Yasin has also lived in Britain from time to time. In the past, he has lectured with Omar Bakri Mohammed (the one-time leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir UK and founder of the pro Al-Qaida group, Al-Muhajiroun), who was banned from the United Kingdom because of his religious extremism in 2006.

One review of Yasin’s activities includes the following interesting  report:

On September 11, 2001, Yasin was in Saudi Arabia soliciting the support of an al Qaeda front known as the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation – which eventually would be designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government – to help finance the creation of his proposed “Islamic Broadcasting Company” (IBC).

In 2005 researchers for the Australian television program Sunday found that Yasin had engaged in a pattern of fraud and misrepresentation vis a vis IBC. For example, in 2004 Yasin traveled from his UK residence to Australia, armed with elaborate promotional materials for his startup IBC venture. One brochure, complete with photos and architects’ drawings, gave details of a proposed TV broadcast center in England’s Coventry Technology Park. Depicting IBC as “a unique investment opportunity” that “will host up to 50 multimedia TV channels and five radio stations,” Yasin held fundraisers ostensibly designed to help launch the company. At one 2004 event, some $90,000 was pledged in a single evening.

But all the money raised by Yasin quickly disappeared, and IBC never materialized. According to Walid Ali, managing director of the Islamic Broadcasting Group, Yasin’s brochure was “a work of fiction, indeed fraud” – “the drawings were lifted from someone else’s brochure.” Moreover, Yasin’s only connection with Coventry Technology Park was a small office space rented out by his UK associate, Channel Islam, which broke its lease in 2007 and was thereafter pursued by debt collectors.

Yasin’s misrepresentations extend also to the Curriculum Vitae (CV) which he prepared to support his application to the UK’s Immigration Department. In the CV, Yasin identified himself as a graduate of two separate institutions of higher learning. Yet neither school has any record of any graduate named Khalid Yasin.

When a questioner for the aforementioned Sunday program asked Yasin about his qualifications as a preacher, Yasin : “I say to you that whatever qualifications I have, they are subjective. And I don’t even care. And if there was a choice for Khalid Yasin I would take any qualification, academic qualification I have and I throw it out the window. And I tell you whatever other qualifications I have, whatever convictions I have will stand on their own.”

Yasin has also made a series of incredibly bigoted and vile comments, including:

• “[I]f you don’t have a people that is governed by Sharia [Islamic Law], then you have a lawless people.”
• A secular Islamic state absolutely “cannot work.”
• Sharia should become the law of the land in all nations because Allah “is the best lawgiver.”
• “There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend.”
• “There has been no evidence that has surfaced, no bona fide irrevocable, irrefutable evidence that had been surfaced that showed that there is a group called al-Qaeda that did the September 11 bombings.” (He said this in July 2005.)
• 9/11 was “an operation that took place with the complicity of some very sophisticated entities other than some Middle Eastern guys on an airplane, or [something] being orchestrated by someone in a cave in Iraq.”
• “We now know” that the World Trade Center fell not as a result of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers, but rather “from internal explosive charges, the same way it’s done in a construction site.”
• Homosexuals should be killed because the Koran mandates it — “We don’t make any excuses about that; it’s not our law, it’s the Koran.”
• AIDS was invented at a U.S. government lab and spread by Western governments through United Nations agencies and Christian missionaries.
• “An AIDS virus, that is a classic disease that was created in Fort McKinley, United States. Fort McKinley, the AIDS virus, 63,000 gallons.”
• “Missionaries from the World Health Organization and Christian groups went into Africa and inoculated people for diphtheria, malaria, yellow fever, and they put in the medicine the AIDS virus, which is a conspiracy.” (Yasin’s emphasis)
• The 2002 and 2005 terrorist bombings in Bali were justifiable responses to years of Western oppression.
• “This whole delusion about the equality of women is a bunch of foolishness, there’s no such thing.”
• The Koran permits wife-beating.
• “We don’t need to go to the Christians, or the Jews, debating with them about the filth which they believe … We Muslims have been ordered to do ‘brainwashing’ because the kuffaar [unbelievers] … they are doing ‘brain-defiling.’”

Evidently, Yasin is a clerical fascist hate-preacher with proven links to al-Qaida networks – and this has been known about for quite some time.

However, this did not stop UCL ISOC from encouraging students to attend a lecture by this vile bigot to speak at one of their events at the beginning of last year.

UCL’s Islamic Society promoted an event featuring a fraud with a record of making hate-filled remarks at the following event:

End of Time…… A New Beginning

An event which promises to enlighten you.

