British
National
Party
Anti-Jihad News Bulletin w/c August 20th, 2007
Subscribe to this and other BNP
News Bulletins here http://www.bnp.org.uk/mailing_list.htm
No sign up required, just give your email address, that's
all.
1. DUTCH MP CALLS FOR BAN ON
QURAN
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FAEC4703-83E2-44DA-9DA4-1A7702C354C1.htm
A Dutch member of parliament has called for the Quran to
be banned in the Netherlands, describing it as a "fascist
book" which calls on people to kill non-believers and
rape women. Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom
Party, called for the ban in a letter published in De Volkskrant
newspaper. In his letter, Wilders compares the Muslim holy
book to Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler's autobiography, and said
the Quran has "no place in our constitutional state".
"I have been saying this for years: there is no such
thing as a moderate Islam," Wilders wrote. Wilders'
Freedom Party holds nine seats in the Netherlands' 150 seat
parliament.
Call for ban
Wilders also said several chapters in the Quran "call
on Muslims to oppress, persecute or kill Christians, Jews,
dissidents and non-believers, to beat and rape women and
to establish an Islamic state by force". The publication
of the letter comes after a weekend attack on Eshan Jami,
a young Dutch politician, who established a group to support
people who have renounced Islam. Jami, who was not visibly
injured in the attack, is now under police protection as
is Wilders. "Ban this wretched book like Mein Kampf
is banned! Send a signal to Jami's attackers and other Islamic
radicals that the Quran cannot be used in the Netherlands
as an inspiration or an excuse for violence," Wilders
said. Wilders acknowledged that his plan would not receive
majority support in the Dutch parliament. "I am fed
up with Islam in the Netherlands: no more Muslim immigrants
allowed. I am fed up with the worship of Allah and Muhammad
in the Netherlands: no more mosques," his letter concluded.
2. MUSLIM RULE IN NIGERIAN STATE
"CHOKES" CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
Islam is not a religion that teaches tolerance and there
is no such a thing as a tolerant Muslim.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017177.php
For Kebbi state pastor Nuhu Mamman, to become a Christian
was to have a death sentence passed on the life he knew:
converting killed his past, and his future appeared moribund
as family, friends and fiancée abandoned him. My
Muslim blood relations dont like me they dislike
and keep away from my family as if we are a plague to be
avoided, Rev. Mamman said. They hate us because
we have abandoned Islam. Our predicament has even been made
worse as even Christians from other non-Muslim communities
still dont trust us. They believe that we are still
Muslims despite our conversion to Christianity. This is
very tough on us. Rev. Mamman, from the Hausa ethnic
group of Kebbi state, says persecution of Christians is
widespread in the state. In the northern part of Kebbi
state, Christians face serious difficulties, he told
Compass. We are always being forced to transfer former
Muslims who have become Christians to other parts of this
country in order to shield them from persecution.
The church works hard to protect converts to Christianity
from Muslim extremist attacks. After Adamu Muhammed, a Muslim
from the town of Birnin Kebbi, became a Christian in 1997,
Muslim radicals sought to kill him. As they hunted for him,
Rev. Mamman said, the church moved him to Jos in central
Nigeria, where he became a Bible student. In 2003, Rev.
Mamman added, a Muslim named Ibrahim Jega from Jega town
converted to Christianity. His family members and
other Muslims threatened to kill him, Rev. Mamman
said. We were forced to take him to Zuru town for
safety. Another convert from Islam to Christianity, Mohammed
Abara from Sabon Birni town, also had to be taken to Pisabu
by us in order to save his life. Of course, such actions
follow the orders of Muhammad himself: baddala deenahu faqtuhu
-- "If anyone changes his religion, kill him"
(Sahih Bukhari 9.84.57). Equally difficult is obtaining
places for converts from Islam to worship. Even if
we succeed in getting land to provide such converts with
places of worship, Muslims who are in government will not
allow us build such churches, said Rev. Mamman, who
was ordained an ECWA minister in 1994. Whenever we
go to renew our land documents or even pay land rent for
our church lands, Muslim government officials usually refuse
to accept such payments, he said. But then,
this is deliberate, as after a period of time they usually
declare our church buildings as illegal structures, just
to find reasons to demolish our places of worship.
