Faced with Taliban militants burning down their schools and killing their people, the elders of this impoverished province took a drastic step. They went behind the backs of the American military and their own government to negotiate with the Taliban.
But Haji Hashem, chairman of Zabul provincial council, learned an important lesson when he and other leaders sat down with Taliban commanders, one he was reminded of Monday after weekend carnage left more that three dozen Taliban dead: negotiating with the insurgents simply is not a viable option. "At first, we negotiate. Otherwise the fight is the only way we can solve the problem. It's the second best way," Haji Hashem told Canwest News in an exclusive interview from the capital of remote and impoverished Zabul province that borders Pakistan. "I don't like to hear about death," Mr. Hashem said. "Sometimes NATO has to fight."
Mr. Hashem's comments came after a weekend in which a major offensive by coalition and Afghan forces left several dozen Taliban fighters dead in neighbouring Uruzgan province. Here in Zabul, nestled between Canada's base in Kandahar province and the border with Pakistan, the local Afghan police also killed four Taliban insurgents on the weekend. "If they stand against the government, we should get rid of them," Mr. Hashem said. "I am hopeful we will have good police."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
The recent clashes between Tuareg rebels and Malian Army have shaken up negotiations being engaged to find an end to the crisis of the two Austrian hostages. Still, Austrian Authorities are remaining confident and optimistic in terms of releasing its nationals following the extension of the ultimatum to an unidentified period.
The Austrian envoy to Bamako, Ambassador Anton Prohaska has not denied that the progress of negotiations with the abductors of the two Austrian nationals is depending a lot on the ease of tension between Tuareg rebels and the Malian Government in northern country.
Media sources quoted Prohaska saying he is optimistic, though, for the return of calm in the north of Kidal region, in order to pursue negotiations without any hinders, adding: we trust in Malian Authorities cooperation in the efforts of releasing the hostages.
However, several intelligence services in Europe believe that the outbreak of Tuareg rebellion again in northern Mali has likely helped kidnappers changing their site in the Sahara, while some said they have left to the Algerian territories. Furthermore, the chief of Counter-Espionage Department at the German intelligence told Spiegel weekly newspaper, in an interview to be read today: we are following with a great concern events taking place there; we have noticed the emergence of new aspects which are likely leading to set ranks of Jihadists before our doors.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa
BRITAIN will next month begin airlifting 2000 Iraqis out of Iraq as part of a plan to help nationals who worked for the British military to settle in the UK, The Guardian reports.
Citing documents it had seen, the British newspaper said the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) were in talks with the charity Migrant Helpline to help Iraqis resettle.
Spokespeople for both the MoD and the foreign ministry were unable to immediately comment on the report when contacted by AFP.
"The (Iraqis) will be accommodated for two days in Slough (west of London) prior to being transferred to resettlement areas in the north or in Scotland," the documents cited by The Guardian said.
According to the newspaper, the foreign ministry said some 450 applications for resettlement in Britain had been accepted, while around 450 had been denied, with a further 100 undecided and 100 being processed.
The total of 2000 Iraqis includes the dependents of the local staff being transferred.
The transfers will occur over a 17-month period beginning from next month, the newspaper said, with flights carrying up to 100 Iraqis every fortnight.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced in October that Britain would help Iraqi local staff who have worked for British forces to settle in Iraq and elsewhere, including Britain under agreed circumstances.
Local staff including interpreters and translators who have worked for Britain for 12 months or more will be eligible for financial and other support, he said in a statement to lawmakers.
#1
I understand Rabes has been eradicated in Britian, did you "Vet" those 2 grand for the disease?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/25/2008 17:40 Comments ||
Top||
#2
?? Redneck Jim ??
These are people who risked their lives to help the Coalition.
I've met some of their counterparts - Kurdish women and some Arab women. One woman lost two of her sisters in two attacks aimed at assasinating her for her translation work for the 3rd ID. Another had a brother and father killed by Al Qaida for her work.
