Free Republic

'A Labour Muslim minister has warned that Islamic law is too unsophisticated for Britain. Sadiq Khan said women could be ' abused' by sharia courts, which may give unequal bargaining power to the sexes. He said: 'The burden is on those who want to open up these courts to persuade us why they should.' Mr Khan, who was made a community cohesion minister in this month's Government reshuffle, rejected the argument that the courts could operate in the same way as the Jewish Beth Din courts. He said Muslim life in Britain was not advanced enough to run a similar...

In London's historic "Inns of Court", barristers practise law in the shadow of the distinctive medieval Temple Church. But does English law really owe a debt to Muslim law? For some scholars, a historical connection to Islam is a "missing link" that explains why English common law is so different from classical Roman legal systems that hold sway across much of the rest of Europe. It's a controversial idea. Common law has inspired legal systems across the world. What's more, calls for the UK to accommodate Islamic Sharia law have caused public outcry.

The disappearance of the CEO and president of a Shariah-compliant investment firm has left many in West Ridge's Indo-Pak community wary and in turmoil. Concerned when monthly profit checks from Sunrise Equities stopped arriving in August, no one has seen or heard from the firm's CEO, Salman Ibrahim. Ibrahim has not returned investors' phone calls. Phone calls to the firm's office at 6355 N. Claremont, and its downtown affiliates, Sunrise Development Inc., have also gone unanswered, leaving many of the firm's mostly Muslim investors wondering where Ibrahim and other corporate officers have gone. "[Ibrahim] stopped paying the monthly installments," said...

The Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Georgetown University cmcu.georgetown.edu _________________________________ The Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding will be hosting a conference -- "Is There a Role for Shari'ah in Modern States?" -- at Georgetown University on October 23rd, 2008. The conference will be taking place from 9:30am to 5pm. A tentative schedule can be found below. --- 10:45am --- Panel 1: Rethinking Islam? Myths and Realities of Islamic Law Nathan Brown, "Shari'ah and Constitutional Reform" Sherman Jackson, "Can Shari'ah be Reformed?" Jonathan Brown, "Shari'ah Meets Reality: Giving Fatwas in...

Just four days ago, I reported that the UK had opened its first official Sharia Court . Not it has come out that there are already five of these courts with at least two more to come. These courts have been sanctioned by the government, with the UK police actually working with the Sharia courts on cases of domestic violence. I have plenty of friends from the UK, but I have to be honest. The UK govt is absolutely clueless as to what they are doing (to be fair I do not care for my govt either) and this will...

Lawfare: Bleeping with the Enemy - May 14, 2008 ... A healthy understanding of Islamofascism, sharia and jihad is replaced by ignorance or the Islamofascist line of a benign Islam and sharia, ...

MasterCard Worldwide and EonCap Islamic Bank (a member of Malaysia's Eon Bank Group) have jointly launched what they are billing as the world's first Islamic debit MasterCard—the EonCap Islamic Debit MasterCard. The EonCap Islamic Debit MasterCard is basically a debit card with ATM functions as well. It also works on PayPass systems, which enables a person to swipe it on a terminal without the card leaving the cardholder's hand. It is referred to as blending traditional purchasing power with modern technology and is Shari'ah compliant. "It is designed to appeal to both Muslim and non-Muslim individuals who prefer better financial...

Jihad Against Freedom of Speech at the United NationsBy Jeffrey Imm The United Nations' Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has no problem with its members suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job" perpetrated by the United States on itself. The human rights of America's 9/11 victims are not a priority for UNHRC's Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, who engages in 9/11 conspiracy propaganda, while working for an organization headquartered in New York City funded by U.S. tax dollars. This is Richard Falk's protected freedom of speech. Denying the role of Jihadists in...

So this is how it ends: not with a bang, but a whimper. The most senior judge in England has declared that Islamic legal principles in Sharia law may be used within Muslim communities in Britain to settle marital arguments and regulate finance. Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said, "Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law." In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips said Muslims in Britain could use Islamic legal principles as long as punishments - and divorce rulings - comply with...

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

It is "common sense" for Christianity to be sidelined at the expense of Islam, a Government minister claimed on Sunday [and that] that more money and effort was spent on Islam than Christianity because of the threat from extremism and home-grown terrorism. Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, defended Labour’s policy on religion after a report backed by the Church of England claimed that Muslims receive a disproportionate amount of attention. Ms Blears told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “That’s just common sense. If we’ve got an issue where we have to build resilience of young Muslim men and women to...

