Riots Continue in Afghanistan

April 4, 2011 By vorjack 21 Comments

From the NYT, riots in Afghanistan reached Kandahar:

Violent protests over the burning of a Koran in Florida flared Saturday for a second straight day, with young men rampaging through the streets of this southern capital city, flying Taliban flags and wielding sticks.

Nine people were killed and 81 wounded in the disturbances, all from bullet wounds, said Abdul Qayoum Pakhla, head of the provincial health department. Kandahar has long been the heartland of the Taliban insurgency but has been relatively quiet in recent months since a surge of additional American troops arrived here.

This is a colossal mess, with rioters furious over the burning of the Qur’an by Terry Jones – but also angry about the protracted counter-insurgency campaign. As Juan Cole at Informed Comment puts it,

I think Afghan intellectuals and leaders know that Terry Jones is a minor nut job. But this issue allows some of them to organize to protest the over 100,000 US troops in their country, which is really what they are objecting to.

That fits the report from Una Moore at UN Dispatch, following the initial riots in Mazar-i-Sharif:

Tonight, the governor of Balkh province (of which Mazar-i-Sharif is the capital) is telling the international media that the men who sacked the UN compound were Taliban infiltrators. That’s rubbish. Local clerics drove around the city with megaphones yesterday, calling residents to protest the actions of a small group of attention-seeking, bigoted Americans. Then, during today’s protest, someone announced that not just one, but hundreds of Korans had been burned in America. A throng of enraged men rushed the gates of the UN compound, determined to draw blood.

What bothers me most is that this kind of thing could continue indefinitely. With the pressure brought by occupation by foreign troops, increased by counter-pressure from the Taliban, parts of Afghanistan are likely to be powder kegs. Terry Jones and other American nutjobs are prepared to provide a spark in return for media attention, then the powers that be in Kandahar will fan the flames.

Filed Under: Christianity, Current Events, Islam 21 Comments

From Christianity to… Islam?

March 25, 2011 By Daniel Florien 34 Comments

This dude converted from Christianity to Islam. His demand for historical evidence and powers of reason must be very high indeed.

The actual conversion was brief. It only involved one sentence: “I bear witness that there is no God worthy of worship but God, I bear witness that Mohammed is the messenger of God.”

For 30-year-old Mathew Miller, those words represented the culmination of a long religious transformation from Christianity to Islam. [...]

“When I put my head on the ground with them, it felt like I could say anything to God, and what I was asking for at the time was guidance. I wanted to know whether what I was doing was the right thing to do.”

Miller, a white convert in a diverse congregation, has heard comments about his faith – and the controversy surrounding his mosque. Once, an Iraqi war veteran told him that the new controversial Islamic Center of Murfreesboro should not be built because it could potentially harbor terrorists.

“I addressed his questions formally and it was funny because at the end of the conversation, he kind of started admitting, ‘Well you know, I don’t know anything about Islam.”

I wonder if he’d convert to my religion, the 9% church?

Of course, some of the comments at CNN are written by people who I’m amazed can even work a keyboard:

traitor.. b astard.. burn in hell..

God the father of creation loves you, allah does not. There are no benefits to serving allah other than martyrdom thru suicide….I’m sorry but its the truth.

Just another Pathetic attempt by CNN to pander to the Islamic community!

[From "EmperorObama"] Welcome aboard my Islamic brother.

u all sound unamerican…..u r all as uneducated as racist muslims in other countries…this america….higher standard…JESUS AND MARY ARE MENTIONIONED IN THE QURAN SO MANY TIMES….u dont even understand ur own bible to know if MUHAMMAD was mentioned….did u expect him to be named…he is allover old tastament

This article is a diversion. It is a propaganda piece for Islam. CNN Continues in it’s leftist ways

The only person who would convert from Christianity to Islam is someone who didn’t have a testimony of Christ as Redeemer of the world in the first place.

I wonder how long it’ll be until he starts blowing stuff up and killing people.

Maybe CNN should change its name to MNN, the Mooselim News Network

The man in this story has made a mistake that will cost him his soul. Buddah and Mohammad are dead and in their graves, but Jesus tomb is EMPTY! We serve a LIVING GOD, and I praise him that I know his truth.

Filed Under: Christianity, Current Events, Islam 34 Comments

UF: Equal Opportunity Critics

March 19, 2011 By fatemeh 15 Comments

Folks, I’ve been thinking a bit about some of the posts that the UF team has brought you recently, and it seems to me that we might have inadvertantly implied that Christians, particularly Catholics priests, are the only people who could possibly claim moral and ethical superiority while simultaneously raping children. Well, I think it’s time to right that wrong.

Mohammed Hanif Khan - Child Rapist

Mohammed Hanif Khan - Child Rapist

Meet Mohammed Hanif Khan. Mister Khan has taken it upon himself to prove that Imams can be child rapists too. By raping children. You can read the full story on the BBC news site, but I want to comment on one aspect of it, specifically this quote from the judge, Justice Dobbs:

“Your actions have had a significant effect on the community. The boys have been reviled by the community for bringing shame on the community.”

