Dr Kaukab Siddique | Editor-in-Chief Rabi' al-Awwal 21, 1425/ May 12, 2004 #57
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QUOTABLE QUOTE:

"We risk losing support for this war unless we quickly " deal with the issue of abuse of prisoners in Iraq. [Senator McCain, May 7, 2004]
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From Br. Khalil Abdur-Rahman, North Carolina, International Representative of Imam Jamil Abdullah al-Amin.

YOU CAN HELP IMPROVE THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF IMAM JAMIL AL-AMIN.

Write polite but firm letters to:
Warden Hugh Smith
Georgia State Prison
2164 Hwy 147
Reidsville, GA 39499-9701
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BR. KHALIL ADDS:
It appears from a CNN report that the prison torture-and-abuse specialists used by the U.S. in Iraq have been taken there after practise in the U.S. prison system. They first did it to prisoners here and then were used in Iraq.
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WAR NEWS: [Based on U.S. media reports]

PALESTINE:

After more than a month of almost daily raids, murders, demolitions, carried out by Israeli tank columns, the masses finally got good news. On May 11, the Islamic resistance blew up an Israeli armored vehicle killing 6 Israeli troops.

IRAQ:

May 11: A U.S. convoy was attacked in the western desert, while travelling from Jordan to Baghdad. All 21 vehicles were destroyed. No figures on casualties are available.
May 11. In KERBALA, U.S. forces destroyed a MOSQUE and 4 other buildings while fighting Moqtada al-Sadr's militia. At least 15 people killed.
May 11. U.S. media are showing pictures of an American contractor said to have been decapitated by his captors said to be Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi and his militia. [The killers in the video are hooded. The actual killing is not shown.]
May 10: The U.S. used jet fighters to bomb Sayyid Al-Sadr's offices in Baghdad. At least 35 people are freported killed
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AFGHANISTAN:

In about one month, a U.S. strike force operating in southern Afghanistan has not been able to find any Taliban. The intiative seems to be in the hands of the Taliban who are carrying out classic guerrilla warfare.

One Taliban attack gained publicity when they killed a famous U.S. football player who had joined the Rangers.

On May 8, the newly arrived Marines were ambushed by the Taliban and lost one killed and one wounded.

Earlier, May 6, the Taliban killed 10 Aghan troops working for the U.S. The Taliban also claimed to have killed 5 U.S. troops but the U.S. media did not mention this.

On May 7, the Taliban killed two BRITISH contractors and their translator in the eastern province of Nooristan

Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader has issued a statement urging the people to unite against the Americans.
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OCCUPIED KASHMIR:

May 7: The news came out that Ghazi Shahabuddin, operational commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, died under torture while in Indian army custody on May 6. There was a COMPLETE STRIKE in Occupied Kashmir to protest the murder. In the capital, Srinagar, thousands of people came out after Juma' prayers to protest the Indian atrocity.
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KARACHI, PAKISTAN: SECTARIAN MURDERS

[From Pakistani Observer]

On May 7, a sectarian crime was committed aganst the Shia community: It was a bomb attack on a mosque which killed 14 people. The atrocity has been condemned categorically by all segments of Islamic thought. The Jihad movement as well as Jamaate Islami have expressed an urgent need to stop such crimes.

In previous years India was seen as playing the Shia-Sunni card to divide Pakistanis. Now India and Pakistan are working together. An effort needs to made to figure out where this intense hatred among Muslims is coming from. Shias and Sunnis have differed for centuries but this kind of violence is relatively new and has a tragic dimension.
New Trend invites readers who might have specific insider information on this issue to share it with us. Here are a few thoughts on this issue:

PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT'S ROLE:
The Musharref regime is closely allied to the U.S. Musharref has helped to arrest 600 Islamic refugees suspected of Al-Qaida and Taliban links and handed them over to the U.S. For some strange reason, the Musharref regime is unable to trace and arrest those behind these bomb attacks on mosques. NO ONE IS ARRESTED EVEN FOR ATTACKS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT AMONG HUNDREDS OF WITNESSES. This strange situation creates the impression that Musharref permits these attacks to take place.
Musharref's regime has a SPECIAL INTEREST in creating the impression that Islamists are fanatical, crazy and full of hate. These attacks are a great help to him. Musharref's intelligence forces, working with the FBI, have the ability to identify closed-minded fanatics who would like to attack Shias. Once they are identified and seem to be ready to attack, they are given full freedom to attack.

BACKGROUND PROBLEMS:
The attacks on Shias indicate the existence of groups who consider the Shias to be not only non-Muslims but enemies of Islam. This issue needs to be studied so that efforts can be made to improve the situation.

