"to preserve peace and harmony in the Maldives"

"On several occasions we have been denouncing the growth of Islamic militancy in the Maldives from this website. Now we think it is important to provide responsible Maldivians with some practical steps that they can take in order to keep our country safe and free from the curse of Islamic militants.
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Certain Maldive families have sent their children to schools trusting that they would be educated in the Islamic religion. For our elders this meant that they would receive an education with a solid moral foundation. This was how it was traditionally in our country, when our parents and grandparents could trust their religious teachers. But now we are in evil times and teachers train children in fanaticism and bigotry in the Islamic schools. Also, when Maldivians get scholarships to study in Pakistan, Egypt and other Islamic countries, the families usually don’t know what is happening to their sons. In this way some may end up as terrorists secretly plotting some violent attack in order to kill as many people as possible.
This is certainly not what their parents wanted. No Maldivian would want to send his child to a school and then have him end up with a terrorist. So, in order to root out this evil from our society before it strikes, it is important that every responsible Maldivian knows how to read the signs of Islamic militancy".

Every Maldivian must be concerned and do what ever they can to prevetn further bloodshed. The first step is to know more about what is going on. The above are excerpts from an illuminating artice Some practical steps to preserve peace and harmony in the Maldives. To read the comple article Click here.

the bomb attack is not a surprise

It has been very obvious for a long time that a terrorist attack was coming. The signs and rumblings have been loud and clear. And now twelve tourists are injured in an explosion in the Malé’s Sultan Park, in what appears to be a planned attack by those who wish to impose Sharia.
Right after the bomb in Bali, it was obvious that sooner rather than later there would be a bomb in Maldives. The rapid build up to this has been apparent in every way. In speech, in action, down to dress details it has been screaming that a bomb was about to happen.

Favorite Fatwas

Because there is no central religious authority in Islam, religious edicts (fatwas) can be declared by almost anybody with a loud speaker.

In the Christian world, the Roman Catholic Church had the Papacy with pronouncements (Papal Encyclicals) that were mandatory for believers. These were issued infrequently and generally created much public clamor. But with the breakdown of Catholic monopoly in 16th century Europe, Protestantism emerged and almost immediately fragmented—as it continues to do to this day. With religious competition, binding religious prohibitions are impossible to enforce. However, the Catholic list of condemned motion pictures (the Index of Forbidden Books and Films) did affect box office returns as late as the 1940s in the United States.
The most recent Protestant religious pronouncements came from the late Jerry Falwell, who got it into his head that one of the Teletubby characters in a TV program for infants was of unknown gender and carried a purse—obviously to Falwell a homosexual baby. His condemnation was laughed out of town.
But our Muslim neighbors around the world have resurrected the religious fatwa with very entertaining results. Knowing the underground humor of Iranians and other Muslims, I suspect many of these fatwas are grist for jokes. Some fatwas, however, have induced the dull-witted to passionate acts of violence.

Ridiculous Fatwas • Iran’s Kayhan newspaper (July 26, 2007) criticized officials for allowing a sale of the new Harry Potter book, claiming the series is a Zionist project in order to disrupt the minds of young people. A fatwa is sure to follow.
• Dean of Islamic Law at al-Azhar University in Cairo ruled in January 2006 that for married couples, “being completely naked during the act of coitus annuls the marriage.”
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Continue reading My Favourite Fatwas by Laina Farhat-Holzman

Cell phones with Bluetooth technology is "haram"

Saudi Arabia's top Muslim body has issued a fatwa or religious edict banning the use of wireless Bluetooth technology for sending photographs, video and audio on cellular telephones.
Cellphones equipped with Bluetooth are "haram" or prohibited according to the laws of Islam, the Council of the Ulema has declared.
Saudi authorities have in the past cracked down on people carrying in shopping malls cellular phones equipped with cameras. It was alleged that such phones were used by men to photograph women illegally.

