Today's Top Islamic News (DAILY)

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CAIRO — A Muslim school in the U.S. state of Tennessee is not content with providing education for its students while helping them stay connected to their Muslim roots, but is striving for academic excellence and recognition.

"We are ambitious," Amiri Yasin Al-Hadid, the principal of the Nashville International Academy, told The Tennessean on Tuesday, June 9.

"We want to offer a world-class education."

The private preschool through sixth-grade academy, established 13 years ago in Tennessee’s rapidly expanding neighborhood of Bellevue, has laid down two clear objectives to implant in its students from their early ages.

"We have to give our children a moral compass," said Al-Hadid, highlighting a focus on promoting values among its students through teaching the basics of Islam.

The second goal is to put students on the road of success through helping them excel academically in reading, writing, math, science and social studies.

"We believe that academic excellence will attract the market."

The school, which currently has 84 students, plans for expansion to double its size with a community center, gymnasium and a mosque.

Al-Hadid, a former Tennessee State University professor, hopes that with the expansion the school would attract more Muslim and non-Muslim students in Bellevue, home to some 1,500 Muslims.

Karen Keyworth, one of the directors of the Islamic Schools' League of America, says that successful schools like Nashville Academy help shatter stereotypes about Islamic schooling.

"There isn't a lot of room to teach radicalism when all the parents want their kids to go to Harvard," she said.

Although Islamic schools in the US date back to the 1930s, there were fewer than 60 in the U.S. by the 1990s. That number has since grown to about 240, including four in Tennessee.

* Roots

For parents like Egyptian-born Mohamed Ali, the academy helps their kids more than just academically.

He makes an exhausting 45-minute drive from Murfreesboro to Bellevue every morning so that his daughter can attend the Muslim school.

"I want her to know my language," said Ali. "I want her to know my religion."

Many parents appreciate that along with helping their children excel in different subjects, the school teaches them Arabic, the language of the Noble Qur’an.

Ather Khan, the school's treasurer, plans to enroll his son next year.

Khan worries about the challenges faced by young Muslims growing up in the U.S. where the language and culture is different from what that of their countries of origin.

Though there are no official estimates, there are between six to seven million Muslims in the U.S.

"You are trying to fit in to American culture and the way of life here — parents don't have time to spend with their kids," notes Khan.

Hala Zein-Sabatto knows about that more than anyone.

Planning to study biology at Vanderbilt University this fall, she credits the Nashville academy for her success in life.

When Zein-Sabatto, whose parents are Syrian immigrants, started her education at the Muslim school in the late 1990s, she was feeling like an outsider growing up as a Muslim in the U.S. Bible Belt.

"It gave me a lot of confidence in who I am — especially in wearing a scarf and in being a Muslim,” she said.
Source: IslamOnline

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BANGKOK: Thai security forces hunted yesterday for gunmen behind a bloody attack on a southern mosque that killed 11 people and raised tensions between the army and villagers.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack this year in Thailand’s restive Muslim deep south, where nearly 3,500 Muslims and Buddhists have died in violence since 2004. But residents of Cho Airong district pointed the finger at the military and police a day after five gunmen burst into a mosque and sprayed rifle fire at praying Muslims, killing 11 and wounding 13.

“Local people believe security people did the shooting. They cannot believe that Muslims, even the very, very bad ones, can kill their brothers while praying,” Worawit Baru, a senator and academic from the region, said.

Thailand’s army, which has deployed 30,000 troops in the region bordering Malaysia, denied any involvement. “The attack was absolutely not done by us,” said Col. Prinya Chaidilok, a spokesman for the Southern 4th Army.

He said forensic experts are studying bullet casings found inside the mosque, where the blood-stained bodies were removed for burial yesterday.

Hundreds of mourners gathered outside the mosque which was guarded by scores of soldiers and police. “We are looking for them,” Prinya said, but he added there were few witnesses to help identify the gunmen. “Survivors did not see them because they were shot while praying with their backs to the door where gunmen opened fired.”

The army blamed separatists, accusing them of seeking to stoke hatred between Buddhists and Muslims in the southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.

It was not first time that a mosque has been at the center of violence in the five-year rebellion. ¬
Source: Arab News

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Italy and France have been accused of reneging on promises to increase aid to African nations.

Anti-poverty group One, set up by rock star Bono, said Italy had actually cut aid to Africa despite making ambitious pledges at a 2005 economic summit.

And it accused France of reducing its aid targets and cutting its aid budget.

