Sunni/Shi'ite Jihad Update from Lebanon. "Radical Group Pulls In Sunnis As Lebanon's Muslims Polarize," by Ellen Knickmeyer for the Washington Post:
TRIPOLI, Lebanon -- Surrounded in the first hours of their battle with Lebanese forces in this northern Lebanese city, fighters of the Fatah al-Islam group shouted desperately from the windows of their hideouts. "God is great!" one resident, housewife Aziza Ahmed, recalled the fighters yelling. "Come be holy warriors with us!"Mohammed al-Jasm, a 28-year-old unemployed Lebanese Sunni, received his summons by cellphone on May 20, his family believes.
Chunky and unmarried, twice-failed in shopkeeping ventures and increasingly prone to spending his idle hours with fundamentalist friends, Jasm took his gun and rallied to the Sunni group, his brothers said.
Ah. The Washington Post has found the key. Chunky and unmarried? Failed in business? You're on your way to becoming a jihad terrorist.
He soon made a forlorn cellphone call to his mother: I'm wounded, he told her.Within hours, Jasm was dead, his body gouged by bullets, his jowly, bearded face pressed into the filthy street. A sister keeps an image of his body captured on a cellphone camera.
To his family, Jasm and a handful of other young Lebanese Sunnis who responded to Fatah al-Islam's appeals died hapless recruits in a conflict that leaders on all sides are promoting between the Muslim world's Sunni majority and Shiite minority.
In Lebanon, the polarization is felt ever more keenly. A governing bloc led by the Sunni-dominated Future Movement of parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is locked in an eight-month-old standoff with the Shiite movement Hezbollah, led by Hasan Nasrallah and backed by Iran and Syria. Both sides are arming.
In January, Siniora's administration received pledges of $7.6 billion from the United States, Europe and Persian Gulf states, including millions of dollars in military aid. The Bush administration is trying to strengthen Sunni countries it considers moderate, among them Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, to counter Shiite entities such as Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.
In Tripoli, residents say they have watched the expansion of groups dedicated to the more strident forms of Sunnism, especially since Hezbollah's war with Israel last year. This growth includes politicking by leaders of the Salafi sect, a fundamentalist stream of Sunni Islam that traditionally rejects politics as an impious Western concept.
At the same time, prominent figures in the Salafi community here have served as intermediaries between their flock and Hariri. In the mosques, "our preachers call upon the people to become part of the political process," said Daii al-Islam al-Shahal, a member of a prominent Salafi family in Tripoli and founder of a group he describes as dedicated to charity, education and preaching.
"There's a relationship between ourselves and Sheik Saad when it's needed," Shahal said. "The biggest Sunni political power is Hariri. The biggest Sunni religious power are the Salafis. So it's natural."
Hariri denies that promoting Sunni political power trickles down to support for armed groups. "We sponsor culture and education, not terrorism," he said in an interview in Beirut. "I am the son of Rafiq al-Hariri -- we never had blood on our hands and we never will."
"I am concerned about Iranian intervention in the affairs of other countries," Hariri added. "But that doesn't mean that we will sponsor Sunni radicalism. Radicalism is not the answer."
The U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have fed Sunni militancy, and U.S. and European leaders are inciting it anew in the building confrontation with Iran and Hezbollah, said Alistair Crooke, former Middle East adviser under European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
For more on Alistair Crooke see here.
With U.S. and European governments encouraging the alignment of Sunnis against Shiites, "it should not be surprising that in November a group of Salafis could think it would be important to come to Lebanon to defend their Sunni people against a growing threat," Crooke said. Fatah al-Islam was founded by Shaker al-Abssi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, who arrived in northern Lebanon late last year after serving a prison sentence in Syria.Abssi reportedly embraces the ideology of Osama bin Laden and seeks to promote Islamic fundamentalism among Palestinians in Lebanon before eventually attacking Israel.
Read it all.
One less radical.
The indications are that the US/Saudi genuises who brought as UBL are at it again - arming Salafi nut jobs to be their proxy soldiers.
"Hapless recruits"?
Isn't that how you translate "Ummah" from the Arabic?
Mohammad, pied piper, or rat?
Pretty good article from Wapo for a change.
"it should not be surprising that in November a group of Salafis could think it would be important to come to Lebanon to defend their Sunni people "
Can someone enlighten me please, whats up in November???
Honestly chunky does come to mind now when I think of jihadis now, many of the Fatah and Hamas fighters i saw on TV the last few days didn't look like they had been raiding the falafel shops in between gun battles.
Some clerics, he said, "are telling Sunnis, 'You have nothing to do here. You might as well go fight Iran, for our Sunni brothers there.' "
from the article
But wait. Aren't Sunni and Shi'a Muslims brothers? That's what the Saudi Prince said!
