Sri Ram Temple attacked in ayodhya today !

[Guest guest]

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[Guest guest]

Here is another gem of a country called Pukistan, the great neighbout of India. Read about this. The following link has data on lot of Islamic countries.

 

http://www.alleanzacattolica.org/acs/acs_english/acs_index.htm

 

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Religious Freedom in the Majority Islamic Countries

1998 Report

Pakistan

 

Population 136,183,000

Religions: Islam 95%; Christianity 2%; Hinduism 1.7%

Catholics 1,069,262

Dioceses: Karachi - 125,493; Hyderabad - 93,962; Lahore - 502,619; Faisalabad - 126,345; Islamabad - Rawalpindi - 122,343; Multan - 98,500

 

Pakistan is an Islamic Republic. Christians represent around 1.5 per cent of the population, with a total of approximately 750,000 Catholics and 850,000 Protestants. Article 20 of the Constitution of 1973 states that every citizen has the right to profess, practise and speak about his own religion, while Article 36 declares that the state safeguards the interests and the rights of the minorities. The reality is different, however, for the Christians are forced into a ghetto-like existence. Article 41 of the same Constitution states that the President of the Republic must be a Muslim. There have been instances of intolerance relating above all to the blasphemy laws promulgated by General Zia in 1985. They state that whoever insults the Koran can be punished by life imprisonment and that anyone who blasphemes against Mohammed is liable to the death penalty.

 

Mixed marriages are permitted only if the man is a Muslim and the woman a Christian, and not vice versa. The schools, created in large measure by the Christian culture, are under Islamic control and the Christian teaching has been marginalised, while their own religion and personalities are discredited in the school books. No Christian preaching is permitted.

 

The law of Pakistan envisages that the religious minorities should have separate political representatives. Peter Jacobs, executive secretary of the national Justice and Peace Committee of the Pakistan bishops’ conference, has denounced the continuing acts of violence and discrimination against the religious minorities in a document entitled Observations on Human Rights - a study on the present situation.

 

Recently "anti- terrorist tribunals" have been set up. They have the power to adjudicate even in cases of blasphemy. The police have the power to enter houses without a magistrate’s warrant and to shoot at those suspected of terrorist activities. The anti-terrorist law also obliges the tribunals to issue a verdict within a week. At Faisalabad many Christian families have been forced to abandon their own homes, following charges made by the police against a young man of 30 of violations against the blasphemy law. This case took place in the village of Sahiwal, 500 kilometres south of Islamabad, where some 14 of the 140 families are Christian. The supporters of Ayub Masih, the young man accused, maintain that the charge levelled against him, which carries the summary death penalty, is the Government’s response to the request by Christian families for the construction of new houses. These witnesses have declared to the UCA News press Agency (7-8 November 1996) that an argument between Ayub and a young Muslim was used as the pretext for the charge which led to his arrest on October 14. The mother of Ayub states that on that day a crowd of 50-60 people gathered near their house and that Ayub, his brother Sampson and his sister were brutally beaten. After this, Ayub and his brother were arrested: "They took away my boys and I escaped," his mother stated. "We are poor people; we cannot defend our children and not even ourselves."

 

According to the testimony of her mother, published in UCA News of November 13-15 1996, Gloria Bibi, aged just 14 years, was kidnapped on August 20 by a young Muslim who forced her to convert to Islam before marrying her. This event took place in a village in the district of Sahiwal and none of the inhabitants has seen the girl since the day of her disappearance. The girl’s mother has denounced the inaction of the police, who, having arrested the members of the young man's family, released them again in exchange for a sum of money. The girl’s family too was forced to pay, but the promises that they would see their daughter again were not kept. The Christians number just 12 out of the 250 families in the village and many are dependent on Muslim landowners. Thus even the local Christians are reluctant to help Gloria’s family, for fear of the consequences from their Muslim employers.

 

In February 1997 at Shantinagar, some 800 houses were destroyed, along with 13 churches and even the villages and the poor quarters of the surrounding area. Some 35 Christians were wounded and it appears, according to the report of Amnesty International in 1998, that some police were also involved in the violence. According to information obtained from Christian organisations, a number of Christians - unknown but estimated at between 50 and 70 - were abducted. Some were raped and forced to become Muslims.

 

Also numerous are the forcible conversions of minors, such as that of a boy of 13 by the boss of the farm where he worked, who placed the Koran on his head and said: "Now you are a Muslim. If you call yourself a Christian again I will kill you. I have written your name on this bullet." There are 40,000 people now homeless. At the beginning of the year the Muslims raided other villages, burning the churches and houses of the Christians. Around 1,000 families are still living in tents, and many of them are accused of insulting Islam.

 

At Toba Tek Singh on September 15 1997, a meeting was held between a group of young Christians workers and Rita Tan, the co-ordinator of the YCW International. The workers, who came from various fields of employment, denounced the great difficulties they had encountered because of their membership of a religious minority. From the testimonies they gave it emerges that in the commercial sector Christians are heavily penalised by the fact that only Christians will buy from other Christians because of a widespread spirit of intolerance. For those who work for others, however, life is marked by a series of injustices and discrimination. The Muslim workers refuse to eat with the Christians and leave them aside. Their pay is lower and sometimes their monthly wages are held back without reason. The tasks reserved for the Christians are the most menial and tedious. And likewise stressed was the impossibility for Christians of obtaining positions in state or public bodies. "Reading the Bible helps us to keep going, to do our work and to struggle for our rights", was the comment of one worker to Rita Tan, as reported by UCA News of October 20-22 1997.

