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March 31, 2007
Pakistan: "Moral" Muslim Women Kidnap And Tie Up Baby
A bizarre situation has been unfolding in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, this week. The issue was created by fanatical Muslim women from the Jamia Hafsa madrassa. The women from this madrassa believe themselves to be upholders of Islamic law and have no sense of the civic responsibilities that living in a "democracy" entail. Islam, of the uncompromising, violent and intolerant Taliban variety is the agenda of the staff and students at the seminary.
There is currently a situation of crisis in Pakistan, made worse since the removal from office of the country's leading judge, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, earlier this month. According to the Musharraf government, the judge was dismissed for alleged misuse of office. Lawyers protested the action, which led to police confrontations in various cities. Chaudhry was severe in taking action against government actions which he deemed to be wrong or in breach of human rights.
In Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban have taken control of some regions with the approval of the Musharraf government, fighting has broken out. The tribal people of the region have been in a conflict with the foreign Al-Qaeda/Taliban fighters who live in the region of South Waziristan since March 19. Last week, 160 people were killed in this fighting. This Friday, conflict in Wana, the "capital" city of South Waziristan led to the deaths of 56 people.
On Sunday, March 25, members of the banned Tehreek Nafaz-e-Sharia Muhammadi (TNSM) made an announcement that if their jailed leader, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, was not released within 72 hours, there would be at least 100 suicide bomb attacks across Pakistan. Sufi Muhammad had been a vociferous supporter of the Taliban. In 2001, he had mobilized 10,000 volunteers to fight against the US forces in Afghanistan.
The threats of suicide bombings were made by Maulana Abdul Haq, Maulana Dost Muhammad and Maulana Safiullah. A week earlier, a tribal council or jirga in the Mamoond area ordered that anyone sheltering foreign terrorists would be hanged. Mamoond is a former stronghold of the TNSM.
On Monday March 26, six people were killed in a shootout which took place in a school in Tank, near the Afghan border. Tank is situated in South Waziristan in NWFP. Police had tried to prevent Islamist militants from conducting a speech in support of armed Jihad. This led to a gun battle in which five militants were killed, along with one police officer.
Tensions between Islamists of the 6-party coalition of fanatics, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal or MMA, and the government have been progressively worsening for more than a year. In February 2006, the MMA parties led protests against the Danish cartoons. At the end of last year, the altering of the Hudood laws incensed the MMA, and they threatened to remove their 65 members from the National Assembly.
The Hudood Laws had been introduced on February 10, 1979 by the dictator General Zia ul-Haq, with the connivance of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of this party, is currently the head of the MMA coalition. The MMA objected to any altering of the Hudood Ordinances as these were based on sharia.
Any woman who had been raped ran the risk of being jailed for adultery under the Hudood laws. Only if she could provide four male Muslim witnesses to the rape would she be exonerated. The necessity for a rape victim to be tried under the Islamic law was amended in November last year. The protection of Women Bill, 2006, allowed a rape case to be treated under secular law. As a concession to the Islamists of the MMA, adultery became illegal under secular law, with a jail sentence of five years' maximum. Though draconian, it is better than Hudood - for zina or illegal intercourse, the Hudood laws specified 100 lashes, imprisonment, and/or the death sentence by stoning. No-one had been stoned, but many women were jailed, even though they had been raped.
The MMA dominate the Regional Assembly of North-West Frontier Province. On November 2006, this regional government voted in a bill which would have introduced a sharia-monitoring unit, under the control of a religious inspector called a Mohtasib who would have the wages and status of a judge.
Musharraf's government suggested shortly afterwards that it would be considering moves to repeal the 1986 blasphemy laws, another legacy of General Zia ul-Haq's Islamist military dictatorship, which lasted from 1977 to 1988. To insult Mohammed can invoke a mandatory death penalty. Naturally, Islamists are fiercely opposed to any changes to the blasphemy laws.
Against this background, the actions of the Jamia Hafsa madrassa, taking place in the heart of the capital, highlight the tensions taking place in wider Pakistani society, between a modern democracy based on a rule of law and Islamism, based upon the 7th century dictates of the Koran. The Jamia Hafsa madrassa is taking drastic actions at present, to draw attention to itself and its desire to destroy Pakistan's fragile democracy and introduce Islamism.
The Jamia Hafsa madrassa is attached to the Lal Masjid or "Red Mosque". During the dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq, the former head of this mosque, Maulana Abdullah was close to the dictator. Maulana Abdullah had made fiery preachings about armed jihad.
The mosque, situated in the central Aapara area of Islamabad, is also close to the building of Pakistan's secret service, ISI. Several ISI members worship at this mosque. Maulana Abdullah was assassinated inside the mosque in the 1990s, and his sons Maulana Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi now run the Lal Masjid and its madrassa. Maulana Abdul Aziz, the senior of the two, and the one said to be better versed in Islamic scripture, heads the Jamia Hafsa madrassa. Ghazi runs the Jamia Fareeda madrassa, which is part of the same complex.
In late January, 3,000 members of the madrassa took action against plans by the Capital Development Authority, which had said it wished to demolish 80 mosques which had been built illegally in Islamabad. As a result, students from the Jamia Hafsa stormed the only children's library in the capital. Armed with Kalashnikovs and staves, these (mostly) women students demanded that the CDA rescind its decision and refused to leave the children's library. The leaders of the Lal Masjid announced that if the women were evicted from the library, there would be suicide bombings. The children's library is still under occupation.
President Musharraf responded to these threats of women suicide bombers by saying: "No law has been enacted contrary to Quran and Sunnah in the country nor any bill be passed prejudiced to Islam." He said that the government would soon be bringing in legislation to empower women, and increasing quotas for women in work and education.
On Sunday, March 25, the head of the Jamia Hafsa madrassa, Maulana Abdul Aziz, announced that he intended to broadcast Islamist FM radio in the capital. Initially, he said, the radius of broadcast would be 7 square kilometers (4 sq miles), but would be raised to a 40 kilometer (25 mile) radius.
The following day, Monday March 26 the fanatical burka-clad women from the Jamia Hafsa madrassa went on the rampage at centers in the capital where videos were being sold. On this day, they went a step further, and decided to take vigilante action against an alleged "brothel".
The news of the raid upon the brothel is carried by Time, the BBC, Stratfor, AKI, The Australian, Zee News and Spero.
The women from the Jamia Hafsa madrassa were convinced that a building near their seminary was a brothel, and that was run by a "madam" known as "Aunty Shamin". About 30 women, assisted by 30 men, descended on the "brothel" and kidnapped Aunty Shamin.
According to Abdul Rashid Ghazi, brother of Maulana Abdul Aziz and deputy administrator of the Jamia Hafsa madrassa: "Our students launched a campaign against the vulgar video films in the city. They approached shopkeepers and advised them to remove all vulgar films from the shops. One of the store owners pointed out that a brothel is operating in the area and it should be the priority."
"So we investigated the matter and further took confirmation from the journalists who cover crimes. Then we asked the concerned police station to take notice. The police confirmed its presence but said that they are very influential therefore the police cannot shut it down. Our students went to the brothel along with the neighbours and asked the woman (Shamim Aunty) to close it down but she abused the students so they detained her."
According to Ghazi, the students found naked girls in the"brothel" and "used condoms". However, not only did the women students abduct AUnty Shamin - they also abducted her daughter, her daughter-in-law and the old woman's six-month old baby.
The following day, as women teachers left their homes to teach at the madrassa, police tried to arrest the, claimed Ghazi. "They were not ready to move against a prostitute because of pressure from high up but they can arrest innocent lady teachers, so our students immediately took to the street and detained some policemen in reaction."
Tasleem Bibi and Seyeda Bibi were the arrested teachers, who were detained with Qari Aziz and Maroof, two militants. Two policemen had been seized in retaliation by the madrassa students.
Ghazi said: "Maulana Abdul Aziz announced that if the government is so corrupt that it can arrest pious and innocent lady teachers for an owner of a brothel, the waging of Jihad is compulsory."
On March 28, the two policemen were freed, but the women from the alleged brothel, along with the baby, were still being held hostage. On March 29, the women and child were released, after they had been forced to read out a "confession". They had been given the option, apparently, of confessing their guilt before cameras, or being subject to a court case. There had been a third alternative - to face an Islamic court set up by the fanatics at Maulana Abdul Aziz mosque and madrassa complex.
What makes this behavior more disgusting, is that the six-month old baby had also been tied up with rope. In front of reporters "Aunty Shamin" (pictured) said; "I apologise for my past wrongdoing and I promise in the name of God that in future I will live like a pious person."
Later she retracted the statement, avowed her innocence of any immoral behavior and claimed that the Islamist fanatics had forced her to make the statement. She said: "I don't think Islam allows anyone to beat a woman and drag her through the streets like a dog. They tied me, my daughter and daughter-in-law and my six-month-old grand-daughter up with rope."
The actions of the Lal Masjid and the madrassa have been one of the worst threats to democracy and security in the country. Already ISI, which is said to have members with links to the mosque, is suspected of causing the "disappearances" of people, and also colluding with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Lal Masjid and the Jamia Hafsa madrassa are said to be respected by both Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
According to AKI there have been alleged links between the Lal Masjid and the suicide bombers who attacked London on July 7, 2005, killing 52 people and themselves.
Fired up by the publicity granted to their acts of blatant lawlessness and defiance of the constitutional democracy, the head of the mosque/madrassa complex, Abdul Aziz made an announcement yesterday after Friday prayers as the Red Mosque. He said that the government has one week to impose Sharia law, or else "clerics will Islamise society themselves... If the government does not impose Sharia within a week, we will do it."
There are also rumors that the Jamia Hafsa madrassa students will be drawing up a "hit-list" of brothels and gambling dens during this week, followed by a drive against these targets. Abdul Aziz said: "Jamia Hafsa will hold a conference on April 5-6 at Lal Masjid, where ulema will finalise a strategy against brothels and gambling dens."
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) a leading body of "moderate" religious leaders who have worked previously with the government said on Friday that the government should take firm action against the Islamist organizations. A source said: "The CII made this recommendation to the government after students of the Jamia Hafsa madrassa challenged the writ of the government by starting an unofficial 'anti-vice' campaign in the federal capital."