Despite the huge diplomatic snub by China as it summoned India's ambassador at 2am on Saturday to protest against Tibetan activists breaking into the Chinese embassy in Delhi, the government here is silent on the reported deployment of Chinese troops in Nepal.
According to reports, China stationed forces on the Nepalese side of the border with Tibet last week, in order to keep tabs on protests by Tibetans in Nepal over the past few days.
The Chinese forces were in plainclothes, but armed with small weapons, sources said. This has rung alarm bells in India's security apparatus, but there's no official reaction.
The government maintained a grim silence on the major diplomatic snub inflicted by China when its foreign office summoned Indian ambassador to Beijing, Nirupama Rao, at 2am to give her a list of demonstrations that Tibetans planned to organize in India.
While this could just as well have been done during working hours, summoning the envoy in the middle of the night is seen here as nothing short of utter high-handedness by the Chinese.
Meanwhile, global strategic analyst Stratfor said Beijing was disturbed by the sight of foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee and US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice jointly addressing the Tibet issue in Washington.
As European authorities grope for ways of combating the appeal of militant Islamism, one German security agency has hit on a novel idea: cartoon comics. Officials in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) had run a well received comic strip campaign against right-wing extremism in 2004 starring Andi, a schoolboy hero who stands up against xenophobia and racism. By my calculations, they were about 70 years late with that one.
Drawing on that experience, they launched Andi last October into a second adventure featuring his Muslim girlfriend Ayshe and her brother Murat, who comes under the influence of a radical friend and an Islamist "hate preacher."
The comic -- printed in 100,000 copies and distributed to every secondary school in Germany's most populous state -- aims to show young people the difference between peaceful mainstream Islam and the violent, intolerant version peddled by militants. "We were always careful not to hurt feelings and anger people by painting a caricature of Islam," said Hartwig Moeller, head of the NRW interior ministry's department for protection of the constitution, responsible for intelligence gathering. "We had to make clear we weren't aiming against Muslims, but only those people who want to misuse Islam for political aims," added Moeller, who despite his intelligence role says 50 to 60 percent of his work is educating the public about threats.
The cartoon, featuring boldly drawn Manga-style figures, is designed to be used in citizenship and religion lessons for schoolchildren aged 12 to 16. "We have learned from our opponents. This is exactly the age at which the Islamists are trying, through Koranic schools and other means, to fill young people with other values," Moeller told Reuters.
The unusual initiative is one example of how countries around the world are searching for new ways to prevent young people being drawn into Islamist violence. Many security analysts speak of the need to counter the "narrative" of al Qaeda -- the message that the West is waging war on Islam in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and that young Muslims must fight back, including if necessary by sacrificing themselves as 'martyrs'. To some youngsters, experts say, al Qaeda offers a sense of identity, belonging and justice -- not to mention adventure and an aura of 'coolness'. The question is how to compete with that allure.
Police and governments in most West European countries have developed outreach programmes to build dialogue with Muslim communities, but some believe a bolder approach is called for. Printing a comic strip is considered "bolder"?
At a conference this month in Stockholm, Swedish terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp cited the example of Ahmad Dhani, an Indonesian rock star who challenged militant ideology in a massively popular album called "Warriors of Love." "I'm not suggesting that we need a musical jihad against extremism in Europe, or that we employ MTV in our efforts," Ranstorp said. But he raised the question: "How do we harness humor, soap opera and our tremendous public relations industries in these efforts to disarm the extremists' messages and influence over young people?
Muslim reaction to Andi has been mostly positive, albeit with some reservations. "We found the basic approach was right and good, we only regretted (the authorities) didn't tell us about this initiative in advance, then it could have been made much better," said Aiman Mazyek, general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany. He said the portrayal of the Islamist hate preacher was "a bit overdone," but added: "There are people like that, I can't say there aren't." He said copies of the comic have been distributed in mosques.
Another regional government, Hamburg, is also using the Andi story, and there has been interest from Austria, Denmark, Japan and the United States.
