News-Observer Reports:
— — “The reinforced glass doors to Durham’s largest mosque were smashed earlier this week and two computer monitors and a printer were stolen, mosque leaders said.”
— “This is the third violent incident at the Jaamat Ibad Ar-Rahman on Fayetteville Street near N.C. Central University campus. Earlier this summer windows and doors were also smashed. Six months ago some rocks were hurled at the mosque by two men who shouted slogans such as ‘go to hell.'”
— “Mosque leaders said they first noticed the damage when worshipers came for early morning prayers on Monday. The mosque is within several hundred yards of a police substation on Fayetteville Street, and mosque leaders said they wanted the police to investigate and offer beefed up patrols.”
Day: November 4, 2009
Arizona – Noor Almaleki Honor Killing: Father To Be Arraigned, Face New Charges
— Arizona Republic reports: “Glendale father to be arraigned in ‘honor killing’ case”
— “An Iraqi immigrant accused of slaying his own daughter for becoming ‘too Westernized’ will be arraigned in Maricopa County Superior Court on Thursday morning.”
— “Prosecutors say Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, of Glendale, conducted an ‘honor killing’ on his own daughter because he felt she had shamed the family by not following traditional Iraqi or Muslim values.”
— KPHO reports: “Dad To Face New Charges In Daughter’s Death”
— “A Glendale father accused of running down his daughter because she was too Westernized faces arraignment Thursday in Maricopa County Superior Court.”
— “Prosecutors are expected file harsher charges against 48-year-old Iraqi immigrant Faleh Hassan Almaleki in the death of his daughter, 20-year-old Noor Faleh Almaleki.”
— “Faleh Almaleki was originally charged with two counts of aggravated assault.”
— “Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said detectives and Maricopa County prosecutors are determining what the new charges against Almaleki will be.”
Chicago: Black Family’s Home Attacked with Bricks with Racial Slurs on Them
— WBBM CBS2 News reports: “Plainfield Family: Victims of Hate Crime? Bricks come crashing through the windows of a suburban family’s home. The family says it’s a hate crime, aimed at them because they’re black. The bricks had racial slurs on them. CBS 2’s Pamela Jones reports police agree it was racially motivated.”
UK: Hizb ut-Tahrir Anti-Democracy Group Schools Receive Government Funding
Council suspends funding to schools linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir
Schools run by members of the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir have had their public funding suspended and will be placed under investigation after the payments were exposed by The Sunday Telegraph.
Government grants totalling £113,000 were paid last year to the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation, which runs a nursery and a primary school in Tottenham, north London and a primary in Slough, Berkshire. The grants continued this year, although no figures are available.
The foundation’s lead trustee and “proprietor” of the Slough school is Yusra Hamilton, a leading member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and wife of the group’s main press spokesman, Taji Mustafa.
The public money – from the Government’s Early Years Fund – was paid to help run the nursery school and two Islamic primary schools where children are taught key elements of Hizb’s ideology from the age of five. It was administered by the local authority, Haringey.
In a statement, the Home Office said: “Haringey Council has decided to suspend its allocation of Early Years Funding, to the schools concerned, pending an investigation.”
Hizb regards integration as “dangerous”, says that British Muslims should “fight assimilation” into UK society and opposes all involvement with the “corrupt” state. It wants to create a global Islamic superstate, or “caliphate”, initially in Muslim-majority countries and then across the rest of the world. The former prime minister, Tony Blair, proposed to ban the group and the Conservatives have said that they will do so if they win power.
Other trustees of the Shakhsiyah Foundation who are Hizb members or activists include Farah Ahmed, the head teacher of the Slough school, who has written in a Hizb journal condemning the “corrupt Western concepts of materialism and freedom”.
On their website, the schools say their “ultimate goal” and “foremost work” is the creation of an “Islamic personality” in children. The creation of an “Islamic personality” is a key tenet of Hizb’s ideology. The schools’ history curriculum states that children are taught that “there must be one ruler of the khilafah [caliphate]”. The schools’ website says that “in the glorious history of Islam… the Sharia was the norm”. Children are taught Arabic from the age of three.
Center for Social Cohesion reports:
Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy
The CSC published a new report on Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), a radical Islamist group that Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling MP recently promised to ban. Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy, by CSC researchers Houriya Ahmed and Hannah Stuart, reveals how HT uses front groups to embed itself into communities and deliberately downplays its intolerant beliefs. Members of HT in the UK have founded schools to propagate the party’s ideology and even received government funding.
