Bharat Rakshak

"You have a government that declared jihad against the people in Southern Sudan and has set up a system based on wrong foundations. A first-class citizen is a Muslim Arab and a second-class citizen is his wife, a third-class citizen is an African who has converted to Islam and a fourth-class citizen is his wife. A fifth-class citizen is a non-believer and a sixth class citizen is his wife.

chandrabhan wrote:Why I am getting a feeling that this ongoing and continuos violence will lead many muslims to get out of Islam. I see a violent and nuclear death for this tool of 'Arabian empire'

chandrabhan wrote:Brihaspatiji,
I cant imagine a group of people who are so prone to violence and sustain it for such along time. the angst, anger, hatred works both ways. it cuts from within. Peace is inherent for the soul, mindless rage is a sure shot way to degeneration of vlaues that separate us from animals - the difference between Chaitnaya and Achaitanya is rationality.

I don’t care what the administrator of a religious body said — especially since it was essentially neutral and non-newsworthy. Does it affect the common Muslim if Vastanvi says Gujarat has developed under Modi? (Well, hasn’t it?) Can we stop feeling that all Muslims are being crushed underfoot when, in fact, they may not be — or that 2002 was a unique occurrence and not the norm? Muslims: stop playing victims where it isn’t warranted. Media: stop your silly shenanigans. There’s too much noise when all one should hear is a big yawn.

David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia, used Google Earth satellite maps to pinpoint 1,977 potential archaeological sites, including 1,082 teardrop shaped stone tombs.

"I've never been to Saudi Arabia," Dr Kennedy said. "It's not the easiest country to break into."

Dr Kennedy told New Scientist that he had verified the images showed actual archaeological sites by asking a friend working in the Kingdom to photograph the locations.

The use of aerial and satellite imaging has been used in Britain to locate Iron Age and Roman sites in Britain, as well as Nazca lines in Peru and Mayan ruins in Belize.

But few archaeologists have been given access to Saudi Arabia, which has long been hostile to the discipline. Hardline clerics in the kingdom fear that it might focus attention on the civilisations which flourished there before the rise of Islam – and thus, in the long term, undermine the state religion.
1994, a council of Saudi clerics was reported to have issued an edict asserting that preserving historical sites "could lead to polytheism and idolatry" – both punishable, under the Kingdom's laws, by death.

Saudi Arabia's rulers have, in recent years, allowed archaeologists to excavate some sites, including the spectacular but little-known ruins of Maidan Saleh, a 2,000 old city which marked the southern limits of the powerful Nabataean civilisation.

For the most part, though, access to ancient sites has been severely restricted.

Researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world. This is, as one scholar puts it, a "sensitive business"

Al-Akwa' sought international assistance in examining and preserving the fragments, and in 1979 managed to interest a visiting German scholar, who in turn persuaded the German government to organize and fund a restoration project. Soon after the project began, it became clear that the hoard was a fabulous example of what is sometimes referred to as a "paper grave"—in this case the resting place for, among other things, tens of thousands of fragments from close to a thousand different parchment codices of the Koran, the Muslim holy scripture.

Prime Minister David Cameron was on Saturday accused of reigniting the post-9/11 rows over Islam and fuelling Islamophobia after he used a speech at an international security conference in Munich to call for a more “muscular'' defence of Western values and a tougher approach to tackling Muslim extremism saying the “hands-off tolerance'' would not do.

In remarks that critics said had echoes of the Blair-Bush speeches, he said Muslims living in the West must abide by Western “values'' of tolerance, free speech and respect for women's rights. Arguing that “passive'' multiculturalism that allowed minority groups not to integrate had failed, Mr. Cameron said: “Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.”

He proposed a social boycott of separatist Muslim groups urging Ministers to refuse to share platforms or engage with them. They should also be denied access to public money in what was seen as a veiled reference to the previous Labour government's policy of wooing Muslim groups with funds.

“Let's properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights — including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism? These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations,” he added. Though Mr. Cameron took care to make a distinction between the religion of Islam and the political ideology of Islamist extremism saying it was wrong to link strong religious faith with radicalism, his remarks drew criticism from Muslim groups. The Muslim Council of Britain accused him of “targeting'' the Muslim community.

