Bharat Rakshak

An October incident that has just come to light is casting a cloud over a Boca Raton Chevron station for what one woman claims is discrimination.Wednesday, La-Fleur Mohammed talked about her experience at the Boca Raton station where she said she was refused service because she was wearing a traditional Muslim headdress that covered almost all of her face."She took my money and said 'you can’t come in here dressed like that'," said La-Fleur Mohammed. "I said, 'excuse me but this is my religious right'."
Mohammed continued, "She said, 'well, I need to see you'. I said, 'no, you don't. Please just give me $20 on pump number one' and that's when she just threw my money back at me."Mohammed said at that point she picked up her money, walked out, and called 911. A sheriff's deputy arrived and escorted Mohammed into the store again, but was still refused service."I've never felt humiliated like that before to get service from someone," Mohammed said."While we did not see evidence of discrimination; we have taken corrective action," said Chevron operations manager Karen Rheny. It was "an unfortunate misunderstanding of an internal message that was intended to heighten security during a time when there is a higher risk of robberies".

This is the first empirical study to ask North American Muslims what shari’a means to them in their everyday lives. The study demonstrates that the present “moral panic” over shari’a and its alleged impact on American legal and social culture is wildly overblown. Based on the study, for most American Muslims shari’a represents a private system of morality and identity, primarily focused on marriage and divorce rituals. None of the American Muslims interviewed for this study expected American courts to enforce shari’a. Just like other Americans, they will access the courts for adjudication according to American family law if they cannot make a private agreement (relating to divorce) that meets their needs and values.

"The Third Jihad," narrated by an American-Muslim physician, Zuhdi Jasser, who practices in Arizona. From the documentary, it seems that Dr, Jasser simply wants American-Muslims to know the difference between a moderate Muslim – an individual who sees his or her faith as a personal matter -- from an individual who practices political Islam, or "Islamism." Proponents of Islamism desire to "Islamicize" social, legal and political institutions with their interpretations of Islamic doctrine through non-violent legal means – political parties, indoctrination of future generations through the educational system, and governmental institutions.

The Islamists' agenda is as socially coercive, though not as extreme, as say the Taliban. As a result, their actions are likely to mimic the Islamist AKP party now in power in Turkey, whose leaders have detained countless journalists in the past year for speaking against the government. On a smaller scale, Islamist activity might resemble other religious groups which have been heavily criticized in the media such as the Haredi in Israel for their harassment of women, or evangelical Christians in the US for their political position on abortion thereby inciting the killing of abortion doctors in the US.
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The narrator of "The Third Jihad," Dr. Jasser, concedes in his rebuttal to the New York Times article, that while the number of Islamists may not be meaningful in the US at the moment, or even in one hundred years, but adds that this does not matter. Islamists' international ties and access to foreign funding give them an advantage with which the typical first generation American-Muslim immigrant community of modest means cannot compete. As a result, the influence of Islamists in the US is in no way proportional to their numbers.

Weeks earlier, FBI agents arrested Izhar Khan, imam of the Masjid Jamaat Al-Mu'mineen mosque. Police leveled charges of providing funding and material support to the Pakistani Taliban on the 24-year-old Khan; his 76-year-old father, Hafiz Khan, who is the imam at the Flagler Mosque in Miami; three other family members; and an unrelated Pakistani man. Their arrests shocked the local Muslim community and left two prominent spiritual leaders in solitary confinement awaiting trial.

John Gillies, special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami office, was careful not to implicate the mosque or its members in the criminal case. "I remind everyone that the Muslim and Arab-American members of our community should never be judged by the illegal activities of a few," he said in a written statement.

But protesters from groups such as the Tea Party of Fort Lauderdale and the Coral Springs-based Americans Against Hate remain unswayed.

A pale man with glasses and a grave expression steps up to the podium. "We believe that things that are unsavory and unacceptable to this community are being done, and we want the answers," he tells the cheering crowd.

[...]

The call to shut down the Margate mosque is the latest example of backlash against South Florida's roughly 90,000 Muslims.

[...]

Masjid board President Yazid Ali faces the news cameras. "We don't support terrorism," he says. "We're Americans."

Islam has become an important part of American discourse leading up to the 2012 federal elections and candidates everywhere appear eager to take a position on Islam for political gain.

