find her style stilted: At her best, she makes use of her intellectual skills to explore the tension between the personal and the historical, presenting Muhammad as an average individual doubting his choices, a visionary testing the limitations of his epoch; at her worst, she's didactic, frequently making sermonizing comments about thinking critically about jihad that are a mere rhetorical device. For Armstrong isn't a savvy, inquisitive thinker: She tells rather than shows, assumes rather than explains. She also stops short in exploring the connections between Muhammad's teachings and modernity. Thus, her subtitle, " A Prophet for Our Time," is ambiguous. Still, in her hand Muhammad is a religious reformer, although he's also a strategist aware of his power.

The sword isn't absent in the Koran. Neither are tales of wisdom and morality. Pope Benedict shouldn't waste time in proxies and surrogates. He would do well by reading the Koran directly. So would we.

[Rasputin]

Australia's top Muslim cleric at the centre of a storm over his comments about immodestly dressed women has asked for "indefinite leave".
Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali had asked for leave from his duties at Sydney's main Lakemba Mosque, he said in a statement read on his behalf.

Earlier, he was taken to hospital with chest pains after collapsing.

He again apologised for his comments comparing immodestly dressed women to "uncovered meat".

The pressure of the last couple of days has had an obvious effect on my health and wellbeing

Sheikh Hilali

He said his suggestion that women who did not wear a headscarf attracted sexual assault had been taken out of context and "misinterpreted".

But he conceded the analogy had been "inappropriate and unacceptable for the Australian society and the western society in general".

While Sydney's mosque association had suspended him for three months following the publication of his comments, Sheikh Hilali indicated at the end of last week he would not resign.

'Inappropriate'

On Monday, at a meeting with the Lebanese Muslim Association, he collapsed and was rushed to hospital.

He was said to be in a stable condition but would remain in hospital for at least three days.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALI
Born in Egypt
Aged 64
Imam in Sydney
Appointed mufti of Australia in 1989


Controversial mufti
Australia's Muslims fear backlash

Outside the hospital, Lebanese Muslim Association Tom Zreika released a statement from the sheikh, which said he had "asked for indefinite leave from my duties at Lakemba Mosque".

"The pressure of the last couple of days has had an obvious effect on my health and wellbeing. I ask the public to give my family and I some privacy, time and space to recover," the statement said.

His comments were delivered in a sermon to some 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

But it was not until they were published in The Australian newspaper last week that a wave of anger was unleashed.

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside... and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?" Sheikh Hilali was quoted as asking during the sermon.

"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab [headscarf], no problem would have occurred," he added.

'Lasting damage'

Despite the three-month suspension imposed by Muslim leaders, Sheikh Hilali has been under increasing pressure to resign as the Mufti of Australia.

Prime Minister John Howard said that "unless this matter is satisfactorily resolved by the Islamic community, there is a real worry that some lasting damage will be done."

Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward accused the imam of inciting rape and said he should be thrown out of the country.

[Rasputin]

مراسم تدفين و سوگواری برای قربانيان حمله هوايی ارتش پاکستان به مدرسه ای دينی در نزديکی مرز افغانستان به تظاهرات خشم آلود منجر شده است.
ارتش پاکستان بامداد دوشنبه مدرسه دينی در نزديکی مرز افغانستان را که محل فعاليت گروههای تروريستی خوانده شده بمباران کرده و حدود هشتاد نفر را کشته است.

سخنگوی ارتش پاکستان تاکيد کرده که از اين محل، که در نزديکی خار، شهر اصلی ناحيه قبيله نشين باجور واقع است، برای تدريس علوم دينی استفاده نمی شد بلکه محل تمرکز و آموزش تندروهای مسلح القاعده و طالبان بوده است.

اما هزاران نفر جمعيت خشمگينی که برای خاکسپاری قربانيان حاضر شده بودند عقيده دارند که کشته شدگان، نه پيکارجو بلکه طلاب عادی علوم دينی بوده اند.

به گزارش خبرگزاری آسوشيتد پرس فقير محمد، يک پيشوای محلی که به داشتن روابطی با شبکه القاعده مظنون است، خطاب به جمع 10 هزار نفری مردم خشمگين گفت: "دولت پاکستان به دستور آمريکا به مردم بی گناه حمله کرده و آنها را کشته است."

جمعيت بر ضد آمريکا شعار دادند و پرچم اين کشور را به آتش کشيدند.


جمعيت خشمگين بر ضد آمريکا شعار دادند و پرچم اين کشور را به آتش کشيدند.

سراج الحق يکی از وزرات دولت پاکستان در اعتراض به حمله ارتش به مدرسه اسلامی استعفا داده است.

آقای سراج الحق گفته است: "اين اقدامی خطا بود. ارتش به قربانيان هيچ اخطاری نداده بود."

گروه های اسلامی در سراسر پاکستان از جمله در پيشاور و لاهور حمله ارتش به مدرسه علوم دينی را محکوم کرده اند.

جبهه ای از احزاب و سازمانهای اسلامی مردم را روز سه شنبه به تظاهراتی در کراچی دعوت کرده است.

لغو سفر پرنس چارلز

پرنس چارلز وليعهد بريتانيا که از پاکستان ديدار می کند، سفر خود را به شهر پيشاور لغو کرده است.

وليعهد تمايل فراوان داشت که از منطقه مرزی شمال غربی کشور ديدار کند، اما به توصيه دولت پاکستان و به خاطر نا آرامی ها سفر خود را لغو کرده است.

