Pakistan ISI Caught Red Handed

The Haqqani Network is a Taliban wing  based in Pakistan. Last week it was responsible for the terrorist attack on an NATO installation in Kabul. Sixteen people were killed – no Americans.

Now irrefutable mobile intercept evidence has been traced which shows the direct link between Haqqani network and the ISI.

According to U.S. officials, the Haqqani network consists of several thousand fighters and operates with impunity from safe havens inside Pakistan, conducting cross-border raids into Afghanistan and up into Kabul.

The Pakistani spy agency uses the Haqqanis to sow violence so Afghanistan cannot emerge as a strong and stable country allied with Pakistan’s arch enemy India.

Two days before the attack on the U.S. Embassy, a large truck bomb went off at an American combat outpost, wounding 77 U.S. soldiers.

Posted in Terrorism | Leave a comment

Mecca: Sacred Muslim Sites Destroyed To Create Hotels and Public Toilets

Mecca: Blingsville, KSA

According to an article in the Independent, urbanisation projects for the redevelopment of Mecca are responsible for the destruction of many sites sacred to Muslims. The following are the next to feel the brunt of the demolition crews:

Bayt al-Mawlid

When the Wahabis took Mecca in the 1920s they destroyed the dome on top of the house where the Prophet Mohammed was born. It was thenused as a cattle market before being turned into a library after a campaign by Meccans. There are concerns that the expansion of the Grand Mosque will destroy it once more. The site has never been excavated by archaeologists.

Ottoman and Abasi columns of the Grand Mosque

Slated for demolition as part of the Grand Mosque expansion, these intricately carved columns date back to the 17th century and are the oldest surviving sections of Islam’s holiest site. Much to the chagrin of Wahabis, they are inscribed with the names of the Prophet’s companions. Ottomon Mecca is now rapidly disappearing

Posted in Islamism | 1 Comment

Who Cries For Kurdistan?

Whereas the Israel-Palestine issue remains a flashpoint, and a sore one at that, which induces waves of empathic solidarity for the Palestinians from your average Muslim, primarily concerned about the welfare of their co-religionists, the struggle for other co-religionists struggling for statehood receives scarce attention. Why is that? Why does the notion of an indepedent Kurdistan for the Kurds engender little more a blank stare despite the fact that the modern history of the Kurdish struggle for separate political status goes back more than eight decades and involves incidences of brutal human violations on a massive scale?

As this fascinating essay about the history and the current political dynamics in the struggle for Kurdish emancipation from Outernationalist shows:

Posted in Human Rights | Leave a comment

Simply A State for Palestine

The Palestinians nudge closer to achieving a recognised state, as their application to the UN Security Council goes to the vote later today. Obama will inevitably veto it, no surprises there. So will France. But if the Palestinians can get past the UNSC to the General Assembly they will win membership to the UN by a large majority, giving them “observer” status to the UN, similar to that of the Vatican. This could then lead to full membership if they continue to play their cards right.

UN membership for Palestine is a good thing in principal. And, if it can be achieved, it will be good in practice for both Palestinians and Israelis for two reasons:

It will strengthen the hand of the moderate Palestinian consensus and isolate the Hamas contingent. No one opposes the UN bid led by Mahmoud Abbas more than his compatriots in Hamas. The Arab Spring and the possibility of UN recognition could weaken the legitimacy of Palestinian Islamist politics.

Posted in International Affairs, Israel/Palestine | Leave a comment

Caption Competition 16/09/2011

You know what to do…

Posted in Caption Competition | 7 Comments

China’s Campaign Against Ramadan

Here is a shocking story of state-sponsored anti-Muslim persecution in China.

