Links News & Views November 3, 2006

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November 3, 2006

UK youths 'among worst in Europe'

Britain's teenagers are among the most badly behaved in Europe, a study by a think-tank has suggested.

On every indicator of bad behaviour - drugs, drink, violence, promiscuity - the UK was at or near the top, said the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The institute looked at the results of a number of studies of adolescents conducted in recent years.

The researchers believe the country's record can be explained by a collapse in family and community life in the UK.

Free time

Measured against German, French and Italian youngsters, British 15-year-olds are drunk more often and involved in more fights, and a higher proportion have had sex.

The institute says young Britons are marked out by how they spend their free time.
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Ethiopian leader: Somali militants threat to world
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- Ethiopia's prime minister said Wednesday that Islamic militants in Somalia represent a threat to the Horn of Africa and the entire international community and that more must be done to contain them.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told The Associated Press he held out little hope that a peace agreement could be reached between Somalia's internationally recognized government and Islamic militants who have taken over much of the country.

Ethiopia, a largely Christian nation, supports neighboring Somalia's secular government.

"Apparently some people believe that the al Qaeda elements in Mogadishu ... are people one can talk to in a reasonable manner, that they can be convinced not to be extremists," Meles said.

The extremists "represent a direct threat first to Somalia and the Somali people, second to the region and Ethiopia and lastly to the international community," he said. "When they control the whole of Somalia, it would be very naive to assume that they will mend their ways, cease to be terrorists and become very civilized and very tame pussycats."

Meles has confirmed that he has sent military advisers to help Somalia's weak government, prompting Islamic leaders to declare a holy war against Ethiopia.

"In effect they have declared war on us, they have massed their troops very close to our border, so they have publicly shown that they pose a direct security threat to us," Meles said. "It would be a dereliction of duty for any Ethiopian government to ignore that and welcome the takeover of the whole of Somalia by jihadists."

Meles declined to discuss what action he might take against the Islamic militias.

The Arab League has sponsored peace talks between the Somali government and the Islamic Courts. But so far the talks, being held this week in Khartoum, Sudan, have been deadlocked.

Meanwhile, Islamic militias expanded their control over Somalia by taking over a strategic coastal town Tuesday night. The fighters peacefully seized Hobyo in the central Mudug region, according to an Islamic official.

The leaders of the Council of Islamic Courts have demanded that Ethiopian troops withdraw from Somalia before they will meet with the government. They also have called for the secular national charter to be replaced with Islamic law.

But Meles said he has little faith that extremist elements within the Islamic Courts would ever honor an agreement with the transitional government.

"I think so far the talks have not been serious, I believe the [extremists] believe they have the military momentum and that they are using the talks in Khartoum as a cover for their military takeover," Meles said.

He added that international diplomats are not taking the threat posed by the Islamic Courts seriously.
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UK: Veiled Muslim stopped from boarding a bus
A MUSLIM woman was prevented from getting on a bus in Greater Manchester because she would not remove her veil.

The 22-year-old Manchester University student from Oldham says other passengers laughed when the driver refused to let her on because he could not check her identity with her bus pass.

Now the driver's bosses at First Manchester are to meet with their trade association, the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT), to seek advice on how to deal with the problem if other passengers with photo passes refuse to lift their veils.
They say they have received no complaint from the woman and have been unable to track down the driver concerned.

The student, who didn't want to be named, tried to board the 59 bus to Oldham.

She said: "The driver asked to see my pass, but it has my photo on and he couldn't see my face.

"I told him I would not remove my veil and he said I couldn't get on."

She is now offering to help the company draw up guidance to drivers.

Situation

She said: "It is understandable because the driver has his duty, although he said it in quite a rude manner. It wasn't nice and other passengers were laughing.

"Bus drivers should be told how to deal with this situation. The veil is my choice and my religious duty. I am willing to go in and help the company so everyone knows what to do."

A First Manchester spokesman said: "We have investigated this incident thoroughly but found no complaint on our system.

"A women has now identified herself as the person in this situation. However, an official complaint was not registered. Under regulations passengers are required to confirm their identity if using a photo bus pass.

"If passengers aren't able to do this they will still be able to travel by paying for their trip."

A CPT spokesman said: "We have not heard of this happening before and as our meeting with First has not been held yet, we can't really talk about it."

One bus driver at Oldham bus station, who didn't want to be named, said: "What are we supposed to do? What is the point of a pass if you can't see someone's face?

"It hasn't happened to me yet but nobody has told me what I should do if it does."

Thousands expected to support Sheik
Thousands of supporters of Sydney's Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali are expected to turn out in support of their besieged leader.

A rally planned for Saturday to show support for the Sheik was called off by him on Thursday.

Instead, he has called on his faithful to join him for Friday prayers at Lakemba mosque in his first public appearance since being rushed to hospital with chest pains on Monday.

