Former Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz: „Turkish secret agents intentionally started forest fires around Christian monasteries of Greece“

Greek politicians reacted angrily on Monday following the admission by former Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz that Turkish secret agents intentionally started forest fires in Greece in the 1990s as part of state-sponsored sabotage.
The claims are not new and were common knowledge on the islands of the eastern Aegean which were particularly hard hit by wildfires in the 1990s. But Yilmaz’s comments -- part of an interview published in the Turkish daily newspaper Birgun over the weekend -- are the first admission by an official source that Ankara was funding subversive activities in Greece.

According to Yilmaz, who served as premier three times in the 1990s, agents of the Turkish secret service set fire to Greek forests during the leadership of his archrival Tansu Ciller, from 1995 to 1998. During that period major forest fires caused huge damage on the islands of the eastern Aegean and in Macedonia.

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Islam group urges forest fire Jihad

THEAGE / AUSTRALIA

AUSTRALIA has been singled out as a target for "forest jihad" by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror.

US intelligence channels earlier this year identified a website calling on Muslims in Australia, the US, Europe and Russia to "start forest fires", claiming "scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels' forests when they do the same to our lands".

The website, posted by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network, argues in Arabic that lighting fires is an effective form of terrorism justified in Islamic law under the "eye for an eye" doctrine.

The posting — which instructs jihadis to remember "forest jihad" in summer months — says fires cause economic damage and pollution, tie up security agencies and can take months to extinguish so that "this terror will haunt them for an extended period of time".

"Imagine if, after all the losses caused by such an event, a jihadist organisation were to claim responsibility for the forest fires," the website says. "You can hardly begin to imagine the level of fear that would take hold of people in the United States, in Europe, in Russia and in Australia."

With the nation heading into another hot, dry summer, Australian intelligence agencies are treating the possibility that bushfires could be used as a weapon of terrorism as a serious concern.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the Federal Government remained "vigilant against such threats", warning that anyone caught lighting a fire as a weapon of terror would feel the wrath of anti-terror laws.

"Any information that suggests a threat to Australia's interests is investigated by relevant agencies as appropriate," Mr McClelland said.

Adam Dolnik, director of research at the University of Wollongong's Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, said that bushfires (unlike suicide bombing) were generally not considered a glorious type of attack by jihadis, in keeping with a recent decline in the sophistication of terrorist operations.

"With attacks like bushfires, yes, it would be easy. It would be very damaging and we do see a decreasing sophistication as a part of terrorist attacks," Dr Dolnik said.

"In recent years, there have been quite a few attacks averted and it has become more and more difficult for groups to do something effective."

Dr Dolnik said he had observed an increase in traffic on jihadi websites calling for a simplification of terrorist attacks because the more complex operations had been failing. But starting bushfires was still often regarded as less effective than other operations because governments could easily deny terrorism as the cause.

The internet posting by the little-known group claimed the idea of forest fires had been attributed to imprisoned Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Suri. It said Al-Suri had urged terrorists to use sulphuric acid and petrol to start forest fires.

 

Sudan’s Aerial Bombing Aims at Churches in Nuba Mountains

After Khartoum denied that it had bombed civilians earlier this month, Sudanese aerial strikes last week were aimed at church buildings and schools in Kauda, South Kordofan state, a humanitarian aid worker said.

Antonov airplanes dropped bombs on Thursday and Friday (March 22 and 23), destroying some houses and cattle near the church buildings and schools but causing no casualties, he said.

Humanitarian agencies consider the Islamic government’s targeting of civilians in the Nuba Mountains, which has a large Christian population, an “ethnic cleansing” against non-Arab peoples in the multi-ethnic state, with the added incentive of ridding the area of Christians, he said.