IRAN'S BLUNDERS HAVE HURT THE SHIAS: Shias are a small, 10 to 15% , segment of Pakistani society, but are relatively affluent and well-placed in business, the professions, the armed forces, the police and the bureaucracy. In Iran, after Imam Khomeini became weak of health, the newly emerging lower level clerics tried to use neighboring Pakistan's Shias as a pressure group to gain support for Iran. A big effort was made by Iran to DISTRIBUTE Shia literature in Pakistan which attacked the holiest personalities of mainstream Islam. Then Iran went further and started funding and arming Shia groups which grew bold enough to attack and kill Sunni opponents. In Pakistan, ISLAM is the bedrock of society and it is a SERIOUS BLUNDER to attack and abuse the SAHABA (companions of the Prophet, pbuh). Shia literature also attacked 'Ayesha Siddiqa, r.a., the Mother of the Believers.

For Pakistani Muslims, such attacks are less acceptable than abuse aimed at one's own mother and father. Such abuse helped to spread the idea that perhaps Shias are not Muslims and are enemies of Islam.

SPILLOVER OF THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN:
In Afghanistan, the Taliban movement had been opposed by Iran which provided weaponry to the small Afghan Shia community known as the Hazarajat. The bloodletting began with the Shia [Hazara] massacre of the Taliban in Mazar-e-Sharif. [That was when the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan.]

Later, when the Americans invaded Afghanistan, the Hazaras armed by Iran were part of the Northern Alliance. [Iran was among the first to recognize the Karzai regime.]

Musharraf too has been using Hazara Shias to hunt the Taliban and to mistreat them in his prisons. So there is a blood line in Afghanistan which has resulted from the conflict there. It is not really sectarian because at one time the Taliban and the Shias were allies.

A scientific effort needs to be made to study these issues so that sanity may be restored in Pakistan. Condemnation itself is not enough.
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WASHINGTON, DC ACTIVIST Ms. Luci Murphy RECOMMENDS NEW TREND's REPORT ON IMAM Jamil, IRAQI PRISONERS,

etc. [She wrote this note when she sent New Trend's report to her friends.]

Kaukab Siddique is a very interesting Muslim scholar who teaches at Lincoln University. Originally from Pakistan, he has embraced most of the revolutionary causes including gender equity. I met him through his daughter Nadrat who was involved with one of the Nicaragua solidarity groups in DC years ago. She later went into debt to support prison solidarity work for the blind sheikh mentioned in the article below.

Imam Jamil is good ole H. Rap Brown.

Luci

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." - Helen Keller
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POLITICAL PRISONER HAMMAD's FATHER WRITES

Dear Brother:

Reference your article dated May 8, 2004. With your permission I would like to use your term "Virginia Innocents" from time to time. It is right on the money in describing my son Hammad and the other Muslim Brothers who are locked down in the Alexandria Detention Center.

King Lyon
(Father of Hammad Abdur-Raheem)

as-Salam 'alaykum wa-rahmat Allah, wa-barakatuh!
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Perspective

The MYTHOLOGY and METHODOLOGY of Anti-SEMITISM
THE LEFT and the RIGHT are BOTH Anti-SEMITIC!

by our media monitor

Kenneth Timmerman was on C-SPAN late May 9, early May 10. Standing next to him as master of ceremonies was Daniel Pipes, special adviser to President Bush. Timmerman has written a book about the plight of the Jews in our times! Our Pakistani and other overseas readers might have a problem understanding how the Jews in America use the fear of anti-semitism to gain support for Israel and the war against Iraq and the Muslim world.

MYTHOLOGY
  1. According to Timmerman [and others like Derschowitz, Emerson, and the ADL group], many people hate Jews because they are Jews. They say this is a form of racism, like that of the KKK for Black people.
  2. Like Hitler, anti-semitics are racists who want to hurt Jews.
  3. Why do "they" hate Jews? Because "they" are anti-semitic! [Circular argument but if you don't accept it, you might be accused of anti-semitism too.]
  4. Hitler killed SIX million Jews. [How do we know that is true? If you raise that question, you may well be accused of anti-semitism. The "correct" answer is: because the Jews say so.]
  5. Hitler taught that ALL Jews should be killed. [And you dare not ask for proof or ask why, otherwise you might lose your job.] Also, to gain Black support, we must say that Hitler was the worst enemy of Africans. [Here we dare not say that ALL Africa was enslaved by the BRITISH, the FRENCH, the ITALIANS, the BELGIANS and the SPANISH. There was only ONE German colony. Which Africans did Hitler enslave? I am about to lose my job, so I better stop.]
  6. If anyone opposes the Jews, there is grave and imminent danger that one might start behaving like Hitler.
METHODOLOGY

Timmerman's methdology is interesting in that it manipulates information to create a sense of threat. A Muslim group in Washington is following a similar methodology. Hopefully this report will help Muslims to stay away from following in the footsteps of the Jews. I would like to give some good advice to Timmerman and to his friend, Islam hater Daniel Pipes, which my sociology professor once gave me: ALL BEHAVIOR IS LEARNED BEHAVIOR. No one is inherently against Jews, who lived peacefully as a tiny minority in Palestine under Muslim rule for hundreds of hears. ISRAEL took PALESTINE by FORCE. What was taken by force, will be re-taken by force. There is no hatred of Jews involved. At one time the Crusaders took Palestine and held it for a hundred years till Saladin (Salahuddin) threw them out. They also took Egypt but were defeated by Sultan Baybars. Similarly the Jewish colonists will be driven out.

