Author Archives: taffy

Rome: First halal meat counter

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The Italian capital, Rome will open its first supermarket halal meat counter on Saturday, where Muslims will be able to buy meat slaughtered according to Islamic principles as well as other halal products.

Imams from mosques in Rome, Florence and Ravenna will attend the inauguration at the Ipercoop supermarket in the southern Casilina area of Rome, where traditional Arab dishes will also be served.

Muslim immigrants and converts can buy meat at halal butchers, but haven’t been able to find it in supermarkets, and halal meat counters could help integrate Muslims in Italy, according to some.

“This is a chance to understand each other better and find new opportunities for dialogue, mutual understanding and coexistence – even inside a supermarket,” the organisers of Saturday’s event said in a statement posted to the Italian interfaith website ildialogo.org.

Bombs and beatings: Life among the Taliban

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BBCNEWS… In Pakistan an account of life with the Taliban has emerged from a 13-year-old girl called Meena, who says her own family tried to turn her into a suicide bomber. There is no independent confirmation of her account but police say they believe she is telling the truth, and her information could be valuable. Meena told her story to our Pakistan correspondent Orla Guerin.

 VIDEO

My brother used to tell me that the place for a woman is either at home or in the grave. I was always restricted to home.

He said: “If you leave the house I’ll cut off your head and put it on your chest.”

My brother had been to the local school and beaten the girls and the teachers.

He said anyone who wanted to study was a friend of America.

I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted it so much that once I dreamt I was sitting in a hospital, working as a doctor. I wanted to help the poor, those who cannot afford medical fees.

Taliban commanders used to come to our house. There was an underground bunker beside the house, with electricity.

It was concrete and very strong. Cars would drive on top but no-one would realise what was underneath. In that hideout they used to train suicide bombers.

Most were children of my age or younger than me. They were used for these activities because they were too young to know any better.

Going to ‘paradise’

I used to see these children getting on a vehicle to go for their missions. They used loud Islamic CDs to motivate them.

And I would think, “My God, more Muslims are going to be buried”. Then the news would come that more Muslims were wiped out.

My brother used to prepare bombs and my sister-in-law did too. He told me that he would teach me this. I told him no. I would not even look at what they were doing.

My father and brother told me to carry out a suicide attack. They were pressuring me to do this.

They told me: “If you do it you will go to paradise long before us.” I replied: “Why don’t you tell me I will go to hell long before you?”

Every day they used to tell me this. Every day. I was very young when they started telling me this. I said to them: “What about all the people I will kill? They are all Muslims.”

They started beating me when I refused. They beat me non-stop. They made my life hell. I never had a single moment of happiness. They did everything other than kill me.

Bomber’s medicine

They said: “The bomb will be connected with a button, or something like the remote control of a TV. We will give you this kind of remote, and you will go to the place.

“We will also give you a mobile, and we will ring that phone, and press the remote, and you will be blown up with this bomb.” Continue Reading →

Counter-terrorism officers target universities. U.K.

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Special Branch officers are being stationed in universities at risk of being targeted by extremists, the Government has admitted.

A number of institutions have been identified by counter-terrorism officers amid fears students are in danger of being groomed by fanatics.

David Lammy, the Higher Education Minister, insisted the threat posed to universities had been exaggerated but admitted that it remained an “extremely serious issue”.

The move comes just weeks after a former student at University College London sparked a major terror investigation when he allegedly attempted to detonate explosives on a flight over the United States on Christmas Day.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was president of the university’s Islamic Society for three years before graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering in June 2009.

UCL – rated as one of the best in the world – has now launched an investigation into his time at the university.

In an interview, Mr Lammy admitted that security had been stepped up at a series of universities, with anti-terrorism officers actively patrolling campuses.

“We have identified universities for whom the risk is greater and they have to work closely with Special Branch, and so I think it is a partnership between leadership at universities and the police,” he said.

Mr Lammy said he did “not recognise a caricature of a significant risk across Britain”.

