Latest Updates: persecution RSS

  • johnpi 12:36 am on January 27, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Harrath, , Mohamed Ali Harrath, persecution, , ,

    Chief of UK’s Islam Channel arrested in South Africa, faces deportation to Tunisia.

    Mohamed Ali Harrath, 46, is the force behind the Islam Channel, which is watched by 59 per cent of British Muslims and beamed by satellite to 132 countries.
    ….

    The Islam Channel last night accused Tunisia of using Interpol to harass and intimidate Harrath.

    Before fleeing his homeland, he co-founded the Tunisian Islamic Front, which Tunis accused of seeking to establish a Muslim state by armed revolutionary violence. Harrath insists that the organisation was a non-violent political party set up to oppose what he regarded as Tunisia’s one-party rule.

    At Tunisia’s request, he has been on an Interpol Red Notice, its highest form of alert, since 1992 but was allowed into Britain in 1995 and accepted as a refugee.

    Harrath has been convicted in absentia of numerous criminal and terrorism-related offences by Tunisian courts and sentenced to 56 years in prison.

     

  • johnpi 10:01 am on January 14, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , persecution,

    US, Norway protest over Azeri crackdown on Muslims.

    The United States and Norway called on authorities in Azerbaijan on Thursday to investigate what rights groups say was a police crackdown on Muslim worshippers in a remote region bordering Iran.

    In a joint statement, the U.S. and Norwegian embassies in Baku said their diplomats had been prevented from entering the village of Bananiyar in the Nakhchivan autonomous republic on Wednesday by a group of people who verbally threatened them.

    Rights groups accuse police in Nakhchivan, geographically separate from the rest of Azerbaijan and bordering Iran, of beating and arresting dozens of worshippers in the village after they observed the Shi’ite mourning day of Ashura on December 27.

    Oil-producing Azerbaijan, a tightly-controlled former Soviet republic, is mainly Shi’ite Muslim but the government is strongly secular, the article says.

     

  • johnpi 8:15 am on January 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , persecution,

    Number of churches firebombed rises to six plus one convent school in Malaysia. AP reports ‘Christians defy church attacks.’

    Thousands of Malaysian Christians came out for weekly services Sunday despite three new attacks in a campaign of fire-bombings that has sent tensions soaring in the Muslim-majority nation.

     

  • johnpi 12:22 pm on December 27, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Divine intent, , , , Mandeans, , , , persecution, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Bloodshed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir as a suicide bomber attacks Shiites. Five people dead, 81 wounded, 10 of them seriously.

    Earlier I blogged about the issue of minority victimization in Pakistan which seems to be finding its source and inspiration in strident Sunni Islam. The Spittoon has a blog post about minority victimization in the Middle East. It raises a fair question: What will be consequence to Islamic civilization if large segments of the Muslim population lose the experience of living respectfully with diversity?

    The Spittoon blogger accurately describes the situation now:

    Together with the Jews, Zoroastrians, Mandeans, Bahai, Yazidis, and other, smaller groups have all left the region that gave birth to all the monotheistic faiths. Those that remain have often been reduced to what one Christian commentator has called an underground, “catacomb” faith, recalling the persecuted faith of the Early Church.

    Anecdotally, I live near a large city in America that has a huge refugee population of Mandeans. According to Wikipedia, before the US overthrew the secular Saddam government, there were about 60,000 Mandeans in that country. Today, there are 5,000.

    The Quran speaks to diversity as well:

    …the Quran says: “O humankind, God has created you from male and female and made you into diverse nations and tribes so that you may come to know each other. Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most righteous.” Elsewhere, the Qur’an reaffirms that diversity is part of the Divine intent and purpose in creation, and so it states: “If thy Lord had willed, he would have made humankind into a single nation, but they will not cease to be diverse…And, for this God created them [humankind].

    In answer to the question I posed, the consequence will be, I think, a devolution – not an evolution – of Islamic civilization as Muslim communities thwart Divine intent and are acculturated to arrogance and disrespect.

     

  • johnpi 9:12 am on December 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , persecution, ,

    The US Senate holds an intelligence hearing on the Central Asian Republics.