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Radical Muslim sect grows more dangerous in Nigeria

The imam's insistent, lecturing voice comes right to the point over the scratchy audio recording: Holy war is the only way to bring change for Muslims in Nigeria. Abubakar Shekau urges followers of his feared Boko Haram sect to carry out more assassinations and bombings. The group's violent campaign already has left more than 240 people dead this year. On Friday, a suicide bomber hit a military base while explosives detonated around Maiduguri — attacks that bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram. "Whomever we kill, we kill because Allah says we should kill and we kill for a reason," Shekau says in a recording of a sermon obtained by The Associated Press.  MORE

63 killed in attacks in northern Nigeria: Red Cross official

Bomb and gun attacks targeting police stations and churches in the northeastern Nigerian city of Damaturu left 63 people dead, a Red Cross official said Saturday.

One of the police buildings was hit by a suicide bomber, Suleimon Lawal, police chief for Yobe state, whose capital is Damaturu, told AFP.

A local government official said hundreds were also injured when the attackers bombed a city police headquarters, three other police stations and six churches in Damaturu late Friday, after similar raids in another city blamed on an Islamist sect.


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Three prisoners released in Ethiopia

ICC

On October 25, three Christian prisoners were released from prison in Ethiopia after an ICC staff member (who is a native of Ethiopia) called the Muslim police officials and reminded them that they were violating the law for arresting the Christians for preaching the gospel.

The three Christians (one of whom is a former Muslim leader) were arrested on October 15 for preaching the gospel to Muslims. Even while they were in prison, the Christians continued to share their faith. As a result of their testimony in prison, two people came to Christ and others were healed from sickness after the Christians prayed for them.

The government officials panicked and released them after receiving the call from ICC. A Muslim police official confronted the Christians and asked them, “How do you have people in the US who asked us to release you?”

Though the three are now free, Muslim authorities are threatening to bring criminal charges against the former Muslim leader.

ICC is closely monitoring the situation. Please keep the Christians in your prayers.

Click here to view their photo (faces blurred to protect them) on Flickr.

This is the country we’re saving

By Daniel Greenfield, FRONTPAGEMAG

Pedophilia, forced marriages, blasphemy trials and drug dealing. That is the real Afghanistan. The one that lingers on even when the Taliban are chased into the hills. That cannot be changed by American intervention because this is who its people are.

We might have been able to save Afghanistan from the Taliban, but we can’t save it from the Afghans. From the quarreling clans and warlords, the age old customs and the Islamic mores. Beyond a sliver of Western educated men and women in Kabul lies a land of a thousand cruelties and a million knives. With a vendetta around every corner and murder in every heart.

There is no Afghanistan, only a thousand divisions. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan that replaced the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is an internationally funded mirage. A multi-billion dollar fund with its own flag and its own mercenaries. And because these mercenaries won’t fight, our soldiers go out to fight and die in their place.

Beneath that flag there is no unity. There are only divisions. Sunnis and Shiites. Pashtuns, Tajiks and Hazaras. Men and women. Groups with nothing in common except the Koran and the knife.

Last month’s New York Times chronicled one such collision of coexistence as a secret relationship between Tajik and Hazara teenagers led to rioting and the detention of the couple. A group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, which they stopped to interrogate the couple.  Soon a crowd had gathered to try to stone or hang them for adultery.  When police rescued the couple, an outbreak of mob violence occurred which left one man dead, cars on fire, and the teenagers in jail.

The girl’s uncle promised to kill her when she was released for shaming the family. “Blood was perhaps the only way out,” the girl’s father said. “What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them.”

Afghan jails are filled with women fleeing abusive marriages. Fleeing home carries with it a ten year jail sentence. The analogy to escaped slaves is as obvious and inescapable as a Muslim marriage. Adultery is the catch-all charge that can be leveled at a woman at any time, married or unmarried, a young girl or an elderly woman.

The Afghan man has three tools of power. Zan, Zar and Zamin. Women, gold and land. A man with many women will be able to breed many sons and expand his own clan. A man with a great deal of gold will be able to buy weapons and take his share of the drug and human trafficking networks. And a man with much land will have his own kingdom.