The report, backed by figures like Bill Gates and Desmond Tutu, said Italy and France are holding back other members of the G8 group of rich nations.

The BBC's international development correspondent David Loyn says the research is underpinned by a fear that the global economic downturn could undo what modest progress has already been made.

Sir Bob Geldof and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan have written a joint introduction to the report in which they talk about the global financial crisis.

They say the world's poorest people have benefited least from globalisation, but they are now suffering the most from a crisis they did not cause.

Italy 'has no credibility'

The One report concluded that the US, Canada and Japan had largely met their commitments - adding that their pledges had been relatively modest.



It's a big problem that requires a big decisive response from all those who are fortunate enough to be well-off
Silvio Berlusconi
Italian prime minister

It said the UK and Germany had missed some targets but were attempting to put in place much more ambitious programmes than the other nations.

The report, due for its worldwide release later, is particularly critical of Italy, which is due to hold a G8 summit later this year.

"Italy has said it will put Africa at the forefront of the agenda at the G8 summit," the report says.

"Based on its performance against the [last G8 summit] commitments, it has no credibility to host discussions of such global importance."

During a news conference on Wednesday Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi - who is meeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi - called for decisive action from wealthy countries to help bring Africa out of its misery.

"It's a big problem that requires a big decisive response from all those who are fortunate enough to be well-off," he said.

However, he said that aid could not simply continue to pour in to Africa.

He accused some African leaders of funnelling money into their own Swiss bank accounts rather than use it to help their people.

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It was at Cairo University's Festival Hall that the great diva of Egyptian song, Umm Kalthoum, held her greatest concert triumphs in the 1950s and 1960s.

In the hall with a massive beige dome that made it look like an elegant concert hall or even opera house, she moved educated, influential Egyptian men and women to tears and ecstasy - a joy that has not been felt in this crowded and often chaotic city for years.

Until today.

Barack Obama entered from the far right of the stage and the audience of a few thousand of Egypt's great and good rose almost as one body.

Ministers of state, Coptic bishops and Muslim imams, senior Egyptian journalists - supporters of the regime and its critics - successful businessmen and leading academics, along with a large contingent of carefully chosen students from Cairo University and the American University of Cairo, applauded and waved back to the US president as he strode with an athlete's grace to centre stage.

Moving speech

An Umm Kalthoum song could go on and on without losing its intensity for more than an hour, and Obama sustained the rapt attention of his audience - most relying on simultaneous translation and the earnestness of his body language, his lean, appealing physical presence - for nearly as long.

Obama's speech was watched live by millions around the world [AFP]
One minute into his speech he won nearly every heart and mind in the great hall, announcing his pride to be carrying "the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace Muslim communities use in my country: asalaamu alaikum.

The audience rose to its feet and I was not the only one in that vast hall with tears in my eyes.

I never imagined, as an American and a Muslim, that I would ever hear an American president invoke the blessing of Islam or to go on to quote from the Quran, as he would do several times with great relevance.

Or to refer to Muhammad as "the Prophet upon whom be peace".

But this extraordinary event was more than superb pacing and performance, more than the soaring, almost classic oratory Obama is famous for and that translates so well into modern literary Arabic.

It was more than soothing and conciliatory words for a predominantly Arab audience here in the Festival Hall, or the millions who watched and listened at home and the office, at universities and cafes courtesy of a dozen live Arab satellite feeds.

A vast Arab audience nursing the grievances of decades sharpened by the blows of the past eight years that preceded Obama's presidency – the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the collapse of the Arab-Israeli peace process, the brutality of the siege and war on Gaza that cry out for justice and conciliation.

'New beginning'

Obama vowed that he was in Cairo "to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world", a new beginning based on respect – a word that figured significantly in this speech - as well as "mutual interests and shared values".

The US president vowed a "new beginning" with Muslims worldwide [AFP]
But it quickly became clear that he was basing that new beginning on acknowledging realities and speaking hard truths – to Americans and to Israelis as well as to Arabs and Muslims.

He went well beyond the at-best well-meaning but almost meaningless platitudes about Islam as the religion of peace, to call his distant American audience's attention to Western civilisation's debt to Islam, "that carried the light of learning through so many centuries paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and enlightenment".

He recalled a Muslim civilisation that was based on innovation, science, mathematics, printing, medicine, the fine arts, and in general, religious tolerance and racial equality.

But for his audience here and throughout the Arab world, he insisted that the impulse behind the creation of the state of Israel was a tragic history that could not be denied, alluding to the persecution of the Jewish people for centuries, culminating in an unprecedented Holocaust.