Um. Just. But. Wow. The boys are the ones who’ve brought shame on the community?! In similar fashion to Catholics who fell over themselves to ostracise children who had been raped for the terrible crime of being raped and daring to object to being raped, the Muslim “community” of Stoke-On-Trent have, it seems, reacted to a well-respected rapist by blaming the victims. Religious folk really do have fantastic moral compasses, don’t they? I can’t decide whether the judge has been very clever or particularly obtuse by phrasing it that way: “You’ve harmed the community, but the community are being a bunch of assholes about it anyway”. Either way, I find it deeply disturbing that a Judge could imply (if imply is the right word, I actually think it’s a pretty unambiguous wording) that the victims of a rapist have brought shame on their community by being raped. Nobody who thinks that way (or who is too stupid to realise that what they’re saying makes it sound like they think that way) has got any business being a judge.

Filed Under: Culture, Hypocrisy, Islam 15 Comments

Anti-Muslim Rally Fail

March 8, 2011 By vorjack 18 Comments

Here’s another video of Christians harassing a Muslim. This one is painful, but there’s a funny side to it. First the video, then the story behind it:

YouTube Preview Image

The story begins with a rally planned by Anjem Choudar to be called “Sharia4America”. There’s no question that Choudar is a radical Muslim – or rather, there’s no question that he wants to be seen as a radical Muslim. He runs around promoting “Islamic ideology,” but he has no real following. I suspect most American Muslims look at him the way moderate Christians look at Fred Phelps.

Naturally, a counter protest was planned. But for some reason, Choudar cancelled the rally just before it was scheduled to begin, leaving the counter protesters at a loss.

The first comedic thing that happened was the friction between different groups of protesters. All the big names were there, including Rev. Terry Jones (of “Burn the Koran” fame), and they didn’t get along. From TPM

His black sunglasses resting a few inches above his signature handlebar mustache, Jones hopped up on a bench in Lafayette Park and announced that his organization Stand Up America was holding a rally.

An aide to Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the American Center for Security Policy, didn’t take kindly to that and quickly told the National Park Service that Jones wasn’t a part of their group and didn’t have a permit for his rally. So Jones and his crowd, many of them decked out in biker gang gear, set up shop in the midst of Pennsylvania Avenue.

[...]

… Jones ran into Randall Terry, the militant anti-abortion activist who has been churning out the type of media coverage Jones’ Koran burning stunt got for years.

“You should’a burned the Korans by the way, you blinked. You should’a burned them,” Terry said.

And then we have the above video:

The formal events had both ended but attendees were still hanging around by the time a Muslim man holding a Starbucks cup and wearing a bluish winter coat with writing on the back began chanting Arabic prayers in front of the White House. That’s when attendees of both rallies merged around the man soon breaking into chants of “U.S.A.” and “Jesus” and renditions of “Amazing Grace.” Those throwing tiny crosses at the man’s feet appeared to be from the Jones camp.

“Is he yelling U.S.A.?” asks one man in the crowd. “It doesn’t matter — he’s anti-women, he’s anti-freedom,” one woman said. “Take it back to your own country!” said another man. “No Sharia law!” shouted another.

Filed Under: Christianity, Islam, Videos 18 Comments

Tea Party Protest Goes Off the Rails

March 5, 2011 By vorjack 33 Comments

In mid February, there was an event in California to raise money for Relief USA, a charitable division of the Islamic Circle of North America that provides money for disaster relief, domestic abuse shelters and other causes. However, there was some problem with two of the keynote speakers, who might or might not have ties to terrorist organizations.

According to the Orange County Register:

Bay Area Islamic activist Amir Abdel Malik Ali spoke last year as part of “Israeli Apartheid Week” presented by the Muslim Student Union at UCI, meant to focus on Palestine.

At that event, Malik Ali stated he supports Hamas and Hezbollah.
[...]
In 1991, [Imam Siraj] Wahhaj became the first Muslim to give an invocation at Congress.

A U.S. attorney named Wahhaj as a co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He was one of 170 people who prosecutors said could have been involved in the plot but were never charged. Wahhaj – an imam at a Brooklyn mosque – has denied any involvement.

Some local residents accused the men of being radicals, and a protest of the fundraiser was planned. The protest has now gotten far more attention that the original fundraiser, because of the incredible anger on display.

YouTube Preview Image

Reports are that the protest, now associated with the Tea Party, lost the plot early and simply began shouting at everyone who came to give money. Gleen Greenwald sums it up:

I think what was most striking about that video is that the presence of small children didn’t give these anti-Muslim protesters even momentary pause; they just continued screeching their ugly invective while staring at 4-year-olds walking with their parents.

Filed Under: Christianity, Islam, Videos 33 Comments
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