Free Republic

MAYBE this time, I thought. Maybe this first Australian Islamic Conference would at last show us the moderate Muslim leaders we've searched for. God, we need them. Look at the latest doings of the hate-preachers we have now. Take the Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilali, who has just given interviews in Iran demanding Muslims stand "in the trenches" with its hostage-taking regime, and is now being investigated for allegedly giving $12,000 to a Lebanese propagandist linked to terrorists. Meanwhile, the head of the Lebanese Muslim Association, which pays him to preach at Australia's biggest mosque, has had to...

IRAN is still seeking to install 50,000 uranium enriching centrifuges at its nuclear plant in Natanz, the head of the Iranian atomic energy organisation said today. "The objective of the Islamic Republic of Iran is not just the installation of 3,000 centrifuges at the Natanz plant but we are doing everything to install 50,000 centrifuges,'' Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said, according to the IRNA news agency. Iran said yesterday it could now enrich uranium on an industrial scale but did not disclose how many centrifuges it had now installed at the Natanz plant in central Iran to enrich uranium. Mr Aghazadeh...

FIREBRAND Islamic convert Yvonne Ridley has accused Australians of being among the worst Muslim haters in the world. As millions of Australians celebrated Easter, they were branded Islamophobes by the outspoken British woman. She believes Australian attitudes to Islam are hardening faster than any other nation. "I'm deeply shocked," Ms Ridley said. "It's not what it was when I was last here three years ago. "I've visited over 20 different countries in the last three years and Australia is the most shocking in terms of deterioration." Ms Ridley, 48, will speak about Islamophobia today at a controversial Muslim conference at...

A YEMENI was killed today in clashes with police as workers at a gas export terminal in southern Yemen protested at a French engineer's alleged desecration of the Koran, a local official said. "One worker was killed and others were arrested following clashes with police who intervened" to contain the protest at the terminal being built by the French company Total in Balhaf port, he said, requesting anonymity. "After a fight between a French engineer and another who is Yemeni, the Frenchman - to enrage the Yemeni - threw a Koran on the floor in an offensive way," the official...

NSW Christian Democratic Party leader Reverend Fred Nile said today he had received death threats over his call for a moratorium on Islamic immigration to Australia. Mr Nile, who is recontesting his upper house seat at the March 24 state election, on Saturday called for a 10-year ban on Islamic immigration. He wants the immigration department to give preference to persecuted Christians while studies on the impact of Islamic immigration are carried out during the moratorium. Mr Nile has previously called for a ban on the wearing of full-face scarves in NSW. Today, he said he and another Christian Democratic...

A FRENCH court will debate the extent of free speech versus religious sensitivities today as Muslim groups sue a satirical magazine that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. The Grand Mosque and the Union of French Islamic Organisations accuse Charlie Hebdo of inciting racial hatred by reprinting the Danish caricatures that sparked violence in the Muslim world last year. Politicians, intellectuals, secular Muslims and left-wing pressure groups have lined up behind Charlie Hebdo, arguing that Muslim groups have no right to call for limits on free speech. "I just cannot imagine the consequences not only for France but for Denmark...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he is not worried about the possibility of United States military strikes on his country. The Iranian leader was speaking on national television in an address geared towards defending his record in office. Mr Ahmadinejad says the US can only wage psychological warfare in an attempt to divide the Iranian people. He has also brushed aside concerns about United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran last month. "The sanctions issue belongs to the past, especially when we're talking about a country like Iran," he said. "Iran is a powerful country with extensive relations with others. "If...

ALMOST a year after violent protests against Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the editor who commissioned the drawings said they had prompted a vital debate on the integration of Islam in the West. Flemming Rose, culture editor of daily Jyllands-Postenm, said he had published the 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed to defend free expression against what he saw as self-censorship over Islam in Denmark and Europe. The cartoons sparked protests by Muslims around the world in which at least 50 people died. Many Muslims regard any image of the Prophet as blasphemous. “The cartoons didn't create a new reality, they...

A TERROR suspect who allegedly bought five stolen army rocket launchers said he would use them to blow up "the nuclear place" and Parliament House, a Sydney court heard today. It is alleged the man, Mohammad Ali Elomar, was later seen near Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, where an access lock for a gate to a nearby reservoir had recently been cut. The claims were contained in a police statement tendered to Central Local Court, where Taha Abdul Rahman - the man accused of selling the rocket launchers - was today refused bail. Mr Abdul Rahman, 28, from Leumeah, in...

