The Corner Report

On Monday, Israel’s the chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Yona Metzger, visited the West Bank village of Yasuf, where the local mosque was vandalized last week.

By ROBERT MACKEY

On Monday, Israel’s the chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Yona Metzger, visited the West Bank village of Yasuf, where the local mosque was vandalized last week.

Following up on a story The Lede discussed on Friday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that one of the two most senior religious leaders of Israel’s Jewish community paid a visit on Monday to the West Bank village of Yasuf, where a mosque was set on fire and covered with Hebrew graffiti last week. Israeli and Palestinian officials have blamed the attack on Israeli settlers.

According to Haaretz, Yona Metzger, Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, told residents, “I came here to expression my revulsion at this wretched act of burning a place holy to the Muslim people.” Agence France-Presse reported that that he drew an explicit comparison to Kristallnacht, the November 1938 attacks on Jewish synagogues and businesses in Nazi Germany. “Seventy years ago,” Rabbi Metzger said, “the Holocaust, the biggest tragedy of our history, began with the torchings of synagogues during Kristallnacht.”

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In banning minarets, Switzerland has exposed how fake the rights and freedoms of the West really are for minorities, writes Ramzy Baroud*

So this is how democracy works?

In 2004 France banned headscarves and school principals chased after young "defiant" Muslim girls who continued to cover up in school. Now, following a national referendum, Switzerland has banned minarets, because minarets also somehow symbolise oppression. Thanks to the dedicated action of the far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP), Alpine skies will be free of that menace that would spread intolerance and taint the splendour of Swiss architecture.

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New York Times

Urs Flueeler/Associated Press In the village of Amsteg, Switzerland, a poster promoting the ban on minarets became the site of competing messages on Monday.

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

When Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a ban on construction of minarets in a referendum on Sunday, they surprised some pollsters and disappointed many European leaders, including those of their own government, who opposed the ban and now must find a way to implement it.

A day after nearly 58 percent of Swiss voters supported the ban, Europe found itself thrust into another round of soul-searching precipitated by yet another clash over integrating — or not integrating — a swelling Muslim population.

In France, where similar debates have focused not on architecture but on how some Muslim women dress, Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister, was quick to condemn the results of the Swiss referendum.

“I am a bit shocked by this decision,” Mr. Kouchner said on a French radio program on Monday. “It is an expression of intolerance, and I detest intolerance. I hope the Swiss will reverse this decision quickly.”

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Al Ahram

Clockwise from top left: pro-veil demonstrations in France; "Stop-the-minaret" campaign logo in Switzerland; The Economist cover story on "Eurabia"; a symbolic illustration depicting veiled women on the French flag; a BBC map showing the number of Muslim populations in Europe, hijab -martyr Marwa El-Sherbini; a mosque in Switzerland

Is Europe in the grip of a new wave of Islamophobia? Gihan Shahine investigates

It was not something she did or said. Rather, it was just the way she looked and her manner of dress that cost her her life. Veiled Egyptian pharmacist Marwa El-Sherbini was innocently playing with her three-year-old son in a park in Dresden in Germany when a Russian-German man suddenly called her "a terrorist" among other things.

El-Sherbini called the police and took the matter to court, where she ended up being fatally stabbed by the same man as she prepared to give evidence. El-Sherbini's husband was also stabbed as he tried to protect her, and he was then shot and critically wounded by a police officer who reportedly mistook him for the attacker.

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Al Ahram

Clockwise from top left: pro-veil demonstrations in France; "Stop-the-minaret" campaign logo in Switzerland; The Economist cover story on "Eurabia"; a symbolic illustration depicting veiled women on the French flag; a BBC map showing the number of Muslim populations in Europe, hijab -martyr Marwa El-Sherbini; a mosque in Switzerland

Is Europe in the grip of a new wave of Islamophobia? Gihan Shahine investigates

It was not something she did or said. Rather, it was just the way she looked and her manner of dress that cost her her life. Veiled Egyptian pharmacist Marwa El-Sherbini was innocently playing with her three-year-old son in a park in Dresden in Germany when a Russian-German man suddenly called her "a terrorist" among other things.

El-Sherbini called the police and took the matter to court, where she ended up being fatally stabbed by the same man as she prepared to give evidence. El-Sherbini's husband was also stabbed as he tried to protect her, and he was then shot and critically wounded by a police officer who reportedly mistook him for the attacker.

