Britons join Kurdish rebels to fight Turks

Britons are among foreigners fighting Turkish troops with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, The Sunday Times can reveal.
According to PKK fighters holed up in one of the natural fortresses of the Qandil mountain range which runs along Iraq’s Turkish and Iranian borders, several Europeans have joined forces with their group.
At least three Britons were in the PKK’s 3,000-strong force, boasted one fighter as he and a group of men huddled in a room discussing the latest clashes with the Turkish army. Others include Russians, Germans, Greeks, Iranians and Arabs. More...

Iranians study nuclear physics in Britain

The Foreign Office has cleared dozens of Iranians to enter British universities to study advanced nuclear physics and other subjects with the potential to be applied to weapons of mass destruction.
In the past nine months about 60 Iranians have been admitted to study postgraduate courses deemed “proliferation-sensitive” by the security services. The disciplines range from nuclear physics to some areas of electrical and chemical engineering and microbiology. More...

Palestinian Militant Use of Google Earth

The Guardian reports that Palestinian militants have relied on Google Earth for their attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets:
Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes. "We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city centre and sensitive areas," Khaled Jaabari, the group's commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian. Abu Walid showed the Guardian an aerial image of the Israeli town of Sderot on his computer to demonstrate how his group searches for targets. The Guardian filmed an al-Aqsa test rocket launch, fired into an uninhabited area of the Negev desert, last month. Despite the crudeness of the weapons, many have landed in Sderot, killing around a dozen people in the last three years and wounding scores more. More...

Turks Set Cars Alight in Brussels

Tonight (Wednesday evening) heavy rioting erupted in Turkish quarters of Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Buses and trams were attacked. Several cars were torched and shops destroyed. Police forces were unable to restore law and order in the boroughs of Sint-Joost-ten-Node and Schaarbeek where since last Sunday the animosity among Turks is running high. Turkish flags are omnipresent. In some streets the Turkish crescent and star adorns almost every house.
The Turks’ anger was provoked by rising tension with Kurds along the Iraqi-Turkish border and by the debate in the American Congress about the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915. On Sunday night Turkish youths in Sint-Joost destroyed the pub of Peter Petrossian, an ethnic Armenian who had to flee for his life. Apparently, some Turks think that by attacking the Armenians in Brussels they can convince the world that the Turks never committed a genocide of the Armenians. More...

Where're LULAC & MeCHa?: New "24" Trailer Indicates Same Old Tricks

A plane is heading toward the White House to attack it. And wouldn't you know it?--the plane is not being led by four Muslim terrorists, the way it was on the actual plane that was headed that way, UNITED 93. Nope, it's Hispanic former CTU agent Tony Almeida (the very hot Carlos Bernard) who's misdirecting the plane. As on "24," even when Muslims are the terrorists, it's only because they're working for "the man"--the (non-Muslim) White corporate man, the (non-Muslim) Russian man, or some other (non-Muslim) entity or party.

Via Debbie Schlussel

Around Coke and Makkah

Via God Help Britain

Swastikas in Haifa - again

As already so many times before, swastikas are sprayed on houses and cars in Haifa, a home of burgeoning Slavic population.

Evidence Implicates Assad Personally in North Korean Nuclear Deal

President Bashar Assad was personally involved in Damascus’ nuclear deal with Pyongyang. Documentary proofs of this, obtained from the presidential bureau and signed by Assad in person, are now in the hands of the US and Israeli intelligence services, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report. In one, Assad hands down a specific order in his own handwriting that North Korea not be charged for Syrian goods, including an annual shipment of 100,000 tons of Durham wheat for five years worth a total of $120 million. This is the equivalent of the value of the reactor for producing plutonium up to its most radioactive stage, which North Korea promised Syria.
A high-ranking Western intelligence source speaking to DEBKAfile described the evidence against Assad in US and Israeli hands as solid and much closer to a smoking gun than the West has turned up against Iran’s nuclear program. More...

