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Terror mastermind and senior Al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki is dead a senior U.S. official confirms. Al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Islamic militant cleric who became a prominent figure in Al-Qaeda's most active branch, using his fluent English and Internet savvy to draw recruits to carry out attacks in the United States, was killed Friday in the mountains of Yemen, American and Yemeni officials said. excerpt - Yemeni security officials and local tribal leaders said al-Awlaki was killed in an air strike on his convoy that they believed was carried out by the Americans. They said pilotless drones had been seen over the...

Rush Limbaugh blasted General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt, Tuesday for accusing business owners of lacking “leadership” and “complaining about the government.” He even compared Immelt, along with President Obama, to “radical Islamic imams” who want small businesses to “sacrifice themselves” in order to appease During a small business summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Immelt, who also chairs President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, said businesses need to “get some action underway.”

There is much turbulence in the Iranian government today. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is not happy that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fired Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi last month. He has now given Ahmadinejad an ultimatum to either re-instate Moslehi or resign. A sullen Ahmadinejad caught a bad case of the “blue flu,” and stopped showing up for work. According to the BBC, one of his aides wrote a blog post that said the Iranian president “is in pain, as if a thorn is stuck in his throat… he cannot take it out or swallow in.” Try that one the next time...

David Cameron is considering plans to create a "multi-faith" House of Lords where Muslim imams could sit alongside Anglican and Catholic bishops. The controversial suggestion is revealed in a paper drawn up by Tory officials which calls for a wide range of different churches to be represented once reforms to the Upper House are carried out. Currently 26 Anglican bishops have seats in the Lords. But Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, is drawing up a draft bill setting out wholesale changes to the Lords that are expected to include provisions for hundreds of existing peers, including the bishops, to...

Interesting.... This muslim Cleric visited london EXACTLY one year ago from the date of the attacks, July 7, 2004 CNSNews.com) - London Mayor Ken Livingstone's previous support of a Muslim cleric who advocates suicide bombings may cause him some embarrassment as he now must speak for the city in the wake of Thursday's terrorist bombings. Livingstone condemned the Thursday attacks as "mass murder," and added that "this was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners." Yet Livingstone has in the past...

Reporting from San Diego — U.S. border authorities have arrested a controversial Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago and was caught earlier this month trying to sneak into California in the trunk of a BMW, according to court documents. Said Jaziri, the former imam of a Muslim congregation in Montreal, was hidden in a car driven by a San Diego-area man who was pulled over by U.S. Border Patrol agents near an Indian casino east of San Diego on Jan. 11. Jaziri had allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling group $5,000 to get him across...

MOSCOW (AP) - A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba said Tuesday U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Qur'an by putting it into a toilet, although he added he never witnessed it himself. Airat Vakhitov, who described himself as a former imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic in southern Russia, is one of seven men released from Guantanamo in 2004 and returned to Russia. He and the six others were held in Russia for three months, then released a year ago. Vakhitov said at a news conference organized by the state RIA-Novosti...

An appellate court in Milan upheld on Wednesday the conviction of 23 Americans charged with kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in 2003 and ordered even harsher sentences. All but one of the Americans are Central Intelligence Agency operatives.

A former inspector general for the Defense Department is calling on Congress to investigate and oversee the vetting process for Muslim clerics who are nominated to serve as U.S. military chaplains. In a letter sent earlier this month to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, former Inspector General Joseph Schmitz outlined what he believes is the potential risk to national security posed by the military’s current chaplain vetting system.

From his recent travels to the Persian Gulf—sponsored and paid for by the State Department—Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf returned with a none-too-subtle threat. His project, the Ground Zero Mosque, would have to go on. Its cancellation would risk putting "our soldiers, our troops, our embassies and citizens under attack in the Muslim world." Leave aside the attempt to make this project a matter of national security. The self-appointed bridge between America and the Arab-Islamic world is a false witness to the sentiments in Islamic lands. The truth is that the trajectory of Islam in America (and Europe for that matter)...

