“The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.” -Marcus Aurelius
Classic Muslim strategy. Force host culture to bend till it breaks, then sue them.
There is more here but the video shown tells me it is not available at this time. If you are in the US please try it and tell me if it works there. Otherwise, one must wonder why this particular video gives that unusual error.
Islam is the religion of peace, and every man you see with a beard and no moustache is Mother Theresa
(CNN) — Thousands of people turned out in Karachi Sunday to show their support for Pakistan’s current blasphemy laws and warn the government against changing the laws.
The rally, called by the leaders of several hard-line Islamic groups, closed main roads and markets throughout the city. Demonstrators demanded Pakistan leave its blasphemy laws untouched. They make it a crime punishable by death to insult Islam, the Quran or the Prophet Mohammed.
A number of banners at the rally stated support for Muhammad Mumtaz Qadri, accused of shooting the governor of Punjab province earlier this month. Qadri was a bodyguard for Gov. Salman Taseer, a liberal lawmaker who spoke out against the blasphemy laws. Qadri told police he assassinated Taseer because “he did blasphemy of the Prophet Mohammed.”
A bill is now before the Pakistani parliament that would change the current blasphemy laws. It calls for a tighter definition of the term to avoid cases like that of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was sentenced to death under the law. A court found the 45-year-old woman guilty of defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed during a 2009 argument with fellow Muslim field workers.
Cultural enrichment at its very finest. The information chain on this is complex. FOOMF told me about it by way of an article on Winds of Jihad (An excellent site) which linked back to the original story at PI News and I had it retranslated (as I couldn’t believe my own eyes) by Thorin at PI news itself.
Its short, but intense:
a 30 years old kurish man from Iraq has been murdered by Kurds from Lebanon. The’ve chopped off his head in Kiel northern Germany
they made him kneel down and then cut his throatprobably some kind of honor killing
a left husband jalous over the new boyfriend of his ex-wife…
By Hugh Macleod and Annasofie Flamand BBC News, Kharaz, south Yemen
The parents of Somali Halim Ibrahim, 22, paid for her to travel alone, hoping she could earn them money in Yemen
Amina Ahmed’s letter, typed out in English by a fellow refugee, tells of a little known horror she and others endure in the tragedy that is Somalia’s ongoing civil war: The rape, forced marriage and even beheading of women at the hands of the Islamist militiamen who have overrun much of their country.
“I was living with my aunt in Afgooye district of the lower Shabelle region when [a] warlord assaulted our home as a reason to marry me by force.”
Her aunt tried to protect her from the man but he shot her dead.
Ms Ahmed fled next door to her neighbour’s, but the man followed and shot them all. Then Ms Ahmed fled, braving the perilous trip across the Gulf of Aden to reach Yemen.
“This year we have been hearing a lot about forced marriages and rapes,” says a member of an aid agency working on the ground with newly arrived Somali refugees in Yemen.
Like most who spoke about the actions of the hardline Islamist al-Shabab and other militias in Somalia, he refused to have his name published, fearing reprisals against his family still living in Somalia.
The head office of the aid agency also requested their name not be published for fear of attacks on their staff members in the country.
‘Beheaded’
“Women cannot move or sit outside. They can’t even walk with their brother,” says the aid worker.
“Unmarried women are forced to marry and if she refuses they say she’s a non-Muslim. Many parents choose to send their girls away with relatives and friends so as not to be forced into marriage or raped.
“If a woman refuses a forced marriage, we have reports of them being beheaded and their head sent to their father.” Continue Reading →
Pakistani intelligence says Moaviya group is planning a suicide attack against Sheikhupura Prison, where the woman has been held since 2009. In Lahore, the first hearing for the murder of Punjab Governor of Salman Taseer opens amid hugging and showering of flowers for his assassin.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) – An extremist Islamist group calling itself ‘Moaviya’ might be planning a suicide attack against Sheikhupura Prison in order to kill Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy, this according to a report by Pakistani intelligence. Ms Bibi has been held in the prison since 2009. Punjab police and prison authorities have tightened security, especially in the wake of the assassination of the provincial governor, Salman Taseer, last Tuesday.
A few days ago, Mgr Lawrence John Saldanha, president of the catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan, said, “it is clear that anyone that opposes the blasphemy law is at risk.”
Mgr Rufin Anthony, bishop of Islamabad-Rawalpindi, told AsiaNews that religious fundamentalism and intolerance are spreading in the country.
Increasingly, Muslim religious leaders are actually offering rewards to anyone willing to carry out attacks and violence against those who criticises the blasphemy law.
