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2006 NewsMay 1, 2006Robertson labeled Islam a "bloody, brutal type of religion"
On the April 28 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Corp.'s (CBN) 700 Club, host Pat Robertson referred to Islam as a "bloody, brutal type of religion." Following a report suggesting that those who convert from Islam could face hardships and even death sentences in some Middle Eastern countries, Robertson expressed concern that Americans, "especially the American left," need to "wake up" to the "danger" that Islam presents. He said that, in the past, Muslim invaders would kill "an unbeliever" if they would not convert to Islam and that today, "if somebody wants to leave Islam, they're going to kill them." Robertson continued: "Whoever heard of such a bloody, bloody, brutal type of religion? But that's what it is. It is not a religion of peace." Robertson has frequently asserted that "Islam is not a religion of peace," as he did in the April 28 broadcast. For instance, as Media Matters for America previously noted, Robertson made similar comments on April 24 when he warned his viewers that "we are not listening" to what Islam "says," just as we did not listen to "what Adolf Hitler said in Mein Kampf." On a March 13 broadcast, Robertson declared that Muslims who protested controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were "satanic" and "crazed fanatics" who were "motivated by demonic power." On the July 14, 2005, broadcast of The 700 Club, Robertson blurred the distinction between radical Islamists and the Muslim community at large, claiming that Islam instructs its followers to commit acts of terrorism. Robertson stated: "Islam, at least at its core, teaches violence. It's there in the Quran in clear, bold statements." According to the Associated Press, during a 2002 broadcast of the program, Robertson declared that Islam "is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist. They want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy." April 28, 2006Saudi Tourist Accused of Trying to Molest Young Girlhttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193664,00.html
April 25, 2006Muslims desecrate the American flag in public in New York. Stepping on it with their shoes, tearing it apart while shouting Allaho akbar. If they don't like America, why they stay in it? (video click here) April 24, 200618 Dead at Just 1 Egypt Hotel After BlastsBy STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago CAIRO, Egypt - Three explosions rocked the Egyptian resort city of Dahab at the height of the tourist season Monday night, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 150 at just one hotel, according to the doctor who runs the Sinai peninsula rescue squad. Dr. Said Essa said he was headed to the scene of the blasts and that his casualty
figures were for victims at the el-Khaleeg Hotel only. He said there were casualties
from the other explosions but he had no details. Terrorist attacks have killed nearly 100 people at several tourist resorts of Egypt's Sinai region in the past two years. Bombings in the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, near the Israeli border, killed 34 people in October 2004. Last July, suicide attackers in the resort of Sharm el-Sheik killed at least 64 people, mainly tourists. The Egyptian government has said the militants who carried out the bombings were locals without international connections, but other security agencies have said they suspect al-Qaida. This is high tourist season in the region, and hotels all along the Egyptian coasts could be expected to be at near capacity, mainly with Europeans, Israelis and expatriates living in Egypt. In Israel, the country's rescue service said it had raised the alert level. Israeli Channel 10 TV reported that Israel had closed the border crossing at Taba, preventing vehicles from entering Sinai. It said a stream of Israeli vehicles were leaving Sinai. Many Israelis travel to the Sinai for beach holidays. Israel's ambassador in Cairo, Shalom Cohen, told Channel 10 there were three explosions — in a hotel, a police station and a marketplace. "We don't know of Israelis" who were hurt, he said, though some Israelis were known to be in Dahab. Cohen said the best thing Israeli tourists in Sinai could do now would be to "go home." He said there have been repeated warnings from the Israeli government against visiting the Sinai Desert, where Israelis have been targeted in attacks in the past. "Unfortunately, the warnings came true," he said. The Israeli rescue service, Magen David Adom, offered help through the International Red Cross and the Egyptian Red Crescent but has not received a reply, the service said in a statement. It said about 20 ambulances were standing by at the Taba crossing between Israel and Egypt if needed. Dahab is located on the Gulf of Aqaba on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula and is about 65 miles south of Taba, near the border at the southern tip of Israel. Dahab is 200 miles southeast of Cairo. April 18, 2006Former Fla. Professor to Be DeportedBy Spencer S. Hsu
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| Sami al-Arian pleaded guilty to one charge in his terrorism
trial. (Chris O'meara - AP) |
Former Florida professor Sami al-Arian pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide support to a Palestinian terrorist organization and agreed to be deported from the United States in a deal with federal prosecutors, unsealed in federal court yesterday, that ends one of the nation's highest profile terrorism cases.
By entering a guilty plea Friday at a closed hearing in Tampa, al-Arian, 48, appears likely to soon win his release from prison, where he has spent most of his time in solitary confinement since his Feb. 20, 2003, arrest, and be reunited with his wife and five children, said his lawyer, Linda G. Moreno.
The U.S. government claimed a measure of vindication after suffering a stunning setback in December, when a federal jury in Tampa deadlocked on nine charges that al-Arian aided terrorists, found him not guilty of eight other counts -- including conspiracy to maim or murder, perjury, and immigration violations -- and acquitted three co-defendants on all 34 charges against them.
The 15-page deal, accepted yesterday by U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr., leaves a murky outcome for the first criminal prosecution that relied mainly on vast amounts of secretly gathered intelligence against terrorism suspects collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Then-U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft called al-Arian's 2003 indictment an early victory for the USA Patriot Act, which gave prosecutors access to 20,000 hours of secretly tapped phone calls and hundreds of fax intercepts. Yesterday, Ashcroft's successor, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, noted that al-Arian had reversed a decade of denials and confessed to supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has killed hundreds of civilians in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank through suicide attacks and was declared a terrorist group by the United States in 1995.
"We have a responsibility not to allow our nation to be a safe haven for those who provide assistance to the activity of terrorists," Gonzales said in a written statement. "Sami Al-Arian has already spent significant time behind bars and will now lose the right to live in the country he calls home."
Moreno, al-Arian's lawyer, said that given his pending sentencing, scheduled for May 1, "this is not a time for any political statement to be made." But she said the former University of South Florida computer engineer was "at peace" with "a just resolution to bring about closure to a nightmare."
"Dr. al-Arian has been very sensitive to the suffering of his family and his five children, and in particular his two youngest children, who have been the most traumatized by having their father in prison for three years," Moreno said.
Douglas W. Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University in California and an assistant attorney general from 1985 to 1989, called the deal "a face-saving gesture" in a test case that was a serious disappointment to the government.
"There was more there than the department could prove, and when that happens, compromise is the result," Kmiec said.
David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who represented al-Arian's brother-in-law, who was deported before standing trial, said the government "stood down" and abandoned a retrial of al-Arian on the eight remaining charges.
"It's consistent with a general pattern of overcharging in terrorism, and being unable to come up with the evidence to bear out their initial charges," Cole said. He noted that authorities first sought to imprison al-Arian for life.
Instead, prosecutors agreed to recommend a prison sentence at the low end of federal guidelines of 46 to 57 months. That would be close to the time al-Arian would be credited with serving since his arrest, Moreno said.
In the unsealed agreement, al-Arian admitted to trying to hide the identity of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shallah, who was a longtime top official of al-Arian's university-affiliated think tank in Tampa, a relationship that was detailed in evidence admitted under FISA wiretaps.
While al-Arian said his support for the Palestinian group predated 1995, when it became illegal under the U.S. government designation, he admitted to filing for immigration benefits for leading Muslim scholar Bashir Nafi and later helping his brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, in a U.S. court case in which Nafi and Najjar denied association with the group, a claim al-Arian acknowledged was not true.
Al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian, was a visible Muslim activist and U.S. campaign contributor. His avowed hostility to Israel made him a controversial symbol for free speech advocates before prosecutors alleged he was Palestinian Islamic Jihad's de facto leader and head of a criminal organization.
CAIRO, Egypt - The Associated Press: Worshippers at three Christian churches came under attack from knife-wielding assailants during Mass Friday.
Police said one worshipper was killed and more than a dozen wounded in the simultaneous attacks in the northern city of Alexandria.
He was caught unawares while celebrating mass in a private apartment. He was
visiting Catholic Indians in the country. Like all other non-Muslims, pastoral
care is denied them. There are around one million Catholics in Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh (AsiaNews) – A Catholic Indian priest was yesterday forced to leave
Saudi Arabia. He was discovered by the religious police as he organized a prayer
meeting in the lead-up to Easter. Arrested on 5 April, he remained in police custody
for four days and on Saturday 8th April he left for India. The practice of any
religion other than Islam is forbidden in Saudi Arabia. Meetings held privately
in people’s homes, among friends, are also banned.
The priest, Fr George Joshua, belongs to the Malankara rite of Kerala (India).
His visit to Catholic Indians in the Saudi Kingdom was planned with his bishop’s
permission.
On 5 April, Fr George had just celebrated mass in a private house when seven religious
policemen (muttawa) broke into the house together with two ordinary policemen.
The police arrested the priest and another person.
The Saudi religious police are well known for their ruthlessness; they often torture
believers of other religions who are arrested.
