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.

Pakistan: Proposed law to improve women's rights causes "uproar"

"The proposal has prompted widespread opposition in the Islamic world."

And why is that? After all, isn't Islam and Islamic law supposed to "elevate" women? The problem is, that "elevation" is not established by standards outside of Islam, where there can be no higher "elevation" than to act in lockstep with Allah's will. Hence, anything beyond what is spelled out in the Qur'an and Sunnah is liable to be denounced as bida, or innovation. Thus, attempts to increase women's rights in society beyond that will not be seen as generous, but dangerous, and sharia will remain the chief obstacle to improving the condition of women wherever it is the basis for a society's laws.
There's an uproar over proposals by the council for Islamic ideology (CII), to reform Islamic law concerning the family, in order to provide greater rights for women in the case of divorce. Current law recognizes divorce declared "verbally" by the husband, in private, and grants few economic rights to the wife.
The CII (a significant constitutional group with a legal consulting role in parliament and the government, set up in 1962) is also proposing that the wife should be able to ask for a divorce, in writing, with an obligation for the husband to accept the request within 90 days. After this period of time, the marriage would be dissolved anyway, unless the woman withdrew the request. It is also advised that women should declare their property at the time of their marriage, because after divorce many husbands strip their wives of their own property.
Asma Jahangir, president of the Pakistani commission for human rights, explains to AsiaNews that, in any case, women have a legal right to divorce, but the real problem is that often the husband does not provide any economic support for her or her children. She recalls that many husbands throw their wives and children out of the house, without even divorcing or giving them anything.
Muslim lawyer Hifza Aziz adds that today, the man can remarry without even telling his new wife about his previous divorce.
The proposal has prompted widespread opposition in the Islamic world, and the mufti Munibor Rehman, a prominent religious leader, accuses the CII of "wanting to invent a new sharia" and "to create anarchy and chaos in the country."
Hanif Jalandhry, secretary general of the alliance of organizations of Islamic schools, accuses the CII of "exceeding its constitutional role, with the proposal to introduce non-Islamic reforms into the law." Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, president of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Sami, says that the council "is sowing confusion among the people, with mistaken interpretations of sharia."
These accusations are rejected by S.M. Zafar, president of the Pakistani society for human rights, who reiterates that "the right of the woman to ask for a divorce is already practiced under the principle of the Khula, and the CII only wants to formalize this practice."
The CII is not withdrawing the proposed law, which will be examined by parliament. On November 18, Hamid Saeed Kazmi told the national assembly that the government "does not support" these proposals, which are being advanced by the CII on its own initiative. The minister for law and justice, Farooq H. Naek, has specified that parliament will not approve a law that is in contrast with the holy Qur'an and the Sunnah.
Another controversial point is the CII's proposal to allow women to make the pilgrimage of the Hajj (which Muslims must make at least once in their lives) without a Mahram ("guardian"), in respect of the constitutional right to travel without restrictions.

Michael (Mikaeel) Jackson converts to Islam

He was feeling "a bit down." So he decided to convert to the "funnest" religion in the world -- you know, the one that bans -- and whips people for -- dancing. "Michael Jackson 'becomes a Muslim and changes name to Mikaeel,'"

Beleaguered pop star Michael Jackson has converted to Islam and changed his name to Mikaeel, it has been claimed today.
The 50-year-old singer, who has previously been photographed wearing a traditional Arab women's veil, reportedly became a Muslim in a ceremony at a friend's house in Los Angeles.
The singer, who was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, is said to have sat on the floor and worn a small hat while an imam officiated at the home of Steve Porcaro, who composed music on his Thriller album.
He is said to have been encouraged by Canadian songwriter David Wharnsby and Phillip Bubal, a producer, who both approached him after he appeared 'a bit down'.
A source told The Sun: 'They began talking to him about their beliefs, and how they thought they had become better people after they converted. Michael soon began warming to the idea.
'An imam was summoned from the mosque and Michael went through the shahada, which is the Muslim declaration of belief.'[...]
Meanwhile, Jackson is scheduled to give evidence in person at London's High Court to defend allegations that he owes an Arab sheikh £4.7 million.

