Iraqi Wedding costs unbearable

Mind-boggling wedding costs, including wedding dress, hairdresser, reception salon, band, food, drinks, and pre-wedding gifts, are becoming a burden for many Iraqi couples.

Haydar Barak, 32, was forced to postpone his marriage for the second time because of the huge increase in wedding costs.

His fiancé Nur Abdel-Fareed, 25, has been waiting for more than two years to realize her adolescence dreams.

"Any woman has a dream to marry in a white dress, have an impeccable party and share this special moment with her relatives," she told IOL.

"Sometimes, however, we have to choose between a long happy life and a festivity that might take all the resources of the couple."

She told Haydar they we can marry without an expensive wedding ceremony.

"But my family is keen to have everything and as a tradition in Iraq, if the man wants to marry a girl, he has to accept all requests from her family," she noted.

In Iraq, like in many Arab countries, the groom’s family is responsible for all wedding expenses.

This includes paying for food, drinks, wedding dress, band, reception salon, hairdresser, decoration, clothes that are given as gift previous the wedding and a honeymoon trip.

"I know how hard it is for my fiancé today," says Nur.

According to the United Nations and NGOs, nearly 28 percent of Iraqis aged between 15 and 29 are unemployed.

Government sources, however, estimate the unemployment rate at 40 percent.

But many other couples have crossed this line and are now trying to pay for the accumulated wedding-related debits.

"I got married three months ago but to do that my family had to sell one of our properties to help me buy the gold and pay the costs for the party requested by in-laws," Jamal Younis al-Azza, a 31-year-old Baghdad teacher, told IOL.

He notes that in conservative Iraq men are under social pressures to get married by a certain age.

"When you are over 30, you are considered very old and have to get a wife as soon as possible.

"I made so many offers to her family trying to spend little money with the festivities but they insisted and asked for a large amount of stuff," al-Azza recalled bitterly.

"I had to struggle to pay for all that and have debits because of the marriage that will be part of my life for many months to come."

Khalid Khafaja al-Din, a 29-year-old government employee, is ready to take the risk to realize his marriage dream.

"We awaited three years to get married and now we are spending what we have to make it come true," he told IOL.

"Until now I have spent all my savings to finally have my wife and raise a family," he added.

"I get about US $500 salary per month but hope that will be enough for both of us, though I already have US $4500 debits because of the weeding."

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Reads about Marriage Extravagance in Islam here.

Islam Bashers want to distribute literature at our events

A federal judge today denied an evangelical Christian group's request for permission to hand out literature on sidewalks at an Arab festival in the heart of the Detroit area's Middle Eastern community.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds denied Anaheim, Calif.-based Arabic Christian Perspective's request for a temporary restraining order.

The group describes itself in its court filing as "a national ministry established for the purpose of proclaiming the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ to Muslims ... (that) travels around the country attending and distributing Christian literature at Muslim festivals and mosques."

A lawyer for the group said it would seek a permanent injunction against the city of Dearborn.

"It's not over," said Robert J. Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, an Ann Arbor-based Christian rights advocacy group.

Another lawyer on the case said the Dearborn officials action could be part of what he described as a broader Muslim legal attack on critics of Islam in our "Judeo-Christian nation."

"Muslims are using the courts in this country to stop our free speech rights," said William J. Becker Jr., a Los Angeles attorney who has represented a number of prominent critics of Islam.

The 14th annual Dearborn Arab International Festival is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors Friday through Sunday to the city that has the Detroit area's greatest concentration of Arab-Americans.

Festival organizer Fay Beydoun said the evangelical group was being offered a good spot in an area with a number of other religious, nonprofit and political groups.

"You have to pass right in front of it to get anywhere," said Beydoun, executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce.

Southeastern Michigan has about 300,000 people with roots in the Arab world. It includes large numbers of both Muslims and Christians.

The group sued Dearborn after police told the Rev. George Saieg members would need to restrict literature distribution to a designated table-and-booth section of the festival site.

The city said safely accommodating the 150,000 daily festival-goers requires limits on where people can leaflet. It said other Christian and Muslim groups already have tables and booths for distributing material at the festival.

City officials say anyone is free to have conversations — but not leaflet — on sidewalks within the festival's barricades.

"It appears to be a legitimate governmental interest for crowd control and safety," Edmunds said in denying the request. "The festival area is more akin to a fair than a normal city street."

Becker said the case is similar to one he handled in Los Angeles, in which Jews for Jesus member Cyril Gordon won about $250,000 after being arrested for trespassing in 2006 outside an Israel Independence Day event in a park.

