Here, we have 15 inner spiritual strugglers who were caught in a failed attempt to topple a secular government. "Azerbaijan sentences 15 Islamists for plot attempt," from Reuters:
BAKU, Dec 10 (Reuters) - An Azeri court on Monday sentenced 15 members of an Islamist group to long terms in prison for a foiled plot to overthrow the government.
Led by 32-year-old Said Dadashbeily, and known as "Said's Group", they were detained last January and court procedures started in October.
Dadashbeily, who used to work for a foreign company in Baku, was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Other members of the group received lesser terms.
All denied the charge of attempting a coup d'etat, links to Iranian organisation Sepakh, and other crimes.
Most Azeri are Muslim, but the government under President Ilham Aliyev is strictly secular. The administration is close to Washington and Azerbaijan has troops serving alongside U.S. forces in Iraq.
In the past five years, authorities in Azerbaijan have closed down several Islamic charities with links to Gulf states.
Azerbaijan last month said it detained followers of the Wahhabi branch of Islam, including an army officer, who were armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons and about to attack the U.S. and British Embassies.
Simply another example of the "war in Iraq" failing in the general vacinity. Short-term gains are nice on paper, but the victory we all seek is non-existent.
Islam has, and will further continue to spread by the sword, for that is what it does, under the directive of its prophet, never ceasing under its own volition, but only responding to blunt force in oposition.
A sad reality, but a reality nonetheless.
SOME FACTS ON AZERBAIJAN:
Officially, there is religious freedom.
Religion stats: 83-84 % Muslim (about 70 % of them Shia, 30 % of them Sunni - many fairly nominal); 11 % no religion (legacy of the Soviet era); about 5 % Christian (mostly Russian or Armenian background), a few Jews (0.3%), and a few Baha’is.
In 1990 there were only about 40 ethnic Azeri Christians; by 2001 there were an estimated 2000 and counting. The Azeri New Testament (translated by an Azeri Muslim-background believer ), is circulating nicely, and the whole Bible is going into both dialects of Azeri. The Bible is also being translated into five languages of indigenous minorities.
Let us hope the authorities in Azerbaijan can continue to keep the lid on the jihad preachers and plotters.
DA,
Universally protected freedom of conscience in matters of personal belief and individual choice is the antidote to tyranny and persecution everywhere.
"...who were armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons..."
......Principle items of Islamic negotiations, usually stored in mosques...
After World War II Soviet forces occupied large parts of Azeri-populated Northern Iran. Only Western pressure caused them finally to leave.
One-half of Iran's population consists of Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, and Arabs (the Arabs in the oil-producing area, in southwestern Iran next to Iraq, may or may not turn into the "Khuzistanian people" asking for their "legitimate rights" -- if they do, it will be fun to watch the government in Tehran attempt to point out what an obvious invention, for political reasons, that is, even as it keeps up a steady campaign on behalf of the "Palestinian people"). The Kurds can be encouraged by the spectacle of an autonomous or still better, independent Kurdistan in what had been northern Iraq. The Baluchis can be given military equipment to make things more difficult for the Islamic regime.
And the Azeris, who constitute one-quarter to one-third of Iran's population, may decide they no longer wish to be part of the Persian Empire, not now that they can join a secular Azerbaijan to the north, and trade the religious fanaticism and corruption of the Islamic Republic of Iran for something while, it is not New England town-meeting democracy, is at least a place where one can breathe, and even think, in a way not possible in Iran today.
A dimidiated Iran, or an Iranian regime fighting to keep from being dimidiated, and losing much of its population and, in the southwest, much of its oil wealth, is an Iran far less able to protect, or promote, its nuclear project.
A serious sentence is death.
We did not get Al Qaida admitting defeat by giving excuses and demanding mercy until we killed or captured about twenty thou jihadists in Iraq the last year.
Governments have to get firm with fundamentalist overreaching.
Our problem is fundamentalist islam which takes its marching orders from the evil trinity of the koran the hadith and the sira - and centered in one bloodthirsty immoral child rapist called Mohammed.
The sanction ought to be increased, to encourage others like Gadahn, or Lindt, or Reid, or Hooper - so they will be less likely to take up with (their excuse), the pathology of the day.
"In the past five years, authorities in Azerbaijan have closed down several Islamic charities with links to Gulf states." - article
Azerbaijan, a Muslim state, chooses to close chrarities linked to their coreligionists in the Gulf states. Yet, in Europe and America these Mosques/Charities/Advocacy groups go unfettered, given tax-exemptions, and are seen to be "positive" things in our "Multi-cultural" society.