Obamanoids “Crash” Tea Party, Claim Dear Leader Has Cut Taxes
The Obamanoids’ argument that their dear leader has not raised taxes and has in fact overseen tax cuts for 95 per cent of Americans is a clever exercise in spin, and it completely ignores the fact that the administration is preparing to implement nearly $1 trillion in new taxes over the next 10 years, not to mention the colossal taxes that are contained within Obamacare.
As ABC News’ Jake Tapper (hardly a right-wing tea partier) reported shortly after Obama took office, “President Obama’s budget proposes $989 billion in new taxes over the course of the next 10 years, starting fiscal year 2011, most of which are tax increases on individuals.”
These include eliminating itemized deductions, hiking capital gains tax, as well as curtailing tax cuts already in place.
In addition, the beast that is Obamacare will help the administration to “spread the wealth” by “taxing the rich,” which in reality means the middle class, by hitting “higher earners,” ie anyone who can actually maintain a decent standard of living, with an array of tax increases which will further economically cripple Americans already laboring under the worst financial crisis since the great depression.
As Bloomberg News reported, analysis by the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation revealed that the bill would generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes by 2019. Bear in mind, this is on top of the near $1 trillion in other new taxes that comprise Obama’s budget over the next 10 years.
In addition, the Congressional Budget Office states that the bill also levies almost $69 billion more in penalties for those who fail to meet mandates to buy insurance.
Obamacare will impose dozens of new taxes that will totally eviscerate any remaining disposable income of millions of Americans and in turn lead the economy to ruin. Read a run down of the details of just some of those new taxes here.
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CAIR: Anti-Islam Ads Pulled From Miami Buses
MIAMI, April 16, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ ——CAIR-SFL applauds end to ‘campaign of hatred and intolerance’
The South Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFL) today announced that Miami-Dade Transit is dropping bus advertisements sponsored by an anti-Islam hate group.
“We believe Miami-Dade Transit did the right thing in dropping this campaign of hatred and intolerance,” said CAIR-SFL Executive Director Muhammed Malik. “The advertisement’s reference to apostasy is merely a smoke-screen for the promotion of anti-Islam bigotry and the attempted marginalization of American Muslims.”
He said Stop the Islamization of America’s leaders, Pam Geller and Robert Spencer, are considered by many Muslims to be among the nation’s most vicious Islamophobes.
On her personal blog, Geller has written of President Obama: “[O]ne thing is for sure: Hussein is a muhammadan [sic].”
Geller has been vocal in her criticism of the black population in South Africa and seemingly supportive of the slain South African apartheid leader Eugene Terre’blanche. Following Terre’blanche’s recent murder, Geller wrote: “All I see in South Africa is Black supremacism. Terreblanche [sic] may have been a white supremacist, but he’s the dead one.”
Her blog has in the past featured categories such as “Advancing Islamic Lies,” “Islam 2008: Religion of Barbarism” and “Slavery: An Arab custom.” She was recently involved in a Florida conference that invited extremist anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders to speak.
In one 2009 blog post, Geller wrote in reference to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad: “And frankly I find the whole new ‘Abrahamic’ narrative really galling. 1,400 years ago some maniaic [sic] decided to spin the origin of a 5,767 year old religion to advance their own evil end and said it was Ishmael that Abraham was to kill and now it’s taken as…..gospel? Puhleeeze.”
She also claims Muslim groups “control information and how it is processed at senior levels of the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the various branches of the military.”
Geller has even been criticized by other Islamophobes for her extremism and for supporting far-right fascist groups in Europe. In fact, Stop the Islamization of America is an outgrowth of a similar group in Europe that seeks to block the construction of mosques on that continent. Stop the Islamization of Europe also “considers Islamophobia to be the height of common sense” and claims that Islam “considers lying to be not only acceptable, but obligatory.”
Robert Spencer has also been criticized for the extremism exhibited on his personal anti-Muslim web site “Jihad Watch,” which recently compared Muslims to Nazis. Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald wrote: “When I see thousands of people in a mosque, I am put in mind not of a gathering at St. Peter’s, but rather, of a Nuremberg Rally, a horizontal collective affair, rather than vertical, with the prostration itself performing, or signifying, blind obedience of the kind that, at the real Nuremberg, is signified by the heil-hitlering salute of thousands, yelling in unison, and saluting, and re-saluting.” [Spencer refused to repudiate those statements.]
Fitzgerald also wrote on that hate site: “Only one group, only one belief-system, distinguishes itself by appearing incapable of fitting in. And that is Muslims, and Islam. . .if one really knew what Islam contained. . .then how could any decent person remain a Muslim?” He also recommended that western nations be “Islam-proofed the way a house is child-proofed.”
One then right-wing critic wrote of Spencer’s blog: “His website has descended into a true hate site at this point, dominated by extreme, bigoted commenters who regularly advocate genocide and mass murder of Muslims.” [That writer has since broken with the far-right, in part because of pervasive anti-Islam bigotry its proponents often exhibit.]
In 2007, Spencer spoke at a so-called “Counterjihad Brussels” conference in Belgium attended by those with links to far-right parties such as Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang (Belgium) and Ted Ekeroth of Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden). Both parties have been accused of either having a racist platform, a neo-Nazi past or having links to neo-Nazis and other racists.
“The bus ads are part of a growing ‘Islamophobia machine’ nationwide that must be challenged by Americans of all faiths,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
He noted that CAIR has long held that religious decisions should be matters of personal choice, not a cause for state intervention. According to CAIR’s position statement on Islam and apostasy: “Faith imposed by force is not true belief, but coercion. Islam has no need to compel belief in its divine truth.”
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Clinton Alludes to 1995 Bombing, Says Words Matter
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton warned of a slippery slope from angry anti-government rhetoric to violence like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, saying “the words we use really do matter.”
The two-term Democratic president insisted he wasn’t trying to restrict free speech, but in remarks Friday he said incendiary language can be taken the wrong way by some Americans. He drew parallels to words demonizing the government before Oklahoma City.
On April 19, 1995, an anti-government conspiracy led by Army veteran Timothy McVeigh exploded a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people.
“What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold — but that the words we use really do matter, because there’s this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike,” he said.
“One of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have.”
Clinton made the remarks at events sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund on the upcoming anniversary of the bombing.
He mentioned the rancorous fight over President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Passage of the law elicited threats against some lawmakers.
“I’m glad they’re fighting over health care and everything else. Let them have at it. But I think that all you have to do is read the paper every day to see how many people there are who are deeply, deeply troubled,” he said.
He also alluded to the anti-government tea party movement, which held protests in several states Thursday. At the Washington rally, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota railed against “gangster government.”
Clinton argued that the Boston Tea Party was in response to taxation without representation. The current protesters, he said, are challenging taxation by elected officials, and the demonstrators have the power to vote them out of office.
“By all means keep fighting, by all means, keep arguing,” he said. “But remember, words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Crash Victim Screams, ‘Say You’re Sorry’ at Epileptic Cabby
“Say you’re sorry!” the young woman sobbed. “Just look at us and say you’re sorry!”
They came face to face after a Manhattan sentencing today, close enough to touch — a young woman whose survival is a miracle, and the epileptic, off-his meds cabby who nearly killed her, sending her best friend to the morgue and two other friends to hospitals during a 2006 taxi ride from hell.
“Look at us!” the trembling woman, Amy Vallerelli, 25, of Westchester, begged the reckless, heartless hack, pushing toward him in a courtroom’s narrow aisle.
“Why can’t you just say you’re sorry?” she demanded, her voice cracking, as court officers gently held her back. “I just want him to say he’s sorry!” she told the officers. “What is wrong with him?”
Hassan Afzal, also 25, said nothing, leaving the courtroom surrounded by other court officers, who guided him down a hallway, past his screaming victim.
Afzal left Manhattan Supreme Court with a felony negligent homicide rap forever on his record — and, in his victims’ minds, the death of 21-year-old Danielle Ricco forever on his soul.
He’ll serve zero time in jail for the death of Ricco, who was ejected fom his cab as it careened down the West Side Highway in the Meatpacking District, Afzal slumped at the wheel.
Having stopped taking his anti-seizure meds weeks before, he’d suffered the inevitable attack, he admitted in pleading guilty last month.
Prosecutors agreed to the no-jail, five-years-probation deal after realizing they risked a full acquittal at trial because they could never have given a jury hard evidence of a seizure — and Afzal had been steadfastly lying that his brakes had merely failed.
