Islam

This brutal killing has shocked the world. It was heinous and unpardonable crime, but I do not call it murder for that is a legal term and the motive and pre-meditation have to be established by a court of law.

Some of us have gotten carried away, on both ends of the spectrum. This is just an attempt to see what happened, and try to place it in the context of immigrant assimilation, problems with teenage clothing, and try to lay the blame - for that is what we all want to do when confronted with such deep tragedy.

Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon."

-- Dick Cheney, 30 December 2006, eulogizing Gerald Ford.

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One of the executioners asked "Are you afraid?"

He answered "I am not afraid of anyone. I have been a mujahid and a political activist all my life, and I expected death at any moment. "

He added, "Down with the Americans and the Persians. Long live the Arab nation and Palestine"

-- Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti, 30 December 2006 (morning of the Muslim Festival of Sacrifice), just before his death.

One should not forget that Cardinal Ratzinger (before becoming pope) said: Turkey should find its identity in the Islamic world and not in Christian Europe.

I had the privilege to visit Istanbul recently, and I would advise anyone to please go visit Turkey, and particular Istanbul, to understand this critical issue at this point in history:

1. Istanbul sits in Europe (on the old Greek province of Thrace).  The Ottoman Sultans' seat of government was here.

2. The Ottoman sultan was also 'sultan-i-room' - King of Rome - the Byzantine Empire (the Russian Orthodox became independent due to the conquest of Byzantium by Muslims).

While travelling the other day, I observed the lady next to me reading an American evangelical magazine with page after page of anti-Islam stuff stated in the most childishly hateful manner. More than offended, I was amused and wondered what was the desired goal of this synergy between Zionists, evangelical Christians and some militant governments of the West. Governments that keep warning, almost subliminally, 'they want to change our way of life, let history judge us'.

I don't know how the media missed the angle that the current Pope, Benedict XVI, made comments that Turkey did not belong in the European Union and it should look for its identity in the Islamic world. These remarks were made just before he became Pope. It has also been widely known that the Pope wants to take on Islamic fundamentalists on an intellectual level.

The war on terror as initially envisioned by the US is lost – today Bush effectively declared the CIA 'torture' program illegal, upheld the Geneva conventions, promised to eventually close down Guantanamo and try the captured 9/11 terrorist leaders in military tribunals with defence attorneys provided. Now it is just an intelligence and police problem, what it should have been all along. Also in today's speech, George W. Bush was petulantly bitter about the decision of the US Supreme Court in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld

The Hizbullah-Lebanon war has permanently tipped the delicate balance. Israel's aura was defeated, and together with it – the last vestiges of American moral and military credibility.

1. Best way to escape the media-sound-bytes-silly-issues agenda of MCC is to make a pro-active agenda for community participation.

2. There is no religion without a clergy. Instead of bothering ourselves with clergy in Iran or Afghanistan or Saudi or Egypt, we should have our academics talking to Canadian Muslim clergy.

3. If a malicious or ignorant accuser accuses us of condoning 'terrorism' and is unaware of the issues surrounding 'terrorism' and prefers to adopt the neocon non-definition which makes every anti-US/Israel militant group a terrorist - it is best to ignore the question. It is much better to use the phrase, 'we are absolutely

Do Canadian Muslims have leaders who represent the aspirations and political leanings of the growing and divergent Muslim community, or are they seduced by short-term opportunism? Let us take a look.

Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis resigned from Joe Volpe's Liberal leadership campaign due to Volpe's unabashed support for Israel in the current Middle East conflict. Liberal MP Wajid Khan, and a well-known Muslim politician, is hanging on as the Ontario chair for Volpe's campaign.

Then Wajid Khan went one step further and courted the Conservatives, and Prime Minister Harper brought him on board as an advisor for Middle East and South Asian affairs. Tom Axworthy, former principal secretary to prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and chair of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University, called this move “I haven't heard of anything like this before.” Many members of the Liberal caucus have asked that Khan be excluded from the caucus as Conservative policies will be misunderstood as having a Liberal origin. Mr. Khan is also an ardent supporter of the increasingly unpopular Canadian troop presence in Afghanistan – which is an aggressive military campaign, and not just peacekeeping. Mr. Khan is on record as having said, “my year as a prisoner of war in India taught me how fruitless war is.”

The king of Saudi Arabia threatened that regional war would take the place of the 'peace processes' of the past.

Being stranded on the wrong foot for the past two weeks, this is brilliant strategy to counter the three problems the Saudis have: the opinion on the street, militants (al-Qaida) and Iran and the rise of Shi'ite power.

"Saudi Arabia warns everybody that if the peace option fails because of Israeli arrogance, there will be no other option but war," state-owned media quoted the king as saying. . . .

So-called freedom for Iraqis has been death, poverty and insecurity. The following accounts are not a result of 'insurgent' activity, but rather the work of US/UK allies:

Terri Judd in the Independent UK takes a deeper look at their plight in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom:

The women of Basra have disappeared. Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women's secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country.

by Akber Choudhry

Pope Benedict said the following today:

In a clear reference to Iran, he said: "Concerning the international crises linked to nuclear power, may an honourable solution be found for all parties, through serious and honest negotiations."

In another part of the speech, the Pope defended Israel's right to exist, a passage which appeared to be an indirect criticism of statements by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian President, that the Jewish state should be eliminated.