Today's Top Islamic News (DAILY)

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Auto wudu' machine hits markets
02/02/2010 06:00:00 AM GMT

CAIRO — A Malaysian company launched on Monday, February 1, the world's first high-tech machine to help Muslims make their pre-prayer ablution rite without excessively wasting water in line with their faith teachings.

"The (Automatic Wudu' Washer) AWW will revolutionize the wudu' in all Islamic countries making wudu' cleaner, faster and above all saving millions of liters of water," the company, Inventors AACE Technologies, said on its website.

The ornate, green-colored machine is fully computerized according to its inventors.

It comes with automatic sensors and basins to curb water usage during the rite.

"The user is not required to touch the taps as the taps are activated by water proof diffuser sensors along with audio prompts that is controlled by a central PLC system to dispense water automatically to the taps for each wudu' washing sequence as stipulated in the Holy Qur'an," the website added.

"The used water is then discharged from the rear end of the unit through one pipe outlet."

The machine's surfaces are all coated with nano silver to prevent contact fungal and bacterial infection.

"Besides, the AWW allows a person to perform the wudu' while standing in an hygienic, comfortable and quick manner with blow drying after each wudu'," the inventors said.

"The AWW also recites the `doa' (prayer) before and after each wudu automatically."

AACE Technologies took two years to develop the machine at the cost of $2.5 million and it will be sold at $3,000-$4,000 a piece.

Ablution is necessary for Muslims before performing the five daily prayers.

The ritual is meant to purify the body from impurities.

* Water-saving

The inventors hope the machine will help also help a good cause by saving millions of liters of water wasted during ablution rites everyday.

"Saving water is a motivation for people to adopt this system rather than the conventional methods, where there's a lot of water wastage," AACE Chairman Anthony Gomez told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, reported Reuters.

The device saves water at approximately 1.5 liters per ablution per person.

"During the Haj, two million people used 50 million liters water a day for wudu'," he said, referring to the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah.

"If they introduce this machine they are saving 40 million liters per day."

The inventors are counting on rich countries the Middle East to snap up the machines.

The Gulf city of Dubai has shown interest in acquiring the product for its airport.

AACE also wants to target mosques and offices with new models that can be wall mounted in a group of six.

For Azman Mohamed Noor, a Musli9m from Singapore, the invention can prove beneficial for his country where water supplies are little

"Nothing is impossible," Azman Mohamed Noor said

"Of course we are trying ways and means to new products, those that can save mankind, those that can save nature."

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Autopsy: FBI shot Muslim prayer leader 20 times
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:05:02 GMT

US Muslim prayer leader Luqman Ameen Abdullah had been shot 20 times by federal agents in Detroit last year, an autopsy report confirms.

The autopsy was completed last November, but released on Monday because of the ongoing investigation by the Dearborn police where the shooting took place.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) said that agents were trying to arrest Abdullah at a Dearborn warehouse when he resisted and fired a gun.

Police had accused Abdullah of encouraging his followers to commit violence against the US government.

His family denied the charges, accusing the FBI of using excessive force against the Muslim prayer leader.

At that time, Friday prayer leader of Masjid al-Islam Imam Abdul-Ali Musa told Press TV he had access to documents which could prove that the killing was a pre-arranged scenario.

Imam Musa said the government had prepared a 50-page indictment to justify the raid in which Abdullah was killed.

He described the prayer leader's killing as "an assassination by the federal government" adding that "this is to intimidate the Muslim community."

On Monday, US House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, along with a coalition of civil rights and Muslim activists, once again called for a Justice Department investigation into Abdullah's death.

AGB/TG/DT

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Gates defends US arms sales to Taiwan
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:47:15 GMT

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates justifies Washington's plan to sell arms to Taiwan expressing hope that Beijing's 'reactionary measures' will be short-lived.

Gates argues that according to a bill the US Congress passed in 1979, Washington is committed to provide certain levels of weapons to Taiwan for defense purposes.

Earlier, the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report said that the US is concerned about the growing imbalance of power across the Taiwan Strait in favor of China.

Beijing has threatened to suspend military exchanges with Washington and impose sanctions on American companies that sell arms to Taiwan.

China has not revealed any details about such possible sanctions.

Beijing considers Taiwan as part of the Chinese territory and insists that it should be unified with the mainland China.

GHN/MB

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Obama unveils record $708 bn military budget
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:59:14 GMT

US President Barack Obama seeks a record $708 billion military spending for fiscal year 2011 despite earlier vows to trim Pentagon's 'wasteful' weapons programs.