But he added: “We do recognise that threat levels have been raised and that this is an extremely serious issue and that there are particular institutions – and those institutions are aware of this because we have brought it to their attention – where the risk is greater and those institutions are working very closely with the police and are working closely with Special Branch and those institutions (police and Special Branch) are present on campus.”

The Government refused to be drawn on which universities had been identified or the number of institutions with tightened security.

In the past, Prof Anthony Glees, director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at Buckingham University, has suggested as many as 24 institutions may have been infiltrated by extremists. The Government has denied the claims.

Vice-chancellors announced last month they were establishing a panel to look at how universities can take action to prevent violent extremism while protecting freedom of speech.

Muslim chaplain ‘smuggled’ box-cutter blades into jail

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A city Department of Correction Muslim chaplain who served 14 years in prison for murder and robbery was arrested today for carrying three utility blades and a pair of scissors into a lower Manhattan jail, authorities said.

The chaplain, Zulqarnain Abdu-Shahid, had the utility blades and scissors in his duffel bag when he arrived at the Manhattan Detention Complex in the morning, according to the city Department of Investigation.

The dangerous items were found after an X-ray machine alerted correction officers to the presence of metal in the bag, the DOI said. 

Authorities did not say why Abdu-Shahid was visiting the jail, commonly known as the Tombs, or why he was carrying the scissors and the rectangular blades, which were 1-and-1/2 inches long by three-quarters of an inch wide.

Abdu-Shahid, 58, was arrested at the scene and charged with four counts of first-degree promoting prison contraband — a felony carrying a maximum 7-year prison term — and four counts of the same charge in the second degree, a misdemeanor.

The Staten Island resident, who is married with three children, was ordered held in lieu of $30,000 bail during a hearing in Manhattan Criminal Court last night, where he appeared in a long robe and navy blue skull cap.

His lawyer, James McQueeney said the blades were ‘injector razor blades from an injector razor,” and that when Abdu-Shahid told that to the correction officers who stopped him, “his explanation that he didn’t know there were there [in the duffel bag] was accepted.”

“He was allowed into the” Tombs after the blades were confiscated,” McQueeney said. “Only later were questions raised about this.”

Despite that claim, DOI Commissioner Rose Gil Hearn said, “This arrest demonstrates the serious consequences of bringing in contraband to the city’s correctional facilities.” Continue Reading →

‘Terrorist’ Twitter Threatens Hugo Chavez’s Stranglehold on Media

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FOXNEWS…The greatest threat to Hugo Chavez’s future just might be the World Wide Web.

Fierce and growing protests over media freedom have left at least two students dead in Venezuela, and graphic images depicting violent tactics employed by the police there have started to flood the Internet.

Police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets have left students bloodied and battered in Caracas and other cities during a week of protests over President Hugo Chavez’s tightening gag on the opposition press.

On Sunday, Chavez ordered five cable stations shut down for refusing to broadcast his frequent speeches, setting off nationwide demonstrations in a country already wracked by water shortages, electricity rationing, alarming crime rates and the plummeting value of its currency, the Bolivar.

Student protesters have organized their efforts by planning their demonstrations on Twitter, which is serving as both a public message-board for activists and a storing house for images of the worst of the violence.

Elsewhere online, more than 80,000 people have joined a Facebook group, “Chavez estas PONCHAO!” taunting the increasingly unpopular president with a slang term meaning “Chavez, you struck out.” 

Chavez has fought back by declaring that “using Twitter, the Internet (and) text messaging” to criticize or oppose his increasingly authoritarian regime “is terrorism,” a comment that recalls the looming threats of his allies in Iran, whose bloody crackdown on physical and electronic dissent may be blazing a trail for the Latin strongman. 

Venezuelan journalist Nelson Bocaranda told El Nuevo Herald that the government has launched an army of Twitter users to bring down online networks and try to infiltrate student groups. 

“They are scared by Twitter,” he told the paper, noting that Chavez fears that the social networking system will allow students to follow the model of Iran and spread their protests by coordinating them online. 