"This is a case where your right, my right and anybody's right to walk down the street and express their views is being disrupted by a police action," he said.

An official of the Council of American-Islamic Relations said Arabic Christian Perspective was asking for special treatment.

"They should abide by the rules and purchase a booth like the other religious groups," said Dawud Walid, executive director of the group's Michigan chapter. "Christians can talk about Christianity and Muslims can promote Islam. This is the right we have as Americans."

The following is from a blog here:

I thought I recognized the name Arab Christian Perspectives when I read this Orange County Register story about how the group recently filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking access to proselytize outside an Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan. In 2004, I did a story about Christians who tried to convince Muslims outside the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove to leave their faith and join Christ. Among the groups? The Arabic Christian Education Center in Anaheim, which hosted seminars under Arabic Christian Perspectives preaching the evils of Islam.

Shortly after doing the story, I received an angry call from someone with the group because I pointed out some of its members were former Muslims-turned-Christians. He claimed that such a revelation put his life in danger, because Muslims are required to kill those who leave the faith. Five years later, and I've yet to hear about any Muslim massacres of Christians in Orange County.

But the real reason why this group is loony is because of their repeated association with Robert Morey, the former Irvine pastor who memorably flamed out due to hubris and tried to build an empire on Islam-bashing. Arabic Christian Perspectives founder George Saieg has featured Morey at conferences to trash Muslims. As for Saieg's thoughts on Islam? It features "deceptive teachings"--yeah, because the book of Leviticus is SO truthful...

Oh, and Saieg ain't a fan of Catholics, either--he's an ordained Calvary Chapel pastor.

Iraqi Crusaders still trying to spread the word

Ever since former president George W. Bushreferred to the war on terror as a “crusade” in the days after the September 11 attacks, many have charged that the United States was conducting a holy war, pitting a Christian America against the Muslim world. That perception grew as prominent military leaders such as Lt. Gen. William Boykin described the wars in evangelical terms, casting the U.S. military as the "army of God." Although President Obama addressed the Muslim world this month in an attempt to undo the Bush administration's legacy of militant Christian rhetoric that often antagonized Muslim countries, several recent stories have framed the issue as a wider problem of an evangelical military culture that sees spreading Christianity as part of its mission.

A May article in Harper’s by Jeff Sharlet illustrated a military engaged in an internal battle over religious practice. Then came news about former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Scripture-themed briefings to President Bush that paired war scenes with Bible verses. (In an e-mail published on Politico, Rumsfeld aide Keith Urbahn denied that the former Defense secretary had created or even seen many of the briefings.) Later in May, Al-Jazeera broadcast clips filmed in 2008 showing stacks of Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari at the U.S. air base in Bagram and featuring the chief of U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, telling soldiers to “hunt people for Jesus.”

In the aftermath of that report, the Pentagon responded that it had confiscated and destroyed the Bibles and said there was no effort to convert Afghans. But while the military dismissed the Bagram Bibles as an isolated incident, a civil-rights watchdog group, Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), says this is not the case. According to the group's president, Mikey Weinstein, a cadre of 40 U.S. chaplains took part in a 2003 project to distribute 2.4 million Arabic-language Bibles in Iraq. This would be a serious violation of U.S. military Central Command's General Order Number One forbidding active-duty troops from trying to convert people to any religion. A Defense Department spokeswoman, in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, denies any knowledge of this project.

The Bible initiative was handled by former Army chaplain Jim Ammerman, the 83-year-old founder of the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC), an organization in charge of endorsing 270 chaplains and chaplain candidates for the armed services. Ammerman worked with an evangelical group based in Arkansas, the International Missions Network Center, to distribute the Bibles through the efforts of his 40 active-duty chaplains in Iraq. A 2003 newsletter for the group said of the effort, "The goal is to establish a wedge for the kingdom of God in the Middle East, directly affecting the Islamic world."

J. E. Wadkins, vice president of student life at Ecclesia College who oversees the International Missions Network Center, says they have worked with Ammerman for 20 years and reached out to him as part of their "Bibles for the Nations" mission. He estimates that in the end, between 100,000 and 500,000 Arabic Bibles were distributed in under one year, beginning not long after Saddam Hussein's ouster. "It was a really early effort there," says Wadkins, "when things first opened up."