[...]

Yet rather than resorting to Muslim-bashing, American leaders should show their potential to lead by taking on the more difficult task of combating intolerance. After all, this country was founded on the ideals of religious tolerance, pluralism and democratic freedom.

It is not difficult to make the case that American Muslims are well integrated and a positive asset to the nation. A major study published by the research and polling organisation Gallup in August 2011 shows that American Muslims are well integrated and loyal citizens. Indeed, it also shows that Islamophobia is not impacting the economic well-being of most American Muslims.

Klaus wrote:In hindsight, something does seem to be in common with people such as the Prophet Mo and Jinnah. They completely lose it after some kind of personal tragedy and become fanatically obsessed with personal pursuit of power to the exclusion of everything else.

Am trying to find out if it has something to do with the lizard brain and/or neuro-linguistics of Arabic/Urdu/Persian languages.

Acharya wrote:Dear Colleagues:



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gakakkad wrote:

Acharya wrote:Dear Colleagues:



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Is this for real ? I mean is she truly speaking for Hindu voices in India ?

M. Zuhdi Jasser is a physician, a Navy veteran, an American patriot and a Muslim who does not hold with those who preach that Islam commands its followers to take part in a war against unbelievers.

"The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision for America," a documentary film Jasser narrated, takes a hard look at those Muslims who are waging this war -- both with bombs and by stealthier means. The film had been among the educational materials used to train New York City police officers. Then, last month, The New York Times went on what one might call a crusade against the movie, publishing a series of articles branding it a "hate-filled film about Muslims," suggesting it was scandalous for the New York Police Department to have screened it, and calling on Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to "apologize for the film ... and make clear that his department does not tolerate such noxious and dangerous stereotyping."

In the first of its stories, the Times charged that the film "casts a broad shadow over American Muslims." That ignores the unambiguous statement with which the documentary opens: "This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of radical Islam. Only a small percentage of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are radical."

The story quotes Jasser as saying in the film: "This is the true agenda of Islam in America." What Jasser actually said in the film is that jihad is "the true agenda of much of the Muslim leadership here in America."

Jasser has long argued -- and he is not alone in this -- that the leaders of some of the most powerful organizations claiming to represent American Muslims are not as moderate as they would have you believe. Prominent among such organizations is CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently the driving force behind the Times coverage.

The Times chooses not to inform its readers that CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism-financing trial in the U.S. to date, the 2007 U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, et al. The Times also neglects to report that the FBI has broken all ties with CAIR.

The paper never bothered to interview Jasser. Nor did the Times quote Robert Jackson, the only Muslim on the New York City Council, who told other reporters that while he "initially thought from reading about (the film) that it cast a negative image on all Muslims ... it does not. It focuses on the extreme Muslims that are trying to hurt other people." The Times turned down an op-ed by former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and former CIA Director Jim Woolsey defending the documentary.

The Times' stories present not a single factual error. However, illustrating the first story was an image of the White House with a black Islamic flag flying above it. The Times called that "a doctored photograph," leaving readers to infer that the filmmakers had done the doctoring. In fact, that image was found on a jihadist website. (Such images are common on such sites, as any reporter working the terrorism beat should know.)

CAIR calls itself a Muslim "civil rights" organization and most of the major media take it at its word. Jasser has pointed out that one of its main missions is to silence critics, to deprive them of the right to free speech. One of the ways this is done, Jasser says, is by making it appear that Muslim reformers are themselves extremists: "That is what the vicious distortions about this film do to my work and the work of so many others within the House of Islam who are trying to publicly take on the American Islamist establishment."

Jasser adds: "Were Americans ever to finally become educated to the slippery slope between nonviolent Islamism (political Islam) and Islamist militancy, the legitimacy of these Muslim Brotherhood-legacy groups would evaporate."

The barriers to providing such education are growing. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has denounced "The Third Jihad." The NYPD has stopped showing it. CAIR is not satisfied. The organization has demanded that Kelly resign and that the police department "offer a concrete plan to help counter the misinformation about Islam and Muslims provided to almost 1,500 officers through the screening of 'The Third Jihad.'"

This week, I happened to be in New York's Penn Station, where I heard an announcement on the public address system: "If you see something, say something." Zuhdi Jasser has seen something. CAIR wants him to shut up about it. And CAIR has friends in high places.

