Obama in an Islamic Wonderland.

We all enjoy fairy tales. Some of us are good at telling them. Enjoying a fairy tale from a clever teller of them is a big leap to believing in them. Seriously, Will anyone buy this toffee?

You betcha.

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Obama's Challenge to the Muslim World

Washington Post

The historic significance of President Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo cannot be overstated. Never before has an American president spoken to the global Muslim community. His speech marked a major shift in American foreign policy. Obama directly enlisted a religion to build global peace and to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, end nuclear proliferation and stop terrorism.

In just a few sentences he demolished the phony theory of the "Clash of Civilizations," which insists that Islam and the West must always be in conflict. Instead, he declared the United States is not at war with Islam and outlined a plan for how the conflict can be resolved.

Perhaps most important, he put religion at the core of the peacemaking process. For too long, Americans had come to fear Islam as an intolerant, violent religion. Obama cited examples from the Quran that belied those stereotypes. He emphasized the core similarities among Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

"Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism," he said. "It is an important part of promoting peace."

To Muslims, that was a powerful statement. "Islam is the solution" is the mantra of many Muslims. They believe their religion can and does solve problems. Now they have the leader of the most powerful nation on earth agreeing with them and seeking their help. He is challenging them to live up to Islam's ideals, just as he insisted that the United States must live up to its own ideals.

He captured the attention of Muslims because, unlike most politicians, he was willing to critique both his own country and Muslims where they fell short of their ideals.

The question now is whether Muslim governments and warring factions can embrace the true meaning of Islam.

For each of the problems Obama cited -- American occupation in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the spread of nuclear weapons, development of democracy, religious freedom, women's rights and economic development -- Islam presents a solution.

Islam denounces suicide of any sort, especially suicide bombings that kill innocents. Even in a defensive war sanctioned by Islamic law, suicide is expressly forbidden.

As Obama pointed out, the Holy Quran says that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind. Adherence to Islam would end indiscriminate firing of missiles from Gaza into Israel that kill innocents.
Islam certainly opposes Muslims killing Muslims, which has been the staple of the dispute between Iraqi Sunnis and Shias as well as in Pakistan and Darfur.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Islamic jurists ruled that under Islamic law those type of attacks did not fall under the norms of a just war.

Even top clerics and government officials in the Islamic Republic of Iran concede that Islam prohibits nuclear weapons because they kill indiscriminately.

Islam supports democracy with government run by consent of the people. A Shariah-compliant state owes its existence to the will of the people and is subject to control by them. The Prophet Muhammad himself said, "The hand of God is on the majority."

Religious freedom is at the core of Islam. The Quran expressly and unambiguously prohibits the coercion of faith because that violates a fundamental human right - the right to a free conscience. The Quran says in one place "There shall be no compulsion in religion." And in another it says, "To you your beliefs and to me, mine."

The Prophet Muhammad has been known as the first feminist. "The best of you are those who are best to their women," he said. Gender equality is an intrinsic part of Islamic belief. The Qur'an makes no difference in the religious obligations of men and women and set the stage for women's rights. Many of the limits placed on women in Muslim societies are due to local custom more than to Islamic teaching.

If using these Islamic principles, peace can be found in the region, Palestinians and Israelis can find accommodation, and Muslims can stop killing Muslims in Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, then the economic aid Obama promised can lead to a flourishing economy. Dubai and Kuala Lumpur have shown us the way.

By embracing Islam in the peacemaking process, Obama has laid down a challenge to Muslims. Live up to the tenets of our religion, embrace Shariah law as conceived by the Prophet, and see what happens.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, an independent, non-partisan and multi-national project that seeks to use religion to improve Muslim-West relations. (www.cordobainitiative.org) He is the author of "What's Right with Islam is What's Right With America."

The uncomfortable similarities between early Christianity and Islam

Severed heads, stoning of adulteresses, woman in veils, martyrs, self flagellation are all symbols and lore familiar to followers of the most ancient and largest Christian religion, Roman Catholicism. As a young boy, the Mass was in Latin and I attended six days a week. To keep it interesting, I went to summer Baptist Bible school.

I was fascinated by the lore and confused that there could be different views on the same icons, Christ on the cross, the Resurrection and everlasting life eternal. As a man I have adjusted my beliefs to account for the contradictions and have put away some of the unexplainable and embarrassing details. The Catholic Church has as well. These would surely include the inquisition and burnings at the stake. The Protestant wings of the Christian Church have some unpleasantness as well.

