Lagos, Nigeria (CNN) -- Attackers killed at least 11 people Wednesday in a region of Nigeria that has been convulsed by violence between Muslims and Christians, an official said.Read it all here.Muslim herdsmen, some dressed in military uniforms, attacked a predominantly Christian village at about 1 a.m. Wednesday near the city of Jos, close to where a machete-wielding Muslim group killed hundreds in a mostly Christian town this month, said Choji Gyang, special adviser on religious affairs to the governor of the Nigerian state of Plateau.
The dead included women and children, he said. The attackers, from the Fulani ethnic group, also injured at least four people and stole 120 cattle from the village of Kyi, he said. Two people are missing.
The violence has put much of oil-rich Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, on edge, with rumors swirling of more attacks. Authorities in Lagos took the unusual step of sending a text message to residents to try to put them at ease.
"Please be informed that the story of Fulanis trooping into Lagos for the past three days to cause chaos is baseless," the message said. "All security agencies have investigated this rumor individually and collectively and found that there's no iota of truth in it. Be advised to go about your lawful business without fear.
"All agencies remain committed to keep our state and country safe. We are fully alert. Thank-you and pass this message onto others."
The attacks Wednesday followed the massacre earlier this month of roughly 200 people near Jos, a city in central Nigeria that lies on a faith-based fault-line between Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria and the mainly Christian south.
A few weeks ago, Muslim attackers with guns, machetes, and knives killed people in several Christian villages near Jos in apparent retaliation for previous attacks against Islamic communities and the theft of cattle from herdsmen, Human Rights Watch said....
13 Christian Nigerians Killed in Additional Violence
From CNN:
Two Indians Given Jail Sentences for "Sexy" Text Messages
From Lanka Business Online:
DUBAI, March 17, 2010 (AFP) - Two Emirates Airline cabin crew in Dubai were given three-month jail terms for exchanging sexy text messages, a local daily reported on Wednesday.The then-married flight attendant, 42, and her male supervisor, 47, were convicted of "coercion to commit sin," the National daily reported court documents as saying.
It said the pair -- both Indian -- were earlier sentenced to six months in prison to be followed by deportation, but an appeals court last week reduced the jail time and dropped the expulsion penalty.
The court concluded there was not enough evidence to prove that the unidentified pair had actually been sexually involved, the paper added.
The messages were exposed during a bitter divorce battle between the attendant and her husband that began in 2007, the daily said.
It said the divorce court had ordered Dubai's telecommunications company, Etisalat, to produce the text messages after the husband accused his wife of an affair.
Etisalat provided copies of SMS messages in October 2008, allowing the husband to file a "criminal complaint" against his wife, the paper said.
The court also handed a three-month jail term to the attendant's sister for perjury, after she claimed she had been having the affair and had been using her sister's telephone.
The attendant's husband has since gained custody of the couple's four-year-old son after the divorce was finalised, the paper reported.
Dubai, a regional tourist hub with a large non-Muslim expatriate population and the Gulf's most liberal social policies, nevertheless continues to apply strict rules based on Islamic Sharia law.
A British pair await a final verdict from Dubai's appeals court next month to find out if they will serve a one-month jail sentence over charges of kissing in public.
A British mother-of-two lost custody of her children and was jailed for three months last year on adultery charges filed by her then Egyptian husband.
Muslim Converts Face Persecution in Egypt
From Christian Today:
Muslims in Egypt who change their faith face persecution by the state and rejection from their families, an investigation by Release International has shown, according to the latest edition of the ministry's magazine.
A Muslim woman who became a Christian told Release how she was kidnapped by her relatives, who pulled out her fingernails to try to make her renounce her new faith.
Mary, not her real name, works secretly to help women like herself - those from a Muslim background, who have chosen to change their religion. She described how some relatives tortured her to try to get her to return to Islam.
"They tortured me, pulled out my nails and burnt me but God gave me a way out," she said.
