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The pendulum swings away from Sheikh Hasina and her governmentAHEAD of the festival of Eid-al-Fitr on August 9th-11th, the two quarrelling heads of Bangladesh’s political dynasties exchanged greetings cards. But the outward signs of peace between the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League, and the opposition leader, Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), mean little. A European diplomat says he has just sent two cables to his capital. The first discusses the growing chances of the League’s defeat in elections due by next January. The second is about the dynastic succession plans of the battling...

In a major battlefield success, Islamic militants attacked and occupied a Pakistani military fort on the Afghan border, officials said Wednesday. Seven Pakistani frontier guards died in the assault and 20 were listed as missing. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said 50 attackers died in the surprise attack on Sararogha Fort in South Waziristan on Tuesday night. The casualty figure could not be independently confirmed, and in the past the rebels have dismissed government claims about their losses as heavily inflated. "About 200 militants charged the fort from four sides," Abbas said. "They broke through the fort's wall with...

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=122&id=7227&t=Thailand%3A+Two+Buddhist+teachers+killed+in+south Friday, December 29, 2006 by Asia News | Tags: thailand, terrorism, islam Suspected Islamic militants this morning shot dead two Buddhist teachers and then set their bodies ablaze near the school where they used to teach in southern Thailand, local police said. The charred remains of the bodies were found 100 metres from the school entrance, near the pickup truck they were driving when the militants attacked. One of the victims, Chamnong Koopathanaphong, was the principal of the school in Yala province and the second man Manoo Sornkaew, was a teacher at the school. Police said they believed the...

Can a war be won without understanding the enemy? No. Israel's continuing failure to stem persistent Hamas terrorism is a testimony to the fact that the Jewish state is still in dark about the real character of their enemy - Arabs living in the historical Jewish lands. Time and again Israeli leaders have exhibited their profound ignorance of the Arab's culture of terror that nourishes the Hamas mentality. The Israeli efforts to withdraw from southern Lebanon and the unilateral disengagement to the 1967 lines around Gaza Strip have all been carried out under the perception that such gestures would achieve...

MUSLIM leader Sheik Mohammed Omran says allegations that Islamist terrorists were behind the London bombings were premature and unsupported by evidence. Sheik Omran, head of the Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah mosque in Brunswick, also rejected allegations Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks in America, saying he believed the US Government itself carried out the atrocity. "That is absolutely what I believe it is," Sheik Omran told the Herald Sun. "It could be (to initiate a war) against Islam; it could be against Muslim countries, just to give them a free hand to do whatever they want." Sheik Omran...

NEW DELHI – As the principal of an Islamic seminary in New Delhi, Maulvi Mohammad Mouzzam Ahmed knows there is no such thing as a free lunch. So when he was offered an all-expenses-paid trip to the United States a few months ago, to see how religious schools operate there, he was curious, and a little skeptical. What, he wondered, would the world's greatest superpower want with a nice moderate Muslim like him? The maulvi was not alone. He was just one of a half-dozen Indian Muslim clerics invited to the United States in September as part of the US...

Two more American sons died in Iraq, two more mothers lost their sons in Israel to Palestinian terrorism. 53 more Muslims were slaughtered by Wahhabis in a mosque in Quetta, Pakistan. Maher Hawash, an Intel software engineer whose detention in Oregon, USA, prompted high-profile protests about civil rights abuse, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiring to help the Taliban in Afghanistan. And taking advantage of our democratic traditions, religious radicals, disguised as Islamic advocacy groups have launched a campaign of intimidation to stop President George W. Bush from going ahead with his appointment of foremost Islamic scholar Dr....

Mr. President Sir, You are my president too even if I am not an American. Planet earth should start getting used to the idea of the American president being it. You don’t know me. But then how does that matter? You do not know countless others as well whom you, and your friends, so regularly relieve of their pitiful existence on daily basis. Remember Afghanistan. That those Taliban brutes did not have gratitude shows their upbringing. Imbeciles….et al... One only expected them to say a few words of thanks to you, sir, before they were so expensively Daisy Cuttered. After...

We like to think - or rather we comfort ourselves with the thought - that the West, especially the United States, is caught in a frenzy of Muslim-bashing. We try not to realize that our own condition, a mixture of ineptitude and backwardness, is an invitation to bashing. We are not the victims of a cosmic conspiracy. We are responsible for our backwardness ourselves. We have not managed our affairs well. This is true of almost all the countries that call themselves Islamic. Even when the end of colonialism came, the world of Islam continued to be exploited - again...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — "I say Cambodia is safe," said Ahmad Yahya, one of the most prominent Muslims in the country, addressing fears that Islamic militants could find a niche in this unruly land. "But who knows?" With its porous borders, its corruption, its hide-and-seek legal system and its disorganized Muslim community, some analysts say, this small Southeast Asian country could easily become a refuge and a breeding ground for terrorists. "I told the ambassador, don't worry about our people," Mr. Yahya said, referring to the American envoy. "Our people I can guarantee. But the Bangladeshis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Saudis and...

Islamists belong to many different sects and groups. They subscribe to different schools of thought. And as such are often observed competing with each other in a race for winning as many adherents as possible for their particular causes. But on one issue they are united - the destruction of democratic values as represented by the United States of America, The agreement on a common enemy has given Al-Qaeda the much dreaded strength and penetrating ability. All the feuding factions of Islamists are united under the umbrella of Al-Qaeda. Saudi Arabian Wahabbis under Osama bin Laden, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood under...

Similarly, the behavior of Muslim main street also demonstrated an absence of true and responsible leadership. Muslims in Arab countries, instead of sharing the grief of the civilized world, were observed celebrating the carnage in New York. Their retrogressive attitude confirmed their image of a people who are led by leaders devoid of any understanding of human values. Echoing the sentiments of their leaders, most of them were heard saying that Americans deserved the atrocity. None of their leaders was forthcoming in condemning the barbaric act. What was shocking to many was the silence of the Muslim leaders - political...

My light-brown beard with random blond streaks and pale skin color led me to an interesting conversation during a condensed milk expedition at my local grocery store. It all started when I asked a store employee for directions to the isle with condensed milk. Seeing my beard, he asked if I was Amish. While he was apologizing for the question, I replied that I was Muslim. Our words collided so he asked me, with much curiosity on his face, what I had said. I told him again that I was Muslim. I could tell from his _expression and gestures that...

JAFFA , 14 July — In 1923, a Russian poet, Carney Chukovsky wrote a delightful short tale for children, Tarakan the Giant Beetle, an all-time favorite nursery rhyme for Russian kids. It is a story of the animal kingdom intimidated by Tarakan. The Beetle threatened to devour the disobedient animals, and the awed lions and tigers have holed up in their lairs. True, a beetle has no fangs or horns, but the menacing Tarakan would brandish his great long mustachio, and no beast would dare to challenge the little monster, until a small sparrow flew in and ate up the...