religi

Islam does not condone Gangsters

2007-08-13T06:09:00.000-07:00

slam does not condone Gangsters

Mirza A. Beg

The attack of Tasleema Nasreen in Haydrabad, India and threatening her life is one more example of the impotent rage by religious bigots, because they find themselves incapable of living the ideals of their religion, and meeting the intellectual challenges.

I have not read the writings of Tasleema Nasreen, a citizen who has been chased from her native Bangladesh, currently living in India. Therefore I have no opinion on her writings. For the sake of discussion let us assume that what her detractors say is correct about her writing. It should not be difficult to prove her wrong by writing rebuttals, most of all by living the humane tenets of Islam. They do not seem to have faith in their own capabilities, or the greatness and grandeur of Islam to with stand small pin-pricks.

They find the low road of violence easy to take. It is uncivilized and un-Islamic, behavior, of brawn over brain. Intimidation and extortion are the only values they understand and practice. They neither read nor understand the humane attitude of the Prophet Muhammad, who did not attack those who insulted him, and there were many in Mecca at the time, who did. He returned the insults with visits to the sick with kind words. When he returned triumphant to Mecca, he did not punish any one who had not been guilty of cruel violence.

They obviously are in violation of the Indian penal code for attack on Ms. Nasreen and threatening her life, but emotionally they have insulted Islam much more than the detractors of Islam or Ms. Nasreen ever could, because they sully the name of Islam by acting in its name.

It is unfortunate that while India is making great strides towards modernity, many in the provincial legislators are criminals or support criminal behavior. Bal Thakary in the name of Hinduism has held the whole state of Maharashtra and its great city Mumbai ( Bombay) hostage as his fiefdom and has engineered riots where hundreds of people have been killed. Modi, who is still the chief minister of Gujarat has used the levers of power to kill and deprive minorities of their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

With this backdrop when three Muslim legislators from Hydrabad condone threats on the life of a woman whom they accuses of insulting Islam or Yaqub Qureshi from UP feign to put up a bounty for the killing of Danish editorial Cartoonist, the Indian government and the legal system finds itself hamstrung and fears accusations of the persecution of minorities.

These people are not only insult to their own religions they are an insult to the rule of law under the elegantly designed Indian constitution. They exploit the raw baser emotions of the populace for self aggrandizement. Tolerance of opinions is the hallmark of civilization and great religions. By not bringing such criminals to the bar of justice, not only the religions are insulted, but most of all it injures the Indian Republic and the rule of law. The country as a whole and the weaker sections of the society eventually pay grim price.

I urge the Government of India and the state governments to bring the legislators from Hydrabad and all others who indulge in patently illegal and unconstitutional activities to the bar of justice.

Visit Mirza A. Beg’s site at http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/

Pakistan at 60: caught between military rule and radical Islam

2007-08-13T06:07:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan marks its 60th anniversary, the country finds itself chafing under military rule with its identity and very existence threatened by a rising tide of Islamic extremism.

Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and its Taliban allies plot insurrection and global terror from bases in Pakistan’s northern tribal zones, and military ruler Pervez Musharraf is under intense to strike hard against them. But security experts say the threat of radical Islamic terrorism is the product of military rule – and only a return to democracy can help bring it to an end. “The country is fighting two last battles which will decide the soul of Pakistan – first is the fight against extremism and second is the rise of a people’s movement for genuine democratic rule,” political writer Najam Sethi told AFP.

“The establishment of civilian supremacy is the one at the heart of the country’s soul while the fight against extremism is an international concern which we have to address.”

For 10 years, Pakistan along with the US and Arab countries backed a fierce guerrilla war, funneling funds and arms worth billions of dollars to radical Islamic groups fighting the Soviets. Thousands of fighters from the Middle East arrived in Pakistan’s northwest cities. The US CIA and the ISI of Pakistan joined hands to train these men. The latest US weaponry was dumped in Pakistan. Islamic schools were set up to recruit young men to fight as volunteers in Afghanistan. Books highlighting the virtues of jihad against infidels were printed and distributed in the markets of the Hindu Kush tribal regions.

The 1989 Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and the abrupt US withdrawal from the region opened a new phase of jihadi culture leading to the rise of the Taliban movement from the refugee camps spread throughout Pakistan and the creation of Al Qaeda.

Political analyst Shafqat Mahmood said that in the six years since the Taliban were ousted from power in November 2001, Pakistan had become a pivotal US ally but that its problems had only multiplied. “Any strategy to fight extremism and terrorism would have to be multi-pronged,” he said, referring to the unrest in tribal areas.

“Some tactics would be short term, especially military ones, but the real strategy has to cover years, even decades,” he said.

Hasan Askari, former head of the Political Science Department of the Punjab University, believes Pakistan can no longer be described as a moderate and tolerant society.

“Pakistani society has been brutalised by religious extremism and intolerance preached and practised by hardline Islamic groups. This has also adversely affected the search for knowledge and the quest for objective inquiry, thereby making it difficult for the people to realise their potential.”

Commentators said the lack of consistent democracy has not only allowed extremism to flourish, but has stunted the development of Pakistan.

However Askari says he has hope in Pakistan’s silent majority.

Analyst Sethi said the upcoming general elections, slated for early next year, and Musharraf’s own election later this year could decide the direction the country would go.

“If we do not establish people’s supremacy we will go the path of Algeria and succumb to the religious forces. We will become inward looking, parochial, anarchist, divided, fissured and plagued by sectarianism,” Sethi said. afp

AZERBAIJAN: WHY IS ’ALTERNATIVE’ ISLAM GAINING STRENGTH?

2007-08-13T06:05:00.000-07:00

Liz Fuller and Badek Bakir 8/12/07
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL

With the eclipse of the political opposition in Azerbaijan, Islam is increasingly poised to fill the ideological vacuum.

Most government officials, however, deny that the increased interest in Islam poses a serious threat to either political stability or national security.

Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, many Azerbaijanis rejected communist ideology in the wake of the reprisals in Baku in January 1990 by Soviet troops that left at least 130 people dead.

But the pro-Turkish Azerbaijan Popular Front that took power in May 1992 failed to impose order on political chaos or reverse economic decline, and many people sighed with relief when a failed insurrection in June 1993 ended with the self exile of President Abulfaz Elchibey and the return to power of former Communist Party of Azerbaijan First Secretary Heidar Aliyev.

