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Stonegate Institute [New York] February 6, 2012
“You have each been convicted of the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family. The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honor, a notion of honor that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honor that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.” Ontario Judge Robert Maranger, delivering the verdict in the Shafia murder case.
On Sunday, January 29, 2012, the Ontario Superior Court imposed mandatory sentences of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, on Mohammad Shafia, 58, his younger, second wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed Shafia, 21. The polygamous Shafia family had come to Canada from Afghanistan. The accused had strong defence lawyers; and the jury deliberated for 15 hours before coming to a unanimous verdict.
The trio were all found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. Canada does not impose death sentences and will not extradite people within its borders to jurisdictions that order capital punishment.
The story of this crime began in 2009. Three sisters – Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 – and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, the older and childless first wife of Mohammad Shafia, were found dead in a black Nissan Sentra at the bottom of the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills, Canada. The court determined that they had been drowned, then placed in the vehicle, which was pushed into the canal.
Continue reading “A Sick Notion of Honor” by Raheel Raza
Folksmagazine [India] February 3, 2012
 Hazrat Makhdoom Faqih Ali Mahimi Shrine, 15th c. CE, Mumbai – Photograph 2011 Via Wikimedia Commons. On January 24, the Islamic hijra month of Rabi Ul-Awwal began. During this month, traditional Muslims around the world will celebrate the birthday of Muhammad (peace be upon him). Milad An-Nabi (Birthday of the Prophet) will be an official holiday in India on February 5, the 13th day of Rabi Ul-Awwal. The occasion is similarly honored in 54 Muslim countries, as well as several others with large Muslim minorities, including Sri Lanka, Fiji, Guyana, Kenya, and Tanzania. Milad An-Nabi festivals, juloos processions, candle-lighting, and gatherings for recitation of verses in praise of Muhammad will be held wherever Muslims congregate. The event is known as “mevlud” among the Bosnians, “mevlyd” in Albanian, “mevlid” for the Turks, and “mawlid” in Britain and other English-speaking lands where Muslims have immigrated. The custom is maintained vigorously in Egypt – of which more will be said toward the end of this column.
The birthday of the Prophet will, unfortunately, not be commemorated publicly in Mecca, where he was born, in Medina, or elsewhere in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The KSA is the only Muslim state that does not recognize Milad An-Nabi. For the past decade, since a royal order by then-Crown-Prince and now King Abdullah, Saudi Muslims have been permitted to praise the prophet at Milad An-Nabi behind the walls of private homes. But there will be no open festivals or processions within Saudi Arabia’s borders.
Continue reading Muslims Honor Birthday of Muhammad – Except in His Birthplace by Stephen Schwartz
CIP February 2, 2012
 Title: "Women Volunteers in the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina." As an American Muslim, I am proud of the frontline role the organization I direct, the Center for Islamic Pluralism, has taken regarding women’s issues in our faith community. The Center has produced numerous documents on the crime of female genital mutilation and other atrocious practices inflicted on Muslim women.
These include so-called “honor” murders, forced marriage, forced divorce, marriage contracted with minor females, and other abusive habits found in Arab countries, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, and the immigrant Muslim communities in the West.
In 2009 our Center produced a major study of shariah agitation in Western Europe that addressed these problems forthrightly.
I note with great dismay that such social pathologies affect especially our Turkish and Kurdish coreligionists.
I oppose imposition of hijab (the headscarf), which should be worn by Muslim women exclusively by their own choice. I believe that hijab should not be adopted to suggest that a Muslim woman with her head wrapped by an ostentatious covering is a better Muslim or “more Islamic” than a Muslim woman who rejects hijab. Almighty Allah (s.w.t.) knows the modesty and virtue of Muslim women, and alone possesses the capacity for judgment of their belief, conduct, and repentance. Allah is not anthropomorphic in Islam. Allah possesses neither a physical body, nor a specific place in the universe, nor, above all, a gender.