The effort is an example of what critics call a growing culture of militarized Christianity in the armed forces. It is influenced in part by changes in outlook among the various branches' 2,900 chaplains, who are sworn to serve all soldiers, regardless of religion, with a respectful, religiously pluralistic approach. However, with an estimated two thirds of all current chaplains affiliated with evangelical and Pentecostal denominations, which often prioritize conversion and evangelizing, and a marked decline in chaplains from Catholic and mainstream Protestant churches, this ideal is suffering. Historian Anne C. Loveland attributes the shift to the Vietnam War, when many liberal churches opposed to the war supplied fewer chaplains, creating a vacuum filled by conservative churches. This imbalance was exacerbated by regulation revisions in the 1980s that helped create hundreds of new "endorsing agencies" that brought a flood of evangelical chaplains into the military and by the simple fact that evangelical and Pentecostal churches are the fastest-growing in the U.S.

The chaplains minister to flocks that are, on the whole, slightly less religious than the general population and slightly less evangelical. According to a 2008 Department of Defense survey, 22 percent of active-duty members of the military described themselves as evangelical or Pentecostal (although the actual number of evangelical-minded believers is likely higher when encompassing personnel who follow more evangelical expressions of mainline Protestant denominations, as well as a sizable percentage of the additional 20 percent that describe themselves simply as "Christian").

Among the "endorsing agencies" is CFGC, which represents a conglomeration of independent Pentecostal churches outside established denominations. The group was accepted as a chaplain-endorsing agency by the Department of Defense in 1984, two years after it first applied. Since 1984, MRFF charges, Ammerman's agency has violated numerous codes that govern chaplaincies, including a constant denigration of other religions, particularly Islam, Judaism, mainline Protestantism and Catholicism, but also non-Pentecostal evangelical churches. In a 2008 sermon, Ammerman described a CFGC chaplain at Fort Riley, Kans., who demanded the 42 chaplains below him "speak up for Jesus" or leave his outfit. In a video for an organization called the Prophesy Club, CFGC chaplain Maj. James Linzey called mainstream Protestant churches "demonic, dastardly creatures from the pit of hell," that should be "[stomped] out." But the primary target of CFGC's ire is Islam. A 2001 CFGC newsletter asserted that the real enemy of the U.S. wasn't Osama bin Laden, but Allah, whom the newsletter called "Lucifer." A 2006 issue argued that all Muslim-Americans should be treated with suspicion, as they "obviously can't be good Americans." In a 2008 sermon, Ammerman called Islam "a killer religion" and Muslims "the devil."

Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says it's "counterproductive to the interests of our military to have officers or servicepeople proselytizing. It should be addressed at the highest levels of the military." Hooper says that while he can't say whether events such as these constitute a systematic problem in the military, "we've certainly seen enough incidents for it to be a concern."

Continue reading the article here.

Large Blue Butterfly and Allah's creation

Allah shows us different miracles in our everyday life. Read this story and see how complex his creation is:

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It flutters across a hillside in Somerset – the lovely blue butterfly that came back from the dead. And the man who brought it back is watching, celebrating 25 years of its resurrection.

The return of the large blue, which went extinct in Britain in 1979, is one of the great conservation success stories, and the 25th anniversary of its reintroduction is being celebrated today at Montacute House, the Somerset stately home in the heart of large blue country, by Britain's leading conservationists, headed by Sir David Attenborough.

What they will be celebrating, in fact, is the work of Jeremy Thomas, Britain's leading butterfly expert, who discovered the way to bring back a creature which has the most astonishing life cycle of any British insect – it spends most of its life as a caterpillar inside an ants' nest, and without the ants, it cannot turn into a butterfly.

As a young researcher, Professor Thomas, as he now is, discovered which species of red ant has this relationship with the large blue (and there is only one) and then worked out how to keep the ant colonies flourishing. It was a question of having the grassland where they lived grazed very short, so it would remain warmed by the sun. If the grass was only a few centimetres too long, the ants would disappear, and with it, the butterflies.

Historically, rabbits had kept the grass short, but in the mid-1950s rabbit populations were suddenly devastated by the plague-like disease myxomatosis. On many large blue sites, the turf grew too long and the butterfly began rapidly to die out – although no one had any idea why.

It took Jeremy Thomas six summers of work on the very last of the large blue sites, on the edge of Dartmoor, from 1972 to 1977, to unravel the chain of events which was leading to the rapid demise of one of Britain's most beautiful wildlife species.

He was just too late to save it. But the knowledge to bring it back and keep it was now in place; and in 1983, working with another butterfly conservationist, David Simcox, he brought large blue caterpillars from Sweden and released them on the Dartmoor site; they emerged as adult insects the following summer.

