Showing posts with label Islamic radicals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islamic radicals. Show all posts
Thursday, May 03, 2012
FOX NEWS: BAMAKO, Mali – In one town in northern Mali a man has been whipped for drinking alcohol. In another, pictures of unveiled women have been torn down. In a third, traditional music is no longer heard in the streets.
While government soldiers were fighting each other this week for control of the capital in Mali's southwest corner, Islamist fighters were asserting control over the Texas-sized northern half of the country. The Islamists, some of whom are foreigners, are imposing strict religious law, setting up a possible showdown with Tuareg nationalist rebels who say they want a secular state and who seized northern Mali in March alongside the Islamists.
In the fabled city of Timbuktu, whose winding alleyways lined with mud homes fill with sand blown in from the Sahara, pictures of unveiled women have either been torn down or covered over with black paint, according to El Hadj Baba Haidara, a member of the Malian parliament for the city. The Islamists have also cut the signal for national TV broadcasts to the city because they consider the women not properly covered and don't approve of the music the station plays, Haidara said.
"No one came come here and tell us how to practice Islam," Haidara said. "Timbuktu has been Islamic since the 12th century and we have our own way of doing things."
Down the road from one of Timbuktu's mosques, whose wooden doors are decorated with metal crescents and stars, Islamists have made their base at a bank. A sign at the entrance says "Islamic Police" in Arabic and French. Residents have been given a phone number to report serious crimes and other emergencies, but widescale patrols haven't been deployed to enforce Shariah, at least not yet. But punishments are being meted out.
On Monday in Gao, one of the three biggest cities in north Mali, two men caught smoking hashish were given 30 lashes in front of the police station, according to Hama Dada Toure, a teacher in Gao. One man who had allegedly beaten his pregnant wife was given 10 lashes and ordered to pay her.
Toure said a flexible tree branch is used in the whippings, the blows delivered with less than full force. The Islamists make the person being punished say "Allahu Akbar. La illah illa-Allah" — meaning "God is great. There is no God but God" — each time the branch strikes them. » | Associated Press | Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Another sharia story »
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The BBC has told its journalists not to call Abu Qatada, the al-Qaeda preacher, an “extremist”.
Journalists were also cautioned against using images suggesting the preacher is overweight.
A judge ruled this week that the Muslim preacher, once described as “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe”, should be released from a British jail, angering ministers and MPs.
Adding to the row, Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, yesterday insisted that Qatada “has not committed any crime” and said his release has nothing to do with the European Court of Human Rights.
A British court has called Qatada a “truly dangerous individual” and even his defence team has suggested he poses a “grave risk” to national security.
Despite that background, BBC journalists were told they should not describe Qatada as an extremist. The guidance was issued at the BBC newsroom’s 9.00am editorial meeting yesterday, chaired by a senior manager, Andrew Roy.
According to notes of the meeting, seen by The Daily Telegraph, journalists were told: “Do not call him an extremist – we must call him a radical. Extremist implies a value judgment.” » | Neil Midgley and James Kirkup | Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Saturday, October 15, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Tunisian extremists firebombed the home of a TV station chief Friday, hours after militants protesting its broadcast of a film they say violated Islamic values clashed with police in the streets of Tunis.
About a hundred men, some of whom threw Molotov cocktails, lay siege to the home of Nabil Karoui, the head of the private television station Nessma late on Friday, the station reported in its evening news bulletin.
Karoui's family had only just escaped, the news presenter said.
Sofiane Ben Hmida, one of Nessma's star reporters, told AFP the station chief was not at home when the attack on his house took place at around 7:00pm (1800 GMT). But his wife and children were.
About 20 of the protesters had managed to get inside.
"The family managed to get out the back and are safe. The attackers wrecked the house and set it on fire," he added.
Interior ministry spokesman Hichem Meddeb told AFP around a hundred people had turned up outside the house, forced their way inside, broken the windows and torn out two gas pipes. Five people had been arrested, he added.
This was the most serious incident yet in an escalating series of protests against the station's broadcast of "Persepolis" on October 7.
The globally acclaimed animated film on Iran's 1979 revolution offended many Muslims because it depicts an image of God as an old, bearded man. All depictions of God are forbidden by Islam. Read on and comment » | Saturday, October 15, 2011
LE FIGARO: Troubles autour du film Persepolis en Tunisie : Des milliers de personnes ont manifesté vendredi pour dénoncer la représentation de Dieu sous les traits d'un vieillard barbu. Dans la soirée, le domicile du PDG de la chaîne qui a diffusé le film a été attaqué. » | Par lefigaro.fr | Samedi 15 Octobre 2011
Monday, June 06, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Home Secretary has criticised universities for their “complacency” in tackling Muslim extremism as she prepares to publish the Government’s updated strategy for countering Islamic radicalism.
Theresa May told The Daily Telegraph that universities were not taking the issue of radicalisation seriously enough and that it was too easy for Muslim extremists to form groups on campuses “without anyone knowing”.
