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Supporters of Iran have been celebrating the callous attack on Salman Rushdie, which saw the author stabbed up to 15 times – including once in the neck. Rushdie, 75, was attacked by Hadi Matar, 24, as he was being introduced to the stage for the CHQ 2022 event in Chautauqua, near Buffalo in upstate New York, on Friday morning. He was airlifted to hospital and undergoing surgery in Erie, Pennsylvania. He was issued a fatwa – a death sentence - in 1989 by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini after his book, the Satanic Verses, sparked and outcry with Muslims in Britain.

New York State Police have identified the suspect in Friday's stabbing of novelist Salman Rushdie as a New Jersey man who, according to law enforcement sources, allegedly had 'sympathies toward the Iranian government.' Rushdie, 75, whose novel 'The Satanic Verses' drew death threats from Iran's leader in the 1980s, remained in surgery Friday evening hours after being stabbed up to 15 times by a man who rushed the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in western New York. Authorities confirmed that the attacker Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, was arrested at the scene and...

A Fatwa has been issued against living on Mars by clerics who say that trying to set up home there would be un-Islamic. The fatwa – or ruling – was issued by the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment (GAIAE) in the UAE after the Mars One organisation announced that it would try and establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. The committee argued that an attempt to dwell on the planet would be so hazardous as to be suicidal and killing oneself is not permitted by Islam

(CNSNews.com) – Reports about a fatwa urging young girls to travel to Syria to provide sexual services for jihadist rebels are causing a stir in Tunisia, while also drawing attention to the Islamic concept – little-known in the West and controversial among Muslims themselves – of “temporary marriage.” Girls as young as 14 are counted as eligible for the “sexual jihad,” and around a dozen young Tunisians are believed to have taken up the call, attributed to an influential Saudi scholar, Sheikh Mohamed al-Arifi. The pan-Arabic Al-Hayat newspaper reported this week that a video circulating on social media sites in...

SORGUES, France — A T-shirt worn by a 3-year-old nursery-schooler named Jihad has led to an unusual and politically charged criminal trial here that tests the limits of free speech — and common sense — in a France increasingly ill at ease with its growing Muslim population. “I am a bomb,” the shirt said on the front. The back read, “Jihad Born Sept. 11.”

I just received this e-mail as an American fan and supporter of Geert Wilders: Dear Supporters of Geert Wilders: We are asking for your assistance in Calling on all Dutch Embassies to free Geert Wilders At the following link, you will find a list of all Dutch embassies and consulates abroad: http://www.embassiesabroad.com/embassies-of/Netherlands#668 We are sending this request to you and many thousands of people the world over who have expressed support for Geert Wilders because you understand very clearly and pressingly the threat to our freedoms symbolic in his prosecution. It doesn't matter which country you are writing from because...

Saudi Cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid saying Mickey Mouse should be killed.

NEW YORK - Defendants in lawsuits resulting from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks must turn over materials from as far back as 1992, when it appears that Osama bin Laden called for a holy war against the United States, a federal judge said Friday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels affects defendants in lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages from numerous banks, charities and individuals worldwide who are alleged to have supported al-Qaida before the 2001 terrorist attacks. Daniels said it was reasonable to require organizations such as the Muslim World League, the International Islamic Relief...

No one doubts Osama bin Laden’s intention to inflict even larger damage on the Great Satan, and that he considers our children to be legitimate — and appropriate — targets. He has said that he asked and received permission from Muslim theologians to murder up to two million American children, in what he considers to be a just reprisal for the supposed damage done to Muslim children by the United States.

A “distorted” Channel 4 documentary about Muslim extremism that enraged community leaders and resulted in a fruitless police investigation will now be the subject of an Ofcom inquiry. West Midlands Police made a formal complaint over a Channel 4 Dispatches film that participants and race crime prosecutors claim was edited in a misleading manner. Undercover Mosque, broadcast in January, featured footage shot at a number of mosques, including one at which a preacher praised the Taleban for killing British soldiers. Channel 4 said that the programme revealed how a message of hatred and segregation was being spread by some Islamic...

