Iran to Give $50 million to Hamas-led Government

Elder of Ziyon was asking himself why Iran wasn’t financing publicly Hamas. Well, from The New York Times:

Iran said today that it would give $50 million in aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government after the United States and the European Union froze their aid.

Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, announced the donation on the last day of a pro-Palestinian conference here.

“We warn that if the aid is cut and if this continues in the near future, this land will witness a humanitarian disaster and the occupiers and their supporters will be responsible,” the ISNA student news agency quoted Mr. Mottaki as saying, alluding to Israel.

The European Union suspended its $600 million aid package and the United States a $400 million donation after Hamas’s unexpected electoral victory in January. The measures were aimed at increasing pressure on the militant Palestinian group to renounce violence and to recognize Israel.

Sooooooooooooo… the culprits of the humanitarian crisis are European Union and Unites States…And Iran is a humanitarian country. 

This world is full of idiots.

But as JihadWatch says:

Now we don’t approve of Hamas getting a penny from anyone. Still, this is $50 million that the Thug-In-Chief can’t use for his own galloping nuclear ambitions. And it’s also $50 million unspent by the United States or Western Europe — a small sum, but perhaps someday such sums will be put toward the defense against the global jihad.

Advertisement

Top Al-Qaeda man killed in Afghanistan

You can read about it here

Nine militants, including a top Al Qaeda operative carrying a bounty of $5 million on his head, have been killed in an air strike six kilometers from here, senior security officials said.

Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah alias Abdur Rehman alias Abu Muhajir, wanted by the US for his involvement in the 1998 bombings on American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, was killed in an attack on Wednesday night, the officials said. The 41-year old militant was said to be from Egypt.

“His death has been confirmed,” officials working for different agencies said. “The confirmation is based upon multiple intelligence sources,” one of them said.

Tags: Afghanistan, terrorism

Powered by Qumana

The Australian rapists who blame their Pakistani-Muslim culture

A New South Wales Supreme Court judge has rejected a claim by a Sydney gang-rapist that his strict Pakistani upbringing meant he did not know his actions were wrong.

Justice Peter Hidden has today sentenced two Sydney brothers, who can only be known as MSK and MAK, for a range of sexual assaults against two teenage girls at the brothers’ home in Ashfield in 2002.

The brothers are already serving lengthy sentences for the gang-rape of two other teenage girls and MSK will now serve up to 28 years in jail, and MAK will serve up to 19 years.

MSK claimed his family’s strict moral and cultural upbringing in Pakistan explained his offences, which has angered one of his victims, Tegan Wagner.

“This wasn’t about culture, this is about abuse against women and the fact that they had the nerve to bring in culture to begin with just astounds me,” she said.

HT: All Things Beautiful.

Just in case someone does not agree with the “Muslim” in the title you can read these posts:

• Muslim gang rapes in general and in Australia.
• Western Muslims’ racist rape spree. (translated to Spanish here).

The racist reason is given by the rapists themselves. The problem is that nothing is being done to prevent others doing the same. In the case of these rapers:

Sister Toldjah has several posts on the subject. but one of them is extraordinary:

• Gang rapist’s attacks unavoidable.

A violent gang rapist should have been given a lesser sentence

partly because he was a “cultural time bomb” whose attacks were inevitable, as he had emigrated from a country with traditional views of women, his barrister has argued. MSK, who, with his three Pakistani brothers, raped several girls at their Ashfield family home over six months in 2002, was affected by “cultural conditioning … in the context of intoxification”, Stephen Odgers, SC, told the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday.

Kinshasha on the Potomac has the victim’s response to the eldest brother…

when he mouthed “I’m sorry”. According to the SMH;

Ms Wagner laughed and gave him the finger. When the court adjourned, she stood up, faced him and said: “F— you! Go to hell, mate.”

“I’ve been waiting four years to do that,” she said. Now 18, Ms Wagner then
took the extraordinary step of allowing her identity to be made public. Outside court, she said: “I’d like to say, have fun in prison, boys. I won.”

