Category Archives: Pakistan

Jihad Watch: Pakistan: Lawyer threatens to kill Christian charged with “blasphemy”

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And not just with his hourly billing charges, either. From Jihad Watch May 8 2009

Here is yet another example of how Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are used to terrorize innocent people. An update on this story: “Pakistan: Lawyer Threatens To Kill Christian Charged With ‘Blasphemy,’” from Compass Direct, May 6 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

ISTANBUL, May 6 (Compass Direct News) – A Pakistani Christian charged with abetting blasphemy against Islam was denied bail for his own safety last week after an Islamist lawyer allegedly threatened his life in a court hearing.Hector Aleem, 51, remains in Adiyala Jail in Rawalpindi, near Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad. Judge Mustafa Tanveer dismissed his bail application at a court session on Thursday (April 30).

“If the judge does not punish Aleem according to the law, then [we] will kill him ourselves,” said Tariq Dhamal, an attorney for the unnamed complainant, according to a report by the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS).

Police arrested Aleem last November when a Muslim scholar received a text message insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Authorities charged Aleem with blasphemy and abetting blasphemy, sections 295(c) and 109(bb) respectively of the Pakistani criminal code.

Court evidence shows the text message came from an unlisted phone number, not Aleem’s. At an April 25 hearing, Investigating Officer Zafer Ikbal said he had concluded that evidence proved Aleem’s innocence. Ikbal’s investigation, along with a February judicial decision, resulted in charges of blaspheming Islam being dropped. The charge of abetting blasphemy still stands.

Nevertheless, at the April 25 hearing prosecuting attorneys asserted that Aleem was guilty of blasphemy on grounds that “he is a Christian and can make blasphemous comments about the prophet Muhammad,” according to Katherine Sapna, a field officer for CLAAS….

He can do it. Therefore he did do it. And why is he judge as capable of doing it? Simply because he is a Christian.

If the roles were reversed, and an American court treated a Muslim this way, it would be international headline news, and “Islamophobia” detox would become required of every church and school in the country. But the international human rights organizations will take little or no notice of this.

Posted by Robert at May 8, 2009 1:29 AM

National Post: Racism in Islam, Pakistan and Bangladesh

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Tarek Fatah, National Post

Published: Tuesday, April 28, 2009

chadian-woman
The following is an edited excerpt of a speech delivered last week at the Durban Review Conference (Durban II) in Geneva, Switzerland.

As I speak to you, I am deeply disappointed that my colleague Milly Nsekalije, a survivor of the 1994 massacre of Rwandan Tutsis, could not share her story with all of you. The reason: In the eyes of some, she cannot have been a victim of the genocide since she is not 100% Tutsi.

What does it say about the state of racism in our world when the victims of a genocide practise exclusion on the basis of the so-called purity of blood lines and ethnicity?

Worse than her exclusion from to-day’s event is the fact that it has happened at a conference meant to combat racism. As this shows, we have turned the concept of racism upside down.

Racism operates not just as a black/ white divide, but also as a cancer that affects relations between people of colour — people who often share the same religion, but have different shades of brown or black skin.

This internalized racism, which devours the people of the developing world in Asia and Africa from within, is too often left out of the discussion of racism.

This afternoon, I would like to shed some light on two genocides — one happened in 1970-71 in what is now Bangladesh; and the other that continues as I speak in the Darfur region of Sudan. In both instances, the root of the problem lay with one group of Muslims feeling they were racially superior to their victims, who also happened to be Muslim. In both cases, the doctrine of racial superiority and the practice of institutional racism went unchallenged, even after the horrible consequences of such racism were evident and for all to see.

In 1970, my country of birth, Pakistan, was divided in two: an eastern part that is today known as Bangladesh and the western rump, which survived a subsequent war with India as the state we now know as Pakistan.

East Pakistan was inhabited by the darker-skinned Bengali people who happened to be the majority community of Pakistan, but found themselves ruled by a lighter-skinned minority from what was known as West Pakistan.

In the first 25 years of the country’s history, the racist depiction of the darker-skinned Bengalis as an inferior and incapable people became the unquestioned dogma among the ruling minority. The darker-skinned Bengalis’ culture was portrayed as un-Islamic and influenced by Hinduism. Their music, cuisine and attire were mocked, and their language was banned, leading to widespread protests and deaths in 1952.