 

At Multan, human rights activists and Christian groups protested against the establishment of the new anti-terrorist tribunals, empowered to judge on cases of blasphemy. "If cases of blasphemy are judged by the anti-terrorist tribunals, acquittals will become impossible," said Johnson Shahid, a Catholic human rights activist. In particular they fear the special powers given to the police under the new anti-terrorist measures envisaged by the government, such as entering houses without a warrant and even killing suspected terrorists. The Christian minorities condemn the vulnerability to which the new law will expose them in the face of charges of blasphemy - fabricated charges moreover - of which they are the victims. The protest, according to UCA News of September 29 - October 1 1997, was directed principally against Section 295-C of the penal code, in which the offence of blasphemy is defined in extremely vague terms that leave plenty of scope for false and trumped-up accusations.

 

One Muslim who converted to Christianity, survived prison and was disowned by his family, is now helping others along the path of conversion. UCA News of April 20-22 1998 relates his story. Born in Multan, Ijaz Zaidi became interested in other religions while still a student. Struck by Christianity, he publicly declared in 1964 that he had embraced the new Faith. As a result of this gesture he was imprisoned for two years and, after his release, was disowned by his family after having been beaten so badly that he required hospital treatment for multiple fractures. However, his sufferings were not yet over, because all the Christian churches contacted by him, including the Catholics, refused to accept him for fear of the possible consequences. Only thanks to his patience and tenacity, Ijaz finally succeeded in receiving baptism and being accepted in the Anglican Church. Today he devotes himself to helping and guiding Muslims interested in conversion, and 1,700 people have since turned to him. Meanwhile, Ijaz continues to work and has remained a bachelor ever since the family of his former fiancée rejected the suggestion that the girl should convert in order to marry him.

 

The Pakistani Catholic Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad, an authoritative critic of the severe Pakistani laws against blasphemy, committed suicide on May 6 1998. The police have stated that the Bishop shot himself in front of the tribunal of Sahiwal, 270 miles south of Islamabad, after having visited the family of Ayub Masih, the young Christian condemned to death under the blasphemy law. The Pakistani laws have been vehemently criticised as discriminatory against non-Muslims and as a carte blanche for abuses on the part of Muslims against their non-Muslim neighbours. During an inter-religious seminar held last summer, Bishop Joseph had denounced the profound injustice of this law and had declared himself ready to give his own life in order to change it. On the morning of May 6, the bishop had organised a meeting to pray for the victims of the blasphemy law and had reiterated the need to make some significant gesture against the application of this law. Bishop Joseph had been President of the Justice and Peace Commission and had also translated the Roman Missal into the Urdu language. Bishop John Joseph had always denounced the situation as impossible, giving interviews and making appeals, such as that on behalf of Anwar Mash, accused of blasphemy and awaiting sentence who was passing his life in solitary confinement without ever seeing the light. Or that of Samina Inayat, abducted from her family, the only Christian in a small village, and at just 15 years of age becoming an object of barter. Bishop John Joseph did everything he could to secure her freedom, contacting Islamic leaders and the police, and he succeeded in his attempt. Now the young girl is in a safe place where she is trying to forget her ordeal and start a new life. Or Salamat Masih, condemned to death at just 12 years and then acquitted, afterwards fleeing abroad. The teacher Catherine Shaheen, by contrast, was accused of blasphemy and deprived of her salary. Now she lives in secret because the Islamic extremists have threatened to kill her.

 

Bishop Joseph had listed nine cases of violence perpetrated by the police and by terrorists against Christian religious and laity - tortures, abuses and killings. The Dominican Sister Susanne, assassinated by a terrorist on August 11 1988, the French Cyprian Dias, who suffered the same fate on September 11 1988; Nazir Masih, tortured and killed in a police station; an entire Christian family, women and children included, cruelly maltreated in 1997.

 

The death sentence passed on Ayub Masih was referred for appeal in June 1999. The young man had been accused of expressing views favourable towards the book Satanic Verses by the English author Salman Rushdie, whereas the defence was able to demonstrate that Ayub harboured no hostility towards Islam. The case acquired a degree of attention after the suicide of Bishop Joseph in protest against the death sentence. Ayub is the fourth Pakistani Christian to have been condemned to death on the charge of having blasphemed against the Koran. The other three were later acquitted by the High Court of Lahore, but they have been forced to live abroad because of the continued threats against them.

 

Five Christians accused of blasphemy were murdered while their trials were still in progress. Three of them were still in custody when they were murdered. Judge Arif Iqbal Bhatti, who had helped to secure the acquittal of two of these Christians, was himself murdered last October (Catholic News Service, May 13 1998).

 

One month after the death of Bishop John Joseph, the Christian community gathered together in the parish of St Peter and St Paul at Faisalabad in the Punjab region. The Italian journalist Ettore Botti of the Corriere della Sera compiled the impressive testimonies of some of those present. Many of these are converts from Hinduism, the casteless and untouchables, the despised and poorest of the poor. In Lahore they call them bangi - the toilet cleaners - because they are the only ones who will do this work. Faruk Zahid tells how he had worked for some time in a furnace which produced bricks, but then he was dismissed because a Muslim was given his job. Often the Christians of the country form little colonies, which have the appearance of ghettos from which they are forbidden to emerge.

 

A plan to amend the Constitution and to adopt the Islamic law as the state law has been submitted to the Pakistan national assembly on August 28 1998. Some representatives of the religious minorities and the opposition parties have sent official protests and organised demonstrations against this. Pakistan already acknowledges Islam as the state religion, but the present proposal to adopt Islamic law into the legal system is another matter altogether. The amendment in question has been sponsored by the current Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif.

 

On September 5, the Italian daily Avvenire published an article by Marco Moriconi which stresses the fact that a number of representatives of Sharif’s own party who belong to the Christian and Hindu minorities have disassociated themselves from this initiative by their Prime Minister. Bishop Alexander John Malik of Lahore has likewise expressed serious concern, especially in relation to the fact the minorities would be left at the mercy of the 72 or so Islamic religious sects present in the country, each of which has its own interpretation of the Koranic law.

