Today's Top Islamic News (DAILY)

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WASHINGTON – American Muslims are denouncing a plot to attack Jewish synagogues and a military base in New York and offering help to thwart assaults against their country.

"We reject unequivocally such violence or any attempt to undermine public safety and national security," Dr. Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North American (ISNA), said in a statement e-mailed to IslamOnline.

"We are repulsed by the hatred directed towards the Jewish community and stand in solidarity with our Jewish neighbors."

Four men were arrested Wednesday for plotting to attack Jewish synagogues and shoot down military planes at a US military base in New York.

According to court documents, the four plotted to attack two Jewish synagogues and US warplanes based at Stewart International Airport, which houses aircraft used to transport military supplies and personnel to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Police said the suspects, reportedly tracked for a year before arrest, had criminal records, but had no known links to Al-Qaeda.

"We repeat the American Muslim community's repudiation of bias-motivated crimes and of anyone who would falsely claim religious justification for violent actions," Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said.

"We applaud the FBI, the New York Police Department and the other law enforcement agencies that took part in the investigation for their efforts in helping to prevent any harm to either Jewish institutions or to our nation’s military."

A US court on Thursday ordered three of the four men be held without bail. The hearing of a fourth suspect was scheduled for a later time after he was admitted to hospital.

The charges hold a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison to a maximum life sentence.

* Misguided

"American Muslims stress that Islam does not sanction violence against civilians. "We believe that violence has no place in our community and is in no way a part of the ts of Islam," said Fozia Khan of Armonk, president of the Westchester-based American Muslim Women's Association.

"We would like to stress that the people who commit these acts are misguided and confused and ignorant or unaware of Islam's ideology of peace and tolerance.

"Unfortunately, incidents of this kind hamper our efforts to create harmonious relationships with other religious organizations within our community."

Anees Shaikh, spokesman for the Thornwood-based Upper Westchester Muslim Society, agrees.

"The local Muslim community, including the Upper Westchester Muslim Society, has said many times, and continues to say, that we reject terrorist acts and hate-motivated crimes regardless of who perpetrates them or seeks to commit them," he said.

"It's especially disturbing that in this case houses of worship were apparently targeted."

US Muslim groups have called for Muslims nationwide to provide help to police to thwart any assaults against their country.

"Members of the American Muslim community should remain vigilant in reporting any activities that could harm the safety and security of our nation or its citizens," said CAIR's Awad.

Source: IslamOnline

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CAIRO — A former US soldier escaped the death penalty for gang-raping an Iraqi girl and slaughtering her family as the jury failed to reach consensus on the sentence, reported The New York Times on Friday, May 22. "The defendant failed to live up to his duty to protect the innocent people of Iraq," prosecutor Marissa Ford said.

After 10-hour deliberations, the 12-member jury failed to agree the death penalty for Steven Green for raping and killing an Iraqi girl and her family in 2006.

This left Green, who was discharged from the army, to serve life sentence in prison.

Green led four other soldiers to rape and kill Abeer Kassem al-Janabi, murder her parents and a six-year-old sister before torching their home in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Four other soldiers were convicted in the gang-rape, with sentences raging from five to 100 years.

During the closing arguments, Green's lawyers tried to persuade the court that the US soldier was not in a good mental status when he committed the crime.

"They've tried to make Mr Green a victim," Assistant US attorney Brian Skared said.

He accused the defense of playing a "blame game," filling the sentencing phase with testimony about Green's chaotic and neglectful childhood and shoddy leadership of his unit in Iraq.

Skared said Green was not acting on instinct or impulse when he killed the innocent Iraqi family.

"(He had planned the rape and murders) with a criminal and perverse mind," and then celebrated when it was over.

Anger

But many Iraqis were angry with the ruling.

"The court has not delivered justice," Ahmed Samir Jaber, 27, a mechanic in Mahmudiya, told Reuters.

"If I killed an American girl, the American court would have executed me.

