The Glazov Gang – The Real Meaning of "Allahu Akbar"

Daniel Greenfield (Shillman Fellow, Freedom Center)

HT: Robert Spencer @ Jihad Watch »

Stone Mason Sparks Cathedral Row with 'Muslim' Gargoyle
THE TELEGRAPH: A Lyons stone mason has provoked a row after creating a gargoyle for the city's cathedral in the image of his Muslim foreman with a sign saying "Allahu Akbar" (God is great[er]) in both Arabic and French.

A new gargoyle on Lyon cathedral, which looks like Benzizine Ahmed (R), the Muslim foreman who led the restoration of the tower and worked on the cathedral for 30 years. Photo: The Telegraph
The 12th century Saint-Jean cathedral of Lyons, southeastern France, has hundreds of gargoyles around its roof whose traditional role has been to ward off evil spirits.

Since August, this seat of the Archbishop of Lyons has a new addition – a face remarkably similar to Ahmed Benzizine, a Muslim foreman who has been restoring churches and cathedrals in France for the past 37 years.

Emmanuel Fourchet, a local stone mason decided to immortalise his friend according to an age-old tradition of carving gargoyles resembling associates that stretches right back to the cathedral's construction.

"It could have been the face of a Portuguese man or anyone else but it happens to be an Algerian Muslim Arab – my friend Ahmed," he said.

However, while some have praised the initiative as a unifying "ecumenical gesture", the move has sparked cries of blasphemy among the more conservative elements of the churchgoing community who have sent angry letters of complaint. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Monday, September 06, 2010

Fort Hood Shooting: 13 Killed and 30 Injured at US Army Base
THE TELEGRAPH: A US army officer called Major Malik Nidal Hasan has been named as the man responsible for killing 13 people and injuring 30 more in a mass shooting at a Texas military base.


Major Hasan, a military psychiatrist who had allegedly called for Muslims to attack Americans over the Iraq war, is critically ill and under guard in hospital.

The authorities initially believed he had been killed in the ensuing gun battle with police but it later emerged he was still alive despite being shot four times in the incident at Fort Hood base, the largest American military installation in the world.

The serviceman was about to be posted to either Iraq or Afghanistan and argued regularly against the wars, it has been claimed.
Hasan, armed with two handguns, walked into a training centre and opened fire on fellow soldiers who were having last-minute medical check-ups before being deployed to Afghanistan. Thirteen were killed and 30 injured.

However, there were suggestions that some of the dead might have been shot by the authorities in their attempt to stop the gunman.

Hasan is now under guard in hospital where he is unconscious and on a ventilator. >>> Nick Allen in Los Angeles and Andy Bloxham | Friday, November 06, 2009


Profile: Major Nidal Malik Hasan Was Trained to Treat Post-traumatic Stress
TIMES ONLINE: The man who turned guns on his fellow soldiers is an army psychiatrist trained to help his comrades come to terms with precisely the same scenes of terror that he himself brought to Fort Hood yesterday.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, is a mental health professional assigned to a base that is home to the US Army's "warrior reset programme", set up to help soldiers returning from war zones cope with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

He attracted the attention of police six months ago for internet postings analysing the motives of suicide bombers but was not formally investigated. Major Hasan had also complained to relatives of harassment by fellow-officers mocking him for "being Middle Eastern", according to a cousin who came forward last night.

Born and educated in Virginia, Major Hasan is a US citizen whose parents came from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem. >>> Giles Whittell | Friday, November 06, 2009

THE TELEGRAPH: Fort Hood shooting: gunman shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before opening fire: Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage that killed 13 people at Fort Hood military base in Texas have reported that gunman Major Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" - God is great - before opening fire. >>> | Friday, November 06, 2009

'Wailing of Wolves' in Iran as Cries of Allahu Akbar Ring from Roofs
TIMES ONLINE: At about 9pm each day Nushin, a young housewife, performs the same curious ritual. She climbs up the stairs to the roof of her Tehran home and begins shouting into the night. Allahu akbar,” she cries, and sometimes “Death to the dictator”.

She is not alone. Across the darkened city, from rooftops and through open windows, thousands of others do the same to form one great chorus of protest — a collective wail of anger against a reviled regime that no amount of riot police and Basiji militia can stop. “It sounds like the wailing of wolves,” said one Tehrani.

And each night, as the street demonstrations are crushed with overwhelming force and the regime cracks down on all other forms of dissent, it grows steadily louder and more insistent, not just in Tehran but in other densely populated cities of the Islamic Republic.

“It’s the way we reassure ourselves that we are still here and we are still together,” says Nushin, a woman who has never dared to rebel before.

“This is what people did before the revolution and I hope it warns the regime about what could happen if it doesn’t change its way.

“And because I’m a religious person the sound resonating in the neighbourhood makes me feel better. Even my little daughter joins me, and I can see how she feels that she is part of something bigger. It is our unique way of civil disobedience and what’s interesting is that it increases every time they do something that makes people angrier.” >>> Martin Fletcher | Thursday, June 25, 2009