Today's Top Islamic News (DAILY)

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US reassures Russia on its missile shield plan
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:56:59 GMT

The Pentagon.
The United States reassures Russia on not deploying its missile shield in Ukraine as Moscow warns of its objections to the revised Obama plan.

Under the new plan, Washington says it would replace the land-based sites in Poland and the Czech Republic with a network of sensors and sea-based interceptors and will eventually add land-based interceptors by 2015, US Defense Department said on Friday.

The sea-bed interceptors are designed to protect Europe against short- and medium-range missiles.

The Pentagon rushed to clarify its plans after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sternly objected and voiced concern about the American new missile shield program, saying a report that Ukraine might be part of the system was "rather unexpected".

Ukraine and other countries have shown the willingness to host the radar site for the shield, a system strongly backed by former US president George W. Bush.

The Pentagon said on Friday that US Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow did not make any reference to the stationing of US radars or any other missile defense systems on the territory of Ukraine, and "no such proposal has been made to the government of Ukraine".

It further said that the United States remains interested in earlier proposals dating back several years that would involve sharing data from Russian early-warning radars in Armavir and in Azerbajian.

Russia, which fiercely opposed the Bush missile shield, welcomed President Barack Obama's last month statement that Washington was scrapping Bush administration's plan to deploy anti-missile weaponry and radar in Poland and the Czech Republic.

But, the new US plan "raises more questions than answers," Lavrov said on Friday, during a visit to Moldova for a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of ex-Soviet countries.

FTP/MB

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French physicist detained charged with al-Qaeda link
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:51:07 GMT
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The Large Hadron Collider.?
The French police arrest two French brothers, one a scientist working on a 10-billion-dollar project, alleged of having links with the terrorist al-Qaeda group.

The physicist was working at the world's largest atom smasher, which ceased operation last year just days after its celebrated inauguration, when a massive electric failure related to a construction fault caused the entire equipment to shut down.

The arrests of the two Frenchmen, aged 25 and 32, were made in the southeastern French city of Vienna, 33 kilometers (20 miles) south of Lyon.

The physicist, who was affiliated with an outside institute, had been assigned to analyze projects at the laboratory since 2003. He was one of more than 7,000 scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, a tunnel which is around 100 meters underground and 27 kilometers long, said the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.

CERN expressed dismay at the arrest saying that the physicist had no contact with anything that could be used for terrorism. "None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain," its statement, released on Friday, said.

The LHCb experiment, on which he worked, is one of a series of research projects along the 27-kilometer circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border. He had access only to the small experiment he was working on, and not to the tunnel itself, CERN said.

"LHCb is an experiment set up to explore what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and build the universe we inhabit today," the organization said on its Web site.

The Big Bang was a vast explosion that scientists theorize was the beginning of the universe 14 billion years ago.

FTP/MB

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Russian nuclear subs shoot ballistic missiles
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:07:26 GMT
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A Russian Akula class submarine
The Russian Navy has reportedly test fired two submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) in the northern Pacific Ocean.

The RSM-50 missiles were shot from the vessels over Tuesday and Wednesday in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Far East, Interfax reported on Friday quoting the country's Defense Ministry.

The missile reportedly hit their designated targets in the uninhabited peninsula of Kanin.

The RSM-50 is capable of carrying from one to seven nuclear warheads and can hit strategic targets at a range of 6,500 to 8000 km (4,040 to 4,970 miles).

In 1977, the Soviet Union inaugurated the missiles, named by NATO as the SS-N-18 Stingray, as its first sea-based ballistic missile, capable of carrying three to seven multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV).

HN/MMN

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Canada to pull troops out of Afghanistan by 2011
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:02:24 GMT

Canadian troops n Helmand Province
Amid deepening rift over the handling of the NATO war in Afghanistan, Premier Stephen Harper has reaffirmed that Canadian troops would leave the war-ravaged county in 2011.