Yet another news flash on the whereabouts of the self-described “bridge-building” couple behind the Ground Zero mosque:Last week, Daisy Khan was poised to travel to the Middle East, planning a $12,000 taxpayer-funded jaunt to join her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in the United Arab Emirates, Aug. 29-Sept. 2, courtesy of the State Department. But she didn’t go. According to a staffer at the Manhattan office shared by Khan and Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative and American Society for Muslim Advancement, Khan is still in New York, though when I called she was unavailable for questions because she was “in a meeting.” The U.S. Embassy in the UAE...

Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, an Islamic enclave is being carved out of the heart of the City of Brotherly Love. And how generous have you been with your tax dollars? You just gave $1.6 billion for the privilege of turning over all this cash to the Islamic community. The person doing the carving is Kenny Gamble, the author of such hit songs as “Love Train” and “Me and Mrs. Jones.” So far Americans have shelled out $1.6 billion in federal grants, loans, and “charitable” gifts to create an alleged “Muslims-only” community. A convert to Islam, Gamble, now known as Luqman...

Extremist imams may lose nationality: Sarkozy PARIS, July 19 (AFP) - France's tough-talking Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy promised "zero tolerance" Tuesday for Muslim leaders who encourage attacks such as the bombings in London on July 7 and said he would strip them of their French nationality. "We have to be much stricter against those who indoctrinate young suicide bombers," he told Liberation newspaper. "I am going to launch proceedings to deprive French imams who preach violence and fundamentalism of their nationality; systematically expel those who do not respect our values and are not French; and step up monitoring of places...

Office of the Honorable John Boehner United States Congressman, 8th Congressional District (Ohio) Office of the Honorable Mitch McConnell United States Senator, Kentucky June 21, 2010 . Dear Congressman Boehner and Senator McConnell, Thank you in advance for your time. I would like to ask if you will review and share with your congressional colleagues the following information which includes, but is not limited to, a collection of quotes and documented activities pertaining to a number of Islamic preachers (Imams) in America. It is important to know that for them, being truthful to Americans would place their agenda in jeopardy;...

SNIPPET: "ROME (Reuters) - Two Moroccan students deported from Italy last month were suspected of plotting to assassinate Pope Benedict, an Interior Ministry source said on Friday. Mohamed Hlal, 26, and Ahmed Errahmouni, 22, students at the University for Foreigners in the central Italian city of Perugia, had been under surveillance by anti-terrorist police for months before they were expelled on April 29." SNIPPET: "Six other foreign students, suspected of contacts with militant Islamic groups, are still under investigation." SNIPPET: "The magazine said police discovered a map of Turin at Errahmouni's house annotated with numbers and circles, ahead of a...

Ahmad Afzali, the Queens imam who pleaded guilty in March to lying to law enforcement officials about his relationship with Najibullah Zazi, the airport worker who planned to bomb New York's subways, was sentenced by a federal judge yesterday to time served. Mr. Afzali, who left his native Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion, also agreed to "self-execute" removal from the United States in the next 90 days in order to avoid a deportation hearing. Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Afzali warned Mr. Zazi and his father that they were under law-enforcement surveillance, then, as Assistant U.S. Attorney James P. Loonam told...

Last of two parts. The leader of the local Islamic organization preparing to build a major new mosque in Boston is allegedly linked to a network of Muslim companies and charitable groups in Virginia suspected by federal investigators of providing material support to Islamic terrorists. The chairman of the board of trustees of the Islamic Society of Boston, which has city approval to construct a $22 million cultural center and mosque in Roxbury, was also a leader of an Indiana-based Muslim organization known for its anti-Western rhetoric and for providing a platform for radical Islamists, some of whom have been...

