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A wave of violence ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 57 people and injuring nearly 200 in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc in the Iraqi capital just days after American forces left the country.

A wave of at least 14 bombings ripped across Baghdad Thursday morning, killing at least 60 people in the worst violence in Iraq for months.

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber attacked a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Kabul on Tuesday killing at least 54 people in unprecedented sectarian violence a day after Afghanistan's Western allies pledged long-term support once their troops leave. Doctors and police struggled to count the dead from one of the bloodiest attacks in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. The Taliban denied responsibility.

Brethren, Peace and Good to you in Jesus Christ. I was reading this opinion piece by Joel Rosenberg published in Fox News: Why would Iran authorize a major terrorist operation on American soil? Skeptics say the much-discussed “foiled” Iranian plot makes no sense. We will know soon enough if the Feds have sufficient evidence related to this specific plot. But Iranian leaders may, in fact, have a motive to accelerate direct attacks on the U.S.: Shia Islamic eschatology, or "End Times" theology.Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are convinced that the End of Days has come. They believe...

"...critics say that theocrats in Tehran intend to use the mosque to establish a recruiting center for the militant Shia Muslim group, Hezbollah in Europe..." The city council of Copenhagen has given its final approval for the construction of the first official "Grand Mosque" in the Danish capital. The mega-mosque will have a massive blue dome as well as two towering minarets and is architecturally designed to stand out on Copenhagen's low-rise skyline. Unlike most mosques in Europe, which cater to Sunni Muslims, the mosque in Copenhagen pertains to Shia Islam. The mosque is being financed by the Islamic Republic...

Officials say the bodies of at least 22 Shia pilgrims who were shot dead have been found in a remote desert area in western Iraq. The bodies were discovered late on Monday night, hours after the gang of gunmen stopped the bus at a fake security checkpoint and told all the women to get off, according to one security official who interviewed a survivor. An Iraqi army patrol found the deserted women, weeping and wailing, by the side of the highway and brought them to the provincial capital of Ramadi for help. One of the women told officials that there...

Wahhabism and Shia Islam are key threats to Malaysia’s security and should be kept under close watch to ensure they do not lead to extremism, a Department of Islamic Development (Jakim) official has said. The National Security Council (NSC) put a group of clerics on its terror watch-list last week for preaching Wahhabism, a puritanical strain of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia ... Zamihan stressed that, if left alone, Wahhabism and Shia Islam could “sow the seeds of extremism as seen in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia and Chechnya”. He said certain parties were now actively promoting both teachings with financial...

Roger Stockham ... The California man accused of plotting to blow up a Detroit-area mosque rejected his court-appointed counsel Friday, upset that the attorney is a Shiite Muslim and a "patron" of the Islamic center where he was arrested. There are two main sects within Islam, Shiite and Sunni. The schism between Sunni and Shiite stems from the early days of Islam and arguments over the Prophet Muhammad's successors as the faith's spiritual leader.

Iran has significantly expanded its intervention and is ready to transform Iraq into a proxy, a report said.The Center for New Politics and Policy asserted that Iran was filling the vacuum left by the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq. In a report titled "Iraq's Shi'a Leadership Crisis and the Iranian End Game," the Washington-based center said Iran was using both Shi'ite and Sunni militias to destabilize Iraq to prevent the emergence of a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad.

ISLAMIC fanatics are mutilating themselves at a British mosque in a bloody ceremony carried out only yards from a busy high street. Shia Muslims use a five-bladed chain called a Zanjeer to whip their own backs and make cuts in their foreheads with razor blades in homage to their faith. Bare-chested men were left bleeding heavily during the ritual known as Matam – self-flagellation – which a witness described as being “like a scene from a horror film”. The Matam takes place during the annual Shia Ashura ceremony and commemorates the death of Husayn, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad....

An Imminent Coup by Hezbollah in Lebanon Elias Bejjani - 9/18/2010 On Saudi advice has delayed the return of Lebanon's PM, Saad Al Hariri, from Saudi Arabia to Beirut. Meanwhile, 3500 Hezbollah militiamen are secretly deployed in the Eastern Christian region according to a report that was published yesterday by the "Beirut Observer" web site. Hezbollah has reached its final logistic preparations to execute an armed coup to take over all of Lebanon by force. The web site attributed its information to well-informed sources in the Saudi media. Below is a summary of the report with other related information: Well-informed...

