It is probably just a matter of time before we see high profile kidnappings in Europe as are described as being planned here. From UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.
An Algerian terrorist group is calling on fellow extremists to track and strike government and civilian compatriots in France.In an Internet message, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat called on its "Muslim brothers in France" to survey, track and "ambush" high-level political, military and economic officials on French soil, Le Figaro reports.
"Our real enemies aren't only the military rulers," the GSPC said in its Internet message reportedly published in early August. "But also numerous civilians known for their allegiance to French leaders."
"Support your brothers in Algeria by tracking these criminals in France," the statement reportedly read.
The GSPC was founded in 1998 as a splinter group of the Armed Islamic Group, which launched a bloody insurgency against Algeria's military backed government in the early 1990s. The ensuing civil war killed as many as 150,000 people...
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Young Australian Muslims call for modern imams
23 August 2005
By MICHAEL PERRY
SYDNEY: Young Australian Muslims called yesterday for an end to "hell-fire and brimstone" Islamic teachings and for imams to be trained and accredited to ensure their teachings fit a modern, multi-cultural Australia.
In light of the London bombings by four young British Muslims, young Australian Muslims said the local Islamic community must modernise and further integrate into mainstream society, warning its isolated youth were vulnerable to radicals.
A day before prime minister John Howard holds an Islamic summit in the capital Canberra, he also called on Muslim leaders to take responsibility within their communities to prevent religious-based terrorism and violence.
"We do not believe there is a threat within the Islamic community of terrorism in Australia," Kuranda Seyit, head of the moderate youth Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations, told Reuters.
But Seyit, a former school teacher, said there were some Australian Muslims who sympathised with al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and who had the potential to incite violence.
Four British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people on July 7 when they detonated bombs on three trains and a bus.
Seyit said Australia's smaller mosques needed to be brought into line with the country's mainstream mosques.
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"The smaller mosques are the ones that are still using an archaic and dogmatic approach to teaching Islam - the hell-fire and brimstone approach," he said.
"What is needed is more dialogue with these imams."
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said earlier in August that up to 60 suspected Islamic militants in Sydney and Melbourne were under surveillance.
Australia sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and has been on a medium-level security alert since shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. But Australia has never suffered a major peacetime attack at home.
"A common thread which has run through extremists' attacks and...declarations has been the use of a perverted interpretation of Islam," Howard told reporters.
Muslims have been in Australia for some 200 years, originally arriving as camel drivers to help explore the outback. Muslims currently make up 1.5 per cent of the 20 million population and live mainly in Sydney and Melbourne.
Seyit called on Howard's Islamic summit to consider the Forum's Modernising Muslims Six Point Plan, which called for the accreditation and training of imams.
He said imams who migrated from the Middle East came from very different societies to modern, multi-cultural Australia.
The Forum's plan called on imams to have a certain level of competency to lead a mosque, pass a certain level of English fluency, have a basic knowledge of Australian society, its norms, traditions and politics, and undergo a character test.
It also called on the Australian government to help establish the country's first Islamic institute which would produce home-grown imams. "The aim is to produce a new generation of home-grown Australian imams, fluent in English and accustomed to Australian society," said Seyit.
!
Everyone knows that Islam is the religion of peace, and "jihad" means an inner philosophical struggle, so this is just the jihadists saying they want to sit down and have a philosophical discussion with the French. "Ambush" is just their way of saying "discuss".
Why is anyone surprised.....
If you were in the muslims shoes and you saw your
"Brothers working with the Infidels supporting their governments..."
According to everything you have ever been taught these people are Worse than the infidels...
For they have turned against Allah and his prophet.. And the penalty isnt an ice cream cone.
They are traitors unholy ...
As a "Good Muslim" I would have to take action..
Else i would also become an apostate..
One of the less "moderate"muslim leaders in Australia has recently stated that the australian muslims should just sit tight,procreate and wait for the day they will be a majority,then they will invite the non-muslims to please leave....
Prime Minister Howard has repeated variations of the following theme on several occasions over the past few weeks:
"A common thread which has run through extremists' attacks and...declarations has been the use of a perverted interpretation of Islam."
I suspect that the same groups who’ve so thoroughly misinformed GWB and Condi about Islamic teachings, customs and traditions are now also working for the PM and his staff.
So let us ask Prime Minister Howard, a good and Christian man, to show precisely how, and to what degree, those Muslim extremists have, as he insists, so perversely misinterpreted their own religion.
Of course, he’s probably no more knowledgeable about Islam than GWB or Condi.
So I suggest that one of Kuranda Seyit’s first tasks, if he’s honest and trustworthy, should be to explain to the Prime Minister that it is he, not the ‘extremists’, who has misinterpreted Islam.
Until so informed, by honest folks, he will continue to publicly express his uninformed ‘common thread’ theme.
And Australian Muslims will continue to snicker at him.