In 1970, after suffering under the minority rule of West Pakistan for 25 years, the people of East Pakistan voted to elect a party based in their region, and gained a clear majority in the country’s national parliament.

However, the racist view that Bengali people were incapable of ruling the country, or that they were traitors to the fair-skinned minority of West Pakistan, led to a military intervention and widespread massacres over a 10-month period.

The killing of the Bengali people by the West Pakistan army stopped only when India intervened and defeated the Pakistan Armed Forces, but not before hundreds of Bengali intellectuals, professors, poets, authors, musicians and painters were rounded up and massacred.

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Doctors in Pakistan warned not to wear pants and shirts. Writ of state in Pakistan in doubt.

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TTP warns NWFP doctors over dress. From Paktribune

PESHAWAR: The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has allegedly warned doctors of the public sector hospitals in Peshawar to stop wearing shirts and trousers or face suicide bombing.

A senior doctor at the oldest public sector hospital of the NWFP ñ the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) — told our sources on condition of anonymity that they had received a letter from the TTP, asking doctors and all other medical staff to immediately stop wearing shirts and trousers or suicide bombers would target them at their institutions.

He said the chief executive of the LRH, after receiving the TTP letter on April 28, circulated the communication to the medical superintendent, deputy medical superintendents and other senior staff members of the hospital and directed them to take precautionary measures.

The doctor said the chief executive had mentioned in his circular that the TTP threat should be taken seriously, urging doctors and other staff members to stop wearing shirts and trousers. The staff member said the alleged TTP threat had sent a wave of shock among the doctors’ community.

Two other senior doctors at the Hayatabad Medical Complex and the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) also confirmed receiving similar threats from the TTP. They said chief executives of all the three teaching hospitals directed their staff members, particularly doctors, to stop wearing shirts and trousers so that they could be saved from suicide bombers.

When reached by telephone, NWFP Secretary for Health Dr Sohail Altaf confirmed the threatening letters that were received by the hospital executives from unknown people. He said he too had received a copy of the letter, which he had dispatched to the NWFP police chief, Malik Naveed Khan, for investigation. Sohail Altaf said he did not believe the Taliban would have sent the letter.

The secretary said it seemed that certain elements had started terrorising peaceful citizens in view of the situation the people were facing these days. A senior doctor at the LRH said the threatening letter had created extreme panic and many doctors had stopped wearing the dress after the warning from the Taliban.

“It shows there is no writ of the government and Pakistan has become a Taliban state. It is a serious issue as the Taliban have practically started interferering into the personal matters of citizens and affairs of the government departments,” said a senior doctor at the KTH.

Taliban Islamists Nearing Pakistani Nukes

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by Hillel Fendel Israel National News:

(IsraelNN.com) Israel and the US should be focusing more on the Taliban’s rise in nuclear Pakistan than on Iran’s nuclear aims, more and more experts are saying.

“Pakistan must move to the top of our strategic agenda,” writes former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton. Similarly, “Nuclear Taliban/Al Qaida is a far more ominous threat than nuclear Iran could ever be,” writes Byron Ellis, who heads the international Jethro Project consulting company.

Bolton, writing in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, warns that the U.S. must take “hard steps” to prevent Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from falling into the hands of Taliban. U.S. President Barack Obama’s statement of confidence last week that the nuclear arsenal will not fall to the terrorists is “not reassuring,” Bolton writes, “in light of the Taliban’s military and political gains throughout Pakistan.”

There is a “tangible risk that several weapons could slip out of military control,” Bolton warns. “Such weapons could then find their way to Al Qaeda or other terrorists, with obvious global implications.” Continue Reading →

Muslims claim right to have weapons as ornaments of Islam

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The article below uses an argument I think we had better all familiarize ourselves with quickly. In all nations which have adopted suicidal multi-culturalist policies, we should prepare ourselves for this. In Canada, decades ago Sikh’s demanded the right to carry a ceremonial knife called a Kirpan as part of Sikh traditional garb. They won this right although I believe in most instances, children had to wear a rubber one to schools. It didn’t take long before an argument at a temple in Vancouver broke out over rules of eating between conservatives and more liberal Sikh’s and the kirpan’s where drawn and used. Now I have no particular objection to people bieng armed. I do however, have a strong objection to disarming the general law abiding public and then making exceptions for minorities who claim that it is their cultural or religious right or obligation to be armed and thereby being the only armed segment of the population. Below, Muslims are using this precise argument to avoid abiding by the terms of their own ‘peace deal’ in Swat Pakistan claiming that weapons are for Muslims an ‘ornament’ and therefore, they have the right to keep their AK47s despite agreeing to lay them down once the state began to enforce sharia law in Swat.

