UN Survey: Arabs Read Approximately 4 Pages Per Year

Muslims believe that they only need to read the koran, the terrorist training manual.

The average Arab in the Middle East reads approximately four pages worth of literature a year, according to a RIA Novosti Russian news service report published in November.
The Syrian newspaper Tishreen, commenting on a recent survey conducted by the United Nations, said that according to the study, Americans read an average of 11 books a year, with the average Briton reading eight books.
The Arab Thought Foundation, which reports on cultural development in Arab countries, concluded that only a little more than 8 percent of Arabs aspire to a higher education.
The U.N. survey reported that every year, one new book title is published per 12,000 people in the Arab world, as compared with one per 500 people in Britain. Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) says Israel publishes more than 4,000 books a year, making Israel the second highest per-capita publisher in the world, after the People's Republic of China.
The United Nations Development Programme Literacy Report for 2007-2008 listed Israel in 56th place for world literacy, with the Palestinian Authority coming in 80th, Jordan 84th, Lebanon 97th, Iran 114th, Syria 120th, and Egypt in 132nd place.

Sept. 11 Suspects Offer to Plead Guilty ‘in Full’

Self-described Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants today offered in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom to plead guilty to charges that could lead to the death penalty.
The five reached agreement to “announce our confessions and plea in full,” according to a document read in court by Judge Stephen Henley, an Army colonel.
“I do not trust Americans,” Mohammed, who has previously said he wanted to be martyred, told the judge today. He claimed the existence of an “agreement between Bush and CIA who tortured me,” and the court, though he didn’t explain what he meant.
Military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the five alleged Sept. 11 conspirators including Mohammed, who has said he organized the al-Qaeda attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania seven years ago. Relatives of five victims of the attacks sat in the gallery; it was the first time victims’ relatives were present in the courtroom with the terrorism defendants.
“Are you prepared to enter pleas to the charges against you today?” the judge asked Mohammed.
“Yes,” Mohammed responded.
The document read today in court was filed by all five defendants on Nov. 4 following a series of meetings among them.
“Our success is the greatest praise of the Lord,” the judge read from the document.
‘Without Any Pressure’
“All of these decisions are undertaken by us without any pressure or influence by Khalid Sheikh,” co-defendant Ali Abdul Aziz Ali told the judge. “What was said or will be said by Khalid Sheikh will be repeated by us, also.”
Mohammed and the others are among 250 being held at Guantanamo, a U.S. military prison camp in Cuba that has become the target of international criticism for jailing hundreds of suspected terrorists without charges. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to close the prison, located in a remote patch of a U.S. Navy base on land leased from Cuba.
Henley asked military prosecutors to submit legal briefs on whether the commission can “accept a plea of guilty to a capital offense.”
Navy Commander Suzanne Lachelier objected to including her client, Ramzi Binalshibh, a nephew of Mohammed, in the filing of the Nov. 4 document. She said he had “been permitted to go to this meeting” and others “without notice to me.”
The court has reserved decision on Binalshibh’s request to dismiss his lawyer pending a hearing on the results of a psychiatric examination of Binalshibh.
Lawyer Denounced
Binalshibh denounced his lawyer in court, saying, “She is a person who is not cooperative and she lies.”
Defense lawyers have alleged that Binalshibh and defendant Mustafa al Hawsawi were intimidated by Mohammed to waive their right to legal representation.
The court has also reserved decision on al Hawsawi’s request to dismiss his military lawyer, Army Major Jon Jackson. Today, the judge granted Jackson’s request for a psychiatric examination to determine his client’s mental capacity to plead guilty. The judge said Jackson had described concerns about his client’s mental state in a secret court filing.
Al Hawsawi told the judge he decided to plead guilty “with all my complete mental capacity and voluntarily.”
The relatives in the gallery were chosen at random from 115 family members of Sept. 11 victims who applied for permission to travel to Guantanamo to witness the proceedings.
Obama has criticized the military commissions, saying the Guantanamo detainees should be tried either in federal court or before a military court-martial. Seventeen prisoners face war- crimes charges and Pentagon officials say as many as 80 at Guantanamo may be charged.
To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley in Guantanamo Bay at jarowley@bloomberg.net

Tulsa highway patrolman subdues armed man who "was praying for Allah to help him carry out his mission"

