Dr Kaukab Siddique | Editor-in-Chief ---------------------------------------------------------
Jamada al-Awwal 11, 1426/June 18, 2005 #47
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EYE OPENING ANALYSIS of Iraq: "Imam" Hassan Qazwini [remember his $14 million mosque in Michigan?] is promoting the U.S. government theory that a "sectarian war" is going on in Iraq. Qazwini claims the U.S. liberated Iraq! For understanding the actual situation in Iraq, please scroll all the way down.
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THINK ABOUT IT:

Imam Jamil al-Amin says that to understand Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, look at the American prison system right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. [Scroll down for special report on the tragic situation in Baltimore's detention center.]
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SUDAN's Darfur: Zionists Preparing Grounds for U.S. Intervention: the Holes in the Propaganda are Big & Ugly

Ms. Diane Rayme 
The Diane Rayme Show 
American University 
Washington, DC 
drshow@wamu.com 
Dear Ms. Rayme

Your hour long program on Sudan, June 14, 2005 was one-sided to such an extreme that I decided to write and indicate to you the niceties of honest journalism which the program missed.
  1. Your program was about an Islamic nation, Sudan, and focused on Darfur region which is also Muslim. In that context, you could not bring on any Islamic or Muslim presenter. Thus you missed out on a basic ingredient of journalism: the viewpoint of the people being discussed.
  2. Your panelists, Nick Christoff of the New York Times, Ken Bacon of Refugees International and Charles Snyder [ex-State Dept.?] came up with the claim that 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur by the Khartoum-backed militias. There was no indication how your people arrived at this figure. Who carried out the survey, when and using how many investigators?
  3. I wonder if you realize that 400,000 is a lot of people. The United States, with the most horrendous weapons potential in the world, has killed only 100,000 civilians in Iraq, according to Lancet magazine. How the Sudanese militias could kill 400,000 is incredible, considering the primitive weaponry of the militias. Perhaps the U.S. should hire the militias as its instructors in Iraq.
  4. If the militias, with no helicopter gunships, travelling over the vast Darfur, were to kill ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE EVERY DAY for every day of the 365 days in a year, that would be 36,500 people. If the militias kept doing that for four years, they would kill 146,000 people. Even for Christian missionary propaganda, that's quite a stretch!
  5. Your presenters claimed that EVERY WOMAN who goes to fetch water from wells outside the refugee camps is raped. Even a much less seasoned journalist than you, Ms. Rayme, would have asked: Who told you this? And as, obviously, your three presenters do not know the language, which group did the interpretor belong to who told them the tall tales about rape?
  6. The biggest hole in your program was your inability to ask the obvious question: WHO HAS ARMED THE DARFUR REBELS so well that the Khartoum government had to raise militias to fight back? That's the key question and you failed to ask it. [Your guests went into Darfur via Chad, which is allied to Israel, so they should know.]
  7. Ken Bacon is supposed to be working for Refugees International but the demands he laid down for the Bush Administration to implement indicate that he is not a humanitarian relief worker but a political operative bent on the destruction of Sudan. He wants the U.S. to:
    1. Impose SANCTIONS on Sudan.
    2. Urge all American businesses to divest from Sudan.
    3. Impose a NO FLY zone on Sudan.
    4. Send in TROOPS. Ms. Rayme, you did not question Bacon at all. That's poor journalism
  8. In spite of all the gobbledegook your guests spouted about Sudan ["Arabs are fighting Africans" etc] it was still useful because it brought out the SPECIFIC FORCES participating in the anti-Sudan program:
    1. The Zionist lobby in America.
    2. Billy Graham and the Evangelists.
    3. The Jewish Holocaust museum and related groups.
  9. Would you agree that after the hiatus created by the Sudan-U.S. agreement to work together against terrorism, the Bush administration will move once more against Sudan, and the "work" being done by your three guests will then come in handy?
Sincerely 
Kaukab Siddique, Ph.D 
Associate Professor of English
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Montreal Perspectives
By Jalaluddin S. Hussain

Sharia used as phantom to terrorize Quebecers

These days the Sharia story is getting on my nerves. Take for example one Mr. Pierre Gauthier, praising the one and only Muslim member of the Quebec National Assembly, Madame Fatima Houda-Pepin, in the Letters column of daily, The Gazette, Montreal.

