A man threw a petrol bomb through the window of a mosque west of Brussels on Monday, killing the imam and injuring a second person, Belgian newspaper La Derniere Heure reported.
The newspaper quoted police as saying a suspect was detained after the attack in Anderlecht and a large crowd of people gathered in front of the mosque. Police were not immediately reachable for comment.
Belgium has a Muslim population of about 500,000 out of a population of nearly 11 million and there are occasional acts of violence between communities, particularly in areas such as Anderlecht.
Derniere Heure said the victim, 46, was treated by emergency services at the scene but died of smoke inhalation.
In December, a gunman killed seven people in the eastern city of Liege after detonating a hand grenade and firing rifle shots into a crowd of Christmas shoppers. Continued on Page 47
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22 September 2011 - A sharia court has been established in Antwerp, Belgium, by a radical Muslim group called Sharia4Belgium.
Leaders of the group say that the purpose of the court is to create a parallel Islamic legal system in Belgium in order to challenge the states authority as enforcer of the civil law protections guaranteed by the Belgian constitution.
The sharia court, which is located in Antwerps Borgerhout district, is mediating family law disputes for Muslim immigrants in Belgium.
Legal experts say that the Islamic court will also undercut the states ability to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of so-called honour crimes. In 2007, for example, Belgium outlawed the practice of forced marriage.
Those convicted of forcing someone into marriage by violence or coercion face a prison sentence of up to two years and a fine of up to 2,500 ($3,500). This law is likely to be undermined as Muslim marriage disputes come under the jurisdiction of the sharia court.
Sharia4Belgium says that the court in Antwerp will eventually expand its remit and handle criminal cases as well.
Sharia4Belgium consists of Islamists who are committed to bring everyone living in Belgium (including all non-Muslims) under the authority of sharia. Its website issues an invitation calling for all Belgians to convert to Islam and submit to sharia or face the consequences.
The group is linked to Anjem Choudary, leader of Muslims Against Crusades, an Islamist group in England that recently announced a project to establish self-governing sharia-controlled enclaves across the United Kingdom.
In November 2010, Belgian police arrested three members of Sharia4Belgium in a counter-terrorism operation. The suspects were using the Ansar al-Mujahideen jihadist website to plan an attack on Belgian soil.
Muslims make up around 10% of Antwerps population, and the city has long been a hotbed of radical Islam. Some estimates claim that more than half of the mosques in Antwerp are controlled by radical Muslim groups, including the Deobandi sect.
The Europeans want to play a key role in the ongoing conflict with Iran over its disputed nuclear program, jumpstarting stalled negotiations in a bid to prevent Israel from taking military action. But can the EU's hapless foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who will lead the talks, make a difference?
When Catherine Margaret Ashton, also known as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, became Europe's top diplomat two years ago, even her husband Peter Kellner expressed skepticism. Upon her appointment, the British people "weren't exactly dancing in the streets," admitted Kellner, president of the YouGov international opinion polling group. Following an unpromising start, Ashton's reputation has continued in one direction: downward.
After one and a half years, the job performance of Europe's first high representative of the Union for foreign affairs and security policy -- as Ashton is officially known -- was so dismal that there was open speculation that she would be replaced. "We are slowly running out of time," warned Elmar Brok, the foreign policy spokesman for Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the European Parliament. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) at the parliament in Brussels, described Ashton's policies as "ridiculous."
The Briton, who has the "charisma of a caravan site on the Isle of Sheppey," as British journalist Rod Liddle once quipped, has endured the reproaches without complaint. When she is criticized, she dutifully takes notes. She gladly reads off prepared statements. Her strengths lie in her work behind the scenes, she asserts. When she became the EU's foreign policy chief, she said that she was not "an ego on legs," adding: "The skills I bring (are) of negotiation, of diplomacy."
Over the coming months, Ashton will have an opportunity to prove whether this is true. The top EU foreign policy representative currently faces the most difficult mission in international politics. It is her job to negotiate with Iran over its controversial nuclear program.
Continued on Page 47
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] President Nicolas Sarkozy ...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit... threatened in a key re-election campaign rally Sunday to pull La Belle France out of Europe's 25-nation visa free zone unless the EU toughens its immigration policy.
Sarkozy, who this week said La Belle France had too many foreigners, made the threat at a mass meeting which he hopes will turn the tide against front-running Socialist Francois Hollande with just 42 days to go before election day.
The so-called Schengen passport-free zone must urgently be overhauled to fight the flow of illegal immigration, said the right-wing leader, returning to a constant theme in his bid for five more years at the Elysee palace.
To chants of "Nicolas, president!" from the tens of thousands in the flag-waving audience, Sarkozy said unchecked immigration would put extra strain on social safety nets for Europe's poorest.
"In the coming 12 months, (if) there is no serious progress towards this (reforming Schengen), La Belle France would then suspend its participation in the Schengen accords until negotiations conclude," he declared.
The Schengen area is home to 400 million Europeans who can cross borders without a passport. Once inside the area, undocumented Democrats can theoretically move freely between the participating states.
Sarkozy's UMP party chartered TGV high-speed trains and fleets of buses to ferry supporters from across La Belle France for the rally in a cavernous exhibition hall in Villepinte, near Gay Paree Charles de Gaulle airport.
Sarkozy told them he also wanted the EU to introduce a "Buy European Act" based on a US measure that obliges the state to use domestically-produced products in public contracts.
He warned that if the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... did not do this within a year he would, if re-elected in the two-round vote in April and May, implement a unilateral "Buy French" law.
"I want a Europe that protects its citizens. I no longer want this savage competition," he told the crowd, which the UMP estimated at 70,000. He said he rejected the idea of "a Europe that opens up its markets when others do not".
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] President 
