Archives 2001 Left Shoe News

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)

Jan…Feb…Mar…Apr…Jul…Aug…Sep…Oct…Nov…Dec

31 January 2001

26/1/01 UN urges Saudi Arabia to halt child floggings
The UN committee on the Rights of the Child called on Saudi Arabia to halt child floggings, stonings and amputations of young offenders. It noted that anti-vice officials "routinely harass and assault persons under 18 for dress code infractions" and that Saudi laws discriminate against females and non-Muslims.
The Saudi reply was that "women enjoy the same rights as men". But women are banned from driving a car or travelling without the permission of their husband or other male relative.

23/1/01 Nigerian woman lashed for pre-marital sex
Muslim authorities in northern Nigeria gave 100 strokes of the cane on the buttocks for zina (fornication) to a 17 year old mother, Bariya Maguzu on Friday. The flogging was witnessed by a large crowd in front of the Islamic Sharia court in Gusau, Zamfara state.
28/1/01 Livinius Obis was flogged by more than 50 persons for allegedly selling alcohol in the Sharia state of Kano, northern Nigeria. No effort was made to send him to hospital for treatment of the wounds inflicted upon him. Apparently "vigilantes" can get away with the implementation of Sharia?
HRAIC opposes the use of Sharia, Islamic law, as barbaric in the 21st Century.
10/1/01 Rampaging Muslims burned down about 40 hotels and bars in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri and the town of Barma. A Muslim youth leader said that the lunar eclipse on Tuesday night was "due to the immoral acts committed in these places".

8/1/01 Four Russians murdered in Algeria
Four Russian engineers who had gone picking mushrooms in the forest of Edough, 600 km east of Algiers were found with their throats cut. Apparently they did not know that the forest harbored members of the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) who are fighting for a Sharia Islamic state in Algeria.
28/1/01 GIA rebels cut the throats of 25 civilians, including 16 children and four women on Saturday night at El Guetaibia village, 220 km west of Algiers.
15/1/01 Seven people, including 4 children were knifed and shot at Hai El Kitab, 70 km south of the capital. At Laghouat four family members, including a 14 month-old baby were killed on Saturday.
17/1/01 On Tuesday armed Muslim rebels fired at two lorries and a car near Khemis Miliana, 120 km west of Algiers, killing 12 passengers. The rebels then set the vehicles alight. On Monday at the village of Tamesguida, south of Algiers, 5 teenagers playing dominoes in a café were shot dead.
19/1/01 23 shepherds and farmers were killed by GIA in a forest in Dahra region , 125 km west of the capital.
20/1/01 GIA gunmen broke into a home in Medea, 55 miles south of Algiers, and killed 11 family members including a 4 year-old child. A teenager was able to escape unharmed.
29/1/01 GIA broke into 2 homes in the hamlet of Oued Fares and killed 24 people as they slept, 16 of them children.
4/1/01 Eleven soldiers were killed in an ambush in the Batna region 435 km S of Algiers.
6/1/01 Algerian security forces killed 15 rebels near Tizi-Ouzou on Thursday.
22/1/01 A French magistrate has issued a warrant for an Algerian Islamic extremist, Rachid Ramda, jailed in Britain. He is wanted for the bombing of St. Michel metro station on July 25,1995 that left 8 people dead.

5/1/01 Police charge 7 Islamists with Philippines bombing spree
Police charged MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) leaders with multiple murder charges following New Year bombings in Manila that killed 22 people and injured more than 120. The bombs had been triggered by mobile phones.
14/1/01 April Grant, 6 year-old stepdaughter of a Briton, is being held for a ransom of $2000 by the MILF on the island of Basilan, southern Philippines.
29/1/01 Abu Sayyaf rebels, who are also fighting for a Sharia Islamic state have planted landmines around their lair in Indanan, Sulu, southern Philippines. American, Jeffrey Schilling, thought to be a hostage of Abu Sayyaf on Jolo has been seen by villagers walking freely with his captors and holding an M-16 assault rifle. Schilling is a convert to Islam.
7/1/01 MILF attacked a militia outpost near Tubod and abducted a farmer, Francisco Timo, as a hostage.

11/1/01 Chechen kidnapping prompts aid pullout
Aid groups are pulling out of Chechnya because of fears for their safety. On January 5, gunmen fired on a convoy of clearly marked aid vehicles near Stariye Atagi and seized US head of Doctors Without Borders, Kenny Gluck. A World Food Programme shipment to Chechnya has also been halted.
Kidnapping for ransom is an old Islamic tradition dating back to Prophet Muhammad.

24/1/01 Seven die in Ethiopian religious clashes
Seven people were killed and twelve injured in clashes between Christians and Muslims in the eastern Ethiopian town of Harar on Friday. A noisy Orthodox Christian procession with blaring loudspeakers celebrating Epiphany was attacked by Muslims whose prayers had been interrupted. Ethiopia's population of 60 million is roughly split between Christians and Muslims.

22/1/01 Six killed in Bangladesh by Islamic anti-communists
Schools and stores closed in Dhaka Sunday during a general strike to protest the bombing of a leftist rally in Bangladesh which killed six people and injured 50. The death toll could rise as many of the 30 in hospital were in a critical condition.
17/1/01 The Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust's annual report says that there is alarming violence against women in the country. Forty two women were killed after being raped; 209 were tortured because they had not brought enough dowry for their husbands and 100 died. At least 272 women and girls were seriously burned, blinded or maimed by acid thrown over them. Such attacks are usually carried out by men who have been spurned by the women. More than 300 women and girls were reported missing, abducted or forced into prostitution. Only half of them were rescued and returned home. Another 43 women were victims of fatwas issued by Islamic clerics, which too is illegal in Bangladesh. Details of their punishments were not released.

16/1/01 Trinidad plotters treated lightly
Fifty eight members of the Jamaat Al-Muslimeen were fined $2.3 million for bombing police HQ in a failed 1990 coup. They then stormed the legislature and took over the TV station. Twenty four people were killed in total. The light treatment was due to an amnesty signed at the time.

13/1/01 Nation of Islam official held in 1990 slaying.
Mustapha Muhammad, who helped organize last year's Million Family March for Louis Farrakhan faces murder, weapons and conspiracy charges for the August 22, 1990 death of Reynaldo Lopez in Newark, New Jersey.

27/1/01 Malaysian couple face khalwat charges
An imam from Lendu and several police officers raided the house of a widow in her thirties and her three year-old daughter at 8.30 on Thursday night. They arrested her and a 26 year-old religious department officer from Alor Gajah. They have been charged with khalwat (close proximity) under the Malacca Syariah Offences Enactment which carries a maximum fine of RM3000 or a 24 month jail sentence or both. The couple are engaged to be married.
HRAIC says that sex between consenting adults should be of no concern to religion or state.
13/1/01 About 20 police raided the New Testament Church homestead and farm at Bukit Markisa yesterday. Police broke locks to enter rooms of the foreign and local guests. After three hours search they left finding nothing subversive or deviant about the church.
5/1/01 Three doctors testified at the inquiry of the Human rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) that they had found injuries on about 20 people arrested at an illegal gathering on Nov.5 Injuries included a fractured nose, fractured thumb, lacerations, haematoma on the scalp, swellings on various parts of the body and a bleeding ear. The injuries could not have been self-inflicted and were consistent with complaints that they had been hit with blunt objects, caned or kicked or punched. In all 122 people had been detained during a pro-reformasi rally.
19/1/01 Butterworth students have been ordered to shave off beards and moustaches. They are also opposed to corporal punishment from their teachers.
23/1/01 Malaysia has destroyed its stockpile of 94,000 landmines under the international Mine Ban Treaty. Landmines are estimated to kill or maim 25,000 people annually.

19/1/01 Red Cross clinic attacked in southern Sudan
Hundreds of horseback militia, the Murahaleen loyal to the Islamic government, attacked the Christian-held village of Chelkou. Almost everything in the ICRC compound was looted, tents destroyed and a vehicle burnt.
14/1/01 Seven Sudanese opposition leaders from the National Democratic alliance are to go on trial this week. This follows a meeting they had with US diplomat, Glenn Warren, where "matters of national importance" were discussed. The US considers Sudan a sponsor of terrorism.
11/1/01 Pro-government militiamen raided villages in the Mariel Bai area of southern Sudan killing 11 people and abducting 122 women and children to be slaves. The Arab raiders of the Baggara tribe also stole 5,075 head of cattle from Dinka tribesmen.

28/1/01 Religious violence rages in Pakistan
An ambush of the Karachi Sunni Wafaaq-ul Madris school bus killed three clerics, a teen-age student and the driver on Sunday. Three others including a policeman guarding the van were wounded. Angry protesters set fire to two cinemas and closed a road with burning cars and tires.
Separately, unidentified gunmen shot and killed a Sunni worshipper outside an eastern Karachi mosque. Elsewhere gunmen peppered a Shiite mosque with bullets wounding six people.
20/1/01 Prominent Iranian Shiite leader, Agha Sultani, was killed as he was leaving a Shiite mosque in central Karachi. The Sipah-e-Sahaba, SSP, Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet, have been blamed. This organization wants Shiism to be declared non-Muslim.
22/1/01 The Supreme Court in Lahore stayed the execution of Haq Nawaz after the SSP threatened non-peaceful demonstrations in the streets. Haq, and 7 others who escaped in a violent jailbreak several years ago, had been found guilty of the drive-by shooting of Iranian diplomat Sadiq Ganji in 1989.
30/1/01 Hundreds of Islamic protesters ransacked the offices and destroyed the press of the newspaper "Frontier Post" in Peshawar after it had published a letter considered derogatory to Prophet Muhammad. Seven staff members were charged with blasphemy, an offence punishable by death.
4/1/01 A battle with rockets and mortars between rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Kallay, 75 miles from Peshawar, has left 5 people dead. Among the dead was a 6 year-old child. The fighting was reportedly due to Sunnis refusing access to Shiites of a shrine revered by both sects.
16/1/01 Islamic group, Tanzeem-ul-Ikhwan, has given the government until March7 to make Pakistan an Islamic state based on Sharia, Islamic law. Tanzeen-ul-Ikhwan has 300,000 militant members.
8/1/01 Pakistan is reported to have developed a new missile that can be tipped with a nuclear warhead. The Haider-1 has a range of 2,500 kilometres and at a speed of 16.6 kilometres per second can reach many Indian cities within 3 minutes of launch.
27/1/01 Pakistan has put aside differences with India to offer relief aid for victims of the Gujarat earthquake. Some 12 people were killed by the quake in Pakistan itself.
4/1/01 Indian police have arrested three men in new Delhi over the attack on the Red Fort nearly two weeks ago. Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba claimed responsibility for the attack.

