Nairobi blast kills at least five: Officials
NAIROBI: A blast in Eastleigh, the main Somali district of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, killed at least five people on Monday, an official at the national disaster operations centre said.
"Police are securing the area for emergency response services," the official said. Eastleigh has in recent years been the scene of several explosions usually attributed by the police to Islamist extremists.
Taliban abduct candidate in north: Afghan official
KABUL: An Afghan official says Taliban gunmen have abducted a candidate running for a seat in the provincial council and seven members of his entourage.
Governor Abdul Jabar Haqbeen said on Monday that candidate Hussain Nazari and seven others were taken overnight in the northern Sar-i-Pul province.
They were travelling in a taxi to the provincial capital and had no security escort with them. The governor says elders in the area are trying to negotiate with the Taliban to get Nazari and the others released.
Afghanistan is holding elections on Saturday for a new president to replace Hamid Karzai as well as for provincial council members.
The Taliban have vowed to use force to disrupt the April 5 vote and have stepped up attacks in the lead-up to the polling.
Putin’s Intentions Aren’t What Matter
They're not hard to divine, but our strategic vision shouldn't depend on them anyway.
‘What matters is the intent. And we don't have a sense of that." That is what one of Washington's legion of anonymous "senior government officials" told the Wall Street Journal about the Russian military forces now massing on Ukraine's border - complemented, of course, by the tens of thousand more Russian troops stationed in what, until just a few days ago, used to be . . . Ukraine.
Clearly, our Beltway gurus have refined a bit of ancient wisdom: If you cannot remain silent and proceed to remove all doubt that you are a fool, at least remain anonymous.
Let us pretend for a moment that our senior official is right, and that Vladimir Putin's intent, rather than America's strategic perception, is "what matters." Is the Kremlin's intent really so shrouded in mystery that our $50-plus billion per year intelligence community doesn't quite "have a sense" of it?
Putin has just annexed the Crimean Peninsula with virtual impunity, after promising not to do it even as his forces were moving into place to do it, and despite Russia's prior guarantee of Ukraine's territorial security. His military invasion and seizure comes in the wake of his 2008 invasion of Georgia and seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - which followed security assurances similar to those Russia had given Ukraine.
In connection with both invasions, the United States and Western Europe vowed that there would be serious consequences but meekly accepted Russia's aggression. In fact, during the Bush administration, after the United States publicly touted Ukraine and Georgia for NATO membership, the hand-wringing alliance stopped short of incorporating them.
Rest assured that Putin's bare-chested romps do not include navel-gazing over what the West's actions imply about its intent. He fully understood that NATO was unwilling to extend to these former Soviet satellites its security guarantee - viz., that an attack on any NATO country is considered an attack on all NATO countries that must be repelled as such. Coupled with Europe's willingness - actually, anxiousness - to increase economic intercourse with and energy dependence on Russia even after the Georgian invasion, Putin grasped that he had a green light to indulge his revanchist ambitions.
Against this backdrop of recent history, Russia now has upwards of 50,000 troops in position for an invasion of heavily Russian sections of Eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin claims to be engaged in military exercises, under circumstances where there are many thousand more troops than training exercises would justify and where the "we're just doing exercises" pretext is shopworn. Russia's claim that it has no hostile designs on Eastern Ukraine echoes its false assurances regarding Crimea and Georgia. Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal report elaborates, the gathering Russian forces are making active efforts to conceal their positions and their equipment along the Ukrainian border. They are establishing supply lines that would be essential to an invasion and prolonged occupation.
So what do you suppose Putin's intent might be? Sure is tough to get a sense of it, no?
Willful blindness to easily acquirable knowledge is standard operating procedure in Washington. When accountable national-security officials learn that important American interests are being threatened, the public expects them to take decisive action. Decisive action is politically risky. Often, politicians would rather not know.
When information is too available and too pellucid for them to feign ignorance, epistemological uncertainty about its significance is always a convenient fallback position. Let's say a cop on the beat in a high-crime area in the dead of a summer night sees a man in a ski mask, screwdriver in hand, eying an apartment window. He would not be a cop for long if he turned his back because, after all, you never know what the masked man's intent might be. But he would still qualify for a front-office job at the National Intelligence Directorate - perhaps analyzing "largely secular" organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.
All that said, though, intent is not what matters in international affairs. The key is to have a strategic vision of the real world and our interests. That is the solid foundation for American foreign policy. If it were in place, there would be far fewer occasions to wonder about our adversaries' intent. That problem is solved by having decided they are adversaries until proven otherwise; by treating them in that manner in every interaction; and by making clear to them that the wages of crossing us will be real and lasting. (Maybe someone could tell President Obama that Putin has joined the Tea Party - might do the trick.)
It is all well and good for House majority leader Eric Cantor, among other Republican leaders, to chide the president for designing policy around the Putin he hopefully imagines rather than the real Putin. This, however, is neither a new problem nor one that's unique to Obama.
As I ruefully detailed back in 2008, the Bush administration delusionally regarded Russia as a "strategic partner," notwithstanding Putin's quite calculating strategic cooperation with Iran (you know, the "Death to America" guys) on nuclear-power development and ballistic-missile technology. Then, as I observed in late 2010, two years after the Georgia invasion, with Putin defiantly occupying Abkhazia and South Ossetia, GOP support for Obama's wayward New START treaty with Russia was mustered by such foreign-engagement masterminds as former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice (architect of Bush's strategic partnership with Russia) and Senator Richard Lugar (who in 2006 had partnered with then-senator Obama to disarm Ukraine). The treaty would not have been ratified without the familiar machinations of Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham - then on a respite between supporting Qaddafi against jihadists and supporting jihadists against Qaddafi. McCain and Graham strongly urged their colleagues to take up consideration of New START . . . then voted against it once its approval was assured.