SNIPPET: "The top US general in Iraq has identified the three main Shia terror groups in Iraq that are backed by Iran. General Ray Odierno said Iran continues to back the League of the Righteous (or Asaib al Haq), the Mahdi Army spin-off Promised Day Brigade, and the Hezbollah Brigades (or Kataib Hezbollah). "The Iranians... continue to fund, train and provide weapons and ammunition to Shiite extremist groups," Odierno told reporters in Baghdad according to AFP. Qods Force, the special operations branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, has "gone to a more sophisticated program with a smaller set of...

A suicide bomber has killed at least 43 people and injured 40 more southwest of Baghdad, Iraqi police say. The attack targeted government-backed Sunni militia members lining up to be paid in the town of Radwaniya. The Sunni militia fighters, known as the Sahwa or Awakening Councils, were once allied with al-Qaeda, but turned against the militant group in 2006. Struggle for IraqCoalition questions Baghdad glazier Iraq: Key facts and figures Q&A: Parliamentary polls Among the dead were at least six soldiers and three accountants, the Associated Press news agency reported. At least 13 soldiers were also wounded, along with...

With Europe on the verge of economic collapse, what about all those popular predictions that the European Union would become the world's political powerhouse, giving rise to the endtimes prophecies of a world dictator known to Bible students as the Antichrist? Joel Richardson, author of a bestselling book on Bible prophecy, says atheists will have a field day mocking Christians for the incorrect interpretations about the last days. When ""The Islamic Antichrist" was released last fall, it immediately zoomed to the top of the religious charts at Amazon and the No. 1 spot among all books at Scribd – an...

In the April issue of GQ, the always candid Shia LaBeouf lets it be known that he's still bitter about the way the media handled his widely-publicized car crash in 2008. Although he was initially arrested in Los Angeles on a misdemeanor drunk driving charge, a couple of days later it was announced that Shia was not at fault in the accident, which left him with a severely injured left hand. "I'd be watching the news, and they'd play my car crash, and every once in a while Kim Kardashian's sister [Khloe] would jump on TV and preach to me...

Ever wonder what a zany guy like the Ayatollah Khomenei taught his followers? Well, as it turns out, he was something of a prolific author, whose treatises on Islamic law are reverentially referenced by Shiite Islamic clergy even today. Let's take a look at some of his more, ummm.... un-Western messages...

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "An Iranian-backed Shia terror group that claims it seeks reconciliation with the Iraqi government has kidnapped a US civilian in Baghdad. The US recently released the top leader of the group under the guise of a reconciliation program, but the release actually was related to a hostage exchange. The Asaib al Haq, or the League of the Righteous, kidnapped Issa T. Salomi, a US civilian contractor, in Baghdad in late January. Salomi went missing in Baghdad sometime after Jan. 23, the US Department of Defense noted in a press release on Friday. The League of the...

VIDEO - Saudi Cleric Muhammad Al-Arifi Vilifies Shiites, Calling Iraqi Ayatollah Sistani "an Infidel"

MEDINA, Saudi Arabia – At the cemetery where the Prophet Muhammad's family is buried, an Iranian Shiite Muslim pilgrim overcome with emotion was jerked by a Saudi soldier, who barked a sharp order: "Stop crying!" The soldier, a gun at his hip, then hovered over the pilgrim as he wrapped up his prayers to make sure he didn't start weeping again. The Baqee cemetery is where the bitter rivalry between Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran gets personal. Iranians and other Shiites flock to the graves to pay respects to several revered descendants of Islam's prophet, while Saudi soldiers...

Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the 'immorals' - homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused. The threat has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of Iraqi homosexuals now seeking...

Members of the tiny Jewish community in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, say they have not received their monthly food rations or any government financial assistance for the past three months. Rabbi Yahya Yusuf, leader of the 65-member community, told IRIN the Jews had been “suffering terribly” of late; many had been finding it very difficult to even feed their children. “We have sold everything we possess to buy food for our families. We even sold our women’s gold rings. We have run out of money,” he said. Yusuf said that two weeks ago they had staged a protest outside government headquarters...

Saudi Arabian troops and aircraft are now enforcing a ten kilometer deep "kill zone" on the Yemen side of their Yemen border. This is the first combat operation for Saudi forces since 1991 (during the liberation of Kuwait.) This is in support of a four month war between rebel Shia tribesmen and the Yemeni armed forces. Since November 5th, Saudi fighter bombers have flown over a hundred sorties against rebel targets just across the border. Hundreds of smart bombs and missiles have been used. Saudi artillery has fired hundreds of shells at the rebels, and Saudi helicopters and infantry now...

