Day: October 30, 2009
Malaysia: Bibles Seized by Extremists
Bibles seized as Malaysia minorities fear fundamentalism
Authorities in Malaysia have seized more than 20,000 Bibles in recent months because they refer to God as “Allah,” Christian leaders said Thursday.
The seizures have fed fears among minority groups, which see signs of encroaching Islamic fundamentalism in the predominantly Muslim but multi-racial country.
“There is a growing sense of Islamic assertion, yes,” said the Rev. Hermen Shastri, general-secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia. “There is some concern.”
The Bibles were written in the country’s official language, Malay — in which the word for God is “Allah,” as it is in Arabic.
However, Malaysia’s government says the word is exclusive to Islam.
Its use in Christian publications is likely to confuse Muslims and draw them to Christianity, the government says. So it has banned use of the word in Christian literature.
“Malay has borrowed from Arabic, just as it has from Sanskrit and Portuguese,” Shastri said. “We have maintained the community has the right to use the word.
“But I think this has ignited a cause in the Muslim communities, who are interpreting it as a siege on Islamic beliefs.”
A Home Ministry official directed requests for comment to the ministry’s Publications and Quran Text Control Department, which enforces the ban. An employee there redirected calls to a spokeswoman, who in turn asked CNN to call the Home Ministry back. Calls to other departments were similarly redirected.
A Roman Catholic weekly newspaper, The Herald, is challenging the ban in court after the government threatened to revoke its license for using the word in its Malay edition. Hearings on the case have gone on for two years.
“We quote it as it is. We cannot change the text of the Scripture,” Herald editor Father Lawrence Andrew told CNN last year. “I cannot be the editor of the Bible.”
Among the Bibles confiscated were Malay-language ones that the Bible Society of Malaysia said it had imported from Indonesia. About 10,000 others also were confiscated from Gideons International, which places free copies in hotel rooms and other places.
The Malaysian constitution provides for freedom of religion. The country has a dual-track justice system, in which Islamic courts operate alongside civil ones.
Rulings by the Islamic, or sharia, courts are directed toward the country’s Muslim, who make up 60 percent of the population. But they worry non-Muslims who see them as Islamism seeping into the moderate nation’s fabric.
In November, the National Fatwa Council — the country’s top Islamic body — banned Muslims from practicing yoga. It said elements of Hinduism in yoga can corrupt Muslims.
The council also bans short hair and boyish behavior for girls, saying they encourage homosexuality.
In northern Malaysia’s Kelantan state, authorities have forbidden bright lipstick and high-heeled shoes, saying the bans will safeguard Muslim women’s morals and dignity, as well as thwart rape.
And last month, an Islamic court judge in the eastern state of Pahang upheld a verdict to cane a Muslim woman for drinking beer in public.
The country has been mired in inter-faith disputes as well in recent months. In those cases, many non-Muslims complain that the civil courts generally cede control to Islamic courts.
Muslims cannot convert to other religions without the permission of the Islamic courts, which rarely approve such requests.
In relationships in which a Muslim parent has converted children to Islam over the objection of a non-Muslim parent, the sharia courts usually have upheld the conversions.
And earlier this year, a Sikh family lost a court battle to cremate a relative after officials said the man had converted to Islam years before his death, though the family said he hadn’t.
Arizona: Noor Almaleki Case – Father in “Honor Killing” Attempt Captured in UK – Extradited Back to US
Dad accused in hit-run fled to Mexico, England before capture
An Iraqi immigrant accused of running over his daughter for being too “Westernized” fled across three countries before he was extradited to the United States and arrested Thursday, authorities said Friday.
Faleh Almaleki, 48, of Glendale, drove to Mexico the day of the attack and later boarded a plane for London, said David Gonzales, U.S. marshal for Arizona. Almaleki was detained by British authorities for entering the country illegally and escorted by U.S. officials on a flight to Atlanta.
U.S. marshals and Peoria detectives arrested Almaleki on Thursday afternoon after his plane landed in Atlanta, Gonzales said. The suspect had evaded investigators for more than a week.
Almaleki waived his extradition rights in front of a Georgia judge and should be transported back to Arizona within a few days, Gonzales said.
