Free Republic

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...

FIVE Sydney men accused of plotting violent jihad in Australia were Islamic extremists who believed their faith was under attack, a jury has been told. Opening his case against the men, crown prosecutor Richard Maidment SC said circumstantial evidence would show they planned to detonate an explosive device or use firearms in pursuit of their religious, political and ideological cause. Khaled Cheikho, Moustafa Cheikho, Mohamed Ali Elomar, Abdul Rakib Hasan and Mohammed Omar Jamal have all pleaded not guilty in the New South Wales Supreme Court to conspiring to commit an act, or acts, in preparation for a terrorist act....

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated US President-elect Barack Obama and called for "fundamental and fair" changes to US policies in the region, Iran's official IRNA news agency said. "I congratulate you for attracting a majority of votes ... I hope you will prefer real public interests and justice to the endless demands of a selfish minority," Mr Ahmadinejad told Mr Obama in a statement published by IRNA. Iranian officials have said Mr Obama's election victory on Tuesday showed the American people's desire for fundamental change in domestic and foreign policy from the policies of President George W Bush, who...

A US publisher has cancelled the publication of a novel about the youngest wife of the Muslim prophet Mohammed amid a growing controversy over the book. The Jewel of Medina, a debut novel by journalist Sherry Jones about Mohammed's child bride A'isha had been due for release in the US last week. But publisher Random House released her from the contract amid the controversy and her agent said Jones was now looking for a publisher in another country to pick up the rights. "Random House made the decision to cancel its US publication of the novel The Jewel of Medina...

PALESTINIAN security forces in the occupied West Bank today arrested dozens of demonstrators calling for the resurrection of the Islamic caliphate, security officials said. Police loyal to president Mahmoud Abbas arrested more than 50 members of Hizb al-Tahrir (the Islamic Liberation Party), a group calling for the replacement of the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments with a greater Islamic state. The group was founded in 1953 and has branches all over the world. When they were arrested the activists were heading to a football stadium in the town of Beit Jalla outside Bethlehem for a demonstration marking the anniversary of...

IRAN today said it "respects" the outcome of Zimbabwe's one-man presidential election which saw veteran incumbent Robert Mugabe stay in power but was denounced as a farce by the West. "We respect the will of the Zimbabwean people expressed in the second round of the presidential elections, whatever it is," foreign ministry Mohammad Ali Hosseini said. "We hope that these results are in the interest of the independence and the development of Zimbabwe," he added, according to the ISNA student news agency. Mr Mugabe was sworn in for a sixth term after being declared the winner of Friday's election runoff...

Suspected Al-Qaeda militants attacked a village in Diyala province north of Baghdad and beheaded five members of a local group fighting the jihadist network, police said. Police Lieutenant Colonel Najim al-Sumaidaie said the militants raided the village of Benizad, south of the provincial capital Baquba, and attacked a newly created outpost of a local anti-Qaeda "Awakening" group. "Five people from the Sahwa (Awakening) group were shot dead and later beheaded by the militants," Sumaidaie said, referring to groups of mostly Sunni Arabs who have allied with the US military to fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq. "We set up the outpost with...

ISLAMIC leaders from around the globe are at a two day summit in Dakar, struggling to counter wars in their midst and feeling unloved and unfairly treated by the West. US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, never ending conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and strife in Sudan's Darfur region weigh heavily on the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference as its leaders gather in the Senegalese capital. OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told foreign ministers at a pre-summit meeting that the leaders of the 1.3 billion Muslims must work on the "pressing issues confronting" them such as the death and...

ONE OF Denmark's biggest newspapers republished the controversial drawing of Muslim prophet Mohammed less than a day after a plot to kill the cartoonist was foiled. The cartoon depicting the prophet with a bomb under his turban has appeared on the homepage of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper – as well as being published three times on a page featuring the story of the plot to kill Kurt Westergaard. Yesterday, three men accused of conspiring to kill Westergaard were arrested by Danish authorities. Westergaard produced one of a series of drawings of Mohammed published by the newspaper in 2005, sparking outrage around...

THE brother of Trooper David Pearce says the slain soldier had wanted to go to Afghanistan, but urged mourners at his funeral not to forget his mates still there. Prime Minister John Howard and Labor leader Kevin Rudd were among mourners today at the funeral for Trooper Pearce at St Stephen's Cathedral in Brisbane. Trooper Pearce was killed by a roadside bomb while driving a light armoured vehicle in Afghanistan's Oruzgan Province last week. The 41-year-old father of two from the Gold Coast was posted to the Brisbane-based 2nd/14th Light Horse Regiment in October 2006 and was serving with the...