"What the American soldier did is a terrorist act and he deserves execution," he added, from underneath the bo of an old car he was fixing.

Iraqis said that the ex-soldier's sentence smacks of double standards.

"If this girl and her family had been American, he would have been executed for this dirty act," said Ali Mohsen al-Fetlawi, 37, a photo studio owner.

"This is not justice."

Alaa al-Haribi, 35, a civil servant, said Iraqis felt powerless at the sentence.

"We prayed for them to execute him but we can't do anything about their decision because the court is American, so that's that."

But Mahmoud Janabi, a truck driver, believes the sentence, though falling short of what he hoped, would send a strong message to US troops.

"I'm happy because at least other American soldiers will see this and think twice before doing acts like this again."

Source: IslamOnline

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CAIRO – Six Muslims of Somali origin are accusing Britain's MI5 of blackmailing them to work as informants or be considered a terror suspect and face detention and harassment in the UK and overseas.

"The MI5 agent said, 'Mohamed if you do not work for us we will tell any foreign country you try to travel to that you are a suspected terrorist,'" Mohamed Nur, 25, told The Independent on Thursday, May 21.

The agent, who entered Nur's house posing as a postman, said they suspected him of being an extremist.

"I immediately said 'And where did you get such an idea?' He replied, 'I am not permitted to discuss our sources'. I said that I have never done anything extreme."

Nur is one of six British Muslims of Somali origin who have accused the MI5 of blackmailing them.

"We're going to make your traveling harder for you if you don't co-operate," Mohamed Aden, a 25-year-old community worker from north London, recalls his experience with MI5 agents.

On a trip to Chicago, Adydarus Elmi, a cinema worker, and his pregnant wife were separated, questioned and deported back to Britain.

Three days later, Elmi was summoned by police for questioning about his travel documents.

He was grilled for nearly two and a half hours by a man and a woman.

"I felt I was being lured into working for MI5."

Over the following weeks, the young Muslim received threat calls from the MI5 agent.

"She would regularly call my mother's home asking to speak to me," Elmi told The Independent.

At one night, the agent called him at early morning to congratulate him on the birth of his baby girl, though his wife was still seven months pregnant.

"Katherine tried to threaten me by saying – and it still runs through my mind now – 'Remember, this won't be the last time we ever meet'," recalls Elmi.

"'If you do not want anything to happen to your family you will co-operate'."

* Islamophobia

None of the six Muslim men, who work with disadvantaged youths at the Kentish Town Community Organization (KTCO), has ever been arrested for terrorism or a terrorism-related offence.

They have repeatedly complained about the MI5 treatment to the police and to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which oversees the MI5 work.

Sharhabeel Lone, the chairman of the KTCO, has also written to Lord Justice Mummery, who heads the tribunal, to protest the harassment.

"These incidents smack of racism, Islamophobia and all that undermines social cohesion," he wrote.

"Threatening British citizens, harassing them in their own country, alienating young people who have committed no crime other than practicing a particular faith and being a different color is a recipe for disaster."

Lone dismissed the MI5 actions with the young Muslims as counterproductive.

"These disgraceful incidents have undermined 10 years of hard work and severely impacted social cohesion in Camden.

Targeting young people that are role models for all young people in our country in such a disparaging way demonstrates a total lack of understanding of on-the-ground reality and can only be counter-productive."



Source: IslamOnline.net

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By Natalia Antelava
BBC News, Baghdad

A metal frame bed, a plastic cup and change of clothes is all that Hagop owns. He also has a degree in civil engineering from the United States and a life sentence to serve in Iraq - not for the crimes he had committed, but for his illness.

Hagop is one of 1,200 patients who live behind the bars of al-Rashad, Iraq's only mental healthcare institution.

Along the corridors of al-Rashad heavy locks hang on metal doors and all windows are barred.