Vallerelli, who’d been sitting behind Afzal in the cab that June night, suffered a shattered femur in the crash. Her nose had been broken so badly, “My septum was crushed into my skull,” she told the court in a victim impact statement. “I don’t even know if I can have children now,” she sobbed at a podium.
Afterward, she would show Afzal none of the court system’s unwitting mercy.
“Monster!” Vallerelli railed as Afzal passed her, still silent, outside the courtroom. “Pig! I went through 15 surgeries!” she shouted, her voice shaking. “You don’t even care that you killed someone and put three people in the hospital! You’re a pig! You’re a maniac! You’re disgusting!”
There was no mercy, too, from Ricco’s mom, especially concerning Afzal’s request to keep his passport while on probation. Afzal had been born in the U.S. of Pakistani descent, and his wife and children remained there.
“He should not be allowed to leave the state of New York or get his passport,” the mom, Diane, demanded in her own victim impact statement. “My daughter is in the state of New York, in a cemetery, in a vault. She cannot leave.
“My daughter deserves some kind of justice,” the mom said of her beautiful girl, who died weeks short of taking a dream, hospitality internship at a Disney World hotel.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m a parent. I cannot forgive.”
During and after court, the victims and their family members gave a harrowing account of the moments before the crash.
The four young women had hailed Afzal’s cab after a night out celebrating Vallerelli’s 20th birthday. Ricco took the front passenger seat. Vallerelli and two sisters from Brooklyn — Anna and Enza Sallustio — shared the rear seat.
“The second we got into that cab, you were playing that rap song by T.I.,” Vallerelli said during her victim impact statement. Ricco urged him to lower the blasting music. “You laughed,” Vallerelli remembered aloud at the podium. “You made it louder.”
Ricco then angrily reached over and lowered the radio, Vallerelli said. Afzal became enraged, Vallerelli said, tauntingly blasting the volume, hitting the gas pedal and speeding down the West Side Highway, running lights along the way.
All the while, “You were looking into her face as if to torture her!” Vallerelli told her best friend’s killer.
Right before the crash came the ultimate insult, family members said. Afzal lifted his right leg and flung it over Ricco’s lap — a gesture of great disrespect in his culture, family members said.
“How did you do that — drive with your left foot while you put your right leg over our daughter?” Ricco’s father, Richard, said trembling with rage in another impact statement. “How dare you touch our daughter?”
“We hope this haunts you,” said victim Enza, 25 — who’d spent fourteen days in a coma after the crash. “Until the end of your days.”
| — Hat tip: Nilk | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Search Under Way for Suitable Islamic Cemetery
Ministry of Education proposes hiring consultant for EUR 30,000
The Finnish Islamic Council is looking for a location in the south of Finland for a cemetery for Muslims. The aim is to get an area that could accommodate thousands of graves over the coming decades.
The council has asked a number of municipalities in the south of Finland if they have an suitable land area for the purpose.
The council’s deputy chairman, Anas Hajjar said that only a few of the municipalities answered the enquiry, and that the answers were all negative.
An enquiry to the Uusimaa Regional Council did not bring any results, because cemeteries are decided at the municipal level.
The Islamic Council has decided to hire a consultant, for an estimated fee of about EUR 30,000.
The task of the consultant would be to pinpoint appropriate areas, assess their suitability for the purpose, and conduct studies of the soil.
The council itself does not have the money to hire such a consultant, but Helsingin Sanomat has learned that the Ministry of Education is proposing that the funds be included in this year’s second supplementary budget.
The Ministry of Finance responds to proposals for the supplementary budgets next week, after which they will be made public. Before that, the Ministry of Education is neither confirming nor denying the information.
The Finnish government agreed in 2007 to take part in the costs of setting up an Islamic cemetery.
The consultant’s fee proposed by the Ministry of Education is one of the first phases in the move. The total costs are estimated at EUR 1-2 million.
A foundation is to be set up for the financing of the cemetery, which would have representation of the Islamic Council, the various Islamic religious communities, and the state.
Finland has about 45,000 Muslims. The precise number is unknown because not all Muslims are registered members of a religious community.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: a New Generation at the Mosque
By Tommi Nieminen
The depth of the devotion of 23-year-old Hunde Assefa is apparent just looking at him, as he walks with his veiled wife and four-year-old son on the street. Hunde has a thin beard, he is dressed in white, and on his head he has a Muslim cap. This indicates that he is more devout than his average co-religionists in Finland.
Hunde was born in the late 1980s in Finland, and has lived here his whole life. But when he is asked about his identity, he does not emphasise his Finnishness.
“My primary identity is that of a Muslim. In other respects I am international. My roots are in Ethiopia, I was born in Finland, and I have attended international schools”, he says.
Hunde could also be called a second-generation immigrant. The members of his family were originally Ethiopian Christians. Hunde converted to Islam six years, so it is no wonder that he is very religious, as converts often tend to be.
Hunde was 18 years old when he accepted Allah into his life. One reason for this is that as a teenager he spent much time with Somali immigrants.
“It was during comprehensive school that the development of a foreign identity began. When Somalis and other foreigners started coming to Finland, there was no doubt that I belonged to them.”
Hunde is a young man who weighs his words carefully. He adheres to the teachings the fairly conservative Shafi’i school of Islamic law, and he follows Sufism, which focuses on the purification of the soul.
“When a person prays five times a day at certain times, it brings order into life.”
During the day Hunde works sorting mail at the Itella postal centre. At the weekends he teaches the Koran to children in Malmi, and studies for the entrance examinations to the Aalto University. The rest of his time he spends with his family.
Hunde does not follow Western popular culture: “The lyrics of popular music are what they are. I don’t watch much TV either, as it affects the soul.”
If things go well, Hunde will attend an Islamic university some day. For instance, there is an interesting school in Yemen — the moderate Dar Al Mustafa.
“Many students from the West have gone there. When they have returned they have done many good things in their communities.”
There are at least 45,000 Muslims in Finland. Most of them are Sunni. There are only a few thousand Shia in Finland. Most have arrived after the early 1990s. First came Somalis, then Iraqis, Kosovars, and Afghanis. A small Tatar minority settled in Finland already in the late 19th century.
Now many of the children of Muslims who immigrated to Finland in recent decades have grown up. Some of them have become secularised and Westernised, while many live very devout lives dedicated to Islam. But what kind of an Islam do they believe in?
There has been very little Islamic radicalism in Finland, but it is the second generation of Muslim men who are seen as a high-risk group all over western Europe. For instance, in Britain and France, many in the second generation of immigrants have become embittered, radicalised, and have isolated themselves from society.
They have their reasons. Many of them were born in Europe and have lived all of their lives here, and still they are treated as second-class citizens — on the labour market, for instance. This also happens in Finland, while the unemployment rate for the population at large was nine per cent in 2005, it was 58 per cent among Somalis living in Finland.
This makes many young Muslims go beyond the employment office in their quest for answers.
The story of Abdillahi Farah Muhamed, who lives in Pähkinärinne in Vantaa, is a sobering one. The first six years of his life he lived in the family of a camel herders in Somaliland. Now at the age of 21 he already looks like a young person from the Helsinki region, wearing big headphones and a woolen cap.
Abdillahi was sent to Finland in 1996 to flee the war. He had never even heard about Europe. He saw snow and the sea for the first time. People lived in white cubes. The sounds that buses made was strange, because Abdillahi had never heard of natural gas.
“In the schoolyard I was called an ugly black, or I was asked if I was a rubber boat refugee. I will never forget it”, Abdillahi recalls in a restaurant of a hotel in Vantaa.
In his teens, he lived an intense life. Abdillahi adapted to Finnish culture by drinking, taking drugs, and wandering the streets at night. One time in Malmi three Finnish men pointed a gun at him and threatened to shoot.
“It stayed in my mind”.
Racism was sometimes aggressive. He had a girlfriend for a short time, who had a Russian-born father. When the man found Abdillahi in his home, he took out a hunting rifle and threatened to shoot him, and he didn’t even care if he were sent to prison for it.
“You don’t easily forget things like this”, Abdillahi says.
In 2007 Abdillahi fled the problems he was having to Germany for six months, to stay with his half sister. The trip changed his life. Abdillahi cannot say which things led to other things, except that it was the providence of Allah. When he returned to Vantaa he became a fundamentalist with a capital F.
Now he believes in the very conservative interpretations of Sunni Islam. Some of his thoughts are confusing, such as his views on evolution: apes are descended from people who sinned against Allah millions of years ago, and Allah turned them into apes.
Or on the roles of men and women: “The biggest problem in Finland is that Somali women here think that they are free to do what they want. They have deprived men of the honour of being responsible for everything that a woman eats, what she wears, or what the women are taught.
