This in just days after the president of Afghanistan thanked Canadians for helping
his country move toward democracy.....
The World Today - Afghan man faces death penalty for religious conversion
ABC - OnlineThe World Today - Thursday, 23 March , 2006 12:30:00
Reporter: John Shovelan
ELEANOR HALL: United States President George W. Bush has added his voice to those expressing concern about the case of an Afghan man who is facing the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Abdul Rahman has been jailed and charged with rejecting the Muslim religion, and a judge in Afghanistan has said he could be executed under Sharia law if he refuses to return to the faith.
But while international pressure is growing on the Afghan Government to intervene, the Government in Kabul says it's up to the courts to decide the matter.
From Washington John Shovelan reports.
JOHN SHOVELAN: The Afghan legal system is a mix of civil and Sharia or Islamic law and Sharia law stipulates death for anyone who deserts their faith.
Conservative commentators in the US have been urging the Bush administration to intervene on behalf of Abdur Rahman.
COMMENTATOR: You know this really is, it's an outrage and it's a shame.
JOHN SHOVELAN: Germany, Canada and Italy, all with troops in Afghanistan have raised their concerns about the case and some politicians have called for a troop withdrawal unless the case against Abdur Rahman is dropped.
President Bush today said he hoped Afghanistan would abide by the universal principle of freedom.
GEORGE BUSH: I'm troubled when I hear, deeply troubled when I hear the fact that a person who has converted away from Islam may be held to account. That's not the universal application of the values that I talked about. I look forward to working with the Government of that country to make sure that people are protected in their capacity to worship.
JOHN SHOVELAN: The case is sensitive for the Afghan Government which depends on foreign troops and also depends on foreign aid to support its economy.
But he's also under pressure from conservative supporters of Islamic law.
Rahman is reported to have told a judge at a preliminary hearing last week, he became a Christian while working for an aid group, which was helping Afghan refugees.He's quoted saying, "I'm not an apostate. I'm obedient to God, but I'm a Christian. That's my choice."
The US Undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns, raised the case with the visiting Afghan Foreign Minister earlier this week.
NICHOLAS BURNS: We certainly will respect the sovereignty of the Afghan authorities and the Afghan system.
From an American point of view, people should be free to choose their own religion and people should not receive any severe penalties, certainly not penalty of death or in our case, we would even say penalty of imprisonment, for having made a personal choice as to what religion that person wishes to follow.
JOHN SHOVELAN: The senior UN representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said in a statement, he was following the case with grave concern.
He said, "It is my wish that Mr Rahman's legal and human rights will be upheld and that this matter does not create a rift between Afghanistan and its international partners."
He went on, "Freedom of religion, including the freedom to change one's religion, was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Afghanistan had adhered to."
The case prompted a question to President Bush during his visit today to West Virginia.
REPORTER: Do you have an army of sociologists to go over there and change that country or are you hoping that in a couple of decades that we can change the mindset over there?
GEORGE BUSH: No, I appreciate the question, it's a very legitimate question.
JOHN SHOVELAN: Some Afghan officials have raised the questions about Mr Rahman's mental state and there have a been some reports that he will plead innocent, because he is not of sound mind.
John Shovelan, Washington.
ELEANOR HALL: A spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says the Australian Government is a long-standing supporter of religious freedom, and that the Minister hopes the Afghan Government respects Mr Rahman's religious rights.[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1598997.htm]
Islam becoming the religion of terror and destruction?
U.S. House of Representatives legislation that would impose sanctions has been stalled.
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Posted: March 4, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Art Moore
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
Sudan's militant Muslim regime is slaughtering Christians who refuse to convert to Islam, according to the head of an aid group who recently returned from the African nation.
The forced conversions are just one aspect of the Khartoum government's self-declared jihad on the mostly Christian and animist south, Dennis Bennett, executive director of Seattle-based Servant's Heart told WorldNetDaily.
Villagers in several areas of the northeast Upper Nile region say that when women are captured by government forces they are asked: "Are you Christian or Muslim?"
Women who answer "Muslim" are set free, but typically soldiers gang-rape those who answer "Christian" then cut off their breasts and leave them to die as an example for others.
Bennett says these stories are corroborated by witnesses from several tribes in the region. Upon returning to the U.S., he wrote a letter to influential members of Congress and activists.
"After witnessing once again the situation on the ground there," Bennett wrote, "I must ask 'How long will the United States government allow the Government of Sudan to continue its jihad against the Black African Christians of South Sudan?'"
