Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Monday, March 24, 2008
BBC: An audio message attributed to al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman Zawahiri, has called for attacks on American and Israeli interests.
The voice, not confirmed as Zawahiri's, urged retaliation for Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip.
The speaker said Muslims should support Palestinians by focusing on armed struggle, not just demonstrating.
The message was posted on an Islamist website and follows two audio speeches purportedly from Osama Bin Laden.
The graphic accompanying the audio carried the logo of al-Qaeda's media arm, al-Sahab. Al-Qaeda Deputy Calls for Attacks >>>
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
LE FIGARO: Aujourd'hui, un tiers de la population est musulmane et les jeunes générations sont plus pratiquantes.
La capitale européenne sera musulmane dans vingt ans. C'est du moins ce qu'affirme une étude publiée la semaine dernière dans le quotidien La Libre Belgique. Près d'un tiers de la population de Bruxelles étant déjà musulmane, indique Olivier Servais, sociologue à l'Université catholique de Louvain, les pratiquants de l'islam devraient, en raison de leur forte natalité, être majoritaires «dans quinze ou vingt ans». Depuis 2001, Mohamed est, chaque année, et de loin, le premier prénom donné aux garçons nés à Bruxelles.
«Il faut relativiser ces chiffres, insiste Mahfoud Romdhani, député socialiste et vice-président du Parlement francophone bruxellois. Les immigrés de pays musulmans ne sont pas tous musulmans ! Moi-même, je suis de culture musulmane, mais agnostique.» Olivier Servais se veut d'ailleurs prudent sur les projections à long terme, Bruxelles subissant des flux de population importants en tant que capitale de l'Union européenne. L'islam, première religion à Bruxelles dans vingt ans >>> De Stéphane Kovacs, envoyée spéciale à Bruxelles
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Sunday, March 23, 2008
BBC: The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned in his Easter sermon against nations' greed for oil, power and territory.
Dr Rowan Williams said the "comforts and luxuries" we take for granted could not be sustained forever.
He told worshippers: "We face a culture in which thoughts of death are too painful to manage."
Two men were arrested at the start of the sermon, after protesting over comments made by Dr Williams on the adoption of Islamic Sharia law.
'Inner deadness'
Dr Williams reminded the congregation of Christianity's Easter message that death would be overcome.
But he said death was the end "in an important sense", and urged Christians to prepare for it by constantly striving to let go of "selfish, controlling, greedy habits".
The archbishop said: "Individuals live in anxious and acquisitive ways, seizing what they can to provide a security that is bound to dissolve, because they are going to die.
"Societies or nations do the same. Whether it is the individual grabbing the things of this world in just the repetitive, frustrating sameness that we have seen to be already in fact the mark of an inner deadness...
"Or the greed of societies that assume there will always be enough to meet their desires - enough oil, enough power, enough territory - the same fantasy is at work.
"We shan't really die. We as individuals can't contemplate an end to our acquiring, and we as a culture can't imagine that this civilisation, like all others, will collapse and that what we take for granted about our comforts and luxuries simply can't be sustained indefinitely.
"To all this, the church says, sombrely, don't be deceived: night must fall." Archbishop Warns Greedy Nations >>>
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
NZZ Online: Papst Benedikt hat in Rom bei Regen die Ostermesse abgehalten. Er rief zum Frieden im Mittleren Osten, in Afrika und Tibet auf. Zuvor hatte er mit der Taufe eines konvertierten Journalisten Unterstützung für die Islamismus-Kritik signalisiert.
(ap/sda/dpa/Reuters) Papst Benedikt XVI. hat in der traditionellen Ostermesse in Rom eine friedliche Lösung der Konflikte im Nahen Osten und in Tibet gefordert. Er rufe dazu auf, friedliche Lösungen für den «gepeinigten Nahen Osten, besonders das Heilige Land, den Irak, Libanon und schliesslich Tibet» zu finden, sagte der Papst.
Tausende von Touristen und Gläubigen hatten sich auf dem Petersplatz eingefunden und feierten in strömendem Regen die zweistündige Messe mit dem Papst.
Besonders an Ostern gelte es auch an die afrikanischen Krisenregionen zu denken, mahnte der Papst und nannte Somalia und Darfur als Beispiele. Ungerechtigkeit, Hass und Gewalt seien die Geisseln der Menschheit. Im Anschluss an das katholische Hochamt erteilte der Papst auch den Segen «Urbi et Orbi» (der Stadt und dem Erdkreis).