Carl wrote:So it looks like the New York Times was used by Anglo-Saxon patrons of the American Islam project. The NYT did this by blatant misreporting and distortion of facts, as well as selective hiding of other facts. This case is a model case, and so am posting the article in full.

Last week, just before the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth, Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old Saudi writer in Jidda, took to his Twitter feed to reflect on the occasion.

“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you,” he wrote in one tweet.

“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more,” he wrote in a second.

“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more,” he concluded in a third.

Twitter quickly flooded with responses to Kashgari, registering more than 30,000 within a day. He was accused of blasphemy, and enraged Saudis called for his death. By the time he removed the tweets and issued a long apology, backtracking on his comments and begging for forgiveness, the danger had already expanded beyond the Web. Someone posted Kashgari’s home address in a YouTube video, and, his friends say, vigilantes came looking for him at his local mosque. The Saudi information minister banned Kashgari’s local newspaper column and barred outlets across the country from publishing his work. Nasser al-Omar, an influential cleric, called for him to be tried in a Sharia court for apostasy, which is punishable by death. Other leading clerics decried Kashgari on their own, and Saudi Arabia’s council of senior scholars issued a rare and harshly worded communiqué condemning him and his tweets and demanding that he be put on trial. Yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s leading news site, SABQ, reported that the king himself had issued a warrant for Kashgari’s arrest.

With the pressure mounting, Kashgari fled to Southeast Asia earlier today. Hours later, in his first interview with the press, he told The Daily Beast that he was stunned by the turn of events but resigned to the fact that he can never return home. “It’s impossible. No way,” he said. “I’m afraid, and I don’t know where to go.” Kashgari says he is now planning to apply for asylum abroad.

Though Saudi Arabia has seen uproars over controversial newspaper articles or scholarly works before, no great calls for Sharia trials have ever sounded in the kingdom on account of a few tweets—and the furor has gone viral, snowballing into a bigger scandal than anything the country has seen in the recent past.
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Introduction

British Islamist Anjem Choudary and Omar Muhammad Bakri – both former leaders of British jihadist organization Al-Muhajiroun – have launched an organization called Shariah for Hind (India) to advance their agenda for reestablishing Islamic rule in India. The group has planned a major public event in New Delhi on March 3, 2012, which marks the end of the Turkey-led Islamic caliphate 88 years ago.

It should be noted that during the British rule, Indian leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Mahatma Gandhi campaigned for the Islamic caliphate led by Turkey – Gandhi doing so perhaps to gain Muslim support against British colonial rule in India.

Shariah for Hind plans to campaign for reestablishing Islamic rule in India with an ideological agenda which outlines a much purer form of Islamic rule for the country than that which existed during various periods of rule by Muslim kings in India both before and during the British era.

According to the ideological agenda stated on the group's website, Islamic Shariah will be enforced in India; temples and statues of Hindu gods and Indian leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi will be demolished; and Bollywood, the world's largest movie industry, will be abolished in order to make way for a monotheistic Islamic rule in the country.

Shariah for Hind – Leaders and Website Details

It appears that preparations for establishing Shariah for Hind began sometime in 2011; its website was launched in January 2012.

The domain for the website was created on January 3, 2012, according to its registration details.[1] The registrant for this website is "Abu Rumaysah c/o Dynadot Privacy, PO Box 701, San Mateo, CA 94401, United States."[2]

The two leaders of this organization are identified as Sheikh Anjem Choudary and Sheikh Omar Muhammad Bakri. On the contact page of the website, these two names are published prominently: Sheikh Anjem Choudary, Judge of the UK Sharia Court, and Sheikh Omar Muhammad Bakri, who is identified as "Expert on Islamic Groups Worldwide." Bakri's phone number is given as 00961 70957759 – 961 being the country code for Lebanon. Choudary's phone number is given as 0044 7956 600 569.

The website of Sharia for Hind gives the name of its chairman as Abu Baraa and his phone contact as +44 7856827605. It also gives another phone contact, +44 7956041034, for Abu Rumaysah – Spokesman, a former Hindu, of Convert 2 Islam.