Amongst the various unsavoury speakers were:

Anwar Al-Awlaki (Video Lecture, exclusively recorded for this event, plus live Q&A via phone link)

and the equally unpleasant and jihadi-adoring

Khalid Yasin

Well, just fancy that.  UCL’s Islamic Society booked a fraud with a record of making hate-filled remarks and known past associations with jihadi terrorist organisations.

Leading contenders include Hussein Ibrahim (head of the MB parliamentary bloc), or one of his fellow hardliners, Mahmoud Ezzat, Gomaa Amin, Abdel Rahman Al Bar or Mohamed Badee’a. Outside runners include the deputy chairman of MB (recently removed from the Guidance Council in the rigged elections of December), Mohamed Habib – although the likelihood of Habib winning the post is remote in the extreme given the hard-liners complete grip on the reins of power inside MB.

Without a hint of irony, one new Guidance Council member, Saad El-Katatney, told Egypt’s Daily News:

We are a powerful group that is getting more powerful, these elections proved that the highest authority is well aware of the group’s welfare, therefore they have elected members for the new Guidance Office to lead in the coming four years… I can see a bright future for the Muslim Brotherhood with this harmonious group.

Not the sort of “bright future” many beyond the Brotherhood would want, one would wager.

One of the contenders, Mohamed Badee’a, has already set out his ideological stall, eager to attract the attention of fellow clerical fascists in the Guidance Bureau as they mull over who should be declared Supreme Guide on January 15th.

In a deranged article in the Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb, Dr. Badee’a seeks to impress his fellow Islamists with the assertion that the late Sayed Qutb was not (as is widely understood) a radical Islamist, wedded to a jihadist model of clerical fascism. Oh deary me, no! In fact (he claims), Qutb was a peaceful reformist. Badee’a asserts Qutb had:

won the respect of many including  Eugene Rogan author of “The Arab”. He continued that numerous theses studied and doctorates discussed were based on Qutb’s writings where he was in fact referred to as a ‘reformist’.

One might kindly suggest that Badee’a actually read Rogan’s highly acclaimed work before he asserts something that was very far from Rogan’s mind as the latter wrote of Qutb’s radical, innovatory reform of Islam’s traditions.

Declaring that Qutb sought to reform Islam is not necessarily a promotion or endorsement of Qutb’s ideas – it is a statement of fact. Islamism seeks to re-form Islam, not to the better – but as a clerical fascist political ideology determined to win power by any means necessary. Turning Islam into a vicious, violent, negative, ideology of narrow-minded bigotry and intolerance is the essence of Qutb’s reforms.

However, such is the nature of the disingenuous, truly Orwellian double-speak of the Brotherhood, so one should not be surprised to discover such a complete distortion of reality slips easily from the lips of one of MB’s leaders.

That a leading contender to MB’s supreme leadership should now seek to openly promote  Qutb, ideological forefather of al-Qaida and every violent jihadi group worldwide, speaks volumes.

The vote by the 100 member Shura Council of the Muslim Brotherhood pitted two powerful internal factions against one another for control of the organisation. One faction, made up of significantly younger leaders of MB, are keen to play down the hard-line, clerical fascist core policies of MB, instead wishing to promote the Brotherhood as a “moderate” political force wedded to notions of democracy and social reform. The other faction, made up of older, “conservative” MB leaders take a less media-friendly line, demanding that the Brotherhood remain overtly committed to its clerical fascist principles and to the assertion of Islamist theocracy.

In Europe, we have become accustomed to the re-invention of the Far Right: the ditching of overt support for the Third Reich and fascism, the repeated declarations that they are no longer anti-democratic, pro-dictatorship and wedded to a violent racist creed. Of course, we all know that this is but window dressing. Such spin has also met with considerable opposition from within their own ranks. The struggles between the Political Soldier and Flag Group within the neo-Nazi National Front in the ’80s pivoted around exactly such issues.

The struggle between so-called “moderates” and “conservatives” inside the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood are of very similar dimensions and are being waged by very similar sorts of people. Indeed, to suggest that the “moderates” of MB are indeed moderates is as much to take leave of one’s senses as a declaration that Griffin and his followers inside the National Front of the 1980s were moderates. Just as the struggles inside the British neo-Nazi movement were tactical in their nature (and not in any way determined by rejection of basic Nazi ideological positions) and driven by the fascists’ continued lack of support from the British people, so to are the present struggles within the equally fascist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Muhammad Habib, deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, pinned his hopes on the younger generation of “moderates”, led in its turn by Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh. However, it all went disastrously wrong for Habib and his faction within MB, leading one Egyptian commentator to describe the election as:

an internal coup d’etat against the reformist camp of the Brotherhood.