Still, Abdillahi is no hooded warrior of the faith. He has just started to work at a day-care centre in Vantaa. Previously he has had a job as caring for mentally disabled people in Rinnekoti in Espoo. He is a polite young man, but in his faith he is very extreme. “A lone wolf”, as he says himself.
One wonders if the young Abdillahi understands himself what he is talking about as he says without batting an eye that those who draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad should die. “It is in our holy book. I cannot go against it. Each one of us is responsible for his actions.”
He also cannot abide the Shia Muslims, who even today are clashing with the Sunni in Iraq. However he knows that there will be a day when all of the world’s Muslims will stand together.
“We have been told that the last world war will take place in the Palestinian territories. All Islamic countries in the world and all Christian countries will unite”, Abdillahi says.
Who has said that?
“It can be found right in the holy book, the Koran.”
Are you ready for it?
“I hope that I will not be alive on the day that it happens.”
Is this discussed much at mosques in Finland?
“Of course not. They teach how to live a good life and what kind of an attitude to take toward your parents, and how to get closer to God.
There are not many Sunni in Finland whose doctrine would be that severe. One factor preventing the widespread radicalisation of the Muslim population is that there is no single dominant group of Muslims, as there are in Britain (the Muslims of India and Pakistan), Germany (The Turks, although many of them are quite secularised), or in France (the North Africans), says Islam specialist Marko Juntunen of the University of Helsinki.
The more Muslim groups want to optimise synergy, the readier they need to be to compromise. This puts a damper on extremism. However, not all.
Kuel Jok, a Sudanese researcher at the University of Helsinki, claimed in February that the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab was recruiting young Somalis living in Finland to go to war against the Somali government. In the early part of the year the Finnish Security Police (SUPO) asked Parliament for EUR 1.7 million in funding to station officers permanently in Africa and the Middle East to stop possible terrorists who might want to travel to Finland.
Tom Kankkonen, a journalist for the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), wrote in his book Islam Euroopassa (“Islam in Europe”), that the spread of the hard-line Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia, which is akin to Salafism, which is practiced in Finland, is seen as something of a threat. There are already a few hundred of these neo-fundamentalist Sunni in Finland, and they operate in communities such as the Helsinki Muslimikoti (“Muslim Home”), the Iqra association, and the Salafi Forum on the Internet.
“These kinds of groups all over Europe feel that it is most important to create an island of Islam isolated form the rest of society”, Juntunen says. However, he notes that the religious interpretations of the groups do not necessarily have anything to do with security threats, even though Salafism might serve as a motivator for radicalism.
The staunchly conservative and very literal Salafism is — for now at least — more of a cause for concern for Finland’s moderate Muslim population than for the Lutheran mainstream.
Youth worker Mohamed Xadar Mukhtar Abdi has a clear mission: to keep Somali young people on the straight and narrow. To keep them away from khat, alcohol, and other bad habits. Mohamed works at the Kanava association, which offers help to immigrants.
“Many are on the verge of dropping out of school. Then there are young people who have already fallen”, says 25-year-old Mohamed.
“Some have broken their family ties. They do nothing. They just sleep during the day and see their friends at night. Khat is the worst people stay awake all night, and the next day goes completely crazy.”
It is paradoxical that many Muslim young people who have become radicalised in the Western world have actually rejected the traditional lifestyles of their own parents. They might live very Western lives and have just a scant knowledge of the teachings of Islam. For some more worldly Muslims, Islam is just a way to brand consumer goods.
“Increasing numbers of global goods are brand names of Islam, from Barbie dolls, to Internet sites, to soft drinks, and entertainment”, Juntunen says.
So it goes: Finland’s young Muslims yearn to live as individuals, just like others. The individuality simply varies considerably: from rigid Salafism to a more consumer-oriented Islam light. The Internet has a key role in what ideas are attractive, and with the experiences of everyday life.
“From late last year, one of the biggest concerns here in Kanava has been that many Somali young people are losing their jobs”, Mohamed says.
“After getting splashed with too much mud, it becomes easier for a young person to be recruited to some [hard-line Muslim] organisation.”
Some of the Somalis who were interviewed for this story, such as the young Abdillahi, believe that there are “quite a few” supporters of al-Shabab in Finland. However, they emphasise that the support does not mean that they support terrorism, but rather that some of Finland’s Somalis represent the same clans that are in the majority in al-Shabab.
Mohamed says that the possible impact of the radical movement is feared in Finland’s moderate Muslim circles. He himself is proof that even a devout Muslim can adapt to a Finnish lifestyle. He is a quiet as Finnish men generally are, and he has at least one basic vice that is not acceptable in Somali culture. “I sometimes don’t visit my mother for many months.”
Nevertheless: when Mohamed looks in the mirror, he understands that he will always be considered a Somali, until he dies. It is a label.
“If the Sello shooter had been a Somali, all hell would have broken loose”, he says.
Relations between Finland’s Sunnis and Shi’ites have cooled over the past decade. Researcher Marko Juntunen sees this as a reflection of the sharper division in the entire Muslim world. After the WTC attacks in September 2001 there has been radicalisation in the whole Muslim world. What happens in Iraq or Iran between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites has repercussions all the way to Finland.
“The [Salafist] Muslimikoti association in Pitäjänmäki is circulating some quite extreme Arabic language anti-Shi’ite material on the Internet”, Juntunen says.
The schism is a sensitive issue in the Finnish Muslim community. The dispute is made worse by the fact that the hard-line Sunni Saudi Arabia is actively engaged in missionary work, which has been taking place even in Finland since the 1980s.
“The Saudis began to direct money toward Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian [Shi’ite] revolution. The Saudi administration feared that the Islamic activism on the street would topple governments all over the Middle East”, Juntunen says.
At least three Finnish mosques and one community have received money from Saudi sources. For instance, Helsinki’s Islam Centre in East Pasila. There is disagreement among Muslims on the degree to which the money is conditional on the assimilation of religious doctrine prevalent in Saudi-Arabia.
The 26-year-old vice president of the Finnish Islamic Party, Wubulihaire Rousidan says that the conservative Muslimikoti association has received Saudi money. Rousidan, who also has the Muslim name Nasrullah, is a Uighur — a Muslim from the west of China. He is opposed to the Saudi doctrines.
“When Muslimikoti bought its place in Pitäjänmäki, one of the donors was a Uighur living in Saudi Arabia. The place is not suitable for the life that we Uighur live. For instance, men and women cannot be together in the Muslimikoti. The men are on one side and the women are on the other.”
The head of anti-terror activities at the Finnish Security Police (SUPO), Lasse Anttila, sees no need to worry about Muslim money coming in as such. Nor is he concerned that a few dozen Muslims have travelled from Finland to study in conservative universities in Saudi Arabia in the past decade. It might even reduce radical tendencies.
“People with radical thoughts have become more moderate during their studies, and rejected their previous extremist ideas”, Anttila says.
“The problems are related more to recruiters operating near the official institutions of learning, who try to recruit students into violent, radical activities. We have spoken to some who have gone to study so that they might recognise this possibility.
One can hardly envy young Muslim men who have come to Finland from Africa or the Middle East. How are they supposed to prove their willingness to assimilate?
One way is to become an artillery man at the Vekarajärvi garrison, as 25-year-old Mohamed Abdirashid Awad did.
“I was the only dark-skinned person at that time, even though it was Finland’s largest garrison. All the others were from Heinola or somewhere, and there were some who probably had never seen a dark-skinned guy. But I got some friends there”, Mohamed says, sitting in his regular café in Helsinki.
Now he is studying to be a surgical nurse, and he has a job selling hamburgers. He watches hockey on television, and goes to the mosque to pray. He often has a friend, 26-year-old Aden Ahmed Hassan with him.
Aden has also moved ahead in Finland, although he has sometimes failed to get a job when he spoke his name on the telephone. Now he is studying at the Hanken School of Economics (as a child he was placed in a Swedish-language elementary school), he is a member of the Swedish People’s Party, and he has a job as an airport security inspector.
“We know everything about this culture.”
One might imagine that such Euro-Muslims would be easy for Finland to swallow, but it’s not quite that easy. Mohamed says that a couple of months ago security guards at Helsinki Railway Station grabbed him and sprayed him with pepper spray. A police officer on the spot claimed that Mohamed had kicked another guard. “While I was bleeding, because a guard had hit me in the face.”
The matter will go to court soon, but Mohamed does not believe that Somalis are on an footing with the population at large before a Finnish court. Not even at the same level as light-skinned immigrants.