A Queens imam pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to feds who were investigating whether he tipped off wannabe terrorist Najibullah Zazi that he was being watched. Ahmad Afzali faces six months in prison and deportation 90 days later under the plea deal - which he said amounts to an execution. "I just signed my death sentence," the Afghan national said outside court, explaining that he has no idea where he would go after leaving the United States. "I'm between a rock and a wall." Afzali lost his composure several times during the proceeding before Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block, wiping...

DEARBORN, Mich. — An autopsy report shows that a Muslim prayer leader suffered 21 gunshot wounds during an FBI raid at a warehouse in a Detroit suburb where agents were attempting to arrest him. The report released Monday by the Wayne County medical examiner's office indicates that Luqman Ameen Abdullah was shot once in the back. Earlier Monday, Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad (huh-DAD') said it would take several more weeks for his department to complete its investigation into the Oct. 28 shooting. Abdullah was described as a leader of a national radical Sunni group that wants to create an...

SNIPPET: "U.S. intelligence officials believe there are dozens -- perhaps hundreds - of Americans who have been in e-mail contact with the radical Yemeni cleric who is believed to have inspired and directed both the Fort Hood shooter and the failed Christmas Day airline bomber, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned. Efforts to learn the details of that communication, or even to target Anwar Al-Awlaki militarily, may be hindered by his status as an American citizen."

NEW YORK (AP) - Federal prosecutors are challenging efforts by the Yemeni government to intervene in the courtroom defense of an outspoken sheik accused of funneling millions of dollars to al-Qaida. Sheik Ali Hassan al-Moayad has been jailed in Brooklyn since last year over the objections of Yemen, where he was a leading member of an Islamic-oriented political party. With a trial nearing, officials in Yemen recently hired a prominent Yemeni lawyer and sent him to New York to monitor the case. The lawyer, Khaled al-Ansi, was cleared to enter the United States. But when he showed up in court...

Date: January 8, 2010 ISCC affiliated Imams Issue Important Fatwa Attack on Canada and the United States is Attack on Muslims Over 10 million Muslims Live in North America Calgary) Twenty Imams affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada have issued a Fatwa today declaring the attacks on Canada and the United States by any extremist will be the attack on 10 million Muslims living in North America. This is the first Fatwa by the Muslim clergy declaring attacks on Canada and the United States as attack on Muslims. Following is the text of the Fatwa. FATWA (religious edict)...

Hundreds of Islamic centers in the United States have become a hot-bed of extremist activity; they promote violence, terrorism and hatred against America. “Our initial investigation has concluded there are between 400 to 500 radical Islamic centers in the U.S.,” said David Gaubatz, the director of counterintelligence and counterterrorism for the Society of Americans for National Existence. “In those places, they preach an extreme version of Islam that says America and the West is the enemy. They espouse violence, hatred and the need for terrorism.” Gaubatz is a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who now works for the Mapping Shari’a...

It happened again on Wednesday, December 9, 2009, less than a month after the incident aboard AirTran Flight 297. United Airlines Flight 227, scheduled to depart Denver International Airport at 1:50 pm Wednesday for Los Angeles was disrupted when several passengers who were described as Middle Eastern in appearance, confirmed by this investigator to be a group of Muslims traveling together, were removed from that aircraft due to suspicious behavior that originated in the terminal and continued to the airplane.

LONDON (Reuters) -- Counterterrorism detectives said they had arrested five men in early morning raids today in northwest England. They were being held on suspicion of committing terrorism offenses including inciting an act of terrorism overseas. Police said the suspects, aged 21, 26, 27, 52, and 62, were detained after swoops at homes in Manchester and Bolton, and at a hotel near London's Heathrow Airport. The properties were now being searched.

The Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood massacre apparently acted alone and without outside direction in the attack, investigative officials said Monday evening. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will be charged by the U.S. military rather than in a civilian court, they said. Although investigative officials portrayed Hasan as a lone wolf, the investigators and a U.S. official disclosed that Hasan communicated 10 to 20 times with a radical imam overseas who in the past came under scrutiny for possible links to terror groups. The investigative officials said the communications began last year and continued into this year and "were...

