Palestinian gunmen, who identified themselves as members of the Islamic Jihad group, shoot a man in a public square in the West Bank town of Jenin, in this Aug.

Permanent Link posted by J @ 11:14 am 23 comments

YALA, Thailand (Reuters) - Suspected separatists shot dead two Buddhist teachers on Friday and burned their bodies in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south, police said, the latest attack in a three-year insurgency that has killed more than 1,800.

The teachers were ambushed in their pickup truck only 300 meters (yards) from the village school where they taught in the southern province of Yala, police said. Security forces are bracing for a new round of attacks on government buildings, officials and civilians to mark the third anniversary of the renewed insurgency on January 4, police said.

"We knew they were going to do it, but we didn't know the target," Police Colonel Pumipetch Pipatpetchpoom said of the attackers. "Our security checkpoints have blocked them from entering the city, so they had to do it in a village," he added.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the violence which has seen almost daily gun and bomb attacks in the three predominantly Muslim southern provinces bordering Malaysia.

Thailand's military-appointed government has embarked on a peace drive in the Malay-speaking region, an independent sultanate until the Buddhist-dominated Bangkok government annexed it a century ago. But the attacks have continued.

The Education Ministry said this week 110 schools had been hit by arson attacks and 71 teachers and school staff killed in attacks since January 2004.
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MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Ethiopia said on Tuesday it was halfway to victory against Somali Islamists and could seize their Mogadishu stronghold within days following a week of war in the Horn of Africa.

Islamists countered that they were ready for a long war and any attempt to oust them would prove disastrous for their foes. The Red Cross said hundreds were wounded in the latest fighting.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his forces supporting Somalia's weak interim government had killed up to 1,000 Islamist fighters. There was no independent verification of that. The Islamists also claim to have killed hundreds.
"We have already completed half our mission, and as soon as we finish the second half, our troops will leave Somalia," Meles told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital.

He said a force of between 3,000 and 4,000 Ethiopians had "broken the back" of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) around the government's south-central outpost Baidoa, and that the Islamists were now in "full retreat".

Ethiopia backs Somalia's secular interim government against the Islamists who hold most of southern Somalia after seizing Mogadishu in June. Addis Ababa and Washington say the Islamists are backed by al Qaeda and by Ethiopia's enemy, Eritrea.

Somalia's envoy to Addis Ababa said Ethiopian soldiers had advanced to within 70 km (40 miles) of Mogadishu and could capture it in 24-48 hours.

SICC spokesman Abdi Kafi said any such attempt "will be their destruction and doomsday ... It is a matter of time before we start striking at them from all directions."

The Islamists claim broad popular support and say their aim is to restore order to Somalia under sharia law after years of anarchy since the 1991 ouster of dictator Siad Barre.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting to be briefed on Tuesday by Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall of Guinea.

AU BACKING

Meles said his forces' main target now were Eritrean troops and foreign jihadists. He said a handful of Islamist prisoners taken on the battlefield were holding British passports.

At least two Ethiopian jets fired missiles on retreating Islamist fighters on Tuesday shortly after pro-government forces recaptured two towns near Baidoa. It was the third day of Ethiopian air attacks in the escalating conflict.

"Over 800 war wounded have arrived at the various medical structures around Baidoa and Mogadishu is the last few days," said Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"Thousands of people are fleeing the combat areas. It is too early to tell if this is a temporary displacement," Notari said.

The African Union (AU) backed Ethiopia's right to intervene. Diplomats say that, allied to Washington's tacit support, may embolden Meles to try to seize Mogadishu.

The fighting could now draw in Eritrea on the side of the Islamists, the diplomats said. They added that Kenya, which is taking in a flood of Somali refugees across its north border, was trying to broker cease-fire talks.

The Islamists insisted their retreat was a tactic in what they vowed would be a long war. "We will fight to the last man until we ensure there are no more Ethiopian troops in our country," Kafi said.

Thousands of Islamist fighters crammed into trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns and left Mogadishu for the frontlines.

Analysts say Ethiopia's heavy arms and MiG jets had saved the government from being routed.