"Canada's military mission in Afghanistan will end in 2011," Harper told reporters in Ottawa.

"We will have been in Afghanistan longer than we will have been in both world wars Combined."

Harper has vowed that Ottawa wouldn't take part in any further military mission in Afghanistan. "And we will not be extending the military mission, period."

Canada currently has about 2,800 soldiers fighting the Taliban-linked insurgents in the troubled Southern provinces of the war-ravaged country, where insurgency has skyrocketed over the past few months.

The United States has called for troop reinforcements in response to the escalating Taliban insurgency, which is at its highest level since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Canada and several European countries seem to oppose further commitments to the mission in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the mounting number of Western soldiers coming home in body bags has sent support for the war plummeting in Europe, Canada, and the United States.

The current year has been the deadliest for foreign forces, as well as Afghan civilians.

JR/MB

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35 killed in Mexican Drug violence
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:53:49 GMT
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Mexican police officers search inside a burnt car with six charred bodies inside, in ?Tijuana, Mexico.?
Drug-related brutal attacks and crimes spanning five Mexican states, kill 35 people in one single day, security officials say.

Despite the deployment of 50,000 soldiers across the country by the government to confront the cartels, fierce drug wars have claimed over 14,000 lives since 2006.

On Friday, ten bodies were discovered in six different locations in the southern state of Guerrero, and another six bodies were found in the small town of Ciudad Ayala.

All the bodies had messages attached. One of the messages said: "This is what is going to happen to all the rats, kidnappers and extortionists." The messages were signed by the "boss of bosses."

Bodies of seven victims of an execution-style killing were discovered in two locations in the vicinity of Mexico State. And in Tijuana, near the US border, a civil servant was found hanging from a bridge, badly beaten and his head bound with adhesive tape.

Two more men were killed around the border region, the epicenter of Mexico's bloody drug wars.

FTP/MB

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2 Polish soldiers killed, 4 injured in Afghanistan
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:42:20 GMT
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Polish army soldiers in Afghanistan
A roadside bomb has killed two more Polish soldiers and wounded four others in Afghanistan, amid rising death toll for foreign soldiers there.

The lethal blast happened Friday in central Afghanistan's troubled Wardak province.

Media reports said the blast was caused by a landmine which exploded under their military vehicle

Poland has 2,000 troops deployed in the war-ravaged country, as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The incident brings the death toll of Polish troops deployed there to 15 since the US-led invasion of the country began more than eight years ago.

The United States has called for troop reinforcements in response to the escalating Taliban insurgency, which is at its highest level since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Despite the presence of over 100,000 foreign troops in the country, the escalated militancy has made the current year the deadliest for foreign forces, as well as Afghan civilians.

JR/MB

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Obama: I do not deserve Nobel prize

The Nobel committee said Obama had reached out to the world in a bid to end nuclear arms stocks [EPA]
Barack Obama, the US president, has said he is "surprised and deeply humbled" after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009, less than a year after taking office.

Speaking in Washington, Obama said he did "not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honoured by this prize".

The Nobel Committee in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, said that the award recognised Obama's attempts to foster international peace and create a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama will give his $1.4m reward for winning the Nobel Peace Prize to charity, the AFP news agency reported a US official as saying.

No decision has yet been taken on exactly which organisations will benefit, the official said.

AlJazeera

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US: Taliban has grown fourfold

Extra US troops are needed for combat and to train Afghan army units, McChrystal has said [AFP]
Taliban-led forces fighting US and Nato troops in Afghanistan have increased nearly fourfold since 2006, according to a US intelligence estimate presented to the US president.

The report says that the number of Taliban fighters has grown to 25,000, from 7,000 four years ago, the officials said on Friday as Barack Obama convened a fifth cabinet-level meeting on his country's military strategy in Afghanistan.

The US president is considering whether to agree to a request by the senior commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan for up to 40,000 extra troops to be deployed.

