‘Waging war against God’:
In another indication of the regime’s determination to punish those who took part in protests after last year’s disputed presidential election, Shiva Nazar Ahari was convicted of the crime known as “moharebeh” – usually punishable by death.
The 26-year-old, who founded the Committee of Human Rights Reporters in Tehran, was also convicted of plotting to commit crimes and agitating against the ruling system, Iran’s semi-official ILNA news agency reported.
The New Iraq… a lot like the Old Iraq:
Nine months later, Ramze is still languishing in legal limbo in a Baghdad prison. His story lays bare the horrific abuses and lack of legal process that characterise post-Saddam Iraq’s detention system, which human rights groups say has scarcely improved since the darkest days of the dictator’s rule.
Up until his arrest, Ramze had been living with Rabiha in the UK, leading a quiet life of trips to the park, the local mosque and making ends meet on modest benefits provided by the British government.
But even in London, events in Iraq caught up with the couple. In September 2009, Ramze heard that his son, Omar, had been arrested by government security forces and several weeks later he travelled to Iraq to try to help. Within a month, he too had been arrested.
Does William Hauge think this is ‘medieval’?
Write to Hague and let him know your views, courtesy of Amnesty International.
Abu Hamza is one of several men whose extradition to the US has been temporarily blocked by the European Court of Human Rights, because they are not satisfied he will be treated humanely:
The court in Strasbourg has already been considering the cases of the four men for three years, and has asked for more submissions to be made before it reaches a final ruling.
The far-right jackboots are, unsurprisingly, unhappy. It’s PC gaawn maaaaad!! some squeal. One actually complains “I am a white English heterosexual male, what rights do I have, zero zilch nada!”.
The point these so-called Defenders Of Western Civilisation fail to grasp is highlighted very clearly in a judgement by David Hope:
One of the men who has won this temporary reprieve is Babar Ahmad:
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.
Report: New York ex-cons who traveled to Yemen pose ‘significant threat.’
As many as three dozen criminals who converted to Islam in American prisons have moved to Yemen where they could pose a “significant threat” to attack the U.S., according to a report on al Qaeda from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be released Wednesday.
“The group seeks to recruit American citizens to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States,” said Sen. John Kerry, D.-Mass., the committee chairman.
The Senate report said that while the ex-convicts “ostensibly” moved to Yemen to study Arabic, U.S. diplomats and law enforcement officials in Yemen “feared that these Americans were radicalized in prison and traveled to Yemen for training.”
And some blonds have finally converted to Islam, so sit up and take notice:
Also of concern to U.S. officials, the Senate staff found, is a group of “nearly 10 non-Yemeni Americans who traveled to Yemen, converted to Islam, became fundamentalists and married Yemeni women so they could remain in the country.”
An American official described them as “blond-haired, blue eyed-types” who fit the profile of Americans who al Qaeda has sought to recruit for terror missions.
It is impossible to know for sure without knowing who the individuals are,but the story reads as if it is purely speculative fantasy. There are some people who used to be in prison who are in Yemen and some people who are “blond haired blue eyed types” (I guess this is code for white) and we all know Yemen has Al-Qaeda and prisons are places for radical recruitment that give too much religious freedom to those inmates (says a former prison official who’s selling a book). None of the speculations and general fear mongering seem to actually relate specifically to each other.
Not just white people, but REAL white people! Aryans! Islam is spreading to the Aryans, hold on to your socks!
Islamonazism!
Jamaican Muslim leaders agree to reinforce a ban on radical preacher Abdullah al Faisal if he ever makes it back to Jamaica.
Further, the imams want to work with the Jamaican government to focus on Jamaican citizens who have been deported from other countries after converting to Islam in foreign prisons.
“There are going to be some changes there,” said Muhammad, who noted that there are a number of deportees coming back from prisons in America and England who have Islamic materials they have received while in the prisons in these countries.