Aliyev restored order, signed a string of contracts with international oil companies, muzzled the media, and suppressed or coopted the opposition. But he failed to offer a vision of a new Azerbaijan that would appeal to the majority of a population demoralized by defeat in the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

In search of a sense of identity, or in some cases out of sheer intellectual curiosity, Azerbaijanis, especially the younger generation, are increasingly turning to Islam. Thousands of people flock every week to Friday Prayers at Baku’s Abu-Bakr mosque.

Mushviq Shukyurov, who is 40 and teaches at a pedagogical institute in Sumqait, the industrial satellite north of Baku, told RFE/RL that he developed an interest in Islam after reading the works of 19th century Azerbaijani philosophers. He said that reading the Koran for the first time last year changed his life, and made him want "to seek for and serve the truth."

Shukyurov said that "many" of his students likewise show an interest in Islam, but that he fears some of them, lured by "false promises" made by either Saudi or Turkish missionaries, are following "a false path."

Missionaries

Shukyurov’s misgivings highlight two parallel trends that partly account for the ongoing revival of interest in Islam: widespread ignorance resulting from the lack of any formal instruction in schools on the rudiments of religion, and the influx over the past 15 years of missionaries representing a multiplicity of Islamic, Christian, and other religious denominations.

Rafik Aliyev, who headed the State Committee for Religious Affairs from its founding in 2001 until the summer of 2006, told RFE/RL that interest in Islam is growing because there is no religious education.

Adil Hadjiev, another former official of the State Committee for Religious Affairs, says that for that reason, people are likely "to open their doors to the first missionary who knocks."

And there is no shortage of such hopeful proselytizers. Traditionally, most Azerbaijanis are Shi’ites, while a minority are Sunnis. The ratio is approximately 65 percent Shi’a and 35 percent Sunni, with Sunnis predominate in the northern regions of the country bordering on Daghestan, and Shi’ites more numerous in the south, especially districts bordering on Iran.

But the Sunni share is gradually increasing, a trend that reflects, on the one hand, disillusion with and suspicion of Azerbaijan’s "official" clergy who function under the Muslim Board of the Caucasus. That institution was first established in 1944 and its current head, Sheikh ul-Islam Allakhshukur Pasha-zade, has held his post since before the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, representatives of three distinct currents within Islam are actively recruiting new converts.

Those three competing schools are the Salafi/Wahhabi school as practiced in Saudi Arabia; Iran’s brand of radical Shi’a Islam; and the moderate Hanafi school of Islam promoted by the Turkish NGO Nur (Light). But it is extremely difficult to estimate how many Azerbaijanis practice which form of Islam. Writing in the Russian daily "Nezavisimaya gazeta" in April 2006, one Azerbaijani journalist estimated the number of followers of Wahhabi/Salafi Islam in Azerbaijan at approximately 25,000. The total number of mosques in Azerbaijan today is between 1,400-1,700 for a population of 8.5 million, compared with only 40 in late 1991.

Opposition Eclipse

Other factors too, both political and socioeconomic, drive many Azerbaijanis to seek in religion either consolation or a new meaning to their lives.

One factor is the eclipse of Azerbaijan’s numerous opposition parties. Over the past 14 years, since the return to power of Heidar Aliyev, opposition parties have been constantly harassed by the authorities, evicted from their offices, denied access to state-controlled media, and refused permission to stage demonstrations in downtown Baku.

The pressure to which they are routinely subjected is so intense that there is less risk involved in attending prayers at a mosque than in joining a political party. In addition, opposition parties’ constant rivalry and feuding and the reluctance of prominent opposition party leaders to set aside personal ambitions and join forces to create a united front have discredited them in the eyes of many people. The Azerbaijani authorities for their part have resorted to blatant rigging of all successive national elections, beginning in 1995.

A second, related factor is anger and resentment at the country’s leadership, which has permitted a handful of close associates to monopolize virtually all spheres of economic activity. And a large share of the multi-million dollar profits that President Aliyev promised from Azerbaijan’s Caspian oil revenues is being plowed into grandiose but useless projects, such as Olympic-standard sports stadiums in remote areas of the country, reserved for the use of a chosen few and off-limits to the rest of the population. Moreover, Azerbaijan is showing the first symptoms of "Dutch disease." Economists predict that inflation this year will reach 16 percent; steep rises in the price of gas, electricity, and gasoline earlier this year were met with widespread popular anger.

Historian Altai Goyushov is one of those who attribute the growing popularity of Islam to growing injustice, corruption, and economic problems. Goyushov believes that voters can no longer find within the opposition camp a force they can trust to represent their interests.

Role Of The West

And it is not just the Azerbaijani leadership that people feel betrayed by, but also the West, in particular the United States. Many Azerbaijanis, both ordinary citizens and some government officials, accuse the West of double standards. They point out that while the West proclaims its commitment to spreading democracy, it is guided more by mercantile interests, such as profiting from the exploitation of Azerbaijan’s hydrocarbon wealth. For that reason, many people think, the West supported the Rose Revolution in Georgia in November 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in December 2004, but turned a blind eye to widespread falsification during the Azerbaijani presidential election in 2003 and the parliamentary ballot in 2005.

Former State Committee for Religious Affairs Chairman Aliyev argues that people have lost trust not only in pro-western Azerbaijani politicians, but in the West in general. "The West in its dealings with other countries takes into consideration first and foremost its own national, political, and economic interests, and it does not give people correct information. It would not be wrong to say that Western democracy has failed totally," Aliyev says.

Finally, Azerbaijani police and security forces sometimes indiscriminately target men who by their clothing and long beards can be identified as followers of Salafi/Wahhabi Islam. Hadji Gamet Suleymanov, imam of the popular Salafi/Wahhabi Abu-Bakr mosque, says that such brutal treatment can prove counterproductive.

"You know this serves only to fuel radicalization, and some radical forces can use this to win more supporters. We are also against crime, if someone has committed a crime we are against that, but if you are prosecuted only because you are a believer, this is not right," Suleymanov says.