And Jeff continues saying:

While the use of the “Islamic” defense for gang rape is obviously ludicrous (Islam does not sanction rape), modern Islam, particularly how it is practiced and integrated into tribal societies, is brutal and does not hold women in high esteem (at least from my decadent, morally bankrupt, Western Crusader point-of-view). Women who have sex (as well as men) outside of marriage are to be whipped 100 times (from “The Light” 24.2), while adulteresses get stoned (Sunnah, Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413).

The terrible reality is that MSK is right (in Spanish, I translate only a part of it):

In some parts of Pakistan, the sexual assault -rape included- is officially authorised as a legitime way to implement the system of social values.

The Council of a little village ordered reciently that 5 teenagers should be “kidanpped, raped or murdered” because their negative to be treated as material things.

Their ages were between 6 and 13 when they were married against their will to pay a family debt, There is also the case of Mukhtar Mai: when it was presumed that her brother, aged 12, had comitted an offense in a little agricultural village, the council ordered his sister should be group-raped. So, she was carried to a hut where she was raped by four men repeatedly.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there were 804 cases of these type of rapes officially orchestrated in 2000 and 434 of them were group-rapes. But the worst thing is that the victims of these atrocities chould commit suicide, because the victims of rape are an irreparable damage to their families.

So when MSK committed the rapes he was only perpetuating his own cultural inheritance. He is proud of a society in which the sexual violence is officially condoned and used commonly as a tool to subdue the women even more.

I will search for more modern figures and write a post about them

Technorati Tags: rape, women’s rights, Australia, Western Countries, Pakistan, gang-rape, Sydney,

powered by performancing firefox

Did UBS help the Mullahs’ nuclear ambitions?

The Swiss bank UBS has become the latest casualty of raging "Iran fever" (¿? Sounds a little bit ironic and despective, doesn't it?) on Capitol Hill after key congressmen stepped up allegations that it had helped finance the Mullahs' nuclear ambitions in breach of US sanctions, and that it had once banked for Osama Bin Laden. Dana Rohrabacher, the chairman of a congressional inquiry into off-shore banking and terrorism, is mulling further hearings to determine whether UBS endangered world security by helping Iran through the illegal transfer of $440m (£253m) in US bank-notes in the 1990s.

"Iran at that time was facing a credit crunch. If the US was trying to restrict Iran's flow of income, but UBS was working to supplement it through loans and credits, then it seems to me the bank was working directly against the interests of the country that acted as one of the most important sources of business," he said in congressional hearings.

"Worse, UBS transferred US banknotes to Iran in violation of the very programme they were entrusted to run," he said.

More about Rahman and Afghanistan

We have known today that Rahman has asked for asylum in any foreign country:

 KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan man who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity has appealed for asylum in another country, the United Nations said Monday.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards said the world body was working with the Afghan government to meet the request by Abdul Rahman, 41.

"Mr. Rahman has asked for asylum outside Afghanistan," Edwards said. "We expect this will be provided by one of the countries interested in a peaceful solution to this case."

 And Italy has sought for obtaining his asylum:

ROME – Italy's foreign minister will ask the government to grant asylum to an Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity….

Abdul Rahman, 41, was released from prison late Monday, a day after the court dismissed the case under pressure from the Bush administration.

He quickly dropped out of sight, as Muslim clerics in his country continued to call for his death.

BUT why on earth no one was there waiting to protect him? A man who has received so many death threats, how can be left alone in a country where his own family has accused him and his own father has called him a traitor? We knew the Afghan Government was not going to do very much? BUt how about the International Forces?

The problem now is that he has disappeared: no one has seen him since. Afghan authorities have settled him to have mental treatment in the West. I just do not know what to make of it. Is he in hiding protecting by International troops and as a secure measure no one has said where he is? Or has he been kidnapped?

BUT there are also MORE Christians detained for the horrible, despicable crime of being Christians:

According to Compass Direct -a monitor of Christian persecution-, two other Afghan Christians were jailed in the past few days.

"Because of the sensitive situation, local sources requested that the location of the jailed converts be withheld," the organization said.