According to the Investigative project on Terrorism:

The conservatives won out, but Habib is crying foul and aired the Brotherhood’s dirty laundry on Al Jazeera. He claims the elections were held suddenly, not properly announced, and the person who scheduled and organized them – Mohammad Mahdi Akef, the Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood – did not have the authority to do so. Al Arabiya reports:

“Mohamed Habib, the first deputy to the Supreme Guidance, said Sunday that the election violated the bylaws of the movement. And added that the call for the election ‘came from an individual [Akef] and not from the Guidance Bureau who are in charge for calling for the elections.’”

Habib is also upset that, due to state crackdowns and illnesses, many Shura Council members were unable to participate in the vote. He claims:

“The objective of holding the elections with this hastiness is to establish one group against another group, and not just to exclude me personally, but also to infringe upon the rights of the Guidance Office.”

Some Shura Council members, including Habib, refused to vote under those circumstances. Akef, of course, claims the elections were legitimate. “Let Habib say what he wants to say, I am walking in line with the institutes of the group. I confirm the soundness of the [election] procedures 100 percent,” he said. Habib is calling for the elections to be investigated.

As IPT‘s report comments:

Looking at all this, one can’t help but wonder: If the Brotherhood cannot manage to conduct an internal election according to its own internal regulations that their leaders write, how can it be trusted in government?

The answer is, of course, they cannot.

On the last day of 2009 came the news that US authorities were reporting direct contacts between Abdulmutallab and Anwar al-Awlaki and were actively investigating the same (this is further explored in the excellent cross-post, here).  At the very same time, CNN reported that:

The man accused of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day attended an Islamic ‘Knowledge Fest’ in Houston, Texas, in 2008, according to one of the organizers of the event.

Yasir Qadhi, who was an instructor at ‘Ilm Fest,’ said the 16-day conference organized by the Al Maghrib Institute was a series of courses and workshops to teach young Muslims ‘the nuts and bolts of Islam.’

Yasir Qadhi should be well known to readers of The Spittoon and Harry’s Place and more widely to Islamist-watchers everywhere as a loathsome individual of violently bigoted opinions. Back in 2001, Qadhi revealed himself to be a Holocaust denier:

All of these Polish Jews which Hitler was supposedly trying to exterminate, that’s another point, by the way, Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews. There are a number of books out on this written by Christians, you should read them. The Hoax of the Holocaust, I advise you to read this book and write this down, the Hoax of the Holocaust, a very good book. All of this is false propaganda and I know it sounds so far-fetched, but read it. The evidences are very strong. And they’re talking about newspaper articles, clippings, everything and look up yourself what Hitler really wanted to do. We’re not defending Hitler, by the way, but the Jews, the way that they portray him, also is not correct.

Warming to his theme, Qadhi continued:

You can use this against them [Jews] so easily. … You go to America, you find that 95 percent of the Islamic Studies professors are Jews, you know that? 95 percent of Islamic Studies are Jews. And 0 percent of Judaic Studies are Muslims. I am not advising any Muslim to waste his time studying Judaism but I’m saying, why are Jews studying Islam? There is a reason, not that they want to help us, they want to destroy us … they want to bring about doubts, look at the doubts that exist, look at the divisions, the discord, look at the disunity, look at all these ideologies that are being spread. Know that the Yahood [Jews] and the Kuffar [Infidels] like this type of thing.

It’s not just Jews that Qadhi hates:  all non-Muslims are a “spiritually filthy substance” whose lives and property hold no value and are forfeit to Muslims during Jihad. That goes for Shi’a Muslims too. In a lecture posted on Youtube, Qadhi states that the Shi’a are “the most lying sect in Islam” and that “the Shias are allowed to lie and it is their religion to lie.” However, one will be hard pressed to view that video, as Qadhi has now forced YouTube to remove the item because of his “copyright claim”. A convenient device to cover-up the evidence of his bigotry – and odd, given the Wahhabi general disdain for copyright as an invention of the infidel.

Qadhi is, of course, no stranger to UCL’s ISOC. He has spoken a number of times at UCL. One such being a course, held in 2008 on sihr, black magic. A course organised by the UCL ISOC, whose president at the time was one Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, later to become infamous as the Detroit 253 bomber.

Qadhi taught Abdulmutallab on the former’s “IlmFest” courses for “advanced” students in Houston, later that same year. Qadhi, who had previously taught Abdulmutallab at courses run at the UCL ISOC, now claims that he knew fairly little about the young Nigerian – despite the fact that the IlmFest courses are specifically for students that have previously been acknowledged as advanced by Qadhi himself. Qadhi claimed:

“He was a very quiet individual, tight-lipped and shy, and he did not ask a single question during the discussions,” Qadhi said in an exclusive interview with CNN. “He barely interacted with the other students at the conference.”

