Jihad: Waging Peace and Justice

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

by Prof. Mohamed Elmasry

1. The word Jihad (from the Arabic root Ga-Ha-Da) is a verbal noun meaning exerting an effort, expounding an energy, striving, working to improve, struggling, doing one’s best.
From the same Arabic root, there is Majhood (effort), Mojtahed (a person who does his/her best), Ijtehad (Islamic science of deducting Islamic laws from basic sources), Johid (potential or energy as in electrical potential or energy) and Jihad (persuasion as in (29:8), (31:15), (6:109)).

2. Jihad in Islam is waging peace and justice. Jihad is a war against unjust, oppression, exploitation, tyranny, fear, corruption and denying the masses basic human rights (4:75-76) and to establish justice, peace, freedom, especially freedom of religion, security, equity and social justice (2:193).
The tools for launching this war are knowledge, effort, resources, activism, awareness, praying, persuasion, combativeness, advocacy in addition to exercising social, political and military pressures (9:111), (8:60), (9:44-45).
The use of the military option is not ruled out and would be used if and only if it is the only option to stop a greater evil (2:216). The rules of engagement are so strenuous for a given military option to qualify as Jihad. Not every military campaign is a Jihad (2:244).

3. Jihad in Islam is not meant for domination, and not to achieve personal, territorial and/or economical gains and not to exercise power and control. Any type of aggression would make Jihad null and void (2:190-191).

4. One of the most important objectives of Jihad in Islam is to stand for those who are oppressed and/or forced out of their homes just because of their religion (22:39-40).

5. Those who are performing outward Jihad must also spiritually reform themselves by performing (al-jihad al-akbar), an inward personal and more difficult type of Jihad (29:69), (22:78).
This type of Jihad is the internal spiritual and moral struggle which should lead to the victory over the ego. This is an important, necessary, and meritorious type of Jihad. In effect, this type of Jihad is the one which we wage against our lower selves, according to the Prophetic traditions. This personal effort made to overcome the self is considered to be “the greatest Jihad”, as mention in a Hadith narrated by Imam Ahmed.

6. It is impossible for Jihad to be performed by an oppressor, a tyrant, a transgressor or an exploiter; it does not matter what that person/government/group calls his/her/its actions. Nor there is Jihad for those who are after personal, tribal and national gains (9:24).
It is precisely in such a context that Jihad meant not to have a negative but a positive meaning both inwardly and outwardly and it is in this sense that Islam has stressed the positive aspect of combativeness; peace belongs to those who are inwardly at peace and outwardly at war with the forces of unjust.

7. Jihad is an unselfish and noble effort for the good of humanity (29:6), involving many sacrifices; money, time, effort, and the ultimate sacrifice of all, life itself. But the rewards of this unselfish and noble act are immense (29:69), (9:41), (4:74), (3:142), (9:16), (9:111), (49:15) and its negligence is costly for humanity (9:38-39), (9:24), (9:81).

8. For political and historical reasons, the word Jihad in the West connotes violence. It is most often translated into English not only as “a holy war,” but also a war waged against non-Muslims, a kind of Crusade in reverse.
Today in the West the term Jihad leads people to believe that Muslims are supposedly encouraged to take up arms in order to impose their faith by force, annihilating those who reject it.
This is contrary to the Islamic teachings that it is not for man but for God alone to judge and punish disbelief and that compulsion in religious matters is formally forbidden (2:256). It is regrettable that in Western public opinion, Jihad seems to have retained only the misleading meaning of “holy war.”

9. The Qur’an explicitly safeguards the clergy, declaring that God protects non-Muslim places of worship: “Did not God check one set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of God is commemorated in abundant measure.”
This prohibition is corroborated and elucidated by the Prophetic tradition which forbids soldiers to do harm to any religious persons, whereas they could logically have been the primary targets if the motive of “holy war” had been religious.
Without putting Western civilization on trial, we should nevertheless mention by way of contrast that several centuries later, the founders of international law in Europe excluded the Muslim “infidels” from the benefits of the law of wars. Yet, the concept of “holy war” remains branded as the expression of the Muslims’ religious fanaticism. How ineradicable are the prejudices!

10. Jihad was and still being invoked in Muslim protests against foreign occupation, oppression and exploitation during colonialism, post-colonialism, and neocolonialism, a cause perceived as both just and necessary.
However some Muslims must bear responsibility for the bad name given to Jihad. Today some contemporary governments and groups in Muslim countries make reference to Jihad only in its military meaning, through words and deeds, in order to hide their moral, social and political bankruptcy. In the process they kill the innocent, cause only death and destruction and do not advance the cause of peace and justice. But regrettably they are the ones who show up regularly in the newspapers and on television.

