Islam: The Religion of Peace?

[TurQ]

It is shame just shame

No information at all just expressing their hatred for Muslims.

When the people of Taif stoned him, bleed him, Angel Gabriel comes to him and says " Oh the messenger of God, I can put those two mountains over the city of Taif" and he replies " No, If they had known me, they wouldnt behave like that".

If I were christian it would hav bothered me such hate filled messages. They are ignorant, sadly they are not aware that they are ignorant.

Muhammad dies June 8, 632 A.D. in Medina

In the third month of the eleventh year of Hijra, Muhammad fell sick and layed in the house of his wife Ayisha in Medina. The recent death of his infant son, Ibrahim weighed his spirits down, and the poison he had consumed at Khaibar still bothered him.

A little after midday of 8 June, 632, the 62 year old Muhammad stretched himself gently and was no more. Later in the night his followers dug his grave on the same spot where he breathed his last. They spread his red mantle on the bottom of the grave, and his body was lowered into it. The grave was made level with the floor. Muhammad's tomb is now close to the mosque of Medina. Six mosques have stood on the same site as the present one.

The so-called "Prophet of Peace" who the Qur'an (Koran) commanded to fight 26 battles, and who planned no less than 86 expeditions against innocent people (only the battle of the Ditch was defensive) was no more. He gave no prophecies and performed no miracles. Within a century after Muhammad's death, Muslim armies had reached as far as India in the east and Spain in the west. They gave two choices to the people they encountered; either convert to Islam or die.

[Gavur]

Convert may go, but still hunted

28mar06

KABUL -- An Afghan man who faced execution for converting from Islam to Christianity could be free within days, but his safety is far from guaranteed.



A Supreme Court spokesman, Abdul Wakil Omeri, said the case had been dropped because of "problems with the prosecutors' evidence".
He said several of Abdul Rahman's relatives testified he was mentally unstable and prosecutors have to decide if he is mentally fit to stand trial.

Another Afghan official said the case had returned to prosecutors for further investigation. But he said Rahman would be released in the meantime.

Many Western governments, including Australia, the US and several European nations had condemned the prosecution of Abdul Rahman.

The court's decision has averted a major international dispute for President Hamid Karzai.

But it's raised another problem: how to protect Rahman after his release.

Many Islamic clerics want him killed and one even said he should be "torn to pieces".

About 700 Muslim clerics and followers last night gathered in central Mazar-e-Sharif, chanting "Death to Bush" and other anti-Western slogans after the court announced it had dropped its case against Abdul Rahman.

Rahman, 41, became a Christian in the 1990s while working for an aid group in neighbouring Pakistan.

Muslim clerics, who have demanded death for Rahman as an apostate for rejecting Islam, warned the decision would touch off protests across this religiously conservative country.

Rahman was moved to Kabul's notorious high-security Policharki prison on Friday after inmates at a jail in central Kabul threatened him. AP

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18622965%255E663,00.html

[imported_RUDO]

'Can Turkey Bridge the Gap Between Islam and the West?

'Can Turkey Bridge the Gap Between Islam and the West?'
By Cihan News Agency, Washington
Published: Wednesday, March 29, 2006
zaman.com


The American published Christian Science Monitor touched on the broker role of Turkey between Islam and the West in an article today.

With its increasing role in the Middle East, Turkey is on one side trying to strengthen its neighborly relations, while on the other trying to undertake the role of mediator in the region.

As examples of "surprise" foreign policy moves by Turkey, The Christian Science cites the Ankara visit of HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement) leader Khaled Mashaal in February; Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari’s visit immediately after, and Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s planned visit.

[Gavur]

Iranian hawk swoops on universities to crush dissent

Robert Tait in Tehran
Monday March 27, 2006

Guardian

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cracking down on Iran's universities in an effort to crush a student pro-democracy movement and strengthen the hardliners' grip on power.
Leading student activists have been jailed or expelled from their studies, and lecturers have been sacked, while the government has proposed subjecting academics to strict religious testing.