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In one of the first revealed verses of the Qur’an, God drew the attention of the Arabs to the camel, a part of their everyday lives:

[Have they not looked at the camel-how it was created?
And at the sky-how it was raised up?
And at the mountains-how they were embedded?
And at the earth-how it is spread out?
So remind them! You are only a reminder.] (Al-Ghashiyah 88:17-21)

In many other verses of the Qur’an, people are instructed to examine nature and learn from it because people can know God only by examining His creations. Because of this, in one verse of the Qur’an Muslims are defined as people who think about the creation of the heavens and the earth:

[Those who remember God, standing, sitting and lying on their sides, and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth (saying): “Our Lord, You have not created this for nothing. Glory be to You! So safeguard us from the punishment of the Fire.”] (Aal `Imran 3:191)

As a result of this, for a Muslim, taking an interest in science is a very important form of worship. In many verses of the Qur'an, God instructs Muslims to investigate the heavens, the earth, living things or their own existence and think about them. When we look at the verses, we find indications of all the main branches of science in the Qur’an.

For example, in the Qur’an, God encourages the science of astronomy:

[He who created the seven heavens in layers. You will not find any flaw in the creation of the All-Merciful. Look again-do you see any gaps?] (Al-Mulk 67:3)

In another verse of the Qur’an, God encourages the investigation of astronomy and the composition of the earth that is the science of geology:

[Do they not look at the sky above them? How We have made it and adorned it, and there are no flaws in it? And the earth, We have spread it out, and set thereon mountains standing firm, and produced therein every kind of beautiful growth (in pairs), To be observed and commemorated by every devotee turning (to God).] (Qaf 50:6-8)

[It is He Who sends down water from the sky from which We bring forth growth of every kind, and from that We bring forth the green shoots and from them We bring forth close-packed seeds, and from the spathes of the date palm date clusters hanging down, and gardens of grapes and olives and pomegranates, both similar and dissimilar. Look at their fruits as they bear fruit and ripen. There are Signs in that for people who believe.] (Al-An`am 6:99)

In another verse of the Qur’an, God draws attention to zoology:

[You have a lesson in livestock...] (An-Nahl 16:66)

Here is a Qur’anic verse about the sciences of archaeology and anthropology:

[Have they not traveled in the earth and seen the final fate of those before them?] (Ar-Rum 30:9)

In another verse of the Qur’an, God draws attention to the proof of God in a person's own body and spirit:

[There are certainly Signs in the earth for people with certainty; and in yourselves as well. Do you not then see?] (Adh-Dhariyat 51:20-21)

Pirate Kings of Puntland, Somalia

This post is sort of continuation of earlier post on Somali pirates and history of Somalia.

This one is from Al Jazeera:

They don't wear eye-patches or peg legs and you won't find any parrots perched on their shoulders, but they are no less pirates for that.

Twenty-first century piracy Somali style is a far cry from the swashbuckling, sea dogs of old but, in recent months, they have captured both the headlines and the public's imagination.

Their high seas hijackings have also forced the media to focus on Somalia, arguably the globe's most neglected tragedy.

But who are these men and what drives them to carry out such audacious attacks?

I set off to Puntland, the semi-autonomous region in Somalia's north-eastern corner, to find out.

Puntland is one of the poorest parts of war-torn Somalia and it is home to most of Somalia's dreaded pirates.

The pirate's ranks have been swollen by many of the region's youths - drawn by the potentially huge profits of one of Somalia's most successful, if unconventional, business enterprises.

Faced with limited options and even less optimism for the country's future, the young pirates care little about the risks they will run at sea.

In Garowe, the capital of Puntland, I met a well-known pirate; Abdirashid Ahmed - nicknamed Juqraafi or "geography" - still flush from a recent hijacking.

Ransom negotiations

Abdirashid and his colleagues had just taken receipt of a ransom payment of $1.3m after capturing the Greek ship MV Saldanha in February.

Smartly dressed and driving a Toyota four-wheel drive, he cut the perfect figure of prosperous young Somali.

"It took us three months of negotiations with the boat's owner before we came to an agreement over the ransom money.

"We initially asked for $17m but compromised and accepted $1.3m when we realised it will take a long time to get more out of the shipping company," he tells me.

However, it was desperation, not greed, he claims, that pushed him to throw in his lot with the pirates.

"We are driven by hunger, just look at our country and how destroyed it is. We are people with no hope and opportunities, that is what is forcing us into piracy," he says.

Successful ventures like Juqraafi's have turned piracy in Somalia into a self-financing local industry. Pirate cells operate in well-organised groups, drawing in members of extended family networks.

"Those who have been paid a ransom sponsor the other pirates. For example, if a group is holding a ship and they're paid ransom and then another ship is captured, the first group will fund the second one till they too get ransom payment," says Juqraafi.