Rocket Hits Israeli City, Gaza Still Sealed

JERUSALEM – Palestinians fired a rocket at an Israeli city near the Gaza Strip on Friday but caused no casualties, police said, as the Israeli military continued its closure of all crossings into the coastal territory because of ongoing rocket fire.
Early Friday's rocket landed in an industrial zone in Ashkelon, about 11 miles inside Israel, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Israel allowed a trickle of key supplies into Gaza during a five-month truce with Gaza's Hamas rulers, then shut the crossings after the truce began breaking down Nov. 4 in a flurry of Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes.

Israel maintains Gaza closure despite humanitarian concerns is how this is portrayed. It is the bad Israelis that are oppressing the good "palastinians."

Thousands of Jordanians protest Israeli Gaza blockade.
Thousands of people took to the streets of the Jordanian capital on Friday to protest Israel's blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
More than 3,000 demonstrators marched in the streets of the Al-Wihdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman and torched US and Israeli flags, organisers said.
Chanting pro-Hamas slogans, the protesters carried banners reading, "Yes for resistance" and "End the Zionist occupation of Palestine."
"We can't be silent anymore about what happens in Gaza," Hamazah Mansur, head of the Islamic Action Front's six-member parliamentary bloc, told AFP.
"If the situation in Gaza develops, Arab rulers should expect an earthquake that would shake their countries and their regimes."
Israel has imposed sanctions on Gaza since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power last year in the impoverished territory of 1.5 million residents.
The one-hour protest was organised by the IAF, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which held a similar protest on Wednesday.
The IAF said earlier this month it was planning a trip to the Gaza Strip from the southern Red Sea port of Aqaba in a bid to break an Israeli blockade.
Jordan and Israel are bound by a 1994 peace treaty.

Australia: Report finds imams sanctioning marital rape, domestic violence, welfare fraud

Islamic Apologetics Rule #7734: Anytime Islamic practices garner bad publicity (child marriage, domestic violence, etc.), they must be blamed on "culture."

SOME Muslim religious leaders in Victoria are condoning rape within marriage, domestic violence, polygamy, welfare fraud and exploitation of women, according to an explosive report on the training of imams.
The report says some imams apply Sharia (Islamic law) when it benefits men but not when it benefits women, and that they hinder police from pursuing domestic violence charges.
Women seeking divorces have also been told by imams that they must leave "with only the clothes on their back" and not seek support or a share of property because they can get welfare payments.
And the report says some imams knowingly perform polygamous marriages, also knowing that the second wife, a de facto under Australian law, can claim Centrelink payments.
The report is based on a study commissioned and funded by the former Howard government and conducted by the Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria.
It was presented yesterday at a National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies conference at Melbourne University.
It is the result of extensive community consultation, interviews with police, lawyers, court workers and academics, and meetings with and questions to the Victorian Board of Imams.
The board's role is to provide an Islamic view and religious guidance to the community and represent it to the media. The report claims that the 24-man board ignored or did not directly answer many of the questions.
It says women, community and legal workers and police involved in the consultation were particularly concerned about domestic violence, and suggested that imams aimed to preserve the family at the cost of women.
When cases came to court they were often dropped after family and community elders pressured women to withdraw charges.
The report says some women who were legally separated but not religiously divorced had their husbands enter their houses, demand sexual intercourse and take it by force.
"Workers who have assisted women in this situation said that the advice women received from the imams was that it was "halal" — permitted — because there was a valid "nikah" — marriage," it says.
The report also cites sexual assault allegations connected with under-age marriages.
It says polygamy is steadily increasing and gaining acceptance among Melbourne Muslims, and Shepparton police report many "de facto" relationships that are really polygamous marriages. [...]

And Islamic law is never to blame:

Community members quoted in the report believe that imams' narrow religious training in an increasingly complex world, lack of life experience, poor English and lack of understanding of Australia create problems for the community. For example, ill-informed comment by imams drew a wedge between the mainstream and Muslim communities.
The report suggests the Muslim community believes many imams are ill-equipped for the role, which involves much higher expectations in Australia than in predominantly Muslim countries, including marriage counselling, pastoral and spiritual care, marriages and divorces.
"They come from their own little village and culture and say this is what Islam is," one woman is quoted saying. "They come from a village where there is no running water and electricity, and they bring their dark ideas into this country."

Meanwhile, one imam is shocked -- shocked!

The secretary of the Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi Naji El-Imam, said he could not understand how the council could write such a report and denied the complaints "absolutely".