22/1/01 Killings continue in Kashmir
One Indian soldier and three civilians were killed when a bus ran over a landmine in the Tapper area 27 km north of Srinagar.
Two civilians were killed and 20 wounded when a grenade missed its target and landed on the road.
Six separatists were killed and seven security personnel injured in a clash in Kannachak near Jammu. Elsewhere three civilians including one woman were shot dead by unidentified gunmen. On Wednesday, 12 people were killed and dozens injured when a suicide squad tried to storm Srinagar airport.
7/1/01 Unidentified militants threw a grenade at the Iqbal market in the town of Sopore wounding 28 civilians, 15 seriously. Three civilians died elsewhere in shootouts.
9/1/01 Thirty people waiting to pay their telephone bills were wounded, five critically, when a bomb exploded at the Srinagar exchange.
14/1/01 Eleven people, including five separatist guerillas and an Indian soldier were killed in Kashmir on Friday.

23/1/01 Pakistanis killed helping Taliban
Brigadier Amjad of Pakistan's 996 Brigade and three other Pakistani soldiers were among the Taliban killed by the Mujahideen in Khwaja Ghar, Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan. Brigade 994 and units of the Kohat Division and Pakistan's 9th Division have been aiding the Taliban in Takhar province.
19/1/01 More than 100 Hazaras, a Shiite Muslim ethnic group, are reported to have been summarily executed when the Taliban retook Yakaolong, 130 miles NW of Kabul. The Taliban authorities have barred journalists from visiting the area.
24/1/01 The opposition claims to have uncovered three fresh mass graves in the Khojah Ghar district of Takhar province. The 70 bodies included those of women and children.
8/1/01 The supreme leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mullah Mohamad Omar, has warned that the death penalty will be applied to any Muslim who converts to another faith. This includes distributing literature promoting non-Islamic faiths.
20/1/01 In a Radio Shariat broadcast Mullah Mohammed Omar has ordered the faithful to the mosques for three days of prayers aimed at ending the worst drought in 30 years.
26/1/01 Twenty two barbers have been arrested by the Taliban for giving men Leonardo Di Caprio-style haircuts. Although the Taliban closed cinemas on taking power in Kabul in 1996 and destroyed hundreds of VCR's, pirated videos including Titanic are watched by those who have television sets and videocassette recorders hidden in their homes. Religious police of the Ministry of Vice and Virtue say the style is offensive to Islam and could interfere with a person's ability to bow and say prayers.

20/1/01 Suspect captured in Internet killing
Elite Israeli soldiers posing as Arabs today captured a Palestinian woman, Mona Najar, 25, who lured an Israeli youth to his death after an exchange of emails. She was captured in a pre-dawn raid on her parents' home in the village of Bir-Nabala near Ramallah. Ophir Rakhum, 16, from the seaside town of Ashkelon, arranged to meet her in Ramallah where accomplices shot and knifed him to death.
28/1/01 The Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, said his government would not tolerate further attacks on Israel by Palestinian guerillas from Lebanese territory.
29/1/01 Israel is sending a 100-bed field hospital run by 150 Israeli doctors and staff to Bhuj, Gujarat for Indian earthquake victims. Bhuj lost its main hospital in the quake.

25/1/01 Dalai Lama condemns Christians, Muslims
The Dalai Lama has joined Hindu leaders in condemning the Muslim and Christian practice of actively seeking converts. Unlike Buddhism and Hinduism, Islam is an aggressive religion.

1/1/01 Bombs explode outside two churches in Tajikistan
One bomb on Sunday evening destroyed two buildings at the Orthodox church of St. Nicholas in Dushanbe. Another bomb destroyed windows at a Seventh Day Adventist church. A bombing at a Korean Christian mission in October killed seven and injured 50.
11/1/01 Central Asian republics Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyztan are holding crisis talks over the Islamic threat to set up a Sharia Islamic state in the Ferghana valley and overthrow the government of President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Juma Namangani, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is harbored by Taliban Afghanistan and is backed by Osama bin Laden.

19/1/01 French recognize Armenian genocide.
The National Assembly recognized the slaughter of Armenians by Turkey in 1915 as genocide. Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were killed as part of the Ottoman Empire's campaign to force them out of eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923. Many saved themselves by escaping to Russia or converting to Islam.
23/1/01 In retaliation, Turkey scrapped a $149 million deal with a French firm to launch a spy satellite.

3/1/01 Iran arrests 262 in crackdown on "Indecent" New Year parties
Hefty fines and whippings were imposed on men and women for mingling with members of the opposite sex and consuming alcohol. Women were punished for wearing "indecent" clothing - probably letting their hair or arms show.

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28/2/01 Pakistan -- Dr Shaikh still in prison

Dr. Younis Shakh, Pakistani humanist, founder of "The Enlightenment" and "South-Asian Fraternity", remains in a Pakistani jail facing a mandatory death sentence if found guilty.
A GP, he lectured at the Islamabad Medical School where, last October, a medical student entrapped him into "blasphemy". Apparently two questions he asked involved when Islam began and whether Prophet Muhammad's parents went to Hell. The "blasphemous" answers were? that Islam began with Archangel Gabriel's revelations to Muhammad (the fundamentalist answer should have been that Adam was the first Muslim. Even Jesus was a Muslim prophet!) and that people from "the Age of Ignorance" could not go to Paradise. (Yet one hadith says that Muhammad told Khadijah, his first wife, that her dead babies from her previous marriage had gone to Hell. Another hadith shows one reason why Muhammad was hated by the Meccans - he told them that their parents were in the Fire.)
Please send a petition (see "Left Shoe News" above) to Pakistan dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, who to his credit did try to soften the Blasphemy Law but backed down due to fundamentalist anger.

18/2/01 The office and printing press of "The Frontier Post" newspaper in Peshawar were vandalized by an Islamic mob on Jan30 because of a letter which appeared in its columns. The Pakistani police stood by helplessly during the attack and later arrested 7 editors and reporters on charges of blasphemy, which carry the death penalty.
The controversial letter, submitted by e-mail, entitled "Why Muslims Hate Jews" was assumed to be OK because of its title and assistant editor, Munaver Mohsin, a heroin addict just out of detox, sent it along to the press without reading it. . He did not realize that it called Prophet Muhammad a "womanizer" and "the first nazi" who committed atrocities against the Jews. (The fact that these statements are true does not disallow the blasphemy charge.)
The seven staffers are still behind bars but the authorities believe that the letter might have been planted by competitors and the newspapermen will be acquitted.
24/2/01 In the past week, five Shiite Muslims have been killed in separate incidents in eastern Punjab and Karachi. Police have arrested Azim Tariq, leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba (Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet) one of the most violent and well-armed religious groups.
In recent years religiously motivated violence has left hundreds dead.
22/2/01 Pakistan is to evict 100,000 Afghan refugees by July15, as it is near-bankrupt and cannot cope. A new wave of 170,000 Afghans has poured into Pakistan since September adding to the million or so already there. They are fleeing the worst drought in living memory, the civil war and the harsh rulers, the Taliban.

Editorial: US to blame for Islamic extremism in Pakistan
Pakistanis will tell you that the United States helped the madrasas (religious schools) on their radical and often violent course. During the 1980's, many of them along with fundamentalist groups received covert CIA aid because they were turning out "freedom fighters" for the guerrilla war against the Soviet forces protecting Afghan towns against the Mujahideen. There are about 10,000 madrasas in Pakistan with about 1 million students aged from about 10 to 35 reciting the Koran, which contains incitement to violence and hatred, for hours a day and many give military training including the manufacture of bombs. Most of the Taleban leaders are graduates of madrasas and they provide cadres for Islamic insurgency in Central Asia.
And yet the Silent majority in Pakistan does not hate the West and they do not want to see Islamic Law introduced. But military rule, the absence of free elections and the threat of Islamic mobs poses a grave danger to secularism there.

South Asia targeted by Islamists
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan blames the government of being a silent spectator to the rise in religious extremism, violence against religious minorities and women. It accused Muslim clerics of spewing vicious hatred resulting in harassment and murder.
4/2/01 Islamic militants killed 6 Sikhs in Srinigar, Kashmir as they were returning home from work. Tens of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs have fled Kashmir as the various rebel groups wish Kashmir to become part of Pakistan or Greater Mughalstan (This will? comprise Pakistan, Kashmir, Bangladesh and a part of north India containing its capital Delhi)
10/2/01 Fifteen civilians were killed when militants of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Al-Umar Mujahideen attacked the village of Kotcherwal in Rajouri, Kashmir. Three members of the Lashkar-e-Islami were killed in a shootout in Poonch district and two members of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen were killed in Anantnag district.
3/2/01 A group of Bangladeshi Muslim activists dragged a policeman to a Dhaka mosque where he was lynched. Fifteen other people were wounded in riots protesting a ban on fatwas by Muslim clergy. The fatwas in this case involved women's rights, preventing them from mixing and working with men outside their families and allowing adulteresses to be tortured. Sixty demonstrators, mainly students from a madrasas (Muslim religious school) have been arrested and Moulana Mufti Amini, secretary-general of the group Islami Oikyo Jote Thousands of supporters of the ban, including villagers, veiled women and girls, marched, danced and sang in Dhaka. They were protected from Islamists by a huge police presence. Kabir Chowdhury, a retired professor of Dhaka University, said: "The people of Bangladesh will no longer tolerate fatwas given by (Muslim) fundamentalists to achieve their ulterior motives. They are out to retard progress and social justice." Death threats have been made against the 2 High Court judges who made the ban on fatwas and against mostly foreign-funded NGO's which they say are "agents of Satan" and "violate the spirit of Islam".
Bangladesh is one of the few relatively democratic Muslim countries in the world, with laws remaining from British colonial days.
13/2/01 To add a note of light relief : Hundreds of television sets have been hurled from rooftops by Muslim residents of Ahmabad and Surat, India after Muslim cleric, Mufti Imtiaz, said television was the cause of the Gujarat earthquake.