 

The Pakistan national assembly approved the provision on October 9 1998 with a majority of 151 votes to 16, and now it awaits deliberation by the Senate, where the Pakistani Muslim League does not have the required two-thirds majority for it to pass into the national law. The prime minister has welcomed the vote, maintaining that it is "the beginning of a new Islamic order for Pakistan". In his speech to . he has promised the religious minorities that he will "take care of their rights", but no one seems inclined to believe his protestations. Christians, Muslims and Hindus are continuing to protest. On October 15 at Lahore, over 2,000 people gathered in the city square for a demonstration organised by the Christian-Muslim Committee for the rights of the people. Among the leaders of the protests were the Muslim Senator Ajmal Khattak, Cecil Chaudry and the activist Bishop Joseph Francis. The same day the Commission for Inter-religious Dialogue of the Pakistan bishops’ conference organised a seminar in which all the religious leaders condemned the document. Sharif could get around this obstacle by calling an extraordinary session with a combined vote in both houses.

 

The effect of this law could even be to oblige all Pakistanis, whether Muslims or not, to pray five times a day and to contribute annually a tenth of their income for the maintenance of the Muslim community - in addition to making the Constitution, the laws and the sentences in tribunals of every kind depend on Islamic principles.

 

The Christians of Pakistan fear genocide but they will not leave the country. This was stated to Fides on November 6, 1998 by Cecil Chaudry, aged 58, principal of the of St Anthony’s secondary school in Lahore and leader of the Christian Liberation Front, an organisation of socially and politically committed Catholics and Protestants. Chaudry maintains that Christians must expect "a veritable genocide on the part of the right-wing religious extremists, just as happened to the Jews in Nazi times". He continues: "That is why we are opposing this proposal with all our forces. Thanks to God we have established a powerful opposition platform in the Senate and we are hoping that the Bill will not pass into law. The National Christian Action Front, with its president Clement Shahbaz Bhatti, has established a real organised lobby which will block the approval."

 

Even Muslim groups are opposed to this proposal, because they believe that it will plunge the country into a state of anarchy. The extremists, however, are overjoyed and support it. They have even begun to openly threaten those who are opposed to the Bill, such as Bhatti and Chaudry. The latter adds: "The document will strengthen the powers of the Prime Minister, but at what cost? The price could even be the destruction of the country! In a state like Pakistan, religious intolerance is already a powerful force. People are already murdering in the name of Islam; the Christian town of Shantinagar was completely razed to the ground in a matter of a few hours; 50 Hindu temples were destroyed in a single day. They even burn the churches; they shoot at each other and throw bombs into the mosques of rival Islamic groups; they use the blasphemy laws to oppress the Christians. If this document is approved by the Senate, the religious minorities will be deprived of everything in a few years, and women will be persecuted. Bishop John Joseph sacrificed his life to awaken the Christian world and the people of Pakistan. However, I think that the West is still asleep! We are hoping for the maximum possible international reaction - for us this is a matter of life or death."

 

A new outbreak of murder against Christians came to public notice on November 18 1998 when the police, after seeing blood flowing out under a door, discovered the bodies of a family of nine people who had been massacred at Nowshera, 25 miles from Peshawar, a frontier town between Pakistan and Afghanistan which provides refuge for a million-and-a-half Afghan refugees. The father of the family, John Bhatti, had formerly worked for the army, but before the murder - for which no one has yet been arrested - he was working as a waiter, although he was still living in military accommodation with his wife, his daughter and several grandchildren, including a baby of eight months. The message discovered on the walls of his house after the attack was to the effect of "Enough of the black magic!". The reason for this bloody attack could well have been the climate created by the declaration of Nawaz Sharif, who has publicly stated that he draws his inspiration from the "model of the Afghan Taliban". Again, speaking at a meeting in the north of the country, he announced that he would take every step necessary to introduce a legal system which includes among other things the hanging of rapists on the day of the arrest, the amputation of limbs for thieves, stoning for adultery and flogging for a series of minor offences, claiming that today in Afghanistan "crime does not exist". According to Amin Saikal, director of the Centre for Oriental and African Studies at the Australian National University, "Sharif wants to establish a regime dominated by his own Punjabi people, similar to the theocracy of the Pashtun Taliban".

 

Fides of December 4 1998 reports that a week before the massacre, Prime Minister Sharif had visited the province, accompanied by Senator Sami-un Haq, the representative of the Maulana party, an extreme Islamic faction very powerful in the region. The Maulana have issued a fatwa against anyone who opposes the 15th amendment to the constitution. During a public meeting this Senator incited the crowds against the Christians with a cry of "death to the infidels!" The Christians continue to vigorously demand the withdrawal of the proposal which would make the Islamic law the basis of the state.

 

In an interview given to the local monthly Newsline, Bishop Bonaventure Paul, emeritus bishop of Hyderabad in Pakistan and president of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Episcopal Conference, questions whether the measure is in any case necessary for the country. "In the constitution it is already stated that ‘there will not be any law other than the Koran and the Sunna’," he says. "The state already has a religious character; there is a federal court of the Sharia which has the power to impose a veto on laws contrary to the spirit of Islam". According to the bishop the amendment will do nothing other than to "open the door to intolerance" and "sharpen the distinction between the majority and the minority". He insists: "We are all citizens of Pakistan, but in this way we will become second class citizens."

 

The Christian Liberation Front (CLF), following the massacre of November 18, has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister, describing the amendment to the Constitution as "a threat to the 20 million non-Muslims living in Pakistan". The organisation calls upon the government to immediately withdraw the proposal in order to safeguard the lives of non-Muslim citizens. If this proposal is approved "the constitution will cease to exist", the letter states, and "the basic rights of the citizens will be trampled underfoot".