AsiaNews sources said there were around 400,000 Indian Catholics in Saudi Arabia
who were denied pastoral care. Catholic foreigners in the country number at least
one million: none of them can participate in mass while they are in Saudi Arabia.
Catechism for their children – nearly 100,000 – is banned.
Often, for feasts like Easter and Christmas, Catholics plan holidays in the Emirates,
Bahrain or Abu Dhabi, where at least for once, they are free to attend mass.
By Jerry Markon, Timothy Dwyer and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
A federal jury today found Zacarias Moussaoui eligible to die for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, concluding that Moussaoui's lies to federal agents paved the way for the deadliest terrorist strike in U.S. history.
The unanimous verdict in U.S. District Court in Alexandria means that Moussaoui's death penalty trial will now move to a second phase, in which prosecutors will try to persuade jurors to vote for execution while defense lawyers seek to spare his life.
Reading the verdict outside the courthouse, court spokesman Edward Adams said, "By this verdict, the jury has found that death is a possible sentence in this case."
As he was being led from the courtroom, Moussaoui, wearing his habitual white knit cap and green prison jumpsuit, yelled, "You'll never get my blood! God curse you all!"
The jury agreed with the prosecution that Moussaoui was subject to capital punishment on three counts against him that carry the death penalty. Moussaoui, 37, an al-Qaeda operative, pleaded guilty last year to a total of six conspiracy counts related to the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The 12-member jury found that prosecutors had proven that Moussaoui intentionally lied to the FBI about his knowledge of the pending al-Qaeda plot when he was arrested in August 2001. According to a verdict form signed by the jury foreperson, jurors further concluded that Moussaoui "contemplated that the life of a person would be taken" because of his lies and that at least one victim died on Sept. 11 "as a direct result.''
In reading the verdict outside the courthouse, Adams said the jurors found that the government also established that Moussaoui engaged in conspiracy to destroy aircraft and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. In their only question to the judge after they began deliberating last week, the jurors asked for a definition of "weapon of mass destruction" and were told the term applied to an airplane used as a missile.
Today's vote only means that Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty under federal law. In the trial's second phase, Sept. 11 family members are expected to testify for prosecutors about their loss, while defense lawyers present evidence of Moussaoui's troubled childhood and questionable mental state. Jurors will then vote on whether he should be executed.
The day's developments began when the jury of nine men and three women sent a note to U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema saying they had reached a verdict on their fourth day of deliberations.
The case went to the jury Wednesday afternoon, and deliberations continued Thursday and Friday before breaking for the weekend.
The verdict takes the government an important step closer to securing what the prosecutors called legal justice for the assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Moussaoui is the only person convicted in an American courtroom on charges stemming from those attacks.
His eligibility for death culminates a three-week hearing that proved as unpredictable as the behavior of Moussaoui himself
Mar 30, 2006
Rice visit to English mosque cancelled over security fears 
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart Jack Straw have cancelled plans to visit a mosque in England, officials said, amid opposition from anti-war protesters.
The mosque in Straw's constituency in Blackburn, withdrew its invitation for security reasons after opponents of Friday's planned visit threatened to "invade" the building, mosque official Ibrahim Master said.
"The visit wasn't cancelled because we don't like Condoleezza Rice," said Master, a member of the mosque's governing committee. "What these people had threatened to do was invade the mosque during dawn prayers."
He said the Masjide Al Hidayah mosque's governing committee met Wednesday night with a group of Muslims which included members of the "Stop the War Coalition," which is sharply opposed to the US-led war in Iraq.
He said the group threatened to protest inside the mosque when the two top diplomats were inside.
"It would have compromised the safety of the visiting dignitaries," he said.
Master said because the group were Muslims, it would be impossible to prevent them from entering the mosque.
Rice is due to visit Blackburn to repay a visit Straw made to her home state of Alabama last year. She will attend a concert in Liverpool during the two-day trip as well as meet dignitaries in Straw's constituency.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "It's a pity that we will not be visiting a mosque in Blackburn. Everything we are doing on this visit is being done with respect to the communities involved, taking their views into consideration."
She added: "We are looking forward to meeting Muslim and civic leaders during the visit."
A spokesman for Stop the War Coalition said the invitation was withdrawn because of pressure from the Muslim community.
Alex Martindale, chair of "Blackburn With Darwen Stop the War," said: "An historic decision has been made.
"The mosque committee and the surrounding community, in conjunction with Muslim scholars from Blackburn and Preston, have taken the decision to withdraw their invitation to Condoleezza Rice.
"It has been presented that local people would be in support of Jack Straw's invitation to the US Secretary of State. But this decision is evidence that the bulk of the community, Muslim and otherwise, are strongly against the visit.
"Blackburn With Darwen Stop the War salutes the committee of the mosque and extends our thanks to the community and scholars involved for their united efforts in arriving at this decision," Martindale said.
Sohela Ansari told friends that her husband Aftab had pronounced the word talaq three times in his sleep. Under Muslim personal law, a man can divorce his wife by saying talaq three times.
The issue ended up before local religious leaders.
"Muslim clerics issued a fatwa (religious decree) asking the couple to live separately immediately after the news reached the local mosque," police official Bhaskar Mukherjee said by phone from Jalpaiguri district headquarters.
However, the couple, now legally divorced, insist they are still in love and do not want to live apart.
They have been married for 11 years and live with three children in the district's Falataka village, 600 kilometres north of Kolkata.
The police learned of the tussle when the couple went to a family counselling centre at the police station to seek help last week.
The police official said the clerics have ordered the woman to marry another man during the separation period.
Once her second husband divorces her, she can then remarry her first husband.
"The Muslim Personal Law says that during the 103-day separation period called Iddat, the woman has to remarry if she wants to be reunited with her husband," Noor ur Rahaman Barkati, the chief religious judge of the state said.
India honours Muslim laws on marriage, divorce and property while its Hindu majority follows a British-inherited system on civil matters.
"The court dismissed today the case against Abdul Rahman for a lack of information and a lot of legal gaps in the case," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the case.
"The decision about his release will be taken possibly tomorrow," the official added. "They don't have to keep him in jail while the attorney general is looking into the case."
The court's decision was sure to anger at least some of the clerics who ave demanded that authorities enforce a provision in the country's Islamic-based laws calling for the execution of Muslims who abandon the faith.
"There will be big protests across Afghanistan," said Faiez Mohammed, a Sunni Muslim leader in the northern city of Kunduz. "This has shamed Afghanistan in the eyes of other Muslim countries."
A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said it wasn't clear whether the 41-year-old Rahman would be able to stay in Afghanistan or have to move abroad.
Rahman was being prosecuted for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. He was arrested last month after police discovered him with a Bible.
In an interview published in an Italian newspaper on Sunday, Rahman said his family, including his former wife and two teenage daughters, had reported him to authorities.
He stressed that he was fully aware of his choice to convert.
"If I must die, I will die," Rahman told the Rome daily La Repubblica, which did not interview him directly but channeled questions through a human rights worker who visited him in prison.
Rahman said he chose to become a Christian "in small steps" after leaving Afghanistan around 1990. He moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, then Germany, and tried to get a visa in Belgium.
From Richard Owen in Rome
THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference
at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble
aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.
The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.
The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim- Christian reconciliation by asking “pardon” for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. But John Paul’s apologies for the past “errors of the Church” — including the Inquisition and anti-Semitism — irritated some Vatican conservatives. According to Vatican insiders, the dissenters included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.
Pope Benedict reached out to Muslims and Jews after his election and called for dialogue. However, the Pope, who is due to visit Turkey in November, has in the past suggested that Turkey’s Muslim culture is at variance with Europe’s Christian roots.
At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.
“The debate has been reopened,” La Stampa said. Professor De Mattei noted that the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1009 had helped to provoke the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, called by Pope Urban II.
He said that the Crusaders were “martyrs” who had “sacrificed their lives for the faith”. He was backed by Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, who said that those who sought forgiveness for the Crusades “do not know their history”. Professor Riley-Smith has attacked Sir Ridley Scott’s recent film Kingdom of Heaven, starring Orlando Bloom, as “utter nonsense”.
Professor Riley-Smith said that the script, like much writing on the Crusades, was “historically inaccurate. It depicts the Muslims as civilised and the Crusaders as barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.” It fuels Islamic fundamentalism by propagating “Osama bin Laden’s version of history”.
He said that the Crusaders were sometimes undisciplined and capable of acts of great cruelty. But the same was true of Muslims and of troops in “all ideological wars”. Some of the Crusaders’ worst excesses were against Orthodox Christians or heretics — as in the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
The American writer Robert Spencer, author of A Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, told the conference that the mistaken view had taken hold in the West as well as the Arab world that the Crusades were “an unprovoked attack by Europe on the Islamic world”. In reality, however, Christians had been persecuted after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.
