#1
Simple solution. When a girl child is born in Europe, inform her parents that if the government later discovers that she has had her genitals mutilated, unless her parents have reported the criminal act to the police, they will be held criminally liable for aggravated assault.
Their daughter will be taken from their custody, and both the mother and father will spend a minimum of 1 year in prison, each.
It does not matter matter where, or under what circumstances, the mutilation occurred. That she is mutilated is all the evidence needed.
[Dawn] The Sunni Tehrik ...formed in Karachi in 1992 under by Muhammad Saleem Qadri. It quickly fell to trading fisticuffs and liquidations with the MQM and the Sipah-e-Sahaba, with at least a half dozen of its major leaders rubbed out. Sunni Tehreek arose to become the primary opposition to the Deobandi Binori Mosque, headed by Nizamuddin Shamzai, who was eventually bumped off by person or persons unknown. ST's current leadership has heavily criticized the Deobandi Jihadi leaders, accusing them of being sponsored by Indian Intelligence agencies as well as involvement in terrorist activities... (ST), a Barelvi Islamist organization, announced last Sunday that it was converting itself into a political party. To quite a few Paks the ST comes across as being another sectarian outfit triggered by the controversial Islamisation process of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in the 1980s.
It is true that the ST was a consequence of the legacy of the sectarian mess Zia's divisive ...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled... policies had created, but it must be emphasised that during the dictator's regime the Sunni sectarian outfits that emerged were almost all ideologically orientated towards either the Deobandi school of thought or the Salafi doctrine. The majority of Pak Moslems belong to the Barelvi school of thought -- an 18th century emergence that fused elements of Sufism with rituals and beliefs of the faith being practised by Moslems of undivided India in the rural areas.
That's why some scholars have also defined Barelvism as a kind of 'folk Islam', that may be riddled with some superstitions but is said to be far more moderate and pluralistic than the faith advocated and interpreted by its Deobandi or Salafi counterparts. According to sociologists like Abdul Qadeer and author Hassan Abbas, it is this perception that made Zia (and his intelligence agencies) concentrate on patronising political and beturbanned goon outfits representing the more puritanical Sunni sects.
It was felt (by the dictatorship) that the Barelvis' theological disposition was not suited to be transformed into the kind of jihadist fervour Zia was funded and directed to ferment (in Afghanistan) by the US and Soddy Arabia in the 1980s. Unlike the majority of Pakistain's Sunni sectarian outfits that emerged during the Zia era, the ST was formed in 1992, four years after the end of the Zia regime.
Its formation was explained as a reaction by Barelvi political-religious organizations to the rising influence of Deobandi and 'Wahabi' outfits that worked closely with the country's military-establishment during the anti-Soviet 'Afghan jihad.' But even though the ST surfaced as the Barelvis' first expression of sectarian militancy, the theological and ritual diversity found within the Barelvi sect has restricted it from turning into the kind of beturbanned goon outfit its Deobandi or Salafi counterparts (such as Sipah Sahaba) have become notorious for.
Analyst Murtaza Haider recently reproduced the doctoral thesis of Syed Ejaz Hussain in Dawn that analysed the religious characteristics of the 2,344 cut-throats set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock between 1990 and 2009 in Pakistain. The sectarian breakdown of the set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lockcut-throats revealed that more than 90 per cent belonged to the Deobandi school, whereas only five per cent were from the Barelvi sect.
It is interesting to note that till the 1990s, whereas religious minded Deobandis had well oiled political parties like the Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam ...Assembly of Islamic Clergy, or JUI, is a Pak Deobandi (Hanafi) political party. There are two main branches, one led by Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and one led by Maulana Samiul Haq. Fazl is active in Pak politix and Sami spends more time running his madrassah. Both branches sponsor branches of the Taliban, though with plausible deniability... (JUI) , and the more urbanised Sunni puritans backed mainstream fundamentalist entities like the Jamat-e-Islami (JI), the majority Barelvi population were hardly ever organised on a cohesive political-religious platform.
The Jamaat Ulema-e-Pakistain was considered to be the prominent Barelvi party, but a majority of Barelvis have (ever since the 1970s) largely been seen to be supporters of 'secular' parties like the PPP (in rural and semi-rural areas of Sindh and southern Punjab) and the MQM (in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... ). Political Economist, Boris Rumer, in 'Asia at the end of Transition' suggests that the JUP was strong among religious minded Barelvis in urban Sindh and parts of Punjab, and though it opposed the PPP regime of Z A Bhutto, it did not support the Zia dictatorship, denouncing his Islamisation policies as being pitched against the Barelvis.
With the rising belligerence of Deobandi beturbanned goon organizations during the Zia regime and the state-patronage that these outfits enjoyed during the Afghan war, the JUP disintegrated -- especially when members of its youth wing and some elements of the Barelvi student organization, Anjuman-e-Taleba-e-Islam (ATI), began forming more radical Barelvi outfits.
Many of these outfits came together in 1992 to form the ST. In Bloody Karachi, MQM hard boyz who'd fallen out with the party's leadership (claiming it was too 'secular' and 'pro-Shia'), also began joining the ST.
