Hate and Ignorance Leads to Another Mass Shooting at Wisconsin Sikh Temple -By Kevin Holmes | WRAL

On July 20, a young man with bright red hair blended in with a crowd anxious midnight movie-goers eagerly waiting to see the new Batman movie at Century 16 in Aurora, Colorado. The young man entered the theater and slipped out an emergency exit, leaving the door ajar. He reentered the theater a few minutes after the movie began. Protected by full body armor and armed with an AR-15, he opened fire on the unsuspecting audience. When the bullets stop flying, 12 people were dead, 58 injured. The man, later identified as James Holmes, was taken into custody without incident. His motives remain unknown.

Fast-forward two weeks, another mass shooting. . .

Satwant Kaleka, president of the temple, was killed by the gunman while trying to protect those in his temple. Photo: HUMAYUN M @ 18% GREY

DURHAM, N.C. —Sikhs of the Triangle said hatred and ignorance were to blame for a mass shooting at a Wisconsin temple Sunday.

An unidentified gunman killed six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee in a rampage that left terrified congregants hiding in closets and others texting friends outside for help. The suspect was killed outside the temple in a shootout with police officers.

Police called the attack an act of domestic terrorism, but did not provide any details about the gunman or suggest a possible motive, including whether he specifically targeted the Sikh temple.

Tejphal Singh Dhillon, who co-founded the 600-member Sikh Gurdwara of North Carolina in Durham, said the victims in Wisconsin share a common enemy with Sikhs in the Triangle.

“Our common enemy is hatred and ignorance,” he said. “If we can remove this hatred and ignorance, then we’d all be winners.”

Daljit Caberwal, another of the temple’s founding members, said that people have a lot of misunderstandings about the Sikh religion. “I don’t know the exact motivation, but I think one of the reasons could be mistaking Sikhs for the followers of bin Laden,” Caberwal said. “We are mistaken for our identity.”

Sikh men traditionally wear turbans and grow beards, Caberwal said, which causes them to frequently be confused with Muslims.

“When September 11 happened, pictures of bin Laden were posted on the TV and press media wearing a turban and a beard,” he said. “Basically, it’s a question of ignorance. Hopefully, with more education, people will soon find out who Sikhs are and hopefully this confusion will someday will go away.”

He said the Sikh faith – the fifth largest religion in the world with about 80 percent of its followers living in India–is “peace-loving.” There are about 250,000 to 300,000 in the United States.

“We are proud to be patriotic, fellow Americans,” he said. “This incident is an unfortunate one… (but) once we come to know people and people come to know us, there are no walls in between.” The World Sikh Council released a statement Sunday condemning the Wisconsin temple shooting and calling for a “prayerful response.”

“This is a troubling day, not only for Sikh-Americans, but also for all Americans,” Sikh leaders said in the statement.

Reprint: Triangle Sikhs Blame Ignorance for Wisconsin Temple Shooting -By Kevin Holmes | WRAL.com

Introduction by blogger SWilliamsJD

 

ACLU, Relatives Sue U.S.Over Drone Assassinations in Yemen -By Charles Savage | NPR

WASHINGTON — Relatives of three American citizens killed in drone strikes in Yemen last year filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against four senior national security officials on July 17th. The suit, in the Federal District Court here, opened a new chapter in the legal wrangling over the Obama administration’s use of drones in pursuit of terrorism suspects away from traditional “hot” battlefields like Afghanistan.

The first strike, on Sept. 30, killed a group of people includingAnwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico, and Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who lived at times in Queens, Long Island and North Carolina. The second, on Oct. 14, killed a group of people including Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born in Colorado.

Accused in the suit of authorizing and directing the strikes are Leon E. Panetta, the secretary of defense; David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A.; and two senior commanders of the military’s Special Operations forces, Adm. William H. McRaven of the Navy and Lt. Gen. Joseph L. Votel of the Army.

“The killings violated fundamental rights afforded to all U.S. citizens, including the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law,” the complaint says.

