Muslims protesting for Rushdie’s knighthood(UPDATED)

Photos from AP h/t JihadWatch:

In England:

Muslims protest outside Regents Park Mosque in central London against the knighthood of Salman Rushdie. Friday June 22, 2007. Muslims angered by Britain’s decision to honor author Salman Rushdie with a knighthood held a rally in London Friday, warning the furor threatens to match the fierce reaction to publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark in 2006. Also Friday, a high-level Iranian hard-line cleric declared that the religious edict calling for Rushdie’s killing remains in place and cannot be revoked, and he warned Britain was defying the Islamic world by granting the honor. (AP Photo/Will Wintercross).

Muslims protest outside Regents Park Mosque in central London against the knighthood of Salman Rushdie. Friday June 22, 2007. Muslims angered by Britain’s decision to honor author Salman Rushdie with a knighthood held a rally in London Friday, warning the furor threatens to match the fierce reaction to publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark in 2006. Also Friday, a high-level Iranian hard-line cleric declared that the religious edict calling for Rushdie’s killing remains in place and cannot be revoked, and he warned Britain was defying the Islamic world by granting the honor. (AP Photo/Will Wintercross).

Female Muslims stand behind their placards as they protest outside Regents Park Mosque in central London against the knighthood of Salman Rushdie. Friday June 22, 2007. Muslims angered by Britain’s decision to honor author Salman Rushdie with a knighthood held a rally in London Friday, warning the furor threatens to match the fierce reaction to publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark in 2006. Also Friday, a high-level Iranian hard-line cleric declared that the religious edict calling for Rushdie’s killing remains in place and cannot be revoked, and he warned Britain was defying the Islamic world by granting the honor. (AP Photo/Will Wintercross).

Muslims protest outside Regents Park Mosque in central London against the knighthood of Salman Rushdie. Friday June 22, 2007. Muslims angered by Britain’s decision to honor author Salman Rushdie with a knighthood held a rally in London Friday, warning the furor threatens to match the fierce reaction to publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark in 2006. Also Friday, a high-level Iranian hard-line cleric declared that the religious edict calling for Rushdie’s killing remains in place and cannot be revoked, and he warned Britain was defying the Islamic world by granting the honor. (AP Photo/Will Wintercross).

UPDATE: They also burned St.George’s Cross:

Muslims burned the flag of St George and called for the Queen to ‘Go to Hell’ in a furious rally held in London over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood.

In Pakistan:

Pakistani lawyers hold a rally to condemn the British government for awarding knighthood to British author Salman Rushdie in Lahore, Pakistan.  The decision to award Rushdie a knighthood has sparked a harsh reaction throughout much of the Muslim world. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)

Activists of the Pakistan Awami Tehrik party protest against British author Salman Rushdie in Karachi June 21, 2007. A group of hardline Pakistani Muslim clerics has bestowed a religious title on Osama bin Laden in response to a British knighthood for the author Salman Rushdie whose novel “The Satanic Verses” outraged many Muslims around the world. REUTERS/Zahid Hussein (PAKISTAN)

Pakistani protesters rally against the British government for awarding a knighthood to British author Salman Rushdie in Lahore, Pakistan. Pakistan and Iran have summoned ambassadors to protest against Rushdie’s knighthood award.  (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)

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House Bans Aid To Saudi Arabia

 A bit of common sense indeed:

[…] The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to prohibit any aid to Saudi Arabia as lawmakers accused the close ally of religious intolerance and bankrolling terrorist organizations. The prohibition, reflecting persistent tensions with the kingdom after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, was attached to a foreign aid funding bill for next year that has not yet been debated by the Senate. It also faces a veto threat from the White House because of an unrelated provision. […]

“Saudi Arabia propagates terrorism. We all know that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi,” said Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat. She added that Saudi youths had entered Iraq to “wage jihad” against U.S. forces fighting there. Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of the al Qaeda group that carried out the September 11 attacks, was expelled from the kingdom in 1991 for anti-government activities.

 […] Lawmakers also complained that with Saudi Arabia’s vast wealth from oil revenues, U.S. taxpayers do not need to subsidize training Saudis. “With poor countries all over the globe begging us for help, why are we giving money to this oil-rich nation?” Berkley said.

House Bans Aid To Saudi Arabia :: Middle East News and Perspectives :: Hyscience

King Juan Carlos should be learning from this.

And of course, if later Bush vetoes this, he would make the error of his life.