Special Forces Ops in Iran

Britain’s Sunday Times reports that British SAS and American and Australian Special Forces have been engaged in operations inside the Iranian border to interdict weapons shipments.
There have been at least half a dozen intense firefights between the SAS and arms smugglers, a mixture of Iranians and Shi’ite militiamen.
The unreported fighting straddles the border between Iran and Iraq and has also involved the Iranian military firing mortars into Iraq. UK commanders are concerned that Iran is using a militia ceasefire to step up arms supplies in preparation for an offensive against their base at Basra airport.
An SAS squadron is carrying out operations along the Iranian border in Maysan and Basra provinces with other special forces, the Australian SAS and American special-operations troops.
They are patrolling the border, ambushing arms smugglers bringing in surface-to-air missiles and components for roadside bombs. “Last month, they were involved in six significant contacts, which killed 17 smugglers and recovered weapons, explosives and missiles,” a source said. It was not clear if any of the dead were Iranian. More...

The U.S. Counter-propaganda Failure in Iraq

The coalition has failed to counter enemy propaganda either by responding rapidly with effective counter messages or by proactively challenging the messages, methods, and ideology that the insurgents and extremists promote and exploit.
While terminology may vary—some officials refer to information operations as strategic communications, influence operations, psychological operations, perception management, or just propaganda—the intent to influence the hearts and minds of target audiences through the effective use of information remains constant.
In Iraq, while the coalition fumbles its information operations, the insurgents and militia groups are adept at releasing timely messages to undermine support for the Iraqi government and bolster their own perceived potency. They are quick to exploit coalition failures and excesses; they respond rapidly to defend their own actions, often by shifting blame to the authorities; and they hijack coalition successes to argue that change only occurs as a result of their violence. The slow speed of the U.S. military's clearance process—typically it takes three to five days to approve even a simple information operations product such as a leaflet or billboard—creates an information vacuum that Iraqis fill with conspiracy theories and gossip often reflecting the exaggerations or outright lies of insurgents and extremists.
Insurgent capabilities are advanced. Violence is their most effective propaganda tool. This is not a new strategy. For example, Johann Most, a nineteenth-century German pamphleteer, described terrorism as "propaganda of the deed." In Iraq, violence intimidates the uncommitted, undermines confidence in the authorities, demonstrates potency, and can provoke a disproportionate military response from both the Iraqi authorities and the coalition. More...

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda’s Secrets

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.
Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company’s Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.
The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network.
“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE’s methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries. More...

WashPost: Seeking Iran Intelligence, U.S. Tries Google

When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft.
Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way — by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as “Iran and nuclear,” three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations. More...

Bin Laden issues Iraq message

Osama bin Laden, has released a new audiotape calling on fighters in Iraq to unite and stand shoulder to shoulder.
In the tape broadcast by Al Jazeera on Monday, a voice sounding like bin Laden admitted that mistakes had been made in Iraq and exhorted the fighters to rectify them.
"Some of you have been lax in one duty, which is to unite your ranks," bin Laden said. "Beware of division... The Muslim world is waiting for you to gather under one banner."
In the audio recording, entitled A Message to the People of Iraq, bin Laden called on tribal leaders and the leaders of armed groups to initiate an agreement between the different groups.
"The interest of the Islamic nation surpasses that of a group," he said.
"The strength of faith is in the strength of the bond between Muslims and not that of a tribe or that of nationalism."
Bin Laden said fighters in Iraq should admit "mistakes" and try to correct them in the interest of unity.
The recording was aired as Iraq's government reported violence had dropped by 70 per cent since the end of June, following a series of US-led offensives.

Al-Qaida spreading terror via Net

Over 100 English Internet sites, packed with flashy videos of car bombings and other terror strikes, are helping spread the message of the so called jihad by Al-Qaida and other extremist groups among Muslims in the US and Europe, taking advantage of their anger over Iraq war.
While their reach is difficult to assess, it is clear from a review of extremist material and interviews that militants are seeking to appeal to young American and European Muslims by playing on their anger over the war in Iraq and the image of Islam under attack, The New York Times reported quoting terrorism experts.
Tedious Arabic screeds, it reports, are reworked into flashy English productions. Recruitment tracts are issued in multiple languages, like a 39-page, electronic, English version of a booklet urging women to join the fight against the West.
There are even online novellas like "Rakan bin Williams," about a band of Christian European converts who embraced Al-Qaida and "promised God that they will carry the flag of their distant brothers and seek vengeance on the evil doers," it adds. More...

