Moderate Palestinian Authority TV: Jews And Christians Are "Inferior And Smaller, More Cowardly And Despised"

From Jihad Watch:

Imagine the outcry if a Christian TV station said this about Muslims. But no one will take notice of this from the "moderate" Palestinian Authority. "PA TV teaches kids: Christians and Jews are inferior, cowardly and despised," by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik for Palestinian Media Watch, May 23:

A young Palestinian girl was asked to recite a poem during a PA TV children's program. This poem, according to the host of the show, teaches children "responsibility and belonging."...

PA TV host: "You are going to recite a poem, which also teaches us responsibility and belonging."

Girl: "... The occupier stole my land and my grandfathers' land...
Where is your sword, Khaled (Arab warrior)?
Where is your courage, Saladin (Muslim conqueror)?
But no one answered me.
Where is my weapon? I found it - a stone. I took it and threw it at the enemies of destiny. I taught the world that the Muslim in the name of Allah cannot be defeated...
They challenge us with the White House, and we challenge them with the [Islamic] awakening and the Kaaba [in Mecca]. They aren't stronger than Khosrau and Caesar (rulers of Persian and Byzantine Empires).
They [Christians and Jews] are inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised. They are remnants of the [Christian] crusaders and Khaibar (i.e., Jewish village destroyed by Muslims in 629)...
Oh Muslims of the world: Awaken, you have slept too long.
Your fathers and your sons are being massacred, your Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is defiled and destroyed."

Host: "Bravo! Applause for our friend Lara."
[PA TV (Fatah), May 11, 2012]

Muslim Soldier Guilty In Plot To Blow Up Texas Restaurant Full Of Fort Hood Troops

From the AP via Fox News:

A federal jury on Thursday convicted a Muslim soldier on six charges in connection with a failed plot to blow up a Texas restaurant full of Fort Hood troops, his religious mission to get "justice" for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jurors in U.S. District Court in Waco deliberated a little more than an hour before finding Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo guilty of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempted murder of U.S. officers or employees, and four counts of possessing a weapon in furtherance of a federal crime of violence.

Abdo, 22, did not stand with his attorneys when jurors and the judge entered the room, and he showed no emotion when each of the six guilty verdicts was read by the court clerk. Abdo, who's been accused of spitting blood on authorities escorting him and a jailer, wore a mask covering his nose and mouth throughout the trial.

He faces up to life in prison. U.S. District Judge Walter Smith is set to sentence Abdo in July.

Prosecutors said Abdo had already started making a bomb when he was detained at a Killeen motel last July after going AWOL from Fort Campbell, Ky. Authorities also found numerous bomb-making components, a loaded gun, 143 rounds of ammunition, a stun gun and other items in his backpack and motel room.

In a recorded police interview, Abdo said he was planning to pull off an attack in the Fort Hood area "because I don't appreciate what my unit did in Afghanistan."

He told authorities he planned to put the bomb in a busy restaurant filled with soldiers, wait outside and shoot anyone who survived — and become a martyr after police killed him. Abdo told an investigator that he didn't plan an attack inside Fort Hood because he didn't believe he would be able to get through security at the gates, according to testimony.

During the four-day trial, a recorded jail conversation was played for jurors in which Abdo told his mother his religion inspired his actions and he was seeking "justice" for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Their suffering is my suffering," he said.

Abdo's lead attorney, Zach Boyd, told jurors during closing arguments that Abdo should be acquitted because his plan never progressed beyond preparation.

Killeen police began investigating Abdo on July 26 after a gun store employee reported a young man bought 6 pounds of smokeless gunpowder, shotgun ammunition and a magazine for a semiautomatic pistol, while behaving in an odd manner and seeming to know little about his purchases.

Officers also learned that Abdo bought a U.S. Army uniform and a "Smith" name patch from another store, and jurors saw surveillance footage showing him leaving the store wearing the uniform he just bought. He was detained July 27 after police tracked him to the motel in Killeen, about 150 miles southwest of Dallas.

