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Translation from Hebrew to English by me In the city Beslan which is in Russia, where the slaughter at the school occured, there are fears the number of dead will reach 600. Hundreds of bodies have yet to be identified, dozens of them are still buried under the debris and 260 individuals are still reported missing.

MOSCOW. Sept 5 (Interfax) - Russia and Saudi Arabia expressed determination on Sunday to build up joint efforts in combating terrorism, the Kremlin said, citing a telephone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Abdullah, who called Putin, "offered the Russian president and the entire Russian people his sincere and deep condolences in connection with the monstrously brutal terrorist acts in Beslan and wished them staunchness in this hard time," the Russian president's press service said in a release. "It was specially emphasized on both sides that neither Islam nor any other world region has anything...

Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech following the bloody end to the school seizure in Beslan marked a significant break from Russia's attempt in the past to isolate Chechen terror from the issue of radical Islamic terrorism, according to Israeli officials. Putin, during a somber televised address to the nation after the botched attempt to free the captives, said, "We have to admit we showed no understanding of the danger of processes occurring in our own country and the world at large. We failed to react appropriately to them and, instead, displayed weakness. And the weak are always beaten." One senior...

Translation from Hebrew to English by me There is no way to crack down on the Islamic-Arab Terror, that hurts Muslims as well, as long as there are countries who support "terror which is just" and look away from the support of Syria and Iran in suicide terrorism. There is a linkage between the mass murder at the Russian school, the genocide occuring many months now in Sudan, the explosion of the train in Madrid, the blowing up of Synagogues in Istanbul and the explosions of the busses in Bear Sheva. Whoever is looking for the Al Queda command responsible...

Translation from Hebrew to English by me IDF troops arrested this evening at the Ziv intersection in the Hebron area a 14 year old Arab girl who was planning to stab one of the soldiers. In the possession of the Arab two knives were found. After her arrest, the Arab girl was transfered to the Shabak for further investigation.

It's not every day that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revokes a visa issued to a Swiss-national scholar scheduled to teach at one of America's premier universities. But this has just happened, and it's a good thing too. The Swiss scholar is Tariq Ramadan. He is Islamist royalty – his maternal grandfather, Hasan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood, probably the single most powerful Islamist institution of the twentieth century, in Egypt in 1928. Tariq is a Swiss citizen because his father, Sa‘id Ramadan, also a leading Islamist, fled from Egypt in 1954 following a crackdown on the brotherhood. Sa‘id...

Militants launch internet magazine encouraging women to take up arms and fight holy wars against infidels (AP)

Palestinian cleric says hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners is form of jihad, any victims will be considered martyrs (Reuters)

In a striking admission, George W. Bush said the other day that that "We actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be [called] the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world." This important concession follows growing criticism of the misleading term "war on terror" (how can one fight a tactic?) and replaces it with the more accurate "war on ideological extremists." With this change, the battle of ideas can begin. But who exactly are those...

[FBIS Media Analysis] Iraq, Iran: Sermons Denounce US, Express Support for Al-Sadr, Call for Sunni-Shia Unity On 13 August, sermons in Iraq by both Sunni and Shia clerics condemned US military activity in Al-Najaf and expressed support for Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Imams also denounced the Iraqi Interim Government and urged all Iraqis, including members of the Iraqi Army and National Guard, to join Al-Sadr's cause. A prominent Iranian imam also urged Iraqis to take action against the US. Iraqi Sunni Sermons In his sermon at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque, Abd-al-Ghafur al-Samarra'i, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars,...

The most salient point to come out of the 9/11 Commission’s hearings was its criticism of the name “War Against Terrorism” given by the Bush administration to the ongoing military campaign. The commission stated clearly that this implied an overly vague and unfocused concept at the most basic and fundamental levels of strategic decision making, to a point making the entire campaign devoid of meaning. This is hitting the nail on the head. Terrorism is not an enemy, but a strategy. There is no such thing as a war against a strategy, and any attempt to conceive one is an...