Backed by Muslim clerics, the National Islamic Front regime in the Arab and Muslim north declared a jihad, or holy war, on the south in 1989. Since 1983, an estimated 2 million people have died from war and related famine. About 4.5 million have become refugees.
Sudan's holy war against the south was reaffirmed in October by First Vice President Ali Osman Taha.
"The jihad is our way, and we will not abandon it and will keep its banner high," he said to a brigade of mujahedin fighters heading for the war front, according to Sudan's official SUNA news agency. "We will never sell out our faith and will never betray the oath to our martyrs."
The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a resolution finding that Khartoum is "systematically committing genocide," but current legislation that would impose sanctions has been stalled. The Sudan Peace Act is opposed by both the White House and Wall Street.
Sanctions in the House version of the bill target oil revenues that Khartoum is using to fuel its war effort. Bennett, with 20 years experience in international risk management and banking, said he was the first to probe the link between oil and jihad that is now documented and publicized by human rights groups. His research began in 1996 when he asked: If you're the government of Sudan and you're broke, how are you paying for your war?
In his letter urging action by the U.S., he points out that Sudan's military continues to decorate and promote known war criminals such as Commander Taib Musba, who in the mid-1980s killed an estimated 15,000 unarmed, civilian, ethnic Uduk Christians.
In 1986, Musba entered the Uduk tribal capital of Chali and declared to its Christians: "You are all going to convert from Christianity to Islam today, because here is what's going to happen to you if you don't."
Musba then killed five church leaders in front of the gathered villagers. When they refused to convert, he began killing unarmed men, women and children. Some were herded at gunpoint into a hut then run over by a 50-ton, Soviet-made tank.
He also herded groups of about a dozen people into a hut, where he asked the first person "Do you renounce Jesus Christ?" Anyone who refused was killed by a three-inch nail driven into the top of the head.
The U.N. high commissioner for refugees granted the Uduks international refugee status in 1992 after investigating the atrocities, but almost as many died during the six years they waited for the declaration.
Islam also is forced on Sudanese in the Muslim north. Security police in Khartoum are pursuing a local convert to Christianity who went into hiding three weeks ago to escape arrest and possible death, the Compass Direct news service reports. Aladin Omer Agabni Mohammed, who left Islam 11 years ago to become a Christian, is subject to the death penalty under Sudanese criminal law for "apostasy." According to a church leader, two other converts face a similar situation.
Forced starvation
Bennett says that in addition to the more immediate, readily apparent atrocities taking place, there is a slower, less perceptive persecution that is equally deadly.
Forced starvation is one of the primary tools of the Khartoum regime, he says. When government forces attack a Christian village, they kill everyone they catch, but those who flee lose everything necessary for survival.
"The government comes in and burns the crops, burns grain stored if there was any excess, burns houses down," Bennett said. "Now you have only the clothes on your back, no tools, no cooking pots, no buckets for water, and you have to run two days through the bush in 115-degree temperatures in order to escape."
In the arid wilderness, escapees try to survive on tree leaves and stagnant, dysentery-infested water. If a women is breastfeeding, her milk dries up, Bennett said, and the baby starts dying. Small children, just weaned, also start dying.
"But all the family has to do is change their name to Muhammad or Ramadan, convert to Islam and walk the two days back to the government of Sudan who will care for them," he said.
Last year, the government of Sudan burned all the crops in the area where Bennett's group works.
"There wasn't anything to harvest," he said. "Literally we saw people eating roots and tree leaves. It's like eating the nutritional properties of cardboard. It's enough to put something in your stomach but not enough to feed you."
A food drop came from the U.N. World Food Program, he said, "but they never came in to do an assessment; they just dropped it from the air."
As the "hungry season" approaches – the rainy period of June, July and early August – emergency food supplies become critical. Servant's Heart believes it will need to feed 50,000 people in its area during that time.
Slavery as tool of terror
Slavery is another tool of the National Islamic Front regime, though Bennett says it is not known in the northeast Upper Nile region, mainly because of lack of transportation.
Western Bahr El Ghazal is one location where it persists because the railroad line allows captured men, women and children to be taken to slave markets in the north.
"If you want to end systematic slavery, blow up the train line and keep it blown up," Bennett said.
The ongoing controversy surrounding slave redemption – the practice of buying freedom promoted by some humanitarian groups – arose again in the past week when the Irish Times and Washington Post published exposes acknowledging the existence of slavery in Sudan but alleging that fake slave redemption is taking place.