“It is easier for Russians and Estonians to get ahead”, Aden says. “I would like to know why that is.”
There is no single reason for this. The Somalis were Finland’s first large refugee group, and it was difficult to adapt. Political Islam, meanwhile, has acquired a dark reputation, even in Finland, even though the overwhelming majority of Muslims oppose terrorism.
“Now many young Muslims have to suffer for something that they have no part in”, says youth worker Mohamed.
That certainly provokes anger. Marginalisation from work, drugs, and a lack of money, combined with xenophobia all combine to rob a person of a feeling of self-worth. Some might find an answer to this dead end from hard-line faith. On the global market of Islam there are plenty of teachings to choose from.
“If a young person is not psychologically prepared, and if a young person feels that Finland does not accept him, these kinds of roads make it easier”, Mohamed says. “Sometimes I feel myself that I would have expected more of Finland.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 11.4.2010
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Hungarians Empty Offertory Boxes at 500 Churches
Two Hungarians who went on a burglary spree in 500 churches across Austria have been caught.
Tyrolean police said today (Fri) the pair were arrested after clearing out an offertory box at a church in Erpfendorf on Tuesday.
Officers also confiscated special devices the crooks had used to fish out coins from church cash boxes across the country.
The men — who had hundreds of Euros with them when they were caught — confessed travelling to Austria for a few days several times over the past few months to clear out offertory boxes at churches in different provinces.
They were put into custody at Innsbruck prison.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Stiffer Mafia Term Sought for Dell’utri
Prosecutor asks 11 years for former Berlusconi aide
(ANSA) — Palermo, April 16 — An appeals prosecutor on Friday asked for an 11-year Mafia jail term for Marcello Dell’Utri, a senator in Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party and the architect of the media magnate’s reincarnation as a politician in the early 1990s.
In the first trial in 2004 Dell’Utri, 68, got nine years for helping Cosa Nostra.
During the trial, a turncoat claimed Dell’Utri and Berlusconi “put Italy in our hands” but his testimony was later undermined by his then clan chief.
But in presenting his request, Prosecutor General Nino Gatto argued that informant Gaspare Spatuzza’s testimony “fit perfectly with the previous evidence and traced a precise picture of the relationship between the senator and the Graviano bosses,” two of Palermo’s once-strongest mafiosi now serving life for a range of crimes including a wave of terrorist-style bombings around the country during the early 1990s which killed 10 people and injured nearly 100.
The prosecutor also repeated that it had been Dell’Utri who introduced Berlusconi to Vittorio Mangano, a Palermo boss who worked as bailiff for years at the Italian premier’s estate outside Milan.
Berlusconi has always insisted he had no knowledge Mangano was connected to Cosa Nostra.
Gatto further claimed the appeals trial had shown “the defendant’s inclination for tampering with evidence”, in particular by working with one informant to discredit the three whose testimony was key in the December 2004 verdict.
He said a stiffer sentence was warranted because it had been shown that the PdL senator “wove ties with the Mafia for 30 years”. Dell’Utri denies wrongdoing.
Reacting to the 11-year request, he quipped: “The prosecutor added on two years of interest because it’s been six years since the first verdict”.
The senator, who has carried on a range of political and literary pursuits while on trial, said he had not bothered to listen to all of Gatto’s closing arguments.
“I went for a stroll around the port. I had a ‘sfincione’ (spongy Sicilian pizza). It was delicious”.
Asked whether the sentence request had interfered with his digestion, he replied: “Not a bit. I’ve already digested it”. Dell’Utri reiterated a claim that the prosecutors were biased against him.
The appeal is the second stage in Italy’s three-tier judicial system.
Third and final appeals are dealt with by the Court of Cassation.
A sentence only becomes definitive when the top court hands down its verdict.
In the meantime, defendants may or may not be detained, according to the discretion of the courts and whether or not they are members of parliament.
Dell’Utri’s arrest was denied by parliament, which extremely rarely authorises members’ detention.
In the Palermo appeals trial, the PdL senator’s defence team will start delivering their final arguments on April 30.
A verdict is expected in mid-May.
FROM SICILY TO MILAN.
Dell’Utri left a bank job in Sicily in 1974 to go to Milan to work for Berlusconi’s Fininvest group, where he rose through the hierarchy to eventually become head of its advertising arm Publitalia.
He is credited with being the brains behind the creation of Forza Italia, conceived to fill the hole in the political centre left by the Bribesville scandals, in 1993-94.
For years, prosecutors said, Dell’Utri acted as a middleman between the Mafia on the one side and the Milan establishment on the other, facilitating favours in both directions.
A key contact for Dell’Utri in Palermo was said to be his friend Gaetano Cinà, a retailer who was related to a local Mafia bigwig. Cinà, a co-defendant in the trial, was given a seven-year prison sentence in 2004.
Berlusconi has always said he believes his former aide is innocent. When called to give testimony in the trial, the premier invoked his right to remain silent.
After Dell’Utri was accused by turncoats of being a link between the Mafia and Fininvest, prosecutors went to investigate the group’s books. They reported that between 1975 and 1983 about 55 million euros entered the accounts from unclear sources.
Dell’Utri’s lawyers responded that the source of the money was clear.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Blames Author for Giving Mafia ‘Publicity’
Rome, 16 April (AKI) — Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday accused best-selling author Roberto Saviano of giving the mafia “publicity”. He also blamed the popular Italian TV series ‘La Piovra’ for spreading interest in the mafia worldwide.
“We need only recall that the eight series of ‘La Piovra’ have been aired in 160 countries, as well as the raft of books published on the mafia, such as ‘Gomorrah’,” Berlusconi said.
Saviano, who lives in hiding under police protection, wrote a highly successful book on the Neapolitan mafia, ‘Gomorrah’ which was also made into an award-winning film with the same name.
“The Italian mafia is the world’s sixth largest, but, oddly enough, it is the most famous and gives Italy a very negative image, thanks to the publicity it has received,” Berlusconi added.
He was presenting to journalists the results of the conservative Italian government’s crackdown against organised crime since it took office in May 2008, together with Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni and justice minister Angelino Alfano.
A total 23 out of the 30 most wanted mafia fugitives have been arrested since the government took office, Maroni said.
“The mafia is much more afraid of harsh prison terms and legislation than intellectual debate. This is why the present government has implemented concrete anti-mafia measures,” said Alfano.
But centre-left opposition politicians said they deplored Berlusconi’s comments on Saviano.
“There’s a disturbing implication here: if we keep quiet about the mafia we can pretend it doesn’t exist,” said opposition Democratic Party chief whip in the upper house of parliament, Anna Finocchiaro.
“Berlusconi should apologise to Saviano, who risks his life by speaking out,” said opposition Italy of Values party leader and former prosecuting magistrate Antonio Di Pietro.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Converts Raise Fears in Switzerland
Some young Swiss converts to Islam are a potential threat to the country’s security, according to the head of the Migration Office.
Alard du Bois-Reymond was speaking about the Central Islamic Council (IZRS), founded by young converts in the western town of Biel. The group strongly denies his assertion.
Du Bols-Reymond told the German-language newspaper NZZ am Sonntag that such converts include people who want a “radically different society” and pointed to examples in Britain and Germany where such demands had provided “fertile ground for potential terrorists”.
The IZRS was also the subject of a recent highly critical article in the German-language magazine Weltwoche, which described its leader, Nicolas Blancho, as “the most dangerous Islamist in Switzerland”.
It described his preaching based on the strict form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and quoted examples of intolerance towards women and non-Muslims.
One of the IZRS’s long term aims is certainly to establish schools where conflicts that some Muslims currently face in public schools — such as obligatory swimming lessons for girls at mixed primary schools — would not arise.
But the accusations of terrorism are roundly rejected by IZRS spokesman, Qaasim Illi. There is no parallel with converts in other countries who have been involved in terrorist acts, he told swissinfo.ch.
“Those converts, did they speak in public, did they work for some kind of ideal or political aim which they discussed in public? Of course not.
“And that’s the point: they are people who went to some sort of back street mosque, far away from the media. We are just the opposite: from the beginning we said we would address the public. Our methods are based on the rule of law, not on terrorism,” he said.
Law-based state
The IZRS was set up shortly before the Swiss people voted to ban the construction of minarets last November. In the wake of a highly effective anti-minaret campaign, some traditional Muslim groups wondered if they had been too reticent about presenting their position.
The aim of the IZRS, Illi explained, is to gather Swiss Muslims together to make them “politically capable” of confronting future votes on issues concerning Islam, such as a ban on headscarves or burkas.