A SYDNEY building was to be the target of a rocket attack after a man allegedly supplied rocket launchers stolen from the military to a suspected terrorist. Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty said the man arrested today over the theft of rocket launchers was allegedly connected to some of the men detained in an anti-terrorism raid last year. It is understood that one rocket was intended to be used against an unspecified building in Sydney. The rocket launchers are reportedly of the type designed to be fired from the shoulder by infantry. They have enough punch to destroy a...

The United States wants the international community to take more action against Iran, and impose more sanctions than those adopted Saturday by the UN Security Council, the State Department's number three diplomat has said. "We don't think this resolution is enough in itself. We want the international community to take further action," US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said after the council slapped the first-ever UN sanctions on Iran, targeting its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in response to its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work. "We would like to see more vigorous national and...

INDONESIA'S Supreme Court has overturned a guilty verdict against Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir for conspiracy in the deadly 2002 Bali bombings, a court spokesman said today. Some foreign governments accuse the cleric of having led a regional extremist group and the move is likely to anger countries such as Australia, which lost 88 nationals in the bomb attacks on nightclubs on the Indonesian resort island. Bashir was released in June after completing a 30-month jail sentence for being part of a conspiracy behind the bombings. The Supreme Court, in response to an appeal by Bashir challenging the verdict, ruled...

A SENIOR Church of England cleric whose father converted from Islam has attacked the world view of some Muslims, accusing them of incompatible double standards of "victimhood and domination". “Their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims, as in Bosnia or Kosovo, and always wrong when Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists, as with the Taliban or in Iraq,” said the CoE's only Asian bishop, Michael Nazir-Ali. Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester in southeast England, was quoted today as saying because of a “dual psychology” in which some Muslims...

The Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA) says an independent panel is being set up to investigate if comments made by Sydney cleric, Sheikh Taj el-Din Al Hilali, endorse rape. Sheikh Al Hilali has been at the centre of controversy since comments he made suggested women who dressed immodestly were inviting sexual assault. He says his comments have been taken out of context and will resign if an independent panel finds him guilty of endorsing rape. LMA president Tom Zreika says a panel will be established to look at the matter. "The process has to be conducted and it will be conducted,"...

RIOT police will be on hand during prayers at Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly's Sydney mosque today. The sheik has called on his faithful to join him for Friday prayers at Lakemba Mosque for his first public appearances since being rushed to hospital with chest pains on Monday. Police have already closed the road outside the mosque in western Sydney in anticipation of the thousands of supporters expected to gather before prayers begin at 1pm (AEDT). Large numbers of police, including riot police, will also be on hand. Officers with bomb-sniffer dogs had been through the mosque, which has been covered...

SHEIK Taj al-Din al-Hilaly has asked his followers to call off Saturday's planned rally which has been organised as a show of support for the besieged cleric. The sheik has gone on Voice of Islam Radio in Sydney thanking his supporters for their faith but urging them not to attend the unofficial rally at Lakemba. "He just called for people not to go, not to participate in the rally which doesn't show our way of faith," said Moussab Legha, a cleric at the radio station. "He said everyone should be cooled down." Mr Legha said the sheik will be attending...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- At least 12 people were killed in violence around Iraq on Saturday, while authorities found the decapitated corpses of seven people dumped north of Baghdad in what appeared to be a sectarian revenge killing. The bodies were found in an orchard in the city of Duluiyah late Friday. Three had been among a group of 17 construction workers kidnapped Thursday while traveling home to the predominantly Shiite town of Balad, police said. The corpses of the other 14 were found earlier Friday, also beheaded. The kidnapping was apparently retaliation for the abduction Wednesday of three Sunni...

DENMARK'S Foreign Ministry warned Danish citizens against travelling to several Muslim countries and Israel today after the latest Prophet Mohammad cartoon controversy. The warning comes after Danish state TV aired amateur video footage showing members of the anti-immigrant Danish People's Party (DPP) youth wing taking part in a competition to draw images mocking the Prophet at a summer camp in August. The Foreign Ministry issued a strong advisory against travel to the Gaza Strip and cautioned against travel to Israel and the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen...

AUSTRALIA'S most senior Islamic cleric has called for a Muslim leader to be ostracised over comments about the prophet Mohammed that he likened to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly yesterday accused the chairman of John Howard's Islamic reference board, Ameer Ali, of selling out his religion to gain the support and financial backing of Muslim critics. Dr Ali said in The Australian yesterday that Mohammed had flaws, and criticised Muslims who blindly follow the faith and failed to question the veracity of the Koran. Sheik Hilaly, the head of Lakemba Mosque in Sydney's southwest, said Dr Ali's...

POPE Benedict has been informed of the hijack of a Turkish Airlines plane in which the hijackers reportedly want to deliver a message to him in protest at his planned trip to Turkey, the Vatican said today.