All eyes have been on Iraq and the handover. But it is time America and its allies turned their attention to Saudi Arabia and the militant Islam that thrives there – a creed which continues to fund and inspire al-Qaida Last autumn I visited a Sufi shrine just outside Peshawar in the North West Frontier of Pakistan. Rahman Baba was a seventeenth-century mystic whose Sufi verses have made him the national poet of the Pathans, and whose tomb has for centuries been a place where musicians and poets have gathered. A friend who used to live nearby during the 1980s...

The following is an except from e-mail received in response to my recent column, from a Muslim who lives in London and writes for Al-Jazeerah.        “We will return one day unified as one nation with one army and rest assure that those criminal Jews from the criminal state of Israel will have no sanctuary this time.  Even though Islamic laws give them protection, the sons of those who have been killed may not adhere to that protection.  The world is a witness to the fact that, it is the Jews that are hastening to full fill that prophecy of...

Riyadh Kingdom of Saudi Arabia TV1 in Arabic, official television station of the Saudi Government, carries at 0928 GMT on 14 May 2004 a live sermon from the holy mosque in Mecca. Shaykh Abd-al-Rahman al-Sudays delivers the sermon, which he begins by saying that the nation has faced much sedition in history, but the worst is the current one of charging others with non-belief. "It is an unmatched wanton crime," he says, and wonders how a Muslim can repudiate his fellow Muslim. The imam cites Koranic verses and prophet's traditions that forbid repudiation of fellow Muslims, and asserts that repudiation...

What do we offer the world? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 19, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern "So, how do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?" asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory will be theirs as well." Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world" was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the "Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison. Indeed, the filmed orgies among...

(IsraelNN.com) In the trial of a British national in Australia, Jack Roche, the defendant’s son announced his father “remains committed to Jihad”. Jack Roche is standing trial for conspiring to perpetrate a bomb attack against an Israeli diplomatic installation in Australia. Roche, a convert to Islam, stands accused of plotting to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. Roche, 50, denies the charges against him. The district court trial is expected to last up to four weeks and Roche faces a maximum sentence of 25 years if convicted.

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) Not long ago, U.S. officials and senior Shiite clergy viewed radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a fringe figure with a narrow base of support. Times have changed. In the six weeks since al-Sadr launched an anti-coalition uprising in Baghdad and across central and southern Iraq, the young cleric has been elevated to heroic status, his movement re-energized. His militiamen now control Najaf, Kufa and Karbala. The uprising has raised fears of eroding support for the U.S.-led coalition among the mainstream of Iraq's Shiite majority, a community emerging from decades of oppression and hoping for political domination when...

Global terrorism is on the rise and is likely to continue unabated for the next 100 years, according to Prof. Yonah Alexander, one of the world's leading analysts on the subject. Alexander, director of the Inter-Universities Center for Terrorism Studies, also believes it is only a matter of time before groups like al-Qaida use non-coventional weapons as part of attempts to promulgate their ideology and undermine western society. In this respect, he anticipates that al-Qaida's next theater of operations will be Europe, where the organization has established a widespread base and network. "If you ask me whether the worst is...

Herb Meyer is calling for a holy war to save western civilization. But the former Reagan CIA official has a problem: Most people don’t know what it is he wants to save. "We’ve forgotten what Western civilization is," Meyer told NewsMax.com. "We no longer teach it in the schools. If you come to the schools where I live and ask a group of high school students ‘what is Western Civilization?’ They’ll tell you it’s slavery, the oppression of women and we don’t recycle.” But Western Civilization is not made up of our faults; all civilizations have those. Meyer contends, “It’s...

The war in Iraq is now over a year old.  Contrary to many media pundits, I believe the war is going as expected, even with the recent increase in fighting at Fallujah and Najaf.  Over a year ago, I was among those who wrote that this war is not simply a war against terrorism, but is in fact a war against militant Islam.  It looks like what we wrote then is coming to fruition today.  Events both in Europe and Iraq seem to confirm our expectations.        The war on terror has now turned into a religious war in Iraq. ...