“Pakistan is not a reliable ally because the country, if given the occasion, will always chose the Taliban“. Well, yesterday it was known that Pakistan Government is harrassing US diplomats (more here) and that it has also turned down key US antiterrorism requests. Meanwhile, there are more reports about imprisoned terrorists claiming they saw Pakistani Army officers training with them, although of course, Pakistani Government denies it. But there are a significant numbers of Pakistani Army officers who express their support for Islamic terorism,

It is about time to get the message… not only in Washington, but also in the rest of the countries taking part in Afghan NATO operation. Everything that happens in Pakistan has a reflection there. And the sooner the better.

Related:

Terrorist Caught on Tape: Top Hizbul Mujahideen and LeT terrorist commanders caught on tape @ Ekawaaz.org.

Pakistan in peril @ FrontPageMag.com. “Islamist elements in Pakistan’s military unhappy with President Asif Zardari are reported to be plotting to remove their country’s civilian government and replace it with a military dictatorship“. Remember that Pakistan has nukes.

El País (Translation T&P):

The clue that links definitely March 11th terror attacks with Al-Qaeda appeared 4 yearsa go, although it is here and now, in this article, when it will be published for the first time. It happened in a remote place located on North-West Pakistan, near Afghanistan’s frontier. During the night of Nov 30th to Dec 1st, 2005, a missile fell in a building located in a little village near Miran Shah, North Waziristan’s capital. This is one of the seven agencies belonging to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where the main AQ leaders and an important number of its members established between the last months of 2001 and the beginning of 2002, after losing Afghan sanctuary where they have been at their leisure till the US military intervention just weeks after Sept. 11th.

The missile I am referring to, was launched from one of those unmanned drones that US CIA uses since some time ago to kill AQ leaders whose presence is detected in the area. North Waziristan is, on the other hand, the place where 2004 and 2005, AQ had to place their operatives and the terrorist training camps, after fleeing from the invasion that the Pakistani Army made in South Waziristan between spring and autumn 2004. In their North Waziristan’s base, AQ has been profiting from the protection given by talibanised sectors of the native Pashtun tribes, in this case of Utmanzai Wazir and Dawr.

As a consequence of the mentioned attack, 5 individuals were killed. One of them was Hamza Rabia, then AQ external operations’ chief and the last responsible of the planning of terrorist attacks in North America and Europe. In the beginning of 2002, Osama Bin Laden had decided to divide in two AQ’s operative structure. The other chief, the one related to internal operations, was dedicated to Afghanistan and Pakistan in full. Its chief was Mustapha al Uzayti, widely known as Abu Faraj al Libi. The external operations’ leadership was given then to Sept 11th’s mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But he was arrested in Rawalpindi on March 2003. From that moment on, Abu Faraj Al Libi also implicated himself on external operations, whose leadership was given to the Egiptian Hamza Rabia. They worked closely from that moment on.

But what has this to do with March 11th bombings? Well, one of those other 4 individuals who were killed with Hamza Rabia in the referred selective targeting of AQ operatives, was identified thanks to foreign intelligence services as Amer Azizi. His identification was confirmed by some facts dicovered later in Pakistan and the United Kingdom to which I will not refer on the present article. Amer Azizi, a Moroccan national, had been a very outstanding member of the AQ cell stablished in Spain in the mid 90s, whose leader was Imad Eddine Barakat Yarkas, aka Abu Dahdah, who recruited him and sent him to a training camp in Afghanistan. He was judged in absence on terrorism charges related to that cell, because he fled successfully from Spain after the police operation that closed it definitely on Nov. 2001. This happened when it was discovered that Abu Dahdah’s cell was directly linked to another European cell, this time based in Hamburg, directly linked with Sept. 11th bombings.

Amer Azizi was mentioned in, at least, 141 of the 241 books related to the policial and judicial investigation carried on by National Court after March 11th bombings. His name also appears in 8 of the 30 separate processes related to March 11th bombings, that completed its investigation. Considering them in full, these references underline, on the one hand, that there were very closed links between individuals who carried on leading roles in the preparation and later development of the local terrorist plot which prepared and placed the bombs that exploded in the 4 Atocha trains. And on the other hand, they reveal the relations Amer Azizi had with North-African organizations, which are now inside global terrorism nets, which he used to reach relevant positions in the closed circle of AQ’s leadership.

It was precisely Amer Azizi, when he returned from Afghanistan on the summer of 2001, who recruited Mustapha Maymouni, also a Moroccan national, who in 2002 created the red core which perpetrated March 11th bombings. Another Moroccan nationals, Driss Chebli, and Serhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, The Tunisian, already Mustapha’s brother-in-law, ended by being named leaders of that net when Maymouni was arrested temporarily on Morocco on Feb. 2003. When Driss Chebli was also arrested 4 months later, accused of being part of Abu Dahdah’s cell, The Tunisian became the local leader of the March 11th terrorists. Well, The Tunisian was also recruited by Amer Azizi. As the indictment 20/2004 uncovers, a protected witness maintained that they communicated back in 2002 and 2003 by e-mail. That same investigation shows the links of Amer Azizi with other well-known material authors of Madrid’s bombings, as Jamal Zougam or the fugitive Said Berraj.

Amer Azizi’s links with North-African entities belonging to AQ’s net were consolidated during his time in Afghanistan, because the training camp in which he spent time there, named Martyr Abu Yahyia, was one the Lybian Fighting Islamic Group’s (LFIG) main facilities. There, both members of LFIG and of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (MFCG) were indoctrinated and trained, after both organizations decided in the late 90s to coordinate their activities. It was there also that Amer Azizi met Abdulatif Mourafik, aka Malek the Andalousian, a member of LIFG. As a result of his stay there and of the contacts he maintained, Amer Azizi became integrated into the LFIG, but with strong ties with MIFG or even being an operative of both groups.

It is now then that the meeting held on Feb 2002 in Istambul by delegates from LFIG, MICG and from a Tunisian similar organization, some of whose leading operatives have had a relationship with Abu Dahdah’s cell, acquires an special meaning. They agreed then to perpetrate Jihadi acts in their countries of origin or in those they were living then. About that meeting and the strategic decision adopted in it, there is an intelligence note inside indictment 20/2004. The facts are the Casablanca attacks happened on May 2003, and those of Madrid on March 2004, and that both plots were deeply connected. Moreover, the already mentioned Malek the Andalousian was the one who entrusted Mustapha el Maynouni, the one who began March 11th bombings’ net, to build a cell to plot a terrorist attack in Morocco afterwards.

Even if what happened in Atocha trains continues to be presented as an example of what an independent cell, only integrated by auto-radicalised Muslim immigrants, can do, evidence suggests a different interpretation of its authors, leadership and strategy. In the March 11th bombings’ execution, there were some criminals who were just common offenders and it’s very reasonable to consider that some members from LIFG took part. But that’s not all. The close relationship between those who had important roles in March 11th plots and Amer Azizi, who in 2004 had an key post in the external operations’ AQ leadership, as I have mentioned in this article, obliges us not to look to a Madrid’s quarter, not even to the Maghreb, when we ask ourselves where the March 11th plot was approved, but to North Waziristan.

Thanks to Barcepundit for the tip.

So in the end it was not Iraqi war what was linked to March 11th bombings, but Afghan NATO operation which began only some weeks after Sept 11 attacks, while Iraqi military intervention began in 2003. Zapatero took back the troops shortly after he won the March 14th elections because he didn’t want Spain to be an AQ’s target. But if we read carefully this article, we see that the same groups that plotted March 11th bombings, had reunited in the now Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and had kidnapped 3 Spanish and a French national, who were volunteers in Mali. At the same time, they have mentioned the Islamist prisoners in Spain in the same press release where they announced the kidnappings. In fact, Spain has been a traditional recruitment and funding area since the 90s, after France, and the wider movement this terrorist group belongs to, the Salafists, has an important net to provide both recruits and money in really big quantities, although officials can only guess it, because hawala is employed to send it (around 1 million euros on recent years, according to experts).

The interesting thing is that the kidnapping has taken place around the same time as Obama announced the US troops’s surge for Afghanistan. Just yesterday Spanish Defense Minister Chacón has announced that Spain will send 511 more soldiers to Afghanistan. There are people who are beginning to write on Internet forums that Zapatero is just as depending on Obama as Aznar was from Bush (of course, the opposition this time is backing the Government, although I can’t say if it’s because they are convinced of doing what’s right or because of something else). Before March 1th there was Casablanca plot.

I only hope that the volunteers’ kidnapping is not another step towards a new terrorist plot on Spanish soil, under the pretext that we are in Afghanistan. Not because I am worried about Zapatero’s ass, but because of the devastation, pain and horror that this kind of attacks bring.

What is more: he was an illegal allien. From Daily Mail:

Albanian Krenar Lusha, 30, was given £93,000 after NatWest failed to complete full checks on his UK status.

He used the cash to buy a house in Derby, where he stored bomb-making equipment and information on how to carry out attacks.

The illegal immigrant also managed to get a UK driving licence, secure a £30,000-a-year engineering job and was even offered a second mortgage – which he declined.

Lusha opened a NatWest bank account in 2000, soon after he sneaked into Britain on the back of a lorry.

When bank staff were asked about its dealings with Lusha, one mortgage advisor told Preston Crown Court: ‘He was just a pleasant natured person and there was nothing untoward.’

Yesterday Lusha was jailed for seven years after he was convicted of five out of 10 terror charges following a three-week trial.

In the house there were gallons of petrol and potassium nitrate and in his computer there were instructions about how to make bombs.

Zapatero, in Copenhaguen summit.

Meanwhile, the new abortion law was passed in Congress… Why wouldn’t the wind, the proprietor of it all, just blow out and make this law disappear?

Mehmet Goren has been found guilty of killing his 15-year-old daughter, Tulay

An update on this story. From Sky News:

Mehmet Goren was told he must serve at least 22 years behind bars after being convicted of the murder of his daughter Tulay.

She was killed in January 1999 after her father – described as a “psychotic bully” – discovered her romance with a man from another branch of Islam.

Tulay’s body has never been found. Her sister Nulay Guler has called on 49-year-old Goren to end the family’s nightmare and reveal what he had done with her body.

A jury at the Old Bailey in London heard that Goren terrorised his family, on one occasion trying to gas them and on another trying to inject his wife Hanim with rat poison.

An affectionate guy, isn’t he?

When he discovered Tulay’s relationship with Halil Unal he became furious – partly because he could not marry her off for a price of £5,000 and partly because Mr Unal was a Sunni Muslim, while the Gorens followed the Alevi branch of Islam.

Half mean, half bully. What a mixture!

Telegraph adds:

He was cleared of conspiracy to murder Halil Unal, Tulay’s former boyfriend who survived being attacked with an axe by Mehmet, two weeks after the schoolgirl vanished.

Well, what a relief. Now, everybody can be much calmer…

Will he listen?

Thnaks to Chris.

El País (Translation T&P, being un update on this story):

“Spain is the last ring of Salafism in Europe“. This appears written in a confidential report of the Italian Prosecutor’s office from 2001 and sums up the huge spread of this Islamist group in the country. This same group has kidnapped 3 volunteers in Mauritania.

A group funded and formed by recruits belonging to different cells and their supporters in Spain. A group which has its more productive and comfortable European basis in Spain, after France.

Last reports sent to Spanish Government by the National Inteligence Center (CNI), the General Police and Civil Guard Information Office point out that Spain is a “recruitment ground” and “constant source of funding” of AQIM (Al-Qaeda for an Islamic Maghreb). There are around 30 open investigations now in Spain about Islamist terrorism which have this group as their target.

The author of this Italian report about Salafism explained how since the late 90s, the leaders in Europe of the Hassan Hattab’s cells, the then leader of the Salafist Group for the Preaching and Combat (GSPC), ended up taking refuge in Spain, attracted like a magnet.The members of AQIM that kidnapped Alicia Gómez, Roque Pascual and Albert Villalta since Nov 29th, have a lot of “brothers” that are now waiting to be judged or imprisoned for belonging to this “organization”, according to Penitentiary Institution’s sources. Most of them are Algerians, but there are also Moroccans and Tunisians.

The last six imprisoned from this organization were judged last November in the Second Tribunal of the National Court in Madrid. They were normal types, no long beards, wore jeans, wool jerseys and cheap shoes. In the faces of 33-year-old Fares, 39-year-old Fathi, 39-year-old Salah, 50-year-old Abdelkader, 45-year-old Abdelfatah and 43-year-old Lahouari, the fear of being sentenced to more than 100 year in prison appeared. The charges are robbing several houses in Costa del Sol resorts to fund the murders of dozens of people in Algeria and Mauritania.

“I have been on a mission and have eliminated 25 infidels”, confessed on the phone, 45-year-old Abdelhakim Fekkar, aka Hakim, the imam who appears to have organised the group in his talks with them in the prison of Topas (Salamanca). The terrorist attack wasn’t a fantasy from “brother” Hakim. In Tebessa (Algeria) 15 soldiers died in those days and 13 were severely hurt in an ambush of one of the AQMI’s cells. Days afterwards Hakim told them of another attack in which he also took part. His mission in Mauritania also was held in the same days when another terrorist attacks to the military base on Lemgheity,near the Algerian-Mali frontier. The result, of which he also boasted, was 15 people killed.

The ammunition for these attacks, the explosives’ acquisition and the infrastructure to build campings in the Sahel desert, where Algerian Army can’t locate them, are all funded with the money and jewels which are stolen by the group’s army of supporters. Stolen cars in Spanish cities and drug trafficking fund also this criminal activity of the new AQ base in Africa, an itinerant base which goes and comes very quickily in a nobody’s territory where the old 4×4 of the fragile armies of Mauritania and Mali can’t reach and the US satellites get confused by the terrorists dressing themselves as shepherds, shopkeepers or livestock farmers.

“It’s very difficult to know how much money they have raised here, but in the last years, they have received from Spain a million euros at least”, according to an agent from the General Information Office. Stealing is not the only way to fund the movement: there are also donations made to continue the jihad in Africa using the net of halal meat butchers and the zakat (alms) from some radical mosques. A joint group of Spanish and French Judges and Prosecutors, studies the phenomenon of funding channels for AQIM. “The money is send without any stops. We are an inexhaustible source, but this is very difficult to fight because most of it moves through hawala (a payment system held outside the traditional finance system)” according to one member of the equipment.

Salafists which fund and recruit for the Sahel are all over Spain. Since 11S, the moment when the police was awakened and began carrying on “preventive” detentions, an important number of their militants have been recruited in Andalucía, Ceuta y Melilla, Basque Country, Navarra, Aragón, Madrid and Catalonia. Some judges from National Court, like Baltasar Garzón, have questioned in their offices hundreds of their militants and are familiar with their practices and targets.

“The GSPC (now AQMI) is a terrorist group of radical Islamist inspiration of Sunni fundamentalist ideology. Its followers are inspired in the Salafi movement (…) Their main objective is to reinstaurate in Algeria an Islamic republic in which the Quram would be the only law, preaching Jihadi to destroy Algerian state (…) and using terrorist fight as the only mean to reach their goals”, declared Judge Félix Degayón in a judicial decree in which he ordered the search for 5 Salafist who fled from Operation Green, the one who just had arrested and carried before the judges the condos’ robberies of the Costa del Sol.

Today, this decree would not be valid as the Salafist group has widened its targets and now is pursuing a new califate and an Islamic republic bigger than Algeria. On Sept 13th 2006, Abu Musab Abde I Wadud, the GSPC’s Algerian emir announced his servitud to Osama Bin Laden.

“We have decided to (…) pledge fidelity to Abd Abd Allah Osama Bin Laden. We have reached an agreement with a handshake and we offer him the fruit of our hearts (…). You won’t find in us but ears and obedience”. And Wadud supported the union because “the Islamic Umma can’t win his enemies if it doesn’t renounce to its differences. (…) Is it reasonable that the Mujahideen remain scattered?”.

The pledge to Bin Laden and this call for the union of the Mujahideens have achieved what looked like impossible: all the Jihadist groups from the north of Africa are united, a time bomb of unknown and unforseeable differences. So, the salafists from the GSPC bind today to the Moroccan Islamic Fighter Group (GICM), the Lybian Islamic Fighter Group, the Tunisian movements and other satellites, according to the CNI’s analysts. In 2007, Islam’s lion (Osama bin Laden) let the GSPC Argelian terrorists to be renamed as “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb”, the group that had kidnapped the three Spanbish volunteers. “This blessing has turned them into a model in the north of Africa, so a lot of people would like to be recruited by them. Dozens of them have already done that from Spain”, according to UC2’s Chief, the Civil Guard’s unit which investigates on Islamist terrorism. A nightmare for the European intelligence services, specially for Spain and France, as they fear that Salafists will train their men on the desert and then order them to strike on European targets.

The murder on last May of Edwin Dyer, a 61-year-old botanist, after the United Kingdom denied to free the bearded imam Abu Qutada, Salafists’ icon and friend of several of AQ’s prisoners in Spanish prisons, is the most important of the Government’s worries. The kidnappers’ press release suggests that they will try to free their “imprisoned tortured brothers in your prisons”. A petition that never has been attended to in Europe.

TX to Alianza de Civilizaciones.

AFP:

The wife of Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has appealed to Muslim women not to join the jihad themselves but to support their menfolk in holy war, US monitoring groups said on Thursday.

In a letter released by Al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab entitled “A Message to the Muslim Sisters,” Omayma Hassan Ahmed Mohammed Hassan also called on the female faithful to resist Western pressure to shun the hijab, or headscarf, the monitors said.

Well what did you expect? What could Al-Zawahiri have said IF she said she thinks otherwise?

Reuters, thanks to MAS:

Though polygamy is illegal in Russia, the southern Muslim region of Chechnya encourages the practice, arguing it is allowed by sharia law and the Koran, Islam’s holiest book.

…Political analysts say that in exchange for successfully hunting out Islamist fighters, the Kremlin turns a blind eye to Kadyrov’s Muslim-inspired rules.

Today Grozny’s cafes hold men sipping smuggled beer out of teacups as alcohol has been all but banned, single-sex schools and gyms are becoming the norm and women must cover their heads in government buildings.

Clad in a tight hijab, Asya Malsagova, who advises Kadyrov on human rights issues and heads a state council dealing with the rights of Chechen prisoners, told Reuters: “We believe every woman should have a choice — but we prefer she covers up.”

Against the backdrop of a bubbling Islamist insurgency, Islam’s revival has also brought violence against those who do not live by sharia law in the North Caucasus — a region the Kremlin has described as its biggest political domestic problem.

…Dirt roads lead the way to Chechnya’s first camel farm, about 55 km (34 miles) northwest of Grozny, where 46 of the two-humped creatures munch on salt and grass while they are groomed to be gifts for dowries and religious holidays.

Considered holy animals in Islam, they sell for 58,000 roubles ($1,886) each, said Umar Guchigov, the director of the farm, which opened just over a year ago under Kadyrov’s command, and plans are in place to build three more in Chechnya.

Camels, polygamy, shariah law (and persecution of those who don’t live under it), sex seggregation and veils. What a perspective…

Press Association:

Jurors trying three men from north-east London accused of the “honour killing” of a 15-year-old girl have begun a fourth day of deliberations.

Tulay Goren is said to have been murdered by her father Mehmet and uncles Ali and Cuma in January 1999 because she fell in love with another man.

Mehmet Goren, 49, of Navestock Crescent, Woodford Green, Cuma Goren, 43, of Evesham Avenue, Walthamstow, and Ali Goren, 56, of Brettenham Road, Walthamstow, deny the charge.

All three defendants also deny an allegation of conspiracy to murder Tulay’s boyfriend Halil Unal.

Jurors in the case began their deliberations last week at the end of the two-month Old Bailey trial.

Wife in Tulay Goren’s “honor killing” trial breaks decades of silence @ Times.

Teenage girl “murdered by father” @ BBC.

I have read two very interesting articles on the subject:

How Sharia-compliant is Islamic banking? @ BBC. Islamic scholars are complaining that Sharia-compliant operations are not really very Islamic, but against the Quram.  The prohibition of  interest which is at the core of this kind of finance has been one of the most critisized aspects of Shariah finance. 

How Islamic finance works @ VOA News. Not long but interesting.

Recently, two US Pakistani had been jailed for video terror plot. But, the problem is not mainly in the US, but back in Pakistan. In the “new threat of the old Jihadis“, CSM writes about the new situation growing there:

another militant threat is rearing its head in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province and its heartland; home to the country’s capital, cultural hub, and military headquarters. Once-dormant Punjabi jihadists like Dilawar are beginning to link up with the Taliban, supplying manpower in battles in the northwest but also bringing the fight to Pakistan’s center by carrying out attacks on their home turf.

This danger is nothing new. The power of ideology, about which I have been writing for so long now, is just showing its ugly face again. The constant teaching of children about the good qualities of Jihad (and so, supporting Talibans in the country) should have worried more the Pakistani political elite (unless they are linked somehow) and, specially, the countries taking part in the NATO operation in Afghanistan against the Taliban.

The supposed “alliance” between Pakistan and US should have been much more profoundly analysed than was. Pakistan is not a reliable ally, because Pakistani society, if it had to chose, would always chose the Taliban.

Related: ABC News: “The road terror starts in Pakistan” @ The Investigative Project on Terrorism.

AFP has this:

The spiritual leader of Malaysia’s Islamic party has urged religious scholars to practice polygamy, saying they could rid the practice of its bad reputation, a report said Thursday.

Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, who leads the Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) which is part of the opposition alliance, said that ulamas could be model polygamous husbands.

“Normally, when a man likes a beautiful woman, he will take her as his second wife,” he said according to the New Straits Times.

“But after they have children, he will divorce the woman. This is the bad image that I meant which should be cleaned up,” he said. “Ulama can play an important role in clearing this image.”

Ok, so, when are they going to urge the women to be “polyandries” too? Oh, well, yes, I remember, the Quram only speaks about polygamy, not about “polyandry”.

Just for the record: polygamy has a “bad reputation” not because men marries second beautiful wife to have children with him, getting rid of her afterwards, but because of the inherent unequality between husband and wifes. There are people who defend that if freely accepted, polygamy is all right. It is not my case: I think that equality between partners is conditio sine qua non for a marriage to be valid. Polygamy is entirely opposed to that equality.

1. Al Qaeda kills another Counter-Narcotics Agent @ Armies of Liberation.
2. Switzerland’s ban on minarets is a European shift @ Chicago Tribune.
3. Attention Jihadists: Please have your Boarding Passes Ready @ NewsReal Blog.
4. Police suspects honor killing in Delhi’s girl @Daily Times India.
5. Obama: the empty-suit Nobel laureate @ The Washington Times.

Hope that you find them useful!

This is an update on this story (1, 2, 3, 4). El Mundo:

Sources of the Penitentiary Institutions in Spain reported yesterday that there are 64 Islamists imprisoned in Spain, most of them condemned by Jihadist activities related to March 11th bombings, and with Police Operations called “Nova” and “Dátil”.

Nearly a dozen Islamists condemned by their role on March 11th bombings, are imprisoned, among others,Jamal Zougam, who was an active player in the massacre.

Islamists related to March 11th bombings were accused of being “members of cells or terrorist groups, Jihadist-related, who, using violence as a mean to achieve their targets in all their activities, want to end every democratic regime and eliminate the culture of Western Christian tradition. They also want to impose an Islamic state under Sharia Law, that is, the Islamic Law in its most radical, extreme and less common expression”.

In “Operación Nova”, the Third Section of the Criminal Tribunal from the National Court published on Feb 2008 a sentence in which 20 Islamists were condemned to 173 yearsin prison. The charges were belonging and colaborating with terrorist organization.

Lastly, “Operación Dátil” ended with a sentence of the same tribunal on Sept 2005. It condemned 18 person, among others Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, aka “Abu Dahdah”. He was considered as the leader of an AQ cell in Spain. He was also condemned on conspiration charges related to Sept 11 2001 attacks on US.

ABC.es:

In the text, the criminals announce they will “not stop” in “our will to combat and kill you and we will resist your attacks to help our tortured imprisoned [fellows] in your prisons”. In Spanish prisons there are around 60 Jihadist prisoners and some of them belong to the Salafist school. Linked to the latter, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat was born, group which was later transformed into AQIM.

…Even if officially there are no proofs of financial payments from the Governments, it is true that the terrorists have only freed the hostages after their financial demands were fully satisfied. One of the organizations which has mediated in some of AQIM kidnappings is the foundation directed by Seif El Islam, Muamar El Gadaffi’s son, who has a “widespread net” in the Sahel’s area, although in the last kidnappings another channels have also been used. France and Spain will work together in the negotiation’s area for obvious reasons: French Administration knows well the area because of its condition of former metropoly.

Esther from Islam In Europe, asked me yesterday if I have seen any polls on the subject on Spanish MSM. Daniel Pipes has this:

14,000 readers of 20 Minutos voted 93-6 percent in favor of the statement “Good, we must curb Islamization’s growing presence” and against “Bad, it is an obstacle to the integration of immigrants.” 35,000 readers of El MUndo replied 80-20 percent that they support a Swiss-like banning of minarets.

As this is not the only poll that shows these numbers across Europe he reasons about them:

First, it raises delicate issues of reciprocity in Muslim-Christian relations. A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, Qatar’s first-ever church opened in 2008, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple, or signboard. Rosary’s priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: “The idea is to be discreet because we don’t want to inflame any sensitivities.” And when the Christians of a town in Upper Egypt, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of “laborious negotiation, pleading, and grappling with the authorities,” won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a mob of about 200 Muslims attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building secret churches.

Why, the Catholic Church and others are asking, should Christians suffer such indignities while Muslims enjoy full rights in historically Christian countries? The Swiss vote fits into this new spirit. Islamists, of course, reject this premise of equality; Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottakiwarned his Swiss counterpart of unspecified “consequences” of what he called anti-Islamic acts, implicitly threatening to make the minaret ban an international issue comparable to the Danish cartoonfracas of 2006.

Second, Europe stands at a crossroads with respect to its Muslim population. Of the three main future prospects – everyone getting along, Muslims dominating, or Muslims rejected – the first is highly improbable but the second and third seem equally possible. In this context, the Swiss vote represents a potentially important legitimation of anti-Islamic views. The vote inspired support across Europe, as signaled by online polling sponsored by the mainstream media and by statements from leading figures.

Reuters:

A nationwide rally on Monday to mark the killing of three students under the Shah turned violent when students clashed with security forces armed with batons and tear gas in the largest anti-government protests in months.

“From now on, we will show no mercy toward anyone who acts against national security. They will be confronted firmly,” said prosecutor Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Witnesses said scuffles occurred between students loyal to opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi and others who support hardline President Ahmadinejad in Tehran universities on Tuesday.

Any international condemnation?

Following the news of 4 European (3 Spanish and 1 French) volunteers kidnapped by Al-Qaeda in Mauritania and taken then to Mali, I posted about the UN denouncing that international drug trafficking is financing terrorist groups in the Sahel, a Saharan region. In its Mauritanian and Mali zones is where AQIM has now its headquarters after being expelled from Algerian coasts. The link shows a connection with Bolivarian Venezuela:

The United Nations says the discovery of a crashed plane in Mali carrying cocaine from Venezuela has revealed a link between drug trafficking and terrorism.

The head of the UN drugs agency, Antonio Maria Costa, has warned that a sub-Saharan region of Africa, known as the Sahel, has become a new centre for drug trafficking, and the trade is helping to fund rebels and militant groups.

The BBC reports the wreckage of a Boeing 727 was found in Mali last month with up to 10 tonnes of cocaine from Venezuela on board.

via Radio New Zealand News : Stories : 2009 : 12 : 10 : Link revealed by UN between drug trafficking and terrorism.

More on the links between Chávez and terrorism: Venezuela’s new Continental Bolivarian Movement: 15 Minutes on Latin America @ Fausta’s Blog.

From El Periódico, with thanks to Esther:

Sources in the interior ministry involved in anti-terrorism say that the case of the alleged abduction and trial of a woman in Reus by Muslim fundamentalists is the most violent expression of the an increasingly disturbing phenomenon: fundamentalist groups of people who, with support of ultra-conservative mosques, assume the role of judge and police of Islamic morals and exert enormous social pressure on the Muslims in these towns.

The phenomenon, which for years has been manifesting itself in countries like France and the Netherlands [ed: I'm not sure where they got that last one from], has been detected in rural municipalities in the Camp de Tarragona area, as well as in villages in Gironès and Segarra.

This always happens in towns where the mosque is run by followers of Salafism, an ultra-conservative denomination, which believes in following the lifestyle of the Salaf (the first followers of Mohammed).

These people use their status in the community to shield their community and create a separate country, separated from the Catalan environment, which they consider ungodly. These mosques call on the faithful not to socialize with the Catalans, not to turn to their institutions (police, judges or associations), to only purchase halal products in Muslim shops, and not to use banks, since they charge interest. In addition they pressure parents not to allow their daughters to go to gym class or to the pool, and to take them out of school once they start menstruating.

More in Speroforum.

Well, this doesn’t surprise me. There are two relevant things, by the way:

1. this is the 1st time that Spanish MSM recognises this fact. Specially considering that El Periódico is both leftist (“Alliance of Civilizations“) and Catalan nationalist (They have favoured non-Hispanic immigration to make newcomers speak Catalan rather than Spanish).
2. it’s still an unreported and basically ignored fact. Of course, Catalonia has the most important group of Salafists (or ultra-traditionalist Muslims, in general) in Spain, so it’s rather logical that the first information on this phenomenon comes from there. But it’s not the only part of Spain where Muslims with ultra-traditionalist views live. I would like to hear from other similar groups from Madrid, Valencia, Andalucia (specially Granada), Basque Country, etc.

With thanks to Muslims Against Shariah and Pat Dollard.

Specially dedicated to Fanfatal.