#1
The comic -- printed in 100,000 copies and distributed to every secondary school in Germany's most populous state
Hummmmmm, sounds suspiciously like Government Propaganda, Something Germany's well experienced with.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/25/2008 8:15 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Comics and cartoons are a great way to deal with these buffoons. Laugh at them. Have the comic book heroes kick the shit out of them. Show them being de-robed. Beards set on fire. There's no end to the merriment that could be depicted. Not only that, it really would raise the awareness of the young populace to the menace in front of them. It would influenece their thinking, just like Superman and Batman did here over the generations.
#3
Years ago the EU came out with what had to be the lamest comic hero ever. It was more PC than Captain Planet, it was "Captain Euro":
http://www.captaineuro.com/index.htm
And of course, like any bureaucracy, it remains, like a dead raccoon under the porch.
Be sure to check out the "Baddies", the villains that he has to try to talk to death in endless meetings, I guess. "Junior" looks like George Michael. An evil parrot?
#4
The comic -- printed in 100,000 copies and distributed to every secondary school in Germany's most populous state -- aims to show young people the difference between peaceful mainstream Islam and the violent, intolerant version peddled by militants.
i.e. the difference between something which is not Islam and something which is supported by the Koran, the life of the "prophet" and over a thousand years of Muslim jurisprudence.
The head of Germany's intelligence agency said that "several hundred" Muslim extremists are living in Germany and that al-Qaida is forming a strong base in North Africa, a German magazine reported on Monday.
Ernst Uhrlau, who oversees the BND, the Germany intelligence agency, said that "up to 700 people are being surveilled, in different degrees," according to an interview with Der Spiegel. He was also quoted by the magazine as saying that "more than a dozen" of those people had made trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan to try to make contact with Islamic extremist groups operating there.
"Converts that end up in extremist groups often tend toward political renegades and absolute intolerance and highest radicalism," Uhrlau was quoted as saying by the magazine for its special edition on Islam in Europe. However, he also emphasized that most converts were "friendly people, who discovered Islam in searching for meaning for their lives."
In the interview with the magazine, Uhrlau underlined that northern Africa was becoming a greater security risk. The magazine quoted him as saying that German intelligence and security agencies had followed "with great concern" the activities of a "handful of groups" that have settled in the region. "What's growing there is bringing a brand new quality of jihad right to our front door," he was quoted as saying by the magazine.
Posted by: ryuge ||
03/25/2008 05:49 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Europe
#1
It's easy to have an accurate count, as extremists in Germany have to be licensed by the police.
Canada is often thought of as a land of bland consensus and multicultural harmony - the last place where you would expect to see a religious minority up in arms, and journalists accusing the state of gagging freedom of speech. Yet in recent months, these have become fixtures of the country's public debate.
The Canadian equivalent of Denmark's cartoonists, or the Netherlands' Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is the outspoken conservative columnist Mark Steyn. In a 2006 article he used demographics to suggest that the West would succumb to Muslim domination.
The piece, entitled "The future belongs to Islam" and published by the Toronto magazine Maclean's, argued that Europe was "too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia". Mr Steyn summarised the presumed global advantage of militant Islam with a stark equation: "Youth + Will = Disaster for whoever gets in your way." To some, he had crossed the line between vigorous polemic and Islamophia.
The notion that Muslims should be feared by virtue of their numbers and purported militancy is "quite inflammatory", says Toronto law student Khurrum Awan. Mr Awan and fellow students marched on Maclean's a year ago to demand a chance to issue a full-length rebuttal in Canada's only nationwide news magazine. "What we said is that we want an opportunity to participate in the debate when you are talking about the issues that relate directly to us," Mr Awan told the BBC News website. Maclean's editor gave the students short shrift. He said he had published 27 letters in response to the Steyn article, and would "rather go bankrupt" than let outsiders dictate the content of his magazine.
Late last year the students, supported by the Canadian Islamic Congress, took their demand to the federal Human Rights Commission and similar bodies in British Columbia and Ontario. The move both publicised the dispute and highlighted a previously little-known aspect of the commissions' remit - the possibility of suppressing speech.