The piracy industry is controlled by criminal gangs who recruit local youths and take the lion's share of the profits. They are also well-armed with weapons ranging from Kalashnikovs to rocket launchers.

Sharing the spoils

And every pirate cell, says Juqraafi, has clear policies and guidelines for everything it does - including sharing the ransom.

"The financier is usually a businessman who sponsors the pirates and gets 30 per cent of the ransom. The pirates get 50 per cent," he explains.

"The remaining 20 per cent is given to the poor and all those who, in one way or another, help the pirates on shore and this includes local government officials who expect bribes from every successful venture."

In their search for ships, Somali pirates have spread themselves across thousands of square miles of water, from the Gulf of Aden at the narrow doorway to the Red Sea, to the Kenyan border along the Indian Ocean.

When they started out, Somalia's pirates cast themselves as the "Robin Hoods of the sea" - defenders of the nation's fisheries.

The country's tuna-rich waters were repeatedly plundered by commercial fishing fleets soon after the country's last fully-functioning government collapsed in 1991.

Somali fishermen turned armed vigilantes, confronting fishing boats and demanding that they pay a tax.

But what began as a deterrent to illegal fishing has today become a free for all.

"These youths are capable of anything," Dr Ahmed Abdirahman, a university professor in Puntland, says.

"If the world does not come up with a solution to piracy, its going to take a far worse turn," he warns.

In 2008 alone, more than 120 pirate attacks occurred in the Gulf of Aden, far more than in any other year in recent memory.

Pirates 'net $80m'

Experts say the Somali pirates netted more than $80m, an astronomical sum for a war-ravaged country whose economy is in tatters.

At least a dozen vessels and crews are currently being held hostage off the coast of Somalia.

As on every issue in Somalia, public opinion on piracy is sharply divided. To some within the community, the pirates are amoral thugs bringing yet more trouble to their shores.

But to others and, arguably, they are in the majority, these modern-day buccaneers are heroes who are robbing the rich to feed the poor.

Nowhere is the support for piracy greater than in the town of Eyl, Somalia's modern-day pirate capital.

Hidden between rocky hills, isolated and lacking good roads, Eyl is the perfect pirate hideout.

Contrary to our expectation of prosperity in Eyl, we were confronted not with palaces but a few crumbling houses - a clear indication that the millions of dollars earned from the lucrative business of hijacking passing ships are not invested in the town.

Public support

Despite this, Said Elmi Mohamud, a 55-year-old Eyl resident, began to defend the pirates to us even before we had stepped foot out of our vehicle.

"I know you are here looking for our heroes," he declared.

"I don't call them pirates – they are our marines. They are protecting our resources from those looting them. They are not criminals."

Pirates moor their captive ships off Eyl's beaches and use the town to supply both them and their hostages with food, water and other necessary provisions.

While in Eyl ourselves, we watch from afar as the Dutch-owned MV Marathon was held by pirates a little further out to sea.

Rows of battered boats lie scattered along the beach. They are used by the pirates to shuttle between the port and the ships at sea.

And whenever word spreads that another ship has been hijacked, activity in Eyl moves up a gear.

There is a lot of money to be made and nearly everybody in the town is anxious for a cut. Elders stream into the town to arbitrate disputes between their young clansmen as gold-digging women flock to Eyl from far and near to get themselves a pirate.

But not everyone in Eyl is happy about piracy.

"We hate the pirates but can do nothing about them. They are more powerful than us," Mohammed Khalif, one of the town's Islamic leaders, says.

"Even the international naval powers with all their warships and weapons have not been able to control them."

'Lots of killings'

He also laments the negative impact piracy has had on the town.

"They have troubled us a lot. They have brought us alcohol, commercial sex workers and massive inflation. Lots of killings also take place here," Khalif says.

As piracy in Puntland has become an international issue, so pressure is increasing from within to take action.

Abdirahman Mohamed Mahmoud, Puntland's regional president, took office in January on an anti-piracy platform. He says fighting the pirates is high on his agenda.

He sends his fledgling coastguard to sea and, at night, soldiers mount roadblocks in all of Puntland's major cities.

But Mahmoud says he needs more help to tackle what is now an international problem.

He is critical of the international community's approach to combating piracy, saying they will never successfully defeat the pirates without collaborating with local forces like his own on land as well as at sea.

About 15 international naval vessels, including three American navy ships, patrol Somalia's pirate-infested waters, many under an American-led anti-piracy task force.
Most of the patrol vessels are concentrated in the Gulf of Aden and, as a result, the pirates have adapted, simply moving further into open seas.

"We need just a small fraction of the money the naval fleets are wasting now to effectively combat piracy. I think they are not interested in fighting piracy," Mahmoud says.