Alarmed by the growing number of Palestinians who are emigrating from the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian Authority's mufti has issued a fatwa [religious decree] forbidding Muslims to leave. Sources in the PA Foreign Ministry told The Jerusalem Post that some 10,000 Palestinians have filed requests to emigrate from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year. They said the requests had been approved. "Every day we hear about hundreds of Palestinians who file requests for emigration with different consulates and diplomatic missions," the sources said. "According to our statistics, there are at least 45,000 emigration...

May 23, 2007 Fatwah Can't Silence 'Warrior Woman' Poet DONNA BAVER ROVITO ''She writes that Muslim women should burn their burqas, that women should be treated as equals, and that religion should have no place in law or government...'' What can you buy for $11,319 these days? You can rent the 14-bedroom Christian Dior Chateau on the French Riviera for a week in December. Or, you can grab a 2001 Ford F-250 Super Duty two-door pickup truck that's still in pretty good shape. Or ... if your taste runs toward the grisly, you and your Muslim extremist cronies might offer...

Muslim groups in US should battle Islamophobia by explaining how America, Islam in fact share same values Published: 05.12.07, 15:15 / Israel Jewish Scene After six Muslims were arrested this week for plotting a terrorist attack on an American army base I heard an interview with a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He was expressing concern for the safety of his community and thus stressing that these six were in no way representative of Islam or American Muslims and he criticized the media for portraying them as such. As a Jew who has suffered from anti-Semitism I...

An al-Qaida-linked extremist group warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that he and the West were "doomed," as protesters raged across the Muslim world to demand more of an apology from the pontiff for his remarks about Islam and violence. The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified. The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross"...

Just in. I am looking at a picture of the WTC with smoke pouring out of the western tower. Looks like a huge amount of damage. Debris raining down on people in the street.

Here are some links from the FR archives in observance of the fifth anniversary of 9/11/2001 - Threads list of several breaking news items - Latest Articles The first post reporting the attacks by OldEconomyBuyer - World Trade Center Posted on the first anniversary - Associated Press newswire - September 11, 2001 - Chronology of news alerts, bulletins and flashes

What if there are ten million and one? Religion of Peace Update from CNN, with thanks to Doug: Michael Scheuer, who once headed the CIA's bin Laden unit, says bin Laden has been given permission by a young cleric in Saudi Arabia authorizing al Qaeda to "use nuclear weapons against the United States ... capping the casualties at 10 million." "He's had an approval, a religious approval for 10 million deaths?" I asked him. "Yes," Scheuer responded.

Indian minister said offering $10m for beheading cartoonistBy Haaretz Service Last update - 08:38 19/02/2006 An Indian state minister has offered a reward of more than $10 million and a prospective killer's weight in gold to anyone who beheads one of the cartoonists who angered Muslims by depcting the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, the London Sunday Times reported this week. The offer follows a Pakistani cleric's reward of $1 million and a car for the killing of one of the cartoonists. The new, larger reward was announced by Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of minority welfare in the Indian state...

MINISTER in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has offered a £6m reward to anyone who beheads one of the Danish cartoonists who outraged Muslims by depicting the prophet Muhammad. Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of minority welfare, said the killer would also receive his weight in gold. He made the offer during a rally in his constituency in Meerut, northeast of Delhi. Protesters then burnt an effigy of a cartoonist and some Danish flags. A Pakistani cleric has also offered a $1m reward — and a car — as a “prize” to anyone who kills one of the cartoonists. Mohammed Yousaf...

Taliban offers reward for killing of cartoonist (AFP) Updated: 2006-02-09 15:30 A top Taliban commander offered a reward of 100 kilograms of gold to anyone who kills the person responsible for "blasphemous" cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported. If someone killed the cartoonist responsible for the cartoons in Denmark, the "Taliban will give 100 kilograms (244 pounds) of gold," Mullah Dadullah said in a telephone call to AIP from an unknown location, the Pakistan-based private news agency reported on Wednesday. Dadullah also said the Taliban would give five kilograms of gold to anyone who killed...