From Indian Express:

Agencies Posted: Sunday , May 03, 2009 at 1529 hrs IST

Taliban

Islamabad:

Describing weapons as “ornament of the Muslims”, the Taliban on Sunday refused to lay down arms even as nearly 200 militants were killed in Pakistan’s NWFP after military launched operations against them last weekend.

“The weapons are the ornament of the Muslims so we will not lay down arms,” Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said. Continue Reading →

Confirmed by Stratfor: Taliban lures Pakistani security for talks, kidnaps them

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April 28, 2009 from Weaselzipper

Pakistan: Taliban Kidnap 71 Cops, Frontier Guards in Buner After Luring Them to Mosque for Talks….

Paktal

I sense a whole lot of headless corpses in the not-so-distant future……

PESHAWAR: Armed militants in Pir Baba area of Buner district took hostage, at least, 71 security officials after inviting them to talks in a local mosque near the famous shrine, a source from the troubled district told The News.

It was learnt that those who were made hostage included the station house officer (SHO) of the Pir Baba police station, his 20 cops and around 50 personnel of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC).

The sources said that the militants had invited the SHO and other cops to the mosque for talks at around 7:00 pm. They were later made hostage and armed militants were directed not to let any of them go outside. It may be mentioned here that the FC is at the disposal of the local police in Buner as is the case in several other troubled areas.

Judge suspends Pakistani woman’s deportation order amid honour-killing fears

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Posted: April 28, 2009, 6:31 PM by Rob Roberts The National Post:

By Wu Yun, National Post

Mississauga hairdresser Roohi Tabassum was supposed to be deported from the U.S. to her native Pakistan today, where she feared her estranged husband would kill her for touching men’s hair.

But the Federal Court Tuesday agreed to suspend the 44-year-old woman’s deportation order until a pre-removal appeal, which could take several months.

Ms. Tabassum was smuggled to Canada from the U.S. in 2001, and filed a failed refugee claim. She has since built a life in Mississauga, working as a hairdresser and buying a house, even as she faces deportation to Pakistan.

She submitted to the court several letters from her husband, Faisal Javed, and his relatives, who purportedly threatened to kill her once she returned to Pakistan, because she dishonoured him by touching men’s hair.

“The Federal Court was also satisfied … the immigration officer who handled her pre-removal assessment appeal didn’t properly take those letters into account,” her lawyer, Max Berger, said today.

Her husband, who fled Pakistan with her eight years ago but only made it to the United Arab Emirates, was angered when a friend spotted her in the hair salon in 2006. He also suspected she had a boyfriend, but she strongly denied it. They have separated but not yet legally divorced.

Mr. Berger said the Federal Court postponed her deportation because it was satisfied “Roohi would suffer irreparable harm if she was removed from Canada.”

He will ask the Canada Border Services Agency to reconsider Ms. Tabassum’s pre-removal assessment.

Mr. Berger told the court that 1,200 to 1,500 women were killed in 2007 from honour killings in Pakistan, citing U.S. Department of State statistics.

PAKISTAN: TALIBAN-INSPIRED ATTACKS HIT CHRISTIANS

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I can’t believe the west is unable to criticize Islamic teaching while the Qu’ran is used as a “how to” manuali-hate-u-infidels in murder and may-hem.

 April 27, 2009-Compass Direct

Armed militants fire into crowd, seriously injuring three; jizye tax imposed in Orakzai.

As Taliban control hits pockets of Pakistan and threatens the nation’s stability, Christians worry their province could be the next to fall under Islamic law.

