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  • johnpi 4:14 am on February 9, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
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    Hijaabified Beauty takes on child abuse in the Muslim community:

    A while ago, I wrote a very personal post which was deleted very soon after I published it. You see, I have a dark secret that I have kept to myself for much of my life. A secret that I wish I had the courage to share with someone close to me. One that has, in my mind robbed me of the innocence of childhood. I was a victim of sexual abuse.

    I am not writing this post to gain some sort of pity, or to be encouraged by my readers to tell someone I know, or even to confront my abusers. I am writing this post to alert parents. Most instances of child molestation are committed by individuals that are close to the child or family. The offender is often a family member…someone who has easy access to the child, and someone who the child is relatively comfortable around. Unfortunately, this was true in my case.

    It pains me to say this, but parents need to stop being so trusting of their relatives. It is important that if you leave your child home with a relative that you ask your child what they did with their uncle (for example). Children are innocent, they will tell you. I wish till this day that my mother would have forsaken all political correctness and politeness and that she had explained to me what a good touch and bad touch was so that I might have been able to salvage my childhood.
    ….

    And don’t for a second think that we are free from such a fitna because we are Muslim. Child molestation is big problem in our communities…it just doesn’t get talked about. I want to change that. Start talking…to your child, your neighbor, a family member, your shaykh or community member. Make the community aware of this horrible problem.

     

  • johnpi 3:56 am on February 9, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Love in Jordan: ‘Dress Western act Oriental.’

    In the corridors of the University of Jordan, young women sway their hips in tight jeans, embracing the latest fashion trend the West has to offer. Their male counterparts seem no less committed to showing off their looks, nor to a deeply rooted urge to catch the attention of flashy girls.

    This is one of the few places where young people can mix in a country built on strict gender segregation. Despite the superficially Western influenced culture, many young people express exasperation with the traditional mentality governing most people.

    But girls and boys, like in many oriental societies, often break the taboo and engage in a romantic relation. But the fate of most romantic adventures is in the end determined by family more than the lovers themselves.

    “This romantic relationship is veiled with secrecy, fear and deception,” admits Ehsan, a fourth year engineering student at the university of Jordan who says he must keep his family in the dark over this relationship if he wants to one day marry the girl.

    “My family does not know I have a girlfriend. Her family might kill her if they know,” he said.
    ….

    “Some of the young people refuse old tradition and want to make their own choices,” he said. “But this culture needs time to grow.”

    In Jordan, the majority of the 5.6 million population is made up of young people, with a ratio of two females to every male.

     

  • johnpi 3:35 am on February 9, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Maulvi Noor Jamal, , Noor Jamal, , ,

    Taliban confirm Hakeemullah’s death.

    The Taliban based in Orakzai Agency confirmed on Tuesday that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Hakeemullah Mehsud is dead.

    However, Alam Tariq the offiicial Taliban spokesman has not yet made a statement.

    Sources said that Maulvi Noor Jamal has been nominated as Mehsud’s succesor.
    ….

    Maulvi Noor Jamal is a native of the Orakzai Agency and rose to power as the leader of the Taliban in the Kurram tribal area.

    He was also given responsibilities for Orakzai when the military began the Waziristan offensive in October.

    Jamal is in his late thirties and was a maulana at a local madrassah before he was made the leader of the Taliban in Kurram.

    He had a close relationship with Mehsud and is known for his brutality. One resident who left Khurram for fear of being wanted by him said Jamal “…kills humans like one will kill chickens.” Jamal is also the man who is allegedly overseeing the flogging of two men and a teenage boy in a recently broadcast video.

     

  • johnpi 12:11 am on February 9, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    There aren’t enough good targets in Somalia…

    A senior leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia has declared jihad against neighboring Kenya for supporting the weak Somali Transitional Federal Government.

     

  • johnpi 11:58 pm on February 8, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Khmer Rouge, , , , , , , Vietnam analogy

    Could US drone strikes push Pakistan into Khmer Rouge type genocide?

    A more provocative — and perhaps more ominous — analogy today might be between the CIA’s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Richard Nixon’s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalent. To briefly recapitulate that ancient history: In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries.”

