Wednesday, May 30, 2007

LEBANON: Nahr al-Bared is a ghost town, smelling death

From Reuters and IRIN (UN)

Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, Abdul Aziz Khoja, in an interview with Al Hayat published on Sunday, said four Saudi militants fighting for Fatah al-Islam had been confirmed dead. Fatah al-Islam is believed to have several hundred fighters from Algeria, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen as well as disaffected youth from the Palestinian community.

Iraq militants export violence to neighbors

From Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet of the New York Times

Militant leaders warn that the situation in Lebanon is indicative of the spread of fighters. "You have 50 fighters from Iraq in Lebanon now, but with good caution I can say there are a hundred times that many, 5,000 or higher, who are just waiting for the right moment to act," Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident in Britain who runs the jihadist Internet forum, Tajdeed.net, said in an interview Friday. "The flow of fighters is already going back and forth, and the fight will be everywhere until the United States is willing to cease and desist."

Looking for Osama in the Maldives

From John Lancaster of Slate

Somewhere in his 50s, the scowling imam wore the long beard and calf-length pants that marked him as a follower of Wahhabiism, the strict fundamentalist brand of Islam that originated in Saudi Arabia. But I was not in Saudi Arabia. I was in the Maldives ... As elsewhere, the growth of fundamentalist influence can be traced in part to Saudi Arabia, which built a seven-story-high school in Male—the Islamic Studies Institute—whose curriculum runs heavily to Arabic and the Quran. Moreover, many young Maldivians have studied at madrassas in the Middle East and Pakistan, where some have been recruited by militants.

In Memoriam: Tashbih Sayyed

From Rachel Neuwirth at the American Thinker

The world will also have to see if the Saudi efforts are genuinely aimed at establishing peace in the region, or if they are just another attempt to perpetuate the Wahabbist ideology of jihad by claiming to be working for peace ... I hope that we will hear Tashbih's voice about the Islamist/Saudi Arabian fronts within our own society, such as CAIR and MPAC, who weasel their way in America to propound their brand of radical Islam. They take advantage of the American constitution and civil liberties to Islamize America.

The Islamist Threat Arrives in Switzerland

From Steven Stalinsky and The New York Sun

A report filed by the Ministry of Justice in Switzerland, May 2007 -- Salman bin Fahd Al-Odah is a preacher of global influence and is one of the senior figures of the fundamentalist Islamic Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia as well as a close associate of Osama bin Laden. He was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for his extremist ideologies from 1994 until 1999. Even after his imprisonment, he adopts the call to armed struggle against the infidel Western countries in his writings." ... Switzerland's banning Mr. Odah follows decisions in other Western countries to close their borders to influential Muslim religious figures who often espouse anti-Western and pro-jihad sentiment.