Between 1990 and 2011, as many as 35 people accused of blasphemy or opposed to the law were murdered in extrajudicial killings or found dead in dubious circumstances.
Such deaths tend to cause rejoicing among some Muslims, as evinced by the demonstrations in favour of Taseer’s murderer, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri.
When he was arraigned in court last Tuesday, dozens of his fans hugged and kissed him, showering him with rose petals.
More than 2,000 people have also joined a Facebook group that backs the murder. Only 70 people have expressed an opinion against him.
According to US-based LifeSiteNews, more than 500 Muslim scholars have praised Qadri’s deed.
“It is shocking that the murderer of a governor is being honoured,” said Fr Daniel Habib, a Lahore priest. “Hundreds of lawyers are proudly presenting themselves to save Qadri; this is barbarianism. Instead of condemning such an act, he is being made a hero.”
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Today, as a part II to Nick’s two show series on sharia law and Islam in the west, Nick had special guest, Clare Lopez, who’s bio is below:
Clare M. Lopez is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East, national defense, and counterterrorism issues. Currently a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and vice president of the Intelligence Summit, she formerly was a career operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee from 2005-2006, and has served as a consultant, intelligence analyst, and researcher for a variety of defense firms.
Ms. Lopez is deputy director of the U.S. Counterterrorism Advisory Team for the Military Department of the South Carolina National Guard and serves as a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, the Institute of World Affairs, and the Intelligence Analysis and Research program at her undergraduate alma mater, Notre Dame College of Ohio. She has been a Visiting Researcher and guest lecturer on counterterrorism, national defense, and international relations at Georgetown University. Ms. Lopez is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media on subjects related to Iran and the Middle East and the co-author of two published books on Iran. She is the author of an acclaimed paper for the Center, The Rise of the Iran Lobby and co-author of the Center’s Team B II study, “Shariah: The Threat to America”.
Ms. Lopez received a B.A. in Communications and French from Notre Dame College of Ohio and an M.A. in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She completed Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia before declining a commission to join the CIA.
Part I is available here and is a call in show only with no guests, but some of the calls are interesting.
Enjoy.
Malik Mumtaz Qadri leaves a court in Islamabad on Wednesday, a day after he gunned down Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer. (AP)
By AZHAR MASOOD | ARAB NEWS
Published: Jan 6, 2011 01:37 Updated: Jan 6, 2011 01:37
ISLAMABAD: The killer of Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer was showered with rose petals by lawyers when he was presented Wednesday before District and Sessions Judge Malik Naeem Shaukat by police. The court gave Islamabad police remand of Malik Mumtaz Qadri for a day.
Qadri was brought to court in an armored car. A rowdy crowd slapped him on the back and kissed him as he was escorted inside the court. The lawyers who tossed the rose petals were not involved in the case.
As he left the court, a crowd of about 200 sympathizers raised slogans in his favor.
Earlier, more than 500 preachers and scholars from the Jamat Ahle Sunnat group said no one should pray or express regret for the killing of the governor. The group representing Pakistan’s majority Barelvi sect also issued a veiled threat to other opponents of the blasphemy laws.
“The supporter is as guilty as one who committed blasphemy,” the group warned in a statement, adding politicians, the media and others should learn “a lesson from the exemplary death.” Jamat leader Maulana Shah Turabul Haq Qadri paid “glorious tribute to the murderer … for his courage, bravery and religious honor and integrity.” Continue Reading →
Whatever any of you may get from this report, what I get from it is something everyone used to know not too too long ago, and precious few do now. That the second most important thing for a free people, is the second amendment of the US constitution. The right to personal self defence. Without that, we are subject to whatever foaming hate filled nut bag that wants to force his values on us.
January 6, 2011
By Scott Stewart
When one considers all of the people and places in the West targeted by transnational jihadists over the past few years, iconic targets such as New York’s Times Square, the London Metro and the Eiffel Tower come to mind. There are also certain target sets such as airlines and subways that jihadists focus on more than others. Upon careful reflection, however, it is hard to find any target set that has been more of a magnet for transnational jihadist ire over the past year than the small group of cartoonists and newspapers involved in the Mohammed cartoon controversy.
Every year STRATFOR publishes a forecast of the jihadist movement for the coming year. As we were working on that project for this year, we were struck by the number of plots in 2010 that involved the cartoon controversy — and by the number of those plots that had transnational dimensions, rather than plots that involved only local grassroots operatives. (The 2011 jihadist forecast will be available to STRATFOR members in the coming weeks.)
Groups such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have gone to great lengths to keep the topic of the Mohammed cartoons burning in the consciousness of radical Islamists, whether they are lone wolves or part of an organized jihadist group, and those efforts are obviously bearing fruit. Because of this, we anticipate that plots against cartoon-related targets will continue into the foreseeable future.