11. Today Muslim’s outlook on Jihad are one of the following: a. All types of Jihad is irrelevant to Muslims today. b. All types of Jihad is justified except these types which involve the use of armed resistance. c. All types of Jihad is very much relevant and needed today, from the inward spiritual struggle against one’s lower self, to activism for peace, justice, social justice,…etc, to armed resistance whenever armed resistance is justified; for example against foreign occupation, oppression, tyranny and unjust.

[Prof. Mohamed Elmasry is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.]

source:
http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com/ar/ar_jihad?printer=1.php

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Key excerpts: The Pope’s speech

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Key excerpts: The Pope’s speech

Remarks by Pope Benedict XVI in a speech in Germany have provoked outrage in the Muslim world and led to demands that the pontiff apologise for “insulting” Islam.

Below are some key excerpts from the Pope’s speech at the University of Regensburg, entitled Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections.

ON UNIVERSITY LIFE

It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium.

The university [of Bonn, where the Pope taught for a period from 1959] was also very proud of its two theological faculties. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university – it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.

That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

ON HOLY WAR

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read… of part of the dialogue carried on – perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara – by the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

In the seventh conversation…the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God,” he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.”

ON RELIGION AND REASON

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

ON THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE

The liberal theology of the 19th and 20th Centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenisation, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative.

“The intention here is… of broadening our concept of reason… Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today “, Pope Benedict XVI

Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack’s goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason.

[But]…any attempt to maintain theology’s claim to be “scientific” would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self… This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that… religion or ethics no longer concern it.

CONCLUSION

The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application… Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.

In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/5348456.stm

Published: 2006/09/15 10:37:32 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Related News:

Pope urged to retract Islam remarks
Pope Benedict XVI is being urged to retract comments he made linking Islam with violence after they provoked a wave a condemnation from across the Muslim world.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5D2B8367-5315-4D52-B544-EE402F4F4C16.htm

Turkish Lawmaker Compares Pope To Hitler

ANKARA, Turkey — A Turkish lawmaker said Pope Benedict XVI would go down in history “in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini” for remarks he made about Islam. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican’s ambassador to express regret over the remarks.
http://www.wral.com/apworldnews/9856565/detail.html

Remarks by Pope Prompt Muslim Outrage, Protests

BEIRUT, Sept. 15 — A medieval reference in an academic lecture by Pope Benedict XVI unleashed a wave of denunciations, outrage and frustration across the Muslim world Friday, with officials in Turkey and Pakistan condemning the pontiff, Islamic activist groups organizing protests and a leading religious figure in Lebanon demanding that he personally apologize.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500800.html

Fury Over Pope’s Remarks Raises Concerns

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Pakistan’s legislature unanimously condemned Pope Benedict XVI. Lebanon’s top Shiite cleric demanded an apology. And in Turkey, the ruling party likened the pontiff to Hitler and Mussolini and accused him of reviving the mentality of the Crusades.
http://www.wral.com/apworldnews/9858855/detail.html

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Taliban not behind all violence in Afghanistan, says Nato chief

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Taliban not behind all violence in Afghanistan, says Nato chief

Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday September 15, 2006
The Guardian

The Taliban should not be blamed for all the violence in Afghanistan, which was also being perpetrated by al-Qaida remnants and criminals, Nato’s top commander said yesterday.

“There is a tendency to characterise all of the violence in Afghanistan as the resurgence of the Taliban,” said US General James Jones, the alliance’s supreme allied commander Europe. “This is inaccurate. It doesn’t capture the nature of the problem.” He said the violence had other causes, including “the strong presence of the drug cartels which have their own infrastructure, their own export system, their own security system …”

Addressing the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna, Gen Jones said: “I would caution that we should not make the Taliban 10 feet tall [bigger than they are].” The new weapons being used were available to “all of the actors, not just the Taliban”, he said.

Military commanders believe a minority of fighters attacking British troops in Helmand province, and mainly Canadian troops in neighbouring Kandahar province, are hardcore Taliban. The majority, they suggest, are local people paid by the Taliban who offer significantly more – about £5 a day – than the money paid to recruits to the Afghan army.