Bennett respects the work of groups buying back the slaves, but he believes it is inevitable that some will be conned. Engaging in the practice is a matter of individual conscience, he says.
"Anytime you have tens of thousands of American dollars coming into an area you've got potential problems of corruption," Bennett said.
He says the "jury is still out" on whether it fuels the market by increasing demand.
"Slave-taking would still be happening even if nobody was buying back slaves," he said. "Maybe not to the full extent."
But he believes it's important to keep in mind that taking slaves is "just one more facet of the jihad against the civilian population" in southern Sudan. The methods may vary in different parts of the country, but the aim is the same.
"In the Uduk tribe, Taib Musba drove three-inch nails into people's heads," he said. "In northeast Upper Nile, they are gang-raping women and cutting off their breasts; in western Bahr El Ghazal, they are capturing women and selling them as slaves."
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26672
Islamic Congress takes credit for helping Liberals fend off Tories
Gillian Cosgrove
Saturday, August 07, 2004
As the pundits are still noting, the big losers in the federal election were
the Liberals, who nearly blew it, and the socialists, whose boastful
rhetoric did not garner them nearly as many seats as they expected. The
winners were the Bloc Quebecois, big time, and the Conservatives, to a more
modest degree.
But there was another, hitherto unacknowledged, winner: Canada's
700,000-member Muslim community, which now ranks as the second-largest
religious bloc in Canada after the Christians and is growing rapidly.
On June 28, Muslims delivered the vast majority of their votes to the
Liberals, especially in greater Toronto where, led by Colleen "Baghdad"
Beaumier, an apologist for the deposed Saddam regime in Iraq, they beat back
the upstart Conservatives and NDPers. In this process, Muslim leaders claim,
with statistics on their side, Muslims did nothing less than to "save" (at
least in their eyes) Canada from the Conservatives.
To put it bluntly, Muslims now hold the balance of power in at least 100
ridings.
If you doubt all this, check this headline on a post-election "media
communique" issued by the Canadian Islamic Congress: Muslim Vote Helps Save
Canada from Conservative Government: More than 80 per cent of Eligible
Canadian Muslims Voted -- with Liberals the Overwhelming Favourite.
According to a CIC exit poll, 71% of Muslims voted Liberal; 23% opted for
the NDP; 3% for the Bloc Quebecois, with the remaining 3% spread among the
Conservatives, Greens and independent candidates.
Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, CIC's national president, finds it significant that 88%
of Muslim voters younger than 25 bothered to cast ballots, with more voting
for the NDP than usual, and the percentage of Muslim women casting
ballots -- eat your heart out Osama bin Laden! -- was slightly higher than
that of men.
The good doctor sums up the CIC's response to the election result: "It's a
very good day for democracy in Canada."
Ms. Wahida Valiante, CIC national vice-president, chimes in: "CIC took a
leading role to engage Muslims in this election.... But now we must HOLD
EVERY MP ACCOUNTABLE TO THE ELECTORATE THAT PUT HIM THERE. The REAL work has just begun."
A CIC research document stresses that, FOR THE FIRST TIME, there were more
than 100 ridings in Canada "where Muslims hold a significant 'swing vote' of
between 1.8% and 13.5%."
HOW THE ISLAMIC CONGRESS RATES OUR MPS
Back in April, the CIC flexed its electoral muscle by issuing what it called
"Canada's first election research report card," grading all 301 MPs on their
performance in Ottawa over the last four years. They were assessed against a
position paper on 10 national and 10 international issues, including, of
course, their position toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as defined
by the aforesaid CIC.
Then it takes some shots, of sorts, at the Martin government: "Current
Canadian policy toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict ... is more of the
Israel-cannot-do-wrong, and thus is less balanced than under previous
administrations."
Nonetheless, it reports, 42 Liberal MPs out of a total of 85 MPs get "A"
ratings on its report card, including Paul Martin and Cabinet members Bill
Graham, Reg Alcock, Ralph Goodale and John McCallum. Joe Volpe and Pierre
Pettigrew merit Fs.
By contrast, all 14 NDP members get As, while only six Conservatives receive
As and 69 Fs, and 23 Bloc MPs get As and one an F.
RIDINGS WHERE MUSLIMS HAVE MOST CLOUT
According to the extensive CIC research, of the 101 ridings where Muslim
voters can cast "swing votes," seven of the top 10 are in the Greater
Toronto Area, two in Montreal and one in Ottawa. The riding with the most
Muslims, 13.5%, is Don Valley West, Toronto, followed by Don Valley East,
12.5%.
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