Russia is on the march because it was treated like a friend while it acted like an enemy. As usual, the bipartisan transnational-progressive clerisy convinced itself that our adversaries, who thrive on instability, have an abiding interest in international stability - that they are best seen as trusted "partners" in the pursuit of American objectives rather than aggressors pursuing their own very different objectives.
As Putin menaces Ukraine, Obama prattles about international law. Even if this president's sudden interest in faithful adherence to law could be taken seriously, the international arena is not a "community" sharing common legal norms and enforcement mechanisms. Aggressors are not presumed innocent such that we must sit idle until their intent can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. They are presumed hostile until they prove otherwise.
Today's Russia is no Soviet Union, at least not yet. But it will grow stronger, and its behavior more provocative, until we devise economic, diplomatic, and defense policy on the assumption that it is an enemy. The longer we wait to "reset" in accordance with reality, the more painful the reckoning will be.
Why Turkey's Local Elections May Have Global Impact
Driving into Istanbul from Ataturk International Airport, the image looms, enormous and omnipresent: the stubbornly stern face of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"I've spent a lot of time in Libya and Iraq," one Turkish businessman told me of the billboards along the roadside and banners hung from buildings several stories high. "It's Gaddafi and Saddam all over again."
In truth, it's not quite the same: the posters and flags are only temporary here, strung up before the local elections on March 30, and presumably to then be taken down. And smaller, less authoritarian (and less intimidating) banners depicting opposition party leaders also wave throughout the city. But in a fiercely contested election, and amid a political crisis that has splintered the Turkish people, many find the images of Erdogan frightening, a symbol of an Islamic dictatorship that threatens to destroy the nearly 100-year-old secular Turkish Republic, oft-lauded as the only Islamic democracy in the world.
"America is focusing on Putin," my businessman friend says. "But Erdogan is much more dangerous. He is Muslim Brotherhood. He hates Jews, Zoroastrians, and atheists. He wants only Islam."
Indeed, recently, Erdogan, who has long blamed his troubles on "the Jewish lobby," has now taken to grouping atheists in with terrorists. And hinting at a conspiracy against the government, former economy minister Zafer Caglayan, also a member of the ruling AKP, or Justice and Development Party, declared at the climax of the graft corruption scandal that has gripped Turkey since last December 17, "I would understand if a Jew, an atheist, a Zoroastrian would do all these things to us. Shame on them if these things are done by those who claim to be Muslim. How can a Muslim do this?"
Tie such remarks in with Erdogan's strong support for Egypt's ousted Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi and the money-laundering schemes and illicit gold-for-oil deals with Iran at the center of the corruption scandal, and Erdogan and his AKP buddies appear quite threatening, indeed.
True, not everyone agrees with my friend's assessment of Erdogan as being "more dangerous than Putin;" but among the country's intellectual, secular elite there is a strong sense that their prime minister has become desperate, and will do virtually anything possible to retain power. Already, he has banned Twitter after tapes allegedly linking him to the graft case were leaked and broadcast there and on YouTube, which was shut down in Turkey today. European Union Vice President Neelie Kroes called it a "desperate and depressing move," and asked "Where will it end Mr Erdogan?" in separate Twitter posts.
And while Sunday's elections are local, not national, the entire country is aware that a win for the AKP will be a win for Erdogan.
As Burak Bekdil, a columnist at Hurriyet Daily, told me, "Erdogan will definitely view any national vote around 45 percent as a sacrosanct vote of confidence and approval of his authoritarianism which in that case will surely gear up with the aim of crushing the most vocal ones among the 55 percent. I fear street violence and police brutality, not just bans on social or conventional media or restriction of other freedoms."
Bekdil also points to the prime minister's "ideological solidarity" with the Muslim Brotherhood as a growing problem for the West. As Kadri Gursel observed last August in the Al-Monitor, "The AKP leader and his close associates have been attributing more than ideological kinship to their close ties with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. They see it as a historic and strategic partnership that seeks to establish a new order based on solidarity with Brotherhood branches throughout the eastern Mediterranean basis and the entire Sunni Muslim world."
That connection, especially with the prospect of an AKP win on Sunday, could also raise tension with the West. In an e-mail, Hurriyet Daily editor Barçin Yinanç speculated, "the fact that the West has remained largely indifferent to the coup in Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood has left a scar in the mentality of the AKP, which thinks that there is no tolerance for political Islam in the West, and so will arrive at the conclusion that the West will be against AKP as well."
Then again, Erdogan is no fan of the West, either – least of all, America, home to his former ally-turned-nemesis Fetullah Gulen (on whom he also blames the current crisis), and to Twitter and You Tube – both of which he has sworn to "eradicate." Moreover, reported Today's Zaman (which, it should be noted, is owned by Gulen), "Erdoğan described Facebook and YouTube, which he maintained to have been abused by his political opponents, as a threat to the nation at a joint broadcast of A Haber and ATV news channels. Talking about the recently passed amendments to the Internet law, widely criticized at home and abroad for censorship, Erdoğan made it clear that he did not find the restrictions on freedoms and the violation of privacy introduced by the Internet law sufficient. The prime minister said: '[…] There are other steps we will take following March 30.'"
Hurriyet's editors are evidently equally concerned – and not just about censorship . According to a March 27 op-ed by columnist Semih Idiz, "But if [Erdogan] gets the numbers he wants, we can expect an even worse witch hunt than the one underway, as Erdoğan and his ministers unleash his already highly apparent fury on those he considers his enemies. Meanwhile, his enemies will not rest either and we can expect even more unsavory revelations about Erdoğan and government members.