Religious leaders from all over Puntland have also embarked on a mission to battle the buccaneers. And what better place to try to reform pirates than in Eyl.

At the town square they hold an assembly. Their sermons focus on the vices the pirates have introduced with the money they earn.

But not far from where they are preaching, business is brisk.

At Eyl's restaurants, women eagerly serve the pirates, their accountants, middlemen and negotiators. Their four-wheel drive vehicles are never far away.

They are, undoubtedly, the kings of Puntland.

See Video:

Part 1

Part 2

Islamophobia Bullying becoming more common in US Schools

You can see one such incident in the video below:

Muslims in Czech Republic

Mosque in Lednice (Czech Republic) garden

Not so long ago the words Czech and Muslim were two polar opposites and it would be almost unthinkable to use them together. But now, two decades after the fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Muslims are increasing in numbers, becoming more active and founding new organisations to represent them.

"About 300 come to the main mosque and at least 200 come to the prayer hall in the centre," Vladimir (Umar) Sanka, one of the managers of the main mosque and prayer hall in Prague, told IslamOnline.net.

He said the numbers of Muslims are slowly but surely growing in the Czech Republic.

"The prayer hall is so overcrowded every Friday that we have been forced to have two Friday prayers and lectures so that all the Muslims can even fit."

The mosque had to hire a sports hall for `Eid Al-Adha, one of the two main religious festivals on the Islamic calendar which was celebrated in December, to accommodate the record-breaking number of 1,500 Muslims who showed up.

The increase of Muslims is linked to the growing number of Czechs embracing the Muslim faith.

"In our mosque in Prague we are honoured and happy to witness a new conversion almost every week," says Sanka.

The last recorded number of Muslims was around 12,000 in 2007, but the latest estimate is around 20,000, including 400 converts.

The first official Muslim organisation, the Islamic Foundation, was established in 1991.

In 1998 it opened its first mosque in Brno and then one year later in Prague.

There were also attempts to build mosques in smaller cities, mainly Spa towns which are popular with Arab clients, but these plans were met with resistance from both the public and churches.

Islam itself was not legally accepted as a religion by the Czech state until 2004.

New Representatives

Until recently, the mosques in the cities of Brno and Prague were the only official bodies representing Muslims in the Czech Republic.

But now new organisations are appearing to meet the needs of the growing and increasingly diverse Muslim community.

Mohamed Abbas is a well-known media figure and publisher of Islamic literature, including the Qur’an and a translation of Riyad us Saaliheen, the only book of hadith so far published in the Czech language.

Abbas is now also one of the founders of a new organisation called the Islamic Community, whose aim is to provide more activities for Muslims.

Currently the Islamic Community is in the process of securing 300 signatures needed to become officially recognised, which will make it the second Muslim body in the Czech Republic eligible for state funding.

"At the moment organizations here represent only a marginal number of Muslims in the country and do not include everybody," Abbas told IOL.

"We want to change this and create an organization for all, and one that is truly democratic and transparent."

Abbas is optimistic about garnering the needed 300 signatures.

"The number of Muslims here is definitely increasing, especially after Czech Republic joined the EU, and they are interested in seeing an active organization serving them."

State registration will give the organization a wider scope.

It will be able to rent, build and manage Islamic centers, establish Islamic schools and after 10 years it can ask for other special rights like taking care of the spiritual needs of Muslims in the army and jails as well as support of state for Islamic marriages in mosques.

Facebook Islam

Another completely new organization, which is quite different from the ones already being set-up, is a new Facebook Group called Muslims from Czech Republic, created by 21-year-old fresh convert Jitka Cervinkova.

When Jitka first embraced Islam in September of last year she searched Facebook for a group of Muslims in her country.

When she didn’t find any, she decided to create one.

Since its creation in November 2008, the group has grown rapidly and now has over 300 members.

"I think Facebook is great for meeting other Muslims as I don’t really go to the mosque here in Prague because it is too far for me and it seems that women there are mainly mums with children," she told IOL.

"I didn’t meet any young girls of my age when I visited."

Now Jitka, along with other administrators of the group, are faced with the great responsibility of becoming leaders of the fastest growing, and perhaps most influential, Muslim group in the country.

"I feel the Muslim community in the Czech Republic is growing at great speed, although I don’t know any statistics I feel I meet more and more young Muslims here every day."

The Facebook group has attracted mainly a young generation of people and consists of both Czech converts and Muslims from other countries, such as the Arab world or Bosnia, who are living or studying in the Czech Republic as well as non-Muslims who are interested in Islam.