AbdulMutallab was not a visible presence during the conference and did not attend all the sessions, recalled Qadhi.

Qadhi recalls speaking to AbdulMutallab and remembers that he was “very reserved in his responses.”

AbdulMutallab also attended two seminars organized by the Al Maghrib Institute in London in the months before the event in Houston, Qadhi said.

One of the events was on the life of the Prophet Mohammed, and the other course was on the first chapter of the Koran.

“This was mainstream Islamic stuff,” said Qadhi.

Qadhi has good reason to cover his tracks, of course. Apart from preaching anti-Semitism and hatred of non-Muslims to UCL’s Muslim student body, Qadhi has embedded himself on the liberal circuit in the US as a spokesman for “conservative” Islam, having been involved in de-radicalisation efforts in the United States and was a leading participant in the U.S. Counter-Radicalization Strategy conference organized by the National Counterterrorism Center in the summer of 2008.

When are the great and good going to wake up to the fact that Islamism, regardless of its spokesmen’s claims, is irremediably opposed to liberal, secular and democratic values and is everywhere linked to the violent, authoritarian practices of clerical fascist terror?

Of course, the Christians of the Middle East have not been alone in this. Starting with the sometimes sizeable Jewish minorities of the Arab world, religious minorities have been more or less forced out of the region since the end of World War II. Together with the Jews,  Zoroastrians, Mandeans, Bahai, Yazidis, and other, smaller groups have all left the region that gave birth to all the monotheistic faiths. Those that remain have often been reduced to what one Christian commentator has called an underground,  “catacomb” faith, recalling the persecuted faith of the Early Church.

Nina Shea, in a recent article, comments:

Within our lifetime, the Middle East could be wholly Islamicized for the first time in history. Without the experience of living alongside Christians and other non-Muslims at home, what would prepare it to peacefully coexist with the West? This religious polarization would undoubtedly have geopolitical significance.

She echoes the views of the Lebanese Catholic scholar, Habib Malik (son of the late Charles Malik, one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights):

The existence of settled, stable, prosperous, and reasonably free and secure native Christian communities in the Middle East has served in many instances as a factor encouraging Islamic openness and moderation, creating an environment of pluralism that fosters acknowledgment of the different other. . . . In Lebanon, before the outbreak of war in 1975, Muslim communities lived with their Christian counterparts in a free atmosphere of mutual respect. The fruits of this coexistence are evident today, even after so many conflicts, among educated classes of Lebanese Sunnis and Shiites, who stand out in the broader Arab Islamic context as full-fledged examples of modernity in every way. Islamic moderation is strengthened when Muslims live with confident co-national adherents of communities that respect women, do not condone suicide bombing or religious domination, are compatible with liberal democracy, defend personal and group rights, and are comfortable with many features of secular life.

Charles Malik is the founding director of the Foundation of Human and Humanitarian Rights -Lebanon, an organisation dedicated to a secular, democratic and liberal future for all the communities of modern Lebanon.

Elsewhere, the Copts of Egypt continue to suffer between the hammer of Islamist pogrom and the anvil of the state’s continued complicity in discrimination against the Coptic Orthodox Christian community. Shea quotes the brave and indefatigable Bishop Thomas of the Coptic Church, who has single-handedly attempted to preserve the ancient Coptic language (the last living descendent of the language of ancient Egypt) and the fragile culture of the Egyptian Christian community. For his pains, Bishop Thomas has faced repeated death-threats. Bishop Thomas recalled his own upbringing as a Copt in Egypt and the hope that his faith brings him:

I grew up memorizing the Quran, and a lot of the Hadiths, hearing the stories of the history, how the Islamic troops were victorious. And we have to study that and we have to write it in our exams and we have to praise it. Nowadays, the media has the same style and, wherever you are, you hear Quranic reciting. It shouts everywhere, and this is part of the pressure that people are living with. Even though we are facing a lot of hardship, still we are not weak because, simply, truth is strong, love is strong, hope is strong, and that enables the Christians in Egypt to continue.

Finally, Shea discusses the incredibly brave Anglican priest, Canon Andrew White. She writes of her friend:

The 45-year-old Anglican priest, afflicted with multiple sclerosis, voluntarily gave up his prestigious post at Coventry Cathedral to minister in Iraq. Since 2003, he has negotiated hostage releases, reconciled Sunnis and Shiites, operated free medical clinics, and supported Baghdad’s eight remaining Jews. White is the pastor of St. George’s Church, an ecumenical congregation he established for the remnants of Baghdad’s Chaldean, Syriac Orthodox, and Assyrian communities. Scores of his congregation have been murdered, and White himself was featured on a sectarian group’s “wanted” posters. He was once bound and beaten by security police.