 

Despite these appeals, President Sharif has declared that "the Senate does not have the right to prevent the approbation of this proposal" and that "the people should punish those senators who vote against it", and he adds that "they must be forced to approve it because it is the unanimous wish of 130 million Pakistanis".

 

Bhatti is certain that the Prime Minister will not achieve the two-thirds majority of the senators and that this will "vex him profoundly". The people, moreover, are not so enthusiastic about this proposal, which is opposed also by many Muslims. Former premier Benazir Bhutto, in a declaration to UCA News of November 30, 1997 accuses the government of "provoking religious madness" and of seeking to introduce into the country "the Taliban version" of Islam. And she denounces the growing death threats against non-Muslim parliamentarians and other citizens.

[Guest guest]

What do Islamist terrorists want? The answer should be obvious, but it is not.

 

A generation ago, terrorists did make their wishes very clear. On hijacking three airliners in September 1970, for example, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine demanded, with success, the release of Arab terrorists imprisoned in Great Britain, Switzerland, and West Germany. On attacking the B'nai B'rith headquarters and two other Washington, D.C. buildings in 1977, a Hanafi Muslim group demanded the canceling of a feature movie, Mohammad, Messenger of G-d, US$750 (as reimbursement for a fine), the turning over of the five men who had massacred the Hanafi leader's family, plus the killer of Malcolm X.

 

Such "non-negotiable demands" lead to wrenching hostage dramas and attendant policy dilemmas. "We will never negotiate with terrorists," declared the policymakers. "Give them Hawaii but get my husband back," pleaded the hostages' wives.

 

Those days are so remote and their terminology so forgotten that even the American president now speaks of "non-negotiable demands" (in his case, concerning human dignity), forgetting the deadly origins of this phrase.

 

Instead, most anti-Western terrorist attacks these days are perpetrated without demands being enunciated. Bombs go off, planes get hijacked and crashed into buildings, hotels collapse. The dead are counted. Detectives trace back the perpetrators' identities. Shadowy websites make post-hoc unauthenticated claims.

 

But the reasons for the violence go unexplained. Analysts, including myself, are left speculating about motives. These can concern the terrorists' personal grievances - such as poverty, prejudice, or cultural alienation. Alternately, they can respond to international politics:

 

------ Pulling "a Madrid" and getting governments to pull their troops from Iraq.

 

------ Convincing Americans to leave Saudi Arabia.

 

 

------ Ending U.S. support for Israel.

 

 

------ Pressuring New Delhi to cede control of all Kashmir.

 

Any of these motives could have contributed to the violence; as London's Daily Telegraph puts it, problems in Iraq and Afghanistan each added "a new pebble to the mountain of grievances that militant fanatics have erected." Yet none of these issues is decisive to giving up one's life for the sake of killing others.

 

In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: <font size="3">to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and the Shari'a (Islamic law). Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their "real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a orldwide 'caliphate' founded on Shari'a law."</font>

 

Terrorists openly declare this goal. The Islamists who assassinated Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 decorated their holding cages with banners proclaiming "The caliphate or death." A biography of Abdullah Azzam, one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of recent times and an influence on Osama bin Laden, declares that his life "revolved around a single goal, namely the establishment of Allah's Rule on earth" and restoring the caliphate.

 

Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that "the pious Caliphate will start from Afghanistan." His chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also dreamed of re-establishing the caliphate, for then, he wrote, "history would make a new turn, G-d willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government." Another Al-Qaeda leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, publishes a magazine that declares "Due to the blessings of jihad, America's countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon," to be followed by the creation of a caliphate.

 

Or, as Mohammed Bouyeri wrote in the note he attached to the corpse of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker he had just assassinated, "Islam will be victorious through the blood of martyrs who spread its light in every dark corner of this earth."

 

Interestingly, Bouyeri was frustrated by the mistaken motives attributed to him, insisting at his trial: "I did what I did purely out of my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted."

 

Although terrorists state their jihadi motives loudly and clearly, Westerners and Muslims alike too often avert their eyes. Islamic organizations, Canadian author Irshad Manji observes, pretend that "Islam is an innocent bystander in today's terrorism."

<font size="3">

What the terrorists want is abundantly clear. It requires monumental denial not to acknowledge it, but we Westerners have risen to the challenge. </font>

 

<h1>JIV JAGO!!! JIV JAGO!!! JIV JAGO!!!</h1>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1724923_1,00.html

 

AN undercover investigation has caught leaders of a radical Islamic group inciting young British Muslims to become terrorists and praising the Tube bombers as “the fantastic four”. A Sunday Times reporter spent two months as a recruit inside the Saviour Sect to reveal for the first time how the extremist group promotes hatred of “non-believers” and encourages its followers to commit acts of violence including suicide bombings.

The reporter witnessed one of the sect’s leading figures, Sheikh Omar Brooks, telling a young audience, including children, that it was the duty of Muslims to be terrorists and boasting, just days before the July 7 attacks, that he wanted to die as a suicide bomber.

 

After the attacks that claimed 52 lives, another key figure, Zachariah, justified them by saying that the victims were not “innocent” people because they did not abide by strict Islamic laws. In the immediate aftermath the sect’s leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said: “For the past 48 hours I’m very happy.” Two weeks later he referred to the bombers as the “fantastic four”.

 

The evidence compiled by The Sunday Times in hours of transcripts and tapes will lend weight to moves, announced last week by Tony Blair, to proscribe such organisations for providing a breeding ground for would-be terrorists. The attorney-general’s office said last night it would investigate the recent comments by a number of Islamic radicals with a view to prosecution.

 

The Saviour Sect was established 10 months ago when its predecessor group Al-Muhajiroun was disbanded after coming under close scrutiny by the authorities. Its members meet in secret in halls, followers’ homes and parks. They are so opposed to the British state that they see it as their duty to make no economic contribution to the nation. One member warned our undercover reporter against getting a job because it would be contributing to the kuffar (non-Muslim) system...

