That modern, understanding religion...

Ain't that Poirot?




Or Cluseau?

I believe he refers to Hércule Poirot . . .

Gee, I guess without a moronic emoticon it's just not a joke anymore?

I got it, Panzade, but your reply was even funnier, for some reason.

joke?

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi police Friday found many bodies of executed civilians and policemen in the basement of a religious court set up by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Najaf, al-Arabiya news television quoted police officers as saying.

At least 25 bodies of policemen, national guardsmen and ordinary civilians were carried up to the courtyard by the police from the basement of Sadr's religious court, where they were first found, confirmed the police.

"We entered the building which was being used as Moqtada Sadr's court and we discovered in the basement a large number of bodies of police and ordinary civilians," said General Amer Hamza al-Daami, deputy head of the Najaf police.

"Some were executed, others were mutilated and others were burned." he added.

Earlier, the Iraqi police started to take control of the area around the revered Imam Ali Shrine in the holy city after Sadr ordered his Shiite militiamen to leave it.

Najaf has witnessed fierce battles between US-backed Iraqi government forces and Sadr's Shiite militiamen for three weeks, leaving several hundreds of Iraqis killed.

According to the terms of a peace agreement reached by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Sadr on Thursday to end the 22-day long fighting in Najaf, Sadr's armed militiamen are to leave the shrine and Iraqi police take over the responsibility of security.

"We have accepted the solution of peace that has been presented to us by his eminence Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani," Iraqi Minister of State Kasim Daoud told a news conference afterwards.

"Moqtada al-Sadr is free to go anywhere he likes and as far as I hear ... probably he will stay in his house in Najaf, but he is as free as any Iraqi citizen to do whatever he likes," he said in English. Enditem

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Despite the diversion, Mc.G., I'm still very interested in hearing your feelings about whether Saudi Arabia's rulers should be rooted out the way that you would have happen in Iraq.

Fortunately Saudi Arabia is NOT Iraq and I have the ability to tailor my opinions of foriegn policy.

I do believe that government od SA should crack down a bit on the fundamentalist Islam clerics in SA because if they don't, there will be a crisis in that country.

Right now, the SA government is our frinds. We have a mutually beneficial diplomacy working and unless that were to change (as it did in Iraq) I see no reason to do the same thing to SA that we did in Iraq.

I hope that answers your query.

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed: A Wake-up Call for Muslims

An Arab journalist challenges Islamic terror

By ABDEL RAHMAN al-RASHED

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.

Osama bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.

What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement." Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?

These images, when put together or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.

For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realize the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture.

Let us listen to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the sheikh - the Qatar-based radical Egyptian cleric - and hear him recite his fatwa about the religious permissibility of killing civilian Americans in Iraq. Let us contemplate the incident of this religious sheikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians.

This ailing sheikh, in his last days, with two daughters studying in "infidel" Britain, soliciting children to kill innocent civilians.

How could this sheikh face the mother of the youthful Nick Berg, who was slaughtered in Iraq because he wanted to build communication towers in that ravished country? How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?

In a different era, we used to consider the extremists, with nationalist or leftist leanings, a menace and a source of corruption because of their adoption of violence as a means of discourse and their involvement in murder as an easy shortcut to their objectives.

At that time, the mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life.

Then came the neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry.

We can't call those who take schoolchildren as hostages our own.

We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.

We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

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Let us remember correctly terror 'in the name of Allah'
Michelle Malkin attacks the mainstream media for continuing to "whitewash" exactly how deadly the Muslim terrorists we face are.link

Is this the same Michele Malkin who's written a book defending the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII?

Surely, we're not supposed to take her seriously? Or maybe only sometimes. But how is one to know?

'Beat me once a week' says Iranian woman
22 September 2004

An Iranian woman, beaten every day by her husband, asked a court to tell him only to beat her once a week.

Maryam, the middle-age woman, said she did not want to divorce her husband because she loved him.

"Just tell him to beat me once a week ... Beating is part of his nature and he cannot stop it," Maryam told the court.

The Tehran court found the man guilty and banned him from beating the wife, the paper said.

"If I do not beat her, she will not be scared enough to obey me," the husband said.

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Thai teachers strike over attacks

Security is tight across southern Thailand amid continuing unrest
Thousands of teachers have gone on strike in southern Thailand, urging the authorities to do more to protect them from attacks by Muslim militants.