CANDICE Buchan was dancing and having an "awesome time" with friends when a series of bomb blasts ripped through Bali's Sari club, killing both her parents. After being left an orphan at the age of 15, she spoke publicly for the first time today about the death of her mum and dad Gerardine and Stephen in the 2002 Bali bombings. "I still remember being in the Sari Club that night for (a friend's) birthday with a big group of us having an awesome time," Ms Buchan, now 20, told a ceremony at Coogee in Sydney to mark the fifth anniversary...

AL-Qaeda called on Islamists to sow terror in the West to create a climate of fear, in a third video marking the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, which was posted on the internet today. Called "reasons and motives for the attacks on New York and Washington," the video features a montage of images of the burning World Trade Centre towers and scenes from Islamist training camps. "We must take Islamist terrorism to Western countries so that it becomes a normal part of life like natural disasters," a voiceover says. "In that way, we will have acts of mass...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says it's suffering a decline in membership and fundraising and blames the Justice Department for listing it as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas case against a charity accused of ties to terrorists. CAIR asked a U.S. District Court in Dallas to strike it from the list of more than 300 other Muslim groups named as unindicted co-conspirators in the government's case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The case is being tried in Dallas. "The public naming of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator has impeded its ability to collect donations...

A VICTORIAN mosque plans to bestow awards on Australians they believe are Islamophobes -- politicians, community leaders or media identities they categorise as hostile to Muslims. The Brunswick-based Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah Association has unveiled what it calls its annual "Islamophobia Award for the worst Islamophobes in Australia". Likely to be near the top on the group's list of nominees is Pauline Hanson, who has come under fire from the mosque and other Muslims for her recent call for a "moratorium on any more Muslims coming into Australia". Mosque leader Sheik Mohammed Omran, who teaches a fundamentalist minority form of...

AT least 10 militants have been killed and another 15 injured in a commando raid today on a radical mosque in the Pakistani capital, the military said. “We have reports of ten militants dead and 15 injured,” Major General Waheed Arshad told a private television channel.

THE leader of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq has vowed to attack Iranians unless Iran cuts off its support for the Iraqi government within two months. "We give the ... Persians in general, and leaders of Iran in particular, two months to withdraw their support and presence in Iraq," Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, said in the 50-minute audiotape posted today on an Islamist website which has often carried al-Qaeda statements. In the first such threat by his group, Baghdadi said that unless Iran meets his demands, the group will wage a "brutal war"...

A senior Al Qaeda figure in Iraq warned a British cleric back in April of plans to attack British targets, telling him "those who cure you will kill you", The Times is reporting. The claim comes as police question eight suspects, all of whom appear to be doctors or have medical links, in connection with the botched car bombings in London and Glasgow. Canon Andrew White told the newspaper that he met the unnamed Al Qaeda leader, who had travelled from Syria, on the sidelines of a religious reconciliation meeting in Amman, Jordan. Canon White said that he had passed...

PAKISTANI intelligence officers have busted a gang of Islamic militants supplying suicide bombers and explosive devices to Taliban fighters in neighbouring Afghanistan, police said. The eight-member gang led by former fighters of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group was based in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, a senior police official said. They used to collect materials and volunteers from the central province of Punjab, the official said, requesting anonymity. The suspects were arrested in Punjab over the past few days. "During the interrogation they confessed to having carried out a series of suicide bombings and bomb blasts against foreign...

MUSLIMS are outraged that prospective citizens will have to acknowledge the Judeo-Christian tradition as the basis of Australia's values system. Australia's peak Muslim body said the proposed citizenship question -- revealed in the Herald Sun -- was disturbing and potentially divisive. Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Dr Ameer Ali said the "Abrahamic tradition" or "universal values" would be less divisive ways of describing the nation's moral base. Dr Ali said use of the term Judeo-Christian was the result of "WWII guilt", and before 1945 Australia would have been called only Christian. "That question must be rephrased," he said. Dr...

MAYBE this time, I thought. Maybe this first Australian Islamic Conference would at last show us the moderate Muslim leaders we've searched for. God, we need them. Look at the latest doings of the hate-preachers we have now. Take the Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilali, who has just given interviews in Iran demanding Muslims stand "in the trenches" with its hostage-taking regime, and is now being investigated for allegedly giving $12,000 to a Lebanese propagandist linked to terrorists. Meanwhile, the head of the Lebanese Muslim Association, which pays him to preach at Australia's biggest mosque, has had to...