-- snip --As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant. Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him. His conversion, however, was a...

Gallup says only 7 percent of the world's Muslims are political radicals. Yet 36 percent think the 9/11 attacks were in some way justified.On the inside back cover of books published by Gallup Press there is the following breathtaking statement: Gallup Press exists to educate and inform the people who govern, manage, teach and lead the world's six billion citizens. Each book meets Gallup's requirements of integrity, trust and independence and is based on a Gallup-approved science and research. Don't be distracted by the bad grammar. Focus instead on Gallup's "requirements of integrity, trust and independence." Thanks to a remarkable...

Even Americans knowledgeable about Europe’s growing accommodation to the totalitarian ideology known alternatively as Islamism, jihadism or Islamofascism tend smugly to believe the same thing can’t happen here. Think again. Every day, new evidence appears of similar acts of submission – the Islamists call it “dhimmitude” – on the part of the U.S. government, judges, the press and leading corporations. Eurabia, meet the United States of Amerabia. On May 4, an ominous alarm was sounded in a Pajamas Media column by Youssef Ibrahim, a former New York Times reporter. Ibrahim is an astute critic of the Islamists’ steady, tireless and...

Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia.

By Natalie O'Brien April 26, 2008 The Australian OUTSPOKEN Muslim cleric Taj al-Din al-Hilali says the Bible "mandates" the wearing of the veil by Christian women. Writing in a new book, Sheik Hilali, who lost his job as mufti of Australia after comparing scantily clad women to uncovered meat, argues that the Bible and the Koran make similar demands of a woman's modesty. Sheik Hilali, who remains the head of Australia's largest mosque, in the southwestern Sydney suburb of Lakemba, says the purpose of the book is to show the commonalities of Islam with the Jewish and Christian faiths when...

The Daily Record in Baltimore, Maryland recently published a story by Brendan Kearney that oddly seems to present a conflict between a bank employing Islamic Shari'ah law with its American investments and some black American borrowers and painting it as a racist issue. Sadly, the real story, that of Islamic law being imposed on American investors, is sidelined in order to pursue the race card. (Full story reprinted at BlackEnterprise.com) As The Record reports, a black couple in Baltimore -- I identify their race because it is pivotal to how the Record reports the story -- had contracted with the...

Rome mayoral candidate, Gianni Alemanno, will on Thursday visit the Italian Islamic Cultural Centre in the capital, known as the city's Grand Mosque ... "The mosque in Rome is a unique Islamic institution of the Italian republic and it is the first time that a candidate for mayor is coming on a visit,"... "During his visit, Alemanno will meet some Muslim representatives and in particular the secretary general of the Islamic centre, Abdellah Redouane."

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Radical Islamists not only want to destroy America with bombs and weapons of mass destruction, they also are infiltrating U.S. financial markets and influencing the flow of credit and capital, according to the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conservative think-tank. CSP President Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration assistant secretary of defense, has launched a national campaign to counter what he calls "an insidious threat" -- shari'a-compliant finance. He says U.S. financial institutions and businesses engaged in shari'a-compliant financing are exposing themselves to civil and criminal liability. That type of investment poses a serious risk not...

“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the service of Allah is our highest hope”. Credo of the Muslim Brotherhood Introduction Most of us who study terrorism focus primarily, if not exclusively, on the violence and the carnage. But there is another aspect to terrorism that that represents a long term, sub-threshold threat and highly effective form of attack to which we are subjected on a daily basis. It is a campaign of sophisticated Political Warfare that is largely unacknowledged by the government and, as a consequence, is...

Minnesota taxpayers are footing the bill for a charter school that reportedly violates the law by promoting religion — Islam. Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) in Inver Grove Heights regularly holds prayer sessions and includes study of the Koran in its curriculum, even though charter schools are public schools and must not endorse or promote religion, according to columnist Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune. She writes: “TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is ‘establishing Islam in Minnesota.’ The building also...