Based on extensive interviews with former leading members, over a year of fieldwork and previously unpublished internal strategy communiqués from HT’s global leadership, the report is the most comprehensive study of the group’s activities in the United Kingdom to date. The report concludes with a detailed analysis of the policies the government could adopt to limit the influence of HT in the UK.
Covering the report’s findings, the Sunday Telegraph revealed that the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation, an HT charity that runs two primary schools – one in Haringey, North London and another in Slough, Berkshire – received £113,411 of government funds. Stuart is quoted as saying:
“Young people who get involved with Hizb ut-Tahrir’s fronts are tricked into believing its radical agenda represents true Islam.”
A week later, the Sunday Telegraph revealed that Haringey Council has now suspended government funds to the Foundation. Ahmed is quoted as saying:
“This suspension of funding is very welcome. It is quite wrong for the British state to be funding groups that want to destroy it.”
Michael Gove MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, asked
The report’s findings were covered by the Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Jewish Chronicle, Haringey Independent, National Secular Society, charity newsletters and numerous online blogs. The report has also been covered by leading press in Pakistan, such as the a parliamentary question regarding how much funding the Foundation has received in the last three years from the Government. Daily Jang. Ahmed and Stuart were also quoted in Pakistan’s News on Sunday about HT’s activities:
“Ideologically HT is no different to al-Qaeda. It is a dangerous and divisive organisation that aims to implement a totalitarian dictatorship that will use violence to spread its rule. HT’s strategy is to propagate its ideology amongst all levels of society and to indoctrinate the population with its extremist belief system, which it presents as ‘true’ Islam. The party’s claim is a lie. Its ideology must be challenged and totally rejected.”
Ahmed spoke about the report’s findings on LBC Radio with Nick Ferrari, and about HT’s activities on the US chat show, Secure Freedom Radio.
Other Reports on Hizb ut-Tahrir Organization:
White House Adviser Joins UK Interview with Anti-Democratic Hizb ut-Tahrir Group
Extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir Event Promoted with Beheaded Statue of Liberty
UK: Press Reports of “Furious Residents” over Extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir Conference
Canada: Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) Group to Meet in Govt-Managed Community Center
Chicago – IPT News: “Anti-Semitic, Anti-Christian Propaganda on Display at Caliphate Conference”
Chicago’s Moment of Freedom: Chicagoans Stand Up for Freedom Challenging Hizb ut-Tahrir
Bangladesh – CDN Report: “Court Impedes Effort to Rescue Kidnapped Girl in Bangladesh”
Court Impedes Effort to Rescue Kidnapped Girl in Bangladesh
Muslim men abduct Christian eighth-grader, force her to convert and marry.
DHAKA, Bangladesh, November 3 (CDN) — A bail order in Bangladesh has impeded police from rescuing a young Christian girl who was abducted and forced to convert to Islam and marry one of her kidnappers, according to police.
Four Muslim men abducted eighth-grade student Silvia Merry Sarker on July 30 as she made her way home from school in west Sujankathi village, under Agoiljhara police jurisdiction, in Barisal district in southern Bangladesh, according to her father, Julian Sarker.
Sarker filed a case under the Women and Children Repression Act against Al-Amin Faria, 24, Shamim Faria, 22, Sahadat Faria, 20, and Sattar Faria, 50.
“My daughter was abducted by Faria with the help of his cousins and other relatives,” said Sarker.
Sarker filed a First Information Report (FIR) charging that the men abducted his daughter initially to “indulge Al-Amin Faria’s evil desire.” Later she was forced to convert to Islam and marry Al-Amin Faria, which Sarker said was part of an attempt to take over his land and property.
Local police inspector Ashok Kumar Nandi told Compass that police were continuing efforts to arrest the kidnappers but had yet to find them, as the unusually early bail order had blocked their efforts.
“There are four names as prime suspects in the case,” Nandi said. “We arrested three of them, but the court released them on bail. If the court had given them to us on remand, we might have found the girl, or at least we would get much information to rescue the girl.”
Generally suspects in cases under the Women and Children Repression Act are not granted bail so early for the sake of investigations, Nandi said.
“We do not know why they were released on bail,” he said. “Those released persons are moving freely in the village. We cannot arrest them again without an order.”
Attorney Rabindra Ghosh, president of Bangladesh Minority Watch and an activist for Dutch human rights organization Global Human Rights Defense, told Compass that the granting of bail to the suspects also poses threats to the victim’s family.