The story in human terms and the evolving role between man and God is dependent on the time. Reforms cannot be expected to take hold from outside. Reform is far more personal. It comes from inside the heart and mind. It requires acceptance of past misdeeds, an act of contrition and a desire and determination to be be forgiven and to change.

Americans have led the way in reconciling religion with the state and with personal freedoms. Perhaps that is the dream that inspired our clumsy entrance into the world of Islam. Perhaps someday something good will come out of it. That seems to require divine intervention, but then that is the idea.

Music mystery of Da Vinci Code chapel cracked

Audio: The Rosslyn motet performed



By Richard Alleyne The Telegraph

A Scottish church featured in The Da Vinci Code is embroiled in a fresh mystery of secret codes and heretical knowledge - but this one could be more than mere fiction.

An ex-RAF codebreaker and his composer son say they have deciphered a musical score hidden for nearly 600 years in the elaborate carvings on the walls of Rosslyn Chapel.

The pair believe the tune was encrypted because knowledge of music could have been considered heretical.

Thomas Mitchell, 75, a music teacher, and his son Stuart, 41, a pianist and composer, say they became intrigued by the markings on the chapel's arches more than 20 years ago.

Thomas was particularly struck by the 213 carved cubes in the Lady Chapel.

"I was obsessed by these symbols. I was convinced they meant something." Using codebreaking skills learned during the Korean War and his knowledge of classical music, Thomas Mitchell finally realised that the cubes depicted patterns made by sound waves.

"After scratching our brains for years the whole thing just came together in a eureka moment. We believe this is the Holy Grail of music and, unlike The Da Vinci Code, it is absolutely factual." Mr Mitchell realised the patterns on the cubes seem to match a phenomenon called cymatics or Chladni patterns. These form when a note is used to vibrate a sheet of metal or glass covered in powder.

Different frequencies produce different patterns such as flowers, diamonds and hexagons - shapes all present on the cubes.

The two men have brought the music back to life using instruments from the Middle Ages, adding words from a contemporary hymn to finish the piece, called The Rosslyn Motet.

Among the theories about Rosslyn is that it is the secret resting place of the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and even the mummified head of Christ.

"They Did it for Their Country"

Group of young Muslims murders 3 Christians in Turkey
By Barbara G. Baker/Compass Direct News Service
Apr 20, 2007

ISTANBUL (BP)--In a gruesome assault against Turkey's tiny Christian community, five young Muslim Turks entered a Christian publishing office in the southeastern province of Malatya April 18 and slit the throats of the three Protestant Christians present.

Two of the victims, Necati Aydin, 36, and Ugur Yuksel, 32, were Turkish converts from Islam. The third man, Tilmann Geske, 46, was a German citizen.

The Turkish press reported that four of the five young men, all 19 to 20 years of age, admitted during initial interrogations that they were motivated by both "nationalist and religious feelings."

"We did this for our country," an identical note in the pockets of all five young men read, Channel D television station reported. "They are attacking our religion."

According to the Hurriyet newspaper, one of the suspects declared during police questioning, "We didn't do this for ourselves. We did it for our religion. May this be a lesson to the enemies of religion."

In a demonstration against the Zirve Publishing office in Malatya two years ago, local protestors had claimed its publishing and distribution activities constituted "proselytism" among Muslims and should be closed down. Turkish law, however, guarantees the right to engage in religious evangelism if it does not contain proven political motives.

The three Christians were found tied hand and foot to chairs in the liaison office of Zirve Publishing in Malatya's Niyazi Misr-i district. Their throats had been cut and their bodies marred by multiple stab wounds.

US Sunnis "Dominated by Extremists"

Stephen Schwartz, the Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, writing at Tech Central Station about his organizaton's efforts to combat Islamists:

But we also must deal with serious challenges inside the Western Muslim community. First, U.S. and UK Sunni Muslims are completely dominated by extremists - Saudi-backed Wahhabis in the first case and Pakistani-controlled jihadists in the second. Canada, which I recently visited for a series of lectures, represents an important exception to this pattern, as discussed here.

His words; "US and UK Sunni Muslims are completely dominated by extremists."