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By NADIA HIJAB

"Islam is a religion that lives by the sword and it should die by the sword." The person making this declaration was not some wild-eyed neocon or Christian fundamentalist, but an old friend of mine, a thoughtful, widely-read American who tapped not just the mainstream media but also progressive publications and blogs.

I can't remember what provoked this outburst. It was at a dinner in 2004 or so, and we were discussing United States policy in the Middle East. But I do remember responding, "But that means people like me. There are so many different faces of Islam. Do you really want to put them all to the sword?"

In the wake of the Ft. Hood massacre, that conversation loomed large in my mind. If a progressive friend could come up with a gut reaction like that in the heat of discussion, what hope is there to communicate to the broader population of Americans? In their emotional response to the unforgivable act at Ft. Hood, how many Americans would care that there are as many facets of Islam as there are Muslims, from austere fundamentalists to fun-loving families to serious secularists -- with every shade in between.

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Saturday, 29 August 2009

GENEVA - The general secretary of the World Council of Churches has said that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories should be declared a "sin against God".

"Occupation along with the concomitant humiliation of a whole people for over six decades constitutes not just economic and political crimes but, like anti-Semitism, it is a sin against God," said WCC general secretary the Rev. Samuel Kobia, in a report on 26 August to a meeting of the church grouping's main governing body, its central committee.

He noted that at its founding assembly in Amsterdam in 1948, the WCC has declared that anti-Semitism is a "sin against God". Kobia said, "Are we ready to say that occupation is also a sin against God?"

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OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Despite the Israeli occupation restrictions more than 170,000 Palestinian worshipers managed to make it to the Aqsa Mosque and attend the prayers on the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

A statement by the Aqsa Foundation for Heritage and Endowment, issued on Friday afternoon, said that tens of thousands of worshippers attended the dawn prayers at the Aqsa Mosque, then droves of worshippers started arriving at the mosque. They were mostly Palestinians living in occupied Jerusalem and in 1948 occupied Palestine with a modest number of Palestinians from the West Bank because West Bank Palestinians need passes to enter occupied Jerusalem.

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OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Jewish settlers on Sunday stormed the Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem and offered rituals while roaming the holy site's plazas, the Aqsa foundation for endowment and heritage said.

The foundation in a statement said that Israeli occupation police escorted the settlers while performing their Talmudic rituals.

It described the storming today as "unprecedented" since no Jewish groups are allowed to enter the Aqsa during the holy month of Ramadan.

The foundation charged that the step was an escalation on the part of the "Zionist regime", and called on Palestinians of the 1948 occupied Palestine and Jerusalem to intensify their presence in the holy site.

Palestine Information Center
www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/

Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan

AMSTERDAM — Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan plans to sue Rotterdam City Council and Erasmus University following their decision to sack him over accusations of backing the Iranian regime.

"I will not have my credibility damaged this way," Ramadan, a world famed philosopher and theologist, told the NRC Handelsblad daily on Wednesday, August 19.

The Rotterdam City Council and Erasmus University dismissed Ramadan from his position as integration adviser and visiting professor respectively.

They cited his "Islam & Life" program airing on Iran's Press TV as the reason for the decision.

“"Although there is no doubt about the personal effort of Tariq Ramadan, both boards find this indirect relation with this repressive regime or even to be associated with it, not acceptable," the city of Rotterdam said in a statement.

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By Alan Philps

One of the most popular items on YouTube, the video-sharing website, is a slickly produced clip called Muslim Demographics. Since it was posted in March it has attracted more than 10 million viewers, a score usually reserved for content of a more salacious nature. Far from it: this is a statistics-laden preview of the coming apocalypse, when Europe falls to the silent, swordless jihad of Muslim immigration.

@body arnhem:The authors of the eight-minute video do not declare themselves, but the content indicates that it is the work of an American Christian evangelical organisation using the supposed fate of Europe as a call to raise the alarm in the US before it goes the way of the Old Continent.

It is frightening stuff, intoned over a soundtrack of scary music. Because European women do not have enough babies, the continent is dying out; its fertility rate has already dropped below the point of no return. The wellhead of western civilisation is culturally dead, and only Muslim immigration keeps the place from becoming a desert.

