“I am not an apostate, I love Jesus Christ”

There are a lot of people writing about Abdul Rahman, that man who can be another martyr in the 21st century. A man that, knowing what was going to happen to him, acknowledge his faith in Christ. A man whose own family denounced to a Shari’a tribunal for the very grave crime of converting to Christianity. I have written yet on the subject, but there are more news, and as a result I am going to make a summary of the posts I have read throughout the blogosphere, underlining that the difference between the cartoons and this case is that in here the life of a peaceful, valuable and good human being can be destroyed because of the intolerance of a country and its President Hamid Karzai, who has decided not to intervene to save his life.

Having said that, it’s reconforting to me that in a moment where we have so many self-interests and when so much people tend to hide what they really are to satisfy the political correctness, there are people as this man that has everything to lose, he keeps himself firm, as Pastorius notes:

He was questioned, “Do you confess that you have apostacized from Islam?”

He responded, “No, I am not an apostate, I believe in God.”

Question: “Do you believe in the Koran?”

Response: “I believe in the Injil (New Testament) and love Jesus Christ.

So simple, and serene and yet so important and brave. You can see the video in which he says that here.

Among the Governments, possibly the Italian Governemnt has taken the hardest position of all. We can see it in the Italian Blogosphere. For example, Libero Pensiero is commenting an article appeared in the Italian Newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, in which a paragraph at least is very important:

Con i Talebani non si sarebbe saputo niente (anzi, qualcuno avrebbe detto “sono i loro usi, Abdul lo sapeva e non doveva convertirsi o comunque non doveva dichiararlo”), non si sarebbe potuto protestare più di tanto (i Talebani non erano molto aperti ai consigli altrui) e, soprattutto, avrebbero fatto come volevano (vedi statue dei Buddha, distrutte nonostante e richieste dell’Onu).

Translation: With the Talebans this case would not have been known (or if it has been the case, they would have said, “these are our uses, Abdul knew it and he shuold not have converted, and do not talk more about this issue), there would have never been so much protests (the Talibans were not very open to discussion) and, above all, they would have acted as they wanted (just remember the Buddha statutes, destroyed, without taking into account the demands from ONU).

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Court rules against Muslim girl who didn’t want to wear “uniform of the unbelievers”

From The Telegraph:

The Law Lords have overturned a court ruling that teenager Shabina Begum’s human rights were violated when she was banned from wearing full-length Islamic dress at school.

Well, she named the uniform (that is, same form, regardless any personal or individual concerns) the one of the un-believers, reason very important not to wear it.

If you scroll down the article from the Telegraph you can see that one of her defendants is Cherie Blair.

HT: IBA and Jonz.

Technorati Tags: hijad, Cherie Blair, Islamists, Great Britain,

Terrorist suspect accused of plotting to buy a radio-isotope bomb (UPDATED)

The trial is taking place in Britain. From Free Republic:

One of the suspected terrorists on trial for allegedly plotting a nationwide bombing campaign has been linked to a nuclear weapon.

The Old Bailey jury was told that Salahuddin Amin had been involved in discussions to buy a nuclear bomb.

The prosecution said contact had been made with the Russian mafia in Belgium, from whom they wanted to buy a radio-isotope bomb.

Yesterday, jurors heard the prosecution outline its case that the seven-strong gang – all British citizens – planned to blow up pubs, nightclubs, trains and also considered hitting the UK's power infrastructure.

Khyam, Garcia, Hussain, Akbar

The gang had wanted to blow up "the biggest nightclub" in central London, prosecutor David Waters QC said.

In February, 2004, they were allegedly overheard discussing bomb targets.

Mr Waters said: "Jawad Akbar referred to attacks upon the utilities, gas, water or electrical supplies.

"Alternatively, a big nightclub in central London might be a target."

The accused deny conspiring to cause explosions between January 1 2003 and March 31 2004.

Three of them also deny an additional charge of possessing an article for terrorism.

Mohammed Babar, a US citizen who pleaded guilty in New York to a role in a "British bomb plot", is expected to give evidence against the defendants.

The Guardian:

Seven British men with alleged links to al-Qaida plotted to carry out a terrorist campaign in the UK with homemade explosives containing more than half a tonne of fertiliser, the Old Bailey heard yesterday. The defendants, mainly of Pakistani descent, had most of the necessary bomb-making components ready but were arrested in March 2004 before they had finalised a target, said David Waters QC, opening the prosecution case.

[…] Most of the gang are accused of having undergone training at terrorist camps in Pakistan in the past few years. And they all "played their respective roles" in the plan to make a bomb or bombs, which would be used "to kill or injure citizens of the UK", said Mr Waters.

A US citizen, Mohammed Babar, who has already admitted his part in the "British bomb plot", will testify at the Old Bailey in a few days' time.