The human rights commissions were set up in the 1960s and early 1970s to investigate claims of discrimination in housing and employment. But section 13 of the 1977 Human Rights Act authorised them to hear complaints about material "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" by reason of race, age, gender, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, religion, etc. To some groups, this provides a useful remedy. "When people feel insulted they should have recourse," says Khaled Mouammar, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, who argues that the Maclean's article promoted hate against Muslims.
But others are alarmed. Leading the charge against the commissions is Ezra Levant, an Alberta-based publisher who was targeted by a complaint after reprinting the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in his (now-defunct) newspaper in early 2006. His accuser, a Calgary Muslim leader who cited the Koran in his complaint, said the publisher had spread hatred.
In January Mr Levant appeared before an Alberta Human Rights official charged with deciding whether to refer the matter to a special tribunal. In a videotaped statement later posted on his website, Mr Levant called the commission a "sick joke" and defiantly pleaded guilty. "I'm not going to try to minimise what I've done and beg for mercy," he told the BBC News website. "I have the right to violate all those Koranic precepts because we follow Queen Elizabeth's law, not Muhammad's law."
The core of the dispute is best understood not as a clash of civilisations, but as a conflict within the West itself. It pits old liberal values that sanctify individuals against a new emphasis on the rights of groups. Mr Levant regards commission officers as "new-fangled, political crusaders" bent on overturning centuries-old Common Law.
Canada's Human Rights Tribunals, he points out, are quasi-judicial bodies, not regular courts bound by strict standards of procedure to protect defendants. Every single "section 13" complaint referred to the federal Human Rights Tribunal has been upheld. And those targeted often incur heavy costs even if a complaint is dropped - as was the case for Mr Levant, who says his legal bills amount to C$100,000 (£49,000).
The commission officials who vet complaints deny acting like rogue inquisitors, and insist they strictly follow the law. "We have a legal obligation to consider every complaint we receive if it fits one of the grounds for which discrimination cases can be heard," says Carmen Gregoire, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
But according to critics, the fact that commissions are acting within the law offers little comfort. Alan Borovoy, a veteran lawyer who campaigned to set up the commissions, says their willingness to hear complaints about speech rests on flawed legislation. He regards the provisions on "hatred or contempt" as departures from the original purpose of the Human Rights Act, and wants them scrapped. "The human rights statutes were designed to deal with discriminatory acts, not discriminatory words," he says.
Mr Borovoy believes that minorities' push for equality, which he supports, has led to a neglect of traditional freedoms. "Other interests have for the time being trumped the free-speech values and I'm hoping that with some of these cases we might be able to turn the tide," he says.
Posted by: ryuge ||
03/25/2008 04:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: Global Jihad
#1
It pits old liberal values that sanctify individuals against a new emphasis on the rights of groups.
Yup. Goodbye to the Enlightenment. It's all about which aggrieved minority class you belong to.
#2
Typical of the BBC to minimize the demands of these Muslim whiners. These included a multi-page article unedited by Maclean's, control of the cover of the special issue in which their Islamic tirade would be hosted, etc. The BBC has also left out the columns offered to these same dark ages lunatics by every major newspaper in the country, the CBC, etc. etc.
#4
It's worse than that. They give some sort of higher status to collections of individuals than the individuals that make up the collection.
Liberals say everyone is the same (which is wrong), yet they want the government to give certain people who joins groups special treatment (which is also wrong).
They talk about society as if it's one thing, yet love multi-culturalism which pits the interests of groups of newly arrived people against those who have been in the country, and then makes them pay for their own oppression!
I've come to the conclusion that the leftist mental disease is an addiction to cognitive dissonance, a love of envy and the projection of one's own faults onto those who point them out.
Agron Abdullahu, who once faced trial alongside the five men charged in May with plotting a paramilitary attack on Fort Dix, could get less than two years in prison at his sentencing next week. The Kosovo refugee was never accused of being a part of the others' alleged plan to kill U.S. soldiers. Instead, he pleaded guilty last year to what his attorney called a "fairly technical" gun charge of supplying guns to illegal aliens.