Among the video’s more startling “facts” is that the German government has itself predicted that Germany will become a Muslim state by 2050. Half of all babies born in the Netherlands are Muslim. The Muslim population of Britain exploded thirtyfold in 30 years.

There is one problem: most of the statistics are implausible or downright wrong. The film declares, for example, that Muslim women in France have a total fertility rate of 8.1 children, against the French average of 1.8. Data on the religion of mothers are not collected in France, but if this astounding figure were true it would make French Muslim women the most productive in the world. The world record for fertility is held by Niger, at 7.15, while Algeria and Morocco – from where most French Muslims come – have a rather modest average of 2.38.

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The minority Ultra-Orthodox Jews want ancient religious law to be upheld throughout Israel

Ultra-Orthodox Jews have thrown stones and vegetables at Israeli police who replied with water canons at a protest against the opening of a car park in Jerusalem.

The clashes at the Israeli city hall building on Saturday broke out after the protesters complained that the opening contravened religious law by occurring on the Jewish Sabbath.

"We [initially] understood this will be a quiet protest, that they will come and hold a prayer. When the people got here, we realised that things were different," Bruno Stein, a police officer, said.

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By Chris Hedges

The crisis faced by combat veterans returning from war is not simply a profound struggle with trauma and alienation. It is often, for those who can slice through the suffering to self-awareness, an existential crisis. War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.

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REMAINS of the largest ancient Egyptian temple yet to be found in Sinai have been uncovered in Qantara, reports Nevine El-Aref.

At Tel-Hebua, known in Pharaonic times as Tharo, the area from which the ancient Egyptian army embarked on military campaigns along Egypt's eastern borders, an Egyptian archaeological mission stumbled upon what is believed to be the largest New Kingdom temple ever discovered.

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"Israel is indeed a racist state!'

By Gilad Atzmon, Apr 21st, 2009

What we saw yesterday at the UN Anti Racism Forum was crude collective institutional Islamophobic racism in its making, a coordinated show of rabid western chauvinism. A bunch of European diplomats behaving as a herd of sheep, exhibiting complete denial of the notion of freedom of speech and the culture of debate.

Israel is indeed a racist state!

Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish state’. Though Jews do not form a racial continuum, their national state’s legislation is racially orientated. The Israeli legal system is discriminatory towards those who fail to be Jews. As if this is not enough, the Israeli army proves to be murderous towards the indigenous inhabitants of the land.

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A Palestinian walks along a deserted road in the West Bank city of Ramallah. (Photo: Muhammed Muheisen / AP)

26 March 2009

By Abukar Arman, Truthout

In light of the rampant extremism and militarism around the world, nothing proves more dangerous than the manipulation of truth for political ends. This tactic facilitates the demonization process that blurs ideologies and beliefs in both the West and the Islamic world. And, no concept is more abused by both sides than the concept of Jihad.

To Muslim extremists and their cronies, Jihad is a narrowly defined license to fight their perceived enemies (including Muslims, as is the case in Somalia) even if that leads to atrocities against civilians. And to Western extremists and their cronies, Jihad is a religiously sanctioned, perpetual holy war led by militant non-state actors sworn to destroy Western values and civilization.

However, Jihad is a complex concept deeply embedded in Islam. It is a principle that all Muslims who adhere to the teachings of their religion embrace. And, contrary to prevalent post-9/11 perception, the concept does not connote senseless violence against innocents or suicide bombings.

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Terry Holdbrooks stood watch over prisoners at Gitmo. What he saw made him adopt their faith.

By Dan Ephron
Newsweek, Mar 30, 2009

Army specialist Terry Holdbrooks had been a guard at Guantánamo for about six months the night he had his life-altering conversation with detainee 590, a Moroccan also known as "the General." This was early 2004, about halfway through Holdbrooks's stint at Guantánamo with the 463rd Military Police Company. Until then, he'd spent most of his day shifts just doing his duty. He'd escort prisoners to interrogations or walk up and down the cellblock making sure they weren't passing notes. But the midnight shifts were slow. "The only thing you really had to do was mop the center floor," he says. So Holdbrooks began spending part of the night sitting cross-legged on the ground, talking to detainees through the metal mesh of their cell doors.