Looking for wife #9, child #68

With eight wives and 67 children, Shahadeh Abu Arrar has given new meaning to the term "family man."
Abu Arrar, 58, is a member of Israel's impoverished Bedouin Arab community. But even in a traditional society where men commonly have several wives and many children, Abu Arrar is exceptional.
"I'm thinking about a new wife, No. 9," he told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot in a recent interview. "There are many women who wish to marry me and there is no lack of women. I never had a problem with such things."

Somali forces shut radio station after Islamist interview

The forces ordered Mogadishu-based Simba Radio off the air and arrested its chief Abdullahi Ali Farak and a journalist, according to a reporter who works there. The radio on Wednesday evening interviewed Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, a radical Islamist leader, who said he was behind a suicide attack earlier in the day on an Ethiopian army base near a hotel where Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was staying.
Sheikh Mukhtar -- also known as Abu Mansur after training in Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban in the early 2000s -- presented himself in the interview as a spokesman for the Somali Islamist movement in Mogadishu, but he has commanded numerous other militia fighters over the past decade.
Last month, Somali security forces besieged and opened fire at Shabelle radio, destroying equipment and forcing it to close for 15 days after they accused one of Shabelle reporters of hurling a grenade at a police patrol.

Swedish documentary follows "regular" Europeans who turn to jihad

Why do young men, who have grown up in the safe bosom of Scandinavia, want to sacrifice their lives for Allah? That is the question posed by a Swedish documentary that provides a glimpse into the world of young European Muslims who dedicate themselves to jihad, or holy war.
Aching Heart is the story of two young Swedes with immigrant backgrounds - one from Ostermalm, one of Stockholm's poshest neighborhoods, and one from Kvanum, a tiny town in central Sweden - who left their homes in the 1990s to seek martyrdom in the wars of Chechnya and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
But most of the focus of the film is on Göteborg, Sweden's second-biggest city. This is where Mirsad Bektasevic grew up. The 20-year-old Swede with Bosnian roots was given an eight-year sentence in Sarajevo this summer for planning a suicide attack there in 2005.
The opening scene of Aching Heart is a video found with Bektasevic when he was arrested: Two balaclava-clad men show off a stash of weapons, including hand grenades and suicide belts. These weapons will be used against Europe, against those who have their forces in Iraq," a voice says. "These two brothers have sold their lives to please Allah. We are Muslims. The lions are coming. We are ready to attack."

Iraq launches diplomatic offensive as Turkey row deepens

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced he would send a high-level delegation to Turkey for "urgent negotiations" after an emergency meeting of his cabinet to discuss the matter.
While Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan challenged the Maliki government and Iraqi Kurds to take a stand against Kurdish rebels on their territory or face the consequences, Baghdad responded with a series of conciliatory statements.
Ankara is seeking parliamentary approval for military action in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region against bases of rebels of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). More...

Gaza: Christian Bookstore Owner Was Tortured Before His Death

The owner of a Christian bookstore in the Gaza Strip who was found dead this weekend was publicly beaten by Islamic gunmen accusing him of spreading Christianity, witnesses and Palestinian Arab security officials said. The body of Rami Ayyad, director of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, was found Sunday riddled with gunshot and stab wounds. He had been abducted the night before as he closed his shop, a local Christian group said.
Gaza-based Islamic groups had accused Ayyad, a Baptist, of engaging in missionary activity. His bookstore was firebombed in April, and since then Ayyad had told relatives he was receiving death threats from Islamists.Witnesses and security officials associated with Hamas's so-called Executive Force told The New York Sun that Ayyad was publicly beaten a few blocks from his store before being shot to death. Hamas security sources said Ayyad's body showed signs of torture.

Interview with Laurent Murawiec, author of "Pandora’s Boxes, The Mind of Jihad"

There’s one thing that uniquely differentiates the modern jihadi movement from all others: it is the bloodlust.
The al-Qaida training manual speaks of killing enemies like of a “slaughter” an animal sacrifice to Allah: it is human sacrifice. That’s what Mohammad Atta says in his last text. The jihadi practice is a return of human sacrifice in the 21st century.
We find an idolization of blood, of savagery, a cult of killing, of death. Gruesome murder is lionized and proffered as model, as pleasing to Allah, as opening the gates of Paradise for the “martyrs.” The highest religious authorities sanction it, governments condone it, approve of it, the media enthusiastically endorse it. Think of the notorious “Waiting Room of Paradise” at the Martyrs’ Cemetery of Tehran where a 14-feet high fountain of blood-like red liquid symbolizes the essence of Islam’s message, the guide says!
More...