Shariah for Hind – The Ideology

"There is a Consensus among All Muslim Scholars That It is Not Permitted for Non-Muslims to Have Authority over Muslims; India Needs to Return Back to Her Glorious Islamic Past; India Needs a Muslim Revolution"

In a statement, titled "The Need for Muslim Rule in India," Shariah for Hind notes that Muslims cannot live under non-Muslim rule, stating:[3]

"There is a consensus among all Muslim scholars that it is not permitted for non-Muslims to have authority over Muslims. Allah says in the Quran, 'I have created you (Muslims) a leading Ummah (nation) in order to witness the affairs of mankind.' [EMQ 2:143]

"Islam is the only religion to have maintained its relationship with God, with a miraculous book called the Quran and meticulous sciences that ensure texts recorded during the life of the final Messenger Muhammad can be verified, understood and authenticated. This cannot be said for any of the other world religions, which have literally been lost in translation.

"Fundamentally however, Islam is not a secular religion and, unlike the 'biggest democracy in the world' [i.e. India], always refers its governance back to the supreme commander, Allah (God).

"The Islamic constitution remains intact 1400 years after its inception, and emphatically puts the Indian constitution to shame. Political parties such as the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] and Indian [National] Congress have let India down because just like their British predecessors they were never suited to be rulers and so ruined their country with backward and evil policies."

"India needs to return back to her glorious Islamic past. India needs a Muslim revolution."

"Indian Political Parties Have Preyed on the Muslim Community, As the Wolf Preys a Lamb; They Have Divided Us with Nationalism and Poisoned Us with Democracy"

In a statement, Shariah for Hind identified its political objective as follows:[4]

"As a nation we used to move mountains.

"The Muslim Ummah (nation) is a community unparalleled in history. At its height in power it ruled over three continents. It brought tyrants to justice and liberated the oppressed. History still records their magnificent conquests, which against all odds defeated the mightiest of superpowers.

"But somewhere along the line that bright light waned and in 2012 we (Muslims) find ourselves bizarrely under the thumbs of the very people we were meant to liberate! India is now ruled by the most incompetent, unqualified and wicked individuals who have no clue about their purpose in life, let alone how to rule a nation. The Indian constitution, just like its Pakistani and Bangladeshi counterparts, [is] an appalling attempt at law and order, a stab in the dark, a gross display of trial and error.

"Indian political parties have preyed on the Muslim community, as the wolf preys a lamb; they have divided us with nationalism and poisoned us with democracy but most significantly have made us forget what the final Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) was sent down for i.e. the total domination of the world by Islam.

"And so we lay defenseless, strewn and confused.

"The Shariah4Hind project has thus been launched to kick start the return of Islam in the Indian subcontinent. Raw, undiluted and without compromise; it is the wild card which will inshaa'allah (God willing) make the Indian government forget about Kashmir. It is a call to unite over half a billion Muslims to retake what is rightfully theirs and galvanize a superpower unmatched in the world.

"3rd March 2012, New Delhi, India. A new spring waits."

The Muslims versus the Non-Muslims

"The Whole of India is in Fact [a] Muslim Land, the Authority Belongs to… [Muslims] and That They Should Take It From the Current Ruling Party to Implement the Shari'ah... Instead [of] Begging for Rights from the Hindus, the Muslims in India Must Govern By the Law of the Creator Allah"

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Anti-Muslim graffiti was found scrawled on the side of a Kensington building Monday, and some local residents are worried the incident will spark racial tensions in the remarkably diverse neighborhood. The graffiti, which was left on the side of TDS Insurance on Beverly Road, declared that "Allah is Shit." The incident is being investigated as a bias crime, and some theorize that the vandalism may be retaliation for a rash of anti-Semitic graffiti left on Jewish homes and establishments in Midwood recently.

"This could be tit for tat," Abu Chowdury, a manager at TDS Insurance, tells Brooklyn Daily, referring to the Midwood incidents. "But we just want to stop it in the community." Kensington is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in NYC, with Bangladeshis and Pakistanis living alongside Mexican families and Orthodox Jews. "It is just shocking," Mamnunul Haq, a Bangladeshi community leader, tells the Daily News. "No one wants to see anything like that. We are a very peaceful people."