Compass Direct also reports that this past weekend, one young Afghan convert to Christianity was severely beaten outside his home by a group of six men who eventually knocked him unconscious with a hard blow to his temple. He woke up in the hospital two hours later, but later was discharged.

"Our brother remains steadfast, despite the ostracism and beatings," one of his friends is reported to have said.

The link does not tell anything of accusing the beaters and send them to jail. Maybe the Government thinks: "hey, they are doing that work for us". Each day passes along, each day I am more disgusted with the so-called powers of this world. BUT I am more displeased even with the so-called "intelectuals" and non-governmental organizations, who are so eager pointing out the human rights violations in a lt of Western countries and yet are so quiet when talking about the ones that happen in these part of the world. They are just silent. They do nothing. They say nothing. Even this is really a very grave violation that keeps repeating everyday

It's disgusting to see it's all a theatre, just made to think themselves are better all the rest of the world. I would like to see how many of them will face death with the same braveness and greatness of mind as this man has done.

Iranian regime is going to execute “silently” a woman fearing International pressure

Haghighat-Pajooh murdered her "temporary husband" for attempted rape of her 15-year-old daughter, from her first marriage and in 1997 was charged with murder, by the misogynist Mullah judiciary and sentenced to death.
Haghighat-Pajooh was originally scheduled for execution in 2002 however due to international pressure the execution was stayed. Once again however, the Islamic Republic of Iran's high tribunal has reinstated the ruling and has every intention of seeing the execution through .
Her execution, is reportedly scheduled to take place by or before April 1st, which is the last day of the Persian New Year.
According to various received reports, the Islamic regime is planning to execute her quietly so that any ressure from the international human rights groups can be foiled. The Islamic regime, fearing any further protests and challenges by Iranian women, plans to use Haghighat-Pajooh's case in order to strike more fear and intimidation in the hearts of Iranian women.
Fatemeh's daughter appeals to all freedom-loving people around the world as well as international human rights groups for immediate attention to her mother's case. 

HT: Sugiero.

Gateway Pundit also mentions this.

Abdul Rahman’s update: charges dropped against him

Looks like the pressure made by a lot of people has succeded:

"The court dismissed today the case against Abdul Rahman for a lack of information and a lot of legal gaps in the case," the official told AP on condition of anonymity.

"The decision about his release will be taken possibly tomorrow," the official added. "They don't have to keep him in jail while the attorney general is looking into the case."

Abdul Wakil Omeri, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, confirmed the case was dismissed because of "problems with the prosecutors' evidence."

"It is the job of the attorney general's office to decide if he is mentally fit to stand trial," he told AP.

Questions are reportedly being raised on whether or not Rahman would stay in Afghanistan, or face exile in another country.

[…] An Afghan Christian in the U.S. who has regular contact with Christians in his home country through his ministry, posted a video clip of Rahman on his website.

Rahman says in the clip, according to Andaryas: "The punishment by hanging? I will accept it gladly, but I am not an infidel. I am not a traitor. I am a follower of Jesus."

These last days, the pressure has come from several fronts. For example, Australian President, John Howard, has linked the fate of Abdul Rahman's to the presence of Australian forces in Afghanistan:

Howard has already written to Afghan President Hamid Karzai asking him to intervene and save the life of Abdul Rahman, condemned to death for converting from Islam to Christianity, and he said Sunday that his government would continue pressuring Kabul over the issue.

“I will not drop off this issue, I will not just be content to write a letter and leave it at that,” he said. “I will continue to press very, very strongly.”

Howard went on to link the case of Rahman, 41, to the deployment of Australian troops who have been fighting Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban regime, a fundamentalist Islamic militia which introduced harsh Sharia law to Afghanistan before being toppled by US-led forces in late 2001.

“I do feel very deeply about this, particularly because there are Australian soldiers risking their lives to fight the Taleban and we’re not fighting the Taleban to allow something like this to happen,” Howard said.

The Pope, that a lot of people were expecting to speak about this issue -including myself-, has also defended the freedom of religion:

Pope Benedict XVI has asked the Afghan president to show clemency towards a man facing possible execution for converting to Christianity. Abdul Rahman has been charged with apostasy, a religious offence.