Press officials with the C.I.A., the Pentagon and the Justice Department declined to comment.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, was filed by Nasser al-Awlaki, who was Anwar’s father and Abdulrahman’s grandfather, and Sarah Khan, Samir’s mother. Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights are assisting them in the legal action.

Excerpt, read: Relatives Sue Officials Over U.S. Citizens Killed by Drone Strikes in Yemen -By Charles Savage| NPR

 

U.S. Troops Posed with Body Parts of Afghan Bombers -By David Zucchino | L.A.Times

The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan’s Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse’s severed legs.

A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.

Two soldiers posed holding a dead man’s hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man’s hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading “Zombie Hunter” next to other remains and took a picture.

The Army launched a criminal investigation after the Los Angeles Times showed officials copies of the photos, which recently were given to the paper by a soldier from the division.

“It is a violation of Army standards to pose with corpses for photographs outside of officially sanctioned purposes,” said George Wright, an Army spokesman. “Such actions fall short of what we expect of our uniformed service members in deployed areas.”

Wright said that after the investigation, the Army would “take appropriate action” against those involved. Most of the soldiers in the photos have been identified, said Lt. Col. Margaret Kageleiry, an Army spokeswoman.

The photos have emerged at a particularly sensitive moment for U.S.-Afghan relations. In January, a video appeared on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines urinating on Afghan corpses. In February, the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base triggered riots that left 30 dead and led to the deaths of six Americans. In March, a U.S. Army sergeant went on a nighttime shooting rampage in two Afghan villages, killing 17.

The soldier who provided The Times with a series of 18 photos of soldiers posing with corpses did so on condition of anonymity. He served in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne’s 4th Brigade Combat Team from Ft. Bragg, N.C. He said the photos point to a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.

He expressed the hope that publication would help ensure that alleged security shortcomings at two U.S. bases in Afghanistan in 2010 were not repeated. The brigade, under new command but with some of the same paratroopers who served in 2010, began another tour in Afghanistan in February.

U.S. military officials asked The Times not to publish any of the pictures.

Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the conduct depicted “most certainly does not represent the character and the professionalism of the great majority of our troops in Afghanistan…. Nevertheless, this imagery — more than two years old — now has the potential to indict them all in the minds of local Afghans, inciting violence and perhaps causing needless casualties.”

Kirby added, “We have taken the necessary precautions to protect our troops in the event of any backlash.”

Excerpt, read: U.S. Troops Posed with Body Parts of Afghan Bombers -By David Zucchino | L.A.Times

 

Pakistan Passes Landmark Legislation to Protect Women’s Rights | ABC News

Azim Mai’s husband allegedly threw acid in her face last year after she refused to sell their two boys to a man in Dubai to use as camel racers. The 35-year-old mother of five can no longer find work as a maid because her deeply scarred face scares potential employers.

Acid burnings are among the most horrific crimes against women in Pakistan that are now criminalized in a landmark set of laws passed by the parliament. They stand to protect millions of women from common forms of abuse in a conservative, Muslim country with a terrible history of gender inequality.

Rights activists praised the laws Tuesday while stressing their passage was just the first step, and likely not the hardest one. It could be even more difficult to get Pakistan’s corrupt and inefficient legal system to protect women’s rights that many men in this patriarchal society likely oppose.

“This is a big achievement for the women of Pakistan, civil society and the organizations that have been working for more than 30 years to get women friendly bills passed,” said Nayyar Shabana Kiyani, who has lobbied for the legislation as part of The Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights group.

“We can’t really get good results until the laws are implemented at the grassroots level,” she added.

The two bills containing the new laws, which received final approval from the Senate on Monday, stiffened the punishment for acid attacks and criminalized practices such as marrying off young girls to settle tribal disputes and preventing women from inheriting property.