Editorial: Five Acts that need reform in Malaysia
But following from 2 paragraphs above, the Internal Security Act dating from the Emergency in British colonial days allows indefinite detention without trial in the Mahatir police state. The Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) also identifies the Official Secrets Act, Sedition Act, Police Act and Printing Presses and Publications Act as needing reform. We would add Syariah (Islamic Law) provisions in a number of states. The Malaysian government treats any opposition as tantamount to treason.
19/2/01 It is an offence to gather in a group of more than 5 persons with the intention to demonstrate under Section 27 of the Police Act. Thirty brave people aged from 18 to 73, including 10 women were arrested yesterday in Jalan Pudu, Kuala Lumpur. Police confiscated T-shirts with the Words SOS, Save Our School, printed on them.
Two hours later, 16 people, including a woman and a 15 year-old boy were picked up in Jalan Maarof, Bangsar and similarly charged.
19/2/01 Police fired teargas into a crowd of 1000 reformasi supporters in Kulim, who sang and carried banners and placards, criticizing government leaders and supporting the 10 opposition members on trial. Seven people were arrested, including a woman who was dragged along the roadway. Keadilan Youth vice-chairman, N. Gobalakrishnan was arrested for complaining of police brutality. At least 12 demonstrators were injured by police.
On Saturday, police wielding canes and using water cannons chased about 500 anti-Mahatir demonstrators through the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Tin Chua of the National Justice Party said, "There is probably an order from the highest level to obstruct any peaceful gathering here".
On Sunday, police again used teargas and sprayed chemical-laced water on more than 250 anti-government demonstrators, who chanted, "Free Anwar" - referring to the imprisonment of former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. He was fired by Mahatir in 1998 after disagreements about economic policy and later convicted of corruption and sodomy on charges he insists were trumped up by Mahatir's government.

Editorial: Stop the attacks on the Serb minority in Kosovo
Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo received much support from the international community when Slobodan Milosevic was ethnically cleansing them. But now radical Muslims are attacking the Serb minority and gypsies (Roma and Ashkali) who remain in Kosovo. Yes, we think that religion has some part to play as they would not be so violent towards fellow Muslims.
16/2/01 A bus traveling from the city of Nis in Serbia to the Serb majority town of Podujevo in Kosovo was bombed killing 10 Serbs, including a baby, and wounding 40 others. A crater 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep was left. See Earlier attacks on Serbs.
18/2/01 Three former Bosnian War fighters are on trial in the Hague charged with mass rape of Muslim women of the small town of Foca and forced prostitution involving dozens of women some as young as twelve. A wider definition of slavery is expected from the commission.
20/2/01 Appeals judges at the UN war crimes court upheld most of the charges against two Bosnian Muslims and a Bosnian Croat. In 1998, Zdravko Mucic, Esad Landzo and Hazim Delic were jailed for seven, 15 and 20 years respectively for killing and torturing Serb civilians in 1992 at Celebici camp near Konjic in central Bosnia. The trial has set the precedent of including rape as torture.

Editorial: Intifada helped elect Sharon
By rejecting the peace deal offered by former Israeli PM, Ehud Barak, Palestinians have helped elect hard-liner, Ariel Sharon. They will probably end up with less than was previously offered. Some demands are unrealistic: Israel offered compensation for refugee land and homes lost but will never accept all the former refugees and offspring so allowing what they consider as a potential "fifth column" in their country. Nor will they give up the "Wailing Wall", the "Buraq Wall" of those Muslims who accept the hadith that Prophet Muhammad flew from Mecca to Jerusalem on the back of a two-winged horse-like animal called Buraq and tethered it at the Wailing Wall.. (Modernist Muslims say this might have been a dream of Muhammad.)

Buraq?

Reconciliation will never happen if Palestinians adopt the position of the Islamic extremists, that the Jewish state must be destroyed. For example, Abdullah Shami of Islamic Jihad,"the holy war against Israel must never stop the destruction of the enemy's cities and villages, and the killing of all settlers is the choice". The founder of the Islamic militant group, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said, "The Palestinian authority must get rid of the Oslo peace accords and increase resistance".
Praise from Syria and Iran (e.g. Rasfanjani) for Khalil Abu Olbeh, the driver who rammed his bus into a crowd of Israelis killing 10 and wounding 17, was sickening.

5 Feb. '01 Egyptian court convicts only four
A southern Egyptian court today convicted only 4 of 96 defendants for deadly Muslim-Christian clashes on 2 Jan. '00. Twenty-one people, nearly all of them Christians, died in the violence. Thirty eight Muslim defendants were charged with murder. Mayez Amin Abdel-Rahim received ten years and Mohammed Fawzi Shahib was sentenced to two years in prison for "accidental homicide". Two others received a year for damaging a car.
Coptic Christian Bishop Wissa whose diocese includes the village, el-Kusheh, where the killings took place said the ruling was an "open invitation for any Muslim to kill Christians".
In September, Sohag Criminal Court convicted 20 Muslims of inciting violence in nearby Dar el-Salam, where 5 Christians were injured and 156 Christian-owned stores, homes and businesses were burned or looted.
See "Persecution of Christians in Islamic Countries" for more.

11 Feb. '01 Thirteen children killed by GIA
GIA (Armed Islamic Group) fired on a shanty town in northern Algeria, killing at least 27 people, half of whom were children. The raid took place yesterday evening near Berrouaghia. The children were aged between 6 months and 18 years.
Violence in Algeria has claimed 100,000 lives since the insurgency began in 1992. Last month, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika threatened to fight militants "with an iron fist", but new deaths are reported on an almost daily basis.
17/2/01 Soldiers combing the woods near Sidi Bel-Abbes on Thursday were ambushed by about 100 GIA. Thirteen soldiers and 6 militants were killed. Two shepherds were killed and another abducted on Wednesday in the Mascara region. Also one person was killed and another kidnapped at a GIA roadblock near Thenia.
17/2/01 Six Algerian men arrested by British anti-terrorism police were charged Saturday with planning terrorist acts and conspiring to commit fraud. They were in possession of electronic equipment, false identity documents and false credit cards.

16/2/01 Iran flogs three
Three men Mohammad, Majid and Ismail Rahimi each received 180 lashes in Vanaq Square, Tehran on Thursday for drinking alcohol and having illicit sex.
12 Feb.'01 Opponent of religious fascism, journalist Mohammad-Baqer Vali-Beig, head of "Today's Society" publishing house was arrested today in Tehran. About fifteen reformist journalists are now in jail in Iran. Although non-elected, the Islamic establishment controls the judiciary, media, the military and police.
2/2/01 An all-woman fashion show was banned on Kish Island, Iran by hardliners.
20/2/01 Atousa Pourkashian, 13, is being allowed to play chess against males although Prophet Muhammad hated chess. (He considered it a "game of chance" and many Medinans would rather continue their games than listen to his sermons.) Since the election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami many sports complexes have been built for women although male spectators are not allowed if the competitors are not covered from head to toe.
9 Feb.'01 A thousand monarchists, who want the son of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to rule Iran, rallied in the Mellat Park, Tehran on Friday. They were attacked with tear-gas and clubs and fifty were arrested.
HRAIC agrees with their right to demonstrate peacefully but supports a secular liberal-democratic republic in Iran.

5 Feb.'01 Islamists jailed for life in Niger for 1994 murder
Thirteen Muslim fundamentalists of the Tidjania sect were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of eight members of the security forces. Two others were sentenced to five years each for violating freedom of religion. Police had been sent to the village of Kouloukta because the Islamists had been forcing people to attend prayers.
Recently Islamic militants burned down seven Christian-owned restaurants and a church in Maradi.
Niger, in west Africa is overwhelmingly Muslim but is a secular state.
On the other hand, in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Christians have attacked Muslim northerners, pulling them from buses, burning their identity cards and harassing them at roadblocks. Mosques have been attacked and burned, often with the complicity of the authorities. Hundreds, mostly Muslims, have been killed.

28/2/01 Sharia in northern Nigeria
Nine of 36 states in Nigeria have adopted Sharia, Islamic law. Zamfara was the first and many Christians have left in despair as they were denied access to government jobs, unable to teach religion in their schools and land to build churches. Sharia includes punishments such as stoning to death, amputations and flogging. Men and women, of all faiths, are now prohibited from sharing public transport in Zamfara. Boys and girls are taught in separate schools and the sale and consumption of alcohol has been banned.
Attempts to introduce Sharia in the neighboring state of Kaduna, with its much larger Christian population, led to terrible bloodshed last year. At least 2,000 people died in fighting between Christians and Muslims and the Christian minority says the fear of Sharia is driving their numbers even lower.
17/2/01 Suspected prostitutes and drinkers escaped the harsher penalties of Kano state Sharia Code when it could not be proved that they had been fornicating or drinking. Section 319 states, "A person should be punished for drinking if he confesses or if the odour of alcohol is perceived in his mouth a person is liable to conviction for fornication if he confesses or if four worthy persons testify to have seen him in the act."
The 10 women were sentenced to two weeks imprisonment and 26 men to one month each on the lesser charge of "immoral gatherings".

21/2/01 Sudan strongman arrested
Hassan al-Turabi, for ten years the hardline Islamic ideologue behind President Omar al-Bashir, who came to power in a military coup, has been arrested. The two men fell out in late 1999 and Turabi formed the Popular National Congress Party. It was revealed yesterday that Turabi had signed a deal with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). The SPLA who are black Christians and animists control much of the south and are fighting against the imposition of Sharia. The PNCP newspaper, "Rai al-Sha'ab", "People's View" has been closed down. The document focused on "scrapping all laws that cripple freedoms, lifting the state of emergency, releasing all political detainees and standing together with other political parties in the face of oppression and violation of human rights."