In a recent interview with the online daily zerkalo.az, Muslim Spiritual Board head Pasha-zade denied that there have been any "serious cases causing concern" in the religious sphere. At the same time, he claimed that the political opposition seeks to play the religious card, and he expressed clear dissatisfaction that the government authorities do not take a tougher stances against "Wahhabis." He said that the "Wahhabis," especially the congregation of the Abu Bakr mosque in Baku, enjoy special privileges that are not extended to any other religious group.

Hidayat Orujev of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations said at a press conference in Baku on June 29 that "there are small groups in the country representing radical religious forces that think they can come to power. But the very idea is ridiculous." In contrast to Pasha-zade, Orujev said he considers the situation at the Abu-Bakr mosque "normal."

But the Azerbaijani authorities nonetheless keep a close watch over religious groups. Djeyhun Mamedov, who heads the Information and Analysis department of the State Committee for Religious Affairs, admits that the activities of religious groups are monitored to determine whether any of them break the law.

And Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry has in recent years announced the arrest of several "Wahhabi" groups suspected of planning terrorist acts.

Islam Izmayil, a former National Security Ministry official who now heads the Security Studies Center, believes that the government still controls the activities of various religious groups to a greater or lesser degree. He told RFE/RL he thinks the Azerbaijani government is portraying the upsurge of popular interest in religion to the West as a potential threat in order to justify its ongoing crackdown on both opposition activists and believers.

Editor’s Note: Liz Fuller is an RFE/RL analyst; Badek Bakir is a correspondent for RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service

Posted August 12, 2007 © Eurasianet
http://www.eurasianet.org

Reckoning with radical Islam

2007-08-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

Lee Hamilton

The recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) suggests that al-Qaida is as strong as it was before Sept. 11, 2001. This is deeply disturbing and suggests that our counter-terrorism strategy is insufficient.

It has been nearly six years since the 9/11 attacks, a period of time longer than the Civil War or World War II. It is hard to imagine President Roosevelt's government acknowledging that the Japanese were as strong as they were on Pearl Harbor Day six years after the attack, yet that is where we are today.

We have done some things right: There has not been another terrorist attack in our country, and top al-Qaida leaders have been captured or killed. But we need to do many things better, and try new approaches as well.

The radicalization of the Islamic world stands out as a particular challenge. From Morocco to Indonesia to the cities of Europe, extremism is spreading. Yet America lacks a clear program to win the battle of ideas that is taking place within the Islamic world. Instead, our strategy is weighted toward combating extremism with military force, particularly in Iraq. Meanwhile, new terrorists are rising up faster than we can possibly kill or capture them.

Military force must always be an option against terrorists, but we must give new emphasis to drying up the source of terrorist recruitment, and weakening the appeal of the extremists. We have learned much about Islam since 9/11, but we still fail to understand it.

We make a terrible mistake when we use terms like "Islamo-fascist," suggesting that we think all of Islam is inherently violent. Islam is complex, multi-faceted and profoundly divided. To defeat the small minority of Muslims who turn to violence, we will need the help of the vast majority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims who are peaceful but who hold grievances against America. To do this, we must better understand the root of those grievances.

Muslim hostility toward America may at times be rooted in religion, but it is also political. Because the United States is the richest and most powerful nation, we inspire jealousy and resentment. Historically, we have backed repressive Muslim leaders -- like the Shah in Iran, or General Zia in Pakistan. Before 9/11, our military presence in Saudi Arabia and support for Israel drew widespread opposition in the Islamic world; since 9/11, the war in Iraq has dramatically increased anti-Americanism. Whether or not they condone terrorism, many Muslims have a sense that Islam is under attack, and this has fed radicalization.

At the same time, the opportunity embodied within American society is a source of hope for many Muslims, and makes the United States an attractive place to live, work or study. The values of tolerance and equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence are admired, and the commitment to equal justice and the rule of law in the Constitution is sorely lacking in many Muslim countries. Whether or not they approve of our foreign policy, many Muslims find much to love about what America stands for, even as they want to preserve their own traditions.

To roll back radicalization, we must do more to show Muslims the side of American power that they admire. We need to support economic policies that advance trade and development in Muslim countries, and primary and secondary schooling that provides young Muslims with alternatives to radical education. We need to support the rule of law as strongly as freedom, so that our commitment to democracy is matched by our commitment to justice. This kind of agenda of opportunity can show the world's Muslims that America is invested in their future, and that America is on their side.

We also need robust public diplomacy to build substantive ties with the world's Muslims. We need more scholarships, exchange programs and American libraries in Muslim countries, and more funding for the kind of outreach and international broadcasting that we used to reach across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Our diplomats need to get out of our embassies and travel more around Muslim countries to engage their citizens. And we need America's Muslims to play a more prominent role in building bridges of understanding with their co-religionists globally.

Ultimately, only Muslims can reject the radicalization in their midst. To help them succeed, America must make common cause with peace-loving Muslims. The good news is that we have far more to offer in this battle of ideas than the extremists' message of hate; nearly six years after 9/11, it is time for us to get to work.

Islam and extremism

2007-08-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

I am in Kuala Lumpur at the 5th International Convention of Asia Scholars. The organizers say that at least 1,300 scholars are here from Europe, the Americas and Asia participating in workshops on culture and art, politics and religion, geopolitics and Asean, among many others. I was invited by the Seattle-based National Bureau of Asian Research to present a paper on extremism, political identity and Islam.

Religious fundamentalism is rising around the globe. (Witness the election of George W. Bush with the support of right wing fundamentalist religious groups from the “Bible-belt”). There can be no doubt that religious fundamentalism in Islam is on the rise as well. Unfortunately, the world focuses on the minority represented by extremists such as the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Islamiyah and similar groups. A blanket condemnation of Islam as either source or facilitator of radicalization and extremism is a big mistake. We ought to have a better appreciation of the factors that can account for the rise of radical and extremist groups in Muslim communities today.

What are the forces that influence developments in our Muslim communities? What are the more proximate, exogenous issues that trigger extremist acts? What are some of the factors that can mute or mitigate these forces? What actions can be taken to dull the leading edge of extremism, particularly in the local communities? What role do religion and education play in all these? We need to find the answers to these questions if we are to deal with the radicalization and the growth of extremism in Muslim communities.

The changes in geopolitics over the last decade have put our liberties at risk. In the minority Muslim areas of Thailand and the Philippines, for instance, our liberties are at risk from internal ethnic conflicts with central government. In Mindanao, it has been taken to a new level by the fear of an all-out war strategy to deal with the Basilan ambush/encounter.