“We will try to see how best we can get these persons back in the community from a positive point of view and ensure that if they still maintain their Islamic identity, it is in fact in a positive way instead of a negative way,” said Muhammad.
Also, according to the Jamaican newspaper I’ve linked here, al Faisal was successfully deported from Kenya to Gambia. It’s like a game of “Where’s Waldo” trying to figure out where assorted governments have stashed him.
Muslim prisoners in the UK ‘refuse to take part in rehabilitation programmes.’
Previously, Muslim prisoners refused to take part in Sex Offender Treatment Programmes because it involved talking about offences against women, but now some are refusing to take part in all rehabilitation sessions where they have to ‘open up’ in front of other cons.
A little more explanation:
One Muslim prisoner, Abu Dira, a maximum security prisoner at HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire, said this week: “Muslims cannot speak about their past crimes in a group setting.
“It is an established concept within the Sharia that a Muslim must not speak about the Haraam – prohibited things – and certainly should not advertise past mistakes to their peers.”
He says that it is clear from the words of Islamic prophet Muhammad, called a Hadith, that it was wrong to talk about past crimes.
He said: “This is clearly supported by Hadith – If you keep your evil away from the people, Allah will record this as a charitable act from yourself for yourself, so corruption is not to be spread amongst Muslims.”
A religious ward against treatment of psych disorders and violent social dysfunction. Total disaster. Nihilism. This isn’t about Western information vs. Islamic information; these guys need to learn skills and practice using them to make it less likely that they do the crimes again.
I obviously don’t know anything about these gentlemen and even if I did I wouldn’t presume to judge their sincerity. However, they are certainly correct that Islam in general discourages publicizing or confession of one’s sins. Of course it can be done if it serves a purpose, such as treatement or rehabilitation. So the question becomes whether an accomodation can be made to limit the number of people to whom the act is confessed or just in some other way deal with legitimate concerns without making excuses for people not to seek to get better. If indeed this is the best way to help these men to heal and get better than (understanding obviously that such groups should be confidential) it seems an exception could be made.
I agree that if understood correctly religious strictures do not prevent people from receiving necessary treatment. However, I am not sure one should just assume that such treatment is universal. In fact, I am quite sure that if people for whom religion is a support (again this whole discussion on my part assumes the sincerity of the inmates, not sure what else we can do) treatment will be more effective if any possible accomodations are made so that they do not feel tension between their religion and their treatment but instead are made to see that their religion and their treatment program work together to address their illnesses.
I posted a longer comment but it got lost…I don’t have time to reytpe it now but I’d be happy to discuss this issue with you further John if my comment above is not clear or you think it is problematic.
Abu Noor, thank you for the thoughtful reply.
The religious concern is about spreading corruption, and a distinction should be made between a man bragging on his sexual exploits, and a contrite man speaking with (one would hope) contempt and revulsion at his own sins and crimes, motivated by resolve to not commit them again.
I would criticize the response of the prisoners here as puritanical to the point of dysfunction, whatever their sincerity, but I was also thinking today about Aziz’s and your affirmation that orthodoxy is the surest way to salvation, and that crossed over into my thinking about your comment here.
The Quran enjoins us to seek the greater good, which is not always the same thing as orthodox practice. It seems that a tact to reach salvation more in line with what is required of us would be to keep one eye on what can clearly be discerned as the greater good, and one also on the tradition, and work to resolve the two.
I’d appreciate hearing from a Muslim psychologist or psychiatrist on this topic, because I would think this issue would come up in their own practice.
I’m not sure if I actually disagree with you here John or we would just choose to use different language. It is not about choosing “the greater good” over orthodoxy, orthodoxy includes notions of the greater good in it…of course some individuals may have impoverished or incorrect notions of orthodoxy but that’s true about everything.