Pakistani acid attack survivor, Azim Mai, 35, holds her daughter Shaziya, 8, while sitting on a bed waiting to have a massage session for their wounds, at the Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011. (Photo:Muhammed Muheisen/AP)

Mistreatment of women is widespread in Pakistan, a nation of some 175 million where most people are poor, only half the adults can read and extremist ideologies, including the Taliban’s, are gaining traction.

In 2010, at least 8,000 acid attacks, forced marriages and other forms of violence against women were reported, according to The Aurat Foundation. Because the group relied mostly on media reports, the figure is likely an undercount.

Women are discriminated against in other ways as well. Pakistan ranked third to last in 2011 in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, only beating Chad and Yemen. The report captures the magnitude of gender-based disparities in things like health and education.

The new laws explicitly criminalized acid attacks and mandated that convicted attackers would serve a minimum sentence of 14 years that could extend to life, and pay a minimum fine of about $11,200.

Other new laws mandate a minimum prison sentence of three years for forcing a woman to marry, including to settle tribal disputes; five years for preventing a woman from inheriting property; and three years for a practice known as “marriage to the Holy Quran.”

Feudal families in rural areas of Pakistan engage in this practice so that women won’t receive marriage proposals and their share of the inheritance will stay in the family, said Farzana Bari, head of the gender studies department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

“This legislation addresses the patriarchal traditions that have been used against women to violate their rights,” said Bari. “People have been doing these kinds of things for so long that they don’t even think it’s unjust.

Reprint: Pakistan Passes Landmark Legislation to Protect Women’s Rights | ABC News

 

Teen Katya Koren Allegedly Stoned to Death for Entering Beauty Pageant | CBS News

Reports allege that Katya Koren was stoned to death for participating in beauty contests. The investigation is ongoing. (Photo: Courtesy of facebook)

A teenage Muslim girl’s body was found dumped in a forest the Crimean peninsula one week after she was reported missing. Local media initially reported that she was stoned to death by suspects claiming the 19-year-old has violated Sharia law by taking part in a beauty contest, a British newspaper reports.

Will Stewart of the Daily Mail writes that Koren’s appeared to have suffered head injuries and been strangled. However, the Daily Telegraph writes that local police are claiming “her killing had nothing to do with sectarian violence and that the girl had been killed by a psychologically troubled classmate who had given her a lift on his moped and then robbed and possibly raped her before battering her to death with a rock.”

Sergei Reznikov, a senior policeman involved in the case, told the Telegraph: “A student did it, killing his classmate. There is no other underlying reason, neither religious nor linked with inter-ethnic conflicts.”

Initial reports had indicated that three Muslim youths killed her, saying her death was justified under Islamic law because taking part in a beauty contest is a violation of it.

The Daily Mail reported that one 16-year-old suspect under arrest told police Koren had “violated the laws of Sharia.”

According to an official report on a Crimean government website, the 16-year-old classmate confessed to her murder, and gave as his reason, “I just wanted to kill her.”

While the area is home to some 250,000 Muslims, incidents of Sharia Law being enforced are almost unheard of, the Telegraph reports. The 16-year-old suspect allegedly has a history of mental health issues, and is being evaluated currently for whether he is of sound mind.

Muslim Girl in Beauty Contest Stoned to Death | CBS News

 

An Uprising in Egypt: 85 Million Voices Speak As One

The Egyptian capital Cairo was the scene of violent chaos on [last] Friday, when tens of thousands of anti-government protesters stoned and confronted police, who fired back with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons. It was a major escalation in what was already the biggest challenge to authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year-rule. They are demanding Mubarak’s ouster and venting their rage at years of government neglect of rampant poverty, unemployment and rising food prices.

 

CAIRO — Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood and the secular opposition banded together Sunday around a prominent government critic to negotiate for forces seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, as the army struggled to hold a capital seized by fears of chaos and buoyed by euphoria that three decades of Mr. Mubarak’s rule may be coming to an end.

The announcement that the critic, Mohamed ElBaradei, would represent a loosely unified opposition reconfigured the struggle between Mr. Mubarak’s government and a six-day-old uprising bent on driving him and his party from power.