Commanders are also concerned about what they call Taliban propaganda that troops are occupying the country and threatening local livelihoods by preparing to eradicate the opium poppy crop. They say Nato cannot easily counter this message when soldiers are battling the Taliban rather than winning “hearts and minds”. Gen Jones urged the international community to tackle opium production, which provides more than half the country’s income. Nato commanders do not want to get directly involved in poppy eradication: that is the job of civil agencies and the Afghan authorities, they say.

Meanwhile defence sources expressed optimism that the 1,000-strong reserve battalion requested by Nato commanders would be agreed by the time alliance defence ministers meet in Slovenia at the end of the month.

source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1873122,00.html

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

9-11 : “The more we research, the more doubt we”

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Now also Swiss say:

“The more we research, the more doubt we”

BY ELIE PETER

15.09.2006 | 12:03: 15

ZURICH – 2973 humans died with the notices of 9/11. “Bin Laden” and “aluminium Kaida”, the Bush clan cried. The world believed him. In the meantime even scientists doubt the Bush version. Also Swiss university University of Albert A. Stahel (63) and Daniele Ganser (34) place now hot questions.

“Something is not correct”, says strategy expert Stahel in the “world week” and refers to the “incomplete” official 9/11-Report of the US Government of 2004.

In relation to VIEW the university professor confirms the criticism:

Osama Ben Laden cannot be “the large godfather” behind the notices. It did not have enough means of communication.

Stahel doubts that a passenger airline cracked in the Pentagon: “For flight beginners it is actually impossible to meet the building so exactly.”

Seven hours after the twin Towers beside it the World trade center 7 collapsed. The official version: It burned for a long time. Stahel: “Nothing at all is clear.”

Still as Stahel historian Daniele Ganser, its colleague at the University of Zurich continues to go. Also it calls the official US version “a conspiracy theory”: “There are 3 theories, which we should treat equally”:

“Surprise theory” Bin Laden and Al Kaida implemented the notices.

“Let it intentionally happen” parts of the US Government knew the aluminum dock since plans. They did not react, in order to legitimize a series from wars to.

“Lead it intentionally out” the notices by the Pentagon and/or secret services were implemented. The being shop videos are falsified. 3000 humans were sacrificed for strategic interests.

Ganser: “The more we research, the we doubt more of Bush version.” For it it is conceivable that the Bush government was responsible. “Bush lied already so much! And already 1962 gave it in the Pentagon a plan to sacrifice innocent US citizens for own interests.” As far as Ganser Stahel does not go: “I place only questions.”

source:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blick.ch%2Fnews%2Fausland%2F9-11%2Fartikel45057&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Americans in Denial about 9/11

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Americans in Denial about 9/11

By Matt Taibbi

09/14/06 “Rolling Stone” — – So, why did they hate us after all?

We sure blew off that question nicely. As with everything else in this country, our response to 9/11 was a heroic compendium of idiocy, cowardice, callow flag-waving, weepy sentimentality (coupled with an apparently bottomless capacity for self-pity), sloth, laziness and partisan ignorance.

We dealt with 9/11 in many ways. We instantly dubbed everyone who died in the accident a hero and commissioned many millions (billions?) in mawkish elegiac art. We created a whole therapy industry to deal with our 9/11-related grief, made a few claustrophobic two-star Hollywood movies about the bombings, read Lisa Beamer’s book and bought that DVD narrated by Rudy, watched Law and Order entertainments about sensational murders committed that morning and left for Jerry Orbach to solve, made bushels of quasi-religious references to “hallowed ground.” We made many careers out of assigning blame for the attacks, with the right blaming Bill Clinton, Michael Moore blaming George Bush and the clinically insane blaming those mysterious demolition experts who allegedly wired the bottoms of the towers with the explosives that “really” caused the tragedy. And we talked about 9/11 — to death. We blathered on so much about the attacks and whined so hard about our “lost innocence” that the rest of the world, initially sympathetic, ended up staring at us in suicidally impatient agony, a can of kerosene overturned above its head, like the old lady sitting next to Robert Hays in Airplane!

We did just about everything except honestly ask ourselves what the hell really happened, and why.

That process of self-examination was flawed from the start. We were screwed the moment Fareed Zakaria wrote his infamous “The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?” essay for Newsweek a few weeks after the attacks. The question — why do they hate us? — was maybe the right question, but that was only if everyone could have agreed on what it meant. For what do we mean by they, and what do we mean by us? I for one am not entirely sure we’re clear on these points, even now.