The expansion of an extremist religious interpretation of Islam does not help us. We are at risk from within and from without.

Muslim communities are fighting to survive—physically as well as culturally. Muslim communities are being radicalized proportionate to their failure to “modernize” themselves relative to their environments. Pressures on non-Western societies are gathering force under globalization. (You only fave to talk to indigenous peoples’ groups and anti-WTO organizations to feel the anxieties generated by globalization). Globalization has been seen as a threat, an imposition to a people’s identity and culture. Modernization can be traumatic, particularly if forced and hasty, especially when the transformation removes communities from the safety of tradition.

In its 2000 world development report, the World Bank identified two seemingly contradictory forces affecting the world order: globalization and localization. Globalization forces national governments to go beyond their borders in order to cope up with the progressive integration of world economies while localization manifests itself in the increasing assertion of local people for political or religious identities. Paradox of globalization; as world capital, trade, finance become integrated, nationalist or local groups tend to resist these homogenizing processes in order to protect group interests and cultural identity.

It is in this context that we should address the issues of radicalization and extremism in Muslim communities, noting that radical Islam has been fuelled by the negative impacts of globalization. Will a global military war on terror end terrorism? I think not. Killing the terrorists will not end terrorism. However, it is the same globalization forces that may provide the key to addressing radicalization and extremism, principally the forces of democratization. Genuine Democracy—which will provide justice, protection and more space for the marginalized—will be able to temper this inclination toward extremist advocacies.

While we acknowledge that there is a process of radicalization in the moderate and pluralistic south East Asian communities, we stress that radical does not necessarily mean terrorist or violent—there is a spectrum of actions that fall under radical. The determinant is how they react when confronted by key issues, such as the establishment of an Islamic state, Sharia (Islamic law), the role of women, and freedom of worship. Nonetheless, the propensity for violence is certainly a defining characteristic of the most extreme segment of the radical spectrum. The willingness to use or justify violence to attain religious or political objectives is one element that separates violent extremists from other radical Muslims.

The Sickness That Is Wahhabi Islam

2007-08-08T06:37:00.000-07:00

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia officially came into existence in 1932. The Al Saud clan, led by Abdul Aziz bin Saud (c. 1880 - 1953), had by this time gained total control of the region formerly known as Arabia. The process of forcing rival clans into submission began at the start of the 20th century. Aziz was supported by members of a movement called the Ikhwan, or Brotherhood. Aziz founded the Ikhwan from disparate Bedouin tribesmen in 1912. These religious fanatics shared the same brand of fundamentalist faith as Aziz, but they later objected to the clan leader's alliance with the British "Christians." Eventually, the relations between the Ikhwan and Aziz soured, and by 1930 the future monarch had annihilated them as a force.

The Ikhwan followed the branch of Islam known as Wahhabism. This intolerant and extremist ideology had been formulated by Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792). Wahhab had been forced to flee from Medina, and he found protection in the person of Abdul Aziz's ancestor, Muhammad Ibn Saud, in 1744. At this time, the al-Saud family was based at the town of As-Dariyah in Najd region, near Riyadh. Wahhab's philosophy was derived directly from Ibn Taymiyyah: worship at shrines was considered forbidden, leading to a ban on tomb markers. Anyone who did not conform to Wahhab's strict interpretation was a heretic, and deserved to be killed. Like Ibn Taymiyyah, Wahhab saw any "innovations" (bida) in Islam to be heretical. For the theologians of Al Azhar University in Egypt, the ideology of Wahhab was primitive.

Muhammad Ibn Saud was given religious "legitimacy" as a ruler over Najd by his association with Wahhab. By the time he died in 1765, the family which had developed as olive grove owners in the 16th century was as powerful as any other tribal group in Arabia. Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was virulently opposed to the Shi’a branch of Islam, and condemned their pilgrimages to shrines of their saints. After his death, his followers (who called themselves muwahiddun or "unitarians") seized the Iraqi Shiite city of Karbala in 1802, where they destroyed the shrine of Imam Husain. The following year, they took control of Mecca, prompting the Ottoman Caliphate to send a force to reclaim the holy city.
n 1891, the Al-Saud family was driven out of Arabia by their rivals from the Rashidi clan, who took control of Riyadh and its environs. The al-Sauds took up residence in Kuwait until January 15-16, 1902, when Abdul Aziz bin Saud and his supporters drove out the Rashidis from Riyadh. The Rashidis remained powerful, supported by the Ottomans and by Turkey. In 1921, assisted by his camel-riding Bedouin followers of the Ikhwan, Abdul Aziz forced the Rashidis into submission, followed by an alliance.

British meddling in Middle Eastern politics had seen two Hashemite brothers placed as rulers in Iraq and Transjordan in 1921. The Hashemites claim descent from Mohammed, and since the 10th century, the ruler (sharif) of Mecca was traditionally a Hashemite. Since 1916, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, supporting British interests, declared Hejaz (the northwest of Arabia along the Red Sea, comprising Jeddah, Mecca and Medina) to be independent of the Ottoman Turks. Sharif Hussein ibn Ali's son 'Abd Allah was king of Transjordan and his brother Faysal was king of Iraq. In March 1924 Sharif Hussein declared himself "Caliph", shortly after the Ottoman Caliphate was abolished on the 3rd of that month. By September 1924, Abdul Aziz bin Saud and the Ikhwan took control of Mecca, leading Sharif Hussein ibn Ali to abdicate on October 5th and go into exile.

Control of the Hashemite region of Hejaz led the Ikhwan to go north to Transjordan in 1924, to claim that territory for themselves. The British, though allied to and financing Abdul Aziz bin Saud, met the Ikhwan with force, leaving alive only eight from a legion of 1,500. The Wahabbists objected to minarets, dancing and music. In 1921 Winston Churchill had warned the U.K. parliament of the extremism of the Wahhabists, saying: "Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account, and they have been, and still are, very dangerous to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina."
In June 1926, the Ikhwan attacked a traditional procession called the mahmal. 25 people and 40 camels died. The mahmal involved a caravan procession carrying ornate curtains from Egypt to Mecca, where these drapes were placed on the Kaaba shrine during the Hajj pilgrimage. According to Abdul Aziz bin Saud, the violence occurred when members of the procession had sounded trumpets in the vicinity of a "holy place." Bin Saud had earlier tried to prevent the mahmal taking place.

