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Guang Eng labels Umno Penang 'racist' over mosque land allegations By Anisah Shukry April 04, 2012 [The Malaysian Insider] KUALA LUMPUR, April 4 - Lim Guan Eng accused Umno Penang today of racism for choosing only to highlight the alleged disposal of land earmarked for mosques in the Bayan Mutiara project. The Penang chief minister said that if Umno's claims were true and that the land been reclassified in the 102.6-acre sale of Bayan Mutiara to Ivory Property Group Bhd (IPGB), then issue affects both Muslim and non-Muslims. "Why then is Umno not highlighting that non-Muslim land for religious worship...

March 8, 2009 PATTANI, Thailand, March 7 (Reuters) - S SNIPPET: "Pattani and the neighbouring provinces of Narathiwat and Yala, abutting Malaysia, were a Muslim sultanate until annexed a century ago by predominantly Buddhist Thailand. Around 80 percent of people there are Muslim and speak a Malay dialect. The violence has ranged from drive-by shootings to bombings and beheadings and often targets Buddhists and Muslims associated with the Thai state, such as police, soldiers, government officials and teachers."

February 26, 2009 Thailand: Jihadists behead three people this week, bringing their total to 47 "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks..." Qur'an 47:4 They just want Sharia -- as always. "Thailand: More beheadings in troubled Muslim south," from AKI, February 26 (thanks to C. Cantoni): Narathiwat, 26 Feb. (AKI) - Suspected Islamist rebels have decapitated three people in Thailand's Muslim dominated south in the past week, police said on Thursday. Three people were killed late on Wednesday in the southern Thai province of Narathiwat , and one of the victims was decapitated, police said....

February 20, 2009 "Thailand jihadis decapitate soldiers" SNIPPET: "PATTANI, Thailand (AP) — Suspected Muslim insurgents ambushed a military convoy and beheaded two soldiers in southern Thailand on Friday in the second such attack this month, police said. More than 20 gunmen armed with automatic rifles ambushed a group of five pairs of soldiers traveling on motorcycles after they finished escorting teachers to school in Yala province, said police Col. Somphien Phuwaphongphitak." SNIPPET: "The insurgents target Buddhists and also Muslims who they believe have collaborated with the government [i.e., "apostates"]. The attacks — which include drive-by shootings and bombings — are...

Suspected militants shot dead a Muslim and two Buddhists in two separate incidents in Thailand's far south, police said on Tuesday, the latest violence in a five-year separatist rebellion. The 24-year-old Muslim was shot dead and his mother was injured as they rode a motorcycle to a rubber plantation in Pattani, one of three southern provinces roiled by violence that has killed 3,200 people since 2004. In a nearby district, two Buddhist truck drivers were shot dead and mutilated by four unknown gunmen at a rubber factory, police said. The killers sped away on two motorcycles with one of the...

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

Suspected separatists crucify informant in Thailand's deep South Nov 29, 2007, 3:55 GMT Pattani, Thailand - In a new spate of atrocities in Thailand's troubled deep South, suspected separatists crucified a Thai-Muslim man for being an informant and beheaded two Thai-Buddhists, military sources said Thursday. The body of Thai-Muslim Abdulloh Malohsae, an assistant headman in Rueso district, Narathiwat province, was found Wednesday nailed to a cross with his throat slashed, and a note pinned to his chest reading, 'This is how the running dogs of Thai officials come to an end.' It was the first time separatists had crucified their...

Suspected Muslim insurgents opened fire on nine Buddhists who were riding in a commuter van in Thailand's restive south Wednesday, killing all of them execution-style... The attack prompted officials to step up security in the south, where a Muslim insurgency has claimed more than 2,000 lives since 2004. Suspected insurgents bombed the van as it slowed into a curve in the road, which they also had blocked with a large tree trunk, said police Lt. Kitti Mankhong, a duty officer in the Yaha district of Yala province, where the attack occurred. Armed with assault rifles, the attackers first shot at...