 

Last week Omar Brooks stirred controversy with televised comments, but they were carefully chosen to avoid appearing to incite violence. On Saturday, July 2 he had been more forthright.

 

Speaking to a group of teenagers and families, he declared it was imperative for Muslims to “instil terror into the hearts of the kuffar” and added: “I am a terrorist. As a Muslim of course I am a terrorist.”

 

The 30-year-old, who claims to have had military training in Pakistan, said he did not want to go to Allah while sleeping in his bed “like an old woman”. Instead: “I want to be blown into pieces with my hands in one place and my feet in another.”

 

In public interviews Bakri condemned the killing of all innocent civilians. Later when he addressed his own followers he explained that he had in fact been referring only to Muslims as only they were innocent: “Yes I condemn killing any innocent people, but not any kuffar.”...

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1724923_4,00.html

 

Here is the full article

The Sunday Times - Britain

August 07, 2005

 

Focus: Undercover in the academy of hatred

By the Insight team

 

While London reeled under attack, the teachers of extremism were celebrating — and a Sunday Times reporter was recording every word

On a Friday evening late in July a small group of young Asian men gathered secretly in the grounds of a Victorian manor house on the edge of Epping Forest, east of London, to listen to their master.

Debden House, a property run as a bed-and-breakfast and campsite by Newham borough council, was chosen because they were running scared.

Earlier that day police had arrested the remaining three suspects for the failed 21/7 London bombing. While millions of Britons watched the dramatic final siege on television, members of the Saviour Sect had come to hear a different interpretation of the day’s events.

 

Among them was an undercover reporter from The Sunday Times. He joined a football kickabout as they waited for their leader. Others practised kick-boxing.

 

As they chatted the reporter was asked if he would be willing to wear a “strap” — slang for a suicide bomb belt. He laughed the suggestion off nervously and was relieved when everyone smiled.

 

At 8pm a bulky figure with a long beard and flowing white robe picked his way across the open field in the twilight with the aid of a walking stick. Two hours late, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed had finally arrived.

 

A Syrian with seven children who has lived on benefits for 18 years, this extremist cleric has been investigated by police for using inflammatory language but he has never been prosecuted.

 

Now, sitting cross-legged and picking at a bag of fried chicken and chips donated by one of the group, Bakri addressed his followers. He was perturbed by the day’s events.

 

Rather than express relief that the bomb suspects were in custody, he was disgusted that two of the men, arrested in Notting Hill in west London, had been made to strip down to their underwear.

 

There was, however, some consolation. Referring to the capture of the first bomb suspect in Birmingham two days earlier, he suggested the freak tornado in the city that followed was divine retribution for the police action. “It was so close to the area of arrest,” he said with a flicker of glee.

 

The meeting then took a more serious — and revealing — turn.

 

Referring to the speed with which police issued closed-circuit television pictures of the suspects in the London attacks, Bakri suggested that they should have covered their faces to conceal their identity from prying CCTV cameras. This sparked a discussion with his right-hand man, Anjem Choudhury, which was taped by our reporter.

 

Choudhury: “It’s CCTV, sheikh; that’s the killer. You can’t go anywhere without them monitoring you now: down the street; out the station.”

 

Bakri: “There is million of pictures on CCTV. None of them said this man or this man . . . but when somebody speak, saying my son is this, my son is that, they will take picture of son and they will look at CCTV.”

 

Choudhury: “Oh yeah, when somebody gives them a picture, then they can follow them around . . .”

 

Bakri: “People got big mouths. That’s why the link to the family is not going to help. These people should be completely rootless. That’s why Sheikh Osama (Bin Laden), he build all people young. He train the youth.”

 

Bakri suggested that people were pointing the finger of blame for the attacks at his group.

 

Choudhury replied: “Sheikh, they’re looking for the planners and the eggers-on. We fall into the later (sic) category. We’re not planning anything.”

 

 

DURING a two-month undercover investigation The Sunday Times has amassed hours of taped evidence and pages of transcripts which show how Bakri and his acolytes promote hatred of “non-believers” and “egg” their followers on to commit acts of violence, including suicide bombings.

 

The evidence details how his group, the Saviour Sect, preaches a racist creed of Muslim supremacy which, in the words of Bakri, aims at one day “flying the Islamic flag over Downing Street”.

 

In his two months with the sect, our reporter witnessed a gang of Bakri’s followers brutally beating up a Muslim who challenged their views. He listened as a succession of “religious leaders” ridiculed moderate Muslims and repeatedly justified war against the “kuffar” — non-Muslims.

 

He discovered that the core of the group consisted of about 40 young men guided by a handful of spiritual mentors. Many are of Bangladeshi origin, jobless and living in council flats in east London. They use aliases, taking the names of the prophet Muhammad’s companions.

 

At their meetings — which often included school-age teenagers — they were fed a constant diet of propaganda warning that the kuffar are out to destroy them.

 

Integration with British society is scorned, as is any form of democratic process. Followers are encouraged to exploit the benefits system. They avoid jobs which could bring them into contact with western women or might lead them to contribute to the economy of a nation they are taught to despise.

 

In regular lectures and sermons it is instilled into them that Islam is a religion of violence. While publicly they did not defend the London attacks, they speak differently in private.

 

Bakri, who faces possible deportation with the introduction of new terror laws announced by Tony Blair on Friday, was taped saying that he had been “very happy” since the July 7 London bombings, which killed 52 people. After the second attacks, he described the bombers as the “fantastic four”.

The undercover reporter, who has a Muslim background, first approached the group as a potential convert in June, three weeks before the first London attack. Posing as a university graduate who was disaffected because he could not find a job, he introduced himself to members of the Saviour Sect who ran a stall handing out leaflets on the Whitechapel Road, east London.