A Recent Plot
On Dec. 29, 2010, authorities in Denmark and Sweden arrested five men they say were involved in planning an armed assault on the offices of Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen. Jyllands-Posten is the newspaper that first published the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005. According to the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (known by its Danish acronym PET), three of the arrested men, a 29-year-old Swedish citizen born in Lebanon, a 44-year-old Tunisian and a 30-year-old Swedish citizen, lived in Sweden and had traveled to Denmark to participate in the plot. The other two individuals arrested were a 37-year-old Swedish citizen born in Tunisia who was detained in a Stockholm suburb and a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker who was arrested in a Copenhagen suburb. The Iraqi has been released from Danish custody.
According to the PET, one of the three men who had traveled to Copenhagen, 29-year-old Swedish citizen Munir Awad, had been arrested in Somalia in 2007 and in Pakistan in 2009 on suspicion of participating in terrorist activity. When arrested in Pakistan, Awad was allegedly traveling in the company of Mehdi Ghezali, a Swedish citizen who had been released in 2004 after being held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. Given Awad’s background, it is almost certain that he had been placed under intensive surveillance by Swedish authorities and it is likely this surveillance resulted in the unraveling of the plot. Continue Reading →
Islamic Group Declares War on Religious Films Written by David E. Miller
Published Wednesday, January 05, 2011
A new ruling reiterates ban on religious character depiction in film and televison
An international Islamic organization has declared war on cinematic depictions of the prophet Muhammad and his companions, arguing they denigrate Islam’s most revered characters.
The Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence) Council, a body of the Muslim World League, said in a statement issued Sunday that the images not of the prophet himself but of his companions were creeping into films and television series and prompted the new ruling, which was adopted during the 20th conference of the Council in late December.
“The council reiterates its previous decision banning the production, promotion … and viewing of these films and series,” the statement read. “These [portrayals] may cause the denigration and devaluation of the figures and be used as an excuse to ridicule them.”
The Quran, Islam’s divine book and primary source of law, doesn’t explicitly forbid the depiction of Muhammad or other prophets, which include figures like Abraham, Moses and Jesus from the Jewish and Christian traditions. But some oral traditions, known as hadiths, ban any such visual representation. The main concern cited by jurists was that depicting Muhammad would encourage idolatry.
Based in Mecca, the Muslim World League is one of the largest Islamic NGOs. Its missions include Islamic proselytizing, coordination of Islamic preaching and support of needy Muslims worldwide.
The statement dismissed the argument that the films were a means of educating the public about Islamic figures, saying “the holy scriptures contain sufficient information.”
Film industry officials and observers said the council had nothing to worry about because producers and directors wouldn’t dare test the ban. Mousaad Fouda, president of the Egyptian Film Syndicate, said that work on an excellent film about the life of Jesus was stopped recently in Egypt mid-production, adding that Egyptian audiences preferred action movies and dramas.
“There are no producers in Egypt that would make a film depicting the Prophet or his companions,” Fouda told The Media Line. “They would be too worried that such films will not succeed commercially.”
Sariel Birnbaum, an Arab film researcher at the State University of New York in Binghamton, said the Arab film industry has gradually become more conservative regarding the depiction of Islamic figures.
“In 1951, when religious films were first produced, only the Prophet and his close companions were banned from the screen,” he told The Media Line. “Today, there are hundreds of characters from the dawn of Islam who cannot be shown.”
Among the most common cinematic methods of depicting the prophet are showing the scene through his eyes, or focusing on his enemies in seventh-century Mecca and his Jewish rivals, Birnbaum said.
In a rare instance when Hollywood took on the Muhammad story, American actor Anthony Quinn depicted the prophet’s uncle, Hamza, in the 1976 epic film “The Message” directed by Moustapha Akkad. The presence of the prophet was symbolized in the film by organ music, and his words – unheard – were repeated by other characters.
Birnbaum attributed the growing orthodoxy of Sunni jurists regarding the film industry to a battle being waged on two fronts: one with Christianity and the other with Shiite Islam, both of which encourage artistic depiction of their revered figures.
Offensive caricatures of Muhammad published in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005 caused widespread protests in the Arab and Muslim world, including the burning of Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran. The cartoon continues to inspire Muslim anger. Denmark and Sweden courts last week ordered four people held in custody for allegedly planning a “Mumbai-style” terrorist attack on the newspaper.
“Religious censorship rules supreme,” Birnbaum added. “If an official religious authority bans a film post-production, the investment is lost.”