It is not anti-semitic to note that even the most idiotic book written by a Jew will get published in America and will even be introduced by an adviser to the President. By contrast, the books of a great historian like David Irving are barred from all book chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble because he honestly could not find any evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz or of the claim that the Nazis killed six million Jews. Compared with Timmerman and Pipes, David Irving is a giant of scholarship who meticulously documents all that he writes from ORIGINAL SOURCES. Irving is NEVER invited to C-Span. Why? Because a Jew named Lamb decides which books will be introduced on C-Span. Is that view anti-semitic or a fact?
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EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF a MARTYR IN FALLUJAH

I want to share this extraordinary story with you that has just been translated from the Islamic news website Mafkarat al-Islam (www.islammemo.cc) I should mention that the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in al-Fallujah was there literally on the front lines with the Resistance fighters during the siege - the only news source so close to the action. His reports were vivid and detailed. Here is his latest.

wa-s-salam!

Eric Mueller
Texas
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Gulf donor buys piece of martyr's shirt for $80,000 to go towards a hospital in al-Fallujah.

Saturday, 18 Rabi' al-Awwal 1425 H, 8 May 2004, 1:56pm, Mecca time.

In a unique deal, a businessman from a Gulf state has purchased a piece of clothing from one of the martyrs of al-Fallujah for $80,000 - the money to go to building a hospital in the heroic Iraqi city.

The piece of clothing brought tears to the eyes of those present when one of the doctors who had been working in al-Fallujah presented it. It exuded a mysterious and extremely beautiful fragrance similar to musk, but more pleasant. Let us allow the doctor to tell us the story of that strange night - a night that was to repeat itself time and again, day after day during the siege of al-Fallujah.

The doctor says, "On one of the nights of the unjust siege of the city of al-Fallujah, when I was in the makeshift hospital in the heroic city, we could hear the sound of the hated clusterbombs exploding and the whine of the American aggressor aircraft as they violated the peace of the city. Minarets of the city's many mosques broadcast calls of Allahu akbar! (God is greatest!) and prayers to try to instill some sense of calm and reassurance in everybody.

"The medical team in the city and those who came to help them out from various parts of Iraq, as well as those townspeople who had volunteered to save the wounded were racing against time to save the lives of all those wounded who could be saved. And there were many who kept pouring in to the hospital. It was in that situation that the body of a youth was brought in by his companions on their shoulders.

"They brought him in a little car because all the ambulances were blown up and set afire if they tried to get to the front lines. They put their friend's body on the examination table. At first he appeared to be alive - he had a broad smile spread across his face, bright and broad as the full moon.

"I was thinking, what do you suppose he is seeing or hearing, such that an _expression of such happiness and content would spread across his face? He looks like a bridegroom on his wedding night. Has he seen the beauties of paradise? Has he seen his place in heaven? It was as if I could hear him say, 'if only my people could know how my Lord has forgiven me and made me one of the honored ones.' [al-Qur'an, 36:26-27]

"He was a slender young man of about 20 years of age wearing simple clothing. Blood was oozing from a small wound in the neck. I examined him and found no other wound. His body was soft and warm as if he were asleep, but there was no pulse and no breathing.

"Suddenly there diffused throughout the hospital a beautiful fragrance. I've never smelled anything more beautiful in my whole life. I was certain that it was the smell of musk. His clothing and body and even his pure blood were giving off the aroma.

"Everyone in the hospital gathered around. Everyone shouted 'Allahu akbar!' aloud. Cries of 'Allahu akbar!' and of 'There is no god but God!' resounded throughout the whole place when people saw the miracles that had occurred to this living martyr. Miracles that the Messenger of God [Muhammad], peace and blessings be upon him, told us about and that we read about in the biographies of the Prophet and his Companions. But actually witnessing this miracle and in actual circumstances aroused in us the spirit of jihad and the desire to seek martyrdom. It gave us an energizing boost of faith - something we were in great need of in those circumstances.

"Everyone there took a small piece of his aromatic shirt to demonstrate the details of what had happened to those who had not had the chance of attending the 'wedding night' of that martyr. For we didn't want to be so egotistical as to see these events and miracles and not allow others to feel and learn from those lessons on jihad and martyrdom.

"In my turn I obtained a small piece of the shirt and brought it with me to the country in which I reside. I wanted to show it to the largest possible number of Muslims. I consider it a trust laid upon me, that I must tell everyone far and near about it. The fragrance of musk still exudes from the cloth even though more than three weeks have passed since the event. One businessman from a Gulf country saw the piece of cloth and set its price at $80,000 so that the money could go to building a hospital in al-Fallujah."

The doctor concluded his story saying, "Now I am certain that God's wisdom was behind my going there, so that I could see what I saw and tell all the brothers and sisters about it, so that His aim could be attained. It was so that we could revive the obligation of jihad - the jihad of the person, or jihad with money - something that many of our enemies today want us to abandon so that we might sit by humbly, weak, and subordinate on earth."

Arabic original at:
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=31943
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2004-05-15 Sat 07:04ct