The defiant mufti is expected to speak at the prayers and his appearance is bound to provoke a massive display of loyalty from his supporters who have been galvanised amid mass calls for him to resign.

Australia's most senior Muslim cleric has been under fire from sections of his own community as well as mainstream Australia over a sermon he gave last month in which he suggested that immodestly dressed women invited sexual assault.

Thousands of Muslims had been marshalled to attend a rally in Lakemba on Saturday by text messages and emails, but the sheik spoke on Voice of Islam Radio in Sydney urging them not to attend the demonstration.

Clerics had tried to stop the unofficial demonstration, which they feared could degenerate into chaos, with some even worried about a repeat of the violence of last year's Cronulla riots.

The groundswell of support for the sheik gained more momentum when senior clerics and imams joined dozens of Muslim community groups in backing him on Thursday.

A statement signed by 34 Muslim community groups accused the media and politicians of exaggerating the scandal and using it to vilify Australian Muslims.

Man detained after firing shots to protest papal visit


Associated Press

Istanbul — Police detained a man who fired shots into the air outside the Italian consulate Thursday to protest this month's visit by Pope Benedict XVI, and the suspect told a TV reporter he wanted to “strangle” the pontiff.

Pope Benedict is scheduled to visit Turkey Nov. 28-Dec. 1.

“I don't want him here. If he was here now, I would strangle him with my bare hands,” the suspect, who identified himself as Ibrahim Ak, 26, told a Dogan news agency television cameraman as he was detained by police.

“I fired the shots for God,” Mr. Ak said as he sat handcuffed inside a police van outside the consulate. “Inshallah (God willing), this will be a spark, a starter for Muslims.”
“God willing, he will not come, if he comes, he will see what will happen to him,” Mr. Ak said.

It would be Pope Benedict's first visit as pope to a predominantly Muslim country, only two months after he provoked widespread anger in the Islamic world by quoting an emperor who characterized the Prophet Muhammad's teachings as “evil and inhuman.”

Pope Benedict has since expressed regret for offending Muslims and called for dialogue with Islam.

“That shameless, dishonourable pope will not come to this country!” Mr. Ak shouted as police took him to a nearby police station. “I'm telling all Muslims he won't come!”
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De Villiers Proposes Public Ban on Islamic Veil
Phillippe de Villiers has proposed a ban on wearing veils in public places. The leader of the Mouvement Pour La France party raised the issue, which has already been implemented in Belgium.


The debate on the Islamic veil has crossed the channel. Philippe de Villiers has proposed a ban on wearing veils in public places, claiming that it has already been banned in Belgium while the issue is being considered in Holland.

De Villiers, who will be standing for the Presidential elections in 2007 having gained a paltry 4.5% in 2002, demanded "a strong signal so that France can impose its own values". Speaking to Le Figaro newspaper, he continued: "the islamic veil is a symbol of a woman's submission, and affects her dignity. It is an obstacle to belonging to a national community, and activists use it to attack the very basis of the Republic. Young girls sometimes wear it out of choice, but many are forced to wear it."

He continued: "It is not up to France to adapt to Islam, it is Islam's responsibility to adapt to France. That will be the key issue in the 2007 elections."

While the veil has been banned in Flanders, the debate has been raging in England after Jack Straw made a comment about one of his constituents who was wearing a veil. He told the press that he had asked her to remove the veil so that he could understand what she was saying - the debate exploded, as it is likely to do in secular France.

De Villiers published a book earlier this year called "Les Mosquées de Roissy", in which he denounced a network of radical prayer centres and potential terrorists working as baggage handlers. Proposing himself as the last bastion of Republican values, de Villiers hopes to take ground from Jean-Marie Le Pen and Nicolas Sarkozy who have both been seeking to impose themselves on the far right.

Muslims must feel British - Straw
Commons leader Jack Straw says he wants to avoid a situation where "the Muslim community, or any of our communities, feel isolated and defensive".

A "stronger sense of shared British identity" was needed among all ethnic groups and religions, the Blackburn MP told an inter-faith conference.

Some groups have criticised him for saying he asked Muslim women if they would remove their veils in meetings.

But Mr Straw said a "frank debate" on the state of society was needed.

'Common values'

In a speech at University College London, he argued that during the last 50 years, people's "sense of class" had dissolved.

This had led to an "erosion of collective sense of community", he said.

Mr Straw claimed people had come to view themselves "more in terms of their cultural, ethnic, national, gender or religious affiliations".

"Britishness" could provide "common values", such as liberty, tolerance and the rule of law, he added.

This was "not about a nation - there are Scottish, English and Welsh nations".

But people should speak a "common language", as this was essential to communication between religions and ethnic groups, Mr Straw said.

'Splinter and divide'

He told the Three Faiths Forum: "Simply breathing the same air as other members of society isn't integration.