Jitka, who is usually busy studying for a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic, now also finds time to organise events and post topics to the group.

So far the group has hosted social events for its members and has also organised a film viewing for the general public.

Volunteers from the group translated a film about Islam from English and answered questions about Islam to the non-Muslim audience.

"We have ideas for many projects and events," said Jitka, citing the need for funding and sponsors who could be able to help.

"We are hoping to organise an exhibition about Islam, as well as set up information stalls with leaflets and information," she said enthusiastically.

"We want to hold more lectures and generally host events which portray Islam in a positive light to the public."

Independent Kosova: One year on

The issue of Kosova and the international recognition of its statehood these days are obviously far from media attention, with the Middle East permanently boiling, North Korea showing off its nuclear power, and the global economic crisis rightly stealing most of the headlines and prime time minutes.

But, this absence from news bulletins does not mean that there is dust over Kosova, or for that matter, the wider Balkan region has finally and permanently been settled.

More than a year after proclaiming independence from Serbia, Kosova has been recognized by 60 countries, including the United States of America, most of Europe's largest states, and some very important Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Malaysia.

Still, on June 15, when Kosovars will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of their constitution, the shadow of a great number of states hesitating to endorse its statehood will certainly bring some rainy clouds above the celebration.

In addition, the one single question that is bound to "spoil" the celebration is going to be the unclear future regarding Serbs living in Kosova and the neighboring state of Serbia.

Serbia is still persistent in its stubborn refusal to accept the reality of an independent Kosova.

It does an incredible job to keep many countries — including too many Muslim ones — from recognizing the newest Balkan republic. Furthermore, the whole international community is highly reluctant to engage with Kosova in a meaningful way.

So, the just, multiethnic concept of the internationally supervised state does not break down — again — in the whirlpool of ethnic divisions and the renewal of conflict.

Hence, today, Kosova's success is measured not by what it did, but by what it did not do, or to put it even more accurately, it is what it could not do.

Read complete article here.

Agent provocateur?

From Haaretz:

The first time Kathleen Baines saw Maksud was on Wednesday, May 20. Like everyone else, she knew the well-to-do Pakistani by his first name only. He had started appearing here the previous September, wandering around outside Masjid al-Ikhlas (the "mosque of devotion") in town, meeting people in a popular local restaurant, paying for their meals and offering financial help.

Frequenters of the mosque, some of them immigrants from East Asia and others African Americans, could not help but notice that Maksud had five vehicles, including a Mercedes, a BMW and an ATV.

On that Wednesday in May, Maksud arrived in the neighborhood in one of his cars at about 4 P.M. and stopped at Baines' house. He has a narrow face, she recalls now, and peroxided hair. He would wear sunglasses and expensive shoes. Whenever he came to look for her partner, James Cromitie, in recent months, he would remain outside, and this time was no different.

"Where is the brother?" he asked, and she answered from the window: "James is on his motorbike with my son." Maksud asked her what his cellular phone number was. The question sounded strange to Baines since he was the one who had given James the phone.

When Cromitie returned with her son on the motorbike, he gave her a kiss and went over to Maksud's car. She saw on the seat of the car that three cellular telephones had been placed alongside one another and this also seemed strange.

"Where are you going?" she asked and James replied, "We're going to eat." "When will you get back?" she asked and Maksud answered, "about 8 P.M."

At around 8 P.M. she called her partner, but there was no reply. She was not surprised. "Maksud would always force him to turn off his phone when they met. He always tried to persuade James to leave me. He called me the 'boss-woman.' He would ask: Where is the bitch?" she said when we met last week in Newburgh.

Cromitie did his best to avoid Maksud, Baines says. They were relieved when he said he was leaving for Pakistan in November 2008, but in January 2009 he returned.

"I'm taking the brother to the mosque," Maksud would tell her. He paid for Baines' rent several times, gave Cromitie money and promised to bring them gifts. "Listen, sister," she remembers him saying, "if the brother wants $10,000, I'll give it to him." Maksud would add that this was in the spirit of Islam.

Baines is 42 and has two grown daughters, a 6-year-old son from a different man and a 2-year-old grandson.

"James treated all of us like his family," she says. She met him in a hostel for men, where she worked, four years ago. Cromitie, 53, was born in Brooklyn and spent 12 years in jail for various drug offenses. In 2005, a few months after he was released, he moved to Newburgh. "He is a gentleman. One doesn't find men like that today. He asked me to stop working. He converted to Islam in jail and from that I understood that Islam must be good because he treated me well."