Federal prosecutors are taking steps to seize four U.S. mosques and a New York City skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization

You have to wonder at the double standards of  “justice” applied to former Bush Homeland Security chief nominee Kerik and former Bush energy advisor Majida Mourad, a Shi’ite Muslim lobbyist and former Bush Administration energy advisor.Both lied on federal forms and to White House personnel officials in the Bush Administration.  But only one of them was prosecuted.  The other, Ms. Mourad, lives the life of Al-Riley.

Sources close to Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim say the cleric has died. Hakim was being treated for lung cancer at a hospital in Iran, and those close to the man said his health was deteriorating. A family member and an aide to Hakim, speaking on the condition of anonymity, separately told reporters Wednesday that he had suffered a setback. Hakim was known for his close links with Iran, and he led the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite groups. In June, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani visited Hakim in Tehran, where the ailing cleric was...

BEIRUT: A tense calm held in the Beirut neighborhood of Aisha Bakkar during the day Monday after armed clashes on Sunday left one person killed and several wounded. A large number of Lebanese Armed Forces soldiers tanks and armored personnel carriers lined Rachidine Street, which divides Aisha Bakkar between supporters of the Future and Amal parties, as the military tried to keep calm in the neighborhood. Despite the military presence, the atmosphere in the neighborhood was strained, as groups of men congregated on sidewalks and around vandalized cars and shattered glass from Sunday's fighting. On both sides of the road...

MADINAT HAMAD, Bahrain -- On a recent evening, Issa al Jibb climbed the roof of his home and started hurling Molotov cocktails into the adjoining property of the Rawi clan. By the time Bahraini police shot him down with a rubber bullet, Mr. Jibb had managed to burn three cars and part of the building, and inflicted serious burns on two Rawi teenagers. This was no ordinary feud among neighbors. Mr. Jibb, 46 years old, is a native of this small Persian Gulf kingdom. The Rawis are originally from Syria, were recruited along with thousands of other Arabs and Pakistanis...

The US military has released a senior member of a deadly terror group backed by Iran that has been directly implicated in the kidnapping and murder of five US soldiers in Karbala during a complex operation in early 2007. Laith al Qazali was freed last weekend "as part of a reconciliation effort" as well as an attempt to secure the release of captive British hostages, according to a report in The New York Times. Laith is the brother of Qais Qazali, the commander of the Qazali network, which is better known as the Asaib al Haq, or the League of...

The good news is the Hezbollah led March 8th coalition lost the the Lebanese Election, it may also be that the bad news is the fact that the Hezbollah led March 8th coalition lost the the Lebanese Election. First the good news the Hezbollah coalition lost and at the very least, it is a loss of face for Syria and Iran...The bad news is also that Hezbollah lead March 8th coalition lost the the Lebanese Election. As Barry Rubin warned two weeks ago, a Hezbollah victory might have been the worst thing for the terrorist group because it might have...

Awwamiya, Saudi Arabia - Despite the vast oil fields underfoot, this rural village of struggling farmers and narrow streets is a long way from the gleaming riches and wide boulevards of Riyadh. It is also far from the strict Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam favored by the Saudi government, since most Awwamiya residents are Shiite Muslims. These religious and economic realities help explain the graffiti on view here: "Death to Wahhabi," "Down with the government," and "We will not forget our prisoners." Somewhere here, too, Sheikh Nimer Al-Nimer, a firebrand Shiite cleric in his late 40s, is hiding from police....

DAMMAM // When Sayyid Hassan al Nemer was a young boy, Shiite clerics like himself were not permitted to wear a black turban. Nowadays, Sayyid al Nemer wears his turban everywhere, even when meeting senior officials in Riyadh. On the other hand, said Sayyid al Nemer, 47, “our children are being taught that we are non-believers” by Sunni Muslim teachers in government schools. Fifteen years after the Saudi government extended an amnesty to exiled Shiite leaders and began addressing their complaints, many in the Shiite minority say they still face widespread religious and political discrimination, according to recent interviews with...

Tensions between Egypt and Lebanon’s Hizbollah group have escalated after the Shia movement admitted that one of its members had been smuggling weapons from Egypt to the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian authorities were chasing 10 Lebanese men on Monday, allegedly members of a Hizbollah cell, on the Sinai peninsula, which shares a border with the Gaza Strip, in a crackdown on a group that they claim was planning to attack Egyptian institutions and Israeli tourists.