"The real fight, whatever the results of Sunday's elections, will be for the presidential elections this year and the general elections planned for next year. I have said it before here. The bottom line is the stronger the AKP comes out of these elections, the more turbulence we can expect in Turkey."
That view is shared by most of the others I've spoken to in Istanbul in recent days. Some of the country's most prominent industrialists – people who have been particularly outspoken in their opposition to Erdogan's policies – are deliberately lying low, fearful of what may come.
Moreover, while both Bekdil and Yinanç seem to feel that further Islamization of the country under Erdogan is unlikely, it is not, they say, for lack of desire on his part – or that of his supporters. "Further Islamization was partly the result of over self-confidence on the part of Erdogan," Bekdil says. "With survivability climbing up in his list of priorities and the social/collective reaction he has faced since Gezi, [such things] should have told him that he should rethink 'raising devout generations.' But this 'ideal' will never disappear from his political genes."
For this reason, Bekdil – and many others – express a real fear for the future of Turkey's so-called "Islamic democracy" – a term Bekdil considers a mistake. The West, he says, "should give up on the 'Islamic democracy' endeavor. With an Islamic democracy, where you end up is where we in Turkey have ended up. Is it too difficult to see that?"
Syria: the jihadi town where 'brides' are snatched from schools
A year ago, the city of Raqqa in northern Syria was sprouting political activist groups and philosophical discussion circles. A “guerrilla gardening” squad promoted environmental awareness by planting vegetables in central reservations.
The liberals who made it a base after the rebels swept in and drove out the regime in March last year are gone, disbanded, accused of supporting democracy and other “kuffar” or infidel beliefs, their members living either underground or in Turkey.
The city has been transformed into a staging ground for displays of the harshest “justice” meted out by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the jihadi group too extreme even for al-Qaeda that has imposed its rule over large parts of the country.
Refugees, women still living under its rule and men who have escaped from its prisons have told Telegraph of the life under the shadow of the extremist group’s black flag.
One woman, whose name the Telegraph knows but is withholding, described how she went to the recruiting office of an all-women jihad unit, formed from the women who have flocked to Syria from Europe and elsewhere to serve the cause, some with their children.
“I went inside their headquarters, which used to be the Christian church,” she said. “I asked what the conditions were to join. They said you have to be 18-25, unmarried, and you would earn 25,000 Syrian pounds.
“But if you joined you had the opportunity to marry one of the foreign fighters. However, they make sure you are a real jihadist.”
She said that outside she met four new recruits, three from Tunisia, and one Frenchwoman, who told her she was divorced and had brought her 12-year-old daughter and four younger sons to Syria to join the militants.
The opportunities for marriage in the Syrian jihad - and before “martyrdom” - is a recurring theme of the blogs and other online forums favoured by ISIS’s foreign fighters in Syria, many of whom write in English.
But the Raqqa woman and other activists from the town say that the imbalance of the sexes means ISIS has begun to “recruit” brides from local schools and colleges.
Among those who resisted, they say, was a 21-year-old student called Fatima Abdullah from a tribal area outside the city, whose brother had joined ISIS and persuaded their father to hand her over for marriage to a Tunisian. She refused, and when her family insisted, killed herself with rat poison. The story was confirmed by other activists from the town.
Since the beginning of January, rival rebel groups including western-backed militias still loyal to the original opposition Free Syrian Army have launched a counter-attack across the north of Syria to drive out ISIS.
Earlier this month, rebels all but completed an operation to remove the extremists from Idlib province while in Aleppo province ISIS have been forced into towns to the east. As they left their former strongholds they killed some of their prisoners, freed others, and loaded many more on to trucks and took them with them.
In Aazaz, a town between Aleppo and the Turkish border, ISIS retaliated for the FSA attack by beheading four captives from other militias and placing their heads on the plinth in the middle of the roundabout in one of the main squares, residents.
“We call it the beheading circle, now,” one, Anwar Mohammed, said.
A photograph of the heads, with a German fighter standing in triumph over them, circulated on jihadi websites.
Ahmed Primo, described how he was saved from a similar fate by a stray shell.
“I heard a voice calling my name for execution,” he said. “Then suddenly there was the sound of an explosion. The guards and the emir, the militia leader, were injured, and carried away. The next day the prison was liberated and I escaped.”
Mr Primo had previously been detained by the Syrian regime in his home city, Aleppo, and held for a month. Asked whether the treatment he received from ISIS, which included beatings, being bound and blindfolded for weeks at a time, and electrocuted in his testicles, was better or worse than his experiences under the regime, he said: “It is not a question of better or worse. It was exactly the same.”
ISIS split last summer from Jabhat al-Nusra, the recognised wing of Al-Qaeda in Syria, and in February was disavowed by Al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman Zawahiri.
But by then its capacity to instill fear by its harsh punishments, and ability to attract fanatical fighters from abroad had enabled it to take control of large parts of northern Syria, with Raqqa province mostly under their sway.
Mr Mohammed, one of the early “citizen journalists” who sent reports of the initial uprising against President Bashar al-Assad to the outside world, was among Aazaz’s luckiest people. He had been seized from his home by ISIS fighters, taken to the group’s headquarters in Aleppo city, a former children’s hospital, for interrogation, and then detained in a prison in another town, Hreitan.
Light of build, he managed to escape one night by squeezing through the bars of his cell and lowering himself to the ground with knotted blankets. When he made it home - and across the Turkish border - his father said ISIS had visited him to tell him his son was to be executed as a spy.