As the opposition seethes, Chavez has threatened a “radical” response to student activity, promising to “deepen the revolution” and “impose authority” wherever flashpoints occur. 

“There are some attempting to set fire to the country,” Chavez said in a televised address on Thursday. “What are they seeking? Death.”  Continue Reading →

Khadr repatriation overturned by top court

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CBCNEWS… The Supreme Court of Canada has overturned lower-court orders that the federal government must try to repatriate Toronto-born Omar Khadr from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay.

However, the top court agreed Canadian officials violated Khadr’s human rights, and that he continues to be threatened by the effect of those violations.

In a unanimous decision released Friday, the court declared that Canadian officials breached Khadr’s right to life, liberty and security of the person under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

However, it concluded that ordering the government to ask the U.S. for Khadr’s repatriation to stop the continuing violation of his rights would interfere with the government’s jurisdiction over foreign relations. Therefore, it chose not to issue the order, even though it had the authority to do so.

“We … leave it to the government to decide how best to respond to this judgment in light of current information, its responsibility for foreign affairs and in conformity with the charter,” the ruling said.

Khadr, 23, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since he was arrested in Afghanistan at age 15, accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. He is scheduled to be tried in July by a U.S. military court on charges of murder, conspiracy and support of terrorism.

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Violent Death of Girl in Pakistan Spurs Push for Justice

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 Compass Direct News… Rare protest by family of tortured child puts spotlight on abuse of Christian working poor.
LAHORE, Pakistan, January 28 (CDN) — A daring protest and a high-profile funeral here on Monday (Jan. 25) for a 12-year-old Christian girl who died from torture and malnourishment has cast a rare spotlight on abuse of the Christian poor in Pakistan.

In an uncommon challenge in the predominantly Muslim nation, the Christian parents of Shazia Bashir Masih protested police unresponsiveness to the alleged violence against their daughter by Muslim attorney Chaudhary Muhammad Naeem and his family and his attempt to buy their silence after her death. The house servant died on Friday (Jan. 22) after working eight months in Naeem’s house.

An initial medical report indicated she died gradually from blows from a blunt instrument, wounds from a sharp-edged weapon, misuse of medicines and malnourishment. Key media highlighted the case on Pakistan’s airwaves, and minority rights groups along with high-ranking Christian politicians have swooped in to help.

Initially police were unresponsive to the family’s efforts to file charges against Muslim attorney Naeem, and on Saturday (Jan. 23) they staged a protest in front of the Punjab Assembly. The power of Naeem, a former president of the Lahore Bar Association, was such that officers at Litton Road police station refused to listen to Shazia’s relatives when they tried to file a complaint to retrieve her three months ago, telling the girl’s relatives, “a case against a lawyer cannot be registered,” her uncle Rafiq Masih told Compass.

Her mother, Nasreen Bibi, told Compass Naeem came to their home on the day Shazia died and offered 30,000 rupees (US$350) to keep the death secret and to pay for burial expenses.

“I refused to accept their offer, and they went they went away hurling death threats,” she said. Continue Reading →

Tory MP claims ”barbaric and medieval” views about women have been imported into Britain

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A Tory MP accused some communities of importing ”barbaric and medieval” views about women into Britain while discussing the sentencing of an Asian teenager for rape.

David Davies, a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, has called for the Attorney General to review the three-year term imposed on Balal Khan, 14.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live on Wednesday the Monmouth MP said the case raised a ”wider question”.

”What is it about this young man’s upbringing, what about his community or his parental upbringing, that led him to think that women are second-class people whose rights can be trampled over like this?” he said.

”That is a very interesting question. And, you know, there are some sensitive issues here, but there do seem to be some people in some communities who don’t respect women’s rights at all and who – if I may say, without necessarily saying that this is the case on this occasion – who have imported into this country barbaric and medieval views about women and that is something that also needs to be addressed.”

The Conservative Party distanced itself from Mr Davies’s comments.