A meeting was held by senior figures within the CII hierarchy, which decided to issue a formal condemnation of sectarianism, religious extremism and lawlessness.
Tariq Azeem, the government's State Minister for Information, suggested that madrassas should be moved out of the capital. He told reporters that the government would provide land and money to assist such relocation.
The district administration of Islamabad has said that it will "take action" against the Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Fareedia madrassas within days. It firstly wished to wait until a meeting concerning the president and the affair of the deposed Supreme Court justice had been held. This meeting is due to happen on April 3, and therefore, such action against the Islamists will take place on April 4 or thereafter.
The police have already registered a case against Abdul Rashid Ghazi, vice principal of the Jamia Hafsa mosque. Muhammed Tariq, a police oficial said: "We will definitely arrest them."
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 8:10 PM | Comments (1)
Libya: Muslim Dictator Redefines Christianity
News from Reuters, also in Middle East Online reports that the dictator Muammar Gaddafi (Qadafi) has decided that he knows better than Christians what Christianity is about.
Yesterday, while attending a prayer meeting in Niger to commemorate the birthday of Mohammed, he said: "There are serious mistakes -- among them the one saying that Jesus came as a messenger for other people other than the sons of Israel. Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Other people who are not sons of Israel have nothing to do with that religion. It is a mistake that another religion exists alongside Islam. There is only one religion which is Islam after Mohammed."
The speech was broadcast live on Libyan TV.
There was a meeting of Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia this week, the "Arab Summit" hosted by Saudi officials at the al-Athriyah Village just outside Riyadh. Gaddafi boycotted this event, stating: "Libya has turned its back on the Arabs... Libya is an African nation. As for Arabs, may God keep them happy and far away."
The dictator has recently "come in from the cold" as far as UK and US governments are concerned. On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, traveling from London to New York exploded shortly after takeoff. Making a "great circle" route, it was over Scotland, and bodies and wreckage fell over the small town of Lockerbie. All 259 people on the plane were killed, along with 11 people on the ground. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifah were later charged in the US and Scotland.
Libya refused to surrender the two men for trial, leading to a UN ban on air travel and sales of arms to Libya. The suspects were finally released from Tripoli on April 5, 1999. In January 2001, a court in the Hague found Abdel Baset al-Megrahi guilty of murder. His appeal was later rejected.
Earlier, Libya had shown its cavalier disregard for international law, when on April 17, 1984, gunmen from inside the Libyan Embassy in St James Square, London fired shots at members of a demonstration which was taking place outside. 10 people were injured, and a 25-year old British policewoman, WPC Yvonne Fletcher, was shot in the stomach and fatally wounded. The Embassy refused to surrender the gunmen, claiming diplomatic immunity. A siege situation then took place, which ended 11 days later on April 27.
Gaddafi had responded to support the gun-toting diplomats. In Tripoli, 18 people were held hostage in the UK Embassy, immediately after WPC Fletcher was shot.
In May 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice announced that Libya's cooperation in the "war on terror" merited the country being removed from a list of nations which supported terrorism. The US had broken off diplomatic relations with Libya in 1980. Britain, somewhat typically, had decided to renew their diplomatic relations with Libya in July 1999.
Libya may not support terrorism any more (even though in 1985 Gaddafi offered to send weaponry to Louis Farrakhan's heretical Nation of Islam), but it should still not be trusted.
Friday's ridiculous pronouncements about Christianity should set alarm bells ringing for anyone concerned about peace and stability in Africa. Gaddafi is already sponsoring mosques and other Islamic institutions in the rest of Africa. Already Saudi-funded mosques in the Horn of Africa are being used to stir up conflict between Muslims and Christians. For Libya's dictator to denounce one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity signals that he intends to support a more radical form of Islamic "missionary" (da'wah) activity.
With a hat-tip to Little Green Footballs, details have emerged of the murder of an evangelical Christian in Ethiopia last week. On Monday afternoon (March 26), an evangelist named Tedase was snatched from Merkato street in the town of Jimma in southern Ethiopia. He had been preaching with two women assistants. Christian Newswire reported that the man was taken into a mosque on the street, which is funded by Saudi Arabian Wahhabists. Here, he was beaten to death. Ethiopia is roughly split between Christians and Muslims. Traditionally relations between followers of the two faiths is said to be good, but on October 1 last year, Muslims attacked Orthodox Christians in Dembi, northwest of Jimma. Five people were killed.
In Kaduna in northern Nigeria, thousands of people (mostly Christians) were killed in 2000, after the government introduced sharia law. SInce then hundreds of people have been killed in Muslim-Christian conflict in northern Nigerian states. On March 21 in the northern Nigerian state of Gombe, Muslim school pupils lynched a Christian woman teacher to death in Gandu, claiming that she "desecrated a Koran". On March 23 an evangelist church in the same town, belonging to the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) was set on fire by a Muslim mob. Burning of churches is becoming a frequent event in Nigeria. Several churches were burned in northern Nigeria in February last year, over the cartoons of the "prophet" of Islam which were produced in Denmark and never printed in Nigeria.
The Western nations, particularly those in Europe, no longer support Christian missionaries, preferring to send money in the form of food aid. However, by neglecting the situation of Christians in the continent, when faced with attacks from Muslim fanatics in Sudan and other nations, they will be allowing Islamism to flourish. And where Islamism flourishes, support of terrorism and armed conflict naturally follows.
Gaddafi is not a moral man - he is a dictator who desires no liberty and democracy for his own people. It seems that he also intends to force his own brand of Muslim despotism onto other peoples of Africa.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 9:33 AM | Comments (2)
March 30, 2007
Bangladesh: High Security After Islamist Leaders' Executions
News from Associated Press, Reuters, the Daily Star and The New Nation:
The individuals pictured above are - Top Row, l-r - Abdur Rahman, Siddiqul Islam (aka Bangla Bhai), and Ataur Rahman or "Sunny", the younger brother of Abdur Rahman. Bottom Row, l-r - Abdul Awal, Khaled Saifullah and Iftekhar al Mamun.
Earlier today (late on Thursday night, Bangladesh time) all six were hanged. On May 29, 2006 the six had been sentenced to death at the Jalakathi Additional District and Sessions Court in the southwest of Bangladesh. They had all been found guilty of the murders of two judges at Jhalakathi on November 14, 2005.
Two judges had been in a minibus being taken to work when a young man (Iftekhar Hasan Al Mamun) had come forward and thrown a bomb. Senior Assistant Judge of Nalchhiti Upazila Sohel Ahmed (32) was killed instantly. Senior Assistant Judge of Jhalakathi, Sadar Upazila, Jagannath Pandey (35) died on the journey to hospital. The blast tore off the roof of the microbus, and the bomber, Mamun, was injured. In a sign of what was to happen later, Mamun had with him a "suicide-bomb" attached to his leg. On the ambulance journey to hospital, he tried to detonate this.
This event was closely followed by a double suicide bombing on November 29, 2005 at two courthouses - one in Chittagong in the southeast of the country, and one in Gazipur in the center of the nation. At least ten people died in these attacks. The 2005 suicide attacks at the courthouses were the handiwork of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or JMB.
On December 1, 2005 another suicide bomber attacked a Chittagong courthouse. Two policemen died, but miraculously the suicide bomber, who had both his legs and also his hands blown off, managed to survive long enough to give information. He said that in Shakhipur upazila, Tangail district, there were 25 mosques which were used by the leaders of the JMB to plot bombings.These mosques were built with money from the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS), a Kuwait-based group which sponsors attempts to destabilize countries so that they become Islamist. RIHS was designated as a terrorist entity by the US on January 9, 2002
The 2005 post-Ramadan suicide bombings had been predicted. Previously, Islamists' bombs had been planted, or thrown at, their intended targets.
JMB had brought Bangladesh to a standstill on August on August 17, 2005 when about 400 small explosive devices were set off virtually simultaneously across Bangladesh. 63 out of the nation's 64 districts were affected, 100 people were injured and two people, including a small boy, were killed. At the scene of each explosion, leaflets were found, threatening more bombs against the judiciary, if the democratic country did not immediately adopt Sharia law. The bombings had been financed by RIHS, through Dr Muhammad Asadullah al-Ghalib, a professor of Arabic at Rajshahi University. Ghalib headed the group Ahle Hadith Andolon Bangladesh (AHAB), which had built the 25 mosques in Shakhipur upazila, Tangail district, which had been used by the group, and also by JMJB.
JMB had committed numerous bomb attacks before August 17 2005 and JMJB had committed murders, but strangely the government of the time had deliberately chosen to pretend the latter group did not exist. On January 26, 2005, the State Minister for Home, Lutfozzaman Babar, had said: "We don't know officially about the existence of the JMJB. Only some so-called newspapers are publishing reports on it. We don't have their constitution in our record."
There are two reasons for the coalition government's denial of the extent of terrorism. The first is that previously, the JMB primarily had tried to assassinate members of the opposition Awami League party. The second reason is that politicians within the coalition had direct links to JMB. Just days before the Chittagong and Gazipur courthouse suicide bombings, the government had made a large donation to RIHS, to sponsor the building mosques and madrassas.
The JMB had a ruling council of seven members, called the Shura. All seven members of this Shura had links with one of the parties within the government coalition - the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, the Islami Chhatra Shabir. This latter group has involved in death threats and murders of academics.
Currently there is no government in Bangladesh. The four-party coalition dissolved itself in November, to prepare its election campaigns, for an election which should have taken place in January. Currently the son of the previous prime minister (Khaleda Zia) is under investigation for fraud. The country is being "managed" by an electoral commission.
What is so important about the hanging today of these six individuals is that two of them (Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai) are the heads of the two main Islamist terror groups in the country, and these two in association with Ataur "Sunny" Rahman are the three key figures in the heirarchy of JMB.
Ataur Rahman was arrested on December 14, 2005. He admitted that JMB is mainly funded from the Middle East, from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Sudan and some other Middle Eastern countries and some Islamic NGOs, and moneyed men of these countries donated the money for establishing the 'Rule of Allah'. Ataur Rahman is the younger brother of the leader of JMB, Abdur Rahman.