From 1926 onwards, the Ikhwan staged minor revolts against Abdul Aziz, and one faction even tried to destroy the Kaaba at Mecca. In 1929, antagonism between Abdul Aziz bin Saud and the Ikhwan led to a showdown. The religious authorities supported the King, and he crushed the Ikhwan. He set up a National Guard, and in 1932 announced himself king of Saudi Arabia. He had named the entire region of Arabia after his clan.

Vandalism In The Name of Allah

In 1924, the Wahhabis had begun a campaign of destruction of graves of Muslim saints and imams. Even the tomb of Mohammed's daughter Fatima, from whose lineage the Mahdi (Messiah) will be born, was destroyed. The Ikhwan had even tried to desecrate the tomb of Mohammed, but had been restrained by the Al Saud chief. Under the rule of King Abdul Aziz and his descendants, the destruction of religious sites has been accelerating up to the present day. Over the past two decades, according to the Gulf Institute, 95% of the ancient buildings of Mecca have been demolished. Dr Sami Angawi, a Saudi architect, claims that now there are only 20 buildings which remain from the time of Mohammed.

The tomb of Mohammed is in Medina. In the 1950s, the Saudi establishment decided to build a library over the grave site. The architect gained a compromise, by allowing the tomb to remain beneath the library. The authorities intend the tomb to be concreted over and made into a car park. In 1998, the tomb of Mohammed's mother, Amina bint Wahb, was bulldozed and razed to the ground. The house of Khadija, Mohammed's wife, is no longer standing. It has been replaced with public toilets. The house of Abu Bakr, the first Caliph and father of Mohammed's last wife Aisha, has vanished under the foundations of a Hilton hotel.
ountain, is being considered for demolition. Prince Turki al-Faisal wrote in response to a 2005 newspaper article condemning such destruction that Saudi Arabia was spending more than $19 billion preserving the heritage of Mecca and Medina: "[We are aware] how important the preservation of this heritage is, not just to us but to the millions of Muslims from around the world who visit the two holy mosques every year. It is hardly something we are going to allow to be destroyed."

The Grand Mosque of Mecca is now becoming dwarfed by high-rise construction projects, including the Zam Zam tower, being built by the Bin Laden family. A religious ideology that can render its own heritage obsolete, in case pilgrimage (classed as "shirk" or "polytheism") takes place, is destructive and anti-cultural. The tribe of Al Saud spreads this ideology around the world, funding madrassas and schools. The human beings who live under the intransigent rule of Wahhabism are denied some of the basic rights we take for granted in the West.

Abuse In The Name Of Allah

Saudi Arabia exports its Wahhabist ideology around the world. In 2005, Prince Alaweed bin-Talal made $20 million grants to the US universities of Georgetown and Harvard to promote "Muslim-Christian understanding", yet there is no such tolerance of any other faith within Saudi Arabia. No Bibles or crucifixes can be brought in by visitors, and holding Christian religious services can lead to imprisonment.
Since 1926, the Wahhabists have had mutawi'oon (also spelled muttawa or mutawi,) who are enforcers of "virtue" – the religious police. These Islamic vigilantes wear red and white check keffiyehs or headscarves, and have the power to arrest people. They belong to an official body called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which has 10,000 members in 486 centers throughout the kingdom. The president of this commission is Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith. He stated in March this year that a royal decree was issued on September 7, 1980. This decree, said Al-Gaith, made the muttawa follow strict procedural guidelines.

He said: "The commission plays a large role in capturing people who practice sorcery or delusions since these are vices which affect the faith of Muslims and cause harm to both nationals and expatriates. The commission has assigned centers in every city and town to be on the lookout for these men. As for their fate, they are arrested and then transferred to concerned authorities. The commission also has a role in breaking magic spells, which are found in the sea. We cooperate with divers in this aspect. After the spells are found, they are then broken using recitations of the Holy Koran. We do not use magic to break magic spells, as this is against the teachings of Islam as mentioned by the Supreme Ulema. But we use the Koran as did the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)."

Belief in sorcery and witchcraft seems anachronistic in the 21st century, but in November 2005 a chemistry teacher found himself sentenced to three years' imprisonment and 750 lashes, for mocking Islam and studying witchcraft. Those who had accused Mr. Muhammad Al-Harbi were his own students. In December, Mr. Al-Harbi was granted a pardon by King Abdullah.

In June last year, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith launched a campaign to stamp out practices of "witchcraft" amongst Indian and African migrant workers in the kingdom. Earlier, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported on the case of a naked African "witch" who brought traffic to a halt in Medina. The woman had been seen walking naked, and was tracked to a brothel. She tried to flee through a window, but fell through a roof and walked away unharmed, showing her "witchcraft." She was later captured. The situation of foreign witchcraft practitioners led to Al-Ghaith setting up emergency centers throughout the kingdom to "register complaints on sorcerers and charlatans, track them and terminate them."

When not seeking out witches, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice targets people who are considered to be acting immorally. They commonly seek out people who are "in seclusion." This breach of morality, called "khalwat", happens when a man and woman are found to be in each other's company when they are neither married nor blood relatives. How the muttawa assess "khalwat" is – to Western minds – bizarre.

In June, 2006 a disabled 70-year old woman entered a shop in Al Deira market in Riyadh while unaccompanied by a man. In the shop was the male shopkeeper. As a result, the woman (and not the man) was accused of "khalwat". Her relatives were not informed of her arrest. They found her a few days later in a jail.

The Saudi-based Arab News reported recently that a Nigerian man has been in jail for at least 50 days. Ibrahim Mohammed Lawal, a recent convert to Islam, had been studying Islamic Law at Badiya Islamic Center in Riyadh. When he heard that his 63-year-old woman neighbor was ill, he offered to drive her to the hospital. Several hospitals refused to admit the woman. Some time after she was finally admitted to a hospital, Mr. Lawal wondered about the woman's well-being. He called to her apartment, where three of the woman's female friends were present. As he inquired after the woman's health, the muttawa arrived, and arrested Mr. Lawal and the three women.

Mr. Lawal cannot understand why he is in jail. He said: "I wanted to do a good thing for a woman who was sick, and this is what I get in return. I lost the support of my family in Nigeria, where my wife and children are upset with me – and here I am languishing in prison."