Obama is proposing in his 3.8 trillion dollar budget plan a hike in military funding, including the boosting of funds for nuclear weapons and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 3.4 percent increase in Pentagon's base budget by Obama's White House accounts for the allocation of $549 billion in addition to earmarking another $159 billion to finance US military missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US president's spending freeze on different areas of the budget, supposedly to help ease the pressure of a hefty 1.6 trillion budget deficit, does not include defense expenditures.

Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has welcomed the boosting of the military budget and said that the funding scheme has been drawn up according to "a dose of realism" about the threats and required funds.

He reiterated his remarks on the necessity of military preparations to encounter asymmetric warfare and 'overseas enemies' and added, "The department's leadership now recognizes that we must prepare for a much broader range of security challenges on the horizon."

Despite Pentagon's scrapping of a number of military proposals, the department will focus more on the development of unmanned planes, helicopters, electronic warfare capabilities and cyberspace measures, Reuters reported.

GHN/MB

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White House anticipates Mohammed execution
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:04:49 GMT

The Obama White House expects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the US says is the architect of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center to be found guilty and executed.

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he's going to meet his maker," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Sunday.

"He will be brought to justice and he's likely to be executed for the heinous crimes he committed," he told John King on CNN's "State of the Union".

President Barack Obama's decision to try Mohammed in New York has come under harsh criticism from politicians who deem the trials as disruptive and costly for the city.

Possible alternatives include the United States Military Academyat West Point, Stewart Air Base outside Newburgh and the federal prison in upstate Otisville.

The Mayor of Newburgh has, however, welcomed the idea of bringing the trials to the city, saying that it will jump start the town's economy.

"The city of Newburgh is a poor place," Nicholas Valentine said on Friday. "And we could really use the economic stimulus that a federal program like this would bring."

Newburgh, about 60 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan, has a new $22 million state-of-the-art courthouse that can be secured easily and is less than a 90-minute commute from Manhattan, Valentine added.

Mohammed has been in US custody since March 1, 2003, when he was captured in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.

After initially blaming Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, and attacking Afghanistan in order to capture the Saudi national, US officials changed focus of their attention and announced that the main culprit has been transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

In March 2007, Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing in Guantanamo Bay claimed Mohammed and four co-defendants confessed to plotting for the attacks.

On December 8, 2008, they allegedly sent a note to the military judge expressing their desire to confess and plead guilty.

Human rights groups, such as the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch say the harsh treatment inflicted on Mohammed during his stay at the Guantanamo detention center amounts to torture, questioning credibility of the 'confessions' under interrogation.

The US says four of its commercial passenger jet airliners were hijacked on September 11, 2001. Two of the airliners crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, one hit the Pentagon and the fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Many analysts and scientists have however stated that the attacks were either intentionally allowed to happen or were a 'false flag' operation orchestrated by an organization with elements inside the United States government.

Demolition theory proponents, such as physicist Steven E. Jones, architect Richard Gage, software engineer Jim Hoffman, and theologian David Ray Griffin, argue that the aircraft impacts and resulting fires could not have weakened the buildings sufficiently to initiate a catastrophic collapse.

The buildings would not have collapsed completely, nor at the speeds that they did, without additional energy involved to weaken their structures, they argue.

Italian MEP Giulietto Chiesa, whose documentary film Zero was aired on Russian state television in late 2008 has questioned the official American version of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The documentary film is based on a collection of essays by the same name which has attracted much attention in Italy since their publication in the late summer of 2007.

The film features prominent figures including novelist Gore Vidal and playwright Dario Fo as well as retired American professor of philosophy David Ray Griffin.

Federal Aviation Administration controllers, US Air Force pilots, military commanders and physicists also appear in the critical documentary, expressing strongly divergent opinions about what happened on September 11, 2001.

To date the American intelligence apparatus has not explained the circumstances in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his accomplices had managed to conduct such attacks on American soil.

MT/DT

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French Catholics Warn Against Muslim Veil Ban
01/02/2010 09:11:00 PM GMT

PARIS – Amid a heated debate about the Muslim veil, the French Catholic church warned Monday, February 1, against banning face-veils, calling on the European country to respect rights of its Muslim minority.


"The result could be the opposite of what is desired and lead to a reaction that increases the number of women wearing this garment,” said Bishop Michel Santier, the top French Catholic official for interreligious dialogue in a statement cited by Reuters.

He said that very few women wore face-veil in the country.