Teachers say they are perceived by the rebels to be representatives of the Buddhist-dominated administration.

Bangkok said it would send 2,000 extra policemen south to boost security.

The move came as a senior Thai security official said intelligence suggested militants were planning attacks on the country's tourist spots next year.

One of the main focuses of the southern violence which began almost a year ago has been schools. Hundreds have been burnt down and a number of teachers have been killed.

Muslim community leaders complain that the school curriculum forces their children to follow Buddhist principles. The teachers say they have no control over a schooling system which is regulated by Bangkok.

Teaching unions in the provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala called for a strike following the deaths of two colleagues in one day.

"Teachers and students are too scared to go to school," a Pattani education official told the Associated Press.

Pattani teachers said the strike, which has closed at least 300 state schools in that province alone, would continue until their safety was guaranteed.

The government responded to the strike by saying police reinforcements would be deployed on 1 January, and would remain in operation for at least a year.

But the BBC's Tony Cheng in Bangkok says the proposed move is unlikely to satisfy the teachers - who have already seen a large increase in security forces, but no end to a conflict that has left nearly 600 people dead.

The announcement of more troops comes amid comments by General Kitti Rattanachaya, a senior security adviser to Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, that intelligence reports suggested separatist groups were planning attacks on "soft targets" outside the south, such as the resorts of Phuket and Pattaya, in 2005.

"The situation will be terrifying as the terrorists open war on all fronts to divert attentions from the southern area," Mr Kitti told the Associated Press.

But Mr Thaksin dismissed the comments as speculation.

Takbai inquiry

Tensions in the south have been inflamed by the authorities' response to a Muslim protest in Takbai in October, which led to the deaths of 78 demonstrators in police custody.

A government-backed inquiry into the incident found that the deaths were not deliberate, but Mr Thaksin admitted on Wednesday that the panel had also found that official negligence was partly to blame.

He said senior officials failed to do their jobs, and left it to subordinates to handle the protest's outcome.

Samir Ubeid, an Iraqi Researcher Living in Europe: The Nobel Prize Is Racist and Stems from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Following are excerpts from an interview with Samir 'Ubeid, an Iraqi researcher living in Europe, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on October 31, 2006:

Samir 'Ubeid: I don't call it the Nobel prize - I call it the "Hubal" [idol] prize.

Interviewer: Hubal?

Samir 'Ubeid: Yes, because it often encourages heresy. It encourages attacks against the heritage, and encourages those who scorn their people and their culture. The proof is that it was awarded recently to Pamuk, who had encouraged civil strife, which might preoccupy Turkey and the Muslims in general. He held Turkey responsible for what the Ottoman state did, when he referred to the massacre of the Armenians.

[...]

Interviewer: In other words, if you are a traitor to your country, you deserve this prize.

Samir 'Ubeid: If you are a traitor to your country, and a heretic, who curses his Prophet, you deserve a Nobel Prize.

[...]

Why has the prize been awarded to 167 Jews, and to only four Arabs out of 380 million Arabs - and all four are considered traitors? For example, Al-Sadat got the prize during the normalization process, and as a price for Camp David, together with Begin, who carried out the Deir Yassin massacre, and who was in the "Hagana" gangs. Later, the prize was awarded to [Ahmad] Al-Zewail, in order to buy his invention, and Al-Zewail has disappeared since.

Interviewer: You mean the Egyptian Ahmad Al-Zewail?

Samir 'Ubeid: Yes, the Egyptian chemist. The prize was also awarded to Mohamed ElBaradei, and in this case, it is soaked in the blood of the Iraqi children and people.

[...]

Mother Teresa was brought, along with a group of people like her…

Interviewer: Some say the prize was awarded to her for her missionary activity in Africa, India, and so on...

Samir 'Ubeid: Let's assume she was righteous, according to the logic of the media, which is now controlled by the Jews and Hollywood. When they awarded the prize to Teresa, they were trying to award an "artificial hymen" or "artificial honor" to this prize. My colleague said that there is democracy. What democracy is there, if out of 1.5 billion Chinese, only two or three were awarded the Nobel? If you examine the Russian scientists and writers, who shook the world with their literature and their knowledge... What about Sakharov, what about Tolstoy? In addition...

Interviewer: But Sakharov was awarded the Nobel prize.