Though lacking deep support on his own, Dr. ElBaradei, a Nobel laureate and diplomat, could serve as a consensus figure for a movement that has struggled to articulate a program for a potential transition. It suggested, too, that the opposition was aware of the uprising’s image abroad, putting forth a candidate who might be more acceptable to the West than beloved in Egypt.

In scenes as tumultuous as any since the uprising began, Dr. ElBaradei defied a government curfew and joined thousands of protesters in Liberation Square, a downtown landmark that has become the epicenter of the uprising and a platform, writ small, for the frustrations, ambitions and resurgent pride of a generation claiming the country’s mantle.

“Today we are proud of Egyptians,” Dr. ElBaradei told throngs who surged toward him in a square festooned with banners calling for Mr. Mubarak’s fall. “We have restored our rights, restored our freedom, and what we have begun cannot be reversed.”

Dr. ElBaradei declared it a “new era,” and as night fell there were few in Egypt who seemed to disagree.

Excerpt, read: Opposition Rallies to ElBaradei as Military Reinforces in Cairo -By Anthony Shadid & David D. Kirkpatrick |NYT

 

Related: Egypt Cuts Off Internet Access Following Street Protest | Bloomberg (VIDEO)

Egypt’s Crisis: Mubarak Family Profile – By Martin Evans | Telegraph UK

President Obama Speaks About  the Situation in Egypt (VIDEO)

Clinton ‘Deeply Concerned’ About Violence Against Egypt Protesters in Egypt |PBS Newshour (VIDEO)

Egypt’s Front Pages: Read All About It | The Economist

 

The World’s Newest Country? Sudan’s Secession Vote – By Josh Kron | NYT

JUBA, Sudan — Southern Sudanese election officials posted early results on Sunday indicating that perhaps more than 95 percent of voters in this regional capital voted to secede from Sudan.

The referendum, held last week, was the capstone of decades of civil war in Sudan, which pitted Christian and animist rebels in the south against Arab rulers in northern Sudan. All indications show the week-long referendum passing and the south forming its own country.

Over the course of the day on Sunday, results from other parts of Sudan, as well as from across the globe, were streaming in, all showing secession to be the overwhelming favorite. According to early results, southern Sudanese living in Europe who voted favored secession by about 97 percent, the BBC reported.

Vote tallying in Sudan started after polls closed at 6 p.m. Saturday, and carried on through the night, with officials often counting by lantern or flashlight.

While the results are the first concrete steps for the south to secede from the rest of Sudan and become its own country, the process will take time. The final vote tally is not scheduled to be announced until Feb. 14.

And true independence would not come before July 9, when an American-backed peace agreement between the north and the south expires. It was that agreement, signed in 2005, that set the referendum in motion.

Still, there are many issues to be ironed out, including citizenship rights, oil sharing and the future of the contested and volatile Abyei region, which was supposed to hold its own referendum on whether to join the south or the north, but never did.

In two other regions that are part of the north, consultations are supposed to determine whether or not to join the south.

But on Sunday, independence already seemed palpable.

Excerpt, read article:  In Sudan, Early Results Strongly Lean to Secession -By Josh Kron | NYT

Related: Crossroads Sudan: Sudan’s Political Challenges (Video)

Oil and Power at Center of Vote to Split Sudan – By Peter Wilkinson & Dan Rivers |CNN International

Sudan Vote ‘Peaceful and Credible’ | AlJazeera Africa

Sudan: A Vote on Secession | MSNBC Photo Gallery

LIFE Magazine Visit Sudan in 1947 | LIFE Photo Gallery

 

Thousands Rally in Pakistan Over Blasphemy Law–By Muhammad Mansoor| AFP

KARACHI (AFP) – More than 50,000 people rallied in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi on Sunday, police said, against the controversial reform of a blasphemy law that was behind the killing of a senior politician.