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authorities have strictly prohibited the few remaining Maldivians who have native Divehi names from using their real names in their passports

Maldive parents are forced to fill in a form and spell their child's name in Arabic. The form is then submitted to the Supreme Council for Islam to be whetted for the name's Islamic authenticity before civil authorities are permitted to register it. There are absolutely no public guidelines on what constitutes a name that is permissible in Islam. It is left up to the whims and fancies of some bearded freak who probably spent the previous night beating up one of his four wives, as per the Koran [Surah el-Nisaa: 34].The Maldives currently claims to be implementing a political reform process that is supposed to usher in democracy. And yet no one seems to be prepared to address the root cause of despotism, lack of individual dignity and breach of human rights in the islands. Both the Maldive government and the opposition pretend that this cause does not exist, are powerless to dispose of it or actively condone it. In editorials last year and in 2005, we wrote about the issue of forcing Maldive parents to adopt names that are determined by arbitrary ruling of mullahs who answer to superiors in the jihadist hotbeds of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Malaysia.In last year's editorial we stated that a few older Maldivians still have traditional Divehi language names. This in spite of Maldivians being forced to take Arabic or Arabic-sounding names for years by the ruling mullahs.
To read the complete story click here

BREASTFEEDING FATWA PROFESSOR SACKED BY AL-AZHAR MADARUSA

"It stated that if a man and a woman worked together alone in an enclosed work place, the woman must breastfeed him to avoid any sexual relationship between the pair, since the man would become like a son to the woman. The Islamic religion bans a person from being in private in the same room with a person of the opposite sex, unless they are married or have close relations (parents and children, brothers and sisters, and so forth). The fatwa provoked huge controversy among religious scholars, and on the internet. Al-Azhar authorities condemned the religious edict, which sparked huge controversy among religious scholars, and on the internet, saying that it portrayed a negative image of Islam. Others said it would have the "opposite effect", of promoting sexual interaction and sexual harassment in a work place instead of diminishing it."

To read full article click here

"يأمر زوجته بإرضاع صديقه ليقضي رمضان معهما"

"رغم أن تداعيات فتوى إرضاع الكبير انتهت على الأقل بالنسبة للإعلام و صاحب الفتوى الذي أوقفه الأزهر الشريف عن العمل، إلاّ أن تبعات أخرى للفتوى تظهر في بعض المجتمعات العربية و الإسلامية و تنذر بعواقب سيئة حسب رأي بعض المشتغلين بالفتوى.

و كشف الشيخ شمس الدين بوروبي أحد أشهر رجال الإفتاء في الجزائر أن إحدى الجزائريات شكت له من تهديد زوجها لها بالطلاق أن لم ترضع صديقه، و أن تاجراً استفسر منه عن إمكانية رضاعته من موظفة في محله. و طالب بوروبي في لقاء مع صحيفة "الشروق" الجزائرية أمس الأول رجال الدين و السياسة بوقف خطر "الفتاوى المستوردة" مؤكداً أن "جزائريين ذبحوا بناءً على فتوى، و إني لأتعجب من هذه الفتوى التي تستبيح الأعراض".

و قال الشيخ شمس الدين بوروبي: هنالك العديد من الحالات التي وصلتني حول موضوع رضاعة الكبار، و الحالة التي حزت في نفسي كثيراً كانت لسيدة تبكي و هي تقول إن زوجها "السلفي المتدين الملتزم" طلب منها أن ترضع صديقه "المتدين أيضاً" حتى يتمكن من قضاء شهر رمضان في بيتهما و الإفطار معهما، و كانت المرأة شديدة الانفعال و التأثر.

و أشار إلى أن الزوج هددها بالطلاق إن لم تنفذ أمره.وأضاف أنه تلقى اتصالاً من تاجر من الحميز شرق العاصمة الجزائرية بعدما انتشرت فتوى إرضاع الكبير و ما رافقها من ضجة إعلامية موضحاً أن التاجر سأله "عندي موظفة في الطابق العلوي من المحل التجاري و أنا
معجب بهذه الفتوى فهل يمكن أن أعمل بها؟"

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What do they teach in Saudi Arabia?