“Again it seems the Muslim community is being treated as part of the problem rather than part of the solution,” a spokesperson said.

Some Labour MPs and rights activists questioned the timing of Mr. Cameron's remarks which coincided with an aggressive march by the far-right English Defence League in the Muslim-dominated town of Luton against “Islamisation'' of Britain.

Local police chief Lt. Col. Alex Fauzy Rasyad said about 1,500 people - many with machetes, sticks and rocks - attacked about 20 members of the Ahmadiyah Muslim sect who were visiting their leader in his house in Banten province on Indonesia's main island of Java.

arun wrote:The German State of Hesse bans the burka / burqua:

German state risks Muslim anger after becoming first in the country to ban the burka

SSridhar wrote:Muslims must abide by Western values, David Cameron - Hasan Suroor in The Hindu

A_Gupta wrote:IMO, David Cameron is correct in stating that Muslims in the West must abide by Western political values - i.e., democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, common civil laws, rule of law, etc. I hope Cameron is not suggesting that family, tradition, and what we would call religious values must be made uniform.

David Cameron is standing by his decision to attack multiculturalism and hit back at Labour claims that he was helping the far RightMinisters demanded that Mr Khan apologise for "smearing" the Prime Minister by linking him with the EDL, whose members demonstrated on the streets of Luton on Saturday, chanting "Muslim bombers off our streets" and holding banners aloft, some of which read "No more mosques".
"The Prime Minister was also criticised by Muslim groups for pronouncing that multiculturalism had failed in Britain because it had led to segregation. In a major speech tackling the threat posed by Islamic extremists, the Prime Minister warned that "hands-off tolerance" of unacceptable practices by minority communities had only served to encourage extremism. He called for a "muscular" defence of British values. Speaking to a conference in Munich, Mr Cameron said that the threat of terrorism must be confronted not only though intelligence and surveillance, but by taking on the ideology of Islamist extremism at home. "Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism," the Prime Minister said. While a "passively tolerant" society allows its citizens to do what they like, so long as they do not break the law, a genuinely liberal country "believes in certain values and actively promotes them", Mr Cameron said. "Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights, regardless of race, sex or sexuality. It says to its citizens: This is what defines us as a society. To belong here is to believe these things.
"Each of us in our own countries must be unambiguous and hard-nosed about this defence of our liberty."
He said it was no longer enough for the authorities simply to proscribe groups which advocate violence, or to ban foreign preachers of hate from coming to the UK. "Non-violent extremists" who disparage democracy, oppose universal human rights and promote separatism were also "part of the problem", he said, because they lure young Muslims on to the path of radicalisation which can later lead them to espouse violence. Organisations of this kind had been "showered with public money" by presenting themselves as representatives of the Muslim community while doing little to combat terrorism, Mr Cameron said. "Let's properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? "Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism?
"Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations.

it or not, Islam is the charged centrality in our daily news headlines. Not just the Arab world or Afghanistan, it seems to lie behind a broad range of international disorders: suicide attacks, car bombings, military occupations, resistance struggles, riots, jihads, fatwas, guerrilla warfare, threatening videos and 9/11. But can these things be taken as an Islamic phenomenon without taking into account the principal elements of the ground situation in different parts of the world? What if Islam never existed? Remove Islam from the path of history, would the world have been a different place: no clash of civilisations, no holy war, no terrorists? What if that weren’t the case at all?