"Britishness is thus an identity available to Anglicans, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and those of other religions and none, and a central element of that identity is the principle that everyone has the freedom to practise their faith not as a matter of tolerance but of right."

He added: "There is no inevitability that our communities will splinter and divide.

"Nor is there any inevitability that our attempts to heal divides will succeed. Progress depends on our willingness to engage." .........

Muslims and security
The price of freedom
A fine line between vigilance and witch-hunting

“PEOPLE can lose clearance on the vaguest excuse, without being told why—it's a new McCarthyist mood.” That's one reaction (from a London human-rights lawyer, Louise Christian) to reports from several Western countries that Muslims are being laid off from sensitive jobs—as customs officers, for example—on security grounds.

At the other extreme, there is no shortage of voices making the opposite argument: that security services are too slow to see the threat from “sleepers” whose job puts them in a position to wreak havoc. “The scandal is that suspicious people were hired in the first place,” says Mark Baillie, a terrorism wonk at International Policy Network, a London think-tank.

In an ever more polarised climate, almost any report on this subject can trigger opposing reactions. In Britain, it emerged this week that the son of Abu Hamza, a jailed Islamist preacher, had been doing maintenance on the London underground—before his employers found he had been convicted in Yemen over a bomb plot. The story enraged the tabloid press. But initially Ken Livingstone, London's leftist mayor, said it was fine for Mohammed Kamel Mostafa to work on the Tube—only to back down later, saying the young man had hidden his past.

Similar emotions have been triggered by French efforts to crack down on Islamism at Charles de Gaulle airport, outside Paris. Last month alone, Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, decided to withdraw accreditation from 43 Muslim employees at the airport. Several baggage-handlers have taken their case to a court, claiming discrimination against Islam.

Mr Sarkozy's worry about the airport is not new: in April he said he was probing 122 employees who worked inside the airport's security zone, and that 60% would have their authorisation repealed or not renewed. In the summer, police shut down several secret prayer rooms at the airport.

In North America, Islamic groups say cases of “religious profiling”—denying Muslims the right to cross borders, board planes or take certain jobs—have grown faster in recent months than they did after September 11th. And arguments over security and liberty are likely to get louder as the range of “sensitive” jobs grows longer. As Mr Baillie says, “a programmer working in air-traffic control or a power plant can do more damage than an old-time spy.”

Erdogan Chooses NATO Over Pope in Apparent Snub to Pontiff
Already facing a potential storm of protests when he visits Turkey later this month, Pope Benedict will not be recieved by the Turkish prime minister in what the Italian press were calling a major snub to the pontiff.
The Italian press on Thursday saw a snub in the fact that Pope Benedict XVI will not meet Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his November 28-30 visit to Turkey.
Erdogan will instead attend the November 28-29 summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Riga, Latvia.
"The Islamic premier will go abroad so as not to receive the visiting Benedict XVI," said a headline in the daily La Repubblica. "Erdogan avoids meeting with the pope," said a Corriere della Sera headline.
"Elections are approaching, and maybe... the prime minister thought that not meeting the pope would mean one problem less in the electoral campaign," Ruggero Franchescini, the archbishop of Izmir, Turkey, and president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops there, told Corriere.
Turkey is set to hold presidential elections in the first half of 2007, followed by general elections late in the year.
Benedict will be making the trip, his first to a Muslim country since his election as pope in April 2005, under a cloud because of remarks he made in September linking Islam to violence.
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Arab World Debates The Veil
Required By Islam For Modesty, Or A Sign Of Political Extremism?
AP) The origin of the debate could not be more intimate: what a woman chooses to wear before she leaves home. But the increasing popularity of the full Muslim face veil has set off an emotional dispute in the Arab world over whether the covering is required by Islam for modesty or a dangerous sign of political extremism.

The debate is most intense in Egypt, the world's largest Arab country, where one university two weeks ago banned women who wear the face veil, or niqab, from living in a hostel, and government-backed newspapers have launched a campaign against it.

"The niqab vogue: an imported innovation, used by the political extremists," read a recent banner on the pro-government Al Mussawar Weekly. "Our new battle is against the niqab," added Mohammed Fatouh, a specialist on Islamic issues in another government-owned weekly, Rose el-Youssef.

Salama Ahmed Salama, a columnist in Egypt's biggest government daily, Al-Ahram, was more blunt: "It expresses an extremist attitude ... Wearing the niqab is as outrageous as wearing a bathing suit or pajamas to the office."

On any given street in the capital, the face of one woman will be fully covered, with only her eyes peering through; nearby another woman will cover her hair, leaving her face bare, and still another will have her face and hair free of any covering.

The dispute highlights the growing wave of conservative Islamic practice across the Arab world - and among Muslims living in the West - and the intense struggle between secular governments and Islamic opposition groups. Head scarves fell out of favor among some urban Arab women in the 1920s and 1930s but began reappearing in the 1970s and 1980s. The evolution has been steady with more women covering their hair each year and more also wearing body cloaks.