I would caution both you and the inmates (not that either of you have necessarily fallen into this trap) of looking for or assuming a conflict and figuring out what should prevail over what. It may seem obvious to you that standard best practices in the field of psychology should prevail over notions of religious fiqh or manners. It may seem obvious to the inmates that the opposite is true. I would urge everyone to seek to find if there is really a conflict and to look for accomodations which make sense to both mental health or social work professionals and religious scholars.
I see a grave danger in the tendency to be overzealous and overly dogmatic in a way that frankly displays lack of appreciation of the complexity of the Islamic tradition and could be very well be a self destructive impulse but one which tries to provide a rationalization in opposition to “the system” for one’s own failures, but I also see a grave danger which I am not attributing to you John, but which I feel is along a continuum from the attitude you’re basically expressing here and which one finds prominent among some moderate Islamic voices and a lot of Islamophobic voices (for different reasons I would hope) And that is one which takes some kind of pleasure in coercing people to conform to society’s expectations despite the fact that they feel it is contrary to their religious beliefs. Forcing someone to act against their religious beliefs is extremely destructive to the human personality and something I hope no person with a decent sense of humanism or religious belief would take lightly. Even if it is done with some notion that the person’s religious beliefs are misguided and somehow one is doing it for their own good, it is a dangerous road to go down.
Note clearly I am deliberately and explicitly refraining from saying what value should take priority over the other, I refuse to put it as a binary like that…instead approach the situation assuming there shouldn’t be a conflict as I outlined above and most times there won’t be one.
Allah Knows Best.
Unfortunately as someone who works in the foster care system one thing I will note that is obvious upon reflection but one can lose sight of when one philosophizes is that practically when one is dealing with these issues almost always one is dealing with people in dire circumstances with profound “issues” of their own completely separate from these issues. Therefore if a person has a mental illness or has committed a crime or is just in some lesser way socially dysfunctional, it is hard (heck its impossible) to completely separate that out from how they see their religious beliefs and how others will view their attempt to express their religious beliefs.
I refuse to put it as a binary like that…instead approach the situation assuming there shouldn’t be a conflict as I outlined above and most times there won’t be one.
Not to devalue anything else, but this is the best of what you said.
I guess you could say I feel a sense of urgency about addressing the criminality and violence of the men so afflicted, and I’ve had other experiences with mental illness in a Muslim family member that cause this story to resonate for me.
in third world countries, mental health is never a priority..;’
mental health is more important than body health yet most people just ignores it.~.’
3,000 Rohingya families await deportation after release from prison:
Thousands of Burmese Muslims from Arakan – often called Rohingyas – were offered a safe haven in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal, but with the change in monarch the rules changed too. What was to have been a permanent abode of peace for these uprooted people has now turned into a chamber of horrors.
There are about 3,000 families of Burmese Muslims in Mecca and Jeddah prisons awaiting deportation. Women and children are held in separate prisons nearby. The only contact the men have with their wives and children is through mobile phones.
Al Qaeda: crickets
The Black Hole of CMU: Muslims isolated in special US prisons.
A look inside the special “Communication Management Unit” in Terre Haute, Indiana, where most of the high-profile ‘political’ Muslim prisoners are held, including Enaam Arnaout, founder of Islamic charity Benevolence International Foundation, Dr. Rafil Dhafir, physician and founder of Iraqi charity Help the Needy, Ghassan Elashi, founder of Holy Land Foundation and CAIR’s Dallas office, Randall Royer, Muslim civil rights activist, Yassin Aref, imam and Kurdish refugee, Sabri Benkahla, an American who was abducted the day before his wedding while studying in Saudi Arabia, and John Walker Lindh.
Andy Stepanian, an animal rights activist who is the first to be released from a CMU, called it “a prison within the actual prison.” He said that the prisoners “are not there because they harmed anyone. They’re not there because they approach anything that most reasonable people would consider even close to being terrorism.”