Graham Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul who later became a professor of history and author of numerous books on the troubled Arab world including The Future of Political Islam now comes with A World Without Islam (Little Brown/Hachette India, Rs 595) in which he says the world wouldn’t be much different from what it is today: “deep-rooted conflicts that still exist over ethnicity, economics, warfare, armies or geopolitics … don’t have anything to do with Islam and indeed existed long before Islam came into existence.”
mpt to investigate whether there was something unique in Islam that breeds violence and conflict, Fuller divides his book into three parts. Part One, “Heresy and Power” spans the rise of Mohammed to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; Part Two, “Meeting the Civilisational Borders of Islam” has chapters on Islam in India and China and Islam in the West: Loyal Citizens or Fifth Column?: and Part Three, “The Place of Islam in the Modern World” with chapters on colonialism, nationalism, Islam, and the independence struggle and war, resistance, jihad and terrorism. As Fuller puts it, “I try to run through a whole lot of events and take Islam out of the equation and see what we are left with.” But these chapters are a kind of bird’s eye view of events; they cannot be taken as a definitive account of the histories of the period.
It is politics that decides the course of events, which he means the struggle to control natural resources and the means to have access to them. If this calls for tough diplomacy leading to military action, as often happened in the past, so be it: it is always self-interest dictated by vital economic interests that determines the course of history.

Thee underlying theme in book is the relationship between religion, power and the state. Fuller argues that the close relationship between religion and the state over much of western history has affected Christianity and Christian history vastly more than it has affected Islam and the Islamic world. For us, in India this would be hard to take because all round us from north Africa down to Malaysia we see the rise of Islamic states with other religions marginalised into the background. This makes many believe here that Islam is the most assertive force in both state and society, even in the secular West.

Prem wrote: For us, in India this would be hard to take because all round us from north Africa down to Malaysia we see the rise of Islamic states with other religions marginalised into the background. This makes many believe here that Islam is the most assertive force in both state and society, even in the secular West.

arun wrote:Moving half-way around the world from Dearborn, USA to Umbulan, Indonesia. This time a bout of actual Muslim on Muslim violence inspired by differing interpretations of Muslim religious practice. However, this time around the targets of rage of a group of Muslims were not Muslims of the minority Shia / Shiite sect but rather Muslim’s of the minority Ahmadi / Ahmadiyah/ Ahmadiyya sect:

Six killed in clash between villagers and Ahmadiyah followers

This weekend, British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered the most important speech of his premiership so far. His address to the Munich Security Conference was a powerful condemnation of a deadly Islamist ideology that threatens the very fabric of British society, as well as a wholehearted rejection of “the doctrine of state multiculturalism.” All the more remarkable, this bold speech came amid a suffocating culture of political correctness in the United Kingdom, which has frequently stifled open debate during the past two decades.
The British government has identified Islamist extremism as the number one threat to national security. Cameron was absolutely right to point out that “the biggest threat that we face comes from terrorist attacks… we have got to get to the root of the problem, and we need to be absolutely clear on where the origins of these terrorist attacks lie. That is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism.”It is easy to see why these remarks were necessary. In 2009 British intelligence services revealed that there are 2,000 extremists involved in Islamist terrorist plots in the UK, with many more providing backing. MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence agency, has since warned of a new wave of suicide bomb attacks by home-grown terrorists, with mounting fears over the radicalization of British Muslims.In his speech Cameron called for an end to the self-imposed cultural segregation of some Muslim communities, calling on all Britons to adopt “a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone.” He also made it clear that the days of engagement by the British government with extremist Islamic groups that claim to be moderate are over. This is a clear, and welcome, break with the lax policies of his Labour predecessors.Prime Minister Cameron’s words in Munich were a huge step in the right direction. His government now needs to put them into action to ensure that the Islamist terrorist threat is emphatically defeated, both at home and abroad. That includes a commitment to winning the war in Afghanistan, and ensuring the Taliban do not retake power, as well as a determination to isolate the extremists at home, and crush the Al Qaeda networks that proliferate across the UK

French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday declared that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it
We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him," he said in a television interview in which he declared the concept a "failure".

Prime Minister David Cameron last month pronounced his country's long-standing policy of multiculturalism a failure, calling for better integration of young Muslims to combat home-grown extremism.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia's former prime minister John Howard and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar have also in recent months said multicultural policies have not successfully integrated immigrants.