    Sihanouk, helpless to do anything, looked the other way. In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk — until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.

    The Taliban sure hope so…

     

  • johnpi 10:37 pm on February 8, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Louay Safi, ,

    An experienced military trainer who taught US Army soldiers about his Muslim faith has been suspended from working on military bases pending a continuing criminal inquiry, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News.

    The [Louay] Safi affair reveals the deep divisions within the U.S. government over how to combat terrorism and over what constitutes moderate Islam.

    Some believe insight into Islamist thinking can be gained only by engaging a wide range of people in North America’s close-knit Muslim community, where leaders may well have ties to extremists – ties that do not necessarily signal alliances or support. Others argue that engagement should be limited or shunned to avoid legitimizing radicals or embarrassing the government.

    Safi is a senior official of the Islamic Society of North America, the country’s largest Muslim organization. ISNA has been consulted for years by Washington and is described as a partner in the fight against terrorism. In addition to serving as ISNA’s communications director, Safi runs its program certifying Muslim chaplains for work in the U.S. military and prison system. He publicly denounces terrorism and advocates peace.
    ….

    “You have a schizophrenic government and a schizophrenic institution,” Zelikow said, referring to ISNA. “The schizophrenia cuts right into how the government views the whole Fort Hood affair. We don’t know whether to treat him [Hasan] as part of an international conspiracy or as a lone wolf who happened to have gotten solace from a radical imam.”

     

  • johnpi 6:51 pm on February 8, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Sri Lanka arrests General Fonseka.

     

  • johnpi 6:48 pm on February 8, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Sectarian strife makes love difficult in Iraq.

    The problem of inter-communal marriages is largely new in Iraq, where the community one belonged to was previously of little importance in the quest for a spouse. Executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime comprised a Sunni Arab elite but was largely secular.

    “The situation deteriorated after the fall of the former regime and the sectarian violence that followed.”

    Sociologist Suha al-Shamaa, who also works in the women’s section at the human rights ministry, said: “Before the U.S. occupation of 2003, the question of which community a woman belonged to was not asked. Today it’s essential.”
    ….

    As many as 41.5 percent of Iraqi men and women over 12 years old are single, the WFP says, and 4.2 percent are widowed.

     

  • johnpi 10:17 am on February 8, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Toronto college creates Muslim studies program to teach imams how to create a ‘Canadian Islam.’

    According to the 2001 census – the last one for which data are available – there were 579,640 Muslims in Canada, almost half of those in Toronto.

    Canada’s fastest growing religion, Islam is now firmly rooted in the country. And whileRoshan Jamal is glad to see her faith become established here, she laments that size has also allowed Muslims to remain isolated within their own communities if they choose.

    “It’s a natural instinct,” says Jamal, president of the Canadian Dawn Foundation, set up a year ago to help Muslim leaders learn what it means to be a person of faith in this country.

    But Jamal says Islam thrives best in a new country when its followers find ways to adapt the faith to their new home, as it did in the Middle Ages as the faith moved out of the Arab world and into Asia, Africa and Europe.

    That’s why her group is putting $70,000 over two years behind a new Canadian Certificate in Muslim Studies program that was launched Saturday at the University of Toronto’s Emmanuel College.

    Targeted at imams and other Muslim leaders – but open to anyone – the goal is to help develop a Canadian form of Islam, says college principal Mark Toulouse, a driving force behind the program.

     

  • johnpi 9:55 am on February 8, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    A 5,000 student Muslim girls school planned for a small town in northeast England that was huge and out of scale to the surrounding communities has not only been halted by the Charity Commission but the local MP will attempt to compel legal action against the charity that proposed the project.

    The prospect of a boarding school for 5,000 Muslim girls being set up in Pendle has been shattered by the Charity Commission. The charity watchdog has ruled Birmingham-based charity Islamic Help was operating outside its charitable objects in raising money for a school at Brierfield Mills.

    In a hard-hitting decision, the commission has ordered donations to be returned to those who responded to the appeal for funds.
    ….

    Pendle MP Gordon Prentice called in the commission, insisting Islamic Help was breaking charity law in asking for money for a purpose outside its charitable objects.