He developed a strong relationship with the General, whose real name is Ahmed Errachidi. Their late-night conversations led Holdbrooks to be more skeptical about the prison, he says, and made him think harder about his own life. Soon, Holdbrooks was ordering books on Arabic and Islam. During an evening talk with Errachidi in early 2004, the conversation turned to the shahada, the one-line statement of faith that marks the single requirement for converting to Islam ("There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet"). Holdbrooks pushed a pen and an index card through the mesh, and asked Errachidi to write out the shahada in English and transliterated Arabic. He then uttered the words aloud and, there on the floor of Guantánamo's Camp Delta, became a Muslim.

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Geert Wilders has threatened to defy the ban on him

A Dutch MP who called the Koran a "fascist book" says he still plans to travel to the UK despite being banned on public security grounds.

Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders was invited to show his controversial film - which links the Islamic holy book to terrorism - in the UK's House of Lords.

But Mr Wilders, who faces trial in his own country for inciting hatred, has been denied entry by the Home Office.

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Benny Morris

Published on January 16, 2004

Survival of the Fittest?
An Interview with Benny Morris

By ARI SHAVIT

Note: Benny Morris is the dean of Israeli 'new historians', who have done so much to create a critical vision of Zionism--its expulsion and continuing oppression of the Palestinians, its pressing need for moral and political atonement. His 1987 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, chronicled the Zionist murders, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing that drove 600,000-750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948, thus refuting the myth that they fled under the orders of Arab leaders. A second edition of this book is due out this month, chronicling even more massacres, and a previously unsuspected number of rapes and murders of Palestinian women. Thus Morris continues to provide crucial documentation for Palestinians fighting the heritage of Al-Nakba, "The Catastrophe."

But in an astonishing recent Ha'aretz interview, after summarizing his new research, Morris proceeds to argue for the necessity of ethnic cleansing in 1948. He faults David Ben-Gurion for failing to expel all Arab Israelis, and hints that it may be necessary to finish the job in the future. Though he calls himself a left-wing Zionist, he invokes and praises the fascist Vladimir Jabotinsky in calling for an "iron wall" solution to the current crisis.

Referring to Sharon's Security Wall, he says, "Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another." He calls the conflict between Israelis and Arabs a struggle between civilization and barbarism, and suggests an analogy frequently drawn by Palestinians, though from the other side of the Winchester: "Even the great American democracy could not have been created democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history."

*****************

Benny Morris says he was always a Zionist. People were mistaken when they labeled him a post-Zionist, when they thought that his historical study on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem was intended to undercut the Zionist enterprise. Nonsense, Morris says, that's completely unfounded. Some readers simply misread the book. They didn't read it with the same detachment, the same moral neutrality, with which it was written. So they came to the mistaken conclusion that when Morris describes the cruelest deeds that the Zionist movement perpetrated in 1948 he is actually being condemnatory, that when he describes the large-scale expulsion operations he is being denunciatory. They did not conceive that the great documenter of the sins of Zionism in fact identifies with those sins. That he thinks some of them, at least, were unavoidable.

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22 January 2009

JERUSALEM – Israel’s High Court says a water company can extend a waste line through a historic Islamic cemetery at the entrance of Ramla.

The decision rejected a petition filed by the Al-Aqsa Foundation, according to its lawyers.

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By Franz Chávez

LA PAZ - "Did you know they want to throw God out of Bolivia?" asks a television spot frequently broadcast by opponents of leftwing Bolivian President Evo Morales ahead of the Jan. 25 referendum on constitutional reform.

The reform proposed by the government eliminates the clause in the current constitution in which the Bolivian state "recognises and upholds the apostolic Roman Catholic religion" as the country’s official religion.

The Catholic Church is not formally taking sides in the debate, but the opposition is using the proposed change as one of its arguments against the reform.

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Written by www.daily.pk
Tuesday, 02 December 2008 18:37

The recent attack in Mumbai bringing mayhem to the city, was quickly condemned throughout the world. At the same time another quick attempt was made to malign Pakistan and Muslims in these attacks. Let us analyze the incident critically.