In May 2006, the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, announced that the powers of the muttawa to arrest and detain suspects for hours were to be limited. The decree, reprinted in newspapers across the kingdom, stated: "The role of the 'authority for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice' ends with apprehending suspected individuals and handing them to the police, who then present them to prosecutors with a report of the incident involved."

Despite such rulings, the zeal of the religious police exceeds the bounds they should abide by. Sometimes Shi’a Muslims are apprehended by the muttawa, and only released when they have signed a document denouncing their faith. The religious police frequently take men whose hair is too long off the streets. The individual's locks are sheared to an acceptable length before release. They have a reputation for violence. This year, two men have died while in their custody. In June this year, local news reported that one man who had been apprehended for "khalwat" had died of a heart attack in custody. 50-year-old Ahmed Al Bulawi had been arrested in the northern province of Tabuk. The woman he was accused of being too "close" to was the relative of his employers.

28-year-old Salman Al Huraisy had died in May this year, after being arrested by the muttawa in Riyadh. Mr Huraisy had been accused of dealing alcohol. His relatives claimed that he had been beaten to death.

In the same month, Saudi newspaper Okaz reported that a woman was severely injured after she fled from muttawa who had broken into her home. The religious police suspected her of "indecent activities." She panicked and jumped from the fourth floor of her apartment block.

The greatest abuse of the religious police's powers happened in March 11, 2002, and only became public knowledge after a senior member of the 20,000-strong Al Saud clan allowed the incident to be reported. A fire had broken out at a girl's dormitory at a school in Mecca. The girls inside tried to flee the burning building. Because they were inappropriately dressed, the religious police beat them back into the blazing dormitory. They also prevented firemen from reaching the trapped victims. As a result, 15 innocent girls died. When the fire was first reported it had been claimed that the girls had died in a "stampede" to escape.

In July last year, the muttawa caused 69 women who worked at a chain of cosmetics stores to lose their jobs. One woman said: "The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice came to our shop once. We were wearing Islamic clothes and did not have any makeup on us despite the fact we work in a cosmetic shop. We did not look indecent as they claim and we definitely did not deserve to lose our jobs." A senior member of the company which owned the shops said that "the commission issued a decision ordering us to close down our shops within three days. When we objected they said either we close down the shops or they will settle the matter by taking all the girls by force to their cars."

The laws enforced at Saudi's religious courts indicate a cavalier approach to human dignity. In March this year, a young woman who had run away from home was placed in a foster home for girls and was additionally sentenced to sixty lashes.

In November last year, Deutsche Presse Agentur reported that a young woman, who had been subjected to a violent gang rape by at last four assailants, was herself convicted of "khalwat." Before the rape had taken place, she had been alone in a car with a man. As a result, she was sentenced to 90 lashes.

The following month, an Indian man working in Saudi wanted to visit his wife, who had just given birth to a son. He lost his way, and found himself in a Muslim-only area of Medina. His maroon residency visa (indicating he was a non-Muslim) was noticed, and he was reported to the police. A religious court sentenced him to be beheaded.

Beheadings take place in public, where a victim is made to kneel before having the head severed with a sword. There are numerous cases of female migrant workers, who have defended themselves from employers' rape attacks, who have been killed this way. The figures for decapitations in Saudi Arabia have increased dramatically this year. In 2005, 83 people were beheaded, but in 2006 this figure dropped to 38. In this year alone there have been 107 public decapitations.

Saudi Arabia is a country with no democracy, and no religious freedoms. Yet we in the West allow the Saudis to fund mosques and schools, and to promote their intolerant Wahhabist ideology. Saudi-supported groups like CAIR complain about Muslims' rights being abused in the West, while Muslims and non-Muslims have no real rights in Saudi Arabia. There is something unbalanced in this equation.

Fanaticism: The latest project for Islam's brightest

2007-08-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

In Britain and Australia, several Muslim medical doctors and engineers have been arrested following a series of failed car bombings. The arrest of these well-educated professionals, together with the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri's role as al-Qaeda's deputy leader, raises questions that go far beyond disaffection among Muslims and the consequences of the US' misadventures in the Middle East.

Doctors and engineers, after all, are professionals. They are well-off, well-established members of society, not marginal figures whom we might expect to be drawn to desperate acts of violence. Moreover, they come from a scientific background and science is usually not associated with religious zeal or political fanaticism.

Of course, only a minority of zealous Muslims espouse political violence, and only a tiny number of Muslim professionals set off bombs. Nevertheless, the presence of doctors and engineers in fundamentalist movements stands out. In fact, fundamentalist leaders often have professional backgrounds. Doctors who organize groups based on literalist readings of scripture and engineers who lead Islamist political parties are familiar figures throughout the Muslim world.

One reason for this is the difference between the cultures of basic science and applied science. Throughout the world, physicists and biologists tend to be more skeptical and less religious. Among engineers and biomedical professionals, however, conservative, even fundamentalist religious leanings are not so unusual.

This phenomenon is not unique to Islam. In the US, literalist Christians with engineering backgrounds have long led opposition to Darwin's theory of evolution. Compared to biologists, the ranks of medical doctors include a much larger proportion of creationists.

Likewise, in Muslim countries, it is not unusual for engineering professors to denounce Darwin as a fraud, and many well-known doctors argue that modern technological and scientific developments are prefigured in the Koran.

In the Muslim world, applied science has even more religious and political entanglements. In their effort to overcome centuries of military and commercial backwardness, Muslims have sought to industrialize, rationalize administration, and adopt modern forms of political life. However, a constant concern has been to adopt these changes without corrupting Muslim culture -- to become technologically adept and yet remain devout Muslims.

In this effort, professionals in applied science, as people who would help Muslim countries catch up with the West, have enjoyed enormous prestige. Engineering programs are in high demand, and engineers enjoy a status comparable to lawyers and doctors in the West. The best and the brightest young Muslims go into applied science, while basic science languishes.

With their important role in modernization, applied scientists engage in cultural debates as well. A doctor may choose a secular path, or try to integrate a traditional faith with a modern profession. Such choices are directly connected to debates over the direction the whole society should take.