This elemental tribal power defines Afghanistan. Women are at the bottom of this pyramid. But so are minority ethnic groups. The father’s cruelty in the New York Times story is about more than honor, it is about population retention in the internal power struggle. A Hazara daughter who marries a Tajik enlists on the other side of one of Afghanistan’s numberless micro-conflicts. Those conflicts are not always violent, but they are very real.

And on top of the bubbling kettle is Islam. No religion would be quite as fit for this backward tribalism as a religion that began as a warlord’s cult. Islam does not unify Afghanistan. For all that the Islamists imagine a Caliphate, Islam adds only another layer of division. Ethnic divisions in Afghanistan are also religious divisions. And Islam adds religious sanction to the oppression of women and the massacres of rivals.

Almost any other religion would have had a civilizing influence on Afghanistan. But Islam’s influence has only embedded the savagery deeper beneath its dusty skin. Everything that is bad in Afghanistan has its supporting verse in the Koran. The culture of the tribal raid, its emphasis on victory as proof of divine sanction and its contempt for women– finds its echo in the Koran. Tribal cruelty becomes the will of Allah.

But Islam added another facet to the Afghan nightmare, its doctrines elevating local conflicts above tribal raids. In United in Hate, Jamie Glazov wrote, “This is where the Western Left and militant Islam intersect: human life must be sacrificed for the sake of the idea.”

The tribal raider is unable to imagine any higher idea than the honor of his family. But Islam adds the idea of the meta-tribal identity. The Islamic Ummah as the ultimate tribe. It is an idea that allowed Mohammed and his successors to loot and pillage their way across much of the world. And the world is bleeding from a million wounds, stabbed, cut and pierced by the followers of that idea.

The things that the tribesman loots for in this world are given to him twice over in paradise if he dies in battle. And if he suspects that the paradise overflowing with virgins, gold jewelry and pungent wines is a lie that the elders and clerics tell to get him to risk his life while they remain behind with their share of the virgins, gold and wine in this world– to say so openly would be blasphemy.

It is no wonder that the Taliban found its perfect breeding ground in Afghanistan. Just as variants like Al-Shabaab found theirs in equally backward places such as Somalia. The purity that the Wahhabis seek is really barbarism. And it is most easily found in the most backward places. The least civilized countries.

The Taliban may have repressed Afghanistan, but they did not add very much that was not already there. Afghanistan is not Persia, a place that Afghans looking for freedom and opportunity flee to today. Their edicts and brutality made Afghanistan worse, but the difference was most notable in Kabul, and far less so in more backward provinces. As the Taliban return, so does a surge of brutality. But it is a surge that adds to the existing brutality in the official and unofficial systems.

Will the Taliban rule in Afghanistan? In a sense they always have. Long before the Taliban existed, the gleeful cruelty, the dogmatic brutalization and the culture of fear reigned in Afghanistan. The Taliban contribution was the linkup through Pakistan and now Iran with a global Jihad. The local raid giving way to the global raid. The persecution of Christians in Afghanistan giving way to September 11. Exploding Buddhas transitioning to falling skyscrapers.

The terrible genius of Islam is that it took the violence of the tribe and the clan and sanctified it. Islam elevated the vendetta to the highest form of religious service. The one that is above all others.

20th century Islamists took the ugly tribal feud and globalized it. They took backward places like Afghanistan and turned them into platforms for a global war. We may be able to save ourselves from the puppet masters behind this shadow war, but we cannot save the Afghans from themselves.

Muslim fundamentalist torch churches in Zanzibar, Tanzania

Worship buildings burned on east African archipelago’s Zanzibar, Pemba islands.

Muslim extremists on Saturday (July 30) burned down a church building on Zanzibar island off the coast of Tanzania, church leaders said, just three days after another congregation’s facility on the island was reduced to ashes.

In Fuoni on the south coast of Zanzibar (known locally as Unguja), Islamic extremists torched the building of the Evangelical Assemblies of God-Tanzania (EAGT) at around 2 p.m., said Pastor Leonard Massasa, who oversees Zanzibar’s EAGT churches. The assailants were shouting, “Away with the church – we do not want infidels to spoil our community, especially our children,” Pastor Massasa said.

