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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."
********
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, videos made in New York by Barot in April 2001 are disturbing. Two of these featured the World Trade Center towers. In both video clips, Barot turned the camera so that they lay on their side. In one, he makes the sound of an explosion. These clips were found on a tape, inserted within a commercial video of the Bruce Willis movie "Die Hard With a Vengeance", which details terror attacks upon New York. The clips (mpeg format) can be found here and here.
On November 7 2006, Barot was jailed for life. He was given a minimum of 40 years, meaning he will not be free until he is 74.
Barot made several plans for devastating attacks in Britain and the US. Barot had carefully researched the potential of manufacturing a dirty bomb or RDD. Much of his research took place in Birkbeck College, using a forged identity pass. The Metropolitan Police have provided his research and documentation for a RDD, though sensitive passages have been obscured. They can be found here and here.
Barot was aware that an RDD would not cause massive loss of life, but would be, as he called them, "Weapons of Mass Disruption". Cleaning up costs for materials with long "half-lives"would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and create widespread financial, tourist and business disruption. The radioactive materials that Barot systematically investigated included cobalt 60. He wrote that a few grams of this, dispersed via conventional explosives, could close an area the size of Manhattan.
Other radioactive substances that Barot examined included Cesium 137 (one of the radioactive isotopes released by the Chernobyl disaster), Tritium, Strontium 90, Californium 252, and Americium 241. Americium 241 was the substance which Barot decided was the most practical for the purposes of a RDD. Discovered in 1944, this product has a half-life of 432.2 years. It emits both alpha particles and gamma rays, and if inhaled or consumed orally, it is deadly. Of all the substances examined by Bharot, this is the most easily obtained as small amounts are found in smoke detectors.
Last year, one radioactive substance which was not examined by Barot made international headlines, when it caused a London-based Russian dissident to die on November 23. Polonium 210 was discovered in 1897 by Marie Curie, which she isolated from pitchblende. It can be extracted from uranium-containing rocks or from radium-226. However, a nuclear reactor would be required to produce commercial amounts.
Alexander Litvenenko had been deliberately exposed to the substance on November 1, probably orally ingested. Within hours of being poisoned he began to feel ill and vomited throughout the night. His stomach pains continued and eventually his hair began to fall out, but even when admitted to hospital, doctors assumed he was suffering from thallium (which causes hair loss). Up until four days before Litvenenko's death, his doctors still assumed he had been poisoned with thallium. The subsequent investigations into the circumstances of Litvenenko's poisoning and death involve 48 countries.
Polonium-210 emits alpha particles, which are unable to penetrate through a sheet of paper. However, inside the body, these create havoc, made worse by polonium's ability to bind with various organs in the body. Dr Andrea Sella of University College, London, said: "An alpha particle strikes a strand of DNA. It snips it in two, which is bad news, or glues two strands together. Either way normal cell repair mechanisms may be unable to sort that out. The result is that essentially the cellular command and control network (in the body) falls apart." The Polonium-210 almost certainly came from Russia. In the post-Soviet world, radioactive substances such as Polonium-210, and toxins such as dioxin (used to poison Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko in 2004) appear to be easily accessible.
Vladimir Putin denied that Litvenenko's death had anything to do with his establishment, even though traces of the substance were found on UK-bound planes which had brought individuals from Russia. At the Pine Bar sushi restaurant where Litvenenko had met one of these men, seven other people were found to have ingested small quantities of Polonium-210. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) announced on 28 November that 68 individuals had been assessed as needing medical assistance after possible exposure to the isotope.
The existence of a black market in radioactive substances has long been the subject of conjecture. In 1998, workers at one Russian nuclear facility tried to smuggle out 18.5 kilograms of nuclear material. If Putin is telling the truth, and his agents had nothing to do with Litvenenko's death, then the world is at greater risk of a biochemical and radiological attack than ever before. If radioactive substances are available for illegal operations, then the black market in these materials does exist. It will only be a matter of time before these materials fall into the hands of terrorists.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 8:59 PM | Comments (1)
Germany: Judge Cites Koran to Minimize Marital Abuse
This story, with thanks to Dhimmi Watch, seems hard to understand: A German Judge Cites Koran in Divorce Case
The case seems simply too strange to be true. A 26-year-old mother of two wanted to free herself from what had become a miserable and abusive marriage. The police had even been called to their apartment to separate the two -- both of Moroccan origin -- after her husband got violent in May 2006. The husband was forced to move out, but the terror continued: Even after they separated, the spurned husband threatened to kill his wife.A quick divorce seemed to be the only solution -- the 26-year-old was unwilling to wait the year between separation and divorce mandated by German law. She hoped that as soon as they were no longer married, her husband would leave her alone. Her lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk agreed and she filed for immediate divorce with a Frankfurt court last October. They both felt that the domestic violence and death threats easily fulfilled the "hardship" criteria necessary for such an accelerated split.
In January, though, a letter arrived from the judge adjudicating the case. The judge rejected the application for a speedy divorce by referring to a passage in the Koran that some have controversially interpreted to mean that a husband can beat his wife. It's a supposed right which is the subject of intense debate among Muslim scholars and clerics alike."The exercise of the right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law)," the daily Frankfurter Rundschau quoted the judge's letter as saying. It must be taken into account, the judge argued, that both man and wife have Moroccan backgrounds.[...]
I want to stop here. (Please follow the link for the whole story.) I want to analyze the Judge's thinking in this case, and where it came from.
The Judge is using two multiculturalist premises:
1) All cultures are equal*.
2) It is not an undue hardship for a person to obey the expectations of his or her culture.
She also uses a very convenient legal strategy:
3) Foreign laws and customs "have a say" in Germany's enforcement of its laws.
The problem with (1) is not so much that it is wrong, but that it could not possibly be true. To declare that all cultures are equal is to deny every standard for judgement.
The problem with (2) is contradicted by history: all sorts of people have suffered unearned hardships in all sorts of cultures. Slavery, to use the clearest example, has been practiced in almost every society and for millenia, without many people being bothered by its existence until recently.
The problem with (3) is two-fold: there are no guarantees the traditions have any basis on justice, and the judges who cite foreign law and customs are simply reaching for an excuse to support their preferences. (Also notice that the people who want to uphold the value of foreign traditions, are usually the same doing the best to undermine national tradition**.)
The Judge's reasoning simply makes no sense. It is a testament to the power of ideology that intelligent people have come to believe this nonsense, and behave as if believing this nonsense was a moral duty. Not only this ruling, but the ideology behind this ruling, ought to be rejected publicly and thoroughly. The sooner we do this, the better we will be.
Notes:
* One of my missions in life is to tell people that multiculturalism does not mean simply that "all cultures are equally wonderful". It means that all cultures are equally wonderful, EXCEPT Western cultures, which are equally wicked.
** I don't know about this judge's specific views. I speak from experience, however.
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 1:37 PM | Comments (1)
March 21, 2007
Nigeria: Muslim Pupils Kill Their Christian Teacher
Gombe (yellow on map) is a small state in the northeast of Nigeria. According to Reuters SA, earlier today, a Christian teacher at a secondary school was lynched to death by Muslim pupils.
At the school in Gombe, Oluwatoyin Olusase was acting as an invigilator at an "Islamic Religious Knowledge examination. When the exam was over, pupils attacked her outside the school, claiming that she had "desecrated" the Koran. Whatever incident she had done is not recorded.
Joseph Ibi, state prosecutor said: "We have received information that a female teacher has been lynched by her students. We are investigating the report."
In February 2006 in Bauchi state, adjacent to Gombe (purple on map), a Christian teacher in a secondary school had tried to confiscate a Koran from a pupil who was reading it in class. As a result, rioting broke out in which 5 people were killed and several churches were burned down.
The circumstances today seem similar. Police claimed that their intervention had prevented a riot.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
France: Muslim Rips Out His Wife's Eyes, Is Jailed
News from Agence France Presse via Expatica and Sydney Morning Herald, though so far not in French online newspapers.
A court in Nimes yesterday sentenced a Moroccan man, Mohamed Hadfi, to thirty years' jail, after he "ripped out his wife's eyes in a fit of rage". The attack happened in their apartment in Nimes, southern France in 2003, after the woman refused to have sex with him.
The 31-year old had been in an arranged marriage with his 23-year old wife Samira Bari. The woman had grown up in France, and had apparently ordered a divorce before she was permanently blinded by Hadfi.
After the attack, Hadfi fled to Germany, but was detained and deported to stand trial. He was found guilty of "acts of torture and barbarity leading to a permanent disability".
The prosecutor called for Hadfi to serve at least 20 years of the 30-year jail sentence, after which he will be deported and prevented from returning to France.
To those who would say "What has this got to do with Islam?" - the lawyer for the man, Jean-Pierre Cabanes had argued: "This is the result of a marriage that was arranged, not chosen." The lawyer made a point of the cultural differences between the French-raised wife and Hadfi who had grown up in southern Morocco.
Arranged marriages are abuses of people's human rights, particularly those of Muslim women who are often treated by their families as mere chattels. The difference between an arranged and a forced marriage is hard to prove in law. One thing is certain - almost all Muslim "honour killings" happen where a family either intends to, or has created, an arranged marriage.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
Pakistan: Islamist Assassin Gets Death Sentence
On February 20 last month, a Muslim fanatic shot a Pakistani woman minister in the head and shoulder. The minister, 37-year old Zilla Huma Usman (pictured) was a minister for social welfare in Punjab province. She had two sons and was married to a doctor. She also ran a small fashion design business in Gujranwala. She was attacked during a brief power cut while attending the Muslim League House in Gujranwala. She was taken by helicopter to Lahore General Hospital, but died shortly after she arrived.
Her killer, Mohammed Sarwar, was an extremist Muslim who has been described in some accounts as an imam. He had said at the time to a TV crew: "I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah's commandment... I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again." He admitted he had killed the woman because he did not believe female politicians should exist in Islam.
Raja Basharat, Punjab's Law Minister, said then: "He is basically a fanatic. He is against the involvement of women in politics and government affairs. He considers it contrary to the teachings of Allah for a woman to become a minister or a ruler. That's why he committed this action.
He had already been implicated in four actual murders and two attempted murders in Gujranwala. He had been released in relation to these previous cases for "insufficient evidence". He worked as a stone-mason.
Yesterday, 40-year old Sarwar was sentenced to death by a court in Gujranwala.
A court official said: "Judge Tariq Iftikhar has sentenced Sarwar to death on two counts, one for the murder of Zil-e-Huma and the other for spreading terrorism by the action."
He was additionally given a two-year jail sentence and was fined 10,000 rupees ($165) for possessing an illegal weapon. Sarwar showed no reaction when the sentence was passed.
Sarwar was educated at a madrassa and was a father of nine children.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 7:53 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2007
UK: Muslim Terrorists Get Passports Via Fraud
News from the BBC, Bloomberg and Reuters:
If anyone thinks that Britain is a useful ally of America in its war against terror - think again. Under the visa waiver program, anyone with a UK passport can get on a plane to the US and enter the country without undergoing stringent checks into their criminal history. There is no need for UK passport-holders to apply for a visa, despite the fact that Britain has more extremist Muslims than any other Western country.
Last year, 10,000 passports were issued to people in the 12 months leading up to September 2006, which were issued to people who declared false information. The system is so poorly managed that two known terrorists have also managed to be issued with passports.
Minister at the Home Office Joan Ryan admitted that 16,500 fraudulent passport applications had been made to the Identity and Passport Service during this period, and 10,000 of these were not detected. The two terrorists were issued with their passports before this date.
As a result of such sloppy regulation, beginning in May, the IPS will be introducing face-to-face interviews for passport applicants. Annually 6.6 million passport requests are made (more than 10% of the entire population of Britain).
The government, known to underestimate poor figures has said that, by its own estimation, there are at least 570,000 people living in Britain illegally. This figure is 1% of the total national population. This is not the way for any country to fight terrorism, seemingly not bothered enough to remove its illegal immigrants.
One of these terrorists is Dhiren Barot (pictured), who was given a life sentence of a minimum of 40 years on November 7, 2006. Barot, who had been a terrorist in Kashmir in the 1990s, had planned attacks upon targets in the US and Britain. He had been issued with a total of seven British passports using his real identity, and two passports which were gained using bogus names.
The other convicted terrorist was Salaheddine Benyaich (alias Abou Mouhgen), who is currently serving an 18 year sentence in Morocco for his involvement with the multiple bombings of Casablanca, which took place on May 16, 2003. 45 people died, including 12 suicide bombers. Benyaich has links to Al Qaeda. He was a membeer of the Moroccan Islamic Combattant Group (GICM).
Benyaich had two British passports which he had claimed using the identity of a Brighton-born British citizen.
David Davis, the Conservative party spokesman on home affairs, said: "It is outrageous that this government managed to issue multiple genuine passports to convicted terrorists under false pretenses... This is a shocking admission which betrays chaos at the heart of the passport system. It also further undermines the government's case for their expensive ID card system."
In February, the government admitted that more than 1,000 passports were "going missing" in the post each year.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
Islamists And Bio-Chemical Terror: Part Two
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
In 2001 a plot to attack the European Parliament building in Strasbourg with sarin gas was foiled. Six Islamists appeared at Horseferry Road Magistrates on February 17, 2001, but charges against them were dropped. One of these was Algerian Mustapha Labsi, who was detained in connection with a 1997 plot to bomb the G7 summit in Lille, northern France. Labsi was an associate of Abu Doha, who is said to have been a leading Al Qaeda co-ordinator in Europe. Doha (aka Rachid Boukhalfa and other aliases) is wanted in the US for allegedly masterminding a plot to blow up Los Angeles airport on Millennium Eve, 1999.
Algerian Ahmed Ressam (left) was arrested in December 1999 in connection with this planned attack. He had more than 100 pounds of explosives hidden in his car. In July 2001 he told a court how he had been trained in Afghanistan camps to prepare and use hydrogen cyanide gas. He had been advised to release it near buildings' air vents, and said he had taken part in exercises in which dogs were poisoned with the gas. He received a 22-year jail sentence.
The European Parliament plot was not the only Islamist attempt to use deadly chemicals in a European attack. MI5 had urged prosecutors to drop the case against the men who plotted the EU attack, but a police leak, one day after the case was dropped, revealed to the Telegraph that sarin plans had been found in a house in London. The plans detailed how to manufacture sarin and described how to deploy it. Special Branch officers believed an attack upon London's underground railway system was being planned.
The "Hamburg ring", with which these individuals were connected, had planned poison gas attacks against the Paris Metro, probably using sarin, states a 2005 report from the Jamestown Foundation.
Italy too has had evidence of Al Qaeda-related plans for chemical attacks. In March 2001 a phone conversation between two suspected Al Qaeda operatives was recorded by Italian authorities. Essid Sami Ben Khemais spoke of an "efficient" product which could be stored in tomato cans that, when released, could "suffocate" victims. He also mentioned a gas bomb whose effectiveness had been developed by a Libyan professor. Khemais had links to the "Hamburg ring".
In February 2002, four Moroccans were arrested outside Rome. They had with them maps of Rome and its water systems, and the US Embassy was circled in red ink. With them was found nine pounds of potassium ferrocyanide. This cyanide-based substance is not lethal in water, but can be ignited with gunpowder and dispersed by air.
Abdel Qader Fadlallah Mamour, the Senegalese-born former imam of Carmagnola mosque, was deported from Italy in November 2003. An Islamist who boasted of knowing bin Laden, he claimed in July 2005 that "within six months Italy will undergo a chemical attack."
On December 16, 2002 100 French police raided the Cité des 4000 housing estate in the suburbs of Paris. 29-year old French-Algerian Marwan Ben-Ahmed (Merouane Benhamed) was arrested with a stash of chemicals to manufacture explosives, and two empty propane canisters. Other chemicals, detonators and a chemical protection suit were also found in the apartment. The French authorities believed that Ben-Ahmed had intended to fill the propane canisters with toxic chemicals. Material on a computer revealed the names of some of Ben-Ahmed's associates.
One of these associates was Rabah Kadri, who had been arrested on November 5, 2002, suspected of plotting a chemical attack upon the London Underground. In February 2003, Khadri was charged with attempting to create a chemical weapon between 1 January 2002 and 20 January 2003. These charges were later dropped. Khadri was a close associate of Abu Doha and the "Hamburg ring". Khadri was later convicted with 9 others of plotting nail bomb attacks on Strasbourg Christmas market.