The official Saudi ideology — known as Wahhabism — in which Saudi students are steeped from a young age, demonizes the West and the religious “other.” Saudi teens have, for years, been instructed by state school textbooks that claim that “fighting unbelief…and those who perpetrate it” is “one of the noblest acts, which brings one closer to God, and one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God.” The word for “fighting” here is “qital,” derived from “qatala” or “to kill,” and which has virtually no metaphorical meaning in Arabic. Enmity between Saudi Wahhabiists and others is exalted as a sacred duty from first grade through twelfth.
Predictably, this kind of indoctrination results in droves of young Saudi men ready and willing to enlist for suicide missions against infidels and heretics throughout the world. Surely the Saudi media commentators know about the state-sponsored indoctrination, and have views on how to revise the educational system. But an open, sustained, and in depth debate on these issues is yet to be permitted inside Saudi Arabia. Simply raising critical questions is pressing the envelope. By venturing for answers that would fault the Kingdom’s Wahhabi education, one would risk arrest for blasphemy or related charges.

Read the full article here

A truly courageous Bangladeshi sounds the warning.

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“When I began my newspaper, [The Weekly Blitz], in 2003 I decided to make an end to the well-orchestrated propaganda campaign against Jews and Christians and especially against Israel … In Bangladesh and especially during Friday prayers, the clerics propagate jihad and encourage the killing of Jews and Christians. When I was a child my father told me not to believe those words but to look at the world’s realities.”
“There is hardly a secular aspect of Bangladeshi society that hasn’t been infiltrated by Islamists,” Choudhury said.
In the political arena, radical Muslim parties have attained power gradually, gaining more and more seats in parliament until they become an essential part of any political coalition. Maneeza Hossain, manager of democracy programs at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, explained in a March 2006 National Review article that the attractiveness of radical ideologies to many in Bangladesh reflects the failure of the two main political parties, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and the Awami League, to offer genuine democratic reforms and economic growth. “The rise of Islamism is not a reflection of ignorance, but a result of disenchantment with the hollow discourse of democracy adopted by the political class against a background of corruption and economic disparity,” Hossain wrote.
Corruption Opens Door to Political Parties Affiliated with Extremist Religious Movements
Islamist actions, on the other hand, are seen as untainted by corruption, a mainstay of political life in Bangladesh, regularly ranked as the world’s most corrupt country by Transparency International. Orphans are enrolled in the more than 64,000 madrassas in the country, and constituencies are provided with funds from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, to build mosques and hospitals, helping Islamism in its many forms to gain further roots.
The efforts of the two main political parties in combating this growing radicalism have been inadequate at best. Instead of continuing the established Bangladeshi practice of a separation between mosque and state, both parties have courted the Islamists. The many concessions made by both parties to gain the support of Islamists and their sympathizers has, among its many effects, increased the use of religious rhetoric in mainstream political discourse. Disturbingly, those who stand against the Islamists are branded as anti-Muslim, with even the country’s constitution labeled as “Christian” by some.
Both mainstream parties are guilty of this complacency and accommodation, but, according to Hossain, it is the BNP that has formed an alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islam, the dominant public Islamist party.