Muslim villager shot dead 05nov05 A MUSLIM villager has been shot dead by suspected Islamic insurgents in Thailand's restive south while walking home after evening prayers at a mosque, police said today. Leeya Samukama, 27, was killed in an ambush late yesterday in Narthiwat, one of Thailand's violence-plagued southern provinces, they said. The suspected militants also shot and wounded Leeya's friend, Nasuha Ar-ware, 25, who was admitted to hospital, police said, adding they collected several shells from an AK47 assault rifle from the scene. Violence in the three Muslim-majority provinces of mainly Buddhist Thailand has killed more than 1000 people...

Pattani boy, four, named after Osama Acouple in Pattani who named their only son ''bin Laden'' after the Saudi-born fugitive say they hope he will grow up as ''smart'' as the man being hunted by the US in connection with the devastating attacks on New York and Washington on Sept 11, 2001. The boy, now four, was born on the day of the terror attacks which Osama bin Laden is accused of plotting. Ibrohim Jae-rong, 43, a villager of Panarae district, said the district office refused to register his choice of name, and urged the family to switch to Nuruddin....

Bangkok, 9 Nov. (AKI) - As the violence in Thailand's hree southernmost provinces shows no sign of abating, prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has announced an impending “D-Day” against the rebels. In the last 24 hours, Muslim insurgents have attacked Yala Provincial Hall and a series of other minor targets, while Bangkok has announced the killing of Hasueming Jarong, a leading member of the Pattani Mujahideen, one of the groups fighting for an independent Islamic state comprising Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said that the government has prepared a large scale offensive against the rebels to be launched...

Asaha Dajing, 19, appeared to be thriving at an Islamic college in Yala, 20 miles north of this remote village. He had just won a $125 creative writing scholarship, big money in these parts. His family was proud. But Asaha had friends his parents didn't know about: Islamic radicals who were recruiting impressionable young men for a mysterious holy war here in the jungles of southern Thailand. Asaha's secret life was exposed only by his death. He was killed by police along with 13 other militants April 28 when they staged a suicidal assault on a government office near this...

Pattani _ His parents hoped monkhood would help him appreciate the Lord Buddha's teachings, but an attack on Wat Phromprasit on Oct 16 gave Charoen Prathumthes an answer to what he should do with his future. After spending some three months during the Buddhist Lent, he left the monkhood on Oct 24 and immediately joined 43 other villagers as a member of a village defence volunteer team in Ban Nok in Panare district where the temple is located.

BANGKOK, Aug 28 (Reuters) - A bloody insurgency in Muslim southern Thailand is a struggle for the independence of its ethnic Malay majority involving tens of thousands of people ready to die for their cause, a senior separatist figure said. In his first interview with a major news organisation since violence flared 20 months ago, a spokesman for the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) said his movement had no ties to international groups such as Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda or its southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah. "We have no connection with those terrorists," the senior member of PULO,...

Bangkok - The bodies of a Buddhist couple were found shot and nearly decapitated on Friday in restive southern Thailand, adding to the five other beheadings in the past three weeks, police said. Jad Suwanchatree, 52, a defence volunteer in Muang district of Yala province, and his wife Serm, 51, were riding their motorcycle to tap rubber from a plantation when they were killed. "As Jad stopped his motorcycle to remove wood which blocked the road, he was shot and slashed in his neck, as was his wife," police in Yala said. "Their heads were not totally separated from their...

POLICE in central Thailand arrested four people and seized weapons that were apparently being sent to the country's troubled Muslim-majority south, officials said today. The arrests took place in Nakhon Ratchasima town on Thursday, hours before a series of attacks by unidentified gunmen left six people dead and three injured in the southern province of Pattani. Three of the arrested men are Thai Muslims, said police Lt. Col. Prasong Ruangdej. The fourth is a Buddhist. Thailand has a Buddhist majority, though Muslims are predominant in the far south. Prasong said police, acting on a tip-off, intercepted a truck in which...

THAILAND, BANGKOK -- Police suspect an Islamic group was involved in the bombing of a train in southern Thailand, the national police chief said Tuesday -- suggesting for the first time a link between Muslim activists and a rash of violence in the area. The small bomb, left in a box on the train, exploded Monday when the train was at Yala station. Two security guards who were inspecting the suspicious package were wounded when it blew up. Muslims are a majority in the south of Thailand, but make up just 4 percent of the country's 62 million people, who...