15/2/01 Chechen Islamist sentenced for killing POW's
A Russian court in Kabardino-Balkaria has sentenced to life imprisonment a Chechen field commander, Salaudin Temirbulatov. A video had been made of him slitting the throats of three Russian soldiers in 1996 near the village of Komsomolkoye and shown on television.
5 Feb.'01 Five people were injured when a bomb exploded in the Belorusskaya subway, Moscow today. In August, 13 people were killed in a bombing in an underground walkway in Pushkin Square. A year earlier, about 300 people were killed in a series of apartment buildings in Moscow and two other cities, prompting the Russian government to send troops against rebels in Chechnya.

13/2/01 Turkey must allow Kurds own language
Turkey's 12 million Kurds do not enjoy the same rights as minority Greeks and Armenians. Their language is outlawed in schools and non-musical broadcasting. This must change, the European commission says, if Turkey wishes to join. The EU also wants the emergency lifted and the death penalty abolished.
19/2/01 France has pledged not to send home the 910 Kurdish immigrants, including 480 children, dumped on the Riviera at the weekend. Some were from Turkey, and one from Iraq said "thousands of Kurdish villages in Iraq " had been burned to the ground by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
1 Feb.'01 Twenty-eight Kurdish boys, from 9 years to 15, were arrested as rebels at Viransehir on Jan.8th for shouting out slogans such as "Turkey Sucks" and "Long live Kurdistan".

15/2/01 ObL wanted Stinger missiles from Pakistan to "kill Americans"
In a Manhattan court, Texas pilot Essam al-Ridi testified that, in 1993, Arlington resident Wadih el Hage had given him $230,000 from Osama bin Laden to purchase a plane powerful enough to carry Stinger missiles for war on Americans.
On the bill of sale for the 1961 Sabreliner T-39A jet, Mr Al-Ridi gave the address of Imam Moataz Al-Hallak, the former leader of the Islamic Society of Arlington mosque.
Mr. bin Laden asked him to work as the pilot but al-Ridi thought twice about causing unnecessary death. The plane crashed on its first flight due to faulty brakes and so was never put into use.
HRAIC says that the sale of arms to Pakistan must be stopped as they are being used by the Taleban and terrorist groups in Kashmir. Serious consideration must be given to declaring Pakistan a "rogue state."

4 Feb.'01 Eleven die in sunk Indonesian ship
A ship carrying Muslim refugees sank Sunday off eastern Indonesia's Maluku islands, killing 11 people and leaving 11 others missing. The Leo Star II capsized in huge waves after leaving the North Maluku capital of Tenate bound for Galela.
In July, another ship packed with about 481 Christian refugees sank without trace in the area.
Religious violence in Maluku province has claimed at least 5,000 lives since January 1999.
4 Feb.'01 OPM (Free Papua Movement) fighters killed four Indonesian soldiers and lost one themselves. The attack occurred at Betaf near the border with Papua New Guinea.
The OPM have been waging a war of independence since Indonesia occupied the former Dutch colony in 1963.
11 Feb.'01 Four separatists of the Free Aceh Movement and a police officer were killed in a gun battle in Kruet Lintang village in East Aceh.
On Saturday, human rights activists found two bodies with bullet wounds near Bireun, West Aceh. Separatists claimed the dead were unarmed civilians.
At least 6000 people, most of them civilians, have died in the conflict in the past decade.
FAM wants independence for their oil- and gas-rich homeland. We agree that the Acehnese should benefit from their mineral wealth but do not support the Islamic agenda of FAM, which wants implementation of Sharia.

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31 March, 2001

18/3/01 Taliban destroy cultural heritage of Afghanistan
Two Buddhas carved into the mountainside near Bamiyan have been destroyed by explosives. The taller was 170 feet high and the other 120 feet and were carved in the 3rd and 5th centuries. The decision was made by 400 Muslim clerics as the "statues were gods of the infidels".
22/3/01 The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have opened the National Museum in Kabul to show that they have destroyed all of its statues. Museum staff said about 40 statues had been smashed following an order by the supreme Taleban leader, Mohammed Omar, to eliminate what he called idolatrous images.
28/3/01 Amnesty International has published eye-witness accounts of a massacre of about 300 men, women and children which took place when the Taleban recaptured Yakawlang in Bamiyan province in January.
2/3/01 Despite UN sanctions imposed in January, the Taleban refuse to hand over Osama bin Laden, wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, mostly Africans. On Monday he praised the two Islamic suicide bombers who detonated a small boat full of explosives alongside the USS Cole in Aden harbor on Oct. 12 killing 17 American sailors and wounding 39 others.

28/3/01 Britain outlaws 21 Terror-linked groups
Britain has long been criticized for being a haven for groups involved in terrorist activities. Now suspected terrorists may be arrested without a warrant and detained for up to a week without charges. Even fund-raising or openly supporting a banned organization could lead to arrest.
Three-quarters of the groups are Islamic and include:
Al-Quaeda (Afghanistan), Islamic Jihad (Egypt), Islamic Jihad (Palestine), Al-Gama'at al-Islamiya (Egypt), Armed Islamic Group (Algeria), Salafist Group for Call and Combat (Algeria), Hezbollah (Lebanon), Hamas (Palestine), Abu Nidal (Palestine), Islamic Army of Aden, Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (Iran).
The ban is not directed against groups campaigning peacefully against injustice.

24/3/01 Palestinian urges non-violence
Marwan Barghouti, head of Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, today urged more non-violent protests, marches and demonstrations to force an end to Israel's 34-year occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.
Hamas (Islamic Resistance) and Islamic Jihad are NOT supported by the silent majority of Palestinians who do not see gun, grenade and bomb attacks against Jewish civilians as the way to liberate Palestine. Arafat is, in part, responsible as he freed terrorists from jail and invited Israeli retaliation. The Israeli response is often excessive for while 52 Israelis have been killed in the 6-month intifada the Palestinian death toll has been 355.
Moreover, the Jews have been reluctant to allow Arabs to enter Israel for work and are withholding money due to the Palestinian Authority which is near bankrupt.

18/3/01 Religious violence in India
On Friday a Kanpur district official was killed by a burst of machine gun fire from a city mosque. On Saturday night two police stations were attacked with AK47 assault rifles by activists of the SIMI (Student Islamic Movement of India) resulting in two deaths. On Sunday, Hindu mobs joined bloody street battles with Muslims leaving 5 more dead.
The violence was touched off by allegations that Hindu fundamentalists in New Delhi had burned a copy of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

24/3/01 14 killed in separate Russia blasts
Fourteen people were killed in three separate blasts, minutes apart, Saturday morning in southern Russia bordering on Chechnya. The most deadly was at a farmers' market in the city of Mineralnoye Vody. Militants fighting for an Islamic homeland have been blamed.
19/3/01 Two Chechens were sentenced to life imprisonment for a 1999 apartment bombing in Buinaksk that killed 64 people. Isa Zainutdinov, 62, and Alisultan Salikhov, 35, had been promised $30,000 for the attack by Jordanian warlord, Khattab. Such bombings which killed a total of 300 Russians resulted in Russia occupying the province.
19/3/01 Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of Yulia Fomina, 27, stewardess of a Russian airliner hijacked in Istanbul and flown to Medina. It is not certain whether the shot that killed her was from her Saudi rescuers or a Chechen hijacker. The Chechens were Sufian Arsayev, Eriskhan Arsayev and Deni Magomerzayev.
19/3/01 Arms sales by Russia to Iran, regarded as a "rogue state" as the military is under the control of the hardline Islamic Guardian Council and not the elected reformist government, is worrying Iran's neighbors. The deal worth $7 billion over a few years will also help complete Iran's nuclear reactor. It already has the missiles which could be tipped with nuclear warheads. Although Russia needs the cash, we consider it a short-sighted policy.

21/3/01 Pakistan cracks down on opposition
Some 1600 political activists have been rounded up in the past 3 days by Pakistan's unelected military government. "Punjab became like a jail", said the president of the ARD (Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy) which represents 18 of the country's banned political parties.
2/3/01 On Thursday a leading member of the Sunni militant group, Sepa-e-Sahaba , Haq Nawaz, was hanged for the murder of an Iranian (Shiite) diplomat 10 years ago. The next day 3 Shia shopkeepers were shot dead in the town of Hangu in the North-West Frontier province. In the ensuing gunbattle ten Sunni Muslims were killed. Several shops and cars were set alight.
4/3/01 Six Sunni gunmen on 3 motorcycles rampaged through Sheikhpura killing 2 policemen and 7 Shia. Police suspect Sipeh-e-Sahaba, Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet, which regards Shia as non-Muslims and wants Pakistan to be declared a Sunni Muslim state.
5/3/01 Kashmir: A two-member suicide squad of the Pakistan-based group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, stormed an army camp killing four soldiers and wounding eight. Later Indian security forces killed three militants of the Pakistan-based group, Jaish-e-Mohammad in Kupwara. Elsewhere two militants and a civilian were killed in separate shootouts. A Muslim militant and an Indian soldier were killed when guerrillas attacked an army base at Poonch. In another incident a four year-old child was killed and his mother wounded when unidentified gunmen shot at a Hindu wedding feast.
More than 30,000 people have been killed since the armed rebellion erupted in Kashmir nearly a decade ago.

30/3/01 Armed Islamic Group killings in Algeria
A family of five including women and children has been killed in an attack in the Tipaza area. Fifteen people were killed in a massacre at the shanty-town of Hai Benachour. On Sunday a family of 13 was killed near Blida.
19/3/01 Islamic militants detonated an explosive and fired a mortar on cars near Thenia, killing two civilians and wounding 23. On Saturday evening two police officers were shot to death at Guelma. In nearby Annaba a homemade bomb killed a policeman.
19/3/01 The Algerian army killed 9 armed rebels on Wednesday in the Timexi forest and 13 rebels hiding in caves near Ouled Attia. Soldiers in the Collo region did not interrupt a clash between two opposing militant groups: when the fighting ended they found 20 decapitated bodies from both sides.
28/3/01 Abdelmajid Dahoumane, who is wanted by US authorities for helping prepare bombs to be used in Seattle, has been arrested in Algeria on his return from Afghanistan, where he had been undergoing training in arms and explosives.
There is no doubt the economic situation in Algeria feeds the discontent. While Algeria has rich gas and oil exports, the poor see little from it. Unemployment in the 20-25 year age group stands at 49 per cent, housing is scarce and prohibitively expensive , while monthly wages average around 8000 dinars, about $110.