To complicate matters further, the Islamic world is in a period of religious experimentation. Traditional doctrines and supernaturalism remain vigorous, but the structures of religious authority are changing. Today's fundamentalism is a modern way of being religious, more suitable to a literate, urban population than a peasantry guided by traditional religious scholars.

Traditionally, Muslim scholars achieved status by mastering socially useful knowledge, which was Islamic law. Today, however, applied science is also useful knowledge for the modern world. As a result, in a modernizing environment, doctors and engineers can find themselves in positions of religious authority, leading a Koran study group and interpreting scripture.

The Muslim world is home to many successful movements that combine doctrinal conservatism with a modern outlook that supports capitalism and embraces technology. Professionals have been integral parts of such movements, because modernization encourages action rather than resignation. Political ideas are easily translated into religious language, and in extreme circumstances, violent jihadism is used to express political frustrations.

But the possibility of violence should not distract us from noticing that fundamentalist convictions also motivate positive political activism. Islamists (such as those in Hamas) gain credibility among Muslim populations because of the social services and community support that they help to organize. Indeed, fundamentalist professionals often excel in such activism. Their puritanical religious style sets forth an ideal morality with clear-cut rules that are similar to the constraints of an engineering project. Engineers set out to change the world according to a blueprint, as they were trained to do.

Religiously colored political violence will always attract some professionals. But, again, it is a tiny number. The majority of observant Muslims are peaceful, and most Islamists today have adopted more moderate, democratic politics.

Increasingly Islamism is becoming a form of right-wing populism. But, like right-wing Christians in the US, Islamists can be legitimate parts of a democratic political landscape. Indeed, one virtue of democracy is its ability to dampen violent tendencies. If we are to encourage democratic trends in political Islam, we must learn to think of Islamists as political opponents rather than as violent adversaries who may have medical and engineering degrees.

Taner Edis was born and educated in Turkey, and is associate professor of physics at Truman State University, Missouri.

Officials: Hamas forcibly converted Christian woman to Islam

2007-08-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

Hamas members denied the accusations, accusing rival Fatah of spreading lies even though the professor, Sana al-Sayegh of Gaza City's Palestine International University, has indicated she was converted against her will. Sayegh, head of the University's Science and Technology Department, disappeared June 24, failing to show up at work where she serves as the Gaza Strip's only female doctorate in her field. After a few days, co-workers and Sayegh's parents informed Gaza security officials of the professor's disappearance. According to sources close to her family, about five days after she disappeared Sayegh caller her parents to say she was being held against her will in order to marry a Muslim man, who was also a professor at the University. Sayegh's family declined to speak to WND directly, explaining interviews about the matter could endanger the professor. "Sayegh said she couldn't talk. It was very clear she had been abducted and was made to do things she didn't want to do," said a source. 'She would never convert willingly to Islam'A few days later, the family said they received a copy of a conversion document certifying Sayegh had become a Muslim. The document was signed by two witnesses, as is required. One witness was Zaher Khail, president of the Palestine International University, who according to Palestinian security officials is an Islamist close with Gaza-based terror groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Fatah officials say Khail assisted in kidnapping Sayegh, whose family stated she would "never" convert willingly to Islam. Fatah officials also accused Hamas leaders directly of overseeing Sayegh's "forced" conversion. Sayegh's family and Gaza-based Christian leaders attempted to meet with former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, but the Hamas leader declined a personal meeting. Instead, according to sources close to Sayegh's family, a delegation of Hamas militants was sent to the Sayegh household to inform them the professor had converted "willingly" and that Sayegh no longer wanted to associate with her family unless they all converted to Islam. Sayegh on Thursday showed up to work at the university but has not been in touch with her parents. Sources close to her family and Fatah officials speculate she was threatened against contacting her family again. Calls by her family to Sayegh's new husband and his family were not returned.

About 2,000 Christians live in the Gaza Strip, which has a population of over 1 million.

linked militants kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam a female Christian professor in the Gaza Strip, according to the professor's family and officials from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization.

Europe Confronts Islam

2007-08-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

Germany is home to 3.2 million Muslims, yet last month a small but vocal group staged a protest in Cologne to try to block plans for a Mosque. This kind of Muslim exclusionism has become a disturbing but growing trend in Western Europe.

Leading opponents of the mosque in Cologne—Manfred Rouhs, leader of a radical right-wing citizen’s movement known as Pro-Cologne, and Ralph Giordano, a respected German-Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor—cite the mosque’s largely Turkish constituency as a primary cause for concern. “These people only speak Turkish,” Rouhs told The New York Times. “They see no need to learn German. We think that’s the wrong way, and because of this we are critical of the project.” In Giordano’s view, the mosque would be “an expression of the creeping Islamization of our land.”

The continued threat of terrorism may be part of what is making Europeans reluctant to embrace the Muslim community, but as USA Today notes, Muslims are essential to combating terrorism and securing global peace. Europe and the rest of the world cannot afford to continue to alienate this segment of the community.

Despite this warning, Germany isn’t the only one experiencing tensions. Former foreign secretary of Great Britain Jack Straw ignited an ongoing debate about the use of veils in British society when he wrote in The Lancashire Telegraph last year that he “felt uncomfortable about talking to someone ‘face-to-face’ who I could not see.” According to an Ipsos MORI poll conducted shortly afterwards, 59 percent of Londoners agreed with Straw’s insinuation that wearing veils is bad for race relations. And more recently, David Sexton, a columnist for The Evening Standard, wrote that the veil is “abusive, a walking rejection of all our freedoms.” It’s therefore unsurprising that some Muslim women who wear a veil report being the object of verbal abuse as well as legal action restricting their right to wear it.

The concerns about veils are emblematic of larger concerns about Muslims in British society. After the terrorist attacks of 2005, the foiled plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners in 2006, and the unsuccessful car bombings in June, there has been an increasing backlash against British Muslims. The British National Party is still small—receiving only 0.7 percent of the vote in the 2005 general election—but it is the fastest growing party in the country. It promotes the deportation of all illegal immigrants and thinks Britain should pay legal ones to leave. Nick Griffin, head of the BNP, has called Islam a “wicked, vicious faith” and British Muslims “the most appalling, insufferable people to have to live with.”