So says a moderate Muslim who ought to know.

I wonder what efforts are being made by the FBI. Most of the public has no idea what is being preached in the Mosques of America and are dependant on the FBI as the front line of defense against terror in this country, homegrown, al-Qaeda affiliate or otherwise. Regardless, there will be political hell to pay when terror breaks out in the United States. It will be very hard for any politician to deliver the RoP mantra while the radical Imams are preaching otherwise.

Also interesting in the Schwartz piece is this:

Third, while a great number of Shia Muslims in the U.S. and Canada, with their clerics and mosques, are less orthodox in their attitudes, and sympathize with CIP against Saudi-backed Sunni terror, they are often tainted by an attraction to Iran and Hezbollah, which makes it impossible for us to sustain a cooperative effort with them. We maintain formal relations with Iraqi Shia leaders out of concern for the situation in their country, where U.S.-led coalition troops are present in the front lines for freedom. If we enlisted all the Shias on this side of the Atlantic who express warmth toward us, CIP might quickly become one of the largest Muslim organizations in North America. But before such a development can take place, Hezbollah must be curbed in Lebanon and Ahmadinejad removed from power in Teheran - the latter as a first step toward complete dismantling of the Iranian clerical regime.

If Hezbollah must be "curbed" and Ahmadinejad removed from power first, I guess it will be quite some time before the moderate CIP becomes one of the "largest Muslim organizations in North America." In the meantime, what are the implications of the continued "extremist domination?"

America At A Crossroads - A left turn to Dhimmitude?

PBS Shelves film on Moderate Muslims, The Washington Times.

A 52-minute documentary film exploring the struggles of moderate American Muslims at the hands of their radical brethren has also become a showcase for the struggles between right and left in the news media.

The producers of "Islam vs. Islamists" say their taxpayer-funded film has been shelved by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in "an ideological vendetta," and because the production team includes conservative columnist Frank Gaffney Jr., founder of the Center for Security Policy.

Producer: PBS dropped "Islam vs. Islamists" on political grounds, AzCentral.com.

Key portions of the documentary focus on Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix and his American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit organization of Muslim Americans who advocate patriotism, constitutional democracy and a separation of church and state.

Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank.

Silencing Muslim Moderates, Arizona Republic.

Doug MacEachern
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 10, 2007 12:00 AM

If Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix were a Christian - and he emphatically is not - we might deem him a saint.

But Jasser is a Muslim. He believes in his religion as fervently as any Catholic bishop believes in his. Or any Muslim imam, for that matter. He is faithful to the Quran, which Jasser believes conveys a message of peace.

Because of his faith, and because of what he has done to act on his faith, Jasser has evolved into an extraordinary symbol of what true heroism means in the post-Sept. 11 world. He is a Muslim and an American. And he is a man of peace - a rare, bold iconoclast who is willing to speak out against people who, he believes, have stolen his faith for evil ends.

So, is Zuhdi Jasser what you might call a "moderate" Muslim? If you do, then the Public Broadcasting Service has a problem with you.

On April 15, PBS, along with its Washington, D.C., affiliate, WETA, will begin airing an 11-part series of documentaries titled America at a Crossroads. It is described by PBS as "a major public television event . . . that explores the challenges confronting the post-9/11 world," and much of what it explores is the clash of Western values and those of fundamentalist Muslims.

Until earlier this year, a part of that exploration was to include a segment on Muslims living in the West - in places like Copenhagen, Paris, Toronto and Phoenix - and their clashes with Muslim fundamentalists who often explicitly align themselves with violence and, sometimes, with terrorists.

The segment was titled, Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center. By and large, the clashes it depicted involved people like Jasser condemning violence perpetrated in the name of Islam, and fundamentalist imams condemning the Jassers of the world as false Muslims.

In some cases, the documentary showed fundamentalists talking candidly about shutting up the moderates in their midst. And, in one case involving a moderate Muslim politician in Denmark, it caught them talking about shutting him up permanently.

In many respects it is an inspiring story, the sort of story that public television often likes to tell. But it isn't going to tell the story depicted in Islam vs. Islamists. At least not as a part of the heavily promoted Crossroads series, and quite possibly not at all.

The problems that the PBS-WETA producers had with Islam vs. Islamists are complex. On The Arizona Republic's news pages today, reporter Dennis Wagner details many of those issues.