1. Why India was chosen? The Indo-US nuclear deal was probably on the basis of give and take. India gets free access to Civilian Nuclear facilities and expand its nuclear program. On the other hand India will have to play an important role in the US war on terror. This seems to be the underlying agreement for the greater Asian Union that is on the cards, with India playing a vital role. Already, it is accepted as pseudo super power, and it was allowed a major role in Afghanistan to consolidate the war on terror. With Pakistan besieged from Afghanistan and India, division of Pakistan would make the objective easily achieved.

2. Why Mumbai was chosen: It is the atrium business center of India, as it is universally known. A tourist center and hot spot for foreigner tourists and business people. Any other city targeted would not have attained the results that were required to be achieved through this incident.

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While US main corporate media units, particularly CNN and Fox TV stations, were 24-7 covering the Mumbai attacks, Muslims were massacred in the city of Jos, in Nigeria. In terms of the number of the victims, Nigerian Muslim victims were double of the number of the Indian victims.

In Iraq, dozens were also killed, and scores were injured, in addition to protests against the US-Iraqi security pact, which allows US forces to stay in Iraq three more years, meaning that the Iraq war may continue for the same period.

In Afghanistan, 61 Afghanis were massacred in just two days by US-led NATO and Afghani forces.

The Israeli brutal siege of Gaza Strip continues, punishing about 1.8 million Palestinians, who began to starve and who are living in darkness after the severe shortages of food and fuel supplies as a result of the Israeli occupation government siege.

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By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand)*

The word ‘jihad’ is derived from the root juhd, which means ‘to strive’ or ‘to struggle’. It denotes the exertion of oneself to the utmost, to the limits of one’s capacity, in some activity or for some purpose. This is how the word is understood in Arabic grammar.

Because fighting against one’s enemies is also one form of this exertion or striving, it is also sometimes referred as jihad. However, the actual Arabic word for this is qital, not jihad. Fighting with one’s enemies is something that might happen only occasionally or exceptionally. However, jihad, properly understood, is a continuous action or process that animates every day and night of the life of the true believer. Such a person does not let any hurdle affect his life, including desire for gain, the pressure of customs, the demands of pragmatism, lust for wealth, etc.. All these things serve as hurdles in the path of doing good deeds. Overcoming these hurdles and yet abiding by the commandments of God is the true jihad, and this is the essential meaning of the concept of jihad. There are many references to jihad, as understood in this way, in the collections of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.

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The Arab community is seeking to have its voice heard. but many Arab-Americans believe the US candidates are ignoring their concerns

By Habib Battah in New York

Arab-Americans are expected to vote in large numbers next week in what is arguably the most important US election for decades.

But many of them feel they are being intimidated and dissuaded from casting their votes and the US presidential candidates have failed to engage them, representatives of major community organisations say.

Now, groups such as the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee [ADC], are seeking to dispel rumours and disperse misconceptions that have prevented some voters from going to the polls in the past.

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The Islamic eight point star: This detail in stucco is from the Salon de Embajadores (Ambassador's Room) in the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. This is where the Muslim ruler received senior dignatories and is the grandest room with a high ceiling and stunningly decorated walls. It is also the most dimly lit room and as a result has preserved some of the colours. Again, you see all the three elements of Islamic art here: geometrical patterns, vegetal patterns, and Arabic calligraphy. The calligraphy is simple stuff and is just two words, literally, Help (top) and God (bottom). I'm of the view that perhaps no building in the world has the word God or Allah inscribed on it as many times as in the Alhambra. The last Muslims rulers of Spain, the Nasirids, were well aware of their position and decorated the Alhambra fittingly: imploring God for His help and protection. Everyone interprets the Alhambra as royal palace, a secular place, but it is a masterpiece of the Sufi artists and a significant piece of Islamic religious architecture and decoration. The Nasirids held on until 1492 and the years that followed saw the holocaust of Muslims in Europe. Today, the witch-hunt or Islamophobia continues in other guises.

In the final part of his journey across the US looking at the roots and influence of Islam in America, Rageh Omaar looks at the life of US Muslims post-9/11 and asks if there is such a thing as "American Islam".

Farooq Mohammad says September 11, 2001, was a day "like hell".

A member of the New York City Fire Department, he distributed wet rags to enable people to breathe immediately after the twin towers were struck.

Farooq says other American Muslims like himself were active among those helping victims of the horrific attacks, but admits that he thought about whether his own life could soon be threatened.