Religious groups blocked a main thoroughfare in Karachi’s teeming metropolis holding banners in support of the police commando who shot dead Punjab governor Salman Taseer on Tuesday over his views favouring an amendment of the law.

Taseer had called for reform of the blasphemy law that was recently used to sentence a Christian woman to death. But his outspoken liberal stance offended the country’s increasingly powerful conservative religious base.

“Mumtaz Qadri is not a murderer, he is a hero,” said one banner in the national Urdu language in support of the man who carried out Pakistan’s most high-profile political killing in three years.

“We salute the courage of Qadri,” said another.

Religious students filled the street wearing scarves and turbans inscribed with “Allah-o-Akbar” and bellowing slogans in favour of holy war.

Senior police official Mohammad Ashfaq put the overall number of protesters at more than 50,000. Another senior police official confirmed the number and said some 3,000 police officers were guarding the event, which forced the closure of businesses and roads in the area and ended after dusk without violence.

Excerpt, read entire article: Thousands Rally Over Blasphemy Law in Pakistan –By Muhammad Mansoor | AFP

Thousands Rally in Pakistan Over Blasphemy Law| Al Jazeera English (Video)

Related: Pakistan Profile: Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab (Video)

Salman Taseer: An Act of True Moral Heroism – By Chris Hayes | The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC Video)

 

Rohingya: “Hell on Earth!”

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh — It’s there in their faces, in the dark night of their eyes and in the sag and slump of their shoulders. It’s unmistakable, the despair of the Rohingya, the fear for departed husbands and fathers, the daily abrasions of poverty, sadness and the world’s indifference.

More than a quarter-million Rohingya – an ethnic Muslim minority from western Myanmar – have come here to southern Bangladesh to escape the hunger, humiliation and official brutalities in their homeland. Many have landed in a place called the Kutupalong Makeshift Camp.

It is an obscenity, this camp, a festering hell of lost hope and inhuman squalor. No water, power, schools or medicine. Occasional stoop-labor jobs carrying bricks or making salt. Huts made of leaves and branches. There is no music.

“The worst conditions you could imagine anywhere on earth,” says a well-traveled international aid worker. “Total despair,” says another.

These are the luxuries in the camp: a packet of cookies, a crayon, a new battery for an old radio, a small breeze on a sweltering night.

Refugee Sano Ara, 30, sits with her mother, left, and her children at an unregistered refugees camp, outside the official camp at Kutupalong, run by Bangladesh government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, near Cox's Bazar, a southern coastal district about 183 miles (296 kilometers) south of Dhaka, Bangladesh. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman)

Difficult enough are their journeys from Myanmar to the camp. Even more dangerous are the attempts by thousands of Rohingya men and boys to emigrate each year, starting with perilous sea voyages to Thailand. After that comes an overland trek to Malaysia, a country that has become a kind of Muslim El Dorado for the Rohingya. There might be friends or family connections there, and perhaps jobs that allow for money to be sent to families back in the camps.

These trips often begin in leaky boats that are underpowered and overloaded. Hundreds of Rohingya die at sea each year, and hundreds more are rescued, adrift at sea, by navies in the region. And thousands are detained each year by the Thai authorities. Human rights groups were outraged recently when it became known that the Thai military had roughly detained several dozen Rohingya men on a remote island, then packed them into a boat with few provisions and towed them back out to sea.

“Pushbacks” is what aid workers are calling this tactic.

How to measure or comprehend the terror – or perhaps it’s the love – that propels a man to leave his family, quite possibly forever, and climb penniless into a boat to find uncertain work a thousand miles away in a place where he knows he’ll be both unwelcome and liable to arrest? For that matter, what hellish existence could send a family fleeing to a refugee camp where conditions resemble, charitably, the 12th century?