The information on Marwan Ben-Ahmed's computer led to four arrests. On December 24, 2002 at a housing complex outside Lyon in southern France, Menad Benchelalli was arrested. He and Marwan Ben-Ahmed were among 25 people convicted and jailed on June 14, 2006 of plotting attacks against various targets in Paris. All were members of the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), whose long-standing links with Al Qaeda became formalized on September 14, 2006.
Benchelalli's family had a history of radicalism. His father Chellali (right), a radical imam at a mosque in Vénissieux, Lyon, was also convicted on June 14 last year. Chellali had been arrested in January 2004, along with another of his sons, Hafid, his wife Hafsa, and three others. An official from the Interior Ministry said that Menad Benchellali had been trained at Al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan in poisons and had been actively trying to produce a biological weapon. He was experimenting with botulism and ricin, and had tested his chemicals upon animals, the official claimed. He said: "A cell around the Benchellali family was trying to manufacture chemical and biological weapons for attacks around Europe."
The toxins had been stored in 70 centiliter flasks and in Nivea face cream jars, which had been given to a local chemist, Mourad Merabet. Relatives of the family had assisted in purchase of 9 to 10 kilograms of ingredients. Raids at the relatives' homes had also uncovered chemical formulas for "explosives and a substance that could make toxic gas." Merabet denied holding the toxins, but did admit destroying Menad Benchellali's computer hard disk, upon which chemical recipes were stored. Chellali, Menad's father, admitted that he had known of his son's attempts to make deadly toxins. Chellali Benchellali was deported from France on September 7, 2006.
The toxins which the Benchellalis were creating were said to be botulism and ricin, though neither of these substances was found. Botulism (Clostridium botulinum toxin) and ricin (a phytotoxin with an extremely complex molecular structure) are deadly. A single drop of botulinum toxin within a ventilation system can be fatal. According to AFP, ricin is 6,000 times more deadly than cyanide. It is effective in quantities no bigger than a grain of salt. On September 11, 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was stabbed with an umbrella in London, which injected a micro-pellet containing ricin. Markov died a week later.
Ricin is derived from beans of the Castor Oil plant (Ricinus communis). It featured in the plans of another Algerian terrorist - Kamel Bourgass (aka Nadir Habra), who had arrived in the UK as an illegal immigrant in 2000. In January 2003, MI5 received information from Algeria, obtained from informant Mohammed Meguerba, who was in custody. Meguerba mentioned Bourgass, and said that he was creating toxins which he said, were inside two Nivea face-cream jars, like the French toxins discovered a year later.
On January 3, 2003, when police went to arrest Bourgass from his apartment above a chemist's shop at 352 High Road, Wood Green, north London, castor oil beans, processing equipment (a grinder, mortar and pestle, a bottle of acetone, funnel, thermometers and scales) and photocopied recipes for ricin production were found.
Bourgass (right) had fled to an apartment in Crumpsall Lane, Manchester. When on January 14 police tried to enter this apartment, Bourgass stabbed Detective Constable Stephen Oake eight times as he tried to escape. The detective died from his wounds. Bourgass was convicted in June 2004 and given a life sentence for DC Oake's murder. In April 2005, Bourgass was found guilty of "conspiracy to commit a public nuisance by using poisons and explosives" and he was sentenced to 17 years' jail.
Bourgass had frequently slept at Abu Hamza's mosque in Finsbury Park, north London, where he photocopied his chemical recipes. He had used the mosque as his mailing address. Following Bourgass' arrest, the mosque was raided on January 20, 2003. Hidden behind ceiling panels were found false passports, CS gas canisters and, ominously, chemical warfare protection suits and a gas mask.
Bourgass had intended to use the ricin which he was developing to attack the busy Heathrow Express rail link, placing ricin on hand rails and in lavatories on the trains. During his 2005 trial, chemical experts confirmed that his production methods - using a solvent to break down fats and oils in the castor oil beans, filtering the substance and evaporating to form a powder - would have been effective. An expert from Porton Down chemical research center recreated the method and tested it on mice.
Bourgass had 3 recipes for cyanide, including the one which had been used to create Zyklon B, the gas-forming pellets employed by Nazis in Auschwitz and other death camps. He also had a recipe for a poison derived from potatoes and one for creating botulinum toxin from excrement and rotten meat. The chemical expert said this was the hardest poison to produce, though it exceeded the others in its toxic potential.
Ramzi Yousef had added cyanide to the explosives which he used to detonate beneath the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. 6 people were killed and 1,000 were injured. The cyanide was destroyed in the explosion. If it had survived the blast, the casualty count would have been higher.
On Monday, February 2, 2004, ricin was found in a mailroom at Capitol Hill. The substance was found on an automatic mail sorter in an office used for the mail of Bill Frist, then Senate Majority Leader, at Dirksen Senate Office Building. Staff were checked, but there was no human contamination. Five months later Islamist group Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade claimed responsibility for this attack, but this assertion has been doubted.
On March 30, 2004, six people who belonged to the Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun were arrested in Britain. One individual was arrested in Canada, and another was arrested later. Seven of these individuals are currently on trial in London. The trial mainly concerns their purchase of 1,320 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which can be used as a conventional explosive. However, shortly after their arrests, news focused on their alleged plans to employ the highly toxic chemical Osmium tetroxide for a chemical attack against either Gatwick airport or the London underground. Though no osmium tetroxide was found in their possession, this was the first time the chemical had been mentioned in such a context.
Exotic chemicals aside, products from nature can have horrendous effects. A worrying list of such "natural" agents can be found here. A fortnight after 9/11, public figures in the United States began receiving envelopes containing strange powder. This substance contained spores of anthrax. More than 21 people were affected and five people died.
Anthrax (spores of the bacterium Bacillus anthracis) produces a systemic infection in two forms - cutaneous, where skin contact causes lesions, and the more serious inhalation anthrax, where the spores enter the lungs and multiply. Half of the victims developed inhalation anthrax, and all of the fatalities had developed this form of the infection. The first victim to die was Robert Stevens, who worked at a Boca Raton tabloid called The Sun.
One of the victims of the attack was Johanna C. Huden, an editorial assistant for the New York Post. A small red spot appeared on her middle finger, and eventually turned black. She was suffering from cutaneous anthrax infection and survived.
Postal workers in Brentwood Washington DC fell ill, with two dying from inhalation of the spores which had apparently come from letters addressed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Two postal workers from New Jersey also suffered from inhalation anthrax but survived. Additional letters had been sent to ABC News, CBS News and NBC News.
What makes this case disturbing is that the person (or persons) responsible for sending mail containing the anthrax spores was never caught. Years after the event, questions still remain about how the anthrax spores were obtained, and whether such an attack is likely to be repeated.
The anthrax attacks raised important challenges to national security. Potentially, there are other "toxic shocks" which could be far more devastating, as I will discuss in Part Three.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 8:06 AM | Comments (1)
March 19, 2007
Netherlands: Memorial To Islamist's Victim Is Unveiled
From Expatica, news comes that yesterday, a memorial to film-maker Theo van Gogh was publicly unveiled. On November 2, 2004 van Gogh, a descendant of the family of artist Vincent van Gogh, was shot and stabbed by 26-year old Mohamed Bouyeri, a Moroccan with Dutch citizenship. At the time of his murder, which happened in broad daylight on the Linnaeusstraat, an Amsterdam street, 47-year old van Gogh was working on a film about anti-Islamic politician Pim Fortuyn, who had been shot dead in 2002.
The murder happened because the film-maker had produced a TV documentary on the appalling treatment of women in the Islamic world, entitled Submission. This film, which had been scripted by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, had featured projected texts from the Koran adorning the bodies of naked and beaten women. This "insult" to Islam (which insults most values cherished by the West) was deemed sufficient reasoning for Bouyeri to kill the film-maker.
Bouyeri nearly decapitated his victim, and using a knife plunged into van Gogh's chest, he pinned a five page letter, which threatened to murder politicians such as Geert Wilders and others, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali. During his court case for the killing in July 2005, Bouyeri said: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion. I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do the same, exactly the same."
He said to Theo van Gogh's mother, who was sitting in the gallery: "I don't feel your pain. I have to admit that I don't have any sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because you're a non-believer."
Yesterday, members of Theo's family were with the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, and the chairman of Oost-Watergraafsmeer city district Martin Verbeet to see the unveiling of a memorial sculpture to the film-maker. The sculpture, by artist Jeroen Henneman, is situated in the Oosterpark, a short distance from the scene of Theo's murder.
Entitled "The Scream" (pictured), the sculpture is made of tubular steel, depicting a profile of the film-maker's head, morphing into a scream, echoing the screams for mercy that Theo made when he was attacked, screams which were ignored.
One resident of Oosterpark had tried to prevent the statue being placed. Whether this individual was a Muslim or an appeaser of Islam is not mentioned. The sculpture should have been unveiled on the anniversary of the murder, but because of an error in the request for a planning permit, the placing of the artwork had been delayed.
Jeroen Henneman said the event yesterday was "an end to all the red tape. Not much else."
There are plans for a second memorial, which will feature a cylindrical kiosk in which cacti which will be offered for sale for 2 Euros ($2.66). This artwork will be named "Een Prettig Gespre" - or "a pleasant chat". After every interview he gave, Theo van Gogh would give his interviewer a cactus.
Cacti seem to represent Theo van Gogh's personality well - he was undoubtedly "prickly". Despite this, he was outspoken, and a champion of the rights of the oppressed, and an exponent of free speech with no fake respect for hateful religious ideologies - the antithesis of the religious bigot who killed him.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 1:51 PM | Comments (1)
Islamists And Bio-Chemical Terror: Part One
This article by Adrian Morgan (Western Resistance's Giraldus Cambrensis) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission
Toxic Shock: The Threat of Bio-Chemical Terror
Part One (of Three)
When we think of terrorism, the first image we conjure up is of suicide-bombers or hijacked planes, creating devastation and carnage. More subtle, but perhaps more devastating, are the potential results of a biological or chemical attack. More worrying is that many of the substances available to terrorists would be invisible, without any taste, undetectable to their victims. Though such scenarios were a staple of 1970s B-movies, they remain as real and dangerous as any other terror threats.
Al-Qaeda has been exploring such avenues for some time. In February, 2001, the group had planned to launch a nerve gas attack upon the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, northeastern France (pictured above). The plan had been directly ordered by Al-Qaeda, and involved six Algerian terrorists based in London, who had contact with cells in Milan and Frankfurt.
The plot was discovered after operations by German police. The attack was planned to happen between February 11 and February 14 while 625 Euro-MPs were in the building. The European Parliament was to be the first in a string of similar attacks upon other buildings. The six individuals were arrested and were charged with terror offenses at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court. The charges against them were then dropped, on the orders of MI5, Britain's homeland security agency. MI5 apparently wanted to monitor subsequent activities of the British-based cell.
The gas chosen by Al-Qaeda for use on the European Parliament was sarin (O-Isopropyl methylphosphonofluoridate). This substance was employed to deadly effect on the Tokyo underground railway system on March 20, 1995. Members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult released the gas on five carriages. 12 people died and more than 4,000 people were injured. A previous release of sarin by the cult on June 27-28 1994 at Matsumoto, killed 7 people and harmed 200. The 1994 incident had used an impure form of the gas, released above ground.
Developed in Germany as a chemical weapon by Gerhard Schrader and others for the Nazis in 1938, sarin has no color and no odor. It is 500 times more deadly than cyanide. The victims in Tokyo reported a smell of solvent, acetonitrile, which had been added to the sarin to dilute it and to increase its volatility. Sarin acts by attacking the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, thus inhibiting the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which then builds up in nerve tissue. As a result, all of the body's muscles go into spasms, leading to incontinence, breathing problems and death. Atropine is used to treat the condition, but it needs to be administered immediately. Several of those injured in Tokyo suffered permanent brain damage.
There are several ways to manufacture sarin, but unless it is extremely pure it eventually breaks down. When Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq on March 1988 he used sarin. 5,000 people died. Hussein's methods of producing sarin involved impurities, so any Iraqi supplies of sarin itself which may still exist are fortunately likely to be degrading beyond practical use. However, Saddam used "binary weapons" which contained two precursor components of the gas, which would mix upon impact. Kept separately, these precursors have a longer shelf-life than impure sarin.
In May 2004 a roadside bomb in Iraq was detonated, containing two precursors of sarin. Two soldiers were mildly affected by the small amount of sarin that the bomb produced, after they handled shrapnel. The bomb had been made using an artillery shell from the Saddam era.
In 2004, Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, reported that at least 12 similar artillery shells containing sarin and mustard gas had been found from locations within Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld claimed these had been found by Polish troops.
Sarin is listed as a "weapon of mass destruction" (WMD) by the United Nations. In 1993 it was among substances outlawed by the UN Chemical Weapons Convention.
In the summer of 2005, it was revealed that the UK parliament was a target of another Al-Qaeda plot involving sarin gas. The Sunday Times of August 21, 2005 carried a story which has now been removed from the online edition. This reported that encrypted emails had been encoded with the assistance of an Al Qaeda "supergrass". The deciphering of the code allowed this and other plots to be uncovered from computers seized in Britain and Pakistan. The plan to gas the Houses of Parliament had been hatched in 2004.
The plot had been mentioned in an internal police report. In July 2005, after the 7/7 tube attacks, a meeting had taken place with senior officers from Specialist Operations 17 (SO17), the unit assigned to protect parliament. An officer disclosed that: "The House of Commons was one of their targets as well as the Tube. They were planning to use chemicals, a dirty bomb and sarin gas. They looked at all sorts of ways of delivering it."
The discovery of the plot led to the Houses of Parliament being subjected to increased security in 2005. Dame Eliza Mannigham-Buller, head of MI5, intervened to examine security at parliament, which led to revelations that the building was not nearly as well protected as had previously been thought.
On February 2, 2000, George Tenet, director of the CIA told the US Senate: "Although terrorists we've pre-empted still appear to be relying on conventional weapons, we know that a number of these groups are seeking chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents. We are aware of several instances in which terrorists have contemplated using these materials."
"Among them is bin Laden, who has shown a strong interest in chemical weapons. His operatives have trained to conduct attacks with toxic chemicals or biological toxins."
The man who was responsible for Al-Qaeda's biological and chemical weapons program was Midhat Mursi al-Sayid 'Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri (pictured right). Egyptian-born Mursi led the development and training in explosives and poisons at the Derunta terror training camp near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Mursi, born on April 29 1953 graduated from Alexandria University in 1975. He went to live in Saudi Arabia in 1987, and reappeared in Afghanistan during the 1990s. The Derunta training camp was hit by a US air strike on October 12, 2001 and Mursi fled to the borderlands of Pakistan.
In late 2001, CNN examined documents recovered from the bombed-out ruins of Derunta. These included chemical formulas for sarin gas. 64 videotapes also came into CNN's possession. One of these showed Mursi's cruel experiments involving the poisoning of three dogs using an (unidentified) gas. In one of these experiments a white liquid is shown as the source of the gas, and not causing the animal to be alarmed. The gas caused the canine victim to salivate profusely before losing control of its muscles and becoming unable to breathe before dying. The symptoms are regarded as a sign of a nerve agent, possibly sarin.
Another dog tried to escape the poison gas, indicative of either chlorine, arsenic or tear gas. The third dog's less strenuous resistance to the gas indicated it was cyanide gas, stated Raymond Zilinskas of the Monterey Institute, a former UN arms inspector.
A $5 million bounty was placed upon Midhat Mursi al-Sayid 'Umar's head by the US Rewards for Justice program. On Friday, January 13, 2006 the US launched an airstrike upon houses in Damadola village, three miles inside the Pakistan border with Afghanistan. The target of the strike was Ayman al-Zawahiri, second in command of Al Qaeda, who was due to attend a conference in the village. Zawahiri had not been present, but Mursi was one of four senior Al Qaeda members who were killed in the airstrike.
Al-Qaeda's plans to use sarin gas would involve sophistication to manufacture, but it seems that Saddam's Iraq was a reliable source of industrial-strength WMD. In April 2004, 20 tons of chemical weaponry were discovered in Jordan, including sarin gas. King Abdallah claimed that they came from Syria, though they appear to have come originally from Iraq, according to General Georges Sada, a former Air Vice Marshall under Saddam Hussein.