    “I shall be raising this issue in Parliament. I want to see a full audit of the finances of Islamic Help. And I want the Charity Commission to maintain an oversight and supervisory role.

    “I am also left wondering what kind of assurances were given by the charity to Lloyds TSB (57% privately owned) to secure the £650,000 loan.”

    You can’t just say, “Inshallah!” and come blazing in without regard for the local political response, which is nearly always cautious at best or alarmist at worst whenever new religious institutions come to a community.

     

  • johnpi 9:28 am on February 8, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , handshakes, shaking hands

    Muslim man wins handshake case in Sweden.

    Sweden’s unemployment agency has been found guilty of discrimination for expelling a Muslim man from a job training program because he refused to shake hands with a woman.
    A Stockholm court Monday ordered the Public Employment Service to pay 50,000 kronor ($6,700) in damages to an immigrant from Bosnia who lost his jobless benefits when he was kicked out of the program.
    Citing his faith, the man had refused to shake hands with a woman when he was interviewing for an internship. The agency said his behavior was part of the reason he didn’t get the position, and decided to exclude him from the program.

     

  • johnpi 9:24 am on February 8, 2010 | 7 Permalink | Reply
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    Rift develops within Amnesty International over partnering with Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners.

    Amnesty International has been accused of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terrorists above those of their victims, following the charity’s affiliation with a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, who has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers.

    Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.
    ….

    Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign.

    “I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on January 30.

    Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners have been on the outs around here for some time.

     

  • johnpi 8:44 am on February 7, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Troid

    After reading Umar’s ‘Rise and Fall of the Salafi Dawah‘ I came away with a poor impression of the ‘Troid’ group as one of the more problematical ones, but this lecture seems very responsible (assuming this is the same group, which it may not be).

    It may be that 9/11 and everything that has happened after has caused very unbalanced, immoderate groups to address distortions of extremism that were coming to dominate in the 1990s.

     

  • johnpi 11:18 pm on February 6, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
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    Al Shabab launches new effort to drive girls out of schools in areas it controls.

    The Al-Shabab movement in Somalia has issued directives in schools located in areas under its control, in an effort to instill Islamist ideology in the younger generation.

    Islamist authorities in Merca, located some 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu, have ordered that boys and girls learn in separate classrooms and that the Somali national flag be replaced with the movement’s flag in schools, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat.

    Observers and human rights activists are concerned that the new directives will help the Islamists spread a radical ideology among impressionable schoolchildren.
    ….

    Analysts suspect the directives are a sign the movement is trying to push girls out of the school system in moves reminiscent of the Taliban’s attacks against girls’ schools in Pakistan, since imposing separate schooling for boys and girls is logistically and financially impossible.

    “Al-Shabab has already demonstrated its clear need to subjugate women, and the expulsion of girls from schools fits into this,” Roque said, “in the same way that the Taliban separated men and women, their roles, their rights, and their role in the public and private spheres.”

     

  • johnpi 8:11 am on February 6, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Government must target militants in Karachi: MQM.

    The MQM demanded on Saturday that the government must conduct an operation against militants holed up in different areas of Karachi.

    Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, MQM’s Deputy Convenor Farooq Sattar said that Chief Minister Sindh Qaim Ali Shah has also admitted that militants are heading to Karachi to escape the military operations in Swat and Waziristan.
    ….

    He said that some religious parties and other political leaders are still defending the heinous crimes of the Taliban. He appealed the public to socially boycott such parties.

     

  • johnpi 8:01 am on February 6, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Thousands pack funerals for Pakistan bomb victims.

    Beating their chests with hands, thousands of minority Shiite Muslims attended a mass funeral Saturday for those killed in a pair of bombings in Pakistan’s largest city.

    At least 33 people died and 170 others were wounded in Karachi on Friday when suspected Sunni militants targeted a bus carrying Shiite worshippers and then attacked a major hospital treating victims of the first bomb, said government spokesman Jamil Soomro.