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Muslim group says no going back on Islamic Banking

A Muslim group in the North yesterday threatened to defend the implementation of the Islamic Banking system with the last drop of their blood. It warned the Christian community opposed to it to back off or face the full wrath of their anger.

The Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria told reporters at the end of its meeting in Kaduna last night that it would rather go to war than give up their agitation for Islamic banking. It said since Islamic banking has been implemented in Britain and other Christian-dominated countries, there is no reason why it cannot be implemented in Nigeria.

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Khartoum cancels Sudanese nationality of southerners

Sudan's parliament passed a law on Wednesday cancelling the Sudanese nationality of southerners, four days after their homeland declared independence from the north, state media reported.

"All the southerners are going to lose their Sudanese nationality directly" because of the amendments to a law approved by parliament, MP Ismail al-Haj Musa told AFP, confirming a report on the official SUNA news agency.

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Jihad In Sudan Redux

On July 9, the mostly Christian South Sudan will legally and officially separate from the Muslim north and become a new, independent and free country. Fearing loss of its iron clad grip of other non-Arab regions in the north, whose people likely envy the freedoms won by the South, Arab/Islamist leaders in Khartoum have launched a military assault on the Nuba Mountains, a mixed Christian, animist and Muslim region. Reports from the area are gruesomely reminiscent of the decades-long assault Khartoum waged on the South. These include forced conversions to Islam, mass displacement, bombing of civilians and mass slaughter.
 
Anticipating the effects of Christians winning freedom from his rule already in December of 2010 Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity, laid out a vision for the future of his nation:
 
"If south Sudan secedes, we will change the constitution and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity... Sharia (Islamic law) and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language", he told a group of supporters.

Al-Bashir made his statement as the people of Southern Sudan were preparing to vote in the referendum that secured their imminent independence. With less than a week left before South secedes, al-Bashir is determined to fulfill his promise not by changing the constitution, but through murder and ethnic cleansing.
 
After concluding a military occupation of the disputed border region of Abyei,  which resulted in the expulsion of more than 100,000 (non-Arabs, mostly from the Dinka tribe), Sudanese army and government-sponsored Arab militias attacked the African tribes of Nuba Mountains, a region situated in the Northern state of Southern Kordofan. Reports indicate indiscriminate bombings of civilians and a systematic killing of the black-skinned Nuba, which forced estimated 100,000 to abandon their homes. One report described "door to door executions of completely innocent and defenseless civilians, often by throat cutting."  Another suggested the government might be using chemical weapons. The Bishop of Nuba Mountains described the events as genocide: "Once again we are facing the nightmare of genocide of our people in a final attempt to erase our culture and society from the face of the earth." A well-respected Sudan analyst concurred.
 
Nuba embody the diversity of culture and religion that al-Bashir wants to destroy. Numbering some 1.5 million, Nuba people are Christians, Muslims and the followers of traditional faiths. It is not uncommon to find the adherents of all faiths within a single family. Comprising from more than fifty tribes and speaking an equal number of languages, the Nuba have an incredibly diverse culture.
 
Just like the Africans of the South, the Nuba have faced racial discrimination from the Arab governments and elites of the North, which led them to join Sudan's People Liberation Army (SPLA) at the beginning of the second outbreak of Sudan's Civil War (1983-2005). The government's response, especially after the Islamist regime of Al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi seized power in 1989, escalated into the campaign of annihilation. The Nuba people lost their lands; they were murdered, starved and enslaved.  In what some  called genocide in the name of Islam, all Nuba-Christians, animists and even Muslims-were targeted for eradication; estimated 200,000 perished.
 