Der 80-jährige Benedikt war von einem weissem Baldachin auf den Stufen des Petersdoms vor dem kalten Regen geschützt, die Teilnehmenden auf dem Platz formten ein buntes Meer an Regenschirmen. Kurz vor Beginn des Hochamtes wetteiferten die Gläubigen mit dem Donner: Das Himmelsgrollen drohte den Halleluja-Gesang zu übertönen. Papst Benedikt zelebriert Ostermesse im verregneten Rom: Mit Taufe Kritik am Islamismus ins Rampenlicht gestellt >>>
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
NEWS OF THE WORLD: A FANATICAL preacher of hate has been recorded urging impressionable young British Muslims to go to WAR against our troops.
Yet, sickeningly, crazed cleric Anjem Choudary and his wife rake in more than £25,000 a year in welfare BENEFITS—while he plots to destroy British society.
Now Choudary —who once called for the Pope to be executed and described the September 11 hijackers as "magnificent martyrs" — could face arrest under anti-terror laws for his evil ranting on the tape, which was passed to the News of the World.
After hearing his latest inflammatory remarks, terror experts asked: "What more does this man need to do before he is locked up?" Tape Reveals Vile Rants of Muslim Scrounger Who Preaches Evil >>> By Lewis Panther
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
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Hat tip: The Avid Editor and Klein Verzet
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
THE SUNDAY TIMES: The Democrat was surging ahead but now revelations about the men who helped shape him are putting voters off
Long before Barack Obama launched his campaign for the White House, when he was considering a run for the US Senate in 2003, he paid an intriguing visit to a former Chicago sewers inspector who had risen to become one of the most influential African-American politicians in Illinois.
“You have the power to elect a US senator,” Obama told Emil Jones, Democratic leader of the Illinois state senate. Jones looked at the ambitious young man smiling before him and asked, teasingly: “Do you know anybody I could make a US senator?”
According to Jones, Obama replied: “Me.” It was his first, audacious step in a spectacular rise from the murky political backwaters of Springfield, the Illinois capital.
The exchange also sealed an intimate personal and political relationship that is likely to attract intense scrutiny amid the furore over Obama’s links to some of Chicago’s most controversial political and religious power brokers.
Obama has often described Jones as a key political mentor whose patronage was crucial to his early success in a state long dominated by near-feudal party political machines. Jones, 71, describes himself as Obama’s “godfather” and once said: “He feels like a son to me.”
Like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the outspoken pastor of Obama’s Chicago church, and like Tony Rezko, the millionaire fundraiser and former friend of Obama who is on trial for corruption, Jones is in danger of becoming a hindrance to his protégé’s presidential ambitions.
For almost a year Jones has used his position as leader of the state senate to block anticorruption legislation passed unanimously by the state’s lower house. He has also become embroiled in ethical controversies concerning his wife’s job and his stepson’s business.
None of them is linked to Obama, but the Democratic contender can ill afford another scandal related to his former Chicago allies. Despite his electrifying speech on race last week, the opinion polls make worrying reading for the senator and his aides.
Hillary Clinton appears to be regaining lost ground and John McCain, the Arizona senator who has sewn up the Republican nomination, has edged ahead of his warring rivals.
When Obama stood before a row of American flags in Philadelphia on Tuesday, he faced the greatest challenge of his candidacy. His campaign was reeling from the potentially fatal fallout of Wright’s rabid videotaped sermons, in which the Chicago preacher exclaimed, “God damn America,” and said that the US government had invented Aids to infect black people. Barack Obama: Toxic Mentors Start to Corrode Pristine Campaign >>> By Tony Allen-Mills in New York
Barack Hussein Obama’s Speech on Race
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
This demonstration just goes to show how many people just don’t 'get it'!
BOSTON HERALD: AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Demonstrators of all races and colors crowded Amsterdam’s central square Saturday, braving wind and sleet to show their opposition to anti-immigration lawmaker Geert Wilders.Mark Alexander (Paperback)
The protest, called "Netherlands Shows Its Colors," is primarily a reaction in advance to the short film Wilders says he will release later this month criticizing the Quran as a "fascist" book.
One protester carried a sign saying "standing together against the right wing populist witch-hunt."