Last night there was a candlelight vigil at the intersection of Beverley and Church, the site of some of the graffiti. The gathering was organized by City Councilmember Brad Lander, who wants to plant trees and benches in front of TDS Insurance to create a multi-ethnic gathering place called "Kensington Plaza." In a statement, Lander said, "We will respond vigorously to bigotry targeting any group. Recently, Brooklyn has seen multiple anti-Semitic crimes-and the community has responded with appropriate outrage. Now, in the face of this Islamophobic attack on a member of Kensington’s Bangladeshi community, we must unite again."

A Muslim convert from Brooklyn who ran a website that posted threats against the creators of the television show “South Park’’ is expected to enter a federal guilty plea, his attorney said Wednesday.

Jesse Curtis Morton, also known as Younus Abdullah Mohammad, was charged last year with communicating threats and has been in custody since he was arrested in Morocco in October.

Carl wrote:The call for jihad against India goes out -- from Londonistan.

British Islamist Anjem Choudary Launches 'Shariah for India,' Vows to Demolish Hindu Temples and Bollywood; Muslims Urged to Join In New Delhi March Next Month Marking 88th Anniversary of the End of Islamic Caliphate
Article here.

Introduction

British Islamist Anjem Choudary and Omar Muhammad Bakri – both former leaders of British jihadist organization Al-Muhajiroun – have launched an organization called Shariah for Hind (India) to advance their agenda for reestablishing Islamic rule in India. The group has planned a major public event in New Delhi on March 3, 2012, which marks the end of the Turkey-led Islamic caliphate 88 years ago.

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nachiket wrote:Anjem Choudary is useful in a way. He loudly declares and puts in words what every islamist in his heart desires, but will never say out loud. It can serve to educate people of what might befall them if they leave the islamist ideology unchecked. Far more dangerous are those who work towards the same goal as Anjem Choudary does but in an insidious manner, deftly making use of our liberal laws to protect themselves, whilst claiming to be tolerant and secular. They probably hate Choudary for giving unnecessary publicity to the danger posed by islamism. Pat Condell had expressed this quite well in one of his videos.

Edit: I think this is the video. Thank god for Andy Choudary

Temples, shops of Hindus attacked at Hathazari

Fri, Feb 10th, 2012 7:09 pm BdST

Chittagong, Feb 10 (bdnews24.com) – Authorities clamped Section 144 banning public gathering at Hathazari on Friday amid mounting tensions after several Hindu temples were vandalised and torched there.

Local people claimed religious bigots of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Chhatra Shibir incited the vandalism and arson of the temples from Thursday evening to Friday noon.

Tensions that boiled over into violence originated Thursday morning following rumours that a mosque had been attacked. Allegations have it that houses of Hindus in the area were also attacked. The leaders of the Hindu minority there blamed the 'indifference' of the administration for the situation.

Another group of people took to the Chittagong-Rangamati road blocking traffic from Nandirhat to Hathazari Sadar upazila around 11am Friday. They also said their Friday prayers on the road.

They alleged a mosque had allegedly been hurled with brick bats from a procession of Loknath Sebashram Thursday morning. The blockaders demanded arrest of those linked with 'hurling brick bats on the mosque'.

After simmering tensions through the day, primary and mass education minister Afsarul Ameen, city Awami League president A B M Mohiuddin Chowdhury, Chittagong Development Board chairman Abdus Salam and city Awami League's joint secretary Ibrahim Hossain Chowdhury Babul went to the area and calmed the agitated locals in the afternoon.

"Tensions mounted following a misunderstanding. Security in temples and mosques in the area has been strengthened and the law enforcers have been alerted," Ameen said.

Chittagong district deputy commissioner Faiz Ahmed told reporters about the ban on public assembly through the imposition of Section 144.

"Police will take action if they see any gathering," he said.

TIT FOR TAT: THE ORIGIN

According to the local people, Hindus in the area took out a procession to celebrate the founding anniversary of Loknath Sebasram Thursday morning.

They used microphone and drums in the procession.

When the procession was passing a mosque, Muslims in the mosque forbade them to drums. At one stage, someone hurled a brick bat on the procession.

An altercation took place at once which turned into chase and counter-chase when someone from the procession responded by throwing a brick bat.

Police organised a meeting between the two parties which was allegedly delayed with ill-intention. A group of Muslims said that the meeting will be held in the mosque and the Hindus agreed.