Abdur Rahman had escaped detection sometimes by his own guile and sometimes by bad luck on the part of security officers. He was finally arrested on March 2, 2006 at a house in which he had hidden in the town of Sylhet, Sylhet district, in the northeast of the country. Before he finally surrendered, he had withstood a siege.
A few days later, on March 6, 2006, Bangla Bhai, aka Siddiqul Islam, was captured in Mymensingh district, in the north of the country. Rather than giving himself up to members of RAB (the Rapid Action Battalion), Bangla Bhai tried to blow himself up. He was taken to Mymensingh Hospital, suffering from burns, splinters and loss of blood.
As well as being the second in command of JMB, Bangla Bhai also had his own terror group, called Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh or JMJB. This group, whose name means "Vigilant Muslim Citizens, Bangladesh" had been operating for six years before Bangla Bhai "went public" in a shared news conference with Abdur Rahman in May 2004.
JMJB had specialized in killing and torturing communists ("atheists"), and appeared to have police support. They also tortured and killed innocent villagers, such as Badsha Mia (pictured) of the village of Raninagar, Naogaon. Badsha Mia had been hung upside down from a tree and tortured to death, while his screams were broadcast via a microphone and speakers to the rest of the village. Police in the village did nothing to intervene.
Abdul Awal who was also hanged today was the son-in-law of Adur Rahman, the chief of JMB who was captured from a Thakurgaon bus stand on November 18, 2005. He too had been on the Shura of JMB. Khaled Saifullah was also a Shura member. He was arrested in April, 2006.
Today's hangings have effectively wiped out the main leaders and thinkers in the JMB elite. The hangings took place almost simultaneously at various prisons where the convicts had been held. Khaled Saifullah was hanged in Pabna jail, while Ataur Rahman Sunny and Iftekhar Hasan Mamun (the killer of the two judges) were hanged in Kashimpur jail, Gazipur. Abdul Awal was hanged at Mymensingh jail, along with Bangla Bhai. Abdur Rahman was hanged at Comilla jail.
The date of the hangings had come as a surprise. Only last week, Deputy Inspector General of prisons Maj. Shamsul Haider Siddiqui said that the six men would not be hanged until April.
Following news of the hangings, Bangladesh has been placed under high security alert. Though the existing JMB leadership has been hanged (with two remaining Shura members in prison), there are signs that JMB has been regrouping. Six JMB activists were arrested last Saturday (March 24) after a raid on an Islamic school in Jamalpur district, 90 miles north of the capital, Dhaka. Explosives and grenade casings were seized in the raid.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 8:33 PM | Comments (0)
Should The Islamic World Apologize For Slavery? - Part One
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Should The Islamic World Apologize For Slavery?
Part One (of three)
For members of Britain's politically correct establishment, this week has been one of hand wringing and embarrassing gestures of self-abasement. On Saturday, March 24, a procession took place through London, led by the two most senior figures in the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and Archbishop of York, John Sentamu. The event, called the "Walk of Witness" was part of the bicentennial commemoration of Britain's abolishment of slavery. Among the procession was a group that had marched 250 miles from Hull in shackles and chains (pictured). They were released from their manacles by the Archbishop of the West Indies.
On Tuesday March 27, the Queen and Tony Blair took part in a commemorative service at Westminster Abbey. It was exactly 200 years previously that WIlliam Wilberforce, (born in Hull on August 24, 1959) had succeeded in passing an act to abolish the trade in slaves, which did not come into force until January 1, 1808. This act did not see the end of slavery in Britain and its colonies. It was not until August 29, 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. Wilberforce had died a month before, on July 29. He had retired from politics in 1825. Wilberforce is celebrated in Michael Apted's new movie "Amazing Grace".
Tuesday's ceremony at Westminster Abbey was interrupted by a man in an African batik shirt, Toyin Agbetu, who shouted his objections to the service. As Archbishop John Sentamu, an African, wryly noted: "I hope the depth of anger he expressed is matched by that he should have towards those African chiefs who grew fat through the capture and sale of their kith and kin for trinkets."
No-one is asking for the descendants of the Oba of Ife or the King of Dahomey to make apologies for their part in slavery. An estimated 10 to 25 million Africans were sent across the Atlantic, shackled together in appalling conditions, destined to lead terrible and squalid lives as slaves. From London alone, 2,704 ships left to pick up slaves and transport them to the New World.
America's slavery officially ended in 1865, even though it led to Civil War. Eight years earlier, the US Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dred Scott that black people could never become citizens of the United States. In February 2007, Virginia officially apologized for its part in slavery, and on Monday this week, Maryland followed suit.
Modern Western nations' involvement in the black slave trade lasted little more than 350 years, yet Islam has been involved in the black slave trade for more than 14 centuries, from the time of its founder. Mohammed owned black slaves, and in countries like the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, the black slave trade continues. According to Murray Gordon, the amount of black slaves taken by Muslims amounted to 11 million, though this figure is probably an underestimate. While white (and Arab) slave merchants bought and sold black people from the west coast of Africa, Muslim slavers in north Africa also engaged in a trade of white Christians, a trade that politically correct history books conveniently ignore.
There is a line in the Marine Corps Hymn that goes "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli". The last part of this line refers directly to naval engagements from 1804 and 1815, which sought to end the trade in white slaves. Though most of the Christian slaves in North Africa were Europeans, a sizable number were Americans, captured at sea by the notorious Barbary pirates, or corsairs.
For the Barbary corsairs, named after the Barbary ("Berber") coast, trade in white slaves began in earnest in the late 16th century. They came from Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers and Morocco, all vassal states under the Ottoman Empire, which is why most contemporary accounts refer to the corsairs as "Turks" or "Janissaries" (a type of soldier in the Ottoman empire).
The corsairs first came to prominence in the early 16th century, led by the brothers Barbarossa, who had assumed powers as the first pashas of Algiers. Uruj was beheaded by the Spanish in 1518, but his brother Khair ad-Din (died 1546) succeeded him. Khair ad-Din took control of Nice in southern France in 1543. The Barbarossa brothers led raids on shipping throughout the Mediterranean. Their successors would lead raids far beyond the confines of the Mediterranean coastlines.
One of the most famous individuals captured by the Barbary corsairs was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the author of Don Quixote. In 1575, the ship he was on, the Sol, was captured by corsairs. For five years he was a captive in Algiers, and on numerous occasions he had tried to escape. Cervantes escaped severe punishment as he bore a letter of recommendation from Don John of Austria, illegitimate brother of the King of Spain. A ransom was made for him, his captors assuming he was of the nobility. This was paid and he was released in 1580.
The southwest of England had been subjected to the predations of Barbary corsairs from the end of the 16th century. In 1617, a fishing fleet from Poole in Dorset had set off for Newfoundland. There, they were besieged by pirates described by survivors as "Turkish", and the majority of the crews were abducted. By 1619, more than 300 ships had been captured off the south coast of Britain. The majority of sailors who had been captured by Barbary pirates were never heard from again.
On March 24, 1620, Owen Phippen (also called Owen Fitzpen was captured by corsairs and held as a slave for seven years until his escape. A memorial stands in St Mary's Church in Truro, Cornwall, erected by the rector, Owen's brother.
By the time Owen Phippen was captured, the population of white slaves in Algiers alone numbered more than 20,000, according to Paul Baepler of the University of Minnesota. A decade later, the figure had risen to 30,000 men and 2,000 women. Sailors were not the only victims of the Barbary slave raiders.
In July 1625, a raiding party of corsairs landed at Mount's Bay in Cornwall, and swept into the parish church where the locals were worshipping. Sixty men, women and children were abducted and carried onto the corsairs' boats. Looe, a small Cornish port, was also attacked, though its inhabitants had tried to hide or flee. 80 men were taken and the village was burned. The mayor of Plymouth reported that "27 ships and 200 persons (were) taken". A second fleet of corsairs arrived soon after the first. The mayor of Plymouth would later record that 1,000 vessels had been destroyed in that summer's raids, and the same number of villagers had been abducted into slavery.
On a moonlit June night in 1631, the inhabitants of the coastal village of Baltimore in County Cork, southwestern Ireland, were asleep, unaware that by daybreak their lives would be changed forever. A small flotilla of boats had sailed into the bay unnoticed. These boats, called xebec by their crews, had sailed from Sale in Morocco. They bore 230 musketeers, Muslims to a man, and they had come looking for slaves to sell in Algiers. They had no mercy for any of the town's inhabitants as they burst into homes, setting the crofts alight. When one villager, Thomas Curlew tried to resist, he was hacked to death, and his wife was carried off. All of the elderly villagers were murdered, and by morning, the Barbary corsairs sailed off, carrying with them 130 men, women and children.
The leader of the abductors at Baltimore was himself a former slave. He went under the name of Murad Reis, but originally he came from Harlem in the Netherlands, where he had been known as Jan Jansen or Jan Jansz. After being captured at Lanzarotte in 1618 he became a convert to Islam, and married a Moroccan woman, even though he had left a wife and daughter behind in Harlem. His raids took him far from the Barbary coast. He even raided Iceland in 1627, taking 400 captives into slavery. He became governor of Oualidia in 1640. Many of those who became slaves opted to convert to Islam, though this was no guarantee of freedom from servitude.
According to Robert C. Davis of Ohio State University, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (2004), in 1544 7,000 captives were seized by Algerian corsairs in the Bay of Naples. In 1554, Vieste in Calabria, Italy, was raided and 6,000 people were carried off. In Granada, Spain, 4,000 men, women and children were taken into slavery in 1566.
The traffic in Christian slaves had actually decreased in the 17th century, partly because inhabitants of Mediterranean coastal regions had fled, and partly because the Turkish Ottomans, made cautious after the Battle of Lepanto, were no longer providing support to the corsairs. The Battle of Lepanto took place in 1571 (Cervantes suffered a hand injury in this naval battle) between Ottomans and allied Christian forces. The Ottoman fleet was crushed in this engagement.