"I’m very much against Geert Wilders and racism in general, but I think it’s really important to show not only Holland but the rest of the world that there’s a lot of people who do not agree with his ideas," said Elisa Trepp. Several Thousand Demonstrate in Amsterdam Against Anti-Quran Film >>> Associated Press
NEW YORK TIMES:
A Dutch Antagonist of Islam Waits for His Premiere
JIHAD WATCH:
Fitzgerald: The Times, in its shrinking dotage
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Hat tip: Dave McRitchie
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE:
Dutch court to consider bid to ban anti-Islam movie
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Friday, March 21, 2008
THE TELEGRAPH: Canon Michael Ainsworth, a priest and colleague of mine just a couple of miles from my rectory in the City of London, was recently attacked in his churchyard by three youths. Michael suffered two black eyes, cuts and bruises. He was taken into hospital and his wife Janina, also a priest, said: "It's obvious that the attack on Michael does contain a religious element." It certainly is obvious: his attackers shouted, "You f------ priest!" as they beat him up.
This is the second time that Michael's church has been attacked. After the Good Friday service last year, louts threw bricks through the windows. A parishioner, Susan Crocker, said: "It's not out of the blue - it's a recurrent problem."
Well, it's clear that the yobs who attacked Michael were Muslims. To their credit, the local Muslim leaders have tacitly admitted this by publicly deploring the crime. So why were the police, and much of the media, so vague as to call these thugs "Asians"? If I smashed the windows of a Brick Lane curry house and gave the manager two black eyes, you can be sure the police and the papers wouldn't describe me as a "European".
Of course the authorities excuse their evasiveness by saying it's to preserve good racial and community relationships, forgetting that it was Michael's attackers who first damaged these relationships and that appeasement always encourages worse violence in the long run.
This attack was one small example of the persecution being endured by the Church worldwide. On four continents Islamic militants are attacking and sometimes murdering Christians and burning down churches. Why do the archbishops and bishops not lead mass Christian demonstrations against these atrocities? Instead, we have to observe the filigree intelligence of the Archbishop of Canterbury as it operates on the precise relation between English law and some "unavoidable" accommodation with sharia. He, with his whole hierarchy, strains at gnats and swallows camels.
Meanwhile, a Nigerian archbishop said that Dr Williams's words hardly made things better for Christians persecuted under sharia in his country. "Their lives," he said, "are at the very least unbearable." If Dr Williams is so intelligent, shouldn't he have known beforehand that his remarks would only give encouragement to the fanatics? If I tried to walk down the main street in Riyadh wearing my clerical collar, the religious police would throw me into jail. In Britain we allow Muslims to build huge mosques in prominent places such as Regent's Park. What does this say about the relationship between Christianity and Islam worldwide? Without Christianity, our society is doomed >>> By Peter Mullen | 21/03/2008
THE TELEGRAPH:
Christianophobia comes to the East End By Damian Thompson
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Thursday, March 20, 2008
TIMESONLINE: New polls released today suggest that Barack Obama has been damaged significantly by the controversy over his pastor's inflammatory remarks and that the the issue has become a serious threat to his presidential ambitions.
A new national Gallup tracking poll indicates Hillary Clinton regaining her lead over Mr Obama for the first time in a month, now leading him 49 per cent to 42, a 13 point shift to the former First Lady in less than a fortnight.
Mrs Clinton now also holds a 16-point lead over Mr Obama in Pennsylvania, their next contest on April 22, according to a poll for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In addition, Mr Obama has lost his once commanding lead among independent voters to John McCain, the Republican nominee, in a new CBS poll.
Mrs Clinton leads Mr Obama in the Keystone State by 51 per cent to 35. Mr McCain is backed by 46 per cent of independents, to 38 per cent for Mr Obama. The Gallup and Pennsylvania polls were taken at the height of the controversy, but before Mr Obama made a major speech on the issue on Tuesday.
Despite widespread praise for Mr Obama's speech, in which he used the controversy to challenge America to move beyond its current racial tensions, aides to Mrs Clinton now believe that the incendiary comments of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright offer her perhaps her best chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Polls show Barack Obama damaged by link to Reverend Jeremiah Wright >>> By Tim Reid, of The Times, Washington
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
BBC: Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has been widely criticised for donning a white headscarf to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Well-known for her stand on women's rights, she has provoked headlines such as "Just like a submissive woman".
Socialist MP Maria Roth-Bernasconi said it was irritating that she had angered feminists in Iran.
Ms Calmy-Rey said she was observing protocol. "When you are a guest you respect local customs," she said.
Social Democrat MP Liliane Maury Pasquier accepted that customs had to be observed.