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Lebanon declares victory in war on militants

 

Lebanon declared victory on Thursday in its 33-day war against an al Qaeda-inspired militant group at a Palestinian refugee camp and said its military operation there was over.

The fighting between the army and militants holed up in the Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon was the worst outbreak of internal violence in the country since the end of its civil war 17 years ago and cost the lives of at least 166 people.

“I can tell the Lebanese that as of now the military operation in Nahr al-Bared is finished,” Defence Minister Elias al-Murr told Lebanon’s LBC television. “All the positions of the terrorists have been crushed,” he said, adding that the surviving members of Fatah al-Islam had pulled back from the edges of Nahr al-Bared into civilian areas deep in the camp.

“I dedicate this victory to the Lebanese people … all of the Lebanese people.” Murr said the army would maintain a siege around the camp until all Fatah al-Islam militants surrendered, including their leader Shaker al-Abssi. “They have to surrender … It’s not good enough to say Abssi was killed, if he is dead, give us the body,” he said.

Murr said the army was continuing some mopping up operations and defusing mines and booby traps at the outskirts of the camp. A source at a grouping of Palestinian Muslim clerics, which had tried to mediate an end to the battles, said Fatah al-Islam official Shahine Shahine told the mediators the group welcomed the Lebanese announcement of an end to the operation. “He told us that Fatah al-Islam declares a ceasefire,” the source told Reuters.

SPORADIC SHOOTING

Witnesses said only very light exchanges of machinegun fire continued at the camp after Murr’s announcement following a day of sporadic clashes. The fighting had been concentrated in areas held by the militants on the outskirts of the camp. Security forces are barred from entering Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps by a 1969 agreement.

And it continues:

The army says Fatah al-Islam started the conflict on May 20 by attacking its posts. The group, which includes fighters from across the Arab world, says it has been acting in self-defence.

Murr said in a newspaper interview published earlier that some of the fighters arrested were members of al Qaeda. “There is a section of them which belongs directly to al Qaeda,” he told An-Nahar newspaper.

Fatah al-Islam has said it has no organizational ties to al Qaeda but shares its militant ideology.

Lebanon declares victory in war on militants – Yahoo! News

“Shares its militant ideology“: it would be better to say they share its terrorist ideology…

From Terra España:

What is known as ‘the new camp‘ is an extension to the north, among other causes because of the demographic growth, off the limits of the historical camp fixed by UN in 1948, which was built by quarters of one-floor blocks. The new quarters, which duplicated the initial camp’s area, consist of high blocks built on both sides of the highway to Syria.

It’s in these new quarters where Fatah al Islam was entreched itself since June 20th shooting at the troops. The Lebanese Army has bombed that sector with stopping these last days, destroying with heavy artillery the Islamist positions and making them go back to the south, to the old camp.

[En Español]

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Hamastan update

 Is this the first stage to obtain Western aid?

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Palestinian government dismissed by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, called for renewed talks on Saturday between the factions, Haniyeh’s office said.

Abbas has ruled out any dialogue with Hamas Islamists, whom he accused of trying to assassinate him and of launching a coup in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has denied Abbas’s allegations and accused him of participating in a U.S.-led plot against its democratically-elected government.

“The way out of the current situation is launching a Palestinian dialogue without pre-conditions,” Haniyeh told the Yemeni president by phone.

Haniyeh said these talks should be held “on the basis of no loser and no winner, and on the basis of no harm to anyone, and on the basis of a national unity government,” according to Haniyeh’s office. [tell that to the dead ].

The United States and Israel wants to isolate Hamas economically, diplomatically and militarily in the Gaza Strip, where the Islamist group seized control just over a week ago.

Haniyeh calls for talks with Abbas’s Fatah faction | Top News | Reuters.com

You can also read the interview with Hamas founder, Mahmoud Zahar: “We will try to form an Islamic society“. Read it all. it’s very important. An excerpt:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called this a good moment to push forward with the peace process. Will Gaza and Hamas definitely stay out of any such talks?

Zahar: What kind of peace process is it? There will only be lots of chit-chat. Meanwhile the occupation will continue, and the Israelis will remain here to destroy our lives.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In the West there is a fear that the Gaza Strip may become a playground for international terrorism. Is this danger real?

Zahar: Our people can’t distinguish between resistance and terrorism. We’re fighting for the liberation of our land from an occupation. When people in Europe had to fight the Nazis, they were honored, later, as freedom fighters. No one would have called Charles de Gaulle a terrorist.

Marvellous isn’t it? This people (Haniya, after Hamas ousted Al-Fatah from power, left) call the Israelis, Nazis.