Muslim Brotherhood sets up Islamic clerical power

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's powerful opposition movement, has laid down its first detailed political platform, which would bar women and Christians from becoming president and establish a board of Muslim clerics to oversee the government, reminiscent of Iran's Islamic state.
The platform has dismayed secular reform activists who have cautiously hoped the Brotherhood was becoming more moderate and who supported the movement in the face of a tough government crackdown against it. The document also complicates the debate in Egypt over how to deal with the Brotherhood, which proved its widespread popularity in 2005 parliament elections.
The blueprint illustrated the dominance of a more hard-line trend in the Brotherhood, known as the "Daawi" - Arabic for "preaching" - over a minority of moderates who seek to reform the group and call for a civic government that respects Islamic principles. "It establishes a religious state," Abdel Moneim Said, head of the leading Al Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies, said. "Its an assassination to the civic state."
The Brotherhood has been banned since 1954 but its candidates run in elections as independents.

U.S. Marines: from Iraq to Afghanistan

The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials. The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command. Its supporters argue that a realignment could allow the army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.
At the moment, there are no major Marine units among the 26,000 or so American forces in Afghanistan. In Iraq there are about 25,000 marines among the 160,000 American troops there.

An American Citizen Training Islamist Militants

See Video.

Voice of Reporter: ... The people are not only Somalis. Among them is this American, who says that he heard the call for the Somali Jihad when he was away from America.

Abu Mansur the American: Oh muslims of America, take into consideration the situation in Somalia. After 15 years of chaos and oppresive rule by the american-backed warlords, your brothers stood up and stablished peace and justice in this land.

Voice of Reporter: Abu Mansur is not only a fighter, but also the military instructor of the Islamic Courts Union fighters...

Via Solomonia

MNF kills 37 terrorists, detains 25, demolish five Qaeda houses

Over 37 terrorists were killed, 25 suspects detained, and several weapons caches were discovered during military operations conducted by the Multi-National Forces (MNF) in Diyala province, an MNF statement said. The forces executed military operations October 4-7 targeting Al-Qaeda in Iraq safe havens in the Diyala River Valley, north eastern Baghdad.
During the operations, the forces discovered several weapon caches and a mosque frequently used by Al-Qaeda in Iraq for meetings.They destroyed a river crossing to prevent further weapon smuggling.Additional air strikes demolished five Qaeda in Iraq safe houses. One of the buildings was used as a command and reconnaissance location. The forces also destroyed a truck reportedly used to transport weapons.

Spain: Schools Have to Accept Veiled Pupils

The education council of the regional government of Catalonia has forced a state school in Girona to admit [Shaima, a seven-year-old Moroccan girl] to participate in lessons. The girl, who refused to remove her veil, had been missing school for over a week. The mother, Noama, affirms that the decision to wear the hidjab, the scarf which leaves the face uncovered, is not due to family pressures. “Shaima did everything alone,” she says in one of many interviews, “the child has grown up until last year in Morocco with the paternal grandmother, from whom she took her religious habits.” […]
But the public opinion does not seem to agree: according to the on-line survey launched by El Pais on the case of little Shaima, 76% of the Spanish believe that the use of religious symbols in class should be forbidden, while 24% are in favour.

Does Religious Law Permit Visiting Egyptian Pyramids?

Pyramids are graves of polytheists, and a Muslim is permitted to visit them for the sake of a moral lesson (pertaining to death and the world to come) based on the Prophet's words in the hadith: "Visit tombs, for they remind you of the world to come". Other religious authorities, however, have prohibited visiting the pyramids because they are tombs of infidels.
In May 2004, Sheikh Maher Al-Qahtani, which specializes in the traditions of the Prophet, posted a fatwa that forbids visiting Egyptian pyramids on the grounds that they enclose the graves of infidels. "It is forbidden to enter the homes [of infidels] or the ruins of the homes in which they used to dwell, and it is forbidden to visit them if it is known that infidel tyrants [dwelt there]. If a [Muslim] visitor must pass by [such places], he must do so in haste - according to what has been transmitted to us by Bukhari and Muslim through Ibn 'Omar - for when the Prophet passed by the stones [ruins of structures], he said: 'Do not enter the homes of [the infidels] who inflicted iniquity upon themselves [i.e. harmed themselves by failing to embrace Islam], unless you are weeping [from fear] that you will be harmed by that which harmed them.' He then faced forward [without looking right or left] and walked at a quick pace until he left the wadi behind. More...

