Friday, July 27, 2007

Lawyers sap our will to combat terrorism

by Michael Burleigh from The Sunday Times

If Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s anti-terrorism measures seem ignorant of what our fellow Europeans practise routinely, they also reflect an outmoded habit of separating domestic and foreign policy. Why is foreign aid not contingent upon warning recipient states that they will forfeit it if clerics they subsidise preach hatred of the West? Why aren’t we helping Afghanistan or Pakistan to build secular alternatives to the Saudi-financed madrassas where children are brainwashed with cartoon Jew killers? If this is a neo-Cold War, why are we failing to help the four fifths of Muslims who are not from the Middle East to assert themselves against that demented region?

Take a drive in your car and just imagine

by Matthew Good from the Aldergrove Star

Take a drive in your car and just imagine On the other side of the world, in the war-torn and arid Sudanese region of Darfur ... The United Nations Security Council has been of little effect when it comes to confronting the problem in Darfur. The Chinese and Russians have blocked attempts to properly hold the government in Khartoum accountable, primarily because the Chinese, for example, do a considerable amount of business with Sudan, be it to do with oil exports of the sale of arms. And while the Bush administration has condemned the government there, and has been forthright enough to categorize what is transpiring in Darfur as genocide, it is currently co-operating with the Sudanese government, using Sudanese nationals to infiltrate Salafi Jihadi extremist groups in Iraq.

Violence won't work: how author of 'jihadists' bible' stirred up a storm

by Ian Black from The Guardian

Egypt's counter-radicalisation programmes are the most extensive of any Arab country, but jihadists are also rehabilitated in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordan. The Saudi effort, involving 2,800 "deviants", is lenient with those who fought in Afghanistan but less so with returnees from Iraq or anyone attacking the Saudi state - which insists it has the sole authority to authorise jihad. Saudis in al-Qaida are still more likely to be killed than undergo psychological profiling, "revise" their views or debate sharia law with approved clerics.

The Legacy of the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh - Part-X

by Rabindranath Trivedi from the Asian Tribune

Accelerating the trend towards Islamization are the newly returned Bangladeshi migrant workers from the Gulf States who have brought with them the radical Wahhabi and Salafi teachings, says Charles Tannock, Vice-President of the Human Rights subcommittee of the European Parliament. He says that a radical group led by a man calling himself Bangla Bhai, in 2004, attempted an Islamist revolution in several provinces bordering India, supported by local police and ten thousand followers. Tannock’s observation that “Hindus, Ahmadiyyas, and tribal people in the Chittagong hills, fearful for their safety, have been leaving the country in droves” is supported by evidence we provided in last year’s report as well as those we have included in this report. Bangla Bhai, it is reported, was a member of the Jamaat Islami (JI) party, a coalition partner of the ruling party and formerly an employee of the Saudi Embassy in Dhaka. He is the President of Jagroto Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) party.

Business flight will hurt Arabs

by Samuel Gregg from The Australian

By contrast, Saudi Arabia permits non-Muslims to worship privately but does not define this right in law. Conversion to Christianity is severely punished, church-building forbidden, public preaching by Christians a criminal offence and importing Christian literature illegal. In practice, the Government tries to manoeuvre between the demands of Wahhabi Muslim leaders and Saudi Arabia's need for domestic workers and Westerners with technical skills. Hence, Christians can attend services in private homes, though interference from Saudi religious police is common. Estimates of foreign-born Christians working in Saudi Arabia vary from 500,000 to one million. The irony is that as the number of Christians in the Gulf grows, thousands of Christians - mainly members of various Orthodox and Catholic rites present in the Middle East centuries before Islam - are fleeing the rest of the Arab world.

Turkish Dilemma

by Max Singer from National Review Online

Iin the last 30 years the Iranian efforts to spread their Islamist revolution and the Saudi 100 billion dollar campaign to spread Wahhabi dogmas of hatred and intolerance around the world have made profound advances. Although at home in Saudi Arabia the government for the last few years has been fighting hard against the local agents of the thinking they are still propagating around the world ... It is clear that if Wahhabi influenced Muslims came to power in Turkey it would be a disaster for Turkey and for the world. On the other hand, if excessively secular elements came to power in Turkey, even if they had a quite objectionable nationalist/authoritarian tinge, the harm would be limited. Moreover, the prospects for soon moving back to the center would be good as there is no emotionally compelling international movement of authoritarian/secularists to sustain and reinforce such a Turkish group, nor is there an international secularist movement stirring up the Turks in the way that Saudi-financed Wahhabis are.