'Extremism' fear over Islam studies donations By Ben Leach Last Updated: 1:00am BST 13/04/2008 Extremist ideas are being spread by Islamic study centres linked to British universities and backed by multi-million-pound donations from Saudi Arabia and Muslim organisations, a new report claims. Eight universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, have accepted more than £233.5 million from Saudi and Muslim sources since 1995, with much of the money going to Islamic study centres, according to the report. The total sum, revealed by Anthony Glees, the director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, amounts to the largest source of external...

"It is necessary for us to participate in political life, in the life of political parties. The political forces, on their part, must then give ample space to issues such as immigration and integration." Among those running for the elections this weekend to choose representatives for Rome's city council is Khalid Chaouki, the founder of a group known as the Young Muslims... He could not hide his envy for the situation of second generation immigrants in neighbouring countries such as France where they have managed to occupy important positions in various departments such as the department of Justice. "I want...

My journey through Egypt A glimpse into the life of non-Muslims under Islamic oppressionBy Jesse Petrilla | Thursday, April 10, 2008 I have recently returned to the United States from Egypt where I was on a fact-finding mission to see what life is like for non-Muslims who live under Islam. What I saw was a dire situation of oppression and discrimination that many in America and the West have all but ignored. A place with rampant police brutality and corruption, where non-Muslims are second-class citizens at best, who are brutally victimized on a daily basis. All this in a nation...

A New York City cabbie who operates an extremist Islamic anti-American Web site that features violent images — including mocking the deaths of GIs in Iraq — says he’s doing the country a service by “exposing the truth.” Yousef al-Khattab, who runs RevolutionMuslim.com from his home in Queens, told FOX News that he also wants the U.S. to embrace Islam and Sharia Law, which prohibits alcohol and can include stoning to death or severe flogging for pre-marital sex and adultery. On any given day, log on to al-Khattab's site and a host of startling images appear: — The Statue of...

Cambridge University has been given £8 million by a Saudi Arabian prince to establish an Islamic studies centre. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, ranked in the top 20 richest men in the world, with a fortune of about £10 billion, has donated the cash to the university to fund a centre in his name for the study of the role of Islam in the Middle East and globally. The gift has been recommended by the university's general board and is expected to be announced in June. advertisement The grandson of King Ibn Saud and nephew of King Abudllah, the prince counts...

Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman touched off a fierce debate when he recently wrote in The New York Times Magazine that Islamic Sharia law represents the highest state of "the rule of law." But what many of Feldman's critics did not recognize is that his argument has been building over several years. Just as an old photographic print slowly becomes visible when immersed in developing solution, Noah's claims about the alleged virtues of Sharia first surfaced in his 2005 book, Divided by God written when he was still a professor at NYU. Three years later, Feldman, who helped draft...

After the attacks of 9/11, many people in the West, including Christians, were asking, “Where are the moderate Muslims?” They may have showed up last fall. A group of what appeared to be moderate Muslim leaders sent a conciliatory message to representatives of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant faiths, offering to work toward a more peaceful coexistence between the world’s two largest religions. How should Christians in the West respond to this offer? A basis for peace? Issued October 13, 2007, and titled A Common Word Between Us and You, the Muslim document stressed the need for peace between...

Excerpt - AMSTERDAM, March 23 (Reuters) - A U.S.-based web service, which Islam critic and Dutch right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders planned to use to show his film critical of the Koran, said on Saturday that it had inactivated the site due to complaints. "This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy," the company said on the site www.fitnathemovie.com. Wilders, who has given few details about his 15-minute film, has said he plans to release 'Fitna' on the Internet before the end of the month...

... In some sense, the outrage about according a degree of official status to Shariah in a Western country should come as no surprise. No legal system has ever had worse press. To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. By contrast, who today remembers that the much-loved English common law called for execution as punishment for hundreds of crimes, including theft of any object worth five shillings or more? How many know that until the 18th century, the laws of most European countries authorized torture as an official component of the...

The world's Muslim countries warned Wednesday that an "alarming" rise in anti-Islamic insults and attacks in the West has become a threat to international security. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called on Europe and America to take stronger measures against 'Islamophobia' in a report prepared for a summit of the group's 57 members in Dakar on Thursday and Friday. The report by a special OIC monitoring group said the organisation was struggling to get the West to understand that Islamophobia "has dangerous implications on global peace and security" and to convince western powers to do more. Islamic leaders...