She also said the Government would cut funding to any Islamic group that espoused extremist views, and set out the “key British values” to which those seeking support must subscribe. It is understood that about 20 groups are already losing their funding.
Mrs May made her comments ahead of the publication this week of the updated version of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.
“I think for too long there’s been complacency around universities,” she said. “I don’t think they have been sufficiently willing to recognise what can be happening on their campuses and the radicalisation that can take place. I think there is more that universities can do.”
Mrs May said universities had to “send very clear messages” and “ask themselves some questions about what happens on their campuses”. » | Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent | Sunday, June 05, 2011
Universities are seats of higher learning. Their purpose is to disseminate learning, erudition, and enlightenment. They are supposed to bring people out of darkness, not let them fall into it. Any university, however grand, however prestigious, is not worthy of its name if it allows its students to become, or remain, benighted. – © Mark
Sunday, February 28, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: A Labour minister says his party has been infiltrated by a fundamentalist Muslim group that wants to create an “Islamic social and political order” in Britain.
The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) — which believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state — has placed sympathisers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve “mass mobilisation” of voters.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Jim Fitzpatrick, the Environment Minister, said the IFE had become, in effect, a secret party within Labour and other political parties.
“They are acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level,” he said.
“They are completely at odds with Labour’s programme, with our support for secularism.”
Mr Fitzpatrick, the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, said the IFE had infiltrated and “corrupted” his party in east London in the same way that the far-Left Militant Tendency did in the 1980s. Leaked Labour lists show a 110 per cent rise in party membership in one constituency in two years.
In a six-month investigation by this newspaper and Channel 4’s Dispatches, involving weeks of covert filming by the programme’s reporters:
IFE activists boasted to the undercover reporters that they had already “consolidated … a lot of influence and power” over Tower Hamlets, a London borough council with a £1 billion budget. >>> Andrew Gilligan | Saturday, February 27, 2010
Monday, November 09, 2009
FOX NEWS: Communism is gone but Islamic radicalism and jihadism are with us. President Obama will have to find an effective way to deal with this new threat or the American people will find someone else who can.
In the wake of “11/5,” the attack at Fort Hood, Barack Obama faces a tough choice--like it or not.
The 44th president must choose to confront an unpleasant reality, head on--or else it will run him over. The issue is the threat of terrorist violence, here on the homefront.
Terrorism, and the debate over how to respond to terrorism, was the defining issue of the 43rd presidency. And now it’s apparent that Obama, too, will spend the bulk of his presidency confronting terror, from Afghanistan to new battlezones, such as central Texas.
Obama and fellow Democrats would rather, of course, talk about health care. But over the next few years, the Fort Hood shooting is going to be a bigger story, since it is connected to our relations, good and bad, with the entire Islamic world, including nuclear Pakistan and almost- nuclear Iran.
For his sake, and for ours, Obama needs to understand that sometimes even presidents don’t get to decide the agenda -- the agenda is decided for him. In such a situation, the question is whether or not the president can adapt to the new era and its new challenges.
So this president needs to launch an aggressive investigation, digging into every aspect of Thursday’s shooting rampage that left 13 dead and dozens injured. How did it happen? Who bears responsibility? And, most importantly, what must we change now? Otherwise, if Obama simply talks about health care and “cap-and-trade” and “don’t ask, don’t tell” and all the other staples of his 2008 agenda, he will be left in the dust by the cyclonic events of 2009 and beyond. And in the wake of the 11/5 shootings, his presidency could be blown away by a whirlwind of damaging leaks, embarrasing reports, and well-justified fears.
Obama will always have his base of support, of course, especially in the media. Taking their cues, as ever, from the siren song of secular liberalism, the Mainstream Media would rather talk about health care, with an occasional digression into gay marriage. As documented by the Media Research Center, MSM reporters are mostly loathe to draw anything outher than politically correct conclusions about the religious and ethnic dimensions of the Fort Hood mass murder.
Thus the MSM is likely to be left in the dust by more fearless, more energetic media. Columnists Dick Morris and Eileen McGann were blunt in their e-mail headline: “Ft. Hood Attack Was Terrorism.” And also on Sunday morning, the top dozen headlines at WorldNetDaily, a popular conservative Web site, dealt forcefully with Fort Hood. So while the MSM is bemoaning “stress,” “PTSD,” and “over-extension,” WorldNetDaily is offering an entirely different narrative, featuring headlines such as “Muslims: ‘America’s chickens have come to roost,’ U.S. Islamic street preachers declare Fort Hood victims got just desserts,” and “Shooter advised Obama Transition: Fort Hood triggerman aided team on Homeland Security task force,” and “Military jihadists fill ‘every branch’: Ultimate 5th column penetration, warns best-selling ‘Muslim Mafia’ [author]” One additional piece was penned by Joseph Farah, the Arab-American editor of WND, whose headline blared, “PC sickness killed our soldiers.” How will the commander-in-chief react to that?
