Bin Laden urges Muslims to launch a holy war (jihad) to stop the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip and Taunts the US

A Call for Jihad to Stop the Aggression against Gaza", was posted on websites on Wednesday.
Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in a message- perfectly timed to coincide with the Obama inauguration and the Israeli offensive in Gaza- urged Muslims to launch a jihad against Israel and condemned Arab governments as allies of the Jewish state. The use of the term Crusader-Zionist alliance will further ignite tensions between Christians and Muslims and is geared to inflame Muslim passions to even greater heights. The following are some of the key points of the message purporting to come from bin Laden.

"Our brothers in Palestine, you have suffered a lot.... the Muslims sympathise with you in what they see and hear. We, the mujahideen, sympathise with you also..We are with you and we will not let you down. Our fate is tied to yours in fighting the Crusader-Zionist coalition, in fighting until victory or martyrdom.
There is only one strong way to bring the return of Al-Aqsa and Palestine, and that is jihad in the path of God (a reference to the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem). The duty is to urge people to jihad and to enlist the youth into jihad brigades....Muslim nation, you are capable of defeating the Zionist entity with your popular capabilities and your great hidden strength — without the support of (Arab) leaders and despite the fact that most of (the leaders) stand in the barracks of the Crusader-Zionist alliance.

God has bestowed us with the patience to continue the path of jihad for another seven years, and seven and seven years..The question is, can America continue its war with us for several more decades to come? Reports and evidence would suggest otherwise.."

President Bush, the message said, was leaving his successor with a "heavy inheritance." Referring to Barack Obama the speaker said: "If he withdraws from the war, it is a military defeat. If he continues, he drowns in economic crisis." Here bin Laden is taunting the US.

Youth Riots - Rosengard,Malmo, Sweden-December 19th

Ewa-Gun Westford, a police spokeswoman, said the clashes on Wednesday and Thursday night were linked to the recent closure of an Islamic cultural centre in Malmo's heavily-immigrant populated neighbourhood of Rosengard.

The owner of the building had decided not to renew the centre's lease, which houses a mosque.

"We've had a very difficult evening. There's extensive damage to public property and there's been stone-throwing and bomb threats against police," Westford said... (Al Jazeera)

Nigeria:Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered on the charge of being witches

The Benenson Society has launched a campaign against the horrific treatment of some childen in Nigeria and has provided the following details:
"Nigeria is a land with fast growing Christian and Muslim communities. Almost 62 million Nigerians are Christians. In addition to mainstream Christian churches, there are many local evangelical and Pentecostal churches that blend aspects of Christianity with tribal religious traditions. Some of these communities, such as the Liberty Foundation Gospel church, have a strong sense of possession and witchcraft.

Some pastors of these churches are helping to create a tragic campaign of violence against children. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered on the charge of being witches, while some of these preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities by charging for a deliverance from possession.

Twin boys Itohowo and Kufre stand surrounded by angry villagers who believe they are bringing evil to their lives (Robin Hammond/The Observer)

(Below are some of the stories of children harmed as witches recorded in a recent article by Tracy McVeigh for Britain’s Guardian newspaper. You can find her video report at Child ‘Witches in Africa’. (See also Children of Nigeria for horrific pictures which convey the gravity of the situation).

“ But an exploitative situation has now grown into something much more sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children - naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush.
Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance - sometimes as much as three or four months' salary for the average working man - although the pastor will explain that the witch might return and a second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent wants to keep the child, their neighbours may attack it in the street.
………. Mary Sudnad, 10, grimaces as her hair is pulled into corn rows by Agnes, 11, but the scalp just above her forehead is bald and blistered. Mary tells her story fast, in staccato, staring fixedly at the ground.
'My youngest brother died. The pastor told my mother it was because I was a witch. Three men came to my house. I didn't know these men. My mother left the house. Left these men. They beat me.' She pushes her fists under her chin to show how her father lay, stretched out on his stomach on the floor of their hut, watching. After the beating there was a trip to the church for 'a deliverance'.
A day later there was a walk in the bush with her mother. They picked poisonous 'asiri' berries that were made into a draught and forced down Mary's throat. If that didn't kill her, her mother warned her, then it would be a barbed-wire hanging. Finally her mother threw boiling water and caustic soda over her head and body, and her father dumped his screaming daughter in a field. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she stayed near the house for a long time before finally slinking off into the bush.Mary was seven. She says she still doesn't feel safe. She says: 'My mother doesn't love me.' And, finally, a tear streaks down her beautiful face.

Gerry was picked out by a 'prophetess' at a prayer night and named as a witch. His mother cursed him, his father siphoned petrol from his motorbike tank and spat it over his eight-year-old face. Gerry's facial blistering is as visible as the trauma in his dull eyes. He asks every adult he sees if they will take him home to his parents: 'It's not them, it's the prophetess, I am scared of her.'

