Free Republic

Thursday 07 July 2005, 10:19 Makka Time, 7:19 GMT Muslim scholars met in Amman, Jordan, for religious dialogue The Muslim world's top scholars have agreed that fatwas, or religious edicts, should only be issued by clerics with religious authority. The move is meant to weaken statements by figures involved in fighting in Iraq who ordain violence. The three-day meeting in Amman, which ended on Wednesday, has for the first time gathered representatives of eight Sunni and Shia Muslim schools of thought. They all also agreed that followers cannot label other Muslims as "apostates", something groups in Iraq have done to...

ROME (AP) - An Italian prosecutor is investigating whether U.S. agents played a role in the alleged abduction from Milan of a suspected Islamic militant, according to news reports. The 41-year-old imam, identified as Abu Omar, disappeared in the northern Italian city in February 2003. Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro is looking at whether he was seized in a CIA operation and flown to Egypt for interrogation, the Corriere della Sera and other newspapers have reported. Last week, the prosecutor visited a joint U.S.-Italian air base in Aviano to find documents on air and vehicle traffic that might shed light on...

In recent months, the cause of freedom has made enormous gains in the broader Middle East. Millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq defied terrorists to cast their ballots in free elections. Palestinians voted for a new president who rejects violence and is working for democratic reform, and the people of Lebanon reclaimed their sovereignty and are now voting for new leadership. Across the Middle East, hopeful change is taking place. People are claiming their liberty. And as a tide of freedom sweeps this region, it will also come eventually to Iran. The Iranian people are heirs to a great...

Photos From The 'Islamic Republic' of Iran: Bombings in Oil-Rich Province of Iran Kills Nine, Wounds 36; Tehran Bomb Kills One An Iranian clergyman and people pass as muncipality workers try to clean up the explosion site in Ahvaz, Iran, Sunday June 12TH, 2005.(AP) Rescue workers are seen at the explosion site in Ahvaz, Iran, Sunday June 12th, 2005. (AP) A TV grab from the state run Iranian network shows cars damaged by the explosion in Ahvaz, Iran, Sunday June 12TH, 2005. (AP) People watch Ayatollah Khomeini's footage, the founder of Islamic Republic of Iran, on a huge screen talking...

An outbreak of polio in Yemen has risen to 63 cases, making it one of the worst epidemics in the world, the UN health agency said. The number of cases in Yemen will probably soon exceed 100, as many more suspected cases are being investigated, said Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the World Health Organisation's polio eradication campaign. "They are having a pretty big epidemic there," Rosenbauer said. "But we should be able to stop the virus relatively quickly." Meanwhile, in Indonesia, which like Yemen was thought to be polio-free, two more cases have been confirmed, the WHO said. Indonesia,...

Clerics strip fugitive Taliban leader of power By Tom Coghlan in Kandahar (Filed: 20/05/2005) A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai. The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September. Symbolically,...

The conviction last week of Ali al-Timimi, an American-born Islamic scholar, on terrorism charges thrust the so-called "Virginia Paintball Jihad" case to the forefront as the federal government's greatest court victory against terrorism. All told, federal prosecutors counted 10 convictions in the case. Al-Timimi's conviction marked the first post-Sept. 11 case in which the government won a terrorism conviction for actions tied to philosophy and words designed to help the enemy, rather than deeds, such as providing money, equipment or actual combat help to that enemy. "Until now these people have escaped. It is a very powerful position to be...

Bellevue firm tied to pro-Hamas Web siteBy Peter LewisSeattle Times staff reporter, April 23, 2005 A Bellevue company has helped support a Web site dedicated to advancing Hamas, an Islamic organization the U.S. government considers a terrorist group. The site features videos of Humvees blowing up and U.S. soldiers being killed. The site was down temporarily yesterday but was working again last evening. Content included a training video of the "Mujahideen Army" and a message to the American people that said in part they had "elected criminals and are responsible for their actions." The Bellevue company, eNom, apparently is...

<p>October 15, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Pentagon investigators will question a Muslim chaplain who arranged a trip to Mecca for Islamic U.S. servicemen that was paid for by a Saudi charity linked to al Qaeda, a top Defense Department official said yesterday. In March 2001, Capt. Rasheed Muhammad led a "Haj tour" for about 60 Muslim service people that was paid for by the Muslim World League, which is dedicated to the spread of an extreme form of Islam embraced by Osama bin Laden.</p>

Two held over US fears of radical cell in forces By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 24/09/2003) The United States military is urgently investigating a potential radical Muslim cell among its own servicemen at the Guantanamo Bay prison as it emerged yesterday that two more members of the garrison are in custody. Senior Airman Ahmad I al-Halabi, an Arabic language translator, was secretly arrested a month ago, Pentagon officials said last night. He is being held at an air base in California and is charged with more than 30 counts of espionage, aiding the enemy, disobeying a lawful order and...

