British National Party
Anti-Jihad News Bulletin w/c August 20th, 2007
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1. DUTCH MP CALLS FOR BAN ON QURAN

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FAEC4703-83E2-44DA-9DA4-1A7702C354C1.htm

A Dutch member of parliament has called for the Quran to be banned in the Netherlands, describing it as a "fascist book" which calls on people to kill non-believers and rape women. Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom Party, called for the ban in a letter published in De Volkskrant newspaper. In his letter, Wilders compares the Muslim holy book to Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler's autobiography, and said the Quran has "no place in our constitutional state". "I have been saying this for years: there is no such thing as a moderate Islam," Wilders wrote. Wilders' Freedom Party holds nine seats in the Netherlands' 150 seat parliament.

Call for ban

Wilders also said several chapters in the Quran "call on Muslims to oppress, persecute or kill Christians, Jews, dissidents and non-believers, to beat and rape women and to establish an Islamic state by force". The publication of the letter comes after a weekend attack on Eshan Jami, a young Dutch politician, who established a group to support people who have renounced Islam. Jami, who was not visibly injured in the attack, is now under police protection as is Wilders. "Ban this wretched book like Mein Kampf is banned! Send a signal to Jami's attackers and other Islamic radicals that the Quran cannot be used in the Netherlands as an inspiration or an excuse for violence," Wilders said. Wilders acknowledged that his plan would not receive majority support in the Dutch parliament. "I am fed up with Islam in the Netherlands: no more Muslim immigrants allowed. I am fed up with the worship of Allah and Muhammad in the Netherlands: no more mosques," his letter concluded.

2. MUSLIM RULE IN NIGERIAN STATE "CHOKES" CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

Islam is not a religion that teaches tolerance and there is no such a thing as a tolerant Muslim.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017177.php

For Kebbi state pastor Nuhu Mamman, to become a Christian was to have a death sentence passed on the life he knew: converting killed his past, and his future appeared moribund as family, friends and fiancée abandoned him. “My Muslim blood relations don’t like me – they dislike and keep away from my family as if we are a plague to be avoided,” Rev. Mamman said. “They hate us because we have abandoned Islam. Our predicament has even been made worse as even Christians from other non-Muslim communities still don’t trust us. They believe that we are still Muslims despite our conversion to Christianity. This is very tough on us.” Rev. Mamman, from the Hausa ethnic group of Kebbi state, says persecution of Christians is widespread in the state. “In the northern part of Kebbi state, Christians face serious difficulties,” he told Compass. “We are always being forced to transfer former Muslims who have become Christians to other parts of this country in order to shield them from persecution.” The church works hard to protect converts to Christianity from Muslim extremist attacks. After Adamu Muhammed, a Muslim from the town of Birnin Kebbi, became a Christian in 1997, Muslim radicals sought to kill him. As they hunted for him, Rev. Mamman said, the church moved him to Jos in central Nigeria, where he became a Bible student. In 2003, Rev. Mamman added, a Muslim named Ibrahim Jega from Jega town converted to Christianity. “His family members and other Muslims threatened to kill him,” Rev. Mamman said. “We were forced to take him to Zuru town for safety. Another convert from Islam to Christianity, Mohammed Abara from Sabon Birni town, also had to be taken to Pisabu by us in order to save his life.” Of course, such actions follow the orders of Muhammad himself: baddala deenahu faqtuhu -- "If anyone changes his religion, kill him" (Sahih Bukhari 9.84.57). Equally difficult is obtaining places for converts from Islam to worship. “Even if we succeed in getting land to provide such converts with places of worship, Muslims who are in government will not allow us build such churches,” said Rev. Mamman, who was ordained an ECWA minister in 1994. “Whenever we go to renew our land documents or even pay land rent for our church lands, Muslim government officials usually refuse to accept such payments,” he said. “But then, this is deliberate, as after a period of time they usually declare our church buildings as illegal structures, just to find reasons to demolish our places of worship.” As one example of arbitrary demolitions of places of Christian worship in the state, Rev. Mamman cited the destruction of a church in Danbargo village by government agents. “In Danbargo village of Shanga Local Government Area, almost all the villagers last year decided to become Christians after listening to the gospel preached to them,” he said. “We built a place of worship for these Christians, but the local government council authority of Shanga demolished this church building.” Rev. Mamman said the local council also told the Christian villagers that if they refused to recant their belief in Christ and return to Islam, the government would seize their farms. “Without any visible means of surviving this attack,” he said, “these Christians in Danbargo village went back to Islam.” The Rev. Adamu Sunday Peni, vice chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Kebbi state chapter, told Compass that lack of land for building places of worship – along with forceful conversion of Christians to Islam and discrimination against Christian public workers – is among the most pressing problems Christians face.