عمليات روز دوشنبه دو روز پس از انتشار خبر تظاهرات گروهی از تندروهای اسلامگرا در اين منطقه صورت می گيرد.

در اين گردهمايی، تظاهرکنندگان به حمايت از اسامه بن لادن، رهبر طالبان، و ملا محمد عمر، رهبر پيشين افغانستان، شعار دادند و آنان را قهرمانان خود خواندند.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Former Muslim Jesus Only Way to Stop Radical Islam

former Muslim woman who has dedicated herself to winning Muslims to Christ has traveled to India to witness to that country's large Muslim population.

W.L. Cati recently traveled to an area of northeastern India that is dominated by the country's Muslim minority. The founder and president of Florida-based White Horse Ministry says she plans to speak two to three times a day, carrying the message of the gospel. Christ, says Cati, is the best hope for stopping radical Islam.

"That's the bottom line. Our salvation is their salvation," says the former Muslim. "We need to stop playing patty-cake with them and start giving them the truth and praying that they find Jesus -- because if they don't, we're all going to be wearing the veil soon."

Cati expresses her excitement about witnessing to the large Muslim community in the area -- and says she is expecting tangible results.

"[The area is] full of Muslims. I'm really expecting signs, wonders, and miracles, whatever it takes to bring them into the kingdom," she shares. "So I'm going there, laying my life down for their salvation."

Cati says the group she is traveling with plans to distribute 7,000 copies of the JESUS video in three languages that are spoken in that country. Her ministry's former name was Zennah Ministries.

[Rasputin]

Paris airport bars Muslim staff

More than 70 Muslim workers at France's main airport have been stripped of their security clearance for allegedly posing a risk to passengers.

The staff at Charles de Gaulle airport, including baggage handlers, are said to have visited terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One man is thought to have been a friend of Richard Reid, the so-called British shoe bomber.

Richard Reid tried to blow up a flight from Paris to the US in 2001.

Discrimination lawsuits

Earlier this year officials at Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, conducted a security review of staff and questioned dozens of Muslim workers.

More than 100 baggage handlers and aircraft cleaners had been under surveillance for months.

In all, 72 people were later told their passes allowing access to secure areas were being withdrawn.

Airport officials say some of the workers had frequently visited Pakistan and Afghanistan the previous year.

It is also believed another worker had been close to a senior figure in an Algerian terrorist group with links to al-Qaeda.

But some of the men who have lost their security clearance are suing airport authorities.

They claim they are being discriminated against because of their religion.

However, about a dozen other workers who have been identified as security risks still have access to sensitive areas of the airport because under French law they must be allowed an opportunity to respond to the charges before they are suspended.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

The Islamic Community has, unfortunately, not offered an appropriate response to this, and has in fact stayed on the margins of these problems. [Passage omitted] The defeating fact is that none of the Bosnian institutions have to come to see us. Our country and our institutions must recognize this problem. [Passage omitted] I think that this can affect negatively not only the Bosnian Muslims and their Islamic Community, which has existed for 500 years, but can also be negative for the community of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a whole. [Passage omitted] It may be said that the Islamic Community and other institutions have been indifferent about this issue, but it seems as if some are assisting it as well, either financially or in another way. [Passage omitted]

[The guest in the studio is Al Husin Imad (Abu Hamza)]
[Host] Al Husin Imad (Abu Hamza) is the spokesperson for the Ensaria [Ansarija] organization [association of Bosnian citizens of Afro-Asian background]. Abu Hamza, are Bosnian Muslims lost, as we have frequently heard from Muslims from the Arab world primarily and do they truly need to be led back to their roots?

[Abu Hamza] Concerning Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, I think they are better Muslims than those in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, because they managed to preserve their Islam in a Christian Europe. [Passage omitted] We have mosques here, sisters covered by veils, Islamic schools, etc. [Passage omitted]

[Host] Why are certain members of the Wahhabi movement spreading the ideology suggesting that Bosnian Muslims are not good Muslims?

[Abu Hamza] I think this is a conflict between the young and the elderly. This is not a conflict, as you said, between Wahhabis and Muslims. [Passage omitted] The young want something new, something genuine. [Passage omitted] People here are divided between genuine Islam, practical Islam and "communist" Islam. [Passage omitted]

[Host] Your biggest critics say that you are mostly turned to young people and that you indoctrinate them with your version of Islam.

[Abu Hamza] I agree that we have succeeded, that we have succeeded with the young with our method of work. The Islamic Community has admitted defeat here, as its society is an insolent one. If you enter a mosque you would usually find two or three elderly people and the rest would be young people that you call Wahhabis. [Passage omitted] We want here a practical Islam as taught by [words indistinct], not as Tito and his communist UDBA [state security agency] had requested from Bosnian Muslims.

[Host] Foreign governments, intelligence agencies, and media see danger in this, what you claim you have succeeded in. You are most frequently linked with terrorism, preparations for terrorist attacks in Europe and the rest of the world.

[Abu Hamza] Very simply, in 1992 none of us were here, and then you were accused of terrorism and the Islamic Jamahiriya. [Passage omitted] We, as a group of people, are not the problem here. The problem is the war against Islam. They will try to reduce the Islamic factor of Bosniaks to a minimum. They do not want Bosniaks to have their state, their army, their police, and their economy. Someone is trying to turn Muslims into something that suits both Bush and Blair. [Passage omitted]

When the whole world had turned its back on you, we came here to give our lives for this Bosnia. And now you are selling us for American interests, European interests, but you will pay for this in the end. [Passage omitted, Abu Hamza says that others respect more those who are true to their identity.] You have to go back to genuine Islam. [Passage omitted]