And he denounced Holocaust denial just as he denounced Israeli indifference to the suffering and the hardships of the Palestinians and the daily humiliations of occupation.

Finally, hard talk that his audience was ready to meditate upon.

Perhaps it is Obama's deep reading in philosophy that led him to seek synthesis of apparent tension and conflict.

Even in his opening words, he honoured his official hosts - Al Azhar, the citadel of Sunni orthodoxy, and the University of Cairo, the launching pad in the 1920s and 1930s for secular education - as two remarkable institutions "that represent harmony between tradition and progress".

Obama differentiated between the invasion of Iraq, which he had opposed, and the war in Afghanistan which he defined as a war of necessity, and repeated his pledge to pull out all US combat units from Iraqi cities by next month, and all troops by 2012.

Broad alliance

He continually stressed the importance of broad alliance and international support that the US had when, in the wake of 9/11, it went into Afghanistan in pursuit of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Obama, left, was hosted by Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, during his Cairo visit [EPA]
But he engaged rather than denounce those in the Muslim world who doubted America's intentions, in effect renouncing that overbearing theme of his predecessor that "whoever is not with me is against me".

So when Obama condemned al-Qaeda for killing innocent men, women and children, it was not just American victims of 9/11 but the murder "of people of different faiths – but more than any other, they have killed Muslims".

He acknowledged that in response to the trauma of 9/11 America had in some cases acted contrary to its best traditions and ideals and he spoke of "concrete actions to change course" by unequivocally prohibiting the use of torture and ordering the Guantanamo prison to be closed by early next year, drawing significant applause.

This was also a moment for giving assurances.

Obama insisted that the US sought no military bases in Afghanistan and he acknowledged that military power alone would not solve the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Rather, he was committed to spending many billions of dollars partnering both countries to build schools, hospitals, roads, businesses and to help the many displaced by war.

Obama was clearly responding to those supporters newly turned into critics who claimed he had been co-opted by the lure of a military solution in Afghanistan and by extension, in Pakistan.

The range of the US president's speech was broad, reaffirming his commitment to human rights, democracy and women's rights, but also stressing the importance of development, job creation and extending education, particularly to women, that is problematic for much of the Muslim world.

Middle ground

As usual he sought the middle ground, saying that America has no business imposing its own system on different societies, but he insisted on basic human rights - the rule of law, freedom of expression, freedom to practise one's religion, equal justice, a voice in government that is free of corruption.

Obama is pushing for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [AFP]
Typical of his instinct for ethical realism, however, instead of threatening or denouncing his ultimate host - the Egyptian government - or any other state in the region practising political repression, he said governments respecting those universal rights would enjoy more stability, security and prosperity.

Along with the hard truths there were some very significant, if subtle, messages.

An idea circulated by Israeli official circles and Americans enthralled by the Jewish state, that Obama was in the Middle East to put together a Sunni Arab-Israeli alliance to isolate and combat Shia Iran, was nowhere to be found in his speech.

Nor did Iran occupy an equal amount of concern or time with the Afghan-Pakistani issue, the Iraqi war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But slipped into a most unconfrontational discussion of American-Iranian relations that included an acknowledgment of America's role in overthrowing a legitimately elected nationalist government in Iran during the Cold War years, Obama reaffirmed an early election campaign commitment, too controversial at the time for him to pursue, that the US government was ready to talk with the Iranian leadership without any preconditions.

Even more significant was his acknowledgment that Hamas enjoyed popular support among Palestinians and it was in this context that he made the usual call for Hamas to renounce violence, recognise past agreements between the Palestinians and Israel, as well as recognise Israel's right to exist.

Suddenly he was advising Hamas, not denouncing it, to accept the responsibility of governing. Perhaps historians will remember this speech as the moment America's engagement with Hamas began.

S Abdallah Schleifer is Distinguished Professor of Journalism at the American University in Cairo and Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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A Chinese submarine has collided with an underwater sonar array being towed by a United States military ship, according to a US official.

The unnamed military official told CNN on Friday that the Thursday's incident happened near Subic Bay, off the coast of the Philippines.

The destroyer USS John S. McCain was towing the array, deployed to track underwater sounds, especially those emitted by submarines.

Therefore, it is probable that the US ship was tracking the Chinese submarine and compiling a 'library' of its acoustic signature. Such information would be useful in case of a future conflict.

The array was damaged in the crash, but the official said the sub and ship did not collide.