He thwarted prayers to Allah

OKLAHOMA CITY All Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Sheldon Robinson was looking for was a burger and an oil change on his day off.
But Thursday he got a standing ovation from members of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority for his heroic actions in between.
On Sept. 5, Robinson dropped his wife and two children off at the Burger King restaurant at 41st Street and Memorial Drive and was pulling into an auto dealership across the street for an oil change when his cell phone rang.
"My spouse told me there was a man inside with a gun, saying he was going to kill everybody," said Robinson, an 11-year veteran of the highway patrol who is assigned to the Creek and Muskogee turnpikes.
Robinson turned around in time to see people fleeing the building, including his wife, who grabbed the couple's two children and hid in a nearby trash container area, closing the doors behind her.
It was only an instant, but Robinson said it seemed like hours before he got his truck turned around and pointed for the Burger King.
"I was relieved to see them in the Dumpster area, but I knew I had to go in there and see what was going on," he said.
Robinson, wearing his trooper badge around his neck and carrying his weapon, parked his truck and peered in the window of the Burger King.
Inside was a man dressed in black. A Glock .40-caliber handgun and a full box of ammunition sat on the tabletop next to him.
Three other people were looking for a way out when Robinson passedthem as he entered the restaurant.
When the man briefly removed his hand from his gun, Robinson, who had approached from the man's blind side, grabbed his arm.
Now alone in the restaurant, the two men wrestled on the floor before Robinson got one of his handcuffs around the man's arm.
"The second one didn't lock in place, so we went down again," Robinson said. "He was a pretty stout guy."
Robinson had the man fully cuffed by the time Tulsa police officers arrived.
"It was one of those deals of being in the right place at the right time," Robinson said. "I believe he would have loaded up that gun and gone to town because he was praying for Allah to help him carry out his mission."
Jerome Norvell Denson, 24, of Tulsa was arrested on charges of attempting to perform an act of violence and possession of a firearm while in the commission of a felony. He remains in jail awaiting a preliminary hearing....

Gaza out of animals for holiday slaughter

So the poor blood thirsty Animalstinians are out of cows to slaughter with their bare hands as the moon god allah told them to kill in his name?

RAFAH, Gaza Strip -- Salah Afana's cattle business usually booms with the approach of the Muslim feast of the sacrifice. But this year he has hit a snag: He's out of cows.
Mr. Afana, Gaza's largest cattle trader, has been unable to import cows since Israel shut the strip's borders last month in response to Palestinian rocket fire. He since has sold all his stock -- less than half of what he sold last year -- and is turning customers away.
The Gaza-wide shortage of cows and sheep for slaughter is one of many disappointments Gazans face before Eid al-Adha, the most important holiday in the Muslim calendar. For them it's tantamount to Thanksgiving without turkey.
The four-day holiday beginning today is supposed to be one of the year's most joyful, but nothing is as it should be, Gazans say. An Israeli blockade on the ruling Hamas government has caused shortages of basic goods, and Palestinian political squabbling has kept thousands of would-be pilgrims from traveling to Mecca.
On top of that, their banks have run out of currency, depriving thousands of civil servants of salaries.
It's a sharp contrast to Bethlehem, in the West Bank, which after several bleak years is finally getting a Christmas season to cheer about. Hotels are booked solid, Manger Square outside Christ's traditional birthplace is already bustling with tourists, and Palestinian and Israeli security forces are working together to keep the peace.
"We're under siege, the pilgrims can't get out, and there's no money. How can we celebrate the holiday?" said Mahmoud Khozendar, a Gaza doctor.
Eid al-Adha commemorates the readiness of Abraham -- Ibrahim to Muslims -- to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, who stays his hand and provides a lamb instead.Gaza has about 10,000 sheep, half of the number needed for the holiday, said Ibrahim al-Kidra of the Agriculture Ministry. The price of a sheep has nearly tripled, to about $550, and there's little money available to buy them. For those lucky enough to find a cow, prices have jumped by a third, to about $2,000 each.
In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Jihad al-Wazir of the Palestinian Monetary Authority begged Israel to allow his agency to send money to Gaza. He said Gaza's banks hold 47 million shekels ($12 million) --less than a fifth of what is needed to pay the public servants.
Israeli officials say the request is being considered.

ISLAM: MARONI, NEW 'MOSQUE' EVERY 4/5 DAYS IN ITALY

ROME, DECEMBER 5 - There are two mosques in Italy which are just that: in Milan and in Rome. However, every 4/5 days a mosque is opened in the form of an Islamic cultural centre. So said in an interview Italy's Interior minister, Roberto Maroni. "Every four or five days, mosques are opened as cultural centres like the one in Macherio", he said, referring to the centre mentioned by the two Moroccan citizens arrested in Milan and accused of preparing attacks in Italy, "where there is prayer, teaching of the Koran and provision of food and drinks", even with public contributions, added the minister, drawing attention to the fact that the Milan centre is a not-for-profit organisation. Respecting the rules when opening such centres "goes for all Italians and all the more so for those who are not Italian", said Maroni, inviting councils and police to "make thorough checks".