14/3/01 Malaysian activist charged with sedition
Ezam Mohamad Noor, youth leader of the Parti Keadilan Nasional (National Justice Party) has been charged under the Sedition Act. He is alleged to wish to topple the Mahatir government with Philippine-type People Power rallies. He denies the charges saying he only planned nationwide peaceful protest meetings.
26/3/01 Kedah police have warned political parties against discussing "sensitive matters" and "negative activities" in their meetings. Examples were the use of the word "Islam" in names of organizations and the recent Kampung Medan incident.
22/3/01 The strict policies on alcohol in Terengganu and Kelantan is deterring foreign tourists from visiting the two states said (non-Muslim) Deputy Tourism Minister Dr. Ng Yen Yen.
26/3.01 Nik Abdul Aziz, PAS (Parti se-Islam Malaysia) spiritual advisor and Chief Minister of Kelantan says they would like to see men and women queuing in separate lines for buses to avoid unnecessary body contact. It is also desirable for men and women to sit in separate sections of the bus.
Perhaps Muslims are more "sexy" than us? but it does not seem a problem here in Australia.

29/3/01 Pokemon cards banned in Saudi Arabia
A religious fatwa has been made against Pokemon in Saudi Arabia. Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah said it encouraged gambling as well as carrying religious symbols representing Zionism, Christianity and Free Masonry. They also appeared to be based on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which Islam rejects.
Because of severe punishments for violators, including whippings, revocation of trade licences, stiff fines and deportation, the edict is expected to be followed strictly.

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30 April 2001

Thailand Station Blast Kills Boy
A seven year-old boy was killed and 37 other people wounded, 16 severely, when a bomb went off at Hat Yai station 590 miles south of Bangkok on Saturday afternoon. A second explosion took place at Betong injuring 5 people on Saturday evening.
Three Muslim separatist groups, the Mujahedin, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional and the Pattani United Liberation Organization have allied to form the Bersatu..
The Hat Yai rail junction, the commercial and rubber centre of southern Thailand, has been hit by 5 bombs in 20 years, killing nine people and wounding about 200.

29/4/01 Police Brutality in Algeria
The death in custody of an 18 year-old brought thousands of Berbers out on the streets in eastern Algeria. The police responded killing 4 unarmed civilians and the total after a week of demonstrations stands at 35 dead. The Berbers hold deep-seated complaints as well: they demand recognition of their language which is not related to Arabic. The Berbers were the original inhabitants of the area before the Arab Muslim invasion. The protests are not connected with the Islamic insurgency in the country.
7 April Rebels of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) slit the throats of 5 shepherds in the Ojebel Aouf area.
8 April More than 30 rebels were killed including 3 leaders in an offensive by security forces around Sidi Ali Bounab.
18/4/01 A sixteen year-old girl was hacked to death with an axe, her father seriously injured and her mother kidnapped by GIA at Berrouaghia. At a second house a man and his two children were killed.
24/4/01 Excavation work at the former headquarters of the French army 350 miles east of Algiers uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of 290 people. Last year, two top French generals told a newspaper that summary executions were common during the conflict.

Editorial: Apartheid or cooperation?
The Israeli and Arab people in Palestine have two alternatives, cooperation or separateness. Hamas and Islamic Jihad should both be restrained by Palestinians wanting a state. (Let's face it! Israel won't allow itself to be pushed into the sea and won't be giving much more away, intifada or not.) Likewise the ultra-Orthodox Jews who dream of a Third Temple on the site of Al Aqsa mosque and a Greater Israel comprising Hebron and its putative tomb of Abraham/Ibrahim, and so on should face reality.
If "religion" cannot be put aside and mortar fire, suicide bombings and massive retaliation continue, then Israel must withdraw behind secure, shortened boundaries. Settlements which are provocative and untenable would have to be evacuated, and tunnels and passovers constructed so the two populations are kept apart.
How much better a less religious bination with Arabs and Jews living in harmony, turning desert into a land of milk and honey. (Israel is building a desalination plant in Cyprus which makes Mediterranean Sea-water drinkable.)
23/4/01 Moawiya Kabha, an Arab ambulance driver of Kfar Saba, Israel saved the life of 14 year-old Jewish boy, Michael Milman, badly bleeding after a Nablus suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of Israelis. (An Israeli doctor, Mario Goldin, 53, was killed in the blast and 50 wounded.) We know that the 18 year-old Hamas bomber will go to Paradise* but will Moawiya go to Paradise or Hell for his part in the tragedy? Kabha visited Michael in hospital and said, "We are all human and have to treat each other with respect. There is no Jewish and Muslim. There are only people. "
*Martyrdom in Islam To die a martyr or shaheed fighting in the way of Allah gives immediate passage to Paradise, unlimited sex with 70 virgins, sitting on a chair of rubies or reclining on green cushions. But some Islamic scholars argue that the Koranic injunction to seek Paradise by dying in battle with the infidel does not extend to acts premised on suicide.

11 April '01 Sudan Police Tear Gas Cathedral Meeting
Hundreds of Christians fled the All Saints Cathedral in Khartoum when Islamic police fired tear gas into it. The meeting was to discuss the breaking up by police of a meeting on Tuesday.
13/4/01 More than 50 Christians have been flogged for demonstrating against a government order to transfer an Easter ceremony to a different venue. Among them were 4 women and two boys. Many were sentenced to 20 days jail in addition to 15 lashes of the whip.
The SPLA (Sudan Peoples Liberation Army) says that the Islamic government is using Iraqi pilots and planes against Christian areas in the south. Also Chinese trainers are helping organize pro-government militias in the areas.

22/4/01 Sacrilege in Iran
Newspaper editor Amid Naeeni has been arrested for publishing in his magazine Payam e Emrouz (Today's Message) that special prayers during a natural disaster was a superstitious practice and that Angel Gabriel was an imaginary creature.
About 40 periodicals have been banned in recent months.
12 April 2001 Over 40 people associated with the banned liberal opposition group, Freedom Movement have been arrested and denied access to lawyers. They have been charged with plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime which carries the death penalty.

8 April '01 Harassment of Church work in Malaysia
The Selangor government has told the Catholic community here to relocate its proposed church even though piling work has started. The state wants the church to be relocated from the present site near Monfort's Boys Town to an industrial estate 2km away.
26/4/01 Badaruddin Ismail, a human rights activist from the group SUARAM and webmaster of a pro-reform web site, has been detained under the infamous Internal Security Act. ISA allows anyone deemed a threat to national security to be held without charge for sixty days. In the last two weeks ISA has been used to arrest nine supporters of jailed former deputy prime minister , Anwar Ibrahim.
30/4/01 Former police chief Abdul Rahim Noor has been sentenced to two months' jail for causing Anwar Ibrahim a black eye on the night of his arrest in 1998. Abdul Rahim said he lost control when Anwar, who was blindfolded and handcuffed to his bed, called him "the father of dogs". Prophet Muhammad hated dogs and had many destroyed.
26/4/01 Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad at an Islamic conference in Dubai said, "Muslim countries should not be in a hurry to embrace democracy. We really don't understand how it works, especially liberal democracy."

30/4/01 Music, Wedding Photos Banned in Taleban Afghanistan
The Taleban leadership in Afghanistan censors almost all music there, apart from religious songs and chants. John Baily, a British professor specialising in Afghan music says those caught in possession of musical instruments are beaten, jailed , fined and their instruments destroyed. Most professional musicians have fled into exile to keep their music traditions alive.
1 April '01 Photographs of living things are not allowed and important events such as weddings cannot be treasured. Pictures of departed parents or children must be destroyed. The religious police say that if a man views a strange woman's face, he may be tempted to impure thoughts or acts.. If a woman needs a passport or identity photo, it must only have her eyes showing. But this a small problem: women cannot work or go to school and are treated most unjustly. Average income is about $2 per month.
20/4/01 The United States has announced it is donating eighty-three vehicles and two-and-a-half million dollars to help rid Afghanistan of its several million landmines.
17/4/01 Afghanistan's rival factions began a four-day cease-fire to allow the United Nations to immunize about 6 million children under age 5 with polio vaccine. Last year there were 115 new polio victims in Afghanistan.

12 April 2001 American Hostage Freed in Philippines
After 10 days of assaults on the southern island of Jolo, the Philippines army has rescued US hostage Jeffrey Schilling. The 25 y.o. from Oakland, Calif. had been held for nearly 8 months by Muslim rebels of the Abu Sayyaf group, threatened with beheading, at times in chains and lost 100 pounds of his 290 pounds weight. Schilling, a convert to Islam had gone voluntarily to the camp with his Muslim wife, Ivy Osani, a cousin of Abu Sayyaf spokesman, Abu Sabaya but was not allowed to leave. Schilling has lost his admiration for the rebels and now only wants them destroyed. It has been said that Abu Sayyaf is more interested in ransom than religion, but it does remind one of Prophet Muhammad's small band of brigands of early Medina. See Ransom and Prophet Muhammad.

17/4/01 Hotels raided in Kano
Sharia, Islamic law, continues to be implemented in northern Nigeria with police raids on hotels, restaurants and bars. A group of young Islamic vigilantes attacked the Hezinon Afiton hotel in Kano City and set it alight.
19/4/01 Twelve people, including 7 children, were killed when a mosque collapsed in Mushin, Lagos. The victims were taking lessons in Arabic and Islamic studies. Islam is a theistic religion which believes that every little action of life and death is pre-ordained by Allah. Deism, on the other hand, postulates a Creator who is not concerned with day-to-day events.