The US Navy did not consider the event a case of deliberate harassment, according to the CNN report.

Earlier in March, Washington accused Beijing of behaving in an aggressive manner after two tense standoffs between US and Chinese vessels in the South China Sea.

Later, China said a US naval vessel involved in the incident with Chinese fishing boats had violated maritime law and urged the US to take steps to avoid a repetition.

AGB/ZAP/DT

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TEHRAN: Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad registered a thumping victory in Iran's fiercely-contested presidential race
, official results
showed on Saturday, in a major upset for his moderate rival.

"Doctor Ahmadinejad, by getting a majority of the votes, has become the definite winner of the 10th presidential election," state news agency IRNA declared as his jubilant supporters took to the streets in celebration.

However, his main challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi -- who pledged to improve relations with the outside world during the most heated election campaign since the Islamic revolution -- also declared himself the victor, suggesting a tense battle lay ahead.

Ahmadinejad won 65 percent of the vote against more than 32 percent for war-time premier Mousavi, with almost 90 percent of ballot boxes counted, said election commission chief Kamran Daneshjoo, highlighting the massive turnout.

The international community has been keenly watching the election for any signs of a shift in policy after four years of hardline rhetoric from the 52-year-old Ahmadinejad and a standoff on Iran's nuclear drive.

Mousavi, who was aiming for a political comeback on a groundswell of support among the nation's youth, complained of irregularities in the vote, including a shortage of ballot papers and attacks on his campaign offices.

"In line with the information we have received, I am the winner of this election by a substantial margin," said Mousavi, who had pledged to ease restrictions particularly on women, and fix Iran's ailing economy.

But as the official results showed Ahmadinejad would be back for a second term, his supporters began pouring on to the streets of Tehran, honking their horns and waving Iranian flags.

"Where are the greens? -- in a mousehole," the crowds mocked, referring to the campaign colours of Mousavi, whose supporters thronged the streets in mass rallies during the campaign.

"I am happy that my candidate has won -- he helps the poor and he catches the thieves," said sandwich seller Kamra Mohammadi, 22.

The election underscored deep divisions in Iran after four years under Ahmadinejad, who enjoyed passionate support in rural towns and villages, while in the big cities young men and women threw their weight behind Mousavi.

Iran has been at loggerheads with the West as Ahmadinejad delivered a succession of fiery tirades against Israel, repeatedly questioned the Holocaust and vowed to press on with nuclear work, denying allegations Tehran was seeking the atomic bomb.

Passions ran high during the campaign, with Ahmadinejad and his challengers hurling insults at each other in acrimonious live television debates while their supporters staged massive carnival-like street rallies.

Ahmadinejad, portraying himself as a man of the people, pledged to stamp out corruption and help the poor while his rivals accused him of mismanaging the economy of one of the world's top oil producers and damaging the nation's international standing.

The election was a clear two-horse race, with results showing former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezai coming a distant third with 2.5 percent of the vote and ex-parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi fourth with less than one percent.

Ahmadinejad's campaign manager Mojtaba Samareh Hachemi dismissed the rival camp's claim of victory, insisting the incumbent remained "the president of all Iranians."

"According to the votes counted so far, the distance between Ahmadinejad and his rivals is so great that any doubts cast on this victory will be treated as a joke by the public," he was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying.

Daneshjoo said turnout was estimated at a record of between 75 and 82 percent of the 46.2 million electorate, with long queues forming at polling stations across the country.

"Historic Turnout on the Nation's Great Day," was the headline in the state-run Iran newspaper.

US President Barack Obama, who has called for dialogue with Iran after three decades of severed ties, said he saw the "possibility of change" in relations with the Islamic republic.

"Whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help advance our ability to engage them in new ways," Obama said.

Even if 67-year-old Mousavi had won, it was doubtful there would be any major shift in Iran's nuclear and foreign policy as all decisions on matters of state rest with all-powerful supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In the United States, home to the largest Iranian expatriate population, opponents of the regime condemned the election as a "sham."

The vote has nevertheless highlighted a call for change after 30 years of clerical rule in a country where 60 percent of the population was born after the revolution.

The economy was also a key election issue, with the country battling inflation at 24 percent, rising unemployment and plunging income from crude oil exports.

TOI

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Bosnia locks horns with Serbia over a newly-released video footage that shows Europe's top war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladic living at large in Belgrade.

Bosnian state TV aired the controversial footage on Wednesday, which included films of Mladic attending family occasions, dancing at weddings, singing Serbian folk songs and enjoying a skiing holiday allegedly last winter.