Mohammed Nour, who ran the media centre in Aazaz from where reports by local and international journalists were filed after the town was “liberated” from the regime in July 2012, was the son of a man who had disappeared in the Assad regime’s prisons before he was born.
Last September, ISIS came for the son after it defeated Mr Nour’s Northern Storm brigade. Like his father, he has not been seen since.
His mother said she had visited al-Bab, a town to the south-east still under ISIS control, to try to find him. “I go to the prisons, like I did with his father,” she said. “They say to come back later.”
Now 49, she never remarried, and Mohammed is her only child.
What is perhaps most remarkable is that despite the brutality, many residents of north-west Syria still back ISIS. Samer Amori, Mohammed Nour’s uncle, said that people who supported the regime now support ISIS. A more convincing explanation is that by demanding control of all aspects of its subjects’ lives, ISIS did at least manage to impose some sort of order on a Syria that is becoming more lawless as the war progresses.
But for many men and women, particularly the liberal activists, who have suffered under both the regime and ISIS, the recent fighting has brought the third year of the uprising to deeply depressing close.
Mr Primo, electrocuted by fighters from the regime and Assad, said he had always believed the West would intervene, and that what had happened in Tunisia and Libya would happen in Syria. Now it is clear that with the country little more than a fighting ground for rival warlords, some not even Syrian, the West has little stomach for involvement.
“When I started out I could never have imagined anything like this,” he said. “These people, they do not have our way of life, or of thinking.
It’s very strange to us. I didn’t expect it would turn out this way.”
French and Belgian Jihadists Boast About the Syrians They Slaughter
A cable news station in Paris has aired shocking video of French-speaking jihadists at work in Syria. The footage broadcast Thursday night on BFMTV played like a macabre postcard home, only the latest reminder that hundreds of French and thousands of European jihadists are waging war against Bashar al-Assad. The news channel has called it evidence that France’s own are “direct actors in the atrocities committed in Syria.”
The video excerpts are said to have been filmed over several days in February by French-speaking members of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS, a radical group of al-Qaeda dissidents. The brigade in the footage is said to comprise about 20 French nationals and 20 Belgians.
Heavily blurred for broadcast, the images provided to French journalists by supporters of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army are nevertheless plainly gruesome. Most disturbing perhaps is the juxtaposition of the young men all smiles —- for all appearances enjoying a summer holiday, footloose buddies on a camping trip—amid sheer horror.
“We used to haul jet skis, quads, and motocross bikes. Now, on the path to God, we haul apostates and miscreants. Those who combat us, those who combat Islam,” one woolly-capped, wispy-bearded twenty-something grins, speaking a mix of French and Arabic at the wheel of a blue Dodge pickup. “You can film my new trailer!” he tells the cameraman. The view swings past the truck’s cargo bed to a heap of bodies, seven or eight BFMTV tells us, who are said to be Syrian rebels and civilians freshly killed. Under a cloudless sky, their bodies are dragged without ceremony on a makeshift sled along the dirt of a plowed field to a mass grave.
Thousands of European nationals are believed to have traveled to Syria to join jihadist groups fighting to oust Assad. French media in recent months have narrated a disconcerting tick-tock of their country’s share of the fighters: Their comings and goings, arrests, even the anguish of their mothers. Interior Minister Manuel Valls in January estimated that 700 French nationals or residents of France were more or less involved in the Syrian conflict, that 250 were currently in Syria, 99 were in transit to get there, 150 had showed interest in going there, 76 had already returned, and that 21 had died on Syrian soil. The French anti-terrorist judge Marc Trévidic recently told Reuters of “a very clear accelerator, when the first generation of those who left came back to get their buddies.”
President François Hollande’s office announced Monday that a strategy and action plan had been decided in the battle against the Syrian jihadist networks and their recent radicalization, but details were promised for an unspecified later date.
The grisly footage obtained by BFMTV shows the French-speaking fighters arriving at a scene splayed with bodies. Bloody corpses are filmed up close. Deemed “apostates” by a man behind the camera, some appear to be fighters with Free Syrian Army insignia. Others are apparent civilians: a teenage boy in a Dolce & Gabbana jacket lies motionless beside a pile of plates he is assumed to have been carrying; a man in a kitchen lies dead in a pool of blood, next to the onion he is supposed to have been peeling when he was gunned down.
In the TV report, a BFM crew travels to Azaz, a town eight kilometers from the Turkish border, and finds a villa occupied until recently by fighters known locally as the “French Brigade,” said to be unable to converse fluently in Arabic with locals. At a roundabout in the town, one man recounts the Islamists’ taste for displaying the decapitated heads of foes atop a statue for all to see. On the same roundabout, a blurred line-up of heads features in a photo posted to a French-speaking jihadists' Facebook page last month: a nauseating spectacle that zealous followers are invited to “Like.”
Muslims Outnumber Catholics in Vienna Grade Schools
Muslim students, according to new statistics, now outnumber Roman Catholic students at middle and secondary schools in Vienna, the capital and largest city of Austria.
The data—which show that Muslim students are also on the verge of overtaking Catholics in Viennese elementary schools—reflect an established trend and provide empirical evidence of a massive demographic and religious shift underway in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country.
The Muslim population in Austria now exceeds 500,000 (or roughly 6% of the total population), up from an estimated 150,000 (or 2%) in 1990. The Muslim population is expected to reach 800,000 (or 9.5%) by 2030, according to recent estimates.
In the current school year, 10,734 Muslim students are enrolled in Viennese middle and secondary schools, compared to 8,632 Roman Catholic students, 4,259 Serbian Orthodox students and 3,219 students with "no religious persuasion," according to statistics compiled by the Vienna Board of Education (Stadtschulrat für Wien) and published by Radio Vatican website on March 21.
