News
2/15/2008 | News | Kim McLaughlin
Danish imams urge calm as cartoon protests mount
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish Muslim preachers sought to soothe Muslim anger on Friday after newspapers reprinted a drawing of the Prophet Mohammad which caused outrage in Islamic countries two years ago. Danish papers republished one of the drawings of Mohammad on Wednesday in protest against what they said was a plot to murder the cartoonist who drew it. Mostafa Chendid, an imam at the Islamic Faith Community, said Danish media had confused freedom of expression with the freedom to insult others. But he called for all Muslims to "cool down" and "turn "the other cheek," rather than pursue a violence, saying this would harm Islam the same way the cartoons had. "We are trying to dampen the anger," he said at Friday prayers at a mosque in northern Copenhagen.
2/14/2008 | News | Souhail Karam
No red roses for Saudi sweethearts on Valentines Day
Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items colored scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolizing love, newspapers said. "They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying. It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it sees as encouraging relations between men and women outside of wedlock, the newspaper said. Saudi Arabia imposes an austere form of Sunni Islam which prevents unrelated men and women from mixing, bans women from driving and demands that women wear a headscarf and a cloak. Relations outside marriage are strictly banned and punishable by law.
2/11/2008 | News | Lauren Frayer
US: al-Qaida in Iraq training children
BAGHDAD - Boys in soccer jerseys don black masks and grab weapons. They scramble over mud-brick walls, blast down doors and hold guns to the heads of residents inside. The U.S. military said videos seized from suspected al-Qaida in Iraq hideouts show militants training children who appear as young as 10 to kidnap and kill. It's viewed as a sign that the terror network — hungry for recruits — may be using younger Iraqis in propaganda to lure a new crop of fighters. "Al-Qaida in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman. "It is offering children as the new generation of mujahedeen," he added, using the Arabic term for holy warriors. The video, shown to reporters Wednesday, depicted an apparent training session with black-masked boys — ammunition belts draped across their small chests — forcing a man off his bicycle at gunpoint and marching him off down a muddy lane. An off-camera voice, speaking with an Iraqi accent, instructs children how to take firing positions with assault rifles. At one point, the boys huddle in a circle on a cement floor, solemnly pledging allegiance to al-Qaida.
2/6/2008 | News | MEMRI.org
Saudi Businesswoman Lands in Riyadh Jail – For Having Coffee with Male Colleague at Starbucks
In his February 5, 2008 column in the Saudi English-language daily Arab News, Saudi journalist Raid Qusti relates what happens when a woman has a cup of coffee with a male colleague at a Starbucks. Qusti has written numerous columns in favor of expanding women's rights, educational reform, and modernization, and is often critical of Islamism. See Qusti's column, titled "Coffee with Colleague Lands Woman in Trouble" by clicking on the headline of this posting.
2/5/2008 | News |
Muslim insurgents use mentally retarded women to carry out bombings
"Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on pet bazaars Friday, police and Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital this spring," reported the Associated Press. “The chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said the female bombers had Down syndrome and that the explosives were detonated by remote control indicating they may not have been willing attackers in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert stepped up security measures.”
2/5/2008 | News |
Saudi Women's Rights Activist Wajiha Al-Huweidar Criticizes Middle Eastern Men Saudi Society
"This Saudi Patriarchal Culture Has Become Prevalent under Religious Guise" Wajiha Al-Huweidar: "We have raised a generation - I think it began with my own generation - on the belief that we are a special people, that we are the cradle of Islam, that the truth is ours and ours alone, that we are the Saved Sect of Islam. People have begun to believe all these lies, and they use them as pretexts. When we demanded that women be employed in public workplaces, they say: 'No, we are a special people.' When we demand that women be allowed to drive, they say: 'No, we are a special people.' No, we are not. In what way are we special? There is nothing special about us. True, we have the two holy cities - Mecca and Al-Madina - but this does not mean that we have a monopoly on religion, and that we are the only Muslims in the world.
1/22/2008 | News | Beila Rabinowitz
Hysteria Over Geert Wilders' Rumored "Anti-Quran" Film Continues Unabated
Dutch MP Geert Wilders' rumored "anti-Quran" film has set off a wave of hand-wringing and hysteria in Holland. The announcement by the head of the Freedom Party that he planned to make a film showing that the Quran is "an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror," has sent Dutch government and security officials scurrying to design contingency plans in the event riots break out upon the release of the film.
1/22/2008 | News | Graeme Paton
Extremists turn attention to Muslim women
Growing numbers of young Muslim women are being "groomed" by extremists, the Government has warned. They are becoming targets for radical groups linked to al-Qa'eda that are attempting to recruit impressionable young people in Britain, it is claimed. Radical groups are thought to be attempting to recruit impressionable young people in Britain The disclosure is made in new guidance designed to clamp down on extremism on university campuses.
1/18/2008 | News | Reuters
Belarus jails Prophet Mohammad cartoon publisher
BELARUS - Belarus on Friday jailed for three years an editor of an independent newspaper who reproduced cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that first appeared in Denmark in 2005 and caused mass demonstrations across the Muslim world.
1/11/2008 | News | Bill Gertz
Pentagon fires anti-terrorist analyst
Some Pentagon and military leaders, along with lots of working-level officials, are quietly rallying to support ousted Joint Staff counterterrorism analyst Stephen Coughlin. Pentagon officials said a number of generals and admirals who share Mr. Coughlin's well-reasoned assessment of the Islamic law underpinnings of Islamist terror are voicing support for the lawyer and former military intelligence official. Mr. Coughlin was fired as a Joint Staff contractor after his confrontation with Hasham Islam, a special assistant to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, was reported in The Washington Times last month. Mr. Islam, a Muslim, referred to Mr. Coughlin as a "Christian zealot with a pen" during the meeting several weeks ago, a slur rejected by Mr. Coughlin's supporters.