The meeting started in the evening. Requesting anonymity, several of those who attended the meeting told bdnews24.com that a handful of miscreants vandalised a temple on the Loknath Sebasram premises when the meeting was underway.

They also vandalised seven to eight cars of the temple's visitors.

Puja Udjapon Committee convenor Ashok Kumar Deb told bdnews24.com that someone broke a windowpane of the mosque after the incident in the morning and a rumour that Hindus vandalised the mosque spread in the area.

On Friday morning, temples in the area were vandalised and shops owned by Hindus were torched and looted after madrasa students in the area gathered following an announcement through a PA system.

A bdnews24.com correspondent in Chittagong said he saw tell-tale signs of vandalism in three other temples in the area. They are the Sri Sri Jagadeshwari Ma Temple and Jagannath Bigroho Temple at Nandirhat and Kalibari Temple at Sadar upazila.

The Sri Sri Jagadeshwari Ma Temple was burnt, too.

JAMAAT-SHIBIR BLAMED

Many of the people in the area said a quarter is provoking the incident and Zila Parishad administrator M A Salam pointed the finger at Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir.

As the area is only three kilometres away from the Chittagong University (CU), many of the leaders and activists of Chhatra Shibir's CU unit live there.

Moreover, the largest madrasa of the country is located in the area and Shibir allegedly controls it.

Zila Parishad administrator Salam said adequate police were not deployed in the area to tackle the situation after Thursday's incident.

Salam, an Awami League leader, said Jamaat and Shibir leaders were fuelling the tension to destabilise the situation after CU was ordered shut on Wednesday following deaths of two Shibir men in clashes with activists of pro-government students.

Hathazari Thana BNP chief S M Fazlul Haque blamed the administration for the unpleasant events.

"The situation would not have been like this in the first place had the administration been on alert at the beginning," he said.

Haque added that all local supporters and activists of BNP were asked to work together to protect communal harmony in the locality.

Local MP and Jatiya Party presidium member Anisul Islam Mahmud went to the area in the morning but failed to get the situation any better.

The disturbing developments prevented the annual festival of the Loknath Temple to begin Friday morning. A large number of Rapid Action Battalion members and police have been deployed there.

http://bdnews24.com/details.php?cid=2&id=218015&hb=top

taslima nasreen @taslimanasreen Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
35 injured while Muslim fanatics destroyed Hindu temples in Bangladesh. bengalinews.org/news333.html

ISTANBUL – Iranian authorities this week arrested Christian converts from Islam while they were meeting for worship at a home in the southern city of Shiraz, according to sources.

Officials are holding the Christians at an unknown location, they said.

The sources put the number of the arrested Christians, who belong to one of Iran’s many underground house churches, at between six and 10. Authorities often detain, question and apply pressure on converts from Islam, viewing them as elements of Western propaganda set against the Iranian regime; as a result, the converts are forced to worship in secret.

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An Uzbek man has admitted at a court in the US state of Alabama to plotting to kill US President Barack Obama.

[...]

Authorities say he was in the US illegally after he received a student visa but never enrolled at school.

According to the plea agreement, in July 2011 Kodirov came into communication with someone known as "the Emir", who he believed was a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

[...]

The plea deal says: "Kodirov said that he did not care if he got shot and killed, as long as he killed President Obama."

Kodirov is said to have met another man who spoke Uzbek, and sometimes went to mosque with him.

The agreement says that together they would look at extremist websites and videos, on Kodirov's laptop.

On 11 July, Kodirov asked his friend to buy him a gun so he could kill the president, saying he "knew this was what he was supposed to do for Islam".

the factions that unseated Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed this week hoped to sideline the former activist and dissident, they were sorely mistaken. A darling of the Western media, Nasheed has cut a defiant pose, confirming to press that he is the victim of a coup while rousing thousands of supporters to take to the streets of the island capital Male. Within a day of his forced resignation from office, Nasheed had an op-ed in the New York Times, likening his cause with that of other pro-democracy forces in the Arab world struggling against the cancerous legacy of decades-old dictatorships. “Long after the revolutions,” Nasheed warns, “powerful networks of regime loyalists can remain behind and can attempt to strangle their nascent democracies.”

