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CAIRO, March 4 (IslamOnline.net) – British Muslims angrily reacted after the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has backed a minister’s controversial comments that Muslims should accept that they would be targeted by police under anti-terrorism laws. “The comments are astounding and not helpful in the least, as they could increase anti-Muslim sentiments in the country,” Inayat Bunglawala, the spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, told IslamOnline.net on Friday, March 4. The council is the largest group representing the country's 1.6 million-strong Muslim community. Bunglawala was speaking after Sir Ian Blair said he supported Home Office Minister Hazel Blears’ statements...

GENEVA, February 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – A Swiss think-tank has recommended teaching Islam in schools as it helps the second and third generation of the Muslim community integrate into society. The Swiss Academy for Development (SAD) cited in a recent study the success story of teaching Islam in schools in the two cities of Kriens and Ebikon, central Switzerland, in the 2002/03 school year. “The results of the experience exceeded all expectations and showed a positive feedback,” said the study, released on February 15. “It can serve as a model for all cities across the country. Such schools encourage Muslim...

AMSTERDAM — The allegations laid against the suspected murderer of Theo van Gogh have been expanded and he is now accused of preventing Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali from carrying out her work, a charge that carries a life sentence. The new charge is based on the letter that was left plunged into Van Gogh's body with a knife, warning that Hirsi Ali and several other politicians were next. Hirsi Ali subsequently went into hiding and has not since reappeared in Parliament. The intense security measures needed to ensure her safety — and which reportedly included her being flown by...

THE HAGUE, December 29 (IslamOnline.net) – The best way to sum up the dying year of 2004 for Dutch Muslims is to speak about religious discrimination, xenophobes, bigotry, last but not least, racist attacks on their places of worship. Even before the November killing of anti-Islam filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, following his insulting documentary about Islam, Dutch Muslims have been targeted by the extremist agenda of the influential right-wing parties. The xenophobia and extremism cancer prompted Queen Beatrix to dedicate her annual address to the nation Saturday, December 25, to national unity and the importance of tolerance and moderation for...

Justice authorities arrested a Moroccan man last month after receiving a tip-off that Islamic extremists were allegedly planning an attack on the Red Light District in Amsterdam, it was reported on Friday. The pizza-delivery courier allegedly conducted reconnaissance of the capital's prostitution zone while riding through the area during work hours on his scooter. He was arrested on 5 November. Newspaper De Telegraaf described him as a "radical Moroccan pizza deliverer". The National Detectives Unit was alerted to the supposed attack plan by three anonymous emails, the first of which was received on 14 September. Emails dated 27 September and 11 October gave further details of the...

An exodus of native-born Dutch in search of a new life abroad has reversed immigration flows for the first time since the post-war era. Last year more people left the Netherlands than arrived as migrants or asylum seekers, even though unemployment remains low at 4.7 percent and per capita income is higher than any major country in Europe. Ellen and Peter Bles are planning to leave their home near Tilburg for Perth, Western Australia Lawyers, accountants, computer specialist, nurses, and businessmen are lining up for visas to the English-speaking world, looking to Australia, New Zealand and Canada as orderly societies...

By all accounts, Theo van Gogh, 47, the great-great-grandson of the brother of the Dutch master, was a repulsive character. Foul of mouth, given to anti-Semitic outbursts, the film director was described thus by the Wall Street Journal: In writings and speeches he made crude jokes about Jews and riled Moslems with scatological insults. A few months before his murder, he attended a debate called "Happy Chaos" organized by students and a leftist magazine. It descended into rancorous chaos when Mr. van Gogh called a Moslem leader the "prophet's pimp." In August, van Gogh, known as the Michael Moore of...

I just had a conversation with a Ham Radio operator in the Netherlands. At his request, I will not identify him here. He states that the situation there is very tense, with anti-muslim sentiment and violence rising daily. According to this gentleman, very little of what is actually hapening is making it out into the International News Media. He reports that Dutch Lawmakers are being heavily pressured by the citizenry to halt further Muslim immigration entirely, to deport non-citizen Muslims, and the jailing of anyone encouraging Islamic radicalism. Mass demonstrations are being formed, and he is personally concerned that rioting...

Kneeling in the sodden, charred remains of the primary school, Hari Boukameans took a Stanley knife to a melted computer. He twisted and he gouged -- trying to recover the hard drive, hoping to salvage a little bit of the precious Dutch culture of live and let live from the flames of hatred that consumed his workplace. The Moroccan gave up. He slumped in the smelly, black mass of ashes. "This is really evil," he groaned. Spray painting a white cross and White Power slogans on to the grey brick walls of the Muslim school the previous night, Dutch racists...