“They are threatening the victim’s family to withdraw the case,” said Ghosh. “Release of the abductors on bail so early is a travesty – the abductors got impunity due to the early bail order. For the sake of the girl’s rescue, the court could have sent the arrestees to police on remand to find more information about their hideout.”
Gnosh concurred that an accused person under the Women and Children Repression Act case does not get bail so early without first getting necessary information from them.
False Document
A few days after the kidnapping, Sarker said, the abductors provided Nimchandra Bepari, a Hindu neighbor, an affidavit claiming that Sarker’s daughter was 19 years old. Bepari gave the affidavit to the local police inspector. The kidnappers also contacted sub-district chairman Mortuza Khan.
“My daughter is 13 years old, but the abductors made an affidavit of her age showing 19 years old,” Sarker said.
The headmaster of Agoiljhara Shrimoti Matrimangal Girls High School, where the girl is a student, issued a certificate denoting that Silvia Merry Sarker is even younger than 13 – born on Dec. 24, 1997, which would mean she is not yet 12 years old.
The fabricated affidavit provided by the kidnappers states that she accepted Islam and has married, said Sarker.
“I am shocked how a minor girl is shown as an adult in the affidavit,” Ghosh said. “It is illegal, and there should be proper action against this kind of illegal activity.”
Al-Amin Faria had tried to get the girl’s two older sisters to marry him, but their early marriages saved them from falling prey to him, Sarker said.
“I married off my two elder daughters at an early age immediately after finishing their schooling,” said Sarker.
Before they married, Sarker said he felt helpless to keep Faria and his family from accosting and harassing his other daughters.
“I could not take any legal action against them since we are the only Christian family here,” he said. “I tolerated everything. I did not inform it to police or they would get infuriated.”
When Faria “targeted” his second daughter for marriage, Sarker informed the headmaster of the school and its managing committee, and they warned the Muslim not to disturb the family, Sarker said. Nevertheless, he said, he felt he couldn’t send his older daughters to school because he feared Faria would harm them.
“The relation of us with those Muslim neighbors is ‘predator-and-prey,’” he said. “I saved my other family members from his lechery, but I could not save my youngest daughter.”
Sarker said he felt alone and helpless as a Christian minority but that he doesn’t understand how the entire justice system also can be so helpless.
“Why and how can the court, law enforcement agencies, police, administration, society and the country be helpless against him? Why can’t they rescue my daughter?” he said.
Dilip Gabriel Bepari, an activist for Bangladesh Minority Watch, told Compass that the group had informed national and international officials in seeking help to find the girl.
“We informed it to various ministers, political leaders and police high officials,” Bepari said. “We also informed it to the Vatican ambassador in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, the girl is still missing.”
Archbishop Paulinus Costa of Bangladesh said the Catholic Church’s impassioned plea to the government is to rescue her as soon as possible and bring the kidnappers to justice.
“It is unfortunate that the girl is not rescued yet in three months,” Costa said. “There must be negligence and indifference to the Christians from the government, otherwise the girl would be rescued.”
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) this year removed Bangladesh from its “Watch List” of countries requiring close monitoring of religious freedom violations, but it urged the new Awami League administration to strengthen protections for all Bangladeshis.
USCIRF also indicates that it hopes the government of Bangladesh will investigate and prosecute perpetrators of violent acts against members of minority religious communities.
Pakistan fashion week defies Taliban with non-Islamic dress
(Pakistan) Karachi: Pakistan fashion week defies Taliban with non-Islamic dress
Daily Telegraph reports:
Sonya Battla, the first designer to show, presented a collection that she said celebrated strong women. She dismissed the fact that in more conservative parts of the country, her designs might get women driven out of town or stoned to death.
“I’m a very brave woman,” said the 38-year-old designer. “I’m not going to be scared and no one’s going to judge me.”
Taliban militants have killed more than 300 in the past month in a bloody campaign of bombings and assassinations. Attacks on markets, universities, the army general headquarters in Rawalpindi and police stations in Lahore show the Taliban can reach seemingly ever corner of the country.
But the fashion world was determined to stage its shows.
“Life has to go on,” said Samar Mehdi, 35, another young designer who studied fashion at Bristol University. “And this is a way to tell the people want our lives to stop that ‘No, we won’t let you.'”
The shows were held at the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s financial capital under strict security. The event – originally scheduled for October – planned to introduce designers and models from abroad, but the fragile security situation has left organisers counting on local talent.