"I started to really think about what happened, you know, and what may happen," he says. "And whether or not my own life is in jeopardy now."

New York is in many ways the epicentre of what some people label the clash of civilisations between Islam and the West.

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JERUSALEM - An Islamic charity is outraged that a "massive" group of Israeli settlers, rabbis and politicians attempted to break into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem early Thursday morning.

The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Islamic Waqf and Heritage claimed that Israeli extremists "carried out several failed attempts to break into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound" on Thursday.

Extremists shouted anti-Muslim slogans while others performed religious rituals in the mosque's outside yard, Israeli police looking on and reportedly refusing to act.

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The following is a copy of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's speech to the United Nations General Assembly early Wednesday morning, as translated by the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran News Service and published at Haaretz:

Mr. President, Excellencies,

I am grateful to the Almighty for granting me another opportunity to be present in this world Assembly.

In the last three years, I have talked to you about great hopes in the bright future of human society, and some solutions for achieving sustainable peace and expanding love, compassion, and cooperation.

I have also talked about unjust systems governing the world; pressures exerted by some powers seeking to trample the rights of other nations, oppression imposed on the majority of the global community, especially on the people of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Africa, Latin America, and Asia; about challenges we are faced with, such as efforts to shatter the sanctity of families, destroy cultures, humiliate lofty values, neglect commitments, expand the shadow of threats, as well as about the arms race and the unfairness and inability of the systems governing world affairs in reforming the status quo.

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Olmert is alleged to have paid bribes to a US businessman]

Israeli police have recommended corruption charges against the country's prime minister.

Police said on Sunday that they possess enough evidence to charge Ehud Olmert for accepting bribes and breaching public trust.

The move to indict Olmert comes amid allegations that he unlawfully accepted envelopes stuffed with cash from Morris Talansky, a US businessman, before he became prime minister in 2006.

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What sweetness lies in an empty stomach!
Man is like a lute: no more, no less.
If the lute is full
it cannot sing a high or low note.

If your mind and stomach
burn with the fire of hunger
it will be like a heavenly song for your heart.
In each moment that fire rages
It will burn away a hundred veils
And carry you a thousand steps
toward your goal.

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Contributed by Sadia Dehlvi

As children we aimed our eyes at the horizon trying to spot the small sliver and once the Ramzan moon was sighted we went around the house greeting all the elders with Ramzan Mubarak. The house would soon be filled with Pheniyan, khajla, dates and other Ramzan specific delicacies for sehri (pre dawn meal) and iftaar. The radio was locked in the cupboard and the television was veiled with a cloth only to be unveiled on Eid. Going to the movies was simply out of question, a childhood rule I still obey.

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By Dan Levine

For one of the trippiest global-warming fallouts we could possibly conjure, we turn now to the good ol’ Ninth Circuit. Down in Northern Arizona, the owner of a ski mountain operating on federal land wants to start using artificial snow. This fake powder will be made with what judges alternatively call “recycled wastewater” or “treated sewage effluent” (translation: soaped-up poopy-water).

Problem is, the mountains in question happen to be sacred to quite a few Indian tribes. And they are none too pleased about having said poopy-water sprayed on a peak they regard as “an indivisible living entity…home to deities and other spirit beings.” They sued, and a circuit panel led by Judge William Fletcher took their side (.pdf) and put the kibosh on the fake (beige?) snow idea.

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Jewish guerrillas told British: quit Palestine or die
Fighters were led by future Israeli premier

By Marcus Leroux

A pamphlet warning Britons to leave the Middle East or face death has come to light in a stash of illicit propaganda.

The document does not hail from Basra or Baghdad, nor was it penned by the Islamists of al-Qaeda or the al-Mahdi Army. It was found in Haifa, about 60 years ago, and it was issued by the underground group led by Menachem Begin – the future Prime Minister of Israel and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

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The Codex Sinaiticus Bible

Alexi Mostrous

The story of the Codex Sinaiticus Bible, the oldest complete copy of the New Testament in existence, reads like a script from an Indiana Jones film.

Ever since a German explorer controversially removed it from an Egyptian monastery, four countries have fought for control over the ancient manuscript.