"This is the first stage of victory ... When this is all over, we will enter Mogadishu peacefully," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said by telephone from Baidoa. He offered amnesty to Islamists who lay down their arms.

Addis Ababa fears a hardline Muslim state on its doorstep and accuses the SICC of wanting to annex Ethiopia's ethnically Somali Ogaden region.

(Additional reporting by Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu, Hassan Yare in Baidoa, Ibrahim Mohammed in Jowhar, Sahra Abdi Ahmed in Kismayu, Andrew Cawthorne and Bryson Hull in Nairobi, Jack Kimball in Asmara, Irwin Arieff in New York and Sam Cage in Zurich)
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 4:28 pm 4 comments

TWO Muslim students have been expelled from an Islamic school in Melbourne for urinating and spitting on a Bible and setting it on fire.

The explosive incident has forced the East Preston Islamic College to call in a senior imam to tell its 650 Muslim students that the Bible and Christianity must be respected.

Anxious teachers at the school have also petitioned principal Shaheem Doutie, expressing "grave concern" about an "inculcation of hatred and radical attitudes towards non-Muslims" at the school, including towards non-Muslim teachers.

The Bible desecration took place last week at a school camp held near Bacchus Marsh, about 50km west of Melbourne, attended by 33 teenage Muslim boys ranging in age from Year7 to Year 10.

A school report of the incident, obtained by The Australian, says it happened late at night and involved three students and another two watching.

"The main perpetrator (a Year 7 student) urinated on the Holy Bible, tore some pages from the Holy Book and burnt them then finally spat on the Holy Book," the report says.

The second boy, from Year 9, "tore pages from the Holy Book and burnt them", while a third student, from Year 7, "tore pages from the Holy Bible and then he rolled it up like a cigarette and pretended to smoke it".

The boys come from a variety of ethnic Muslim backgrounds -- one is believed to be an Albanian/Malaysian, another Lebanese and another Indonesian.

Mr Doutie, whose school receives about $3.9 million in state and federal government funding each year, told The Australian yesterday that both he and the school community were appalled by the Bible desecration and that he had expelled the first two boys and suspended the third.

In a letter to all staff on Monday, Mr Doutie wrote: "The school unconditionally apologises for this horrible act as conducted by some illiterate and ignorant students while under the care of EPIC teachers.

"We regard the desecration of the Bible in a very serious light and therefore we have taken serious action against the offenders.

"The Bible is an important book both for non-Muslims and Muslims and should be treated as a holy book by all religions."

Mr Doutie said he did not believe that the boys realised the significance of their act.

But to ensure it did not happen again he had called in the assistant imam of the Newport Mosque, Oman Haouli, to tell the students that the Bible was a sacred book. "My lesson to them was to respect their neighbours and respect all religions," Mr Haouli said yesterday.

But the desecration incident has shaken the nerves of the school's teachers, about half of whom are non-Muslim.

A petition signed by 22 teachers expressed "anguish and dismay at the grave incident of the desecration of the Holy Bible".

"This whole incident implies a deep hatred inculcated in the students towards the Christians/non-Muslim teachers," it says.

The petition said there had been "previous incidents of students misbehaving towards non-Muslim teachers".

It called on the school to "take steps to rectify this explosive situation" to ensure the safety of teachers.

Mr Doutie said the school had tried to contact the parents of the expelled boys to find out why they had desecrated the Bible. But he said the school had not received a response.

EPIC is an eight-year-old primary and secondary school in Melbourne's north that caters mostly to the children of working-class immigrant Somali and Lebanese families.

The Bible desecration comes at a time of heightened tension among Australia's 300,000-member Islamic community, many of whom believe their religion is being unfairly discriminated against because of terrorism fears.

Many Muslims remain angry about the public humiliation suffered by their spiritual leader, the mufti Taj Din al-Hilali, after the Sheik likened female rape victims to pieces of meat who brought the attacks on themselves.
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EPIC principal Shaheem Doutie said the school community was shocked by the desecration and said the college placed great emphasis on religious tolerance.

