From Yahoo: Opposition to the construction of mosques has skyrocketed in cities and towns across the country, say scholars and advocates of Muslim culture.
Public protests against three planned mosques have made news in the past week: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined others in opposing the building of a mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. Hundreds demonstrated against a proposed mosque in a small town in Tennessee. And some residents of Temecula, California, are opposing the local Muslim community's plan to build a bigger mosque, saying it could become a hotbed of radical Islam.
(Salaam - There was an interesting objection to the Corboda mosque reported in this article from an American Muslim convert, a position I tend to agree with.)
Stephen Schwartz, a convert to Islam and the founder of the nonprofit Center for Islamic Pluralism, opposes the building of the mosque near the World Trade Center, calling it an "unnecessary and misguided attempt at conciliation." He says that Muslims should not build big new mosques in the country because it will stoke tensions with the non-Muslim community.
"The problem that emerges is that these projects, when they are ambitious and large, set off a certain sector of the American people," Schwartz says. "I think that's very unfortunate but it is reality. Muslims should take that into account and should understand that building large mosques right now will be problematic."
From Salon: In a new blog post arguing against the planned Muslim community center near Ground Zero, Newt Gingrich explicitly argues that the United States should follow the lead of the oppressive theocracy of Saudi Arabia and reject the so-called Ground Zero mosque.
There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.
(Salaam) Many American Sunni Muslims (and all who are not Sunni) would not want to live in an 'oppressive theocracy' like Saudi Arabia but we've got Gingrich to try to bring its policies here anyway.
Al Awlaki makes himself a partner to God in the giving and taking of life while misrepresenting the Prophet PBUH. I suppose the 'medicine' he is referring to is that which the Prophet prescribed to the woman who used to throw garbage on him each day as he prayed...oh wait...
Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki - the radical who has also been cited as inspiring the Fort Hood, Tex., massacre and the plot by two New Jersey men to kill U.S. soldiers - singled out artist Molly Norris as a "prime target," saying her "proper abode is hellfire."
FBI officials have notified Norris and warned her they consider it a "very serious threat."
In an English-language Al Qaeda magazine that calls itself "Inspire," Awlaki damns Norris and eight others for "blasphemous caricatures" of the Prophet Muhammed. The other cartoonists, authors and journalists in Awlaki's cross hairs are Swedish, Dutch and British citizens.
The 67-page terror rag is seen by terrorism experts as a bald new attempt to reach and recruit Muslim youth in the West.
"The medicine prescribed by the Messenger of Allah is the execution of those involved," writes Awlaki, 39, a Las Cruces, N.M.-born American citizen.
"A soul that is so debased, as to enjoy the ridicule of the Messenger of Allah, the mercy to mankind; a soul that is so ungrateful towards its lord that it defames the Prophet of the religion Allah has chosen for his creation does not deserve life, does not deserve to breathe the air."
From Salon.com: Canada is on the verge of adding honor killings to its federal criminal code, affirming the practice of murdering girls and women who supposedly bring dishonor to a family as "barbaric cultural practices" and "heinous abuses." Besides making honor killings a unique criminal charge, the Canadian government is looking at other strategies to address the gender-based violence, including the launch of television programs that will highlight the consequences of the abuse.
The government's action seems to be prompted by a new report from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Released this past weekend, the report found that honor killings in Canada's immigrant communities are on the rise. It emphasized that these crimes must be acknowledged as a practice that is unique from traditional homicide because of its cultural roots and the targeting of females, according to The Montreal Gazette.
The United Nations estimates that each year 5,000 mostly Muslim women and girls are shot, stoned, strangled, stabled, burned, or smothered by family members with the intention of cleansing shame from the family's name. While most of these crimes occur in the Middle East and South Asia, immigration is taking them around the globe.
He said the group "doesn't see its own evil," even though many members are "assiduous readers of the Bible."
(This is an excerpt of a longer McClatchy news article. Follow the link at the bottom for the entire piece. I think the analogy, at least as it relates to making claims of religious justification for acts of crime and violence, is apt. - Salaam.)
APATZINGAN, Mexico - As the leader of one of Mexico's most ruthless criminal gangs, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez is the mastermind of hair-raising brutality in his native Michoacan state. He also would like the world to know that he has a pious, loving and huggy-kissy side, and so he's penned a booklet entitled "Thoughts."
"If you want to say 'I love you!' to those who surround you and to your friends, say it today," the drug lord exhorts his readers.
In the 104-page booklet, which was published earlier this year, he offers advice on personal empowerment, Christian living and proper deportment.
