Free Republic

STOCKHOLM, April 22, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A top Muslim scholar said the minority would abide by the Swedish law in confronting a Christian preacher who insulted Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), urging his fellow Swedish Muslims not to take the law into their own hands or commit any violent acts to avenge the repulsive remarks of the Christian cleric. “We beg those who threatened (Runar) Sogaard, in the name of Islam, to let Swedish law judge between him and us,” Hassan Moussa, the head of Sweden’s council of imams, wrote in the Expressen newspaper, according to Reuters Friday, April...

Report French investigators are tracking $7 million transferred by PLO treasurer to Suha’s account. WASHINGTON - French investigators are tracking seven million dollars transferred by PLO treasurer Nizar Abu Ghazaleh to the Paris bank account of ex-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's widow, The Wall Street Journal said Wednesday. Palestinian officials said the Palestine Liberation Organization controlled a bank account in Tunisia from which millions of dollars in unexplained payments were made to Suha Arafat - payments they suspect were connected to contracts issued by the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Yasser Arafat before he died last year, the report said. The officials...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A federal judge Monday indicated First Amendment issues may play a significant role in the government's case against an Islamic scholar accused of exhorting followers to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Ali al-Timimi, 41, denies he is guilty, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema told prospective panelists, while summarizing the prosecution's case against the defendant. "He says that he only counseled the young men at issue to leave the United States and (migrate) to an Islamic country where they could practice their religion freely," she told a pool of 110 people who filled out long questionnaires. Opening...

JEDDAH, 23 March 2005 — A 25-year-old Indonesian woman who came to Saudi Arabia as a guest worker will have several of her fingers, toes and part of her right foot amputated because of gangrene after being tied up for a month in a bathroom by her Saudi sponsor, who also apparently beat her severely, injuring her eye and knocking several of her teeth out. The reason given was that the woman, who worked as a maid, had not finished cleaning the house. The Indonesian government is demanding justice as Riyadh police continue to investigate this disgusting crime. The story...

RIYADH— The case of a Saudi writer who was sentenced by a Shariah court in Riyadh to 275 lashes and four months imprisonment after being accused of being “corrupt” by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, has returned to the Ministry of Culture and Information yesterday after the intervention of the ministry, Arab News has learned. The case is the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Ali Al-Mizeini, an Arabic language professor at King Saud University, was charged by the commission with allegedly questioning the religious institution’s abilities and knowledge in...

Editor's note: Readers may also be interested in New Jersey: An Islamic Murder of Coptic Christians?.Anyone following the investigation into the mid-January slaughter of the Armanious family (husband, wife, two young daughters), Copts living in Jersey City, N.J., knows who the presumptive suspects are: Islamists furious at a Christian Egyptian immigrant who dares engage in Internet polemics against Islam and who attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity.The authorities, however, have blinded themselves to the extensive circumstantial evidence, insisting that "no facts at this point" substantiate a religious motive for the murders.Somehow, the prosecutor missed that all four members of this...

February 05, 2005 Muslim apostates cast out and at risk from faith and family By Anthony Browne While Christians who turn to Islam are feted, the 200,000 Muslims who turn away are faced with abuse, violence and even murder THE first brick was thrown through the sitting room window at one in the morning, waking Nissar Hussein, his wife and five children with a terrifying start. The second brick went through his car window. It was a shock, but hardly a surprise. The week before, another brick had been thrown through the window as the family were preparing for bed...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch politician who went underground after the slaying of filmmaker Theo van Gogh last year, returned to her office in parliament Tuesday amid tight security after 10 weeks on a U.S. Marine base in Maine. Hirsi Ali wrote the script for Van Gogh's short television film "Submission" the last of his work to be aired before Van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death on Nov. 2 which sharply criticized the treatment of women under Islam. Van Gogh was murdered on an Amsterdam street while cycling to work. An "Open Letter to...

Argument over faiths probed in killing of 4 Jersey City man received chat-room death threat Sunday, January 16, 2005 BY MIKE FRASSINELLI AND MARK MUELLER Star-Ledger Staff Authorities are exploring whether a religious argument in an Internet chat room led to the slaughter of a Coptic Christian couple and their two daughters in their Jersey City home, relatives of the slain family said yesterday. One of the victims, 47-year-old Hossam Armanious, spent some of his spare time in chat rooms devoted to the Egyptian religious sect, at times proselytizing and at times writing about persecution of Coptic Christians by Muslims,...

The father of a murdered New Jersey family was threatened for making anti-Muslim remarks online — and the gruesome quadruple slaying may have been the hateful retaliation, sources told The Post yesterday. Hossam Armanious, 47, who along with his wife and two daughters was found stabbed to death in his Jersey City home early Friday, would regularly debate religion in a Middle Eastern chat room, one source said.