Mladic has been on the run since 1995 when the UN war crimes court in The Hague indicted him on genocide charges for staging the massacre of nearly 8,000 Bosnian Muslims during the civil war in former Yugoslavia (1992-1995).

Bosnia has long demanded that Mladic be brought to justice.

Officials at The Hague have reportedly launched an investigation into the footage and have promised to comment later.

Rasim Ljajic, the chairman of the Serbian National Council for Co-operation with the ICT, has denied that the footage is that of Mladic.

According to Ljajic, the release of such footage ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers was designed to mount pressure on Serbia and ruin its chances from becoming a member of the European Union.

The capture of Mladic is a condition for Serbian progress toward membership in the European Union. Pro-Western leaders in Belgrade claim they do not know Mladic's whereabouts.

FA/SBB

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UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council voted unanimously on Friday to slap tougher sanctions on North Korea in response to its recent nuclear
test in violation of UN resolutions.

All 15 members endorsed a draft resolution sponsored by Britain, France, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

The text, which does not authorize the use of force, calls on UN member states to slap expanded sanctions on North Korea.

These include tougher inspections of cargo suspected of containing banned items related to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile activities, a tighter arms embargo with the exception of light weapons, and new financial restrictions.

The compromise text seeks to punish Pyongyang for its May 25 underground nuclear test and subsequent missile firings in violation of UN resolutions.

"We believe that this unified action by the Council represents a very significant step in response to what the North Korean government has been doing," Britain's deputy UN ambassador Philip Parham told reporters Friday ahead of the vote.

He expressed hope that the resolution would encourage Pyongyang "to abandon its current track and take the path of constructive engagement."
TOI

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By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent BBC News website

Queen Victoria
Gunboat diplomacy is not really an option open to London now

Great Britain is not amused.

It has expressed its displeasure that Bermuda, one of its 14 remaining colonies - or, as they are now called, "British overseas territories" - has accepted four Chinese Muslim Uighurs from Guantanamo Bay without consulting London.

Queen Victoria would have huffed and Lord Palmerston would have puffed - and perhaps sent a gunboat or at least a rude letter as he was wont to do when foreign secretary in the 19th Century.

Mrs Thatcher would have treated it as personal insult - as she did when her friend Ronald Reagan invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983 without telling her - or the Queen, who was (and is) Grenada's head of state.

Not that Mrs Thatcher minded the invasion - that was to get rid of some Marxist revolutionaries - but she wanted the proprieties observed.

These days it is a bit more polite. The Foreign Office in London issued a lofty and frosty statement to the effect that it had "underlined to the Bermuda government that it should have consulted the UK on whether this falls within their competence".

I bet the Bermudians are quaking at the "underlining" they have received. It is not a word Lord Palmerston would have used, I think.

(Update: I have received some e-mails from Bermuda from people who think that there is something else behind this - an attempt by the premier of Bermuda Ewart Brown to provoke a row with Britain as a way of furthering the cause of independence. His Progressive Labour Party favours independence, but public opinion appears to be against.

Britain has never been slow to demonstrate an imperial role in Bermuda. I remember going there in 1990 with Mrs Thatcher for a summit with President George Bush senior. It seemed to the media a strange place to meet and it looked as if Mrs Thatcher had chosen Bermuda in order to show that Britain still had somewhere it could hold such a meeting. It was fun though.

The British governor Sir Richard Gozney is quite clear that his agreement over the Uighurs was not given. "It was done without permission and the Government of Bermuda should have consulted with us because it carries with it foreign policy and security issues," he said.)

Handling China

The British government is worried not only about the offence to its dignity - and it does seem odd that it did not get wind of this plan.

Bermuda
Bermuda agreed to accept four former detainees of Guantanamo Bay

After all, it is supposed to be in a "special relationship" with the US government.

But perhaps the new administration has not yet caught up on the niceties of what powers the mother country retains over these "overseas territories". It is security, defence and foreign policy, if they ever ask.

London is also concerned about the effect on China, which has demanded the return of these Uighurs, whom it regards as dangerous "separatists" for supporting a Muslim state of East Turkestan in western China.

British diplomats in Beijing face quite a delicate mission in trying to explain what has happened.

On the one hand they want to push the blame onto those pesky Bermudians (one can imagine the Chinese hurrying discreetly for an atlas; perhaps the Brits helpfully brought one).

On the other hand, it is a considerable loss of face for the British ambassador to have to admit that the Bermudian mouse has nibbled the tail of the old British lion.