"Manners are a way of showing respect for others," he writes. "If you don't have them, don't expect to be respected."
If it's bizarre for the leader of a drug gang that beheads or quarters its enemies to offer advice on Christian living, well, it may be. However, the criminal gang known as La Familia Michoacana is a pseudo-Christian posse that mixes zeal and inspiring slogans in its pronouncements. Its members are ordered to study the Bible and pray the rosary, even as they gun down police, dismember their opponents and manufacture highly addictive crystal methamphetamine.
Unlike other Mexican drug cartels, La Familia portrays itself as religious and patriotic, and deeply tied to the mountain ranges and plains of Michoacan state along the Pacific coast. The group has a distribution network in the U.S. and funnels marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine to more than a dozen cities. A Mexican army general said La Familia has particularly strong distribution channels in California.
La Familia's thousands of members are often recruited from drug and alcoholism rehabilitation centers and sent to special training courses at secret safe houses in Michoacan.
"They bring in motivational speakers to their indoctrination sessions. Again, it's the U.S. Army 'be-all-you-can-be,' 'you can take your life in your own hands,' 'you can chart your future,'" said George W. Grayson, a scholar of contemporary Mexico at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., who's written about the group.
Grayson said the religious aspect of La Familia "is all propaganda."
"Nazario touts the Bible-pounding and often excuses their savage acts as being the work of the Lord, but I don't think there is an iota of religious conviction."
One might gain a different idea upon reading "Thoughts," which is filled with images of the Bible, crosses and Jesus. "If you want, you can become a good Christian," it says on one page. "Remember not to build walls or barriers but instead build bridges to unite people."
Like most of the short essays, it's signed "El mas loco," or "The Craziest One," a nickname often used by Nazario Moreno, who's also known as "El Chayo," a common nickname for people named Nazario.
....
The "band of brothers" mentality of La Familia appeals to jobless young men in a state with a tattered social fabric. Legitimate jobs are scarce, and some 1 million Michoacan residents have migrated to the U.S. in search of opportunity.
The drug gang has bought many legitimate businesses that range from mango and avocado farms to drug and hardware stores and car washes. The group's appointed delegates serve as a shadow power behind local governments.
"They have become substitutes for the police and the authorities. They tell people when to keep noise down at night," said Juventino Bravo Rojas, a deacon at the local Catholic parish.
He said the group "doesn't see its own evil," even though many members are "assiduous readers of the Bible."
The group's control is extraordinary. To grasp the extensive system of lookouts that La Familia operates, one only has to climb aboard an army patrol vehicle with a mounted .40-caliber machine gun in the cargo bed, and cruise.
During a lengthy ride with a radio scanner blaring, one could regularly hear hidden cartel sentries reporting on the passage of the vehicle.
"You can hear them say, 'There's a '53' going from such-and-such a point to such-and-such a point," said an army colonel, who couldn't be identified because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. " '53' is the code they use for the military, just as they say '40' for the police and '20' for the judicial (police)."
The sentries would sign off with a religious phrase: "May God repay you."
"They believe they are the saviors of Michoacan. They control 87 of the 113 municipalities in the state," said the veteran journalist. He said the cartel's recruits come under lengthy indoctrination. "They make them watch Godfather One, Two and Three to understand the concept of family."
The group has grown bolder in its attacks on federal law enforcement agents. On June 14, gunmen armed with high-caliber rifles and grenades ambushed a federal police convoy in rural Michoacan, firing on the patrol from two directions. Twelve officers were killed.
Since last year, La Familia has been locked in a blood-curdling battle with a onetime allied cartel that had made inroads in the state, Los Zetas, which was once the armed wing of enforcers of the Gulf Cartel, a syndicate on Mexico's east coast. Scores of low-level enforcers have been slain, and usually beheaded, in the settling of scores.
The erstwhile theology of La Familia irks Los Zetas, which a few months ago hung a cloth banner along a roadway accusing La Familia of moving toward "practices of Islamic fundamentalism."
'We must overcome our misgivings about 'God' both because of the word's intrinsic, historical merit and because it empowers us to communicate with our Jewish, Christian and other English-speaking neighbors in a meaningful way.'
An Islamic scholar spoke to a crowd of about 450 people at Western Michigan University on Feb. 19 with the message that Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same God.
He also brought a message specifically for the many Muslims who were part of the audience: Failure to use the English word "God," in addition to the Arabic word "Allah," gives the impression to Christians and Jews that Muslims do not worship the same God.
Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, chairman of the board and scholar-in-residence of the Chicago-based Nawawi Foundation, explained the history behind God's many names and emphasized his belief that adherents of the three religions worship the same deity, even though they do so in different ways.
Abd-Allah was brought to WMU by the Muslim Students' Association, in collaboration with the Arab Student Association. His foundation is a nonprofit institution that works to spread teachings about Islam in the U.S. through research and education.
In his speech, titled "One God, Many Names: Muslims, Christians and Jews All Call Upon the Same God," Abd-Allah said the three religious groups all invoke the God of Abraham. He said this is a fact clearly affirmed in the Bible and in the Quran, the Islamic holy book....
The weight of a name As far as names used for God, Abd-Allah said all of them are "beautiful" and meaningful. But while the name Allah is considered to have a unique sanctity for Muslims, he said English-speaking Muslims should not use the name exclusively. He called such exclusive use "a very ill-advised position" that affirms the notion that the Muslim God and the Christian and Jewish God are not the same God.
"We must overcome our misgivings about 'God' both because of the word's intrinsic, historical merit and because it empowers us to communicate with our Jewish, Christian and other English-speaking neighbors in a meaningful way," he advised Muslims in his 2004 essay.
He said the belief that Muslims worship a God other than the deity revered by Christians and Jews has been detrimental to the way Muslims are viewed in America.
American religious conservatives such as the Christian Coalition's Pat Robertson and evangelical Franklin Graham, he said, have erroneously spread the idea that the Muslim God is somehow lesser than the Christian God. For Robertson, he wrote, "the world's troubles turn on the question of 'whether Hubal, the moon god of Mecca known as Allah,' is supreme or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible is supreme." Abd-Allah debunked that notion, writing that Hubal was the chief pagan idol of Mecca and bore no theological or historical connection to Allah.
In discussing the history of different names for God, Abd-Allah said biblical terms such as Elohim come from the same Semitic root as the word Allah and basically mean "the one who is worshipped." In Arabic-speaking countries, he noted, non-Muslims refer to their God as Allah.
"God and his names are part of a universal human legacy," Abd-Allah said. "It's very important for us to understand the beauty of the word God."
The website of a top Saudi cleric who issued an edict calling for those who support co-educational environments to be put to death has been shut down on Sunday.
Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak's website was shut down following a barrage of criticism from religious scholars in Saudi Arabia and Egypt condemning his fatwa (religious ruling) as a call for violence.
Many religious scholars in Saudi Arabia denounced Barrak's ruling, saying it was similar to rulings once issued by religious fundamentalists, or Takfiris, accusing other Muslims of apostasy and condemning them to death.
In Egypt, Sheikh Abd al-Hamid al-Atrash, former head of the fatwa council at the influential al-Azhar Institution, said Barraks' ruling was a serious one, adding that the issue of co-education should have been studied in depth before issuing such a ruling.
"Co-education is not prohibited (in Islam) at all; there is no problem with women, if dressed modestly, being at school or work side by side with men," Sheikh Atrash told Alarabiya.net.
He added that mixed gender is discouraged if women are not dressed modestly and in places where people drink alcohol and use drugs. Sheikh Atrash said even in those cases a person cannot be condemned to death; explaining that one cannot be put to death simply because he or she attended a mixed congregation in a bar or a night club.
Shaikh Barrak, 77, said in a fatwa that the mixing of genders at the workplace or in education "as advocated by modernizers" is prohibited because it allows "sight of what is forbidden, and forbidden talk between men and women."
"All of this leads to whatever ensues," he said in the text of the fatwa published on his website (albarrak.islamlight.net).
"Whoever allows this mixing ... allows forbidden things, and whoever allows them is an infidel and this means defection from Islam ... Either he retracts or he must be killed ... because he disavows and does not observe the Shariah," Barrak said.
"Anyone who accepts that his daughter, sister or wife works with men or attend mixed-gender schooling cares little about his honor and this is a type of pimping," Barrak said.
Now Abdulmutallab is in a federal prison outside Detroit, cooperating with authorities, and living a life not unlike the one he had been somewhat obsessed with: as a prisoner of the U.S. government, in an orange jumpsuit.
Excerpt: The Islamic societies attract a certain kind of Muslim - extremely devout. In fact, school officials say most Muslims at British universities don't join their "ISOCs," as they are known, because the young people who join them tend to be very political and don't particularly want to mix with other groups at school.
Abdulmutallab joined the University College London ISOC soon after he arrived on campus. His quick elevation to the presidency of the group just a year later meant that in addition to leading the opening prayer at the society meetings, he was in charge of organizing the annual Islamic Awareness conference, a task that people who knew him say he attacked with gusto.