But the biggest dispute has been over the niqab - a full facial veil that leaves only a slit for the eyes that re-emerged in Egypt in the late 1980s and has since grown in popularity, both in the Arab world and among Arab Muslims in the West. ...............

Florida Republican in Islam hate row
BROOKSVILLE, Fla., Nov. 2 (UPI) -- A prominent local Republican in Florida said Tuesday he believed Islam was a "hateful, frightening religion."

Tom Hogan, Sr., the recently appointed commissioner of Hernando County, told the St. Petersburg Times Tuesday that he agreed with a letter his wife Mary Ann had written to the paper describing Islam as a "hateful, frightening religion."

"Overall, worldwide, it certainly is," Hogan said. "Don't you read your own paper?

"There's a saying out there, and there's some truth to it, that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. It's their thing," he told the newspaper.

Mrs. Hogan wrote her letter to the St. Petersburg Times last week in which she criticized county authorities for supporting the celebration of Eid-al-Fitr, the festival that marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Oct. 23, at a local mosque.

The St. Petersburg Times described Tom and Mary Ann Hogan as being "widely considered the first couple of Hernando County's Republican Party, and both have helped lead the party since the 1960s."

The paper said that local Muslim religious leaders in Hernando County "reacted with shock and dismay" to the Hogans' comments.

"We're deeply concerned about the hateful and racist nature of these comments," Ahmed Bedier, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the newspaper. He said he would urge Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who appointed Hogan to the county commissioner's post less than three months ago, to fire him from it.

But Mary Ann Hogan told the St. Petersburg Times she was standing by her comments. "They can call it whatever they want to," she said. "I'm calling them barbarians. "

'All religions degrade women'
AN ANGLICAN archbishop has linked Taj el-Din al Hilaly's inflammatory comments on women with the degrading image of "the sheila" in pub culture and the failure of Sydney Anglicans to ordain women.

The Archbishop of Perth, Roger Herft, has compared Sydney diocese's refusal to ordain women priests with some Islam thinking that repressed women and gave them status as second-class citizens.

His criticism stands to widen the rift in the Anglican Church over women's leadership roles just one week after the Sydney synod invoked scriptural authority to effectively block a debate on women priests. Sydney is one of a handful of dioceses in Australia where women are ordained deacons, but not priests.

Archbishop Herft, an advocate of women bishops, said the sheik's sermon raised serious questions.

But Christians should not be quick to judge because similar thinking, although more sophisticated, was evident in many religious traditions.

"We are rightly horrified by the tone and language used by the sheik in his use of the phrase 'uncovered meat' to describe women who do not wear the 'hijab'," the archbishop said.

"In our haste to judge, let us not forget that similar views are found in the Christian faith, as it is found in secular ideologies portrayed in the degrading view of 'the sheila'.

"In the recent [Sydney debate on ordaining women], the foundational issues were argued with more sophistication, but the basis on which the determination never to allow women into the ordained ministry was canvassed on similar grounds."
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Leader Says Islam, West Must Work Together
PARIS, Nov. 1, 2006 (UPI) -- An Arab leader told a United Nations conference in Paris that growing conflicts between Western and Islamic nations threaten global security.

Amr Mussa of the Arab League told the U.N.-organized conference that the Security Council should take up "this crisis that has arisen between the West and Islam," the Indonesian news service Antara said.

It wasn't just a problem of cultures, Mussa said, but also problem of political and security matters threatening world peace, Antara reported. Mussa warned that extremists were exploiting the issue.
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Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told conference participants that Islamic countries need to work with the West to develop economically, the West needs to work with Islamic nations to improve their understanding of Islam, Antara said.

Centre adds fuel to fatwa fire, defends Shariat courts
Amidst raging debate over ‘fatwas’ issued by Shariat courts, the Centre has defended the Muslims’ right to have such courts saying it was part of their fundamental right to freedom of religion guaranteed under the Constitution.

“The functioning of Dar-ul-Qaza would be protected under the fundamental rights enshrined in Article 25 and 26(b) of the Constitution,” the Centre said in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court in response to a PIL seeking ban on Shariat courts.

Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion while under Article 26(b) every religious denomination enjoys freedom to manage its own affairs in matters of religion.

The petition filed by one Vishwa Lohan Madan last year sought direction to the Centre and other authorities to ban ‘Shariat Courts’ for running a “parallel judicial system” in the country.

But the Centre said, “Freedom guaranteed by Article 26 to every religious denomination or every section thereof to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes and to manage its own affairs in the matters of religion would include the freedom to establish Darul-Qaza/Nizam-ul-Qaza to settle disputes between two persons professing Islam, according to Sharia.”

