Bashar al-Assad attends Eid prayers in Damascus – video

Bashar al-Assad attends Eid prayers in Damascus – video

The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, makes his first public appearance in six weeks, attending Eid prayers at a Damascus mosque. Assad hasn’t been seen in public since a bombing in the Syrian capital last month that killed the defence minister and three other top security officials.

Egypt’s Mursi accused of stifling dissent in media crackdown

By Yasmine Saleh, Reuters, Fri, Aug 17

CAIRO (Reuters) – A media crackdown in the first month of Mohamed Mursi’s rule has raised fears Egypt’s Islamist president is moving to stifle criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood.

This week, formal accusations by state prosecutors were filed against two journalists, while an issue of the newspaper al-Dostour was confiscated by the state’s censorship unit – disappointing those who believed last year’s overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak would lead to greater media freedom.

Mursi, who resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood when he was elected in June, saying he wanted to represent all Egyptians, has also named Salah Abdel Maqsood, a former colleague from the Islamist group, as information minister.

“The Brotherhood’s recent actions against the media are harsh and unacceptable and tell us that we are going backwards and that things are managed the same way they were during Mubarak’s time,” rights activist Gamal Eid told Reuters.

The crackdown on media is also worrying the United States, which for years has secured the loyalty of one of the Arab world’s most influential states with substantial financial aid, now running at about $1.55 billion a year.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Thursday that Washington was “concerned by reports that the Egyptian government is moving to restrict media freedom and criticism in Egypt.”

The Brotherhood has repeatedly denied any intention to censor opinion, saying it wants only to stop media reports which might incite violence or unrest, or which personally insult the president.

“Those who filed the complaints against the journalists with the public prosecutor are not all from the Brotherhood. There were also ordinary people upset about the disgusting insults that some media have been publicizing,” Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan told Reuters.

One of the two charged journalists is Islam Afifi, the editor of the daily al-Dostour newspaper, whose August 11 issue was confiscated. Afifi was sent to a criminal court after the state’s public prosecutor charged him with insulting Mursi and inciting the overthrow of Egypt’s ruling system.

The other one is Tawfiq Okasha, owner and the main host of an Egyptian television channel called Al-Faraeen who was also sent to a criminal court on accusations of inciting people to kill Mursi and insulting him. The prosecutor ordered the channel be taken off air.

Al-Faraeen TV channel is privately owned by Okasha, a strong opponent of Mursi and Islamists. Okasha had previously said in one of his talkshows that Mursi and his group “deserve to get killed”.

A Brotherhood lawyer also filed a complaint on Wednesday with a state prosecutor, accusing three prominent editors of Egyptian dailies including Afifi of insulting Mursi.

“I accused them of insulting the president and spreading false information that could destroy the state and create panic among the people,” lawyer Ismail al-Washahy told Reuters. “Most of what they published had nothing to do with media but were pure insults with no proof,” he added.

CODE OF ETHICS

The issue of Dostour newspaper that was banned ran on its front page a long list of accusations against the Brotherhood. It said the group was leading Egypt to “its worst decades … filled with killing and bloodshed.”

Afifi accused the Brotherhood of trying to stifle dissent. “It is an orchestrated campaign against the media by the Muslim Brotherhood. They want to silence any opposition to their policies,” Al-Ahram online news website quoted him as saying.

An earlier issue of Dostour released on June 21, before the results of the presidential elections were announced, ran a front-page article accusing the Brotherhood of planning a “massacre in Egypt” if Mursi lost.

The newspaper was bought three years ago by the Wafd Liberal party, a party whose critics said allowed itself to be used as a “friendly opposition” under Mubarak while the Brotherhood was officially banned.

Many Egyptians were upset with the media after the revolution which toppled Mubarak, saying it had misunderstood the responsibility that comes with media freedom. Some said journalists had often crossed the line in making personal insults and accusations without proof.

However, many critics are asking for a mechanism to implement a code of ethics, rather than taking criminal action against journalists.

“There are certainly violations in the media, but there are also ways to punish journalists other than dragging them to courts or prisons,” rights activist Eid said.

Three Egyptian columnists including prominent novelist Youssef El-Qaeed said earlier this month their columns had been removed by a new committee of editors used to supervise state-run newspapers for including anti-Brotherhood opinions.

The editors were chosen by the upper house of parliament, which is dominated by the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.

Others left their columns empty in protest at the selection of the new editors.