On that day in May when she tried to reach him by phone, Baines did not know that Maksud, Cromitie and three of their friends were on their way to Riverdale in the Bronx, to carry out what Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder described later as an unimaginable, blood-curdling plot: planting bombs in parked cars next to a Riverdale synagogue and Jewish cultural center, and shooting missiles at a helicopter at Newburgh's Air National Guard base.

The lethal plot was foiled, however. One of the five men put the bombs in place while three others kept watch. But no one was aware that the bombs had been defused earlier by the Federal Bureau of Investigation - and that FBI officers, members of the New York Police Department and a joint anti-terror force were lying in wait for them.

When the men returned to the car, they were arrested at the height of an "painstaking operation," as one source said to The New York Times. According to official reports, the investigation started in June 2008. The FBI received a tip-off then that the men were planning to attack targets in the United States. Four of the men are converts to Islam; three were born in the U.S. and the fourth (said to have psychiatric problems) is from Haiti. They were all jailed in the past for drug offenses.

In a press conference held outside the Jewish center in the Bronx on May 21, the commissioner of the New York City Police Department, Raymond Kelly, said the four had been overheard saying they wanted to carry out a jihad because so many Muslims were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Democratic Party Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents the Bronx in the state assembly, said in an interview with the Times that people are sometimes motivated by religious hatred and hatred of Jews, but it was fortunate that the FBI and police had uncovered this plot at an early stage.

On that fateful Wednesday evening, Baines still knew nothing - even when FBI agents carried out a search of her house and detained her for five hours. The following day, when it was reported that the driver of the car had cooperated with the FBI, Baines realized that this was Maksud - "the man who destroyed my life."

Salahuddin Muhammad, the imam of the local mosque, was not surprised. "We thought he was an informer," he told both journalists and the children who study in the mosque. The children saw all the media buzz and were disturbed that the name of their mosque had come up in connection with the plot. "We wondered what to do," the imam explained to the youngsters. "How should we tell the authorities that we suspected him? But it was the authorities who had sent him."

Maksud, it later transpired, is a Pakistani immigrant who was arrested in 2002 for selling fake driving licenses to immigrants. In order to avoid serving a jail sentence and being exiled, he agreed to work for the FBI. An on-the-ball journalist from The New York Post realized this was the same federal informer who had worked five years earlier in Albany, New York, in a similar fashion. He had appeared near a local mosque there, presented himself as religious and rich, and had become friendly with Musharaff Hussein, an immigrant from Bangladesh who owned a pizzeria and was having money troubles. According to the official version, the informer eventually helped to thwart a dangerous terror plot planned by the pizzeria owner and the mosque's imam, Yassin Arif, originally from Kurdistan. They were plotting to kill a Pakistani diplomat and to finance the murder by selling weapons. In Albany, Maksud used a different name.

An FBI spokesman in New York refused to confirm or deny that this was the same informer, but said, in a telephone conversation, that the prosecution had to prove the guilt of the four men while the defense had to prove that they had fallen into a trap.

Continue Reading here.

France to bring in Burqa/Niqab ban in public

The French government appeared divided Friday, June 19, over a proposal to ban the donning the burka, a loose outfit covering the whole body from head to toe and wore by some Muslim women.

"If it were determined that wearing the burka is a submissive act, and that it is contrary to republican principles, well naturally parliament would have to drawn the necessary conclusions," Government Spokesman Luc Chatel said, reported Agence France Presse (AFP).

Chatel, who welcomed the proposal, has not rule out the possibility of passing a law in this regard.

"Why not," he wondered.

Communist MP Andre Gerin is spearheading the drive to set up a parliamentary commission to look into what he described as a growing number of women donning the burka in France.

His proposal is backed by some 58 MPs, many of whom are from President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party.

The lawmakers are calling for a special inquiry into whether women who wear the burka or the niqab undermine French secularism and women's rights.

It is expected to come up for a vote in the National Assembly soon.

If the lower house agrees to set up the commission, it would draft a report to be released no later than November 30.

Muslim community leaders say that burka remains a rare exception among France's nearly seven million Muslims, the biggest Muslim minority in Europe.

According to AFP, there are no figures on the number of women who wear the full-body covering in France -- and whether it is on the rise.

In past, they have indirectly discriminated against women wearing Niqab by rejecting their citizenship.

Its been over 5 years now since they brought in Anti-Hijab law. Just makes me wonder what they will be doing next.

If you read history, the catholic church (backed by France ofcourse) used to pass all strange laws like Missionary position was the only permitted way to consummate relationship between couples. All other positions were considered sinful. Special permission was required in case of exceptions.

Maybe in near future they might say that when its summer women cant dress modestly, they need to dress like tarts.