IRAN is still seeking to install 50,000 uranium enriching centrifuges at its nuclear plant in Natanz, the head of the Iranian atomic energy organisation said today. "The objective of the Islamic Republic of Iran is not just the installation of 3,000 centrifuges at the Natanz plant but we are doing everything to install 50,000 centrifuges,'' Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said, according to the IRNA news agency. Iran said yesterday it could now enrich uranium on an industrial scale but did not disclose how many centrifuges it had now installed at the Natanz plant in central Iran to enrich uranium. Mr Aghazadeh...

FIREBRAND Islamic convert Yvonne Ridley has accused Australians of being among the worst Muslim haters in the world. As millions of Australians celebrated Easter, they were branded Islamophobes by the outspoken British woman. She believes Australian attitudes to Islam are hardening faster than any other nation. "I'm deeply shocked," Ms Ridley said. "It's not what it was when I was last here three years ago. "I've visited over 20 different countries in the last three years and Australia is the most shocking in terms of deterioration." Ms Ridley, 48, will speak about Islamophobia today at a controversial Muslim conference at...

A YEMENI was killed today in clashes with police as workers at a gas export terminal in southern Yemen protested at a French engineer's alleged desecration of the Koran, a local official said. "One worker was killed and others were arrested following clashes with police who intervened" to contain the protest at the terminal being built by the French company Total in Balhaf port, he said, requesting anonymity. "After a fight between a French engineer and another who is Yemeni, the Frenchman - to enrage the Yemeni - threw a Koran on the floor in an offensive way," the official...

NSW Christian Democratic Party leader Reverend Fred Nile said today he had received death threats over his call for a moratorium on Islamic immigration to Australia. Mr Nile, who is recontesting his upper house seat at the March 24 state election, on Saturday called for a 10-year ban on Islamic immigration. He wants the immigration department to give preference to persecuted Christians while studies on the impact of Islamic immigration are carried out during the moratorium. Mr Nile has previously called for a ban on the wearing of full-face scarves in NSW. Today, he said he and another Christian Democratic...

A FRENCH court will debate the extent of free speech versus religious sensitivities today as Muslim groups sue a satirical magazine that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. The Grand Mosque and the Union of French Islamic Organisations accuse Charlie Hebdo of inciting racial hatred by reprinting the Danish caricatures that sparked violence in the Muslim world last year. Politicians, intellectuals, secular Muslims and left-wing pressure groups have lined up behind Charlie Hebdo, arguing that Muslim groups have no right to call for limits on free speech. "I just cannot imagine the consequences not only for France but for Denmark...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he is not worried about the possibility of United States military strikes on his country. The Iranian leader was speaking on national television in an address geared towards defending his record in office. Mr Ahmadinejad says the US can only wage psychological warfare in an attempt to divide the Iranian people. He has also brushed aside concerns about United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran last month. "The sanctions issue belongs to the past, especially when we're talking about a country like Iran," he said. "Iran is a powerful country with extensive relations with others. "If...

ALMOST a year after violent protests against Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the editor who commissioned the drawings said they had prompted a vital debate on the integration of Islam in the West. Flemming Rose, culture editor of daily Jyllands-Postenm, said he had published the 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed to defend free expression against what he saw as self-censorship over Islam in Denmark and Europe. The cartoons sparked protests by Muslims around the world in which at least 50 people died. Many Muslims regard any image of the Prophet as blasphemous. “The cartoons didn't create a new reality, they...

A TERROR suspect who allegedly bought five stolen army rocket launchers said he would use them to blow up "the nuclear place" and Parliament House, a Sydney court heard today. It is alleged the man, Mohammad Ali Elomar, was later seen near Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, where an access lock for a gate to a nearby reservoir had recently been cut. The claims were contained in a police statement tendered to Central Local Court, where Taha Abdul Rahman - the man accused of selling the rocket launchers - was today refused bail. Mr Abdul Rahman, 28, from Leumeah, in...

A SYDNEY building was to be the target of a rocket attack after a man allegedly supplied rocket launchers stolen from the military to a suspected terrorist. Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty said the man arrested today over the theft of rocket launchers was allegedly connected to some of the men detained in an anti-terrorism raid last year. It is understood that one rocket was intended to be used against an unspecified building in Sydney. The rocket launchers are reportedly of the type designed to be fired from the shoulder by infantry. They have enough punch to destroy a...