I received a letter from him on October 25, which said in part, “I am very sorry to tell you that the two major bomb explosions in Baghdad this morning have done serious damage to the church compound. . . . Outside the church, at least 132 people were killed and over 600 injured. Destroyed fragments of their bodies have been thrown through windows of the church. . . . Many of our staff and church members remain unaccounted for. Lay Pastor Faiz and I have been trying in vain to reach them by telephone. Today was a terrible day for us. But even in the blood and trauma and turmoil, there are things for which we can, and indeed must, praise our G-d.”

There is a passage in the Gospel of Luke, one of many that never fails to move me. The Angel Gabriel has visited Mary. Mary is understandably troubled by the news that she is miraculously pregnant. Gabriel reminds her that her elderly kinswoman, Elizabeth, has also against the odds become pregnant:

And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.

For with G-d nothing shall be impossible.

One might think of the Churches of the Middle East as Elizabeth, elderly, seemingly barren – and of their brave and devout followers there, who hope on hope that their Churches may survive their present troubles, that they might too be part of the light that is so needed unto the nations of that troubled region. One does not have to be a Christian, nor even a believer of any kind, to understand the demands that anyone of a liberal, democratic and progressive stance must take on this issue. The freedom to worship in peace and safety is part of all of our universal human rights. Perhaps the dwindling Christian believers of the Middle East might take some comfort in those words of the Angel Gabriel, spoken so long ago, to a poor, confused, terrified young woman in the middle of the night:

For with G-d nothing shall be impossible.

Coptic Icon of the Annunciation

O Joseph! Your love
For a pregnant girl has brought
Wise men to their knees.

Laurence Smith

Coptic Icon of the Holy Family

Nizar Rohana was born in the village of ‘Esefya on Mount Carmel in 1975. He began his musical education at an early age and playing the Oud by the age of fifteen, and in 1996 he moved to Jerusalem to take up academic studies. Focusing his research on the music of the great Egyptian Composer Mohammad el-Qasabji, Rohana completed his Masters Degree in Musicology 2006. Today Nizar Rohana is a prominent Oud player in the Palestinian musical scene and he performs regularly for local and international audiences.

Listen and learn:

and this.

May All that is Good grant us such skill.

Bertrand Russell famously exemplified the limits of inductive inference by reference to the farmyard of turkeys that generalised (quite reasonably) that every morning the farmer would feed them… however; they did not take into account Christmas. One might have thought that turkeys might breathe (or perhaps gobble) easier in Islamist Sudan, where Christmas and all things non-Islamic are rather discounted, indeed discouraged. Unfortunately, this is not the case for the brace of fine birds in a cage outside of a supermarket in Taif, a district of Khartoum. Faisal, the in-house butcher is already sharpening his knives and allocating the disgusting duties of plucking and drawing the birds to unwitting Ethiopian shop assistants. Faisal asks me: “What do you do with these things?” I reply: “O Faisal, you eat them!” He glares at me; his visage then softens and he asks: “With dates?”

Forgoing the delights of Faisal’s doubtlessly odd butchery of a turkey; and the shoe-leather qualities of a halaal turkey from Brazil that has spent too long frozen to others in some warehouse in Luxor before being shipped south to Khartoum, the Family Abu Faris are settling down to a tasty repast of leg of mutton this Festive Season. Yes, with dates, and slathered all over with a butter mixture of garlic, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper, together with fresh almonds. The whole is presently sealed in silver foil, in the fridge. I am letting the flavours mix.

Reversing the normal practice of Christmas, this will be the left-overs (or perhaps nearly whole-over) from an earlier meal – or rather, slaughter. A young ram sacrificed at ‘Eid.

An odd sheep. It seemingly had five legs. Or at least so it seemed this morning when I went through the defrosted carrier bag of offal, bits and bobs and meats I had thrust into my hand by the Sacrifice butcher and which I had as quickly plunged uninspected into the depths of the freezer. I went downstairs from my apartment (after confirming with my wife the Arabic for “mutant”) and interrupted the doorman from his task of sleeping on the job. I had something else to share with him, apart from my miraculously five-legged sheep. “You are lucky!” was the reply, when I pointed out that my sheep had five legs. I drew out of the bag of offal I had carried down with me my other discovery: “And, he seems to have had two penises and four bollocks”. The doorman seemed unperturbed: “These are nice, barbeque them, wait until they pop, then eat them.” I asked sarcastically, “With dates?” He leaned forward from his cot: “Why dates? You don’t eat balls with dates!”