     

  • johnpi 10:32 pm on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Joel Titus, Matthew Kaplan edl, , , , , , ,

    Several days ago I posted a photo from Internet vigilante Charlie Flowers’ Facebook page that i contended showed he had an English Defence League connnection. Richard Bartholomew looked at the same photo and thought I had made an ‘imaginative leap.’

    Flowers’ or one of his ‘Cheerleader’ associates has resolved the issue themselves by posting new photos to Facebook of Flowers meeting with EDL youth division leader Joel Titus, an activist with a history of violence who was recently arrested for assaulting a photojournalist, and Matthew Kaplan, who Bartholomew reports is the paid EDL publications coordinator responsible for leaflets and press releases.

    In comments to Bartholomew’s earlier post, Flowers’ or one of his supporters seems to have been most animated by the accusation that Flowers may be affiliated with or have affinity for racists or white supremacists. This latest photo seems a calculated response meant to subvert that conclusion. An anti-Fascist publication describes the mixed-race Titus as the figure the EDL “parades to the media as proof of their non-racist agenda.” Kaplan is a Jewish American student from Seattle, which supposedly rebuts the EDL’s reputation for Nazi affinities. Kaplan has appeared at several EDL demonstrations waving the Israeli flag. However the presence of minorities and Jews is hardly a defense. Racism and religious persecution are as much about who you exclude as who you let in.

    Flowers and his Internet vigilante friends the ‘Cheerleaders’ claim to be opposed to Islamic extremism, but they are actually against Islam and target Muslims indiscriminately, just as their fellow travelers in the EDL do, and there is no better evidence of that than the intimidation tactics they engaged in here at Talk Islam, publishing several front page contributors’ home addresses and sending mail to one blogger’s home. They have also repeatedly threatened me.

    None of those targeted – Hussein Rashid, Aziz Poonawalla or myself – could be described as anything other than moderate or progressive Muslims who have wrtten against extremism and religious violence.

     

  • johnpi 7:36 pm on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , sipah-e-sahaba, SSP, , ,

    Karachi bombings: Ulema rally Pakistanis to call for restraint.

    Ulema from different schools of thought have condemned the two blasts on Friday, appealed to the people to exercise restraint and pointed out that terrorists are trying to distort the image of Islam and the country.

    The Islamic scholars said the perpetrators of the incidents of terrorism were neither Muslims nor Pakistanis, adding that they were trying to divide the people of the same faith.
    ….

    Maulana Hassan Zafar Naqvi ruled out any sectarian aspect of the tragedy, recalling that Shias and Sunnis lived together and would not allow any such conspiracy to succeed in future. However, the series of attacks on mourners was a bad omen, he said, adding that conspiracies were being hatched to distort the image of Islam across the world.

    He said the terrorists were enemies of Islam, Muslims and Pakistan, but, the government could not be absolved from its responsibility. “The government should tell people how many of the criminals arrested in the past had been sentenced to death,” he said.

    Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, the chief of the Central Ruet Hilal Committee, had the same views to share. He said those behind the tragedy were bringing a bad name to Islam, Muslims and Pakistan. He asked the people to keep their sentiments under control, as violence would only strengthen those who were trying to destablise the country.

     

  • johnpi 1:45 pm on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    CBS News is reporting that Abdulmutallab has said that Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attempted suicide bombing against a US airliner.

    The suspect in a failed Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt told federal investigators that radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attack, CBS News has learned.
    ….

    The source said Abdulmutallab told investigators he was guided by al-Awalki to detonate the bomb over U.S. soil, unlike the failed British bomber plot in 2006 when the bombers were instructed to detonate bombs on airliners over the ocean on the way to the U.S. so that there would be no evidence left behind.

    There’s also a discussion of the legality of the US government targeting al Awlaki:

    CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports that al-Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship – he was born in New Mexico – will have little bearing on American military and intelligence efforts to locate and kill him.

    U.S. officials, both current and former, tell Logan that if an individual is deemed to be part of a terrorist network that is a threat to American security in any way, they can be targeted legitimately.

    Al Awlaki denied in another report giving Abdulmutallab permission or issuing a fatwa approving the attack.

     

  • johnpi 9:22 am on February 5, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,

    Contrasting the difference between how homosexuality is viewed in Europe and America versus the Muslim world.

