islamic-video.com

6/12/2006 12:20:00 PM GMT
 

Controversial Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci is facing a lawsuit for making discriminatory and offensive comments against the Islamic religion, IRNA reported.

In her book “Power of Wisdom”, Fallaci insulted Islam publicly in more than eighteen sentences, according to Italy's official news agency, ANSA.

Reports say Fallaci, who lives in New York, isn’t expected to attend Monday’s hearing in the northern Italian city of Bergamo.

The former war correspondent had often stirred controversy for her provocative publications. Her most recent books have drawn accusations she incites hatred against Islam and Muslims.

In her essay “The Rage and the Pride," written in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Fallaci wrote that “the children of Allah spend their time with their bottoms in the air, praying five times a day."

In 2004, the head of the Italian Muslim Union, Adel Smith, filed a lawsuit against Fallaci, charging that some passages in her previous book were offensive to Islam.

Mr Smith's lawyer cited a phrase from the book that refers to Islam as "a pool ... that never purifies."

Last year, Italian preliminary investigative judge Armando Grasso ordered that the 76-year-old journalist should stand trial, saying that her book included expressions which were "unequivocally offensive to Islam" and accusing her of violating an Italian law that bans “outrage to religion”.

Fallaci had openly declared recently that if she sees the minaret of the newly constructed mosque in her neighborhood complete, she would blow it up with her friends.

6/12/2006 6:00:00 PM GMT
 

The poor representation of Indian Muslims in public life and employment is “unacceptable” and retards the country’s overall progress, Congress President Sonia Gandhi said on Monday, according to the Press Trust of India.

"The Constitution protects and upholds their (The Muslims) religious, cultural and educational rights. At the same time and as an open and mature society, we need to accept that there is a gap between rights in law and their realization in practice," Gandhi said after inaugurating the India Islamic Cultural Center in Delhi.

She noted that the majority of Muslims are deprived of their basic rights, saying that this is “unacceptable” in a modern society.

“This retards the overall progress of India itself," Gandhi said.

She also said that the real challenge is to increase awareness of the problems facing Muslims, discuss issues instead of brushing them under the carpet, work on fair and cooperative solutions, reduce levels of deprivation and improve conditions of women and children.

Meanwhile, the India Islamic Cultural Center (IICC) said that its main objective will be to remove “misunderstanding about Islam".

Institutions like the IICC have to play a key role in improving the socio-economic condition of Muslims and other minorities, said Gandhi.

Two panels are now studying the status of Muslims in India. A committee established by the Prime Minister will report on their social, economic and educational status and recommend policy changes.

6/13/2006 11:30:00 AM GMT
 

Egyptian police arrested 220 Muslim Brotherhood members on Monday, bringing the number of those detained to more than 850 since the police began rounding them up three months ago, The Hindu reported.

A lawyer for the Muslim Brotherhood said the men were arrested at a protest in support of a top group member, Hassan al-Haiwan, who is on trial in Zaqaziq, 80 km northeast of Cairo.

"We were under the impression that they would release them, but they haven't. Some might get 15 days detention," said the group's attorney, Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsoud.

Al-Haiwan is charged with illegal possession of weapons and inciting violence during last years’ parliamentary elections.

Maqsoud said the court ruled that Haiwan be released yesterday, but he wasn’t.

According to a statement on the group's Web site, more than 10,000 security officers surrounded about 2,000 Brotherhood members at yesterday's protest.

The statement said the police beat the protesters with batons and fired rubber bullets and tear gas at them, wounding more than 10 people.

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 and officially banned but tolerated by the authorities, made gains in Egypt’s last year’s parliamentary elections, with candidates running as independents with brotherhood support doing better than those from other opposition parties.

6/13/2006 6:20:00 PM GMT
 

The weekend's suicide of three Guantanamo detainees was almost inevitable and indicates a clear failure by the U.S. army and intelligence community, according to a Muslim former Army chaplain in who served at the U.S. detention facility, seattlepi.com reported.

The United States is under growing domestic and international pressure to shut down Guantanamo after three prisoners, 2 Saudis, 1 Yemeni, hanged themselves with clothing and bed sheets in their cells last Saturday.

U.S. Defense officials said the three inmates left suicide notes, but refused to disclose their content.

In an interview with the Associated Press news agency, former Army Capt. James Yee, who served as a Muslim chaplain in Guantanamo, said that the U.S. military failed to protect the lives of the three prisoners.

"If we give the government and military the benefit of the doubt that these prisoners in Guantanamo yield valuable information, then the loss of these three means the loss of potentially valuable information. That's an intelligence failure,” he added.

Yee’s service at Guantanamo ended when he was arrested in Sept. 2003 and allegedly accused of spying. He was cleared after spending 76 days in solitary confinement. The government dismissed all charges against him in 2004, and he received an honorable discharge in 2005.

Yee, who converted to Islam in 1991, said that suicide watch was top priority for guards at the time he served at Guantanamo.

“They should have visual contact every two or three minutes. That was being done when I was down there because suicides were serious issues back then," he said.

He added that a successful suicide at Guantanamo was almost inevitable.

"When I was there in 2002-2003, the situation was already dire," Yee said. "Here we are now well into the fifth year of detention. It was only a matter of time."

The former Army Captain also said that he wrote the standard operating procedure for Islamic burial rites in 2003 because of the expected death of one Guantanamo detainee who attempted suicide. The inmate later recovered with brain damage after staying in a coma for several months, Yee said.

The procedure called for burying the body in a concrete cover because it was expected the body would eventually be exhumed and returned to the detainee’s home country.

“There has to be a funeral prayer. The body has to be washed properly. It has to be what we call shrouded properly,” Yee said.

"If the prisoner is buried on Guantanamo there's a specific way, in accordance with Islamic law - the face toward Mecca, put into the ground on the deceased's right side, things like that."

International human rights groups, UN watchdogs and many foreign governments have repeatedly slammed the U.S. for holding around 450 prisoners in what they describe as a "legal black hole". But the White House has rejected all calls to shut down the prison.

Earlier this week, the United Nations’ human rights agency said that the Guantanamo suicides were not “completely unexpected” and highlighted the need to close the detention center.

”The focus of attention should be on closing Guantanamo," said Jose Diaz, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The European Parliament also passed a motion on Tuesday that calls on Washington to shut down the detention facility “as quickly as possible.”

6/14/2006 12:00:00 PM GMT
 

 

 

 The Majlis of Azerbaijanis of Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed region in Azerbaijan that slipped into war after the collapse of the Soviet Union, strongly condemned the destruction of historic and cultural monuments in the Azerbaijani territory under the Armenian occupation, Trend reported.

The destruction of the occupied villages is “vandalism and crime against mankind,” according to a statement by the Majlis.
These crimes indicate that the Armenian authorities ignore international law. By destroying the Azerbaijanis’ historic and cultural monuments, Armenian politicians damage the inter-regional relationships necessary to the peaceful co-existence of Azerbaijanis and Armenians, the statement added.

The Majlis also charged that the Armenians know that they will eventually leave the occupied areas, and that’s why they burn the Azerbaijan villages and forests.

Members of the Majlis also urged international institutions and mediating countries to intervene to stop such criminal acts by the Armenian authorities.

They also called on the Azerbaijani authorities to stall the peace talks if Armenia continues to exterminate the historic and culture monuments of Azerbaijan.

Armenian forces had driven out Azerbaijani troops in 1994, in the follow up to a war that killed more than 40,000 people and displaced about one million others.