Mary became a Christian at the age of 21, after working for a Christian lawyer. She told Release: "I saw that Jesus was fair with everyone; he was gentle with the needy."
After changing her faith Mary had to leave her family and resorted to living on the streets. Christians she met were suspicious of her, fearing she may have been a spy. They refused to take her in.
"Some priests even told me to return to Islam and my family," she said.
Eventually she was helped by an Orthodox priest and met other believers from a Muslim background for the first time.
Mary began to help them. But state security were aware of what she was doing and informed her family that she had become a Christian activist. Her relatives kidnapped her and tortured her for seven days before she was able to escape.
Mary is still followed by state security and has had to change her address five times.
Christians from a Muslim background also face other problems. "State security tell their employers they are converts and they fire them," said Mary.
"Families also marry off convert girls to Muslims, or lock them away in their houses. They even disfigure the girls' faces with acid."
Others told Release that they have been arrested and tortured by state security for changing their faith to Christianity. Another faces a fatwa calling for his death. They are forbidden from changing the religion shown on their identity cards.
Many are under pressure to leave Egypt, yet choose to stay and bring the gospel to their people.
Despite the danger, Mary says she will carry on working to help girls who have become Christians. "Jesus Christ is someone who is worth doing this for. It is our gift of suffering for him."
Release CEO Andy Dipper adds: "Mary has asked for prayer for protection, wisdom and power, as she cares for young girls who have converted to Christianity.
"Release is helping believers like Mary. We are supporting a safe house for Christian women from a Muslim background, and funding education for children who have lost their parents as a result of persecution. Help us to help our Christian brothers and sisters in Egypt."
Egypt was a major centre for Christian scholarship until taken over by Islam in AD639. Today Egypt has the largest Christian community in the Middle East. Christians, mainly Copts, make up around 10 per cent of the population. Yet Christians are denied political representation and discriminated against in education and employment. Muslims who change their faith are regarded as apostates, who have betrayed not only Islam, but their families and their country.
Through its international network of missions Release supports Christians imprisoned for their faith and their families in 30 nations. It supports church workers, pastors and their families, and provides training, Bibles, Christian literature and broadcasts. Release is a member of the UK organisations Global Connections and the Evangelical Alliance.
Hamas Deputy Minister of Religious Endowments Calls for Jews to be Annihilated
From MEMRI:
Below are excerpts from an interview with Abdallah Jarbu', Hamas deputy minister of religious endowments. The interview aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 28, 2010 (to view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2415.htm).Read it all here.
Following that are excerpts from Friday sermon by Abdallah Jarbu’, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on November 7, 2008 (to view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1904.htm).
February 28, 2010: "The Jews are Foreign Bacteria... The Koran Itself Says That They Have No Parallel... May He Annihilate This Filthy People"Abdallah Jarbu': "[The Jews] suffer from a mental disorder, because they are thieves and aggressors. A thief or an aggressor, who took property or land, develops a psychological disorder and pangs of conscience, because he took something that wasn't his.
"They want to present themselves to the world as if they have rights, but, in fact, they are foreign bacteria – a microbe unparalleled in the world. It's not me who says this. The Koran itself says that they have no parallel: 'You shall find the strongest men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews.'
"May He annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience. I condemn whoever believes in normalizing relations with them, whoever supports sitting down with them, and whoever believes that they are human beings. They are not human beings. They are not people. They have no religion, no conscience, and no moral values." [....]
Brussels: Mosque Links to Holocaust Denying Sites
From Islam in Europe:
I think it's important to note that the mosque did not link to site which focus specifically on Holocaust denial. It linked to religious Muslim portals, and among various articles, they also offered articles denying the Holocaust. My question, therefore, and this is mostly for my Muslim readers: Is there any religious portal out there which does not have articles denying the Holocaust and blaming Jews for all evil?Links on the site of the Great Mosque of Brussels, which link to Saudi Arabia, linked to negationist (ie, Holocaust denial) items, which are criminal in Belgium. They were removed Wednesday.