As far as elementary schools are concerned, there are 23,807 Roman Catholic students, followed by 17,913 Muslim students, 11,119 "non-religious" students, 6,083 Serbian Orthodox students and 2,322 Protestants.
The statistics show that the only Viennese schools where Muslims remain a distinct minority are in the gymnasium, advanced secondary schools that place a strong emphasis on academic learning rather than on vocational skills. Students graduating from a gymnasium are more likely than others to be admitted to attend university in Austria.
Austria is also in the process of introducing new taxpayer-funded textbooks for the formal teaching of Islam in all public elementary schools across the country.
The textbooks are called "Islam Hour" (Islamstunde) and have been prepared by the Islamic Religious Authority of Austria (Islamische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich, IGGiÖ), a Muslim umbrella organization whose main responsibility is the state-funded supply of Islamic religious education at Austrian public and private schools.
According to the IGGiÖ, the new textbooks are based on "secure and recognized sources of Islam" aimed at "embedding Islam into the lives of students." Unlike previous versions of the books, which were criticized for being "overly martial in tone" and for not being "sufficiently oriented toward European values," the new books have been developed based a "completely new didactic model for competency-based education."
Previously, the main textbook used for Islam instruction in Austrian public schools was a vehemently anti-Western screed entitled "The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam" (Erlaubtes und Verbotenes im Islam) and authored by none other than Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Among other Islamic doctrines, the book taught students that Islamic Sharia law takes precedence over secular laws, that women have fewer rights than men, and that those who abandoned Islam are to be put to death.
The book was eventually banned from Austrian schools (although it is still being openly promoted on the website of the Vienna Islamic Centre, the largest mosque in Austria) after Al-Qaradawi[1] — a spiritual advisor for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — began publicly endorsing suicide attacks against Jews as "martyrdom in the name of Allah."
The new textbooks come in four volumes along with a companion CD that includes not only recitations of the Koran, but also a rap song which deals with the aspects of Ramadan.
In an interview with the Austrian newspaper Heute, an IGGiÖ project manager named Amena Shakir said the aim of the new textbooks is to "learn about how the Koranic suras [chapters] can be applied to everyday life." Shakir added that this is the first time Islam is being taught to Austrian students in the German language and that the textbooks contextualize Islam in the Austrian countryside rather than in Arabia.
"We want our young people in Austria have a sense of home," said the president of IGGiÖ, Fuat Sanac. "We have tried for years to bring these books into being."
Sanac also called on the Austrian government to approve and promulgate a new "Islam Law" that would provide Muslims with more legal rights and protections than they enjoy in the current law, which dates back to 1912.
The original law was adopted to help integrate Muslim soldiers from Bosnia-Herzegovina into the Austro-Hungarian army of the Habsburg monarchy. The law recognized Islam as a religious community in Austria, and allowed Muslims to practice their religion in accordance with the laws of the state.
In an interview with Austrian Public Radio Ö1-Morgenjournal on March 21, the Minister for Integration and Foreign Affairs, Sebastian Kurz, said he would honor a campaign pledge to update the law, which would more clearly stipulate the rights and responsibilities of Muslims living in the country.
Kurz said Muslims would be expected to adhere to Austrian values (as yet undefined) and to acknowledge the primacy of Austrian law over Islamic Sharia law. That is to say, Muslims would be prohibited from citing Islamic law as legal justification for ignoring or disobeying Austrian civil laws, he said.
The new law would also clearly stipulate that Islam classes may not contradict or override Austria's civil educational system. In addition, Kurz said Islamic religious institutions in Austria should be financed exclusively from within Austria and that there should be more government scrutiny of funding obtained from abroad, presumably from Saudi Arabia and other oil rich Muslim countries.
At the same time, Muslims would obtain the legal right to operate their own cemeteries according to Islamic law. The law would also regulate the activities of Muslim clergy in hospitals, prisons and the army.
Kurz did not address Muslim demands for the official recognition of Islamic holidays (Muslim students are already entitled to two such holidays each year but Muslim workers are not) in Austria.
In addition, the Austrian government would actively promote the training of Muslim clergy (imams) within the Austrian university system (modeled on the Institute for Islamic Studies at the University of Vienna), with the aim of promoting a "European" Islam.
Kurz said he did not expect significant resistance to the initiative from other political parties in Austria. "We need a new law that clearly defines that there are rights and obligations for every individual in Austria," Kurz said. "It makes sense to have an orderly legal framework regarding Islam, a topic that often raises emotions. Austria needs a clear framework for Islam."
[1] Al-Qaradawi speaks openly about the goals of Islam: "What remains, then, is to conquer Rome. (...) This means that Islam will come back to Europe for the third time, after it was expelled from it twice. (...) Conquest through Dawa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe! We will conquer America! Not through the sword but through our Dawa."
A Whole Lotta Liberal Corruption Going On
Has Nancy Pelosi seen a newspaper lately? (Pro tip, hon: As with the Obamacare monstrosity, you have to read it to find out what's in it.) I'd love to see her face in the wake of the veritable epidemic of Democratic corruption now sweeping the country. Pelosi's blink count must be off the charts.
I'm going to make it easy on Pelosi and put all of the latest cases in one handy rogues'-gallery reference list. But let's not be naïve. It's clear to me that the Barack Obama/Eric Holder DOJ is clearing the decks before the midterms. Prediction: The FBI's GOP corruption shoe will drop right before the elections for maximum distraction and damage. For now, let's take stock of the jackassery:
The Dirty Democratic Mayors' Club: Charlotte, N.C., mayor Patrick Cannon, who bragged about partying with the Obamas to help grease the wheels for city projects, was arrested this week on federal corruption and influence-peddling charges. He's accused of accepting gobs of cash payoffs and Las Vegas trips.