A radical Muslim preacher has been filmed talking about fraudulently claiming benefits and giving advice on how to cheat the Government. Self-proclaimed extremist Abu Waleed was speaking at the London School of Shariah event in preparation for Ramadan, during which he also made jokes about Muslims taking backpacks on to the Underground. The British-born radical retold fables from the koran before encouraging his audience to hoodwink the Government. After a story about a wealthy man, he said: "There was one man, he had a lot of money - just like us, we have a lot of money today from the...

Islam's Universal Blasphemy Fatwa By Andrew G. Bostom FrontPageMagazine.com | 2/25/2008 Early Tuesday morning (2/12/08) “three men with a Muslim background” were arrested by Danish police on anti-terrorism charges, suspected of having plotted to murder Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist for Jyllands-Posten. Westergaard is one of the 12 cartoonists who on September 30, 2005 published cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to protest the tacit enforcement in Danish society of Islam’s taboo on depictions of Muhammad, no matter how banal, or inoffensive, through intimidation—a clear violation of Western freedom of expression. Upon learning of the arrests, Westergaard (noted for this cartoon)...

MUSLIM university students want lectures to be rescheduled to fit in with prayer timetables and separate male and female eating and recreational areas established on Australian campuses. International Muslim students, predominantly from Saudi Arabia, have asked universities in Melbourne to change class times so they can attend congregational prayers. They also want a female-only area for Muslim students to eat and relax. But at least one institution has rejected their demands, arguing that the university is secular and it does not want to set a precedent for requests granted in the name of religious beliefs. La Trobe University International chief...

A new sharia law controversy erupted last night over Government plans to issue special "Islamic bonds" to pay for Gordon Brown's public-spending programme by raising money from the Middle East. Britain is to become the first Western nation to issue bonds approved by Muslim clerics in line with sharia law, which bans conventional loans involving interest payments as "sinful". The scheme would mark one of the most significant economic advances of sharia law in the non-Muslim world. It will lead to the ownership of Government buildings and other assets currently belonging to British taxpayers being switched wholesale to wealthy Middle-Eastern...

Britain's Treasury is likely to back plans to issue Shariah law-compliant bonds, officials said Sunday - amid continuing debate about the application of Islamic laws in the country. Treasury Secretary Alistair Darling, who will present his annual budget March 12, plans to issue the Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, to tap into a fast-growing market in the products. "We want the City of London to be one of the gateways globally for Islamic financial products," a Treasury spokesman said, on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy. ...Shariah law prohibits charging or paying interest, which has led to the...

The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, earned an unusual rebuke from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week for suggesting that some version of Islamic -- "Shariah" -- law would inevitably be introduced in Britain. Even in rejecting the idea, however, Mr. Brown noted that some aspects of Shariah could be accommodated on a "case-by-case" basis. This exchange highlights an issue that is fast reaching a boiling point in Britain and other Western countries with increasingly assertive Muslim communities. Can a modern democracy house more than one legal system, even on a limited basis, and remain a democracy as we...

Thousands of Turks have rallied in Ankara to protest against a government plan to allow women to wear the Islamic headscarf in Turkish universities. The protestors fear such a move would usher in a stricter form of Islam in Turkey, which is a secular state. Turkey's parliament is expected to approve a constitutional amendment to ease the ban next week. The ban on the headscarf in higher education was imposed in the 1980s, and has been enforced for the past decade. A huge crowd gathered at the mausoleum of Ataturk - the man who founded Turkey as a modern, secular...

It seems only yesterday that Premier Dalton McGuinty declared: "There will be no sharia law in Ontario." Many of us, who witnessed the medieval nature of manmade sharia laws in our countries of birth, heaved a sigh of relief back in September of 2005. We thought this was the end of the attempt by Islamists to sneak sharia into a Western jurisdiction. We were wrong. The campaign to introduce sharia is back. Last time, the campaign took a populist approach, invoking multiculturalism. This time, the pro-sharia lobby is dangling the carrot of new niche markets and has the backing of...

Neil MacFarquahar of the New York Times artfully navigates politically sensitive waters with an article on the problem of wife-beating among Muslims in the United States. The general question, simply put, is how to admit a pattern of outrageous behavior by designated victim groups, without provoking a serious reaction of outrage. So the reportage is artfully constructed to imply that solution as well as the problem lie within Islam, and non-Muslims have a minor role, if any, to play. Thus, the article begins with insensitive Americans failing to accommodate the special needs of battered women who happen to be Muslim:...