General Stanley McChrystal has warned that the US mission in Afghanistan risks failure unless more troops are sent to combat the Taliban and provide training and support to Afghan government forces.

Officials said on Friday that Obama - who agreed early in his presidency to send 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan - has not made any firm decision in regard to McChrystal's request.

Support dwindling

Should Obama decide to send more troops, they would join a US military force that is already scheduled to reach 68,000 personnel by the end of the year. There are also about 39,000 troops serving in Afghanistan under Nato.


Obama is facing pressure from his own party over the rise in US military casualties [EPA] But the US president also has to consider a drop in US public support for the war, amid a dramatic rise in US military casualties this year.
Only 40 per cent of Americans support the presence of US troops in Afghanistan, a poll released on Wednesday by the Associated Press and GFK said.

Obama is also facing pressure from within his Democratic party, with several senior members understood to be in favour of pulling forces out of Afghanistan.

One of the options being looked at by the White House is to engage with the Taliban, while taking the war to al Qaeda, whose fighters are understood to be based around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

Peter Baker, a writer with the New York Times, said that Obama had to assess whether sending extra troops would be actually be conducive to improving US security.

"They are trying to eveluate the threat to the United States and in this evaluation al-Qaeda aspires to attack the American homeland, whereas the Taliban has generally not been vocal about attacking the US directly. So, to the extent that the Taliban is a threat to American interests, it is a threat in that it might provide safe haven for al-Qaeda," he told Al Jazeera.

"The question [the cabinet-level team] is grappling with is 'does it make sense to send 40,000 more troops and spend a lot more money to fight a radical group that may not even be the main threat to the US?'"

'Rough estimate'

The US intelligence estimate that 25,000 Taliban forces are ranged against the US and Nato presence in Afghanistan includes associates who are less committed to the fight, officials said.

A US counterterrorism official said the figure was a "rough" estimate because it is difficult to ascertain the size of armed opposition groups that tend to operate in small units.

"You're not talking about fixed formations that rely solely on full-time combatants. Numbers ebb and flow. Bands of fighters appear and vanish," the official said.

A US defence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the size of the Taliban force is far smaller than the combined US and Nato presence, the fighting methods they employ help overcome the asymmetry.

"By the very nature of insurgency, you do not need a lot of insurgents to inflict a lot of damage, because they are able to choose the time and the place to engage," the official said.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

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Muslims 1/4 of world population: U.S. survey

“There are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today,” the Pew Research Center concluded in its study, “Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Muslim Population.”

It found that Muslims make up 23 percent of the world’s 6.8 billion people, the sweeping majority of them Sunnis.

“Of the total Muslim population, 10-13% are Shiite Muslims and 87-90% are Sunni Muslims.”

According to the study, based on data from 232 countries and territories, Asia is home to nearly 20 percent of the global Muslim population.

Indonesia is the world’s most populated Muslim country with 203 million Muslims, about 13 percent of the world’s Muslim population.

Pakistan has 174 million Muslims, India 161 million, Bangladesh 145 million, Iran 74 million and Turkey 74 million, according to the study.

“Together these six countries are home to about 85% of Asia's Muslim population and more than half (53%) of the global Muslim population.”

Nearly half of Asia’s Muslims are concentrated in South Asia.

“The remainder are somewhat equally divided between Southeast-East Asia (26%) and Central-Western Asia (24%),” says the study.

It found that the Middle East and North Africa have 315 million Muslims, about 20 percent of the world’s Muslims.

“The Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries.”

The study also finds that there are 240 million Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, making up about 15 percent of the global Muslim population.

One-third of them live in Nigeria, which has about 74 million Muslims, about half of its population.

The region is home to countries with very large Muslim majorities, including Mauritania (99%), Niger (99%), Somalia (99%), Mayotte (98%), Comoros (98%), Djibouti (97%), Senegal (96%), Gambia (95%), Mali (93%), Guinea (84%) and Sierra Leone (71%).