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Indian Country Today


Photo courtesy Marisol Villanueava -- Thirteen indigenous grandmothers, formally known as the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, initial greeting at the Vatican was not pleasant. The group was almost kicked out while performing a prayer and waiting to speak with Pope Benedict XVI.

Bby Rob Capriccioso

ROME - They went to pray. They went to see Pope Benedict XVI on his home turf. They went to ask that he rescind historic church doctrine that played a role in the genocidal onslaught of millions of indigenous people worldwide.

For 13 indigenous grandmothers, accomplishing only one of their three goals wouldn't have been so bad - had they also not been harassed by several Vatican policemen who claimed the women were conducting ''anti-Catholic'' demonstrations.

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This is an undated company photograph of Dutch artist Auke Cornelis Sonnega's 1938 oil painting "Land of My Dreams," released to the media on Sept. 17, 2007. Source: Sotheby's via Bloomberg News

By Farish A. Noor Asian Edge)

13 June 2008

Dialogue is a funny business, particularly when it happens to be dialogue of the inter-civilisational and inter-religious kind. Having just attended yet another Dialogue between Islam and the West in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I find myself compelled to pen these thoughts before my blood pressure rises any further and I risk doing serious damage to myself and the furniture in my office...

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Coptic Orthodox Church celebrated the entry of the Holy Family into Egypt on 24 Bashans of the Coptic calendar -- which coincided with 1 June...

Al Ahram

When it comes to supporting Israel, any bigot will do, writes Ramzy Baroud*

By Ramzy baroud

The recent uproar surrounding Pastor John Hagee is only remarkable in the sense that it took so long in coming. The fundamentalist pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone "mega-church" in San Antonio, Texas, has long shown himself to be not just anti- Semitic, but also anti-Islamic and anti-Catholic. It doesn't take much probing to find ample examples of racism, bigotry and justification of violent tragedy in the words of the man once described by Senator Joe Lieberman as "Ish Elokim" -- a "man of God".

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Dr Mernissi gave a lecture at the American University of Sharjah titled "Love in Digital Islam: Why is Ibn Hazm so popular on the internet?"

By Siham Al Najami

DUBAI - The clash between Islam and the West is in reality a clash between "Ulfa" meaning empathy and consumerism, said internationally-renowned writer and feminist Dr Fatima Mernissi in a lecture held at the American University of Sharjah.

The Moroccan sociologist delivered the lecture "Love in Digital Islam: Why is Ibn Hazm so popular on the internet?"

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When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, Hillary Clinton is a lot more vulnerable than Barack Obama.

By Barbara Ehrenreich

There's a reason why Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama.

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By Jackson Browne

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants’ windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
They’ll be gathering around the hearths and tales
Giving thanks for all God’s graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus.

Well they call him by the prince of peace
And they call him by the savior
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they’ve turned the nature that I worshipped in
From a temple to a robber’s den
In the words of the rebel Jesus.

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus.

But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgment
For I’ve no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.

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By Ramzy Baroud

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's speech on December 6th - in which he tried to 'explain' his Mormon faith - was met with a mostly sympathetic reception at George Bush Library in Texas.

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Ramadan means brisk sales for food
vendors in Kabul, Afghanistan

Ramadan, a month of day-long fasting, spiritual reflection and sometimes night-long revelry, has begun for most of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims.

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This video gives a new understanding of the psychological symptom known as "projection" with regard to claims by Bush and his teams of Christian crusaders that "Islamic fundamentalists" want to take over the world.

To read the Department of Defense report click here

A report released publicly on Thursday by the Defense Department's (DOD) inspector general has found high-ranking Army and Air Force personnel violated long-standing military regulations when they participated in a promotional video for an evangelical Christian organization while in uniform and on active duty.

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By ADAM JONES

Pope Benedict XVI's recent trip to Brazil seems to have done little to shore up the Catholic Church's declining power in its Latin American heartland. It went a long way, however, towards confirming Benedict's reputation as a reactionary bigot.

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Bishara is a staunch opponent of Israel's policies towards Palestinians and other Arab states [AFP]

Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab MP and leader of the National Democratic Assembly, has submitted his resignation from the Knesset at the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

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The call has raised fears that tensions in
the Muslim south could be inflamed

Hundreds of Buddhist monks have rallied in the Thai capital calling for Buddhism to be enshrined in the constitution as Thailand's national religion.

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