In 1645 in what is now Morocco, one man was born into the Alawite dynasty whose sheer brutality and megalomania would demand more and more slaves to achieve his grandiose plans. This man (pictured) was Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif, a direct ancestor of the current King Mohammed VI of Morocco. In 1672, Moulay Ismail had succeeded as ruler after his brother Moulay al-Rashid had fallen from his horse and dashed his brains out. At the time he ascended the throne, 26-year old Moulay Ismail was the governor of Meknes in the north of the country. He decided to remain in Meknes, and to embark on a massive building project, to create the largest and most opulent citadel ever seen. And to fulfill these ambitions, Moulay Ismail needed manpower. His lack of care for his slaves' well-being led to a need for their continual replenishment, and thus he sponsored his own corsairs in their piracy and kidnapping.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 8:20 AM | Comments (4)
March 28, 2007
Media: Has CBS Been Duped by Radical Islamist?
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Has CBS Been Duped by Radical Islamist?
On Sunday, March 25, on its 60 Minutes show CBS aired an interview between correspondent Bob Simon and the former spokesman of the British radical Islamist group Al Muhajiroun. The subject of the interview, 26-year old Hassan Butt (pictured at left), claimed that he had left support for killing behind him. Butt's apparent Damascene conversion does not sit easily with his track record.
He told Bob Simon that "we would take away the innocence from the person so they were no longer innocent men, women and children... and hence, combatants and allowed to be targeted." Yet Butt asserted that now, "killing for the sake of killing, and killing in the name of Islam for the sake of killing, is completely and utterly prohibited. And there's a big disease, a big problem and a cancer in the Muslim world. And it's a very dangerous cancer, and it needs to be dealt with." Yet in the interview, as he said these words, Butt's face showed no emotion. His voice was slower, and more importantly he did not blink at all, as if his face had become a mask. Close scrutiny of his demeanor gives a strong impression that Butt is lying.
The leaders of Al Muhajiroun and its successor groups (Al Ghurabaa and the Saved/Saviour Sect) have always been scrupulous in their gathering of textual information from the Koran and the Hadiths to justify violent jihad against "enemies of Islam", including infidels, and even old women who did not show enough respect:
"At the time of the Messenger Muhammad (saw) there were individuals like these who dishonoured and insulted him upon whom the Islamic judgement was executed. Such people were not tolerated in the past and throughout the history of Islam were dealt with according to the Shariah. Ka'ab ibn Ashraf was assassinated by Muhammad ibn Maslamah for harming the Messenger Muhammad (saw) by his words, Abu Raafi' was killed by Abu Ateeq as the Messenger ordered in the most evil of ways for swearing at the prophet, Khalid bin Sufyaan was killed by Abdullah bin Anees who cut off his head and brought it to the prophet for harming the Messenger Muhammad (saw) by his insults, Al-Asmaa bintu Marwaan was killed by Umayr bin Adi' al-Khatmi, a blind man, for writing poetry against the prophet and insulting him in it, Al-Aswad al-Ansi was killed by Fairuz al-Daylami and his family for insulting the Messenger Muhammad (saw) and claiming to be a prophet himself.
Shortly after these incidents the people began to realise that insulting the Messenger of Allah (saw) was not something to be taken lightly and that by doing so would mean that you would be killed for it, a concept that many have seem to forgotten ."
Photographs of Hassan Butt from two or three years ago show him looking more "Westernized" than he appears on CBS. In his interview for Bob Simon, he wears a smaller beard, but his head is shaved underneath an Islamic cap.
There is much in Bob Simon's interview that seems authentic, such as claims that Butt raised $300,000 for jihad, with professional Muslims knowing that their donations would be sponsoring armed jihad. Butt's claims that drug-dealing was used by Muslim extremists to finance jihad tally with known facts - heroin from Afghanistan and hashish from Pakistan have long been used to finance jihadist operations. Despite this, the claims that Butt is now working to teach Muslims the "peaceful" truth at the heart of Islam, and leading them away from extremism just do not ring true.
Butt was born in Luton, and attended the University of Wolverhampton. He had been expelled from university after physically attacking an open homosexual. Butt said in 2005 of his victim: "If someone wants to do it privately, that's fine, but don't come out publicly with it." There seems to be something here that Butt is not being "public" about. He had reached the age of 25 in August 2005, and was claiming that he had never dated, as his associations with radical Islam had taken precedence.
In 2005 Butt was telling Prospect magazine: "My mother is arranging for me to get married. Unlike Pakistani tradition, which doesn't allow you to speak to the girl beforehand, I've made sure that I've spoken to the sister, made sure that I'm compatible with her. Obviously, I'm not going to date her or court her."
In the CBS interview, Hassan Butt claimed that Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of the four bombers who blew up parts of London's transport network on July 7, 2005, killing 52 people, had become radicalized after being urged to embark on an arranged marriage. Butt claims that other Muslims have become radicalized "as a result of them being tried to being forced to marry someone they don't want to marry". This argument is weak to the point of being specious.
In August 2005 Butt said that he first became introduced to radical Islam via the pan-Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. This happened, he claimed in Prospect magazine, when he was 17. In Sunday's broadcast interview, Butt claims that his adoption of radical Islam happened when he was only 16.
Butt's revisionist account of his history also extends to the numbers of people he had recruited to fight against coalition forces. He tells Bob SImon that he recruited between 50 and 75 people to undergo jihadist training in Pakistan. Yet in January 2002, Butt telephoned the BBC in Lahore, Pakistan, and claimed that he had recruited 200 volunteers to join the Taliban.
With such glaring discrepancies in his own accounts of his life and experiences, it is clear that there is nothing substantial in any of Butt's testimonies that can be relied upon. Butt tells Bob Simon that he knew Mohammed Sidique Khan, but claims not to have known of the bomber's intentions. Yet in May 2003, Butt told the Times newspaper that he knew of a number of British Muslims who wished to become suicide bombers. He said: "The number is getting close to 50. They are aged 17 to their late thirties. They are contacting me about organisation."
"They are waiting for the right time, the right people. You don't just do it as individuals, you do it as an organization. It's about screening them, testing them, making sure they are sincere. Then, when it's right, believe me, they'll all be used."
Butt spoke to the Times after two British-born Muslims had traveled to Tel Aviv. Asif Hanif had entered Mike's Bar on the sea front on April 30, and detonated an explosive belt. Three people died and 60 were injured in the explosion. His companion, Omar Khan Sharif from Derby, had failed to detonate his bomb. Sharif's decomposing body was found 12 days later, floating in the sea. Butt had claimed to the Times that Hanif and Sharif had both approached him for advice on carrying out their "martyrdom operations".
Butt had been officially expelled from Al-Muhajiroun in January 2002 after he had boasted to the BBC about his recruitment of jihadists. Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, who had founded the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, and who had founded Al Muhajiroun in 1996, claimed that Butt did not represent Al Muhajiroun and was acting alone.
Butt had gone to Pakistan in March 2001, and had been leader of the Al Muhajiroun office in Lahore. In September 2001, Butt had allowed US-based Islamist Junaid Babar to stay at the office. In August 2004, Babar admitted to a New York court that he had set up a terrorist training camp in Pakistan, and also that he helped a terrorist bomb plot in London. This plot has led to a trial of 7 individuals, which is still continuing.
The alleged leader of these 7 individuals, 25-year old Omar Khyam from Crawley, had earlier been sent to Kashmir by Al Muhajiroun. His family had gone to Kashmir to rescue him in 2000. This may be the "17-year old" that Butt admitted sending to Pakistan in his interview with Bob Simon. During his trial, Khyam has admitted his involvement with Al Muhajiroun and that he attended a training camp in Kashmir when aged 17, but he has not said that he was sent there by the group.
On October 25, 2005, the BBC aired an investigation by journalist Richard Watson. For legal reasons connected with the still unfinished trial, Watson disguised Junaid Babar's name as "Shafique". Watson said: "I'm in Cheetham Hill, in the northern suburbs of Manchester. I’ve just met with Hassan Butt, the British jihadist who was with Shafique in Pakistan. He won't be interviewed. But we understand from a very well-placed source that Mohammed Siddique Khan stayed at Hassan Butt's flat in 2003 and met with the self-confessed Al Qaeda fixer Shafique, both in Pakistan and back in Leeds."
After being officially expelled from Al Muhajiroun, Butt had returned to Britain in November 2002. On Monday December 2, 2002 Hassan Butt was arrested. Held at Paddington Green police station, the high security location in west London where Britain's terrorists are investigated, Butt was later released without charge.
In October 2001, Britain's defense minister, Geoffrey Hoon, had warned that any Briton found fighting coalition forces would face prosecution. Technically, Hassan Butt did not fight jihad, despite his claims of recruitment. In 2001, 200 British Muslims who had fought abroad were already known to the UK authorities, but so far none have been prosecuted. The reasons for Butt not being charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 have never been adequately explained; this act specifically makes it illegal for UK citizens to incite terrorism abroad, or to arrange terrorism training.
Hassan Butt is a fantasist, it seems. He certainly has had links with radical Islamists, but his desire to gain attention, to bask in limelight, is not the behavior of someone who is as involved in terror networks as he has previously boasted. In August 2004, he claimed to have recently met with "an autonomous Islamist cell in the UK which possessed large quantities of Semtex, and which was capable of launching an immediate and major attack." He told his interviewer that he was "without a doubt" under MI5 surveillance.
He also said that he prayed "to Allah that he accepts me as a martyr. If that's tomorrow, then tomorrow. If not, then whenever Allah wills." When his interviewer asked why he did not carry out his alleged wish, Butt said: "Everything needs to be done in an organised manner, with the current organisations that are working around the world."
Butt announced his conversion to "peaceful Islam" in January 2006 at Cambridge University's debating union. He preaches now that actions such as those carried out by the 7/7 bombers were wrong. In August 2005 he had said that if the world was to come under the banner of Islam "a lot of killing" is unavoidable. He claimed then that the 7/7 bombers were not immoral, but were guilty only of tactical errors: "I am not in favour of military action in Britain but if somebody did do it who was British, I would not have any trouble with that either."