But federal prosecutors said yesterday that Abdullahu, 25, deserves a far longer sentence for threatening national security by giving guns to people "who expressed their devotion to jihad." To bolster their arguments, prosecutors made public for the first time more than 75 pages of conversations secretly recorded by one of two FBI informants who infiltrated the group.
The conversations took place during a 2007 trip Abdullahu made along with four of the Fort Dix defendants to a Poconos firing range. Abdullahu supplied the guns for that trip and another taken a year earlier. On the tapes, the men laud the accomplishments of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, and discuss their own desire to train as snipers and kill U.S. soldiers.
At one point, they go to a gun store and the informant, who identifies himself as a former Albanian fighter named Besnik, expresses unease. "You think that we are terrorists?" asks Dritan Duka, one of the Fort Dix defendants. "Maybe we are terrorists, you don't know," Abdullahu adds, according to the transcript. Later, Abdullahu says to the informant, "OK, so when you are ready to go to war" and "we got him in." "Dritan, he's in, bro," Abdullahu says, according to the transcript. "All we have to do is train him now." But, in other conversations, not referenced in yesterday's filing, Abdullahu told the others that killing civilians would be against Islam, their religion, and attacking Fort Dix would be "crazy."
Prosecutors said that at the shooting range the men "made repeated references to 'jihad' . . . while one member also showed the other how to shoot 'mujahideen style.' " At that point, they said, Abdullahu should have realized that "certain of his companions viewed their time at the shooting range as not merely amusement, but training for a specific purpose."
Abdullahu, whose family settled in Atlantic County, is a high school dropout who worked as a baker in a grocery store before his arrest. He pleaded guilty in November; his sentencing has been scheduled for Monday. Federal sentencing guidelines call for him to face 10 to 18 months in prison. Although prosecutors are asking the judge to go above those guidelines, the crime carries a five-year maximum. Abdullahu's attorney, Richard Coughlin, said yesterday that he would not comment on the prosecutors' filings. He is scheduled to file his response later this week.
The five remaining Fort Dix defendants - Mohamed Shnewer, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan; Serdar Tatar, a legal U.S. resident born in Turkey; and Cherry Hill brothers Shain, Eljvir and Dritan Duka, all illegal immigrants from the former Yugoslavia - have pleaded not guilty. Jury selection in their trial is slated to begin in late September, and they face life in prison if convicted. Abdullahu will not testify in their trial, Coughlin has said.
At Abdullahu's guilty plea, Coughlin said his client's conversations would have been theoretical and innocent. "People say a lot of things when they don't know their every word is being recorded," he said.
On one of the tapes prosecutors cited yesterday, Abdullahu brags about being able to make a bomb."You can break into a house and steal stuff and make a bomb," Abdullahu said, according to the transcript. "Yeah, I can break into a Home Depot and make a . . . biggest bomb."
Prosecutors also noted that, shortly after his arrest, Abdullahu scratched graffiti into his jail cell door that depicted an AK-47 assault rifle firing bullets at the letters "FBI." They first revealed the graffiti in a June court filing to oppose Abdullahu's bail motion. The judge denied him bail.
US President George W. Bush spoke on Tuesday by telephone to Pakistan's new Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on the importance of the fight against terrorism and expressed his readiness to work with the new leader, the White House said.
Bush congratulated Gilani on becoming prime minister and "said he looks forward to working with him and the new government of Pakistan," spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.
"He reiterated that Pakistan is an important ally and country, and the two leaders agreed that fighting extremists is in everyone's interest," she told reporters about the phone call at 7:50 am (1150 GMT).
Earlier Tuesday, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf swore in Gilani, a key aide of slain opposition icon Benazir Bhutto, as prime minister.
Gilani will lead a coalition of Musharraf's opponents that won general elections last month.
The United States, which viewed Musharraf as a crucial US ally against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, was following events closely as the election result raised questions about Washington's relations with Pakistan.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher were visiting Pakistan to meet Musharraf as well as the new political leadership, including former premier Nawaz Sharif and Gilani.