Morocco Cuts Off Diplomatic Relations with Iran, Accuses It of Spreading Shi'ism in the Country On Friday, March 6, 2009, Morocco announced that it was cutting off diplomatic relations with Iran. The decision followed weeks of escalating measures between the two sides. The two countries had been at odds in the past over Morocco's grant of asylum to the Shah after the Islamic Revolution and its support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, but the current rupture is the worst nadir in Moroccan-Iranian relations since these were normalized in 1991: [1] Undiplomatic Behavior The crisis between Morocco and Iran...

'I have not found in the whole long history of the Arab-Israeli conflict even one neutral American position. We used to love America in the region in the '40s. [President Woodrow] Wilson's principles [of national self-determination] represent freedom facing a Europe that was colonizing us. But America now is living a policy worse than that of British and French colonialism." So said Muhammad Hussein Fadhlullah early one morning last week, and I suppose I should not have been surprised. We met in a nondescript -- but heavily guarded -- office building in south Beirut. On my way there I had...

A female suicide bomber with explosives hidden under flowing black garments blew herself up in a crowd of Shiite pilgrims including many women and children south of Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 30 people and injuring dozens more, according to initial reports from Iraqi security officials. ---snip--- The suicide bomber had apparently been aiming to pass through the center of Abu Jasim village in al-Musaib, a popular resting place for pilgrims, a local police official said. When she could not get past a checkpoint just outside the village, the attacker went to a tent that had been set up...

Islam Party...

The best way to understand Ahmadinejad's brand of Shitite eschatology (end-times theology) is to listen to Iranians describe it themselves. Amir Taheri is a European-based columnist who used to serve as the executive editor of "Kayhan", Iran's largest daily newspaper. In an April 2006 essay entitled "The frightening Truth of Why Iran Wants a Bomb," Taheri wrote that just before announcing to the world that Iran had "gatecrashed 'the nuclear club," President Ahmadinejad "disappeared for several hours" to have a secret meeting with the Islamis messiah, a figure known as the twelfth Imam or Mahdi. Taheri wrote, "According to Shia...

PESHAWAR - Pakistani security forces Sunday seized a van packed with 1,000 kilos of explosives. Seven suspected Taliban militants were also arrested in the operation in the northwestern town of Jamrud. "The van was packed from floor to ceiling with explosives weighing around 1,000 kilograms," or 2,200 pounds, the official said, adding that detonators were attached to the explosives. "The van could have been used during Muharram and caused many deaths if this huge amount of explosives had been detonated," he said. The security official said the seven men arrested were members of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the country's umbrella Taliban group...

Mubarak especially is often referred to as "Pharaoh" -- from an Islamic perspective, an extremely demeaning epithet, since Pharaoh in the Koran is the ultimate representative of infidelity, idolatry, and tyranny. "Calls in Iran to Topple Egyptian, Saudi Regimes," by Y. Mansharof for MEMRI, December 12: Iran's attacks and accusations against Egypt and Saudi Arabia have recently intensified. In early December, Iran's leading conservative government dailies Kayhan and Jomhouri-ye Eslami accused the Egyptian and Saudi regimes of treason, and called on their peoples to topple their regimes. Kayhan editor Hossein Shariatmadari, who is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, praised...

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke out against Iran during a meeting with members of the Egyptian ruling party, a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida said Thursday, according to Israel Radio. Mubarak accused the Islamic Republic of trying to subsume its Muslim neighbors, telling the forum that "the Persians are trying to devour the Arab states." Mubarak's comments came after the Egyptian leader recalled the country's diplomatic envoy from the Iranian capital earlier this week following an increase in tension between the two countries. Recent strain between Cairo and Teheran has grown as several demonstrations in Iran called for the...

BAGHDAD — Senior Iraqi and Coalition leaders marked the transfer of the 3,000th armored Humvee to the Government of Iraq Nov. 22, through a program employing 522 Iraqis from different ethnic and religious backgrounds including Sunni, Shi’a and Christian. This milestone transfer is part of a program to produce mission-ready armored Humvees for issue to the Iraqi military and Police forces and to provide on-the-job training to Iraqi mechanics. The two-year program includes refurbishment of Humvees for the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior and the Counter-Terrorism Bureau. The first vehicles went to the Iraqi Army on March 12 of...

Saudi and Sudanese Writers Warn Of 'Shi'ite Octopus' Taking Over Sudan The religious rift between Sunnis and Shi'ites in the Middle East, and the tension between the Arab countries, particularly the Gulf states and Egypt on the one hand, and Iran on the other hand are also manifested in Sudan-Iran relations. While the Sudanese regime maintains close ties with Iran, some Sudanese, especially those residing outside the country, have voiced concerns that Sudan may join the countries under Iranian influence. Over the past few years, there have been several uproars in the Arab press over perceived attempts by Iran to...