Peace and Goodwill to All.

Montazeri was a leading light in the 1979 Revolution. Initially named as Khomeini’s successor, Montazeri soon turned against the regime, becoming one of its bravest and most consistent critics from within the Shi’a clerical elite. He remained under house arrest for much of the latter part of his life.

Montazeri will remain a controversial figure for everyone committed to secular democracy and the separation of religion and state. However, Montazeri’s personal bravery,  integrity and commitment to human rights are surely without question. His early and consistent opposition to the tyranny of Khomeini’s regime and that of his successors marked the Grand Ayatollah out as an important opponent of the Islamist regime in Iran and, more broadly, the political realities and ambitions of clerical fascism.

His funeral is today, December 21, in Qom.

I call you father because I learned from you how to defend the oppressed without using violence against the oppressor. I learned from you that being silent is helping the oppressor. Father, I learned much from you, although I never got the chance to show my appreciation for being your child and student. Father, forgive us.

Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Laureate for peace

Read the obituary written by Muhammad Sahimi,  here.

In Egypt, the Coptic Orthodox Christian minority make up some 10% of the population; yet they continue to face hostility and persecution, largely whipped up by the Islamists. Writing in the New York Times, Daniel Williams observes the double-standards of the leaders of the Islamic community in condemning the Swiss referendum on minarets, whilst remaining silent about the continued denial of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority’s right to worship in peace:

On a side street in the far northeast Cairo suburb of Ain Shams, the door of a five-story former underwear factory is padlocked.

This is, or was supposed to be, the St. Mary and Anba Abraam Coptic Christian Church. The police closed it Nov. 24, 2008, when Muslims rioted against its consecration. Since then local Copts have had to commute to distant churches or worship in hiding at one another’s homes.

While Muslim leaders criticized the Nov. 29 vote in Switzerland that banned construction of minarets, the distinctive spires on mosques that are used for the call to prayer, they don’t support Christians who want to build churches in some Islamic countries. Restrictions in Egypt have exacerbated sectarian violence and discrimination, say Copts, a 2,000-year-old denomination that comprises about 10 percent of the population.

The day after the Swiss vote, Ali Gomaa, one of Egypt’s top Muslim clerics, called the decision “an attempt to insult the feelings of the Muslim community in and outside of Switzerland.”

Copts quickly said that neither he nor any other Islamic leader mentioned the Christian situation in Egypt.

“Without the merest attempt to put our house in order, are we in any position to taunt others to put theirs?” Youssef Sidhom, editor in chief of the Cairo-based Egyptian Coptic weekly newspaper El-Watani, said by telephone. “They should be ashamed.

Read more here

Eyewitnesses reported thousands of heavily armed policemen took up positions in the capital from early Monday morning hours in an apparent bid to curb the protests.

The bulk of the parties which signed up to take part in the rally include those signatories to the Juba declaration last September in a conference hosted by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

The parties are protesting the delay in passing crucial laws including the national security and referendum bill. A memorandum is set to be delivered to the national assembly.

Below are some photographs of the aftermath of that demonstration in which many peaceful demonstrators were beaten down by police using iron reinforcement rods.  Amongst many arrested were the Secretary General of the SPLM, Pagun Amum, and his deputy in the North, Yasir Armun.

After the personal intervention of the President of Southern Sudan and Vice President of Sudan, Salva Kiir, both SPLM leaders were released. Many others, less prominent, remain in detention. More demonstrations are expected later this week.

Please note that the demonstrators come from all regions and all religions of Sudan.

Freedom, democracy and peace for Sudan.

UPDATE

Amnesty International has released the following press release:

Sudan must end violent crackdown on protesters

7 December 2009

Amnesty International has strongly condemned a violent crackdown by Sudanese security forces on political protests in Khartoum on Monday.

The organisation also received reports of those arrested being tortured in detention. More than 200 people, including opposition leaders and human rights activists, were arrested as they gathered in front of the parliament building this morning.

“This is yet another example of the culture of violence that the Sudanese government has adopted,” said Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of the Africa programme at Amnesty International.

“We ask the government to immediately announce the names and whereabouts of those arrested and to charge them with recognized criminal offences or else secure their immediate release.”

“This widespread use of violence and torture against opposition and human rights activists as well as ordinary civilians must stop now’.

“The government should respect their right to peacefully assemble and express their views. This is a crucial time for Sudan and all parties should abstain from using violence, especially in the light of the coming elections and referendum.”

The demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament building in the early morning despite a last minute ban being imposed by the authorities.