To read the full article click here

Islamist militants try to blow up Buddha carving

Islamist militants in Pakistan have tried to blow up a seventh-century Buddhist rock carving in an attack reminiscent of the destruction of ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan six years ago.
There was, however, no damage to the image of the sitting Buddha carved into a 130-foot high rock in mountains 20 km north of Mingora, a town in the scenic Swat valley, northwest of the capital, Islamabad.
A group of masked-men tried to destroy the carving on Tuesday, said provincial archaeology department official Aqleem Khan.
''Militants drilled holes in the rock and filled them with dynamite and blew it up,'' Khan said on Wednesday.
''The explosion damaged the upper part of the rock but there was no damage to the image itself,'' he said.
Buddhism spread through northern India and flourished in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan hundreds of years before the arrival of Islam. Both countries are now predominantly Muslim.
Khan compared the attack on the carving to the destruction of two giant standing Buddha statues in Bamiyan province in Afghanistan in early 2001 by the then ruling Taliban.
The Taliban blew up the two ancient statues carved into a cliff face saying they were offensive to Islam, despite appeals from around the world, including from Muslim leaders, that they be saved.
''It's just like the way the Taliban used to behave,'' he said.
Khan said there were no arrangements to guard the site in the Jehanabad area in the Swat valley. Police had been informed of the attack, he said.
As in other parts of northwest Pakistan, militants have intensified their activities in the valley in a bid to force people to follow a strict Islamic code.
There have also been several attacks on security forces in the valley in recent months.
Last week, militants blew up about 60 music, video and cosmetics stalls in a market in the valley after their owners ignored warnings to close their businesses that the Islamists deemed un-Islamic.

Read the complete report at IBN Live

Islamists Vow to Behead Britney Spears, Madonna...

Muslim terrorist leaders threatened to forcibly convert Britney Spears and Madonna to Islam and warned if they resist, their heads would be cut off for "spreading Satanic culture," according to a new book released today.
The threats, recorded on audio, come as Madonna is due to arrive in Israel Wednesday to celebrate the Jewish new year with fellow Kabbalah practitioners.
"If I meet these whores I will have the honor – I repeat, I will have the honor – to be the first one to cut the heads off Madonna and Britney Spears if they will keep spreading their satanic culture against Islam," said Muhammad Abdel-Al, spokesman and senior leader of the Popular Resistance Committees terror organization.

Read more and hear the audio at WorldNet Daily..

German Police Save Infant Girls from Genital Mutilation...

Police in Bremen, Germany, raided an apartment recently not to arrest any terrorists but rather to prevent two of its occupants from being terrorized by another form of barbarism: female genital mutilation. In what has been described as “a first” by a German women’s organization, authorities in the northern, port city were able to intervene and thwart a planned, female circumcision of two girls aged one and four. The infants, taken into state care, were to have undergone the horrifying procedure in their 25-year-old mother’s native country of Gambia at a female circumcision ritual.
However, the girls’ German father discovered the mother’s gruesome plan when he returned home one evening and found two packed bags and his daughters missing. Very fortunately for the girls, their father was vehemently opposed to the hideous ordeal his wife of five years, whom he had married “according to Muslim law”, was planning for them. Already aware of the father’s fierce opposition to her scheme, the mother had hidden the intended victims among countrymen at another apartment, from which at least the one-year-old was slated to leave the next day for the West African country.
An ensuing, loud argument between the two parents about the mother’s scheme luckily drew a visit from the police, now keen on finding the two little girls. The mother, however, refused to help the authorities and was taken into custody for obstructing police. But other Gambian women indicated where the toddlers were hidden, leading to their timely rescue.
It is estimated that 30,000 women living in Germany have undergone female genital mutilation, most in their native countries, and are part of the one hundred and thirty million women worldwide who have suffered the same, tragic fate. In addition, three million females, mostly girls aged four to ten, but babies as well, undergo this savage “operation” every year, while in Germany alone as many as 5,000 girls are in danger annually of joining that number.
According to one German publication, female genital mutilation is carried on especially in Africa where about 90 to 100 per cent of the women in such countries as Somalia, the Sudan and Gambia are circumcised. It is also practiced in the Middle Eastern countries of Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, but does not exist in any North African country except for Egypt. Muslims in Indonesia and Malaysia also subject women to it. But while Muslim women are the main victims of female genital mutilation, African animist tribes, Coptic Christians and Ethiopian Jews also are guilty of the horrid practice, which pre-dates Islam. As well, many of these countries have launched their own campaigns to eradicate this terrible social blight.
The reasons given for the revolting practice are that it is traditional and prevents women from having sexual feelings, thus “saving” them from their own sexuality and leaving them “pure” for a future husband. An impure, or uncircumcised, woman would never be able to marry in some of the above-mentioned countries’ cultures. The practice, therefore, ensures the girl’s future standing as a wife and mother.
Female genital mutilation first came to the attention of western nations, including the United States and Canada, in the 1990s. Immigrants and refugees from the approximately 25 countries where it is practiced brought this anti-civilizational custom with them. One writer stated that hardly anything at that time shook western states more deeply than the realization that this brutal habit was being carried on within their borders.
Since then, western countries have introduced legal measures to fight the practice. It is now grounds for an asylum claim in some industrial states. As well, in 1999 in France, for the first time a woman was also given a long, prison sentence for having performed “innumerable” female circumcisions, while the parents were given probation. France and Germany have also made it illegal not only to have the offensive procedure done within their borders, but also abroad, since parents were flying their daughters back to their native countries after its proscription in the West.