Saudi executed and crucified Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabian authorities Friday beheaded and crucified a Saudi national convicted of killing and robbing his mother. The Saudi Press Agency quoted an Interior Ministry statement that said the convict was executed and crucified in public in the southern province of Baha. Friday's beheading brought to 34 the number of people executed this year in Saudi Arabia, mostly smugglers. Earlier this month an Iraqi and three Pakistani drug smugglers were beheaded in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. Executions of people convicted of murder, rape, armed robbery and...

Citing only alleged European "secret reports," an article in a Saudi government daily accused the U.S. Army of harvesting the organs of Iraqis and selling them. The story in Al-Watan also was published in the Iranian daily Jomhouri-ye Islami and the Syrian daily Teshreen, reports the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.

MADRID-The Spanish deputy prime minister has attacked the decision to free a controversial imam who was jailed for writing a book which advised readers how to attack women without leaving any marks. María Teresa Fernández de la Vega strongly criticised release of Mohamed Kamal Mostafa, who was freed after only serving 20 days of a 12-month sentence. In an interview with the programme 'Ruedo Ibérico' on Spain's Antena 3 channel, the deputy prime minister said "this did not help to reinforce the line which Spanish society had adopted to domestic violence: zero tolerance". She criticised the decision of the court...

BARCELONA – The imam who was jailed for writing a book about how to hit women without leaving marks has been released after just 20 days behind bars. Mohamed Kamal Mostafa, the imam of Fuengirola in Andalusia, was jailed last month for one year. But he has been released and must go on a training course to learn about human rights. Legal sources said he was released early because his imprisonment would not help his reintegration into society. The course would be more likely to reform his ideas, they added. But womens' groups were expected to object to the early...

How many females have been stoned in Allah’s name? How many women have had their bodies crushed to death because the Koran says that’s what is to be? How many mothers and daughters have been dragged into the public place while men lift rocks to pound into their flesh until their bodies quit moving? This is what goes on in Iran , for example. When I read of this I think that an Iranian representative sits in a chair at the esteemed United National building in New York City . There he is honored. There he gets his perks. There...

Iranian woman journalist freed on bail, Hospitalised (AFP) 11 December 2004 TEHERAN - An Iranian woman arrested in a judicial crackdown on reformist journalists was freed on bail but needed hospital treatment due to her detention, her husband told AFP on Saturday. According to Ahmad Beigloo, journalist Fereshteh Ghazi “was kept in solitary confinement for 38 days and had to be checked into hospital as she was not in a good physical or mental shape”. The woman was arrested over her articles on women’s rights published on Internet sites. She was released on bail of 500 million rials (about 57,000...

Justice authorities arrested a Moroccan man last month after receiving a tip-off that Islamic extremists were allegedly planning an attack on the Red Light District in Amsterdam, it was reported on Friday. The pizza-delivery courier allegedly conducted reconnaissance of the capital's prostitution zone while riding through the area during work hours on his scooter. He was arrested on 5 November. Newspaper De Telegraaf described him as a "radical Moroccan pizza deliverer". The National Detectives Unit was alerted to the supposed attack plan by three anonymous emails, the first of which was received on 14 September. Emails dated 27 September and 11 October gave further details of the...

An exodus of native-born Dutch in search of a new life abroad has reversed immigration flows for the first time since the post-war era. Last year more people left the Netherlands than arrived as migrants or asylum seekers, even though unemployment remains low at 4.7 percent and per capita income is higher than any major country in Europe. Ellen and Peter Bles are planning to leave their home near Tilburg for Perth, Western Australia Lawyers, accountants, computer specialist, nurses, and businessmen are lining up for visas to the English-speaking world, looking to Australia, New Zealand and Canada as orderly societies...

In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, German feminist publisher Alice Schwarzer discusses the difficulties Germany has in dealing with its Muslim women and the growing influence of Islam in Europe. DPA Alice Schwarzer: "The multicultural ideology is untruthful." SPIEGEL: For decades, people have looked on without doing anything as some of Germany's Turkish women were stripped of their rights. Why has this stirred so little resistance in German society? Schwarzer: Because every denunciation of this abuse is immediately branded as racism. But common sense is never wrong: A women, who stumbles about beneath a mountain of cloth while her husband...

She inspires both admiration and rage, and has become one of the most familiar faces on the backbench of Holland’s parliament. Now, women’s rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali has gone into hiding after a death threat against her was pinned to the body of murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Hirsi Ali’s path from Somalia to parliament has been marked by a willingness to say and do things others never dared. But she has also incurred the wrath of many Muslims insulted by her message. She describes herself as a “lapsed” Muslim, and says Islamic culture needs to become more modern....