Butt now claims that his family has rejected him for being a traitor to Islam, and he is under death threats from his former associates. He is writing a book, he says, about "moderate" Islam.
I do not buy into Hassan Butt's "conversion". I do not believe that he is doing anything other than "taqqiya", presenting a new gloss to the same hateful dogma he has previously espoused publicly. It seems he always wishes to be a center of attention. Previously he courted publicity by outrageous claims. Now he is courting publicity by claiming to have made a radical decision to become moderate.
There is no convincing explanation for his previous radicalism, not even an admission that when he boasted of his jihad recruitment he was young and naive. He has made absolutely no attempt at a full confession of his previous "sins". Perhaps such a confession would put him at risk of jail, but it would give his current posturing more credibility. Just because Hassan Butt claims he has reformed, that is no reason to believe him.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 1:38 PM | Comments (2)
March 27, 2007
Lebanon: Adventist Church Spreads Falsehood About Islam
Continuing yesterday's theme that those theologically committed to dialogue with Islam can only do so through falsehood and cowardice, today we see the following 'gem' from the Adventist Church: World Church: Statement on Islam to Provide 'Relationship Tool' for Christian, Muslim Communities
As almost any psychologist will tell you, open-minded dialogue is vital to achieving mutual respect and understanding. That advice also applies to communities of faith, according to Seventh-day Adventist leaders in the church's Trans-European (TED) region, where an estimated 60 to 65 percent of citizens are Muslims.
First, I usually don't trust conventional wisdom, not even from "most psychologists." But more importantly, in order to have open-minded dialogue, all partners in said dialogue must participate in good faith. This is a precondition, not a given.
Adventists in the region recently adopted an official Statement on Islam to help foster a more constructive relationship between Muslims and Christians. "As [the Adventist] movement continues to grow in the world," the statement begins, "we are looking for [a] good relationship with Islam, a faith with a similar sense of godly calling that is followed by one-fifth of the world's population."
I didn't know Adventists have a concept of Holy War leading to World Conquest, a concept of dominating or exterminating religious minorities, and another concept legalizing the rape of female war captives. But I guess I'm not up-to-date on the Adventist faith.
The Statement draws parallels between Islam and Christianity, such as submission to the Creator God and a common Abrahamic heritage. It also applauds the scientific, literary and philosophical contributions of Muslims throughout history and recognizes Islam's prophet Muhammad as "a spiritual and social reformer at a time of confusion and ignorance."
This is the myth of the Great Islamic past, and it is always repeated, never proven. It is also false. And Muhammad was "a spiritual and social reformer" in the sense that Mao Tse-Tung was a "tough-minded agrarian reformer."
"We believe that among peoples of all faiths, God has through history preserved a people of authentic submission in the face of apostasy, oppression and persecution. We acknowledge that within Islam there are such people ... Within this group of sincere believers we see potential partners for further exploring our spiritual understanding of the One true God," the Statement reads.
This is strangely ironic considering Islam prescribes the death penalty for apostates from the religion. It is the apostates who need protection from Islam, not the other way around.
The Statement ends with a call for Adventists to commit to "honesty, fairness and respect in describing Islamic faith," and vice versa. It acknowledges doctrinal differences--such as belief in Christ as Savior and Son of God--but says such differences should "not be made points of controversy or generate attitudes of superiority, but rather provide an opportunity for respectful dialogue, knowing that it is ultimately God who brings conviction to the heart."
The statement's call for honesty would be far more credible, had the statement iself been even remotely honest. But Dhimmis can never tell the truth.
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 11:11 PM | Comments (3)
March 26, 2007
New Zealand: Christian Denominations Divided Over "Anti-Islam" Seminars
First, the story: Christians split over anti-Islam seminars
Christian churches have splintered into opposing camps over the Mosque and Miracles conference which will discuss the "threat" of Islam in New Zealand.Leaders of the Anglican and Catholic churches distanced themselves yesterday from the event, while Baptist and evangelical churches vowed not to be "scared into naivety".
The July Mosque and Miracles conferences will feature Christian pastors from Australia giving seminars on Islam and its challenge to Western societies.
The Anglican Bishop of Christchurch, the Rt Rev Dr David Coles, said that after The Press coverage on Friday of Muslim outrage at the event he received several phone calls from church leaders. "They were saying this is dreadful stuff and we need to take the lead on this. It's definitely dangerous to start stereotyping Muslims in this country. It's very provocative and it often gets confused with immigration issues."
Conference organiser Murray Dillner told The Press last week that Islam "made a society implode" and "had a mindset to take over the world".
Commentary: The Christian denominations are split along political lines; the right-leaning Baptists and Evangelicals for the conference, while the left-leaning Anglicans and the politically schizophrenic Catholics against it.
But what is important to understand is the reasoning behind their positions. The opponents of the conference take "dialogue" with one's enemies to be a sacred duty, almost as a divine commandment. They believe steps that harm dialogue itself ought to be avoided. Thus, if a conference offends Muslims, the conference must be sacrificed so that dialogue may continue.
The Christians promoting the conference take dialogue to be a tool which may be used in achieving worthy objectives. They don't take dialogue itself to be a sacred duty to be observed at all costs. For them it is more important to know the truth than it is to appease Muslims.
It should be clear that the second position is the correct one. Truth takes precedence over dialogue. To begin with, what can be obtained from a dialogue at which you go willfully blind? Or for that matter, why would you trust a dialogue partner which insists you don't learn the truth about them? You are simply offering your naked back, and giving them the knife. It is far better to avoid naivette.
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 8:59 PM | Comments (1)
Yemen: Koran "Desecration" Leads To Riots
News from Independent Online, Al-Arab, Arab News, AKI and Reuters AlertNet:
A riot broke out yesterday in the Yemeni port city of Belhaf, allegedly after a French engineer desecrated a copy of the Koran by throwing it on the floor. At least four people were injured. The incident which provoked the fuss happened when a French employee of the energy company Total argued with a Yemeni colleague, and then threw the book on the ground.
A local official, Ali Muhammad al-Maqdashi, reported that spontaneous demonstrations took place, and that the injuries happened when police tried to disperse protesters.
According to Arab News, police shot in the air to disperse rioters. At the port city in Shabwa province, a helicopter and nine cars were set ablaze. Facilities and workers' houses were also destroyed.
Balhaf is where a $3.7 billion project is being run by Total, which aims to create a 320 kilometer (240 mile) pipeline of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for export. Yemen's oil reserves are said to be dwindling, but by the end of 2008, 6.7 million metric tons of LNG is expected to be produced annually.
The government of Yemen has urged officials and tribal leaders to report to a commission which is running an inquiry into the incident, to ascertain how the violence happened.
****
In separate news from AP and AFX/AFP, a French student and a British student, both Muslims, have been killed in the al-Khanajer Mountains, a tribal region of Yemen. The students were attending a Sunni college when it was attacked by Shi'ite rebels. Several others were wounded.
The leader of the Shi'ite rebels is Abdel-Malek al-Hawthi. The incident happened today at the Dammaj School in the mountains, several miles north of Saada.
Abdel-Malek al-Hawthi is the brother of the anti-US cleric Hussein Badr Eddin al-Hawthi (Badreddine al-Houthy) who was killed in September 2004. Badreddine's father continued the activities of the Faithful Youth movement until imprisoned on September 23, 2005.
Last April, four people were killed when a Shi'ite mosque was attacked in Amran, northern Yemen. The Shiites of Yemen are generally of the Zaidi sect. A month before the Amran attack, 627 Zaidi rebels had been released by President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen.
The Dammaj school where the students today had been studying Arabic, is one of the largest madrassas in Yemen.
The Al-Hawthi group is widely believed to be funded by Iran and Libya, claims repeated today in state-owned newspapers. These countries, as well as members of the Al-Hawthi group, have all denied the claims.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 1:49 PM | Comments (13)
March 25, 2007
Saudi Arabia: Islamic Justice - 60 Lashes For Running Away From Family
Saudi Arabia is busy exporting its Wahhabist ideology around the world, as if it is a set of values that deserves any respect. Yet at home, where women are not allowed to drive cars, the backward laws of Wahhabism treat women as "objects" and not as people. Women are denied rights to vote, though Prince Mansour ibn Miteb, chairman of the General Committee for Municipal Elections, has promised that in 2008 this will change.
This weekend, according to DPA and India E-news, a young woman who ran away from her troubled home has been sentenced to be incarcerated in a foster home for girls. The news was originally reported in Saudi newspaper Al-Watan. Not content with this punishment, the Saudi court also ordered that the young woman should be given 60 lashes. The "young woman" is 20 years old.
Because of the backwards ideology which controls all aspects of Saudi life, a "responsible male guardian" such as a husband or wife must accompany a woman at all times.
If a woman is in company with someone to whom she is not married, she can be jailed. In June 2006 a 70-year old woman with a disability had the audacity to enter a shop in Al Deira market in Riyadh where only one man - the storekeeper - was present. As a result, she was arrested and carted off to a women's jail. The male shop owner was not arrested, and it was only after a search by relatives that the elderly lady was found to be in prison. She had committed the crime of "khalwat" - the sin of "unlawful seclusion" with a male.
The fanatics who arrested the elderly woman belong to the "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice", the kingdom's morality police. These individuals, called mutawi, muttawa or mutawi'oon have a reputation for acting as if they have impunity and are above the law. In May, the Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef slightly reduced the powers of the "religious policemen". He decreed on May 23 that they would no longer have powers to detain suspects for hours, in cases of "harassment" that have brought resentment.
The most outrageous incident of the religious policemen overstepping their responsibilities only became news because a member of the ruling royal family, the House of Saud, leaked the report to the newspapers. On March 11, 2002 the religious policemen refused to allow schoolgirls to flee a burning dormitory at Mecca. They also prevented the fire services from dealing with the conflagration. As girls tried to escape the flames, the religious policemen beat them with sticks and forced them back into the building - because they were not wearing "suitable" attire. As a result, 15 innocent girls died unnecessarily.
In today's Arab News, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith (pictured), current president of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is interviewed. Certain questions, such as one which mentioned the differences between Islamic schools of thought about whether women should have their faces covered (for the muttawa, all women's faces should be covered by a niqab.