In the courtyard of one of the wards dozens of men sit on the ground waiting for their lunch. It arrives in big metal bowls, and one by one men get up, scoop rice and lentils onto paper plates, and settle back down on the ground. There are no chairs and no tables.

"Food is terrible and there is not enough," says Kasim, one of the patients.

Kasim used to work as an interpreter for the British troops in Basra. Now he says "life is bad, very bad".

Six years of war in Iraq have virtually destroyed the country's health system, causing thousands of doctors to flee and leaving hospitals without medicine and equipment.

In the country so preoccupied with basic survival, the mentally ill slipped off the priority list.

No visitors

Most of the patients in al-Rashad suffer from chronic schizophrenia, and doctors say that nearly half of them could live at home, but the war and the stigma that their illness carries in Iraq keep them in hospital.

Al-Rashad
There are no chairs or tables for inmates of the al-Rashad facility

"Neglect is the biggest problem. Only about 10% of patients are sometimes visited by their families, they'll come here but they don't want them back.

"An overwhelming majority don't have anyone at all," says psychologist Saad Joaid.

"My family has kicked me out, society does not accept me, we are in prison here," mutters one of the patients, also called Saad.

Al-Rashad is set right on the edge of Sadr City - one of the city's most dangerous neighbourhoods.

At the height of the insurgency - as the hospital was caught up in the midst of fighting - staff fled, the hospital buildings were looted, and hundreds of patients ran away.

"I stayed," Hagop says. "It was scary, very scary. People from the outside attacked us in our hospital," he remembers.

Some of the patients were found wandering the streets and were brought back by neighbours, but others never returned.

"This was a war zone and we fled the hospital just to save our own skin," says Raghad Sarsam, one of the psychiatrists at al-Rashad.

Dr Sarsam is now back at work, but despite security improvements, for many of his colleagues it is still too dangerous to come to work. The entire hospital is run by only seven doctors.

"We have one skin disease specialist for more than 1,000 patients," says Saad Joaid. "Imagine what it is like trying to care for them."

New approach

Iraqi psychiatrists say the war and violence has taken a real toll on mental health of the entire nation, and that the number of mental disorders is on the rise across the country.

Al-Rashad
Most patients are confined to bare wards with no activities

"Demand for psychiatric treatment will rise, as the nation digests and comes to terms with what has happened over the last years," says Dr Emad Abdulrazoy, National Adviser for Mental Health at the Ministry of Health.

Dr Abdulrazoy's job is to set up a new programme, which will aim to create psychiatric care centres in hospitals across the country.

But this could take years, especially since the whole of Iraq, with its population of 30 million, has only 70 psychiatrists.

"These days it's not the most appealing profession. Young people would rather go into surgery or dentistry, where it's easier to make money," says Dr Abdulrazoy.

But even if and when they are set up, the new centres are unlikely to make much difference to the patients of al-Rashad.

"The problem is that most of them have been here for so long that they are beyond the point of recovery," says Dr Sarsem.

For now, the staff at al-Rashad are preoccupied with trying to meet basic needs, like a lack of medicine, equipment, food and they are also in a desperate need for a rehabilitation programme.

There is a tiny centre at al-Rashad, which offers art and music therapy classes.

But the resources are so scarce that the rehabilitation programme can accommodate fewer than 100 patients.

More than 1,000 others never get to leave their wards.

"Our hospital is a good hospital, but life is hard" Hagop says.

Hagop's illness is now in remission and his doctor says he could leave now if he had a home to go back to.

He does not, and al-Rashad is where he will be staying.

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CAIRO — With the clock ticking for the opening of the first mosque in St. Joseph town in the Midwestern U.S. state of Missouri, Muslims hope that the worship place would highlight the true image of Islam.

"I hope it sheds light on Islam so people will learn they don't have to live in fear," Shamsuddin Rager, a Muslim revert, told the St. Joseph News on Saturday, May 23.

Moving to St. Joseph two years ago, Rager found himself in a city where Islam and its followers are least understood.

