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)
Left
Shoe News, 31 March 2002
Nigeria
25/3/02 Safiya appeal
upheld
Safiya Husaini who was sentenced to
death by stoning under Islamic law last November has had her case dismissed.
The reason was that her child, Adama, was conceived before Sharia was
introduced in Sokoto state.
One of our contentions was that she had been divorced and we have been unable
to find a hadith where Prophet Muhammad stoned a divorced person.
We wish to thank our readers who sent petitions to Nigeria to help save Ms
Husaini. Hundreds of letters a day have been pouring into the Federal
Government which is making representations to the 12 northern states where
Sharia has been re-introduced.
Do not think that the fight against Sharia is over. A sharia court at
Bakori in Katsina state has just sentenced Amina Lawal to die after she
conceived a child while divorced. Unfortunately she has confessed, making our
job harder. Again the man involved was acquitted as four adult male Muslim
witnesses had not viewed the act. Under Islamic law, the word of a woman is not
sufficient to convict a person of a capital offence.
No women have died yet but convicted thieves have had a hand amputated and
drinkers have been flogged in public. We will publish the details about Amina
when more are available but continue your protests to President Obasanjo
(himself a Christian) on president.obasanjo@nigeriagov.org
30-3-02
Editorial: Whither Palestine?
Even by the standards of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the past month
has been bloody and miserable, with Palestinian suicide bombers regularly
murdering Israeli citizens and Israeli military retaliation also inadvertently
killing Palestinian civilians.
The new rounds of violence stem from Palestinian Authority leader Yasser
Arafat's astounding and contemptuous rejection of the peace deal offered by
former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, brokered by former US president Bill
Clinton, in July 2000. It offered the Palestinians a separate state in more
than 95 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza and part of Jerusalem. This
rejection helped defeat Barak at the polls and elect the hawkish Ariel Sharon.
Recently Saudi Arabia has produced a new peace plan, involving Israel
withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders in exchange for complete recognition and
peace from its Arab neighbors. This is a variation on all the peace plans
offered before and has no more chance of success than any other.
Saturday, March 2 Ten Israelis, including 2 babies and a ten year-old
boy, die after a Palestinian, Mohammed Ahmed Durarme, detonates explosives
strapped to his body in a crowd of Ultra-Orthodox Jews in West Jerusalem.
Israel retaliates with military strikes into Palestinian territory, killing at
least 14.
5/3/02 Three were killed and 13 wounded in a gun attack on a Tel Aviv
restaurant.
9/3/02 Eleven were killed and 54 wounded in a café suicide-bombing.
12/3/02 An Israeli shepherd, two truck drivers, a woman and her daughter
were killed near the border with Lebanon when gunmen opened fire on vehicles.
Hezbollah's aim is to provoke a wider war.
March 19: Saddam Hussein adds fuel to the fire by offering a $US25,000
reward to each family that loses a martyr fighting Israel. A counter move by
Israel might be to destroy the parental home of a suicide bomber. His relatives
seem accomplices after the event in showing such pride in their son's dastardly
deeds.- Did you see the joy in the streets after September 11? It was
sickening!
22/3/02 Three Israelis died plus the Palestinian suicide-bomber and 40
were injured in an attack in central Jerusalem.
On Wednesday a suicide-bomber belonging to Islamic Jihad killed 7 passengers,
mainly Arab-Israelis on a bus in northern Israel.
Thursday, March 28 A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 21 Israeli
civilians as they celebrate the Passover holiday. The Israelis must be losing
patience with the endless terrorism and contemplating military action to disarm
and dismantle the Palestinian terrorist networks. The Palestinians will try to
get us to be sorry for what happens to them but retaliation is justified if you
believe in “an eye for an eye”, and collateral civilian casualties must be
expected.
23/3/02 Support Iraqi Kurds against al-Qaeda
Most Iraqi Kurds are moderate secular Muslims but a radical Islamist group,
Ansar al-Islam (Helpers of Islam) have set up a stronghold in remote Kurdish
mountain villages and threaten the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Captured Ansari guerillas have admitted links between Osama bin Laden and
Saddam Hussein that go back to 1992. Admittedly the philosophies of the Baath
Party and the Ansari are widely divergent but both are hostile to the West and
to democracy, while most Kurds cautiously support the fight against terrorism.
