Israel OKs WB Houses

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RAMALLAH, West Bank: Israel formally approved Monday the construction of 455 new housing units in West Bank settlements.

The Gush Etzion settlement of Har Gilo, which is just north of the West Bank city of Bethlehem, will receive a major boost to its population with 149 units. Ma’aleh Adumim, to the east of Jerusalem, will have 89 new units. The ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modi’in Illit, to the west of Ramallah, will see an additional 84 units; the Agan Ha’ayalot neighborhood of Givat Ze’ev, north of Jerusalem, 76 units; and the small settlement of Kedar, near Ma’aleh Adumim, 25 units. Defense Minister Ehud Barak also approved 20 units in Maskiot in the Jordan Valley and 12 additional units in the Gush Etzion settlement of Alon Shvut.

A sports park will be constructed in the settlement of Ariel and the plan for a new school in Har Adar is in the works, a Defense Ministry statement said.

Currently, 2,500 apartments are under construction in the settlements — most of them in Modi’in Illit, Betar Illit, Ma’aleh Adumim and Givat Ze’ev.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel’s decision further undermined any belief that it was a credible partner for peace. “Rather than unite behind the current drive for peace, and find their way back to the negotiating table, Israel has decided to stay the course in its determination to frustrate US and international efforts to restart peace negotiations,” Erekat said.

The move deepened an already unprecedented rift with the United States over settlement expansion. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, trying to placate the Americans, has said the newly approved homes are a prelude to a freeze, but that has been a tough sell internationally because Israel plans to complete the 2,500 homes already under construction.

Many occupiers living in enclaves nearest to the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have cited cheaper housing costs as a motive. Others see themselves as pioneers exercising their right to lands they call Judea and Samaria.

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US Troops Raid Afghan Hospital

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KABUL: A Swedish charity accused American troops Monday of storming through a hospital in central Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants. The US military said it was investigating.

The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan said the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division forced its way into the charity’s hospital without permission to look for insurgents in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul.

“This is a clear violation of internationally recognized rules and principles,” said Anders Fange, the charity’s country director. He said it also went against an agreement between NATO forces and charities working in the area.

The US troops came to the hospital looking for Taleban insurgents late at night last Wednesday. Fange said they kicked in doors, tied up four hospital guards and two people visiting hospitalized relatives, and forced patients out of beds during their search.

They also barged into women’s wards, he said, adding that strangers entering rooms where women are in beds is a serious insult to the local Pashtun culture and word of it could turn the community against international troops.

When they left two hours later, the soldiers ordered hospital staff to inform coalition forces if any wounded insurgents were admitted, and the military would decide if they could be treated, he said.

The staff refused. Fange said informing on patients would put the staff at risk and make the hospital a target and he demanded guarantees the military would not enter hospitals without permission in future.

“If the international military forces are not respecting the sanctity of health facilities, then there is no reason for the Taleban to do it either,” he said. “Then these clinics and hospitals would become military targets.”

US military spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker confirmed that the hospital was searched last week but had no other details. She said the military was looking into the incident.

“We are investigating and we take allegations like this seriously,” she said. “Complaints like this are rare.

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UK Mosque Protest Stirs Violence Fears

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CAIRO — Right-wing demonstrators plan to protest outside one of London’s largest mosques on the anniversary of September 11, is stirring fears of anti-Muslim violence and prompting condemnation as a racist, hate monger act against Britain’s Muslim community. “These self-confessed hooligans will attack people, I’m absolutely convinced about that,” Weyman Bet, joint national secretary of the Unite Against Fascism movement, told The Times on Tuesday, September 8.

Members of the Anti-Islam group English Defense League (EDL) are planning a rally that will descend on the site of the new Harrow Central Mosque in London on Friday, the anniversary of September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

The EDL, which clashed with the police and Muslim groups in Birmingham on Saturday during another anti-Islam protest leading to 35 arrests, has advertised the event on its website.

Muslims voiced fears that the protest would turn violent as the case in Birmingham, especially if the bigger numbers expected this time harassed the faithful.

Extra security had been hired and worshippers had been urged to ignore provocation.

“We would request that the local authority and the police try to put a stop to it,” Haroon Sheikh, chairman of Harrow Central Mosque, said.

“We would have 200 to 300 people coming here for prayers on a Friday. Emotions will be high if it's provoked, but we will have the police and we will have stewards here.”