But much of their hostility seems to boil down to this: They could not bring themselves to declare people like Jasser "moderate" because that would mean criticizing the fundamentalists whom the Jassers of the world oppose.

As the PBS producers affirmed time and again in their letters and e-mails, who is an Islamic "extremist" and who is a "moderate" depends entirely on which side of the street you're standing. In large part, it is about "context."

"We felt the program was flawed by incomplete storytelling and problems with fairness," said Jeff Bieber, executive producer of the Crossroads series. "We felt the writing was alarmist and without adequate context.

"We just felt there was incomplete context, (that) could lead viewers to the wrong conclusions."

"These are the 'root-cause' people," responded Jasser, who said the PBS-WETA producers could not bring themselves to identify the issue facing the United States since Sept. 11, 2001: "It is a radical Islam problem."

On Feb. 12, Bieber wrote to the Islam vs. Islamists production team, informing them they were scrapping the project.

Bieber's bottom line: "The latest cut of Islam vs. Islamists falls significantly short of meeting the standards necessary for inclusion in America at a Crossroads and for PBS national distribution." Effectively, over 12 months of production work and an estimated $700,000-plus of public television's dollars went down the drain.

As The Republic's Wagner writes elsewhere in today's pages, the production of Islam vs. Islamists was stormy from the beginning. Series producers Bieber and Leo Eaton and the Islam vs. Islamists producers fought raging battles for months over matters of structure and presentation.

The paper trails of letters and e-mails among the series producers and those of the Islam vs. Islamists segment, as well as interviews with Islam vs. Islamists producer Martyn Burke of California, tell a story that goes well beyond typical editor -journalist haggling.

"I've worked for networks all over the world, and I've never seen anything like this," Burke said.

It is an odd trail. Early last year, conservative foreign-policy expert Frank Gaffney won approval from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the parent organization of PBS, to pursue his project as part of the Crossroads series.

But by mid-summer of 2006, the Crossroads producers were badgering Burke to fire Gaffney and his partner, Alex Alexiev, according to Burke, who argued it was because of Gaffney's conservative politics.

"Never before have I been asked, 'Don't you check into the politics of the people you're working with?' " wrote Burke in a long letter to Bieber and Eaton in January. "Years ago I did a two-hour documentary on the Hollywood Ten. I felt as if I was living in that same era of blacklisting."

Things got stranger still as production of Islam vs. Islamists continued.

Burke said the fight over "context" and the side issue of his co-producers' politics caused a seven-month delay in funding. Then, the PBS producers hired a five-member team of consultants to review all the segments of the Crossroads series - among them a university professor who teaches a course on Islam in the United States.

That academic, Dr. Aminah Beverly McCloud of DePaul University, screened a cut of Islam vs. Islamists for a group of Nation of Islam leaders - a rather serious breach of journalism protocol, considering that the Nation of Islam was a major part of Burke's Islam vs. Islamists investigation. According to an e-mail from McCloud to Burke, "These representatives (of the Nation of Islam) were outraged at the implications here and assert that if this airs, they will promptly pursue litigation."

The correspondence between Burke and the series producers suggests the two sides simply could not reach common ground on what constitutes a "moderate" Muslim in the West, and what constitutes an extremist.

It seems a bizarrely fine point to fight over.

The moderates, it seems, are the ones struggling to project a peaceful co-existence between the West and Islam. People like Jasser, for example.

And the extremists? Perhaps those who despise Jasser. Or those who threaten with death those who disagree with them.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like viewers of the Crossroads series will have much chance to sort them out for themselves.

Two old NPR lefties, Diane Rehm and Robert McNeill discuss the moderates Muslims and the $20 million NPR series, "America at a Crossroads" which looks at:

Journalist Robert MacNeil talks about the series of documentaries developed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to explore the challenges confronting the post- 9/11 world, including the war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the experience of American troops, the struggle for balance within the Islamic world, Muslim life in America, and perspectives on American's role globally.