Continue reading Muslim Women I Love Most by Stephen Schwartz
The Weekly Standard Blog February 1, 2012
 Sultan Ahmed Mosque, 17th c. CE, Bugojno – The mosque was heavily damaged during the 1992-95 aggression and was reconstructed with some modern alterations, including to its minaret. Photograph 2010 via Wikimedia Commons. On Wednesday, January 25, a team of 150 officers from the State Investigation and Protection Agency of Bosnia-Herzegovina (SIPA) arrested Nusret Imamović, leader of the main Wahhabi Islamist cell in the country, and his brother Eldin Imamović.
The pair was seized in an investigation of a gunfire attack at the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo last October, by a Serbian Muslim named Mevlid Jašarević.
According to Bosnian media, SIPA announced, “The goal of the operation is to collect evidence that could be tied to the attack on the U.S. Embassy and all the evidence will be handed over to the Bosnia-Herzegovina State Prosecutor after forensic processing.”
Local media also said that the authorities suspect Nusret Imamović was involved in a bombing at a police station in the Bosnian town of Bugojno in June 2010. In the assault on the American embassy, only the shooter and a guard were injured. But in the Bugojno blast one officer was killed and six were wounded. The aim was to terrorize conventional Bosnian Muslims who attend Ajvatovica, a 500-year old spiritual Sufi observance. Wahhabi targeting of Sufis is especially common in South Asia but is seen wherever the bushy-bearded fundamentalists appear.
Nusret and Eldin Imamović were apprehended in the northeast Bosnian village of Gornja Maoča, an enclave considered Wahhabi headquarters in the partitioned state. Gornja Maoča was raided by Bosnian police in February 2010, and Imamović was detained with seven followers. In that instance, the Wahhabi cohort in Gornja Maoča was charged with “maintaining a criminal organization, attacking the Bosnian constitutional order, endangering national unity, fomenting racial and religious hatred, discord and intolerance, and unauthorized possession of weapons and explosive materials.” But Imamović and his associates were then released without trial.
Continue reading Bosnia Re-Arrests Top Wahhabi Plotter After U.S. Embassy Attacked by Stephen Schwartz
Stonegate Institute [New York] January 31, 2012
On January 19, the first conference on female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Middle East opened in Beirut, Lebanon. The event was called by two non-governmental organizations, the Dutch-based Humanist Institute for Cooperation (HIVOS) and WADI, the Association for Crisis Assistance and Solidarity Development Cooperation. Founded by Germans, WADI has worked extensively in Iraqi Kurdistan, where it is in the forefront of opposition to FGM.
FGM is most commonly found in African countries, where it may be inflicted on women by Christians and animists as well as by Muslims. For example, Egyptian Copts and Ethiopian Orthodox Christians subject their daughters to this cruel and inhumane degradation. FGM is not a religious-based practice, although it has been legitimised by certain Islamic clerics, including the Egyptian radical preacher Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. Even Al-Qaradawi, nevertheless, states that the alleged justification for FGM among Muslims is based on weak hadiths (oral commentaries) of Muhammad, and that it therefore cannot be considered obligatory. It has no basis in Qur’an and, fortunately, is absent from much of the Muslim world.
With the political ascendancy in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Al-Qaradawi has been associated, there is a real danger that FGM will increase as a feature of the ostensible “re-Islamisation” of Egypt. Such an outcome would be paradoxical, in that FGM is considered by many a pre-Islamic custom prevalent in Pharaonic Egypt, and its encouragement, rather than supporting Islam, would represent a return to a cultural pattern to which Islam was historically, and definitively, opposed. But the perverse notion that FGM, which predates Islam, reinforces Islamic society, has led to its increase in Indonesia, where FGM was undertaken typically by local shamans or folk healers.
