Spain: 3 people arrested in a mosque, Muslim clerics announce protests

From the Iconoclast:

THREE arrests were made at Palma’s main mosque in Calle Joan Mestre after police followed a North African suspect into the building. The Police say that he failed to stop for a roadside vehicle check and fled into the Mosque, so they followed him.

He was arrested together with the president of the Moslem Defence League and the mosque caretaker, both of whom had reportedly tried to prevent the police from entering the premises, saying that the sanctuary of a mosque should be respected in the same way as that of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues.

According to Diario de Mallorca:

Palma’s Muslim community will get to the streets soon to show their outrage at what has happened. Baleares’ clerics were in contact between them to coordinate them, while Palma’s Major’s office wanted to ease tensions, meeting with people representing the Muslim League, whose president was arrested during the incident.

According to the speaker of this association, Noreddine Belmeddah, imams from all the islands will meet next Friday to speak on this matter and spread the protests to their communities. “This is the deepest confrontation between security forces of Balearic Islands and the Muslims who live here”, said Belmedah, who also said that they will announce how the protests are held in the next hours.

El Mundo publishes the police union’s reaction:

The Unions (CCOO, SPPME, USO, STEI and CSI-CSIF) explain in a press release they don’t believe the City Police of Palma should ask for forgiveness after the incidents at the mosque Pere Grau on July 14th, after the arrest of three people, because it was “legitimate”. Political figures “consider that the police didn’t act correctly”, but it’s entirely according to the legislation currently in force.

This is why, the Unions are asking for the destitution of the Citizenry’s Security Councilman of the City, Antonio Donaire and the general chief of Citizen’s Secutiry of the City, Pepa Peláez. According to the Unions, the police didn’t act because of ethnic or racial reasons and there is no reason to consider this as an “attack on the Muslim world”, but just as a consequence of the police duty to respect and defend the rule of Law without making distinctions between citizens.

(…) “If the facts ended up with the arrests of three people, allegedly accused of terrorist attack and resisting authority’s commands, the process must continue as it would be with any other citizen. Authority principle can’t be broken because 100 people appear in front of the police headquarters, menacing with “assaulting it if the arrested men are not freed”” adds the press release.

Pepa Peláez gave a press conference, stating there were two versions of what had happened and so, an investigation should be opened (note the Algerian flag… no Spanish flag):

Thanks to the Foro Policía (Police Forum on the Web) for the links in Spanish and the photo on the left.

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Tags Technorati: Spain, Antonio Donaire, Islamism, violence, Pepa Peláez

links for 2009-07-28

• The Terror Finance Blog: Al-Kadi’s ownership of Ptech acknowledged
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• Fear the Dark Side of China’s Lending Surge | Caijing.com
  (tags: China economy)
• Always On Watch: Semper Vigilans: UK: MP Simon Hughes, Dhimmi Of All Time?
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• What makes an American wage jihad? » GetReligion
  (tags: Viñas Vinas terrorism Al-Qaeda USA)

Netherlands: no mosque is willing to accept imams trained by the State

Pays-Bas : Aucune mosquée ne veut d’un imam formé par l’État

No mosque in the Netherlands has accepted the possibility of accepting an imam who had been trained by the special formation given by the Government. « The mosques don’t have money and don’t trusts these “dam imams”, according to daily’s Trouw.

The Free University of Amsterdam, the University of Leiden and the school Hofeschool in the Netherlands have offered training courses for Imams. These programs have been developed with the initiative of the Government that wants to end the “import” of Imams from Morocco or Turkey, mostly traditionalists who are against the integration of Muslims and incite often to radicalization.

« The poor mosques don’t have enough money to employ qualified and costly imams. More often, the decisions are taken by the old generation of believers who attend the mosque and pay their fees. Moreover, they don’t want an imam who speaks Dutch », writes Trouw.

Islam in Europe: Netherlands: Mosques not interested in Dutch-trained imams

“Dutch is the language of our future. But the conservatism of the first generation is an hindrance,” says Driss El Boujoufi, of the Union of Moroccan Muslim organizations in the Netherlands (Ummon). Additionally, there are doubts about the religious knowledge of the polder imam. “knowledge of Arabic and of the Koran: you simply don’t learn that all in four, five years,” says Amsterdam youth imam Yassin Elforkani.

They don’t want an imam who speaks Dutch. Remarkably interesting, isn’t it?

