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Locked on 01/26/2004 2:00:53 PM PST by Admin Moderator, reason:
The size of this thread is causing FR to slow down whenever it is accessed. It is going to be locked and moved to the chat/general interest forum. If anyone wants to post a ‘Part 2’ thread, go ahead, but post it to chat. Thank You http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1065689/posts |
Posted on 11/03/2003 9:17:27 AM PST by tubavil
Edited on 01/26/2004 3:58:09 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Wasn't it EOM or the other guy that said "Muslims were taking over Detroit, that Muslim women were coming here to have babies that are American citizens? I definitely think Detroit is not a target if what he says is true.
By Tom Heneghan
PARIS (Reuters) - French Muslim leaders lashed out on Monday at a planned law that would ban Islamic headscarves from public schools and said Muslims were becoming the target of a growing hate campaign which police did nothing to stop.
In a strongly worded statement, the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) said Muslims in France felt deeply worried that the law meant to ban all "noticeable religious symbols" in the name of equality and secularism was actually aimed at them.
The CFCM spoke out after two days of talks with regional Muslim leaders alarmed by a government plan to rush through a ban on religious symbols in public schools and hospitals. One major Muslim group called for protests and petitions against it.
President Jacques Chirac said last month the law would also apply to Jewish scullcaps and large Christian crosses. But few of them are seen in French public schools, leaving the more numerous scarf-wearing schoolgirls as the law's main target.
"The CFCM expresses the Muslim community's profound concern that the only concrete act the government plans...is a draft law that makes them feel stigmatised," declared the statement signed by the CFCM's moderate chairman Dalal Boubakeur.
It noted with disappointment that Chirac announced this in a speech devoted mostly to "recognising Islam as France's second-largest religion and fighting against discrimination."
"The CFCM regrets that cases of Islamophobia are multiplying across France, despite (current) law and without any of these discriminatory acts being punished," it added.
"AMAZED AT EXCESSES"
Chirac announced the planned ban amid growing concern over Islamist influence among France's five million Muslims. It met widespread approval among non-Muslims -- an important boost for the government before difficult regional polls in March.
The CFCM cautiously expressed disappointment at first, but a growing chorus of angry criticism from grass-roots Muslim groups has clearly prompted it to take a stronger stand.
"We were amazed at excesses we heard about," Khalil Merroun, rector of the large Evry mosque outside Paris, told the daily Liberation after meeting regional Muslim leaders on Saturday.
"They told us about veiled women being yelled at on the streets, banks that turn them away because they wear a headscarf and a doctor who put up a sign in his waiting room saying 'I refuse to treat veiled women'," he said.
The CFCM called on parliamentarians, who are due to debate the law in the coming weeks, to make sure the text is balanced and urged Muslims to stay calm in "these difficult moments."
While chairman Boubakeur has tried to work closely with the government, one of the CFCM's main member groups -- the Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF) -- urged all Muslims on Monday to support protests and petitions against the law.
Several Muslim groups linked to the UOIF have already called for a march against the law in Paris on January 17.
Same conclusion, different path.
One Year, One Day
Now, we need to review the occult meaning of the length of time, "one month, one day". In Old English Witchcraft, if a person wanted to join a coven, but had Christianity in their background, they had to immediately renounce Christianity and wait one year, one day before they joined the coven On the very day this waiting period ended, the neophyte could officially join the Satanic coven. Therefore, the knowledgeable witch or wizard places a great importance on this period -- one year, one day.
On September 11, 2001, the Illuminati staged the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the first blow to be struck for the appearance of Antichrist. Not only did this attack contain the strongest of all possible occult numeric signatures (NEWS1756), it was also carried out one year, one day (366 days) after the "baby" was born on September 10, 2000!
Maybe you'll see it, maybe you won't. Either way you won't leave smiling
Interesting times, indeed.
The following excerpt sounds like the Mexican Mecha group.
" The goals and long-term plans of Al Qaeda are also easy to know. First, drive the "Crusaders" (Western nations) out of the Islamic World--which according to Bin Laden consists of every area that has ever once been under Muslim control, including Spain, swaths of the Balkans up to Hungary, much of European Russia and India. Then topple every government in the Middle East, create a new Caliphate and drive on for World conquest. Sounds ambitious? So was Mein Kampf."
By Opheera McDoom
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - France said on Monday it attached little credence to a previously unknown Islamic group's claim to have brought down a plane that crashed off Egypt, killing 133 French tourists and 15 other people.
Egypt again defended the safety record of Flash Airlines, operators of the Boeing 737 that plunged into the Red Sea on Saturday, but Switzerland issued a fresh statement that it had banned the Egyptian company from its airspace on safety grounds.
French civil aviation authority head Michel Wachenheim said France's own checks on the doomed plane had showed "nothing abnormal."
An anonymous caller claiming to represent a Yemen-based group called Ansar al-Haq (Followers of the Truth) told an international news agency the group had downed the plane and would also attack Air France planes unless the French government dropped plans to ban Islamic headscarves from state schools.
Although France says no conclusions can be made on why the plane crashed until all the facts are known, French Justice Minister Dominique Perben said: "On the basis of the information in my possession, (the claim) is not very credible."
The Egyptian government has ruled out an attack on the charter plane, which crashed shortly after take-off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh bound for Cairo and Paris.
FLIGHT RECORDERS MAY HOLD THE KEY
French officials said the plane's two flight recorders, which could hold the key to explaining why it crashed, had not been located yet. The so-called "black boxes" record technical data about the flight and conversations between the pilots.
French experts had to delay plans to use a submersible robot to search for the flight recorders from the wreckage of the plane, now lying in deep water off Sharm el-Sheikh.
"The robot arrived yesterday...but it takes time to prepare the specialist equipment and coordinate and organize with the teams," said France's ambassador to Egypt, Jean-Claude Cousseran.
Rescue teams have found body parts and wreckage but no survivors.
Swiss authorities said on Monday they had found two Flash aircraft unsafe in 2002, raising the possibility that one was the plane that crashed on Saturday.
In Cairo, Flash officials were not immediately available for comment on the Swiss statement.
But they have said the doomed plane was one of only two that Flash has operated in recent years, including all of 2002, although Swiss officials were unable to confirm positively that it was one of those they had inspected.
Switzerland said it had inspected one of Flash's aircraft in April 2002 and found various problems, including missing navigation documents, fuel reserves not calculated to international standards and maintenance deficiencies.
The Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation said an inspection of a second Flash aircraft in October 2002 had revealed "essentially the same defects."
After Flash failed to provide sufficient proof the defects had been remedied, it was barred from landing in Switzerland a few days later, the office said.
Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Ahmed Mohamed Shafiq Zaki said earlier on Monday the Swiss had let a Flash plane take off from Zurich with 148 Swiss tourists in October 2002 after giving the plane a safety check.
"That means it was 100 percent safe," he said.
(Reporting by Opheera Mcdoom, additional reporting by Amil Khan and Thierry Leveque in Paris)
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