The United States wants the international community to take more action against Iran, and impose more sanctions than those adopted Saturday by the UN Security Council, the State Department's number three diplomat has said. "We don't think this resolution is enough in itself. We want the international community to take further action," US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said after the council slapped the first-ever UN sanctions on Iran, targeting its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in response to its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work. "We would like to see more vigorous national and...

INDONESIA'S Supreme Court has overturned a guilty verdict against Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir for conspiracy in the deadly 2002 Bali bombings, a court spokesman said today. Some foreign governments accuse the cleric of having led a regional extremist group and the move is likely to anger countries such as Australia, which lost 88 nationals in the bomb attacks on nightclubs on the Indonesian resort island. Bashir was released in June after completing a 30-month jail sentence for being part of a conspiracy behind the bombings. The Supreme Court, in response to an appeal by Bashir challenging the verdict, ruled...

A SENIOR Church of England cleric whose father converted from Islam has attacked the world view of some Muslims, accusing them of incompatible double standards of "victimhood and domination". “Their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims, as in Bosnia or Kosovo, and always wrong when Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists, as with the Taliban or in Iraq,” said the CoE's only Asian bishop, Michael Nazir-Ali. Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester in southeast England, was quoted today as saying because of a “dual psychology” in which some Muslims...

The Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA) says an independent panel is being set up to investigate if comments made by Sydney cleric, Sheikh Taj el-Din Al Hilali, endorse rape. Sheikh Al Hilali has been at the centre of controversy since comments he made suggested women who dressed immodestly were inviting sexual assault. He says his comments have been taken out of context and will resign if an independent panel finds him guilty of endorsing rape. LMA president Tom Zreika says a panel will be established to look at the matter. "The process has to be conducted and it will be conducted,"...

RIOT police will be on hand during prayers at Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly's Sydney mosque today. The sheik has called on his faithful to join him for Friday prayers at Lakemba Mosque for his first public appearances since being rushed to hospital with chest pains on Monday. Police have already closed the road outside the mosque in western Sydney in anticipation of the thousands of supporters expected to gather before prayers begin at 1pm (AEDT). Large numbers of police, including riot police, will also be on hand. Officers with bomb-sniffer dogs had been through the mosque, which has been covered...

SHEIK Taj al-Din al-Hilaly has asked his followers to call off Saturday's planned rally which has been organised as a show of support for the besieged cleric. The sheik has gone on Voice of Islam Radio in Sydney thanking his supporters for their faith but urging them not to attend the unofficial rally at Lakemba. "He just called for people not to go, not to participate in the rally which doesn't show our way of faith," said Moussab Legha, a cleric at the radio station. "He said everyone should be cooled down." Mr Legha said the sheik will be attending...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- At least 12 people were killed in violence around Iraq on Saturday, while authorities found the decapitated corpses of seven people dumped north of Baghdad in what appeared to be a sectarian revenge killing. The bodies were found in an orchard in the city of Duluiyah late Friday. Three had been among a group of 17 construction workers kidnapped Thursday while traveling home to the predominantly Shiite town of Balad, police said. The corpses of the other 14 were found earlier Friday, also beheaded. The kidnapping was apparently retaliation for the abduction Wednesday of three Sunni...

DENMARK'S Foreign Ministry warned Danish citizens against travelling to several Muslim countries and Israel today after the latest Prophet Mohammad cartoon controversy. The warning comes after Danish state TV aired amateur video footage showing members of the anti-immigrant Danish People's Party (DPP) youth wing taking part in a competition to draw images mocking the Prophet at a summer camp in August. The Foreign Ministry issued a strong advisory against travel to the Gaza Strip and cautioned against travel to Israel and the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen...

AUSTRALIA'S most senior Islamic cleric has called for a Muslim leader to be ostracised over comments about the prophet Mohammed that he likened to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly yesterday accused the chairman of John Howard's Islamic reference board, Ameer Ali, of selling out his religion to gain the support and financial backing of Muslim critics. Dr Ali said in The Australian yesterday that Mohammed had flaws, and criticised Muslims who blindly follow the faith and failed to question the veracity of the Koran. Sheik Hilaly, the head of Lakemba Mosque in Sydney's southwest, said Dr Ali's...

POPE Benedict has been informed of the hijack of a Turkish Airlines plane in which the hijackers reportedly want to deliver a message to him in protest at his planned trip to Turkey, the Vatican said today.