Though little reported in the media, the presence of these chemicals in Jordan were part of a plot by Al-Qaeda linked terrorists to attack the headquarters of Jordanian Intelligence Services, located on a hill in Western Amman. The mastermind of this plot was said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian born terrorist who became leader of "Al-Qaeda of the Two Rivers" in Iraq.
An official in the inquiry told Agence France Presse: "We found primary materials to make a chemical bomb which, if it had exploded, would have made nearly 20,000 deaths ... in an area of one square kilometre." He also claimed that the terrorists planned to use "deadly gas against the US embassy and the prime minister's office in Amman... and other public buildings in Jordan".
Al-Qaeda linked terrorists were also planning to mount chemical and biological attacks in France, as I will describe in Part Two.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2007
Iraq: US-Financed Network Turns to the Enemy
If I understand this correctly, we cannot even buy positive coverage in the Muslim world. Such incompetence is mind-boggling: Television Takeover
Fighting to create a secular democracy in Iraq, parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi had come to rely on at least one TV network to help further freedom: U.S. taxpayer-financed Al-Hurra.Now, however, he's concerned. The broadcaster he had seen as a stalwart ally has done an about-face. "Until now, we were so happy with Al-Hurra. It was taking stands against corruption, for human rights, and for peace. But not anymore."
Stories that he believes cry out for further investigation, such as recent arrests of those accused of supporting the terrorists in Iraq, are instead getting mere news-ticker mentions at the bottom of the screen. And Arab voices for freedom, which used to have a home on Al-Hurra, are noticeably absent. "They're driving out the liberals," he complains.
Mr. Alusi is not the only one concerned about the recent changes at Al-Hurra. Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors--the congressionally-created panel charged with overseeing Al-Hurra, among other government-funded broadcasters--is currently demanding answers about the network's decision last December to broadcast most of a speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah.
Sitting up straight and raising his index finger, he states emphatically, "It's the single worst decision I've witnessed in all my years in international broadcasting."[...]
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2007
Recent History: Watching for the Same Blindspot
There is one cause of people's behavior that shall never be named. And since it shall never be named, I won't break the taboo. Instead, as Mark Steyn says; let me give you a hint: it starts with 'I' and ends with 'slam'.
The immediate cause of this reflection is a book. Not a book about the Jihad, or Muhammad, or anything of that sort. Its title is The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy
The crisis generated many recriminations. By far the most vocal came from Mahathir Mohammad. Malaysia's prime minister heaped calumnyh on hedge funds and blamed international speculators for "villanous acts of sabotage" and "the height of international criminality." At the September 1997 joint IMF/World Bank meeting of international bankers in Hong Kong, Mahathir went on to say that "currency trading is unnecessary, unproductive and totally immoral; it should be stopped; it should be made illegal"--a statement that immediately sent the Asian currencies and stocks further down....
The authors never explain Mahathir's motivation for uttering such strong statements. And it is a good thing they didn't. Because it is doubtful they would have mentioned at least part of his motivation: Mahathir's Islamic faith.
What the authors didn't explain and analysts failed to mention ten years ago is the Islamic concept of Riba, or usury. The way Muhammad ibn Abdullah, Islam's prophet saw it, any kind of profit from interest was immoral, and therefore Islamic law bans the practice. Currency traders, even when they are not speculating, profit from the interest-yielding assets offered in foreign countries, and thus, in Mahathir's eyes, are doing something "totally immoral", which therefore "should be banned."
Since well-paid financial analysts missed this point, I'm thinking of applying for their jobs--or at the very least, of offering my services as a consultant. What do you think are my chances of getting hired?
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2007
UK: Muslim Indoctrination in Schools
This article by Adrian Morgan (Western Resistance's Giraldus Cambrensis) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
The Tragedy of Islamic Indoctrination In British Schools
America is fortunate to have the separation of "church and state" enshrined within the "Establishment Clause" of the First Amendment. No one religion can be promoted, or denigrated, within public schools. Despite this, Islamist indoctrination has crept onto the curriculum of many American schools.
Britain has no written constitution to guide its policies. Worse, Britain has an unelected monarch as its "constitutional" head of state. This monarch is also titular head of the Church of England or "defender of the faith" - a title stemming from the time of Henry VIII. Queen Elizabeth II has never interfered in politics or policy. Since her heir, Prince Charles, declared in 1994 that he was going to support alternative religions as a "defender of faith" - he undermined his role as future monarch and weakened the constitutional authority of the Church of England. His open support for Islam has further undermined his traditional role as "defender of the faith" in waiting.
Since 1992, all state (publicly funded) schools in Britain have had to adhere to the educational strategies laid out in a National Curriculum. This set of standards has been modified over the years. The National Curriculum includes compulsory lessons on religious education. Children in "Key Stages 1 and 2" (up to 11 years of age) are taught in ways that insult teachers' integrity. When a Koran is presented to 10-year old children, the teacher is ordered to wash his or her hands before touching the book, "to show the children the respect with which Muslims treat the holy book." Note the words - "the holy book", as opposed to "their holy book". The children are urged to wash and dry their hands too, even though they are not expected to touch the book.
The demons of political correctness have so deeply infiltrated the National Curriculum documentation that each time Mohammed's name appears, the Arabic symbol for his name is displayed afterwards. Unit 5B Section 2 is intended to indoctrinate children thus: "Children should learn: why Muslims have instructions for worship, how Muslims show concern for others, how Muslims care for people in the community, that abstinence from food plays a part in religious observance." In Unit 5A, Section 2 , teachers are told that their pupils must learn " to understand that the Qur'an is fundamental to Muslims because it is the 'word of God'." Note, the Koran "is" the word of God, not "it is believed by Muslims to be" the word of God.
Unit 5A, Section 1, teachers are told to: "Ask the children to copy the Shahadah and write a short explanation of the beliefs it expresses." The Shahadah is the statement of belief that signals conversion to Islam. To make young children write out this declaration is a blasphemy against any other faith the child may belong to, including atheism.
This government-sanctioned political correctness led my sister, a teacher for 30 years, to tell her school that she would no longer teach the National Curriculum's version of religious education, and would only teach her specialist subject, history.
The National Curriculum deals with Christianity and Islam, with smaller segments on Hinduism and Judaism. Sikhism, Buddhism and other faiths are entirely excluded from Key Stages 1 & 2.
Independent schools do not have to comply with the terms of the National Curriculum, and usually manage to provide a good standard of education without it. At age 16 and 18, pupils from these schools take the same national tests as do students from state schools. Some of these independent schools provide comprehensive religious education in one religion above others - so-called "faith schools". 114 of these schools are Muslim. 18 of these were established since 2002. The first Muslim school in Britain was the London School of Islamics, founded in 1981.
After Tony Blair came to power in 1997 he promoted the idea of public money being spent on increasing the number of "faith schools". In September 2001 he published a government "white paper" outlining these plans. In October 2006 within the state (publicly funded) system there were 4,646 Church of England schools, most of which cater to children aged 8 or under. There were 2,041 Catholic state schools, 37 Jewish ones, 8 Muslim "faith" schools, and 2 that are Sikh. Three of the state-funded Muslim schools had been established since 2005.
In November 2001, a poll of 5,979 people found that 80% of respondents opposed any increase of "single-faith" schools. Only 11% of males and 13% of women polled supported an increase of such institutions.
In August 2005 another poll was carried out, and here 64% of respondents said that "the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind". In September 2006 a local poll found that 44% of Londoners wanted all faith schools to be banned. 43% thought the basics of Islam should not be part of the National Curriculum.
In April 2006 the Association of Teachers and Lecturers demanded that no further public funds should be spent on faith schools.
Blair's hypocrisy in encouraging Muslim schools to gain state funding is highlighted by his statement from March 2005 that religion should be kept out of politics: "Politics and religion - it is not that they do not have a lot in common, but if it ends up being used in the political process, I think that is a bit unhealthy." If he believes that, then he should not be making political demands that tax-payers should fund single-faith schools.
The 114 independent Muslim schools in Britain, which Blair has tried to make available for public funding, have a poor track record. The only Muslim school in Scotland is the Imam Muhammad Zakariya girls' boarding school, established in 2002. An inspection of the school found at one stage that none of its teaching staff had qualifications, and the girls were forced to remain on the grounds for two-week stretches.
This month, it was reported that more than half of private Muslim schools have not been inspected for five years, with some not being visited for an entire decade. 17 of these schools have never been registered with Ofsted, the official school inspection body.
Ofsted is not immune from extremism. It recently promoted Israr Khan to a post as one of its inspectors. In 1996 Khan had interrupted a school choir singing carols at Washwood Heath School, Birmingham, berating Muslim children for taking part. His aggression caused some children to go home in tears.
The material taught at some independent schools is divisive and hostile to non-Muslims. In August 2006 one government minister, Ruth Kelly, said that Islamic schools which promoted extremism should be closed. As is typical of Blair's ministers, nothing has been done on this front.
Even when extremist schools are found, they are allowed to continue operations. The Jameah Islamiyah school in East Sussex (below), founded in September 2003, has been linked with terrorism. It had only 9 pupils, and Ofsted inspections in 2005 found it seriously below expected educational standards. In November 2006, Ofsted recommended its being declassified as a school, but at the end of January, this recommendation had not been acted upon.
In 2004 the Saudi-funded King Fahd Academy in west London was criticized for instilling hostility to outsiders and providing girls with inferior education. Most classes are in Arabic. As recently as December 2006 the school was promoting hatred according to a teacher who said: "The schoolbooks in use describe Jews as 'monkeys' (or apes) and Christians as 'pigs'."
Another Muslim school in west London is the Hawza Ilmiyya, where non-Muslims are described in its literature as "filth". The school is closely tied to the Islamofascist regime of Iran.
There are 700 unofficial Muslim schools or "madrassas", usually classrooms attached to mosques, in Britain. These have about 100,000 children under their care. The Muslim Parliament claimed last year that half of these use illegal corporal punishment, and annually at least a dozen pupils are sexually abused.
Where Islamic schools become publicly funded, their intolerance of British values does not disappear. The Madina school in Leicester will become publicly funded this year. Girls will be segregated from boys, and though 10% of its pupils will not be Muslim, all girls will be forced to wear Muslim headscarves.
The standard of teaching in some Muslim schools is so poor that in Birmingham half the pupils at a Jewish school, King David, are Muslims. Parents are attracted by the high educational standards on offer. In some areas, demographic change has led to pupils in Christian faith schools being predominantly Muslim. One such school is the Catholic-run St Albert's Primary in Pollockshields, Glasgow, where 90% of its intake is Muslim. Osama Saeed is a Muslim who has campaigned for this school to become officially converted to a Muslim school. Saeed is a member of the Muslim Association of Britain, a group linked to the terror-supporting Muslim Brotherhood.
The appeasing of Muslims continues without the interferences of government. In Bordesley in Birmingham, a school has been named St Andrews Junior and Infants for 150 years. The city council has suggested changing the name to one that sounds less "Christian", even though it stands next to the well-known St Andrews soccer ground.
Park Road Junior Infant and Nursery School in Batley, West Yorkshire has imposed a ban on stories about pigs for its youngest pupils, imposed by the principal, Barbara Harris. She said: "Recently I have been aware of an occasion where young Muslim children in class were read stories about pigs. We try to be sensitive to the fact that for Muslims talk of pigs is offensive."
When one teacher at Bayliss Court Secondary School in Slough, west of London, recently told his pupils the true statement that most suicide bombers are Muslims, he was promptly sacked.
Within this unhealthy climate, the extreme opportunists of the Muslim Council of Britain have stepped into the fray. They have suggested that ALL state schools should abandon policies of integration and equality to give Muslim pupils special privileges. Their recommendations can be found in a 72-page pdf document.
The MCB's suggestions, such as excluding Muslims from drama or musical presentations associated with celebrating aspects of other religions, even though ALL pupils are bound by the National Curriculum to write out the Shahadah, have been widely condemned. The MCB wants all girls to be allowed to wear Muslim attire, even if this conflicts with school uniform policy. No parent/teacher meetings should be held during Ramadan, and Muslim pupils should not be encouraged to participate in art classes where they must make representations of humans.
Even Blair's government condemned the MCB report. In Britain, the National Curriculum encourages children to visit mosques. Here, parents have stood up and won their right to prevent this happening. In November 2006, protests by the parents of 10-year olds at Atwood Primary School, Croydon, south London, prevented such a visit. This month, Hampshire Council admitted that some parents and pupils objected to school visits to mosques.
The chaotic situation in Britain can be blamed on many factors, particularly upon Tony Blair's continual quest to impose multiculturalism upon a reluctant population. With no written constitution to refer to, there are no measures to counteract the insane whims of policy-makers. Many of those who formulate policy, such as the authors of the National Curriculum, have never been elected.
As Americans, I urge you to consider how lucky you are. The First Amendment guarantees you and your children certain rights. No one religion can be imposed upon pupils in state schools. If only Britain were to be so fortunate.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 5:07 AM | Comments (6)
March 15, 2007
Thailand: A Week Of Muslim Murder And Mayhem
The provinces of the south of Thailand, Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani, as well as two districts of Songkhla province, are predominantly Muslim, and formerly comprised an independent sultanate called Pattani. This was invaded in 1786, and annexed within Siam (Thailand) in 1902. For five decades at least, there have been insurgencies and rebellions. The current insurgency began on January 4, 2004, when an army base was raided in Narathiwat province, with 300 weapons seized, and with 20 schools set alight. This insurgency has now claimed between 1,700 and 1,800 lives.
The three southern provinces are the poorest in the country, with high levels of unemployment. The national average of unemployment is 14%, but in Yala it is 35%, in Narathiwat it is 28%, and in Pattani the rate is 25%. The Muslims in the region speak Yawi, a dialect of Malay.
On Monday March 5 violence broke out in Yala province, in the south of Thailand. Two men, aged 20 and 24 were shot in a drive-by killing in the province late on Monday, and a 21-year old government security guard was shot dead while he was in a public phone booth in the province. In neighbouring Pattani province, two villagers aged 31 and 52 were shot dead by Muslim insurgents.
The two youths who died in Yala on Monday night were among young people emerging from a Ayurweng village sports stadium on the main Yala-Betong road. A pickup truck pulled up and four to five people opened fire. The two youths who died were named as Rosadee Mahama and Abdulloh Latte. A third victim, Susee Salamae, was shot and critically injured. He was taken to hospital.
Others were killed on the same day in Yala and Pattani. In Yala in the morning, a 32 year old rubber tapper was shot dead as he rode his motorcycle to the plantation where he worked, and his 25-year old wife was badly injured. A 70-year old Buddhist rubber tapper was also killed in a drive-by shooting in Pattani province.
Wednesday March 7: A couple were shot at while riding a motorcycle on Wednesday morning in Yarang district of Pattani. The man was killed and his wife was seriously injured. The 25-year old man, Chachawan Arsaiphol, had on Tuesday attended the cremation of his brother who had been killed on the same stretch of road.
Thursday March 8: About 70 Muslim women and children staged a protest outside Bacho district police station in Narathiwat province. They had faces covered and were demanding the release of a man who had been questioned the day before, but had been released. The protesters did not believe the man, Naruwan Keiji, had been set free.
In Yaho village, Rangae district in Narathiwat, a police patrol vehicle was hit by a bomb, leaving one soldier injured.
General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, who had engineered the coup of September 19, 2006, claimed on Thursday that the authorities were well on their way to controlling the insurgency. The week previously, an insurgent camp had been discovered. Sonthi was preparing to make a trip to the south.
Friday March 9 Early on Friday, two bombs went off in Waeng district, Narathiwat province. One explosion knocked down a power pylon, and the other happened at a crematorium. No-one was hurt.
Also in Narathiwat, a grocery store owner was shot and killed on Friday in Sungaipadi district. Four men pretending to be customers entered Mr Preecha's shop, and then opened fire. When police and military visited the area to inspect the scene of the killing, a bomb went off. A second bomb was found hidden inside the shop, which was defused with water cannon.
While this was going on, Sonthi Boonyaratkalin was talking to officials in Chanae district in the same province.