The sheikh said that following a Royal Decree issued on September 7, 1980, the muttawa must follow strict guidelines concerning behavior. He indicated that the muttawa were not above the law - even though the zealots who caused the 15 schoolgirls to die appear to have never received any discipline.
What is interesting is the medieval mindset which is upheld by the Commission. This is a quote:
The commission plays a large role in capturing people who practice sorcery or delusions since these are vices which affect the faith of Muslims and cause harm to both nationals and expatriates. The commission has assigned centers in every city and town to be on the lookout for these men. As for their fate, they are arrested and then transferred to concerned authorities. The commission also has a role in breaking magic spells, which are found in the sea. We cooperate with divers in this aspect. After the spells are found, they are then broken using recitations of the Holy Qur'an. We do not use magic to break magic spells, as this is against the teachings of Islam as mentioned by the Supreme Ulema. But we use the Qur'an as did the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).The kingdom is backwards in almost all aspects of justice and administration - partly as a result of it being a monarchy ruled by an oligarchy drawn from the numerous progeny of the House of Saud, and partly due to the backwards ideology of Wahabbism.
In November 2006, a woman who was a victim of gang rape was sentenced to 90 lashes, because she had been in a car with a man who was not a male relative or husband. She had been "kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother".
The woman spoke to the Saudi Gazette at the start of this month. The man with whom she had been in the car was also sentenced to 90 lashes.
The 19-year old woman, who is now appealing against her sentence, said that one of the judges had told her that she was lucky to have escaped going to jail. She said: "I was shocked at the verdict. I couldn't believe my ears."
Her account is that she had been blackmailed into meeting the male in a car. This individual had threatened to tell her family that they were having an extramarital relationship. She had met the man as arranged, and when they stopped the car, the pair were abducted by at least five men, who drove them to a farm, where the woman was raped 14 times.
With the stress of the court case, the woman had tried to commit suicide. A women's rights activist, Fuziyah al-Ouni, said to the Saudi Gazette: "By sentencing her to 90 lashes they are sending a message that she is guilty. No rape victim is guilty."
In any other country but Saudi Arabia, Iran and anywhere else where Sharia Law is observed, such a statement might be true.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 4:45 PM | Comments (3)
March 24, 2007
Indonesia: Victories Against Muslim Militancy?
Alfita Poliwo (left) and Theresia Morangke, two of the victims decapitated on October 29, 2005
On Wednesday, March 21, three Islamist individuals who decapitated three Christian schoolgirls in 2005 were given jail sentences. On Saturday October 29, 2005, four schoolgirls were walking to their school in Bukit Bambu village in Gebong Rejo district in Poso regency, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Before they reached their school, the four girls were attacked by a group of men wearing black attire, with their faces covered by black veils. Three of the girls had heads sliced off with machetes. The fourth girl, Noviana Malewo, was struck in the face with a machete, but survived. She is now scarred for life. She testified that up to six men had been involved in the attack, according to Indonesia's national police spokesman Aryanto Budiharjo. There is no reason to disbelieve Noviana's account, which means that up to three individuals have so far escaped justice.
The girls who died on October 29, 2005, were Ida Yarni Sambue (15), Theresia Morangke (15), and Alfita Poliwo (19). Their deaths signaled a renewal of the ferocity of the inter-religious conflict which has thrived in Poso since 1998 and had killed around 1,000 people in Sulawesi. This conflict was part of a wider Muslim insurgency against Christians known as the Moloccan War, which killed 9,000.
The population around Poso comprises approximately equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, compared to the overall ratio of 85% Muslims in the entire archipelago of Indonesia. Earlier in 2005, a bomb had gone off in a market in the Christian town of Tentena in the highlands near Poso. This bombing in May 2005 had killed 22 people.
After the beheadings of the three schoolgirls, attacks against Christians escalated, dying sown somewhat in the spring of 2006. Later in the year the conflicts resurfaced in September when bombings against Christian targets commenced. These attacks were connected with the upcoming execution of three Catholics from the neighboring province of East Nusa Tengerra.
These three men, Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 48, and Dominggus da Silva, 42, had been convicted in April 2001 of fomenting violence and killing Muslims in Poso in May 2000. The evidence against the three men was hardly conclusive, and certainly their sentence of death was a travesty of justice considering that Muslims who had incontrovertibly killed Christians had only received maximum sentences of 15 years' jail. At the time of the Catholics' trial in 2001, the courtroom had been surrounded by Islamists from the Front Pembela Islam demanding that if a death sentence was not passed, the courtroom would be destroyed.
Various US senators, the European Union and Pope Benedict XVI had appealed for the death sentence to be commuted, but the request was ignored. On September 20, 2006, Tibo, Riwu and da SIlva were executed by firing squad at the end of a rain-sodden runway at the airport in Palu, administrative capital of Central Sulawesi province. The following day, Christian populations in Poso and East Nusa Tengerra exploded into violence. On and off, sectarian violence has continued in Poso regency ever since. On October 16, Reverend Irianto Kongkoli, a protestant pastor who had campaigned for clemency for the three executed Catholics, was shot dead in a building supply store in Palu.
After the murders of the three schoolgirls in late 2005, and further attacks against other schoolgirls in the region, no developments had been made in bringing their assailants to justice. On May 5, 2006, five men were arrested in nearby Tolitoli regency, Central Sulawesi. These were then named as Apriyantono (aka Irwan), Arman (aka Haris), Asrudin, Nano and Abdul Muis.
On November 2 last year, two of these were among three men who began their trials in separate courtrooms in South Jakakrta District Court. The trial taking place in West Java island was an unusual precedent, but appears to have been a measure to prevent further escalation of sectarian tensions.
The men who stood trial were Lilik Purnomo, Irwanto Irano and a man named Hasanuddin, who was soon identified as the leader of the men who killed the three schoolgirls. Hasanuddin had been trained at a militant camp in the southern Philippines. This is probably the Jemaah Islamiyah-run training camp.
The court had heard that when the severed heads of the schoolgirls had been placed in plastic bags in their village, they were accompanied by a note, which read: "Wanted: 100 more Christian heads, teenaged or adult, male or female; blood shall be answered with blood, soul with soul, head with head."
Hasanuddin had consulted with a Muslim cleric in Poso before the attacks about mounting a Lebaran (Eid ul-Fitr) terror attack, to commemorate the end of Ramadan (which ended on November 3 in 2005). While living in the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, Hasanuddin had heard about the Filipino terror group MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) carrying out terrorist atrocities to coincide with Eid. He had told Lilik Purnomo: "It would be a great Lebaran trophy if we got a Christian. Go search for the best place for us to find one."
Lilik scouted for victims, and soon fixed upon the schoolgirls who made a regular journey to their school. Hasanuddin hatched the plan to commit the atrocity while in the Gebang Rejo library. According to the prosecution, Hasanuddin said he realized killing women and children was "actually prohibited by sharia (law) but it was allowed to avenge what they (the Christians) have done to us." Hasanuddin ignored the truth that the Moluccan war had been deliberately initiated by Lashkar Jihad and other Islamist vigilante groups.
The news of the three men's convictions and sentences on March 21 came from the BBC, Voice of America, Reuters, Jakarta Post and Associated Press.
Hasanuddin (pictured) was given a 20-year jail sentence, while Lilik Purnomo and Irwanto Irano were given 14 years. The 20-year sentence is so far the longest given to any Muslim involved with killing Christians in the Poso conflict. The relatives of the three girls claimed after the trial said that the three killers deserved nothing less that life behind bars.
Hernius Morangki, the father of Teresia, said: "Twenty years is nothing compared to the sadness and suffering experienced by the victims and their families. This verdict should bring shame to Indonesia."
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Late on Tuesday March 20, the police anti-terror unit known as Detachment-88 had shot dead a suspect in Maguwoharjo village, Depok subdistrict, Sleman district, Yogyakarta. Another suspect was wounded, and several individuals had been arrested. A pistol, an M-16 rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were seized in this raid. Syamsir Siregar, head of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) said that the men were members of the Abu Dujana terrorist network.
He said: "Police are still trying to locate Abu Dujana`s hideouts. To be sure, five of his accomplices have been caught in a raid in which one of them was killed and another one injured."
The man who was killed was only identified as Ma, aged 39, who came from Magelang, Central Java. One suspect who was injured by gunshot had also come from Magelang. Three cars and two motorcycles were also seized during the raid.
Abu Dujana was named by Colonel Petrus Reinhard Golose, from Indonesia's counterterrism task force in March 22, 2006 as the leader of the terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah. Dujana is a former close associate of Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin), who led Jemaah Islamiyah until his capture on August 11, 2003. Hambali is now in Guantanamo.
Dujana's real name is Ainal Bahri, whose nom de guerre derives from a warrior of the murderous prophet Mohammed, who always wore a rd turban around his head - his "turban of death". The historical Dujana had been given a sword by the founder of Islam, which Mohammed described in true Islamic spiritual style: "It is to strike the enemy's faces with it until it is bent."
The terrorist Abu Dujana, born around 1968 came from Cianjur, a town in West Java. It is the same town where Hambali came from. The pair had both trained in Afghanistan, and both were said to be trusted by Al Qaeda. Dijana had been a teacher at Luqmanul Hakiem School, outside of Johor, Malaysia. This pesantren was run by Mukhlas, who was convicted for the October 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, and who is awaiting execution. The exact date when Abu Dujana became head of Jemaah Islamiyah is not known.
On March 21, the day of the verdict on the Christian girls' killers, a 26-year old man identified as AM or JK was arrested in Purwosari, Temanggung, district, Central Java, around 5.30 pm. The man was living in a rented house with his wife and two children. A village head, Karno Budi, said that when he visited the house after the raid, he saw blood on the floor, indicating that the man had been shot. It is hinted at in the Indonesian media that the raids were connected.
The suspects from the raid in Yogyakarta were sent to the National Police Headquarters in Jakarta. Today's Jakarta Post reports that on Thursday night (March 22), the house in Sleman Yogyakarta on Tuesday was once again searched. The suspect in the house had been named as Sutarjo. A neighbor said that four M-16 rifles, handmade pistols and explosives had been taken. The neighbor said: "Those firearms were kept in a cabinet in Sutarjo's room."