The bust follows former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin's conviction in January on corruption charges; former Trenton mayor Tony Mack's February conviction on charges of accepting cash bribes for a downtown parking garage; former San Diego mayor and serial groper Bob Filner's disgraceful resignation after conviction on sexual-harassment-related charges; former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's conviction on extortion, bribery, and conspiracy charges; and former Birmingham mayor Larry Langford's corruption and bribery conviction.
California state senator Leland Yee, gun grabber by day, alleged arms-trafficking gangsta by night: Yee made a decades-long career out of sanctimoniously demonizing gun owners and railing against the Second Amendment. He was arrested this week on corruption charges after an FBI sting found probable cause to believe Yee had conducted wire fraud and engaged in a conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and illegally import firearms. The pol from San Francisco's Chinatown went so far as to discuss "details of the specific types of weapons" with a prospective donor. Until he dropped out yesterday afternoon, Yee was a candidate for California secretary of state.
Pennsylvania state senator LeAnna Washington, party animal: This week, a judge ruled that the Keystone State could proceed with a trial against Washington, who reportedly forced her legislative staff for eight years to use taxpayer time and money for an annual birthday party whose proceeds were diverted to her campaign account. She is charged with felony theft of services and felony conflict of interest. More than a half-dozen former employees blew the whistle. "I am the f-ing senator," she screamed at one staffer who objected. "I do what the f- I want, and ain't nobody going to change me."
Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox, multiple-raid target: The powerful Democrat, beloved by the Left for his gay-marriage activism, announced last weekend that he is stepping down from office after FBI raids on his home and work offices. Fox is the target of several criminal investigations by the U.S. attorney's office, the FBI, the IRS, and state police. Mum's the word so far on the nature of the alleged criminal activity involved.
California state senator Ronald Calderon, all in the corrupted family: Calderon is on a paid leave of absence after being hit with a 24-count federal indictment for bribery and corruption. His brother also was charged with multiple counts of money laundering and influence peddling. Prosecutors allege the legislator accepted nearly $100,000 in bribes, plane trips, gourmet meals, and golf games in exchange for political favors. He also is accused of paying his daughter $39,000 for a phony office job and paying $40,000 in "consulting" fees for a campaign website that didn't exist.
California state senator Roderick Wright, lying liar: Also on paid leave, the entrenched Los Angeles-area politician is now fighting his January conviction on felony perjury, false declaration of candidacy, and fraudulent-voting charges. Wright claimed to live in a rented room in an Inglewood home within his district, but the jury found his true residence was outside the district, in upscale Baldwin Hills. The jury found he lied on candidacy declarations and voter-registration documents and fraudulently voted in five elections.
New York state assemblyman Bill Scarborough, shady jet-setter: The FBI and state authorities raided his home and offices as part of a probe into his travel-voucher practices. He blamed a "tabloid hit job" by theNew York Postover questionable per-diem claims totaling $60,000.
Illinois state representative Keith Farnham, child-porn suspect: After sponsoring two bills to increase penalties for child-porn possession, Farnham was the subject of state and federal raids last week on his home - for possession of child porn. Over the weekend, he resigned his seat, citing "serious health issues." Nowthere'sa euphemism.
Remember: Nancy Pelosi famously promised to "drain the moral swamp" and end the "culture of corruption." She cast herself and her minions as America's political clean-up crew. But once again, the culture-of-corruption boomerang has swung back around to smack Democrats in their smug mugs. The cynical Swamp Drainers just hope you forget it all by election time. Don't.
The current administration wants us to learn more about Muslims and accept their culture.
So, I'm making a sincere effort to learn to communicate with our Muslim friends.
I am learning to write Arabic in the name of 'cultural diversity.'
This is my first attempt at it:
Pakistani Christian gets death in blasphemy case
LAHORE: A court convicted a Pakistani Christian man and sentenced him to death Thursday in a blasphemy case that sparked a riot last year in the eastern city of Lahore, according to his lawyer.
Naeem Shakir, the lawyer for Sawan Masih, said a judge announced the verdict during a hearing at the jail where the trial has been held out of fears that Masih might be attacked on his way to court. Shakir said he would appeal.
Although Pakistan has never executed anybody under the law, crowds angered over blasphemy accusations have been known to take the law into their own hands and kill those they suspect of violating it. Once an accusation is made it is extremely difficult to reverse, in part because law enforcement personnel do not want to appear to be going easy on suspects.
Such vigilantism has created a climate of fear, forcing frightened judges into holding court sessions inside jails and keeping witnesses from coming to the defense of those on trial.
Many human rights activists say the blasphemy law, which allows for punishment of life in prison or death, is misused as a way to target people for personal gain or revenge.
The incident that led to Thursday's conviction began March 7 last year when a young Muslim man accused Masih of maligning the Prophet Muhammad. Police arrested Masih, but the next day a mob ransacked the neighborhood where he and other Christians live, setting fire to homes and destroying household possessions.
Fearing for their safety, hundreds of Christian families fled the area overnight ahead of the riots. Many in the neighborhood have since moved back, and their homes have been rebuilt.
The police arrested 83 suspects following the rampage, including the man who brought the complaint against Masih, said a Lahore police official, Rana Taseer Riaz. But so far none of the suspects have been convicted and all were released on bail, he said.
Pakistan's blasphemy law has existed since even before the country's 1947 founding. During the 1980s, the U.S.-backed military dictator, Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, amended it to add the death penalty and single out Islam as the religion that may not be insulted, among other changes.