The Government emphasized that “it is not a parallel judicial system” as the Qazis or Darul-Qaza/Nizam-e-Qaza did not prevent Muslims to report matters to the Judicial Machinery set up under the law of the land.

“Those who do not resort to Darul-Qaza/Nizam-e-Qaza are at liberty and fully entitled to resort to the court of law. ............

TURKEY IN TRANSITION
Less Europe, More Islam
For almost half a century, Turkey has been pursuing European Union membership. With negotiations now started though, enthusiasm is waning. And the influence of Islam is on the rise.
At first glance, the "Sah Inn Suite" Hotel in Alanya looks no different from the average sunny resort along the Turkish Mediterranean coast: a bulky construction with a honeycomb of balconies, looking out over a generous swimming pool surrounded by parasols and lounge chairs. But, in fact, only men are allowed to take a refreshing plunge into these shimmering blue waters. Women vacationers at the Sah-Hotel swim in a strictly isolated pool for women. And what about a cold beer? Forget it. There is no alcohol here; instead, a mosque offers communion with God.

Why the piety? It's an effort by hoteliers to show their consideration for observant Muslims who want to enjoy "a vacation in keeping with religious laws." And the options for such devout holidays are growing in secular Turkey. Islamic-style swimsuits are the new rage on the beaches and around pools across the country. Nowadays, observant women venture onto the sands clad head-to-toe. Manufacturer of these chaste outfits is the Istanbul fashion firm Hasema, whose customers include the wives of leading politicians of the governing AKP, the religious-conservative Justice and Development Party.

The Cumhuriyet newspaper, which tends to be critical of the AKP, already considers Turkey to be "besieged by Islamic dress regulations." The secular press meticulously covers all violent incidents that appear to be religiously motivated: a young, bikini-clad student attacked by cloaked religious fanatics for example; or a couple assaulted for openly drinking beer during the fasting month of Ramadan. A police officer hit a girl because she was supposedly wearing a skirt that was too short. These are shocking incidents in Turkey, where laws are supposed to protect against religious paternalism, where restaurants are open during Ramadan and where headscarves are banned at universities, schools and public offices.

The state radio-control has visited Islamist broadcasters that -- under names like "Radio Full Moon" or "Tulip Rose" in -- rail against Christians and Jews in so-called "religious talk shows," or warn women not to shake men's hands and remind them to behave modestly.
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Dutch prosecutors launch probe into imam who reportedly cursed filmmaker Van Gogh
(AP) - THE HAGUE, Netherlands-Dutch prosecutors launched a criminal investigation Thursday into a Muslim cleric who reportedly cursed Theo van Gogh just weeks before an Islamic radical shot and stabbed the filmmaker to death.

The announcement came two years to the day after Van Gogh was slain on an Amsterdam street by Mohammed Bouyeri, who is serving a life sentence for the murder.

The daily newspaper De Volkskrant this week reported that Sheik Fawaz Jneid, of the As-Soennah mosque in The Hague, denounced Van Gogh and lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a 2004 sermon, calling on God to give Van Gogh an incurable illness and Hirsi Ali cancer. The paper said it had a recording of the sermon, and had translated it into Dutch from Arabic.

Bouyeri left a note threatening Hirsi Ali after killing Van Gogh. Hirsi Ali, a prominent critic of fundamentalist Islam, wrote the screenplay for Van Gogh's film "Submission," which many Muslims considered blasphemous.

A terror suspect told a court in Amsterdam this week that Bouyeri likely attended the sermon at which Fawaz made the comments.

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk told NOS radio she would investigate Fawaz's residency status to see if it was possible to deport him, and would ask prosecutors to investigate if he had committed a crime.

But Verdonk's spokesman, Arnoud Strijbis, said later that immigration authorities had confirmed Fawaz was a Dutch citizen.

"We have freedom of speech in the Netherlands, but the question has earlier been raised of whether you should be able to say anything," Verdonk said. "I think that wishing people illnesses and that kind of thing, that shouldn't be allowed, so I think that it should be examined, if we, within our criminal justice system, can do something about it."

Elizabeth Woestem, a spokeswoman for the Hague Public Prosecutors Office, said an investigation was being launched to see if the sermon breached any laws. She said it was too early to say what laws may have been broken.

It is not the first time prosecutors in The Hague have studied the imam's preaching.

"We have investigated earlier sermons in 2003, 2004 and 2005," Woestem said. "But we found no criminal acts."

Municipal legislators in The Hague in 2005 asked if the mosque could be closed down because of the content of some of Fawaz's sermons, but city officials said shutting the mosque was impossible because of free speech laws.

A man who answered the phone at the As-Soennah mosque Thursday said Fawaz was not immediately available for comment.

The man, who declined to give his name, said the imam did not deny making the comments, but that nobody at the mosque had seen Bouyeri, who lived in Amsterdam, attending sermons there before Van Gogh's murder.

