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Arab American pilgrims from the Metro Detroit area where attacked and assaulted, for what appears to be sectarian reasons, on Wednesday, Oct. 16, while performing the rituals of Hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia. Mina is a town near Mecca, where pilgrims sleep in tents and stone three pillars, representing the satan, with seven pebbles, on the last day of Hajj. The Saudi government has built thousand of air-conditioned tents to accommodate pilgrims, during this ritual. A known female community leader said that when the local group entered Tent Section 40, an area designated for American, European and Australian Muslims, a...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Southern California doctors and health officials will be on the lookout for Muslim pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia with flu-like symptoms in the wake of a reported outbreak of a SARS-like virus in the Middle East, according to a report. L.A. County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Jonathan Fielding told the Los Angeles Times severe coughs or other similar symptoms could signal the arrival of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, to the Southland. While MERS-CoV has so far only been reported in the Mideast and Europe, doctors and emergency departments will be...

Virus Hangs Over Islamic Pilgrimage To Mecca Health officials in the U.S. will be on the alert for anyone returning from the Middle East with symptoms of MERS, a mysterious and potentially deadly illness. Laila Shifa, left, helps her daughter, Homaira Hamid, center, and husband Jahan pack in their Northridge apartment for their hajj pilgrimage. The couple are bringing face masks to help guard against the MERS virus, which has been detected in the Middle East. By Eryn Brown October 9 After they got married last year, Homaira and Jahan Hamid decided they would embark on the hajj pilgrimage to...

More than two million Muslims descend on Mecca for the annual Hajj each year. Saudi authorities are advising pilgrims to wear face masks in overcrowded places. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File) (CNSNews.com) – As Saudi and U.N. health authorities report new infections from a troubling new respiratory disease, there are concerns that the approaching Hajj – the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca – could increase the risk of spreading the virus as pilgrims return to their home countries. Meanwhile the U.S. government, in a notice published in the Federal Register Wednesday, declared that the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV, or...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. President Obama's choice to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was approved by the Senate on a vote of 63-34, with thirteen Republicans voting to confirm him. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) created quite a stir with his 13-hour filibuster against the Brennan nomination. Not until he received written assurances from Attorney General Eric Holder that U.S. citizens would not be targeted for killing by drones on U.S. soil would the doughty Kentuckian stand down. Good for him. John Brennan then proceeded to take the Oath of Office, as administered by Vice...

Howls of rage went up after the Joint Terrorism Task Force, guns drawn, arrested Maher Hawash in the parking lot of an Intel Corporation facility in March, 2003, and placed him in solitary confinement. The protests intensified as prosecutors detained him without charges for more than a month in an Oregon jail while they pored over the evidence. Given Maher Mofeid "Mike" Hawash's biography, this all came as a particular shock, for he personified the American success story. A Palestinian born in Nablus in 1964 and reared in Kuwait, he arrived in the United States in 1984, earning degrees in...

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen, leading to theories that there may have once been a church in Mecca. A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of Mecca, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Paul Yule, an archaeologist from Heidelberg in Germany, has dated the 5feet 7inch tall relief which shows a man with chains of jewellery, curls and spherical eyes to around 530AD. ... The figure is barefoot, which was typical of Coptic saints....

Nigeria has suspended all Hajj flights to Saudi Arabia after the authorities there deported more than 170 women who had arrived without a male escort. About 1,000 Nigerian women intending to make the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca have been detained since Sunday.

Historian Tom Holland has claimed that Koran makes little or no reference to religious city of Mecca. London : A British channel has come under fire over a programme it broadcast on the history of Islam. The programme, ‘Islam: The Untold Story’, broadcast on Channel 4, triggered nearly 550 complaints to both the television regulator Ofcom and the channel’s presenter Tom Holland. According to the Daily Mail, Holland has been accused of distorting the history of Islam by claiming the Koran makes little or no reference to the religious city of Mecca. He has also been subjected to a number...

A course for U.S. military officers has been teaching that America's enemy is Islam in general, not just terrorists, and suggesting that the country might ultimately have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina without regard for civilian deaths, following World War II precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima or the allied firebombing of Dresden. The Pentagon suspended the course in late April when a student objected to the material. The FBI also changed some agent training last year after discovering that it, too, was critical of Islam.

Here me out before you conclude. I have a rational argument for what I am proposing. In WWII, to defeat Japan America used psychological warfare as part of the battle. They knew that the ultimate destruction of the Japanese Empire at that time was to defame their leader/god figure. By humiliating him on national television forcing him to claim to the world that he is indeed not god and that he has been defeated allowed Japan to succeed and renew in the future. What we did is why Japan is such a successful country today. Islam is using that exact...

