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"British suspected Islamic terrorist arrested in Germany A major German security operation targeted "dangerous" Islamist extremists in dawn raids by 850 police officers on 70 mosques, schools and homes across Germany." SNIPPET: "Hans-Peter Friedrich, Germany's interior minister, banned one Salafist network, Millatu Ibrahim, for "working against our constitutional order and against understanding between peoples". He also announced an investigation into two other networks, Dawa FFM and "The True Religion", with a view to a seeking additional bans."" SNIPPET: "Secret intelligence gathered by police and anti-terrorism officers across Europe gave "cause for concern" in Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Austria,...

Sheikh Ali Wanis, an Egyptian parliament member and prominent figure in the Nour Party—the Salafi party which preaches a return to Islam's earliest practices based on Muhammad's practices—was recently caught in a "compromising position" with a female other than his legal spouse(s). According to official reports, police found a parked car on a dark, farm road, and went to investigate it. They found a man, with the Salafi trademark beard, in an "indecent position" with a "young girl," who later was reported 19-years-old. First, the Salafi MP told police that she was his fiancé; later he claimed the teenage girl...

Major Police Raids Salafist Organization Banned in Germany Some 1,000 German police in seven states raided facilities belonging to ultra-conservative Salafist organizations on Thursday, as the Interior Ministry announced that one such group has been banned. Authorities are concerned about the growing numbers of violence-prone Salafists in the country. For weeks, German officials have focused a significant amount of attention on the country's Salafists, members of a fundamentalist strain of Islam who are suspected of having close ties to Islamist extremists. On Thursday, they made their move, raiding Salafist facilities in seven German states and banning one of the most...

Now German journalists critical of Islamists are in the cross hairs: In a video on YouTube radical Mulsims showed private photos of an employee of the "Frankfurter Rundschau" - accompanied by threats against the "apes and pigs" who published "mendacious" reports. Research by the newspaper "Die Welt" revealed that the film was created by a group associated with the Salafists, who presently are distributing 25 million Korans in German. The initiative began on Saturday in several towns. The day before the video was posted online. In Berlin, as far as we are aware, no Korans have yet been distributed.

Naked images of Pharoahs are heresy, says Salafist leader Abdel Moneim El-Shahat uses TV appearance to condemn Egypt's Pharaonic heritage, reiterates criticism of Naguib Mahfouz and Alaa Al-Aswany The newly discovered tomb that belonged to Rudj-ka, a priest who headed the mortuary cult of the pharaoh Khafre, at the site of the Giza Pyramids in Cairo (Photo: AP) Images of naked Pharaohs on Egypt’s temples are tantamount to heresy, prominent Salafist Abdel Moneim El-Shahat said on Wednesday. El-Shahat, who failed to win an independent seat for the Nour Party in recent parliamentary elections, had previously called Egypt’s Pharaonic heritage “rotten.”...

The pyramids at Giza are the most stunning sight I have ever seen. True, their lonely eminence is threatened by Cairo's unlicensed building sprawl, with half completed houses inching their way towards them. Surveying them at night as the calls to prayer multiplied into a thunder of sound from central Cairo already told me a few years back what was coming. For now members of the Nour (The Light) Salafist party, which won 20 per cent of the vote in recent elections, are talking about putting an end to the 'idolatry' represented by the pyramids. This means destruction - along...

Those who camped out in Tahrir Square side by side with Muslims to call for national renewal now fear their struggle is being hijacked by ultra-conservative Salafist Islamists with no one to stop them. "We did not risk our lives to bring Mubarak down in order to have him replaced by Salafists,"... Sectarian tensions are not new to Egypt, where Christians make up around 10 percent of the population of 80 million. But the frequency and intensity of clashes have increased since Mubarak's overthrow. ... Christians say no one has been tried yet for the burning of a church in...

France's war with the jihadis is more intense than most Americans or even most Europeans would imagine. With French troops engaging the Taliban in Afghanistan often coming under attack, jihadist cells have started targeting France as well as French presence in the Sahel, the north African Sahara. In a recent interview with Parisian daily Le Figaro, French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, provided significant revelations. During a recent lecture tour of Europe I had the opportunity to meet with French defense and counterterrorism officials as well as with legislators, particularly members of the French National Assembly serving on the Afghanistan's committee....

The convergence between Jihadi Khomeinists and Jihadi Salafists seems to be developing as strategists and terrorism analysts are debating the near future of the global jihadi movement. Moving fast to reach out to the Islamist regime in Khartoum, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization openly declared its backing of Omar Bashir's government as the latter in turn solidified its alliance with Hezbollah. This development, which surfaced as of the end of July, comes in parallel of an attempt by the Khomeinist-inspired organization to sign a collaboration agreement with Salafist factions in Beirut a few weeks ago. But the Hezbollah-Sudan exchange of declarations...