Denying Weltwoche’s accusations that the IZRS wants to introduce Muslim sharia law — a law that “has a place only in an Islamic state or system” — he said that Switzerland is a liberal democratic state with the principle of pluralism.
“We are asking for our rights, but we respect others’ rights too. A Muslim woman in this country who doesn’t want to wear the headscarf doesn’t have to. In this system she can even decide to convert to Christianity. Everything this system allows is possible.
“And the system allows us to be as we want. We can grow a beard, we can wear the clothes we want, and we expect to be recognised and not to be portrayed as terrorists.”
Controversial
But the IZRS is a controversial organisation both inside and outside the Swiss Muslim community. Saïda Keller-Massahli of the Forum for a Progressive Islam, told Weltwoche that although Illi and Blancho present a friendly and civilised face to the public, they are dangerous.
“They are luring young Muslims and non-Muslims who are looking for clear guidelines,” she said, describing them as people who need to see the world in black and white.
“The council is spreading a dangerous ideology, which is not consistent with the Swiss constitution.”
She poured scorn on its claim to be financed solely from within Switzerland. “For me it’s beyond doubt that the association, or individuals, get money directly from Saudi sources,” she told the journal. She wants the council banned.
Another prominent Muslim, Hisham Maizar of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland, told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper that the organisation “attracts a lot of young people with no prospects” — but warned that a ban would only make it more attractive.
Larbi Guesmi, who often leads the prayers for the Muslim community in Neuchâtel, is more nuanced.
“I think that even if [Blancho] has ideas that are — I won’t say extremist, but perhaps unusual — they are still ideas that can be discussed. It’s normal for there to be different ideas in society,” he told swissinfo.ch.
He said he understood Blancho’s concerns about the minaret vote, and thinks in retrospect that the Muslims should have made more effort to get across the fact that the ban was unconstitutional.
Nadia Karmous, who heads the Cultural Association of Muslim women in Switzerland thinks that political party activity is less important than furthering mutual understanding.
“We have to work to get to know each other better, and to explain things to people who are afraid [of Islam],” she told swissinfo.ch
Attraction
Researcher Susanne Leuenberger of Bern University, who is currently writing a thesis on Muslim converts in Switzerland, says she is inclined to believe that there is nothing behind the IZRS other than what it says publicly.
“I’ve been to various meetings of the group, and I can’t do more than be there and listen to what they say.
“After all, you can accuse anyone of having hidden intentions — including the government if you want to. That’s always what people do with minorities they want to keep an eye on: they accuse them of having bad intentions.”
She says many young people are attracted to the IZRS because they see it as an organisation that is actually doing something for them.
It is also very professional, with a good website which it keeps updated, and it invites skilful speakers to address meetings.
“Their kind of religious rhetoric, of religious practice, combined with what you might call a sort of MTV video aesthetics is an attractive mixture,” she told swissinfo.ch
While some of the older established Muslims reproach the IRZS for attracting drifting youngsters, Guesmi admits that “young people always have their own demands,” and that it is not always easy to meet them. “It’s really a battle,” he said.
That is evidently where the IRZS scores.
“We appeal to young people because we address their problems,” Illi said.
Julia Slater, swissinfo.ch
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Romanian Life Sentence in Italy
The life sentence has been confirmed for the Romanian man who killed an Italian woman near a railway station in Rome, central Italy.
The Highest Italian court in Rome confirmed the life sentence against Nicolae Romulus Mailat rejecting the appeal submitted by the Romanian man’s lawyers and reaffirming Mailat had acted in a criminal way aiming to kill Giovanna Reggiani.
Reggiani, 47, was attacked on the evening of 30th October 2007 near the Tor di Quinto railway station. Mailat stunned her with a stick and then placed a noose around her neck, according to prosecutor Vito D’Ambrosio. Mailat had been stopped by the superwitness Emilia Neamtu as he was to get rid of the body.
Reggiani died two days later in a hospital in Rome.
Reggiani’s husband Giovanni Gumiero only commented by shouting: “Justice is done.”
His lawyer Tommaso Pietrocarlo said: “We were not looking for a revenge. This sentence won’t return his wife to Gumiero. We were looking only for the truth and it was affirmed.”
Mailat is currently been held in prison in Pesaro, central Italy.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Offers Cut Price Fighters to Romania
Sweden has offered Romania 24 new Gripen fighter aircraft at a cut price to match that demanded by the United States for second-hand F-16s, officials confirmed on Wednesday.
King calls on Brazil to plump for Swedish jet (25 Mar 10)
The offer matches the number of jets offered by the United States, but does not contain ammunition like the US offer.
Romania’s Supreme Council announced in March its decision to buy 24 second-hand F-16 jets for $1.3 billion dollars, a purchase which is to be submitted to parliament for approval.
Jerry Lindbergh, a Swedish government official in charge of defence exports, gave details of the offer at a news conference in Bucharest.
He said Sweden could provide 24 new “fully NATO interoperable Gripen C/D fighters, including training, support, logistics and 100 percent offset for the amount of €1 billion.”
The money could be paid over 15 years with low interest rates.
Sweden’s ambassador to Romania Mats Aberg said it was “Romania’s sovereign right to choose the multirole jets it wanted”, but to provide all information on the Swedish offer, he had sought a meeting with the parliament defence commission chairman.
Swedish group Saab said in March it was “surprised” by Romania’s choice of second hand F-16 aircraft.
Bucharest is also considering buying 24 new F-16 jets and later 24 F-35 jets, the defence ministry said, stressing this was part of the Romanian-US “strategic partnership.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: SATS Chaos as Heads Challenge Ministers With Vote for Boycott of Exams at 11
Hundreds of thousands of children face classroom disruption after head teachers backed an unprecedented boycott of national tests for 11-year-olds.
Primary heads voted to take industrial action for only the second time in their union’s 112-year history.
Members of the National Association of Head Teachers voted decisively to ‘ frustrate the administration’ of compulsory tests due to be taken by 600,000 11-year-olds between May 10 and May 13. Sixty-one per cent backed the action.
Members of the National Union of Teachers who hold head teacher or deputy head roles were also balloted, with 75 per cent supporting a boycott.
Pupils will still be expected to go to school during SATs testing week, but many are now unlikely to be entered for the exams, despite spending months preparing.
Supporters of primary school testing branded the action ‘highly irresponsible’ and warned that parents would be denied objective information about how their children are performing as they begin their secondary school careers.
The planned action also threatens to wreck the school league tables which many parents consult when choosing education for their children.
The executives of the two unions, which represent 80 per cent of primary heads, will meet next week to decide whether to proceed with a boycott, with an announcement expected on Wednesday.
The stand taken by the traditionally moderate NAHT — which last took industrial action in 1985 — is a sign of the depth of heads’ hostility to Labour’s regime of testing and league tables.
They claim SATs force schools to drill pupils for tests instead of giving them a broad education.
They say league tables ‘humiliate and demean’ schools whose pupils underachieve as this can be due to a number of factors rather than failures by the school.
A boycott would throw down a gauntlet to the next Government on the day it begins office. Both Labour and the Tories are going into the election backing the continuing use of SATs, with the Conservatives saying they should be made more rigorous.
Ministers have consulted lawyers over the legality of a planned boycott and have not ruled out a court challenge.
They say the turn-out across both unions was just 45 per cent and only 29 per cent of staff who were eligible to vote backed the action.
Significant numbers of heads are known to oppose the action and are unlikely to join a boycott. Some voted in favour of it only because they feared a ‘no vote’ would be seen as backing SATs.
Others are planning to set last year’s papers to avoid disappointing children who have prepared and parents who expect results.
Heads who boycott the tests are being advised to continue to report grades in English and maths to parents and local authorities but to base them on teachers’ own assessments.
NAHT general secretary Mick Brookes saluted the courage of heads who had voted Yes despite pressure from governors, parents and Gordon Brown, who issued a personal appeal to them to snub the boycott.
Mr Brookes said £23million a year was being wasted on the tests.
The two unions want the Government to replace SATs with a sampling system, where only a small proportion of pupils are tested each year to judge national standards.
At the same time, all pupils would be assessed by their own teachers, with a proportion of marking checked externally.
Schools Minister Vernon Coaker said last night: ‘Today’s ballot result clearly shows that most heads and deputy heads do not support industrial action.
‘A boycott of this year’s tests would not be in children’s best interests.’
Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘It would be highly irresponsible if teachers were to boycott the tests’.