Maybe the Chinese will see it as a plot and a way for the treacherous British to blame someone else. In that way, honour, and face, might be saved.

In any event, this is what diplomats are paid to sort out.

Stranded

Meanwhile, the Uighurs are, in the splendid understatement of their lawyer, "trying to get a sense of where they are".

Where they are is in the middle of the Atlantic, a bit over to the left-hand side.

Map

They will find a most pleasant environment of picture pretty houses, flowers, greenery and the ocean all around, though subject to the occasional hurricane.

Bermuda has not been free of trouble. The British governor was assassinated by local black power militants in 1973.

It is quieter these days. The Uighurs might in due course find it a bit too quiet.

This footnote to the saga of Guantanamo Bay shows the problems that Washington is having in resettling some of the prisoners whom it no longer regards as a threat.

The Uighurs have always argued they were never a threat to the US and that, whatever they were doing in Afghanistan, it was not to fight the Americans.

Another group of Uighurs is expected to be given refuge on another island, this time in the Pacific - Palau, once administered by the US under UN trusteeship.

This far-flung dispersal smacks of a certain desperation by the Obama administration to be rid of the problem so the camp can be closed, as President Obama has promised, early next year.

And it now appears that the president is giving up on taking in ex-prisoners into the United States. The Uighurs would have been rather good candidates.

Declared by the Pentagon not to be a threat and their release ordered by a US judge, they could have joined a Uighur community in Northern Virginia, where many refugees from other conflicts also reside.

But it was all too controversial - so Bermuda and Palau were asked to help instead.

Except that nobody thought of calling London.

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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ISLAMABAD – Tariq-ur-Rehman, one of ten Pakistani students detained by British police in April on terror-related charges, accused his prison guards of religious harassment and abuse.

"They committed sacrilege of Noble Qur'an many times," a visibly moved Tariq told IslamOnline Thursday, June 11, on his arrival at Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad.

"When we read the Qur'an, they came with sniffing dogs and let them sniff the Qur'an.

"We used to cry and begged them not to do that but they said it was their duty."

Weeks after highly-publicized raids to allegedly foil a "very big" terror plot, all Pakistani students were released without charge, leaving British anti-terror officials red-faced. They were transferred into the custody of the UK Borders Agency, which controls immigration into Britain, for deportations on grounds of national security.

Tariq, the first of the students to return home, accused British prison guards of abuse.

"I will unmask the face of Goras," he said, using a local term used for Britons.

"We were kept in cells specified for hardcore criminals. They treated us like criminals rather than defendants," he recalled.

"They often interrupted us during prayers and forced us to break (the prayer) without any reason."

His London-based lawyer Amjad Malik, who accompanied his client to Pakistan, also cried foul.

"They got the counsels and relatives of detained students, naked for search when they went to meet them."

The British government rejected the student's accusations.

"The British government has provided all facilities to the detained students in line with their religion. This includes provision of Halal food, and facilities for five times prayers," British High Commissioner to Pakistan Robert Brinkley said in a press release.

Brinkley also rejected allegations about the sacrilege of the Muslim holy book.

"We have great respect for the Holy Quran." On arrival Tariq, who was escorted by five British police officials, was taken to the office of Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) for questioning.

"He will not be detained for sure," one security official told IOL, wishing not to be named.

Tariq's lawyer too confirmed that Pakistani authorities have cleared his client of all charges.

* British hell

As soon as he landed at the airport, Tariq, a widower with three children who went to UK on post study two-year visa, knelt down and kissed the ground with tears rolling down his cheeks.

"This is an unexplainable trauma. I am seeing the open sky after 62 days," he told IOL.

"I am sorry that I am not able to reply to your all questions because I am not in my full senses."

He was welcomed by a large number of relatives, friends, besides his elder brother were there to welcome him home.

"I am thankful to Allah that I am again with my dear and near ones," am emotional Tariq said while being hugged by his relatives and friends.

He has accepted an offer from the British Home Secretary to leave voluntarily on the condition that the deportation order against him would be withdrawn.

"His deportation orders were withdrawn by the British authorities," said his London-based lawyer Amjad Malik, who accompanied his client to Pakistan.

"He could have lived there, but he chose to come back in protest against the treatment of British police in jail."

Tariq nodded affirmatively.

"I could have stayed there, but did not want to. I didn’t want to live in a so-called civilized country where worst kind of human rights violations are committed in the name of security," he maintained.

"I don’t want to go back there."

Source: IslamOnline