Tags Technorati: Netherlands, Imams’ training, Islam

Jakarta bombings: raids on JI terrorists home prove existence of Islamist social nets

Married life and schools a refuge for Indonesia bombers

A raid on a reported Noordin hideout in a bucolic Javanese village just days before the attacks turned up bombs “identical” to those used in Jakarta, police have said.

The raid also turned up something less usual for one of Asia’s most wanted men: a new wife and two young children, they said.

Noordin’s married life on the run is typical of how JI is held together by strong social bonds forged largely through schools and marriage, International Crisis Group analyst Sidney Jones said.

These bonds mean militants in Noordin’s network can evade capture, despite the fact that the majority of JI disapprove of spectacular and bloody militant attacks on foreigners, Jones said.

“I think there has always been a sense that family alliances are a key element that preserves the unity of the network,” she said.

“There is no question that when you marry into a family you add another layer of protection.”

There are around 50 schools in Indonesia with some link to JI, Jones said, providing a pool of recruits – as well as the husbands and wives that have kept generations of JI families together.

Two bodies are still unidentified.

Tags Technorati: Indonesia, Jakarta bombings, Jemmah Islamiyah, Noordin Mat Top, Noordin,

Kyrgyzstan: Geopolitcal Interest of both US and Russia

Kyrgyzstan – At the Crossroad of Empires, a Mouse Struts – NYTimes.com

Kyrgyzstan is the only country in the world that hosts separate military bases for the United States and Russia, and both major powers are bent on sustaining or deepening their presence. That in part explains why neither has publicly condemned the heavy-handed tactics of the Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who easily won another term last week in an election that his opponents said was rigged. (Obama looks like only worried about Honduras and Chávez’s friend…).

The United States believes that it must have a sizable military base in Central Asia to support the NATO mission in Afghanistan, especially now that supply routes through Pakistan are perilous. The American installation on the outskirts of the Kyrgyz capital is crowded with C-17 cargo planes and KC-135 tanker planes that readily reach the Afghan skies for mid-air refueling of fighters. As many as 30,000 military personnel cycle through the base monthly.

Those troops and planes have stirred deep unease in the Kremlin, which tried to persuade Mr. Bakiyev to oust the Americans, in the end unsuccessfully. Central Asia is Moscow’s former territory and current backyard, and the Kremlin evinces a sense of entitlement here, not to mention a desire to dominate natural resources.

At the same time, the Russians seem torn over the American venture in Afghanistan. They understand that failure could threaten even Russia, which has grappled with Islamic extremism in its south, so they have allowed American military goods to flow across Russia. The Kremlin also can sympathize with Washington’s plight, given painful memories of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.

Still, the Kremlin fears that the United States is setting down lasting roots in Central Asia.

Tags Technorati: Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, USA, Russia, Geopolitics, Afghanistan, Islamic extremism, Bakiyev

Pakistan: pro-Taliban cleric arrested

Pakistan police detain pro-Taliban cleric Mohammad | World | Reuters

Pakistani police have detained pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Mohammad, accusing him of helping militants in the country’s northwest and sabotaging the government’s fight against them, an official said on Sunday.

Mohammad helped broker a deal between the government and the Taliban in February to end violence in the northwest Swat valley, but the pact collapsed after militants refused to lay down arms and began expanding their influence in nearby districts.

Security forces subsequently launched an offensive against the militants in Swat and nearby districts nearly three months ago.

And the reason for his detention is: Pakistan arrests pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad who brokered Swat peace deal that fell apart

Muhammad, father-in-law of Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah, negotiated a truce with the government in February that imposed Shariah, or Islamic, law in the valley in exchange for an end to two years of fighting. But it was widely seen as an acquiescence to Taliban control of the area.

The deal collapsed in April when the Taliban advanced into neighboring districts, triggering a military offensive that prompted a spree of retaliatory attacks by militants in the northwest and beyond.

Mian Iftikhar, information minister for the North West Frontier Province, said Muhammad was arrested for encouraging violence and terrorism.

“Instead of keeping his promises by taking steps for the sake of peace, and speaking out against terrorism, he did not utter a single word against terrorists,” Iftikhar said in a news conference in Peshawar, adding that the cleric’s stance “encouraged terrorism. It encouraged violence.”

More here.

Fareed Zakaria wrote (via Islamization Watch):

The militants who were battling the Army (led by Sufi Muhammed’s son-in-law) have had to go along with the deal. The Pakistani government is hoping that this agreement will isolate the jihadists and win the public back to its side. This may not work, but at least it represents an effort to divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme.