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Hunting: Croatia Opens Doors to Italian Double-Barrelled Guns
(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 16 — Croatia is a well-known tourist destination, with over 1,500km of beaches and around a thousand large and small islands, and an important cultural heritage. But the potential of the country’s inland is less known; in fact it is considered to be a paradise for hunters. Each year, the Croatian Tourism Board reports, hunting tourism attracts 10,000 foreign tourists to the country. But Croatia would like to see this figure rise, also through a plan that was presented by the Croatian Hunting Federation (HSL, 55,000 members, including breeders, of which 10,000 hunters) to improve accommodations for lovers of the hunt. Croatia is very suited for hunting: low urbanisation, uncontaminated, low prices, well-connected to Italy. And most importantly: it houses 4,500 plant species and many kinds of animals. These characteristics have drawn many Italian hunters to Croatia, which is better organised than its neighbours like Albania and Montenegro. With its 2.7 million hectares of woodland and 1,060 natural reserves (a total of 5,500 square kilometers), people can hunt in Croatia for migratory animals like the woodcock — considered to be the queen of game — and quails and resident creatures like partridges, pheasants, hares, bears, roe deer, wild boar, wild cats, foxes, badgers and martens. In the mountains of the Dalmatian peninsula Peljesac, there are opportunities to shoot mouflons and chamois — the hunt for which is strictly regulated — and even species that are protected in Italy, like the Greek partridge. The hunt for this kind of partridge is considered only suitable for “real athletes”, because dogs and hunters must be well-prepared for the mountains. But the country certainly has rules. Croatia in fact adheres to all international conventions for nature protection and 18% of its territory, as well as many plant and animal species, enjoy different levels of protection. Zagreb even houses a museum dedicated to hunting. The Hunting Museum tells the story of the country’s hunting culture and its natural heritage. It also exhibits many fossils, weapons and several kinds of ammunition. Around 400 hunting trophies can be seen in the museum, shot in the country and given to the State, because they couldn’t be taken outside the country. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Italian Wins Award for Drug Trafficking Film
Belgrade, 16 April (AKI) — Italian TV reporter Riccardo Iacona was to receive a Serbian media award for his powerful documentary on drug trafficking in Kosovo and Afghanistan on Saturday. He is the first foreigner to be awarded the investigative journalism prize, Serbian press association president Ljiljana Smajlovic told Adnkronos International (AKI).
Iacona’s documentary, ‘La Guerra Infinita’, (The Infinite War) was first aired by RAI in September 2008, and recently aired on Serbian state television to enthusiastic reviews.
Serbian critics said it was the best piece of reporting on the Balkans since the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and it drew an audience of 2.5 million people.
Smajlovic said Iacona’s reporting on NATO’s peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan was important for two reasons.
“On the one hand, it represents the finest tradition of Western investigative journalism that we admire and would like to emulate,” she told AKI.
“On the other, it represents a clean break with the prevalent, ‘politically correct’, mainstream and conventional view of these operations portrayed by the Western media.”
“Iacona scrutinises NATO and its peacekeeping record unsentimentally, exposing the unpleasant side of foreign occupation,” she said.
The first part of the documentary looks at the situation in Kosovo, after Serbian forces were driven out by NATO bombings in 1999 and the persistent tensions between Kosovo’s various ethnic groups under NATO forces.
The second part of the documentary covers the narcotics industry in Afghanistan. Iacona traces the drug trafficking route from Afghanistan to western Europe through Kosovo and the Balkans and interviews experts and ordinary people.
The documentary highlights the ties between drug producers and smugglers and local politicians.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Egyptian Girl Who Converted to Christianity Subjected to Acid Attack
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — Dina el-Gowhary, the 15-year-old Egyptian Muslim-born girl who converted to Christianity, was subjected to an acid attack, the latest in a string of failed attempts by Muslim fanatics against her and her father, 57-year-old Peter Athanasius (Maher el-Gowhary), who converted to Christianity 35 years ago. Several Fatwa’s were issued calling for the “spilling of his blood,” which makes their lives in constant danger in the face of the reactionaries and advocates for the enforcement of Islamic apostasy laws, which call for the death of a convert.
Dina said that three weeks ago as she ventured out from their hiding place in Alexandria with her father to get some bottled water, her jacket was set on fire due to acid being thrown at her. “My father quickly took my jacket off before the fire reached my arms. Ever since then I am terrorized to go out in the street, with or without my father.”
Through an aired interview with Freecopts advocacy Dina addressed an open letter to President Mubarak of Egypt begging him to save her and her father and allow them to leave Egypt.
She said that she had written previously to President Obama, who got her message and responded to it (AINA 11-17-2009). It was reported that the el-Gowharys met with the US Committee on International Religious Freedom on their last visit to Egypt in January 2010, and that they have asked for asylum in the United States (Fox News video).
Dina wonders whether she will get the same attention from President Mubarak as she did from President Obama. “Will he listen and lend us a helping hand, if, as they claim, he truly does not differentiate between Muslim and Christian citizens?” She asked the Egyptian President, who newly became grandfather to a baby girl “Do you accept that your granddaughter would live under the same conditions like mine? I have no home, I am always afraid when I go to church or even go out in the street, I have no friends and no education.”
In her letter to President Mubarak, Dina expressed her deep distress at the mistreatment and continuous troubles she finds everywhere she goes, including being beaten and humiliated. She tells of how “because of her love for Jesus” she left her Muslim mother and went to live with her Christian father, abandoning school where she was persecuted by teachers and students. “I was threatened many times before. Once coming back from school, a bearded young man stepped out of a car, lifted me through my clothes from the ground and warned me that if my father and myself do not go back to Islam, both of us will be killed.”
Dina, now living with her father for the last two years, has to move with him from one place to another in search of personal safety for both, in the face of the many threats that they experienced since her father declared his conversion to Christianity and his desire to his change religious designation in official documents.
In June 2009 a Court refused his request to order the Civil Registry to alter his religious designation on his ID to reflect his Christian religion and his Christian name, Peter Athanasius. The Court ruling said that the religious conversion of a Muslim is against Islamic Sharia law and poses a threat to the “Public Order” in Egypt. He appealed the Court ruling (AINA 6-16-2009).
In the Freecopts interview, Dina says that she hopes that President Mubarak will help them to leave Egypt in order for them to live normally and for her to continue her education.
The el-Gowhary family was barred from leaving Egypt on September 17, 2009 without any legal reason. They were told, however, that the order came from a higher authority. To this today, says Maher, he does not know why he is barred from travel and which authority exactly is barring him (AINA 9-26-2009).
He explained, in a interview with Freecopts this week, the extremely difficult circumstances they are living under, being hunted the whole time and with many attempts on their lives. “It is only due to the Grace and Protection of God, that we are still alive until today,” he adds.
“Why did they confiscate our passports? What have we done wrong?” said Dina. “The only thing we did is that we loved Jesus with all their hearts and converted to Christianity.” The teenage girl stressed that whatever the government does or will to them to force them to abandon Christianity is in vain. “We will never leave Christianity and we will never ever revert back to Islam. Jesus is simply etched in our hearts,” she said.
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Hamas Bans Men From Women’s Hair Salons
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza’s Islamic Hamas government on Thursday banned men from working in women’s hair salons, the latest step in its campaign to impose strict Islamic customs on Gaza’s 1.5 million people.
Since seizing Gaza in 2007, Hamas has taken steps in that direction while avoiding a frontal assault on secularism. The majority of Gaza residents are conservative Muslims, but Hamas is under growing pressure from more radical groups to prove its fundamentalist credentials by imposing ever harsher edicts.
The latest measure irked one of the victims of the ban.
“Next thing you know, they will ban doctors from treating women, and will only let women treat women,” said Barakat al-Ghoul, a 44-year-old hairdresser. “Tomorrow, they will ban everything.”
Al-Ghoul, who has cut women’s hair for 26 years, said a ban would be devastating. He said he has no other way of making a living.
Islamic tradition forbids women from showing their hair to men who are not their husbands or blood relatives. Until now, though, exceptions were made for the eight known male hairdressers in women’s salons in Gaza City.
Mohammed Fares, a salon owner who employs only women, said the first salons for women sprang up in Gaza in the 1950s.
Some of the male stylists have a devoted following, and their customers accept long waiting periods to get appointments.
Fares said Hamas’ new ruling takes away one of the last remnants of a more liberal lifestyle in Gaza that flourished decades ago, when the territory had cinemas and bars.
Since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, small ultra-radical Islamic groups have sprung up. Known as Jihadi Salafis, they advocate holy war and a strict, fundamentalist brand of Islam, dismissing Hamas as too pragmatic. They are suspected in dozens of bombings of Internet cafes, music stores and other alleged purveyors of vice. All cinemas and bars closed years ago.