That we couldn’t agree on who they were should be obvious by now. To the Bush administration the answers to the they/us questions were, respectively, “foreigners” and “America.” From the outset the Bush crew showed that they were both unwilling and unable to budge from the post-WWII political paradigm they’d all grown up under, and viewed the 9/11 events purely as an attack on the American nation-state by a belligerent foreign power. Their solution to the terrorism problem revolved entirely around a strategy for dealing with those foreign nation-states that were the “sponsors” of terrorism — Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea. It was characteristic of the fourth-rate minds in this White House that they not only immediately got lost in the wrong political paradigm in response to the bombing, but picked the wrong country, Iraq, to punish for the crime. If we give them another ten years at it they’ll probably end up introducing market reform to Antarctica as a backup plan.

Bush and his buddies grew up in the Cold War, an era where two countries dominated the world and even the scraggliest warlord in the central African jungle was usually a client of one or the other. It was a fun time for the overgrown Risk-playing nerds inhabiting America’s think tanks, who spent half a century describing all human life as an ongoing chess match between life-affirming American capitalism on the one hand and, on the other, the bloodsucking communist religion cruelly foisted upon the world by a conspiratorial bund of grubby German Jews (Hitler was eighty years too late!) and French homosexuals. That was what it came down to: World politics for half a century was a pissing match between two warring factions in the sociology department of the international University of Well-Fed White People. Things were so simple, even George Bush could understand them.

Well, things have changed since then. The operating conflict on earth now is no longer capitalism vs. communism, but one pitting organization vs. anarchy. All over the world, the borders of nation-states are blurring and becoming more and more meaningless. From the north Indian subcontinent, to the jungles of the Amazon basin, to the Middle East, and especially to West and Central Africa, nations are fast losing their integrity while local warlords and gangs are taking over. In some places in the world, authority changes more from block to block than nation to nation. In countries like Pakistan, which last week was forced to sign a humiliating peace accord with belligerents on its own territory of Waziristan, a tribal leader can twist the nipples of a nuclear power and not only keep his neck but come out ahead of the game afterward. In the late Eighties and early Nineties the Risk nerds squealed with delight over the supposedly unipolar world created by the fall of the Berlin Wall, but actually the change was from bipolar to apolar. There was anarchy and a crisis of international identity on the other side of that wall. Our pole, one might say, turned out to be a lot smaller than we thought it was.

So what happened? We never got that far in our reasoning. The farthest we ventured, before returning to our regularly scheduled programming, was a vague concession that the world was now “different.” “All of this was brought upon us in a single day — and night fell on a different world,” said George Bush in his “Churchillian” State of the Union address that next January. “The United States confronts a very different world today,” opined the 9/11 commission report. It was “After 9/11, A Different World,” as CBS News put it. Different how? Well, that’s the part we haven’t really figured out yet.

For the most part, America looks pretty much like it looked before 9/11. We spend most of our time pounding Ding-Dongs and Sonic burgers, watching ESPN and surfing porn sites, while transnational corporations — the silent allies of drug cartels and warlords in the dismantling of the traditional nation-state — install turnstiles in Congress and steadily move our entire manufacturing economy overseas. Our culture is a parade of idiot reality shows where ordinary citizens eat caterpillars for money and Southern jocks drive moving billboards in a circle at 200 mph in front of euphoric crowds of a hundred thousand. In the intellectual north, our braver political dissidents dress in T-shirts with the face of George Bush morphed onto a pig’s body and watch documentaries in which other intellectuals brag about being tricked by the Republicans into voting to invade the wrong country.

So what’s changed? Well, we now hang our heads when we remember that dark day, kneel before the appropriate icons (Pat Tillman, firefighters, the Flight 93 passengers) at the appropriate times, and periodically make sure to remember the Big Lesson, a.k.a. Anything Can Happen, Even to Those Such as Us. The Monday Night Football crew this week commemorated 9/11 by bringing a firefighter named Tim Buckley into the booth; when asked what was different now, the humbled Buckley said that after 9/11, you have to think about things more when you go out on a call. “You don’t know what to expect, after something like that,” he sighed, shaking his head. Somber nods all around to that in the booth, and then, with the snap of a finger, back to the field — Third and 16 for the struggling Raiders . . .

In this light one could almost view our response to 9/11 as a triumph of the American system. If nineteen knife-wielding lunatics blowing a hole in the middle of Manhattan on international television can’t even temporarily knock us out of “What, me worry?” mode, you have to feel pretty good about our future chances for remaining just as cheerfully numb through even a more serious disruption of our fantasy existence.