Continue reading Middle East Conference Against Female Genital Mutilation by Irfan Al-Alawi
The Guardian Online [London] January 27, 2012
 The Prince of Wales looks at exhibits during a visit to the British Museum's Hajj exhibition with Saudi representatives. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA The Saudi embassy and their friends in Riyadh must be pleased with the considerable public interest in the Hajj exhibition, which opened at the British Museum this week. Beautiful relics, including historical and contemporary art, textiles and manuscripts, bring to life the profound significance of the Hajj, the pilgrimage that has remained unchanged since the prophet Muhammad’s time in the seventh century.
The Saudis are elusive about many things in their country, but clearly a cultural showcase on the journey to Mecca that every able Muslim must perform at least once in their lifetime, is not one of them. And where better for the Saudis to display their rich history – and tolerance of different cultures (the Hajj brings together over 180 nationalities together in a single space) – than in a national museum of a country whose press does not spare them.
But as I looked at the painstakingly gathered relics on display, and the beaming pride on the face of Saudi ambassador, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud, as he entered the exhibition, I could not help but remember reports of the demolishing of the prophet Muhammad’s home and his wife Khadija in 1984 to make way for a public toilet. Where was the Saudi pride in their own heritage then?
Continue reading The Hajj exhibition is in stark contrast to Saudi Arabia’s cultural vandalism The Saudi elite are proud of the British Museum’s Hajj exhibition – it’s a shame they don’t feel the same about all their heritage by Shenaz Kermali
Stonegate Institute [New York] January 25, 2012
At the beginning of the New Year, as reported in the daily newspaper Haber Türk (Turkish News) of January 6, 2012, E.D., a 25-year old man in the northwestern Turkish city of Bolu, took his 11-year old “wife,” Z.Ç., to the hospital because she suffered pain. The news story identified the couple only by their initials. The doctor diagnosed the girl as eight months pregnant by her “husband.” Whether the girl was in a condition to consent to sexual relations is obviously questionable. One would more probably assume she was raped by the 25-year old.
Marriage to an 11-year old girl is illegal in Turkey, but such cases are a constant in the country’s life.
The doctor called for the girl to be kept in the hospital for in-patient care, but her “spouse” refused, and the couple returned to their village, Alpagut, near Bolu. The hospital released them after the girl signed a document declaring her wish to leave the facility.
Continue reading Turkish Women Victims of “Permitted” Rape by Veli Sirin
Folksmagazine [India] January 22, 2012
 West Kone Yoe Central Mosque, Mandalay - Photograph by Doron, 2007, Via Wikimedia Commons. The promise of democratization in the 2010-2011 “Arab Spring” has nearly vanished in the aftermath of Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi electoral victories in North Africa, continued grinding atrocities in Syria, Saudi Arabian and Gulf Cooperation Council occupation (plus Iranian intrigue) in Bahrain, and chaos in Yemen. But news from China and Southeast Asia is more positive.
In the first country, authorities have removed Communist officials from command over the “rebel” village of Wukan in Guangdong province and replaced them with a local party member, Lin Zuluan, a leader of protests against seizure of communal property for corrupt private sale and alleged electoral fraud. The Wukan party bureaucrats fled the village last month when the revolt there widened and an advocate for the demonstrators, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody.
Since the Arab turmoil began in December 2010, Chinese democracy activists and foreign observers have noted increasing factory strikes and other discontent in the vast country, predicting a “Jasmine Revolution” – a term briefly used to denote the North African revolts. Nevertheless, Beijing continues to repress dissident intellectuals – most recently indicting poet Zhu Yufu for “subversion” in writing a poem calling for street assemblies by disaffected citizens.
Zhu was detained early in 2011 for composing the verse. As quoted partly in Western media, he wrote, “It’s time, Chinese people!/The square belongs to everyone/the feet are yours/it’s time to use your feet and take to the square to make a choice.” Zhu is founder of the China Democracy Party and had previously served nine years in prison, based on two separate trials, in 1999 and 2007.