    Stephen J. Blank of the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute told the subcommittee that the nations along the route “are authoritarian states in which we see manifestations of despotism, clan/familial rule, nepotism, [and] suffocation of autonomous space for political action.” The countries’ leaders also think their political opposition is “inherently extremist, terrorist and fundamentalist, which leads to the self-fulfilling prophecy” that their opponents tend “to crystallize around an Islamic radical vocabulary,” Blank said.

     

  • johnpi 11:40 pm on December 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , persecution, , , , , , ,

    A US appeals court has ruled that Muslims and Arab non-citizens have no right “to be free of selective enforcement of the immigration laws based on national origin, race, or religion….”

    The plaintiffs initiated the lawsuit in 2002 on behalf of Arab and Muslim aliens who were held on immigration violations following the Sept. 11 terror attacks and subjected to abuse, mistreatment and lengthy detentions.

    The abuse included beatings, strip searches and sleep deprivation. The allegations have been substantiated by two reports by the Office of the Inspector General.

    Five of the men settled with the government in November. A sixth plaintiff withdrew his claims several years ago.

    Rachel Meeropol of the Center for Constitutional Rights served as lead counsel for the plaintiffs. She called Friday’s ruling a “mixed bag.”

    “By dismissing [the equal protection] claim, the circuit has endorsed using religion and ethnicity as a proxy for suspicion of terrorist activity. That’s the part of the decision we’re disappointed in,” Meeropol said.

    Case ruling here.

    (via)

     

  • johnpi 3:52 pm on December 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , persecution,

    Americans of Pakistani descent in Pakistan: Villianous agents and saboteurs working for the American government.

    Pakistan’s answer to Sarah Palin, a legislator with the right-wing PML-Q party named Marvi Memon, is sweeping up all US nationals into her accusation that ‘America is exporting terror to Pakistan.’ She makes the wild conspiracy theory claim that US nationals “caught planning terror attacks along with al-Qaeda” are somehow agents of the US government.

    Memon made the accusation on Monday and then demanded that the list of all 9,236 visas given to Americans in the last four months be handed up to the parliament for review. She also wants details for herself and her fellow pols “of where each US citizen was ’stationed’ and for what purpose.” It’s likely that the majority of those on that list will be Pakistani Americans who visited family or who have other established ties to the country.

    There can be little doubt that such a list will be used for Joe McCarthy-style demagoguery (“I have a list!“) as Memon and her like-minded politicians deputize themselves to police US nationals.

    So now in addition to concerns about facing unjust prejudice in America over their Pakistani background, Pakistani-Americans may now be put upon in Pakistan for their US background.

     

  • johnpi 11:11 am on December 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , bangladesh war of liberation, , persecution,

    Should members of the pro-Pakistan Al Badr death squads be brought to justice?

    The Al Badrs were groups of anti-independence Bengalis that operated during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of liberation from Pakistan.

    During the Liberation, the professor’s brother had been working as an artist, a trade which the Al-Badrs considered to be anti-Islam and hence anti-Pakistan. In the dying stages of the war, just days before liberation, the professor’s brother found himself at the mercy of the ‘killing squad.’ Many others around the country – including intellectuals, Hindus, artists – considered to be progressive and pro-liberation had already been hunted down and executed by these pro-Pakistan squads. However, after independence, only a handful of these killers were caught and most escaped, never to face trial.

    No, they shouldn’t is the conclusion of the author of this editorial. If enough time passes, it will be forgotten.

     

  • johnpi 5:29 pm on October 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , persecution,

    The first four tips from a list of 10 for crossing the Israeli border by American writer Pamela Olson.

    1. Be white. In America we at least attempt to be discreet when it comes to racial profiling. In Israel, it is overt and unapologetic. If at all possible, be or at least look Caucasian.