“This white space… is in protest against the Muslim Brotherhood’s conquest over the newspapers and media outlets that belong to the Egyptian people,” columnist Gamal Fahmy wrote on the top of his empty column in al-Tahrir newspaper on August9.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; in Washington; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

Kidnapping, Spats on Docket of Syria Rebel Boss

Kidnapping, Spats on Docket of Syria Rebel Boss
By CHARLES LEVINSON, August 17, 2012, The Wall Street Journal

QOBTAN JEBEL, Syria—One morning this week, Sheik Tawfeeq Shehab Eddin replaced his AK-47 with a Bic pen and took up his post behind a metal desk.

Mr. Shehab Eddin is one of the four rural commanders of the Tawheed Division, an Islamist-dominated umbrella force that is leading Syrian rebels’ fight around the country’s largest city, Aleppo, against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Their division has driven pro-Assad forces from much of the Aleppan countryside and some of Aleppo. On Friday, division fighters fought regime tanks near the city’s airport.

The regime’s pullout from much of the countryside last month has left the Tawheed Division as the area’s army, government and police. That is why on Wednesday, Mr. Shehab Eddin and his aides spent some 14 hours hashing out questions about their next deployment to the front line in Aleppo, scrambling to defuse a flare-up with a neighboring Kurdish village and mediating petty disputes between villagers.

“We commanders have been forced to take on all the problems confronting our villages,” he said, adding that elected leaders should eventually take that over. “The role I am playing now is bigger than myself.”

Similar makeshift governments are springing up in villages across Aleppo province’s countryside, providing interim courts, keeping basic services running, managing finances and distributing aid shipments.

Many of the rebel courts have taken on an Islamic bent. Tawheed Division commanders forbid the torture of detainees. But that ban doesn’t include whipping the soles of detainees’ feet, Tawheed commander Abdel Aziz Salama told several people, including a Human Rights Watch team.

Another group of Tawheed fighters executed four members of an Aleppan family accused of funding and running a hated pro-Assad militia accused of keeping iron-fisted control over restive areas. The division’s field commander, Abdel Qader Saleh, told The Wall Street Journal that the four men were given a battlefield trial before they were killed.

Here in Qobtan Jebel, a pinprick village of century-old stone walled homes in the hills west of Aleppo, Mr. Shehab Eddin’s word is law, at least for now. Before the uprising, the self-taught sheik—also known by his nom du guerre, Abu Soleiman—preached covertly to a small following in an adjacent village about the Syrian regime’s ills.

The sheik’s morning began when two of his fighters brought in a young man they had stopped at a checkpoint with seven jerry cans of gasoline in his car. The commodity is in short supply. The fighters suspected the man might be a smuggler. A couple quick questions satisfied the sheik, who ordered him freed with his fuel.

The next visitor pleaded for the release of a detainee accused of working as a regime informant in the village. The sheik was unmoved. “We have two witnesses and evidence against him,” he said, drawing X’s, O’s and spiral doodles on a blank sheet of paper as he listened.

Next came a stringy youth who said he had just defected from the Syrian army. He was brusquely questioned by the sheik’s aide, Ali al-Haji, a 28-year-old former tank commander with a degree in Islamic law.

The fidgety defector, 20-year-old Ahmed al-Latouf, said he had served as an army mortar man. “There’s no mobiles phones, no television,” he said. “No one knows anything and they believe what their officers tell them—that we are fighting criminal gangs and terrorists.”

The sheik concurred. “We know our brothers in the army have been lied to and brainwashed,” he said, admitting the youth into the ranks of rebel fighters, who elsewhere could be seen doing calisthenics and training with rocket-propelled grenades.

A fighter rushed in. A resident of Qobtan Jebel, he said, had that morning kidnapped a resident of a nearby Kurdish village and was demanding ransom. In retaliation, the Kurds kidnapped four village men.

Kurdish villages dot the local countryside, and relations have cooled since Syria’s civil war took a sectarian turn. With police gone, crime is a growing concern. Rebel commanders say a flare-up now in Kurd relations would play into regime hands. “We’ll call the Kurdish leaders, set up a meeting and solve the problem,” said Mr. Haji.

Next in line was a man from Aleppo who had raised funds for Mr. Shehab Eddin’s brigade, which fought in Aleppo’s Salaheddin neighborhood for 14 days but withdrew last week after supplies wore thin. The fundraiser demanded an explanation for the withdrawal. “We couldn’t stand it anymore. We weren’t getting enough help,” the aide, Mr. Haji, explained, eager not to alienate a supporter.