Last year, three imams from a mosque in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven had their visas revoked after a secret service report said they were spreading fundamentalist propaganda and allowing recruitment for terrorist groups to take place at the mosque. All three imams denied the accusations.

Mother 'planted seeds of hate'
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent
November 03, 2006
TWO Australians arrested in Yemen on terrorism charges had been "indoctrinated" in antisocial behaviour by their hardline mother, the pair's Indonesian family claimed in Jakarta yesterday.

Abdul Rahman Ayub, who along with twin brother Abdul Rahim Ayub formed an Australian branch of the regional Jemaah Islamiah terrorist organisation in the 1990s, lashed out at his brother's ex-wife Rabiyah Hutchison for "poisoning" the two young men's minds with hardline Muslim ideology.

Concurring, Abdul Rahim Ayub yesterday told The Australian, through his brother, that his two sons were "no longer anything to do with me" and claimed he now practised a more tolerant Islam than the one he once shared with Ms Hutchison.

Abdul Rahim, who fled Perth within days of the 2002 Bali bombing and has since been in hiding with his Indonesian wife and their six children, refused to speak directly to The Australian yesterday.

However, he authorised his brother Abdul Rahman, who was deported from Australia on visa matters, to speak on his behalf.

Abdul Rahman described his former sister-in-law as "sharp-tongued" and difficult to get along with.

He said Ms Hutchison called his brother soon after the young men's arrests to let their father know what had happened.

This angered the two Indonesians, who felt Ms Hutchison had deliberately kept Abdul Rahim's children away from him since their divorce in the mid-1990s.

"We were sad about it, but what can you do?" he said. "They've always acted strangely, and if they wanted us to pay attention to them, we should have been involved in their lives, but they never gave us access."

He said Abdul Rahim told his ex-wife bitterly: "This is no business of mine - I don't know and I don't want to know."

Abdul Rahman said he remembered the two boys as "innocent, still just kids" during a visit to Jakarta in 1996, on their way to study in Egypt after their parents had separated.

"But I got the impression she had already planted the seed of hate for their father in them," he said.

He also revealed the couple had a third child, a daughter named Aminah, but said he had no idea of her whereabouts.

Abdul Rahman accused Ms Hutchison of previously having infected him and his brother with her hardline Islamist views, after JI founder Abdullah Sungkar married the pair in a ceremony in central Java in 1984.

"Because it was Ustadz (teacher) Sungkar who married them, we thought that was a good thing," he explained. "But ultimately I knew the real situation, and I urged her to change, but she would not.

"In Islam if there are people who are behaving wrongly it's up to us to show them the error of their ways, but still we must never hate them."

Abdul Rahman, who teaches Islamic thought in mosques, schools and offices in Jakarta, said he now tried to convince his followers not to hate non-Muslims in the way Ms Hutchison appeared to.

He also challenged the Australian Government to prove he had committed any offences during his years working to develop a JI presence there, saying: "I could have done plenty of things there, but I didn't. Nothing. So Australia, you must prove something; don't just talk."

Boys in Yemen, she watches and waits
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Ms Hutchison was born in Mudgee, in the NSW central west, and is in her mid-40s.

The owner of the unit, who spoke on the condition that he was not named, told The Australian he knew little about Ms Hutchison's background. He had met her a few times, but every time she was wearing a full burka and he had never seen her face. She moved into the home near Haldon Street in Lakemba just over a month ago and neighbours say she is quiet and keeps to herself. She is seen coming and going from the two-storey apartment but she never speaks to her neighbours.

The Australian has learned Ms Hutchison is now under travel restrictions. But she has travelled extensively in Asia and the Middle East and has visited Afghanistan several times, before and after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Her sons, Mohammed and Abdullah Ayub, were arrested with another Australian in raids believed to have also netted two senior al-Qa'ida figures and three Europeans who were under surveillance by British intelligence agents.

A family friend expressed surprise last night at the arrest, saying the Ayub brothers "were like pussycats".

"I don't think they would be involved in a terror plot, they're mummy's boys," the friend said.

One of the al-Qa'ida figures detained in the swoop is thought to be a Somali known as al-Ansar, who the CIA claims is a senior Bin Laden henchman in the Horn of Africa nations of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.

The second man was detained in an earlier raid. He is believed to be Abu Atiq, a former Islamic University lecturer and associate of two of the 9/11 hijackers, who is accused of plotting attacks on Yemeni oil installations earlier this year.

Regional security sources say the three Australians, Mohammed Ellias bin Ayub, Abdullah Mustafa bin Ayub andMarek Samulski, were staying in the same apartment block as the three Europeans when they were seized by secret police before dawn on October 17. The Europeans are a British national, a Dane and a German.
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Zainal Anwar on friday: Islam Hadhari champions needed
MANY Malaysians I meet at open house in this festive month of DeepaRaya celebrations are feeling anxious.