Rolling Stones criticised after announcing Israel gig
Pro-Palestinian campaigners calling on Rolling Stones to cancel concert in Israel, claiming the band is allowing itself to become a "publicity tool".
The Rolling Stones were urged on Tuesday to abandon plans to perform in Israel after concluding a lucrative deal to play their first ever concert in the Jewish state.
Palestinians campaigners backing a cultural boycott of Israel said the band were being used as a "publicity tool" to "whitewash apartheid" by the Israeli government following confirmation that it would play before 55,000 fans in Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Park arena on June 4.
Details of the concert were disclosed by Shuki Weiss, an Israeli promoter, who hailed it as "a historic moment".
"I have no words to describe the enormity of this event," said Mr Weiss, who is reported to have paid the group between £2.4 million and £3 million for the concert. "It's a huge honor to bring the Rolling Stones to Israel, an honor for the country, the citizens, and mostly for the fans who have waited for this moment."
The announcement, which has been rumoured for weeks, came eight days after the suicide of L'Wren Scott, girfriend of Mick Jagger, the group's singer. It seemed certain to trigger a scramble for tickets, which go on sale online on Thursday at prices ranging from £120 to £495.
But it provoked a furious response from the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS), which warned that the band would "go down in history as one of the few artists willing to perform in Israel despite its system of occupation, colonisation and apartheid".
"We urge the Rolling Stones to refrain from playing in apartheid Israel and not to condone Israel's violations of international law and human rights against the Palestinian people," said Rafeef Ziadah, a BDS spokesman. She said the concert would serve Israel's "campaign to rebrand itself and will be used as a publicity tool by the Israeli government".
BDS has consistently pressed international artists and academics to boycott Israel in protest at its occupation of Palestinian territories.
Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman who is the organisation's best-known member, last year wrote an open letter to fellow musicians urging them not to perform in Israel. He also wrote to Scarlett Johansson, the Holywood actress, condemning her recent decision to abandon her role as an Oxfam ambassador and instead advertise for SodaStream, an Israeli drinks company that has a factory in the occupied West Bank.
Some high profile acts, including Annie Lennox and Elvis Costello, have said they will not play in Israel, while Stevie Wonder, the American singer, abandoned plans for a concert following a plea from Mr Waters. Other stars, including Madonna and Sir Paul McCartney, have defied the boycott calls and staged concerts in Israel.
Asked if Mr Waters would be contacting the Rolling Stones, Ms Ziadah said in an emailed response: " We will be working with all of our supporters to urge the Rolling Stones to abandon this ill-advised concert."
Bin Laden's Son-in-Law Convicted of Conspiring to Kill Americans
A federal jury in New York found senior al-Qaida member Sulaiman Abu Ghayth guilty on terrorism-related charges Wednesday, including conspiracy to kill Americans. In video statements and speeches released after the Sept. 11 attacks, Abu Ghayth promised similar attacks against U.S. and Western targets.
Evidence presented during the three-week trial included a screen shot of a video from September 12, 2001 showing Abu Ghayth sitting beside Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida members, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of the terrorist group. A videotaped statement broadcast a month later on al-Jazeera showed Abu Ghayth saying "there are thousands of Muslim youths who are eager to die and that the aircraft storm will not stop." He warned "Muslims in the United States and Britain, the children, and those who reject unjust U.S. policy not to travel by plane."
Abu Ghayth testified about being summoned by bin Laden to an Afghanistan mountain cave just hours after the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden acknowledged al-Qaida's responsibility and sought Abu Ghayth's help "to deliver a message to the world."
Abu Ghayth also tried to recruit terrorists from training camps and safe houses. The video messages sought not only to instill fear in Americans but also "drive more suicide terrorists to Al Qaeda," prosecutor John P. Cronan said during the trial.
Abu Ghayth, who was married to bin Laden's daughter, was captured and brought to the United States last year, where he was indicted on terrorism-related charges. He was convicted on three counts related to a conspiracy to kill Americans, to provide material support to terrorist and providing actual support. He faces a maximum of life in prison for the first count and a maximum of 15 years for the latter two counts.
"He was more than just Usama bin Laden's propaganda minister," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a Justice Department press release. "Within hours after the devastating 9/11 attacks, Abu Ghayth was using his position in al Qaeda's homicidal hierarchy to persuade others to pledge themselves to al Qaeda in the cause of murdering more Americans."
Arab summit refuses to recognize Israel as 'Jewish state'
KUWAIT CITY: Arab leaders fully back a Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a flashpoint issue which is threatening to derail the US-led peace talks, a final Arab summit statement said on Wednesday.
"We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state," said the declaration, issued at the end of the two-day meeting in Kuwait City.
The Palestinians recognised Israel at the start of the peace process in the early 1990s, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted they now acknowledge it as the national homeland of the Jewish people, in a move which would effectively torpedo the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.
The Arab League had already rejected the demand, in a statement issued from its Cairo headquarters earlier this month.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is facing an uphill battle to keep peace talks on track beyond an April 29 deadline, with the negotiations waylaid over several key issues, including the question of recognition.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has made it clear that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Netanyahu has placed the recognition dispute at the forefront of the talks, describing Arab rejection of the Jewish state as the "root of the conflict".
For the Palestinians, the issue is intimately entwined with the fate of their refugees who were forced out of their homes or fled in 1948 when Israel became a state. They see Netanyahu's demand as a way to sidestep a negotiated solution to the refugee question.
The strange 2008 McCain-Obama Presidential eligibility debate
Despite the misinformation being disseminated by our corrupt political-media culture, there is no ambiguity.