CONFLICT OVER THE HOLY LAND
Historians count eight Crusades, although dates are disputed: 1095-1101, called by Pope Urban II; 1145-47, led by Louis VII; 1188-92, led by Richard I; 1204, which included the sack of Constantinople; 1217, which included the conquest of Damietta; 1228-29 led by Frederick II; 1249-52, led by King Louis IX of France; and 1270, also under Louis IX
Until the early 11th century, Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted under Muslim rule in the Holy Land. After growing friction, the first Crusade was sparked by ambushes of Christian pilgrims going to Jerusalem. The Byzantine Emperor Alexius appealed to Pope Urban II, who in 1095 called on Christendom to take up arms to free the Holy Land from the “Muslim infidel”
The 4th century Monastery of Apa Bane "St Vennie" (Deir Abu Fana, or the Monastery of the Cross) in Mallawi, Upper Egypt
By: Free Copts
On Sunday, March 19th, 2006 Generl Said Uthman Ismael, president of Mallawi city
council, in the province of El Minia , Upper Egypt , gave 5 days ultimatum to
Bishop Dimetrious of Mallawi to demolish the guest house located in the Apa Fana
monastery or else face demolition by Egyptian security forces.
The monastery dates back to the 4th century and considered by historians and
archeologists to be among the first to exist worldwide when Christian monasticism
flourished out of the Egyptian desert.
The ancient sources such as the History of the Egyptian Monks (Historia
Monachorum in Aegypto), Sayings of the Fathers (Apophtegnmata Patrum), Palladius'
Lausiac History (Historia Lausiaca), Sozomen's Church Hisotory (Historia Ecclesiastica),
and others make reference to a man named Benus or Banus (Bes) who lived near Deir
Abu Fana and can be identified as none other than Apa Bane
In 1992, Apa Bane's remains were discovered in a tomb located beneath the nave floor of the funerary church of the monastery, along with other abbots
Coptic youth reacted to the threats of general Ismael by staging a sit in strike inside the monastery to confront the Egyptian security forces and defend the historical monastery against the Egyptian government thugs who seem to have nothing to do lately but harass the Coptic churches and places of worship.
Married at the age of four, an Afghan girl was subjected to years of beatings and torture, finally escaping to discover that within all the world's cruelty, there is also some kindness. KABUL,
Afghanistan
- Eleven-year old Gulsoma lay in a heap on the ground in front of her father-in-law.
He told her that if she didn't find a missing watch by the next morning he would
kill her. He almost had already.
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In the new "liberated" Afghanistan, apostacy is punishable by death
according to Sharia law. Our policy makers didn't see a problem with incorporating
Sharia law into the Afghani Constitution, nor into the Iraq Constitution either.
From the Australia News, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.
A MAN detained by police for converting from Islam to Christianity could face
the death penalty if he refused to become a Muslim again, an Afghani judge said
today.
Islamic sharia law proposes the death sentence for Muslims who abandon the religion.
Afghanistan's new constitution says "no law can be contrary to the sacred
religion of Islam".
Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada said the suspect, Abdur Rahman, was
arrested after members of his family informed police of his conversion.
He would be charged with abandoning Islam, Mr Mawlavizada said.
"The prosecutor says he should be executed on the basis of the constitution,"
Mr Mawlavizada said, who added that Mr Rahman could come back to Islam.
"If he does not ... he will be punished," he said...
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| Abdel Karim Nabil Suliman, an Egyptian Muslim student, was expelled from Al Azhar University in Egypt for expressing his progressive views |
By: Free Copts
Abdel Karim Nabil Suliman [AKA: Kareem Amer] is a 22 year-old Egyptian student
of law at the Azhar University in Egypt (Largest Islamic University in Egypt and
the Islamic world), Damanhour Campus, and a women-rights activist
He also maintains his own blog where he posts articles expressing his views
on the need for political reform as well as reforming Islam
On Wednesday October 25, 2005 , Egyptian State Security forces took Abdel Karim
from his home, and confiscated hard copies of his writings, this came right after
Karim published an article titled: “The naked Truth Of Islam That I have
witnessed in Alexandria” where he condemned the actions of the Muslim mob
that surrounded the Coptic church in Muharam Bek, Alexandria and attempted to
destroy it 2 years after a stage play in the shurch alledged to be offensive to
Muslims.
On Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 Karim was called in for investigations by a "Disciplinary council" set up by Al Azhar University to question Karim over his articles and views
On Wednesday March 15th, 2006 Karim wrote on his blog under the "Events of Al Azhar Inquisition" saying:
"Yesterday, I went to my college in Damanhour to attend the disciplinary
council I was referred to because of my views and articles that I post online,
the accusations ranged from defaming Islam to atheism to libel against the grand
Imam of Al Azhar and some of the university scholars
Karim adds: (They simply turned criticism into libel and defamation, they considered
the criticism of terrorist teachings as a derogatory act against religion), Karim
went on to say "
" I did not try to deny the writing of these articles that they took as an incriminating evidence, but rather I insisted that they are my personal product despite their warnings that by admitting so, I might face many consequences"
On March 17th, 2006 the semi- official Algomhuria Egyptian newspaper published the following:
"Professor Hamdi Shalany, PHD., Dean of the School of Islamic Sharia and
Law in Damanhour decided to expel the student Abdel Karim Nabil Suliman for perpetrating
acts and writings that defames religion in addition to defamation and libel against
the grand Imam of Al Azhar
The disciplinary council has submitted a copy of the investigation documents for
public prosecution".
Upon receiving the university's decision letter, Karim wrote the following:
"I am not sad! Would one be depressed and sad when he recuperates his freedom? As I was being investigated, I discovered- for the first time- that being a student at El Azhar University means I was a slave owned by it.
Would I be sad because I recuperated my freedom? Would the slave be depressed when he manages to forcibly extract his freedom from the grasp of that who considered himself a master? Would he who wins over injustice, slavery, and intellectual restriction cry? I extracted it from them as they were bargaining with me over it.
They were expecting me to deny or evade responsibility of my free and courageous opinions - they were awaiting for me to give birth to a second personality during the investigations - but how preposterous!
The University of El Azhar is a racist university, with all that the word "Racism" entails. Its Imams and scholars always decry countries of the West, which reached a high caliber in terms of human rights, for having been racist countries at one point of their history.
Would those turbans void of brains remove the speck from their eyes first before blaming others for actions carried out centuries ago? It is a racist university for; in spite of the fact that it is a public university financed by all Egyptian taxpayers - Muslims and Christians alike - it only accepts Muslim students! Isn't that racism?
It is a racist university because it separates male and female students and places them in separate campuses. It even goes as far as banning its female students from studying certain specialties. Isn't that racism? If there is one thing for which I would like to thank that university of El Azhar, it is for having showed me its unveiled face that I would not have been able to witness had I not been one of its students.
I thank it for having opened its doors to me so I could see the laboratories of brain-washing and two-legged bombs, where an innocent kid becomes a rotten swamp after a couple of years, from whom emanates the odors of hatred, violence, and rejection of the other! "
Lucknow, Sat. – With the recent terrorist bombings of the Varanasi Hindu Pilgrimage site on the 7th of March 2006, the Indian Congress Government is now facing a bigger problem of survival, with angry Hindu coalition parties. Many smaller parties in the Indian Coalition Government are now demanding the Indian Government release the Hindu site in Ayodhia for the restoration of the 10th century Hindu Ram Temple, found buried beneath the destroyed 16th century Babri Mosque.
A previously unknown militant group claimed responsibility for the blasts that killed 23 pilgrims in Varanasi on the 7th of March, as relatives cremated the dead.
The Muslim group Lashkar-e-Kahar told a news agency in Indian Kashmir, that it had staged Tuesday’s blasts. “We have carried out the attacks,” a man identifying himself as Abdul Jabbar, the group’s spokesman, told Current News Service in a call. He warned of more attacks if “India does not stop atrocities against Muslims”.
The claim came as relatives of people, killed in the blasts in the Varanasi pilgrim site in north-eastern Uttar Pradesh State, cremated the dead.
Sixty-eight people were also injured in the late-night blasts. “Eight bodies have not yet been identified so far,” said Varanasi’s Chief civilian administrator Ramesh Gokad. Varanasi saw street protests immediately after the blasts by Hindus and riots erupted, according to the Police. Muslim residents of Varanasi packed their bags and fled. No accounts of any casualties have been given for these riots.
In 1992, Hindus tore down the huge Babri Mosque and exposed parts of the Ram Hindu Temple buried in dirt below this razed Mosque. The Hindus acted on ancient Hindu documents and proved them correct.
The Muslims rose in defense of their Mosque against the Hindus. This sparked deadly Hindu-Muslim nationwide riots in 1992 with more than 2,000 mostly Muslims dead. The Indian army stepped in and quelled the riots then and cordoned off the Temple/Mosque site since then.
In 1999, many Muslims brought the matter to the High Court in Lucknow and the court appointed the Indian Archeological Survey Department (ASI) to investigate and produce a report. In 2002, in this High Court in Lucknow, the Indian Archeologists (including Muslim and Hindu representatives) jointly confirmed a Medieval Hindu temple under the remains of the former 16th century Babri Mosque, in a report to the High Court.