He further stated, “From what I observed, about 70 percent of the men that were there were Muslim and had questionable cases that were labeled as either extremist or terrorist cases. But when I grew to meet them, I realized that the cases were, in fact, very different… what it appears to be is that they don’t want people that are either considered to be fundamentalist in Islam or more devout than your average American in Islam to be circulating amidst the regular prison populace in the Bureau of Prisons. Whatever their objective in doing so, I mean, that would have to come from the Bureau of Prisons. But one can surmise it’s because they don’t want the spread of Islam in the prisons or that they’re trying to silence communications from these individuals, because perhaps their cases are in question themselves, and they don’t want to allow them access to the media.”
Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in Britain’s prisons:
A breakdown of the numbers. Interesting that a large number of people identify themselves as ‘no religion’ as opposed to ‘atheist’.
No religion 26,626
Church of England 23,039
Roman Catholic 14,296
Muslim 9,795
Buddhist 1,737
Sikh 648
Atheist 570
Agnostic 514
Hindu 434
Pagan 366
Rastafarian 340
Jehovah’s Witness 230
Jewish 220
Scientology 3
Source: Ministry of Justice
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee, 
MikeLyons are discussing. 
thabet, 
johnpi, and 1 other are discussing. 
MikeLyons 1:06 pm on September 22, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Never trust (or believe in) a “God” who needs us mere mortals to defend him or her.
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee 1:32 pm on September 22, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Of course the classical Islamic juristic concept of hiraba has been identified as the one closest to modern day laws against domestic terrorism. Dr. Sherman Jackson, in an influential 2001 piece, makes this argument and also points out the differences between the concepts.
I am no fan of nor apologist for the Iranian regime and assume they are using a noble concept here to engage in something evil, which they do often and which makes me dislike them even more than similarly evil regimes which do not falsely claim to be acting in the interests of righteousness.
As to your statement though, MikeLyons, it’s sounds good but perhaps doesn’t hold up to examination. Of course, no human can harm God in the least. So any notion that God needs to be defended is indeed false. But would you say, don’t believe in a God that needs you to take care of orphans for him or her, or feed the hungry for him or her, or speak out against oppression for him or her…we do these things for the sake of God not because God “needs us” to do them for God, but because we are in need of God and God is pleased with such actions. You see what I mean?
MikeLyons 1:42 pm on September 22, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
No, I was speaking strictly of God or Gods who need us to defend him or her. If those same God or Gods need us to follow a set of rules not regarding their defense then that is just religion.
Abu Noor 8:19 pm on September 22, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
If that’s what you mean then I agree with you 100 percent and it is indeed a very “islamic” argument. (I don’t mean that it exclusively belongs to Muslims or points to Islam but just that it is an argument frequently used in teaching stories by Muslims against worship of anyone or anything other than God.)
But if that’s the argument it doesn’t necessarily mean blasphemy laws are wrong, for example, which is what I think a lot of moderns would like to use statements similar to yours to prove.
Lawrence of Arabia 10:44 pm on September 22, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Always choose the blasphemer over the supporter of anti-blasphemy laws; the former might be wrong, but the latter is certainly a tyrant.
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee 12:47 pm on September 23, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
LoA : I think you are probably right in your assessment for almost all cases. However, I just do not think it can possibly be that easy for a serious Muslim. There are incidents from the life of the Prophet (saw) that can possibly be interpreted as ones where he (saw) punished blasphemy and did so quite harshly. (Not only would that mean that perhaps the Prophet (saw)’s guidance includes having societal sanctions for certain kinds of blasphemy but it would mean that there is a danger of someone using your statement to say that the Prophet (saw) was “certainly a tyrant.” Now, I have not made an indepth study of this issue, but from some level of examination I think that it is possible to draw other conclusions about those incidents or to in other ways make serious Islamic arguments against blasphemy laws. But I don’t think simply dismissing the concept out of hand is one which is intellectually honest from the perspective of orthodox Muslim understanding. This discussion is of course overlapping in many ways with the whole apostasy laws controversy.
Allaah knows best.