Saudia Arabia would move quickly to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran successfully tests an atomic bomb, according to a report. Citing an unidentified Saudi Arabian source, the Times newspaper in the U.K. (which operates behind a paywall) said that the kingdom would seek to buy ready-made warheads and also begin its own program to enrich weapons-grade uranium. The paper suggested that Pakistan was the country most likely to supply Saudi Arabia with weapons, saying Western officials were convinced there was an understanding between the countries to do so if the security situation in the Persian Gulf gets worse. Pakistan and...

Juhayman ibn Muhammad ibn Sayf al-Otaibi believed that an Islamic uprising was needed in order to create a more fundamentalist Sunni Islamic state. From an outside point of view this may appear rather strange given the fact that Islamic Sharia law governs Saudi Arabia and not one single Christian church or Buddhist temple is allowed. However, according to Juhayman al-Otaibi the ruling elites in Saudi Arabia were self-serving and radical change was needed. This single event in late 1979 still shakes the Sunni Islamic world today and the same applies to covert work done by CIA operatives. After all, the...

In a November 8 article titled “The West Wages Jihad But Forbids Us From Doing So” published in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, prominent Saudi preacher Dr. Aidh Al-Qarni wrote that the West’s hypocritical stance – of engaging in warfare and stockpiling arms while at the same time urging others to be peaceful and to refrain from manufacturing weapons – is simply a clever tactic of warfare. The West, Al-Qarni said, understands that power and military supremacy are far more important than cultural heritage or moral virtue; therefore, it builds up its own strength while keeping its rivals weak by...

The new tower on the skyline in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, looks incredibly like London’s Big Ben — and there’s a good reason. A number of Muslims are calling for Greenwich Mean Time — the standard by which the world sets its clocks — be replaced by official Mecca time. “This summer, the world’s largest clock began its first official duty: marking time during Ramadan in Mecca—Islam’s holiest city,” reports Salman Hameed writing for Religion Dispatches. ”This colossal clock bears a striking resemblance to Big Ben, and the tower that hosts it is six times taller than the British landmark, making...

Michelle and I extend our greetings for a happy Eid al-Adha to Muslims worldwide and congratulate those performing Hajj. Thousands of Muslim Americans are among those who have joined one of the world’s largest and most diverse gatherings in making the pilgrimage to Mecca and nearby sites. As Muslims celebrate this Eid, they will also commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son by distributing food to those less fortunate around the world. They join the United States and the international community in relief efforts to assist those struggling to survive in the Horn of Africa and those recovering from the...

Uncle Sam is getting a little weird. Make that a lot weird. Having dumped hundreds of billions of dollars into a sinkhole called Afghanistan--populated by misogynistic, pederastic, tribalistic and religiously supremacist primitives--to no avail, he has hit on a new plan for winning those ever-elusive Afghan ''hearts and minds.'' (snip) When nature calls, Uncle Sam has decided he wants every U.S. Marine equipped with a map and compass, or some other way of knowing direction. This is to ensure that no U.S. Marine in Afghanistan urinates in the direction of Mecca ever again. Now, there's a winning strategy.

PC lunacy has no place on the battlefield.(NCtimes) -As the war in Afghanistan enters its 11th year, thousands of Camp Pendleton troops are getting much more detailed training in Afghan cultural practices. Years of lessons learned about roadside bombs also are being tapped to better prepare more than 7,000 base troops leaving for Afghanistan in about 12 weeks to spot the weapons responsible for most deaths and injuries. “The training is a lot more thorough and mission-oriented now,” said Gunnery Sgt. Dan Tremore, who was helping to oversee training sessions last week for nearly 100 troops. “It’s extremely important in...

It needs to be noted that Arabs had been making the pilgrimage to Mecca-to the enormous granite Ka'aba, the old shrine at the center of the city-for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, before Islam to pay tribute to these 360 gods represented inside the Ka'aba's walls. Muhammad destroyed all but two -- that of the Virgin Mary, and that of Christ. However, even those representations would eventually be banned under Islam's subsequent prohibition of images. This prohibition was not endorsed by the Prophet. Controversies have exploded over images depicting the Prophet Muhammad, namely his depiction as a turbaned terrorist in...

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will officially launch a $10.6-billion (7.3-billion-euro) extension project Friday for the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest city, media reports said. The project is intended to allow the complex to accommodate some two million worshippers at a time, the daily Asharq al-Awsat said. The site, where 10,000 workers are already working round-the-clock covers an area of 400,000 square metres (4.3 million square feet). The project envisages a multi-level extension on the north side of the complex, together with stairways and tunnels to facilitate worshippers access to the mosque, built around the...