I attended some of the sessions at this year's Islamic Awareness Week program at University College London. Walking into the auditorium, there were signs that directed "sisters" to the left and "brothers" to the right. (A flyer seeking feedback about the session asked, in addition to whether the speaker was interesting, whether the event was "separate" enough.)
About a dozen young women sat in the back of the lecture hall. They all wore headscarves. One of them was from Pakistan, another from Malaysia and a third from Indonesia. The young men wore sweatshirts and track pants. They were at the opposite corner of the hall in the front three rows. Some were bearded, and others were not.
'War on terror' week This year's program included a lecture on the Prophet Muhammad, and another on finding one's life purpose through Islam. The sessions were conducted in a combination of English and Arabic.
In 2007, the tenor of Abdulmutallab's conference was very different. He called his event "War on Terror" week, and it focused on the Bush administration's war on terrorism policy.
The conference opened with a startling video: American Airlines Flight 11 plowing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It then cut to various images of mujahedeen on the battlefield.
It is unclear whether Abdulmutallab knew that he was essentially using the very same images recruiters use in their videos to convince young Muslims to join violent jihad. But people who saw the video that day in the hall said they were a little taken aback.
If there was any question about where Abdulmutallab stood when it came to the war on terrorism, it was answered by how the ushers in the hall were dressed - young men in orange jumpsuits passed out flyers; they were supposed to look like Guantanamo prisoners.
The U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay had clearly captured Abdulmutallab's attention months before the conference took place.
A public letter from advocacy organization in Malaysia, Sisters in Islam.
Sisters in Islam condemns caning of three Muslim women under syariah law.
Sisters in Islam (SIS) is shocked that the Prisons Department has caned three Muslim women for shariah offences.
Given that several issues on shariah and constitutional grounds, sentencing guidelines and Malaysia's commitments to international human rights instruments that were raised on the Kartika case remain unresolved, we question the government's motive in proceeding with the caning of Muslim women.
And to do this surreptitiously implies that the government wanted to hide this degrading and unjust treatment from public scrutiny. We would also like to know whether the men involved were also found guilty for illicit sex and similarly sentenced and caned.
We urge the Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil to take immediate steps to address the several unresolved issues arising from the caning sentence carried out on these women and the Kartika case.
This case constitutes further discrimination against Muslim women in Malaysia. It violates Constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination as whipping of women under Shariah Criminal Offences legislation contradicts civil law where women are not punishable by caning under Section 289 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
We once again urge the government to review caning as a form of punishment as it violates international human rights principles which regard whipping and other forms of corporal punishment as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Moreover, research has shown that caning is not an effective deterrent, even to violent or sexual crimes.
Dr Hamidah Marican
Executive Director
Sisters in Islam
17 Feb 2010
'What do you do if big cities have no water? Who would want to commit any investment here?' asked one diplomat.
From Reuters: The West frets that al Qaeda will exploit instability in Yemen to prepare new attacks like the failed December 25 bombing of a U.S. airliner, but this impoverished Arabian peninsula country faces a catastrophe that poses a far deadlier long-term threat.
Nature cannot recharge ground water to keep pace with demand from a population of 23 million expected to double in 20 years.
More water is consumed than produced from most of Yemen's 21 aquifers, especially in the highlands, home to big cities like Sanaa, with a fast-growing population of two million, and Taiz.
"If we continue like this, Sanaa will be a ghost city in 20 years," said Anwer Sahooly, a water expert at German development agency GTZ, which runs several water projects in Yemen.
Some wells in Sanaa are now 800 to 1,000 meters deep -- requiring oil-drilling equipment -- while many are no longer usable because of the sinking water table, he said.
Millions of thirsty Yemenis may eventually have to abandon Sanaa and other mountain cities for the coastal plain. "Water refugees" may try to migrate to nearby Gulf states or Europe.
Diplomats say fights over water use have erupted in some tribal areas. Several orange orchards have run dry in Saada, a northern province already racked by a conflict with rebels who agreed a fragile ceasefire with the government last week.
"From a Yemeni perspective, al Qaeda is a smaller problem than water. What do you do if big cities have no water? Who would want to commit any investment here?" asked one diplomat.
Wow - As an anglophone who can't read Arabic I'll have to take Kawdess' word for it, but this Al Jazeera poll says 68.6% of respondents believe colonial governments would treat Arab citizens better than current regimes.