America’s response to 9/11 was basically to blow off the entire question of why it happened, change the set-design behind the same old us-vs.-evil commies cowboy-movie worldview, and to patch the hole blown in our self-esteem with a crude mix of stage-managed self-congratulation and sentimental claptrap. Our failure to actually win our subsequent self-declared war on the evildoers we explained away by using a modern innovation, i.e. taking a New-Agey approach to our shortcomings and forgiving ourselves for our little imperfections. In the Dr. Phil age, actual achievement isn’t important, so long as you’re comfortable with yourself! Make a list every morning, think about the good things in life! Living in Madison Avenue’s irony age helps also — when even Tony Soprano pours his heart out to a shrink every week, it’s not hard to convince Americans that they’re still tough, even though Osama bin Laden is still doing bong hits on Al Jazeera five years after we boldly promised to kick his ass.

Whatever happened to actually being tough? What happened to speaking softly while we carry that big stick? Of staring problems bravely in the face, of taking the world seriously? History long ago washed that generation of “us” away, along with the world we still think we live in.

source:
http://www.preview.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11618300/the_low_post_we_still_have_no_idea_iwhyi_911_happened

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US Terrorize The World – 23 Shabaan 1427 H (16.9.06)

 

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The Pope’s Insulting Comments Will Only Fuel ‘War on Terror’ Propaganda

UK, September 15, 2006 ­ Pope Benedict’s recent comments about Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Islam have been rightly criticised and condemned around the world. Speaking in Germany, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) had brought the world only “evil and inhuman” things.
http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net

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Key excerpts: The Pope’s speech

Remarks by Pope Benedict XVI in a speech in Germany have provoked outrage in the Muslim world and led to demands that the pontiff apologise for “insulting” Islam.

Below are some key excerpts from the Pope’s speech at the University of Regensburg, entitled Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections.
SEE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5348456.stm

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Pope urged to retract Islam remarks

The pope provoked anger after criticising Islam and its concept of jihad on Tuesday during a six-day visit to his native Germany, citing a 14th-century Christian emperor who said that Prophet Mohammed had brought the world “evil and inhuman” things.
http://snipurl.com/wh9g

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Turkish Lawmaker Compares Pope To Hitler

A Turkish lawmaker said Pope Benedict XVI would go down in history “in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini” for remarks he made about Islam. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican’s ambassador to express regret over the remarks.
http://www.wral.com/apworldnews/9856565/detail.html

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Fury Over Pope’s Remarks Raises Concerns

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Pakistan’s legislature unanimously condemned Pope Benedict XVI. Lebanon’s top Shiite cleric demanded an apology. And in Turkey, the ruling party likened the pontiff to Hitler and Mussolini and accused him of reviving the mentality of the Crusades.
http://www.wral.com/apworldnews/9858855/detail.html

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ISLAMIC CONGRESS REJECTS POPE’S “IGNORANT” REMARKS ON ISLAM

* “JIHAD” NOT A CALL TO VIOLENCE, BUT A “CHERISHED SPIRITUAL VALUE” *

The Canadian Islamic Congress has responded with shock and concern to remarks made earlier this week by Pope Benedict XVI calling the Islamic concept of “Jihad” both unreasonable and against the nature of God.
http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com/ar/ar_jihad.php

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U.S. MUSLIMS CALL FOR DIALOGUE OVER POPE’S COMMENTS ON ISLAM

CAIR seeks meeting with Vatican representative in Washington, D.C.

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 9/15/2006) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called for increased dialogue between Muslims and Catholics over the controversy sparked by remarks perceived as insulting to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad made by Pope Benedict XVI. CAIR is also seeking a meeting with the Vatican’s representative in Washington, D.C., to discuss the remarks.

In an address on Tuesday, the Pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor as saying: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
URL: http://www.cair.com

SEE: Muslim Leaders Blast Pope’s Comments (Washington Post)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500800.html

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Islamophobia Colors Austria Electioneering

VIENNA ­ Islamophobia is coloring the election campaigns of right-leaning parties, vying to court the votes of anti-immigrant voters in the October parliamentary polls.

It claims that several parties, which it did not name, were trying to Islamize Europe and render its natives a minority in their own countries.
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2006-09/14/06.shtml

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Americans in Denial about 9/11 – So, why did they hate us after all?