The ASI, a government body, which cares for historical monuments, handed over the sealed report to the Lucknow High Court, which then held a closed door session. Mohammed Shameem, one of the top lawyers representing the Muslims in the high-profile case, later said to the press, “Whatever structure found under the disputed Mosque could very well be a Buddhist or Jain Temple, and not necessarily a Hindu temple.” Meanwhile, Zafarayah Jilani, conveyor of the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee, a Muslim group who is the plaintiff in the case, said the ASI report was “vague and self-contradictory.” “We have sought a month’s time to go through the report after which we will file our objections” said Jilani, who also attended the court hearings. Panaji Sekar of an Indian group for fair play said, “What ever structure that is buried under; the Muslims have no right to put their mosque on top of it, leave alone burying it in a mount of dirt.”
A summary of the report, released by the court, said there was “conclusive archeological evidence of a massive Hindu Structure, just below the Hill of the disputed structure (Babri Mosque) and evidence of continuity in structural phases from the 10th century onwards of the Hindu Temple.
In the report, Archeologist said they found ancient brick walls and stonewalls, a “mutilated sculpture of a divine Hindu couple,” a circular Hindu shrine with a water-chute and 50 pillars with Hindu-style carvings, and many other Hindu artifacts, almost all damaged or mutilated into pieces, but still recognizable as Hindu and can be restored by experts.
After the release of the summary of the report in 2002 by the court, Hindu-Muslim riots immediately sparked out as far as Mumbai on the West of India. There were some deaths and hundreds of injuries reported by various hospitals.
The High Court said, it would grant six weeks for both parties to file their objections to the findings of the ASI report. ASI declined to disclose the sensitive report’s contents, which runs to 574 pages and contained substantial visual evidence.
In the hearings for objections, it was revealed that two of the three Muslim experts involved in the preparation of the ASI report have been mysterious bludgeoned to death and the third cannot be found. The High Court adjourned in 2002, to a date to be fixed.
Now with these latest three bomb blasts in Varanasi, the Muslims have inadvertently stirred up a hornet’s nest all over again. The Congress Government is in a delicate balancing situation, with rising oil prices already creating simmering anger of another nature with the Indian Government. The signing of the Non-proliferation of Nuclear weapons treaty with President Bush has not gone very well with the majority of Indians, as they see India conceding to the American pressure. – INA.
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| Pat Robertson's recent comments have landed him in hot water |
evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has accused Muslims of planning world
domination, and said some were "satanic".
On his live television programme, The 700 Club, he said radical Islamists were
inspired by "demonic power".
A US religious liberty watchdog called the comments "grossly irresponsible".
Mr Robertson had to apologise recently for calling for Venezuela's president to be killed, and saying Ariel Sharon was struck down by divine retribution.
His latest comments were expunged from The 700 Club's website, but Mr Robertson's Virginia-based Christian Broadcasting Network confirmed them with a transcript.
'Crazed fanatics'
On the programme, the 75-year-old preacher responded to a news item about the reaction of Muslims in Europe to the publishing of cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.
The footage showed Muslims screaming "May Allah bomb you! May Osama Bin Laden bomb you!"
Mr Robertson said the pictures "just shows the kind of people we're dealing with. These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it's motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it's time we recognize what we're dealing with".
He went on to say that "Islam is not a religion of peace", and "the goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen whether you like it or not, is world domination".
Mr Robertson said in a statement later he was referring specifically to terrorists as being motivated by Satan.
'Gasoline on the fire'
The Reverend Barry W Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the comments "grossly irresponsible".
"At a time when inter-religious tensions around the world are at an all-time high, Robertson seems determined to throw gasoline on the fire," he said.
Mr Robertson, who says his programme is watched by a million Americans daily, has come under intense criticism for recent comments.
He suggested that American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez , and said the stroke that left Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a coma was God's punishment for Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
In both cases he issued an apology within days.
She's no longer a Muslim, has never connected with progressive Islamic groups and does not know the writings of Islam's most respected voices of reform.
So why is Wafa Sultan, a 47-year-old Southern California woman, suddenly in the news as a fresh voice of reason and reform about Islam?
In a blunt interview on Al Jazeera television last month, Sultan harshly criticized Islam as violent and unfavorably compared Muslims with Jews. In remarks Sunday at her Corona home, Sultan, who said she left the faith after witnessing an act of religious extremism, went even further, saying Islam was beyond repair with teachings that exhorted Muslims to kill non-Muslims, subjugate women and disregard human rights.
"I don't believe you can reform Islam," Sultan said. Saying Islamic scriptures are riddled with violence, misogyny and other extremist ideas, she declared, "Once you try to fix it, you're going to break it."
Sultan's Al Jazeera remarks have been widely circulated by such groups as the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-based translation service founded by a former Israeli colonel, and the American Jewish Congress. She made the New York Times front page and is being plied with interview requests from CNN, Fox, "Good Morning America" and public radio. Her e-mail in-box is filled with messages from well-wishers around the world — mostly non-Muslims — praising her "courage," offering donations and pitching proposals to make a documentary about her life.
"This woman, at great personal risk, has decided to come forward not only in English but also in Arabic to discuss what's wrong with Islam and the Muslim world," said Allyson Rowen Taylor of the American Jewish Congress, which has invited her to visit Israel. "She blames the mullahs and clerics for distorting the teachings of the Koran for 14 centuries and speaks about the anger and despair of fellow Muslims."
But the flurry of interest among non-Muslims contrasts oddly with the near silence among Muslims themselves, many of whom say she is a largely unknown figure not causing any particular stir.
"I haven't come across any indication that people are discussing her," said Abdulaziz Sachedina, a University of Virginia Islamic studies professor who was blacklisted eight years ago by Iraqi Ayatollah Ali Sistani for his reformist ideas that women were equal to men and all Abrahamic faiths were equally respectable. "Cyberspace is almost silent."
He said he first heard of her a few weeks ago, when the American Jewish Congress sent him an e-mail with a link to her Al Jazeera interview, which was translated from Arabic into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Sachedina said he agreed with some of her remarks, including her criticism that too many Muslim rulers fail to protect human rights. But he objected to what he called her "vilification" of the entire tradition.
Other Muslims questioned why groups outside the faith were so avidly promoting a non-Muslim to criticize Islam, a practice that has occurred before and is a sore spot in the Islamic community, particularly since many respected Muslims also advocate change.
"Reform is alive and well within Islam, but it will only happen by those from within Islam and not those who hate Islam," said Hussam Ayloush, who heads the Southern California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Some Muslims, however, have embraced at least part of Sultan's message. Ani Zonneveld of the Progressive Muslim Union in Los Angeles, who has been fighting to gain wider acceptance of female musicians in Islam, said she put the link to Sultan's Al Jazeera interview on her personal website, under the title "Wafa Sultan Rocks!" But Zonneveld said Sultan's critiques were not new. Plenty of practicing Muslims, including Zonneveld, have been outspoken in criticizing the way some Muslims interpret their tradition's teachings on women, human rights and interfaith relations, she said.
Sultan herself says she's making a difference. In her interview Sunday, she said growing numbers of Muslims were getting in touch with her to discuss her views. That's a sign, she believes, that she is causing them to rethink their tradition.
"I am trying to push them to doubt their teachings," she said. "My message is effective, and it's doing the job I want it to."
A Syrian native, Sultan said she walked away from the faith of her family 27 years ago, when she witnessed the murder of her professor by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist organization then battling the Syrian government. She said the men burst into her classroom at the University of Aleppo in northern Syria, where she was a medical student, and gunned him down, screaming, "Allah is great!"
"That was the turning point of my life," she said. "I was traumatized. I lost faith in God — or their God — and started to question every single teaching of ours."
She said that, a decade later, after practicing medicine in Syria, she and her husband moved to the United States, where she initially worked as a cashier and studied English at Cal State Long Beach. Today, the couple have three children. Her husband, David, runs an automotive smog-check station. She said she is waiting for acceptance into a residency program before she can be fully certified to practice psychiatry here.
But Sultan said her prime passion has always been speaking out about Islam, something she finally had the freedom to do after arriving in the United States. She began writing regular columns for a local Arabic-language newspaper. Five years ago, she began contributing to a website, http://www.annaqed.com, after the Arabic reference to "the critic."
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks brought her critiques new audiences. Last year, she began appearing on Al Jazeera, the world's most popular Arabic-language television network. Her appearance last month, however, attracted particular attention because she praised Jews for working hard to rebuild their community after the Holocaust, favorably comparing it to violent reactions by Muslims to their plights, whether in response to satirical Danish cartoons or subjugation in the Palestinian territories.
She said she has received death threats and been accused by Muslims of pandering to Christians and Jews with her critiques of Islam.
But Sultan insists that her motives are pure. "I am not against Muslim people," she said. "They are my people. I am just trying to change their mentality and their behavior."