According to Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the Constitution, the narrative of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court case of Minor v. Happersett (1875), other legal opinions, precedence and historical background, Presidential eligibility requires that a candidate be born a US citizen of two US citizen parents at the time of birth.
If you are unwilling to accept the exhaustive legal documentation regarding the true meaning of "natural born" citizenship, you may try the common sense question:
Why has every President since Martin van Buren been a US citizen at birth of two citizen parents except Barack Obama and Chester A. Arthur, who lied about his personal history?
In order to understand the political machinations surrounding the 2008 Presidential eligibility debate, it is important to know that there have been numerous recent attempts by Democrats and Republicans to amend the Article II "natural born citizen" clause, starting in 1975 when New York Democrat House Rep. Jonathon B. Bingham introduced House Joint Resolution 33, which clearly recognized the distinction between "citizen" and "natural born citizen:"
"Provides that a citizen of the United States otherwise eligible to hold the Office of President shall not be ineligible because such citizen is not a natural born citizen."
It may be that our corrupt political-media culture, having failed to change the Constitution by legal amendment, achieved it in 2008 by political fait accompli.
On January 25, 2008, before the Super Tuesday Presidential primary vote, the New York Times endorsed Senator John McCain for President.
One month after endorsing McCain, on February 28, 2008, about the time Barack Obama began to overtake Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Presidential primary, the New York Times published an article questioning McCain's eligibility to be President according to the natural born citizen clause of the Constitution. According to the Times article, he was born outside the continental United States on a US military installation in the Panama Canal Zone and, therefore, possibly ineligible. The Times story was immediately followed by numerous other news items questioning McCain's candidacy as well as lawsuits in California and New Hampshire challenging his Constitutional eligibility for the Presidency.
Strangely enough, on February 29, 2008, the day after the Times article appeared challenging McCain's eligibility, Senator Barack Obama's campaign announced he would co-sponsor legislation already introduced on February 28, 2008 by his political ally Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) to ensure that John McCain could become president, even though he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.
Obama said: "Senator McCain has earned the right to be his party's nominee, and no loophole should prevent him from competing in this campaign."
The McCaskill Senate bill, "Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act", which she wrote by hand on a notepad after reading the Times article, specified a new part of the definition of "natural born citizen," which, if the bill had passed, would have included "any person born to any citizen of the United States while serving in the active or reserve components of the United States Armed Forces."
The initial McCaskill legislation was eventually superseded by Senate Resolution 511.
SR 511 was introduced April 10, 2008 by McCaskill and co-sponsored by Senators Leahy (D-VT), Obama (D-IL), Coburn (R-OK), Clinton (D-NY) and Webb (D-VA) and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. It was reported out of committee without amendment by Senator Leahy on April 24, 2008.
On April 30, 2008, the non-binding (no force of law) SR 511 was passed by unanimous consent (no recorded vote) stating:
"That John Sidney McCain, III, is a ‘‘natural born Citizen'' under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States."
Again, strangely enough, the legal basis for SR 511, also contained in the Congressional Record, was provided to the Senate by former Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, a McCain adviser, and Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, an Obama supporter.
On April 18, 2008, the New York Times concluded that the eligibility issue could only be resolved by a Constitutional amendment, but confirmed the political fait accompli.
"Obviously, we are not going to get the Constitution amended in the next two or three months," said Ms. McCaskill, who was driven to clear up any ambiguity after learning of the potential problem. "We are just trying to send the strongest signal we can as quickly and simply as we can."
So, in April 2008, it appears that McCaskill's "signal" was a political deal struck between the Democrats and Republicans that would provide cover for both McCain and Obama on eligibility and, perhaps, spawned a conspiracy of silence on the issue.
Although it is customary for the parties to certify the eligibility of their candidates under Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the Constitution, the Democrat Party chair, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), made that certification in 2008 only to the State of Hawaii, which has a statutory requirement that such Constitutional certification be made. The remaining 49 states received no such certification in support of the eligibility of Barack Obama.
Allegedly Pelosi prepared two different certifications verifying the eligibility of Barack Obama for the Presidency, which were both prepared on the same day, August 28, 2008, and notarized by the same individual.
The Certification of Nomination sent to the state of Hawaii mentioned the Constitutional requirement:
"THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democrat Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 through 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution.. "
The Certification of Nomination sent to the other 49 states did not mention the Constitutional requirement:
"THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democrat Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 through 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively.. "
We are asking nicely. Nancy, why the two certifications? We can handle the truth.
The debate over McCain's eligibility continued well into September 2008, when Lawrence B. Solum, the John E. Cribbet Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, published an article in the Michigan Law Review entitled "Originalism and the Natural Born Citizen Clause" stating:
"What was the original public meaning of the phrase that establishes the eligibility for the office of President of the United States? There is general agreement on the core of its meaning. Anyone born on American soil whose parents are citizens of the United States is a natural born citizen."
Yet again, strangely enough, in April 2010, as the controversy surrounding Obama's eligibility gained momentum, Solum republished his original article, but substituted the word "parent" for "parents", changing the interpretation in a way that could benefit Obama.
Finally, strangely enough, in October 2011, Attorney Leo Donofrio, provided evidence that, during the run-up to the 2008 election, twenty-five U.S. Supreme Court opinions referencing Minor v. Happersett (1875), the case which suggests Obama's ineligibility for the Presidency, were scrubbed then republished at Justia.com, a main internet resource for Supreme Court decisions. According to that report, Justia.com CEO Tim Stanley was associated with Obama For America 2008.
Perhaps all of the above are easily explained coincidences not requiring any investigation. Or maybe, like other cases of willful ignorance, our corrupt political-media culture is just trying to run out the clock on Barack Obama.