In Pattani province, three villagers were injured in a shooting incident late on Friday as they drove motorcycles home from a tea shop in Yaring district.
Saturday March 10: At 7 am, a bomb went of at a school in Muang district, Yala province, leaving a 22-year old soldier critically injured. The bomb was left in a flower bed and was detonated by remote control when soldiers made a security check.
Early on Saturday, a 15 year old boy was shot dead by security forces after he fired at a security post in Yala province.
A Buddhist couple was shot dead in a village in Betong district, Yala province, on Saturday night.
Sunday March 11: Three Buddhist Burmese workers were shot dead in Nong Chick district, Pattani province, where they were working on a construction site with a dozen other Burmese nationals. Four other workers were injured in the shooting.
One of the men who was shot was then decapitated, the 26th person to be beheaded since this insurgency started in January 2004. On his body was left a note saying: "Kill the innocent and we kill Thai Buddhists." The head was taken away.
Also on Sunday, Muslims and Buddhists staged separate demonstrations in the south. 60 Muslim women wearing veils staged a protest in Pattani, to have three arrested Muslim theft suspects released. The men were arrested on suspicion of stealing a motorcycle. The women blocked the road.
While this went on, 150 Buddhists staged a protest nearby, to complain about the Muslim women blocking the road.
In Narathiwat, a 60 year old Buddhist man was shot dead as he rode his motorcycle to a rubber plantation.
In Yala province, a brother and sister, aged respectively 45 and 48, were shot dead while they went to a rubber plantation in a mountainous region.
Monday March 12 Eight people were wounded in a busy market in Yala province when a bomb went off. At the time of writing, one of the people injured in the market blast, Sgt-Maj.3rd Class Thanunya Baramee, is still in a critical condition. She was hit in the groin and thigh, and after two operations, she remains on a respirator. The person who set off the bomb was thought to be a Muslim woman
In Narathiwat city, a school building was burned down. In Rueso district of Narathiwat province, Ban Kor Tor village was raided. The village is thought to have a training camp for the Runda Kumpulan Kecil (RKK), one of the main insurgent groups.
In Pattani's Nong Chik district, police were still hunting for the head of the Burmese worker killed the day before.
Late on Monday, a school in Yaha district, Yala province, was burned down. Before setting fire to the school, four computers, a TV set and other electronic appliances were looted by the group of around 10 insurgents.
Tuesday March 13: This day was the anniversary of the founding of the BRN (Barisan Revolusi Nasional Melayu Pattani) insurgent group. It was founded in March 1963 by Ustaz Haji Abdul Karim Hassan, who had links to the Communist Party of Malaya. He was apparently influenced by pan-Arab socialism.
Security was tightened in the southern provinces.
Wednesday March 14: In Bacho district, Narathiwat province, early in the morning, a policeman was shot, leaving him in a critical condition.
In Khok Pho district, Pattani, a married couple were injured in a drive-by shooting.
A mini-van carrying passengers in Yaha district of Yala was attacked. A tree was laid in the road, along with spikes. Gunshots were fired at the van as it turned in an attempt to escape by concealed assailants, mounting an ambush.
The bus went off the road and hit a tree as it was being fired at with AK-47 and M16 rifles. The gunmen then entered the bus and began to execute the occupants. The 41-year old Muslim bus driver, Abdulraman Kodae, was shot in the head, but survived.
Three women and five men were killed, all of them Buddhists. Two of the victims were teenage girls, aged 14 and 15. All of the victims were shot in the head, and all had their wallets stolen from them.
To show how thoroughly planned this incident had been, as soon as security forces arrived, a bomb was set off. The van attack has been condemned by Thai Interior Minister Aree Wong-araya.
Thursday March 15: A clerk, Thanet Sriwangkaew, was shot dead at his office in a rubber processing factory today in Rangae district, Narathiwat province. Thanet was seriously injured, shot three times, and was locked inside his office. Fellow workers had to prise open the door to reach him, but he died before his body could reach hospital.
Meanwhile, angry protests took place in provincial capitals around Thailand, at Ayutthaya, Rayong, Chumphon, Krabi, Si Sa Ket and Chiang Rai, where people complained at the inhumane incident concerning the van.
In possible retaliation for yesterday's attack upon the van, a mosque was bombed in Yaha district, Yala province. 11 people were injured in the attack. This appears to be one of the few occasions when Buddhists, who have suffered much during this insurgency, appear to have acted in revenge. The bomb was hurled from a passing car.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)
UK: Muslim Sauna Surprise
A bizarre story from yesterday's Sun newspaper. When most people go to a sauna, they strip off completely, using a towel to cover their modesty. Some more modest individuals may wear trunks or a bikini, but such people are the minority unless the sauna is mixed.
At the David Lloyd Leisure center in Oxford on Tuesday, a woman wearing an abaya and headscarf entered the mixed sauna. She stayed for ten minutes, and then decided to take a swim, still fully clothed in Muslim robes, in the swimming pool.
Though the attire was entirely inappropriate, no staff member dared to stop her or question her. A man who was in the sauna said: "The pool attendant said she was allowed to wear this due to her religious customs. It was just political correctness gone completely barmy. I told the manager that it was my custom to attend saunas naked, as they do in Sweden, and said I trusted he would find that equally acceptable. But to be serious, this is a question of hygiene, not religious rights."
The manager of the David Lloyd Leisure Center, Liam MacGilp told the Sun that pool and sauna attendants have been told of the company policy regarding dress - robes or outdoor garments will not be allowed.
The woman apparently changed into a dry set of robes after her ten-minute swim.
After sweating into robes and then jumping into a public swimming pool, the issue of hygiene is paramount. Additionally, there is a risk of drowning while weighted down with clothing.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 7:37 PM | Comments (0)
UK: 3 Little Pigs Changed To Appease Muslims
With a hat tip to Robert Spencer's Dhimmi Watch, a story from the Daily Mail:
A school play which was to feature the Three Little Pigs has been deliberately altered to appease the sensibilities of Muslims, even though no Muslims appear to have been bothered by the original story.
The school concerned is Honley Church of England Junior School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Instead of featuring three little pigs, the creatures who build their homes with straw, sticks and bricks are puppies. The musical play was to have featured children under 11 years performing, at the Kirklees Primary Music Festival. The event, featuring 63 schools, will be held in June.
The school was forced to change the whole nature of their play on the orders of the organizers of the Kirklees Primary Music Festival. Gill Goodswen is on the festival committee, and is also a head teacher at Stile Common Junior School. She said: "We have to be sensitive if we want to be multi-cultural. It was felt it would be more responsible not to use the three little pigs. We feared that some Muslim children wouldn't sing along to the words about pigs. We didn't want to take that risk. If changing a few words avoids offence then we will do so."
Muslims have condemned the move. This action is similar to that taken by Barbara Harris, head teacher of Park Road Junior Infant and Nursery School in Batley, West Yorkshire. She banned all telling of stories involving pigs to young children at her school. She reasoned: "Recently I have been aware of an occasion where young Muslim children in class were read stories about pigs. We try to be sensitive to the fact that for Muslims talk of pigs is offensive."
Jewish children have been at British schools for far longer than Muslim kids, and yet schools have never considered that Jews do not eat pork, and therefore might find pig stories offensive. The obvious answer is that Jewish parents are not likely to make a fuss. But here, the blame lies entirely with the moronic British people, trying to kow-tow to a deluded concept of "multiculturalism", and happily trashing their own traditions and culture in the process.
The Three Little Pigs story is old, and like some of the Grimm's tales, it has an aura of truth to it. In some of the Grimm's tales, such as the two versions they presented of Red Riding Hood, the wolf approaches a girl, and in the Goat and Seven Kids, the wolf softens its voice.
Rabies causes wolves to approach people and buildings, which they would normally avoid. Additionally, the rabies virus (rhabdovirus) causes paralysis of the throat, leading the creature to be unable to bark, and it will "blow" or have a muted bark. In stories of Red Riding Hood (including one of the versions presented by the Brothers Grimm), and also the Goat and Seven Kids and the Three Little Pigs, the wolf dies in water - echoing hydrophobia, the "fear of water" suffered by humans and animals afflicted by the virus.
WIthin this context, the story of the Three Little Pigs is ancient. According to the folktale types which were given a classification system by ethnologist Stith Thompson in the 19th century, the Three Little Pigs belongs to its own "type" - Type 124. The earliest published account of the story came from 1843.
There is a satirical claim on the internet that the story was first written in the 14th century by a Jewish Rabbi from Gdansk, but this is a tongue-in-cheek "pseudo-history".
It is a shame that such a popular story, with a strong moral - "make strong foundations in your life" - should be so disrespected by the fools at Kirklees Primary Music Festival. Three Little Puppies? It will never come over as anything other than a travesty of culture.
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March 16: Update from the online (not print) edition of the Telegraph.
The issue has provoked strong reactions. A parent said: "Surely there are much worse things to worry about in the world than a story about three little pigs? It is really ridiculous."
Local councillor Terry Lyons said: "I can't believe that Muslims would be offended. This is pandering to a few extremists."
Conservative MP for Shipley Philip Davies summed the situation up most accurately: "My view is that the people responsible for this are completely bonkers. It is the type of political correctness which makes people's blood boil. As usual it is done in the name of ethnic minorities but it is perpetrated by white, middle class, do-gooders with a guilt complex and far too much time on their hands."
As a result of the ridicule heaped on the decision to alter the musical play, "Little Red Riding Hood" written by the late and renowned author Roald Dahl (which includes a segment entitled "The Three Little Pigs", the performance at Huddersfield town hall will go ahead without the ridiculous censorship.
Jim Dodds of Kirklees Council said today: "As well-meaning as it may have been behind the thinking of the organisers of the festival to adapt the wording of the story so as not to cause offence as they saw it, it was a mistake, and it was not the right decision - so let's stick with tradition and make sure everyone enjoys the festival for the fantastic event it will be, and not get distracted by errors of judgment."
Maybe idiots like Gill Goodswen will be shamed into more sensible behaviour. Parents at Stile Junior School, where she is head teacher, should be writing to the board of governors to demand that Ms Goodsen be forbidden from making similar decisions regarding her school.
People like Gill Goodswen typify what is wrong with Britain today, as described by Phillip Davies: "White, middle class, do-gooders with a guilt complex and far too much time on their hands."
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 6:34 PM | Comments (0)
Pakistan: Muslim Militants Stone, Shoot Three People
News from Reuters, Dawn and Associated Press:
A tribal council or jirga ordered that two men and women should be stoned and shot to death on Wednesday, a local government official said today. Fazel Mehmood said that the incident happened in Belod, a village in the Khyber tribal agency, one of the FATA areas along the border with Afghanistan.
The woman, named as Tasleema, and the men, known as Noorullah (or Allah Noor) and Shahzad were held as prisoners in a house on Monday, and were placed on trial by the jirga yesterday. "Allah Noor, Shehzad and the woman, Tasleema, were caught red-handed in a compromising position by activists of the Lashkar Islami religious group," said a local resident.
Before the "trial" took place, announcements were made via loudspeaker from mosques. Tasleema is said to have been a divorced woman.
100 local people gathered in a field, and the trio were firstly stoned. Then, two masked activists of Lashkar-i-Islam stepped forward with Kalashnikov rifles and shot the three people.
The leader of Lashkar-i-Islam (Lashkar-i-Islami or Army of Islam) is Mangal Bagh. He was said to have been present while the torture and execution took place.
The fact that Mangal Bagh can be able to attend such an event openly, and probably assisted in its convening, says a lot about the state of Pakistan's ability to keep rebels under control. In August, a warrant for his arrest was issued.
We reported on this at that time (August 7). This is what I wrote then:
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Pakistan: Deadline For Lashkar-i-Islami, The "Islamic Army"
News from the Pakistan Daily Times states that the government of President Musharraf has given an Islamist militia a deadline of August 17 to cease its activities, or it will be faced with a crackdown. The Islamist militia is called Lashkar-e-Islami (also Lashkar Islami or Lashkar-i-Islami), the Army of Islam.
The decision was arrived at at a jirga or meeting in the Khyber Agency, in North-West Frontier Province, which adjoins the Afghan border.
The representative of the government, the assistant political agent (APA), convened with the elders of Zakha Khel Bazaar, a community in the Bazaar valley in the agency. 300 tribal elders attended the jirga.
The APA said that 400 khasadars (tribal policemen) who had been suspended would be reinstated, along with their salaries Unfortunately, to be vulgar, all this will amount to piss and wind. The 400 khasadars will be expected to act as the government's mercenaries, acting where even the government admits it has little control.
North-West Frontier Province has its own Assembly, and governor, but parts of the province, including Khyber Agency are not officially under the government's legal control. These areas are called FATA or Federally Administered Tribal Regions, and contain seven "Agencies". The Pakistan government says on a FATA website that some regions are regarded as "inaccessible". The document states that until recently: "Around 30% of the total area of FATA was inaccessible politically and around 50% was inaccessible physically."
The FATA document further states: "The upper Bara Valley of Khyber Agency i.e Afridi tirah and Bazaar Zakha Khel Areas continue to be of great concern for the Government of Pakistan." The Zakha Khel Bazaar is the area in which the government expects to launch a "crackdown".
Even regions which are officially under Pakistani jurisdiction in NWFP, such as North and South Waziristan, are not under government control, but have been taken over by the so-called Pakistan Taliban, and in March, a sharia court was established in Wana, regional capital of South Waziristan.
On July 7 we stated that the "Talibanized" regions of North and South Waziristan, which are known to house both Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban were subject to a conciliation process with the Pakistan government. This conciliation led to the reduction of Pakistan troops in the region, who had numbered 70,000.
However, that rapprochement was led by MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal), the Islamist opposition coalition, who comprise most of the NWFP Assembly. MMA is led by the extremist Qazi Hussain Ahmed. His Jamaat-e-Islami party has exactly the same aims as the Islamists in the region, wishing to impose sharia law and to destroy the Musharraf government because of its ties to the US.
As a result, the tenuous reduction in hostilities has already started to break down in Waziristan. Even Afghanistan has complained that nothing is being done to prevent Taliban from crossing the border.
Today, a man's decapitated body was discovered in the village of Madikhel, 22 miles south of Miranshah, regional capital of N. Waziristan. Next to the headless corpse was a letter saying the man had been "executed" because he was a spy for the United States. This is the first time that such an "execution" has taken place since June 25, when a "Grand Jirga" of politicians and tribal leaders negotiated a reduction in hostilities.
So who are the Lashkar Islami?
We first reported on this group on March 29, when fighting between two rival clerics led to bloodshed and virtual war in Bara in the Khyber Agency, fourteen miles west of Peshawar, which saw 24 people killed and women and children taken hostage. The two clerics had been ordered on February 16 by a jirga to cease making radio broadcasts, but had ignored the decree of the council.
Both Mufti Munir Shakir and Pir Saifur Rehman were putting out radio broadcasts on FM transmitters, each denigrating the other's religious beliefs. The war of words on the airwaves became explosive.
Pir Saifur Rehman follows the sect of Barelvi Islam, which encourages music, sees Mohammed as a figure of semi-divine status, a personage of light, whereas Mufti Munir Shakir follows the puritanical Deobandi form of hardline Sunni Islam. Most of the Taliban regime leaders in Afghanistan were educated at the Deobandi madrassa of Haqqania, including Mullah Omar. Haqqania is in Khyber Agency.
The two broadcasting sheikhs had been warring on the airwaves since December 2005.
While Pir Saiur Rehman wittered on about the ever-present spiritual manifestations of Mohammed, Mufti Munir Shakir used his broadcasts to encourage people to join the Lashkar-i-Islami. And with the two opposing views becoming more polarised, the violence of March erupted quite naturally. On March 25, 19 followers of Pir Saifur Rehman were killed, with 16 of these being Afghan nationals.
Ironically, neither Rehman nor Shakir came from Khyber Agency. Munir Shakir had been expelled from Khurram Agency because he was regarded as divisive, espousing sectarian views. Munir arrived in Khyber Agency in 2003. Munir had formerly worked for the tribal warlord and Taliban-like figure of Haji Namdar, who had set up a regime in 2003-4 in Khyber Agency called Amr bil Maroof wa Nehi Anil Munkir which had its own prisons. Shakir eventually fell out even with Haji Namdar.
