The Islamophobic crusade

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/twin-suici...ompound-western-iraq-20101226-234016-043.html
Twin suicide blasts targeting government compound in western Iraq kill 9 people

By Hamid Ahmed, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – Mon, 27 Dec 3:39 PM EST

The suicide bombings were the first major attacks since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new government was appointed last week. Al-Maliki's success has been in large part due to the fact that violence has dropped significantly during his tenure. Attacks like Monday's are a sign that rooting out al-Qaida-linked militants is a continued challenge.
 
http://allafrica.com/stories/201012280653.html

"Khartoum — A group of Islamic fundamentalists on Friday overtly faulted the Sudanese government for accepting south Sudan's referendum on independence, and demanded imposition of Islamic Shar'iah law in the entire country whether citizens of the mainly Christian region of south Sudan like it or not.


South Sudan, whose population mostly follows Christianity or traditional beliefs, is bound for secession from the Muslim-ruled north in a referendum vote due in January 2011, a plebiscite stipulated by the 2005's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which in 2005 ended nearly half a century of intermittent civil war between north and south Sudan."

Any bets on whether there will be acts of religious fanaticism (bombs in public places) if the South votes for independence?
Jan 1 update:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/world/africa/01briefs-KHARTOUM.html?ref=todayspaper
 
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/12/29/denmark-arrests-suspected-planning-terror-attack/
Denmark Arrests 5 Suspected of Planning Terror Attack

December 29, 2010, Associated Press

"COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Five men planning to shoot as many people as possible in a building housing the newsroom of a paper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were arrested Wednesday in an operation that halted an imminent attack, intelligence officials said.
Denmark's intelligence service said it arrested four men in two raids in suburbs of the capital, Copenhagen, and seized an automatic weapon, a silencer and ammunition. Swedish police said they arrested a 37-year-old Swedish citizen of Tunisian origin living in Stockholm.
"An imminent terror attack has been foiled," said Jakob Scharf, head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, or PET. He described some the suspects as "militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks" and said that more arrests were possible."
 
http://tribune.com.pk/story/96022/religious-parties-announce-strike-on-new-years-eve/
KARACHI: Religio-political parties including Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, Jamait Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP), Jamiat Ahle-Hadith, Tanzeem-i-Islami, Tahreek-i-Islami have announced a complete shutter-down strike across Pakistan on December 31, 2010.
JI’s deputy chief, Professor Abdul Ghafoor Ahmed, said on Tuesday that the strike will be held to protest against the “conspiracies” of present rulers to repeal the blasphemy law. Ghafoor said that he regretted that “anti-Islam elements and their local agents” were out to repeal the blasphemy laws in Pakistan to achieve their “malicious goals” against Muslims.
He said that the blasphemy laws had been drafted by clerics from all schools of thought and passed by the National Assembly unanimously.
Ghafoor said that sentences for blasphemy against Jesus Christ are incorporated in the laws of western states, including the United States and the United Kingdom among other countries. He said that no religion in the world allows blasphemy against messengers of God.
The JI deputy chief further said that the JI “pities that some so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of human rights were supporting blasphemy and blasphemers”. He called on the trader’s community and transporters to take active part in the strike."
 
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010...uk-nigeria-violence.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - A radical Islamist sect said on Tuesday it was behind bombings in central Nigeria and attacks on churches in the northeast of the country that led to the deaths of at least 86 people.
The police said on Tuesday that 80 people were killed in Christmas Eve bomb attacks and clashes two days later between Muslim and Christian youths in central Nigeria, while more than 100 are wounded in hospitals.
"We have recovered 80 dead bodies so far in Jos," Daniel Gambo, an official at the Nigerian emergency management agency said late on Monday.
In a separate incident, six people were killed when petrol bombs were thrown late on Friday at churches in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, in Borno state.
"O Nations of the World, be assured that the attacks in Suldaniyya (Jos) and Borno on the eve of Christmas were carried out by us Jama'atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda'Awatu Wal Jihad, under the leadership of Abu Muhammad, Abubakar bin Muhammad Shekau," a statement said on the group's website.
The radical Islamic group Boko Haram has previously used the name Jama'atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda'Awatu Wal Jihad.
 