In the crackdown that reach the Nuba Mountains even before the outbreak of the war, Christian clergy was murdered; churches burned, while Christian children were abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and often forced to join the Sudanese army to fight against their own people. In the current attack Christian places of worship are also being destroyed.  In January 1992, South Kordofan governor, Lt. General al-Hussein officially declared the war a "jihad." Shortly after, in 1993, the religious leaders of Southern Kordofan issued a fatwa that legalized it:
 
"The rebels in South Kordofan and Southern Sudan started their rebellion against the state and declared war against the Moslems. Their main aims are: killing the Moslems, desecrating mosques, burning and defiling the Koran, and raping Moslem women. In so doing, they are encouraged by the enemies of Islam and Moslems: these foes are the Zionists, the Christians and the arrogant people who provide them with provisions and arms. Therefore, an insurgent who was previously a Moslem is now an apostate; and a non-Moslem is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them."
 
Following this religious ruling, Sudanese soldiers and allied militias began killing Nuba imams, burning mosques and desecrating Korans. Today, the same actors praise God as they kill the innoncent.
 
To destroy the social fabric of the Nuba society the government forces and the Arab militiamen systematically raped thousands of Nuba women, including girls as young as nine. The raping took place during abductions, in military camps, and in so-called "peace camps." One victim, a 17 years-old girl named Fawzia Jibreel, told African Rights:
 
"After dark, the soldiers came and took the girls to their rooms, and raped them. I was taken and raped... When you have been taken, the soldier who has taken you will do what he wants, then he will go out of the room, you will stay, and another one will come...Every day the raping continued... It is impossible to count the men who raped me. Perhaps in a week I would have only one day of rest. Sometimes one man will take me for the whole night. Sometimes I will be raped by four or five men per day or night; they will just be changing one for another."
 
The policy of rape is being used in the Nuba Mountains once again.
 
On July 1, during Friday prayers in a mosque in Khartoum, al-Bashir said that he ordered his soldiers to continue "cleaning" South Kordofan.  As history shows all those who care about the plight of Nuba and other Africans of Sudan must take his words seriously and act to stop his religious genocide.

North Sudan: What next?

The recent declaration of independence by South Sudan from its northern neighbor is certainly a welcome event. After two civil wars (1955-1972 and 1983-2005) that took the lives of more than 2.5 million Christians and animists, secession was the only reasonable option. Of course, there are immediate challenges for South Sudan, as it seems unlikely that 7,000 UN peacekeeping troops can protect a new nation that has vast oil reserves and a population living largely in abject poverty.

But what about North Sudan’s future? One noteworthy development in the north is the aerial bombardment targeting civilians in the Nuba Mountains, which are part of the petroleum-rich province of South Kordofan that will be the main oil producing region for North Sudan, following the south’s secession. The Nuba Mountains – once a base for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army that fought against the Arab-led government in Khartoum during the second civil war – are primarily inhabited by the Nuban people, a mixed Christian and Muslim population with their own language and culture.

Indeed, as Amar Amoun (a Nuban MP in North Sudan’s opposition) says, the bombing is a deliberate tactic to depopulate the Nuba Mountains. With Nuban rebels starting to take up arms and hoping to achieve more civil rights or independence for the Nuban people, war with the central government appears likely, hence the potential for another humanitarian catastrophe as in Darfur.

Here is the heart of the issue. It’s all very well to have South Sudan secede, but the root of the problem has still not been addressed: namely, the traditional doctrines of jihad that underlie the Islamist and Arab supremacist ideology of the ruling elite in Khartoum.

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Iran and its proxy Hizbullah continue to expand their influence and presence in South America, a top US general warns.

IsraelNationalNews

USAF General Douglas Fraser, commanding officer of the Pentagon's Southern Command, says Iran has aggressively expanded its network of embassies in the region, as well as building numerous cultural centers and mosques in more than 15 Latin American countries.

Fraser, the shot-caller for US military operations in 31 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, says intelligence provided to SoCom indicates the Iranian-built Mosques and cultural centers are teaching a radical brand of Islam to impoverished Latin American's and serve as recruiting centers for 'extremist organizations.'

Fraser warns these efforts have been accelerated by the close relationship between President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who have met at least nine times during Chavez’s 12-year tenure as President.