    2. Don’t have anything Araby-sounding in your name or your family. You may look white as a lily, but if your last name is Rashid, be prepared for a long wait (hopefully not more than an hour, especially if you have an American accent and don’t claim to be visiting the West Bank or Gaza). Even I often get asked, “What is your father’s name?” “Robert,” I answer. “What is your grandfather’s name?” “Melvin.” So far they haven’t asked me for my great-grandfather’s name, but if they ever do, I will reply, “Ibrahim Yusif Mohammad Abdul Aziz bin Laden… D’oh!”

    3. Have a clean passport. Any evidence in your passport of travel to Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran… you get the idea. If you’ve been to a country that’s not friendly to Israel, they will not be friendly to you. They’ll probably let you through, but rarely in under an hour or four.

    4. Dress nicely. Even if you’re white, have nothing Arab-ish in your name, and haven’t visited any Axis of Evil countries, if you look like a raggedy activist, you may get pulled aside.

    I would be curious to know what happens the next time Olson tries to cross the Israeli border and they Google her name…

     

  • johnpi 11:36 am on September 9, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , persecution,

    Christians attacked by armed Muslim gang in Bangladesh.

    Armed Muslim gangs in Solepur, located close to Dhaka, have been targeting Christians for several weeks, forcing many members of the community to flee the area.

    Forced land sales and motorcycle thefts are rampant in the area and despite the incidents being reported, the police has done little to prevent the targeting of the minority community.

     

  • johnpi 9:22 pm on August 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , persecution

    Victory for Kindhearts:

    A federal judge in Toledo, Ohio, has ruled that the federal government violated the rights of a Muslim charity when it froze its funds in 2006 and stopped it from defending itself against charges it had links to terrorism, according to the Toledo Blade.

    Judge James Carr ruled August 18 for KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development, in Toledo, stating that the charity was denied due process and subject to unlawful seizure of its assets. The ruling did not, however, directly respond to the issue of whether the government’s probes of organizations with potential terrorism ties was constitutional.

    In this case, the government seized a number of records from the nonprofit’s headquarters under the USA Patriot Act and sought to label Kindhearts a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” The government then refused to allow access to the seized documents, making it impossible for the organization to defend itself by using the same records to show where its money was actually spent.

    Kindhearts described as follows:

    “KindHearts, founded after several other Muslim charities were shut down in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did everything it could to ensure that it complied with Treasury Department guidelines, and conducted its operations in a transparent manner,” the lawsuit said in an introduction.

    “It provided humanitarian relief to refugees, displaced persons, and victims of poverty, war, and natural disasters around the world, but especially in Palestine and Lebanon. It did not support terrorism or terrorist organizations in any way,” the complaint said. “Yet for more than two and a half years, its assets have been frozen, unavailable to it, or to the victims for whose aid it was provided.”

     

  • johnpi 11:38 am on August 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , persecution,

    Muslim ex-inmate settles prison treatment lawsuit.

    A former inmate who accused federal prison workers in Illinois of defiling his Quran and torturing him with a nightstick when he complained has settled his civil rights lawsuit for $48,000, one of his attorneys said Thursday.
    ….

    Shaheed, 50, was a practicing Muslim imprisoned at the federal lockup in Marion from April 1996 to early October 2005, according to the 2007 lawsuit. Specifics about his convictions were not immediately available.

    After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Muslim prisoners “suffered much mistreatment by guards and employees at the prison,” the lawsuit claimed without detailing those other abuses.

     

  • johnpi 4:43 am on July 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , persecution,

    Refuting the argument that the US must imprison people who are ‘terrorists’ but cannot be charged with a crime:

    Glenn Greenwald:

    …as a result of breathtakingly broad criminal laws in the U.S. defining “material support for terrorism,” there are few things easier than obtaining a criminal conviction in federal court against people accused of being Terrorists. Even if the only thing someone has done is joined a group decreed to be a Terrorist organization, without even engaging in (or even planning) any violent acts, federal prosecutors are well-armed to convict them. In May, the DOJ obtained a conviction in a federal court of a Somalian-Canadian on “material support” charges for doing little more than expressing loyalty to Al Qaeda. Two other Americans of Somalian descent were just indicted on the same charge as a result of their alleged membership in a “militant Islamic group,” Shabaab. The FBI website even boasts:

    Since the 1990s, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) has investigated and successfully prosecuted a wide range of international and domestic terrorism cases—including the bombings of the World Trade Center and U.S. Embassies in East Africa in the 1990s. More recent cases include those against individuals who provided material support to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as against international arms trafficker Monzer al Kassar and the Somalian pirate charged in the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama.