He also stated that several containers were confiscated from the kitchen in the house. The neighbor said: "All this time, he was good to other residents. He was regularly gone from his house but I only knew that he was a preacher."
Sri Suyani, the wife of Sutarjo, has refused to give interviews to the press. The police have arrested six terror suspects since Tuesday. Two other suspects had been arrested in Surabaya, East Java on Wednesday.
The Jakarta Post states:
Edi was shot in the back while trying to escape, while Aman was shot in the stomach and died before reaching the hospital.
In Temanggung, Mujadid, alias Brekele, who is believed to have been involved in several terror acts in the Central Sulawesi town of Poso, was apprehended on Wednesday morning. Another suspect, Holis, alias Maulana, was arrested in Surabaya on the same day....
...In Wednesday's raid on Karim's home, located five kilometers away from Sutarjo's house, the police found 16 handmade bombs, two M-16 rifles, handmade guns and explosive materials, including 20 kg of TNT and 625 of kg potassium chlorate kept in 25 sacks. Some were hidden in a two-by-two-meter bunker under the kitchen."
Yotje Mende, senior commander of Surakarta Police, declined to say if the explosives which had been discovered had been destined for use in Poso, Central Sulawesi. He said there were more terror suspects at large in Surakarta, claiming: "We will continue hunting them down since there are many still roaming around here."
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 8:05 PM | Comments (1)
March 23, 2007
Radio: Muslim Indoctrination In British Schools
Earlier, I wrote on Muslim indoctrination in British schools for Family Security Matters.
Tonight, for listeners in the Colorado area, I will be chatting to Scott James on his slot, the "Scott and The James Gang ride" on Fox News Radio 600 KCAL on this subject. Scott's slot comes on between 4 and 7.00pm every weekday afternoon.
I should be on around 5.35 pm for 15 minutes.
If you are within the Boulder/Greeley/Ft Collins region, try to tune in.
Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis)
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 3:02 PM | Comments (0)
Muslim Terrorists And Passport Fraud
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Passport to Terror
On May 14, 2002, in the wake of 9/11, the US passed into law the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002. Section 603 of this law required a study to be made within one year, detailing how countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) could be encouraged to introduce electronic data systems for passports, which could be machine-readable by the governments of the US and VWP participant nations.
The study which was produced required that all VWP nations should be issuing biometric passports by October 26, 2004. On August 9, 2004, H.R. 4417 was signed by President Bush which extended this deadline to October 26, 2005.
The US deadline to require the 27 VWP countries to employ biometric passports or "e-Passports" was met by all participants except three - Brunei, Andorra and Lichenstein. The passports contain a chip, known as a radio frequency identification chip (RFID). In the United States, these e-Passports have been issued since August 14, 2006.
In Britain, the standard 32-page e-Passport began to be issued last year, a scheme which has cost an estimated £415 million ($814 million). The e-Passport has its RFID chip placed on page 31, and it contains fingerprint data and digital imaging data. The US version has only imaging data stored within. A standard 32-page e-Passport costs £66 ($130) for an adult, but to require one to be issued urgently, the cost raises to £108 ($212). A child's passport will cost £45 ($88) or £85 ($169) if rushed.
This month, a "jumbo" British e-Passport became available, with 16 additional pages to allow visa/entry stamps for "frequent fliers". The 48-page e-Passport will cost £77 ($151).
The issue of terrorists using fraudulent passports has been a matter of concern for some time. In 1996, Hussein Makdad, a senior member of terrorist group Hezbollah entered Israel from Switzerland, using a stolen British passport. Originally from Lebanon, Makdad was a naturalized German citizen, and thus had no right to a UK passport. While Makdad was preparing RDX explosives in a hotel room in East Jerusalem, they ignited, leading to him being injured and placed under arrest. In January 2001 another Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist, Jihad Shuman, was arrested while entering Israel on a fraudulent UK passport. In June 2002, a Lebanese-Canadian Hezbollah operative named Fawzi Ayub was arrested in Hebron. He was found to possess a forged US passport which he had obtained in Europe.
Terrorist Ramzi Yousef (right) masterminded the attack where a truck laden with 1,200 of explosives was driven into the car park beneath the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. In the ensuing blast, six people died and 1,000 were injured. Yousef had entered the United States at NYC Kennedy Airport on September 1, 1992 with a Palestinian, Ahmed Ajaj. Both had boarded a plane from Pakistan, using fake passports provided by jihadists in the Khaldan terror camp in Afghanistan.
Ramzi Yousef entered the US on a British passport, which bore the name Mohamed Azan. His companion, Ahmed Ajaj, used a Swedish passport in the name of Khurram Khan. These passports had been "photo-subbed", where an authentic stolen passport had its original photograph replaced. Ajaj was arrested at the airport, as his suitcase was found to contain several more fake passports, as well as bomb-making manuals.
On July 27, 2005, a court in Seattle sentenced Algerian terrorist Ahmed Ressam to a 22-year jail term. In 1994, he had gone from France to Montreal on a photo-subbed passport. This fraud was discovered, but he had been released on bail after he claimed political asylum. Ressam had then used forged baptism certification to obtain a Canadian passport in the name of Benni Antoine Noris. He took a car ferry from Vancouver to Port Angeles in the United States on December 14, 1999. Here he was arrested. The trunk of his vehicle contained 50 kilograms of explosives. He had intended to stage a bomb attack upon Los Angeles airport - the "Millennium bomb" campaign.
The passport with which Ressam arrived at Washington State was 100% authentic, despite being obtained fraudulently. If Ressam had escaped, a search for Benni Noris would have yielded no results, as this character did not exist. Ressam had gained his passport from a man named Leo Nkounga (left), an illegal immigrant from Cameroon who should have been deported from Canada on September 15, 1993. Using the passport obtained via Nkounga, Ressam had traveled to Afghanistan in 1998. Here he had met senior Al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah, who had requested six Canadian passports.
On September 28, 2001, Moroccan-born con man Youssef Hmimssa was arrested in Iowa. He had been living in Dearborn Michigan, since entering the US on a forged passport in 1994. This passport, in the name of Patrick Vuillaume, had been discovered in a house in Southwest Detroit on September 17. Federal agents were hunting Al Qaeda suspect Nabil al-Marabh, who was arrested in Chicago four days after the raid on his house, where three men had been apprehended. Hmimssa agreed to assist the authorities, and his evidence was used to convict two members of the "Detroit Sleeper Cell" on June 3, 2002.
On October 1, 2003, John S. Pistole, assistant director of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, told the House Select Committee on Homeland Security that since 9/11, the FBI had investigated numerous cases of terrorists utilizing false or stolen identification.
Mr Pistole said: "Investigation and interviews of detainees have included the following instances of fraudulent documents and use of false identification related to terrorism matters: 1) A Pakistani detainee who served as a doctor and guard for the Taliban was detained at JFK for attempting to enter the US on a forged passport; 2) An Iraqi detainee purchased a false Moroccan passport for approximately $150.00 in US currency, and used it to enter Turkey where he was arrested; 3) An Algerian detainee requested asylum in Canada after entering that country on a false passport; 4) A Yemeni detainee acquired a false Yemeni passport and was able to get a Pakistani visa; and 5) An Algerian detainee obtained a French passport in an alias name and used it to travel to London. The cost for this false passport was 3,000 French Francs (about $530 US, according to the Council of Economic Advisors)."
Britain, which has more "extremist" Muslims than any other European country, has a sad history of passport abuse. On April 2, 2003, two Algerian illegal immigrants became the first people to be convicted in Britain of raisin funds for Al Qaeda. Brahim Benmerzouga and Baghdad Meziane (left) were given 11 year jail terms at Leicester Crown Court. The pair additionally arranged forged travel documents for jihadists. Meziane admitted possessing a forged passport, with which he had opened a bank account, gained a job, and claimed welfare and housing benefit. He had originally entered Britain in 1997 on a fake passport, issued in the name of Cyril Jacob.
Another illegal immigrant Algerian, who was found guilty at Belfast Crown Court on November 24, 2005 of possessing material "for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism." Abbas Boutrab was using a passport which belonged to Fabio Parenti, an Italian tourist who had the document stolen at Dublin airport on Sept 1, 2001.
Andrew Rowe was a UK citizen of Jamaican descent, who became a convert to Islam in 1990, was convicted of terrorism charges on September 23, 2005 and given a 15-year jail sentence. Rowe had been arrested on a Channel Tunnel train France in 2003. In his possession had been several passports. He had been issued with four passports in seven years. He had traveled extensively, including visiting Bosnia in 1995 to fight as a jihadist, and he repeatedly claimed to have lost or damaged his passports to gain clean, new ones. It appears Rowe's passport shenanigans was an attempt to obliterate evidence of his travel to areas associated with terrorism.
In Britain, issues of homeland security, passport registration and immigration is controlled by various departments within the Home Office. The Home Office is renowned for its incompetence - in April 2006 it was revealed that 1,023 foreign criminals, who should have been deported at the end of their jail sentences, had been released into the community. They consequently disappeared. These included 3 murderers, 9 rapists, 5 pedophiles, 7 serious sex-offenders, along with 57 convicted of crimes of violence and 2 convicted of manslaughter.
Prime minister Tony Blair decided to sack Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, on May 5, 2006, replacing him with John Reid. Despite heroic statements, Reid has been unable to stem the tide of incompetence at the heart of Home Office policy. Shortly before Clarke's dismissal, a scandal emerged, involving a suspected Islamist terrorist. It was revealed that this young illegal immigrant from East Africa, who was jailed for street robbery, had not only never been considered for deportation, but had subsequently been issued with a British passport by the Home Office.
The department of the Home Office which deals with passports is the Identity and Passport Service (IPS). On Tuesday, (March 20) this week, some staggering admissions were made by Home Office minister Joan Ryan.
She said that in the 12 months leading up to September 2006, 16,500 fraudulent passport applications had been made to the IPS. Of these claims, less than half were picked up. This led to fraudulent passports being issued to 10,000 individuals. Short of a birth certificate, a passport is the nearest thing to a "proof of citizenship" that a person can have.