(snip) Most of the defendants, whom Babar called the "Crawley lot", visited him there, where they underwent terrorist training in explosives techniques and worked out how to get bomb components and bring them to the UK.

Khyam and Amin both told Babar they worked for a man called Abdul Hadi, whom they claimed was "number three in al-Qaida".

Khyam, whom Mr Waters described as "very much at the centre of operations", said he wanted to carry out operations in the UK because it was as yet unscathed and should be hit because of its support for the US.

"The majority of that contact [with Babar] was in Pakistan and it involved, for the most part, one theme – the acquisition of training and expertise, particularly in relation to explosives," said Mr Waters.

UPDATE: From Times On Line:

All the defendants, apart from Mr Hussain, allegedly trained at camps in Pakistan and spent time in Britain with Mr Babar. They frequently changed their names, used code words and regularly disposed of their laptop computers and mobile phones.

Mr Waters said that in one discussion with Mr Babar, Waheed Mahmood had said he “couldn’t understand why people were coming all the way to Pakistan or Afghanistan to fight when they should be fighting jihad in the UK”. Concerned about MI5 surveillance, he suggested that a new Islamic convert receive explosives training in Pakistan and return to Britain to teach others.

[…]Shujah Mahmood arrived in Pakistan with digital scales for weighing ratios of ammonium nitrate to aluminium powder. Mr Garcia attended training camps and “taught those with less experience how to dismantle and reassemble weapons”. The men were said to have experimented at the camp with ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder, causing small explosions.

 

Tags: Great Britain, terrorism, radio-isotope bomb

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(Horrible) Pic of the Day

Valiantly showing off the severed head of an Indonesian Christian child.

I think it doesn’t need any comments.

Tags: death penalty, Christian Martyrs, Indonesia, intolerance

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Enclaves to practise Islam in the West

And this happens, when an Afghan is surely condemned to death beacuse of his conversion to Christianity and in Argelia a new law has been issued to condemn to prison and to fine the people who intend to convert a Muslim (that is, anyone that speaks about other religions -mainly Christianism-) and is obliging them to only practise their religion in appointed places. Well, as I said before: reciprocity is a NEED to protect this kind of people in countries where there is no freedom of religion, no matter who says the contrary.

The Islamist Challenge to the U.S. Constitution – Middle East Quarterly – Spring 2006

First in Europe and now in the United States, Muslim groups have petitioned to establish enclaves in which they can uphold and enforce greater compliance to Islamic law. While the U.S. Constitution enshrines the right to religious freedom and the prohibition against a state religion, when it comes to the rights of religious enclaves to impose communal rules, the dividing line is more nebulous. Can U.S. enclaves, homeowner associations, and other groups enforce Islamic law?
Such questions are no longer theoretical. While Muslim organizations first established enclaves in Europe,[1] the trend is now crossing the Atlantic. Some Islamist community leaders in the United States are challenging the principles of assimilation and equality once central to the civil rights movement, seeking instead to live according to a separate but equal philosophy. The Gwynnoaks Muslim Residential Development group, for example, has established an informal enclave in Baltimore because, according to John Yahya Cason, director of the Islamic Education and Community Development Initiative, a Baltimore-based Muslim advocacy group, “there was no community in the U.S. that showed the totality of the essential components of Muslim social, economic, and political structure.”[2]
Baltimore is not alone. In August 2004, a local planning commission in Little Rock, Arkansas, granted The Islamic Center for Human Excellence authorization to build an internal Islamic enclave to include a mosque, a school, and twenty-two homes.[3] While the imam, Aquil Hamidullah, says his goal is to create “a clean community, free of alcohol, drugs, and free of gangs,”[4] the implications for U.S. jurisprudence of this and other internal enclaves are greater: while the Little Rock enclave might prevent the sale of alcohol, can it punish possession and in what manner? Can it force all women, be they residents or visitors, to don Islamic hijab (headscarf)? Such enclaves raise the fundamental questions of when, how, and to what extent religious practice may supersede the U.S. Constitution.
The internal Muslim enclave proposed by the Islamic Center for Human Excellence in Arkansas represents a new direction for Islam in the United States. The group seeks to transform a loosely organized Muslim population into a tangible community presence. The group has foreign financial support: it falls under the umbrella of a much larger Islamic group, “Islam 4 the World,” an organization sponsored by Sharjah, one of the constituent emirates of the United Arab Emirates.[5] While the Islamic Center for Human Excellence has yet to articulate detailed plans for its Little Rock enclave, the group’s reliance on foreign funding is troublesome. Past investments by the United Arab Emirates’ rulers and institutions have promoted radical interpretations of Islam. [6]
The Islamic Center for Human Excellence may seek to segregate schools and offices by gender. The enclave might also exercise broad control upon commerce within its boundaries—provided the economic restrictions did not discriminate against out-of-state interests or create an undue burden upon interstate commerce. But most critically, the enclave could promulgate every internal law—from enforcing strict religious dress codes to banning alcohol possession and music; it could even enforce limits upon religious and political tolerance. Although such concepts are antithetical to a free society, U.S. democracy allows the internal enclave to function beyond the established boundaries of our constitutional framework. At the very least, the permissible parameters of an Islamist enclave are ill defined.
[…]As the Muslim community in the United States grows, an increasingly active Islamist lobby has submitted numerous white papers and amicus briefs to legislators and courts arguing for the religious right of Muslims to apply Shari‘a law, particularly in relation to family law disputes.[13] This looming jurisprudential conflict is significant for it raises issues about the rights of community members to marry outside the community, forced marriages, and the minimum age of brides, and whether wives and daughters may enjoy equal inheritance. In cases of non-family law, it raises the question about whether the testimony of women will be considered on par with that of men.
No previous enclave in U.S. history has ever been so vigorously protected by agents of group identity politics or so adamantly defended by legal watchdogs; nor has any previous religious enclave possessed the potency of more than one billion believers around the world. Islamic-only communities may also benefit from the largess provided by billions of petrol dollars to finance growth. The track record of Saudi and other wealthy Persian Gulf donations and charitable efforts are worrisome. There is a direct correlation between Saudi money received and the spread of intolerant practices. In 2004, for example, the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of Al-Haramein Foundation, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest nongovernmental organizations, because of its financial links to Al-Qaeda.[14] Additionally, American graduates of Saudi academies advance Wahhabist interpretations of Islam inside the U.S. prison system,[15] and Saudi-subsidized publications promote intolerance inside U.S. mosques.[16]