Pir Saiur Rehman had come originally from Afghanistan, and had settled in the region since the 1970s.
The followers of both Shakir and Rehman would kidnap and kill supporters, even after their divisive broadcasts stopped. And all the while, the Army of Islam, under the leadership of Mangal Bagh Afridi, a former driver, grew more powerful and more militant.
After the killings and the hostage-takings of women and children at the end of March, government forces began to take a more pro-active stance against the rising powers of the Lashkar-i-Islami. Mangal Bagh Afridi and his followers had then been located in the region around Bara tehsil, scene of the interclan war, but on Friday, March 31 they moved on to Tarkhukas in the remote and inaccessible Tirah Valley.
On this date, states Pak Observer, the Khasadar forces and Mehsud scouts surrounded the headquarters of Mufti Munir Shakir. The former radio star refused to surrender until 1pm the following day. The Lashkar-i-Islami headquarters was given up without a struggle. Those still in the compound handed over to the political FATA administration. They had been urged to do so at a jirga led by a leader of the left-wing Awami National Party (ANP).
The administration also ordered Mangal Bagh Alfridi, the leader of Lashkar-i-Islami to abandon possession of his house in Sheikhabad Spin Qaber in Bara tehsil, for it to be demolished. Similar orders were given to other activists of the Army of Islam.
Mufti Munir Shakir and Pir Saiur Rehman were officially expelled from Khyber Agency by the political administration. Pir had already left in February, reputedly to go to Lahore. But the fighting between their followers continued. In April five people were killed in a clash between the religious factions.
In May, Mangal Bagh threatened to block all routes leding into the Tirah valley if his men who had been made to surrender were not released.
On June 11, Starategy Page noted that "several hundred armed members of the Lashkar Islami ( Army of Islam) briefly occupied the town of Bara, but left when security forces approached. Officials in Bara said it was all a misunderstanding, as the Lashkar Islami had been called in to help restore order in the town, which had been suffering from the violent side effects of tribal politics."
The Khyber Agency political administration went into action on Monday, June 12, when they carried out their vow to demolish the home of Mangal Bagh Alfridi. The four storey house was torn down in Bara, and sixty shops were also demolished. Tribespeople put up no resistance to this show of strength. The administration had decided to stop its previous attempts to bring Laskar-i-Ilsam on board. They had been offering the group the chance to become involved with restoring order to the region, but the group had not complied. The administration was now demanding the surrender of Mangal Bagh.
At this time, the Islamic Army had set up new headquarters in Gagarrana area in the Tirah Valley, in Landi Kotal tehsil. During their brief stay in Bara, they had handed out notices to the populace, saying they were going to institute a body calling itself the Amn Committee. They issued a 14 point decree, saying that peace would be brought to Bara tehsil through imposing major penalties on crimes which included adultery, drinking liquor, etc and fines of Rs.5000 ($83) on the owners on all kind of video shops and cable operators.
The decree stated that a murderer would pay a fine of Rs, 500,000 ($8,299), Rs 50,000 ($830) for having a dish antennae, and Rs 500 ($8.30) for not offering prayers five times a day. No woman would be allowed in market areas without one of her blood relatives.
After the demolitions, tribal and FATA representatives called for a Grand Jirga to resolve the situation, to be held on June 20.
On Wednesday, July 5, the agency authorities mounted a sweep of the village of Gagrina in the Tirah valley, where Mangal Bagh's followers were based. 70 militants from his army were arrested, all members of the Zakhakhel tribe. The administration also closed local routes, and mounted an economic blockade, and stopped all privileges to tribesmen. No identity cards were being issued, and troops patrolled in most bazaars.
These activities brought many zones in the Agency to a standstill. An official announced that the crackdown on Gagrina would continue, and also be repeated in other parts of Tirah and Landi Kotal.
450 tribesmen from various areas of Khyber Agency gathered in Pakhai in a jirga, where they voiced support for the administration's crackdown on Mangal Bagh and his followers. They came from Brag, Karamna, Alacha, Ziara, Dargai, Khyber and other areas. The jirga decided to impose a fine of 500,000 rupees ($8,299) to anyone who gave shelter to Mangal Bagh. They also ordered that anyone who allowed their house to be used as a refuge for the Islamic Army leader would additionally have their house burned down.
One bearded commander of Lashkar-i-Islami claimed: "It is just a reformative organization for the betterment of the tribesmen of Khyber Agency. I have the support of 98 per cent local populance and those who are against me are the people involved in wrongdoing."
On Monday July 17, Dr Tashfeen, the Khyber Agency political agent, demanded that the Zakhakhel tribe hand over Mangal Bagh Afridi within one week. Failure to do so would invoke punishment, including withdrawal of government incentives.
On Tuesday, July 18, Mangal Bagh Afridi, who now was making his own broadcasts on his own FM radio station, bequeathed by Munir Shakir. Bagh decided to be openly defiant. He announced on his "show" that he would mount violent protests if the Khyber Agency administration did not refuse to drop its demands for him to surrender. He even threatened that he would bring in cross-border support from Afghanistan to assist in his threat of terror.
He said: "It has now become difficult for us to remain peaceful. I assure you that unlike Waziristan, our armed struggle would go beyond the frontiers of the tribal territory"
Mangal Bagh added: "If you cannot make a government servant (political agent) abide by the constitution and (yet) have accepted him as the ruler of the agency, then you (parliamentarians) have no right to represent us in the assembly."
The following day, paramilitary forces were sent to guard the residence of Maulana Khalil Rehman, who represented Khyber Agency in the National Assembly. Rehmin said that his own policies of moderation had made Lashkar-i-Islami hostile. He said that he would not close down businesses, as this would punish the wrong people.
It appears that the local administration is hoping that by appealing to the local tribespeople, and hoping to appease them through conciliatory measures to act in a hardline manner to Mangal Bagh. Now the administration has the "agreement" of elders of the Zakhakhel tribe. But even if Mangal Bagh does get handed over to the administration, the FATA-installed authorities have such a tenuous grip on the tribespeople's loyalties, there will be more Mangal Baghs to replace him.
His army is not going to simply revert to being loyal to the Khyber Agency administration, particularly after the fickle way in which it has responded to the threat, attacking whole communities. The way in which the administration has allowed the Deobandi/Barelvi and other conflicts in the region to fester, only acting tough when severe violence breaks out, will only weaken the power of the government in the region.
In the words of Dr. Ashok K Behuria, Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi: In the absence of an imaginative plan to counter such an assertive ideology at the grassroots level, Pakistan will continue to labour under a million mutinies, which will increasingly weaken the capacity of the state in the days to come.
****************
The grim prediction made above seems to be coming true. Musharraf has been criticised for his failure to prevent the Taliban from crossing over the border of North-West Frontier Province. He has recently admitted that the Taliban do cross the border into and out of Pakistan, but still seems unable to take responsibility.
On September 5 last year, he signed an accord with the Pakistani Taliban, who control the agencies of North and South Waziristan. This peace deal, which involved paying off members of the Taliban, ostensibly ended targeted murders and the flow of Taliban across the border into Afghanistan. WIthin days of the accord, targeted killings continued, and reports came of people crossing into Afghanistan, confirming fears expressed by American analysts (though not Kim Howells, the idiot Foreign Office Minister from Britain, who thought such accords could be the future of dealing with terrorists). If history has taught us anything, nothing long-term is ever gained from deals made with terrorists.
The presence of Mangal Bagh at yesterday's grim display of "Islamic law", with no action taken by Pakistan to prevent such an event taking place, demonstrates clearly how weak Musharraf has become in this region.
In a report from the BBC by guest writer Ahmed Rashid, the increasing isolation of Musharraf is described.
Rashid makes mention of the protests by lawyers, which took place in Lahore on Monday and have sporadically continued since. The protests came after Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry was suspended from his office by Musharraf on Friday March . Chaudhry had been a critic of human rights abuses in Pakistan, and also of illegal government activities.
The Associated Press of Pakistan, run by the state, said that Musharraf had received "numerous complaints and serious allegations for misconduct, misuse of authority and actions prejudicial to the dignity of office of the chief justice of Pakistan".
In Lahore (Punjab province) on Monday, 20 lawyers were injured when they were set upon by police. Other demonstrations took place in Islamabad, Karachi, Quetta, and other locations.
Ahmed Rashid claims that Islamic opposition to the president is growing, and Pakistan's commitment to the "war on terror" is being openly questioned by the nation's allies. Rashid says: "Pakistanis are used to military rulers prolonging their innings indefinitely and also to rigged elections.
But what they are not used to is the growing rise of extremism around the country from the rugged mountains of Waziristan to the pristine avenues of Islamabad.
For a country armed with nuclear weapons, ordinary people are getting scared of the future."
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 5:13 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2007
The shock of Islamic indoctrination in American classrooms
The First Amendment to the US federal constitution was written in 1789, and was ratified by the States in 1791. It states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The interpretation of the First Amendment and in particular its first clause, referred to as the "Establishment of Religion" or "Establishment" clause, has a direct bearing on how federally funded public schools can teach religion. Alan Brownstein, a constitutional law expert from the University of California at Davis' School of Law states: "From a constitutional perspective, schools can't teach the truth or falsity of religious belief, and atheism would fall in that parameter."
Public schools can teach about religions, but can neither denigrate one religion nor promote another. When 9/11 happened, children were confronted with the spectacle of Muslim terrorism on their TV screens. Sadly, for children growing up in America, their understanding of why Islamic terrorism takes place is not likely to be explained at school. There are "problematic" verses in the Koran, advocating violence against "unbelievers". These include Sura 8:12: "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them."
Sura 3:151 states: "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority: their abode will be the Fire: And evil is the home of the wrong-doers!" Sura 9:25 declares: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful."
Sura 9:29 states: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." (Jizya was a tax which non-Muslims had to pay to their Muslim overlords).
The First Amendment was originally designed to prevent the conflicts which (Christian) religion had caused in Europe. Now, it is being employed by the politically correct to present an anodyne and inaccurate portrayal of Islam in US public schools. Sura 4:34 specifically states that a husband has the right to beat his wife if she is not submissive. Problematic Suras such as this are not likely to even be mentioned in public schools, for fear of being seen to break the terms of the First Amendment by "denigrating" Islam.
Already schools in America are being taken to task by Muslim activists who perceive that their religion is not treated with enough "respect". In December 2006 Baltimore County School Board in Maryland was accused of inaccuracy in its teaching of Islam. The claim was made by Bash Pharoan, who is president of the local American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and head of Baltimore County Muslim Council.
Pharoan was complaining about resource sheets given to students in seventh and tenth grade. He has been whining for three years that the sheets do not show respect to Mohammed, founder of Islam, because they merely call him "Mohammed." "Omitting the word prophet is disrespectful", Pharoan claimed.
He also objected to the description in the resource sheets of "jihad". He accepted that the sheets refer to its meaning as "struggle" but objected to the statement: "Muhammad justified his attacks to his followers by explaining that to weaken those who opposed the spread of God's word was a virtue, and that those who fell in battle would be rewarded in heaven. Thus the idea of the jihad became the holy war of the Muslims against 'the unbelievers."
The issue of how Islam is taught in schools has become a political hot potato. In California one school, the Excelsior Elementary, took its teaching of Islam to seventh graders to extremes. School pupils were made to dress up in Islamic clothing, to memorize Koranic verses and even to fast during their lunch hour to mimic Muslim behavior during Ramadan. The Five Pillars of Islam were to be learned, pupils were encouraged to say "Allahu Ackbar" and using dice, the children played a "jihad game". The materials employed at the school stated: "From the beginning, you and your classmates will become Muslims."
The games were neither new, nor exclusive to Excelsior. In 1994 the Joseph Kerr Junior High School in Elk Grove, California displayed a banner stating "There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet" while children ran around in Islamic garb. In summer of 2002, Byron Union School District, which governs Excelsior, became subject of a lawsuit. This suit was brought by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center said of the Islamic sessions at Excelsior: "No federal court would have permitted a class where public school students were taught to 'become Catholics' for three weeks, selected a saint's name, wore identification tags that displayed their new name and a Crucifix, and engaged in Catholic religious practices. Here, however, students were subjected to Islamic religious indoctrination and propaganda and the courts turned a blind eye. The Supreme Court missed an opportunity to demonstrate that the Establishment Clause is to be applied the same to all religions and is not just a weapon to be used only against Christians."
On 10 December 2003 U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton issued a 22 page ruling which claimed that Excelsior was not violating the constitution as it was not indoctrinating students into Islam. TMLC pointed out that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional in 2002.
The simulations of Islam as practiced by Excelsior Elementary School were recommended in a textbook published by Houghton Mifflin, entitled "Across the Centuries". The publishers have defended this book, claiming one major critic had not read the book. William J. Bennetta of the Textbook League has read the book, and still condemns it. "Across the Centuries" is one of several controversial text books available in US schools.
The book "Across the Centuries" was republished after it was reviewed by Susan L. Douglass (pictured), an American-born Muslim who works for the Council of Islamic Education (CIE) which was founded in 1990. She is also associated with the International Institute of Islamic Thought, whose president declared that jihad was the only way to liberate Palestine.
CIE describes Douglass as "an American-born Muslim social studies educator and author, with experience in teaching, curriculum and instructional design. She has a Master's Degree in Arab Studies (History) from Georgetown University and a B.A. in History from the University of Rochester. Ms. Douglass is an independent consultant who has served as CIE's principal researcher and writer, contributing to projects involving textbook review, analysis of curriculum and standards, teacher training, and development of supplementary materials."
For nearly a decade, up until 2003, Douglass taught at the Saudi-funded Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1993 the Islamic Assembly published "Answers to Common Questions to New Muslims." In this a question was posed: "Now that I am Muslim, can I keep my non-Muslim friends that I have known all my life?" The answer was given: "You should try to remain away from mixing with non-Muslims because mixing with them removes your religious zealousness and pride from your heart and may lead you to having love and compassion in your heart for them. ...it is obligatory upon a Muslim to be free of the people of infidelity and to hate them for the sake of Allah."
The agendas of those who maintain that religions are discriminated against should always be examined. Bash Pharoan, who maintains that Baltimore County School Board is not respectful of Islam, has demanded that Jewish school holidays be banned. This move was made in June 2006 after his three-year campaigns to have the Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha introduced into school calendars was not accepted. He described his vindictive proposal thus: "This issue is about equality, about equity."
On June 13, 2006, the school board ruled that there would not be official Muslim holidays. The reasons were purely financial. There are very few Muslim students and teachers, and the Baltimore County School Board already allows these to stay at home on their holidays. Only when more teachers in the county were taking Muslim holidays (with substitute teachers costing $59.66 to $103.05 per day) would these holidays become universal. Bash Pharoan, unable to get his own way, then argued that there should be no religious holidays for anyone.
A similar situation arose in 2005 in Hillsborough county in Florida. Here the politicking was manipulated by Ahmed Bedier of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). In October 2005, Hillsborough County School Board approved a calendar for 2006 to 2007 which had removed holidays for Yom Kippur and Good Friday. Since December 2004, Bedier had argued that Eid al-Fitr should be included as an official school holiday. On November 8, the school board took another vote, and religious holidays were reinstated, though with no Eid holiday. Bedier said: "I'm disappointed but I'm satisfied. We're back at square one. If others are getting their holidays, it gives us hope we'll get ours as well someday."
Issues of holidays are trivial compared to the material which purports to educate students about Islam. If such material is of itself biased, then the primary duty of education is undermined. In 2004, Georgetown University hosted a seminar for teachers, federally funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act. The university (already a recipient of $20 million from Saudi Prince Alaweed Bin Talal to "educate" the West about Islam) is one of 18 centers of learning that provide resources to educationalists.
Among the study materials on offer is the "Arab World Studies Notebook", which makes some bizarre claims, such as Muslims arrived in the Americas before Columbus and spread through the Caribbean and into Canada. This preposterous claim was later removed, but other contentious passages remained, including comments suggesting Jews have no claim to Israel. The book is edited by Audrey Shabbas, who has hosted more than 268 seminars for teachers in 155 cities since 1987. A joint publisher of the book is Dar al Islam, based in New Mexico. According to JTA, Susan L. Douglass is an associate of Dar al Islam's Teachers Institute.