We sure blew off that question nicely. As with everything else in this country, our response to 9/11 was a heroic compendium of idiocy, cowardice, callow flag-waving, weepy sentimentality (coupled with an apparently bottomless capacity for self-pity), sloth, laziness and partisan ignorance.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14987.htm

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9/11 : CIA Learned in ‘02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14984.htm

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9/11 : Friendship, then missiles in terror sting

FBI agent details how informant was used to build case against Albany mosque leader, pizza shop owner
http://snipurl.com/wh9d

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9/11 : Fortress America is an ugly America

Of all the stories that ran this week remembering Sept. 11, 2001, and its impact on our country, one of the best I saw was written by the Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic, Blair Kamin. Kamin was lamenting how the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have resulted in dismembering Washington, D.C.’s architectural beauty, turning this “once-lovely city of broad diagonal avenues and open vistas conceived in 1791 by French engineer Pierre L’Enfant” into a militarized zone.

“Capitol Hill is a zone of fear, welcoming the tourists with fences, slanted concrete barriers, steel walls that pop out of the pavement and steel posts called bollards that are designed to hold a vehicle-delivered bomb at bay,” he wrote. “To visit here now is to realize that America has entered a new phase, in which various arms of the federal government have started replacing the temporary security measures installed in the aftermath of Oklahoma City and Sept. 11 with permanent ones.”
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=98953&ntpid=0

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9/11 WHISTLEBLOWER RAIDED BY SWAT TEAM ( WITH AUDIO)

Ground zero hero Major Mike McCormack says he was deliberately targeted for helping release documents on EPA government cover-up, says 75% of police, firemen believe 9/11 cover-up
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2006/150906whistleblowerraided.htm

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9/11 : Venezuela’s Chavez says Bush planned 9/11 attacks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13C-Powt6Zg

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Largest Newspaper in Switzerland asks if Bush was behind 9-11

http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/9-11/artikel45057

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9/11 : Mossad Agents Arrested In Attempt To Bomb Mexican Congress

As reported in La Vox De Aztlan, two men, one of them a former Israeli Colonel and Mossad agent, were arrested INSIDE the Mexican congress carrying 9mm pistols and dynamite, but were released following intense pressure from the Israeli Embassy.
http://www.rense.com/general17/mossadagentsarrested.htm

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9/11 : Israeli Diplomat Carrying Large Quantity Of Explosives Arrested In Argentina

On Wednesday 9th August 2006, Ezeiza airport police arrested an important Israeli diplomat carrying a considerable quantity of explosives. The Zionist representative was en route to Chile and was detained minutes before boarding a plane.

For years, various reporters and indepdendent researchers have been highlighting the false nature of the “attacks” on the Israeli embassy in Argentina and on the headquarters of AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association which was “truck bombed” in July 1997 and the blame placed on Hizb’allah)

This occurred about a month ago. Did you ever see one word of it on ABCNNBBCBS?
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/editorials/signs20060914_IsraeliDiplomatCarryingLargeQuantityOfExplosivesArrestedInArgentina.php

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7/7 investigative video. Truth about the London bombing

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4943675105275097719

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Video: Ludicrous Diversion – 7/7 London Bombings Documentary

On the 7th of July 2005 London was hit by a series of explosions. You probably think you know what happened that day. But you don’t.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14988.htm

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Tortured logic

The administration, apparently untroubled by this disagreement, is now asking Congress to declare that detainees who claim violations of the Geneva Convention may not have their day in court.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14985.htm

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Outlawed – Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the “War on Terror”

The U.S. government-sponsored program of renditions is an unlawful practice in which numerous persons have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional human rights abuses including torture and enforced disappearance.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14989.htm

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A Nightmare for the U.S.A.

The bad dream goes like this. It’s some time in the near future, 2007, 2008 or soon after. Guided by a religious fanatic whose goal was to spread American Style Democracy throughout the world, the USA has lost its financial and moral standing. It turns out that liberating people at gunpoint simply does not win hearts and minds. “Coalition” Troops were not showered with flowers as they marched into Baghdad. It was not a re-enactment of the Liberation of Paris.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/chartier/chartier26.html

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Irked by the spread of democracy

t’s no wonder that Cheney isn’t happy with the spread of democracy to the American foreign-policy debate. Not only did Cheney have to answer Tim Russert for a whole series of spurious prewar claims and badly mistaken predictions. He must also be distressed with how different the political world is now from what it was four years ago, when he and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began building their case for the Iraq war.