A spokesman said: ”These comments do not reflect the views of the party in any way.”

Khan was sentenced to three years in a young offenders institution at Stoke Crown Court after admitting raping and robbing a 20-year-old woman.

Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, said: ”I am appalled at this Conservative MP’s indiscriminate attack on whole communities in our tolerant society.

”This sort of inflammatory language from a leading Welsh Tory does nothing to help hardworking people in difficult times.

”We are trying to get along together the best we can – David Davies should be ashamed of himself.”

Imam in Spain charged for menacing woman over veil

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MADRID (AP) — Charges have been filed against an imam in northeastern Spain accusing him of threatening a woman who refused to wear an Islamic headscarf or abide by certain Islamic customs, prosecutors said Thursday.

The prosecutors are seeking a five-year jail sentence for Mohamed Benbrahim, a Moroccan, on charges of calumny, coercion and menacing behavior against fellow Moroccan Muslim Fatima Ghailan. The two live in Cunit, a town in Catalonia, a region with a sizable Muslim population.

The court filed similar charges against the president of the Islamic Association in Cunit and lesser ones against Benbrahim’s wife and his daughter.

In a statement to the court in the nearby town of Vendrells, Ghailan, 31, said Benbrahim had harassed her and campaigned to have her removed from her job in the town hall’s cultural department purely because she had a job, dressed in a Western style, drove a car and associated with non-Muslims.

She said the imam and his supporters also pressured her husband and children.

Ghailan filed a complaint in December, 2008, after she said she and her husband were accosted in the street by the imam, who told them they would be run out of the town.

Benbrahim was quoted by the Spanish daily El Pais as denying the charges and claiming Ghailan concocted the story. He said he simply felt the woman was not suitable for the job.

But the prosecutors office said the judge investigating the case had found the woman’s account credible and decided to press charges.

Ghailan and the imam cold not be reached for comment Thursday.

The prosecutors office said it could be a year before a trial is held.

About 725,000 Moroccans live in Spain.

Meet the new head of the Muslim Brotherhood

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Mohammed Badie

Mohammed Badie

 JPOST… Last Saturday in Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood announced that it had elected Muhammad Badee as its new supreme leader, a succession which comes at a critical time. A few months ago, Muhammad Mahdi Akef – who had ruled the organization for the past six years – stated that he would not seek another mandate, thus sparking a crisis of major proportions.

But the trouble had already been brewing for a while.

Akef has continually fomented outrage in Egypt with extremist pronouncements. Not only does he overtly support Hamas and Iran, a year ago he proclaimed that he would rather see a Malaysian Muslim as president of Egypt than an Egyptian Copt.

Furthermore, an increasingly large number of Brothers are clamoring for reforms within the group. When the old leader came to the conclusion that he could not bridge the gap between the hard-liners and the reformers, he decided it was finally time to step down.

The younger generation of members are yearning to shake the yoke of the old guard and democratize the movement, and have thus become increasingly restive. They had pinned their hopes on Akef’s second in command, Muhammad Elsayed Habib, but he resigned in protest at the Akef’s policies and subsequently lost his seat on the Guidance Council (the governing body) in December.

Their discontent was only aggravated during the subsequent elections. The elections themselves – both for the seats in the Guidance Council and for the post of supreme leader -stirred anger, as many believed that they had been rigged. However, since the Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, the vote was held in secrecy and was therefore not monitored. What is known is that Badee was elected by a two-thirds majority of the advisory council, and that his ascension spells trouble for reformists.

THE BROTHERHOOD is far from a democratic movement open to pluralistic views. It has remained faithful to the extremist religious doctrine of the man who founded it in Egypt in 1928, Hassan el-Banna, and of its greatest theologian, Sayed Qotob.

