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FRIDAY OCTOBER 19 2001The wife who was shunnedBY IAN COBAINHamida: Bin Laden's motherHAMIDA Al-Attas, a tiny woman in her early sixties, has probably had little to say about the way the world has changed since September 11. But today, as she sits in her villa overlooking the highway linking Jedda to Mecca, she will be watching events as closely as any.Were she able to lift the veil of her burka, moreover, and talk openly, she could offer astonishing insights into the mind of the man that the West believes is to blame. Al-Attas is Osama bin Laden’s mother.Many hastily concocted ...

The Arab Spring brought a chance for democratization and the toppling of repressive regimes. However, some remain cautious given the ascendance of Islamist movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In an incisive article detailing Al Qaeda’s responses to the Arab Spring, Donald Holbrook outlines the opportunities that these revolutions have wrought for al Qaeda in Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, as well the chaos in Syria. Al Qaeda has long promoted revolution through armed conflict, notes Holbrook in his article, published for Perspectives On Terrorism last December. Some argue that the Arab Spring is a repudiation of Al...

Azeez Al-Ghazian, 29, a Saudi national from Fort Worth, TX, is in custody after authorities found counterfeit military identification documents and weapons in his wrecked truck behind Hurst shopping center, which prompted authorities to evacuate it.

There have been explosions at a school in the south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, causing casualties, activists and state media say. Two rebel groups said the building, near a branch of Military Intelligence, was being used as a base by a pro-government militia and security forces. They said it had been almost completely destroyed, killing several officers. But officials told state TV it was just a school for the children of military families and the damage had been minor. Meanwhile, mortars apparently fired during fighting between soldiers and rebel forces to the south also fell in the Israeli-occupied Golan...

In the safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Jews and Israel are remembered fondly,if increasingly vaguely. "THEY CALL That lack of restraint?" the former Iraqi army officer exclaimed, while watching the BBC’s coverage of the Al-Aqsa Intifada on satellite TV last winter. "If this demonstration were held in Baghdad, there’d be 10,000 bodies in the street," said the Arab from Baghdad who now teaches in Iraqi Kurdistan. Almost 4 million people live in the safe haven of northern Iraq. A de facto autonomous region, it has been administered by the Kurds since 1991 when Saddam Hussein withdrew his administration in ...

President Barack Obama’s top civil rights official repeatedly declined to support religious free speech during a July 27 congressional hearing, despite repeated questioning from Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks, who chairs the House’s constitution subcommittee. Tom Perez, the progressive who runs the Justice Department’s civil rights office, refused to answer the questions posed by Franks. “Will you tell us… that this administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?” Frank asked four times. Perez refused to answer, saying “it is a hard question, in the sense that when you make threats...

So, it wouldn't just be blasphemy (that's already covered by the death sentence), but "insulting Islam" (...and we all know how difficult that is) and those homicidal "clerics"... Once again we see that any accommodation to Islamic law results in demands by and more accommodation of the most brutal, backward and bloody ideology on the face of the earth. Notice the media using "conservative" to describe these savages. More Orwellian language. "Saudi Arabia considers law against insulting Islam" Reuters July 15, 2012 (thanks to David) Saudi Arabia is studying new regulations to criminalise insulting Islam, including in social media, and...

Saudis laud credit card hacking scheme Ynetnews - Jan 4 - 2012 Scheme widely reported in Saudi-Arabia as web surfers welcome damage caused to Israelis. ‘Jews are the most despicable, Hitler was right,’ one talkbacker says Roi Kais Published: 01.03.12, 19:56 / Israel News [...] “If I were a hacker I would wish for 800000 credit cards to be leaked, not just 400000,” one ... The responses were mostly hostile towards Jews and Israel. ...http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4170888,00.htmlSaudis Claim Credit For Hack Of Israelis’ Credit Cards Tuesday, January 3, 2012 Adam Dickter Assistant Managing Editor A group of Saudi hackers calling themselves Group...

You would be excused for thinking that the Wahabbi religious establishment of Saudi Arabia and the religion guarantees of our First Amendment have no more in common than fire and water. But I think this oddest of odd couples helps to explain two recent events involving American Muslims and the rest of us -- instances of so-called “home-grown” Islamist terrorism, such as the Fort Hood murders, and the resentment being reported among American Muslims at FBI and other law-enforcement-agency activities at U.S. mosques. To be sure, the religious values the First Amendment protects -- freedom of worship, the nonestablishment of...

According to Gannett News, the the Saudi Arabia government has agreed to pay the legal fees for accused killer Abdulsalam S. Al-Zahrani.Al-Zahrani is charged with the stabbing death a week ago of Binghamton University professor Richard Antoun.