Samir 'Ubeid: I meant Chekhov. Chekhov! Chekhov!

[...]

Are we Arabs not included in the transfer of the scientific genetic code? We, the descendants of Al-Khawarizmi, Al-Jahez, Al-Razi, Avicenna, and Ibn Al-Haytham - are we all born idiots? Is there not a single scientist among us? Are we not included in the genetic code? Is intelligence not transferred down among us Arabs?

Interviewer: Scientific creativity occurs in freedom and democracy, brother.

Samir 'Ubeid: Democracy does not explain how it was awarded to 167 Jews, from among those 15 million scattered around the world, while abandoning 1.5 billion Chinese, a billion Indians, and 380 million Arabs. This is racism.

[...]

The [Grameen] bank for the poor won the prize because some of its shareholders are giants like Haliburton and others.

[...]

They infiltrated this bank, which became in the pocket of the Freemasons. This prize stems from the core of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Disembowelled, then torn apart: The price of daring to teach girls
By Kim Sengupta in Ghazni, Afghanistan
Published: 29 November 2006

The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.

Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.

The day we arrived, an Afghan policemen and eight insurgents died during an ambush in an outlying village. Rockets were found, primed to be fired into Ghazni City during a visit by the American ambassador a few days previously.

But, as in the rest of Afghanistan, it is the civilians who are bearing the brunt of this conflict. At the village of Qara Bagh, the family of Mr Halim are distraught and terrified. His cousin, Ahmed Gul, shook his head: "They killed him like an animal. No, no. We do not kill animals like that, it would be haram. They took away a father and a husband, they had no pity. We are all very worried. Please go now, you see those men standing over there? They are watching. It is dangerous for you, and for us."

Fatima Mushtaq, the director of education at Ghazni, has had repeated death threats, the notorious "night letters". Her gender, as well as her refusal to send girls home from school, has made her a particular source of hatred for Islamist zealots.

"I think they killed him that way to frighten us, otherwise why make a man suffer so much? Mohammed Halim and his family were good friends of ours and we are very, very upset by what has happened. He came to me when the threats first began and asked what he should do. I told him to move somewhere safe. I think he was trying to arrange that when they came and took him," she said.

The threats against Ms Mushtaq also extend to her husband, Sayyid Abdul, and their eight children. "When the first letters arrived, I tried to hide them from my husband," she said. "But then he found the next few. He said we must stand together. We talked, and we decided that we must tell the children. So that they can be prepared, but it is not a good way for them to grow up."

Ms Mushtaq is familiar with the ways of the Taliban. During their rule she and her sister ran secret schools for girls at their home. The Taliban beat them for teaching the girls algebra.

The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.

Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.

The day we arrived, an Afghan policemen and eight insurgents died during an ambush in an outlying village. Rockets were found, primed to be fired into Ghazni City during a visit by the American ambassador a few days previously.

But, as in the rest of Afghanistan, it is the civilians who are bearing the brunt of this conflict. At the village of Qara Bagh, the family of Mr Halim are distraught and terrified. His cousin, Ahmed Gul, shook his head: "They killed him like an animal. No, no. We do not kill animals like that, it would be haram. They took away a father and a husband, they had no pity. We are all very worried. Please go now, you see those men standing over there? They are watching. It is dangerous for you, and for us."

Fatima Mushtaq, the director of education at Ghazni, has had repeated death threats, the notorious "night letters". Her gender, as well as her refusal to send girls home from school, has made her a particular source of hatred for Islamist zealots.

"I think they killed him that way to frighten us, otherwise why make a man suffer so much? Mohammed Halim and his family were good friends of ours and we are very, very upset by what has happened. He came to me when the threats first began and asked what he should do. I told him to move somewhere safe. I think he was trying to arrange that when they came and took him," she said.

The threats against Ms Mushtaq also extend to her husband, Sayyid Abdul, and their eight children. "When the first letters arrived, I tried to hide them from my husband," she said. "But then he found the next few. He said we must stand together. We talked, and we decided that we must tell the children. So that they can be prepared, but it is not a good way for them to grow up."

Ms Mushtaq is familiar with the ways of the Taliban. During their rule she and her sister ran secret schools for girls at their home. The Taliban beat them for teaching the girls algebra.

Thousands Rally Over Pakistan Rape Law