Sharif said he told Negroponte that the government would review Musharraf's cooperation with the United States, saying he wanted to curb militancy but that he did not want the country to become a "murder-house."
His comments came amid US jitters over a New York Times report at the weekend that said that victorious political leaders intend to start negotiations with militants in the hope of ending recent violence.
Asked about Sharif's stance, Perino struck an optimistic tone.
"We feel comfortable that we'll be having a continued good relationship" with the Pakistani government, she said.
Israel threatened to cut off peace talks with Mahmoud Abbas if his Fatah faction joins forces with Hamas. Jerusalem officials said Monday that should Fatah bury the hatchet with Hamas and invite the Islamists into a new Palestinian Authority coalition government, Israel will suspend U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations.
The warning came as Fatah and Hamas, which have been at loggerheads since the latter seized control of the Gaza Strip last June, held reconciliation talks in Yemen. But the Israeli assessment is that the Palestinian factions are unlikely to reach a binding pact given Hamas' refusal of Fatah's core demand that it give up Gaza and submit to Abbas' authority.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Palestinian Authority
Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas on Sunday signed a Yemeni-sponsored reconciliation deal vowing to revive direct talks after months of hostilities, however differences remained over the future of the Gaza Strip.
The two factions reconvened in Sanaa after the talks launched last week by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh came close to collapse several times. We, the representatives of Fatah and Hamas, agree to the Yemeni initiative as a framework to resume dialogue between the two movements to return the Palestinian situation to what it was before the Gaza incidents, a declaration issued after the meeting said.
The Sanaa declaration, signed by top Hamas negotiator Moussa Abu Marzouk and senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmed, also affirmed the unity of the Palestinian people, territory and authority.
The Yemeni initiative called for the situation in the Gaza Strip to return to the way it was before Hamas seized the area in June after routing Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah had said it would agree to direct reconciliation talks with Hamas only if the Islamist group first agreed to relinquish its hold on Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians.
A Hamas official said on Saturday that the group asked that the same condition should apply to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has dismissed a Hamas-led government and arrested some Hamas supporters.
Differences over that key clause remained, but Ahmed said he was looking forward to Yemen setting a date for new talks to begin that would hammer out the details of implementation.
This article starring:
Ali Abdullah Saleh
Azzam al-Ahmed
Fatah
Moussa Abu Marzouk
Hamas
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
Pope Benedict's baptism of an Italian Muslim over Easter weekend was not a hostile act against Islam, the Vatican's newspaper wrote on Tuesday after the public conversion prompted criticism in the Muslim world.
In a surprise move, the pope baptized Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, a well-known journalist and outspoken critic of radical Islamism, at an Easter Vigil service in St Peter's Basilica on Saturday evening that was broadcast around the globe.
Muslim commentators said Allam's hostile writings and his headline-grabbing baptism strained relations between Muslims and the Catholic Church and cast shadows over a recently agreed dialogue between Catholicism and Islam.
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, apparently reacting to this criticism, wrote a front-page editorial arguing that Benedict's gesture was an expression of religious freedom and certainly not directed against Islam.
"There is no hostile intention toward such an important religion as Islam," editor-in-chief Gian Maria Vian wrote on Tuesday. "For many decades now, the Catholic Church has shown its willingness to engage and dialogue with the Muslim world, despite thousands of difficulties and obstacles."
But critics of the baptism questioned why the pope chose to highlight the conversion of Allam, known in Italy for his attacks on Islam. Church experts on Islam aka apologists privately and anonymously expressed concern that his message could strain inter-faith relations.
Writing in Sunday's edition of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, of which he is a deputy director, Allam said: "... the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual."
"DIFFICULTIES AND OBSTACLES"
Catholic-Muslim relations nosedived in 2006 after Benedict delivered a lecture in Regensburg, Germany, that implied he thought Islam was violent and irrational.