AN organisation of 56 Islamic nations have pressed Pope Benedict to apologise for his comments linking Muslims and violence, keeping alive a two-week-old controversy. Foreign ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, approved a statement today urging the Vatican to "retract or redress" the comments, in which the Pope cited quotes saying the Muslim faith was spread by violence. The group issued its statement a day after Pope Benedict assured diplomats from some 20 Muslim nations and the leaders of Italy's Muslim community that he respected them and was committed to dialogue. It was the fourth time...

Islamist fighters in the Somali port of Kismayo opened fire overnight on residents who were burning tyres, throwing stones and chanting to protest against the Islamist takeover of the city hours earlier. A 13-year-old boy was shot dead while protesting, and two other people were injured as violence raged for several hours in Somalia's third biggest city. "We have been taken over by extremists, the Islamic courts have taken us by force, and now they are firing at us," protester Dahabo Dirie said. Riding in trucks with machine guns, the Islamists guarded main streets and forbade gatherings after the protests...

Treasurer Peter Costello has defended Pope Benedict XVI over his controversial comments on Islam, saying the violent reaction was about the stifling of free speech. In an address to a Christian gathering in which he attacked the efforts of Islamic extremists to force their views on nations, Mr Costello urged his audience to read the Pope's speech and wonder at the violent reaction. It's the second time in recent months the treasurer has opened up on the subject of Islamic extremism, earlier calling on those who would introduce sharia law to Australia to look for another country in which to...

THE contentious speech by Benedict XVI and the statement by Australia's George Pell signal a decisive change of attitude in the complex debate over the connection between Islam and violence. In his muscular statement this week, the Cardinal did more than defend the Pope. He did more than lament the Muslim violence directed against the Pope and the Catholic Church. The essence of Pell's statement was that such violence demonstrated one of the Pope's main fears: that for many Islamists there is a link between religion and violence. This is an inflammatory subject that many opinion makers want to keep...

Some Australian Muslim groups have reacted angrily to comments made by Australia's most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell. The Archbishop of Sydney has backed the Pope's speech made in Germany last week, linking Islam's history with violence. The Pontiff has since apologised, saying he is deeply sorry about angering so many Muslims, and that the 14th Century passages that he referred to in no way reflect his views. Cardinal Pell says the pontiff did nothing wrong in making the speech, and says he does not rule out a link between Islam and violence. "I'm not sure, I would welcome...

SYDNEY'S Catholic Archbishop has hit out at Muslims protesting over comments by the Pope, saying their reaction shows the link in Islam between religion and violence. Cardinal George Pell has also labelled the response of some Australian Muslim leaders to the issue as "unhelpful". A wave of protest has erupted among Muslims across the globe after comments by Pope Benedict XVI, in which he quoted an obscure medieval text that criticised some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman". The Pope has since said he is "deeply sorry" for the outrage sparked by his remarks and stressed they...

A spokesman for the Australian Muslim community says Pope Benedict XVI should give a full explanation for his comments about Islam. The pontiff has sparked widespread outrage after last week quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor who said innovations introduced by the Prophet Mohammed were "evil and inhuman". He has since apologised. The head of the Federal Government's Islamic advisory committee, Dr Ameer Ali, says there is disappointment that Pope Benedict has linked Islam to violence. "We expect the Pope to follow the footsteps of his predecessor, who had been a great builder among communities for so many years, and...

<p>COMMENTS by Pope Benedict XVI implicitly linking Islam to violence have caused Muslims "genuine pain", a British Muslim leader said in Sydney today.</p> <p>The head of the Roman Catholic church provoked fury across the Islamic world when he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor's criticism of the Prophet Mohammed for bringing “evil” to the world and accusing Muslims of using the sword to spread their religion.</p>

AL-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would be found, Prime Minister John Howard said today, despite reports the terrorist leader's trail had gone cold. United States commandos charged with capturing or killing bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years, the Washington Post newspaper says. The report comes on the fifth anniversary of the airborne terrorist attacks in the United States that killed 3,000 people. "The world is a big place. (Bin Laden) has a lot of friends," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting. "But in the nature of those things, I guess, he will suddenly...

THE thousands of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks will be remembered in a ceremony at the US embassy today. On the fifth anniversary of terrorists flying hijacked planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, new US ambassador Robert McCallum will host the memorial service at the embassy in Canberra. And Prime Minister John Howard, who was in Washington at the time of the attacks, has admitted he fears a similar attack on towering office blocks in downtown Sydney. Mr Howard, who will attend today's service, said the Government has the power to order the Australian air...