That narrative has been frequently aired in the days since Nasheed’s Tuesday ouster. Nasheed won the country’s first free and fair elections in 2008, defeating Abdul Maumoon Gayoom, a strongman who had ruled the archipelago for three decades. But Gayoom, whose networks of patronage and support still shape much of the country’s political fabric, did not retire, as was hoped. Instead, his hand is suspected in fomenting the unrest and army mutiny that forced Nasheed out this week. As a democracy activist, Nasheed was detained and tortured for six years during Gayoom’s rule. He’s now back on the streets again, calling for fresh elections to restore democracy to the country. YouTube footage shows what appears to be a violent police crackdown on yellow-clad supporters of Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party.

The country’s new President (and Nasheed’s former Vice President) Waheed Hassan dismissed the call for new elections. According to the BBC, he rebuked Nasheed for acting like a “dictator” — Nasheed has been criticized for arresting and detaining a prominent judge loyal to the old regime — and putting on a “show” for the international media. Western diplomats and U.N. officials are scrambling to reach the Indian Ocean archipelago, whose 400,000 people live largely cut off from the myriad, exquisite luxury island resorts that draw in nearly a million tourists a year.

Writing in the Guardian, Maryam Omidi, a British journalist who used to edit The Minivan News, an independent English daily in Male, puts the crisis into perspective:

Three years after the country’s first multiparty election, the tit-for-tat politics, corruption and violence that characterised the previous regime shows no signs of abating. In the months leading up to Nasheed’s departure, the opposition also wielded another political weapon: religion. Increasingly he was accused of undermining Islam – a slur in a “100% Sunni Muslim” nation with a growing conservative fringe.

Islam has a long, fascinating history in the Maldives, which, because of its position along the path of monsoon winds, served for centuries as a stopping point for Arab seafarers and traders. Five times a day in tiny, congested Male, the call to prayer rings out from over a dozen mosques on the two-acre capital island. In recent years, orthodox, Saudi-funded Wahhabism has crept into what was once a far more tolerant, syncretic brand of Islam. The Gayoom regime kept a lid on the country’s Islamists, but pandered to them when attempting to defeat Nasheed in 2008 — his personal faith as a Muslim was called into question and he was said to be in league with Christian missionaries, bent on destroying Islam.

Nasheed shrugged off those rather laughable charges, but now faces more. One Islamist faction claims to have found a cache of liquor bottles in his presidential residence, punishable as a crime under Maldivian law. Earlier, they accused Nasheed of being a “madman and a Christian” and consorting with “Jewish parties,” while exaggerating the environmental threat the country faces from rising sea levels. Nasheed has built his international celebrity through his climate change activism.

However outrageous the attacks on Nasheed may be, other reports are more worrying. The country was rebuked last year by U.N. officials for the resurgence of the practice of flogging women who engage in pre- or extra-marital sex. (This in a nation once hailed by the 14th century Arab traveler Ibn Batutta for the friendliness and laissez faire licentiousness of its people.) Indian analysts fear the steady infiltration of elements collaborating with Somali pirates and fundamentalist militant groups such as Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. In the wake of Nasheed’s removal from office, Islamists ransacked the country’s National Museum, reportedly vandalizing a number of Buddhist artifacts dating back to the country’s obscure pre-Islamic past.

With protests ongoing and Nasheed defiant, it’s hard to tell where the country’s political crisis will lurch next or, indeed, what role some of the Islamist parties may play in a new government. Gayoom has been conspicuously silent, away on travel in Malaysia. When Nasheed spoke to TIME in 2009 soon after winning the presidency, he envisioned a future for his tiny country built on rule of law and a healthy respect for differing opinions. As politics descends into a zero-sum game fought on the streets, it’s a future whose prospects look increasingly dim.

shiv wrote:Where is Hathazari?

Hathazari (Bengali: হাটহাজারী) is an Upazila of Chittagong District in the Division of Chittagong, Bangladesh.

With the pressure mounting, Kashgari fled to Southeast Asia earlier today. Hours later, in his first interview with the press, he told The Daily Beast that he was stunned by the turn of events but resigned to the fact that he can never return home. “It’s impossible. No way,” he said. “I’m afraid, and I don’t know where to go.” Kashgari says he is now planning to apply for asylum abroad.