 

The sect and its interchangeable sister organisation, Al-Ghuraaba, were created after Bakri claimed to have closed down his militant extremist group Al-Muhajiroun last October.

 

The activities of Al-Muhajiroun, which notoriously praised the September 11, 2001 hijackers as the “Magnificent 19”, had been extensively investigated by anti-terrorist police. However, as The Sunday Times discovered, the Saviour Sect and Al-Ghuraaba were Al-Muhajiroun in all but name.

 

The sect came to prominence during the general election in April when it launched an intimidatory campaign against fellow Muslims to stop them voting. They were captured on film yelling and attacking members at a meeting of the mainstream Muslim Council of Britain.

 

George Galloway, the Respect party MP for Bethnal Green, east London, claimed that they made death threats against him when they disrupted one of his election campaign meetings, shouting him down as a “false prophet”.

 

At the time Bakri denied any connection to the sect and he has continued — publicly at least — to keep his distance from it. But members openly talked of him as their spiritual leader when our reporter first approached them.

 

They invited the reporter to attend one of their meetings that evening. It was to be the first of many lectures and sermons that he attended.

 

As he entered the entrance hall of the red-brick YMCA building in Beckton he was met initially with suspicion. Abdul Muhid, one of the sect’s leaders, questioned him closely. Within minutes Muhid, 22, was explaining that most new recruits were former heroin addicts who had found salvation.

 

Another man, Nasser, in his early twenties with a wispy henna-speckled beard, implored our reporter to “unlearn” the brand of Islam that he had been taught as a child and to adopt a new approach.

 

It was important to be unemployed, Nasser said, as taking a job would contribute to the kuffar system. He said he was receiving a jobseeker’s allowance and justified this by saying the prophet Muhammad also lived off the state and attacked it at the same time. “All money belongs to Allah anyway,” he said.

 

There were other ways to opt out. “All the brothers drive without insurance,” Nasser said proudly.

 

Bakri was the star attraction that night. Under bright fluorescent lights, he preached to the 50-strong audience about the need for a violent struggle to defend Muslims who, he claimed, were under constant attack.

 

With a new member in the audience, he added carefully that he was not actually “inciting anyone to violence in the UK”. But the violence was not far away. The following afternoon the reporter witnessed an Asian man being beaten by members of the Saviour Sect for “insulting” their version of Islam.

 

The victim had struck up an argument with one of the group at the market stall. When he threw a leaflet to the ground he was punched in the face and a fight started. Up to seven members of the sect jumped on the man and began kicking him as he lay on the floor. A late intervention by one of the other stallholders gave him the opportunity to escape — his face swollen and bleeding.

 

Unabashed, one of group, dressed in an Arabic shawl, shouted out to onlookers: “You should not feel sorry for him. He is a kuffar and deserves it.” Aged between 20 and 30, the members of the sect mostly wore traditional Islamic clothing, although some were in jeans.

 

Later that day it emerged that the man who had been assaulted had been a member of the moderate Young Muslim Organisation and was also a supporter of Galloway’s Respect party.

 

One of the sect told the reporter that “the brothers” needed to calm down and stop attracting attention to themselves in public. “They should have taken him round the corner and beaten him there,” he said.

ON July 3, Sheikh Omar Brooks of Al-Ghuraaba addressed the group at its Saturday night lecture.

 

The 30-year-old, who comes from a Caribbean background and used to work as an electrician, converted to Islam after coming under Bakri’s spell. He claimed that he had had “military training” in Pakistan. His speech that night at Oxford House, a Victorian hall in a side street off Bethnal Green, was intended to stir passions. He said that it was imperative for Muslims to “instil terror into the hearts of the kuffar”.

 

Occasionally sipping a can of Fanta and gesticulating wildly, he declared: “I am a terrorist. As a Muslim, of course I am a terrorist.”

 

It was not just our reporter’s group who were present. Schoolchildren in T-shirts bearing the words “mujaheddin” and “warriors of Allah” listened intently as Brooks said he did not wish to die “like an old woman” in bed.

 

“I want to be blown into pieces,” he declared, “with my hands in one place and my feet in another.”

 

Brooks — who caused an outcry last week when he told BBC2’s Newsnight that he would not condemn suicide bombers — called on a group of burqa-clad women in the audience to help the fight by making weapons.

 

He told the audience that it was a Muslim’s duty to stay apart from the rest of society: “Never mix with them. Never let your children play with their children.”

 

He added: “This hall is like our fortress against the kuffar and the so-called Muslims like the McB (the Muslim Council of Britain).”

 

Warming to his theme, he said: “They will build bridges and we will break them; they will build tall buildings and we will bring them down.” The audience rippled with laughter at the obvious reference to September 11, 2001.

 

Nasser’s brother, “Mr Islam” — believed to be Islam Uddin — had started the speeches that evening with his own fiery rhetoric.

 

He told the audience that Islam was a religion of violence and that Muhammad was the “prophet of slaughter, not peace”. He said Muslims must not be defeatist as “even now the brothers in Iraq are sending British, American and Iraqi colluders back in body bags”.

 

As his three-year-old son played at his side, he launched into a bitter racist attack. The Jews, he said, were “the most disgusting and greedy people on earth”.

 

Four days after this meeting, on July 7, London was hit by the first wave of suicide bombings. Immediately the spotlight was thrown onto extremist Muslim groups and, in particular, those linked to Bakri.

 

The sheikh avoided difficult questions about the attacks by refusing to answer his telephone. He advised all his followers to do the same in the case they incriminated themselves. The sect closed down its meetings and stopped leaflet campaigns, fearing reprisals.

 

While he was saying nothing publicly, Bakri did, however, address a private meeting held for prayers at the Selby Centre in Wood Green, north London.

 

Before the prayers started, our reporter joined a small group of men sitting on the floor of the dilapidated 1960s hall in a circle with Bakri.