The Sayyid Qutb Reader Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society Edited by Albert J. Bergesen Routledge, 2008 0415954258 (paperback; $34.95) 041595424X (hardback; $135.00) Preface It has been said that perhaps no writer has occupied so central a place within the universe of political Islam in the second half of the twentieth century as Egypt's Sayyid Qutb, and if one wants to understand the mind of radical Muslims, one needs to know what they read, or have read, and they read Sayyid Qutb. In general, his work has been divided into three periods. The earliest (1920-1947) centers on more literary...

Saudi Arabia to execute woman for 'witchcraft'  Thursday, February 14, 2008 A leading international human rights organisation is calling on Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to halt the planned execution of a woman accused of "witchcraft". The woman is due to be put to death on foot of a coerced confession and the statements of witnesses who said she had "bewitched" them. One man claimed she had made him impotent. In another case, a divorced woman reportedly returned to her ex-husband during the month predicted by the witch said to have cast the spell. The court failed to probe alternative explanations...

Thomas Lippman Washington Post November 25. 2007 The subtitle of Yaroslav Trofimov's fascinating and important book about the 1979 takeover of the Great Mosque in Mecca by heavily armed fanatics refers to that event as "the forgotten uprising." Perhaps it has been forgotten here but not in the Muslim Middle East, where it was a seminal event of the region's most traumatic year in modern times. That year began with the Iranian revolution and ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In between, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, radicalizing the Palestinians. Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq. And...

Britain's love affair with the Saudi kingdom By Jemima Khan Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/11/2007 King Abdullah arrived at Heathrow last Wednesday morning for the first State Visit to the UK for 20 years – five planes, 13 family members, an entourage of several hundred. No women. I've been to Saudi Arabia a few times. It's not much fun being a woman there. I suspect it's worse being a Saudi woman. And worse still being her migrant maid. It's a mad place and the rules there have got nothing to do with Islam. advertisementI've had my feet beaten, not once...

Israel Lobby's Pull Pales Next to Evil Saudi Input By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM September 25, 2007It's been a while since a book about American Jews has elicited as much controversy as "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," in which professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University argue that America's Israel lobby exercises "undue" influence and blocks other views on the Middle East.In the noisy debate that has sprung up among its many critics and few advocates, the issue has been unfortunately narrowed to the obvious: how powerful the lobby is or isn't,...

Not only did she avoid mentioning the Saudi (Arab) lobby, which is by far the most powerful lobby in America, but she also chose to solicit the opinions of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (himself a lobbyist for Arab causes), as well as professor Mearsheimer, both known for their controversial anti-Israel positions. Stunningly, no expert contradictory opinion to these two was offered during the six-hour program. It would have been just as easy for Amanpour to pose the same questions to Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz or Professor Fouad Ajami. http://www.aina.org/news/2007082994324.htm

This has gotten way out of hand, especially as it becomes clearer as to what this "Islamic perspective" actually is: Imams taunting airline passengers and personnel, antisocial taxicab drivers and furor over foot baths - and this is just for starters, believe me. “The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a nonprofit 501(c)(4), grassroots civil rights and advocacy group. CAIR is America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, with regional offices nationwide and in Canada. The national headquarters is located on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Since its establishment in 1994, CAIR has worked to promote a positive image of Islam...

The scandal at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. centers on embezzlement allegations made against Farzad Darui. Darui claims that the money was not embezzled, but was being used to pay off the mistresses of Abduallah M. Khouj. Polygamy is officially sanctioned under Islamic law, but since the practice is illegal in the U.S., some of these 'mistresses' were really wives. Except for the ones that weren't. At least one of these 'mistresses' is said to have been held against her will. I'm not sure how that is a good defense. Surely paying off Khouj's wives wasn't in the mosque...

Investigators working on the Bangalore connection to the UK terror plot have come across a startling disclosure: alleged Glasgow bomber Kafeel Ahmed's mother Dr Zakia Khan seemed to be aware of his fanatical inclinations and tried to stop him. Investigators quoted her as saying: "I suspected him to be taking the wrong path, but had no idea exactly what he was up to. I still can't imagine he did something of this magnitude." But the 28-year-old aeronautical engineer's alleged suicide attack was not a bolt from the blue for his family. Not only did the radicalisation of Kafeel and his...

http://www.aim.org/guest_column/5051_0_6_0_C/ Do not Seek Help from The Enemies By Tashbih Sayyed | November 29, 2006 Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Shiites are no better than the Al-Qaeda's Wahhabi Sunnis There are at least three factors that have contributed in the development of this unhealthy situation: both the propaganda success that Hezbollah emerged from the war it imposed on Israel apparently unharmed, and the ascendance of Muqtada Al-Sadr in Iraq's politics, enhanced Iran's image in the region; the success of Sunni insurgents in Iraq to keep the country in turmoil helped Syria to emerge as an important player in the regional politics;...