UNC Grad Charged With Attempted Murder After Plowing Crowd
SUV Plows Into Crowd at University of North Carolina, Injuring Six CHAPEL HILL,
N.C. — A University of North Carolina graduate from Iran, accused of running
down nine people on campus to avenge the treatment of Muslims, said at a hearing
Monday that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah."
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar was accused of driving a sport utility vehicle through The Pit, a popular campus gathering spot, injuring nine people Friday. None of the victims was seriously hurt. Police Chief Derek Poarch said Taheri-azar told investigators he intentionally hit people to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world."
Taheri-azar, 22, appeared in Orange County District Court in nearby Hillsborough on nine counts of attempted murder and nine counts of assault. His bail was set at $5.5 million, and he was assigned a public defender, but he said after the hearing: "The truth is my lawyer."
Taheri-azar graduated from North Carolina in December after studying psychology and philosophy. Investigators believe he has spent most of his life in the United States. On campus, UNC students held what they called an "anti-terrorism" rally.
"We don't want terrorism here, and we're not gonna stand for that where we live and where we go to school," said Kris Wampler, a student at UNC and member of the College Republicans, which helped organize the rally.
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Michael Jackson has sparked further speculation he is on the verge of converting to Islam, after pledging to erect a mosque in his adopted home of Bahrain.
The Thriller hitmaker has won planning permission to construct a 30-metre (98-foot) building just outside Manama on land adjoining the palace of the Bahraini royal family.
The former Jehovah's Witness has been living in the Middle Eastern nation since he was acquitted of child molestation charges in his native America last June. He was recently pilloried for appearing in a Muslim abaya robe, which is traditionally worn by females.
The star's spokeswoman Raymone Bain says: "Michael is looking to give something back to the country that has welcomed him so openly.
Discover Islam spokesman Aman Khalib adds: "Thousands of people are embracing Islam, Michael is just one of them."
On Sunday, March 5, at 10:30 a.m. former Sudanese slave, Simon Deng will speak at the Elim Christian Assembly at 498 Manor Road, near Victory Blvd in Staten Island. Mr. Deng will talk about his experiences as a slave in Sudan, how he started the Freedom Walk, and why it is so important to him.
From March 15th to April 5th Mr. Deng will walk from New York to Washington, DC to shed light on the genocide and modern-day slavery ravaging his homeland. He will hold a press conference at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on Wednesday, March 15th at 1pm before commencing his walk.
Mr. Deng is encouraging people to walk with him in their home areas. Volunteers along the route have headed the call and have organized venues for him to speak and places for him and the other brave walkers to stay.
Mr. Deng, a native of Southern Sudan was captured at the age of 9 and sold to an Arab family in Northern Sudan which enslaved him for three and a half years until he was able to escape. Now 44, Deng speaks out about his difficult childhood and about the atrocities that continue to plague Sudan. One of the first 40 Sudanese to come to the US on political asylum in 1980, Deng has emerged as a national leader among the 250,000 Sudanese Refugees now living in the US.
The Freedom Walk is sponsored by the Sudan Campaign, a collection of national organizations, elected officials and influential individuals working for progress in human rights.
In Sudan, more than 1.5 million innocent people were killed between 1955 and 1973, and an additional 2 million were killed from 1983 to 2005 in what has become the largest civil war in the history of Africa. Since 2003, the ongoing genocide in Darfur has resulted in the slaughter of more than 300,000 in just the past 3 years. Current estimates show that over 10,000 humans continue die as a result of this crisis each week.
If you would like more information about the Sudan Freedom Walk, or would like to sign up to join the walk or volunteer in your home community, please visit the Sudan Freedom Walk website at www.sudanfreedomwalk.org, or send an email to info@sudanactivism.com.
Local media: Maria Sliwa, Freedom Now Communications, 973-272-2861, sliwanews@aol.com
National media: Meryl Zegarek, Meryl Zegarek Public Relations, Inc. 917-403-3601,
mz@mzpr.com
Making Islam Illegal: Is It The West's Only Choice?
World/Warner Todd Huston
February 27, 2006 - When President Bush gave his "axis of evil" speech
he went out of his way to make the world understand that it isn't a war with Islam
itself that we were joining -- and I say joining because the war had been started
by the Jihadists decades before. And, in observance to our Western principles,
that must be the correct way to view our conflagration with radical Islam.
Let's face facts, it certainly is uncomfortable to a Westerner who has been brought up on tolerance, freedom of religion, and liberty to contemplate a war against an entire religion. But are we approaching a time when Western nations won't have a choice but to target Islam itself in certain ways to keep their own people safe. The best course of action is to make public displays of Islam and certain of its practices illegal in Western nations.
So, the question becomes are we at that time now? Are we fast approaching a time when Mosques will be closed and banned? Have we come to a time when Islamic literature is turned away from our borders? Have the childish and dangerous reactions of Muslims to this cartoon in a Danish newspaper proven that Islam cannot be trusted to be a vital, peaceful, and law-abiding segment of society?
It is looking like yes is the answer to these queries.
We are already approaching this today. In Ontario they have officially outlawed Muslim Sharia law, that law that uses religious precepts to enforce moral and society codes of conduct. And Muslim "family councils" have been stopped where local community groups may supplement Canadian law with their local custom.
Several members of the John Howard administration in Australia have spoken out against Islamic clashes with Western notions of law and societal comportment many times over the last few years.
Recently Howard himself said, "I do think there is this particular complication because there is a fragment which is utterly antagonistic to our kind of society, and that is a difficulty Š You can't find any equivalent in Italian, or Greek, or Lebanese, or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad, but that is the major problem."
Muslims routinely destroy property, threaten death and bodily harm to those who speak out against them, and they constantly fund terrorism throughout the world. In Syria they have burnt an embassy, in Europe Muslims have been responsible for murdering people who have written out against Islam or made movies, and other forms of art. These actions are also approved by Islamic teachers (Imams) and religious leaders, not just undertaken by warped loners claiming to represent Islam quite against the will of the majority or authority.
With this ridiculous cartoon
issue, we have seen that Islam has no sense of perspective. In the west parody
or satire is seen as not only common, but completely harmless for the most part.
And religion is not immune to parody and satire, though even in the west most
people are often uncomfortable with religious satire. Usually only people filled
with hate attack religion in parody and most in the West instinctively know this.
As a result, most people dismiss such parody as foolishness and bad taste.
But with Muslims overreacting -- in western eyes at least -- to this silly cartoon issue in the way they have, it becomes nearly impossible for Westerners to view Islam as a peaceful religion, but more as a vicious hate group itself. And that perception is justified with the actions that Muslims have increasingly perpetrated over the ensuing years. So, we find that Islam presents a danger to the safety of the populace all too often. It is violent, oppressive, and reactionary.
But, what is to be done about it? We have been raised to feel that religion should be left untouched by government. Freedom of religion is at the very core of our beliefs. And this concept is an important one to uphold. So, how can we honestly and without hypocrisy begin to look toward making Islam illegal?
There is a parallel of sorts in the USA that might be used as a template for action. The Ku Klux Klan.
After the Civil War ended, the KKK arose from the ashes of war as an advocacy group for the disenfranchised white voter in the south. But it quickly became a terrorist organization bent on taking out revenge on the south¹s newly freed black population for having lost the war. It got so bad that even one of the original organizers, C.S. Cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest, denounced the organization and quit it in disgust.
But as the late 1800s rolled on and the south began to re-enter the Union as full partners in government, the KKK began to lose steam and prominence. For a time it subsided. But as the 20th century neared, it re-emerged and this time became a nationwide and powerful force taking on the flavor of religious, civic and racial duty. The KKK became invested in government and claimed millions of members nation wide.
In the 1920s, however, it became too much for a liberty loving country to allow the KKK to any longer exist. In Indiana, the entire state government was scandalized by their fealty to Indiana's Klan leader who had raped and beaten his secretary on a train trip. Violence against and frequent lynching of southern blacks became so pervasive that Congress finally acted and banned the Klan. The organization collapsed never again to reclaim the power and prominence it once had.
Now, the KKK has always based its precepts on Christianity, as well as racial identity. It also reacted with violence, rallies, death threats and killing when it was threatened. It careened far away from being a mere "idea" or religious theology and became a terrorist organization. And it became a terrorist organization even though literally millions of Americans that belonged to or identified with the Klan were not themselves violent, evil, or dangerous citizens.
The leadership of the Klan supported violence. The leadership preached violence. The leadership planned and fomented it. Therefore, it had to go because it became a danger to every law-abiding citizen, whether they agreed with the racial and religious concepts the Klan espoused or not.
Islam has become the KKK of the 21st century. The sooner we awake to this truth and take steps to ban the religion, or somehow curtail its pernicious influence the better. The west is going to have to put sever restrictions on Islamic Mosques and public display of Islam. Further, devout Muslims should not be allowed to hold public office (though it certainly should not become a racial issue sins of the father should not be visited upon the sons).
This is no religious purge as in centuries past. In the past religions were
banned to be replaced by the state sponsored sect and believers of the banned
religion were mistreated, tortured, unduly taxed, and terrorized.