Go on reading here. It’s just the state in the State.

So it is not rare that American Muslims hate the US Troops. Or in Austria, from Agora, three Muslim soldiers did not salute Austrian flag, rather they just turn their backs to it (also treated by The Brussels Journal).

The 3 Moslem conscripts who refused to salute the flag were not disciplined, instead an Imam was summoned who issued a fatwa saying that it is allowed for Moslems to salute the Austrian flag. In response to the criticisms of Moslems in the army he says that there will alway be a few black sheep, but that their certificates are withdrawn if they are outed.

HT: Arturito.

Let’s fund another pacific countries then

As palestinians say they do not need EU money. There are a lot of countrie sin the world who would need that money. And there are a lot of poor people in the world, who would be extremelly happy to receive it (HT: LGF).

BERLIN (AFP) – The Palestinian territories could survive without aid from the European Union and would find funding elsewhere if necessary, the German press reported the Palestinian finance minister designate as saying.
If the EU makes good on recent threats to suspend funding to the Palestinian territories “the consequences will be serious but not catastrophic”, minister designate Omar Abdul Razeq told the Financial Times Deutschland.
“We can also survive without them,” added the Hamas official, who was named on Sunday as part of a cabinet dominated by members of the militant Islamic group that won resounding victory in the Palestinian election in January.

And of course, people who are not rising their sons and daughter in the destruction and conquest. Because they are just rejecting the aid because they do not want to leave their main purpose: the destruction of Israel..

Tags: Hamas, terrorism, Israel, European Union

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What is the meaning of freedom of expression?

In the US the cartoons should not be published because they are an insult to the religion and you have to respect others. Yet, if someone displays a banner in which it can be read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" in a public school, and the banner is siezed, a Court has sentenced that is against his freedom of expresion, even if that banner is referring to smoking marijuana:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – An Alaska high school violated a student’s free speech rights by suspending him after he unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from the school, a federal court ruled on Friday.
Joseph Frederick, a student at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska, displayed the banner — which refers to smoking marijuana — in January 2002 to try to get on television as the Olympic torch relay was passing the school.
Principal Deborah Morse seized the banner and suspended the 18-year-old for 10 days, saying he had undermined the school’s educational mission and anti-drug stance.
Friday’s ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a decision by a federal court in Alaska that backed Frederick’s suspension and said his rights were not violated.
The appeals court said the banner was protected speech because it did not disrupt school activity and was displayed off school grounds during a non-curricular activity.
"Public schools are instrumentalities of government, and government is not entitled to suppress speech that undermines whatever missions it defines for itself," Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote in the court’s opinion.
The court also cleared the way for Frederick to seek damages, saying Morse was aware of relevant case law and should have known her actions violated his rights.

So, let me get this strait: if you just publish some cartoons that are only seen by people who are reading that paper -and when Jyllands-Posten published them, it was no great paper-, and that you have to pay for it,  you are inciting religion hatred and your freedom of expression should be disminished. But if you are displaying a banner in a public school which is in favour of smoking marijuana, when minors can see it, then you’re exercing your freedom of expression.

Hmm, I still do not see it, really.

Tags: freedom of expression, Jyllands-Posten

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