However, a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all... in spite of using the Sunni prefix in its name, the ST's programme was geared more towards combating Deobandi and 'Wahabi' beturbanned goon organizations whom it accused of being agents of Arab monarchies, and of being backed by Pakistain's military-establishment. After the tragic 9/11 episode, the ST stood out as the only large religious outfit in Pakistain that openly opposed the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and violent sectarian groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba.
Drummed up (by the West and Pak liberals) as being the more moderate face of religious radicalism that was openly critical of the violent tactics of jihadi organizations, the ST's comparative charm suddenly collapsed when a Barelvi fanatic rubbed out the former Punjab Governor Salman Taseer in 2011 after accusing him of committing blasphemy. There is evidence to suggest that a number of Deobandi beturbanned goon outfits were funded by puritanical Arab monarchies and had contacts within Pakistain's intelligence agencies.
The ST, on the other hand, has been collecting funds from its followers (especially from Bloody Karachi's trader classes). However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable...
according to a US report, the ST received $36,000 from the US government for standing up to the Taliban, but further funding was suspended after some members of the ST praised the killing of Taseer. Nevertheless, in spite of the growing militancy and hate crimes surfacing from within the ST, its recently unravelled programme suggests that it plans to continue opposing the Taliban and Deobandi outfits like the Sipah-e-Sahaba/Jamat-ud-Dawa. Little was said in its programme about certain thorny issues (the blasphemy law, the anti-Ahmadi legislation, etc.) whose blatant misuse over the past decades has instigated violence and hate crimes against minorities and liberal Paks. The ST has demanded the release of Governor Taseer's under-trial murderer.
Ironically, such are the issues on which the ST sees itself being on the same page as those it detests.
[Dawn] An investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed that the CIA's drone campaign in Pakistain has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals.
The report was published days after US President Barack Obama I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money... claimed that the drones had "not caused a huge number of civilian casualties" in Pakistain.
However, a woman is only as old as she admits... according to research by the Bureau, it was stated that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. The report claims that: "A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 non-combatants were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts."
The first confirmed attack on rescuers took place in North Wazoo on May 16, 2009. According to Mushtaq Yusufzai, a local journalist, Talibs had gathered in the village of Khaisor and at least 29 people died in total.
The Bureau reports that along with Talibs, locals said that six ordinary villagers also died that day. They were identified by Bureau field researchers as Sabir, Ikram, Mohib, Zahid, Mashal and Syed Noor.
Interestingly, the reports also reveal that often when the US attacks gunnies in Pakistain, the Taliban seal off the site to retrieve the dead. However, a woman is only as old as she admits... "an examination of thousands of credible reports relating to CIA drone strikes also shows frequent references to civilian rescuers. Mosques often exhort villagers to come forward and help, for example -- particularly following attacks that mistakenly kill civilians."
Quoting Christof Heyns, a South African law professor who is United Nations ...an organization whose definition of human rights is interesting, to say the least... Special Rapporteur on Extra- judicial Executions, the report states that "Allegations of repeat strikes coming back after half an hour when medical personnel are on the ground are very worrying. To target civilians would be crimes of war." Heyns is calling for an investigation into the Bureau's findings.
The Bureau's report also states that according to Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Initiative at the Brookings Institution, the US now has 7,000 drones operating and 12,000 more on the ground.
Aside from Pakistain, there is also debate over the use of drones in Yemen, Somalia and Libya. The Bureau's report in the Sunday Times claims that three US citizens were also killed by missiles fired from drones in Yemen last September.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/06/2012 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
#1
Kinda like Muzzies using two suicide boomers---the second activating when rescuers reach the scene?
#2
Exactly like that. Except in this case, the primary targets are specific bad guys instead of random infidels, and the secondary targets are likely their fellow miscreants-in-arms.
If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas...and maybe a Hellfire upside the head.
[Dawn] DESPITE the fact that madressah reforms have been on the national agenda for a number of years, it is clear that on the state level these are going nowhere. As reported in this newspaper, the federal interior minister recently told a cabinet meeting he was 'holding talks' with the relevant quarters regarding the establishment of a madressah regulatory authority. Rehman Malik Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. claimed it was difficult getting different schools of thought on a single platform in this respect. The minister had initially been tasked in November 2009 with setting up the authority. Over two years have passed but there has been no progress on this front. What is more, a spokesperson for the Ittehad-e-Tanzeemat Madaris, an umbrella body that groups together five different madressah boards, has contested Mr Malik's claims, saying that the state has made no effort to set up the authority.
In this regard, one important argument is that de-radicalisation should not be limited to madressahs, but should be a societal endeavour, considering we have become a highly intolerant society. For example, it is said the curriculum taught in public schools is perhaps more effective in breeding intolerance than what seminaries teach. Also, it is fair to say that a significant number of college and university students in this country share the narrow worldview of their more radical madressah counterparts. It is also wrong to assume all madressahs preach violence. Yet the fact remains that some seminaries are indeed teaching their students beturbanned goon ideologies. Hence it is essential that madressahs be regulated, especially where the curriculum is concerned.