The Sayyid Qutb Reader Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society Edited by Albert J. Bergesen Routledge, 2008 0415954258 (paperback; $34.95) 041595424X (hardback; $135.00) Preface It has been said that perhaps no writer has occupied so central a place within the universe of political Islam in the second half of the twentieth century as Egypt's Sayyid Qutb, and if one wants to understand the mind of radical Muslims, one needs to know what they read, or have read, and they read Sayyid Qutb. In general, his work has been divided into three periods. The earliest (1920-1947) centers on more literary...

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader has claimed that a radical Algerian Islamist group had joined al-Qaeda and is being urged to punish France, it has emerged. Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared a video on a website on the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks. In the tape, he issued a warning of new attacks targeting Israel and the Gulf. Although France's government opposed the US-led war in Iraq, French officials believe the country is still a target for Islamist militants. In the video, Zawahiri says: "Osama Bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the GSPC [the Salafist Group for Preaching...

French and Italian police are reported to have arrested at least 10 people in a joint anti-terrorism operation. The suspects, who are mainly Algerian, were detained during raids in Naples, Milan and Marseille. Reports say police are investigating groups believed to be helping fund Islamic terrorism. The suspects are thought to have links to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat - an armed splinter organisation operating mainly in eastern Algeria.

Brescia and Naples, 18 Nov. (AKI) - The three Algerians detained on Tuesday in the Italian cities of Brescia and Naples were planning a massive terror attack - "on a ship as big as the Titanic, packed with explosives" - that aimed to kill "at least 10,000 people", as well as an attack on "Italian citizens and interests" in Tunisia, according phone conversations between the three men, which Italian anti-terror police say they intercepted after al-Qaeda's deadly 7 July attacks on London and on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. In their tapped phone conversations, Yamine Bouhrama, Mohamed...

Plans to 'top' 9/11 strikes 23/12/2005 20:13  - (SA)   Related Articles Pullout 'will lead to attacks' US at risk for more attacks US had 'bomber' in their hands Why is Osama so quiet?    Rome - Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday. The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11 2001 strikes by al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed about 2 700 people, Pisanu...

Italy holds three terror suspects Three Algerians have been arrested in Italy on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. The men were detained in Naples and Brescia, and were "potentially operative", police said. They had contacts with Algeria's Salafist movement, which is believed to have links to al-Qaeda, police added. Italy has moved before against suspected Islamic extremists, arresting an imam and five other men in June who were suspected of Salafist connections.

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) -- The U.S. military has wrapped up exercises aimed at getting north and west African troops ready to fight al Qaeda-linked terrorists and making sure the militants don't get a toehold in a region of porous borders and weak states. U.S. commanders said Thursday they hope the exercise was only the beginning of a long-term relationship. Starting June 6, 700 U.S. troops ran about 2,100 soldiers from nine North and West African nations through counterterrorism exercises including mock patrols, target practice -- even airborne parachute drills that sent hundreds of African soldiers drifting from U.S. C-130 transport...

RIYADH/JEDDAH, 29 June 2005 — Saudi Arabia yesterday issued a new list of 36 suspects believed to be linked to a series of terror attacks across the country, reflecting the government’s resolve to go ahead with its anti-terror campaign. In the latest response to a two-year campaign of bombings and killings by supporters of the Al-Qaeda terror network, the Interior Ministry broadcast pictures of the suspects on state television and offered hefty rewards for their capture. “Security authorities managed to uncover plans by the deviant group who used themselves as a tool to distort Islam and harm the security of...

ABU DHABI [MENL] -- Several commanders of the Al Qaida movement in Saudi Arabia have transferred their operations to Iraq in an effort to fight the U.S.-led coalition. Islamic sources said the movement of scores of leading Al Qaida fighters from Saudi Arabia has hampered operations against the Saudi regime. They said the Saudi members of Al Qaida have become aides and financiers of Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi in Iraq. About 3,000 to 5,000 Saudis have been fighting the U.S. military in Iraq. Over the past few months, about 200 Saudis returned to the kingdom.

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - Al-Qaida-linked Algerian insurgents are becoming more active in Africa's remote, ungoverned deserts, and increased cooperation among African nations will be key to averting future terror attacks, a top U.S. general said Saturday. U.S. Maj. Gen. Thomas Csrnko said the No. 1 threat to the region was Algeria's Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an al-Qaida affiliated movement that loaded fighters onto a dozen trucks earlier this month and attacked an isolated Mauritanian army outpost near the Algerian and Mali borders. The surprise assault left 15 Mauritanian soldiers and nine Salafists dead. The attack was a clear...

CAIRO [MENL] -- Algeria's leading Islamic insurgency group was said to have moved operations to Mauritania. Mauritania has accused the Salafist Brigade for Combat and Call of infiltrating the North African state. Officials said the Salafists have been directed by Al Qaida to attack military bases and other critical facilities in the pro-U.S. ally. On June 4, about 150 Salafist operatives stormed a military base in northeastern Mauritania near the Algerian border. Officials said 15 soldiers and five operatives were killed and six military vehicles were stolen.