Joseph Fahim, the arts and culture editor at Daily News Egypt, said the timing of the statement was strange, as religious programming was at an all time low.
“Religious TV dramas have been declining in popularity for six or seven years,” Fahim told The Media Line. “Programs come and go and no one notices them. They are placed in time slots where viewership is minimal.”
Fahim said the only recent Islamic production he was aware of was announced in Qatar at the opening of the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in 2009. The epic $150 million, English-language production about the life of Muhammad was meant to bridge cultures, but Fahim said no news about casting or production was released since the initial announcement.
Copyright © 2011 The Media Line. All Rights Reserved.
Have comments? Email ed****@**********ne.org.
OTTAWA – As RCMP investigators searched through homes, computers and the seized equipment of three terror suspects arrested at the end of August, the RCMP’s community outreach office in Ottawa was calling an emergency meeting of the cultural diversity consultative committee to apologize to local Muslims.
“To show support to our Muslim brothers and sisters during RAMADAN, there will be no food or drink during this most important meeting. This meeting is for one hour only, in order to observe prayer time and the breaking of the fast during RAMADAN,” wrote Cpl. Wayne Russett.
The committee, especially Cpl. Russett, went into high gear after the arrest of Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh and Misbahuddin Ahmed in Ottawa’s west end on Aug. 25. The two men, along with Khurram Syed Sher, were charged with several terrorism-related offences in a plot the Mounties say was aimed at launching a terrorist attack in Canada and supporting terrorism abroad.
At the Aug. 26 meeting, one day after the terror bust, RCMP and Ottawa police officials apologized that arrests had taken place during Ramadan.
In the days after the arrests, Cpl. Russett held more than a dozen meetings with Muslim groups in Ottawa including visits to mosques, community centres and several meals to break the Ramadan fast. Continue Reading →
From The Ottawa Citizen
By Michael Georgy, Reuters January 5, 2011 9:02 AM
ISLAMABAD – Five hundred Pakistani religious scholars have warned that anyone who expresses grief over the assassination of a senior ruling party official who opposed the country’s blasphemy law could suffer the same fate.
Salman Taseer, a liberal politician close to President Asif Ali Zardari, had no day-to-day role in the central government. But his killing in broad daylight at a shopping centre in Islamabad reinforces the sense that the government is incapable of stabilizing the Muslim country of 170 million.
The Punjab province governor was killed on Tuesday by one of his guards, who was apparently incensed by the politician’s opposition to the blasphemy law, in a parking lot at the block of shops popular with foreigners.
The scholars also noted the “courage” and religious zeal of the killer, saying his action has made Muslims around the world proud. Continue Reading →
I think in this video I failed to make the point i set out to make.
I believe this assassination was a geopolitical earthquake. While very few people around the world will ever know about this killing, and the vast majority of those that do know will not understand it’s significance, you can bet everything you hold dear that the world leaders of any magnitude, from the mayor of a small town to the president of the United states will understand this message perfectly clearly.
That message is, ‘Any attempt to mitigate or resist the most strict and illiberal interpretations of sharia law will result in your death and there is nothing you can do to stop it’.
If our leaders were not frantically attempting to pretend Islam is not the problem and some rare aberrant form of it, or even worse, some other ideology is hijacking the name of Islam, and attempting to prove this by hiring conspicuous Muslims for every sensitive position they have, while making banal TV shows like ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’, (a show for which, CBC writers will be held to task someday, by us if we win this thing, and by the Muslims themselves if we lose for representing Islam as benign,) then maybe they could resist the demand.
But lets be honest. If for example, the governor of some US state has a demand made on him by CAIR, and he has several Muslims on his staff and he is faced with a choice. Sugar coat the demand so it looks pro American to obey it as was explained in Douglas Murray’s most excellent article or fire all their Islamic staff and get ready for countless law suits and absurd accusations from every agenda driven person or group from Michael Moore to the ACLU.
To summarize, if we do not watch our leaders closely, it will be very easy to slide into an Islamic state as they act out of a fear, the giant majority of us, will be utterly unaware of.
Eeyore for Vlad
Thanks again to Encompassed Runner for this:
National Post Staff November 20, 2010 – 10:11 am
In Saturday’s National Post we look at the brutal practice of stoning. This method of execution is still practiced in certain countries, notably Iran, where it is used to punish adulterers and other criminals. The graphic below looks at how a stoning occurs (click on graphic for a full-size version):
Part one
Adam McDowell, Asmahan Giarrit, Jonathon Rivait, Richard Johnson/National Post
Part two
Adam McDowell, Asmahan Giarrib, Jonathon Rivait, Richard Johnson/National Post