The authorities have also begun a programme of burying the bodies of unknown soldiers on campus grounds in what student leaders say is a thinly disguised attempt to bring religious extremists into the universities on the pretext of holding "martyrs' ceremonies". Students fear that such a presence will be used to violently suppress their activities.

In one recent incident students at Tehran's Sharif University were attacked by plain-clothed Basij (religious volunteers) during an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the burial of three soldiers from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war inside the campus mosque. The incident was overseen by Mehrdad Bazrpash, a close aide to Mr Ahmadinejad and a former Basij leader.

The event took place against a backdrop of speeches by Mr Ahmadinejad, a former university lecturer, stressing the need for "martyrdom" in Iran's confrontation with the west over its nuclear programme.

Student leaders say the developments amount to a takeover of the universities by Mr Ahmadinejad's ultra-conservative forces. The campuses were hotbeds of pro-democratic protest during the presidency of the former, reformist leader, Mohammad Khatami. "They want to gain hegemonic control over the universities, which have always been important in influencing the social and political atmosphere and which normally support pro-democracy rather than authoritarian forces," said Abdollah Momeni, an activist appealing against a five-year sentence imposed for leading a student protest.

"Through burying martyrs on campus they open the doors for the entry of armed militias and thus add the universities to their fiefdoms."

Other activists have had their studies terminated after the intervention of Iran's intelligence services. Students also say they have been denied permission for low-level political activities that were allowed during Mr Khatami's presidency.

The purge has extended to academics and university administrators. One political science lecturer was dismissed for belonging to a human rights group.

The chancellor of Tehran's Science and Industry University resigned in protest at government interference. Mr Ahmadinejad has also been accused of overturning an established practice of appointing chancellors and faculty heads from academic staff in favour of trusted cronies. A radical cleric was recently appointed to head Tehran University.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

[Gavur]

Planned Mother Teresa statue irks Albania Muslims

Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:08 PM IST





By Benet Koleka

SHKODER, Albania (Reuters) - Muslims in Albania's northern city of Shkoder are opposing plans to erect a statue to Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian Catholic nun in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican.

The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the regime of dictator Enver Hoxha and where religious harmony and mixed marriages are the norm.

Seventy percent of the population are liberal Muslims, the rest are Christian Orthodox and Catholic.

But Muslim groups in Shkoder rejected the local council plan for a Teresa statue, saying it "would offend the feelings of Muslims".

"We do not want this statue to be erected in a public place because we see her as a religious figure," said Bashkim Bajraktari, Shkoder's mufti or Muslim religious leader.

"If there must be a statue, let it be in a Catholic space."

Several residents told Reuters they felt there was an underground effort to treat Shkoder as a Catholic town, ignoring its majority Muslim community.

Shkoder's Muslims recently protested against crosses being erected on prominent hilltops.

"These acts jeopardise tolerance. Frankly, we're trying hard to maintain religious harmony," said deputy mufti Arben Halluni.

Skender Drini, a Shkoder writer and former diplomat, conceded the statue plan may have come at an inappropriate time.

"(But) if you rise against Mother Teresa, you rise against your own humanism and patriotism," he said.

Shkoder council has taken little notice of the controversy, deliberating a choice between one possible site at the entrance to the city and another near the centre.

Born in Macedonia to Albanian parents, Mother Teresa is claimed by both countries. A square in Macedonia's capital Skopje bears her name, while Albania has named its international airport, a hospital, a square and a state medal after her.

Elsa Decka, 53, who said she was a Catholic with an Orthodox husband and a Muslim daughter-in-law, saw no reason why the statue should not be erected.

"Why not? She has done a lot of good for so many people"," Decka said.

But men in one Shkoder bar said they would prefer a monument to an Albanian fighter who blew himself up in order to avoid being captured by enemy Serbs, or even to two Ottoman-era pashas remembered fondly in Shkoder.