Qotob was far more controversial than Banna. He radicalized Banna’s doctrine – which called for the restoration of the caliphate and the creation of one single nation for all Muslims under the sovereignty of Allah, with the Koran as the constitution and Shari’a as the legal system – by declaring that all Arab societies lived in jahalia (ignorance of the true Islam) as before the coming of Muhammad, and were therefore “infidels.” The meaning of his statement was clear: that it was legitimate to fight such Arab societies in order to form the new caliphate. To make matters worse, he also formed the religious basis that justified attacking non-Muslim states to bring them into the fold of Islam.

This doctrine has been adopted today by all jihadist movements – al-Qaida included – and gives them the legitimacy they need to kill innocent civilians, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Continue Reading →

Mohamed Ali Harrath, Islamic TV chief, is held over terror claims

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Mohamed Ali Harrath

Mohamed Ali Harrath

 TIMESONLINE… The head of the Islam Channel, Britain’s most popular Muslim television station, has been arrested in South Africa and faces deportation to Tunisia over terrorism allegations.

The Times disclosed more than a year ago that Mohamed Ali Harrath, a Scotland Yard adviser against Islamic extremism, was wanted by Interpol because of his alleged activities in his homeland. His arrest on Sunday after a flight from London is being blamed by supporters on a security clampdown by the South African authorities in the run-up to this summer’s World Cup.

Harrath, 46, is the force behind the Islam Channel, which is watched by 59 per cent of British Muslims and beamed by satellite to 132 countries. He has been fêted by politicians, with the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, the minister Shahid Malik and the Tory frontbencher Dominic Grieve attending his annual festival. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, gave him a platform to address thousands in Trafalgar Square in September at the official taxpayer-funded event to mark the end of Ramadan. Harrath, who has a heart condition, collapsed during his arrest and is being treated at Eugene Marais hospital in Pretoria, where he is under police guard. The broadcaster has been convicted in absentia of numerous criminal and terrorism-related offences by Tunisian courts and sentenced to 56 years in prison.

The Islam Channel last night accused Tunisia of using Interpol to harass and intimidate Harrath. Continue Reading →

Report: American Ex-convicts In Yemen Pose ‘Significant Threat’

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U.S. Worried About Three Dozen Criminals Who Converted to Islam in Prison, Most from New York

The Muslim response to the problem, hire more prison imams. Scary thing is, some idiot in government will agree with them.

ABC VIDEO… As many as three dozen criminals who converted to Islam in American prisons have moved to Yemen where they could pose a “significant threat” to attack the U.S., according to a report on al Qaeda from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be released Wednesday.

“The group seeks to recruit American citizens to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States,” said Sen. John Kerry, D.-Mass., the committee chairman.

The Senate report said that while the ex-convicts “ostensibly” moved to Yemen to study Arabic, U.S. diplomats and law enforcement officials in Yemen “feared that these Americans were radicalized in prison and traveled to Yemen for training.”

An American official said the prison converts were believed to be primarily from the New York state prison system.

Members of the Senate staff were told by U.S. law enforcement officials that FBI agents in Yemen did not have the resources to track the ex-cons and that several “have dropped off the radar” for weeks at a time.

U.S. law enforcement officials in Yemen are on “heightened alert because of the potential threat from extremists carrying American passports,” the report said.

Also of concern to U.S. officials, the Senate staff found, is a group of “nearly 10 non-Yemeni Americans who traveled to Yemen, converted to Islam, became fundamentalists and married Yemeni women so they could remain in the country.”

An American official described them as “blond-haired, blue eyed-types” who fit the profile of Americans who al Qaeda has sought to recruit for terror missions. Continue Reading →

Man sentenced to 14 years for honour killing of female cousin

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Hagen, Germany – A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 14 years in jail for killing his cousin in a so-called ‘honour-killing’, a German regional court said Tuesday.

The victim, a 20-year-old woman, was shot dead in a motorway carpark in August 2008, after what the court in North-Rhine Westphalia described as a ‘family tribunal’ had ruled that the woman’s ‘westernized’ lifestyle outraged members of her conservative Syrian-origin family.

A second man, the 48-year-old uncle of the victim, was also implicated in the crime, but has since fled Germany.