This discrimination is not confined to fringe parties in Europe. The accession of Turkey, a majority Muslim country, to the European Union has become an issue of major contention among European leaders and the public. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Christian Democratic Union to which German Chancellor Angela Merkel belongs both oppose full membership for Turkey. Majorities of citizens in Austria, Germany, and France, along with 12 other countries, are also wary of Turkish accession to the EU not only because of the country’s human rights record but also, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, due to its demographics—it is “huge, poor, and Islamic.”

At the heart of growing Muslim exclusionism in Europe is a concern that immigrants want to create a segregated, parallel world—one that rejects and threatens the values of the host country and replaces those values with its own alien beliefs.

Ironically, viewpoints like these have played a significant role in creating a separate, parallel world of Muslim immigrants. Until 1999, the “imperial and state citizenship law” of Germany prevented most migrants and their children from obtaining citizenship and even denied them some constitutional protections. And “The English,” in the words of Roger Ballard at the University of Manchester, “have always had, since the days of the Reformation, this strong commitment to homogeneity.” The Christian European Union—to a degree—views Muslim Turkey as culturally incompatible with its member states.

The reality is that the majority of Muslims have adopted a spirit of accommodation in European communities. The Mosque being built in Cologne, for example, will not broadcast calls to worship over loudspeakers, will not impose itself on a neighborhood, and will be built with glass walls to symbolize its openness. Turkey, for its part, has initiated important political and economic reforms, as called upon to do by the EU, although more reforms are needed.

Recognizing that Muslims have been driven into isolated communities and not offered the same educational and economic opportunities, European leaders must reintroduce rationality into a debate about Islam in Europe that has been hijacked by the vocal minority of nativists and xenophobes. European leaders must reciprocate European Muslims’ spirit of accommodation and give them more of a stake in their communities. This includes not only equal social, economic, and political opportunities, but also an acceptance of religious diversity.

European authorities would benefit from examining what the United States has done right in integrating its Muslim population. This may seem surprising considering the numerous immigration and assimilation challenges we still face, and one need look no further than recent divisive and heated debate in the Senate and the backlash against Muslims in the post-9/11 era for examples. But there are clear reasons why the majority of Muslim Americans—according to the Pew Research Center—are “Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream” while the majority of European Muslims are not.

Part of the explanation is that, unlike in Europe, Muslims in America have not traditionally faced significant economic and social barriers. The same Pew poll referenced above confirms the validity of the belief among the majority of Muslims that they have had the opportunity to advance themselves with hard work and subsequently, “Muslim-American income and educational levels...generally mirror those of the general public.”

Perhaps more importantly, the United States, which was founded upon a principle of religious tolerance and pluralism, offers comparatively fertile ground for those wishing to practice their religion freely. As Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago and a Muslim, recently told Newsweek, “When I say to an evangelical Christian, ‘It’s prayer time,’ they might question the way I pray, but they understand viscerally the importance of prayer. When I lived in England and I said, ‘It’s prayer time,’ people looked at me as if I was an alien.”

Unfortunate setbacks in America, such as the general population’s increasing skepticism of Muslims and their religion, should not blind monoculturally minded Europe from recognizing our historical successes and seeing that cultural conformity does not equal national unity.

Female Christian Professor Forced to Convert

2007-08-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

A female Christian university professor was forced to convert to Islam last week, according to a claim by an official from the Palestinian Authority that has been refuted by the Hamas militant group.

If true, Todd Nettleton from Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) says the professor, Sana-al-Sayegh, would find it hard to come back because she signed a document stating that she is a Muslim. Reconverting to Christianity is apostasy – which is punishable by death under Islamic law.

"It is extremely difficult now for her to come back and say ‘Wait a minute! I'm not a Muslim, I'm a Christian,'" Nettleton told Mission Network News (MNN). “Because of the signed documents, even if they were signed under duress, in the minds of the Muslim populous, she is a Muslim."

According to reports, the professor’s family said Sayegh would never convert to Islam by choice.

It was also reported that the woman called her parents five days after she went missing saying that she was being held against her will so she could be married to a Muslim man.

The family later received a copy of the conversion documents, which had been signed by witnesses.

Since Hamas claimed Sayegh converted willfully, it was hard to say what kind of help the government will offer, explained Nettleton.

"In the government's mind then, ‘OK, she changed her faith. That's fine.' So it's hard to know how the government will play this - what type of a role they will take. I assume that there will not be penalties," the VOM spokesman said.

In June of this year, Hamas had seized complete control of the Gaza Strip. A Hamas-allied militant leader, in an interview with World Net Daily, said that the region’s Christian minority could live there safely on the condition they accept Islamic law.

Of the nearly 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, the CIA estimates the Christian population to be about 10,000 (or 0.7 percent). Muslims, meanwhile, reportedly make up 98.7 percent of the population.

Lebanese Government Announces Killing of Fatah al-Islam Deputy

2007-08-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

A Lebanese government spokesman says police have killed the second in command of the Fatah al-Islam terrorist group, which has been battling the Lebanese Army in a Palestinian refugee camp for more than two months. Edward Yeranian reports from Beirut.

News that Abu Hureira - the number-two man of the Fatah al-Islam Palestinian terrorist group - has been killed by government security forces brought some joy and relief to ordinary Lebanese, eager to see an end to the bloody two-month siege of the Nahr al Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon.

Lebanon Information Minister Ghazi Aridi says Abu Hureira was killed after he and a companion, riding a motorcycle, opened fire on a government checkpoint in Tripoli and officers returned fire.

The shootout is said to have taken place several days ago. DN

Volunteers launch new website to counter radical ideas on Islam

2007-08-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

A new website aims to give the community an avenue to learn the right teachings of Islam and understand the distortions created by extremists was launched on Tuesday.

Voluntary group Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG), which works towards rehabilitating Jemaah Islamiyah detainees, hopes the website (www.rrg.sg) will be a valuable resource to guide the young and Internet-savvy to the right path.

"The effort against terrorism is a battle of ideas, a battle of the minds. In many respects, the cyberspace has become the central theatre. It is estimated that there are 6,000 websites that espouse radical ideologies today,” said Lim Boon Heng, Minister from the Prime Minister's Office at the launch.

“Community leaders thus play an important role in helping our youth to rationalise these complex events, and guide them towards a responsible and non-violent response to their feelings of sympathy and empathy," he continued.

Besides information on religious concepts, video clips of educational forums conducted by the volunteer group are also posted on the website.