Over the past eight years such distinctions have been regarded as naive. In the Bush administration’s original view, all Islamist groups were one and the same; any distinctions or nuances were regarded as a form of appeasement. If they weren’t terrorists themselves, they were probably harboring terrorists. But how to understand Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the countries “harbor” terrorists but are not themselves terrorist states?

Read it all…

That difference is interesting, but in the end it proves no result. Why? Because violent and non-violent Islamists have the same goals, so they would prefer to ally between them than to ally with an stranger.

After this development, the UK FM Milliband has openly supported that the Taliban reenter the Afghan Government. Intelligence, that’s what has been lost…

Tags Technorati: Sufi Mohammad, Pakistan, Taliban, Mian Iftikhar, Maulana Fazullah, Swat Valley

Nigeria: 150 killed in clashes between Islamic sect and police*

The Sun News On-line | News

No fewer than 70 members of a fundamentalist Islamic sect, Boko Haram were reported killed in the early hours of Sunday as the group engaged security agents in a bitter battle in Bauchi, capital of Bauchi State.

Already, a dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed on the state capital just as 176 suspected members of the radical group have been arrested by the police. 15 persons who sustained varying degrees of injuries in the clash are said to be receiving medical attention in different hospitals in Bauchi.

Bauchi State Police Command has confirmed 39 deaths. Eye-witnesses said, however, that the dead are more than that number. Awwal Isa, a nurse at the Bauchi Specialist Hospital, told AFP that a total of 42 bodies had been deposited at the hospital.

(…) The radical sect made its debut in 2004 when it set up a base dubbed Afghanistan in Kanamma village in northern Yobe State, on the border with the Niger Republic, from where it attacked police outposts and killed police officers. Its membership is mainly drawn from university dropouts.

One of the leaders of the group, Aminu Tashen-Ilimi, had told AFP in a 2005 interview that the group’s mission was to lead an armed insurrection in a bid to rid the society of immorality and infidelity.

BBC reports that the toll of dead people has risen to 150:

Dozens of people have been killed after Islamist militants staged three attacks in northern Nigeria, taking the total killed in two days of violence to 150.

A BBC reporter has counted 100 bodies, mostly of militants, near the police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, where hundreds are fleeing their homes.

Witnesses told the BBC a gun battle raged for hours in Potiskum, Yobe State and a police station was set on fire.

Some of the militants follow a preacher who campaigns against Western schools.

The preacher, Mohammed Yusuf, says Western education is against Islamic teaching.

There has also been an attack in Wudil, some 20km (12 miles) from Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria.

(…) Mr Yusuf’s followers in Bauchi are known as Boko Haram, which means “Education is prohibited”.

Well, it’s not a very good point to start when you defend the prohibition of education…

More in IAC.

More here:

In northern Nigeria, Islam dominates in all aspects of life: Islamic courts, Islamic police oversee “good manners” such as wearing of decent clothes by students in certain states, strict censorship of films produced locally in what is dubbed Kannywood.

Police also see to the separation of the sexes in public places, not to mention the ban on alcohol consumption and homosexuality.

Women are treated as second class citizens.

The socio-political pressure is very strong and constitutes, according to analysts who spoke to AFP, a major handicap to modernisation, economic and cultural development.

A typical dramatic example was the refusal, in 2003, of Muslim leaders in the region to support a UN-inspired anti-polio drive, denouncing it as a “plot” by the United States to sterilise Muslims (this would be laughable if it weren’t for the children who could be NOW infected with polio thanks to these idiots….).

The programme was then halted for 13 months.

ADNKronos reports:

Islamic Sharia law is in place across northern Nigeria but there is no history of Al-Qaeda linked violence in the country. Nigeria’s 140 million people are split almost equally between Muslims and Christians and the two groups generally live peacefully side by side, despite occasional outbreaks of communal violence.

This is the proof that terrorists “militants” will never stop, they will always find an excuse to continue their stupid violence “just struggle”. Here we see a country where Shariah Law is applied, but as there are Christians, these Boro Talibans protest about education AND:

They accuse the state government of preventing them from publicly practising their religion or seeking converts.

This part about seeking converts is linked to their call to forbid Western education. Anybody listening?

* They have also torched a church. Convert or else… I’ll torch your church, isn’t it? And if it’s with you inside, even better…. What a way of seeking converts

Tags Technorati: Nigeria, Boko Haram, Islamism, violence,

UK: Islamic conference cancelled after learning audience would be segregated

Just in case there are unintended consequences after hearing what the “islamic path” has to tell you:

CARDIFF Council has cancelled an Islamic conference due to be held in one of its buildings after it discovered the audience would be segregated.Organisers have accused the council of religious discrimination after they scrapped the conference given only 24 hours’ notice.