If the story of how an Islamic group denied Islamic burial to the Mumbai bombers last Monday was so important, why isn't this one? If the Mumbai burial story was evidence that at least some Muslims reject the jihad ideology (which it may indeed have been), isn't this story evidence that at least some Muslims, right here in the United States, accept it? And shouldn't that be something to which at least some people are paying attention?
When the Muslim Jama Masjid Trust refused the Mumbai jihadists an Islamic burial, it made the news everywhere. Muqtedar Khan brought it up to me on the BBC the other day, and in response I pointed out that this gesture would have had much greater significance if not for the fact that Islamic jihad terrorists who have carried out suicide attacks and other attacks against Israel have been treated as heroes and given Islamic burials on numerous occasions.

But in any case, will this story get the same attention from the people who were so heartened by the denial of Muslim burial to the jihadists in India? After all, this is a story about an Islamic jihad-martyrdom bomber being given a Muslim burial in the United States -- and if that isn't enough, add in the little fact that the FBI seems to have pitched in (at taxpayer expense?) to bring his remains back into the country.

BURNSVILLE, Minn. (FOX 9)—One of the five men suspected to be a suicide bomber who killed himself and 29 others last October in Somalia, was buried Wednesday at a Burnsville Cemetery.
FOX 9 has learned DNA tests have confirmed Shirwa Ahmed was one of five suicide bombers who killed himself and 29 others last October in northern Somalia.
He is also a Minnesotan and a naturalized U.S. citizen.
The FBI helped return Ahmed's remains to his family.
At a Twin Cities cemetery in Burnsville Wednesday afternoon, the suspected suicide bomber was laid to rest.
Shirwa Ahmed, 27, was given a traditional Muslim burial.
Family and friends did not wish to talk about the circumstances of his death.
Community activist Omar Jamal is one of the few who will.
“Honestly I look at him seriously as a victim and not as a criminal, I think of him as a young victim," says Jamal....
Uh huh. Meanwhile, we learned last week that Shirwa Ahmed may have been recruiting jihad terrorists among Muslims in Minneapolis:

An investigation into terrorism recruiting among young Somalis leads to Minnesota. Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis is believed to have killed himself in a suicide bombing in Somalia last month. However, investigators fear he may have left a deadly legacy of recruiting other young Somalis to leave Minnesota and join terrorist groups in Somalia.
His high school pictures show a clean cut young man and neighbors at his Minneapolis apartment say lately 26-year-old Shirwa Ahmed had a thick beard.
"He doesn't talk to people," one neighbor said. [...]
In recent months a dozen young Somalis, some as young as 17, have left the Twin Cities, apparently headed back to Somalia where a civil war rages.
Omar Jamal, a local Somali activist, said the families of the young men are frightened.
"The families didn't think, it never crossed their mind, that their kids would have gone to Somalia either to blow themselves up or to join the holy war," said Jamal.
Sources tell WCCO the group suspected of recruiting the young Twin Cities men is know as al-Itihadd al-Islamiya, or AIAI, an organization with known ties to Al-Qaeda. [...]
Canjemi said the Twin Cities Somali community has been a ripe recruiting ground for AIAI for years.
"I believe this recruiting continues on a daily basis," he said.
According to national reports Al Qaeda is enjoying resurgence in Somalia. The FBI said the U.S. government continues to be involved in an active outreach to young Somalis to keep them from being courted by radical groups.
Which may be why the FBI helped bring Ahmed's body back to the States. But will the kuffar's ever-present willingness to help really keep young Somali Muslims in Minneapolis from joining the jihad?

European human rights court upholds French headscarf ban

Funny how accommodations related to Islamic practices are so often the only "human rights" Islamic groups seem to be concerned with. Fortunately, the European Court of Human Rights grasped in this case that Muslims' "right" to display religious symbols does not outweigh that of any other groups, which would have set a disastrous precedent in light of sharia restrictions on the use of non-Islamic religious symbols. Moreover, the "right" to go excessively above and beyond the accepted norms of "modesty" in a society is just not in the same league with actual human rights issues where life, limb, and freedom of thought and speech are at risk -- which, of course, is the case in so many instances under Islamic law.