The court said that the family had objected to the woman’s way of dressing, her habit of smoking in public and her acquaintances with men outside her family circle.

‘Honour killing’ is the term used to describe killings motivated by a perceived transgression of cultural norms.

In Germany it is normally associated with the country’s Turkish and Middle Eastern minorities.

Italy: Police rescue abducted Pakistani teen

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Fano, 19 Jan. (AKI) – Italian police have rescued a 17-year-old Pakistani girl in the country’s northeast and arrested her father over her alleged abduction after a massive search operation. Police found Almas Mahmood in good health on a highway between Bologna and Ancona on Tuesday after her estranged father Akatar kidnapped her in front of her school in the town of Fano.

Almas, who has grown up in Italy, was removed from her family and placed in local care last April after her father savagely beat her for being “too westernised”.

Witnesses on Monday said they saw Almas being bundled kicking and screaming into a car by a man, believed to be her father.

She had tried to make an emergency call from her mobile phone, but dropped it in the commotion.

Almas’ mother, brother and sister were reportedly also inside the car, which drove off in the direction of Bologna.

Italian police were on Tuesday reportedly deciding whether to arrest Almas’ mother, who allegedly opposed her daughter’s “western” style of dress and friendships.

Her father, an immigrant street hawker, allegedly threatened social workers and staff at the children’s home where she was living, but Almas had pleaded with judges not to return her to her family.

Giuseppe Franchini, the headmaster at the technical school where Almas is a student, described her father as “integrated in Italy economically but not culturally.”

The issue of Muslim cultural integration in Italy has been brought into stark relief after several “honour” killings in recent years.

Last September, a Moroccan girl, Sanaa Dafani was murdered in northeastern Italy, allegedly by her father. She had a relationship with an older Italian man,

In 2006, in the northern town of Brescia in 2006 a 20-year-old Pakistani girl, Hina Saleem died after her throat was slit by male relatives after she wore jeans, worked in a pizzeria and went to live with her Italian boyfriend.

After the case, Italy’s previous centre-left Italian government issued a ‘charter of values’ for immigrants.

Toronto 18 conspirator sentenced to 12 years

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 Remember what this scumbag looks like Canada. Your justice system will allow him back on the streets in less than three years, 4 and a half at the most. The judge should face twenty years for handing a wanna be mass-murdering Islamist such a pathetically light sentence.

BRAMPTON — One of the “Toronto 18” conspirators was handed a 12-year sentence this morning for his participation in a plot to bomb several key targets in and around the city.

Saad Gaya, 21, showed little reaction as Justice Bruce Durno read out the sentence, but smiled slightly at supporters as he exited the courtroom.

In his decision, Judge Durno acknowledged Mr. Gaya did not play a leading role in the 2006 bomb plot.

“Saad Gaya was not the prime mover in the plan… he took detailed orders,” the judge said.

With time served taken into account on a two-for-one basis, and a small amount of extra credit given for Gaya’s 14 months in solitary confinement, he has 4-and-a-half years left to serve. Gaya will be eligible for parole after serving one-third of that time.

The Crown, which had been seeking a term of 17 to 18 years, has 30 days to file an appeal.

“We’ll review the decision and read it carefully,” Crown attorney Croft Michaelson said.

Defence lawyer Paul Slansky, who had been seeking a 10-year sentence, said he did not believe Gaya was given sufficient credit for his time in solitary.

“I’m less pleased than I might have been,” Mr. Slansky said outside court. Gaya, who was born in Montreal to parents originally from Pakistan, told police after his arrest that the goal of the terrorist plot was to push Canadian troops out of Afghanistan, but said he did not know the bomb targets, which included the Toronto Stock Exchange, a CSIS facility and a military base.

Gaya admitted he tried to rent a house in which the group planned to store bomb-making chemicals, such as ammonium nitrate.

A number of Gaya’s friends and family who attended court today declined to comment on the young man’s sentence.

Zakaria Amara, the ringleader of the Toronto 18 plot, is to be sentenced this afternoon.