Read the full report at FrontpageMagazine

UK: Muslim Men Gang Rape 12-year-old Girl....

Throughout the evening Chowdhury raped the victim a total of 11 times, using different beds within the house and forcing her to clean herself between attacks.
He also invited two other men to rape her, bringing the total number of men who had abused her that evening to four.
Chowdhury then took the girl home, asking if he could take her phone number before he left.
The girl reported the rape to the police and identified Chowdhury's address as the place the offences had taken place. Officers later executed a warrant at the address on Attock Close and arrested him.
Detective Chief Inspector Mary Doyle from Oldham CID said: "This child was subjected to a terrifying and prolonged attack from Chowdhury and his associates.
"One of the first things she told him was her name and age, so there is no doubt that he was aware how young she was.
"Chowdhury's actions that evening would have been unacceptable on a woman of any age, but to carry out this sort of attack on a 12 year old child is simply abhorrent.
"His victim has shown a great deal of bravery throughout this case, informing the police and pursuing this case to prosecution.
"I hope her bravery and the resulting conviction will encourage other victims to come forward, safe in the knowledge that GMP will investigate any complaints fully and take robust action against the people responsible."
Greater Manchester Police works in partnership with Oldham Council and Oldham Primary Care Trust to combat the issue of child exploitation in the borough.
A team, known as Messenger, has been set up to work in partnership with children's charity Barnardo's to identify children who are potentially at risk from abuse and formulate a strategy aimed at helping these individuals.
Anyone with any concerns about children being exploited in their area should contact their local police station on 0161 872 5050 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Please visit the Greater Manchester Police website to read the complete article.

Porn site fosters Mideast relations: Skin succeeds where diplomacy has failed

Can porn succeed where politics has failed?
An Israeli porn site is proving surprisingly popular with Web surfers in a number of Arab countries, some of which don't have diplomatic relations with Israel.
Ratuv, Hebrew for "wet," specializes in producing skinflicks with topical political themes, typically featuring scenes involving female soldiers, Mossad agents and members of the military.
After installing software that could detect where users are logging on, managers of the site found they were receiving thousands of hits a week from folks in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, even though the Israeli net domain .il is blocked from some of these countries.
"We were amazed to find a huge amount of our users from these countries," says Nir Shahar, who manages the site. "We cannot accept money from many of these countries, so they can't download the films. They can only look at the pictures."
To make up for the lack of local download access in those countries, Shahar decided to translate the entire site into Arabic, with detailed descriptions of each scene and plenty more pics. Traffic went up tenfold, with the site receiving up to 100,000 hits a week from Arab auds.

Read more at Variety.com

Ex-hostages say Taliban beat them for refusing to convert

Some of the South Korean Christian aid workers held hostage by Afghanistan's Taliban said they were beaten for refusing to convert to Islam and protecting female captives, a hospital chief said Monday.
"We found through medical checks that some male hostages were beaten," Cha Seung-Gyun told reporters after the 19 freed aid workers -- 14 women and five men -- underwent examinations at a hospital outside Seoul.
They had returned home Sunday after six weeks in captivity.
"They said they were beaten at first for refusing to take part in Islamic prayers or for rejecting a demand to convert," Cha said.

Read more at AFP