26/4/01 Saudis keep ban on women drivers
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef reaffirmed that his government had no intention of allowing women to drive or have their own identity cards. Women who wish to draw money from a bank must use "family Ids", cards without a photograph that identify them as the dependents of their father or husband. Saudi women must cover all but their hands, eyes and feet when in public. They cannot travel, pursue a higher education or get a job without the written approval of a male guardian.
30/4/01 Saudi government officials say they are planning to block access to a further two hundred thousand internet sites regarded as offensive. New advanced equipment would be used to block the sites.
18/4/01 Seven Muslims, including Hajjis (pilgrims to Mecca) have died in Britain from meningeococcal bacteria of the W135 strain, not found in Britain but in Saudi Arabia. Performing the Haj at least once in your lifetime is a pillar of Islam, but every year there are deaths resulting from it.

9 April 2001 Dubai arrests US missionaries
Three American missionaries could face up to 10 years in prison in the United Arab emirates after being arrested in Dubai and accused of promoting Christianity. They belonged to Frontiers, an Arizona organization that specifically aims to convert Muslims to Christianity.
1/4/01 The Diamond Club in Dubai has been shut down after hosting a gay night featuring a transvestite DJ from Britain.
3/4/01 Sheikh Yussef Qardawi, mufti of Qatar, has banned Pokemon in order to protect the religion of children.
21/4/01 The Constitutional court in Kuwait has dismissed a petition to grant women the right to vote in the Emirate. The petition was brought before the court by two women activists, Lowlowa Mulla and Hind al-Shalfan.
8/4/01 The head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdullah al-Mutawa, has called for a women's football tournament to be cancelled saying it was a disobediance to Allah to take part in such activities and the whole of society could be subject to His wrath. Last September he called on Kuwaiti TV not to show Sydney Olympics women's volleyball, diving and swimming.
2/4/01 A Kuwaiti pop singer, Abdullah Ruwaished has been sentenced to death by a Saudi Arabian cleric Shuaibi for "insulting the Koran" by putting its first chapter to music.

14/4/01 Islamic Bomb Kills Nine in Bangladesh
A bomb exploded at an open-air concert at Ramna Park, Dhaka killing nine people and wounding 50. A second blast 45 minutes later wounded a policeman. The concert attended by 15,000 people was celebrating the Bengali New Year (non-Islamic). The bomb went off prematurely killing the man carrying it. An accomplice, a member of the Islamic student organization, Islami Chattra Shibir, was arrested. Two other bombs were abandoned in the park.
30/4/01 A Bangladeshi high court has sentenced to death 12 former military officers convicted of involvemernt in the 1975 assassination of the country's first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Mujib, father of the current prime minister Sheikh Hasina, was killed along with his wife and 14 other family members when his house was attacked during an Islamic coup. Mujib led Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan and was a secular leader, even-handed towards Hindus and Christians. Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government cleared the way for the trial by amending the constitution after returning to power in 1996.

1 April 2001 Muslim Academy forbids surrogate motherhood
The Islamic Research Academy at al-Azhar, Cairo has issued a fatwa that carrying another woman's baby or becoming pregnant through a sperm donor contradicts Islamic law. It is also un-Islamic for a woman to use her husband's frozen sperm to get pregnant after his death.

24/4/01 Yemen bans human rights publication
The first issue of a new monthly human rights publication was removed from sale. The Information Ministry said it breached the Press Law but gave no details.

24/4/01 86^th anniversary of mass killings marked
Tens of thousands of mourners gathered at Yerevan's genocide memorial to 1.5 million Armenians to remember the beginning of the Ottoman Empire's campaign to force them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923. The only way they could save themselves was to escape to Russia or to convert to Islam.
5 Apl A UN human rights investigator says that torture is widespread in Azerbaijan. President Heyder Aliyev will set up a working group to investigate the charges.

24/4/01 Attacks on Serbs must end
UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said attacks by ethnic Albanian groups (mainly Muslims) in an attempt to ethnically cleanse Kosovo against the Serb minority (Christians) must end.
19/4/01 A bomb went off on Wednesday in Pristina killing one Serb and injuring 4 others.
28/4/01 Eight Macedonian soldiers were killed on Saturday by machine guns and rocket launchers near the village of Vejec. Macedonia is under international pressure to make concessions to ethnic Albanians who make up about 30 per cent of the population.

14/4/01 Islamic militant group claims responsibility for Kashmir deaths
Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked Lolab on Saturday. Five members of one family were killed and at a village in Udhampur district Gulam Hussain, his wife and three children were shot dead.
24/4/01 A boy was among 11 people killed throughout Kashmir on Tuesday.
22/4/01 One civilian was killed and 10 wounded when a bomb planted in a push cart near a police station in Sopore went off on Sunday.
25/4/01 One woman was seriously injured when militants hurled a grenade into a house near Srinigar on Wednesday.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in separatist violence in the Himalayan region since 1990.

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31 July, 2001

12 July Iranian woman stoned to death
Maryam Ayyubi, in her early thirties, was stoned to death in Tehran's Evin prison at dawn on Wednesday. The sentence was in accordance with the Sharia, Islamic law, punishment for adultery. According to reports she was also guilty of murdering her husband and her accomplice, her cousin, was sentenced to hanging.
HRAIC considers stoning to be a cruel, barbaric punishment in contravention of the UN UDHR and asks the reason for the double standard in Iran. Prophet Muhammad applied Rajam (stoning to death) to men and women alike.
In May a woman who had been waiting in death row for 8 years was stoned to death for taking part in a pornographic film.
21/7/01 Sixteen men were publicly flogged with 80 lashes each in Darband Square, Tehran on Friday for consuming alcohol and nine others were given 70 lashes for selling and transporting it.
9 July Nineteen newspapers and magazines have been closed down since April.

22/7/01 Two churches bombed in Indonesia
Islamists are blamed for the bombing of two churches in Jakarta. One Protestant church was empty but Mass was being celebrated in the Roman Catholic Santa Anna cathedral. Fifty-nine people were injured including two who lost limbs.
Last Christmas Eve, 17 people were killed in a series of bombings of churches in Jakarta and other cities.
21/7/01 since Independence, Pancasila, the principle that Indonesia not be a sectarian religious state, has been enshrined in the Constitution. Now it seems that Aceh will be allowed to impose Sharia. HRAIC sees this as a step backward to Seventh Century Arabia.

11 July '01 Sixth Anniversary of Srebrenica
Over 7,000 Muslims, mainly men and boys, were killed after the enclave fell to Bosnian Serb forces on 11/7/95. The International War Crimes Tribunal has indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander General Ratko Mladic but they remain at large. Although opposed to Izetbegovic attempts to turn Bosnia into an Islamic state, HRAIC sees genocide and ethnic cleansing as a blot on humanity.
13/7/01 The remains of 3 US citizens, brothers Agron, Mehmet and Yli Bytyqi of New York have been found in a mass grave in eastern Serbia. The bodies were blindfolded, their hands tied with wire and were in civilian clothes. They had been killed some time after June 27, 1999 by Milosevic forces.
20/7/01 Bosnian Muslim rebel leader, Fikret Abdic has been charged in a Croatian court with the killing of 121 civilians in 1995.

31 July '01 Religion to blame for Middle East Intransigence
Islamic Jihad (Holy War) is training boys as young as 12 to be suicide bombers and guarantee themselves a place in heaven. Desperately short of funds, Arafat now is forced to accept money and weapons from Iranian-backed Hezbollah (Party of Allah). This together with his refusal to detain activists from Hamas (Islamic Resistance) and Islamic Jihad is losing support from those of us who would welcome a Palestinian state.
Although only a relatively small minority, Jewish extremists linked to the outlawed group Kach, have been attacking innocent Arab civilians. On Tisha B'Av, celebrated by Jewish Orthodox, Israeli police had to prevent an ultra-religious group from planting a cornerstone for a future Jewish temple at the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque. Jewish temples were destroyed at the Temple Mount in 586 BCE and 70 CE.

10 July '01 Five charged in Moscow apartment bombs
Five men from the Caucusus who fought alongside Chechen Islamists have been charged with transporting explosives to Moscow which were used in the bombings that killed more than 200 people in 1999.
In May two men were given life sentences for the Buinaksk bombings which killed 64 people. The explosions and raids into Dagestan were given as the reasons for Russia sending troops into Chechnya.
31/7/01 Russian commandos stormed a bus hijacked by 2 Chechen rebels and rescued the 25 civilians on board. One hijacker was shot dead.
11 July '01 General Vladimir Moltensky, Russian commander in Chechnya, has attacked his troops for abuses they carried out during an operation last week, in response to a rebel landmine which killed five Russian soldiers. He said troops would have to rebuild destroyed houses and provide people with food to compensate for their actions.

13/7/01 Afghanistan's Taliban bans Internet
The Taliban has banned the use of the Internet in areas they control because of anti-Islamic material and immorality and obscenity. However there are very few computers in the country and most areas do not have electricity. Those who can afford to, including foreign aid agencies log on through Pakistan ISPs and telephone lines.
21/7/01 The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said that Osama bin Laden should be praised for his services to Afghanistan and Islam. He is wanted by the United States for masterminding the bombing of 2 US embassies in Africa that killed 224 people in 1998.

11 July '01 "Talaq, talaq, talaq", your'e divorced
A precedent for text message divorces was set last month in Dubai when a 26 y.o. woman was divorced by her husband by mobile phone. Under Islamic law, a Muslim man who wants a divorce merely says "I divorce you" three times. It is much more difficult for a Muslim woman to divorce her husband. Prophet Muhammad gave the reason that there are times of the month when women have impaired judgment.
A senior Malaysian cleric, Hashim Yahyah, has agreed with the ruling but Azalina Othman, head of the women's wing of UMNO has called on the Malaysian government not to validate it.
13/7/01 Religious police raid hotel rooms, bars, nightclubs to nab Muslims who are violating syariah (Sharia) laws. Malaysia's version of Sharia is more tolerant say than Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan or Iran where Islamic law is strictly enforced. But khalwat, "close proximity", for example being in a hotel room, parked car, etc. can bring Muslims two years in jail and a fine of $790.
A Muslim man who misses Friday prayers 3 weeks in a row can be jailed for up to 6 months. Violating Ramadan by eating, drinking or smoking in public during the day can bring one year's jail. Adultery and homosexuality can bring a $1315 fine, a whipping and 3 years' prison. "Behaving in an indecent manner in a public place", e.g. hugging or holding hands can bring 6 months' jail.
Malaysian identity cards now list the holder's religion and a Muslim man who has the maximum of 4 wives (Women cannot have more than one husband) has 4 ID's each with a picture of a wife to more easily enforce khalwat.
10 July '01 The Democratic Action Party (DAP) says it will not compromise with PAS (Parti Islam se-Malaysia) in its objection to an Islamic state. Almost half the population is non-Muslim and Sharia must not replace civil law.
22/7/01 Music by groups found to be "preaching anti-God messages" will be banned over radio and television. On Thursday, Kedah police detained two black metal leaders.