3. PUNJAB: “DANGEROUS” TO SAY JESUS IS SON OF GOD

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=9706&size=A

It is dangerous to say that Christ is the son of God because this declaration “hurts the feelings of many Pakistani Muslims” who “do not want to hear such things, even in Christian Churches”. This warning was delivered by some residents of Punjab to local Christian congregations who “should immediately stop their prayers to the supposed son of God”. It was Charles Hamilton, a Christian from Faisalabad, who told AsiaNews about this: “We believe in Jesus, son of God. How can we renounce this belief? What’s more, if we bow to this request, not only will we go against our religious values, we will pave the way for more conditions to be imposed on us, which would destroy us.” Anti-Christian violence is on the rise in Pakistan: recently, a mob of about 40 Muslims attacked Christians when they were preparing for an evangelistic meeting organized by the Salvation Army Church. Despite police reassurances, the perpetrators (who injured seven people who had come for the meeting) have not been brought to book for the violence. All the same, there are also positive aspects in the relationship between the two communities. Faizur Rehman, one of the leaders of the Islamic community, apologized for the incidents targeting Christians. In a written document, Rehman said: “There will be no more denominational incidents and we apologise for what happened. Christians should feel secure in their faith.”

4. SAUDI RELIGIOUS POLICE SPUR GROWING BACKLASH

http://washingtontimes.com/article/20070702/FOREIGN/107020069/1001

After the car stopped outside a Riyadh amusement park, two bearded men dragged the driver from behind the wheel and took the three women on a wild ride of more than an hour, bouncing over sidewalks and finally abandoning them on a darkened street. The women at first thought they had been kidnapped by terrorists. But the two men said instead that they were religious police. It might have gone down as just one more excess of zealousness by the forces charged with upholding Islamic modesty, except that Umm Faisal, the oldest of the three women, did something that is thought to be unprecedented in Saudi Arabia: She went to court. Today, four years after the incident, the latest chapter of the legal battle being waged by this 50-year-old mother of five reopens before Riyadh's Grievances Court, which handles damages suits for abuses by government and public figures. The unusual publicity surrounding Umm Faisal's story comes after two Saudi men died while in religious police custody — one arrested for reportedly consuming alcohol, another for being alone with a woman not of his family. Last week, a trial opened against three religious police officers and a fourth man in the death of Ahmed al-Bulaiwi, the man detained for being alone with a woman. Relatives demanded the death penalty against the defendants. Taken together, the cases could undermine the authority of the force's employer, the powerful, independent body called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of ViceSince the commission's creation more than 60 years ago, there has been no known public legal action taken against its members, despite complaints they occasionally overstep their boundaries. The prevailing view tends to be that whatever their faults, they are acting in Islam's name to defend morality.

But things may be changing.

The National Society for Human Rights, a nongovernmental body, has issued a report which, according to the daily Arab News, charges the religious police with abusive language, unsubstantiated accusations, humiliation of people during interrogation, beatings, unnecessary body searches, forced entry into private homes and coerced confessions. The report, as well as the media coverage of the cases and editorials calling for the commission's reform, suggest the government may act to regulate the force. Another setback for the commission came in the appointed Consultative Council, the nearest thing to a parliament in Saudi Arabia. It rejected proposals to build more commission centers and give members a 20-percent salary raise. While the council's actions are not binding, they reflect a general desire to curb the religious police's power. "Society has developed and the relationship of other governmental bodies with the people has developed and become more human," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi journalist. "Yet the commission has not changed." Several news outlets have conducted informal surveys asking Saudis whether the commission should be dissolved. Some have said yes. The polls may be unscientific, but simply asking the question is significant. Ibrahim al-Ghaith, the commission's head, dismissed the polls, saying the commission is "one of the oldest governmental agencies ... and not a cooperative that can be eliminated because of individual mistakes," according to Al Jazeera. The Saudi government is reluctant to tamper with religious establishments for fear of angering Muslim hard-liners and weakening its credentials as custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines. The hard-line impulse is illustrated by a recent request from 14 faculty members of King Saud University's medical school to ban male students from treating women and vice versa, on the grounds that handling bodies of the other sex is un-Islamic. Umm Faisal — her full name is withheld in reports on the case — says she, her 21-year-old daughter and her Indonesian maid went to pick up her two teenage sons from the amusement park in the family's new Chevrolet Caprice. "I kept asking the men, 'Are you terrorists?' They finally said they were members of the commission," she said. "When I asked what they wanted, they called me names, including adulteress." Umm Faisal said the men drove so fast that smoke came out of the car. The men stopped the car, called their friends and asked them to pick them up. The women, who don't know how to drive (and can't under Saudi law), were left to the mercies of passers-by. Umm Faisal lodged a complaint. She said the commission members claimed they were "indecently covered" because her daughter's veil didn't cover her eyes. In early 2004, she filed suit at Riyadh's General Court, but says several judges pressed her to drop it and late last year the case was dismissed. She then turned to the Grievances Court, which fined one official $540 for mistreating the women and acquitted the other. Umm Faisal isn't satisfied, and her appeal opens before the court today.