DETROIT – Federal authorities say a leader of what they describe as a nationwide radical Sunni Islam group has been fatally shot during an FBI raid in the Detroit area. The U.S. attorney's office in Detroit says Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah refused to surrender during an FBI raid Wednesday and was killed in an exchange of gunfire. ..conspiracy to commit several federal crimes, including illegal possession and sale of firearms and theft from interstate shipments.

A 36-year-old Richfield man charged with making terroristic threats during an argument with another man in Wright County has been arrested at O'Hare Airport after skipping out before his trial was to begin this month, authorities in Minnesota said today. Ismail Alqawasmi remains in custody after his arrest at 8 p.m. Thursday, the Wright County Sheriff's Office said. The Chicago-Sun Times reported that Alqawasmi flew into the United States from Amman, Jordan, on Royal Jordanian airlines and a customs official conducting a name check found the warrant on a law enforcement data base, according to police. Alqawasmi was searched and...

A settlement has been reached in the "Flying Imams" federal lawsuit that was filed by six Muslim men who claim they were falsely arrested on a US Airways jet in the Twin Cities three years ago because of their religious and ethnic backgrounds. According to federal court records, a settlement was reached Monday and filed with the court today. A clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan would not comment on a settlement and instead referred questions to attorneys. A New York attorney for the imams Omar Mohammedi, said this afternoon that settlement is "satisfactory to the plaintiffs." Mohammedi added...

Homeland Security: Despite overwhelming support in and out of Congress, legal protection for airline passengers who report suspicious behavior is being blocked by Democratic leaders. Wasn't one 9/11 enough for them? Were it not for the courage and sacrifice of the passengers of United Flight 93 who forced their plane into a Pennsylvania field, many in Congress might not be here today, with a gaping hole where the U.S. Capitol still stands. We wonder if this fact is appreciated by those trying to block final passage of the so-called "John Doe" provision protecting from legal action those who report suspicious...

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery cleared the way for their lawsuit to go to August trial. They claim their rights were violated when they were removed from their flight in the Twin Cities.

French anti-terror magistrates wrapped up an investigation into four Islamists who may have helped British shoe bomber Richard Reid in France. Le Parisien reports the suspects include the head of a Paris mosque, the leader of a Pakistani community and two other men. Reid spent several days in Paris before boarding a Miami-bound plane in December 2001 with explosives stuffed in his sneakers. Last year, Reid was sentenced to life in prison by a U.S. court for trying to blow up the flight. One of the French suspects, Imam Kamel Lakhram, reportedly acknowledged to French authorities Reid had slept at...

The four men charged with plotting to blow up two New York synagogues and shoot down military planes converted to Islam while behind bars, a place terror experts say is a cauldron for Islamic radicalism. James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen were said by friends and family to have become Muslims while in prison, where they began on a path toward terrorist violence that law enforcement officials say is part of a troubling trend in America. "Prisons can play a critical role in both triggering and reinforcing the radicalization process," read a landmark 2007 report from the...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – The Saudi king on Saturday dismissed the chief of the religious police and a cleric who condoned killing the owners of TV networks that broadcast "immoral" content, signaling an effort to weaken the country's hard-line Sunni establishment. The shake-up — King Abdullah's first since coming to power in August 2005 — included the appointment of a female deputy minister, the highest government position a Saudi woman has attained. snip Khashoggi said Faisal has been working behind the scenes on plans to reform education. After the Sept. 11 attacks, carried out by 19 Arabs, including 15 Saudis,...

The jihadist, back from Yemen I have learned from a well-placed source that Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who killed one soldier and wounded another at a a Little Rock military recruiting center today, and who faces charges of terrorism as well as first-degree murder, has recently returned from Yemen, where he studied jihad with an Islamic scholar there. Apparently the Islamic scholar under whom this American convert to Islam studied was yet another misunderstander of Islam's true, peaceful teachings. More on this as it develops.