Fares said a small pipe bomb was recently set off outside a male hairdresser’s shop, as a warning for him to stop working. Hamas is moving gradually to impose Islamic customs. In the summer, the Islamic group promoted a “virtue campaign,” urging women to cover up and sending out beach patrols to enforce modest attire.
However, Hamas is also sensitive to public opinion, and in response to criticism reversed a decision to force female lawyers to wear headscarves in court.
The Hamas police announced the ban on male hairdressers Thursday on their Web site, citing the Interior Ministry. The statement said those violating the ban would face legal consequences but did not elaborate. Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab Ghussein could not be reached for comment.
Al-Ghoul, the soon-to-be-unemployed hairdresser, said he fears he’ll be sent to jail if he keeps working. He insisted he is not violating Islamic custom.
The windows of his shop in Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighborhood are mirrored, so people cannot look inside. In fact, he only agreed to a phone interview because his female customers wouldn’t let a male reporter enter the shop.
“I’m in the shop with customers, it’s true,” he said. “But I only work with their hair. I don’t do makeup or eyebrows. I don’t touch sensitive areas.”
| — Hat tip: NG | [Return to headlines] |
Three Cheers for Congress, One for France, And Two and a Half Boos for Obama Policy
by Barry Rubin
We depend on your tax-deductible contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to “American Friends of IDC,” with “for GLORIA Center” in the memo line.
The U.S. Congress is back as a factor in U.S. foreign policy. Partly because the Obama Administration has pushed it too far to do unpopular things; partly because members are no longer in awe of the president’s alleged invincibility and much-declined popularity. Many Democratic members see their whole careers flashing before their eyes. And, of course, there’s the administration’s decision to pick a quarrel with Israel.
For the first time since Barack Obama took power, we’re seeing a bit of a congressional revolt even from his own side of the aisle. The two issues are Israel and Iran.
On Israel, 76 senators-including 38 of 59 Democrats-signed a flattering but critical letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging reconciliation with Israel. Another 333 House members signed up, including leading Democrats. The letters blamed the Palestinian leadership-and rightly so-for the lack of serious negotiations.
They noted that “it is the very strength of our relationship [with Israel] that has made Arab-Israeli peace agreements possible, both because it convinced those who desired Israel’s destruction to abandon any such hope and because it gave successive Israeli governments the confidence to take calculated risks for peace.
On Iran, a whopping 363 members of the House of Representatives urged Obama to put “crippling” sanctions on Iran, taking “tough and decisive measures,” and urging him to make sure Tehran doesn’t get nuclear weapons.
Thus, Congress is challenging Obama’s policy on four levels:…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Baby Killed for ‘Honor’ Buried in Concrete in Turkey
A 2-day-old baby was allegedly drowned by her grandmother in the western province of Tekirdag because she was the child of an out-of-wedlock affair, the Dogan news agency reported Friday.
Izzet Sapil, a 25-year-old resident of the Çorlu district of Tekirdag, reportedly became pregnant before her boyfriend went away for military service. Sapil managed to hide her pregnancy from her family, but then told them about it when she started to have labor pains.
Sapil’s family reportedly took her to a doctor’s private clinic, where she delivered her baby April 14 without any official record made of the birth.
Family members then allegedly gathered together and decided to kill the baby to clear their honor. After the alleged drowning, the infant’s body was buried in the garden of the house and concrete was poured over it.
The alleged event was brought to light in an unidentified notice sent to the police, who detained Izzet Sapil; her mother, Türkan Sapil; her three brothers and the doctor. The brothers are accused of having buried the infant, whose body has been removed from the garden and sent to a forensic institution in Istanbul for examination.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Saudis Coming to a School Near You
by Ibn Warraq
Some Americans have been aware of the fact that 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in the September 11, 2001 attack were Saudis. As a report by the Rand Corporation in July 2002 stated, this was “not a coincidence”. The Rand report went on to claim that “The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader. … Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies.” It went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia has long had an ambition “to spread Islam to every corner of the earth”, and it is an Islam founded on the teachings of Sheikh Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab (1703-1787, ed.). To this end, Saudi Arabia has funded, for the last 30 years, the creations of schools, madrassas, and academies. A book published in 1995 by the Saudi Cultural Mission to the U.S. explains how students are taught early on that their prime allegiance is to Islam, and that they should denounce any system that conflicts with Islamic Law, the Sharia. The students also have an incumbent religious duty to spread Islam throughout the world, a fundamental pillar of the Saudi educational system, even if it means fighting “physically”.
According to a weekly news magazine published online on March 1, 2002 by the Saudi royal family, “The cost of King Fahd’s efforts in this field has been astronomical, amounting to many billions of Saudi riyals. In terms of Islamic institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Asia.”…
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: ‘Just Say No to a Coat-Wearing Santa, ‘ Culture Minister Urges
The modern image of Santa Claus is a creation of the Coca-Cola Company that does not reflect the real gift-giving figure on which the icon was based, says Culture Minister Ertugrul Günay, calling for the promotion of faith tourism to St Nicholas’ Mediterranean birthplace. The head of the Santa Claus Peace Council says the effort is too little, too late
The fat man riding a sleigh pulled by reindeer is a false image of Santa Claus created by the Coca-Cola Company, according to Turkey’s culture minister, who seeks to reclaim St. Nick for his original homeland.
Santa’s familiar long white beard and red coat with a white collar certainly wouldn’t be appropriate beach attire in any season in Antalya’s Demre district, where the original St. Nicolas lived.
If this globally recognized image of Santa Claus is accepted by Turkish people, Culture Minister Ertugrul Günay says, the Christmas icon will forever lose his tie to the Mediterranean region, where people can swim in the sea even during wintertime.
“Let’s not give in to a coat-wearing Santa Claus,” Günay said at the Demre-Myra Symposium held April 11 in Demre, the Dogan news agency reported. The culture minister said the Coca-Cola Company, which used the now-iconic figures in magazine advertisements starting in 1931, had created a “false image” for Saint Nicholas.
The popular saint, who lived in what is now the Demre district of Antalya between the second and third centuries, was famous for secretly giving gifts, a practice that made him the inspiration for the modern Santa Claus and his midnight chimney drops.
The Coca-Cola Company did not respond to the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review’s request for a comment on Günay’s remarks.
In his speech, Günay called for increasing faith tourism to Antalya by promoting the St. Nicolas connection. “Let’s not follow a commercial product. Let’s tell the world that St. Nicholas was not riding a sleigh,” he said, adding that activities related to the real story of the saint should be promoted in Demre.
Noting that St. Nicholas’ bones were taken to Italy in 1087, Günay said: “This was disrespectful to a saint. We will bring them back here, so people can come here and have their worship.”
Some Santa Claus promoters in Turkey, however, say it is too late to change Father Christmas’ modern image, and blame the Culture Ministry for not promoting the rebranding earlier.
Turkey’s budget will not be enough to change the popular image, Muammer Karabulut, the head of the Santa Claus Peace Council, said Monday, advising the Culture Ministry to work on a international Santa-themed message of peace instead.
Isik Soytürk, an archaeologist who wrote a children’s book titled “Saint Nicholas,” told the Daily News that the book aims to teach the Mediterranean image of Santa Claus to children around the world. She added, however, that her request to promote her book, which has been translated into 10 languages, internationally — or at least to Demre visitors — had not been answered by the Culture Ministry.
Santa Claus is depicted riding a ship in the pictures of Soytürk’s book, first printed in 2002. She said many foreigners are surprised when they learn that Santa Claus originally came from Turkey.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Why the Whole World Conspires Against Turkey
A few days ago, I received an email from a high school student asking for my advice on his homework. He was hoping to get “some perspective” to write on a catchy topic: “The schemes cooked up against Turkey: The clashes between the right and the left, Alevis and Sunnis, Turks and Kurds, etc.”
In return, I wrote a short answer: “I suggest not looking at these matters from the perspective of ‘the schemes cooked up against Turkey.’“
The next day, I got this reply: “But can you still help me on the schemes cooked up against Turkey?”
“Well, I don’t think that there are such schemes,” I said when I wrote back. “That’s the point!”
Manufacturing paranoia
I haven’t heard back yet, but I know that this argument will be hardly convincing for this high school student and millions of others Turkey because it is almost a national act of faith to believe that there evil powers in the world who constantly conspire against our precious country. That is simply why, the same faith decrees, that we have political tensions “between the right and the left, Alevis and Sunnis, Turks and Kurds, etc.”