[ScythianVizier]

If you keep on posting sufficient enough, then you could also mention Islam as the religion of hatred which even casued the following humanitarian disasters:

* Iraq War, Bosnia War, Vietnam War, Cambotian War, Checnian War, Kosova Conflict, Korea War, WWII, WWI, and hundreds of more on top of those world famous Crusades.

* Colonial Mass Slaughters and Plunders, such as Genocide of Native Americans in Amerikas, Genocide and Enslavement of black Africans, Algerian Genocide, Jewish Genocide, Indian Genocide, Indonesian Genocide, Chechnian Genocide, Crimean Tatar Genocide, Genocide of Gypsies, Circassian Genocide, Rwanda Genocide, Congo Genocide, Ethopia Genocide, Sri Lankan Genocide, and so on, and on.

[1.5 million]

I see this whole list of suposed genocides you have posted Sythian Vizier. Some of which I believe would/do qualify as such. However I am curious as to YOUR qualifying these events as genocide - particularly when you fail to consider the Armenian Genocide as such. I wouls imagine that if you applied some of your criteria that you and other Turks do to claim that the Armenian Genocide is not one - none of these would meet your definition. Just food for thought...

[phantom]

I see this whole list of suposed genocides you have posted Sythian Vizier. Some of which I believe would/do qualify as such. However I am curious as to YOUR qualifying these events as genocide - particularly when you fail to consider the Armenian Genocide as such. I wouls imagine that if you applied some of your criteria that you and other Turks do to claim that the Armenian Genocide is not one - none of these would meet your definition. Just food for thought...

Amen! Some Turks take a novel approach and decide to call every killing in the world a Genocide in order to minimize the importance or suffering of the Armenians. Synthian, is unique though: he calls all of these other things a Genocide, without calling the Armenian experience as such.

[Gavur]

CHRISTIANS IN AFGHANISTAN-A Community of Faith and Fear

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,408781,00.html

By Matthias Gebauer in Kabul

Afghan converts to Christianity lead dangerous lives and must keep their faith secret to avoid persecution by police, Islamists or even their own neighbors. Members of this secret society have to constantly keep looking over their shoulders.




REUTERS
An Islamist demonstration in Afghanistan: Christians have no voice here.
Hashim Kabar is nervous. The 36-year-old is fidgeting with the plastic chair in his small office, looking repeatedly at his watch. His mobile phone keeps ringing and every few minutes he stands up and goes to the door of the small building. "Everything OK?" he asks the armed guard there, who is crouching next to the heavy steel door that has a small slit he can look out of. The guard nods and Kabar comes back. "I don't have a good feeling about this today," he says, rubbing his eyes. "Something tells me we're going to have a visit."

It's difficult arranging meetings with people like Kabar. Time and again he postponed the appointment, then he asked that the location be changed. Finally the meeting takes place in his office. Brochures are lying about and a computer hums in the background, but nothing would indicate the subject of the conversation. There are no crucifixes on the wall, no Bibles on the shelves. Anything that could out him as a Christian has been put out of sight, out of fear. He is afraid that what happened to Abdul Rahman, another convert to Christianity, might happen to him.

The case of Rahman serves as proof to Afghan Christians that they live in extreme danger, simply because of their beliefs. Despite the fact that international pressure prevented Rahman from being sentenced and perhaps executed by Afghanistan's justice system, Rahman's story illustrates the extreme stress that those who turn away from Islam experience every day. "We must recognize that freedom of religion, as promised by the Afghan constitution, does not exist," says Kabar, sadly. "But maybe it's good that the international community is now aware of that."

Persecution under the Taliban

Kabar converted to Christianity 20 years ago, when such a thing was not as taboo as it is today. "There were a lot of churches, both in Kabul and in the country," he says. "Back then the two religions coexisted here almost peacefully." But that all changed when the Taliban came to power in the mid-1990s. Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar ordered his men to raze churches to the ground, to lynch Afghan Christians and to kill or drive out foreigners who followed Jesus Christ.