    Luongo — who details his adventures in Afghanistan, where he attends a “gay party” — agrees with Sharma, saying that while in Europe and America “homosexual desire and acts become the very definition of a person,” in the Muslim world, “homosexual desire and acts are simply one aspect amongst others, something people do but not something that defines a person above all things.” Thus many of the Muslim men the writers encounter do not identify themselves as gay, and ask the latter why they don’t have wives, causing deep confusion, and in the case of Richard Ammon, offence.

    Via Kawdess tweets.

     

  • johnpi 9:16 am on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,

    Conservatives in Qatar are worried about the trend in women’s fashion that they perceive as “cross-dressing.”

    The local press says that more tradition-minded locals are upset by the growing number of young women affecting a masculine style of dress, baggy trousers, short hair and deep voices. These women, who call themselves boyat, which translates as both tomboy and transsexual (and is derived from the English word boy), are being seen in schools and on university campuses where some are said to harass their straiter-laced sisters.

    In an episode of a talk show on Qatari television, called Lakom al Karar (The Decision is Yours), a leading academic said that the “manly women” phenomenon was part of a “foreign trend” brought into Qatar and the Gulf by globalisation. Foreign teachers, the internet and satellite television have been blamed. So have foreign housemaids, for badly influencing children in their care.

    The studio audience was divided over how to respond. Some called for the death penalty for cross-dressers, while others favoured medical treatment. A rehabilitation centre for Qatari boyat has been set up, but a local report says that as many as 70% of them refuse to give up their “abnormal behaviour”.
    ….

    One official describes the “deviant behaviour” of the boyat as a “menace” to society. But others sound less fazed. An American university lecturer in the region says the short hair and gym shoes worn by these young women would look perfectly normal on an American campus. That is just what unnerves the traditionalists.

    Via Kawdess tweets.

     

  • johnpi 8:43 am on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Republican congressman Darrell Issa from South California says the democratically elected Democratic congress is ‘exactly the same’ as Kazakhstan’s dictatorship.

    Issa made the comment at a hearing to Kazakh foreign minister Kanat Saudabayev:

    I want to share with you something here today. Washington, D.C., is exactly the same. This is a one-party town, even though there are people who are not Democrats. And this town has decided to have representation, at least one member of the council, who is chosen simply to represent minorities.

    Issa has also nominated Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev for a Nobel Peace prize.

    Kazakhstan has been described as an authoritarian state and one of the “least free countries in the world” by Freedom House, a human rights organization.

     

  • johnpi 1:10 am on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Militant supporters urge Pakistan government not to create hurdles for Kashmir jihad.

    “As long as Jammu and Kashmir is under Indian subjugation, jihad must continue… Pakistan should continue political, diplomatic and moral support for the Kashmiris seeking freedom.

    If Pakistani rulers cannot help Kashmiris, they should let the field open for the Kashmiri militants, instead of creating any obstacles in their way,” said a declaration adopted at the “Solidarity with Kashmir” conference.

    Problem here is that the Kashmir liberation movement is only tangentially about Kashmir anymore since it’s been assimilated into the global-caliphate-seeking borg. For example, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s “director of transnational operations” running terrorist operations in Australia, Denmark and elsewhere to address concerns that have zero relation to Kashmir.

    And a separate but related point: the Indians have no reason to come to the negotiating table and sue for peace since elements of the militant movement have made it abundantly clear that they won’t rest until all 150 million Muslims in India are ‘liberated,’ and other extremists go still further and speak of the glory days when large parts of the subcontinent and its vast non-Muslim populations were under Muslim rule…in short, the Kashmir separatists can’t deliver a peace dividend, so why should India bother with them?

     

  • johnpi 1:29 pm on February 4, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , skin lighteners

    The latest trend in the Western version of female genital mutilation: Bleaching and dying.

    Accomoclitic Laser and Wax Studio in Lakewood, Colorado … sell something called Bleach Babe, a cream that promises to do away with the “natural discoloration surrounding the exterior of the vagina.” Bleach Babe contains Kojic acid, the same ingredient that keeps salmon meat pink. South Beach Solutions sells a similar lightening product with Sodium hydroxide, which can also be found in drain decloggers and septic tank cleansers.