5. CHRISTIANS FEAR ATTACKS IN PAKISTAN AS FORCES CLASH WITH ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/christians.fear.
attacks.in.pakistan.as.forces.clash.with.islamic.extremists/11437.htm

Christian representatives in Pakistan are calling for urgent prayer to prevent a feared backlash against Christians following clashes between security forces and Islamist militants in the capital. At least seven people have died after a tense standoff erupted into violence at the Lal Masjid mosque in the capital Islamabad. The mosque is linked with two Madrassas (Islamic schools). Militant students have been calling for strict Islamic law and have been accused of carrying out kidnappings in the area. They are armed with assault rifles, sticks and petrol bombs. Persecution watchdog Release International has been told by its contacts that thousands of extremists have been drawn to the mosque, including women and children who are calling for a jihad. They warn that if the authorities continue shooting they will start suicide bombing across Pakistan. Partners of Release International, which serves the persecuted church worldwide, fear that the anger of militants will spill over into attacks against the Christian community. They are calling for prayer. “Whenever there is any incident against Muslims, Christians are always held liable,” says a spokesman for CLAAS, the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement. “The Christians of Pakistan are in serious need of prayer.” Tensions escalated at the mosque after students kidnapped Chinese nationals from an acupuncture clinic, accusing them of working in a brothel. Security forces erected barricades around the mosque before students seized guns from the police, prompting a volley of teargas, which then led to an exchange of gunfire, Release International reports. According to the news agency AFP, students brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles stood outside the mosque chanting “Jihad! Jihad!”. The Pakistan authorities are being encouraged by the international community to clamp down on the extremists. “Pakistan is causing us great concern,” said Andy Dipper, the CEO of Release International. “As the country becomes more unstable, attacks against Christians are increasing. Our partners CLAAS fear that Christians in Pakistan will become the lightning rod for the anger and frustration of extremists in the aftermath of the violence at the mosque. Pray for calm. Pray for the Christians of Pakistan.”

6. TURKEY: CONVERTS TO CHRISTIANITY SUBJECTED TO OFFICIAL HARASSMENT

The claim that Turkey is a secular tolerant Muslim country is a lie; democracy and Islam are incompatible. This is why Turkey is unfit to join the EU.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017245.php

In a bizarre twist in the criminal prosecution of two Turkish Christians for “insulting Turkish identity,” an administrative district authority in Istanbul has ordered the converts from Islam fined for “illegal collection of funds.” Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal, on trial for insulting Turkishness under the nation’s notorious Article 301, were summoned to Istanbul’s Beyoglu police headquarters on Sunday morning (July 1) just before church services began at the Taksim Protestant Church, where Tastan is a member. “Three plainclothes policemen were waiting for me at the church,” Tastan said, “saying I was wanted at the police station.” With their lawyer out of town, he telephoned Topal, and the two agreed to go along to the police station. “I thought probably the police were acting on last week’s Interior Ministry decree,” Tastan told Compass, referring to a June 28 directive sent to all the nation’s governors ordering extra security for Turkey’s religious minorities in the wake of rising violence against non-Muslims. “But it turned out to be something entirely different.” The two Christians were both presented with a separate “penalty” sheet from the security police division linked to the Beyoglu district, ordering each one to pay 600 Turkish lira (US$461) for breaking a civil law. According to the one-page decisions, the two men were guilty of violating section 29 of civil administrative code 2860, which forbids the collection of money without official permission from local district authorities.

