Left Shoe News, 30 April, 2002

Prophet Muhammad said, "When one of you puts on sandals, he should first put on the right foot " (Hadith Sahih Muslim 877)

He also said, "He who does not obey Muhammad disobeys God." (Hadith Mishkat 144)

Nigerian woman to be stoned to death

A 30 year-old divorcee, Amina Lawal, has been sentenced to be stoned to death in Katsina state, northern Nigeria. Some residents in her town of Funtua reported the case to the police when they discovered that Miss Lawal was pregnant.
She confessed to police that she had had a relationship with a man for 10 months. However, he was acquitted as he denies having had sex with her. Under Islamic law there must be four adult male Muslim witnesses in an offence that can lead to a death sentence. (This, incidentally, is why there are so few rape convictions in Islam. The victim will be punished instead, as she has admitted having sex.)
Her sentence will be carried out after Miss Lawal has weaned the eight-month baby girl, Wasila that resulted from the affair.
HRAIC consultant, R.E. Burns, Grad Dip Islamic Studies, says the sentence is flawed as there was no case in which Prophet Muhammad stoned a divorced person.
Please send a petition to help save her.

and in Pakistan

Zafran Bibi has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery by a Sharia court in Kohat, North-West Frontier province. We will bring you more news as it comes to hand.

Australia

The Australian Government must disallow our kids from madrasas.

The Australian government has quite rightly banned parents from sending their daughters overseas to be mutilated genitally.
Now it has come to our attention that sons are being sent overseas to attend madrasas (mosque schools) and we call for this practice to be stopped.
There is a plentiful supply of Muslim schools in Australia and the Education Departments can check their curricula to see that general subjects, not just religion, are being taught.
As President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has pointed out, madrasas have been teaching the rote recitation of the Qur'an in Arabic (not even in Urdu) and they were the main recruiting grounds for the Taleban and al-Qaeda. He says they should provide education in secular subjects such as language, mathematics, science and humanities.
This is true for Australian children and they should attend Australian schools.

The detention, by Pakistan, of Sydneysider, Mamdouh Habib (who is now in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) raised this issue. His wife, Maha, denies he is a Taleban or al-Qaeda. She claims he was in Pakistan looking for a madrasas for his son. It may well be that he wants him to be able to recite the whole Qur'an from memory but, as a retired teacher, I think Aussie kids need a broader education than this.


15/4/02 Barghouti arrested. Chance for Palestine Peace and Statehood

Israeli Defence Forces have arrested Marwan Barghouti in its search of Ramallah. He was the West Bank chief of Fatah, and is said to be the driving force behind the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Its main modus operandi is drive-by shootings but it has claimed responsibility for a number of suicide bombings, the latest being the attack on the Mahane Yehuda open-air market in Jerusalem which killed six civilians. Unlike Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa does not aim for an Islamic state but does use Islam to help its claim to martyrdom. (Al Aqsa is the main mosque in Palestine.)
On April 1, the al Aqsa Brigade possibly sealed Barghouti's fate when it named him as their leader. It is people like him who have been responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian people. They cannot hope for Israel to stop its retaliation while suicide-bombings continue nor for statehood until the second intefada is ended.
10/4/02 Eight Israelis have been killed and 14 people wounded in a suicide bombing on a bus near Haifa. The Islamic group Hamas has claimed responsibility.

Globalisation, Poverty and Islam

The words of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the poverty of most Islamic countries (see "Left Shoe News" February 2002) raises the question of why this is so. His main reason is the Islamic disregard for secular education and technology. Imran Khan, the populist Pakistani politician, on the other hand, would rather blame western financial institutions.
What are the facts?
The 2002 study of the World Bank, "Globalization, Growth and Poverty" says: "Between countries globalisation is now mostly reducing inequality. About 3 billion people live in new globalising developing countries. During the 1990s they grew at 5 per cent per capita compared with 2 per cent for the rich countries. The number of extreme poor (living on less than $1 per day) in the new globalisers declined by 120 million in 1993 to 1998."
Twenty-four nations, with 3 billion people, integrating into the world economy and emphasizing education, rule of law, property rights, foreign investment and exports, include Mexico, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Brazil, the Philippines, Hungary and Vietnam, as well as the giants China and India." "Over 20 years they lifted income per head by over two-thirds, doubling their ratio of trade to income over the past two decades." " The less globalised developing countries made only negligible gains and actually trade less than they did 20 years ago."
"The tragedy is that there are still many countries, with about 2 billion people, marginal to the international economy, isolated from global economic processes, winning little foreign capital, "often with declining incomes and rising poverty" Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and the nations of Central Asia are representative of this [mainly Muslim] group" "As far as we can tell there are no anti-global victories to report from the post-war Third World."
It is true that capitalism is self-seeking and that the difference between rich and poor is increasing in all countries. The wages of less skilled workers are driven down by technology and weaker unions can help the workers less. However absolute poverty (as distinct from poverty relative to the better-off) is decreasing in countries attached to global economic processes.

