PESHAWAR: Forty-two Uzbeks militants and 16 tribespeople were killed in two days of fierce clashes in the volatile South Waziristan tribal region, government and security officials told Dawn. They said another 27 Uzbek militants had been captured by tribal militant commander Maulvi Nazir.
There was no independent confirmation of the death toll on both sides but information gathered from three different government security sources corroborate reports emerging from the restive region that the tribespeople who had once whole-heartedly welcomed foreign militants were now on a hunting spree for them. Officials said announcements were made from mosques on loudspeakers in some villages in Wana, regional headquarters of South Waziristan, exhorting local tribespeople to stand up and wage a “jihad” against Uzbeks.
SNIP: The latest flare-up, the second this month, occurred after the killing of an Al Qaeda-linked Arab identified as Saiful Adil last week. His body was found abandoned in the outskirts of Wana. Maulavi Nazir, a top pro-Taliban militant commander in Wana region, suspected Uzbeks for their involvement in the murder. The security official said a foreign militant and his tribal escort carrying blood money to the widow of Saiful Adil were also attacked on their way which added fuel to the fire.
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http://www.dawn.com/2007/03/21/top1.htm
French official fired for opposing opening of Muslim high school
March 21, 2007
PARIS -- A senior, regional, education official was fired here Wednesday for strongly expressing opposition to the opening of a new Muslim school in the second largest city in France.
The Al-Kindi high school, located in the suburbs of the south-eastern city of Lyon, opened earlier this month after a long fight with the head of city education authority. French Muslims accused the official of being racist against Islam especially after he had tried to stop the school from opening three times, only conceded after national authorities in Paris intervened in the issue. Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said that the official was fired as "his behaviour was not that of a senior official, whose task is to carry out government policy".
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http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=963901
Cologne, 21 March 2007 - German police have assigned plainclothese bodyguards to protect an Iranian-born woman, Mina Ahadi, who says she has received a number of death threats through the post since she formed a society in the northern city of Cologne. Formed last month together with around a dozen sympathisers and named the National Council of Ex-Muslims, the association contains a number of ex-Muslims who are atheists.
"I am a target," said Ahadi, 50, quoted by Deutsche Welle radio, adding that members of the society have received letters telling them they will be shot in the back. She is the widow of a murdered opponent of the Iranian regime and has lived in Germany since 1996. "We are going to get involved in politics, oppose women wearing headscarfs and building plans for new mosques," Ahadi said. She held a press conference in the capital, Berlin, in late February, announcing that she was no longer a Muslim.
"We'll stop honour killings, stop people being stoned to death… We want to make clear that the three million to three and a half million people from Islamic nations who live in Germany are people first and foremost, and should not be branded primarily as 'Muslim,'" she said. She is demanding that Germany do more to help women and girls who she says are oppressed by "political Islam", denied boyfriends or trips to the swimming pool and ostracised if they become pregnant outside marriage. The ex-Muslim groups said it wants to stop mosque groups speaking in the name of the entire community. It has received assistance from a German atheist organisation, the Giordano Bruno Foundation and is heeding police advice to rent office space in a safe location, Deutsche Welle reported.
The death threats are not believed to come from mainstream Muslim groups who say the new association should be tolerated. But they dispute her claim that Islam and human rights are incompatible, saying this only stokes latent Islamophobia already present in some Germans. Other former Muslims in Germany and abroad have rushed to join the group, according to fellow Iranian and council members Nur Gabbari, and it has grown to more than 400 members with daily contacts from countries such as Morocco, Iran, Egypt, Turkey as well as Germany.
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.397469986&par=0