But some light appeared at the end of the tunnel after the inauguration of the Islamic Center of Greater St. Joseph last week.

Rager hopes that the opening of the mosque later this year would change the false impressions about the Islamic faith.

"They don't have to fear Islam," he said.

"They don't have to worry we're going to blow something up."

Rager blames the absence of a Muslim body to represent the community for the prevailing misconceptions about Islam.

He still remembers the mixed reactions he received from people who came to know accidentally that he reverted to Islam five years ago while being in Germany.

"There are mixed reactions," Rager said.

"Quite a few negative, some surprised. The door kind of swings both ways."

Negative portrayal of Islam and Muslims has become the norm in the media since the 9/11 attacks.

American Muslims, estimated at between six to seven million, complain that conservative newspapers and radio and television shows fuel anti-Muslim sentiments.

* Welcome

The mosque plans drew welcome from St. Joseph Christians.

Rev. Chase Peeples, pastor of First Christian Church in St. Joseph, said Muslims are admired for hospitability, devotion and respect for others, calling for Christians to show the same in return.

"I think Jesus spoke pretty clearly about loving our neighbor, and our neighbor may very well be someone of a different faith.

"In Northwest Missouri, Muslims are so much in the minority they probably have more to fear from Christians than Christians do from them."

The Islamic Center of Greater St. Joseph would host interfaith discussions to help promote relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the city.

It would organize monthly events in which non-Muslims would be welcomed to have any questions about Islam.

The weekly Friday prayers at the center would also be open to anyone who wants to participate.

"It's a peaceful religion," the center's imam, Amro Nabil Masjid, of Egyptian origin, said.

"We're not very bad people, after all."
Source: IslamOnline

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Dick Cheney's 'overrated' account of the security gains of the former administrations 'anti-terror' campaign has invited expert criticism against the former vice president.

On Friday, pundits questioned Cheney's recent remarks during which he had claimed that the Bush administration's trademark 'war on terror' was likely to have saved "violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people."

"No matter how you slice this, it's very hard to get to the hundred thousand figure unless al-Qaeda had a nuclear weapon…. Which they didn't," Los Angeles Times quoted Georgetown University professor and counterinsurgency expert, Bruce Hoffman as saying.

"It's an easy thing to say and a difficult thing to prove," he added.

On Thursday, Cheney vigorously defended the Bush administration's approaches, which condoned using torture-aided grilling methods against alleged terror suspects. He called on the interrogators to be "proud of their work and proud of the results."

The daily said the former top gun outdid himself during the comments comparing the alleged achievements by the intelligence operatives with those of World War II intelligence heroes.

"Nobody knows that for a fact…because until one actually sees the intelligence they're sitting on, it's virtually impossible to make a judgment…," said Gary J. Schmitt, director of the American Enterprise Institute's Program on Advanced Strategic Studies.

Cheney had targeted the executive orders for closure of the American military prisons abroad where torture has been reportedly running rife since 2001.

President Barack Obama who ruled on the shutdown claims the facilities did more to foster terrorism than forestall it.

HN/HAR

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ATHENS — As protests continued unabated over the desecration of the Noble Qur'an by a Greek policeman, Muslim immigrants are calling for bringing the officer to justice for insulting the Muslim holy book. "We want to live here in peace," an Egyptian immigrant, who identified himself as Said told Reuters.

"We don't want trouble but we want the policeman to be punished."

Hundreds of Muslim immigrants took to the streets of the capital Athens for the second consecutive day to protest the destruction of the Qur'an by a policeman.

Chanting "Allah is great", the protestors carried banners reading "Hands off immigrants" and holding up copies of the Noble Qur'an.

Clashes erupted between the angry protestors and police, injuring seven immigrants and seven policemen. Police said 46 protesters were arrested.

The protestors were outraged by reports that during police checks at a Syrian-owned coffee shop on Wednesday, an officer took a customer's Qur'an, tore it up, threw it on the floor and stomped on it.