Having bungled his first public remarks after the news of the killings at Fort Hood, Obama is already on the defensive. So, most likely, he and his staff will seek to change the subject as quickly as possible.
But if they try doing that, getting back to, say, “the public option,” they will fail. Because the issue isn’t going away. As Georgetown University terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman said over the weekend:
“I’m not saying it’s part of an organized campaign or a systematic strategy, but we're seeing a sea change when we have once a month a plot that is related somehow to Afghanistan, Iraq or what these people see is a war against Islam. It's too easy to dismiss them as unstable individuals when they have expressed strong religious beliefs with politics. That's the essence of the radicalization we're facing.”In other words, Fort Hood was not a random event; it was part of a pattern. >>> James Pinkerton | Monday, November 09, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
TIMESONLINE: The Taleban seized towns less than 65 miles from Pakistan’s capital yesterday, renewing fears that Islamabad’s recent peace deal with the radicals would only accelerate their advance across the country.
The peace accord had already drawn harsh criticism from Pakistan’s Western allies. “I think that the Pakistani Government is basically abdicating to the Taleban and to the extremists,” Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of States, said yesterday. She added that the situation in Pakistan “poses a mortal threat to the security of our country and the world”.
Mrs Clinton gave her gloomy assessment to the US Congress shortly after hundreds of Taleban fighters occupied government buildings in the district of Buner, ransacking the offices of international aid agencies and taking away vehicles, computers and other equipment. Some employees were also taken hostage briefly.
The militants, carrying rocket launchers and machineguns, also set up checkpoints to search vehicles as many residents fled the area. Local security forces remained confined to police stations and camps.
The fundamentalist movement struck a peace deal with Islamabad recently after a terror campaign in the neighbouring Swat Valley. Under the agreement the militants were allowed to establish an Islamist administration and Sharia courts. In return it was supposed to disarm but has failed to do so. >>> Zahid Hussain in Mingora | Thursday, April 23, 2009
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
EVENING STANDARD: JUST days after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced tough new measures to name and shame foreign-based extremists and prevent them coming from abroad to stir up hatred in the UK, firebrand preacher Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad cocked a snook at her new initiative, the Evening Standard can reveal.
More than 200 Muslims at a packed public meeting in Tower Hamlets were told by organiser Anjem Choudary: "We have a special surprise, a special treat for you. Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad will be joining us on a live feed from Lebanon." He added: "As Muslims, we will not submit to any man-made law, any government, or any prime minister - Bush or Brown - or [to] Jacqui Smith. We submit to Allah."
Choudary, who with Bakri led the fanatical Al-Muhajiroun organisation - notorious for its glorification of terrorism and the 9/11 attacks before its banning and dissolution in 2004 -warmed up the crowd, two Sundays ago, with his own inflammatory rhetoric.
"It is our religious obligation to prepare ourselves both physically and mentally and rise up against Muslim oppression and take what is rightfully ours," he said. "Jihad is a duty and a struggle and an obligation that lies upon the shoulders of us all. We will not rest until the flag of Allah and the flag of Islam is raised above 10 Downing Street."
To loud cheers of "Allah Akbar" [God is great], he railed: "There are three types of Muslims, those in prison, those of us that are on our way [to prison] and non-practising Muslims. Brothers and sisters, if you do not fear your home being raided by the Kufar [non-believer] police, you are not enforcing the Sharia."
Later, in front of a huge banner that exhorted "Muslims rise against British oppression", he introduced the star turn, 50-year-old Omar Bakri, who was standing by in Lebanon. A giant screen, six-feet high and six-feet wide, had been set up to project the image of the extremist known as "the Tottenham Ayatollah". He was refused re-entry to the UK in 2005 as "not conducive to the public good" after vowing that Muslims would "give the West a 9/11 day after day after day".
But when a problem with the live internet video feed failed to yield a picture, Mr Choudary phoned his colleague from the stage and put the receiver to the microphone. The connection was loud and clear and Bakri spoke for 15 minutes.
Apart from a group of elders with long groomed white beards sitting in the front row, most of the 200 men in attendance were Muslims in their late teens or early 20s, mostly dressed in shalwar kameez with westernised accessories - trainers, hoodies and jackets. At the back of the hall, segregated by partitions, were more than 50 women wearing burkhas.
"Do not obey the British law," Bakri told them. He praised his hero Osama bin Laden for being a warrior and exclaimed: "We must fight and die for Islam - this is the map and road to Jennah [heaven]." He said that Muslims did not need to obey man-made laws and that if anyone ordered them to, they should say they are Muslims "loud and proud". He branded the new anti-extremist laws "crazy".
Indeed, it is the new rules, announced two weeks ago by Jacqui Smith, that are meant to prevent "preachers of hate from spreading extremism in our communities". Yet here was Bakri doing just that, potentially grooming the next batch of homegrown suicide bombers. And there was not a uniformed police officer in sight. >>> David Cohen | November 10, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>
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