Posted on 10/03/2006 10:34:44 AM PDT by MadIvan
A Perth woman worshipping at a mosque has described the terror of feeling a bullet whizz past her ear in a drive-by shooting.
Ahdielah Edries, 38, was on the second storey of the Mirrabooka mosque, north of Perth, last night when an unknown gunman fired a shot through the window about 8.45pm yesterday.
"We were in the middle of praying ... I was in front of the window. I heard what seemed like a massive explosion and felt something go past my ear,'' Ms Edries said.
She said the bullet sounded like a jet and missed her left ear by about five centimetres and slammed into a wall.
"If I stood a little bit to the left I would be dead,'' she said.
"I am so grateful nobody died.''
Following the blast the gunman fled the scene in a green Jeep Cherokee four-wheel drive parked across the road. Nobody was injured in the incident.
In the wake of the shooting there was bedlam in the mosque, Ms Edries said.
"Kids were screaming, mothers were running. People wanted to protect their children,'' she said.
Ms Edries, president of the Islamic Council of Western Australia, said at least 100 women and children were on the second floor of the packed mosque, praying during the holy month of Ramadan.
There were about 300 men worshipping on the ground floor, she said. She said the mosque had been vandalised and robbed in the past, and she hoped the shooting was a one-off.
"At this stage we don't know. We hope it is just a stupid person. It was a callous act,'' she said.
Ameer Ali, who heads the government's Islamic advisory committee, said that while this was the first shooting in an Australian mosque, others had been ransacked and worshippers' cars had been vandalised.
He suggested an ongoing debate on the threat of radical Islam was encouraging violence and intimidation against Muslims.
"This is a criminal act, but my question is: where do the criminals get the courage to do this?'' Mr Ali said.
"It comes from what our leaders say in public, so I think our leaders share some responsibility for these acts.''
Mr Ali, head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, declined to identify the leaders whose comments he thought might encourage such attacks.
Officers from the WA police ballistic team are investigating.
Knuckle-draggers all around.
It has only started to mean that because semi-literate people started mispronouncing "one of", which prompted other people, who didn't understand the derivation, to start misspelling the term.
If you think for a little bit, you will realize that saying "one off" to mean "one of a kind", doesn't make any sense. I am old enough to remember when nobody said "one off", when they meant "one of".
I can also remember when "preventative" was just regarded as a stupid mispronunciation of "preventive".
It has also become common (in these days of spell checkers, and poor verbal skills) for people to mix up affect and effect, their and they're, your and you're, etc.
Imagine a nation where one's rights are determined by their religion.
Not to mention flammable and inflammable!
A stupid person that can't aim right.
How did she measure the distance?
The perpetrators of the market bombing in Bosnia and this shooting may share a common religion.
Curious.
My estimation from the old-car hobby was that it meant basically "1 off THE ASSEMBLY LINE". (They DO go "off" it at the end.)
Your view makes perfect sense, but so does the assembly line. Don't know if I really learned that or if it's just speculation from reading it so much (and the old-car hobby includes many oldsters ;-) ).
Well, I can't remember exactly. Wasn't there a nation just like that. You know, sausage eating, beer drinking people? With the funny guy in the mustache. A paper hanger who's into show tunes. Hilter or something like that. And the country he's in. It's N something. Nasty? Noisy? Naz...
A debate? Come on!!! They are just now at the point of debate on this?
What kind of backward uninformed people would not know what is going on around the world.
Good God Almighty.
I couldn't agree more and I'm mighty glad to finally hear someone sa - hey, wait, you mean Muslim leaders right?
/Wonders if she refers to John Howard as 'our leader' when she's inside the mosque.
Sunna or later, Shi'ite happens!
Sounds like someone was getting an early start on their Ramadan celebrations.
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