It is not the slug fest between the former and the current prime ministers that is the main topic of conversation among friends, acquaintances and other guests, but rather the continuing deterioration in race relations and the growing Islamic extremism and intolerant behaviour in this country.

The latest report of abuse by the moral police against an elderly American couple on holiday in Langkawi just serves to fuel these concerns.

Two months ago, two incidents occurred within a few days of each other that made me realise how serious the undercurrents of fear and anxiety are.

A friend sent out an SMS inviting his friends for a Merdeka eve barbeque. One reply came from an unknown person: "If this party is about IFC, we are going to burn it N kill them all. Beware."

The young man was shocked how an invitation to celebrate independence day could elicit such a violent response from an unknown person about an Inter-Faith Commission that does not even exist.

Then a few days after, a colleague at Sisters in Islam said her friend’s brother was beaten up by three neighbourhood boys in Ampang because they were angry that he believed in freedom of religion and Lina Joy’s right to convert. The boy received several stitches for his wounds and made a police report.

Another colleague came back from her Raya holidays in Johor, recounting heated debates between family members and two nephews, one a 17-year-old studying in a religious secondary school and the other a 30-year-old running his own business in Kuala Lumpur, who unequivocally pronounced that Muslims who leave Islam should be killed.

These heightened tensions and bouts of inflammatory SMSes over the past few months are the result of over a year’s concerted and deliberate campaign to create alarm and anxiety among Muslims in Malaysia under the banner "Islam under siege".

The intent is to build support for the Islamist political project of turning Malaysia into an Islamic state with Syariah as the supreme law of the land.

The Islamic state ideologues know they cannot win power through the ballot box as most Malaysians, including Muslims, will not support the kind of intolerant, punitive, bigoted, misogynistic and joyless Islam they stand for..............

Makkah Charter: The Wide Gap Between Principles, Practice
After the US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, it became clear that sectarian and ethnic identity would be a major principle of post-Saddam politics. With Parliament seats and government posts being allocated according to a sectarian-ethnic quota system, powerful Iraqi actors — chiefly the religious Shiite parties and the Kurdish parties — advocated strongly for the interests of their own constituencies. The “de-Baathification” of ministries and the dissolution of the Iraqi Army threw a sizable number of Sunni Arabs, who had been favored for leadership positions under the old regime, out of work. In this environment, and with an insurgency growing, numerous organizations from within and outside Iraq emerged to advocate conflicting interests. The resulting clashes took a violent turn to plague the country ever since.

Various efforts and attempts to find a way out of the deadlock achieved little, and the scale of violence and the ensuing death toll has been huge. Concerned about the possible fall-out of this situation at the regional level, Saudi Arabia and some other neighboring countries remained active in their attempts to help the warring parties come to a peaceful settlement.

As part of this effort, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) brought together Iraqi Shiite and Sunni clerics to meet in Islam’s holiest city and signed the Makkah Charter on Oct. 19, which called for a halt in Iraq’s sectarian bloodshed. The 10-point text, drafted by a group of four clerics from the two communities, under the auspices of the OIC, draws on the sacred principle of tolerance and forgiveness in Islam. It calls for the safeguarding of the holy places of the two communities, defending the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and the release of “all innocent detainees”.

But it would be wishful thinking to believe that the Makkah Charter would ultimately lead to the cessation of fighting in Iraq. OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu was quick to acknowledge that the true success of this effort goes nowhere beyond the mere acceptance of the peace appeal in the charter, and that the document lacks an effective enforcement mechanism. Ekmeleddin acknowledged that the OIC did not have a “magic wand” to ensure its implementation. “It is a moral obligation. Neither the OIC, nor anyone else, has power over the conscience of men,” he added............

Michigan scholar new day-to-day chief of Islamic Society
PLAINFIELD, Ind. - Imam and scholar Muneer Fareed, who led a program to teach Muslim youths about their religion, has taken over the day-to-day operations of the largest Muslim group in the U.S. as the new secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America.

Fareed, who began work Tuesday at the society's Plainfield headquarters, taught at Wayne State University in Detroit until earlier this year. He earned a doctorate in Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan and also has studied in South Africa, Saudi Arabia and India.

"He was an excellent teacher, an excellent administrator, and a very good colleague," said May Seikaly, chairwoman of the Department of Near East and Asian Studies at Wayne State.

The Islamic Society, formed in 1963, is an umbrella group that represents Muslim associations for youth, college students, engineers and others, and provides support to Muslim chaplains and North American mosques.

Fareed also has served as an imam, or prayer leader, at Detroit-area mosques.

"He brings both practical knowledge of lived Islam, as well as a depth of scholarship to this position," Ingrid Mattson, who was elected the society's first female president in August, said in a news release. "In addition, Dr. Fareed has a good understanding of the challenges faced by youth."