A Muslim think tank has found some UK Imams discriminate against women when enforcing Islamic Sharia law. Scholars at the Centre for Islamic Pluralism interviewed 90 Muslims in London, the West Midlands, Lancashire and West Yorkshire. They found some women did not get fair hearings in forced marriage, arranged marriage and domestic violence matters. It comes after an NHS doctor was freed in Bangladesh following claims she was being held there for a forced marriage. Sharia law governs every aspect of a Muslim's life, and Imams or scholars give out rulings on how to live by God's wishes. Some mosques...

SOME Muslim imams condone rape and domestic violence within marriage, exploitation of women, welfare fraud and polygamy, a report has found. The report was based on a study commissioned and funded by the former coalition government and produced by the Islamic Welfare Council of Victoria, Fairfax newspapers report. The report, presented on yesterday at a National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies conference at the University of Melbourne, alleged that some Victorian imams: * Apply Sharia law only where it benefits men; * Hinder police investigations of domestic violence claims; and * Knowingly perform polygamous marriages, which allow a second...

YINCHUAN, June 23 (Xinhua) -- At a tiny courtyard mosque in China's most populous Muslim region, Jin Meihua leads other women in prayer and chants. Every day, the 44-year-old dons a black robe and violet scarf and preaches to dozens of women at the Little White Mosque in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous region, where most of the country's Islam-faith Hui ethnic minority live. Jin has a routine life. "Except attending funerals, I always stay in the mosque, teaching the female Muslims Islamic scriptures." She is a female imam or "ahong," pronounced ah-hung, from the Persian word "akhund" for "the...

Lawyers for six Muslim prayer leaders removed from a US Airways jet at Twin Cities International Airport in 2006 told a federal magistrate Monday that they want the airline to divulge 10 years' worth of discrimination complaints so they could compare the airline's behavior before and after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Attorneys representing the airline argued they should have to turn over just three years' worth of such data. The reason, said one: 9/11 changed everything. "The bottom line is we're in a post-9/11 world," US Airways attorney Dane Jaques told U.S. Magistrate Arthur Boylan. "Procedures changed. The world...

The government is to sponsor a theological board of leading imams and Muslim women in an attempt to refute the ideology of violent extremists. The committee, to be announced this week, will issue pronouncements on areas such as wearing the hijab and the treatment of wives and is part of a government strategy to counter radicalism. It will rule on interpretation of the Koran and promote the moderate strain of Islam practised by most British Muslims. It will also comment on controversial issues affecting Muslims living in Britain, including whether or not they should serve in the armed forces. Its...

Summary: If the limits to growth analysis of our predicament is correct we have no choice but to undertake radical changes in lifestyles, values, the geography of our settlements and especially change to a different economy. We must move to The Simpler Way. The required alternative society must involve far lower rates of per capita resource consumption and environmental damage. This must mean materially simpler lifestyles, in highly self-sufficient and cooperative communities, within an economy that is not driven by market forces and profit and that does not grow over time. The Simpler Way would not involve hardship or giving...

One of two outspoken Muslim clerics scheduled to speak at St. Cloud State University this week is unable to attend, the school said today. The clerics were booked as part of St. Cloud's Islam Awareness Week, which started Monday. Siraj Wahhaj was supposed to speak Thursday on the topic "What is Jihad?" The school was unaware of a reason for his inability to participate. Wahhaj was also scheduled to speak to other college student groups in the state this week. His appearance at the University of Minnesota has also been canceled, said Lolla Mohammed Nur, a U student organizer. Wahhaj,...