Saudi Arabia Lectures the EU on Human Rights

Brussels Journal - The “Human Rights Commission” of Saudi Arabia, a country where slavery was formally abolished as late as the 1960s and is still practiced more or less openly (it is allowed according to sharia law), now lectures Europeans on Islamophobia. Notice that this is not an isolated incident; it is part of a sustained, ongoing effort with the explicit goal of surrendering half a billion Europeans to Islam.

Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) will urge its counterparts in the European Union to ask their governments not to link terrorism to Islam and also to issue regulations to protect Muslims from prejudice and discrimination because of their faith. The government-funded rights body will also address various human rights issues in Europe: when Muslims are unjustly interrogated, treated with disrespect, physically or mentally abused, or not allowed to practice their faith freely such as Muslim girls being prevented from wearing the hijab (head cover) in some schools.

Horrifying Images Of Rituals By A Turkish Islamist Sect

Memri Blog - The mainstream, top selling Turkish daily Hurriyet published today photos taken from an Islamist CD that is selling like hot cakes in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa, for about $1.50 each.
The video depicts dhikr rituals where the Islamist sheik and his helpers are mutilating the bodies of their disciples by inserting metal skewers into their heads and bodies, as well as making young children eat long fluorescent light bulbs. More...

Islam, the West, and Science

Gates of Vienna - Fjordman has posted the conclusion of his excellent three-part essay “Islam, the West, and Science” over at Dhimmi Watch. Here are a few choice excerpts:“Islamic science” had little to do with Islam, but was the amalgam of pre-Islamic knowledge, Greek, Indian, Persian, Jewish, Assyrian Christian and other. As Muslims gradually became numerically dominant and Islamic orthodoxy more firmly established, this pre-Islamic heritage was slowly extinguished, hence science declined and never recovered. This failure was intimately linked to the Islam’s hostility towards innovation and freethinking. In contrast, the Christian and Jewish religions proved more receptive towards new ideas. At the very least they were not as aggressively hostile to logic as was Islam, and in certain situations even facilitated it.

Pakistan: Musharraf-Bhutto reconciliation 'could lead to fresh violence'

Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf signed a law on Friday dropping corruption charges against ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto. This paves the way towards a power-sharing deal between the two and Bhutto is expected to return to Pakistan from self imposed exile on 18 October and stand in the forthcoming parliamentary elections scheduled to be held before 15 January. Reports have said that the power sharing deal was even endorsed by the United States and mediated with the help of a British diplomat, with both the US an Britain keen to see political stability return to Pakistan ending the political upheaval that has engulfed the country.“This is a sad occasion that the national political leadership would strike a deal for its own political benefit and not for the nation and all political solutions would be imposed on us from abroad,” commented the acting president of opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Navaz (PML-N), Javed Hashmi.
A report in the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times on Friday said that islamic leader Mehsud has also threatened to "welcome" Bhutto with bombings on her arrival in Karachi on 18 October. More...

Turkish FM Ali Babacan: Passage In Congress Of Armenian Genocide Resolution Will Irreparably Damage Turkey-U.S. Relations

Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said, “The passage of a resolution in the US Congress supporting Armenian claims of genocide at the hands of the late Ottoman Empire will irreparably damage the image of the United States and make the Jews too a target of criticism in Turkey”.
The US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs is due to vote on the non-binding resolution on Wednesday. The resolution is widely expected to clear the committee and chances are very high that it will be approved in the House of Representatives if it is brought to the floor by speaker Nancy Pelosi. Eight former US secretaries of state wrote a letter last week to Pelosi, who backs the genocide claims, to block the vote. The US administration is also opposed to the measure. More...

Muslim checkout staff get an alcohol opt-out clause

Muslim supermarket checkout staff who refuse to sell alcohol are being allowed to opt out of handling customers’ bottles and cans of drink.
Mustapha, a Muslim checkout worker at the company’s store in Swiss Cottage, northwest London, interrupts his work to ensure that he does not have to sell or handle alcohol. Each time a bottle or can of alcohol comes along the conveyor belt in front of him, Mustapha either swaps places discreetly with a neighbouring attendant or raises his hand so that another member of staff can come over and pass the offending items in front of the scanner before he resumes work. (Times On Line, via God help Britain.)