Muslim minorities
The study, described as the first-ever of its kind, indicates that one-fifth of Muslims (300 million) live in non-Muslim countries.

“There minority Muslim populations are often quite large.”

Hindu-majority India has the third-largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan.

“China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.”

The study notes that China’s 22 million Muslims are distributed in every Chinese province, with the highest concentration in the western provinces, primarily Xinjiang, Ningxia and Gansu.

“Xinjiang is the only Muslim-majority province of China, with Muslims accounting for approximately 53% of the total population.”

The study finds that Europe has 38 million Muslims, making up five percent of the continent’s population, mostly concentrated in eastern and central Europe.

Russia has more than 16 million Muslims, the largest Muslim population in Europe.

According to the study, Germany has the biggest Muslim minority in western Europe, with more than four million population.

It put the number of Muslims in France, which was previously known to have the continent’s biggest Muslim minority, at 3.5 million.

Britain has fewer than two million Muslims, nearly 3 percent of the total population, while Italy has 36,000 Muslim populations, the smallest in Europe.

The study says there are nearly 4.6 million Muslims in the Americas, with nearly 2.5 million Muslims in the US and 700,000 in Canada.

It notes that Muslims make up 16 percent of Suriname’s population, the largest Muslim population in the Americas.

Argentina has a Muslim minority of 800,000, the largest in South Africa.

The figures presented by the study about Muslim populations in the West, particularly in Europe and the US, contradict the estimates usually reported by Muslim organizations in these regions.

Muslims in the US, for example, are commonly believed to number more than 7 million while France is believed to be home to more than six million Muslims.

Source: IslamOnline

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MILAN – Plans by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s allies to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa, a loose outfit covering the whole body from head to toe, is infuriating the political establishment in the southern European country. "A ban (on the burqa) would be xenophobic and discriminatory,” Mario Scialoja, the chair of the Islamic Culture Center of Italy, told Reuters late Thursday, October 8.
“The existing law should be enforced."

The far-right Northern League is pressing to amend a 1975 law to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa.

The law slaps hefty fines and up to two years in jail on people covering their faces with anything preventing their identification by police.

But the Northern League is now proposing to amend the law to ban “garments worn for reasons of religious affiliation”.

The far-right party also wants to remove from the law the expression “justified cause”, which has prompted courts to allow burqa on religious grounds.

Scialoja warned that a burqa ban would stigmatise Muslims, calling on Italian authorities to treat Muslim women with respect.

"We say no to a new law."

The burqa has been a hot issue in many European countries.

Last month, the Italian spa resort town of Montegrotto Terme banned the burqa.

A French MP has also proposed a ban on the wearing, sparking outcry among the Muslim minority and across the Muslim world.

Italy has a Muslim population of some 1.2 million, including 20,000 reverts, according to unofficial estimates.

Unconstitutional

The center-left opposition also strongly criticized the proposed burqa ban.

“(The plan is) unconstitutional because it infringes on religious freedom," said Donatella Ferranti, a member of the opposition Democratic Party.

Barbara Pollastrini, former centre-left minister for equal opportunities, also blasted the move.

She said the current legislation was sufficient, but needed to be more effectively enforced because the burqa "conveys a message of violation of women's human rights".

Italian Muslims have been in the eye of storm since the Berlusconi’s government and its far-right partners came to power.

The Northern League is widely accused of racism with many critics calling it the BNP of Italy, a reference to the British right-wing party.

Its election campaign played on issues such as immigration, crime and economic and cultural fears from immigration.

Portraying itself as a defender of Italy's Christian roots, it started its mission in the new government in May 2008 with bringing down a mosque in the northern city of Verona.

Last September, the League rejoiced the success of its campaign to halt the building of a mosque in the northern city of Bologna.

Last year, League MP Mario Borghezio burst into a church in the northern city of Genoa shouting anti-Islam statements.

Source: IslamOnline