Caribou Coffee Claim: An Islamic bank is the majority owner of the Caribou Coffee chain. Status: True Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002] As you will see from the links below, Caribou Coffee is owned 87.8% by the First Islamic Investment Bank which, among other things has the following philosophy: "Above all, ensuring that all activities conform to Islamic Shari'ah" The chairman of their Shari'ah supervisory board is: Dr. Yusuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi Chairman, Seerah & Sunnah Center, Qatar University; Professor, Faculty of Shari'ah, Qatar University. As you will see from the links below he is also on the supervisory board...

The Rossijskaya Gazeta reports (in Russian, see translation below) that first Moslem medical center has been created in Moscow, Russia. In that center everything is done the Moslem way.

Amid the mountain of evidence released in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, the most provocative has turned out to be a handful of previously classified evidence detailing Islamist extremists' ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover. Also Online Link: See the documents presented as evidence in the case Archive: Read previous DMN stories about the Holy Land Foundation case A knot of terrorism researchers say the memos and audiotapes, many translated from Arabic and containing detailed strategies by the international Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, are proof that extremists have long sought to replace the Constitution with Shariah, or...

Helsinki, Sep. 12, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Europe's first Islamic political party has formed in Finland. The Finnish Islamic Party plans to collect 5,000 signatures in order to qualify for official registration by the end of the year. Counting on support from the 55,000 Muslims living in Finland, the party anticipates some success in next year's municipal elections as well as in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Party spokesman Abdullah Tammi acknowledged to reporters that to date the party has enrolled only a few dozen members. The Finnish Islamic Party platform supports a ban on alcohol sales, the option for Muslim children...

Helsinki, Sep. 12, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Europe's first Islamic political party has formed in Finland. The Finnish Islamic Party plans to collect 5,000 signatures in order to qualify for official registration by the end of the year. Counting on support from the 55,000 Muslims living in Finland, the party anticipates some success in next year's municipal elections as well as in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Party spokesman Abdullah Tammi acknowledged to reporters that to date the party has enrolled only a few dozen members. The Finnish Islamic Party platform supports a ban on alcohol sales, the option for Muslim children...

I would guess that the Finnish establishment is beside itself with glee over this development, for they take it as evidence that Muslims are assimilating, joining the political process, becoming responsible Finnish citizens. But look at the party program: "The Finnish Islamic Party platform supports a ban on alcohol sales, the option for Muslim children to be excused from school music classes and outings to swimming pools, legal status for ritual animal killing and male circumcision, and the eventual introduction of shari'a law in Finland." Most Finns, like most Westerners, have no idea what Sharia has in store for them....

The story of the week wasn't Gen. David Petraeus' testimony on Iraq, although it dominated the headlines. The story of the week wasn't the sixth return of Sept. 11 since the jihad atrocity of 2001, although it inspired many public statements and ceremonies. The week's biggest story garnered little press and few comments. But, in a significant way, this overlooked story -- an outrageous display of police force in Brussels on Sept. 11, 2007 -- symbolizes the missing link in our flawed comprehension of both Iraq and Sept. 11. There, in the so-called capital of Europe, 200 people marked the...

More than 100,000 people are expected to attend the world's largest Islamic Caliphate conference to be held in Jakarta on Sunday. According to Hizb ut-Tahrir, the pan-Islamist political party staging the conference, people will come from all over the world to hear speakers from England, Australia, Palestine, Japan and the Sudan. Abu Bakar Bashir, the controversial leader of Indonesia's Mujahiddin Council, who is committed to transforming Indonesia into an Islamic state will address the conference. He is the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah jailed for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings. Considered by many to be the mastermind...

Suspected Islamic militants decapitated an Afghan man after accusing him of spying for the United States in a tribal region in northwestern Pakistan, an intelligence official said Sunday. The slain man's body, which villagers spotted early Sunday, was dumped by the side of a road on the outskirts of Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan tribal region, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make media comments. A note written in the locally spoken Pashto language that was found with the body identified the man as Habibur Rehman of Zurmat tribe from...