Well the times, they are a changing. Leaders of the UK, Germany, and France have all recently called for the end of full blown Islamic multiculturalism and a restored push for a national identity among all its citizens.
Yesterday, in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy shocked many in his own country when he declared that multiculturalism is dead in The French Republic. Sarkozy made the surprising remarks on French television.
“Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want… a society where communities coexist side by side…If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France… We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him.” – Sarkozy
While France had already rejected some of Germany and the UK’s multicultural practices (no Muslim veils in public or headscarves in schools), Sarkozy had been known as someone open to multiculturalism before becoming President in 2007. Now, he has made it clear that Muslims who move to France must pursue “a French Islam and not just an Islam in France.” Such words did not sit well with Islamic groups, but Sarkozy was merely echoing recent statements heard in England and Germany.
Last week, the UK’s British Prime Minister David Cameron told the annual Munich Security Conference that European nations have been too lenient on allowing anti-western view to spread unhindered in Islamic immigrant circles.
“We won’t defeat terrorism simply by the actions we take outside our borders. Europe needs to wake up to what is happening in our own countries…We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values. We have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream…We’ve been too cautious, frankly even fearful, to stand up to them.” – Cameron

The United Kingdom, in recent years, had opened their doors to all types of pro-Sharia initiatives. Our friends across the pond have often been seen as a possible future for America when it comes to the spread of Sharia. (For a recent example see this NRB blog). The UK has a population of Muslims where Sharia is demanded and even 1 in 3 UK college Muslims think killing for Islam is okay. It is clear now that the British Prime minister knows their policies have failed.

That speech was given in Germany and one of those applauding in the audience was German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel herself had only last October made similar comments about the dangers of multiculturalism mixed with Islamists. She spoke in Potsdam, Germany where the crowd cheered her words of warning.

“(In) the beginning of the 1960s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country. We kidded ourselves a while. We said: ‘They won’t stay, [after some time] they will be gone,’ but this isn’t reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side by side and to enjoy each other … has failed, utterly failed.” – Merkel

Merkel, who surprised few with her call for cultural integration, has now surprisingly become a model for Cameron and Sarkozy. The three pillars of Western Europe are now all on the same page when it comes to understanding the dangers of mixing multiculturalism and Islamists. But will America listen?

A PETITION tabled in Federal Parliament calling for a 10-year ban on Muslim immigration has been labelled bigoted by a leader of the Islamic community.

ACT senator Gary Humphries last Thursday tabled the petition, signed by three Sydneysiders, calling for a 10-year moratorium on Muslim immigration and a review of Australia’s immigration policy to ensure priority is given to Christians.

But the Liberal senator has defended his tabling of the “somewhat offensive” petition, which he acknowledges is potentially racist and bigoted, saying he presented it because it conformed with Senate standing orders.

“I certainly don’t agree with what’s in the document. I don’t agree with the sentiments expressed by the petitioners,” he told ABC Radio today.

“But I believe that they have the right to put that point of view in front of the members of the Federal Parliament.”

Senator Humphries said the petition expressed a view about Australia’s immigration policy and wasn’t racially vilifying. He added he was a friend of Canberra’s Islamic community.

But Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ikebal Patel said the document was bigoted.

“For God’s sake we’ve gone beyond the white Australia policy and now we are talking about . . . a policy that only allows Christians,” he said.

“That’s hardly a loving Christian to be very selective in whom you want to enter in your home.”

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/an ... 6006204370

Lahore, Pakistan
A man, a gun, and vengeance for "blasphemy."...it’s a poster for upcoming film "Aik Aur Ghazi" ("One More Holy Warrior") by eminent Pakistani screenwriter and director Syed Noor, which he says he plans to release within two months. And where Taseer’s killer Mumtaz Qadri was fêted mainly by lawyers and religious parties, the killer in Mr. Noor’s film, a convicted criminal, achieves redemption and hero status through murder.

Though director Noor denies any similarity between his film and the killing of Taseer, the film's expected commercial appeal is indicative of growing acceptability of extrajudicial killing in the name of Islam, argue experts.

A Muslim cleric who called Americans “the biggest criminals” during a recent interview has announced he will hold a protest outside the White House, according to the Daily Mail.

Anjem Choudary, who once said “the flag of Islam will fly over the White House,” says he will lead a demonstration rallying Muslims to establish Sharia law across the United States.