Nwaekais about 16. She sits by herself in the mud, her eyes rolling, scratching at her stick-thin arms. The other children are surprisingly patient with her. The wound on her head where a nail was driven in looks to be healing well.
Nine- year-old Etido had nails, too, five of them across the crown of his downy head. Its hard to tell what damage has been done. Udo, now 12, was beaten and abandoned by his mother. He nearly lost his arm after villagers, finding him foraging for food by the roadside, saw him as a witch and hacked at him with machetes.
What can we do?

....Write to the mainstream churches in Nigeria urging these Churches to speak out forcefully. The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria might also be written to as many of the churches involved in this issue are loosely affiliated as Pentecostal. One could also write to the founder of one of the churches engaged in the condemnation of Children – the Liberty Foundation Gospel Church.

You could also contact your local churches and urge them to look into the issue.

Catholic
Most Rev. Felix Alaba Job
President of the Nigerian Catholic bishops Conference
c/- Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria
6, Force Road,
P.O. Box 951, Lagos, Nigeria
Fax: 01-2636680
E-mail:Cathsecl@infoweb.abs.net

Anglican
The Venerable Akintunde A. Popoola
24 Douala Street, Wuse Zone 5,
Abuja,
Nigeria.

OR

Mrs Helen Ukpabio
Liberty Gospel Church Headquarters
Behind Desan House off Ndidem Usang Iso Road
Calabar, Cross River State
Nigeria.

OR

Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria
c/o Redeemed Evangelical Mission
Oshodi Apapa Expressway
Ijesha,Surulere,Lagos,
Nigeria "

Gaddafi talks on Aljazeera TV about why he is throwing his full support behind Barack Obama

Obama has alleged that Republicans have smeared him. He conveniently forgets that the Barack Hussein smears came from fellow Democrats during the primaries and not from GOP sources. He might also chat with President Gaddafi.

Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi: Obama Suffers Inferiority Complex That Might Make Him Behave "Whiter Than the White." He Should Be Proud of His African, Muslim Identity. Ben-Gurion Gave the Green Light for the Killing of JFK :

Following are excerpts from a public address delivered by Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi marking the anniversary of the U.S. air raid on Libya. The address aired on Al-Jazeera TV on June 11, 2008:Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi:

It has been proven that there is no democracy in [the U.S.]. Rather, it is a dictatorship no different than the dictatorships of Hitler, Napoleon, Mussolini, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and the rest of the tyrants. In the days of crazy Reagan, the American president issued a presidential order to launch a war against Libya, for example, a presidential order to besiege Libya, a presidential order to boycott Libya, and so on. Is this a democracy or a dictatorship?[...]

There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency. But we were taken by surprise when our African Kenyan brother, who is an American national, made statements that shocked all his supporters in the Arab world, in Africa, and in the Islamic world.

We hope that this is merely an elections "clearance sale," as they say in Egypt – in other words, merely an elections lie. As you know, this is the farce of elections – a person lies and lies to people, just so that they will vote for him, and afterwards, when they say to him: :"You promised this and that," he says: "No, this was just elections propaganda." This is the farce of democracy for you. He says: "This was propaganda, and you thought I was being serious. I was fooling you to get your votes."Allah willing, it will turn out that this was merely elections propaganda. Obama said he would turn Jerusalem into the eternal capital of the Israelis. This indicates that our brother Obama is ignorant of international politics, and is not familiar with the Middle East conflict.................................

LiveLeak

Turkey's Top Court to Hear Case to Ban Ruling AK Party Party in major Secularist Islamist clash-Whither Turkish Secularism?

Turkey is the only considerably secular country in the Muslim world. In the July 2007 General Election Turkey's ruling AK Party won a resounding victory scoring 47% of the vote.

The win for the pro-business, Islamist-rooted party was a major blow to secularism within the country. AK party officials have promised to maintain Turkeys secular political system. In reality the movement has moved towards a limited form of Islamisation. A ban on female students wearing Muslim headscarves in Turkey's universities has been lifted.Parliament approved the constitutional amendments by 411 votes to 103. This led to an outcry among secularists. Thousands of people waving Turkish flags and chanting secularist slogans staged a protest rally against the changes in Ankara. Secularists suspect -probably correctly- that the AK Party wishes to dismantle the secularist political system in a gradual manner.

It is against this backdrop that the Turkish Constitutional Court has announced that it will hear the closure case against the ruling AK Party. The case accuses the party of seeking to undermine the secular state and includes a possible political ban of five years for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Constitutional Court's decision to accept the closure case against the ruling Justice and Development Party, called the AK Party, was given in a short announcement by the deputy chairman of the court, Osman Paksut.

With increasing political instability inevitable military intervention cannot be ruled out. So far the army has remained quiescent. However a major constitutional crisis may be about to unfold. In such an eventuality the army may intervene to maintain stability. Is is doubtful if the secularists can withstand the Islamist tide in the long term.

If the AK Party is banned it could reform under another name. AK's predecessor was the Refah Party.

A strongly Islamist Turkey would have little prospect of joining the EU. Could this save secularism?