This is not because that we Turks, by nature, have a special gene for paranoia. The latter is rather carefully nurtured by the state. It is one of the first things we learn in school. We learn how to read and write, how to respect your elders, and also how to beware of another Treaty of Sevres. The latter, the infamous 1920 peace treaty that divided Turkey into pieces and gave most of it to Europeans, along with Kurds and Armenians, is recalled in the world by only a few historians. But every Turk knows Sevres very well, for the state keeps its memory alive, and statist ideologues convince the nation that it is still in the secret drawers of Western powers, waiting for the right time to be re-implemented.
It took me a while to figure out why the state intentionally manufactures such paranoia. The first “aha!” moment was to read George Orwell’s 1984, in which the totalitarian party justifies its rule by referring to imaginary enemies outside. Of course 1984 is a dystopia, and Turkey is far from being that bad, but the logic of creating enemies (within and without) is similar: It leads the citizens to obey the state willingly and unquestioningly.
More particularly, the belief in “schemes cooked up against Turkey” helps the Turkish state explain away the real problems we have in society. It also hides how the state made these problems much worse by its mindless policies. Take the Kurdish question, for example. The official explanation for it, for a long time, has been something like this:
“There are foreign powers which want to divide or weaken Turkey. They manipulate minor differences within our society to create big rifts. They pay off some unpatriotic citizens with bribes, and the latter engage in treason and rebellion against the state. But our almighty state will crush them soon.”
As you can see, this implies two things: There is no Kurdish reality. And the Turkish state is free of any guilt.
The truth, in my view, is that there always was a Kurdish reality, which gradually led to the emergence of Kurdish nationalism. And the Turkish state has fuelled the fire, unintentionally, by its tyrannical policy of “Turkifying” the Kurds, and its brutal ways of pacifying their opposition.
Now, since this conspiratorial mind is quite state-sponsored, its main proponents are those who venerate the state: The Kemalists and other nationalists. But other political camps are not immune from the same mindset. They just have conspiracy theories of their own.
The ‘liberal’ version
Even some of the “liberals,” I must say, seem to be influenced by the conspiratorial mind. (I am using the word in quotes, because even reformed Marxists can be called “liberal” in Turkey these days, whereas I prefer to limit the term to classical liberalism, to which I tend to subscribe.) What we see here is actually a mirror image of the Kemalist mind. While the latter puts all the blame for social tensions on “foreign powers,” the “liberals” I am speaking about put all the blame on the state, and especially the military.
Although I am not the greatest fan of the Turkish military and other institutions of the Kemalist establishment, I think this is a bit too much. I, first of all, believe that the Kemalists are not evil people who enjoy seeing blood on Turkish streets. They are rather quite patriotic. The only problem is that their patriotism leads to authoritarianism rather than democracy and liberty.
The second problem I have with the “liberal” conspiracy theories is that they tend to whitewash society, ignoring the real problems we have there. Even if some nasty episodes in Turkish history — such as the Alevi-Sunni clashes of the 1970s — were really sparked by state “provocations,” they would not be possible without the deep-seated bigotries within society.
Those bigotries, we must understand, are the root causes of our social tensions. And if we can heal them, no “scheme cooked up against Turkey,” if they really exist, can really do us much harm.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Marek Ostrowski’s Commentary on the Polish-Russian Memorial
Polityka 08.04.2010 (Poland)
Marek Ostrowski’s commentary on the Polish-Russian memorial ceremony was rather overshadowed by the tragedy in Smolensk. But his call for the the Russians to come clean about their history remains pertinent. “Putin and Medvedev are progressing very slowly indeed with their reassessment of the Stalinist past,” writes Ostrowski, because “history in Russia has a surrogate function in politics. This means that modernisation and the strengthening of the state always has an autocratic dimension, which underscores the ‘holy’ character of power…. The country’s politics of history are so bound up with the myth of the victorious wars of the fatherland, that they cannot accomodate the 27 million victims and the crimes against its own citizens and those other nations, the Polish among them. This is a jedwabne on many levels.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan:41 IDPs Killed as Bombers Target Camp
PESHAWAR: Two suicide bombers struck a crowd of displaced people collecting aid handouts, killing at least 41 and wounding more than 60 on Saturday at the Kacha Pukha camp on the outskirts of Kohat.
The bombers struck minutes apart in the camp, a registration centre for people fleeing Taliban violence and army operations close to the Afghan border.
“The toll in the two suicide attacks is 41 dead and more than 60 wounded,” DIG Kohat Abdullah Khan told Geo News.
Meanwhile, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al Alami called Geo News correspondent and claimed the responsibility of the attack.
Body parts of the bombers were recovered and most of the victims were members of the Mani Khel and Baramad Khel tribes who had gathered for registration after fleeing fighting in their home district of Orakzai, sources said.
The first bomber detonated his explosives while displaced people gathered to register and receive relief items. A few minutes later the second bomber blew himself up in the middle of the gathering crowd.
| — Hat tip: Henrik | [Return to headlines] |
Ihsanoglu Calls for a Unified Islamic Plan to Confront Islamophobia in the West and Stresses the Importance of Preserving Sudan’s Unity
The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has called on Member States to convene a high-level meeting to elaborate a unified Islamic plan on how to relate with the west in addressing the spate of Islamophobia.
This proposal was contained in the Secretary General’s address to the preparatory senior officials meeting for the thirty-seventh session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers, held at the OIC Headquarters in Jeddah on 12 April 2010, and lasting three days.
The Secretary General underscored the challenges facing the OIC, foremost of which is the campaign against Islam and Muslims in the west, in the context of what has come to be known as Islamophobia. He stressed that this phenomenon must be addressed especially because “it has become a serious matter which portends grave consequences.” In this regard, he underlined that the ban on the construction of minarets in Switzerland was a dangerous indication pointing to growing hostility towards Islam and Muslims. Islamophobia has graduated from being an individual act and newspaper articles to the level of laws and constitutions to underpin the phenomenon, thus featuring in the agenda of political contests at elections.
The Secretary General asserted that the commitment of Member States to support the position of the OIC in voting on the resolution against defamation of religions at the Human Rights Council in Geneva and the United Nations General Assembly was very crucial. This was in spite of the strong opposition they faced from the western states. He cautioned about negligence on the matter for that would mean a loss of the political and legal support needed to defend our religion, values and holy sites. He called on Member States to accord utmost importance to the matter.
Ihsanoglu also spoke about the dangers surrounding the future of the City of Al Quds and the systematic campaign by the Israeli authorities to Judaize the City. He stated that the issue of Palestine and Al Quds entered this difficult phase after the radical right-wing party came to power in Israel. This has impacted negatively on the rights of the Palestinian people and the City of Al Quds whose Arab and Islamic identity is now being targeted. He warned that, for the Muslim world, the issue of Al Quds was a red line that cannot be toyed with.
In this regard, the Secretary General highlighted the efforts made by the OIC after the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip with the dispatch of numerous relief convoys and the action towards the adoption of a Human Rights Council resolution to assess the effects of the aggression on Gaza and send a fact-finding committee under the leadership of the international jurist, Mr Goldstone.
Ihsanoglu also mentioned the OIC’s efforts on Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan which was going through critical times and facing many difficulties and challenges. He announced that he had made some contacts with Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries with a view to establishing a regional joint committee to facilitate a process that would bolster the wherewithal for peace, development, and reconstruction in Afghanistan.
Concerning the situation in Sudan, the Secretary General welcomed the progress achieved in the Doha process on peace in Darfur in which the OIC participated. He lauded the leading role of the State of Qatar in this regard and highlighted the achievements with regard to the financial pledges at the donors’ conference on the reconstruction and development of Darfur which was held in Cairo. He added that Sudan today stood at the crossroad concerning the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement as the people of southern Sudan would vote in a self-determination referendum next year. He called on all Sudanese to work hard together to preserve the unity of their country.
The Secretary General’s speech also touched on the current situation in Yemen and the need for dialogue and national accord to preserve the country’s unity. In this regard, the Secretary General announced that the OIC had established and launched the first phase of the field hospital which also includes a number of external clinics and specialized units.
On the situation in Kashmir, the Secretary General underscored the rights of the people to self-determination. He also talked about the affairs of Muslim minorities in non-OIC Member States, such as Thailand, The Philippines and China.
The meeting adopted the agenda and work programme of the thirty-seventh session of the Council of Foreign Ministers. In that context, Tajikistan was elected as the chair of the bureau of the thirty-seventh CFM, while Yemen and Cote d’Ivoire and Palestine were elected as vice chair and Syria was elected as rapporteur.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
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