Muslims around the world protested and the pope, who said he did not agree with the Byzantine emperor he had quoted, Nope, he said he was sorry it had caused turmoil, but it's rooters.
sought to make amends by visiting the famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul and praying towards Mecca with its imam.
Earlier in March, the Vatican agreed with Muslim leaders to establish a permanent, official dialogue to improve relations.
L'Osservatore Romano said the Vatican remained dedicated toward dialogue with Islam: "Difficulties and obstacles should not overshadow what there is in common and how much can come of the future."
Aref Ali Nayed, a key figure in a group of over 200 Muslim scholars that launched the dialogue with the Vatican and other Christian churches, said on Monday the Vatican had turned the baptism into "a triumphalist tool for scoring points."
"The whole spectacle... provokes genuine questions about the motives, intentions and plans of some of the pope's advisers on Islam," Nayed, who is director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, said in a statement.
King Abdullah is calling for a dialogue among Muslims, Christians and Jews, the first such proposal from this strictly Muslim kingdom at a time of mounting tensions between followers of Islam and those of other religions.
In a speech late Monday, Abdullah said the country's top clerics gave him the green light to pursue his idea. Their backing is crucial in a religiously conservative society that expects decisions taken by its rulers to adhere to Islam's tenets.
The monarch, whose kingdom follows a severe interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism and bans non-Muslim religious services and symbols, said he discussed the idea with Pope Benedict XVI when they met at the Vatican last year.
"The idea is to ask representatives of all monotheistic religions to sit together with their brothers in faith and sincerity to all religions as we all believe in the same God," the king told delegates to a seminar titled "Culture and the Respect of islam Religions."
His remarks were reported by the official Saudi Press Agency.
"I have noticed that the family system has weakened and that atheism has increased. That is an unacceptable behavior to all religions, to the Quran, the Torah and the Bible," Abdullah said. "We ask God to save humanity. There is a lack of ethics, loyalty and sincerity for our religions and humanity."
Abdullah's call is significant. The Saudi monarch is the custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina, a position that lends his words special importance and influence among many Muslims.
His message for tolerance comes at a time of mounting Muslim anger over the republication by Danish newspapers of cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad and the weekend high-profile conversion of a Muslim commentator to Roman Catholicism.
Abdullah did not say whether Muslim clerics from Saudi Arabia would be willing to meet with Jewish leaders from Israel. Saudi Arabia and all other Arab nations except Egypt and Jordan do not have diplomatic relations with Israel and generally shun unofficial contacts.
In Israel, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger welcomed Abdullah's call. "Our hand is outstretched to any peace initiative and any dialogue that is aimed at bringing an end to terror and violence," he said in a statement.
Rabbi David Rosen, head of inter-religious relations at the American Jewish Committee, said he was "delighted" by the Saudi announcement.
"Religion is all too often the problem, so it has to also be the solution, or at least part of the solution, and I think that the tragedy of the political initiatives to bring peace has been the failure to include the religious dimension," Rosen said.
Since coming to power in August 2005, Abdullah has taken steps to encourage dialogue among his kingdom's Sunni Muslim majority and its other Muslim sects, including Shiites. His meeting with Benedict was the first between a Saudi monarch and a pope.
Abdullah said he plans to hold conferences to get the opinion of Muslims from other parts of the world as well as meetings "with our brothers in all religions which I mentioned, the Torah and Bible, so we can agree on something that guarantees the preservation of humanity against those who tamper with ethics, family systems and honesty."
Abdullah said that if such an agreement is reached, he plans to take his proposal to the United Nations.
Posted by: anonymous5089 ||
03/25/2008 12:29 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Global Jihad
#1
This should be interesting. The usual Muslim interfaith dialog is "We talk. You listen. You submit. Or else"
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
03/25/2008 13:18 Comments ||
Top||
#2
No mention of Hindu, Bhudist, etc. participation, but their adherents don't even qualify for dhimmi status, so that makes sense.
The predictable naive positive response from Jewish leaders.
And Abdullah plans to take his proposal to the UN, naturally.
Just fills ones heart with joyous optimism, doesn't it.