A group of villagers stormed in waving handguns and assault rifles. A fighter had commandeered their car to ferry supplies to the front, but sold it instead. They vowed revenge.

“Don’t do a thing until I have a chance to look into this,” Mr. Haji said. “Are you really going to kill someone over a car?”

“We spend a lot of time dealing with petty issues while fighting a war at the same time,” Mr. Haji said after they left. “But if you don’t listen to everyone, we’ll lose the people and then the revolution.”

As the sun set, Mr. Haji retired to his commander’s walled residence where he lives with his three wives and 15 children. They broke the Ramadan fast, silently using flatbread to scoop lentil soup, hummus and tuna fish out of metal bowls.

“We’ll set an ambush for the guy who kidnapped the Kurd, and we’ll turn him over to the Kurds, in exchange for our men back,” he said, reclining on a pillow on the cement floor, scrubbing his teeth with a twig. He dispatched a patrol to find the suspected kidnapper. “The regime wants us to fight among ourselves. We can’t allow this to happen,” he said.

A village elder with a long graying beard and a handgun strapped to his side dropped by to pay his respects. He said he was arrested in 1977 as part of the regime’s crackdown on suspected Muslim Brothers and served 15 years in prison. In Aleppo’s countryside, the rebellion is fueled by memories of that crackdown. Men every village, it seems, can recite the names of men who were killed, or disappeared into regime prisons or were forced into exile during that crackdown.

Before midnight, a messenger arrived to say the kidnapped Kurd had been released. The captor—who said he was on orders from a different rebel leader—panicked when he realized he was being hunted down by both Kurdish and rebel militias. Mr. Haji characterized the other rebel commander as a rogue—”a criminal with a gang posing as a brigade in the name of the Free Army,” he said with a sigh.

“We have enough problems,” the sheik told the messenger. “We don’t need problems with the Kurds. This is not in our interests. This is something that can never happen again.”

Iran Accuses Arab Royalty of Hypocrisy over Syria

Iran Accuses Arab Royalty of Hypocrisy over Syria

August 16, 2012, The Hindu

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rapped the Gulf Arab monarchies for seeking reforms in Syria without applying the same standards of openness for themselves.

Iran’s Press TV quoted Mr. Ahmadinejad as saying in Makkah on the sidelines of a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) that he “was surprised in this summit [to see] that the kings of some countries were speaking against Syria while the majority of their own people do not want them [to rule].”

The Iranian President made the comment on Wednesday during a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul. Rejecting double standards, Mr. Ahmadinejad said that he was “of course waiting to see when these reforms will reach the other countries in the region”.

During the conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad warned fellow Muslim countries in the 57-nation OIC not to fall in the trap that had been laid out for them by the region’s “enemies”.

“Today, all of us have entered into a plan without realising it; a plan that has been devised by the enemy. We are showing hostility toward each other without any clear reason and perhaps based on false information and under various personal, ethnic, historical, and even religious pretexts.”

He added that “media warfare has reached its climax” with the aim of sowing divisions among the countries of the region.

RADICAL COURSE

Mr. Ahmadinejad warned that without a self-conscious and radical course correction, the domination of Israel and its allies would swamp the entire region.

The Iranian side also slammed the summit’s decision to suspend Syria from the OIC. “Before making any decisions, Syria should have been invited to the summit to discuss and defend its position,” observed Ali Akbar Salehi, Iranian Foreign Minister.

How a freedom-fighting pharmacist showed me the complex truth about Syria’s sectarian conflict

How a freedom-fighting pharmacist showed me the complex truth about Syria’s sectarian conflict