The meeting entitled “Islam – from revelation to implementation” was due to take place from 4pm today at County Hall in Cardiff Bay.

But Cardiff Council yesterday cancelled the event because organisers intended to segregate men and women at the three-hour long conference by ensuring the two sexes sat apart on each side of the room.

Abu Hajar, spokesman for organisers Islamic Path, said: “The conference has been booked for months and at the time of booking we were told segregation would be fine (Did they? In that case, the Council wasn’t right at all).  I know other private functions have been held at County Hall in the past by members of the ethnic community and there has been segregation (if this is true, the council was wrong but now has rectified). The council is discriminating against us because of our religious beliefs (what about learning they were wrong on the last times? Anyway, I find truly rare that they could have held conferences with segregated audience in the past of other “ethnic community”. Why hasn’t he said what community was that).”

via The Iconoclast – New English Review.<

Tags Technorati: Shariah Law, UK, Women in Islam, Cardiff Council, Islam – from revelation to implementation, Abu Hajar, Islamic Path.

US Gen Mike Mullen: Pakistani ISI has fomented “chaotic activity” in Afghanistan and India

US notes ISI role in India, Afghanistan terrorism

The top US military commander has accused the Pakistani intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of fomenting “chaotic activity” in Afghanistan and India.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen in unprecedented remarks asked Pakistan’s main spy agency to change its “strategic thrust”.

“What I mean is that they have clearly focused on support of … historically, of militant organizations both east and west. I mean that’s been a focus of theirs in Kashmir, historically, as well as with FATA. And I think … that fundamentally has to change.” Mullen said in an interview.

About time someone blames ISI for its role in the rise of Islamism in the last years. But it’s of no sense if Gen Mullen calls them “militant”, as if he was a kind of CNN reporter. No, the groups ISI has supported are terrorists, who are committed to killing soldiers and officers below his rank.

Tags Technorati: US, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, Pakistani intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence

Italy: the Govt will supply more hardware to troops in Afghanistan

Italy vows more hardware for troops in Afghanistan | Reuters

Italy vowed on Sunday to supply more military hardware to its troops in Afghanistan after three more soldiers were wounded in attacks, prompting a member of the ruling coalition to call for the contingent to be withdrawn.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said two attacks on Saturday in western Afghanistan, which left three Italian soldiers injured, were a confirmation the Taliban was intensifying violence before the Aug. 20 presidential election.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government has already committed to strengthening its presence in the NATO peacekeeping force to around 3,300 troops ahead of the poll.

Let’s hope that solves something. Though the problem is not only of number of soldiers but of strategy. Ideology, drug trafficking, etc need to be addressed and not only in Afghanistan.

Tags Technorati: Italy, Afghanistan, GWOT, war on terrorism, terrorism, Franco Frattini, Silvio Berlusconi, Italian troops in Afghanistan

China: introducing Arabic TV Channel

China kisses Muslim butt with Arabic TV channel – Counter Jihad

China Central Television (CCTV) launched an Arabic-language channel for the Middle East and Africa on Saturday as part of the government’s efforts to expand its relations with the Arab and Muslim world, the Chinese Embassy announced here.

The 24-hour channel will air in 22 Arabic-speaking countries, reaching a total population of nearly 300 million people, CCTV said in a statement at the launch of the new service. The new channel is available through Nilesat and Arabsat services for viewers in the Middle East.

“This is the fourth foreign-language channel we are introducing, after English, French and Spanish,” the official spokesman from the embassy told Arab News.

The contents will be censored, of course, and I’m sure that nothing about China being in the “Global Caliphate” would be accepted.

Tags Technorati: China, Arabic TV, Chinese Arabic TV, Middle East, Africa, Islamism, China and Islam

Pakistan: honor killing after elopement

Daily Times – Leading News Resource of Pakistan – Man kills cousin for ‘honour’

A 23-year-old girl was killed in the name of ‘honour’ in Nawankot police precincts on Sunday. According to the police, Imran allegedly shot his cousin Shumaila in her house. Police said Shumaila had eloped with her aunt’s husband a few days back and her family members took her back two days ago, after convincing her she would not be harmed. The police said the accused wanted to marry her, but got dejected after her elopement. It said Imran forced Shumaila to go into a room and killed her. He escaped without facing resistance.

So in the end this honor killing is just a jealousy killing. As I won’t have you, no one else will. Remarkable…

Tags Technorati: Pakistan, Honor Killings, Nawankot, women in Islam,