But she was quoted by one newspaper complaining that the minister should have shown solidarity with "the women who fight against wearing the headscarf". Micheline Calmy-Rey Sparks Veil Outcry >>>
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE:
Micheline Calmy-Rey aurait mis le voile sous la pression des Iraniens
NZZ Online:
Calmy-Rey verteidigt Besuch in Iran: Gasliefervertrag verstösst nicht gegen Richtlinien
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
EXAMINER: DAKAR, Senegal - The Muslim world has created a battle plan to defend its religion from political cartoonists and bigots.
Concerned about what they see as a rise in the defamation of Islam, leaders of the world's Muslim nations are considering taking legal action against those that slight their religion or its sacred symbols. It was a key issue during a two-day summit that ended Friday in this western Africa capital.
The Muslim leaders are attempting to demand redress from nations like Denmark, which allowed the publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and again last month, to the fury of the Muslim world.
Though the legal measures being considered have not been spelled out, the idea pits many Muslims against principles of freedom of speech enshrined in the constitutions of numerous Western governments. Muslims Nations: Defame Islam, Get Sued? >>>
ORGANISATION OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE:
Ten-Year Programme of Action to Meet the Challenges Facing the Muslim Ummah in the 21st Century
Hat tip: Always On Watch
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
THE TELEGRAPH: Sleepy residents of a quiet Cornish valley say their peace and quiet have been shattered by an early morning call to prayer for hundreds of Muslims who gathered in a holiday park for Persian New Year.
Around 700 Iranian Muslims arrived at Trevelgue holiday park, near Porth, on Saturday and have been praised by staff for their courtesy and good behaviour.
But some neighbours say they have grown weary of the party's call to prayer - or Adhan - that has been broadcast on loudspeakers three times daily - starting at 5.30am.
Neighbour Emma Brewer, 35, said the noise was too loud at the venue, better known for family holiday-makers and Run to the Sun car rally revellers than as a place of religious worship.
"It lasts about 20 to 30 minutes and it is rather loud," she said. "I'm a bit naffed off by it, to be honest."
Another resident, who did not wish to be named, said that she had complained to the local district council about the noise levels.
"It kicked off without warning," she said. "The first I knew of it I was awake because of it, at 5.34am on Monday morning. I didn't know what it was.
"I phoned the people that deal with noise on the council and the initial response is, 'we have to tread carefully, it's a sensitive issue'.
"I just thought, why, it's just noise. I mentioned to them that the council didn't have a problem silencing church bells." Muslim Call to Prayer Upsets Sleepy Villagers >>>
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
BBC: In a new audio message purportedly from Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader threatens the EU over the re-printing of a cartoon offensive to Muslims.
The voice on it says the cartoon, re-published recently in all major Danish newspapers, was part of a crusade involving Pope Benedict XVI.
The drawing, first published in 2005, depicts the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
The voice on the audio has not yet been verified as belonging to Bin Laden.
The message comes on the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
But the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington says that the message was probably released to not to mark that anniversary, but rather the anniversary of the birth of Prophet Muhammad, which Sunni Muslims mark on Thursday.
It appeared on a [sic] Islamist website that has carried al-Qaeda messages in the past.
Over the audio is a graphic with a still image of Bin Laden holding an AK-47 and bearing the logo of al-Sahab, the media wing of al-Qaeda. There is a written translation of the message in English. New 'Bin Laden tape' threatens EU >>>
WATCH BBC VIDEO:
’Bin Laden Tape’ Threatens EU
REUTERS:
Dutch Keep Threat Level High After Bin Laden Message | Thursday March 20. 2008
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
AND KRONOS INTERNATIONAL: Tehran, 19 March (AKI) - In its first session since last week's general elections, the new Iranian parliament is expected to discuss a law that will condemn to death anyone who decides to leave the Muslim faith and convert to other religions.
The parliament, also known as the Majlis, will debate the new law which has been presented by the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Under the proposed law, anyone who is born to Muslim parents and decides to convert to another faith, will face the death penalty.
Currently converts, particularly those who have decided to leave the Muslim faith for Evangelical churches, are arrested and then released after some years of detention.
The new legislation, which has caused concern in Iran and abroad, was proposed mainly because of fears of proselytising activities by Evangelical churches particularly through the use of satellite channels.
There has also been concern over fact that many young people in Iran have abandoned Islam because they're tired of the many restrictions imposed by the faith.
According to unofficial sources, in the past five years, one million Iranians, particularly young people and women, have abandoned Islam and joined Evangelical churches. Iran: Parliament to discuss death penalty for converts who leave Islam >>>
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
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