Luke Harding, The Guardian, Mon 13 Aug 2012
The grinding 17-month war is being fought by many different factions, but the battle lines are not as clear as many think
It was 5am, and Mohamad Baree was hiding with his fighters behind a large rock. Some 300 metres away, a column of Syrian army tanks was advancing towards Aleppo through the countryside. The group of rebels were waiting for it. Baree watched. He then set off a powerful roadside bomb. It blew two of the tanks up. The others staged a panicky retreat to their base in the northern city of Idlib.
“From a military point of view the operation was successful,” Baree tells me a week later, as we bump along in the back of his unit’s battle-scarred minivan. Baree, 27, is dressed in khaki fatigues. He carries a Kalashnikov and a pistol. Despite his appearance, he explains that he is actually a pharmacist who has spent seven years living in Odessa; his brother, another fighter in Syria’s revolution, a lawyer.
Syria’s grinding 17-month war has typically been portrayed as a sectarian conflict. In this version, Bashar al-Assad’s embattled Shia Alawite sect – about 10% of the population – is pitted against the country’s Sunni majority. To an extent, this is true. But the reality is more complex. Some of Baree’s co-fighters are members of what could loosely be called the rustic poor – carpenters, decorators, farmers. Others are educated. Baree says that a professor of chemistry has been giving the rebels tips on bomb-making, helping their military effectiveness. There are army defectors, medics, video activists, even information officers.
The sectarian faultlines are blurred as well. Baree acknowledges that his own group of around 150 rebels, from the village of Korkanaya, near Idlib, is predominantly Sunni. But he says many of his friends are Alawite. “We talk over the internet. They don’t like what Bashar is doing either,” he says. Baree says he has broken off with one childhood friend, a Sunni and a local teacher; the teacher had implacably supported the regime ever since Syria’s uprising began in spring 2011.
The situation in Aleppo, Syria’s largest metropolis, engulfed by fighting since July, meanwhile, is also many-layered. Aleppo is one of the most ancient cities on the planet, home to various Christian denominations, historically a large Jewish population, now all fled, as well as wealthy Sunni traders, many favourably disposed to the regime.
In the mountains just outside Aleppo you find the ghostly ruins of Byzantine churches. There are poor Kurdish hamlets. I find the frontline town of Anadan semi-wrecked and abandoned.
One Aleppo resident I speak to, an engineer living in a regime-controlled district, says he supports the revolution. But he admits many of his neighbours don’t. “If I were to generalise I would say the middle class and upper class don’t want the rebels. They want everything to be how it was,” he says. Many poorer Aleppines had welcomed the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA); others viewed it as a bunch of dangerous extremists; almost all were terrified of what the fighting would bring.
According to Baree, Syria’s revolution has little to do with external forces, or Islamist radicalism. It is, he tells me, the product of Syria’s own domestic dynamic and a logical reaction to the brutal behaviour of Assad. Assad had responded to the Arab spring and demands for political reform by arresting, torturing, and shelling his opponents, thus turning a few isolated demonstrations into a mass armed insurrection. “We tried to persuade him through peaceful means. But this didn’t work. So we took up weapons,” Baree says. Some guns from outside were arriving in Syria. But none have reached his unit, he adds.
Our conversation takes place as we drive through Syria’s FSA-controlled north, a rustic mini-empire of villages, silver olive groves and boys herding sheep. Even here, the regime is never that far away. At one point we pass within a kilometre of a government checkpoint – a yellow water tower near the Bab el Hawa border with Turkey. Our driver Mohammad puts his foot down and races through an exposed patch of farmland. “He nearly crashed and killed us yesterday,” Baree says of Mohammad, one of many Sunni defectors from the Syrian army.
Just over the border, I meet Thaer Abboud, an opposition activist who fled to Turkey from Syria last year. Abboud is an Alawite from the Mediterranean coastal town of Latakia. Some observers have suggested that Latakia and its surrounding mountain villages could form an Alawite heartland, with the regime and army retreating from Damascus and setting up their own an impregnable mini-state there. Abboud, however, says that far from being a loyalist Alawite fiefdom Latakia is split. Some 50% of the town oppose Assad, including some Alawis, a number of whom have been persecuted: “It isn’t a matter of Alawis versus Sunnis. It’s a political thing. In Syria we don’t have separate communities. There are marriages, relationships between Sunnis and Alawis. We’ve lived together for 1,000 years. We’re not dependent on religion.”
Abboud agrees that Assad has played the sectarian card, telling Syria’s Alawites that without him they were finished, and evoking historical memories of Alawite oppression by both the Ottomans and the French. “Assad’s message is: ‘If the regime stays you live. If we go you will be killed.'” In reality, Abboud tells me, all parts of Syria have been ground down, by the regime’s callousness and feudal arrogance.
Three years ago the government even forbade locals in Latakia to swim in the sea. “People can’t take it any more. Everyone was just waiting for a spark,” he says.
And what of the attack on the tank column? It may have been a military success, but it had tragic consequences. One of the tank drivers who survived the ambush fired a shell into a residential building. It hit a fifth-storey flat on Idlib’s 30th street. Five members of a family were sleeping there. All were killed, the latest victims in Syria’s unrelenting war.