Vandals spray-painted red swastikas and the initials "SS" on four family tombs with Jewish-sounding names in a cemetery in eastern France, police said Monday. The attack on the small cemetery in Audincourt probably took place late Saturday or early Sunday, police said. There was no immediate information on who might have been behind the vandalism. France, which has western Europe's largest populations of Jews and Muslims, has experienced a recent upsurge in anti-Semitic and anti-Arab attacks.

BESLAN, Russia, Sept. 4 - Long before the first bombs exploded in Middle School No. 1, marking the beginning of a ferocious battle that left hundreds of schoolchildren and their parents and teachers dead, the hostages had descended to near despair. "At first I thought it was a joke," said one survivor, Emma Gagiyeva, 13, who sat numbly on a couch on Saturday, as the death toll climbed relentlessly, to 330, with many children still missing. "Then they started to shoot the windows, and glass fell on the people. They were shooting above our heads and they killed a few...

"We did not know how to react in the appropriate fashion. We have showed weakness in the face of danger and the weak get beaten up," he said in a televised address."

By Mohammed Ayub Khan The American Muslim Magazine Never has history “chosen” to eliminate a race of people as in the Spanish Inquisition. One wonders why the silence has remained so strong about a people who brought glory and art to Europe for over 900 years. When western students open their history books and read about the “Moors,” few are ever taught that what they are reading has any relevance to Islam. Even today, on architecture frames found in Spain, one can still see the secretive Arabic inscriptions written during the days of the Inquisition: “La ghalab illa’illah” (There is...

The annual Rally for Islam in Britain took place yesterday. The purpose of the Rally is to emulate the Messenger Muhammad (saw) who called the society in which he lived to embrace Islam as a divine way of life. Just as he would stand on the hills of Mecca calling the Quraishi citizens to Islam, enjoining good and forbidding evil – Muslims in Britain usually stand in Britain’s Trafalgar Square with a similar call. However for the first time in 9 years the leadership of Al-Muhajiroun decided to relocate the Rally due to concerns for the security and safety of...

A London school funded by the Saudi Arabian government is facing complaints from parents that it is teaching British children "fundamentalist" Islam while giving girls an inferior education.The King Fahd Academy in Acton, west London, named after the current Saudi ruler, devotes up to 50 per cent of lessons to religious education and teaches almost all classes in Arabic, with boys and girls following different curricula.Former teachers and parents have come forward to criticise the academy's religious teachings for instilling "hostility to the outsider". They also claim that there is discrimination against female pupils. The school was opened 19 years...

Moslem cleric in England says killing non-Moslems is OK By: John Russell | Source: IRN NEWS May 27, 2004 5:29PM EST -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A leading Muslim teacher in the United Kingdom is telling his followers that the killing of non-Moslems is in accordance with Islamic teachings. Shiek Abu Hamsa of the notorious Finsbury Park Mosque in London has been videotaped telling his congregation that, “If a Kafir (that is a non-Moslem)is walking by you and you catch him he’s booty (that is a slave), you can sell him in the market. Most of them are spies. And even if they don’t...

MADRID (AFP) - Spain has detained at least 63 suspected Al-Qaeda members since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, amid fears the country was used as a rear base for the Islamic terror network, experts said. About 20 still remain behind bars, several of them as part of an investigation into Osama bin Laden's network being undertaken by anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon, prison sources told AFP Friday. By mid-September Garzon had charged 33 people for "belonging to the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation" of which 10 were suspected of taking part in the attacks in New York and Washington...

ISLAM will be the most widely practised religion in the UK by 2020, according to British and Muslim magazine editor Sarah Joseph. She says mosque attendance is expected to outstrip church attendance over the next 16 years. Estimates suggest that anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people a year convert to Islam in the UK, which is currently home to approximately 1.8 million Muslims. "We are the second largest faith in Britain and will be the largest practising faith in Britain by 2020 if you use church and mosque attendance as a measure," she told the GDN. Mrs Joseph is editor...

CAIRO, March 6 (IslamOnline.net) – London will host on March 15 the first conference on the impact of Zionism on Jewish, Christian and Muslim relations, organizers said on Saturday, March 6. Due to take place in the University of London, the panel of speakers include such luminaries as Archimandrite Attalla Hanna, the spokesman of the Orthodox Church in occupied Jerusalem, Rabbi Yisroel Weiss of Natueri Karta International, Egyptian professor Abdel-Wahab El-Messiri, an expert in Zionism, and Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). "We want to take the message as clear to people; there is a difference between...