Hizbullah's Marijuana Enriches Financial Pot

The Hizbullah terrorist organization in Lebanon is reaping a bumper marijuana crop in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, according to the French news agency AFP. The area, dominated by Hizbullah Shi'ite Muslims, is benefiting from the continuing Lebanese political crisis that has prevented authorities from risking warfare with Hizbullah terrorists.
"We targeted eight sectors in the Bekaa and Hermel region but the army could not fully ensure the security of my agents in light of its battles with the Islamists at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp," said drug enforcement officer Adel Machmouchi. He said his agents came under rocket-propelled grenade attacks when they approached a marijuana field last month.

The Islamist Trojan Horse

"We're fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here" has become a hymn for the American right and an abominable lie to the left. But drowned out by all the noise is the fact that "they" are here already, having landed a long time ago and gotten very busy indeed constructing the American wing of jihad.
Have you watched the Arabic Channel, also known as TAC, which serves the New York region? Probably not, as most New Yorkers neither understand nor speak Arabic. But if you are among the estimated 1 million viewers — legal and illegal, new and old Arabic-speaking immigrants to the tri-state area — who tune in daily to Channel 507 on Time Warner Cable, this is what you can get: A daily dose of Islamic jurisprudence from an Egyptian sheik, Amr Khaled, who comes direct from Cairo as TAC's prime advocate of "peaceful jihad," on how the duty of every Arab-American is to become first, second, and only a member of the Muslim Ummah. More...

Top Cleric Warns Saudi Youth

Earlier this week, Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al-Asheikh – the most senior Wahhabi cleric in Saudi Arabia -- released a rather surprising religious edict. In this fatwa, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia instructed Saudis not to leave the Kingdom to participate in jihad – a statement directed primarily at those considering going to Iraq. Al-Asheikh said that he decided to speak up, “after it was clear that over several years Saudis have been leaving for jihad” and that “our youth…became tools carrying out heinous acts.” Perhaps even most significantly, Al-Asheikh also addressed potential donors, urging them to “be careful about where [their money is] spent so it does not damage young Muslims.”

Race and Religious Hatred Law in the UK Comes into Effect

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act will, for the first time, make it a specific offence to use threatening words or behaviour towards a religious group.The Government fought tooth and nail in favour of a far more illiberal measure, that would have outlawed remarks deemed likely to stir up hatred. But this was repulsed by a coalition of critics.
As a result, the wording was significantly softened in the Lords to exclude statements and actions that were merely abusive or insulting. Peers also introduced a requirement for prosecutors to show that a person intended his words or actions to be threatening, and inserted a provision specifically safeguarding the right to free expression.But free speech in the UK has always had its limits. You are not allowed to say anything you like and hang the consequences. Libel laws offer a civil remedy for defamation, and the criminal law has long made it an offence to use language to foment disorder or riot. In recent years, however, we have become confused about where the boundaries lie. More...

Al Qaeda and the Taliban's Pakistani insurgency

The Taliban are attacking President Pervez Musharraf's hold on political and military power in Pakistan. The Taliban is also working to weaken the resolve of the police, military, and civilians in the Northwest Frontier Province and beyond. The Taliban and al Qaeda have struck Pakistani military bases in Dargai, Kharian, Dera Ismail Khan, Hangu, and North and South Waziristan. Military convoys have been repeatedly hit by suicide attacks, improvised explosive devices, and ambushes throughout the Northwest Frontier Province. The Bannu suicide attack is the latest in series of Taliban suicide strikes at civilian, police, military, and governmental targets inside Pakistan.
The tribal agencies have long been recognized as the nexus for al Qaeda and the Taliban's suicide campaigns in Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond. The Pakistani Ministry of the Interior has repeatedly accused the powerful South Waziristan Taliban leaders Baituallah and Abdullah Mehsud of carrying out the suicide campaigns inside Pakistan. Over 80 percent of Afghanistan's suicide attackers "pass through recruitment, training facilities or safe houses in North or South Waziristan en route to their targets," a Taliban commander told the United Nations.
The 2005 London Tubes attacks, the 2006 London Airline plot, numerous suicide attacks and bombings in India, and other plots have been traced back to the Waziristan agencies.