Bet, of Unite Against Fascism, agrees that the right-wingers will aim at provocation.

“They know exactly what people will do, and they want a picture of people charging out of a mosque.”

The EDL is affiliated to Casuals United, former football hooligans who want to “fight Jihadists in the community”.

The protest is being organized by a third right-wing group calling itself Stop Islamification of Europe, which claims that “Islamophobia is the height of commonsense”.

Islamophobia

Protesters claim that they are targeting the under construction Harrow mosque, set to be one of the capital's largest when it opens next year, to stress a point. “Our issue is with the mosque,” Tommy Robinson, an EDL organizer, said.

“It is near enough the size of Wembley. Five floors. That’s not good for community cohesion.”

But non-Muslim politicians and right activists slammed the rightists’ claims as hate-mongering.

"The mosque has been in Harrow for 35 years so it is part of the fabric of Harrow,” David Ashton, leader of Harrow Council, said.

“We are puzzled why protesters are singling out Harrow Central Mosque as something new and threatening.”

Ashton added it was a “great shame” that fascists and hate mongers felt they had to import their “extreme views” into their region.

"Harrow does not tolerate extreme views either from those who seek to misuse Islam in the name of a violent agenda or political hardliners who try and create divisions among people from different backgrounds."

UAF are mulling a "solidarity vigil" to "defend the mosque from racists and fascists".

“Islamophobia - bigotry against Muslims - is as unacceptable as any other form of racism,” the group said in a statement on its website. "Its aim is to divide us by making scapegoats of one community.

"Today they threaten the mosque, tomorrow it could be a synagogue, temple or church.

"Today they threaten Muslims, tomorrow it could be Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, blacks, gays, travelers or Eastern Europeans.”

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UK Muslims Welcome Terror Plot Verdicts

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LONDON — Prominent British Muslims welcomed on Tuesday, September 08, the conviction of three Muslim men for plotting a terror attack, but warned that government anti-terror powers should not paint all Muslims with the broad terrorism brush. "It's a good day for counter-terrorism, it's a good day... for the police and the military,” Hanif Qadir of the Active Change Foundation (ACF), told Reuters.

A London court convicted on Monday three British Muslims for plotting to blow up planes flying from London to America with home-made liquid bombs.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, were found guilty of planning to kill thousands of passengers by detonating bombs disguised as soft drinks on board seven planes while in the air.

Are Violence and Extremism Islamic Phenomena? Four other men were found not guilty of involvement in the suicide bomb plot. British Muslim leaders hailed the verdicts of the landmark trial, which prompted the current restrictions on liquids in 2006, as fair.

The convictions showed that the UK "rule of law works," said Inayat Bunglawala of the umbrella group the Muslim Council of Britain.

He also added that British Muslims were as horrified and appalled by the trial as ordinary Britons, “perhaps more so because it reflects unfairly on themselves and their faith."

Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation youth organization, also welcomed the verdicts.

"There are people within our community who try to use our faith to make political points and to use violence and that's against our faith and it's against our community and we've got to come together to defeat it."

Britain is home to a sizable Muslim minority of 2.4 million.

Concerns

British Muslims, however, warned that the trail should not mask the flaws that afflict the government anti-terror policies. Qadir, whose charity organization works to tackle Muslims' recruitment into extremism, warned that would be a "conspiracy theory" over the convictions among some young Muslims.

"Locally I know the concerns and the language that the young people are going to be speaking.”

Bunglawala explained that Muslims’ mistrust in the government is the reason behind conspiracy theories.

Measures resorted to by the government in recent years - such as control orders monitoring uncharged terrorism suspects – have left Muslims feeling persecuted, he noted.

"We should not be taking people's liberty away if the evidence is not there to justify it."

British Muslims have been in the eye of the storm since the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, enduring a growing Islamophobic climate.

They have repeatedly complained of maltreatment by police for no apparent reason other than being Muslim.

A Financial Times opinion poll showed that Britain is the most suspicious nation about Muslims.

Bunglawala stressed that officials need to be careful not to use the broad terrorism brush in indiscriminately painting the entire Muslim community.

"We need to ensure that whatever the outcome of these trials, people do not associate ordinary Muslims with the actions of what is clearly a very tiny minority out there.”