As one example of arbitrary demolitions of places of Christian
worship in the state, Rev. Mamman cited the destruction
of a church in Danbargo village by government agents. In
Danbargo village of Shanga Local Government Area, almost
all the villagers last year decided to become Christians
after listening to the gospel preached to them, he
said. We built a place of worship for these Christians,
but the local government council authority of Shanga demolished
this church building. Rev. Mamman said the local council
also told the Christian villagers that if they refused to
recant their belief in Christ and return to Islam, the government
would seize their farms. Without any visible means
of surviving this attack, he said, these Christians
in Danbargo village went back to Islam. The Rev. Adamu
Sunday Peni, vice chairman of the Christian Association
of Nigeria, Kebbi state chapter, told Compass that lack
of land for building places of worship along with
forceful conversion of Christians to Islam and discrimination
against Christian public workers is among the most
pressing problems Christians face.
3. PUNJAB: DANGEROUS
TO SAY JESUS IS SON OF GOD
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=9706&size=A
It is dangerous to say that Christ is the son of God because
this declaration hurts the feelings of many Pakistani
Muslims who do not want to hear such things,
even in Christian Churches. This warning was delivered
by some residents of Punjab to local Christian congregations
who should immediately stop their prayers to the supposed
son of God. It was Charles Hamilton, a Christian from
Faisalabad, who told AsiaNews about this: We believe
in Jesus, son of God. How can we renounce this belief? Whats
more, if we bow to this request, not only will we go against
our religious values, we will pave the way for more conditions
to be imposed on us, which would destroy us. Anti-Christian
violence is on the rise in Pakistan: recently, a mob of
about 40 Muslims attacked Christians when they were preparing
for an evangelistic meeting organized by the Salvation Army
Church. Despite police reassurances, the perpetrators (who
injured seven people who had come for the meeting) have
not been brought to book for the violence. All the same,
there are also positive aspects in the relationship between
the two communities. Faizur Rehman, one of the leaders of
the Islamic community, apologized for the incidents targeting
Christians. In a written document, Rehman said: There
will be no more denominational incidents and we apologise
for what happened. Christians should feel secure in their
faith.
4. SAUDI RELIGIOUS POLICE SPUR
GROWING BACKLASH
http://washingtontimes.com/article/20070702/FOREIGN/107020069/1001
After the car stopped outside a Riyadh amusement park, two
bearded men dragged the driver from behind the wheel and
took the three women on a wild ride of more than an hour,
bouncing over sidewalks and finally abandoning them on a
darkened street. The women at first thought they had been
kidnapped by terrorists. But the two men said instead that
they were religious police. It might have gone down as just
one more excess of zealousness by the forces charged with
upholding Islamic modesty, except that Umm Faisal, the oldest
of the three women, did something that is thought to be
unprecedented in Saudi Arabia: She went to court. Today,
four years after the incident, the latest chapter of the
legal battle being waged by this 50-year-old mother of five
reopens before Riyadh's Grievances Court, which handles
damages suits for abuses by government and public figures.
The unusual publicity surrounding Umm Faisal's story comes
after two Saudi men died while in religious police custody
one arrested for reportedly consuming alcohol, another
for being alone with a woman not of his family. Last week,
a trial opened against three religious police officers and
a fourth man in the death of Ahmed al-Bulaiwi, the man detained
for being alone with a woman. Relatives demanded the death
penalty against the defendants. Taken together, the cases
could undermine the authority of the force's employer, the
powerful, independent body called the Commission for the
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of ViceSince the
commission's creation more than 60 years ago, there has
been no known public legal action taken against its members,
despite complaints they occasionally overstep their boundaries.
The prevailing view tends to be that whatever their faults,
they are acting in Islam's name to defend morality.
But things may be changing.
The National Society for Human Rights, a nongovernmental
body, has issued a report which, according to the daily
Arab News, charges the religious police with abusive language,
unsubstantiated accusations, humiliation of people during
interrogation, beatings, unnecessary body searches, forced
entry into private homes and coerced confessions. The report,
as well as the media coverage of the cases and editorials
calling for the commission's reform, suggest the government
may act to regulate the force. Another setback for the commission
came in the appointed Consultative Council, the nearest
thing to a parliament in Saudi Arabia. It rejected proposals
to build more commission centers and give members a 20-percent
salary raise. While the council's actions are not binding,
they reflect a general desire to curb the religious police's
power. "Society has developed and the relationship
of other governmental bodies with the people has developed
and become more human," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi
journalist. "Yet the commission has not changed."
Several news outlets have conducted informal surveys asking
Saudis whether the commission should be dissolved. Some
have said yes. The polls may be unscientific, but simply
asking the question is significant. Ibrahim al-Ghaith, the
commission's head, dismissed the polls, saying the commission
is "one of the oldest governmental agencies ... and
not a cooperative that can be eliminated because of individual
mistakes," according to Al Jazeera. The Saudi government
is reluctant to tamper with religious establishments for
fear of angering Muslim hard-liners and weakening its credentials
as custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines. The hard-line
impulse is illustrated by a recent request from 14 faculty
members of King Saud University's medical school to ban
male students from treating women and vice versa, on the
grounds that handling bodies of the other sex is un-Islamic.