Books which promote Islamic radicalism have made their way into school districts through donations. In 2001, the Omar Ibn Khatab Foundation made a donation of 300 Korans, entitled "The Meaning of the Holy Quran", to Los Angeles city school district. In 2002, these copies of the Koran had to be removed, as it was found that they contained anti-semitic footnotes, such as: "The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts. … Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."
The public schools in America are partially protected from Islamist indoctrination by the First Amendment. Though imperfectly applied and interpreted, the Establishment Clause prohibits religious indoctrination from entering the classroom. Through the efforts of Susan L Douglass and the Council of Islamic Education, a biased assessment of Islam is entering public schools via textbooks produced by mainstream publishers.
The extreme and uncompromising form of Islam known as Wahhabism is still being taught in the numerous Saudi-funded schools that exist in North America. Being independent of the US government, such establishments are not subject to the terms of the Establishment Clause. The Saudi-funded Islamic Academy in Virginia, where Susan L. Douglass formerly taught, has already produced three graduateswho were jailed in 2002 on suspicion of planning a terrorist act.
Parents should make themselves aware of what their children are being taught about Islam in school. Demand to see study sheets. Demand a list of approved textbooks, and check these out in your local library. Talk to teachers, principals, or write to your local school board. If you think your child is being indoctrinated, write to your Congress representative. You have a constitution which prevents religious indoctrination by government bodies. For this privilege you should feel fortunate.
As I will show in Part Two, in countries such as Britain, where no such constitutional guarantee exists, Islamist indoctrination and misinformation exists on a grand scale within the educational system, funded by the tax-payer.
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Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 11:34 PM | Comments (2)
Malaysia: Man Converts to Islam, then Divorces Wife
This is certainly an advantage of converting to Islam I had overlooked. In short, a non-Muslim man is married to a non-Muslim woman. (It seems the woman is an apostate from Islam.) The marriage is going badly, and if there is divorce, the children will likely be awarded to the woman in Civil Court. So what does the man do? He converts to Islam, and now being a Muslim man, the case moves to Shar'ia Court, which will side with him. At the end of the day, Islam will get three new followers out of this family dispute, the man and the two children. This is a direct result of Islam's supremacist policies: Non-Muslim spouse must seek remedy in syariah court
PUTRAJAYA: A non-Muslim married to a person who has converted to Islam has to seek remedy in the syariah court over family matters.In a landmark ruling, the Court of Appeal also held that a Muslim could make an application to the syariah court to convert his or her underage children without the permission of the non-Muslim spouse.
However, the three Court of Appeal judges were divided in their opinions.
Judges Datuk Suriyadi Halim Omar and Datuk Hasan Lah dismissed with costs the appeal of R. Subshini, 28, a company secretary, who wanted an injunction to restrain her husband, Muhammad Shafi Saravanan Abdullah, 30, a businessman, from:
* converting their two children, Dharvin Joshua, 3, and one-year-old Sharvind to Islam; and,
* commencing any proceeding in any syariah court with regard to their civil marriage.
Datuk Gopal Sri Ram, who was the dissenting judge, said the court would hear a formal application from Subshini to stay the order sought by her husband in a day or two.[...]
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 8:35 AM | Comments (2)
March 12, 2007
Egypt: Blogger Who Insulted Islam Loses Appeal
On February 25, Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman was found guilty of "insulting Islam". 22-year old Abdel Kareem (pictured) was also found guilty of criticizing Al-Azhar University, which is the largest Sunni theological college in the world. Kareem had been a former student at this university before he was expelled in March 2006.
The father of the law student showed the intolerance typical of Al-Azhar University, where he had forcibly sent Kareem to study. The father demonstrated the love and charity of Islam by declaring that he disowned Kareem, and wanted him executed.
Kareem's blog is still online, even though on February 25, the court in Alexandria sentenced him to four years' jail. He had been sentenced to three years for insulting Islam. Additionally Kareem had been found guilty of "spreading information disruptive of public order and damaging to the country's reputation", and "defaming the President of the Republic". For defaming the undemocratic tyrant Hosni Mubarak, he was given a one year sentence.
Kareem had become an apostate from Islam. After the rioting which took place in Alexandria in October 2005, when mosques organized their followers to attack Coptic Christians, Kareem wrote: "The Muslims have taken the mask off to show their true hateful face, and they have shown the world that they are at the top of their brutality, inhumanity, and thievery. Some may think that the actions of the Moslems does not represent Islam and has no relationship with the teachings of Islam that was brought by Mohamed fourteen centuries ago, but the truth is that their actions is not different from the Islamic teachings in its original form."
Last year, Kareem was one of seven bloggers who were arrested for challenging the corrupt regime of Hosni Mubarak and the Islamist judiciary, but was the first to be convicted.
Today, the Court of Appeal in Alexandria has ruled that the four year jail sentence shall be upheld. His lawyer has said that the case will now be taken to the Supreme Court. Ahmed Saif said: "Kareem was in the court but I was unable to talke to him. There was a huge crowd of supporters and journalists . We lodged the request and hope to be able to meet our client this week or the next."
One of Kareem's last blogs made before his arrest has been translated by the Free Kareem Coalition. It can be found in its entirety here, entitled: "There Is No Deity But The Human Being."
This is an extract:
Freedom, as I learned it, understood it, and believed in it, is the removal of all restrictions from the human being's burden. Slavery, which is its antithesis, means the submission of the human being by imposing some restrictions on his life for the purpose of controlling him. Where restrictions are found, freedom disappears, and where freedom is found, the restrictions fall. This is obvious and does not require practical evidence, and it is illogical to object to it on the grounds that societal principles or religious beliefs must be taken into account. Either absolute freedom is our goal, or we be honest with ourselves and declare our hatred and rejection of it, and declare our preference to surrendering to restrictions over having freedom handed to us.It should be noted that for the past 25 years, America has spent billions in aid to the shabby political regime of Egypt, via its USAID program. If America is so bothered about a lack of democracy in countries like Iraq, then perhaps US citizens should be lobbying their congressmen. While Hosni Mubarak does not allow freedom of speech to those who would criticize him, then perhaps USAID money should be suspended until this freedom of speech, a sine quae non of democracy, is actually practiced in Egypt.Freedom's denial of restrictions does not mean that the human being has the complete freedom to do everything he is able to do. Being powerful does not mean that I am free to subjugate he who is less powerful than I am. For one of the most important principles of freedom is to not trespass on the limits of others' freedoms; this is so that freedom will be meaningful, and not be merely a justification for the actions of those who take advantage of their power to subdue others. Freedom - coupled with responsibility - is a right for all human beings with no distinction, and in order to have this right implemented in a realistic picture, every individual must respect the freedom of others and not degrade it. The law is what organizes this matter, and prevents individuals from trespassing on each other in the name of freedom.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 3:33 PM | Comments (2)
March 10, 2007
US: The WSJ Looks at Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The nation's largest newspaper profiles this courageous woman: Free Radical
NEW YORK--Ayaan Hirsi Ali is untrammeled and unrepentant: "I am supposed to apologize for saying the prophet is a pervert and a tyrant," she declares. "But that is apologizing for the truth."Statements such as these have brought Ms. Hirsi Ali to world-wide attention. Though she recently left her adopted country, Holland--where her friend and intellectual collaborator Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004--she is still accompanied by armed guards wherever she travels.
Ms. Hirsi Ali was born in 1969 in Mogadishu--into, as she puts it, "the Islamic civilization, as far as you can call it a civilization." In 1992, at age 22, her family gave her hand to a distant relative; had the marriage ensued, she says, it would have been "an arranged rape." But as she was shipped to the appointment via Europe, she fled, obtaining asylum in Holland. There, "through observation, through experience, through reading," she acquainted herself with a different world. "The culture that I came to and I live in now is not perfect," Ms. Hirsi Ali says. "But this culture, the West, the product of the Enlightenment, is the best humanity has ever achieved."[...]
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March 9, 2007
Nation of Islam: History - Part 4
Reproduced from a series of articles on Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Nation of Islam - An Empty Legacy
Part 4 (of 4)
By Adrian Morgan
Louis Farrakhan has made no public comments about who will succeed him as head of the Nation of Islam. His tenure as leader of the group has been marked by injudicious comments and actions. He reinstated the Fruit of Islam, the bow-tie wearing "soldiers" of NoI. The Fruit of Islam were initially charged to act as security during Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign. Farrakhan warned the Democratic Party that if Jesse Jackson's demands were not listened to, he would "lead an army of black men and women to Washington, D.C. and we will... negotiate for a separate state or territory of our own."
On March 11, 1984 Farrakhan said: "Hitler was a very great man. He wasn't great for me as a Black man but he was a great German and he rose Germany up from the ashes of her defeat by the united force of all of Europe and America after the first World War." A decade later, Farrakhan would reiterate the claim that Hitler was a "great man".
On June 24, 1984, he said: "Now, that nation of Israel, never has had any peace in forty years and she will never have any peace because there can never be any peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name."
On October 4 1994 he said: "Many of the Jews who owned the homes, the apartments in the black community, we considered them bloodsuckers because they took from our community and built their community but didn't offer anything back to our community." Some of Farrakhan's more recent anti-Semitic statements can be found here.
In 1991 before the rape trial of famous convert Mike Tyson, Farrakhan publicly vilified the victim, Desiree Washington. He blamed her for being out late, saying: "What type of a woman was [Desiree Washington]? What type of a woman would go to a man's room at 2:00 in the morning? She knew that they were not going to look at television. She knew what a hotel room looked like. And, now, she has the arrogance to cry rape." He also said: "How many times, sisters, have you said 'No' and you meant 'Yes'?"
On October 17, 1995, Farrakhan organized the Million Man March, where about 500,000 black men marched at Washington to declare their support for family values. Through this event, Farrakhan raised his profile as a black leader, but it did not bring thousands of new converts to the Nation of Islam.
Farrakhan's inflammatory speeches caused him to be barred from entering Britain for 15 years, a ban that was only overturned by Justice Michael Turner at the High Court in the summer of 2001. The government appealed, arguing that his presence would be a threat to public order, and the ban was reinstated.
In August 1996 Farrakhan attempted to have a $1 billion donation from Muammar al-Qadaffi, the Libyan dictator, pledged the year previously, allowed by the US Treasury, despite sanctions. The request was rejected. Farrakhan visited Libya in January 1995 and was given a human rights award which he accepted.
Before the sanctions, in 1985 the Libyan dictator had offered the NoI an interest-free loan of $5 million to launch a range of household and beauty products. In February 1985, Qadaffi also told the NoI by satellite link that he would offer to send weapons to black militia in the US to destroy "white America".
Among the injudicious acts of Louis Farrakhan was his elevation of Khalid Abdul Muhammad to accompany him on his trips to Libya in the 1980s. Khalid, who was the national spokesman for the NoI, gained notoriety as he publicly expressed his anti-semitism and racism. His views became so extreme, even for the NoI, that he was sacked as national spokesman in 1994, following condemnation from Congress. His speeches had been described as "outrageous hatemongering of the most vicious and vile kind." In 1995, Khalid said: "I was born to give the white man hell. And I will give him hell from the cradle to the grave." Khalid died on February 17, 2001 after a brain aneurism.
Farrakhan's views against whites and Jews are said to have softened. He has made public displays of reconciliation with the family of Malcolm X and with Warith Deen Muhammad, but his revival of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam seems to have no future now. By his own admission Farrakhan is dying. Other schools of Islam, based on more authentic teachings than the delusions and racism of Master Fard and Elijah Muhammad, are thriving in America.
When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, Nation of Islam members in California continued under one of the NoI's alternative names - the Black Muslims. These were led by Yusuf Bey, who typified the sort of person who led the NoI in its heyday, an entrepreneur who wanted to be a politician, with a decidedly sinister side.
While the Nation of Islam was riven into factions, following the 1975 death of Elijah Muhammad, Yusuf Bey, a captain of the group, negotiated a meeting in 1979 between Farrakhan and Silis Muhammad, leader of a breakaway faction. When Farrakhan revived the NoI in 1981, Yusuf Bey was not a part of the movement.
Born Joseph H. Stevens in Greeneville, Texas, in 1935, Bey (pictured left) moved with his parents to Oakland at the age of 5. He joined the US Air Force at age 17, and after four years he was honourably discharged. A qualified cosmetologist, Bey ran beauty salons in Oakland Santa Barbara, before opening a bakery in Santa Barbara in 1968 which later became "Your Black Muslim Bakery". He became involved with the Nation of Islam in 1964, and in 1971 moved his bakery to the East Bay. The bakery sold produce free of artificial colorants, with no refined sugar, fats or preservatives.
Bey had a weekly cable show called True Solutions in which he gave a platform to Elijah Muhammad's views. He even ran for the position of Mayor of Oakland. He died on September 30, 2003 of colon cancer, having established an empire running housing, a school, a security firm and retail businesses, including Your Black Muslim Bakery. At the time of his death, he was engaged in a legal battle with a woman who claimed he had first raped her in 1982 when she was 13. She claimed she had been sexually abused by Yusuf Bey since the age of 10.
As members of Bey's family vied for the position of successor, violence broke out. On February 27, Waajid Aljawwaad Bey, president and CEO of the bakery vanished. His rotting corpse was later found in a shallow grave in the Oakland Hills. In June 2005, Bey's adopted son John was wounded by a gunman in an ambush, and on October 25, Yusuf's 24-year old son Antar Bey was shot dead at a gas station. 19-year old Yusuf Bey IV appeared to have taken over the leadership - he was indicted for smashing up Muslim-owned liquor stores in Oakland, events which happened a month after Antar Bey was killed. One store was torched, and an employee was locked in the trunk of a car. The tactic of wrecking premises had been employed under the leadership of Bey senior - in 1994 a rival laundry had been trashed by Black Muslims.
In January 2006, Yusuf Bey IV said: "If you say you're a Muslim, you should have the action of a Muslim. If you say your going to be a Muslim and an follower the Mohammed you should have the actions of following Mohammed, not selling drugs or selling alcohol, or selling things in your store that's not good for our people. That's killing our people."
As an example of a good Muslim, Bey is seriously wanting - indicted on a grand theft auto charge, he attended strip joints and was indicted in April 2006 for attempted murder.
The flaky mythology and hollow spirituality of the NoI has attracted narcissists who would go on to become dangerous. In October 2002 Nation of Islam member John Allen Muhammad (right) and his sidekick Lee Boyd Malvo went on a shooting spree in the Washington area that saw 10 people shot dead and three people injured.
Hulon Mitchell Jnr was a member of the NoI in California. After being accused of stealing $50,000 from the NoI and molesting children, he set up his own cult. In 1981, his followers decapitated a member, Aston Green, for "blasphemy". Mitchell, aka Yahweh ben Yahweh, was convicted of racketeering. Following his release from prison in August 2001, he took his cult to Canada, where it still exists.
The Nation of Islam seems to have influenced Lennox Phillips, aka Yasin Abu Bakr, to set up the Jamaat al-Muslimeen group in Trinidad. On July 27, 1990 this group attempted a coup on the island, in which 20 people died. In 2005, the group was linked with a bombing campaign.
The Nation of Islam was to influence one racist group in France. In the late 1990s, "Kemi Saba" was attending a sermon given by Tony Muhammad in NoI's Mosque No 27 in South Central Avenue, Los Angeles. Returning to France, he became a member of the Paris-based branch of the NoI, led by Karim D. Muhammad. Taking on board these views, Kemi Saba set up his own heretical sect of Islam called "Tribu Ka", whose main aim was to intimidate and threaten Parisian Jews. In July 2006 Tribu Ka was disbanded on the orders of Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister.
The Nation of Islam is a heretical branch of Islam, which appeals mainly to young disaffected males. It is stuck in a time warp. Black pride is not dependent upon Islam, and Islam is not dependent upon racial segregation, nor upon beliefs that a drug-pusher called Master Fard Muhammad was Allah incarnate. The legacy of the Nation of Islam will include some positive contributions to society, such as the Million Man March, but little else. Will people in the 21st century want to believe in its stories of Martians and spaceships? I think not.