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UK Racists Brutalize Muslim Grandfather

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CAIRO — A gang of young racists brutally beat a Muslim elder almost to death in front of his granddaughter while returning from the mosque, triggering swift condemnation and calls for calm among the Muslim community.

"It was an attack on a defenseless man outside a church of God with his young granddaughter," Arfan Haque, the victim’s son told the Wandsworth Guardian on Monday, September 7.

“The point is the mindless violence,” he added speaking from near his dad's hospital bed.

Ekram Haque, 67, was waiting for a lift outside a mosque along with his granddaughter Miriam, 3, in Tooting suburb in the London Borough of Wandsworth when a group of some 20 teenagers ambushed him.

The gang ran up behind the former care worker and clubbed him around the head. He was battered to the ground in front of his granddaughter.

The attack happened a week ago in a London suburb, but the details were only revealed Monday after police said the old man is on life support after suffering serious head injuries.

"He is close to death," one police source said.

Doctors told the family Haque has no chance of survival.

Friends, who went to hospital last night to pay their last respects, described Haque as a very religious "gentle giant" who had been involved with his community for 25 years.

“My father loved living in Britain,” said his grieving son.

“He considered himself a Londoner.

“He was a kind, loving person, who always went out of his way to support anyone who needed support.”

Appalling

Police said they were treating the attack as racially motivated.

“I find it quite distressing how children can inflict terrible injuries on a man like that, especially with a three-and-a-half-year-old, who was with her grandfather, watching on,” said a police source.

Police linked Haque’s incident to two other attacks in the same area in which elderly Muslims were also assaulted.

“We are treating these attacks as racially aggravated.”

Tooting MP Sadiq Khan, who visited Haque in hospital, criticized the vicious assault.

"I am appalled and angry at the savagery of their actions and the mayhem they have caused," said Khan, a Muslim.

“Nothing can ever justify these sort of actions but if you look at the age of the victims it beggars belief that anyone could attack innocent older members of our community," he added.

"It could well have been any of our parents or grandparents being viciously attacked.”

Khan warned that such attacks create an atmosphere of fear and hatred.

“The devastating impact this group has had on the Haque family and local community is immeasurable."

Arfan, Haque’s son, urged all fellow Muslims to show maximum restraint.

"I want everyone to respect their religion,” he stressed.

“The Qur'an doesn’t condone revenge attacks."

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Indonesia Plans Tougher Anti-Terror Laws

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JAKARTA — Indonesia is proposing tougher anti-terror laws that would allow the detention of terror suspects without charges for up two years, amid warnings from terror experts of a potential backfire. "It is an extraordinary crime, it needs extraordinary measures," anti-terror chief Ansyaad Mbai told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, September 8.

The Security Ministry has asked lawmakers for sweeping amendments to the current anti-terror law, enacted after the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

The proposal would allow the detention of anyone believed to be involved in terrorism for 30 days, up from a current seven, without declaring him/her a suspect.

It would also enable the detention of a suspect for up to two years before appearing in court, up from 120 days in the current law. Preachers inciting or glorifying terror would be prosecuted under the new amendments, even if they were not involved in any terror act.

The anti-terror chief argues that this would bring Indonesia into line with many Western nations that have tough anti-terror laws.

"Why are all countries practicing very tough laws while our laws are very soft?"

The capital Jakarta was rocked on July 17 by suicide bombings targeting its luxury Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels.

The blasts, which killed seven people and injured 50 others, marked the end of a four-year hiatus in such attacks in the world's most populous Muslim country.

Around 85 percent of Indonesian’s 220-million population follow Islam.

Backfire

Rights groups warn that the plans are tougher than those enacted during the repressive days of former dictator Suharto. "When Indonesia had anti-subversive laws in the New Order era, the detention period was only 100 days," notes National Commission on Human Rights head Ifdhal Kasim.

"This is two years."

He insists that the proposed amendments are very harsh and violate human rights laws.

"We're worried that over two years, detainees can be tortured, they won't be able to communicate with their families," he said.

"This clearly isn't in line with the rule of law and human rights. This proposal is over the top."

Some terror experts fear a more draconian anti-terror law could radicalize more people and drive extremists underground.

"By creating a larger group of sympathizers you could be creating larger pools from which to draw radicals and creating larger pools in which radicals could hide," contends Jim Della Giacoma, International Crisis Group (ICG) Southeast Asia director.

"These are very hardworks to crack. They are very small in some ways, they all went to school together and all know each other."

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