"A disaster was averted because somebody picked up the phone and made a call," prosecutor Mark Frazier told The Associated Press after the trial, when the judge's gag order was lifted. "The people who work in businesses like this are vigilant ... and risked being embarrassed if their suspicions turned out to be nothing, but that's what we want people to do."

Abdo went AWOL from the Kentucky Army post over the Fourth of July weekend, about two months after he was charged with possessing child pornography, which put his conscientious objector status on hold.

Abdo then went to Nashville, bought a gun from an online seller and kept traveling until he ended up in his Dallas-area hometown. He paid cash for food, motel rooms and bus and cab fare and used his roommate's ID card. When his Dallas friends didn't help him, he wanted to go to South Texas but chose Killeen because he remembered news reports of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting rampage in which a Muslim soldier is charged, according to testimony.

Maj. Nidal Hasan faces the death penalty in the Fort Hood shootings if convicted at his trial, which starts in August.

Abdo became a Muslim when he was 17. He enlisted in the military in 2009, thinking that the service wouldn't conflict with his religious beliefs. But according to his essay that was part of his conscientious objector status application, Abdo reconsidered as he explored Islam further.

In that essay, which he sent to the AP in 2010, Abdo said acts like the Fort Hood shootings "run counter to what I believe in as a Muslim."

Tunisia: Salafite Party Calls For Polygamy And Halt To Adoptions

From Adnkronos:

The recently legalised Tunisian Salafite party 'Jabhet al-Islah' has called for polygamy to be allowed and adoption to be outlawed.

"It is no longer the time for armed jihad (holy war). We don't intend to use force to stop the sale of alcohol or the wearing of bikinis on the beaches. But we will not tolerate any atatck on the symbols of Islam," the party's president Khouja Mohamed told Tunisian daily Le Temps daily Wednesay in an interview.

Protests erupted in Tunisia last October after official election results showed that the country's Islamist party Ennahda had won the first democratic elections since the Arab Spring uprisings, taking 41.47 percent of the vote and 90 seats in the new 217-member assembly.

The assembly has been tasked with rewriting the constitution, appointing a president and forming a caretaker government. Its nearest rival, the secularist Congress for the Republic, won 30 seats.

Jabhet al-Islah (The Salvation Front) admits it is the successor of the Tunisian Salvation Front party, which was founded in the 1980s and put on a US list of terrorist organisations.

But the party says it does not reject pluralism, while claiming that religion and politics cannot be separated.

"We believe Islam is a religion of democracy and freedom," Mohamed said.

Terrorism: Spanish Cities In Ancient Al-Andalus Are Targets

From ANSAmed:

Granada, Valencia, Seville and Cordoba are the next targets of the Salafite Ansar Al Din group, linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, according to security sources quoted today by Radio Cadena Ser.

In an statement circulated inside the organisation which was reportedly intercepted, the four cities in the south of Spain, which ''were ruled by Muslims,'' are mentioned by Ansar Al Din as places that must be freed and in which the ancient Muslim empire, '' Al-Andalus, must be brought back to life." The sources consider the threat real and specify that Spain continues to be one of the main targets of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). After the fall of Gaddafi, this organisation reportedly managed to take possession of large numbers of Libyan weapons and increased its power in Mali and Timbuktu.

Abu Hamza's Daughter-In-Law Caught Smuggling SIM Card Into Prison Beneath Burka

From The Telegraph:

The daughter-in-law of radical cleric Abu Hamza tried to smuggle a mobile phone SIM card into his high security prison while pregnant and clad in full muslim dress, it was disclosed today.

When Chaymae Smak visited her father-in-law at Belmarsh Prison in December 2010, she had the SIM card stashed in the coin pocket of her jeans beneath her flowing robes where security guards discovered it, London's Appeal Court heard.

She had previously visited her hook-handed father-in-law behind bars, said Mr Justice Openshaw, and was "well aware" that SIM cards were banned in prison.