The Swedish government is to set up an inquiry to look into the possibility of using state funds to provide training programmes for imams. Muslim religious representatives should be able to benefit from Swedish tax kronor in the same way as Christian priests and ministers, according to Minster for Higher Education and Research Lars Leijonborg. The former Liberal Party leader also believes that the move will help stem the development of radical Islam in Sweden. "It has been suggested that radical Muslims from Saudi Arabia are offering to provide imams for free, and a lack of money means that moderate...

Attempts to reform British mosques and win back a “lost generation” of young Muslims are being undermined by the poor quality of home-trained imams, a leading Islamic scholar says. Musharraf Hussain, a government adviser on mosques, said that most of the country’s Islamic seminaries were producing “unemployable” graduates who were incapable of challenging the sense of alienation that led some Muslims towards violent extremism. His concerns were voiced as it emerged that a rift is opening between the Government and four Muslim organisations over moves to introduce national guidelines for Britain’s 1,350 mosques. The initiative aims to make mosques more...

The secret war On the North-West Frontier, soldiers are trying to tighten the noose around bin Laden's forces. But in Europe and America, there is no clear enemy to fight - yet every expert knows that a terrorist atrocity is coming Mark Townsend in Tangier, John Hooper in Madrid, Greg Bearup in Peshawar, Paul Harris in Washington, Peter Beaumont in Baghdad, Antony Barnett, Martin Bright, Jason Burke and Nick Pelham in London Sunday March 21, 2004 The Observer There were shadows in the rocks. As the 12 US Special Forces soldiers arrived at a remote mountain region in eastern Afghanistan...

A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit filed by a group of imams against US Airways and a Minneapolis airport can proceed. U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery said in a 41-page opinion late yesterday that the imams, who say they were discriminated against when they were removed from a flight last year, have a plausible claim that their constitutional rights may have been violated. The imams "have adequately stated a claim" that airport police may have "seized plaintiffs in violation of their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures," Judge Montgomery ruled.

The Netherlands, one reads, has come to accept that magistrates require a generous range of motion to prevent radical clerics from "exercising their profession." But empowering judges will clearly not suffice to promote the "integration" of imams, or to groom a crop of clerics attuned to Western values. So while lawmakers across the Continent consider means to douse inflammatory speech and detain troublemakers "constitutionally," it's time again to consider l'exception française.France, far from those "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" depicted in "The Simpsons," has distinguished itself (since the Paris terror bombings of 1986, especially) as a nation uniquely disposed to trample toes...

The Paris Grand Mosque and the city's Catholic university are teaming up to offer university education for imams to promote moderate Islam and help integrate foreign-born Muslim prayer leaders in France. The privately-run Catholic Institute of Paris will launch a two-semester course on French politics, law and secularism in January for future imams studying Islamic theology at the Grand Mosque, officials of both institutions told Reuters. France has tried for several years to boost imam training. The Sorbonne and public university in Paris declined to take on the task because they said it violated the legal separation of church and...

The Pakistani authorities have confirmed the American findings that the imams of three mosques arrested on November 15 in Boston happen to be the close relatives of the founder of the deadly Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who now heads the Jamaatul Daawa. Pakistani interior ministry sources said that the three Boston-based imams — Hafiz Muhammad Hannan Hafiz Muhammad Masood and Hafiz Mohammad Hamid — are close relatives of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. The sources said they have informed the American authorities that while Hafiz Muhammad Masood and Hafiz Hamid happen to be the real brother of Saeed, Hafiz Muhammad Hannan is...

Flying Lying Imams' conspiracy theories The Garbage "holiness", Muslim Mullahs' despicable industry of "conspiracy theories" on the Islamic attack of September 11, 2001 This is the story of 'flying Imams', no, not that one in which they've managed to put fears into ordinary passengers with "holy-Islamic" Pro bloodthirsty Bin-Laden statements, that the "moderate" terrorists organizations' front goup: CAIR tried to "defend" afterwards. This is about [though the same type of] imams that are in the line of how to commit the crime upon crime, after the Islamic murdering innocent people on 9/11/2001, how to add yet another Islamic crime,...