Police believe Almaleki ran over his daughter, Noor Almaleki, 20, and Amal Edan Khalaf, 43, in a Peoria parking lot Oct. 20 because he felt his daughter had disrespected the family.
Khalaf is reportedly the mother of Noor’s boyfriend.
The two women were still in the hospital, with Noor Almaleki in “life-threatening” condition and Khalaf’s condition improving, when police updated their status earlier this week.
Peoria police said interviews with friends and family revealed that Faleh, a Glendale resident, was angry at his daughter for not following traditional Iraqi values.
Noor’s brother, Peter-Ali Almaleki, told a local news station that his sister went “out of her way to disrespect” her traditional Muslim father.
Noor had married a man in Iraq but returned to the United States and moved in with her boyfriend and Khalaf in Surprise. The father was furious about the arrangement, according to the brother.
Peter-Ali Almaleki said their father called home late last week to check on his daughter’s condition but his wife hung up on him.
UK – Tulay Goren Trial: Sister gives evidence to “honor killing” trial from beyond the grave
Sister gives evidence to ‘honour killing’ trial from beyond the grave
The younger sister of Tulay Goren, a schoolgirl alleged to have been murdered in an ‘honour killing’ for falling in love, gave evidence from beyond the grave about the final time she saw her sibling.
Hatice Goren died in a car crash seven years after 15-year-old Tulay went missing in January 1999.
But in two video interviews recorded in the months after Tulay’s disappearance Hatice told the Old Bailey about the last time she had seen her.
She said her father Mehmet told eight-year-old brother Tuncay to kiss Tulay goodbye as it would be the last time he saw her.
“My dad said to my brother, go and kiss your sister, Tulay, because this is the last time that you are going to see her,” Hatice said. ”He went and kissed her and my dad was crying as well.”
The girl, then 13, wept as she described her sometimes troubled relationship with Tulay, saying: “Before I used to hate her, but now I like her because I miss her.”
Her father Mehmet Goren is alleged to have murdered Tulay after consulting with his brothers Ali and Cuma.
Mehmet, 49, of Navestock Crescent, Woodford Green, north east London, together with Cuma Goren, 42, of Evesham Avenue, Walthamstow, east London, and Ali Goren, 56, of Brettenham Road, Walthamstow, deny murdering Tulay on January 7 1999.
They also deny conspiracy to murder her boyfriend Halil Unal between May 1998 and February 1999.
The court heard that during an interview on March 23 1999, Hatice said her sister was “fun” although they sometimes argued over “clothes and things”.
She became upset when talking about Tulay and said: “I don’t want to talk about her at all, I just wanted to cry.”
In another interview on June 11, Hatice was asked about the night of January 6 after Tulay had been brought back home by her parents, having run away to be with her boyfriend.
Hatice said Tulay was going to jump out of the window and her father then “got her around the neck”.
She said the next morning her sister told the family that she wanted to go back with her boyfriend.
Hatice said: “She was upset and she was crying.”
There was a phone call from Ali, in which Mehmet was told to go out and call him from a phone box, she said.
Hatice said her father later told Tuncay to say goodbye to Tulay, before they went to stay with uncle Cuma.
When they returned home, she noticed Tulay’s jumper and two pairs of her shoes were left, which her father told her to throw away.
Hatice was asked about how her mother was, and said: “She is upset … she thinks that my sister is dead.”
Asked about her father, she said: “He is okay … he’s not upset really.”
The trial was adjourned until Monday.
Somali women beaten for violating Islamic law, officials say”
CNN reports “Somali women beaten for violating Islamic law, officials say”
Militants who control parts of Somalia’s capital city are beating women in broad daylight for violating their radical brand of Islamic law, according to local officials and witnesses in Mogadishu.
“Just today, Al-Shabaab dispatched men with whips to the streets around Bakara market and they are flogging any woman who is found not wearing socks,” according to a female maize trader at the Mogadishu market, who spoke Thursday.
She did not want to be named for security reasons.
In the past two days, more than 130 people, including women who were not wearing headscarves and men chewing dried khat leaves, have been detained for violating Al-Shabaab’s interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law, according to witnesses and officials.
Hooded Al-Shabaab gunmen rounded up 50 women on Wednesday from Mogadishu’s Bakara market for not wearing the veil that is required for women under some interpretations of Islamic law, according to the maize trader.