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Of note on the Diane Rehm audio: Ms Rehm read an emailer's concern that Neo-Cons and the Zionist supporting, conservative Christians got us into Iraq. McNeill talks about how 9/11 provided the justification for Bush to use "Fear". This falls in line with Jeff Bieber's (executive producer of the Crossroads series) statement, "We felt the writing was alarmist and without adequate context. "

PBS would not want to do what it accuses George Bush of doing; exploiting fear. But the real issue is that PBS, like moderate Muslims, is afraid. Afraid of the Islamists, afraid of the threatened litigation by the Nation of Islam, afraid of confirming George Bush's policies. If the criticisms are correct, PBS, like the BBC in the Behanna story, has taken a politically correct left turn at the tranzi national "cross roads" and is on the path to dhimmitude.

The Cancer is Back

Metastasis (Greek: change of the state, plural: metastases), sometimes abbreviated Mets, is the spread of cancer from its primary site to other places in the body (e.g., brain, liver).

Cancer cells can break away from a primary tumor, penetrate into lymphatic and blood vessels, circulate through the bloodstream, and grow in a distant focus (metastasize) in normal tissues elsewhere in the body.

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Sometimes, despite the best efforts of "modern medicine," cancer comes back. Unless every cell is removed or destroyed, the possibility exists for regrowth of the existing cancer or a metastasis elsewhere in the body. Tony Snow and Elizabeth Edwards are two prominent examples of cancer patients whose cancer has traveled through their bodies. So is Pakistan.

The cancer is Islamenoma, commonly known as Islamic Fundamentalism, and left untreated (as it has been in western Pakistan), the prognosis is grim. This report by Bill Roggio (ht: Panama Ed) could be considered the most recent of three major press releases concerning the unwelcome return of a malignancy.

Pakistan's Civil War

Events over the past week highlight the deteriorating situation in the country.

Over the past week, the Taliban have been very active in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. The Taliban attacked the town of Tank, re initiated its turf war with the Uzbeks in Waziristan and continues to consolidate gains in Kohat and Bannu. But perhaps most disturbing event isn't the slow disintegration of the Pakistani state at the fringes, but the open defiance from the Taliban in the heart of Pakistani capital. At the peripheries, Pakistan is either engaged in a full scale civil war or is abandoning territory. At the core in Islamabad, the Islamist see real weakness in the Musharraf regime, and is growing bolder each day.

The Talibanization of Islamabad & the Las Masjid

The recent developments in Islamabad prove the Taliban and al Qaeda are not satisfied with remaining confined to the tribal belt or even the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan. The pro-Taliban leaders of the Las Masjid have become emboldened by the weakness of the Musharraf government of late, and are now openly challenging the rule of law in the very heart of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

Zaffar Abbas, in an article titled "The creeping coup," explains how two brothers, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, run a pro-Taliban movement in and around Islamabad. Aziz "heads Islamabad’s biggest Jamia Fareedia madrassa" which "at any time... boasts over 7,000 students seeking higher degrees in Islamic education.""

Lal Masjid and its adjacent Hafsa madrassa have not only managed to enforce the Taliban-style system of ‘moral policing’ in matters of ‘vice and virtue’, to date they remain in control of the situation" in Islamabad, notes Mr. Abbas. Bands of burka-clad women wielding batons patrol the streets enforcing Sharia, just as Saudi Arabia's notorious 'Department for Virtue and Vice,' or the religious police, do. "Within no time [after becoming emboldened by government weakness over the past few months] groups of men and women from the brigade started visiting shops, threatening them with dire consequences if they didn’t stop selling DVDs, CDs or music cassettes," reports Mr. Abbas. "People were also issued directives about dress codes and other ‘moral and ethical’ issues."

The initial surgery in Afghanistan was not entirely successful and the Taliban cancer is now threatening to kill Pakistan which has been in a weakened condition for quite some time anyway. In October, I wrote:

Musharraf's on borrowed time. He knows it and with his book sales, has been feathering his nest in anticipation of his future endeavers. His value to the west has been as an ally against Islamists in Pakistan and his days of playing it down the middle between Bush and the Taliban are numbered. Both sides are becoming impatient.

It will be better when Musharraf is gone. Perhaps, then an aggressive treatment program can begin in earnest.

Step by stumbling step,
we wind our way through the darkness,
learning as we go.

The Minnesota Fatwa and The Flying Imams

The Minnesota Fatwa
and The Flying Imams

No, these are not the names of two soon to be released Hollywood remakes. Unfortunately, this is an on-going series about life in wonderful, multi-culti Minnesota.