Europe's human rights court today threw out a complaint by two French Muslim girls who were expelled from their school for refusing to remove their headscarves during sports lessons.
France, which takes secularism in state schools very seriously, passed a law in 2004 banning pupils from wearing conspicuous signs of their religion at school after a decade of bitter debate about Muslim girls wearing headscarves in class.
"The court observed that the purpose of the restriction on the applicants' right to manifest their religious convictions was to adhere to the requirements of secularism in state schools," the European Court of Human Rights said.
The two girls were 11 and 12 when they were expelled in 1999. After French courts ruled against them, they complained to the European court that their school had violated their freedom of religion and their right to an education.
The court, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, rejected both complaints by a unanimous ruling of seven judges.
It said the school had done its best to balance the interests of the girls with respect for France's secular model, and their expulsion was a consequence of their refusal to respect rules of which they had been properly informed.
It also said they had been able to continue their education by correspondence classes.
Interesting word choice:
The French veil debate divided a nation torn between its deep attachment to secularism and the need to accommodate Europe's largest Muslim minority. It also raised questions about how the influence of Islam was changing Europe.

Lego terrorist toy "sparks outrage among Muslims"

"Disgust At 'Lego' Terrorist Toys,"

A range of Lego-style fighting figurines - including an Islamic terrorist militant - has sparked outrage among Muslims.The toy mini-figures, made by American Will Chapman, includes a masked terrorist bandit with an assault rifle, grenade launcher and belt of explosives.
Shocked by the playthings, British Muslim organisation the Ramadhan Foundation has branded the figurines "absolutely disgusting".
Chief executive Mohammed Shafiq said the figures were "glorifying terrorism".[...]
Father-of-three Mr Chapman boasts on his website that his nine-year-old son gave him the idea for the range.
The site advertises 31 different Lego-style weapons, weapons packs and 10 miniature militant figurines.
Other fighters in the range include World War Two troops, US marines - and a Nazi SS officer.
A spokesman for Lego UK said they were "not associated" with the toys being sold by BrickArms, "which have been customised without LEGO UK's knowledge or permission."
He added Lego is "committed to developing toys which enrich childhood by encouraging imaginative and creative play - and does not endorse products that do not fit with this philosophy."

British missionary couple in Muslim African country face months in jail "hell hole" after being charged with "sedition"

Out to overthrow the government of Gambia?

Their whole focus has been teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ," remarked a family friend. But that's just it: proselytizing Muslim does, in fact, amount to sedition, that is, creating fitna, "civil strife," in Dar al-Islam.
"British missionary couple in Muslim African country face months in jail 'hell hole' after being charged with sedition,"

A British missionary couple face up to two years in an African hell hole jail after being charged with sedition in The Gambia.
David and Fiona Fulton were arrested last Saturday in the West African Muslim country, and have been separated and held in custody, according to sources.
The couple have been jailed over claims they had been speaking out against the government of president Yahya Jammeh, who has ruled Africa's smallest country with an iron fist for 14 years.
Mr Fulton, 60, who is originally from Troon, Ayrshire, was being held in the country's notorious Mile II prison - a high security jail outside the capital Banjul, described as a tough former colonial jail built during the days of the British Empire.
His wife Fiona, 46, was is understood to be in police custody with the couple's adopted two-year-old daughter Elizabeth.
She has been treated well by police officers who have run errands to buy nappies - but there were growing fears for her husband's safety.
A friend, who did not want to be named said: 'Fiona has been treated well. We are not sure about David. We don't think he's fared quite as well. He's not eating.'
The couple are being held until they are able to raise bail of £125,000 and meet other conditions.[...]"Bail"...or in Islamic parlance, Jizya.
Mr Fulton is chaplain to the Gambian army and carries the rank of major, while his wife looks after terminally ill people and visits women in their homes and in hospital.[...]
As well as ministering for the army, Mr Fulton also has a ministry on the river, which involves reaching immigration outposts and villages only accessible by boat.
The Westhoughton Pentecostal Church website states: 'This is a major challenge, as it involves a 10-day trip up river every month.
'But by God's grace he sees many won for the Lord from Islam and animism.'Hence the charge of "sedition" -- encouraging Muslims to apostatize, a crime punishable by death
The Gambia, one of Africa's smallest countries, is predominantly Muslim but has a significant Christian community, and indigenous beliefs are also practised.
A report in the International Herald Tribune said the Fultons were paraded on state television on Wednesday and charged in court in the capital, Banjul, yesterday.
The prosecution reportedly accused the couple of writing letters to individuals and organisations to 'bring into hatred or contempt, to excite disaffection against the President of the Republic and the government of The Gambia'.
The newspaper said the couple pleaded not guilty and the case was adjourned until December 16.
President Jammeh, who believes he has herbal treatments that can cure AIDS, has tolerated little dissent since he seized power in a 1994 military coup.
Since taking over as a young army lieutenant he has won three widely criticised multi-party elections.
A concerned friend of the couple added: 'While we are free to speak out, in Gambia you cannot.
'As a chaplain part of David's job is to provide comfort to all sorts of people, people high up and people low down - and people who have perhaps fallen out of favour.
'I don't know of anything they have done that could be called sedition. Their whole focus has been teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.'
Pastor Martin Speed, of Westhoughton Pentecostal Church in Bolton, Greater Manchester, said the couple had visited Christians at his church to talk about their work.
'The work he is doing is not political,' Pastor Speed said.
'He's sharing his Christian faith with people. There does seem to be a growing difficulty of Christians in the country of Gambia. We are really concerned about the situation.'