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 5:14 PM | Comments (2)
March 8, 2007
Nation of Islam: History - Part 3
Originally this article was published in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Nation of Islam - The Path to Louis Farrakhan
Part 3 (of 4)
By Adrian Morgan
Malcolm K. Little, aka Malik El-Shabaz aka Malcolm X, was serving an 8-10 year prison term in Charlestown Massachusetts when he first became exposed to Nation of Islam teachings. He had been sentenced at Belmont, Massachusetts for breaking and entering and larceny on February 27, 1946. In the two years previously, he had been charged 7 times in Massachusetts and Michigan for breaking and entering and grand larceny. As well as being a convicted criminal, he had also engaged in homosexual prostitution, stated biographer Bruce Perry in 1991.
While in the Nation of Islam his articulate oratory saw him promoted through the ranks. How much he believed in the the NoI's beliefs about a mad scientist creating white men to curse blacks or that a drug-peddling fantasist called Master Fard Muhammad was "Allah" is debatable. But he certainly believed in the NoI's message of racial separatism, and in 1953 had told police in Plymouth, Michigan, that he was "Asiatic" following the doctrines of Fard. From his own family experiences he knew the extremes of white racism. In his 1963 autobiography he wrote: " The Muslim teachings, circulated among all Negroes in the country, are converting new Muslims among black men in prison, and black men are in prison in far greater numbers than their proportion in the population. The reason is that among all Negroes the black convict is the most perfectly preconditioned to hear the words, 'the white man is the devil'."
In November 1962, he was living on 97th Street, East Elmhurst in Queens, where he was Minister of NoI Temple Number 7. He was harboring some doubts about the group's leader, Elijah Muhammad, on account of the Messenger's adultery. After Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Malcolm X's contemptuous comments caused a public outcry against the NoI and he was told by the Messenger to be silent for 90 days. Malcolm X was involved in the conversion of boxer Cassius Clay to the Nation of Islam. On March 6, 1964, the boxer was renamed Muhammad Ali. Two days later, Malcolm X announced that he had left the NoI.
As soon as Malcolm X left the group, he embarked on an active schedule. He set up Muslim Mosque Inc days after he left NoI. He founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity in June 1964. Two of Elijah Muhammad's sons had left NoI after he had abandoned the group.
In September 1964, Malcolm X was given an eviction notice to vacate his Queens residence, owned by the NoI, by January 1965. This order was ignored, and he continued to reside there with wife Betty Shabbaz and their daughters. He toured Africa in 1964, sponsored by the Egyptian government from April to May and from July to November. He had visited Africa before, as an ambassador for the NOI, in 1959. He had been preparing for Elijah Muhammad's tour which took place later in 1959. He had visited Saudi Arabia on July 21, 1959, but had not performed Umrah. On April 19, 1964, as a State Guest of the House of Saud, he performed the rituals of Umrah as an "orthodox" Sunni Muslim.
He visited France and Britain at the end of 1964, appearing at Oxford University where he participated in the Oxford Union debating society. In February 1965 he was in Smethwick near Birmingham, UK, where racist slogans had been used in the 1964 election. On the early hours of February 14, his house in Queens was firebombed as he and his family slept. A week later, on the afternoon of February 21, he addressed a crowd of 400 people at the Audobon Ballroom near Harlem. His wife testified that there was a commotion from the seventh row, and shots were fired. Malcolm X was taken to Presbyterian Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
His autopsy, performed at Bellevue Morgue on February 21, revealed that he had been hit 15 times with .9 mm caliber bullets and shotgun pellets, with 5 exit wounds. 9 bullets and pellets were retrieved from the body.
His three assailants had fled, but two suspected gunmen were cornered by angry supporters and beaten. Police took 10 minutes to rescue them and place them under arrest. In March 1966, Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson were convicted of murdering Malcolm X. Johnson and Butler were both Nation of Islam members, a fact which fueled rumors that Malcolm X had been assassinated on the orders of leaders within NoI. Malcolm X's lawyer, Percy Sutton, had said after the shooting: "Malcolm knew he would be killed".
Malcolm X's revelations about Elijah Muhammad's sexual philandering caused Louis Farrakhan to write in the newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, in December 1964: "such a man is worthy of death." Though he denied ordering the assassination, Farrakhan later admitted that he had ""helped create the atmosphere" which led to the assassination.
In the next decade, as Elijah Muhammad grew frail, the Nation of Islam would become increasingly involved in incidents of violence. One of the most shocking of these took place in January 1973. In 1950, Ernest T. McGee, aka Khalifa Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, had joined the NoI. He left in 1958, disillusioned with the pseudo-Islam of the group. He formed the Hanafi sect, which adhered to Sunni Islamic principles. A friend of Malcolm X, on January 5, 1973, he had produced a letter sent to the NoI, in which he called Elijah Muhammad a "lying deceiver".
On January 18, 1973, a group of several Nation of Islam members set out for a house which was being used by Khaalis in Washington DC. This was the townhouse of LA Lakers' star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Khaalis was not at home, so the people in the house were attacked. Seven members of Khaalis' family were killed. Four of the victims were babies, aged between 9 days and 22 months. These had been drowned in a bathtub and a sink. Khaalis's wife was shot but survived, albeit paralyzed.
On the other side of America, a group of members of the Nation of Islam began a killing spree against white people in the San Francisco Bay area, which became known as the Zebra killings. Between October 19, 1973 and April 16, 1974, at least sixteen people were murdered.
While the Nation of Islam became associated in the public consciousness with violence and hate, the elderly leader Elijah Muhammad died of congestive heart failure on February 25, 1975. His death came only one day before the annual celebration of Master Fard's birthday, "Savior's Day". The following day, his son Wallace D. Muhammad (pictured as he appears today) was selected as leader of the group.
Wallace had not been an enthusiastic believer in his father's ideology, and soon changed the name of the group to the Bilalian Community. Bilal was the name of an Ethiopian Muslim who had been martyred by Christians. Officially, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam no longer existed, though leaders such as Farrakhan initially remained with Wallace as he attempted to Islamize the sect. The Nation of Islam, envisioned by Master Fard and Elijah Muhammad, had died. But soon it would rise again.
Wallace D. softened some of the image of the NoI, disbanding the "Fruit of Islam" and moving the group more closely towards authentic Islam. In 1977, the group became the World Community of Al-Islam in the West. Later it would become the American Muslim Mission, then the Muslim Society of America. Wallace D. changed his name to Warith Deen Mohammed, changing the spelling of his last name. By 1985, he had made his movement wholly compliant with traditional Islam, and allowed whites to become members.
As Warith Deen Muhammad took the community through various changes, Farrakhan and other followers of Elijah Muhammad became more alienated. Farrakhan left in 1977, but in 1981, he announced that he had revived the Nation of Islam. Once more, black Americans would be invited to believe that Master Fard was "Allah", that people lived on Mars and a giant spaceship hovered above the planet. With Farrakhan's revival of the NoI, the racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism which had been cultivated by Fard and Elijah Muhammad had found its new home.
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
Nation of Islam: History - Part 2
Originally this article was published in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Nation of Islam - What is it?
Part 2 (of 4)
By Adrian Morgan
Nation of Islam - The Path to Malcolm X
Part 2 (of 4)
When "Black Muslim" leaders such as Noble Ali Drew and Wallace Fard Muhammad were preaching, they were part of a phenomenon that had grown in the wake of abolition. Many poor blacks had been forced to migrate to find livelihoods, and in the cities of northeast America, where they faced discrimination, cults led by charismatic religious leaders flourished. These cults added a religious messianic dimension to the racial pride and Pan-Africanism of Marcus Garvey , W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.
Black Jews came into being before the Black Muslims - the first of their "churches" was the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of Truth for All Nations, founded by "prophet" F. S. Cherry in Chattanooga in 1886. On November 8, 1896, "prophet" William Saunders Crowdy (pictured above right) founded the "Church of God and Saints of Christ" in Lawrence, Kansas. The latter group practiced Jewish customs but melded them with Christian beliefs. Between 1919-1931, at least eight black Jewish groups were established in Harlem, New York. The most prominent of the Harlem Black Jews was Arnold J Ford, musical director for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association.
The emergence of Black Muslims in Detroit and Chicago followed many of the patterns of the Black Jews - including the fusion of their professed faith with aspects of Christianity and the belief that their leaders were "prophets". Following the ritual murder committed by one of Master Fard Muhammad's followers in November 1932, the Allah Temple of Islam aka the Lost-Found Nation of Islam gained notoriety.
The murderer, Robert Harris aka Robert Karriem, was eventually declared insane at his trial. His wife Bertha, who had originally been arrested as an accomplice to the killing, said that she had been terrorized by her husband, who had threatened to decapitate her and kill their two children. Harris/Karriem was not the first mentally unstable member of Fard Muhammad's group to make the news before being sent to the asylum at Eloise. In November 1931, Henry James Moaning, aka Ahmed Abdullah, had been declared insane by a court after he sent threatening letters to Detroit's mayor, Frank Murphy, and had broken into Murphy's apartment block. At that time, Murphy had been closing down "flop-houses" which provided accommodation for single men, many of whom were jobless and black.
Master Fard Muhammad and the secretary of ATI, Ugan Ali claimed following arrest that there was nothing in their sect which advocated "sacrificial rites". Fard was arrested on the morning of Wednesday, November 23, 1932, at the hotel where he lived on W. Jefferson Ave. A press report claimed that Fard told detectives that he was the "supreme being on earth." Fard was examined by immigration authorities. On Thursday, Ali's wife Lillie led a march to police HQ to have the two men freed. The following day a crisis meeting was held at the headquarters of the ATI, at 3408 Hastings Street. 200 members attended the venue, above a clothing store. Police reported that it was a "voodoo meeting".
During the day, Fard and Ali began a process of examination by doctors at the Psychopathic Ward of Detroit's Receiving Hospital. Five days later, it was concluded that though Ali was not "normal", Fard was not of unsound mind. By this time, the group had 8,000 members on its register. He left Detroit on a Chicago-bound train on December 7, 1932, and the ATI was nominally disbanded.
Fard came back to Detroit in January 1933. He was arrested on May 25, and ordered to leave the city. The official report states that Fard admitted that his teachings were "strictly a racket" and he was "getting all the money out of it he could." He returned to Chicago, where he was subsequently arrested for disturbing the peace as a result of his preachings.
The FBI accounts of Master Fard Muhammad and those of the Nation of Islam contradict each other, adding to the aura of mystery surrounding "Allah" and his time on earth. The FBI states he arrived from New Zealand in 1913 and had a British father and a Polynesian mother. He had spent time in Portland, Oregon and Seattle. In Los Angeles in 1920, while working as a restauranter, he fathered an illegitimate child to Hazel Barton. This son was named Wallace Max Ford. He was later killed at Linhaven Roads, Virginia, in August 1942 while serving as a US coast guard. Master Fard had been imprisoned for 3 years at San Quentin for peddling narcotics at his restaurant.
The FBI and the NoI agree on two issues - Fard disappeared in June 1934 and his birthday was February 25. According to his successor Elijah Muhammad aka Elijah Poole (pictured left), Fard returned to Mecca. Hazel Barton claimed he visited her to attempt a reconciliation, but being rebuffed he went back to New Zealand. In 1957, the FBI urged its various departments to examine their records, to see if Fard could be traced. No definitive proof of his whereabouts has ever been confirmed. At first, the NoI suspected foul play.
In the hands of Elijah Muhammad, the birthday of Fard became "Saviors Day". The somewhat flaky ideologies of Fard Muhammad became more outlandish. Fard had urged his followers to listen to broadcasts of Joseph Rutherford, president of the Jehovah's Witnesses, who claimed that the end of the "civilized" world had commenced in 1914. The notion of impending Armageddon had been preached by Fard, who had formerly claimed that if his followers ate certain foods and employed their time usefully, the world would be rid of evil by 1934. In his proselytizing, Elijah Muhammad continued the theme of an end to the evil civilization of the whites.
He spoke of a giant spaceship, called the "Wheel", which could inflict retribution on the evil white race, should they harm the Nation of Islam: "..THE WHEEL is in fact a ship (plane) made like a wheel. And it is made for the purpose of Allah (God) Carrying out His Aim upon this world. This WHEEL is by no means to be taken lightly!..."
"....The planes on this WHEEL will be sent down, earthward and are capable of destroying the world almost at once. THE WHEEL (the Mother Plane) is capable of carrying many people in it! The Wheel is 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile in size. The Wheel is capable of sitting up above earth's atmosphere for a whole year before coming down into earth's atmosphere to take on more oxygen and hydrogen for the people who are on this plane (THE WHEEL) O she is a wonderful thing!"
If the Black Man created the heavens and the earth.. AND THE BLACK MAN DID CREATE THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH... then what man is fool enough to challenge the Black Man... VENUS AND MARS... you cannot use Venus and Mars. The people on Mars will not you light (land) on Mars. If they do let you land on Mars, they will be silly to do so... YOU would like to see what the people on Mars look like. That is not, say, impossible. O WHEEL... the greatest mechanical defender, powered by the Spirit of Allah, to Protect us, the BLACK PEOPLE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH.""
These bizarre themes have recently been continued by Louis Farrakhan, a former Calypso singer called Louis Eugene Walcott from St Kitts, who joined the Nation of Islam in 1955: "Seventy-one years ago, before you knew anything about Mars, Master Fard Muhammad called Mars an inhabited planet. He said Mars is 141,500,000 miles from the sun, and she travels at the rate of 1,037-1/3 miles per hour. He said her diameter is 4,200 miles. Master Fard Muhammad said Mercury is also an inhabited planet and is 36,000,000 miles from the sun. Her diameter is 3,000 miles and she travels at the rate of 1,037-1/3 miles per hour. Think about that. No matter how close they are to the sun or how far they are from the sun, all of the planets travel at the same rate of speed."
"Master Fard Muhammad said Jupiter is 483,000,000 miles from the sun. She takes eleven years and nine months to make one complete circle around the sun; her diameter is 88,700 miles; Saturn is 886,000,000 miles from the sun; Uranus, 1,782,000,000; Neptune, 2,793,000,000 miles from the sun; and the far planet Platoon, or Pluto, 4,600,000,000 miles from the sun."
"Pluto [called "Platoon" by Fard] was first discovered in the year 1930, the same year that Master Fard Muhammad found you and me. How far is Pluto from the sun? Four billion, six hundred million miles. In this figure, you have the numerals four and six.""
The emphasis on numbers and mathematics was seen as a way for the Nation of Islam to combat the "tricknology" of the white devils. Fard's handwritten booklets were only available to a select few - only one of these had been printed, entitled "Teachings for the Lost Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way- consisting of Thirty-Four Problems."
Other works by Fard were guarded carefully - "Secret Ritual of the Nation of Islam" had to be memorized by each member. This came in two parts, with the first comprising 14 sections, and the second, 40 sections. The mosques or "Temples" practiced strict segregation between men and women. It was compulsory for male members to be searched upon entering. The paramilitary guardians of the Temples were the smartly-dressed members of the so-called "Fruit of Islam".
The first Temple of the Nation of Islam was situated at 11529 Linwood Ave. In either late 1933 or the start of 1934, Temple No 2 was founded at 7351 S. Stony Island, Chicago. This was set up by Fard and Elijah Muhammad. By the time Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, there were 75 Temples across America.
In 1952, Malcolm Little (above right), a young man originally from Omaha with a traumatic past, met Elijah Muhammad at Detroit. At the age of four, Little's family home had been torched by white racists. Two years later his father was killed in a suspicious streetcar accident. His mother had been incarcerated in a mental asylum while he was a teenager. A petty criminal, Little had been exposed to Nation of Islam beliefs while in prison. He soon changed his name, and became a NoI mosque leader in Boston and then Harlem. By the end of the decade, he would be the main spokesman for the NoI, known by the name Malcolm X.
Malcolm X would later evolve beyond the narrow ideological confines of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, and for this he would pay with his life.
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)
Nation of Islam: History - Part 1
Originally this article was published in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Nation of Islam - What is it?
Part 1 (of 4)
By Adrian Morgan
According to Lawrence Mamiya, professor of religion at Vassar Collegein Poughkeepsie, there are up to 2 million African Americans who are practicing Islam as a faith. Yet Mamiya maintains that the most famous American black Muslim association, the Nation of Islam, has little more than 50,000 members.