Cautiously because they revolted against Saddam during the Gulf War expecting
help from George Bush Snr. which never came. Saddam's ethnic cleansing campaign
left more than 180,000 Kurds dead and 250 Kurdish villages were bombed with
chemical and biological weapons.
Ansar al-Islam has set up a Taliban-style mini-state with 10 villages and 4000
civilians under its control. Girls' schools have been closed and women murdered
for refusing to wear the burqa. Music and photographs are banned. Beauty salons
have been destroyed and men told to grow beards. The group received $500,000,
weapons and 4WDs from Osama bin Laden last year. Since January more recruits
from Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco and Syria have swollen the fighters to
700.
In a decade, since the setting up of the Northern No-Fly Zone, the Kurds have
transformed their region from poverty and devastation to a thriving secular
democracy that nurtures education, a free press, the rule of law and political
and religious pluralism.
Victims of Saddam
Hussein's poison gas Turkish
soldiers with Kurdish heads
Halabja March 1988
Presently part of Turkey,
Iraq, Iran and Syria Mehmed Uzun
8/3/02 Turkey's ban on the use of the Kurdish language in public life is
highlighted by the coming trial of a novelist on 19 April. Mehmed Uzun, 47, who
lives in Sweden has been charged with publishing in the Kurdish language.
28/3/02 The European Union wants Turkey to allow broadcasting, education and
literature in Kurdish. The only way the 12 million Turkish Kurds can listen to
broadcasts in their own language is to tune into a satellite station in Paris.
21/3/02 Three people have died in the southern Turkish city of Mersin in
clashes between thousands of Kurdish youths and Turkish riot police over a
government ban preventing them from celebrating Nowruz (Farsi for New Year,
held on the first day of Spring). But in Diyarbakir their numbers were too
great to tackle. Hundreds of thousands gathered peacefully to hold
celebrations.
Nowruz
Pakistan
17/3/02 Grenades thrown
into Pakistan church
Five people were killed including an
Afghan, a Pakistani and two Americans, Mrs Barbara Green and her daughter
Kristen Wormsley, when 6 grenades were thrown in the Protestant International
Church, Islamabad today. An Islamic attacker may have been the fifth person
killed. Forty-five others were injured.
12/3/02 At least 12 Shias have been killed in the past 2 weeks in Pakistan.
Shias, a despised minority, make up about 20 per cent of the population.
Shakeel Anwar of the outlawed Sunni terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was
killed when he sped away from a police checkpoint in Bahawalpur.
2/3/02 Seven Pakistani
militants killed in Macedonia.
Despite the ceasefire in Macedonia between Orthodox Slavs and the Muslim
Albanian minority a Pakistani Islamic terrorist group attacked police in Skopje
with machine guns. Two ID cards on the bodies gave the names Omer Farooq and
Bilal Hussain.
12/3/02 Three civilians, including two kidnapped Hindus, were killed in
Rajouri, Pulwama and Srinagar districts of Kashmir.
Algeria
29/3/02 More than 100 Algerians have been killed so far this month by the GIA (Armed
Islamic Group). Two people were killed when a GIA bomb went off in a crowded
outdoor market at the village of Ouled Yaich near Blida.
8/3/02 Six people were killed and their taxi set on fire near El Affroun on
Thursday.
12/3/02 President Bouteflika has announced that Tamazight, language of the 17 %
Berber minority, will be recognized as a national language. Berber protests on
this issue and police brutality left 60 dead last year.
Bangladesh
8/3/02 IWD in Bangladesh –
Protests against acid attacks
There were 338 acid attacks, 80% of
them against women, carried out across Bangladesh last year.
The International Women's Day march in Dhaka included thousands of men and its
main focus was on acid throwing.
HRAIC has called on the governments of Bangladesh, Pakistan and India to
toughen their laws on acid throwing and restrict the sale of acid..
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia says all acid throwers will
henceforth be charged and that she is determined to improve the rights of
women. However her four-party coalition contains two hardline Islamic parties
not renowned for their promotion of women's rights. Many Muslim men regard
women as subservient to them and punish them for jilting them or talking to
other men.
Malaysia
7/3/02 Heresy and deviance in Malaysia
Sixteen Indonesians have been
arrested in Ipoh for teachings deviant from orthodox Sunni Islam. Literature
was seized and the State Religious Department will conduct the case against
them.
Malaysia does not have freedom of religion and Shiism and Reform_Islam are
banned.
Demokrasi,
Reformasi, Sekulerisme!