21/4/02 Islamists kill 14 in Philippines blast

A bomb left outside the Fitmark Department Store, General Santos city, southern Philippines killed 14 people today. The Islamic terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf has claimed responsibility and police have arrested two Muslim militants, Bobby Sabilo and Mulikin Adam Ambi. The bombing may be in response to the sentencing of an Indonesian man, Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, 30, who led the police to a cache of a ton of explosives, 300 detonators and 17 M-16 assault rifles.
Al-Ghozi was bomb-maker for Jemaah Islamiah, which wants an Islamic state covering parts of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. It had planned to attack US military personnel and naval vessels as well as the British High Commission, the Israeli embassy and the Australian High Commission in Singapore. He has also admitted to involvement in a string of deadly bombings in Manila in December 2000 that killed 22 people and injured more than 120.

12/4/02 American hostages, Martin and Gracia Burnham will have been hostages on Basilan island for a year on May27. The Abu Sayyaf is wanting $2 million for their release.

25/4/02 Moluccan Muslims set fire to church

A Christian church was set on fire in Ambon, Indonesia and a mortar fired into the Christian sector of the city injuring two people.
5/4/02 Laskar Jihad is held responsible for a bombing in Ambon that killed 7 people and injured more than 50. Five thousand people have been killed in fighting between Muslims and Christians in the Moluccas since 1999 and hundreds of thousands left homeless.

6 April 2002 Bosnia marks war anniversary
Today Bosnia marks the 10^th anniversary of the outbreak of war in the region, in memory of more than 200,000 who died during the brutal conflict. In the fighting which continued until the Dayton peace accord of December 1995, Serbs, Muslims and Croats fought one another and atrocities were committed on all sides, as neighbour turned on neighbour. Twelve thousand were killed in the Sarajevo siege and up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys massacred in Srebrenica alone. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is currently on trial at the Hague Court on charges which include genocide in the Bosnian conflict.
While "two wrongs don't make a right", much of the blame for the sectarian violence lies with the Islamic fundamentalism of Alija Izetbegovic who re-published his "Islamic Declaration" in 1990 in Sarajevo. Rather than be a multi-ethnic secular state, he saw Bosnia as part of a "united Islamic community from Morocco to Indonesia". (The Bosnian Serbs and Croats would be dhimmis in their own country.)
Re Bosnia: "There can be neither peace nor co-existence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions".
"The Islamic movement must and can, take over political power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the existing non-Islamic power, but also to build up a new Islamic one".
This Islamic fundamentalist should certainly bear some of the blame for the misery of Bosnia.

24/4/02 Algerian Islamists kill farmers
GIA (Armed Islamic Group) rebels killed 16 people, including eight children near Tiaret on Tuesday night while they slept. On Sunday three shepherds in a nearby area were killed.
The GIA appointed a new national leader in March to replace Antar Zouabri, killed earlier by security forces. His successor, Rachid Abou Tourab, has pledged to step up action to bring about a radical Islamic state.

23/4/02 Sixteen die in Tunisian synagogue
French Tunisian from Lyon, Nizar Ben Mohamed Nasr Nawar, 24, attacked a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia with a laden fuel tanker. He was killed as were eleven German tourists. The London-based Arab newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi, published a letter from the truck driver implicating al-Qaeda.

10/4/02 Briton sentenced to 800 lashes.
Gary O'Nions, 56, has been sentenced to eight years in prison, a fine of 400,000 pounds and 800 lashes for making and selling alcohol.by a court in Saudi Arabia. (These would have to be spread over a period of time as noone could take that much punishment at one go.) HRAIC considers whipping as torture which Islam denies.

20/4/02 Ban on bikinis, karaoke in Malaysian state.
The PAS (Islamic Party) Terengganu Government has come out with a dress code for tourists, which includes a ban on bikinis and a ruling that if new hotels and chalets want to build swimming pools they must be separate for men and women. "It is not healthy to have both sexes together in such a situation and environment", a tourism spokesman said.
Since PAS took over Terengganu in 1999, it has closed down karaoke outlets, pubs, unisex salons and gaming outlets. It demolished a replica of a turtle in the city because it was considered a form of idol worship and against Islam.
Like in Islamic Kelantan, PAS insists on separate queues for men and women in supermarkets.