Many of Kabar's friends lost their lives during this period. "They tortured prisoners until they got them to tell them the names of other Christians. Then the Taliban would kill them and go in search of new victims." Why he himself survived, he doesn't know. He was taken prisoner twice and interrogated for hours at a time, but his persecutors could find no proof. "I knew the suras and the prayers from the Koran by heart. So I pretended to be a good Muslim," he said, with something like pride in his voice.

But the disappearance of the Taliban has not made much of a difference for people like Kabar. Converts continue to be hunted down, thrown into prison or even killed by their neighbors. The West was largely unaware of the situation, and it was only by coincidence that Rahman's case captured international attention. Afghanistan's 2004 constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, is of little use to Christians. "Many in power in the judicial branch are imams or clerics who have little interest in the constitution," says Kabar.

Hide and seek

Kabar is forced to renounce his core identity every day. There is an Islamic name on his business card, although privately he carries the name of one of the apostles. Only his family and his closest friends know his secret. Sometimes, he says, he has to act as if he is praying to Allah. "If business associates come to my house and suddenly want to pray, I have to go along," he says, adding that he only hopes his God understands.

No one knows how many Afghan converts there really are. Because there are no churches, there are also no records. Everything is carried out in secret; only Christians know other Christians. Kabar says he knows a couple of hundred in Kabul and in many other Afghan cities, estimating that there are probably in total between 1,000 and 2,000 people of the Christian faith in Afghanistan, against a Muslim majority of nearly 20 million. Christian Web sites put that number at 10,000, a figure which seems exaggerated.








Even Christian foreigners in Afghanistan feel the oppression brought down by the larger Islamic society. While Christians in Kabul, who mostly come from the Philippines, can hold masses in Kabul, they have to do so in secret. The head of a small foreign congregation, an ophthalmologist from the United States, declined to talk about the issue last week. Christian groups are often suspected of being missionaries; therefore it's better to keep a low profile. His own church is completely unrecognizable as such, apart from a (relief of a) fish on the outer wall.

The persecution and the constant danger have turned the community of Afghan converts into a closely knit underground organization. Ironically, the oppression has strengthened the faith of many.

Nothing can happen in the open, and Kabar and his fellow believers hold their worship services on different days of the week. "It would be too dangerous to do it on Sunday, because it would be easy for them to observe us." Converts are contacted just before a service is to take place, often by innocent-sounding mobile phone text messages. "We're having tea at 11 o'clock," is one that Kabar reads.

The locations of services change constantly as well, and they are always held in private homes, where everything has to be prepared well in advance. The household staff must be away; neighbors mustn't notice anything; and everyone has to have the 100 percent trust of everyone else. It is too dangerous to even have a Bible at most services, says Kabar, who knows his prayers by heart. Police have come and searched his house three times already, but failed to find anything incriminating. "They know I'm a Christian," he says. "But I won't give them any reason to put me on trial."






*Due to the danger of persecution, the convert's name has been changed and his picture is not shown.

[Gavur]

Afghanistan : More Christians Arrested In Wake Of ‘apostasy’

Wednesday March 22, 2006
Two other converts from Islam in custody; another hospitalized after beating.
March 22 (Compass) – An avalanche of media coverage of an Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity has apparently sparked the arrest and deepening harassment of other Afghan Christians in the ultra-conservative Muslim country.

Authorities arrested Abdul Rahman, 41, last month for apostasy, a capital offense under strict Islamic laws still in place in Afghanistan, which four years ago was wrested from the Taliban regime’s hard-line Islamist control.


During the past few days, Compass has confirmed the arrest of two other Afghan Christians elsewhere in the country. Because of the sensitive situation, local sources requested that the location of the jailed converts be withheld.