As we have stated before, madressah reform is a subject the interior ministry is incapable of handling. It is an educational matter, not one of law enforcement, hence educationists should be at the forefront of the reform initiative. Since education has been devolved, the respective provincial education departments should be handling madressah reform, with the federal government maintaining a supervisory role to ensure uniformity. Making sure the state knows how many madressahs exist and what they are teaching seems like an entirely achievable endeavour -- if the state has the political will, of course.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/06/2012 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
"Reform" is to madrassah as guano is to ice cream.
Hat tip Dry Bones
A year ago, Ali was enjoying university in Damascus, looking forward to a career in dentistry and paying little heed to politics in a country controlled by a single family for over 40 years. That all changed, not so much when other Syrians took to the streets to demand President Bashar al-Assad step down, but when a mysterious message popped up on his Facebook page; it told him to get out of town, or die because he was the wrong religion.
You Alawite, read a text on the social networking site, widely hailed by pro-democracy activists for enabling the Arab Spring uprisings. We dont want to see your face in Barzeh.
Now, long dormant religious bigotries have thrust politics on Ali, who was born into the minority Alawite sect and still lives in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh, where most of his neighbours are Sunni Muslims. The 25-year-old student is now a firm supporter of Assad, not from any admiration for the wealthy elite that has run the country with an iron and often bloody fist for four decades, but because they too are Alawites.
They sent me the threat just because I am an Alawite living in Barzeh, Ali said during a series of interviews Reuters conducted in the Syrian capital last week with a variety of Alawite residents who asked that their identities be concealed.
If Assad falls, they fear a bloodbath for fellow Alawites, outnumbered six to one by the Sunnis in a Syrian population of 23 million, which also includes large minorities of Christians and ethic Kurds. The facts that MSM considers too confusing for you simple peasants
Typical of such tales is that of Ali, the dental student. He said he took the threat on Facebook seriously because one of his uncles had been killed. His body parts were delivered in a bag to his home village in the Alawites' western mountain heartland.
Mahmoud, who hails originally from Rabia in rural Hama province, said 39 people from his village had been killed since March: "If someone leaves the village, is stopped at a checkpoint and they know he is an Alawite, they kill him."
If this is indeed what Assad intends, the eviction of the Sunni community from Syria would be the first time in recent memory since the creation of Israel that Sunnis have been forced out in large numbers from the lands they conquered many centuries ago. Prior to Israel's creation, the last time something like this happened in the Mediterranean region was during the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, when large numbers of Sunnis fled the Christian majority Ottoman territories that became Serbia, Greece, Wallachia, Moldavia and Montenegro.
The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.
The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.
Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove this corrupting material. It is a jurisprudential justification to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.
The article, written by Alireza Forghani, a conservative analyst and a strategy specialist in Khameneis camp, now is being run on most state-owned conservative sites, including the Revolutionary Guards Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.
#5
Suppose in addition that the loud mouth is trying to fumble bullets into a revolver while doing his threatening...
Posted by: James ||
02/06/2012 14:06 Comments ||
Top||
#6
LUCIANNE > [Telegraph.UK] BRITAIN HAD TO PLEAD WID US TO BE PART OF IRAN FLOTILLA, as the US felt that the UK had little or nothing to contribute.
Ouchies.
and
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > HAMAS CHIEF: "ISLAMIC SPRING"; MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD CHIEF: "CALIPHATE SOON"; WESTERN MEDIA: ISLAMISTS [are] MODERATE, ISRAEL BAD.
* WORLD NEWS > IRANIAN OFFICIAL CALLS FOR PREEMPTIVE STRIKE ON ISRAEL, espec before EOY.
Our gas and oil reserves grow; Chinas and Japans shrink. If I move to China, as a Scandinavian-looking white guy I will never be accepted as fully Chinese; if a Chinese moves here, hes liable to run a companyor become president. Barack Obama and most of us would never make it as a president or prime minister in Japan or South Korea, or for that matter France.
Mr. President, sermonize to others abroad, not to us at home, about judging people on the basis of how they look. In India or Brazil, Obama, as most of us, would be relegated to a caste. Yes, I am worried at the present desire to run up trillions of dollars in debt and redistribute income while ignoring the sources of traditional American material wealth. Yet I still see no reason to lead from behind. I accept no post-American anythingand am quite tired after three years of being lectured that I am supposed to.
Espec when too many of our mighty FearLess Leaders don't ask or teach or explain, etc. anything; or at best give out only minimal information - you know, LEADERSHIP!
JOHN WAYNE = WAS AN ANT-ZILLA? D **** NG , I KNEW IT!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Punjab
Wazoo
[Dawn] DESPITE the fact that madressah reforms have been on the national agenda for a number of years, it is clear that on the state level these are going nowhere. As reported in this newspaper, the federal interior minister recently told a cabinet meeting he was 'holding talks' with the relevant quarters regarding the establishment of a madressah regulatory authority. 