The site of the Islamic and Cultural Centre of Belgium displayed links to two Saudi sites, WhyMuhammad.com and Islamway, which included outright negationist and xenophobic literature. Islamway published excerpts from the book by Abdallah H. Al-Kahtany, which talks of the 'Zionist propaganda and the myth of the Holocaust'. The author claims in particular that 'it would be ridiculous to claim that such chambers were used for executing people'.
The same author, in the same negationist momentum, argues that the 'number of Jews killed during the war was 300.000; much less than the number of Muslims killed in the Jewish Holocaust in Palestine'.
Belgian law not only penalizes denying the Holocaust committed by the German National-Socialists during WWII, but also minimizing it.
This is not the first time that the website of the Great Mosque of Brussels, chaired by the Saudi Ambassador in Belgium, indirectly relays Holocaust denial. Belgian site Parlemento.com had revealed similar cases in September 2009. The site administrators had removed the offending links in November 2009, after the intervention of the Centre for Equal Opportunity. They are now back online.
At the Great Mosque they explained that the site admin, Mr. Wasani, was not there, but that he had actually ordered to remove the controversial links. They couldn't explain why the links reappeared. "By mistake, we are told, because we obviously do not endorse the things you cite."
At the Center for Equal Opportunity they say that the Great Mosque is legally responsible for the links on their site. They say they already spoke to officials at the Islamic Center last year and that the links were then removed. They do not think that the authorities at the Great Mosque deliberately and knowingly reactivated those links on their site.
On Tuesday MR deputies Corinne De Permentier and Xavier Baeselen announced they intend to question the federal ministers of the interior, justice and foreign affairs on this issue.
The links were eventually removed on Wedneday.
Source: Le Soir (French), h/t Philosemitism
Iraq: Christian Killed in Northern City of Mosul
From Adnkronos:
Baghdad, 17 March (AKI) - Masked gunmen on Wednesday shot dead an Iraqi Christian in the northern city of Mosul, the Assyrian Christian website Ankawa.com reported. The city has been at the centre of a number of attacks targeting Christians in recent months.Yaqub Adam, a 54-year-old father was hit by a hail of bullets fired from a pistol with a silencer. He was murdered near the shop where he worked as a glassmaker.
It was the first Christian killing since Iraq's national elections on 7 March and came less than a week after 122 Christian families returned to Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province.
Around 800 families had left their homes in Mosul in the past few months to seek safety in villages in the surrounding province, Mosul's bishop Monsignor Emil Shimoun Nona, told Adnkronos International (AKI).
Over 40 Christians have been killed in Mosul in the past three months in bomb and gun attacks in a resurgence of the violence which killed 40 Christians and caused more than 12,000 to flee in 2008.
It is not clear if Al-Qaeda or factions involved in a violent territorial and power struggle between Kurds and Arabs are behind the spike in attacks against Christians and their churches.
Christians number around 250,000 to 300,000 in Nineveh province, out of approximately 700,000 Christians remaining in Iraq.
Before the US-led invasion in 2003, there were over a million Christians living in Iraq, according to data collected by the country's dioceses.
Your Day in “Religion of Peace” “Peacefulness”
From Debbie Schlussel:
Read it all here.So, a nurse disses a Muslim construction worker by refusing to dance with him at a New York City bar, “Social.” And what happens to her? Well, the typical Muslim male response to women: he tries to rape her in the bathroom and beats her senseless. I suppose she should be thankful that, unlike Bebe, she still has her nose and ears, right?
It’s not the first time, either. Previously, I told you about the Muslim who attacked Jewish model Liskula Cohen because she wouldn’t accept his advances on her at a New York bar. As a result he smashed glass in her face, disfiguring her face, which ruined her career.