Militant Imams Under Scrutiny Across Europe By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and LOWELL BERGMAN ONDON, Jan. 24 - In nightly sermons broadcast on the Internet, Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, a 46-year-old Syrian-born cleric, has urged young Muslim men all over the world to support the Iraq insurgency on the front line of "the global jihad," investigators say. He struck a similarly defiant tone this month at a rally attended by 500 people at a central London meeting hall, where a giant screen behind him showed images of the World Trade Center falling. "Allah akbar!" - "God is great" - some...

On October 24, 2004, Arabic websites Middle East Transparent[1] and Elaph[2] posted a petition from Arab liberals to United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan and the Security Council. Written primarily by the Tunisian intellectual Lafif Lakhdar, the petition calls for an international treaty banning the use of religion to incite violence. The Saudi newspaper Arab News reported that, within a week of the petition's posting, over 2,500 Muslim intellectuals from twenty-three countries had signed the petition.[3]Shakir al-Nabulsi, a Jordanian academic and one of the signatories, noted that "There are individuals in the Muslim world who pose as clerics and issue death...

The Islamic organization poised to build the largest mosque in the Northeast on a site in Roxbury has long-standing ties to an Egyptian cleric who praises suicide bombings and a Muslim activist indicted last week in a terrorism financing probe. The Islamic Society of Boston, which has city approval to build a sprawling $22 million Islamic cultural center and mosque on Malcolm X Boulevard, has had a long association with Dr. Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, whose vocal support of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas prompted the State Department to bar him from entering the U.S. four years ago. The local religious...

NEW YORK (AP) - A Yemeni sheik and his assistant were convicted Thursday of plotting to funnel money to al-Qaida and Hamas, handing a victory to prosecutors shaken last year when the man who was supposed to be their star witness set himself on fire outside the White House. Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed were found guilty on all but two of the 10 charges in an indictment that accused them of vital roles in a terror-funding network that stretched from Brooklyn to Yemen. In a meeting with FBI informants in a German hotel room,...

Ahmed Omar Abul Ali, the Virginia Muslim charged with conspiring to assassinate President Bush, met several times with Zubayr al-Rimi—Al Qaeda’s number two man in Saudi Arabia, killed in a shootout with Saudi forces in September 2003: Abu Ali linked to Saudi Arabia al Qaeda leader. (Hat tip: The Jawa Report.) A Falls Church man accused of conspiring to assassinate President Bush met several times with an al Qaeda leader in Saudi Arabia who once was the target of a global manhunt and a key suspect in an attack that killed nine Americans in Riyadh, law-enforcement authorities said. Ahmed Omar...

Extremist cleric staged al-Qaeda recruiting rally By Sean O’Neill and Richard Ford THE radical Islamist cleric whose internet sermons are being investigated by police has held a secret conference at which British Muslims were urged to join al-Qaeda. About 600 people, including women and children, punched the air and chanted Allahu akbar (God is greatest) as they were shown videos of hijacked airliners crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical Syrian-born cleric, said that if the British Government did not relax its tough anti- terrorism laws, the response from...

<p>November 17, 2003 -- A Yemeni cleric who allegedly boasted of giving Osama bin Laden millions of dollars collected at a Brooklyn mosque could be hauled into federal court as soon as today, after more than 10 months spent fighting extradition from Germany, a law enforcement source said. Sheik Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad and his alleged assistant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, are expected to be arraigned in Brooklyn Federal Court immediately upon their arrival in the U.S. on charges they gave material support to al Qaeda and Hamas.</p>

Mar. 5, 2003 Yemeni cleric charged with raising funds for Al Qaida and Hamas By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK A Yemeni cleric detained in Germany bragged to an FBI informant that he supplied $20 million, recruits and weapons to Osama bin Laden in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, US officials said Tuesday. Much of the money came from contributors in the United States, including worshippers at the Al Farouq mosque in New York, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in announcing charges against Sheik Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad. Amid an undercover operation, Al-Moayad "boasted that jihad...

THE trial of a Yemeni imam accused of supplying millions of dollars to Osama bin Laden and Hamas began in New York today. Jury selection was expected to take about two weeks, with the prosecution to begin presenting its case on January 25. Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad, 56, was detained with another Yemeni in Germany in January 2003 and extradited to the United States later that year. US Attorney-General John Ashcroft said in announcing charges against Mr Al-Moayad in March 2003: "The FBI undercover operation developed information that Al-Moayad personally handed Osama bin Laden $US20 million ($26.3m) from his terrorist...

'Muslim women don't have a problem with the fact that their husbands have a few other wives," declared the Iranian ayatollah with great conviction. Sitting across the conference table from him, in the magnificent 17th-century Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como in Italy, I disagreed. My conversations over the years with Muslim women colleagues had given me a quite different picture. "I would suggest that you don't really know how women feel since you're a man. I'm a woman, and I can tell you that women do not want to be one of several wives." While ordinarily this kind of challenge...