“Most of these women were vegetable traders, so they are poor and can’t afford to buy veils for 600,000 shillings [about $23 U.S.],” she said.
She said she saw more women being detained Thursday.
Another 80 Somali civilians were detained in the southwestern town of Luuq, near the Kenyan and Ethiopian border, “because they turned deaf ear to orders we imposed on the town,” said the local Al-Shabaab commander Sheikh Hussien al-Iraqi.
Al-Shabaab is considered a terrorist organization by the United States because of its ties to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.
It has been imposing stricter rules on Somali civilians living in the areas it controls.
Earlier this month, Al-Shabaab militants whipped women for wearing bras in an area of northern Mogadishu that they control, shocking residents who have been besieged by the ongoing insurgency. The militants believe the female undergarments are a deception to men.
Buffalo Beheading “Honor Killing” Trial: Muzzammil S. “Mo” Hassan “gets more time to pay for psychiatric expert”
— Buffalo News: “Accused wife killer gets more time to pay for psychiatric expert”
— The Buffalo News reports:
— “Over the objections of the prosecutor, Muzzammil S. “Mo” Hassan today was given additional time to secure the money needed to pay for the mental health experts he hopes will help him prove he was emotionally out of control when he decapitated his estranged wife last February.”
— “Erie County Judge Thomas P. Franczyk decried the “glacial pace” of the defense effort, but gave defense attorney James P. Harrington until Dec. 7 to report on the progress of the defense tactics.”
— “The judge warned Harrington that he can still preclude this line of defense if further delays are unacceptable.
— “Prosecutor Colleen Curtin Gable complained of deliberate foot-dragging by the defense.”
— “But Harrington insisted that, until an Oct. 13 settlement was reached in the Hassan family estate case, there was a problem with ensuring enough money to pay for the criminal defense.”
— “Though the estate case is several weeks away from a formal settlement, Harrington told the judge that Hassan is now assured he will have enough money to finance his defense, including pay for his psychiatric experts.”
— “The bulk of the estate will go to his four children. Hassan, 44, did not speak during the brief court session that ended about 10:15 a.m. Hassan, who has been jailed since he surrendered to police about an hour after the Feb. 12 killing, did not speak at court. Harrington declined comment as he left court.”
Related Reports:
— August 8, 2009: Man accused of killing wife to get mental examination – Lawyers may seek insanity defense
— March 7, 2009: NY NOW President Stands by Statement on Extremist Killings
— February 17, 2009: Buffalo: Possibility of ‘honor killing’ mulled in Orchard Park slaying
Iran: “Supreme Leader” Warns Opposition Leaders Against Questioning Presidential Vote
Iran: “Supreme Leader” Warns Opposition Leaders Against Questioning Presidential Vote
— RFE/RL: “Iran’ s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has described questioning the country’s disputed June 12 presidential vote as the ‘biggest crime.'”
Michigan: MANA Disputes Calls for Violence by “Ummah” in Luqman Abdullah Indictment
On October 30, 2009, the Detroit News reported comments by an individual who has been reported as opposing American “institutions and ideologies” as an independent Islamic “scholar” on the “Ummah” organization that reported Violent Extemism plotter Luqman Ameen Abdullah belonged to. In the Detroit News report, this scholar states the “Ummah” organization merely promotes an “anti-government” ideology, but does not promote violence.
The “scholar” referenced in the Detroit News report, Ihsan Bagby, is also the General Secretary of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). According to the MANA website, reported Violent Extemism plotter Luqman Ameen Abdullah “was a representative of the Detroit Muslim community to the ‘National Ummah’ and the general assembly (Shura) of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA).” As previous reported, Luqman Ameen Abdullah was killed on October 28 in a shootout with federal agents in a raid investigating weapons and other federal criminal violations. A federal indictment filed on October 27 detailed Luqman Ameen Abdullah’s goals to promote violence against law enforcement agencies, promote hate against non-Muslims, and plot violence against the United States.