6.6 million passports were issued in this period, accounting for 10% of the total population. Joan Ryan tried to soften the blow by stating that in future, passport applicants will have to have face-to-face interviews, a process that will only begin in May.
In February, it was revealed that 1,000 passports had gone missing in the post. And despite the improvement of an RFID chip, even e-Passports are not immune to fraud. Using technology costing only £105 ($206), a consultant from a German security firm was able to hack into the e-Passport's chip to access data. This potentially allows cloned data to be added to a blank chip in a forged passport.
The most damaging revelation from the IPS this week was the news that two terrorists linked to Al Qaeda were issued with passports. The first of these, Moroccan-born Salaheddine Benyaich (alias Abou Moughen), is currently serving an 18 year jail sentence in Morocco. He was jailed for his involvement in plotting the multiple suicide bombings in Casablanca on May 16, 2003. 33 innocent people died in these attacks, along with the 12 suicide bombers. Benyaich was a member of the Moroccan Islamic Combattant Group (GICM). Benyaich had fraudulently obtained a passport using the identity of a Brighton-born British citizen.
The other individual to have gained passports fraudulently was Dhiren Barot. This son of a Hindu banker had converted to Islam and had fought as a jihadist in Kashmir from 1996-1998. In 1999, he had also attended the Hudaybah terror training camp in the Philippines, run by Jemaah Islamiyah. He had plotted to attack targets in Britain and the US. He plotted attacks against the buildings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings in New York, and the Prudential building in Newark.
Barot also explored the possibility of detonating a bomb in a tunnel beneath the River Thames in London, and had made plans for a radioactive dirty bomb. He was given a life sentence on November 7, 2006. The judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, ordered that he be sentenced to a minimum of 40 years' incarceration, and told him: "This was no noble cause. Your plans were to bring indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery first in Washington, New York and Newark, and thereafter the UK on a colossal and unprecedented scale." He added: ""Your intention was not simply to cause damage, panic or fear. Your intention was to murder, but it went further. It was designed to strike at the very heart of democracy and the security of the state. And if successful, would have affected thousands personally, millions indirectly and ultimately the whole nation of the US and the UK."
Barot, it was revealed this week, had been given a total of nine British passports. Seven of these passports had been issued under his real name, and two had been acquired using a bogus identity.
The shadow Home Secretary, Conservative MP David Davis, said: "It is outrageous that this Government managed to issue multiple genuine passports to convicted terrorists under false pretences. What is to say they won't issue genuine ID cards to terrorists or that terrorists will not use fraudulent passports to obtain genuine ID cards? Yet again we see the public continue to be put at risk by the consequences of the Government's failure."
The public in Britain are not the only people to be placed at risk by such shoddy practices. Under the Visa Waiver Program, how many potential terrorists and criminals, issued with bona fide passport documentation, will be traveling to the United States?
On Thursday March 22 this week, police raided 13 addresses in London, and 22 people were arrested. The targets of the raid were illegal passport factories. £40,000 ($78,570) cash, along with false passports, and other documents, were recovered in the raids.
How great the scale of passport fraud in Britain may be, it is certainly large enough to instill alarm in any American citizen who has previously trusted Britain as a reliable ally in the war on terror.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 6:21 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2007
Islamists And Bio-Chemical Terror: Part Three
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Toxic Shock: Part Three
Biological agents such as botulinum toxin, ricin or anthrax as biological weapons are potentially effective - only a few cases need to be recognized to create widespread panic and fear, the goal of the terrorist. When Kamel Bourgass used facilities at Abu Hamza's Finsbury Park Mosque to develop his program to manufacture botulinum, cyanide and ricin, the latter substance was mentioned in a notorious book. The Encyclopedia of the Afghani Jihad exists in 11 volumes. Abu Hamza, who lost his hands and one eye while bungling his explosives lessons at Midhat Mursi's training camp in Darunta, Afghanistan, possessed an entire set of these volumes. In 1999, these had been confiscated from Hamza by police, but were later returned to him.
The Arabic-language Encyclopedia details explosives manufacture, and suggests Western bomb targets. It also includes details on using ricin as one of the "poisons that the holy warrior can prepare and use without endangering his health". When Hamza was convicted on February 7, 2006 of soliciting murder, and sentenced to seven years' jail, he was also convicted under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for his possession of the "Encyclopedia".
There is an anti-toxin for botulinum, and a vaccine exists for anthrax, but there is no cure for ricin poisoning. Actual diseases that then spread by contagion or infection are more apocalyptic in their outcomes. Once unleashed they are hard to contain.
One biological agent which has received much coverage as a potential bio-weapon is smallpox (Variola major), which was included with other Soviet biowarfare agents in 1980, being discontinued in 1992. The last natural case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977 following a campaign of eradication by the World Health Organization. In May 1980 the world was declared smallpox-free.
The few stores of smallpox around the world are closely guarded. Vaccination programs resumed in 2002. Despite this, people who were vaccinated before 1980 will have little resistance to effects of live virus. Even vaccination can cause hazards. The two-year-old son of a US soldier based in Iraq is currently in hospital in Chicago. The soldier had been vaccinated on his tour of duty, but had been unexpectedly brought home. Here, his son touched the vaccination site and is now in a critical condition, suffering from Eczema vaccinatum. Between 1959 and 1968, only 12 US cases of this condition were reported, with an 18% mortality among those affected.
Smallpox, though hard to obtain, remains stable when added to an aerosol, and once dispersed it can be spread by touch or inhalation to other individuals. It can persist on blankets, and scabs fallen from the skin of an infected individual can remain infectious for up to two years. A hypothetical scenario of a smallpox attack is produced by the Center for Disease Control. The epidemic would develop rapidly and inexorably. Once a person becomes infected, vaccination is useless.
Viral agents respect no borders. As Frank Gardner of ESRC states: "A deliberate release into our highly mobile society could have global consequences. Ultimately, western countries are better equipped to contain and deal with such an outbreak than most Muslim ones are."
Credible agents of widespread destruction within a limited area are more likely to be of chemical or bacterial origin than viral. Radioactive chemicals, products of the modern age, have actively been examined by Al Qaeda. If a nation such as Iran (with a dedicated program) has still not managed to create nuclear weaponry, the chances of Al Qaeda doing so, without necessary centrifuges, enriched uranium supplies, hexaflouride gas etc, a fissile nuclear device is still beyond bin Laden's reach.
Despite this, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, between 1992 and 2002 there were at least 175 known attempts by terrorists or criminals to acquire radioactive material. A 17-page document entitled Companies and Organizations of Proliferation Concern, prepared by MI5 in 2003, lists more than 300 organizations that have obtained WMD and nuclear technology. Of these, 114 came from Iran and 95 came from Pakistan, hiding behind "front" organizations. The United Arab Emirates is said by MI5 to be the hub of such illicit dealings.
For Al Qaeda, the most viable use of radioactive material is either to create a "dirty bomb" or radiological dispersion device (RDD) or alternatively to mount conventional explosive attacks upon existing nuclear facilities.
In Australia, the experimental nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights outside Sydney has already been targeted twice by potential Muslim terrorists. In 2003, Willie Brigitte, a French national originally from Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, had been deported from Australia. His lawyer then denied that Brigitte had been involved in a lot to blow up the Lucas Heights reactor. This plot had involved a cell of Sydney-based Islamists. On Thursday last week, Brigitte was jailed in Paris for nine years for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."
On November 8, 2005 several Muslims were arrested in Melbourne and Sydney. These included Algerian Salafist preacher Abdul Nacer Benbrika and some of his followers. The trial of some of these individuals is now underway. Surveillance of the suspects had gone on for 18 months. Benbrika had been recorded in February 2005 saying: "If we want to die for jihad we have to have maximum damage. Maximum damage. Damage their buildings, everything. Damage their lives to show them. In this we will have to be careful." The main target of these attacks was the Lucas Heights reactor.
One of the individuals connected with the cell that planned to attack the European Parliament with sarin gas in February 2001 was Tunisian-born soccer player Nizar Trabelsi (above). He was arrested on September 13 2001 in Belgium. He admitted that he intended to be a suicide bomber, who planned to drive a car bomb into the NATO military base Kleine Brogel, which housed nuclear weapons. On September 30, 2003 he was jailed for 10 years.
In 2005 an Arabic-language website called Al -Firdaws, or "Paradise" published an 80-page bomb-making manual, dedicated to the "commander of the jihad fighters, Sheikh Osama bin Laden, for the purpose of jihad for the sake of Allah." The manual gave specific instructions on how to create a RDD. John Hassard, a physicist from Imperial College, London, stated that these instructions were accurate and practical, rather than theoretical.
One famous American Islamist, Jose Padilla (right), has been linked with plans to create a RDD. US Attorney General John Ashcroft had previously stated that Padilla had conspired to create such a device, but when Padilla appeared at a federal court in Miami on January 12, 2006, no mention of this was included in the charges laid against him.
In Afghanistan in 2001 Padilla had met Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubadayah, who sent him to Lahore, Pakistan for "training". There the pair were said to have developed the "plot" to create a dirty bomb, or "radiological dispersion device", using radioactive materials which would be stolen from within the US. The intended target of this plot was Washington DC.
One individual who was closely involved with al-Qaeda was Dhiren Barot. A Hindu convert to Islam, he used several aliases, including Essa al-Hindi. Under this pseudonym, he wrote a book detailing his experiences as a terrorist in Kashmir. It was revealed last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had admitted to masterminding the 9/11 attacks and other atrocities. Long before this confession, he had spoken of meeting "Essa al-Hindi". Their meeting had taken place in an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1998.
Barot (below) was arrested in August 2004, with a group of his "soldiers". It was not until October 12, 2006, when Barot pleaded guilty at Woolwich Crown Court to plotting terror attacks in the US and Britain, that the judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, allowed reporting restrictions to be lifted. Barot had planned attacks upon the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings in New York, and the Prudential building in Newark.
Knowing his associations with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, architect of 9/11, v