     

  • johnpi 1:09 pm on February 4, 2010 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: daily prayers, , , , , , wudu

    Malaysian company invents hi-tech “wudu” machine to avoid wasting water.

    Malaysian company has invented a machine it says will help Muslims perform their washing rite before prayers without excessively wasting water.

    The ornate, green-colored machine comes with automatic sensors and basins to curb water usage during wudu, an Arabic word used to describe the act of washing the face, arms and legs before prayers.

    The wudu, or ablution, rite precedes the five daily prayers that Muslims perform. There are more than 1.7 billion Muslims in the world, with the majority in Africa and the Middle East where water supplies are scarce.

     

  • johnpi 1:02 am on February 4, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Working Saudi women spend more than a third of their salaries on drivers and taxis. The solution is – women-only buses.

    It could be promoted as a ‘green’ solution to the problem – and the Saudis are all about marketing themselves as ‘green friendly’ right now. By maintaining the ban on women driving they are preventing more cars from being on the road. Very responsible of them…

     

  • johnpi 12:45 am on February 4, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Swiss taking Uighur brothers held by US since 2002.

    A decision by Switzerland to give a home to two Chinese Muslim brothers detained at Guantanamo Bay for nearly eight years could allow the Obama administration to avoid a difficult Supreme Court argument over whether a judge can order detainees released into the United States.
    The Swiss said Wednesday that they will resettle the brothers, Arkin Mahmud and Bahtiyar Mahnut, probably within a month. They are among seven Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs (pronounced WEE’-gurs), who remain at Guantanamo and have been regarded as symbols of the unfairness of the U.S. detention policy following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

     

  • johnpi 12:41 am on February 4, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,

    Al Jazeera interviewed Anwar al Awlaki on Feb. 2nd, during which he said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was his student.

    In an interview which the website said a Yemeni freelance journalist had held with Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born preacher said he had been a teacher of the Nigerian suspect in the Dec 25 attempted bombing of the US-bound plane.

    “The mujahid brother, Umar Farouk (Abdulmutallab) … is one of my students. Yes, and there was contact between us. But I did not issue a fatwa (religious edict) to Umar Farouk for this operation,” Awlaki was quoted as saying.

     

  • johnpi 12:35 am on February 4, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Muslim chaplain arrested for trying to smuggle contraband into New York City jail.

    Authorities say a New York jails chaplain has been charged with trying to smuggle three razor blades and a pair of scissors into a facility.

    The Department of Investigation says 58-year-old Imam Zul-Qarnain Shahid was arrested at the Manhattan Detention Complex on Wednesday.

    The department says Shahid was arrested on several charges, including four counts of promoting prison contraband in the first degree, a felony.

    In the more inflammatory NY Post story, they were described as “box cutter blades” – anything to get the 9/11 reference in there. The Post article also said Shahid had served 14 years for murder himself, which means that as an ex-felon the prosecutor is more likely to go for the maximum 7 year sentence.

     

  • johnpi 1:47 pm on February 3, 2010 | 6 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , ,

    More info on that blast in Pakistan this morning that killed 3 US soldiers outside a girls school that was celebrating opening day.

    Two US army trainers were also amongst the 131 wounded, most of who were school children. Two journalists accompanying the convoy were also wounded.
    ….

    Condemning what it called vicious terrorist bombing, a US Embassy statement said the Americans were US military personnel in Pakistan to conduct training at the invitation of the Pakistan Frontier Corps.

    They were in Lower Dir to attend the inauguration ceremony of a school for girls that had recently been renovated with US humanitarian assistance, the statement said.

    Amongst those killed were four school girls and a paramilitary soldier. “Our teacher was teaching us Islamic education when the explosion caused the roof of our class to cave in”, Samina, a 5th grade student of the school said.

    The official said that the American soldiers were trainers training the Dir Scouts of the Frontier Corps in Dir.

    “They usually wore Pakistani dress, shalwar qameez, and Chitrali caps to conceal their identity”, the official said.

    The Americans were traveling in an armoured vehicle with electronic jammers.

     

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