This past weekend, one young Afghan convert to Christianity was beaten severely outside his home by a group of six men, who finally knocked him unconscious with a hard blow to his temple. He woke up in the hospital two hours later but was discharged before morning.


“Our brother remains steadfast, despite the ostracism and beatings,” one of his friends said.


Several other Afghan Christians have been subjected to police raids on their homes and places of work in the past month, as well as to telephone threats.


First Known Apostasy Case

Rahman was put on trial in Kabul last week for the “crime” of converting from Islam to Christianity and faces the death penalty for refusing to return to the Muslim faith.


But news of his case did not break until March 16, when Ariana TV announced it. According to the TV newscaster, Rahman was asked in court, “Do you confess that you have apostacized from Islam?” The defendant answered, “No, I am not an apostate. I believe in God.”


He was then questioned, “Do you believe in the Quran?” Rahman responded, “I believe in the New Testament, and I love Jesus Christ.”


Although Islamist militants have captured and murdered at least five Afghan Christians in the past two years for abandoning Islam, Rahman’s case is the local judiciary’s first known prosecution case for apostasy in recent decades.


During Rahman’s initial hearing before the head judge of Kabul’s Primary Court, he testified that he had become a Christian 16 years ago, while working with a Christian relief organization in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border.


But after his conversion, Rahman’s wife divorced him, so their two infant daughters were taken back to Afghanistan, where they have been raised by their paternal grandparents.


Soon afterwards Rahman left Pakistan, and over the next few years he managed to enter several European countries. Although he attempted to apply for asylum, he was never able to obtain legal immigration status. After nine years, many of them in European detention centers because he had no valid papers, he was finally deported back to Afghanistan in 2002.


Back in Kabul, Rahman eventually contacted his family. In recent months, he tried repeatedly to regain custody of his daughters, now 13 and 14 years of age.


“The father finally went to the police in order to stop Abdul from contacting him, by telling them that Abdul converted to Christianity,” a Kabul source said. He was promptly taken into custody, interrogated and sent to jail to await trial.


Although Rahman is allowed to have a defense lawyer, he has declined, insisting he can defend himself. But according to Christian sources in Kabul, the convert suffers from recurring mental instability, which could alter the Islamic court’s handling of his case.


Rahman is reportedly incarcerated with 50 other prisoners in a cell designed for 15 in Kabul’s Central Prison, where members of the press have been denied access to him. Since he is estranged from his family, and prisoners are traditionally dependent upon food rations supplied by their families, it is unclear whether he is being fed regularly.


Labeled a ‘Cancer’

If Rahman is found guilty of apostasy and given the death penalty, as demanded by prosecutor Abdul Wasi, Afghan law permits him two final appeals – first to the provincial court, and then the Supreme Court.


Calling Rahman a “traitor to Islam,” Wasi told the court he was “like a cancer inside Afghanistan.”


Wasi told the Associated Press (AP) that when he offered to drop all the charges against Rahman if he returned to Islam, the defendant refused. “He said he was a Christian and would always remain one,” Wasi said.


“We are Muslims, and becoming a Christian is against our laws,” the prosecutor concluded. “He must get the death penalty.”


Rahman is being tried by Judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada, who has said he would issue a verdict on the case within two months.


“We are not against any particular religion in the world,” the judge told the AP on March 19. “But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on Islam.”


On March 20, however, Judge Mawlavizada told the British Broadcasting Corporation that Rahman’s mental state would be considered first, “before he was dealt with under sharia [Islamic] law.”


President Hamid Karzai’s office has said the president will not intervene in the case. But today a religious adviser to Karzai announced that Rahman would be given psychological tests.


“Doctors must examine him,” Moayuddin Baluch told the AP. “If he is mentally unfit, definitely Islam has no claim to punish him. He must be forgiven. The case must be dropped.”