Isn't the nation of Islam one big happy (except for an occasional fourteen-century-long feud) family?
After Hayek's funeral, Hariri summoned the family to Beirut, said Nazha and Fatima, the dead man's sisters. Hariri received them with ceremony, telling them that Hayek and the others killed in the sectarian brawl were "brothers and martyrs," the sisters said. (This is the Hariri that said he will never have blood on his hands?)
So it is true. You can kill another Muslim and still be a martyr.
What are we waiting for? Give them arms and send them all on their way to Paradise. Surely Allah has enough virgins (or raisins) in waiting.
I believe that Iran is behind these Sunni insurgents. The goal of Iran is to destabalize the Lebanese government and replace it with a government completely controlled by Hezbollah. Kind of the Iranian Helter Skelter Plan.
I believe that Iran is behind these Sunni insurgents. The goal of Iran is to destabalize the Lebanese government and replace it with a government completely controlled by Hezbollah. Kind of the Iranian Helter Skelter Plan.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070615/wl_mideast_afp/egyptreligionunrest_070615172744
CAIRO (AFP) - Violent clashes have erupted between Muslims and Coptic Christians in the northern city of Alexandria and elsewhere in Egypt, newspapers reported on Friday.
http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102201.html
Pirates demand ransom
The hijackers of a Danish cargo ship off the coast of Somalia last week have made a monetary demand for the release of the ship and its crew
Somali pirates indicated Monday they are demanding a ransom for the release of the cargo ship ‘Danica White’ and its five-man crew, according to private investigation firm Protocol, which is providing intelligence information to authorities on the case.
The amount of the ransom has not been made public. The crew has been held now for 10 days after being captured in the Arabian Sea on its way from Dubai to Mombassa, Kenya.
It is not known what cargo the ship is carrying, but a former crewman alleged Saturday that in April the ship had carried 220 tons of bombs that were to be eventually sent to the Middle-East.
Neither the Foreign Ministry nor the intelligence services have commented on the ship’s cargo.
http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102201.html
Pirates demand ransom
The hijackers of a Danish cargo ship off the coast of Somalia last week have made a monetary demand for the release of the ship and its crew
Somali pirates indicated Monday they are demanding a ransom for the release of the cargo ship ‘Danica White’ and its five-man crew, according to private investigation firm Protocol, which is providing intelligence information to authorities on the case.
The amount of the ransom has not been made public. The crew has been held now for 10 days after being captured in the Arabian Sea on its way from Dubai to Mombassa, Kenya.
It is not known what cargo the ship is carrying, but a former crewman alleged Saturday that in April the ship had carried 220 tons of bombs that were to be eventually sent to the Middle-East.
Neither the Foreign Ministry nor the intelligence services have commented on the ship’s cargo.
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/003789.html
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Hizb ut-Tahir seize power in Kindergarten
Men from Hizb ut-Tahir have seized power in a privately owned kindergarten in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen. They demand that children are not taught democratic values. The authorities threaten to close the institution down.
The municipal administration of Copenhagen has under dramatic circumstances taken over the administration of the institution and threatens to close it down, according to a report in the Danis newspaper 'Berlingske Tidende'
This unusual step has been taken after parents and members of the Islamistic party Hizb ut-Tahir earlier this year have gained majority in the governing board and taken control over the institution named Salam, and demand that the children are not taught according to democratic values.
The parents have also demanded segregation, different playground for boys and girls. Last year, furious parents demanded the destruction of Christmas related items the children had picked up at a visit to the zoo, claiming the Santa Claus headgear represent Christian values.
In February, after Hizb ut-Tahir gained the upper hand in the board, the leader of the institution quit her job together with another pedagogue. The institution is now lead by a team of 6 believing Muslim women, which has lead the auditors of the municipality of Copenhagen to raise the alarm. The municipality has now taken direct control over the place until a new leadership has been appointed.
"It is unquestionably the tension between what is called pious or fundamentalistic Islam and traditional Danish democratic thought that is at the core of this conflict. The municipality has on other occasions experienced conflicts in its institutions, also religious conflicts, but never has the tension been as high as now", says Jan Dehn of 'Children and Youth office'.
One of the leading members of the parents group, the convert Abdul Hamid Henrik Lund, confirms his connection with Hizb ut-Tahir: "All the parents are what the Danes will call fanatics. We are Muslims and determined that 'the brain of our children get the right programming' (sic). We don't want them to 'run about on Blagards Plads (a square in Copenhagen), behaving like monkeys' (sic). Those children cause trouble because they have neither Danish nor Muslim roots. To us it is important that children grow up with values - they must know what is halal and haram."
Translation by Wiking.
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