The Iranian-Venezuelan alliance remains largely diplomatic and commercial, according to Fraser. But he maintains there are still too many unknowns to simply discount its long-term strategic importance vis-a-vis the growth of Islamic terror groups in the region.

"There are flights between Iran and Venezuela on a weekly basis, and visas are not required for entrance into Venezuela or Bolivia or Nicaragua. So we don’t have a lot of visibility in who’s visiting and who isn’t, and that’s really where I see the concerns," Fraser says.

"It is a concern, and it is an issue we will continue to monitor for any increasing activity," Fraser said.

Fraser also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that military intelligence confirmed Iran has hosted heads of state from three countries: Bolivia, Guyana and Venezuela.

But Fraser isn't just concerned about Iran forming a beach-head in the region. The Iranian-supported Hizbullah terror-organization is also developing a dangerous presence in Latin America, Fraser says. In addition to fundraising and recruiting in the region, the terror group has reportedly started muscling in on the Mexican drug trade.

Fraser is not the first to warn lawmakers from both parties about Latin America's vulnerability to radical Islam. In 2007, Marine Corps General Peter Pace, the Bush Administration’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Armed Services Committee elements of radical Islamic groups were active in South America recruiting and training terrorists.

Pace specifically cited Hizbullah and al-Qaeda, but the Senate chose not to act on Pace's warnings at the time.

Due to Fraser's lobbying, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence will hold a hearing entitled "Hizbullah in Latin America – Implications for U.S. Homeland Security" on July 7th.

Hindus protest Muslim prayers at public school

Hindus from across Toronto plan to protest outside a North York middle school until a controversial Friday prayer session for 400 Muslim students is stopped.

The Canadian Hindu Advocacy is one of a number of Toronto-area groups who are opposed to the 30- to 40-minute services that occurred in the cafeteria of Valley Park Middle School on Overlea Blvd. from November to March.

An imam from a local mosque is brought to school to head the service, officials said. During the service male students are made to sit in front of the girls.

“This is alarming and unacceptable,” said Advocacy director Ron Banerjee. “We respect the separation of church and state.”

He said his group will be sending letters of protest to the Toronto District School Board in the next few days and calling for an end of the noon-time services. That will be followed by protests in November, when the services resume, if the prayers are to continue next school year.

“There’s not supposed to be any religious classes taking place in public schools,” Banerjee said. “We will be asking the board to stop the practice.”

He said school officials stopped students from reciting the Lord’s Prayers years ago and his group will picket the Muslim classes if the practice isn’t stopped.

“Our organization has received many complaints from Hindu students and parents in the Valley Park Middle School region,” Banerjee said.

He said his group would like to begin a discussion with TDSB authorities aimed at restoring secular education within the school system.

“We would also like to discuss the serving of halal meat within TDSB schools,” he said. “Our organization is determined to ensure all Hindu students are provided non-halal meat alternatives.”

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Christian hospital under attack in Pakistan

A group of Muslims tries to seize forcibly a Christian hospital in Taxila, 32 kilometres from the capital Islamabad by making false claims with police. The intervention of Christian leaders and Bishop Rufin Anthony stops the threat.

An attempt by a group of Muslims to take over the Christian Hospital in Taxila was recently foiled. On Saturday, Malik Nur Muhammad, Malik Riaz and Malik Abdul Razzak, influential local Muslims, filed a First Information Report (FIR) with police against the administration of the hospital. The facility, which is located almost 32 kilometres from Islamabad, was established by United Presbyterian Church. They complainants say they bought the hospital and accuse the administrators of refusing to hand it over. They also accuse the current administration of blasphemy but did not include such an accusation in their original application.

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Prison sentences for over 500 Ethiopian Muslims responsible ror burning down churches, Christian homes

(ICC)

International Christian Concern has learned that Ethiopian courts sentenced 579 Muslims to prison terms ranging from three months to 18 years for taking part in violence against Christians that left one dead, and 69 churches and several Christian homes burned to the ground in Asendabo and surrounding areas.