27/7/01 Cyprus marks invasion anniversary
Greek Cypriots remembered with grief the 27^th anniversary of the Turkish invasion with sirens blaring at the time of the landing, 5:20 am. Several thousand Greek Cypriots were killed or went missing.
9 July A Turkish prisoner has starved to death, becoming the 28^th person to die in a hunger strike protesting new maximum security prisons with cells that isolate inmates.
31/7/01 The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Turkey had not violated the rights of a banned pro-Islamic party (Welfare Party) by ordering its dissolution in 1998. The European court ruled the Welfare Party wanted to establish Islamic law which "was in marked contrast to the values embedded in the (European) Convention".

31/7/01 Egyptian feminist cleared of apostasy
An Egyptian court has dismissed the attempts by an Islamic lawyer to force a prominent feminist writer and her husband to divorce over comments she made about Islam. Nawal el-Saadawi , 70, denies she has deserted Islam, but merely wants to reform it. She was the first to come out against female genital mutilation, which is still practised by more than half the population. She wants to change Islamic inheritance laws, whereby women receive only half that of a man - for example in 30 per cent of Egyptian families it is the woman who is the main breadwinner. She is opposed to the practice of veiling and says that the Haj, pilgrimage to Mecca, is left over from pagan days.
Had it been proven that she was no longer a Muslim, she would have had to divorce her husband of 37 years.
18/7/01 More than 80 suspected homosexuals were arrested in May during a police raid on a floating night club on the Nile. Because Egyptian law does not expressly prohibit homosexuality, the men are being tried in a state security court for "propagating extremist ideas" and debauchery. They appeared in court in handcuffs, their names published in newspapers and one Islamic paper has called for their execution.

21/7/01 Hindu pilgrims killed in Kashmir
Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba has been blamed for a grenade attack on an annual hindu pilgrimage to the Amarnath shrine in the Himalayas. Seven pilgrims, two policemen guarding the route, four porters and one militant dressed as a Hindu priest were killed. More than 100,000 Hindus have performed the pilgrimage so far this year. Last year 31 pilgrims were killed.
22/7/01 Islamic militants raided Cheerji village pulling 15 Hindus out from their homes and killing them.
21/7/01 More than 3.3 million children aged from 5 to 14 years work in Pakistan. Almost half of these are less than 9 years and work in chemical plants, tanneries, brickmaking, construction sites and carpet-making.
13/7/01 Human Rights Watch accused Pakistan of defying UN sanctions by continuing to send arms and ammunition to the hardline Taliban army in Afghanistan.

10 July '01 Embassy bomber convicted
Khalfan Khamis Mohamed was given a sentence of life in prison without parole for his part in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Tanzania which killed 11 people. Mohamed was involved in a prison attack which left guard Louis Pepe with permanent brain damage.
10 July Thirteen Islamists have been charged with making and possessing explosives to use against Western and Israeli targets in jordan.
13/7/01 Mokhtar Haouri, 32, has been convicted in a NY court of a plot to bomb the LA International Airport in December 1999.
12 July Mohamed Bensakhria, an Algerian, has been extradited from Spain to France to face charges of plotting to bomb the European Parliament in Strasbourg/.

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31 August, 2001

24/8/01 Islamist murders continue in Algeria
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) has been blamed for the death of 17 travellers near Mohammedia, Algeria.
14/8/01 Another 17 farmers had their throats slashed at a false road-block near Ouled-Bouaja on Tuesday. On Saturday night nine people were killed - four sleeping people in one house and five, including four children in another cottage.
29/8/01 The GIA and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat have infiltrated the capital and on Wednesday a bomb exploded in the Bab-el-Oued district, near the Casbah, injuring 34 people, five seriously.
The Islamic groups are fighting for a Sharia state where Allah reigns supreme. Over 100,000 Algerians have died since the uprising began in 1992.

Public whippings intensify in Iran
14/8/01 A thousand people in Vali-e-Asr Square, Tehran watched 14 men each receive 80 lashes for drinking alcohol. Blood flowed from their bare backs as they were being flogged. Women who flout Islamic morals are whipped in detention centres.
At least 9 mass public floggings in Tehran have been held since July, not only for alcohol but for distributing Western music CD's and being alone with women who were not their relatives. On July 20, 45 men were publicly whipped in Darband Square in a 3 hour orgy of torture. They were laid across a table with their hands tied to its legs.
Hardliners are worried as young couples start to walk around hand-in-hand. The Islamic conservatives who won less than a quarter of the votes in the June election control the judiciary, defence forces and the media. More than 40 reformist newspapers have been closed and dozens of journalists, students and political activists jailed.
29/8/01 Leading film director, Tahmineh Milani, has been jailed. Her latest film, "The Hidden Half" is said to contain feminist and left-wing views.

11/8/01 Kashmir Islamists target schoolgirls
Lashkar Jabbar is enforcing Muslim dress code, with veils, headgear and no cosmetics.
Kulsooma, a 15 year-old high school girl was hospitalized in Srinagar with serious face burns after Islamists threw acid in her face on Aug. 7. Two teachers also were attacked with acid. Attendance at girls schools has dropped 40 per cent since the attacks.
23/8/01 Two Hindu shepherds were shot dead in Luddu district and their livestock taken away. Another two Hindus were killed in Mahu Mangat. Earlier this month 15 Hindu shepherds were killed in Doda. Doda is 60 per cent Muslim.
25/8/01 Three members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba were killed in an attack on a Jammu police station. Six police and a civilian died in the assault. In another incident a member of a village defence commitee and his wife were killed in their house.
28/8/01 Two Hindu priests were beheaded in their temple at Poonch by Islamists. Five members of a Muslim family were killed early on Tuesday for refusing to supply food to the militants.
7/8/01 Three gunmen opened fire at Jammu station killing 11 passengers and wounding 23 others. Jammu is mainly Hindu.
29/8/01 A remotely-controlled landmine hit a bus near Ashmuqam killing 5 soldiers and 2 civilians. About 12 people were injured.
India accuses Muslim Pakistan of arming, training and funding the guerillas. Pakistan denies this and says it only gives them moral support.

10/8/01 Fourteen Israelis killed by "martyr"
Devout Muslim and member of Hamas, Izzedine al-Masri, 23, wandered into the packed Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and detonated explosives strapped to his body. Friends and relatives congratulated his smiling father.
No doubt Israel will retaliate and the cycle of violence will go on. Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not want peace and their aim is to push Israelis into the sea. We support a Palestinian state but it must respect the statehood of Israel.

24/8/01 India charges Osama bin Laden
Islamist, Osama bin Laden has been implicated by a Sudanese defendant, charged with possessing 13 pounds of explosives, detonators and timers, of being behind a plot to bomb the US Embassy in New Delhi. Two Muslim Indians, a Yemeni and a Saudi Arabian have also been charged. The United States accuses bin Laden of planning the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

11/8/01 Eight aid workers arrested for "preaching Christianity"
Four Germans, two Americans and two Australians have been arrested in Kabul, Afghanistan for attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity. The Taliban showed seized Bibles and Christian films and literature that had been translated into the local Dari language. Afghan nationals have been also arrested and if found guilty could be sentenced to death. It is not certain whether the foreigners could also be executed or whether they would be jailed and/or expelled from the country.

14/8/01 Musharraf bans two Pakistani religious groups
President Pervez Musharraf has summoned up courage to ban two extremist groups responsible for hundreds of deaths in recent years. They were the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a violent Sunni group whose leader is believed to be hiding in nearby Afghanistan and the Sipah-e-Mohammed, a Shiite group. They attack each others' mosques, funerals and assassinate each others' clerics and activists.
Musharraf also warned two other groups, Sipah-e-Sahaba, a militant Sunni group and Tehrik-e-Jaffra, an extremist Shiite Muslim organization to mend their ways. Propagation of hatred and violence is "not on".
27/8/01 A mosque of the Ahmedi sect has been burnt to the ground. Over two dozen Ahmedis were arrested for their own protection. The Ahmedi were barred from Islam 25 years ago because they believe that Muhammad may not be the last prophet.
24/8/01 Aid workers in Pakistan are calling for more shelters for women affected by domestic violence. Some action is being taken and recently a husband was jailed for 14 years for cutting off his wife's nose, ears and gouging out both eyes.

4 Aug., 2001 Muslim guerillas behead ten Christians
Ten decapitated bodies have been found near Lamitan, southern Philippines. Abu Sayyaf rebels, fighting for an Islamic homeland, abducted 36 people in a raid on Basilan island. They also burned down a school-house in Lo-oh near Balobo. They claim to have beheaded an American, Guillermo Sobero, from Corona, Calif.
The group collected millions of dollars in ransom money last year and now are financially independent of Osama bin Laden.
28/8/01 Rev. Rufus Halley, an Irish missionary was shot through the head by masked gunmen while riding his motor-cycle home to Malabang village, southern Philippines.
25/8/01 A 5 y-o child and 5 adults were killed when Islamists fired on a jeep in the village of Cabcaban, Basilan island.

1 Aug. '01 Islamists to be retried in Egypt
Coptic Christian trust in the Egyptian justice system was restored somewhat when the Supreme court ordered a retrial of defendants for violence from 31 Dec 1999 to 2 Jan 2000. Twenty Christians and one Muslim were killed in the village of Dar-el-Salam, 440 km S of Cairo. Four Muslims had earlier been jailed but none for murder.
28/8/01 Mahmoud Jaballah, an Egyptian teacher in a Muslim school in Toronto has been shown by Canadian intelligence to be a member of terrorist group al-Jihad, linked to Osama bin Laden. He had been claiming asylum in Canada, saying that he had been persecuted and tortured for "his strong religious beliefs".