What do al-Qaida's leaders fear most? It's not the more stringent screening requirements imposed by the Transportation Security Administration in the wake of the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing by Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Nor is it the long-awaited deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration's AfPak plan. And it certainly isn't the prospect that al-Qaida foot soldiers might end up in U.S. federal court, whether in New York or anywhere else. Rather, what keeps Osama Bin Laden and his followers up at night is the prospect that the Muslim world might get wise to their dirty little secret: that supporting al-Qaida is hazardous to your health.
This is borne out by the results of a new study conducted by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. The December 2009 report, entitled Deadly Vanguards, reveals that, for all of Bin Laden's claims of a clash of civilizations with the West, Muslims have actually been the main casualty of his jihad. "Since the inception of al-Qa'ida, the organization has claimed to represent Muslim interests around the world declaring itself the vanguard of true Islam and the defender of Muslim people," the study says. Yet "the vast majority of al-Qa'ida's victims are Muslims: the analysis here shows that only 15% of the fatalities resulting from al-Qa'ida attacks between 2004 and 2008 were Westerners."
B-52 bombers are constantly circling the skies over Pakistan, waiting to strike when the signal is given (to strike what is never exactly clear from the rumors)
From Time magazine: From the Pakistani army barracks to the roadside chai stands along the Indus River where truckers gulp down cups of muddy tea, anti-Americanism is roiling across the country. It is whipped up by the often sensationalist, ratings-hungry Pakistani TV news talk shows - think of Fox News cranked up to full volume, in Urdu. It resounds from the mosques, in virulent anti-U.S. sermons during Friday prayers. But most ominously, according to Islamabad observers, this deep suspicion of America's intentions in the region seems to be shared by elements within Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence services.
Here's a sample of a few conspiracy theories making the rounds: the U.S. military has a secret plan to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal; more than 9,000 agents of Blackwater, the U.S. security company, now called Xe Services, are roaming the country like bogeymen, at the CIA's behest, kidnapping people and setting off bombs that are later blamed on Pakistani Taliban militants; B-52 bombers are constantly circling the skies over Pakistan, waiting to strike when the signal is given (to strike what is never exactly clear from the rumors).
Even as the wild speculation circulates, U.S. diplomats are harassed in real life by Pakistani authorities. Their vehicles are seized and their visas tangled in bureaucratic red tape for months, crippling aid projects and counterinsurgency efforts. Sometimes photos of their residences are published in newspapers and labeled as CIA dens. American journalists, too, are singled out. Last October, an English-language Lahore newspaper, The Nation, accused a Wall Street Journal correspondent of working simultaneously for the CIA, the Israeli spy agency Mossad and, to top it off, Blackwater. A Pakistani daily also ran a photo of two British and Australian journalists at the site of a suicide bombing and insinuated that they were foreign spies.
This anti-U.S. resentment strikes many in Washington as a tad ungrateful - not to mention misplaced - given that last fall, Congress enacted the Kerry-Lugar bill granting Pakistan over $7.5 billion in economic aid over the next five years. In addition, Pakistan receives military hardware and training to combat Pakistani Taliban - whose wrath is focused on Islamabad - in the mountainous borderlands with Afghanistan.
So what gives?
Pakistan has long been characterized as a country whose rulers may be pro-American but whose people are decidedly not. In 1979, for example, Pakistani radio falsely reported that U.S. aircraft bombed Islam's holiest site in Mecca, prompting a mob to storm the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, killing five American and Pakistani staffers. This simmering hostility was stirred again after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and boiled over, more recently, with drone missile strikes inside Pakistan's tribal territory in which dozens of suspected terrorists - and civilians - died. The Feb. 3 conviction in New York City of a Pakistani woman scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, nicknamed Lady al-Qaeda, on charges of trying to shoot Americans in Afghanistan has also ignited anger in Pakistan against the U.S. The verdict was decried by Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and lawmakers and sparked anti-U.S. protest rallies in Lahore.
From the Jakarta Post: After proposing bans on pre-wedding photo sessions, ojek (motorcycle taxis) and hair treatments, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has now set its sights on aerobic exercise.
Chairman of the South Sumatra office of the MUI, M. Sodikun, said the council was considering an edict to declare the physical activity haram (forbidden under Islam) if the exercise enthusiasts, who are mostly women, did not change their clothing, which the ulema deem arousing.
Sodikun also criticised aerobic moves, which he said tended to spark sexual desire and therefore were contrary to Islamic mores.
"Exercise is recommended to maintain physical fitness and health but it must be conducted in accordance with our existing social norms and culture,' Sodikun said as quoted by kompas.com.
"Aerobic exercise must avoid the use of transparent clothing as it does more harm than good."