Violence on Tuesday night and Wednesday (April 21-22) near the port city of Karachi – some 1,000 kilometers (nearly 700 miles) from the Swat Valley, where the government officially allowed the Taliban to establish Islamic law this month – heightened fears. Christians in Taiser town, near Karachi, noticed on the walls of their church graffiti that read, “Long Live the Taliban” and calls for Christians to either convert to Islam or pay the jizye, a poll tax under sharia (Islamic law) paid by non-Muslims for protection if they decline to convert.

As members of the congregation erased the graffiti, armed men intervened to stop them. Soon 30-40 others arrived as support and began to fire indiscriminately at the crowd, leaving several injured. Among those seriously injured were three Christians, including a child, according to a report by advocacy group Minorities Concern of Pakistan: Emrah Masih, 35, Qudoos Masih, 30, and Irfan Masih, 11. A Pashtun named Rozi Khan was also among the injured.

Policemen and military forces arrested seven suspects at the scene and recovered an arms cache of semi-automatic pistols and a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Continue Reading →

Taliban officially reneges on it’s side of the ‘peace deal’ with Pakistan

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Taliban suspend peace talks with Pak govt

Press Trust of India, Monday April 27, 2009, Islamabad

Taliban on Monday suspended talks with the Pakistani government on the Swat deal to protest against the military operations in Dir, adjoining Swat Valley, in which so far 30 militants and an army officer have been killed.

As the Pakistani forces intensified the operations for second day on Monday, Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariah Muhammadi spokesman Izzat Khan told reporters that no peace talks would be held with the government unless the security forces halted the operations.

Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan also said the militants will not lay down their arms at any cost. The Swat peace deal stipulated that the militants would lay down their arms once the demand for enforcing Islamic Sharia law in the once Pakistan’s famous tourist resort was implemented.

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Depressing news out of Pakistan

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From The Guardian UK:


Their deaths were squalid, riddled with bullets in a field near their home by Taliban gunmen as the execution was captured on a mobile telephone.

In footage which is being watched with horror by Pakistanis, the couple try to flee when they realise what is about to happen. But a gunman casually shoots the man and then the woman in the back with a burst of gunfire, leaving them bleeding in the dirt.

Moments later, when others in the execution party shout out that they are still alive, he returns to coldly finish them with a few more rounds.

Their “crime” was an alleged affair in their remote mountain village controlled by militants in an area that was only recently under the government’s sway. It was the kind of barbarity that has become increasingly familiar across Pakistan as the Taliban tide has spread.

But this time, with black-turbaned gunmen almost at the gates of Islamabad, the rare footage has shown urban Pakistanis what could now await them.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned that Islamic extremists could take over the nation.

In the past few days the footage has circulated among Pakistanis who usually show little interest in the rough ways of the distant frontier regions.

They have now started to wake up to the fear that al-Qaeda-linked rebels from the frontier could take over their nation.

The killings happened in Hangu district, in North West Frontier Province, about two hours drive from the regional capital Peshawar. The punishment was administered by a local group of the Pakistani Taliban, the Islamic militia which has swept across the NWFP towards the capital Islamabad.

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Taliban pushes Pakistan to the brink

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From The National Post April 24:

Taliban fighters have taken control of strategic sites and could strike at Pakistan's largest dam and sites holding nuclear weapons.ReutersTaliban fighters have taken control of strategic sites and could strike at Pakistan’s largest dam and sites holding nuclear weapons.

Pakistan tottered on the edge of a precipice this week as the Taliban made a concerted push into mountain districts that overlook Islamabad.

Near panic seized Pakistan’s allies, as masked and heavily armed Taliban terrorists invaded the Buner district, just 115 kilometres northwest of the capital Islamabad, overran government offices, looted foreign aid agencies and established makeshift sharia courts that banned everything from music to shaving.

The strategic consequences of the invasion are immense.

It exposed far more than Pakistan’s fragility or Islamabad’s vulnerability. It thrust the worst possible doomsday scenario to centre stage.

The Taliban, backed by al-Qaeda, are now established in a district that straddles two crucial targets.

Just 50 kilometres southeast of Buner lies the Tarbela Dam, the largest earth-filled dam in the world. It provides central Pakistan with most of its electricity and the country’s farmers with most of their water.

Thirty kilometres further on lies the Wah Cantonment, an army ordinance complex that produces almost all of Pakistan’s weapons and military supplies – including nuclear weapons – in a collection of 14 massive factories that employ up to 40,000 people. Continue Reading →