An additional 107 individuals are accused of terrorism for their roles in the attacks against the Christians and the public prosecutors have brought charges against them in federal court.  Eight individuals suspected to be among the masterminds of the violence are still at large and Ethiopian authorities are searching for them.

The violence against Christians started on March 2 and continued for a week. ICC was the first organization to break the news about the attacks, warning of the impending destruction. Our supporters responded to the plight of the victims by providing for their emergency needs and signing a petition seeking justice on their behalf.

Speaking to ICC, an Ethiopian church leader said, “I am glad that the rule of law prevailed and the church has finally got protection from the government. The judges who looked at these cases have delivered justice. We are happy that the truth has finally been revealed.”

Ethiopia is a Christian majority country and was one of the first nations to accept Christianity. However, in the areas of the country where Muslims are the majority, Christians face attacks.

“We welcome the decision of Ethiopian courts. We hope that the decision sends a strong message to radical Muslims that violence against innocents will not go unpunished. We would like to thank those who helped the victims through their prayers, their gifts, and their signatures on ICC’s petition seeking justice on behalf of the victims,” said Jonathan Racho, ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa.

Christians at Risk: A Jew's Concern

I read with dismay the reports of repeated assaults on Copts in Egypt.
Here's a Wall Street Journal account (June 11):

Five weeks after the fall of the Egyptian regime, Ayman Anwar Mitri's [a member of the Christian Coptic minority] apartment was torched. When he showed up to investigate, he was bundled inside by bearded Islamists...[who] accused him of having rented the apartment - by then unoccupied - to loose Muslim women...They beat him with the charred remains of his furniture. Then, one of them produced a box cutter and...amputated Mr. Mitri's right ear.

"When they were beating me, they kept saying: 'We won't leave any Christians in this country,'" Mr. Mitri recalled in a recent interview.

Earlier reports this year spoke of a destroyed church in Soul, 20 miles from Cairo, and the mass evacuation of Christians from the village, as well as the New Year's Day bombing of an Alexandria church, leaving 25 Christians dead and scores wounded. And that's only for starters.

Discrimination, distrust, and paranoia feed the troubling climate. Rumors spread like wildfire. A Christian has allegedly abducted a Muslim and tattooed her with a cross. A Muslim disappears and Christians are accused of violence. An intermarriage triggers fear that Christians are trying to subvert the majority population.

Egypt, of course, has been heavily in the political news in recent months. Unrest in the streets led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. The spirit of Tahrir Square captured the imagination of many. Talk of a new dawn in Egypt has been widespread.

But if a page is to be turned in the Arab world's most populous country, it cannot come at the expense of a vulnerable minority. Copts have lived in Egypt for nearly 2,000 years and represent the largest Christian minority in the Middle East, comprising ten percent of Egypt's 83 million inhabitants.

While some Egyptians, to their credit, have spoken bravely of national unity between Muslims and Copts, they have not been able to stop the deadly assaults or lessen the widespread fear.

As a Jew, I identify with the Copts' situation.

Perhaps it's because we can write a doctoral thesis on the topic of minority status. We know all too well what it means to live in a country where legal protections are left to the whim of the authorities, not embedded in a country's DNA or democratic architecture.

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Nigeria: Muslim hordes mass slaughter Christians

Burned corpses with machete wounds lay in roads and smoke rose above this city where rioting broke out again Tuesday among Muslim opposition supporters who were angered by the announcement that the Christian incumbent president had won the election.

On the outskirts of Kaduna, burned out minibuses and cars littered the highways, and at least six charred bodies could be seen. Skull caps and sandals were strewn nearby, left behind by those who frantically fled amid the chaos.
Authorities and aid groups have hesitated to release tolls following the riots across northern Nigeria for fear of inciting reprisal attacks, but the National Emergency Management Agency confirmed there had been fatalities. The Nigerian Red Cross said Tuesday that nearly 400 people had been wounded.

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Nigeria Boko Haram Islamists 'bomb Maiduguri drinkers'

A bomb attack in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Maiduguri has killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens, security sources say.