Umm Faisal her full name is withheld in reports on
the case says she, her 21-year-old daughter and her
Indonesian maid went to pick up her two teenage sons from
the amusement park in the family's new Chevrolet Caprice.
"I kept asking the men, 'Are you terrorists?' They
finally said they were members of the commission,"
she said. "When I asked what they wanted, they called
me names, including adulteress." Umm Faisal said the
men drove so fast that smoke came out of the car. The men
stopped the car, called their friends and asked them to
pick them up. The women, who don't know how to drive (and
can't under Saudi law), were left to the mercies of passers-by.
Umm Faisal lodged a complaint. She said the commission members
claimed they were "indecently covered" because
her daughter's veil didn't cover her eyes. In early 2004,
she filed suit at Riyadh's General Court, but says several
judges pressed her to drop it and late last year the case
was dismissed. She then turned to the Grievances Court,
which fined one official $540 for mistreating the women
and acquitted the other. Umm Faisal isn't satisfied, and
her appeal opens before the court today.
5. CHRISTIANS FEAR ATTACKS IN
PAKISTAN AS FORCES CLASH WITH ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/christians.fear.
attacks.in.pakistan.as.forces.clash.with.islamic.extremists/11437.htm
Christian representatives in Pakistan are calling for urgent
prayer to prevent a feared backlash against Christians following
clashes between security forces and Islamist militants in
the capital. At least seven people have died after a tense
standoff erupted into violence at the Lal Masjid mosque
in the capital Islamabad. The mosque is linked with two
Madrassas (Islamic schools). Militant students have been
calling for strict Islamic law and have been accused of
carrying out kidnappings in the area. They are armed with
assault rifles, sticks and petrol bombs. Persecution watchdog
Release International has been told by its contacts that
thousands of extremists have been drawn to the mosque, including
women and children who are calling for a jihad. They warn
that if the authorities continue shooting they will start
suicide bombing across Pakistan. Partners of Release International,
which serves the persecuted church worldwide, fear that
the anger of militants will spill over into attacks against
the Christian community. They are calling for prayer. Whenever
there is any incident against Muslims, Christians are always
held liable, says a spokesman for CLAAS, the Centre
for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement. The Christians
of Pakistan are in serious need of prayer. Tensions
escalated at the mosque after students kidnapped Chinese
nationals from an acupuncture clinic, accusing them of working
in a brothel. Security forces erected barricades around
the mosque before students seized guns from the police,
prompting a volley of teargas, which then led to an exchange
of gunfire, Release International reports. According to
the news agency AFP, students brandishing Kalashnikov assault
rifles stood outside the mosque chanting Jihad! Jihad!.
The Pakistan authorities are being encouraged by the international
community to clamp down on the extremists. Pakistan
is causing us great concern, said Andy Dipper, the
CEO of Release International. As the country becomes
more unstable, attacks against Christians are increasing.
Our partners CLAAS fear that Christians in Pakistan will
become the lightning rod for the anger and frustration of
extremists in the aftermath of the violence at the mosque.
Pray for calm. Pray for the Christians of Pakistan.
6. TURKEY: CONVERTS TO CHRISTIANITY
SUBJECTED TO OFFICIAL HARASSMENT
The claim that Turkey is a secular tolerant Muslim country
is a lie; democracy and Islam are incompatible. This is
why Turkey is unfit to join the EU.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017245.php
In a bizarre twist in the criminal prosecution of two Turkish
Christians for insulting Turkish identity, an
administrative district authority in Istanbul has ordered
the converts from Islam fined for illegal collection
of funds. Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal, on trial for
insulting Turkishness under the nations notorious
Article 301, were summoned to Istanbuls Beyoglu police
headquarters on Sunday morning (July 1) just before church
services began at the Taksim Protestant Church, where Tastan
is a member. Three plainclothes policemen were waiting
for me at the church, Tastan said, saying I
was wanted at the police station. With their lawyer
out of town, he telephoned Topal, and the two agreed to
go along to the police station. I thought probably
the police were acting on last weeks Interior Ministry
decree, Tastan told Compass, referring to a June 28
directive sent to all the nations governors ordering
extra security for Turkeys religious minorities in
the wake of rising violence against non-Muslims. But
it turned out to be something entirely different.
The two Christians were both presented with a separate penalty
sheet from the security police division linked to the Beyoglu
district, ordering each one to pay 600 Turkish lira (US$461)
for breaking a civil law. According to the one-page decisions,
the two men were guilty of violating section 29 of civil
administrative code 2860, which forbids the collection of
money without official permission from local district authorities.