Darfur: Anonymous "gunmen" beat aid workers in accordance to sharia

“Although the workers complied without resistance to demands for money, the attackers assaulted them up before leaving the scene.” This, of course, is in perfect harmony with sharia law. According to the tafsir (exegesis) of prominent Muslim scholar, Al-Zamakhshari, Koran 9:29 means that "the jizya shall be taken from them [Christians and Jews] with belittlement and humiliation. The dhimmi shall come in person, walking not riding. When he pays, he shall stand, while the tax collector sits. The collector shall seize him by the scruff of the neck, shake him, and say Pay the Jizyah! and when he pays it he shall be slapped on the nape of the neck."

Darfur, 5 Dec. (AKI) - Two gunmen equipped with assault rifles and a hand grenade stopped a humanitarian convoy in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, beat up the aid workers and stole money in the latest of a long series of such assaults that are impeding relief operations, the United Nations reported.
The non-governmental organisation convoy of three vehicles with six local staff was stopped in South Darfur on its way from Nyala, the provincial capital, to the Kalma camp, the joint UN-African Union mission in Darfur or UNAMID said in a statement.
“Although the workers complied without resistance to demands for money, the attackers assaulted them up before leaving the scene.”
“Three out of the six workers were reportedly severely beaten and taken to the local hospital, where their condition is listed as stable and non life-threatening.”
Initial reports suggest that the assailants were informed of the workers’ movements and that they were transporting cash intended for the payment of salaries for the Kalma camp staff.
“If proven right, these suspicions would point to an act of banditry," UNAMID added.
UNAMID, slated to reach 26,000 personnel but now only 10,500-strong, is being deployed throughout Darfur in an effort to bring peace to a region where more than five years of fighting between Government forces, allied Janjaweed militia and rebel groups have killed an estimated 300,000 people and driven another 2.7 million from their homes.