The protest was aimed against the delays in passing laws that are seen as vital to a forthcoming referendum and elections.

Next year’s vote will be the first presidential, parliamentary and local elections in 24 years.

A referendum is also scheduled on whether the south should secede in 2011. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended 22 years of war during which 1,5 million people have been killed.

Meanwhile, in New York on October 29th, Syria, on behalf of the OIC, along with Belarus and Venezuela, proposed yet another General Assembly resolution “combating defamation of religions.” The resolution lends credibility to the proposal of a binding treaty and continues to provide international cover for domestic anti-blasphemy laws in countries like Pakistan and Sudan.

The United Nations has continuously passed non-binding resolutions on defamation of religions since 1999. However, for the first time ever, a UN body has now proposed a binding treaty to combat the defamation of religions.

In response,  over 100 NGOS from over 20 countries have signed a Common Statement protesting the resolution against the concept of defamation of religions:

United Nations resolutions on the defamation of religions are incompatible with the fundamental freedoms of individuals to freely exercise and peacefully express their thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.

Unlike traditional defamation laws, which punish false statements of fact that harm individual persons, measures prohibiting the `defamation of religions’ punish the peaceful criticism of ideas. Additionally, the concept of `defamation of religions’ is fundamentally inconsistent with the universal principles outlined in the United Nations’ founding documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms the protection of the rights of individuals, rather than ideas.

Such resolutions provide international support for domestic laws against blasphemy and injury to religious feelings, which are often abused by governments to punish the peaceful expression of disfavored political or religious beliefs and ideas. Moreover, existing international legal instruments already address discrimination, personal defamation, and incitement in ways that are more carefully focused to confront those specific problems without unduly threatening the rights of freedom of expression and the freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

It is vitally important for governments to combat violence motivated by bias and hatred and to encourage respectful speech and civil dialogue, while at the same time affirming that freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience and religion are integral to the health of free societies and the dignity of the human person.

Finally, legal efforts alone cannot foster an environment of respect and religious freedom. Education and public diplomacy are vital tools in the protection of a peaceful and robust exchange of ideas and beliefs.

The Sudanese head of state faces an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) last March accusing him of orchestrating war crimes in Darfur. Despite making several trips in the region, Bashir has so far avoided all states that have ratified the ICC statute.

However the threat of arrest is not what deters the President. At least not according to the loud-mouthed Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Abdel-Mahmood Abdel-Haleem. The ambassador is a man known for living in a hallucinogenic atmosphere of hyperbole on a planet far, far removed from reality. Speaking to BBC World’s Hardtalk,  Abdel-Haleem became characteristically over-excited:

there is nothing preventing president Bashir to move anywhere.

Apart from possibly an ICC arrest warrant? Cannily asked our man at Auntie.

Warming to his deranged excuses for his President hiding under the bed in the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, Abdel-Haleem became incandescent with simulated rage:

But really for us going to Copenhagen at the highest levels also has its own political calculations because after the defamation and the characterization of prophet Mohamed any Muslim leader will find it difficult to go to Copenhagen.

The Ambassador gets very cross

Asked whether Sudan fears that Bashir could be arrested on Danish soil, the ambassador said that the conference is a UN one and not a bilateral one which means that:

He is free to go anywhere… Whatever you mention piracy is there in international relations which is very regrettable fact. We have our position made very clear on this so-called ICC

Back on Planet Earth, the Sudanese President is limited in his travels abroad out of fear that being in international airspace makes him at risk of being apprehended and extradited to The Hague.

Bashir has already avoided several invitations in the last few months to attend conferences in Uganda, Nigeria, Venezuela and the US. Presumably these countries too have grievously offended the delicate religious sentiments of the Sudanese President – because, of course, there can be no other reason for this peace-loving, progressive President’s reticence to travel to these other far away places, now can there?

It is public knowledge that the Brotherhood’s British arms, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Young Muslim Organisation, have previously promoted al-Awlaki. He was the main speaker at the latter organisation’s “Remaking of a Great Nation” fundraiser for “the people of Iraq” back in June, 2003. The MAB website address being prominently displayed on the posters for the same.

However, the connections between al-Awlaki and the Muslim Brotherhood are far deeper than his speaking at their events in the UK. Writing in the Washington Post, Susan Schmidt commented that:

Tax records show that in 1998 and 1999, while in San Diego, Aulaqi [sic] served as vice president of the now-defunct Charitable Society for Social Welfare Inc… Three years ago [2005], federal prosecutors in a New York terrorism-financing case described the charity as “a front organization” that was “used to support al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.”