7. TANVEER AHMED: ISLAM MUST FACE ITS UNCONFORTABLE TRUTHS

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22005648-7583,00.html?from=newsv

The latest attack in Britain shows how the Islamist threat is being driven by something much grander than mere foreign policy or feelings of grievance. The perpetrators believe they are soldiers in the perceived historical battle between good and evil. The methods of attack are becoming more brazen, amateurish and desperate, illustrated most profoundly by the burning terrorist at Glasgow airport shouting "Allah" while struggling with a policeman, but the ideological roots are unchanged. As a commentator on Muslim affairs and home-grown terrorism, I am often asked whether there is something in Islam itself that is contributing to terrorist acts. As someone who is not a theological expert, I shy away from strong pronouncements on the issue, preferring to discuss the sociological roots of alienation and the modern symbol of protest that Islam has become. But the question is impossible to avoid and I believe that theology is central and not peripheral to the problem. It is grounded in history, but the sparks have been generated by the information age. While the images of poverty and war in countries such as Sudan, Palestine or Iraq combined with the relative disadvantage of some Muslim communities in countries such as France or Britain may contribute to radicalisation, the foundation for their acts lies very much in the set of ideas called Islam. I have lost count of the number of occasions disgruntled Muslims have responded to my writings with comments like "Islam is peace" or "You are not a Muslim any more". Truth be told, I was never a practising Muslim, despite growing up in a Bangladeshi community where religiosity was the norm. This had more to do with being raised in a secular household and society than any great misgivings about Islam. In fact, I often watched friends who were able to practise a spiritual version of the religion with envy, wishing that I could subscribe to a greater purpose than myself. But with hindsight, I can see that what we now call extremism was virtually the norm in the community I grew up in. It was completely normal to view Jews as evil and responsible for the ills of the world. It was normal to see the liberal society around us as morally corrupt, its stains to be avoided at all costs. It was normal to see white girls as cheap and easy and to see the ideal of femininity as its antithesis. These views have been pushed to more private, personal spheres amid the present scrutiny of Muslim communities. But they remain widespread, as research in Britain showed earlier this year: up to 50 per cent of British Muslims aged between 15 and 29 want to see sharia law taken up in Britain. This needs to be seen in the light of American data collated by the Pew Research Centre that showed close to 80 per cent of American Muslims believed they could move up the social ladder in the US and had no interest in Islamic laws on a public level. Like most things Australian, it is likely we sit somewhere between our British and American cousins. But the threat is very real. It was reported yesterday that up to 3000 young Muslims are at risk of becoming radicalised in Sydney alone, according to research by a member of the now-disbanded Muslim Community Reference Group, Mustapha Kara-Ali. But when these views morph into the violent political act that is terrorism, it is very much based in theology. At its core, Islam is deeply sceptical of the idea of a secular state. There is no rendering unto Caesar because state and religion are believed to be inseparable. This idea then interacts with centuries-old edicts of Islamic jurists about how the land of Islam should interact with the world of unbelievers, known as dar ul-kufr. The modern radicals then take it further, declaring that since, with the exception perhaps of Pakistan and Iran, there are no Islamic states, the whole world is effectively the land of the unbelievers. As a result, some radicals believe waging war on the whole world is justified to re-create it as an Islamic state. They go as far as reclassifying the globe as dar ul-harb, "land of war", apparently allowing Muslims to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief. In dar ul-harb, anything goes, including the killing of civilians. While it may appear absurd to most, this nihilistic but exclusivist world view is clearly attracting significant numbers of young Muslims. British police have suggested the latest attacks and foiled plots may have involved teenagers. But the obvious absurdity of the set of ideas is still grounded in Islam, which, regardless of how theological experts argue, can be interpreted in many ways. Muslim communities must openly argue precisely what it is they fear and loathe about the West. Much of it centres on sexuality. This is the first step in rooting out any Muslim ambivalence about living in the West. But thereafter, the argument must proceed rapidly to Islamic theology and all its uncomfortable truths - from its repeated glowing references to violence, its obsession with and revulsion at sex and its historical antipathy to the very possibility that reason can exist as separate from God. Tanveer Ahmed is a Sydney-based psychiatry registrar and writer.