    To convict accused Terrorists in court, they need not engage in any violent acts; any involvement with Al Qaeda or other Terrorist groups will suffice.

     

  • johnpi 9:45 pm on May 3, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , persecution, ,

    It’s pronounced Rohingya, not Macaca…

    After calling attention here at Talk Islam in January to this gentleman’s online racist rants against the Rohingya, he removed said rants from his blog. However his comments live on in infamy here at TI, should he decide to go into politics or something…

     

  • johnpi 8:21 pm on May 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , persecution, ,

    Malaysian Muslims selling other freeborn Muslims into slavery over the border in Thailand.

    Malaysia is a “tier 3″ human trafficking country, one of the worst, according to this report, and Malaysian government officials are heavily implicated.

    “illegal Myanmar migrants deported from Malaysia were often turned over to human traffickers and forced to work in brothels, fishing boats and restaurants in Thailand if they had no money to purchase their freedom.”

    Since we know that many of these illegals are Rohingya, and we’ve already heard “brother Muslims” leveling racist verbal assaults online against them, it leaves little doubt in my mind that at least some of these victims are Rohingya Muslims.

    Marranci did a good job of calling out bs double standards in the Muslim community here:

    The majority of Muslims, even those so ready to violently scream and shamefully misbehave in the name of a free Palestine, will not whisper even a single word to help these ‘brothers’. How many Muslims have heard an imam mention the name Rohingya during his supplication (Du’a) for Afghanis, Palestinians, Iraqis and even perhaps the Chechen muhajedeen?

    Also, I’m tagging this “hegemony of human rights discourse” since the only groups that are advocating on behalf of the Rohingya are operating out of the human rights framework.

     

  • thabet 7:51 am on March 31, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , persecution, roma, , ,

    I suppose this is what Silvio Berlusconi meant by ’superior civilisation’:

    The huge rambling gypsy encampment outside Rome’s ring road known as Casilino 900 has shocked international visitors because of its bad conditions. But the brand new camp of Castel di Decima, another Roma settlement, with its rows of prefabricated huts miles from anywhere, is, if possible, even bleaker. In spite of the TV aerials and the children playing, it looks like a place of detention. All the more so now that it has been fenced off and uniformed police officers guard the gates.

     

  • johnpi 8:58 am on January 29, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: how Muslims treat the poor, persecution,

    The Muslim Rohingya people of Myamar/Burma have been much in the news lately with stories coming out of Thailand that hundreds are feared dead or lost at sea due to actions take by the Thai military.

    The Rohingya are believed to descend from seventh century Arab settlers whose state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. The group has inhabited what is now western Myanmar for centuries.

    So I was taking my usual umbrage at the persecution of Muslim minorities by non-Muslims, then I came across this charming blog entry from 2007 by a Malaysian Muslim academic, the “protem President of the Muslim Bloggers Alliance:”

    We don’t need these parasites. Send them home or drop them off at the borders. Enough is enough. We have been lenient with them far too long! No other Asian country lets them in knowing their problematic tendencies. Why should Malaysia be the dumping ground of Asia?

    Pack them off to Myanmar or ask the United Nations to send them off to those countries who always make a fuss of human rights these and that! We sure do not need these kind. No more!

    In the comments somebody challenges him for writing this and then talking about “Muslim brotherhood.” He responds:

    Do not live with a blinkered view that when I defend Islam and Muslims, I do so without taking into consideration what type of ‘Muslims’ are worth defending.

    Muslims who are superficial ‘Muslims’ aren’t included in my defend list.

    As best I can gather, what makes them superficial Muslims is that they beg in front of the mosque and create an “eyesore.” I guess we Muslims have our own “Gospel of Wealth” that blames the less fortunate for their misery and indicts poor Muslims for their poverty.

     

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