 

The Vatican said the pontiff had appealed to President Hamid Karzai to respect human rights guarantees enshrined in the Afghan constitution….

The appeal was sent in a letter in Pope Benedict XVI's name by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

The note, excerpts of which were released by the Vatican, said the pope's appeal was inspired by "profound human compassion" and by a "firm belief in the dignity of human life and by respect for every person's freedom of conscience and religion".

Releasing Mr Rahman would "contribute in a most significant way to our common mission to foster mutual understanding and respect among the world's different religions and cultures", it added.

On the other hand, we have had a lot of stupid dhimmies also. The first one, Jack Straw, British FM, who was so quick in speaking against the Danish cartoonists, has been now quiet about this case:

When the row about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed broke, no one was quicker out of the traps than our Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. He roundly condemned what he saw as the irresponsibility of their publication.

It was not clear why Mr Straw felt the need to speak up. Britain has no responsibility for independent, democratic Denmark, nor for the European countries in which the cartoons were republished.

We do, however, bear considerable responsibility for Afghanistan. We helped invade it in 2001 to overthrow the Islamist Taliban government, and ever since then we have helped rebuild government and society there, including the framing of a new constitution. The other day, we sent yet more troops to help keep the uneasy peace. We boast, with some justice, that we have set Afghanistan free.

So the news that a Muslim is threatened with death by an Afghan court simply because he converted to Christianity should surely alarm Mr Straw. So far – and the case has been in the press for more than a week – we have heard nothing audible from him. President Bush has said he is "deeply troubled" by the case. Condoleezza Rice and many European governments have put strong pressure on the Afghan authorities to release the man, Abdul Rahman, citing Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes, in its definition of freedom of conscience, the right to change one's faith.

But Britain's mighty response has been left to one of Mr Straw's juniors at the Foreign Office, Kim Howells. Mr Howells has sought "urgent clarification" from Kabul.

It may provide Mr Howells with some of the clarification that he needs to point out that Mr Rahman's case was predictable. Islamic law (sharia) is enshrined in the new Afghan constitution. All the four schools of law in the majority Sunni Islam agree that the penalty for "apostasy" – abandoning one's Muslim faith – must be death. One states: "When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatises from Islam, he deserves to be killed" and recommends that, when he is killed, he should be "neither given a bath, nor any funeral prayer". Much the same applies in Shia Islam.

Looks like some cartoons are more valuable than one person's life. Well, Spanish Government is even worse because they haven't mentioned it, although there are Spanish soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.

Of course, there are also people who are thinking the Rahman's conversion is just a consequence of a Jewish conspiracy:

Another cleric, Ayatullah Asife Muhseni, told a gathering of preachers and intellectuals at a Kabul hotel that the Afghan president had no right to overturn the punishment of an apostate.

He also demanded that clerics be able to question Rahman in jail to discover why he had converted to Christianity. He suggested it could have been the result of a conspiracy by Western nations or Jews.

Well, that would be the poorest of all conspiracies, because the Jews would have achieved a convert to Christianity, not to Judaism. It would certainly be extraordinary. And above all, it is so inimaginable to be a convert to Christianity, hein?

Lastly, I want you to read an article from International Herald Tribune, whose title is: ""Execution of apostates rare in Islamic nations". It's very curious to read: looks like as if it's good that they kill sometimes because of being apostates.

UPDATE: BUT Rahman's is not the only one. You can read here or in general Afghan Times. So we have to ask: are they punishing the authors of these actions? If not, we can say that the Judges are as resposible for that as the killers.

A Lady's Ruminations has also a very good post on the subject. She asks what will be Rahman's situation and how secure he will be. Also The Rolling Barrage asks several questions -very important questions in fact-:

1. Will there be upcoming charges against anyone expressing a minority religious, or non-religious, view?

2. How will the populace respond? Islamic clerics are of the opinion
he is in peril. If so, are the clerics to blame for that danger?

3. Will there be a reaction against the US forces in Afghanistan?

Well, I would change the 3rd question to "Will there be ANY reaction to the Coalition Forces in Iraq?