I’m thinking of offering a new insurance product: Muslim attack and plastic surgery insurance. Pretty soon a heck of a lot more American women will need it. Problem is, the premiums will have to be high in order to compensate for the likely high pay-out rate for expensive procedures....
Hearing on a Plot to Kill a Swedish Cartoonist Begins
From the New York Times:
WATERFORD, Ireland — A late-night court hearing Monday in this quiet Irish town gave new glimpses into the case that American and Irish prosecutors are pursuing against a group of Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic suspected of plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad atop the body of a dog.
Five of the seven people arrested in Ireland a week ago have been released, the last of them shortly before Monday’s hearing. But two others, an Algerian man and a Libyan man, were formally charged with relatively minor offenses that lawyers involved in the case said could keep them in custody while more serious charges, including conspiracy to murder, are weighed by Irish prosecutors. The lawyers said charges against the five others were also possible.
The Algerian who appeared in the Waterford court, named as Ali Charaf Damache, 45, was said by police officials to be suspected of being the group’s leader. Mr. Damache, a 10-year resident of Ireland, was charged with sending a threatening computer message to another Muslim in Waterford. The Libyan, named as Abdul Salam al Jahani, 32, was charged with using a false name to obtain asylum status in Ireland in 2001. Both were ordered held without bail while an investigation continued.No reference was made in the 15-minute hearing to the wider circumstances of the case, which has centered in the United States on a 46-year-old Pennsylvania woman, Colleen R. LaRose [(pictured)], a Muslim convert who adopted the pseudonym of JihadJane on the Internet, and has been in custody in Philadelphia since the fall on charges of linking up with militants overseas in a plot to carry out a murder, apparently that of the Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks.
The arrests in Ireland drew a second American woman into the case: Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, from Leadville, Colo.. A Muslim convert like Ms. LaRose, Ms. Paulin-Ramirez is the wife of Mr. Damache, the Algerian charged in the Monday’s hearing, according to a Waterford lawyer involved in the case, and is several months pregnant. She was one of the seven arrested last Tuesday, but was released on the weekend.
The alleged plot against the cartoonist, and the links to the two American women, appear to have at least been one reason American, British and other Western counterterrorism organizations were placed on alert earlier this year about the risks posed by a new cadre of potential terrorists — white Caucasian women from Western countries with no previously known ties to Islamic terrorist groups — who might use their unthreatening profiles to elude surveillance and detection at airports and other places vulnerable to attacks.
Ms. LaRose and Ms. Paulin-Ramirez are both white and blond, and were raised as Christians. Defense lawyers in Waterford have said that Ms. LaRose spent two weeks in Ireland last fall, meeting with some of those who were arrested last week by the Irish police. The lawyers have said that Ms. Paulin-Ramirez arrived in Ireland at about the same time, and remained with Mr. Damache in Waterford.
American law enforcement officials have said that Ms. LaRose was arrested last October in Philadelphia, shortly after she returned from Ireland. Defense lawyers in Ireland said that from what they have learned from police investigators and their clients, the seven arrested in Ireland came under police surveillance after they were identified by Ms. LaRose under questioning by the FBI.
In addition to Mr. Damache, Mr. Jahani and Ms. Paulin-Ramirez, those arrested last week included a 26-year-old Croat, Danijel Orsov, also a Muslim convert; Nadah Sameh, a Libyan woman in her 30s; and Ghamraffan Slimane and his wife, Ilef, an Algerian couple in their late 40s who were the only people arrested who were not living in Waterford. The lawyers said the couple operated a bakery in the neighboring city of Cork.
Ms. Paulin-Ramirez’s mother, Christine Mott, 59, said in an interview last week in Colorado that her daughter announced her conversion to Islam last Easter and became increasingly estranged from her family. She said that Ms. Paulin-Ramirez had been in contact with a man named Ali via the Internet, and that in the months before she left for Europe she had spent a lot of time on the computer, even neglecting her son from a previous marriage, Christian, 6, who is now in a state-run children’s home in Waterford.
Posts