This is absolutely not the model the west would follow by banning aspects of Islam
today. No religion is replacing Islam and no one is suggesting that Muslims be
mistreated. But the creed to which they hold is fast becoming the most dangerous
one in the world today. It is a fine line that we walk to consider banning Islam,
but the safety of society is at risk not to do so.
This is not an easy conclusion at which to arrive. But if we continue to turn a blind eye to the danger that Islam presents to the west, we are signing our own death warrants.
The KKK was put down in the USA and made powerless for the same reason. Communism was destroyed for the same reason, as well. Islam is a danger to the world.
Unfortunately, it is just that simple.
Warner Todd Huston is a free lance writer, graphic designer and works in Desktop
Publishing. Like every man when young, Mr. Huston was sure that Conservatives
were inhumane, ignorant of history and greedy...then he grew up...
By DONNA ABU NASR, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 17 minutes ago
MANAMA, Bahrain - Al-Qaida suicide bombers will attack more Saudi oil facilities, the terror group purportedly threatened Saturday in an Internet statement that claimed responsibility for the foiled attack on the Abiqaiq plant in eastern Saudi Arabia.
Two suicide bombers tried to drive cars packed with explosives into Abiqaiq,
the world's largest oil processing facility, on Friday afternoon, but security
guards opened fire and the vehicles exploded outside the gates, killing the bombers
and fatally wounding two guards.
The guards died in the hospital, the Interior Ministry said Saturday in a statement
published on the Web site of the official Saudi Press Agency.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi quickly said the attack "did not affect operations" and that exports continued to flow. But the blast made the price of crude oil jump by more than $2 a barrel on the world markets.
Naimi met U.S. Commerce Secretary Gutierrez in Riyadh on Saturday and assured him the kingdom would "ensure the flow of oil despite the terrorist threats," a Saudi government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
A statement appeared on a militant Web site saying that Friday's attack was "part of a series of operations that al-Qaida is carrying out against the crusaders and the Jews to stop their plundering of Muslim wealth." It was signed "al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula" — the name of the Saudi branch of the terror network.
The statement did not acknowledge that the attack was foiled. In fact, it claimed that the two "heroic holy warriors" managed to enter Abiqaiq.
"There are more like them who are racing toward martyrdom and eager to fight the enemies of god, the Jews, the crusaders and their stooges, the renegade rulers" of Arab countries, the posting said.
"You will see things that will make you happy, god willing," concluded the statement.
Al-Qaida had long threatened to attack Saudi Arabia's oil plants, but Friday was the first time it actually attempted to do so. Previously militants linked to al-Qaida had killed foreigners working in the industry, but not at oil facilities.
Friday's assault suggested the militants were adopting the tactics of insurgents in neighboring Iraq, who have repeatedly targeted the oil industry. The Saudis have installed image-recognition devices along their desert border with Iraq to prevent miliants from crossing.
The al-Qaida Web posting said "these (oil) factories help to steal the wealth of Muslims" and claimed the attack was "part of al-Qaida's project to expel the infidels from the Arab peninsula."
Al-Qaida is led by the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, who has long sought to replace the Saudi monarchy with an Islamic government, accusing the royal family of selling out to American "infidels." In late 2004, bin Laden released a video in which he called for attacks on oil facilities to hurt the West.
The posting said Friday's attack was dubbed "Operation Bin Laden Conquest."
The huge Abqaiq facility processes about two-thirds of Saudi Arabia's oil for export, removing hydrogen sulfide and reducing the vapor to make the crude safe for shipping. It lies 25 miles inland from the Gulf coast.
Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki said the attack began at about 3 p.m. when two cars tried to drive through the gates of the outermost of three fences surrounding the processing facility. Guards shot at the cars, and both vehicles exploded, al-Turki said.
The explosions caused a fire that was quickly controlled, the oil minister said.
An AP correspondent who arrived at the site hours after the attack saw ambulances racing through Abqaiq's streets. Police set up roadblocks leading in and out of the town.
The facility lies several miles from a residential area where several thousand expatriate workers — including Americans, Europeans and Arabs — live. Al-Turki said no foreigners were injured in the violence.
Saudi Arabia has been waging a successful three-year crackdown on al-Qaida in the kingdom. Security forces have killed or captured most of the al-Qaida branch's known top leaders, most recently in gunbattles in December. The militants launched a campaign in 2003 to overthrow the U.S.-allied royal family.
Saudi Arabia holds over 260 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, a quarter of the world's total. It currently produce about 9.5 million barrels per day, or 11 percent of global consumption. Abqaiq processes at least 5 million barrels a day.
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
"Killing of women for honor is common in Pakistan, where men consider it an affront to the family when their female relatives have affairs or even choose a husband without the family’s approval," according to AP / Daily Times / Pakistan.
"Honor." This is simply one more misplaced term in the killing cult known as a world religion, "Islam." It’s an honor to murder your sisters. If it were not two bullets into two young women, the brother could have slit their throats. No doubt it was more expedient to shoot than try wrestling two females to the ground.
Note that the secular press release even admits that such "honor killing" is "common in Pakistan." Why? Because this is one more demonic doctrine reciting that to see through such murders is not a crime. It is an offering to the Koran’s Allah. Therefore, it is an act of piety, like going to mosque on Fridays to say one’s prayers.
Shooting is akin to praying. Murder is akin to bowing before one’s deity in oblation. Such is the insanity of the Islamic killing cult.
However, each day I get emails from Muslims demanding that I retract these facts. Yet when I provide them from newsfeeds from their own Muslim countries, from their own media, they have nothing to retort. When I provide them with killing / maiming quotes directly from the Koran as well as biographical truths about Mohammed, I don’t hear another word from them.
That’s how blind millions of Muslims are to their own cult. They are sheltered beyond belief. This was told me once by ex-Muslim Ali Sina, webmaster, FaithFreedom.org. He is daily amazed and disheartened to receive mail from Islamics who just don’t get it. They are trapped in a cult, ignorant of truth, thinking they are the God-ordained missionaries to the planet.
Muhammaad Ashraf, 35, loaded his gun. Then he waited for Kaneez, 27, and Naveed, 25, two pretty women. They were his sisters. They walked near him and in two blasts their bodies laid on the ground. It happened Thursday, yesterday, in Pakistan, just hours ago. It’s weird to think that I am typing about it on Friday half way around the world when this carnage just took place before I had breakfast yesterday. Yet is fact.
A brother slew his sisters. Police registered the pious act.
What had the young women done to cause such dishonor to the clan? The brother had no real proof. The news release states that he "suspected they were having love affairs—an affront to family’s name." "Suspected."
However, Muslim men may have several wives. Further, they can have prostitutes legally. They are known as "temporary wives" and live with their parents while the male does not supply them with any financial support. However, when he wants sex with them, he can have sex with them. In other words, he can go to various houses and have sex with various females—all in one day. That’s not dishonoring anybody.
Muhammad lives near Multan. He suspected, so he loaded his gun. He shot. Two humans are dead because a brother member ended it.
"This man says that he killed his sisters to protect family’s honor," police said.
"The latest killings came weeks after Pakistan’s top human rights group in its annual report said that crimes against women had not dropped in this Islamic nation. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that at least 1,242 cases of violence against women were reported in the first eight months of 2005."
One thousand two hundred and forty-two women violated in one brutal manner or another—all in Pakistan.
Again: One thousand two hundred and forty-two women violated in one brutal manner or another—all in Pakistan.
(AGI) - Vatican City, Feb 20 - Offences were serious but violent answers are unacceptable, more so as they appear to be exploited for other purposes. This is, in summary, Pope Ratzinger's opinion with regard to the blaspheme cartoons on Islam. "To favor peace and comprehension between people it is fundamental and necessary to respect religions and religious symbols and not to provoke the faithful hurting their beliefs and religious feelings", declared Benedict XVI for whom "intolerance and violence are never to be justified as answers to offence, such responses are not compatible with the sacred principles of religion. For this reason", explained the Pope to Morocco's new ambassador Ali Achour, "we can only disapprove of the actions of those voluntarily using an offence of religious feelings to foment violence, more so if such actions are exploited for not-religious purposes". According to Ratzinger "for the faithful and for all good willed people the only way to peace and fraternity is the respect of the beliefs and religious credo of others in order to grant the right on free choice of religion and free religious practice".(AGI).
ROME, Feb. 17 -- At least nine people were killed Friday in clashes between protesters and Libyan police outside the Italian Consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi, according to reports from Libya and Rome. The violence came two days after an Italian politician boasted on television that he was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with caricatures of Islam's prophet Muhammad.
Video images showed demonstrators setting fire to an entrance to the consulate and to a car and heaving stones at the whitewashed building. The Italian Foreign Ministry acknowledged in a diplomatic note that a demonstration had taken place and that it had been "energetically repressed" by police.
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If confirmed, the death toll would be the highest in a series of protests around the world against the publication of the caricatures by Danish and other European media outlets.