A French parliamentary panel recommended last week slapping a partial ban on face-veils in hospitals, schools, public transport and government offices.

Santier regretted that the panel did not invite Christian or Jewish leaders to give their views during the six-month-long hearings, which ended in December.

French Jewish leaders have already expressed concern about a veil ban.

France has seen a heated debate on the face-veil since President Nicolas Sarkozy described it last June as being "unwelcome" in France.

On Sunday, Claude Gueant, a top aide to Sarkozy, said he doubted a total ban would be legally possible.

According to the Interior Ministry, only about 1,900 Muslim women are estimated to being using face-veils.

The European country is home to nearly seven million Muslims, the biggest Muslim minority in Europe.

A burqa is the all-enveloping cloak, often blue, with a woven grill over the eyes, that many Afghan women wear, and it is almost never seen in France.

The niqab, a garment that is often black, covers the face but leaves the eyes uncovered.

Respect Muslim Rights

The top Catholic Bishop urged the government to respect the rights of the Muslim minority.

"If we want Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries to enjoy all their rights, we should in our country respect the rights of all believers to practice their faith,” he said.

"The French, including the Catholics among them, should not let themselves be gripped by fear or a 'clash of civilisations' theory."

Santier also called on the government to distinct between the majority of peaceful Muslims and a minority of radicals.

"A dialogue in truth among believers will help us go beyond mutual mistrust,” he said.

“The path will be long and hard."

France banned hijab in schools and public places in 2004, with many European countries following suit.

While hijab is an obligatory code of dress for Muslim women, the majority of Muslim scholars agree that a woman is not obliged to wear the face veil.

Scholars believe it is up to women to decide whether to take on the veil or burka.

Prominent Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan has said that the French debate on the wearing of burka reflects growing self-doubts inside the society.


Source: IslamOnline

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US bracing for secessionist sentiments
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:56:08 GMT

Thomas Naylor with a replica of the Green Mountain Boys' flag, flown by the Republic of Vermont between 1777 and 1791.
After one-and-a-half-century, Washington has come across a new phenomenon surfacing in its political arena as secessionist advocates in the state of Vermont seek a divorce from the United States of America.

Last week, a group of Vermont State secessionists declared their intention to seek political power in a quest to quit the Union altogether.

"For the first time in over 150 years, secession and political independence from the US will be front and center in a statewide New England political campaign," said Thomas Naylor, 73, one of the leaders of the campaign, Time reported on Sunday

Naylor, a former Duke University economics professor, is in charge of the Second Vermont Republic, which he describes as "left-libertarian, anti-big government, anti-empire, antiwar, with small is beautiful as our guiding philosophy."

A 2007 poll suggested that the group has the backing of at least 13 percent of state voters.

Naylor said, Vermonters would not be "forced to participate in killing women and children in the Middle East."

The secessionists say the US government is an immoral enterprise, which is engaged in imperial wars, propping up corrupt bankers and snooping on the private lives of the US citizens.

President Barack Obama in his State of the Union Address on Wednesday tried to reassure Americans the union of the US states is still "strong."

RB/HGH/MMN

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Manila Offers Mindanao Muslim Power-sharing
01/02/2010 06:11:00 PM GMT

MANILA — The Philippine government has offered a power-sharing deal to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country’s biggest Muslim group, to settle the decades-long conflict in the south.

"In enhanced autonomy, the president is offering to share powers," chief negotiator Annabelle Abaya told a press conference on Monday, February 1.

Under the proposed deal, MILF will have control on tax collections and natural resources areas in the Muslim-majority south.

Abaya said the offer, made during formal peace talks in Kuala Lumpur last week, would not require amendments to the Constitution to sign a peace deal with MIFL.

The top negotiator hoped the offer would encourage MIFL to sign a final peace deal before the country’s presidential election in June to end the four-decade conflict in the south.

MILF has been struggling for an independent state in the mineral-rich southern region of Mindanao for decades.

More than 120,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted in the late 1960s.

Mindanao, the birthplace of Islam in the Philippines, is home to more than 5 million Muslims.

On Table

The top government negotiator said talks are still on the table to bridge the gap with MILF.

"This is a first draft," noted Abaya.

"In a first draft, you usually give your position and then shift your position depending on what the other side thinks."

The top negotiator said the draft focuses on doable measures and proposals that could be accepted by the parliament.

"Eighty percent of what (MILF) has proposed can be embedded in the proposals of the government panel."

In 2008, Manila and MILF reached a peace deal to create a Muslim homeland in the south.