Delusions of the EU

Geographically Turkey is not a European state, apart from the tiny northwestern edge of the country. Last October, however, Turkey was elected for a two-year term in the United Nations security council by winning one of the two non-permanent seats set aside for European countries. While the other candidate, Austria, barely won the required two-thirds majority, Turkey won its seat hands down. In the UN, Turkey belongs to the regional group of the Western European and Others Group (WEOG).
Turkey, however, is a special case in the United Nations. It is the only country that participates as a full member in two regional groups. As it geographically belongs to Asia, Turkey is also a member of the Group of Asian States. And as an Islamic country Turkey is also a member – and a prominent one – of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which includes all Islamic states from Senegal to Indonesia and which is also recognized by the UN.
As a consequence, Turkey eats from three different baskets, depending on whether it invokes its geographical position in Asia, its religious character or its European component. The peoples of Europe do not seem to regard Turkey as a European country. The general expectation is that if the governments of the European Union member states were to put it to a vote in a referendum the people of Europe would reject the admission of Turkey to the EU.
Four years ago, Brussels and Ankara started negotiations intended to lead to Turkey becoming an EU member. The issue is highly controversial because the economic and institutional consequences of Turkey’s admission will be far-reaching for the EU.
To raise Turkey to a European standard of living would require enormous and sustained efforts of wealth redistribution from the European taxpayers, which would impoverish Europe without a guarantee of success in Turkey. Moreover, if Turkey joins the EU, an additional 80 million people become EU citizens. As an EU member, Turkey will be the most populous member with the highest number of representatives in the European Parliament. In the European Council it will be on a par with the present Big Ones. Its foreign interests will dominate Europe’s. Turkey is too big for Europe to swallow.
What worries ordinary Europeans most, however, is that the 80 million potential additional EU citizens are Muslims. Does it serve the interests of the West if the largest member state of the EU is an Islamic country?
Some think it does. They believe that Turkish EU membership will turn the country into a democratic state and an example for other Muslim nations, and hence prove that Islam and democracy can be reconciled. But what if they are wrong? Many ordinary Europeans would rather play safe. However, that is not the attitude of the political establishment.
There are strong indications that the EU establishment in Brussels already considers Turkey to be a member of the European club in all but name. Turkish ministers are already allowed to participate in EU deliberations.According to Pierre Lellouche, a parliamentarian of France’s governing party whom President Sarkozy has given the task of “relaunching Franco-Turkish relations,” Islamism will be defeated by bringing Turkey into Europe. “We have next door to us, a great secular Muslim country that wants to share our values. It is making the necessary reforms. We would be crazy to say no,” Mr Lellouche says.
He is, however, opposed to putting the matter of Turkey’s EU admission before the French electorate in a referendum because this is “to pollute the debate” with the fear of Islam. “Some play around with the fear factor: that is unworthy. Turkey is not Islamism or terrorism. Because of the fear of Islam and of Arabs, we are saying no for the wrong reasons.”
The question, however, is whether those who say yes to Turkey are not doing so for the wrong reason, namely to prove their point that Islam and democracy are compatible.
Why is it that, after 13 centuries of preserving European identity by opposing Muslim attempts to conquer Europe, some claim that Europe can only preserve its identity, its values and its freedoms by opening its doors to Turkey? Why can Turkey not remain free and democratic and “share our values” without becoming European? Is representative democracy only possible in Europe? Is secularism Europe’s only defining element?
Does it serve the interests of democracy and the West that the largest member state of the EU is an Islamic country, when ordinary Europeans oppose it? Is so, why should it not serve the interests of democracy and the West that Mexico becomes the largest member state of the USA? Does the religion of the Turks – even those of the secularized Muslims – matter to ordinary Europeans? Yes, it does. It matters as much as the language of the Hispanics matters to ordinary Americans. Only politicians intent on changing the nature of the peoples they were elected to represent do not care about such things.

Minneapolis: Imam, mosque official barred from flight to Saudi Arabia

An imam and a youth coordinator at a Minneapolis mosque were prohibited from boarding a flight Saturday morning to Saudi Arabia as part of a spiritual pilgrimage, an attorney for the mosque confirmed Sunday.
The attorney said it's likely the men are on a federal "no fly" list because they and the mosque have been connected by rumor to a number of missing Somali men whose families fear have returned to their East African homeland to fight in that nation's civil unrest or to receive terrorist training.
The FBI, which has been investigating alleged links between some in Minneapolis' large Somali refugee community and the strife in that nation, would not comment on the airport incident. The scope of any such links, if they exist, remains unclear.
Sheikh Abdirahman Ahmed of Abubakar As-Saddique, a large mosque in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis, and the mosque's youth coordinator, who did not want to give his name, were not allowed to board a flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, but were not told why. The youth coordinator said others in a group that planned to make the trip -- a hajj, or spiritual pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina-- also were not allowed to board, but he did not know how many people were involved.
Mahir Sherif, a California attorney who represents Abubakar as well as other Somali mosques across the country, said there are many possible reasons why the men are on the federal Transportation Security Administration's "no fly" list, which as of mid-August contained about 50,000 names. But he suspects that the reasons are linked to stories circulating in the Somali community that the mosque has been used to indoctrinate and train young men to return to Somalia -- stories that Sherif strongly denied Sunday.
"We think, we suspect, there is some kind of formal investigation [of the mosque] being conducted by the FBI right now," Sherif said. "What gave me more evidence that there is some kind of official investigation going on was that the second man was kept from boarding. He is head of a youth group at the masjid [mosque]."...

Jihadist "planned Mumbai-style massacre in Britain"

What will prevent this? What will keep this from happening one day -- particularly since honest discussion of the jihad ideology is increasingly forbidden, not by statute (yet) but by the stifling fog of political correctness?

Kazi Nurur Rahman, from east London, was associated with the same terrorist group that is accused of the attack in India which killed almost 200 people.
He was arrested in a sting operation as he tried to buy three Uzi submachine guns and 3,000 rounds of ammunition.
He had talked of buying up to five weapons, hand grenades and as many bullets as possible along with Russian-made rocket-propelled grenades and SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles.
When police raided Rahman's home they found a scanner which enabled him to listen in to police radios along with information on guerrilla warfare.
Counter-terrorism police believe Rahman was planning to arm a gang of associates.
One senior officer told the Daily Telegraph: "This was definitely part of a larger order and the fact that he tried to buy three submachine guns means you only have to do the maths to know he was not the only one involved."
Police also accept that, had he succeeded in buying the weapons, it would have been difficult to stop a massacre on a similar scale to India.
Rahman, 31, was an associate of Omar Khyam, the leader of a gang plotting to blow up Bluewater shopping centre or the Ministry of Sound nightclub with a fertiliser bomb.
Khyam trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba (Let) the Kashmiri separatist group accused of the Mumbai (formerly Bombay) massacre, before he turned to al-Qaeda....