Fareed was one of the founders and core scholars of the American Learning Institute for Muslims. The program based in the Detroit area is geared toward Muslim high school seniors and college students and "seeks to produce Islamically literate members of society that will have a positive effect on Muslim society as well as the society at large," according to its Web site.

Fareed also might be expected to reach out to black, U.S.-born Muslims. In a September 2005 speech to the United Muslim Association of Toledo, Ohio, he said American Muslims had a moral responsibility to strengthen ties with black Muslims.

Fareed succeeds Sayyid M. Syeed, who will head ISNA's new Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances in Washington, D.C., after holding the secretary general's post since 1994.

The Associated Press left a message Thursday at the Islamic Society seeking an interview with Fareed.

Woman raped by 14 men in Sindh
KHAIRPUR: A married woman was gang-raped by 14 men near Mehrabpur on Wednesday evening. Shahzadi, 45, was abducted from Peero Nangori village and allegedly raped by 14 men in a cotton field. The Mehrabpur police have registered a case against 20 men including Nawab, Pervez, Ashraf, Muzaffar, Ali Bux, Manzoor Ali, Anwar, Allah Bux, Alam, Din Muhammad and Shaman. The police have arrested four suspects and the rest are still at large. PPI

Student forger causes terror risk
By David Brown
The FBI has raided the home of a man whose website offered a way of creating fake boarding passes

Christopher Soghoian says he was highlighting a weakness

A student has developed software that creates fake airline boarding passes, prompting demands for airport security to be improved.

The home of Christopher Soghoian, 24, who has joint British and US nationality, was raided by the FBI after the tool appeared on his website.

Mr Soghoian, who is studying for PhD in cybersecurity at Indiana University, said that he was highlighting a loophole that enabled passengers to avoid security checks at airports and could help them to secure an upgraded seat.

Concerns about the website were highlighted by Edward Markey, the leading Democrat on the House of Representatives committee that deals with telecommunications and the internet. He said that Mr Soghoian should be arrested and the website closed down.

Mr Soghoian’s software enabled users to produce a facsimile of a Northwest Airlines boarding pass bearing any name or flight number and thus circumvent security lists of terrorist suspects.

The loophole involves buying a ticket online using a false name and a credit card. Boarding passes created using Mr Soghoian’s website confirm that the airline has checked the bearer’s documents to ensure that he or she has not been banned from flying.

This would make it easier for terrorists to pass through initial airport security checks, which do not scan boarding passes.The passenger would then show a genuine boarding pass when boarding the aircraft, at which point the unique barcode on the pass is scanned but identification does not have to be shown.

Once on an aircraft, the passenger could, theoretically, show the forged pass to obtain an upgraded seat. ..........

Secular Turks Criticize the U.S. Ambassador for Dismissing Warnings Against Rising Islamism in Turkey
During the first week of October 2006, a fierce secular-religious debate broke out in Turkey when President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and top Turkish military commanders warned of the growing threat of Islamist fundamentalism in Turkey. [1]

That week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was on an official visit to the U.S. This visit was depicted as successful by U.S. and Turkish government officials, and especially by the Islamic press in Turkey, despite the ruling AKP's (Justice and Development Party) invitation to Syria-based Hamas officials, [2] Turkey's drawing closer to Iran and Syria at a time when the U.S. was trying to isolate the two countries, and the rampant anti-Americanism in Turkey. [3]

Secular circles in Turkey have a long standing perception that the U.S. has supported Prime Minister Erdogan and feared that he would exploit this trip to garner U.S. support for his presidential bid in 2007, as well as for the AKP in the run-up to the November 2007 general elections.

In the eyes of the secularists, hosting Erdogan in the White House in December 2002, at a time when he was banned from politics due to his Islamist past, opened the door to his becoming prime minister. The secular - and increasingly nationalist - circles in Turkey have accused the U.S. administration [4] of supporting Erdogan, and of creating the concept of a Turkey of "moderate Islam" that would be a model for the rest of the Muslim world. They insist that Turkey is and should remain a secular, modern, and Western republic, as envisioned by its founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

In the midst of these concerns about possible U.S. support for the ruling AKP, and fears of rising Islamism in Turkey - as expressed by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, generals, and high-ranking judicial officials - U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Ross Wilson told a press conference on October 4, 2006 that these warnings and the public debate over the danger they pose to Turkey, were a "cacophony" - leading to outrage from the country's secular circles.

While the secular media and the opposition parties have strongly criticized Ambassador Ross Wilson's remarks (in some cases even calling for his removal), reactions in the Islamist media have been mild. [5] These statements were seen by secular circles in Turkey as U.S. support for the AKP just a year in advance of general elections, and, consequently as U.S. interference in internal Turkish politics.

The following are excerpts from the Turkish media on the controversy over U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson's statements:
Ambassador Wilson: There's Always Cacophony in Turkish Politics, Media

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