On May 12, a few days after street fighting erupted in Beirut, I drove to Majd al Anjar, a Sunni stronghold in Lebanon’s Bekaa, close to the Syrian border, where gunmen were still blocking the motorway from Beirut to Damascus. At the edge of town, several hundred men with automatic rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, pistols and hand grenades stood before earthen barriers and fires. Some wore masks. There was nobody in command – this was a mob, not a militia. The men were angry, afraid, suspicious, shouting at strangers and each other, each one an authority unto himself, carelessly...

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Hackers, believed to be of Iranian origin have destroyed a number of Sunni Internet websites, including the alislamnet.com website, which belongs to Dr. Aaidh al-Qarni, a Saudi preacher, and another website that specializes in the prophet's Sunna [line of conduct] and its sciences, in addition to other websites. This campaign is believed to be in retaliation for a similar campaign that was led by Sunni hackers against Shiite websites. The hackers drew the Iranian flag on an unidentified face and wrote at the top of the website's main page in both Arabic and Persian the following Koranic...

Q&A with ex-CIA agent Robert Baer on terror, the Iran crisis, and Hezbollah blasts When reports from US and Canadian intelligence sources surfaced in late June claiming that Hezbollah, a Lebanese political and paramilitary movement which the Canadian government calls a terrorist organization, was scouting Jewish and Israeli locations in Ontario for possible attack, Robert Baer, a former CIA officer, offered his usual blunt take. “They cannot have an operation fail,” said Baer, “and I don’t think they will. They’re the A-team of terrorism,” he told ABC News. The Lebanese Shia—Hezbollah, in other words—may even be the best car bombers...

Dozens of Shiite radicals scrambled on Friday to sign blood oaths to continue their fight against US forces in Iraq despite an order from their leader Moqtada al-Sadr for them to lay down their arms. Children as young as 10 were among those seen cutting their thumbs with scalpels and putting a bloodied fingerprint to a document circulated by members of the Sadr movement in the cleric's eastern Baghdad bastion of Sadr City. All vowed to fight on, despite orders by Sadr on Thursday to his 60,000-strong Mahdi Army militia to suspend their armed operations indefinitely. The order followed two...

Devout Muslim found guilty of forcing boys to flog themselves in religious ceremony Last updated at 15:41pm on 27.08.08   A devout Muslim was found guilty of child cruelty today in a British legal first after forcing two boys to beat themselves during a religious ceremony.The jury at Manchester Crown Court found 44-year-old Syed Mustafa Zaidi guilty of two counts of child cruelty.The boys, aged 13 and 15, were forced to beat themselves with a zanjeer zani, an implement containing five curved blades, during a ceremony to commemorate the death of a Shia Muslim spiritual leader.Zaidi, of Station Road,...

Lebanon has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi over the disappearance 30 years ago of a senior Shiite cleric after a visit to Libya, officials said on Wednesday. Kadhafi was also indicted for allegedly "inciting the abduction" of Imam Mussa Sadr, the spiritual guide of Lebanon's Shiite community, investigating magistrate Samih el-Hajj said in a charge sheet. An "arrest warrant" was issued for the Libyan ruler and six other Libyan suspects who were also indicted for taking part in the alleged abduction, AFP reported. Sadr disappeared while in Libya with two companions Mohammed Yacoub and Abbas Badreddin...

BAGHDAD -- An emboldened Iraqi government has launched an aggressive campaign to disband a U.S.-funded force of Sunni Arab fighters that has been key to Iraq's fragile peace, arresting prominent members and sending others into hiding or exile as their former patrons in the American military reluctantly stand by. The Shiite Muslim-led government has long distrusted the fighters, many of whom are former insurgents. Senior Shiite politicians label some of the members murderers, and warn that there is no long-term obligation to employ them after their units are disbanded. "The ones in Baghdad and Diyala province just changed their T-shirts....

BAGHDAD — The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq is driving out many leaders of Sunni citizen patrols, the groups of former insurgents who joined the American payroll and have been a major pillar in the decline in violence around the nation. In restive Diyala Province, United States and Iraqi military officials say there were orders to arrest hundreds of members of what is known as the Awakening movement as part of large security operations by the Iraqi military. At least five senior members have been arrested there in recent weeks, leaders of the groups say. West of Baghdad, former insurgent leaders...