Although the Afghan government is clearly anxious to resolve Rahman’s case in order to satisfy international criticisms, the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has reportedly called for Rahman to be punished, insisting that he had “clearly violated Islamic law.”


Rahman’s plight dramatizes the judicial paradox within Afghanistan’s new constitution, ratified in January 2004. Although it guarantees freedom of religion to non-Muslims, it also prohibits laws that are “contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.”


At the same time, the constitution obliges the state to abide by the treaties and conventions it has signed, which include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In outlining freedoms of thought, conscience and religion, Article 18 of this convention explicitly guarantees “freedom to change [one’s] religion or belief.”


Less than 1 percent of the Afghan population is non-Muslim, mostly Hindus and Sikhs. Among the millions of Afghans living abroad during recent decades of conflict in their homeland, some have openly declared themselves Christians. But no churches exist inside Afghanistan, and local converts to Christianity fear retribution if they declare their faith.



SIDEBAR


Arrest of Convert Christian Ignites International Outcry


Before he was dropped from the Afghan government’s cabinet today, reporters grilled Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah yesterday (March 21) about his country’s controversial “apostasy” case during a Washington, D.C. press conference focusing on this week’s U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership talks in Washington.


Acknowledging that the Afghan Embassy in Washington had received hundreds of messages since the trial of Afghan Christian Abdul Rahman was made public last week, Abdullah insisted that his government had nothing to do with the case.


Rahman, who is charged with abandoning Islam 16 years ago, is liable for execution under Afghanistan’s Islamic law statutes.


“I know that it is a very sensitive issue and we know the concerns of the American people,” Abdullah said. “But I hope that through our constitutional process, there will be a satisfactory result.”


Speaking at Abdullah’s side, Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state of political affairs, sidestepped direct U.S. interference in Afghan sovereignty while admitting, “… from an American point of view, people should be free to choose their own religion.”


Two days ago, the U.S. State Department had confirmed that the United States was “following closely” the trial proceedings, emphasizing that there were “differing interpretations” of the current Afghan constitution within the country. The Afghan authorities were being urged to “conduct this trial … in as transparent a manner as possible,” the spokesman said.


Meanwhile, Western allies in the international coalition of troops deployed in Afghanistan have expressed outrage and point-blank condemnation of the trial over the past three days.


Lawmakers and leaders in Italy and Germany declared pointedly that it was “intolerable” that soldiers of all faiths should die to protect a country threatening to kill its own citizens for converting to Christianity. Canada confirmed that it was also “closely watching” the case, while the German Foreign Minister said he viewed it with “great concern.”


“If Afghanistan does not quickly modernize its legal system,” German opposition politician Rainer Bruderle told the daily Bild today, “Germany must rethink its help for Afghanistan.”


After the Italian government summoned the Afghan ambassador to Rome yesterday to discuss Rahman’s case, a Foreign Ministry statement pledged that Italy would “move at the highest level … to prevent something which is incompatible with the defense of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”


From the British Parliament, Nick Harvey of the Liberal Democrats remarked, “To prosecute or even kill someone for having a different faith is unacceptable.” Labour Member of Parliament Alan Simpson agreed, declaring in a statement to The Times in London, “This absurdity must stop.”


A strong protest was also lodged before the European Parliament by Dr. Charles Tannock, who questioned the European Union’s generous funding of a country “which appears to ignore its international legal obligations, and apparently is still ruled by a fundamentalist version of Islamic sharia law.” The parliamentarian called for a plea of clemency to be issued by the EU, requesting Afghanistan to exile Rahman to another country where his religious freedom would be guaranteed.


But one Afghan cabinet official has reacted sharply to the German government’s blunt criticism of the trial, telling the Neue Osnabrueceker Zeitung newspaper that “the heated and emotional reaction of German politicians is exaggerated and has caused annoyance among Afghans.”


Afghan Economy Minister Amin Farhang claimed that although “fanatics demand the death penalty in such cases,” such a sentence was unlikely against Rahman.