On Wednesday, Italy's reforms minister, Roberto Calderoli, said in an interview televised on the state-run RAI network that he was wearing the T-shirt and unbuttoned his shirt to give a glimpse of it. Word of the appearance spread quickly through the Middle East: At least two newspapers in Egypt and one in Saudi Arabia wrote about the incident, and al-Jazeera satellite television broadcast the news.
Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said the act "poured oil on fire," and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi asked Calderoli to resign.
Calderoli, who belongs to the anti-immigration Northern League party, a faction in Berlusconi's ruling coalition, was unapologetic. He said the display was a personal statement and did not reflect government policy.
The aftershocks of the cartoon controversy have persisted elsewhere in Europe, though at a lower intensity than in the Middle East.
A week ago in Germany, Der Tagesspiegel newspaper published a cartoon that showed four Iranian soccer players dressed as suicide bombers standing alongside four nervous-looking members of the German team dressed in German army uniforms. The caption read: "Why the German army absolutely has to be deployed at the World Cup," referring to the global soccer championship scheduled for play in Germany this summer. The editors said the purpose of the cartoon was to satirize the German government's desire to dispatch soldiers to World Cup sites.
The Iranian government demanded an apology and, on Tuesday, protesters in Tehran threw firebombs at the German Embassy.
The cartoonist, Klaus Stuttman, is in hiding because of death threats, according to German reports. "The absurdity of the situation is obvious," Gerd Appenzeller, the Tagesspiegel editor, wrote in the paper, insisting that the cartoon was not intended to suggest that Iranians are terrorists.
In Russia, authorities in the city of Volgograd announced that they would close down an official newspaper because it published a cartoon about the controversy.
The Gorodskiye Vesti newspaper depicted Jesus, the prophet Muhammad, Moses and Buddha sitting on a couch and watching two groups of people fighting. The caption read: "We didn't teach you that."
In a statement Friday, the city administration said it was closing the newspaper "to prevent incitement of enmity on religious national and social grounds, and also to stop the abuse of media freedom."
City officials, however, said they would soon begin publishing another newspaper in Volgograd and might use most of the staff of Gorodskiye Vesti to put it out.
The Russian Union of Journalists condemned the city's decision to close the paper, saying it violated "two fundamental constitutional principles: freedom of the press and the secular nature of our state."
Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, had warned Russian newspapers against publishing the Danish cartoons, and none have.
"I think that any provocations in this sphere are absolutely unacceptable," Putin said in a recent interview with a Spanish journalist. "One must think a hundred times before publishing, making or drawing anything."
About 20 million Muslims live in Russia, making Islam the country's second-largest faith after Orthodox Christianity. Muslim leaders have condemned the cartoons, but no major protests have been reported in Russia. Authorities in Chechnya expelled the Danish Refugee Council, one of the largest aid organizations in the mostly Muslim and conflict-torn republic.
Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, had warned Russian newspapers against publishing the Danish cartoons, and none have.
"I think that any provocations in this sphere are absolutely unacceptable," Putin said in a recent interview with a Spanish journalist. "One must think a hundred times before publishing, making or drawing anything."
About 20 million Muslims live in Russia, making Islam the country's second-largest faith after Orthodox Christianity. Muslim leaders have condemned the cartoons, but no major protests have been reported in Russia. Authorities in Chechnya expelled the Danish Refugee Council, one of the largest aid organizations in the mostly Muslim and conflict-torn republic.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
President Bush disclosed new details on Thursday of a thwarted al Qaeda plot to
use shoe bombs to hijack a plane and fly it into a Los Angeles building, as he
sought to justify his tactics in fighting terrorism.
With critics questioning the legality of his authorization of a domestic spying
program, Bush used newly declassified details of a previously revealed plot to
show that the threat of terrorism has not abated.
"America remains at risk, so we must remain vigilant," Bush said.
He said that in early 2002 the United States and its allies disrupted a plot to use bombs hidden in shoes to breach the cockpit door of an airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles.
But he got the name of the building wrong, saying the "intended target was Liberty Tower." He meant Library Tower, now the US Bank Tower, that at 1,017 feet high is the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River.
The Bush administration last October had cited the plan to attack West Coast targets using hijacked planes as among 10 disrupted al Qaeda plots.
Bush gave a more detailed account on Thursday, saying that in October 2001, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of the September 11 attacks that year, set in motion a plot for another attack inside the United States.
"Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September 11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sought out young men from Southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion," he said.
Mohammed worked with a man known as Hambali, the leader of an al Qaeda-affiliated group in Southeast Asia, who recruited a cell of four operatives, the White House said. Mohammed trained the cell leader in the shoe bomb technique and they met al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in October 2001, said Frances Townsend, homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Bush.
The West Coast plot initially was to have been part of the September 11 attack, but bin Laden decided to focus on the East Coast because it was too difficult to get operatives for both, she said.
She said authorities did not know specific details of the planned attack such as its timing or the flight.
"We knew they were going to fly a commercial airliner into the tallest building in California," Townsend said. "And it was an analytic judgment by the intelligence community that that meant the Library Tower."
The plot was disrupted with help from two countries in Southeast Asia and two countries in South Asia, Townsend said.
Bush has been fighting criticism from Democrats and some Republicans over his decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without court warrants inside the United States on international e-mails and phone calls of people with suspected ties to terrorism.
He has called it a necessary tool for fighting terrorism and preventing another attack on the United States.
Townsend would not comment on whether the eavesdropping program helped in foiling the West Coast plot or capturing the plotters.
The cell leader was arrested in February 2002 and the other three operatives were also caught, but Townsend declined to identify the three or the countries where they were captured.
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in March 2003, and Hambali was caught in Thailand in August 2003.
Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman
Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was found guilty of 11 U.K. criminal charges against him, including encouraging his audiences to murder Jews and other non-Muslims, inciting racial hatred and possessing a document likely to be useful to terrorists.
Al-Masri, 47, a former preacher at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, was convicted today after a three-week trial at the city's Central Criminal Court. Justice Anthony Hughes sentenced al-Masri to seven years on the incitement to murder charges and from 21 months to 3 1/2 years on the others. All of the sentences will be served concurrently.
``You helped to create an atmosphere in which to kill has come to be regarded by some not only as a legitimate course, but as a moral and religious duty in pursuit of justice,'' Justice Hughes told al-Masri.
Prosecutors claimed al-Masri was a ``recruiting officer for terrorism and murder'' and used his sermons to ignite a ``tinderbox'' of angry young Muslims. He is wanted by U.S. federal prosecutors on 11 charges, including trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon and taking part in a 1998 hostage-taking plot in Yemen in which four people were killed.
The Egyptian-born cleric, who lost both hands and one eye in Afghanistan, was acquitted of four of 15 counts in the U.K. -- one of inciting racial hatred and three of the soliciting murder charges -- by a jury of seven men and five women. The jury returned the unanimous verdicts after 2 1/2 days of deliberation.
Al-Masri testified at trial that he helped fundamentalist Muslim groups in countries including Afghanistan, but denied soliciting his followers to murder Jews and non-believers.
Video Recordings
The case against him was based on nine video recordings of his sermons seized by police in 2004, in which he is shown saying that Jews should be ``removed from the Earth'' and urging Muslims to ``bleed'' their enemies.
Britain's Metropolitan Police Service said weapons, military gear and hundreds of forged identity documents were found when it raided the Finsbury Park mosque in 2003.
Police also seized 10 volumes of a manual, known as the Encyclopaedia of the Afghani Jihad, that contained detailed instructions on how to make explosives and identified London's Big Ben and New York's Statue of Liberty as potential terror targets.
Al-Masri claimed at trial that he had never read the volumes and that his sermons were based on the religious tenets and ideas of the Koran.
He was tried on nine counts of soliciting murder and six counts relating to his alleged incitement of racial hatred and his possession of the encyclopedia as a document containing terrorist information. His trial opened on Jan. 11.
U.S. Extradition
The 15 British charges, brought in October 2004, halted U.S. efforts to extradite him. His lawyers have said they plan to contest extradition on the grounds that al-Masri can't be deported until he has served his full sentence in Britain and exhausted all possible U.K. appeals.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly described al- Masri, also known as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, as a ``freelance consultant'' who helped recruit and equip terrorists around the world at a May 2004 press conference in New York.
He's accused in an 11-count federal indictment of providing a satellite phone to the leader of a faction of the Islamic Army of Aden, a group that claimed responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole, in which 17 U.S. sailors died.
Al-Masri received three calls made from that satellite phone to his home on Dec. 27, 1998, one day before terrorists stormed a caravan of vehicles carrying 16 tourists, including two Americans, and took them hostage, according to the indictment. Four hostages were killed and several wounded when they were subsequently used as human shields during a rescue effort by the Yemeni military, the indictment says.
He's also charged with trying to set up a training camp in Bly, Oregon for radical Muslims advocating ``jihad,'' or holy war, and giving material support to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the former rulers of Afghanistan who provided sanctuary for bin Laden.