The Minnesota Fatwa is a news story that I missed. I knew about the Minnesota Muslim cabbies dustup, but I didn't know about a Minnesota Fatwa until I heard about it on Glenn Beck's television show Tuesday night. It seems that all was well with the Muslims in Minnesota until some new "fire and brimstone Imams" moved into the area and started riding herd. Evidently, these hardcore preachers laid down the law and in June 2006, the Imams (including one of the "Flying Imams") issued a fatwa against liquor in cabs and warned the muslim cabbies that if they allowed it in their cabs, they would be hell-bound along with their infidel fares. Well, what would you do if faced with such a choice?

According to a quite likable common sense Arizona Muslim guest on the Glenn Beck Show, the Muslim people were happy until these Imams arrived and started making everyone's life miserable. That seems to be the way it goes, The wahabist send in their men who first crackdown on their own people, then the neighborhood, the town and so forth. The ultimate goal is an Islamic state with Sharia law, inshallah.

It's a good thing for US Airways that these preachers can't sue them in Sharia court but given the current state of jurisprudence, it may not matter.

The Islamic comma.

Every time I hear some Islamic spokesman trying to explain the religion of peace, I always get some variation on,

"It was a terrible thing that your mother's house was blown up by a suicide Muslim girl scout cookie seller, but you have to understand that US support for..."

Always a comma. Always a comma. We shall call it the Islamic comma.
This snippet from an article caught my eye...

"Mrs Lamb, from Fareham, fled Iran in 1988 with her sister after they faced persecution for following the Baha'i faith outlawed by Iran's Islamic fundamentalist leaders.

The 38-year-old accountant said: 'I have all the respect for the sailors and sympathy for their families, and I pray to God they come home as soon as possible, safe and healthy.

'But the British and American governments have got to learn to respect other countries and their boundaries..."

Now here is some Muslim drivel from someone who has been no doubt sponging off the British taxpayer because she had to flee the Iranian cesspool created by the mullahs. Yet she has to revert to the use of the "comma". No simple declaration of support just the normal polite version of ,"we hate your guts."

'Capture was wrong – but so is British presence in Gulf'
Pourtsmouth Today (UK)

AN ACTIVE member of the local Iranian community has said both sides must take some of the blame in the ongoing row over the 15 captured sailors.
Munni Lamb is calling for the prisoners to be released safely but has also questioned why British forces need to be in the Gulf at all.

And as the row escalates over what exactly happened during the raid where eight British sailors and seven Royal Marines were captured, UK diplomats are still trying to gain access to the prisoners. It is not currently known where they are being held, although Iranian sources suggest they have been taken to the capital Tehran.

Mrs Lamb, from Fareham, fled Iran in 1988 with her sister after they faced persecution for following the Baha'i faith outlawed by Iran's Islamic fundamentalist leaders.

The 38-year-old accountant said: 'I have all the respect for the sailors and sympathy for their families, and I pray to God they come home as soon as possible, safe and healthy.

'But the British and American governments have got to learn to respect other countries and their boundaries.

'I think the British government is as answerable as the

Iranian government in this situation.

'I don't think any of the politicians on either side are quite telling the truth, but I do think the sailors were in Iranian waters.'

Muslims in the News

Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24

Imprisoned U.S. citizen says he was in an al Qaida camp in Somalia, but was never a fighter.

WASHINGTON _ A U.S. citizen imprisoned in Ethiopia reportedly told investigators that he was briefly in an al Qaida camp in Somalia and had tried to fire a gun during a clash with foreign troops in the south of the war-torn country, but denied he was a fighter or had undergone military training.

Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, of Tinton Falls, N.J., made the statements in early January while he was being held in Kenya for illegally entering the country, according to an account provided to McClatchy Newspapers on condition that the source remain anonymous.

His father, Mohamed Meshal, angrily disputed the account, saying that FBI agents who interviewed his son in Kenya had found no grounds on which to charge him, and that four British citizens who had been held with him were freed and sent home.

“This was under coercion or under threat,” he said of the account. “U.S. officials are orchestrating the whole symphony.”

The case is at the center of an international controversy triggered by the disclosure that Amir Mohamed Meshal _ and scores of other people _ who entered Kenya from Somalia were secretly sent back to Somalia without legal proceedings between Jan. 20 and Feb. 10, then turned over to Ethiopian forces.