However, as revealed in The Australian yesterday, the school's library contained a video of a banned cleric calling Australian Christians "evil" and non-Muslim schools "sewers".

Although the radical tape, of Abdur Raheem Green, has been shown to some students at the school, Ibrahim said he had not seen it.
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THE British Muslim lecturer accused of inspiring anti-Christian feeling at a Melbourne Islamic college says he is disgusted by news that three students had defaced a Bible.

Abdur Raheem Green said he was "shocked to the core" to be told that students at East Preston Islamic College had urinated on and burned a Bible.

"These boys need to repent to God because, quite apart from being offensive to Christians, this is seriously wrong under Islam," he said. "The Koran tells us not to insult other people's gods."

Mr Green, a 42-year-old former Catholic who lectures to school groups on behalf of a high-profile mainstream mosque in London, said he was horrified by suggestions that the boys could have been influenced by a video in the school's library of a 2003 lecture in which he referred to some non-Muslim Australians as evil.

"I have changed my views a lot over the past few years and I have also come to realise that I should be more careful in how I express myself - I regret some things I have said in the past," he told The Weekend Australian.

"But even back then, when I saw things in more simplistic, black-and-white terms than I do now, I was not calling Christians or Christianity evil. I was talking about things that go on in Western society, like 14-year-olds having sex, and drug abuse and alcohol abuse.

"When I say marriage outside sex is evil or homosexuality is evil I do believe that but I am not saying that those people are evil, I am saying the act is evil. Conservative Christians and Jews feel the same way. There is a theological conflict with Christianity because we happen to believe it is blasphemy to say that any human was the Son of God, but it should be a peaceful conflict."

The 2003 video shows Mr Green warning that if Muslim children attended non-Muslim schools "they will be destroyed - you think you live in a sewer and you come up smelling roses?" But yesterday he said he was mystified by those comments, saying he changed his mind on the issue "well before 2003".

Mr Green, who works as a full-time "outreach officer" for London Central Mosque, lectures on Islam to about 10,000 non-Muslim students a year. The father of 10 describes himself as socially conservative - his wife chooses to wear a niqab face veil - but says the main political criticism he attracts is from hardliners saying he is too moderate.

He supports armed jihad, "meaning the defence of our religion against aggression", and spent two weeks doing military training in Afghanistan in 1990 when the US was supporting Islamic fighters against the Soviet invasion. But he considers Osama bin Laden a "twisted" murderer.

Mr Green, who has visited Australia four times, said he had never been banned from visiting despite being placed on an Australian government watch list, which forced him to cancel a visit last year because the delay involved in applying for a visa caused him to miss a scheduled speaking engagement. "I would like to come back there and sit down with the teachers and students at that school and talk these things through," he said.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 12:17 pm 34 comments

Post apocalyptic New York in a scene from the game - Eternal Forces

A militant Christian computer game could become a Christmas bestseller despite calls for it to be banned.

The game lets players lead an army of violent Christian crusaders fighting to free America from the anti-Christ.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces rewards users for converting or killing unbelievers, in a post-apocalyptic New York.

The game has just gone on sale in the US and is now being introduced to UK shops, sparking protests from Muslims and secularists.

The Muslim Association of Britain called for a ban, saying: 'This game is irresponsible and highly racist.

'It demonises every other religion which isn't Christianity. Games like this poison the minds of young people.'

National Secular Society president Terry Sanderson said: 'Most Muslims and most Christians would recognise this as crude and despicable hate-mongering and give it a wide berth.'

The game is based on Left Behind, a series of Christian fantasy books created by US authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

It encourages users to strengthen their troops through 'the power of prayer' - and lines up Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks alongside Prayer Warriors.

The makers have said the game should not be taken too seriously as a Biblical study.

Left Behind Games chief executive Troy A Lyndon said: 'The game is designed to be a classic battle between good and evil.

'But it does not gratuitously depict death or violence.

'Situations are used to encourage gamers to think about matters of eternal significance, a topic largely ignored in modern games.'
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 5:21 pm 1 comments