Mumbai jihadists refused Islamic burial: "People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim. Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric

Now if he could only convince the living jihadists of that.

A Muslim graveyard has refused to bury nine gunmen who terrorized Mumbai over three days last week, leaving at least 172 people dead and wreaking havoc at some of its most famous landmarks.
The men are not true followers of the Islamic faith, according to the influential Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre (three-hectare) Badakabrastan graveyard in downtown Mumbai.
"People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim," said Hanif Nalkhande, a trustee. "Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime." [...]
While Nalkhande said several Islamic scholars had backed the trust's decision, some also criticized the move.
Even militants must be given a proper burial, said scholar Maulauna Zubair Ahmed.
"As per the Shariah, the trust cannot say no," he said, referring to Islamic law. "The Shariah says whether a Muslim is a drunkard, rapist, criminal, you must offer him a place for burial."...

Welcome to the Police State: 20,000 uniformed troops inside U.S. by 2011

This is what we do not need with Obama as president. Troops in the streets. If we need troops anywhere it would be Dearbornistan, MI, but we all know that Obama is really a muslim and is going to take away our rights. ACLU, you better get your lawyers ready.

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.
The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.
There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.
But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted "a fundamental change in military culture," he said....

Islamophobe says, "Child marriage in Islam is permissible. In the Koran there is no specific age of marriage" -- no, wait, it was an Islamic cleric

There is not only the lack of a minimum age for marriage in the Qur'an, but also the permission for child marriage implied by the permission granted to divorce prepubescent girls (Qur'an 65:4), and of course, Muhammad's own example in marrying Aisha at the age of 6 and consummating the marriage when she was 9. And here is a detailed story of the human cost of the practice made sacrosanct by Muhammad's example (Qur'an 33:21).

In a small, dimly lit brothel in the red-light district of Kano in northern Nigeria nearly all the young prostitutes lined up on plastic chairs are runaway brides.
“I was married when I was 15 years old. I was forced into it,” said Hadiza.
Whenever her husband attempted to consummate the marriage, Hadiza would flee to her parents’ home, but they kept returning her to the man to whom she had been married off.
Finally her husband raped her: the attack was so violent that Hadiza was sent to hospital.
“We have no choice. If you’re not married by the time you’re 16, people think there must be something wrong with you,” she said. The girls around her nod silently - some of them had been forced to marry when they were only 12.
Northern Nigeria has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world: nearly half of all girls here are married by the age of 15.
The consequences have been devastating. Nigeria has the highest maternal mortality rate in Africa and one of the world’s highest rates of fistula, a condition that can occur when the pressure of childbirth tears a hole between the vagina and the bladder or rectum. Many women are left incontinent for life. Up to 800,000 women suffer from fistula in Nigeria.
“They marry young, they get pregnant young, they deliver young and they pick up the fistula,” said Kees Waaldijk, the chief consultant surgeon at the Babbar Ruga hospital, the world’s largest fistula clinic, in the northern state of Katsina.
Most cases happen to young girls during their first pregnancy, and nearly half the patients at Babbar Ruga are under 16. [...]
The Nigerian federal Government has attempted to outlaw child marriage. In 2003 it passed the Child Rights Act, prohibiting marriage under the age of 18. In the Muslim northern states, though, there has been fierce resistance to the Act, with many people portraying it as antiIslamic. “Child marriage in Islam is permissible. In the Koran there is no specific age of marriage,” said Imam Sani, a liberal cleric in the northern state of Kaduna. He said that this was the root cause of the opposition among the more hardline mullahs, who believe that matters of Islamic “personal” law - marriage, divorce and inheritance - must be governed by the Koran, not the state.
“The Muslim clerics have a problem with this Child Rights Act and they decried it, they castigate it, they reject it and they don’t want it introduced in Nigeria,” Mr Sani said.
He said there would be serious repercussions if the federal Government attempted to impose a minimum age of marriage. “There will be violent conflict from the Muslims, saying that ‘no, we will not accept this, we’d rather die than accept something which is not a law from Allah’.”
Half of Nigeria’s 36 states have passed the Act, but it has been adopted by only one of the dozen Muslim states - and even that one made a crucial amendment substituting the age of 18 for the term “puberty”.
Each state in Nigeria has the constitutional right to amend legislation to comply with its local traditions and religion, meaning that central government is powerless to impose a minimum age of marriage.
Other vocal opponents to the Act include village heads and elders - almost all men - highlighting the tribal and cultural constraints that hamper attempts to stamp out child marriage.
“It is important we have the right to marry our girls young so there is no risk of pregnancy outside marriage. It is to preserve the purity of our girls,” said Usman, an 84-year-old man from the village of Yammaw Fulani, who married a 14-year-old girl four years ago. “We will never accept this law,” he said.