They say they believe the attack, which occurred in a beer garden, was carried out by the Islamist sect Boko Haram.

The group wants to establish an Islamic government in Nigeria.

It has carried out a number of bombings in north-eastern Nigeria, as well as an attack on police headquarters in the capital Abuja earlier this month.

Gunmen on two motorcycles attacked a packed beer garden late on Sunday, officials said.

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Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood arms Ogaden rebels

Although he began his life with joining the Muslim Brotherhood in Alexandria .. However, he split on the group   after a few years , he founded “Civic Egypt’s  site” on the net since about one year ago ,  and  Because between this approach and that a vast sea , and Because he grew up at the Muslim Brotherhood  school ,  raised on their  ideology.

For all of that I thought to have an interview with him about:  Why did he leave the Muslim Brotherhood?  What are their inside system of work?  Why he considers the attack on Christians is not random and not bullying, but organized process with a specific goal?  And what some religious symbols meant by (We will implement the Islamic legitimate punishment, after we own the land)? The reasons of Muslim Brotherhood refusal of any criticism to them or to their ideology and meet that with threats? , And why he affirms that the ultimate goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is “being masters of the world”?

I present to you this very exciting interview with “Moomen Sallam”, a dissident member of Muslim Brotherhood, Who is full of nice ideas and humanitarian tendencies.

- What is happening now is a process “to break the Christians”.

- Adopting the majority of Muslims now to extremist interpretations of the chapters of Quran, is Due to tow elements!

- The Relationship between “ElBaradei”, Muslim Brotherhood and the American organization of “Soros”.

Muslim Brotherhood applies the proverb “fight others with loud voice unless they beat you!”

-The Muslim Brotherhood is waiting for the opportunity to apply “Al Hedoud” (the Islamic legitimate punishment)  , Do not believe what they said about they care for the  will of the people .

- This is what Islamic spiritual guide meant with: ”we‘ll raise the society as we want, till it comes to us requesting to apply the Islamic legitimate punishment of sharia  )!

- All   unions and syndicates turned into Muslim Brotherhood political unions, and not unions with purpose of serving people.

The accusation of “scientists of Sultan (president)” has been stuck to Al-Azhar sheikhs.
- Without a culture of acceptance the other, Egypt will be moving into the abyss.

- All the talk about “Shura” within the Muslim Brotherhood groups Is “imaginary”.

- These are the groups who we named them as “central security” within the Brotherhood.

- If the “Education Department” opened its mouse, you’ll hear the sweetest “rubble”, like (Hell with Egypt, the democracy is infidelity)!

-Certainly what is happening to members of   the Muslim Brotherhood group is a “brainwashed”!

- Muslim Brotherhood is extremist and closed minded.

Moomen explains: “99% of the Muslim Brotherhood members are being recruited to the group  … While I actually joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987 with my choice without being recruited.

The recruitment process has its origins basis.  The process starts with a friendship between a person of Muslim Brotherhood and an ordinary person. Through this friendship, the Muslim Brotherhood member starts to promote the average person’s mind.  The process in   which   begins the transmission of the Muslim Brotherhood Ideology in the person.

And then Muslim Brotherhood member invites average person for entertainment journey … (jokes, play and laughter) … but in between, ideas and thoughts happens to be promoted to him.

You said: “till they reach to the stage of “Well we needed   to do something for Islam and we have to save the Muslims from oppression and restore the “Sharia of Allah” (Islamic legislation of God), What kind of persecution that they convince you that the Muslims are facing?

They consider “Non-implementation of Sharia” kind of oppression. The arrests of some members of their groups, they considered also a persecution against Muslims, not just the Brotherhood.

Also , they say that : “ as we  are all Muslims, so there nothing  called Egyptian, Syrian or Malaysian” , so they used to fill a Muslim Brotherhood member’s mind with thoughts like: “That Muslims are persecuted in the Philippines ,The province of Ogaden ,  in Ethiopia, beside Palestine  of course,  they are persecuted also.  Therefore, it’s required that we save our sisters and brothers in religion from the persecution.


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