That al-Awlaki should have been involved with al-Qaida front groups is surely of no surprise. However, the fact that the Charitable Society for Social Welfare was the US arm of a Yemeni charity, set up by the leader of the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is perhaps less well-known.

That man is Shaykh Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, present leader of at-tajammu al-yemeni lil-islah (Yemeni Congregation for Reform), the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Shaykh al-Zindani is also the founder of the Iman University in Sana’a, Yemen. According to the NEFA foundation’s profile of al-Awlaki:

Al Awlaki’s connection to al Zindani extends beyond CSSW, as he also took classes and lectured at Iman University in Sanaa, Yemen, which al Zindani heads. While al Zindani claims that the university has a robust science department where they have discovered a cure for AIDS, others believe that the curriculum deals exclusively with the study of radical Islam

Iman University students allegedly were involved in numerous attacks, including the assassination of three American missionaries and the assassination of one of the leaders of the Yemeni Socialist Party. Al Zindani asserted that the accusations were unfounded.

John Walker Lindh [the “American Taliban”]  is a former student of Iman University.

Al-Zindani is a known associate of al-Qaida, as well as being the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen. In 2004, the US Treasury Department identified al-Zindani as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”. The Department said it had credible evidence al-Zindani had a “long history of working with bin Laden, notably serving as one of his spiritual leaders”, that he “served as a contact for Ansar al-Islam (Al), a Kurdish-based terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda”.

Al-Zindani’s name subsequently appeared on the UN 1267 Committee’s list of individuals belonging to or associated with al-Qaeda.

There is little point in apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood trying to argue that al-Zindani represents another Brother gone to the bad (as they have with al-Awlaki). Writing in Ashraq Alawsat, Mshari Al-Zaydi points out that:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s ties to Yemen go back a long way and they have a special relationship with the country. Since the time of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen [1918 – 1962] the Muslim Brotherhood has displayed special attention to Yemen. Anybody reading about the coup which was carried out against Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamidaddin in 1948 and which ended with his assassinations at the hands of Abdullah Alwazir and a group of Yemeni officers will know that a prominent Muslim Brotherhood figure was the dynamo behind this revolution. We are talking about well-known Algerian Muslim Brotherhood member al-Fudhail al-Wartalani who traveled to Yemen from Egypt after he was ordered by Hassan al-Banna to lead the revolution. The coup proved successful and al-Fudhail served as adviser to the Yemeni revolutionaries. However it was not long before Imam Ahmad Bin Yahya reclaimed power from them, and had the group arrested, and its leaders executed. Al-Fudhail al-Wartalani received a death sentence, but he managed to escape, only to die many years later in Turkey…

Hassan al-Banna’s ties to Yemen are well known to those who have read about this period, and the Muslim Brotherhood has not tried to conceal these ties. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood takes pride in the fact that the “Sacred National Pact” which was the official document of the Yemeni revolution against Imam Yahya, had been drafted at the Muslim Brotherhood’s headquarters in Cairo, according to Muslim Brotherhood historian Mahmoud Abdul Halim.

In short, the Muslim Brotherhood has been intimately involved in attempts to overthrow the Yemeni government by main force in order to install an Islamist regime with them at the helm. If historically facts have given the lie to the Muslim Brotherhood’s propaganda that it is a moderate Islamist party purportedly dedicated to peaceful and democratic change, then present realities in Yemen suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood is a leopard that still has not changed its spots. The Saudi journalist, Hamad Al-Majid, comments:

Wise politicians say that not taking a position on an issue is a position in itself. I believe this applies to the position taken by the Yemeni Congregation for Reform [YCR] on the Huthi crisis in Saada. The YCR is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Yemen, and the party’s position on the Huthi crisis is… dominated by partisan interests, and it is being governed by selfish political considerations.

I browsed the YCR website, skimmed through their articles, and read interviews with their leaders searching for a position that would reduce the danger that Yemen is currently facing from the Huthi rebellion, but I found nothing more than ambiguous decorative phrases, and attempts to twist the Yemeni regime’s arm [in order to make political gains].

To conclude: there an extensive body of evidence linking the fugitive jihadi militant, al-Awlaki to both al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood. This in itself fatally undermines the Muslim Brotherhood’s claims to have repudiated violence and extremism.

However,  there is also a growing body of evidence showing how, despite their best propaganda to depict themselves as peace-loving moderates, the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen (as elsewhere) are intimately involved in jihadi violence designed to overthrow the existing regime and install an anti-democratic and authoritarian Islamist regime. In so plotting, they are heavily involved in exactly the sort of  al-Qaida associated Islamists with which they, with standard duplicity, claim to have no truck.

If there were any doubts about the linkage between Islamism and violence, these are surely now dispelled.