Islam VS Judaism

In 2007 Islam and Judaism's holiest holidays overlapped for 10 days.Muslims racked up 397 dead bodies in 94 terror attacks across 10 countries during this time... while Jews worked on their 159th Nobel Prize.

Acid Attack Part 2

This Afghan girl says she is determined to resume her studies despite being disfigured with acid by Islamic fundamentalists. Unfortunately for her, religion is first priority in Islam - even in the West, where most Muslims adamantly oppose the effort to keep the Taliban from control.

Taliban murders mullah critical of suicide operations

The mullah probably had the most recent attack in mind, where the vast majority killed or injured were fellow Afghanis (8 killed, over 70 injured); one US soldier died.
"Taliban kill mullah critical of suicide attacks," from the AP, November 14 (thanks to Dionysios):
KABUL, Afghanistan - Suspected Taliban militants killed a religious leader in western Afghanistan after he criticized the use of suicide attacks as a weapon of war in the country, an Afghan official said Friday.
Militants kidnapped Shamsudin Agha in Farah province's Anar Dara district on Tuesday, days after he led prayers condemning the practice of using suicide attacks, said provincial police Chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar.
Suicide attacks are one of the Taliban's preferred tactics in their assaults against Afghan and foreign troops. Most of the victims of such attacks have been civilians.
Authorities recovered Agha's body on Wednesday night, Watandar said.
Violence by the Taliban and other insurgent groups has spiked this year to record levels. Attacks are up 30 percent from 2007, military officials say...

The price of trying to get an education

Girl sprayed in face with acid: "I will go to my school if they [Taliban] kill me"

KABUL: An Afghan teenager whose face was burned in an acid attack by suspected extremists vowed from her hospital bed yesterday to continue going to school even if it put her life in danger.
Men on motorbikes used a water pistol to spray acid into the faces of Shamsia and around dozen other girls as they arrived at school wearing all-covering burqas in Kandahar on Wednesday.
Shamsia, 17, was the most badly wounded and had some acid enter her eyes. She was transferred to a military hospital in Kabul where she was visited yesterday by other schoolgirls, accompanied by media.
"I will go to my school if they kill me," she told reporters. "My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies."
It is not clear who carried out the attack which President Hamid Karzai and other officials blamed on the "enemies of Afghanistan" - a broad term that most often refers to extremist Taliban insurgents.
However a Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said by telephone his group would "never do such a cowardly thing against girls and children".

They only threaten to "do such a cowardly thing against girls and children"; but surely they would never really act on such threats??

The conservative Islamic 1996-2001 Taliban regime stopped girls from going to school. The education sector has since become among the main targets of a wave of unrest linked to an insurgency led by the hardliners.
This year around 115 schools have been set on fire, bombed or bulldozed in attacks education ministry spokesman Hamed Elmi blamed on "the opposition".
About 120 people in the education sector have been killed in attacks, he said.
Security fears have caused more than 640 schools to close, most of them in volatile districts in the south and east of the country, Elmi said.