China has a long history of Muslim persecution that goes back decades. Will this story be reported by the “revolutionary socialist” blogs which claim to catalogue incidents of Islamophobia? This means either Islamophobia-Watch (“Documenting anti-Muslim bigotry”) or SocialistUnity? Unlikely, neither Islamists nor the far-left, in their efforts to attribute blame to incidents of draconian anti-Muslim bigotry include abuses by the PRC. Why the ideological selectiveness, you may ask? Simple, China isn’t Jewish Israeli enough for the Islamists to get their bilious juices flowing, and the British far-left just can’t bash the bugbears of “Western Imperialism” and “Zionism” when it comes to Chinese Islamophobia, they really are not that concerned about Chinese Muslims.

For years, China has restricted observance of Ramadan for Communist Party members and government cadres. On one website for an agricultural bureau, for instance, employees were reminded “not to practice any religion, not to attend religious events and not to fast.”

Posted in Anti Muslim bigotry | 2 Comments

Why I Hate Al Qaeda

This is a cross-post by Karima Benoune


2,975 reasons to hate Al Qaeda. There are millions more.

To start, there are 2,975 reasons from 90 countries. An unforgettable patchwork quilt of humanity that was disappeared on a Tuesday morning ten years ago. (credit for photo above depicting many victims of 9/11) But that is only the beginning.

I hate Al Qaeda for all the human beings they have killed – the Africans, Americans, Arabs, Asians, Europeans, agnostics, atheists, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims.

I hate Al Qaeda because they have murdered thousands of Muslims even while claiming to represent them, a claim they make even while bombing mosques during Ramadan. Because they reduce a rich religious heritage to a series of absurd prohibitions. They make the most sacred pronouncements, like Allahu Akbar – God is Great – into threats, into epithets.

I hate Al Qaeda because of the Caliphate of Doom they want to build.

Posted in Islamism, Terrorism | 5 Comments

The Ties That Bind

Muslims have a long and distinguished record of service in the British armed forces.

But this record has been almost completely obliterated in recent years by the competing narratives of the Far Right and of hardline Islamists. Both blocs, for their own ideological reasons, seem to assert that one cannot be both a loyal Briton and a good Muslim at the same time.

In Ties that Bind former Islamist Shiraz Maher recaptures this lost history of Muslim service to the Crown. Maher shows that this collective past constitutes the basis of a new shared future – which can endure in no less testing circumstances. It also forms the basis for enhanced recruitment of Muslims to the armed forces, without political preconditions attached.

Download here.

Posted in History | 1 Comment

Islam in a Secular Europe

Interesting Meet-up to discuss and debate the issues of Islam and secularism in Europe at Conway Hall on 16 September.

Does the religious freedom of Muslims in Europe depend on secularism?

Are veil and burkha bans secularist or counter-secularist?

What should the relationship be between sharia rules and secular law?

Should the state fund Islamic schools if it funds Christian ones?

Can secularism admit any limitations on freedom of expression in religious matters?

Is there a clash of cultures between European values and Islamic ones?

British Humanist Association and Central London Humanists in association with Conway Hall present this panel discussion which aims to bring together key speakers to explore the effect of secular democracy in Europe.

Posted in Secularism | 2 Comments

Toronto Al-Quds Day: Another Jew HateFest

This is essential viewing. It is a distillation of the wholly reprehensible phenomenon of Jew-hatred dressed up as legitimate criticism of Israel. Criticism of Israel is fair game, but accusing it of “sucking the blood of the people of the world” is undiluted Jew hatred, not political critique.

Here Tarek Fatah is interviewed by Brian Lilley on Sun TV, a Canadian tv channel, on the Al-Quds rally held in Queens Park in Toronto which was little more than a racist hatefest, where President Obama was referred to as “this Black man in the White House” and there was talk of raising an Islamic Army to wipe out Israel.

The same phenomenon is happening in the UK. Politicians such as Ken Livingstone will kowtow to Islamic Jew hatred propagated by “representive” Islamist political groups because it will win them a handful of votes from their South Asian constituents.

Posted in Antisemitism, The Far Left | 6 Comments
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