MANA’s website rejects the charges against Luqman Ameen Abdullah stating that reports about Luqman Ameen Abdullah’s promotion of violence are “shocking and inconsistent.” In Abdullah’s defense, MANA states that Luqman Ameen Abdullah “consistently advocated for the downtrodden and always spoke about the importance of connecting with the needs of the poor.” Rather than questioning Luqman Ameen Abdullah’s activity, MANA’s website states that “This tragic shooting raises deep concerns regarding the use of lethal force by law enforcement agents.” The Detroit News report does not mention the MANA website defense of Luqman Ameen Abdullah.
The Detroit News report cites MANA’s Ihsan Bagby as “a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky who has written extensively on mosques in Detroit and nationwide.” The Detroit News quotes Ihsan Bagby as stating regarding the “Ummah” that “They always have advocated for establishing Muslim communities… They have worked in various cities to establish a mosque that is a hub and influences the neighborhood in an Islamic fashion.”
The Detroit News report states that “Ihsan Bagby of the Muslim Alliance in North America agreed the Ummah is anti-government, but disputed the group advocates violence.” It also stated that Bagby “took issue with the government’s characterization of Abdullah as ‘a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group’ and said he is shocked by such ‘hateful rhetoric.'”
MANA’s Ihsan Bagby does not state in the Detroit News report that he is shocked by Luqman Ameen Abdullah’s reported hateful rhetoric against non-Muslims, blacks, law enforcement agencies, and others. MANA’s Ihsan Bagby is only reported as being shocked by the FBI’s characterization of Luqman Ameen Abdullah as “a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group.”
MANA’s Ihsan Bagby has been previously quoted as stating, “Ultimately we can never be full citizens of this country. . . because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.”
Ihsan Bagby was also a recent speaker in Washington DC at the July 4, 2009 weekend Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference ironically entitled: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Ihsan Bagby is also on the Board of Directors of ISNA, which was listed among the unindicted co-conspirator organizations in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial. ISNA’s leader was recently reported to have been invited to a White House Ramadan celebration in September 2009.
In the October 27, 2009 federal indictment against Luqman Ameen Abdullah and other Detroit area associates, Luqman Abdullah referenced the Dar-Ul Movement that he was part of as “a military force to be reckoned.” The indictment also stated that: “According to Abdullah, the group is still Dar-Ul, but this is not widely known because of the United States government. The Ummah is a cover name for Dar-Ul.”
The Detroit News report also quotes an FBI official on the subject, stating: “In a federal complaint, Abdullah, 53, is labeled the local leader of a predominantly black Muslim group called ‘Ummah’ or the brotherhood, who sought a separate state within the United States governed by Sharia law. ‘This is a very hybrid, radical ideology,’ said Andrew Arena, special agent in charge of the FBI in Detroit. ‘Mainstream Muslim groups would not recognize this ideology with what they view their faith is.’ Nationally, Ummah is led by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown. Al-Amin, who is in prison for the murder of two police officers in Georgia, is a former Black Panther leader.”
On October 29, 2009, Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) published a detailed transcription of the PDF graphic of the federal indictment of Luqman Ameen Abdullah, demonstrating the exhaustive and multiple reports of Luqman Ameen Abdullah’s goals to promote hate against non-Muslims and to promote violence against the FBI, police, Washington DC, and non-Muslims.
R.E.A.L. transcribed a significant portion of the overall 45 page federal indictment in its report. In that report, Luqman Ameen Abdullah is referenced as calling for killing police officers, killing FBI agents, calling for a nuclear attack on Washington DC, bragging of shooting blacks, teaching classes on how to shoot police officers, and bragging that he has shot “a lot” of people. According to the report, Luqman Ameen Abdullah bragged to small children, who are members of the “Ummah,” about the number of people he has shot. Also in that report, Luqman Ameen Abdullah was repeatedly armed with a gun, and encouraged members of the Detroit area Masjid Al Haqq to obtain weapons, preferably by obtaining them through killing police officers.
Nor is such an association with violence new. According to the affidavit transcribed in the report, the earlier location of the Masjid Al Haqq had a firearms range, and after the “Ummah” was evicted from the previous location, “On January 20, 2009, while the members of the Ummah were being evicted from 4118 Joy Road by the City of Detroit for non-payment of property taxes, the Detroit Police Department confiscated two firearms and approximately forty knives and martial arts weapons from Luqman Abdullah’s apartment inside the mosque.”