10 Aug. '01 Macedonia: A clash of cultures
Thousands of Macedonian Slavs in Prilep mourned the deaths of ten army reservists who had only been drafted last week. Grief turned into anger against the ethnic Albanian rebels and a mosque was burnt down. Most ethnic Albanians are Muslim.
Ethnic Albanians make up nearly one-third of the population and one of their demands is that all official documents be in both languages. This seems reasonable but Slavs say that 90 per cent of ethnic Albanians speak Macedonian and they would have to learn the Albanian language which bears no resemblance to their Slavic one.

4 Aug. '01 Malaysia nets Islamic terrorist group
So far Malaysia has arrested ten members of the militant religious group KMM (Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia) including one PAS branch chief.
KMM members underwent training as mujahid (holy warriors) in Afghanistan. They are held responsible for the murder of MP, Dr Joe Fernandez last year, the bombing of a church and a Hindu temple, and the attack on the Guar Chempedak police station on Feb. 4.
KMM says that the syariah laws in Malaysia do not go far enough. What do they want? Whippings, amputations, stoning to death, beheading for apostasy?
4/8/01 Malaysia has barred heavy metal from radio and TV. Foreign groups will have to provide videotapes of projected concerts before they are allowed to perform.

13/8/01 Nigerian woman sentenced to 100 lashes
Aminah Abdullahi has been sentenced to a whipping by a Sharia court in Gusau, Zamfara state, northern Nigeria for having an extra-marital affair.

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September 11, 2001

Pilot Mohammed Atta and Prophet Muhammad

Islam's inhumanity to man.
"Some people from the tribe of 'Ukl came to the Prophet and embraced Islam. The climate of Medina did not suit them, so the Prophet ordered them to go to the camels of charity and to drink, their milk and urine (as a medicine). They did so, and after they had recovered from their ailment they turned renegades (reverted from Islam) and killed the shepherd of the camels and took the camels away. The Prophet sent (some people) in their pursuit and so they were (caught and) brought, and the Prophet ordered that their hands and legs should be cut off and that their eyes should be branded with heated pieces of iron, and that their cut hands and legs should not be cauterized, till they die. " Sahih Bukhari, Book 8, 82: 794, purchased from the Park Holme Mosque, SA.

This was only one of hundreds of atrocities committed by Prophet Muhammad. Yet he is said to be the "role model for all mankind for all time to come" ! Sick men like Pilot Mohammed Atta, who flew the first plane into the World Trade Centre, have been poisoned by Hadith like this and cruel verses in the Qur'an A copy of the Qur'an was found in his luggage left behind at Boston Airport.

Misinformation
At least two articles appeared in the Australian press giving false information. James Murray (Weekend Australian, 22/9/01) and Peter Hackett (Advertiser 6/10/01) both gave the views that the Qur'an has a message of peace and tolerance! Here are some verses:

"The Jews, the Christians and the Pagans will burn for ever in the Fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures." (98:6) - (Chapter98, Verse 6)

(Qur'an 48:29) "Those who follow Muhammad are merciless for the unbelievers but kind to each other."

Qur'an (60:4) "Enmity and hatred will reign between us until ye believe in Allah alone."

Qur'an (8:39) (2:193) "Make war on them until idolatory does not exist any longer and Allah's religion reigns universally."

Qur'an (9:123) "Fight the unbelievers in your surroundings, and let them find harshness in you."

Qur'an (9:5) "Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them, capture and besiege them and prepare for them every kind of ambush."

Qur'an (5:72-73) "For he who believes in the Trinity, "the Fire will be his abode … a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemer."

The Nature of Hell

Qur'an (17:97), "On the Day of Judgement, We shall gather them all together prone on their faces, blind, dumb and deaf: their abode will be Hell and we shall increase for them the fierceness of the Fire."

Qur'an(22:19) "Those who deny Me, for them will be cut out a garment of Fire."

Qur'an(22:21) "In addition there will be maces of iron to punish them."

Qur'an (40:72) "By chains they will be dragged along in boiling, fetid fluid."

Qur'an (9:110) "Their hearts will be cut to pieces."

Qur'an (40:18) "Their hearts will come right up to their throats to choke them."

Qur'an (88:6-7) "No food will be there for them but bitter Dari which will neither nourish nor satisfy hunger."

Qur'an (37:62-66) "The Tree of Zaqqum, at the bottom of Hellfire, the fruit therof will cut their entrails."

Qur'an (18:29) "Water like melted brass that will scald their faces. How dreadful the drink!"

Qur'an (38:57) ... "and a fluid dark, murky, intensely cold ... taste it."

Qur'an (11:106) "Those … in the Fire will be … nothing but the heaving of sighs and sobs."

Qur'an (7:179) "Many are the Jinns and men We have made for Hell."

Qur'an (6:44) "We opened to them the gates of all good things (Paradise) … on a sudden We called them to account (Hell) and they were plunged in despair."

Qur'an (9:35) "On the Day that heat will be produced out of that (gold and silver) in the Fire of Hell and with it will be branded their foreheads, their flanks and their backs."

Qur'an (44:47-48) "Drag him into the midst of the Blazing Fire" Then pour over his head the Penalty of Boiling Water."

Qur'an (72:23) "For any that disobey Allah and his Messenger - for them Hell: they shall remain therein for ever."

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31 October, 2001

Waging War on Women

(by RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women, http://www.rawa.org)

Taliban restrictions and mistreatment of women include the ...

Ban on women's activity outside the home, which also applies to women teachers, engineers and most professionals. Only a few female doctors and nurses are allowed to work in some hospitals in Kabul.

Ban on women's activity outside the home unless accompanied by a mahram (close male relative such as a father, brother or husband).

Ban on women dealing with male shopkeepers.

Ban on women being treated by male doctors.

Ban on women studying at schools, universities or other educational institution. (The Taliban has converted girls' schools into religious seminaries)

Requirement that women wear a long veil, which covers them from head to toe.

Whipping, beating and verbal abuse of women not clothed in accordance with Taliban rules, or of women unaccompanied by a mahram.

Whipping of women in public for not having their ankles covered.

Public stoning of women accused of having sex outside of marriage. (A number of lovers have been stoned to death under this rule.)

Ban on the use of cosmetics. (Many women with painted nails have had fingers cut off.)

Ban on women talking or shaking hands with non-mahram males.

Ban on women laughing loudly. (No stranger should hear a woman's voice.)

Ban on women wearing high-heeled shoes. (A man must not hear a woman's footsteps.)

Ban on women riding in a taxi without a mahram.

Ban on women's presence in radio, television or public gatherings of any kind.

Ban on women playing sports or entering a sports centre or club.

Ban on women riding bicycles or motorcycles, even with a mahram.

Ban on women wearing brightly colored clothes. In Taleban terms, these are "sexually attracting colours."

Ban on women gathering for festive occasions or for any recreational purpose.

Ban on women washing clothes next to rivers or in a public place.

Modification of all place names including the word "women". For example, "women's garden" has been renamed "spring garden".

Ban on women appearing on the balconies of their apartments or houses.

Forced painting of all windows, so women cannot be seen from outside their homes.

Ban on male tailors taking women's measurements or sewing women's clothes.

Ban on female public baths.

Ban on females and males travelling on the same bus. Public buses have now been designated "males only" or "females only".

Ban on flared (wide) pant-legs, even under a burqa.

Ban on the photographing or filming of women. [For example wedding photos.]

Ban on women's pictures printed in newspapers and books, or being on the walls of houses and shops.

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30 November, 2001

Nigerian woman to be stoned to death

A 35 year-old divorcee, Safiyatu Husaini, has been sentenced to be stoned to death in Sokoto state, northern Nigeria. Some residents in her village of Tungan Tudu reported the case to the police when they discovered that Miss Husaini was pregnant.
Her cousin, Yahaya Abubakar, 60, admitted to police that he had sex with her three times. However, he was acquitted as only 3 policemen heard his confession and 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 Husaini has weaned the eight-month baby girl that resulted from the affair.

What can we do to save her?

Send a message to President Olusegun Obasanjo of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Ask him to intervene in the affairs of Sokoto state. Nigeria itself is earning the disrespect of the world for the implementation of Sharia (Islamic) laws introduced in the last two years in the northern states. Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes between Christians and Muslims after the introduction of Sharia in the north. A teen-age mother Bariya Ibrahim Magazu was given 80 lashes early this year for the lesser crime of fornication (pre-marital sex). Two people found guilty of theft have had their hands cut off in Zamfara and Sokoto states.
Cruel and unusual punishments are in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Nigeria is a signatory. Remember to be polite. President Obasanjo is not responsible for the introduction of Sharia, but he must do all in his power to have barbaric practices such as stoning, whipping and amputation of limbs removed from state laws.

His email address is president.obasanjo@nigeriagov.org

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23 December, 2001

Shoe bomber thwarted

Evil and not too bright

Twenty-eight year old Briton, Robert Reid was restrained by other passengers when he tried to ignite explosives in his shoes on an American Airlines flight from Roissy, France to Miami on December 23.

He was converted to Islam while serving time in Feltham Young Offenders' Institute for a series of muggings. (The visiting imam from Brixton Mosque has since been suspended for inflammatory speeches against the West.)
After five years appearing as a normal Muslim, Reid moved to Pakistan and is thought to have spent time in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Belgium, Netherlands, France and possibly Afghanistan. He is known to have been on good terms with Zacarias Moussaoui, who would have been the 20^th hijacker on September 11, had he not been arrested on immigration charges.;

16/1/02 Mr Reid is alleged to have received training from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan and gone under the name of “Brother Abdul Rauf”. Much of his travel was spent identifying targets for al-Qaeda.

19/1/02 Apparently he sent several emails before the event stating he would die as a “martyr in the cause of Islam”.

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Archives 2001 Left Shoe News

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)

Jan…Feb…Mar…Apr…Jul…Aug…Sep…Oct…Nov…Dec

September 11, 2001

Pilot Mohammed Atta and Prophet Muhammad

31 October, 2001

30 November, 2001

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)