Continue reading A “Second Spring” in the Far East? by Stephen Schwartz
 Postage stamp issued by the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina honoring the Sarajevo Haggadah,
The Huffington Post January 19, 2012
Destruction of libraries and museums was one of many potent symbols of Serbian aggression against the newly-independent Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the 1992-95 war that left the country partitioned. Abundant acts of evil were perpetrated in the conflict, and witnessed by the world. They included hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, most notoriously in the infamous massacre at Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys were killed by Serbian soldiers.
The war also encompassed the rape of tens of thousands of Muslim women and expulsion of two million people from their ancient homes. Atrocities were committed by members of all three contending ethnic groups — Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks — but, as reflected by the judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY), overwhelming responsibility for attempted genocide rested with the Serb side. The Serbs claimed to defend a Yugoslavia that had collapsed.
Still, most emblematic of the onslaught on Bosnia’s history was the systematic vandalism by Serbian forces of religious and cultural institutions, including the devastation of mosques and Croat Catholic churches. During the three-year siege of Sarajevo, some 12,000 residents, including more than 1,000 children, were killed by sniper and rocket fire from the Serbian military positions in the mountains surrounding the city. While bullets and missiles took people’s lives, their heritage, including the output of four centuries of Ottoman rule in the country, was also subjected to attempted eradication.
Continue reading Bosnian Cultural Heritage Under Peacetime Threat by Stephen Schwartz
The Weekly Standard Blog January 18, 2012
While Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and other Balkan countries have been plagued by radical Islamist incursions, Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha, who is Muslim, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth at the end of November that he considers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iranian government “the new Nazis, and the world must learn from the Holocaust and stop them before it is too late.”
But some Albanian Muslims haven’t gotten the anti-extremist message. On January 7, a 25-year-old naturalized American named Sami Osmakac was arrested in Tampa, Fla., in a federal sting operation, while planning a terrorist attack on local nightclubs, as well as the county sheriff’s office. He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against persons or property.
Osmakac is an Albanian Muslim born in Kosovo (where his relatives spell their name Osmankaj). He has lived in this country since about 2000, according to media interviews with his immediate family, who own the Balkan Food Store and Bakery in St. Petersburg.
The Department of Justice complaint states that Osmakac came to the attention of authorities when he went to a local business in September 2011 and asked if al Qaeda flags could be purchased. The proprietor, who had worked previously with law enforcement, informed them of Osmakac’s request.
Continue reading Kosovar Albanian Arrested in Tampa Terror Scheme by Stephen Schwartz
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Muslim Women I Love Most by Stephen Schwartz
CIP February 2, 2012
Title: "Women Volunteers in the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina."
As an American Muslim, I am proud of the frontline role the organization I direct, the Center for Islamic Pluralism, has taken regarding women’s issues in our faith community. The Center has produced numerous documents on the crime of female genital mutilation and other atrocious practices inflicted on Muslim women.
These include so-called “honor” murders, forced marriage, forced divorce, marriage contracted with minor females, and other abusive habits found in Arab countries, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, and the immigrant Muslim communities in the West.
In 2009 our Center produced a major study of shariah agitation in Western Europe that addressed these problems forthrightly.
I note with great dismay that such social pathologies affect especially our Turkish and Kurdish coreligionists.
I oppose imposition of hijab (the headscarf), which should be worn by Muslim women exclusively by their own choice. I believe that hijab should not be adopted to suggest that a Muslim woman with her head wrapped by an ostentatious covering is a better Muslim or “more Islamic” than a Muslim woman who rejects hijab. Almighty Allah (s.w.t.) knows the modesty and virtue of Muslim women, and alone possesses the capacity for judgment of their belief, conduct, and repentance. Allah is not anthropomorphic in Islam. Allah possesses neither a physical body, nor a specific place in the universe, nor, above all, a gender.
Continue reading Muslim Women I Love Most by Stephen Schwartz