Islam - religion of peace...

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Mar 22, 2007 02:13 PM Associated PressLONDON — British counter-terrorist police said today they arrested three suspects in the deadly suicide bomb attacks on the London transit system in 2005. Two of the men were picked up just before boarding a plane to Pakistan.
No one has ever been charged in connection with the July 7, 2005, bombings, which were the deadliest attack on London since World War II. The four bombers and 52 commuters died in blasts on three subway trains and a double-decker bus, and more than 700 people were injured.
London’s Metropolitan Police said two men, ages 23 and 30, were arrested at Manchester Airport in northwest England as they prepared to board a flight to Pakistan. The third man, 26, was detained at a house in Leeds, a city in northern England where police were searching five houses.
All were arrested on suspicion of committing, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism, and authorities aid they were being taken to a central London police station for questioning.
The houses being searched were all in Beeston, a working-class area of Leeds that was home to three of the 2005 bombers. Officers also were searching an apartment and a business in east London.
The coordinated attacks on London commuters were the first suicide bombings on European soil. The attack was followed two weeks later by a copycat plot in which four bombs failed to detonate.
Three of the suicide bombers — Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18 — were British-born men of Pakistani descent who grew up in the ethnically mixed Leeds area, about 200 miles from London. The fourth, Germaine Lindsay, 19, was born in Jamaica and raised in Britain.
The revelation that seemingly unremarkable British residents could become suicide bombers caused soul-searching across the country and raised fears of a threat from homegrown terrorists.
An official account of the attacks published last year concluded the plotters who inspired and prepared the bombers were likely still at large.
The investigation seemed to have stalled, but the Metropolitan Police said officials remained “determined to follow the evidence wherever it takes us to identify any other person who may have been involved, in any way, in the terrorist attacks.’’
Two suspects were previously detained by British police in 2005. One was released without charge, and the other was charged with wasting police time.
In addition, Magdy el-Nashar, an Egyptian chemist, was taken into custody by Egyptian authorities a week after the attack when British officials said he was suspected of possibly having links with some of the bombers.
He was let go after three weeks, and Egyptian authorities said he had no involvement in the attack. El-Nashar told reporters then that he casually knew two of the suicide bombers while earning a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Leeds.

Islam = Evil...

Sunday, January 21, 2007

The timing could not be more apposite. After the humorless banalities of the CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairie come the grotesque realities of Channel 4's Undercover Mosque in the U.K.

Journalists from Channel 4's Dispatches programme conducted a 10-month undercover assignment in several of Britain's leading mosques. The resulting segment, Undercover Mosque, was aired on Jan. 15.

What is particularly relevant is that Dispatches has an international reputation for excellence and, important this, for its general left-wing approach to political issues. As such, the producers decided to investigate not those Muslim centres renowned for their extremism but various large, influential and allegedly moderate Islamic holy places.

What it found has provoked waves of shock. Several preachers and imams call for holy war, tell congregations that Muslims have to brainwash people, demand that homosexuals be murdered, insist that girls who refuse to wear the hijab should be beaten, and routinely demand that Christians and Jews be killed.

At one mosque in Birmingham, Abu Usama, one of the most popular speakers, says that Muslims have to "form a state within a state, until we take over." He says that in this state any Muslim who tried to leave Islam would be killed. "If the Imam wants to crucify him he could crucify him. The

person is put up on the wood and he's left there to bleed to death."

The documentary also shows a preacher joking about harming gay people secretly so as not to break the law. He laughs as he tells Muslim dentists to thrust extra- large needles into the faces of gay patients.

This is all especially embarrassing for the government because one of its main advisors on Islam, a Muslim member of the House of Lords, attends this particular mosque and speaks highly of it.

Another preacher in Birmingham, Dr. Billal Phillips, explains that as Muhammad married Aisha, a nine-year-old girl, all such marriages are condoned. "The prophet Muhammad practically outlined the rules regarding marriage prior to puberty. With this practice, he clarified what is permissible."

Referring to non-Muslims, another preacher says that, "No one loves the kuffaar [i.e., non-Muslims]. We hate the kuffaar! Allah has not given those people who are kuffaar a way over the believer. They shouldn't be in authority over us. Muslims shouldn't be satisfied with anything other than a total Islamic state."

The book store of the Regents Park Mosque, the largest in London, sells popular videos of the Saudi-trained Sheikh Faiz calling Jews "pigs" who will all be slaughtered. He then makes the sound of a pig and the audience laughs. In fact, throughout the sermons and lessons there is no sign of disagreement or discomfort from anyone in the packed congregations.

The Taliban is praised for killing British soldiers, and followers are repeatedly told to despise Western society. Muslims are condemned if they send their children to kuffaar schools or allow them to play with kuffaars.

The response so far has been that the documentary is mere propaganda. Tragically, it is not. It appears to be an accurate and objective expose of common teaching within those mosques that were until now considered to be standing on the front line against extremism. We would be foolish not to listen to what these Muslims are telling us.

- Michael Coren is a writer and broadcaster. www.michaelcoren.com.