 

Bakri sighed. “So, London under attack,” he said. Then, leaning forward, he added: “Between us, for the past 48 hours I’m very happy.”

 

He drew an analogy for his followers: “The mosquito makes the lion suffer and makes him kill himself. If the mosquito goes up a lion’s nose then he will make him go mad. So don’t underestimate the power of the mosquito.”

 

In his sermon during the prayer meeting he said that the July 7 attacks would make people “stand up and listen”. He blamed the bombs on the West because they had “raped and killed” innocent Muslims abroad.

 

Turning to concerns that “poor” people had been attacked in the bus bomb, he argued that this was permissible because the British Army was drawn from lower-income groups.

 

The congregation was instructed to avoid expressing disapproval of the attacks. “If you cannot support what has happened, then at least don’t condemn it,” Bakri said. If anyone were to ask what they felt about it, they should answer that as Muslims they have no “feelings”, “ideas” or “personal judgment”.

 

He said that it was better instead to pray for the mujaheddin and to welcome the “beautiful” news from Iraq that the insurgency there had increased.

 

A member of the congregation who had brought along his two children told the reporter after the sermon that the British could now feel the fear experienced every day by Muslims. Another said that the bombs were “a good start” and asked Allah to “bless those involved”.

 

The extent of the indoctrination of the members of the Saviour Sect became even clearer during the two weeks in July which saw the failed second attempt to bomb the London transport system.

 

During the twice-weekly lectures and Friday prayers, men who had struggled to find jobs and, in some cases, had drifted into drug abuse, were told that as true believers they were better than non-Muslims.

 

“The toe of the Muslim brothers is better than all the kuffar on the earth,“ Bakri said in one sermon. “Islam is superior, nothing supersedes it and the Muslim is superior.”

 

Other regular speakers claimed that Islam was constantly under attack in Britain — and that the best form of defence was attack.

 

One, who called himself Zachariah, claimed that the kuffar were trying to “wipe out (Muslims) from the face of the earth”. He implored the group “to cover the land with our blood through martyrdom, martyrdom, martyrdom”.

 

Zachariah preached that the non-believers were dispensable: “They’re kuffar. They’re not people who are innocent. The people who are innocent are the people who are with us or those who are living under the Islamic state.”

 

Another preacher, Abu Yahya, who is also reported to go by the name of Abdul Rahman Saleem, argued that Muslims were constantly being subjected to derogatory names by non-believers in an effort to demotivate them. The solution was aggression.

 

He said: “It says in the Koran that we must try as much as we can to terrorise the enemy . . . we terrorise those people who terrorise us.” His message to Britain was: “Because you’re a genuine democracy, all of you are liable.”

 

The influence on the younger members of the sect was obvious. Nasser told our reporter not to worry about those who died in the London attacks. They were, he said, “collateral damage” and they were kuffar anyway.

 

This is not, of course, something that they would say in public. When Bakri finally commented publicly on the bomb attacks, he condemned the deaths of “innocents”. But this was not quite the remorse it seemed.

 

At Friday prayers, on the day after the second bomb attacks, there was a buzz in the air as Bakri walked into the Selby hall in his brilliant white shalwar kameez.

 

In the preamble to the sermon he referred to the bombers as the “fantastic four”. He explained that his lament for the “innocent” applied only to Muslims. It was a linguistic sleight of hand which he summarised as: “Yes I condemn killing any innocent people, but not any kuffar.”

 

IN the wake of the bombings, politicians and police have become increasingly concerned that groups such as the Saviour Sect are radicalising disaffected young men into potential terrorists.

 

On Friday the prime minister said that the successor groups of Al-Muhajiroun, including the Saviour Sect, could be banned under new anti-terrorist proposals.

 

At a hastily arranged press conference in Chingford, Essex, in response to the proposals, Bakri said the Al-Muhajiroun group had never supported terror attacks in the UK.

 

After Friday prayers, five cars full of sect members — including our reporter — drove to Chingford to support him during his press conference. When they arrived, however, they were greeted by Abu Yahya and told to leave quickly without being seen.

 

One of the group later told our reporter that Bakri had not wanted it to appear as if he were the leader of an organisation. He was still unwilling for it to be known that he was the leader of the Saviour Sect.

 

Behind the scenes the rhetoric of the sect was not blunted by Blair’s crackdown. Zachariah weighed in with a new bloodcurdling sermon at Friday prayers at the Selby Centre.

 

“The message of Muhammad,” he told his young congregation, “is how to fight the enemies of Allah; how to execute the enemies of Allah . . . how to return them back to the Allah. Not just through da’wah (invitation); not just through being kind to them; but with the sword.”

 

He added: “Tony Blair is a Christian. He went to the Pope to praise him . . . and he went to Iraq for only one reason. Because of his ancestors who worked so hard to destroy Islam from the face of the earth.

 

“To dismantle Islam. To divide and rule . . . him and his ancestors worked hard from the crusaders in the beginning and then their empire building, installing their proxy leaders.”

 

If the words were just as fiery, the sect was immediately becoming more cautious about its public activities. When our reporter asked for more leaflets and videos, Nasser told him that they had been hidden away.

 

It appeared that the sect was covering its tracks and preparing to go underground.

 

 

Insight team: Ali Hussain and Jonathan Calvert

 

ABHORRENT BUT LEGAL: THE DIFFICULTIES IN PROSECUTING THOSE WHO PREACH HATE

 

Lawyers suggested yesterday that it would be difficult to prosecute Bakri and his fellow preachers under existing legislation, although many of their remarks would probably breach new laws proposed by the government to stamp out the glorification and endorsement of terrorism.

 

Geoffrey Bindman, a leading human rights solicitor, argued that Brooks’s apparent support for suicide bombings and his call for Muslims to “instil terror into the hearts” of non-believers might not be “specific” enough to warrant criminal proceedings.