Read more.

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Australian Hicks first to face Guantanamo trial

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian David Hicks will become the first Guantanamo Bay inmate to face a U.S. military tribunal hearing on Monday, but a growing band of supporters want the trial scrapped and his case heard in an Australian court.

Hicks, 31, a Muslim convert and former ranch hand from the sleepy suburbs of Adelaide, is charged with providing material support for terrorism by joining al Qaeda fighters in
Afghanistan.

The arraignment before the newly constituted U.S. military commission comes more than five years after Hicks was captured in late 2001 by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan as he allegedly tried to flee in a taxi.

Australia's conservative government has refused to intervene in the Hicks case, saying he could not be charged at home because his alleged offences were not a crime in Australia at the time.

But growing public support for Hicks, and frustration at the military commission system, has forced Prime Minister John Howard to express frustration at trial delays and could become an issue for national elections due in the second half of 2007.

"At first there was patience, then there was concern, and now there is increased outrage," said Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown, who heckled
President Bush about Hicks when Bush addressed Australia's parliament in 2003.

Several government lawmakers broke ranks in February and demanded Hicks be returned home. Opinion polls show 69 percent of Australians want him to face a civilian trial at home.

NO "BACKPACKING FROLIC"

Howard has raised the issue of delays directly with Bush, and has an agreement allowing Hicks to serve a prison sentence back in Australia if convicted by the U.S. military. But he continues to support the military tribunals and says Hicks must face trial.

"He wasn't in Afghanistan on some kind of backpacking frolic. These are very serious allegations and they should be tested," Howard told Australian radio earlier this month.

A high-school dropout, Hicks worked on cattle stations in the Australian outback, and as a fisherman, before stunning friends and family when he scored a job in Japan as a horse trainer.

But in 1999, angered by media coverage of Serbian atrocities against Muslims in
Kosovo, Hicks traveled to Albania to join the paramilitary Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), although he claimed he saw no fighting.

The U.S. charge sheet against him says Hicks completed military training at a KLA camp and engaged in hostile action before returning to Australia, where he converted to Islam.

In 2000, Hicks went to Pakistan, where he began training with militant network Lashkar e-Toiba. The U.S. charge sheet says Hicks went to Afghanistan in January 2001 where he met al Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden.

BRING HICKS HOME

Hicks' father, Terry Hicks, has spearheaded an international campaign to both humanize his son and seek his return home.

In 2003, he went to Times Square in New York, dressed in orange Guantanamo-style prison overalls, and stood inside a metal cage to highlight how his son was being detained. He followed that with a documentary retracing his son's journey.

Australia's law council, which represents the nation's lawyers, has demanded Hicks be returned to Australia, saying the military trial had an "unacceptably low standard of justice."

High-profile Australian adventurer and businessman Dick Smith also joined the Hicks camp, offering to pay his legal bills.

But not everyone has sympathy.

The Australian newspaper said it would be an injustice if Hicks did not have to face trial to account for joining the KLA, Lashkar e-Toiba, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

"To join one terrorist group could I suppose be regarded as careless," the Australian's foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, wrote in February. "To join four is pretty much beyond the pale."

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib wears a shirt bearing a slogan in relation to the continued detention of Australian citizen David Hicks at Guantanoma Bay, as he talks to his campaign advisors in Sydney March 21, 2007. Australian David Hicks, 31, who has been in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay for five years, will be the first al Qaeda suspect to be formally charged under new military commission rules when his preliminary hearing opens on March 26. (Ed Giles/Reuters)

Jose Padilla - Another setback ruling

IAMI - A federal judge refused to dismiss terrorism support charges against Jose Padilla on Friday, rejecting defense claims that his 3 1/2 years in custody as an enemy combatant violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke agreed with prosecutors that Padilla's years in isolation at a Navy brig did not count because he had not yet been charged.

Read more.

A Mosque in East Berlin

This was an interesting article about East Berlin's new mosque:

The Muslims Are Coming!
A citizens' group in Berlin turned out this week for a candlelight vigil to protest plans for a new mosque in their neighborhood. It will be the first to be built in the former East Berlin, where almost no Muslims live -- but no one can quite explain why it shouldn't be there.

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It's the demographics, stupid. More on the story.