Is that always a valid statement? Are there never immutable moral judgments that all people of reason can agree upon?

http://www.smh.com.au/world/allah-decides-whether-i-am-a-terrorist-says-accused-20101229-19abz.html
Allah decides whether I am a terrorist, says accused

JAKARTA: An Islamist extremist linked to the militant group al-Qaeda in Aceh, which plotted to kill Westerners in Indonesia, has gone on trial facing multiple terrorism-related charges.
Abdullah Sunata, 32, was part of an ''evil conspiracy'' and had organised the cell's military-style training in Aceh province last year, the prosecutor Asep Aminudin said yesterday. He also supplied firearms to the group, Mr Aminudin said.
''The accused … attempted or assisted in carrying out terrorist acts, with the use of violence to stir up an atmosphere of terror and widespread fear,'' he told the East Jakarta district court.
Sunata was released from jail in 2009 for good behaviour after serving only a small fraction of a seven-year sentence for his role in the 2004 Australian embassy attack, which killed 10 people....
Police had rearrested Sunata in central Java in June on suspicion of planning attacks on the Danish embassy in Jakarta and a police parade, which he denied..."

(More killing because of a cartoon?)
 
http://www.speroforum.com/site/arti...an+refuses+to+modify+Islamic+'blasphemy'+laws
"The government of Pakistan has backed out its commitment to review the country’s controversial Islamic blasphemy laws. On Dec. 30, 2010, Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Khursheed Shah requested that merchants and those in favor of the blasphemy laws to call off their nation-wide shutdown of businesses scheduled for Dec. 31 because the government has no intention to change or repeal these laws."

"Islamic laws against the “blasphemy” of Islam, Muhammad, the Koran, and Islamic personalities were introduced by late Genral Zia-ul-Haq in 1980s and have widely been misused against Christians, Ahmadis, Hindus and liberal Muslims. Christians and human rights groups have been demanding for the total repeal of the laws."
 
Even biased Juan Cole perceives a problem.
http://www.juancole.com/2010/12/8-baghdad-bombings-target-christians.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+juancole%2Fymbn+%28Informed+Comment%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail
8 Baghdad Bombings Target Christians

Posted on 12/31/2010 by Juan
"Al-Safir reports that 2 were killed and 14 wounded in a series of bombings extending over a two-hour period in Baghdad in the late afternoon on Thursday, which targeted Christians. The bloodiest attack took place in the district of of al-Ghadir in the center of the capital, where guerrillas attacked two Christian homes with bombs, killing two and wounding 5. The other five attacks, which took the form of roadside bombs, did not kill anyone, though they wounded a further 9 persons. Many Christians still live in al-Ghadir, though some number have fled because of the threats launched against them by Muslim radicals.

All that said, for Iraqi and Egyptian Christians to be targeted by radical Muslim cells is very bad news and really could over time drain Iraq in particular of Its Christians, leaving it culturally and politically much impoverished and monochrome. "
........................................................................
Would someone please tell the Iraqi Christians that any fear they have for their safety is simply their paranoid Islamophobia.
 
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE6BU2VR20110101?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
CAIRO (Reuters) - A car bombing outside a church killed 21 people in Egypt's northern city of Alexandria as worshippers gathered to mark the New Year, security and medical sources said on Saturday.
The Interior Ministry earlier said 24 people were also wounded in the bombing, which prompted hundreds of Christians to take to the streets in protest. Some Christians and Muslims pelted each other with rocks, a witness said. Cars were torched...
The governor of Alexandria, Adel Labib, "accused al Qaeda of planning the bombing," state television reported in a brief headline without giving further details...
Kameel Sadeeq, from the Coptic council in Alexandria, told Reuters: "People went in to church to pray to God but ended up as scattered limbs. This massacre has al Qaeda written all over, the same pattern Qaeda has adopted in other countries."...
Analysts say the state must address grievances such as those over laws making it easier to build a mosque than a church if it wants to stem such sectarian violence.
....................
NYT coverage of story story:http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...AP-ML-Egypt-Church-Attack.html?_r=1&ref=world

Writing after the bombing on Ahram Online, its editor, Hani Shukrallah, criticized “supposedly moderate Muslims” for being “narrow-minded” and blamed the government for amplifying sectarian tensions.
It was time, he wrote, for Egyptians to face up to a hard reality: “The massacres continue, each more horrible than the one before, and the bigotry and intolerance spread deeper and wider into every nook and cranny of our society.”
An Egypt without Christians was no longer hard to imagine, he wrote, adding, “This will be an Egypt which I do not recognize and to which I have no desire to belong.” ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/world/middleeast/02egypt.html?ref=todayspaper )

(Tell the Egyptian Christians that their fear for their safety is paranoid Islamophobia.)
 
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