 

“If he had said, ‘You must go out and blow yourself up on crowded Tube trains’, then you could say that he’s telling these people to go out and commit murder,” Bindman said. “An incitement in a general rhetorical statement would be difficult to prove as a crime.”

 

Duncan Lamont, a partner at the Charles Russell law firm, said: “These are intelligent people who are careful about what they say and do. Until now they have been able to cock a snook. Under existing legislation their comments are abhorrent but not illegal.”

 

However, Bakri’s description of the Tube bombers as “the fantastic four” and Brooks’s comments about the destruction of tall buildings would most likely fall foul of a new offence of indirect incitement or glorifying terrorist acts. “If you could satisfy a jury that he meant 9/11, then under what is proposed you have him bang to rights,” Lamont said.

[Guest guest]

I want to spread Islam, to convert the Hindus into Muslims

 

Mohammed Zackaria

Madrassa student

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4294147.stm

 

Bangladesh and Islamic militants

 

By Roland Buerk

BBC News, Dhaka

Violence has been increasing in Bangladesh

Bangladesh's government has recently banned two fringe Islamic political organisations, accusing them of being behind a recent spate of bomb explosions.

They acted after some of at least 20 suspects arrested after blasts last week at offices of Grameen and Brac, two local aid agencies, confessed to links with Jamatul Mujahideen and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh.

 

It is a major change in policy.

 

Until just days ago the government was insisting to reporters that Islamic militants were a figment of their imaginations.

 

The opposition Awami League has long claimed there is a problem.

 

At a recent meeting of its youth wing, the talk was of the Taleban and a fight for survival against fundamentalists.

 

 

No government would like to see their government destabilised by these kinds of incidents

 

Morshed Khan

Bangladesh foreign minister

 

The activists packed into a hot room chanting political slogans were convinced the country was under threat and that no one who wanted Bangladesh to remain secular and moderate was safe.

 

 

"I am very afraid," said Jahangir Kabir Nanak, the organisation's chairman.

 

"When I came this morning from my house, my son blocked me. He said, 'Please don't go, don't go. You may get killed. You may die'."

 

Spate of attacks

 

There have been several attacks on senior opposition figures.

 

On 27 January Shah AMS Kibria, a former finance minister, was assassinated in his constituency of Habiganj.

 

Last August the leader of the opposition, Sheikh Hasina, was lucky to survive.

 

 

Former PM Sheikh Hasina had a narrow escape last year

 

Grenades were thrown as she addressed a huge party rally in the centre of the capital. Twenty-two people were killed.

 

Other targets of bombings in the past five years have included cinemas, the British High Commissioner, religious shrines and journalists.

 

No one has been brought to justice.

 

The Awami League alleges that is because extremist groups are being protected by powerful sympathisers.

 

They point the finger at elements within Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote, two Islamic parties that are junior members of the ruling coalition.

 

The claim is rubbished by the government.

 

"Does it make sense?" says Morshed Khan MP, Bangladesh's foreign minister.

 

"No government would like to see their government destabilised by these kinds of incidents.

 

"It is a senseless comment and an irresponsible comment."

 

Islamic shift

 

All the indications are that militants in Bangladesh are few in number.

 

The vast majority of people are moderate and show no signs of wanting the Islamic revolution some extreme groups say they are fighting for.

 

 

I want to spread Islam, to convert the Hindus into Muslims

 

Mohammed Zackaria

Madrassa student

 

But a change is underway in the relationship between faith and politics in Bangladesh.

 

The country was founded in 1971 out of a secular, nationalist movement that called for independence from Pakistan.

 

The mainstream Islamic parties, which deny any links with militants, backed the losing side and for decades were discredited.

 

Now they are enjoying increasing support.

 

At the last elections in 2001 Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote won 20 seats between them.

 

One reason could be the record of the two largest secular parties.

 

The Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party have dominated since democracy was restored in 1991.

 

But the lives of millions of impoverished Bangladeshis have not improved dramatically.

 

Schooling faith

 

The religious parties, already in power as part of the coalition, say they could do better if they were in charge.

 

Islami Oikya Jote is already running schools for those excluded by their poverty from government secondary schools.

 

Madrassas, or Islamic schools, have been opened across the country.

 

In 1970 there were 1,500 registered with the government. Today there are nearly 8,000.

 

 

There is growing support for Islamists

 

 

Tens of thousands more have been set up unofficially and are outside official control.

 

Madrassas offer a free education; even food and accommodation are provided.

 

Students in madrassas get up before dawn to start lessons.

 

Although English, maths and science have been introduced at primary level the curriculum is still dominated by the Koran and the languages of the Middle East.

 

For the older students it is the only thing they learn.

 

Fifteen-year-old Mohammed Zackaria is typical.

 

His father sells shirts in the market in the town of Narayanganj and the family has just enough money to survive each day.

 

His ambition now is to become a cleric.

 

"I want to spread Islam, to convert Hindus into Muslims," he says as he sits outside the family's single-room house.

 

"I want to persuade those who don't go to the mosque to go."

 

 

Islamic madrassa schools are on the increase

 

Opponents of madrassas claim that some could be exploiting the zeal of students to recruit them to extremist groups.

 

The leader of Islami Oikya Jote denies it.

 

"If we're teaching the Koran we have to explain jihad (holy war) in theory," says Mufti Fazlul Huq Amini.

 

"But there is no practical training, weapons training does not exist in any madrassa in Bangladesh, as far as I know, and I oppose it.

 

"This is not the right time for jihad and we don't need it. We've always said we can progress through democracy," he says.

 

Bangladesh does have the potential for instability.

 

It has a huge population of desperately poor, frustrated by the slow pace of change.

 

The violence is perhaps one symptom of the need for the government to deliver.