"Immigrants are outraged," Vasso Akrivou, a member of the group Expel Racism, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The incident on Wednesday was the straw that broke the camel's back."

Lawsuit

The Muslim Union of Greece, representing thousands of immigrants in the country, has filed a lawsuit against the policeman.

"Police told us they need more time for the internal investigation so we went ahead and filed a suit," union president Naim Elghandour told Reuters.

Police have already launched an investigation into the incident.

This is not the first time the violent behavior by Greek police triggered turmoil in the country.

Greece plunged into chaos in December over the death of a teenager by the police.

Muslims make about 1.3% percent of the population in overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian Greece, according to the CIA facts book.

The capital Athens is home to an estimated 100,000 Muslim Albanians, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Moroccans, Syrians and Nigerians.

The country is home to thousands of immigrants who cross into the country illegally every year seeking a better life in the West.

Trapped in legal limbo, most have no jobs, live in squalid conditions and are often arrested for minor crimes.

On May 9, members of a rightist group attacked immigrants in Athens, sending at least three to hospital.

Rights groups accuse the predominantly Orthodox Christian country of not doing enough to protect immigrants.

Greece says the burden of being the main entry point for illegal immigration into Europe is too heavy to bear alone and has asked its EU partners for help.

Source: IslamOnline

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An American politician says former US President George W. Bush and two close allies should be subjected to waterboarding -- a harsh interrogation technique -- for charity.

In separate letters, Rhode Island Democratic Representative Rod Driver offered to pay 100 dollars for "every second" the former president, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice undergo waterboarding, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The report comes as issue of advanced interrogation techniques practiced under the Bush administration during its 'war on terror' debacle has kept the Obama White House quite busy.

Ever since leaving office in January, Bush administration officials have moved to defend the tough and sometimes inhumane measures, including waterboarding that simulates drowning, against enemy combatants.

The officials have said that the measures against terror suspects saved thousands of lives, while claiming that the advanced interrogation techniques did not necessarily mean torture.

Driver, however, says if Bush is so confident it is not torture, he should try it for himself. A spokesman for the former president did not immediately return a call for comment, the Telegraph said.

AGB/SC/MD

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LONDON: The West has to “show greater respect” for Muslims if it wants to rebuild relations with the Islamic world, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Thursday.

In a speech delivered in Oxford, Miliband listed the Iraq war alongside the medieval Crusades and colonial-era division and subjugation of the Middle East as drivers of “bitterness, distrust and resentment” in the region. He also said relations had been damaged by the use of “lazy stereotypes” by Western officials, and conceded that his own use of the labels “moderate” and “extremist” showed a lack of understanding that risked “undermining the force of our own argument,” according to an early text of the remarks released by the Foreign Office.

The speech, at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, was intended to build on an address delivered in Mumbai in January in which the foreign secretary conceded that the idea of a “war on terror” had done more harm than good by uniting otherwise disparate groups in common antipathy to the West.

“Organizations with different aims, values and tactics were lumped together. Little or sometimes no distinction was drawn between those engaged in national territorial struggles and those pursuing global or pan-Islamic objectives; between those that could be drawn into domestic political processes and those who are essentially anti-political and violent,” he said.

“If we want to rebuild relations — to forge broader coalitions — we need to show greater respect. That means rejecting the lazy stereotypes and moving beyond the binary division between moderates and extremists,” he added.

He appeared to pave the way for a more conciliatory policy toward militant Muslim groups, arguing: “That means being prepared to encourage reconciliation with organizations whose values we may not share but who are prepared to pursue common interests.”

However, Foreign Office officials said Miliband was not signaling a change in policy toward the Hamas movement in Gaza. They said Britain remained committed to the “Quartet principles” which dictate that the international community will not talk directly to Hamas about the Middle East peace process until the Palestinian movement renounces violence and accepts Israel’s right to exist.

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Source: Arab News