Smak, 28, of Gap Road, Wandsworth, was jailed for 12 months at Blackfriars Crown Court on May 4 after she was convicted of conveying a prohibited article into prison.

She appealed her sentence in the Appeal Court today - where the facts of her case emerged for the first time - claiming she should be released for the sake of her 10-month old son, with whom she was pregnant at the time of the prison visit.

The SIM card was destined for Abu Hamza, said Mr Justice Openshaw, who was held as a high risk "Category A" inmate following his conviction for inciting murder and pending extradition on terror charges to the United States.

Smak at first claimed she had put the SIM card in her pocket several days earlier and "forgotten about it", said the judge, who added: "The jury clearly didn't accept that claim".

Mr Justice Openshaw, sitting with the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, and Mr Justice Irwin, said Smak, a single mother, had given birth to a baby boy in July last year, and that the boy's grandmother is now struggling to raise him.

But, although the courts had to consider the "impact of custody on the child", a deterrent sentence was justified, ruled the judge.

Smak's lawyers claimed too much account was taken of the fact that the SIM card was destined for Abu Hamza.

But Mr Justice Openshaw held: "It seems highly relevant to the seriousness of the offence that the prisoner she was visiting was Abu Hamza, who was detained as a Category A prisoner following his conviction for inciting murder".

He added: "The particular danger of conveying a telephone SIM card to someone such as Abu Hamza is immediately obvious.

"He could use it to convey messages of support to his followers outside, or use it to encourage or incite the commission of further offences.

"The risk that this may come to pass is a seriously aggravating factor in the commission of this particular offence."

The compassionate features of Smak's case had to be considered, he said, but needed to be weighed against the risk to prison security and the public.

And he told the court: "It seems quite likely to us that she might have appreciated that, if convicted, she would be able to plead her personal circumstances as the carer of her child as part of her mitigation".

It was clear that "alternative arrangements" had now been made for her child's care, the court heard, and Mr Justice Openshaw concluded: "We think 12 months fully reflected such mitigation as was offered".

Smak was in the dock of the court throughout the 30 minute hearing, clad in a robe and headscarf covering her face up to her eyes.

Egypt's Christians Vote To Keep Out Islamists

From the Assyrian International News Agency:

Many Egyptian Christians felt marginalised under former president Hosni Mubarak and are voting to keep an Islamist from replacing him out of fear that their community will be further sidelined.

In Shubra, a working-class Cairo neighbourhood home to many Copts, voting lines were long, and the worry and tension felt by many Christians was palpable.

"I don't want the Islamists. If they come to power and I oppose them, they will say I am criticising their religion and who knows what they'll do to me? We can't talk to them," said 57-year-old Sanaa Rateb after casting her ballot. Dressed in a floral jacket topped with a pearl necklace, Rateb railed against those, including the Muslim Brotherhood, who object to a Christian or a woman standing as president.

"It's a mistake. Where is the principle of citizenship in all this? I have the right, as a woman or as a Copt, to stand for the presidency if I want," she said.

Nassim Ghaly, a young man with a cross tattooed on his wrist in the distinctive manner of Egyptian Christians, interjected: "God protect us if the Islamists come to power and they control the parliament and the presidency at the same time."

Like all the Copts questioned on Wednesday, Rateb and Ghaly voted for Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister to serve under Mubarak, whose campaign posters were the most visible in Shubra.

"Shafiq is a respectable man who can restore the country," said Mary, who declined to give her family name.

Egypt's Coptic Orthodox church, whose patriarch, Pope Shenouda, died in March, has refrained from endorsing a candidate, but Mary insisted that within the community "everyone is voting for Shafiq."

But she says the community is not looking to Shafiq to protect their rights as Christians.

"We don't want anyone to defend us. We just don't want any problems and to be left alone," she said.

The Middle East's largest Christian community has become increasingly concerned about the rise of Islam as a political force since the mass protests that toppled Mubarak.