Hezbollah said it will continue pursuing mediated talks with Israel on a possible prisoner swap.
Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah delivered an address Monday to mark 40 days since the assassination of his terror chief, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus. But he did not make any concrete threat of reprisals against Israel, which the Lebanese militia blames for the killing, despite Jerusalem's denials. "We will pick the time, the place, the punishment, the means and the method," Nasrallah told supporters via video link from his hiding place, where he has largely confined himself since the 2006 Second Lebanon War for fear he could be on Israel's hit list.
Signaling a return to a semblance of routine, Nasrallah said Hezbollah was still in indirect talks with Israel on repatriating two soldiers it seized in a border raid that triggered the war. Hezbollah has demanded that Israel in return free senior Arab terrorists from its jails. "Meetings took place recently and we did not halt the talks," he said.
The United Nations and Germany are acting as intermediaries in the swap talks, though there has been little indication of progress and many Israelis believe the abducted soldiers may be dead.
In his 90-minute speech, Nasrallah mocked Israeli leaders at length, claiming that the Second Lebanon War revealed the essential weakness of the Jewish state. "The Zionist entity can be wiped out of existence," he said, echoing statements by Iran, Hezbollah's main patron.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said Monday Hizbullah does not want a civil war in Lebanon, contrary to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime that works to ignite such a civil strife. Geagea made the remark in an address to the Lebanese community in Los Angeles. "Had Hizbullah accepted Syria's plans to start a civil war we would have been in civil war," Geagea said.
Hizbullah, he added, "does not want a civil war because it is not part of its strategy."
"The Syrian regime is trying to hurl Lebanon into civil war, but did not succeed due to weakness of its allies," Geagea added. He said the International Tribunal "would not only expose those who killed ex-Premier Rafik Hariri (in 2005) but would also disclose who killed Maarouf Saad (in 1975) and who committed all the other crimes.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
ION, TOPIX > EXPERTS:NEW OSAMA MESSAGE MAY BE A [hidden]STRATEGY.
A parliamentary session set for Tuesday to elect a president has been re-scheduled for April 22, Speaker Nabih Berri's office announced. "Parliament speaker Nabih Berri has decided to postpone the session to April 22 at noon (0900 GMT)," his spokesman, Ali Hamdan, told Agence France Presse.
The postponement is the 17th such decision by Berri since September when the house was supposed to elect a successor to pro-Syrian head of state Emile Lahoud. Lahoud's term ended in November and Lebanon has been without a president for over three months.
The Lebanese presidential crisis is expected to top the agenda in this week's Arab summit in Damascus. Regional heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced that they would send low-level diplomats to the meeting in retaliation for what they say is Syrian obstruction of the Lebanese Presidential election.
This article starring:
Ali Hamdan
Emile Lahoud
Nabih Berri
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and his Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal would not represent the kingdom at the forthcoming Arab summit in Damascus, reflecting dissatisfaction with Syria over Lebanon. Riyadh's ambassador to the Arab League Ahmad Qattan, speaking on the sidelines of a preparatory meeting, said he would head his country's delegation.
The decision to send a low-ranking diplomat reflects the strained ties between Riyadh and Damascus over the deep political crisis in Lebanon. Syria and its ally Iran back the Lebanese opposition led by Hizbullah. Saudi Arabia and its Western allies back the cabinet of Prime Minister Fouad Saniora, which has been unable to push through any of its legislative program since November 2006 when six pro-Syrian ministers quit.
This article starring:
Ahmad Qattan
Prince Saud al-Faisal
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
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.
Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas on Sunday signed a Yemeni-sponsored reconciliation deal vowing to revive direct talks after months of hostilities, however differences remained over the future of the Gaza Strip. 
Pope Benedict's baptism of an Italian Muslim over Easter weekend was not a hostile act against Islam, the Vatican's newspaper wrote on Tuesday after the public conversion prompted criticism in the Muslim world.
A parliamentary session set for Tuesday to elect a president has been re-scheduled for April 22, Speaker 
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and his Foreign Minister 