The organization is currently at a crossroads - its current leader, Louis Farrakhan (above right), is dying. Prostate cancer, which he thought he had beaten in 1999, has returned. He recently made a "farewell speech" to a huge congregation in Detroit, where the organization is currently based. Farrakhan urged conciliation between those of faith, saying: "How come we the people of God cannot embrace each other?" Minister Farrakhan acknowledged that the speech would be his last. He told his followers: "My time is up. The final call can't last forever."
The 77-year history of the Nation of Islam, and particularly some of the groups which have been influenced by it, is interwoven with racial politics, intrigues, anti-semitism, and murder. But though the group claims to uphold "Islamic values", some of its core beliefs run directly counter to orthodox interpretations of Islam. To be a Muslim, a person must declare that there is no other God but Allah, and Mohammed is his last messenger. The NoI, however, believe in other messengers, or prophets.
As stated on the Nation of Islam's official website, the group believes that "Allah (God) appeared in the Person of Master W. Fard Muhammad, July, 1930; the long-awaited "Messiah" of the Christians and the "Mahdi" of the Muslims."
This belief is fundamentally at odds with authentic Islam. The Mahdi must be a descendant of Mohammed, via the bloodline of his daughter Fatima. Master Wallace Fard Muhammad gave no reliable details of his origins or lineage. According to Hadiths, the Mahdi will rule as Caliph in the last period of Islam on earth, and will rule for seven years. Master Fard first appeared in Paradise Valley in Detroit in either November 1929 or July 1930 and mysteriously disappeared in 1934, a "rule" of significantly less than seven years.
FBI files claimed Fard was a criminal with 58 aliases. He had served three years in California for selling narcotics, being released from San Quentin on May 27, 1929 according to one account, even though this date conflicts with other known events in Fard's life. Fard's origins are obscure - it has been argued that he was a New Zealander, with mixed white/Polynesian parentage, a Pakistani, a Syrian, a Palestinian or a Jamaican. He told his followers that he was born in Mecca, and that he had a Russian/Jewish mother. When he arrived in Paradise Valley, using the alias David Ford-el, he was a silk peddler, though the Nation of Islam denies this claim.
Before arriving in Detroit, Fard had been a senior member of a group called the Moorish Science Temple of America, which had been founded in 1925 by Noble Drew Ali (1886 - 1929). Based in Chicago, Illinois, with 14 branch temples in other states, the Moorish Science Temple had evolved from an earlier cult - the Canaanite Temple - founded in Newark in 1913 by Drew Ali (real name Timothy Drew, originally from North Carolina). This cult claimed that all blacks were Asiatic in origin, deriving from the land of Canaan. As the Moorish Science Temple, the ideology changed to state that all blacks were Moorish (Moroccan), and incorporated Islam into its philosophy.
By 1927, this group was attracting attention in the South Side of Chicago, with male members wearing red fezzes, having contempt for whites and occasionally indulging in fist fights. Drew Ali (pictured above) considered himself the natural successor to Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the black nationalist who had been deported in 1927. Drew Ali sold potions with Oriental names and sold membership cards to the Temple, soon becoming wealthy. The first national convention of the Moorish Science Temple took place in October 1928. By this time, Drew Ali, who was called "Prophet" by his followers, had earned $36,000 in one year alone, and was said to have commanded 12,000 followers in Chicago.
The Moorish Science Temple was hit by a scandal in the following year. One disgruntled member, Sheikh Claude Greene Bey, had tried to stage a coup and take over the movement. On March 15, 1929, Greene was shot and stabbed to death by a group of Moors. This killing led to Drew Ali being investigated as an accessory to homicide. While awaiting trial, Drew Ali hastily promoted David Ford-el, aka Master Fard Muhammad, appointing him acting head of the Chicago temple on July 20, 1929.
A month later, Noble Drew Ali was found dead at his home, probably as a result of injuries sustained in beatings from the police or from his rivals, and a leadership battle ensued. In September 1929, Kirkman Bey, a man who claimed to possess Drew Ali's will, was kidnapped from his home on the orders of Ira Johnson Bey, a contender for the leadership. Kirkman was held prisoner in Johnson's apartment. When police tried to break in, a shoot-out ensued, in which one policeman and two Moors were killed. 63 Moors were subsequently arrested. Fearful for his own safety, Fard Muhammad moved to Detroit, Michigan.
Here, Fard imported many of Drew Ali's ideas, mixed with some of his own. Drew Ali had written his own "Koran", which blended Christian and Muslim ideas. In 1930, Master Fard founded the Allah Temple of Islam (ATI). He preached his pseudo-Islamic views, and produced booklets. According to his successor, Fard Muhammad left behind a legacy of more than 100 of these "books". Fard allowed his followers to choose their own leaders, or "ministers".
The man chosen by Fard to be his right-hand man would eventually become the leader of the Nation of Islam for 44 years. Elijah (Robert) Poole had been born around October 7, 1897, in Sandersville, Georgia, the seventh of thirteen children. Poole moved to Detroit in April 1923, taking with him his wife Clara and their children. According to the Nation of Islam, Master Fard first arrived on Independence Day 1930.
An NoI document from 1973, entitled the Muhammad University of Islam Yearbook describes how Elijah Poole first met Master Fard at one of the latter's ATI meetings: "..as soon as he walked into the room he realized that the one who was speaking was God, Himself. When shaking the man's hand after the meeting, Mr Elijah Poole said, "I know who you are, you're God Himself". The certain man whispered to him, that's right, but don't tell it now: It is not yet time for it to be known."
"The Savior, Master Fard Mujhammad, used a system of permitting the student ministers to select their own minister from among themselves. They would always select the most articulate, smooth-talking one. However, one day the Savior decided to select his own. "I've let you select yours for a wile," he told the student ministers. "Now I'll select mine." "Hey, you over there, Karriem!" Master Fard called out to the humble little man seated in the corner rear of the classroom. "Who me?" The Messenger asked humbly. "Yes, you Elijah Karriem," The Savior commanded, "Come here with me."
The humble little man went to the front of the class and stood beside his Master. The Savior put his right arm around the little man's shoulder and said, "From now on, this is My Minister." The Savior gave Elijah the name of Muhammad, His name. Muhammad was given the title "Supreme Minister" until later on when he received the title "Messenger of Allah," a title which he was not to use until the Saviour had gone because it was not to be revealed until then that Savior Himself was Allah in person."
The Allah Temple of Islam, precursor of the modern NoI, was more radical than the Moorish Temple of Science. Many of the males still wore the distinctive red fezzes, and dressed themselves in smart suits. Like Drew Ali, Fard charged believers to have their names changed from their "slave names" to Muslim names and were issued with "gaudy identification cards". Drew Ali had tried to balance black pride with the notion of American citizenship, but Fard emphasized contempt for the white race, whom he called "cavemen" or "white devils". Fard maintained that an evil scientist called Yakub had created the white race 6,000 years ago, to plague the original Black Man, who had ruled the earth for 25,000 years before that time. Like Drew Ali, Fard told his followers that they were "Asiatic".
Two years after the Allah Temple of Islam/Nation of Islam was founded in Detroit, it became involved in a major scandal. A member of the group called Robert Harris aka Robert Karriem had ritually murdered James J Smith on Sunday, November 20, 1932. Harris was obviously insane, declaring himself the "King of Islam" during his trial. The racist Detroit press of the time had a field day, calling the crime the "Voodoo Murders" even though only one person was killed. The term "Voodoo" had been coined by a local pastor, J. D. Howell, and was publicized by the Detroit Free Press, which also wrote of the killer's "jungle fanaticism", Harris had erected a makeshift altar, to which he had tied his black victim, who lodged at his home in Dubois Street. Harris stabbed him with a silver knife while his wife Bertha looked on. The killer then caved in his victim's head with an automobile axle.
The day after the murder, the Detroit Free Press claimed Harris/Karriem had told police: "The ninth hour of the twentieth day had come Sunday. It was predestined 1,500 years ago that at that hour I must make a human sacrifice to my gods. It must not be a member of the Order of Islam, but some stranger - the first person I met after leaving my home." In court, Harris claimed: "It was crucifixion time. That's why I killed him."
The Detroit Free Press acknowledged that Fard's version of Islam, and not Voodoo was involved. A "bible of Islam" was found, which advocated killing unbelievers. Harris told how he intended to carry out more murders, which he called "sacrifices". The "Nation of Islam" itself came under the spotlight. A black woman had allegedly been threatened with death by the cult after her employer had expressed his desire to ban the group.
The "bible of Islam" was a booklet written by Fard Muhammad, entitled "Secret Rituals of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam". It had been quoted by Harris/Karriem. This included the words: "The unbeliever must be stabbed through the heart." These words had been found in Harris' home, pasted onto a sheet of paper. The leaflet also claimed: "Every son of Islam must gain a victory from a devil. Four victories and the son will attain his reward."
Seven senior figures in the ATI were arrested. Master Fard Muhammad and Ugan Ali, the secretary of ATI, were taken into psychiatric custody at Detroit's Receiving Hospital for observation. The sanity of Ugan Ali was described as "extremely doubtful... the slightest word or phrase used inadvertently seems to enrage him, for no apparent reason." Master Fard Muhammad, who is still considered to be "Allah" by modern-day Nation of Islam members, was described as "suffering from delusions that he is a divinity".
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Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2007
Saudi Arabia: OPEC Cut Production, Will Cut Even More
I recently heard a minor conservative radio talk host railing against the "greed" of gas station owners, blaming them for the rise in gas prices. (So-called liberals--socialists, really--speak this way all the time, so it isn't newsworthy.) I could not help but be dissapointed an usually reasonable man would fall for such an ignorant, divisive explanation. The price of oil, and consequently the price of gas, is determined, like most everything else, by an interplay between supply and demand. The supply side, however, is largely determined by the international oil cartel OPEC, lead by our friends the Saudis. This is why oil prices have been climbing after a short-lived drop: Saudi Arabia leads Opec output reduction
NEW YORK -- Crude oil production by members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) dropped by 85000 barrels a day last month, as Saudi Arabian output fell to its lowest level in almost three years, a survey shows.Production for Opec, which pumps about 40% of the world’s oil, fell 0,3% to an average 29,89-million barrels a day, according to the survey of oil companies, producers and analysts. Totals for January and last month include estimates for Angola, which became the 12th Opec member on January 1.
The 10 members of Opec with production quotas cut output by 335000 barrels, or 1,2%, to 26,48-million barrels a day last month. Angola and Iraq do not have quotas.
The 10 countries, in an effort to bolster prices, pledged to trim a total of 1,7-million barrels a day from production in two rounds of cuts, one that started on November 1 and another that took effect last month.
The producers cut an average of 1,03-million barrels a day over the period, the survey shows.[...]
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 12:12 PM | Comments (1)
March 6, 2007
Saudi Arabia: The Obtuseness of Israel's Leaders
Dear Caroline Glick:
Yes, they are really that obtuse. They think they can achieve "Peace", when the only semblance of Peace is to be achieved by victory. Every instinct in their body leads them to pursue every venue of negotiation, no matter how ridiculous it is, or how much it damages the Jewish People: Is talk with Saudis merely a diversionary tactic or are Israel's leaders really that obtuse?
Israel's man in Mecca is at it again. Five years ago, for the first time, the Palestinians were beginning to feel diplomatic pressure. In January 2002, the IDF's interception of the Gaza-bound Karine-A Iranian weapons ship in the Red Sea exposed the close relationship that Fatah terror chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat had developed with the mullahs in Teheran. In February 2002, a little-known al-Qaida terrorist by the name of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who had set up shop in Iran after fleeing US forces in Afghanistan dispatched three Palestinian terrorists to Israel to conduct terror operations. The men were arrested en route in Turkey.By February and March 2002, Israel had accumulated and disseminated a critical mass of evidence demonstrating that the Palestinian jihad against Israel was being massively funded by the same states that were funding al-Qaida. Israel had also shown that far from being interested in peace or in combating terror, Arafat, his official PA militias, and his Fatah terror group were directing the jihad.
With the foreign-funded Palestinian terror machine on the verge of being delegitimized, something had to be done to change the subject.
Enter Saudi Arabia.[...]
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 2:01 PM | Comments (1)
March 4, 2007
US: How to Smear a People
Do you ever wonder how destructive falsehoods are spread and perpetuated, eventually becoming the conventional wisdom? It is by a thousand mindless repetitions, slowly absorbed by an unthinking public. Orson Scott Card's latest "Civilization Watch" column examines a contemporary example: Evil Fiction
Let me tell you about an audiobook that I hated.I didn't hate it because it was badly written -- it was mediocre in the way that mediocre thrillers usually are, and that means it would ordinarily have been tolerable.
No, the reason I stopped listening to Steve Berry's The Alexandria Link is that this book is evil.
I don't mean it's about evil. I don't even mean that it is evil-porn, like those horror books whose authors are pervertedly devoted to thinking up cool ways to torture and kill people.
I mean that this book, to the degree that it is read by people ignorant of history (i.e., practically everybody), will move us closer to a future in which our society permits or even approves of the murder of Jews and the destruction of the state of Israel.
Wait! This book is fiction! How could it have such an effect?
Well, it can't -- not all by itself. Its effect is incremental. But it's real.
Here's how it works.[...]
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 1:44 PM | Comments (1)
March 2, 2007
History: When Justifications Are Crimes
The Ottoman institution of devshirme was a system of human taxation in which young Christian boys were enslaved and trained to serve the Sultan and his armies. Islamic apologists have advanced several defenses of the institution, none of them very convincing. Among these the most creative may be what I call "the appeal to parental feeling", the view that the enslavement of the young boys was humane because some of their parents were content to let it happen because avenues of advancement would increase for their sons after enslavement. Better a slave than poor and humiliated.
Slavery itself is an old, well established human institution. There are several myths surrounding it, most of them politically motivated. In an effort to dispel those myths, scholar Thomas Sowell wrote a long essay titled The Real Story of Slavery. The essay is full of interesting facts, but one of them particularly caught my attention--it refers to a different kind of slavery under the Ottomans. Here it is; the passage below is from page 120 of Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals
Although the slave trade was formally abolished in the Ottoman Empire, under pressure for the British government, slavery itself continued. As of 1891, the imperial palace purchased eleven slave girls for its harem, as others in the Ottoman Empire purchased women as concubines--typically white women from a region near the Caucasus and the Black Sea known as Circassia--even though every nation in the Western world had by then outlawed slavery. Not only the Turks accepted such slavery, so did the Circassians. Mothers often groomed their daughters for this role and sold them into what was considered to be a desirable situation, at least by comparison to what was available in Circassia. British foreign secretary Palmerston said, "the only complaint we have ever heard from the Circassians has been against our attempts to stop the traffic."
We should notice that Foreign Secretary Palmerston was unduly naive in his assessment. The Circassians were under brutal Ottoman control, and had little choice but to "complain" following their masters' wishes. But less assume, for the sake of argument, that the assessment is largely true. Let's assume the Circassians accepted slave concubinage and even tried to make the best of it. Let's also assume that Christian parents in the Balkans were sometimes happy their children were enslaved. Does that make the Ottomans less guilty? Does that make Islam, which mandates an inferior status for Christian and Jews, and allows both slavery and the sexual abuse of slave girls any less guilty?
It does not. If anything, it makes it worse. Because oppressing people to the point they would rather have their boys enslaved than remain in a life of despair is no justification. And neither is corrupting mothers to raise their daughters to become concubines. Those are not justifications, but whole new Ottoman--and Islamic--crimes.
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 3:53 PM | Comments (2)
March 1, 2007
UK: Clare College Students Harassed by Police
This is an update to the Clare College story. It turns out British police decided to intervene... to intimidate and perhaps to prosecute the students responsible for the publication of the cartoons. The shameless, the cowardice, the servilitude of those responsible for this act knows no bounds: Students in Clare College Mohammed cartoon row quzzed by police
The controversy over the publication of one of the now infamous Jyllands Posten Mohammed cartoons in a Cambridge University student publication has taken on a new seriousness, after two students were questioned under caution by Cambridgeshire police.
The students, understood to be the editor and guest editor of unofficial Clare College magazine Clareification (renamed Crucification for an issue focused on religious satire) were interrogated under Section 5 of the Public Order Act (“harassment, alarm or distress”).Police confirmed to Index that the students were questioned last Friday, and a file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, which will decide whether to press charges against the students in the coming weeks.[...]
Posted by Ruy Diaz at 6:07 AM | Comments (7)