A New York grand jury first returned an indictment against the cleric in April 2004. Those charges have since been superseded by another indictment, filed in the same court on Sept. 12, 2005.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Car bombs exploded in quick succession Sunday near four Christian
churches and the office of the
Vatican envoy, killing three people and raising new concerns about sectarian tensions.
At least 17 other people were killed in other violence around the country.
No group claimed responsibility for the bombings, which occurred within a half
hour near two churches in Baghdad and two in Kirkuk, 180 miles to the north. The
fifth bomb exploded about 50 yards from the Vatican mission in the capital.
Suspicion fell on Islamic extremists such as al-Qaida in Iraq — led by Jordanian-born
terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — that have been responsible for
massive car bombings and suicide attacks against Iraqi Shiite civilians.
Meanwhile, ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured Sunday when the Iraqi army vehicle they were traveling in was hit by a roadside bomb and small arms fire near Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad.
Both suffered serious head injuries and underwent surgery at a U.S. military hospital in Balad, ABC News said.
The U.S. military announced the death of an American soldier in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad on Saturday. At least 2,241 U.S. military personnel have died since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.
The attacks on Christian sites came at a time of rising sectarian tensions, including reprisal killings and raids, that threaten to complicate efforts to form a broad-based government following the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.
"This was a reaction from the al-Zarqawi people against Christians who they believe support the U.S. military in Iraq," senior Shiite lawmaker Ali al-Adeeb said. "Such acts are rejected by Shiites and Sunnis alike who have been living together with our Christian brothers in Iraq throughout history."
A prominent Sunni Arab politician, Naseer al-Ani, called the bombings "terrorist acts."
Three people died in the bombing at the Church of the Virgin in Kirkuk, police said. At least nine people were injured in the bombings, which caused little damage to the Christian buildings.
Despite the relatively low casualty toll, the bombings are expected to raise fears among the country's small Christian minority — about 3 percent of Iraq's 27 million people. At least 12 people were killed in a series of church bombings in 2004.
Vatican officials had no immediate comment.
U.S. officials are pressing the Iraqis to agree on a government that can win the trust of the Sunni Arabs, the minority community that forms the backbone of the insurgency. Such a government is considered essential if the United States and its international partners are to begin bringing their troops home this year.
However, neither the majority Shiites nor the minority Sunnis appear ready for major concessions in coalition talks. On Sunday, a key Sunni Arab politician accused Shiite-led security forces of pursuing a strategy of sectarian "cleansing" in Baghdad.
"Mosques and houses are empty because clerics and ordinary men are being chased as if there was a sectarian cleansing in Baghdad," Adnan al-Dulaimi told reporters. "Violence only breeds more violence. I demand that this sectarian sedition be stopped."
Al-Dulaimi, leader of the main Sunni bloc in the next parliament, also said he would oppose awarding the vital interior and defense ministries, which control state security forces, to Shiite religious parties.
Al-Dulaimi's comments followed a series of raids last week by Interior Ministry commandos into majority Sunni Arab neighborhoods in the capital. The government insists the raids are directed against insurgents who have targeted Shiite civilians as well as U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and police.
On Saturday, the head of the Badr Brigade Shiite militia said Shiite religious parties will "never surrender" the interior and defense ministries. An alliance of Shiite parties won 128 of the 275 parliament seats last month — the largest single bloc.
On Sunday, bombings and ambushes killed eight policemen and a medic in attacks across Baghdad and in the northern cities of Baqouba and Beiji.
A massive car bomb killed four Iraqi soldiers and wounded six more in Saddam Hussein's birthplace of Uja, about 75 miles north of Baghdad. It was unclear whether the attacks was linked to Saddam's trial, which resumed Sunday.
A former high-ranking general in Saddam's disbanded army, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Idham, was assassinated near Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, police said. The motive for the attack was unclear.
U.S. soldiers shot dead three men wearing Iraqi police uniforms and captured a fourth during a gunfight in Kirkuk. No police identity cards were found, and Iraqi police Brig. Serhad Qadir said they were suspected insurgents disguised as policemen.
(WASHINGTON) - Rejecting a suggestion by Osama bin Laden of a negotiated truce in the war on terror, Vice President Dick Cheney said there was only one way to deal with terrorists. "I think you have to destroy them," Cheney said.
The vague offer of a truce -- coupled with a threat of another attack on the
U.S. -- was made in an audiotape released by the Arab television network Al-Jazeera.
It brought new attention to the al-Qaida leader after a yearlong lull in his public
statements.
U.S. security officials said Thursday there were currently no plans to raise the
nation's security threat level because of the new tape.
Counterterror officials said they have seen no specific or credible intelligence to indicate an upcoming al-Qaida attack. Nor have they noticed an uptick in terrorist communications "chatter" -- although that can dramatically increase or decrease immediately before an attack.
On the tape, bin Laden warned that his fighters are preparing new attacks in the United States but offered the American people a "long-term truce" without specifying the conditions.
But Cheney, in a television interview, rejected that suggestion, saying "We don't negotiate with terrorists."
"I think you have to destroy them," he told Fox News Channel. "It's the only way to deal with them."
The tape prompted increased security at Los Angeles International Airport and other precautions at the city's port and water and power facilities.
The FBI has asked the 103 joint terrorism task forces and intelligence units at its 56 field offices to re-examine its cases and investigative leads in light of the bin Laden tape. "Do you see something in your area of operation that might be assessed as more significant than it was the day before?" said an FBI official on condition of anonymity because he was discussing an internal FBI communication.
The national terror threat level currently stands at yellow, the middle of five grades, signifying an elevated risk of attack. The government has raised the alert level to orange, signaling a high threat risk, seven times since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"At this time, we lack corroborating information suggesting that al-Qaida is prepared to attack the United States in the near term," said Homeland Security spokeswoman Michelle Petrovich. "But we recognize that al-Qaida remains committed to striking the homeland."
The tape, which Al-Jazeera said was recorded this month, represents bin Laden's first public communication since December 2004. Since then, al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, has served as the terror network's public face.
The recording was released only days after U.S. missile attacks in Pakistan that Pakistani officials said killed four senior al-Qaida operatives.
CIA analysts verified the recording as bin Laden's voice. They offered no details about how they reached that conclusion, but in the past the agency has verified authenticity in part by comparing new recordings to earlier messages.
In the tape, bin Laden spoke in a soft voice, as he has in previous recordings, but his tone was flatter than in the past and had an echo, as if recorded indoors. He presented his message with a combination of threats, vows his followers can fight forever and a tone of reconciliation, insisting he wants to offer a way to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He even recommended a book for Americans to read -- "The Rogue State," apparently a book of the same title by American author William Blum. He said it offers the path to peace -- that America must apologize to victims of the wars and promise never to "interfere" in other nations -- though it was not clear if these were conditions for the truce.
Cheney said the tape showed that al-Qaida has been hobbled, because "they didn't have the ability to do anything on video" and because it had been so long since bin Laden had been heard from.
Still, "I think we have to assume that the threat is going to continue for a considerable period of time." the vice president said. "Even if bin Laden were no longer to be a factor, I still think we'd have problems with al-Qaida."
Homeland Security officials alerted states about bin Laden's comments in a routine call Thursday morning, Petrovich said.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said city police deployed additional resources at their airport and "posted signage indicating that bomb sniffing dogs and searches will occur frequently." He described the measures as precautionary.
Sharon Gang, a spokeswoman for District of Columbia Mayor Anthony A. Williams, said the capital was not raising its terror alert level.
------
Associated Press Writer Mark Sherman contributed to this story.
At least 12 people were injured in clashes in Upper Egypt when a group of Muslims
attempted to stop Christians converting a house into a church.
Security officials said the Muslims set fire to building materials for the building
in Odaysat, near Luxor.
Several members of both communities were reported injured in the subsequent clashes,
as well as two policemen.
It is the latest in a series of violent sectarian incidents in Egypt in the past
few months.
A security source quoted by Reuters said the Christians did not have official
permission to build the church.
Police arrested 10 young men and the owners of the house, reports say.
Correspondents say curbs on building churches have been one of the main grievances
among Copts, although these restrictions have been eased recently by presidential
decree.
Over the past several years, Western leaders have affirmed that Islam is a
religion of peace. Through examination of Islamic texts and history, this sober
and compelling documentary demonstrates that Islam is actually a violent, expansionary
ideology that seeks the destruction or subjugation of other religions, peoples,
and governments.
Featuring:
Abdullah Al-Araby - director, The Pen vs.The Sword Publication.
Walid Shoebat - author, Why I left Jihad
Robert Spencer - director, Jihadwatch.com
Serge Trifkovic - Foreign Affairs Editor, Chronicles Magazine
Bat Ye'or - author, The decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam.
QUIXOTIC MEDIA, LLC
Founded in 2005, Quixotic Media is an independent production company located in
Southern California. Quixotic seeks to take on issues of social significance that
major media will not. Islam: What the West Needs to Know is the company's first
production.
info@whatthewestneedstoknow.com
For information or comments, write to Feedback@IslamReview.com