7. TANVEER AHMED: ISLAM MUST FACE
ITS UNCONFORTABLE TRUTHS
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22005648-7583,00.html?from=newsv
The latest attack in Britain shows how the Islamist threat
is being driven by something much grander than mere foreign
policy or feelings of grievance. The perpetrators believe
they are soldiers in the perceived historical battle between
good and evil. The methods of attack are becoming more brazen,
amateurish and desperate, illustrated most profoundly by
the burning terrorist at Glasgow airport shouting "Allah"
while struggling with a policeman, but the ideological roots
are unchanged. As a commentator on Muslim affairs and home-grown
terrorism, I am often asked whether there is something in
Islam itself that is contributing to terrorist acts. As
someone who is not a theological expert, I shy away from
strong pronouncements on the issue, preferring to discuss
the sociological roots of alienation and the modern symbol
of protest that Islam has become. But the question is impossible
to avoid and I believe that theology is central and not
peripheral to the problem. It is grounded in history, but
the sparks have been generated by the information age. While
the images of poverty and war in countries such as Sudan,
Palestine or Iraq combined with the relative disadvantage
of some Muslim communities in countries such as France or
Britain may contribute to radicalisation, the foundation
for their acts lies very much in the set of ideas called
Islam. I have lost count of the number of occasions disgruntled
Muslims have responded to my writings with comments like
"Islam is peace" or "You are not a Muslim
any more". Truth be told, I was never a practising
Muslim, despite growing up in a Bangladeshi community where
religiosity was the norm. This had more to do with being
raised in a secular household and society than any great
misgivings about Islam. In fact, I often watched friends
who were able to practise a spiritual version of the religion
with envy, wishing that I could subscribe to a greater purpose
than myself. But with hindsight, I can see that what we
now call extremism was virtually the norm in the community
I grew up in. It was completely normal to view Jews as evil
and responsible for the ills of the world. It was normal
to see the liberal society around us as morally corrupt,
its stains to be avoided at all costs. It was normal to
see white girls as cheap and easy and to see the ideal of
femininity as its antithesis. These views have been pushed
to more private, personal spheres amid the present scrutiny
of Muslim communities. But they remain widespread, as research
in Britain showed earlier this year: up to 50 per cent of
British Muslims aged between 15 and 29 want to see sharia
law taken up in Britain. This needs to be seen in the light
of American data collated by the Pew Research Centre that
showed close to 80 per cent of American Muslims believed
they could move up the social ladder in the US and had no
interest in Islamic laws on a public level. Like most things
Australian, it is likely we sit somewhere between our British
and American cousins. But the threat is very real. It was
reported yesterday that up to 3000 young Muslims are at
risk of becoming radicalised in Sydney alone, according
to research by a member of the now-disbanded Muslim Community
Reference Group, Mustapha Kara-Ali. But when these views
morph into the violent political act that is terrorism,
it is very much based in theology. At its core, Islam is
deeply sceptical of the idea of a secular state. There is
no rendering unto Caesar because state and religion are
believed to be inseparable. This idea then interacts with
centuries-old edicts of Islamic jurists about how the land
of Islam should interact with the world of unbelievers,
known as dar ul-kufr. The modern radicals then take it further,
declaring that since, with the exception perhaps of Pakistan
and Iran, there are no Islamic states, the whole world is
effectively the land of the unbelievers. As a result, some
radicals believe waging war on the whole world is justified
to re-create it as an Islamic state. They go as far as reclassifying
the globe as dar ul-harb, "land of war", apparently
allowing Muslims to destroy the sanctity of the five rights
that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land,
mind and belief. In dar ul-harb, anything goes, including
the killing of civilians. While it may appear absurd to
most, this nihilistic but exclusivist world view is clearly
attracting significant numbers of young Muslims. British
police have suggested the latest attacks and foiled plots
may have involved teenagers. But the obvious absurdity of
the set of ideas is still grounded in Islam, which, regardless
of how theological experts argue, can be interpreted in
many ways. Muslim communities must openly argue precisely
what it is they fear and loathe about the West. Much of
it centres on sexuality. This is the first step in rooting
out any Muslim ambivalence about living in the West. But
thereafter, the argument must proceed rapidly to Islamic
theology and all its uncomfortable truths - from its repeated
glowing references to violence, its obsession with and revulsion
at sex and its historical antipathy to the very possibility
that reason can exist as separate from God. Tanveer Ahmed
is a Sydney-based psychiatry registrar and writer.
|