But the deal was frozen by the Supreme Court after protests from Christian groups, triggering a new cycle of violence that resulted in the government’s junking the 11-year peace process to solve the conflict in the south.

Manila is preparing to launch a two-month massive consultation campaign on Thursday among stakeholders nationwide to advance peace talks with MILF.

"There is only one way to peace and the resolution of conflict and that is through talking or negotiating," maintains Abaya.

"For the next two months, we will organize a massive consultation campaign with our stakeholders from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao to help in the peace efforts."

Last week, the government asked the parliament to discuss two bills aiming to split the Muslim-majority Mindanao into two regions.

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Haitian PM criticizes US 'kidnappers'
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:30:11 GMT

Haitian PM Bellerive slams Americans who allegedly abducted 33 children during the post-quake mayhem.
Haitian Prime Minister Max Bellerive has criticized a group of Americans who allegedly abducted more than 30 children during the post-quake mayhem.

Haitian police detained 10 members of a US charity group, called 'New Life Children's Refuge', when they were trying to cross into the Dominican Republic with 33 children without the proper papers.

The children, who range in age from two months to 14 years, all have family members that survived the devastating January 12 earthquake.

"It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents," Bellerive told the Associated Press on Monday.

"And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong," he added.

However, the head of the Idaho-based group, Laura Silsby said they were "just trying to do the right thing," admitting she had not obtained the required passports, birth certificates and adoption certificates for the children.

Bellerive also said that Haiti is open to having the Americans tried in the US, since the quake demolished most government buildings, including Haiti's courts.

In response, US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the case remains firmly in Haitian hands for now.

"Once we know all the facts, we will determine what the appropriate course is, but the judgment is really up to the Haitian government," he said.

Haitian officials insist on prosecution to help deter child trafficking, which many fear will flourish in the chaos caused by the incident.

AGB/TG/DT

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Secret CIA-Mossad meeting, preparation for new war?
01/02/2010 06:28:00 PM GMT

A secret meeting between the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Leon Panetta and Israeli officials has reportedly centered on Iran's nuclear program.

In a secret flying visit to Israel on Thursday, the head of the CIA reportedly discussed Iran's nuclear issue in a sit-down with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Mossad Chief Meir Dagan.

The trip, which was originally scheduled to take place in May, follows a recent wave of developments in the Middle East that strongly imply preparations for a possible new military conflict in the region.

Israel has allegedly increased the scope of its undercover operations in the region, particularly against Lebanon, Iran, Syria and the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas.

The extent of this could be seen in recent remarks by Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Peled, in which the former army general explicitly said that another confrontation with Lebanon's resistance movement Hezbollah was almost inevitable.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri responded to the claims on Thursday, saying that Israel's threats against Hezbollah are perceived as threats against Lebanon.

"We consider the Israeli threats on Lebanon to be a threat to the Lebanese government as a whole, rather than to one particular person," said Hariri during a joint news conference with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Hamas officials say they have concrete evidence that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, staged the recent assassination of a senior Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai on January 20.

Their claims have been somewhat supported by Dubai Police Chief Dhahi Khalfan.

"It could be Mossad," AFP quoted police Chief Dhahi Khalfan as saying on Sunday.

To add to the controversy, sources in Turkey's ruling party told Russia's Mignews on Saturday that Israeli spy agents ran an advanced electronic monitoring station from the Ankara military headquarters to keep tabs on communication networks in Iran and Syria.

According to the sources who were speaking on condition of anonymity, the Signals Intelligence station was solely managed by Israeli intelligence personnel and had become off-limits for members of the Turkish government.

For years Israeli politicians have masterminded a wave of undercover operations and terror plots in numerous countries, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Switzerland, and the US.

However, much of Israel's espionage operations have lately been focused on the Tehran government, largely because of Iran's uranium enrichment activities, which Tel Aviv has been seeking to portray as a mortal threat.

Tel Aviv, which is reported to have an arsenal of 200 nuclear warheads itself, accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons and routinely threatens to reduce the country's enrichment sites to rubble.

This is while Iran, unlike Israel, is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has opened its enrichment facilities to UN inspection.

On Saturday, US presidential aid James Jones rejected prospects of an Israeli attack against Iran.

Although US officials normally deny having any plans to stage new war in the region, there have recently been strong hints to the contrary.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Washington will further increase its military presence in the Persian Gulf — allegedly to soup up its defense against possible Iranian missile attacks.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has approved the deployment of new combat equipments, including advanced missile systems and special warships, to the region.

Source: Press TV