The Rohingya number about 750,000 in Myanmar. But the military junta does not recognize them as one of the 135 “national races” in the mostly Buddhist nation. And so, in the face of forced labor, arbitrary arrest, stolen land and even starvation, they flee to the makeshift camp. (An adjoining settlement of 20,000 residents has water, electricity and other basic services. Run by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, it is known as the official Kutupalong camp. Some Rohingya have lived there for more than a decade.)

Hundreds of thousands of members of the Rohingya ethnic group have fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution in neighboring Myanmar only find themselves trapped in a hellish international limbo. As Muslims, they were unwanted in Buddhist Myanmar. As foreigners, they are unwanted in Muslim Bangladesh.

Every day more Rohingya arrive at the Bangladeshi camps, stateless, sun-blasted refugees carrying their meager bundles. The newcomers, largely from Rakhine State in Myanmar, are often so traumatized that they’re unable to tell aid workers what they have fled.

Another one million Rohingya are scattered about the world – there has been a major diaspora from South Asia in recent decades – and they have flung themselves from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan to Thailand to Indonesia. The men lay asphalt and pour cement in Riyadh. They haul fishing nets in the Andaman Sea. They pull rickshaws in Jakarta. The children, with their small hands, peel shrimp and weave carpets in Karachi.

But no country claims the Rohingya. No country welcomes them. For many, Islam is the only sanctuary left. “They still have faith,” says an aid worker, “that Allah will protect them.”

This article was reported by a reporter for the International Herald Tribune in Cox’s Bazar and by Mark McDonald in Hong Kong. It was written by McDonald.

Source: New York Times

References: Al Jazeera, Human Rights Watch Report, Physicians for Human Rights

 

Three Malaysian Women Caned for Adultery

The caning case rekindles a debate over rising Islamization in the multi-racial country. Photo: EPA

Three women were caned on February 9, pursuant to Islamic law for committing adultery, a Malaysian minister has said. They are the first women to receive such a sentence under Islamic law in the country. Hishamuddin Tun Hussein, the Malaysian home affairs minister, said the sentences were carried out after Sharia court found them guilty of adultery. Although it is unclear what evidence or information was permitted to reach the verdict, Hishamuddin claims the punishment was “carried out perfectly” and that no woman was injured.

Two of the women were struck six times while the third received four strokes. One woman was released from prison on February 14. Another will be freed in the next few days; the third woman will be released in June 2010.

The Case of Kartika Sari Dewa Shukarno

Meanwhile the older case of Kartika Sari Dewa Shukarno, sentenced to six strokes of a rattan cane for drinking beer, is under review following widespread publicity and international criticism. The case, when first reported, raised concerns that the nation might be moving away from secularization and thus eroding the rights of some 40-45 percent of the country’s ethnic minorities.

Kartika's sentence came under review following widespread criticism. Photo: AFP

Hishammuddin  acknowledges the widespread concerns about caning women (or anyone else) but claims the recent canings demonstrate that the prisons department can carry out punishments in accordance with Islamic law. Under the sharia, women have to be whipped in a seated position by a female prison guard and be fully clothed.

“The punishment is to teach and give a chance to those who have fallen off the path to return and build a better life in future,” Hishammuddin said.

London-based Amnesty International urged Malaysia to end a caning “epidemic”, saying the women’s case was “just the tip of the iceberg”. Donna Guest, the group’s deputy Asia-Pacific director, said in a statement that Malaysian authorities caned more than 35,000 mostly foreigners since 2002. “The government needs to abolish this cruel and degrading punishment, no matter what the offense,” she said.

Sisters in Islam, a local group of Muslim women activists, said the caning “constitutes further discrimination against Muslim women in Malaysia”.

The recent caning cases also raise an important question of law: Whether a religious state court can impose a caning sentence when federal law precludes women from such a punishment, while men below 50 can be punished by caning. Malaysia has a dual-track legal system with Islamic criminal and family laws, which are applicable only to Muslims, running alongside civil laws. Human rights’ advocates contend the current legal inconsistencies can be resolved by simply abolishing the practice of caning.

Sources: BBC, Al Jazeera