The American people are finally waking up to what has been done to their country, and what has been done internationally in their name.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003259054_dionne15.html

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No News Is Slow News

The news that doesn’t make the front pages or the BBC bulletins is ’slow news’. For example, the resistance to foreign power by the Palestinians, ordinary Iraqis and Afghans is ’slow news’ while the internecine machinations of Bush and Blair is ‘regular news’.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14982.htm

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Taliban not behind all violence in Afghanistan, says Nato chief

“There is a tendency to characterise all of the violence in Afghanistan as the resurgence of the Taliban,” said US General James Jones, the alliance’s supreme allied commander Europe. “This is inaccurate. It doesn’t capture the nature of the problem.” He said the violence had other causes, including “the strong presence of the drug cartels which have their own infrastructure, their own export system, their own security system …”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1873122,00.html

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Afghan militants kill 12 as Taliban forces regroup

As NATO troops exert pressure on Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, militants have regrouped in western provinces and ignited violence that has killed a dozen people in two days, officials said Thursday.
http://snipurl.com/wh91

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Taleban ’seize Afghan district’

The Taleban have ousted Afghan security forces from a district headquarters in the western Farah province after days of heavy fighting, police say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5349330.stm

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European powers refuse to send more troops to Afghanistan

In the face of dire warnings that the NATO-led occupation risks losing ground before a resurgence of support for the former Taliban regime, the major European members of the alliance have refused to send a single soldier.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/sep2006/afgh-s15.shtml

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The Fall of Waziristan: An Online History

The fall of North and South Waziristan and the rise of the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan was an event telegraphed by al-Qaeda and the Taliban
http://billroggio.com/archives/2006/09/the_fall_of_wazirist.php

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Iraq : Bush says he learns lesssons from Vietnam in Iraq war

Memo to President Bush: the biggest tactical mistake in Viet Nam (aside from the US’s military involvement) was the thought that we could win a land war from the air. We bombed, and bombed, and bombed, but the Viet Cong could always come back, harder.

The biggest tactical mistake this administration has made in Iraq(aside from US having invaded it) is thinking that we can win a land war from the air.

It is transparently obvious that you have learned absolutely nothing from the Viet NamWar. This administration is making the same idiotic moves all over again, and thinking that somehow, the outcome will be different.

One of the clinical definitions of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, and expecting a totally different outcome.
http://www.oxfordpress.com/business/content/shared/news/stories/2006/09/BUSH14_1STLD_COX_W8655.html

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Pentagon concludes US defeated in key Iraqi province

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/sep2006/iraq-s14.shtml

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U.S. Military Admit Defeat in Strategic Iraqi Province

One top secret report by a Marine intelligence officer said there is no chance the U.S. military can end the insurgent violence or that a viable government can be set up in the area.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/9844615/detail.html

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Top commander denies US walking away from Al-Anbar province

A top US commander denied the US military had written off Al-Anbar province in Iraq and defended a shift of US forces to Baghdad despite intelligence depicting the situation in the west as dire.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060915/pl_afp/usiraqunrestmilitary

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There is more than one triangle of resistance

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/haifa_zangana/2006/09/the_defiant_triangle_of_the_ir.html

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Three Italian soldiers indicted for civilian deaths in Iraq

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2006/September/theworld_September446.xml&section=theworld&col=

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Judge Says Saddam Not “Dictator”

http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2006-09/14/05.shtml

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Iraq: 7 U.S. Occupation Forces Soldiers Killed

US military officials said insurgents have killed seven US servicemen and wounded dozens more in the past 48 hours across Iraq.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5348534.stm

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U.S. soldier missing in Iraq after blast

A U.S. soldier was missing Friday, a day after a suicide truck bombing killed two soldiers and wounded another 30 west of Baghdad, U.S. military officials said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060915/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_us_soldiers

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 14 September 2006.

• Three US troops reported killed in Resistance ambush in al-Khalidiyah.
• Journalist abducted by puppet regime security forces from funeral of his brother as US-installed “Government” continues repression of journalists.
• Resistance bomb leaves US soldier reported dead in al-Fallujah Thursday morning.
• Resistance bomb in south Baghdad suburb of ad-Durah reportedly kills US soldier Thursday morning.
• Resistance bomb blasts US patrol in eastern al-Fallujah.
• Resistance fighters kill two pro-American Badr Brigade Shi‘i sectarian gunmen in northern Baghdad Thursday morning.
• Resistance bomb targets Iraqi puppet army column in at-Tarimiyah early Thursday.
• Resistance bombards joint US-Iraqi puppet “Shock Troop” headquarters in Samarra’.
• Resistance pounds US base with Katyusha rockets.
• Resistance kills two pro-American Peshmergah gunmen, confiscating documents on Iraqi prisoners of US occupation forces.
• Resistance fighters attack puppet police patrol on al-Wathbah Square in Ba‘qubah.
• Resistance bomber with explosive belt attacks US-Iraqi puppet army checkpoint in Tall ‘Afar.
• Resistance bombards puppet army headquarters in Tall ‘Afar.