He praises Madame Pepin because he thinks that the ill-conceived Sharia initiative was "struck down" in Quebec because of her. According to him the initiative of introducing Sharia in Quebec had as much chance as the Christian and Jewish legal initiatives in a Muslim country. He thinks such initiitiatives had zero chance!

By way of background information it may be mentioned that this letter of Mr. Gauthier is based on a May 27 news report in The Gazette, entitled, "Quebec rejects introduction of legal tribunals". In fact it was a very misleading report published in this only English daily of Montreal. First of all, this report mentions about the National Assembly resolution, whereas in fact it was a motion only, moved by two other non-Muslim women, besides Madame Pepin. Again, it was a non-binding motion and passed when only a handful of members were present in the Quebec National Assembly. Some Muslim quarters have interpreted this motion, having ulterior political motivations and passed to malign the Islamic Sharia system, as a whole, and also to negatively impact on the Quebec Muslim community.

One thing needs to be made clear: the Sharia arbitration is an issue in the Province of Ontario only. In Quebec itself the provincial laws, on family arbitration does not allow any other system of arbitration, except Quebec family laws. This question is being raised here perhaps to find an excuse to spread and re-inforce the prevailing mindset against Islam and Muslims. While Quebec Muslims may have different take on the Sharia law, they cannot allow it to become a reason of attack on their religious and cultural values.

Time to think about a dignified exit strategy for the American coalition forces

It is in the inside page of The Gazette, Montreal of June 13, 2005. The news itself, however, is of great signficance. Brigadier General Donald Alston, the spokesperson of the Caolition forces in Iraq, concedes that,"... insurgency is not going to be settled through military operations..." Instead, the military officers of the U.S. Coalition forces openly suggest that the Iraqi resistance can only end through political negotiations and withdrawal of the invading forces. If a planned exit of the coalition forces is not done, it is feared that the indiscriminate massacre of the Iraqi innocent civilians and killing of coalition soldiers will continue unabated. Is it not the time that the Pentagon devise a dignified exit strategy out of Iraq? If not there could be a repetition of Viet Nam and Somalia. Do the American people want the repetition of those humiliations?
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Jamaat al-Muslimeen News 
P.O. Box 10881 
Baltimore, MD 21234

Baltimore Mother: Our Tears Mingle. Her Son Was Beaten to Death in pre-trial Detention Facility

by Nadrat Siddique

This Tuesday, I found out what it feels like to look into the eyes of a mother whose son has been beaten to death while in custody. Joey Gilbon's mother walked proud, carrying a picture of her son. She had beautiful dark brown skin, a crown of white hair, and deep contemplative eyes, which would make you cry if you looked into them long enough. I hugged her, hardly knowing what to say. "Your son will not be forgotten," I managed to mumble.

I stood with her and the mothers at the entrance of Baltimore's Central Booking Facility on Falls Way and Madison Street. They were there to protest the deaths of their loved ones in custody. So they were in jail in Iraq, you say? Nope, right here, in AmeriKKKa.

Twenty-seven people, mostly black, have died in custody at Central Booking and City Jail in recent months, while waiting to go to trial. Many of them were locked up for very minor, non-violent offenses, like non-payment of child support, or loitering.

Baltimore's zero tolerance law prohibits assembly in certain areas. Although the law ostensibly is aimed at drug dealers, it means that a city resident who steps outside his house, if it happens to be in an area targeted by "law enforcement," may be arrested after one or two warnings. (The zero tolerance laws are also an attack on the First Amendment freedom of assembly of some sectors of society--but that is a separate issue.) So, in effect, some of the detainees held at Central Booking were locked up for standing outside their own homes. And while there, they could be the target of murderous prison guards.