The Coptic community, which makes up between six and 10 percent of Egypt's 82 million-strong population, is traditionally low-key and fairly absent from the country's circles of power.

"What we want is a non-religious state," which would guarantee the rights of all religious groups, Sanaa Halim, in her sixties, said.

"The Islamists trends are worrying," one of her friends added, declining to give her name. "And what have they done in parliament? Nothing, except talk about women and female circumcision."

The friend says she was thinking about voting for former foreign minister and ex-Arab League chief Amr Mussa "because he's an experienced man," but in the end cast her ballot for Shafiq "because everyone's voting for him."

A former air force chief-of-staff, Shafiq was named prime minister in the final days of Mubarak's regime.

He is reviled by the youth of the "revolution," Muslims and Christians. They call him "felool," a pejorative term for those who served in the old regime. But others reject that label out of hand.

"If Shafiq is a felool, then we are all felool," said Ghaly.

Still, the subject is sensitive, and many of those asked questioned were unwilling to be identified, most of them whispering as they spoke so they wouldn't be heard by their fellow voters.

Asked about her position on Egypt's Islamists, a young Christian woman responded dryly: "I'm sorry, I don't wish to say anything on that subject."

Egyptian Sheikh Makes Female U.S. Official Wear Hijab

From Jihad Watch:

According to El Badil, Sheikh Ahmed al-Mahlawi recently gave a sermon in his popular Alexandrian mosque, where he warned the ulema (Islam’s scholars and theologians), from “appearing on TV programs with women who do not wear the hijab.” He pointed out that some make the excuse that, because they see non-veiled women all the time in the streets of Egypt, sitting with one at a TV studio should be fine as well. For Sheikh Mahlawi, however, the ulema have no choice about seeing non-veiled women in the streets, “since that is imposed on them,” but, where they have a say—such as whether to appear on TV with an unveiled woman—they must say no. He then proceeded to brag about how a female official from the U.S. Consulate wanted to meet with him, but he made her wear the hijab first. Finally, he culminated his sermon by warning against “those who do not wish to apply Allah’s Sharia, who love the West, and wish to implement homosexual marriage.”

Jailed Pakistani Doctor Is In Poor Health, Official Says

Pakistan is a terror haven. In Pakistan the doctor who helped the U.S. track Osama Bin Laden is considered to have committed treason.

From NewsCore via Fox News:

The Pakistani doctor jailed for 33 years for helping the CIA track down Usama bin Laden is in poor health and is being kept in isolation due to fears for his safety, a prison official said Thursday.

Dr. Shakeel Afridi was found guilty of treason Wednesday after being accused of gaining vital information for US intelligence by organizing a fake vaccination program near the slain al Qaeda leader's compound in the town of Abbottabad.

Samad Khan, of the central prison in Peshawar, northwestern Pakistan, told AFP, "His health condition is bad, a team of doctors will examine him in jail today [Thursday]."

Though he would not discuss Afridi's condition further, Khan added, "He has been kept away from other prisoners to avert any danger to his life."

Pakistani officials recovered a GPS device that they said was given to him by US intelligence to arrange meetings with his handlers.

Afridi was taken into custody by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency and later was fired as a government doctor.

In January, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed Afridi worked for US intelligence by collecting DNA to verify bin Laden's presence in Pakistan.

The doctor was found guilty of treason under the tribal justice system of Khyber district, part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt. He was also fined 320,000 rupees ($3,500).

The Pakistani authorities were not informed prior to the US Navy SEAL raid that killed bin Laden on May 2, 2011. Not only was it deemed to be an embarrassment that Pakistan had not given its blessing for the raid, it became one of a number of issues to blight relations between the countries.

As a result, Islamabad was determined to make an example of Afridi, according to Pakistani military sources cited by The (London) Times.

US officials and lawmakers reacted angrily to the news Afridi's imprisonment Wednesday.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the committee's ranking Republican, called the sentence "shocking and outrageous" and urged Pakistan to pardon and release Afridi immediately.