Twin Cities Muslim in Somalia Bombing

Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali man who lived in the Twin Cities, apparently blew himself up last week in northern Somalia—and there are almost a dozen others who recently disappeared from the Minneapolis area.


5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that federal law enforcement sources believe that a Twin Cities man blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Northern Somalia last month. The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating whether Shirwa Ahmed had developed a terrorist recruiting network in the area.
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS learned that Ahmed came to the Twin Cities in 1996 and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
More than a dozen young men of Somali descent, mostly in their 20s, from the Minneapolis area have recently disappeared, U.S. law enforcement officials tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. All are thought to be associates of Ahmed. U.S. officials suspect most of the young men have departed for Somalia to fight in ongoing violence there or to train in terrorist camps. Family members of the young men are said to be distraught, trying to figure to out what happened to them, sources say.
So far, the investigation has not uncovered credible evidence of a plot targeting the U.S. but American officials want to track down all these young men before they can say for certain what this is or is not, according to ABC News.

Police flooding into NY subways after warning of jihad bomb attack

Uniformed police officers have flooded New York City's Penn Station, home to the Long Island Rail Road, following a warning from the FBI of a "plausible but unsubstantiated" threat of a terrorist bomb attack against the system during the holidays.
Law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com, the plot involved a "Madrid-like attack," a reference to the synchronized bombing of the commuter rail system in Spain in March 2004 that killed 191 people.
Following the public release of the warning by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, officials in Washington made efforts to dampen public concern.
"There is nothing concrete to suggest this plot ever went beyond the aspirational or talking stage," said a U.S. official familiar with the intelligence that led to the warning.
Law enforcement officials told ABCNews.com the information was based on an FBI source who has proved "reliable and knowledgeable in the past."
Officials told ABCNews.com unspecified new information in the last 48 hours led to the public warning "out of an abundance of caution."
Congressman Peter King (R-NY), the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, told the Associated Press "authorities have very real specifics as to who it is and where the conversation took place and who conducted it."...

Lifeguards Wearing the Burkini?

This just makes me sick. One, I hate muslims and all that they stand for. Two, can this person even move in that thing when it is wet?

THE shorter, tighter and more revealing the better may be the rule on most catwalks, but there is not a miniskirt or plunging neckline in sight as Malaysia's Islamic Fashion Festival gets into full swing.
Models covered from head to toe are strutting down catwalks in Kuala Lumpur wearing designs from around the world during the week-long festival, which emphasises fabric over flesh.
The event is becoming a regular fixture on the fashion calendar in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Dubai as organisers seek to transform the three cities into the London, Paris and New York of the Islamic fashion scene.
This week's festival, the sixth since the show began in Kuala Lumpur two years ago, features Islamic designs for every occasion, from office wear, prayer wear and bridal wear to swimwear, couture and avant-garde.
The festival's founder, Rezza Shah, says his aim is to show that Islamic clothing can be fashionable.
"When I say 'Islamic fashion', they think it's a fashion show where you can see two eyeballs. Even Muslims themselves think this," said Mr Shah, a former model and actor who used to run his own modelling agency. "I do agree that women should be covered but they should be allowed to express their fashion, because we are living in a modern world."Three contradicting clauses in one sentence.
While there are no official statistics indicating the value of the Islamic fashion industry, some have estimated that it could be worth $US96 billion ($A152 billion) a year at least.
"A lot of ladies are covered but are dying to dress up well," said Mr Shah, adding that he aimed to show clothing that ranged from minimal to maximum coverings. "It's not about saying what's right or wrong. It's about showing variety."
Another contradiction: It is about saying what's right (dressing according to Islamic principles) and wrong (not dressing in infidel mini-skirts).

No Freedom in Saudi Arabia

This sign shows just how friendly muslims are to us kafirs.