One of the recent murders was of 52-year old Raymond Smoots, who was beaten so badly by guards that his family could barely recognize his body. But, his mother was determined to fight for justice in her son's case. In the days leading up to the protest, she stood on a West Baltimore street corner with activists handing out leaflets with the heading "Is Baltimore's Central Booking our Abu Ghraib?" It was from her that I learned of the protest.

The protest was called by the Emergency Coalition for Justice, an umbrella organization which included many of the families of the victims, the All-Peoples Congress, the Million Worker March Movement, the Nation of Islam, the Troops Out Now Coalition, and others. I found out about the protest too late, otherwise, I'd have recommended that Jamaat al-Muslimeen add its endorsement.

At the start of the rally, the organizers symbolically wrapped yellow police tape around the front steps of the Central Booking facility, calling it a crime scene, and demanding the prosecution of the prison guards and police responsible for the deaths in custody. They charged that prisoners were forced to lie in their own vomit and that essential medicines were withheld from other prisoners. One, who had AIDS, was denied anti-retroviral medication, and another, a diabetic, was refused his insulin. A female detainee, Debby Epifanio, died after being denied her medicine.

Despite the heat advisory, nearly 300 people showed up for the rally. Most were people of color. I was pleased to see there was a significant youth continent--mostly anarchists and predominantly white.

Some of the mothers spoke. Other speakers included an NAACP representative in stunning African garb, a Nation of Islam representative, a Christian minister, and others. Notably absent were the "Sunni" Muslims.

Strange, I thought, the NOI Muslims don't pray (formally), But they work for justice. The Sunni Muslims pray. But they (with notable exceptions) don't work for justice. Shouldn't one lead to the other?

A particularly interesting speaker was a prison guard, who decried the abuses of his co-workers, and apologized to the families for what they had endured. He wore shades and a hat to disguise himself so that he would not be fired from his job.

While the speakers blasted prisoner abuse and police brutality, I ran up and down the road handing out fliers explaining why we were there to passing motorists. An hour handing out fliers was like a Racism 101 class. Many of the motorists were leaning out of their car windows, clearly intrigued by the protest. Nearly all the black motorists to whom I offered the flier took it; the only black people who refused the flier were prison guards who were getting off work. But the majority of white motorists refused to take the flier. A white ex-convict, who said he'd spent twenty-five years in the facility we were protesting, helped me pass out the fliers. He said, "Sh--, the white people, they won't take it. They all close-minded." It seemed a willful ignorance of injustice.

The rally over, it was time to march.

"Stop the killing, stop the lies, Raymond Smoots didn't have to die!" we chanted as we marched around Central Booking. The facility is a veritable modern day dungeon, encompassing several city blocks, with thick concrete walls protected by cameras and electronic gates.

On the next block, we found ourselves strolling along side the City Jail. It is a dilapidated old brick structure with grates and barbed wire covering the windows on every floor. We turned the corner, chanting, "Tear down the walls," and "No justice, no peace!" The prisoners could hear us, and some of them yelled back words of appreciation and encouragement. I could almost hear some of my reactionary relatives and colleagues saying, "Would you prefer if these common criminals were running the streets?"

But, the real criminals fill the corporate boardrooms, the halls of Congress, and the Oval Office; they are never the ones to be warehoused when they can't afford bail or a good lawyer.
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Analysis of War News:
by New Trend Media Monitor

IRAQ: Media Trying to divert Americans While U.S. Faces no-win Situation

June 2005 shows the full development of the U.S. media's new mode of covering the war in Iraq which New Trend noticed several months back [before anyone else]. Here are the salient features of TV cable and evening news coverage of Iraq in the last two weeks: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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2005-06-18 Sat 19:04ct
NewTrendMag.org