http://www.albasrah.net/en_articles_2006/0906/iraqiresistancereport_140906.htm

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PEACE WITH ZIONISM AND IMPERIALISM IS A MERE ILLUSION

see: http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net/peaceillusions.htm

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The Real Israel – Ghali Hassan

For its entire existence, Israel has been portrayed as a “civilised” society with Western “liberal democratic principles”, defended by “heroic” army. Western media coverage has been bluntly biased in favour of Israel regardless of the enormity of Israel’s war crimes and Israel’s violations of international law and civilised norms. This Israel, however, is a fabricated subject, rather than a reality. It is built on a fiction.
http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/

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Palestinian children in Israeli prison

The Palestinian Prisoner Society, legal and childhood rights institutions, and the international and local Red Cross, are pushing for the immediate release of Palestinian minors from Israeli prisons.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=545&Itemid=1

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United States urges continued starvation of Palestinians

WEST BANK – Six months of a crippling international embargo on the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) has brought its economy to a virtual standstill. As a result, children are being driven increasingly to find work to help support their families.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5726.shtml

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Gaza’s poor struggling to survive in the face of an economic blockade

“I blame the governments of America and Britain for this but not the peoples because they don’t know about us.”
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1603672.ece

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Israeli officers admit use of phosphorus bombs

“In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs, what we did there was crazy and monstrous,” testifies a commander in the Israel Defense Forces’ MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) unit. Quoting his battalion commander, he said the IDF fired some 1,800 cluster rockets on Lebanon during the war and they contained over 1.2 million cluster bombs. The IDF also used cluster shells fired by 155 mm artillery cannons, so the number of cluster bombs fired on Lebanon is even higher. At the same time, soldiers in the artillery corps testified that the IDF used phosphorous shells, which many experts say is prohibited by international law. According to the claims, the overwhelming majority of the weapons mentioned were fired during the last ten days of the war.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/761910.html

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Israel concludes UN post bombing was ‘tragic error’ Israel concludes UN post bombing was ‘tragic error’

‘Flawed map’? Yeah, sure.

One has to wonder what kind of evidence the people at this post were gathering to have made it such a threat to Israel.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200609/s1742361.htm

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UN called Israel 10 times with coordinates

… but Israel still bombed the crap out of it, then tried to lie about it afterwards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XrZphvbbqg

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IAEA: US report on Iran ‘outrageous’

United Nations nuclear inspectors have attacked as “outrageous and dishonest” parts of a US congressional committee intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear work.
http://snipurl.com/wh8u

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ACLU Slams Senate Judiciary Committee’s Approval of NSA Spying Bills

“Congress has a right and obligation to conduct meaningful oversight on the unlawful actions of the president. But instead of investigating lawbreaking, the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to make it legal. We urge the full Senate to reject any attempts to ratify this illegal program.”
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/26722prs20060913.html

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Senators Defy Bush On Terror Measure

A Senate committee rebuffed the personal entreaties of President Bush yesterday, rejecting his proposed strategies for interrogating and trying enemy combatants and approving alternative legislation that he has strenuously opposed.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14983.htm

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Torture complicate Padilla case

Evidence against the American terror suspect was obtained through torture, his lawyers say.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14981.htm

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Judge orders prosecutors to turn over Padilla’s medical records

A federal judge in Miami ordered prosecutors Thursday to turn over medical records for accused al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla, a move that could reveal details of his treatment during 3 1/2 years in military custody.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/15521274.htm

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Judge refuses to reinstate key Padilla terrorism charge

The dismissed charge is important because it is the only one in the indictment that carries a potential life sentence.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14986.htm

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Ney to admit guilt in corruption case

A Republican congressman agreed to plead guilty to illegally accepting tens of thousands of dollars in trips, meals, drinks and tickets to become the first U.S. lawmaker convicted in the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal, U.S. officials said on Friday
http://snipurl.com/wh9h

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW