French policewoman killed in shoot-out, hunt deepens for militant killers

A call for witnesses released by the Paris Prefecture de Police January 8, 2015 shows the photos of two brothers, who are considered armed and dangerous, and are actively being sought in the investigation of the shooting at the Paris offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.

A policewoman was killed in a shootout in southern Paris on Thursday, triggering searches in the area as the manhunt widened for two brothers suspected of killing 12 people at a satirical magazine in an apparent Islamist militant strike.

Police sources could not immediately confirm a link with the killings at Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper which marked the worst attack on French soil for decades and which national leaders and allied states described as an assault on democracy.

Montrouge mayor Pierre Brossollette said the policewoman and a colleague went to the site to deal with a traffic accident. A car stopped and a man got out and shot at them before fleeing.

Witnesses said the shooter fled in a Renault Clio car. Police sources said he had been wearing a bullet-proof vest and had a handgun and assault rifle. However, one police officer at the scene told Reuters the man did not appear to fit the bill of the Charlie Hebdo shooters.

Live French television showed around a dozen police dressed in protective wear and helmets massed outside a building near the scene of the shoot-out.

The new incident came as France began a day of mourning for the journalists of Charlie Hebdo weekly and police officers shot dead on morning by black-hooded gunmen using Kalashnikov assault rifles. French tricolour flags flew at half mast.

Charlie Hebdo is well known for lampooning Islam, other religions and political figures. Tens of thousands took part in vigils across France on Wednesday to defend freedom of speech, many wearing badges declaring "Je Suis Charlie" (I Am Charlie) in support of the newspaper and the principle of freedom of speech.

Newspapers across Europe on Thursday either re-published its cartoons or mocked the killers with images of their own.

Britain's Daily Telegraph depicted two masked gunman outside the doors of Charlie Hebdo saying to each other: "Be careful, they might have pens". Many German newspapers republished Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Police released photos of the two French nationals still at large, calling them "armed and dangerous": brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, aged 32 and 34, both of whom were already under watch by security services.

The attack has raised questions of security in countries throughout the Western world and beyond. Muslim community leaders have condemned the attack, but some have expressed fears of a rise in anti-islamic feeling in a country with a large Muslim population.

In a separate incident, police sources said the window of a kebab shop next to a mosque in the central town of Villefrance-sur-Saone was blown out by an overnight explosion. Local media said there were no wounded.

Security services have long feared that nationals drawn into Islamist militant groups fighting in Syria and Iraq could return to their home countries to launch attacks - though there is no suggestion that the two suspects named by police had actually fought in either of these countries.

Britain's Cobra security committee was meeting on Thursday morning. London's transport network was target of an attack in 2005, four years after 9/11. There have been attacks in Kenya, Nigeria, India and Pakistan that have raised fears in Europe.

Islamist militants have repeatedly threatened France with attacks over its military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa, and the government reinforced its anti-terrorism laws last year.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France faced a terrorist threat "without precedent" and confirmed the two brothers were known to security services. But he added it was too early to say whether authorities had underestimated the threat they posed.

"Because they were known, they had been followed," he told RTL radio, adding: "We must think of the victims. Today it's a day of mourning."

A total of seven people had been arrested since the attack, he said. Police sources said they were mostly acquaintances of the two main suspects. One source said one of the brothers had been identified by his identity card, left in the getaway car.

Late Wednesday an 18-year-old man turned himself into police in Charleville-Mézières near the Belgian border as police carried out searches in Paris and the northeastern cities of Reims and Strasbourg. A legal source said he was the brother-in-law of one of the main suspects and French media quoted friends saying he was in school at the moment of the attack.

COURTING CONTROVERSY

Cherif Kouachi served 18 months in prison on a charge of criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005. He was part of an Islamist cell enlisting French nationals from a mosque in eastern Paris to go to Iraq to fight Americans in Iraq and arrested before leaving for Iraq himself.

Video captured during the Wednesday attack showed one of the assailants outside the Charlie Hebdo offices shouting "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) as shots rang out.

Another was seen calmly walking over to a wounded police officer lying on the street and shooting him with an assault rifle. The two men then climbed into a black car and drove off.

In another clip, the men are heard shouting in French: "We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad."

Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) has courted controversy in the past with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders of all faiths and has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad. Jihadists online repeatedly warned that the magazine would pay for its ridicule.

Around France, tens of thousands of people joined impromptu rallies and vigils on Wednesday night in memory of the victims - among them some of France's most prominent and best-loved political cartoonists - and to support freedom of speech.

Both the magazine's founder and its current editor-in-chief were among those killed in what emergency services called to the scene described as executions carried out at point-blank range.

Satire has deep historical roots in Europe where ridicule and irreverence are seen as a means of chipping away at the authority of sometimes self-aggrandising political and religious leaders and institutions. Governments have frequently jailed satirists and their targets have often sued, but the art is widely seen as one of the mainstays of a liberal democracy.

French writer Voltaire enraged many in 18th century France with his caustic depictions of royalty and the Catholic Church. The German magazine Simplicissimus in its 70-year existence saw cartoonists jailed and fined for ridiculing figures from Kaiser Wilhelm to church leaders, Nazi grandees and communist activists.

"Freedom assassinated" wrote Le Figaro daily on its front page, while Le Parisien said: "They won't kill freedom".

On Thursday the highest state of alert was still in place, with tightened security at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and department stores.

The last major attack in Paris was in the mid-1990s when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks, including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight people and injured 150.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/

Robert Spencer in PJ Lifestyle: The 7 Ways Islam Kills Romance

In PJ Lifestyle, I explain some of the reasons why Valentine’s Day so upset some Muslim clerics last week:

As couples the world over celebrated Valentine’s Day last week, many no doubt recalled the great Muslim love stories: Romeo and Juliet and Fatima and Dalia and Naima; A Midsummer Night’s Stoning; the movies Veiled Woman and When Harry Beat Sally so many.

Right-thinking people today would find such quips “Islamophobic” and distasteful; far more distasteful, however, is the grim reality they represent. When Valentine’s Day rolled around last week, Muslim leaders rose to oppose it with a fervor they have seldom mustered against the jihad terrorists who have supposedly twisted and hijacked their peaceful religion.

The Malaysian Islamic Development Department thundered that “social ceremonies such as this are a stepping-stone towards greater social ills such as fraud, mental disorder caused by alcohol, abortion and baby-dumping, and other negative ills that can invite disaster and moral decay among youths.” The Indonesian Ulema Council declared that “celebrating Valentine’s Day is against Islam.” Saudi Arabia’s feared Islamic religious police banned Valentine’s Day and hunted for people toting suspicious roses and candy boxes. A Saudi cleric who has said that “devotion to jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer” dubbed Valentine’s Day “immoral.”

In Uzbekistan, Muslim clerics preached against Valentine’s Day in their Friday sermons. In Kashmir, Mohammed Akram Wani, a student at Srinigar’s Institute of Arabic and Islamic studies, declared: “The event is anti-Islamic and Muslims are not allowed to celebrate the day because in Islam the day has no importance.” And at Pakistan’s Peshawar University, devout Muslim students decided to celebrate February 14 as Haya (Modesty) Day, which consisted of stoning students who were celebrating Valentine’s Day, firing on police who intervened, and setting several rooms of their hostel on fire.

This hostility to Valentine’s Day, some Muslims explain, is because celebrating it is bid’a – innovation, an unacceptable concept in a religion that Allah has “perfected” (cf. Qur’an 5:3), and because it has roots in Christianity and has become an excuse for drunkenness and promiscuity. But there is a deeper reason as well: Islam is hostile to romance. “Asking a Moslem about his women,” the heroic journalist Oriana Fallaci wrote back in 1964, “is like asking him about a secret vice.” The condition of those women, and the state of Islamic romance, has hardly improved since then.

A few of the principal ways in which Islam is a romance-killer:

1. Polygamy

Polygamy destroys romance. Is she the one, the only one, who has captured your heart, delighted your eyes, put a spring in your step and filled your heart with joy? No, she is just one in a series. The Qur’an tells Muslim men to “marry those that please you of women, two or three or four. But if you fear that you will not be just, then one…” (Qur’an 4:3). It seems fair: a man who cannot be just with multiple wives should restrict himself to just one, but in such matters, what constitutes just behavior is all too subjective and elusive. Islamic authorities have generally understood this to mean equal economic support and equal time in the beds of each.

Yet even if all this were scrupulously managed, an equal distribution of affection wouldn’t be possible. Even Muhammad favored his child bride Aisha over all of his other wives. A hadith has a Muslim making bold to ask him, “Who is the most beloved person to you?” Muhammad answered with one word: Aisha. (Bukhari 5.62.3662) What might his other wives have thought of this?

But the human heart longs to love and be loved uniquely, and this desire cannot be extinguished. In Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924, Philip Mansel’s elegantly written history of Constantinople after the Muslim conquest, he offers a moving case in point involving the daughter of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire:

Yet even these most powerful and privileged of Ottoman might be tortured by jealousy. Adile Sultan, daughter of the great nineteenth-century reformer Mahmud II, married an army officer, Mehmed Ali Pasha. They were in love. One day at the fashionable meeting-place in the Golden Horn called the Sweet Waters of Europe, she attracted his attention. Since she was thickly veiled, he did not know who she was. He dropped a scented handkerchief at her feet. That night the Pasha found the handkerchief on the pillow beside his sleeping wife.

One day, according to Mansel, Adile Sultan traveled to a mosque far from her home. Taking advantage of the celebrated Oriental hospitality, she stopped for a rest at a mansion that was on the way. While enjoying coffee and sherbet set out by her hostess, she was astonished to find that her hostess, too, was the wife of Mehmed Ali Pasha!

She said nothing, however, and returned home where, Mansel says, “thereafter she lived in seclusion, writing poems of increasing sadness. When she died in 1898, she was buried beside her husband. They never referred to his infidelity.” In Islamic terms, it wasn’t infidelity at all. But nonetheless, it gnawed at Adile Sultan’s heart.

It doesn’t take much knowledge of human nature to recognize that it’s a story that has been repeated and is still being repeated in polygamous households the world over.

2. Female genital mutilation

Muhammad is said to have justified the cutting of women’s genitals: “A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet said to her: Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.” (Sunan Abu Dawud 41.5251) The problem with this is that the distinction between cutting and cutting severely is subjective.

There is also justification for the practice in Islamic law: “Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) (by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the bazr ‘clitoris’ [this is called khufaadh ‘female circumcision’]).” ‘Umdat al-Salik e4.3, translated by Mark Durie, The Third Choice, p. 64

While female genital mutilation is by no means universally practiced in Muslim countries, it is not hard to find Islamic authorities around the world today justifying this barbarity on Islamic grounds. The idea behind it is that it reduces a woman’s sexual response, thus making her easier to control. The implications of this for romance are obvious. What should be a joyful celebration of mutual self-giving becomes the painful duty of a slave.

3. Sex on demand

“Slave” is indeed the apposite word. Islamic tradition has Muhammad saying: “If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning” (Bukhari 4.54.460) and “By him in Whose Hand lies my life, a woman can not carry out the right of her Lord, till she carries out the right of her husband. And if he asks her to surrender herself [to him for sexual intercourse] she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel’s saddle” (Ibn Majah 1854).

Clearly Islamic marriage is not a relationship of two human beings to each other, a community of love, but a relationship between a servant and her master. Servant/master romances may be the stuff of bodice-rippers and bad period weepers, but they can only work in real life if on some level the two parties are equals. In Islam, a husband and wife are never equals unless they ignore the various Islamic laws that ensure that they aren’t.

4. Wife-beating

This is the worst of all. The Qur’an says:

“Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God’s guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them.” (4:34)

Islamic apologists routinely claim that the Qur’an’s command to beat disobedient women must be applied only with the most harmless of implements i.e., a toothstick, as per a weak hadith. However, Muhammad’s example is normative for Muslims, since he is an “excellent example of conduct” (Qur’an 33:21) and according to a canonical hadith, Muhammad’s favorite wife, his child bride Aisha, reports that Muhammad struck her. Once he went out at night after he thought she was asleep, and she followed him surreptitiously. Muhammad saw her, and, as Aisha recounts: “He struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?” (Muslim 2127) Aisha herself said it: “I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women.” (Bukhari 7.72.715)

Domestic abuse is found everywhere, but only in Islam is it given divine sanction. And of course, it is inimical to romance. The woman who lives in fear of it cannot love. She cannot even relax. The threat of it places her relationship with her husband on the basis not of love, but of fear….

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Brunei: Propagating religion other than Islam a crime under Sharia

How did these legal experts from the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Prime Minister’s office get the crazy idea that Sharia mandated intolerance? We are constantly told in the U.S. that it is a benign system of laws governing Muslim marriages, inheritance and the like, and that anyone who believes that it has any content that may impinge upon the freedom of non-Muslims is a greasy Islamophobe. Are these Muslim authorities in Brunei Islamophobes in disguise?

“Propagating religion other than Islam a crime under Syariah law,” from the Brunei Times, February 14 (thanks to Twostellas):

PRIVATE education institutions have been cautioned against propagating religions other than Islam as it is a crime under the Syariah Penal Code Order.

During a briefing in Tutong on the law yesterday, legal experts from the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office told 300 representatives of private education institutions it was an offence to propagate religions other than Islam to a Muslim or atheist.

The offence is punishable by a fine of up to $20,000, imprisonment for up to five years or both under Section 209.

Exposing beliefs and practices other than Islam to a Muslim child, or a child whose parents are atheist, carries the same punishment.

Under Section 212, it is an offence to “persuade, tell, cause, offer payment to, influence, incite, encourage or let” the child accept such teachings.

Additionally, it is a crime to expose the child to any ceremony, act of worship or religious activity of any religion beside Islam, or to participate in any activity held for the benefit of other religions.

Several provisions relating to the publication, possession and distribution of materials that propagate religions other than Islam are also included in Brunei Darussalam’s Syariah Penal Code Order.

This law applies to both Muslims and non-Muslims. However, there are certain offences that are applicable only to Muslims.

Brunei is set to enforce the first phase of the new law in April, ushering in Ta’zir or general offences that are punishable by fines, imprisonment or both.

Harsher punishments for serious crimes, such as amputation of limbs for stealing, will be introduced in the second phase, while the death penalty will only come into force in the third phase, pending the finalisation of the Syariah Courts Criminal Procedure Code Order.

Assistant Director of Private Institutions Section at the Ministry of Education Pg Othman Pg Mohd Daud said the new law would “ensure the prosperity, well-being, peace and solidarity” of the people in the Sultanate.

Pg Othman, in his speech at the briefing, said the Syariah Penal Code Order would serve as a platform to overcome the negative problems and challenges brought about by the “rapid development of a borderless world”….

Source: Jihadwatch
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Jihad terror group recruiter invites reporter to convert to Islam, says everywhere there is music, there is ungodliness

Abubakar Shariff Ahmed is a recruiter for jihad. “His advice is that, if Islam is under attack, which he says it is, then it is every Muslim’s duty to wage jihad.” This is in line with the classic formulations of Islamic jurisprudence, which stipulate that exactly that: that jihad becomes the personal duty of every Muslim if a Muslim land is attacked. He also invites Gabriel Gatehouse to accept Islam, and denounces music as leading to ungodliness in line with Islamic law’s prohibition on music.

What Ahmed says actually coincides with what “moderate” Muslim spokesmen say in the West, that jihad only has a military component in defense of Muslim lands. However, his involvement in a jihad terror group is strange, since those spokesmen routinely claim that jihad terror groups are made up of people who do not know anything about Islam and do not follow it properly, but only use it as a cover for their activities. Yet Abubakar Shariff Ahmed seems to be quite pious and devout. What he assumes about music also contradicts the common claim that the Islamic prohibition of music is the invention of greasy Islamophobes. Does Abubakar Shariff Ahmed have a secret stash of the writings of greasy Islamophobes under his bed?

There Is No Fun In Islam Update: “An atheist meets an al-Shabab ‘recruiter,’” by Gabriel Gatehouse for BBC News, February 16 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Abubakar Shariff Ahmed is not a hard man to find. Ask around in the Majengo area of Mombasa and people will know where he lives.

But ask around too conspicuously and you are likely to arouse suspicion.

Mr Ahmed is perhaps better known by his nickname, Makaburi. It means “graveyard” in Swahili.

His name features on US and UN sanctions lists of people suspected of involvement in terrorism – accused of recruiting young Kenyan Muslims for violent militant activity in Somalia.

He himself believes the Kenyan police will one day try to kill him. So he is careful about his security….

Makaburi’s manner may be charming but his beliefs are uncompromising. The time is near he told me. An army of Allah will rise up out of the desert. It will come bearing a black flag and establish a global Islamic caliphate.

He denies recruiting for al-Shabab, or calling on his followers to travel to Somalia to fight.

“I do not have any followers,” he says at one point. I nod towards the bearded teenagers. “Who are they?” I ask. “They have come to ask my advice,” he says.

His advice is that, if Islam is under attack, which he says it is, then it is every Muslim’s duty to wage jihad.

After the interview we sat together on the roof where the breeze had picked up and the air was beginning to cool. “Let me invite you to Islam,” he said, breaking once more into that charming smile.

I smiled back. “Regretfully,” I said, “I am an atheist.”

He screwed up his face, and waved towards the two bearded students, loitering now next to a nearby pigeon coop.

“Look at them,” he said. “Each from a different Kenyan tribe, and me from yet another. But thanks to Islam, we are brothers. Religion brings us together.”

I countered with a story I had once heard on this very programme. A BBC reporter in Bosnia, during the war in the 1990's, had asked an elderly gentleman whether he was a Croat or a Muslim?

The man’s reproachful response had struck home: “I am a musician,” he had said. Music could unite where religion divided. Makaburi was unimpressed.

“Everywhere there is music, there is ungodliness,” he said
The Koran

“Define ungodliness,” I challenged him. I was beginning to enjoy our discussion.

He told me a story about a sailor he had known who had spent a long time at sea aboard a cargo ship. According to custom, after going to the toilet, he would wash instead of wipe.

But he was the only Muslim on board, and eventually the other sailors confronted him about the splashes of water around the loo. Could he stop it please, they found it unhygienic.

They were sitting at breakfast and there was a can of condensed milk open on the table. Makaburi’s sailor friend took the hand of one of his colleagues and dabbed it with some of the sweet sticky substance.

“Now wipe it off with a tissue,” he told him, “then lick your hand. Tell me does it still taste of condensed milk?”

The sailor did so and admitted that yes, his hand still tasted sweet.
Kenya and Somalia map

The dabbing was repeated and the sailor was now invited to wash his hand with water.

Did his hand still taste of milk? It did not. The point was made.

“But surely this is not what it all boils down to,” I protested. “Of course not,” Makaburi beamed. “But let me give you a copy of the Koran,” he pleaded. “You read it, you will see.”

I promised I would, but on one condition. Would Makaburi in return listen to my favourite jazz album, and tell me honestly what he thought?

He looked disgusted. “No,” he said, “no way. I have not listened to music for more than a decade.” And so we parted, our cultural exchange, between atheist and Islamist, unconsummated.

Source: Jihadwatch
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Malaysia: Muslim group offers reward to anyone who can slap politician whom they say insulted Islam

They say she insulted Islam, and yet they aren’t calling for her death, despite the death penalty for blasphemy taught by all the major schools of Islamic jurisprudence. They must be moderates. “Islamic NGO offers reward for slapping MP Teresa Kok over controversial ‘Onederful Malaysia’ video,” from Australia Network News, February 10:
A Malaysian Islamic NGO has offered a $US360 reward for anyone who slaps an opposition MP who posted a controversial Chinese New Year video on YouTube.
Teresa Kok, national vice-chair of the Democratic Action Party, has been accused of insulting Malays and Islam in her ‘Onderful Malaysia’ video.
Local media says up to 300 police reports have been lodged against the video, a play on the government’s ’1Malaysia’ campaign, which uses a talk show setting to poke fun at various national issues.
Ms Kok has told Asia Pacific the video is a satirical attack on government issues, and the race controversy is being used by the governing UMNO party to distract from that.

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Iran: Ayatollah tortured and near death for criticizing political Islam

Why we don’t see more genuine Muslim reformers, part 37,950: “Ayatollah Tortured, Near Death, in Iran for Criticizing Political Islam,” by Shadi Paveh for the Gatestone Institute, February 5 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
Ayatollah Hossein-Kazamani Boroujerdi, a senior member of the Shiite Muslim clergy, is presently serving the eighth year of an 11-year sentence handed down to him by the Islamic Republic’s courts for advocating the separation of state and religion inside Iran. He has also spoken against political Islam and its leaders. As a result, during his time in prison, he has been exposed to torture especially reserved for the Islamic Republic’s dissident clergy and political prisoners. Boroujerdi has endured the rape of his spouse in front of other family members. He has been purposely exposed to toxic chemical agents while kept in a small solitary cell. As a result, he now suffers permanent neurological damage, further aggravated by group beatings. Urgent medical attention has been systematically withheld for his long list of ailments, which are mostly a direct result of years of torture and malnutrition.
On September 29, 2013, for example, Ayatollah Boroujerdi suffered a heart attack in prison for which he was refused medical intervention. His condition has reportedly worsened as of January 28, 2014, when he had severe body tremors and was motionless for hours in his cell, where he presently remains with no medical care.
Possibly due to Ayatollah Boroujerdi’s prominence, the regime has apparently chosen not to execute him, but instead to kill him silently in prison. There were two failed attempts on his life by poisoning inside prison in 2012. His mother, detained at the same time, was also poisoned and died as a result. Previously, in November 2011, a prisoner on death row was told by the authorities that if he succeeded in killing Boroujerdi he would be set free. The attempt failed when other prisoners intervened.
To protest the violent crimes of political Islam in the Islamic Republic, Boroujerdi announced via audio tape from prison that: “I am not inclined anymore to wear this frock; this frock has no credit or value in Iran or the international community” and removed his clerical robes.
Ayatollah Boroujerdi descends from a long line of renowned Shiite clergy; both his father and grandfather were staunch opponents of religious leaders in politics. As a result, both of his parents, along with his brother, were killed by the authorities under mysterious circumstances, as is the regime’s custom.
Despite his critical medical condition in prison, he remains defiant and his spirit remains unbreakable: he has stated hopes that his case will serve as a strong indictment of the Islamic Republic’s despotic rule and unspeakable human rights violations.
Ayatollah Boroujerdi has risked losing his life slowly under torture by writing letters from inside prison to then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to the United Nations, speaking of the absolute lack of freedom inside Iran, the grotesque human rights violations and the imminent danger of political Islam. Further, he recently urged people of Iran to boycott the so-called elections on June 14, 2013. As a direct result of this statement his tortures recommenced despite his extremely fragile medical condition….

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