Read also: Terrorists get guns and money – Israel gets the left hand of fellowship

Meanwhile:

Israel is planning to offer goodwill gestures to Palestinian moderates in the West Bank after the fall of the Gaza Strip to the Islamic militant group Hamas. As Robert Berger reports from VOA’s Jerusalem bureau, the steps will be presented at a four-way Middle East summit next week.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert plans to bring a package of confidence building measures to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas when they hold a summit meeting in Egypt on Monday. Mr. Olmert says Israel wants to strengthen the moderate Abbas government in the West Bank after Hamas seized control of Gaza last week.

“I prefer to see not only the dangers but also the chances, not only the difficulties and there are difficulties, but also how these events can open up new roads for better cooperation and better understanding with many of the Palestinians that live outside of Gaza,” he said.

With the moderate Abbas?  It would be more accurate to say he wants to strenghen the government of Abbas, who is the leader of one of the branches of Muslim Brotherhood, about whose project for Islamic domination I wrote here.

And from Teheran Times:

U.S. and Israeli leaders pledged to support the emergency Palestinian cabinet in the West Bank, as Hamas accused the West of playing politics with aid after the Islamist group ousted its rivals from Gaza.

Well, this is the same reasoning Jimmy Carter made some days ago.

Israelis are skeptical of peace talks with Hamas.

Don’t know why…

UPDATE:

Egypt helped Hamas takeover.

Visit the Fatah’s torture chambers.h/t Barcepundit. The piles of blood of the floor surrounded by flies, lets us see what was going on there. There is no knowledge about who or when was killed there. Or by whom.

Now, show us also the Hamas’ torture chambers.

UPDATE 2: Hamas menaces [link in Spanish] Abbas to take over West Bank (Cisjordania) also. Mahmoud Zahar in another interview to Turkish newspaper Zaman, has said that “his moverment has no intention of stablishing an Islamic state in Gaza” [See the Der Spiegel interview linked in this post before, to see that he said that “as they do not have now a Government, they are going to build an Islamic society“]. He also asked for Turkey’s mediation in the affair:

“Turkey can help the Palestines nowadays, who had been pushed into a corner by the restrictions on gas, the embargoes and the poverty. Turkey can mediate between the groups in Palestine and prevent the unjust international embargoes against this land”.

We can see the result of the “restrictions on gas, embargoes and poverty” has had in Gaza here…

UDPATE 3: Also read Women Honor Thyself about the transfer of 4 million euros to Palestinian Authority.

UDPATE 4: From esperimento:

C’è da aspettarsi che per mezzo secolo gli arabi si uccideranno a vicenda per vendicarsi di quanto è avvenuto”. Questa frase non è di oggi, anche se molti in Palestina la condividerebbero, ma è stata pronunciata nel 1938 da Raghib Nashashibi, autorevole leader della fazione palestinese moderata Partito della difesa nazionale, antenato diretto di quello di Abu Mazen.

That is: Raghib Nashashibi the leader of the moderate Palestinian faction back in 1938, stated, “We may expect now that for fifty years the Arabs will kill one another to avenge what happened during the disturbances.”

Esperimento continues:

The Zionist movement, accepted not only the principle, but the concrete proposal, totally unfavourable and unfeasible, of a minuscule Israel and that the it would be formed of two different piece of lands, separated between them, with no communication, and surrounded by Arab states.

There was later a terrible revolt,

the first Palestinian civil war, much more ferocious and bloody than what we have seen this week, that went on for 3 years, between 1936 and 1939, alongside with violent actions of Anti-Zionist and Anti-British nature (Palestine was back then under British rule), in a very similar context to the one we are living now (except for the obvious differences of time.

Also read La Pulce di Voltaire, writing about the Islamization in Hamastan:

The situation in Gaza has completely changed, according to Abu Saqer, «the Islamic movement has to know everything which is taught in the Christian schools and in the contect of missionary activity… The internet bars, the swimming-pools and the bars should be closed». The attack is particularly hard when confronting against the American Evangelical Missions. In Gaza there are approx. 2000 Christians. In the last months, an Internet bar and a Christian Library has been exploded. The Hamas Chief Mahmud al-Zahar – a probable FM- has accused West because of its idea of liberty which produces “phenomenons as the homosexuality, the unemployment and the AIDS“. Al-Zahar has also remembered the words of the Prince Charles of England, who has appointed Islam and the model of education for children.

Prince Charles, hmm, how rare that an Islamist quotes him…

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