Qatar’s Emir leaves $2 billion ‘deposit’ to Egypt after meeting President Morsi

Qatar’s Emir leaves $2 billion ‘deposit’ to Egypt after meeting President Morsi

Qatar’s crown prince Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani arrives to Egypt to meet with President Mohamed Morsi to discuss relations between the two countries, promises more Gulf money

Ahram Online, MENA, Saturday 11 Aug 2012

The Qatari Emir met with President Mohamed Morsi on Saturday. According to presidential spokesperson Yasser Ali Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani has come to discuss enhancing co-operation between the two countries.

Following the meeting, the Emir deposited $2 billion in Egypt’s Central Bank.

According to the data issued by the Central Bank of Egypt in July 2012, Qatari investments in Egypt climbed 74 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

Following the January 25 revolution and the rise of Islamists to positions of power, questions were raised by anti-Brotherhood forces regarding the nature of the relationship between Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. Some critics claim that the group received funds from the Gulf state during the presidential race. Morsi was the Brothehood’s candidate, after its first choice Khairat El-Shater was unable to run.

Moreover, other rumours circulated claiming the Brotherhood is planning to rent the Suez Canal to Qatar for ninety-nine years thus undermining Egypt’s sovereignty.

The Brotherhood leadership vehemently denied these accusations.

Meanwhile, the president is scheduled to meet with head of the Suez Canal Authority General Ahmed Fadel on Saturday as well.

Yasser Ali dismissed speculation that the president’s meetings with the Emir and General Fadel are connected, describing the rumours of selling the Canal as “absurd and illogical.”

“Those who come up with such claims are ignorant of national issues,” Ali added.

Covering Muslim women: The Olympics and beyond

 By Eva Sajoo, Special to The Vancouver Sun August 10, 2012

VANCOUVER — On Aug. 4, Wojdan Shaherkani became the first Saudi woman to compete in the Olympics. While her judo match lasted a mere 82 seconds, her appearance in the Games has been hailed as a triumph for Muslim women. In part this is because she was granted permission to compete in a headscarf, despite earlier concerns that the drape around her head and neck would pose a safety risk in the ring.

The significance of Ms. Shakerkani’s performance seems limited because Saudi authorities, (along with Qatar and Brunei) only entered female athletes after intense pressure from the International Olympic Committee. It does not change much in the ultra-misogynist Kingdom of the al-Sauds, where women are not even permitted to drive, let alone to engage in sports or physical training at school. These supposedly religious restrictions are actually quite recent— despite the attempt to justify them as Islamic requirements.

Whatever Shaherkani’s appearance may mean for Saudi women, it certainly does not represent progress for Muslim women. The massive coverage of her story ignores the fact that Muslim women have been competing in the Olympic Games (far more successfully that their Saudi sisters) for decades.

Take Nawal El Moutawakel, the Moroccan hurdler who won the 400-metre race in the 1984 Summer Olympics. Her success broke down stereotypes in her country — and earned her royal commendation, including a royal decree that girls born on the day of her victory should be named after her. She has since organized successful local racing events for Moroccan women, and is currently a member of the International Olympic Committee.

Soraya Haddad, an Algerian judoka known as “The Iron Lady of El Kseur” won a bronze medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This year Iraqi sprinter Dana Abdul Razzaq competed in the Games, and was her country’s flag bearer in the opening ceremony.

There are many other Muslim athletes in London this year, including Egyptian weightlifter Nahla Ramadan Mohammed and Turkey’s female volleyball team, collectively known as the “Sultanas of the Net.”

These women don’t make headlines for their religion. Is it because they don’t feel the need to wear headscarves? Or the fact that their countries have not discouraged their participation? The truth is that Wojdan Shaherkani fits much better into the western stereotype of Muslim women: uncompetitive hijabis labouring under patriarchal oppression. North African sprinters who take gold and not scarves don’t get reported as “Muslim.”

Saudi Arabia has been working hard to export its peculiarly backward attitude toward women as the authentic version of Islam for Muslims everywhere. It has had considerable success on this score, considering how widely the Saudi headscarf has been adopted as “authentically” Muslim. Ironically, when western media represent Shaherkani as an example of progress for Muslim women, we inadvertently reinforce the notion that the Saudi version is “real Islam.” How do we know if a woman is Muslim? She wears a headscarf.

The fact that Olympic regulations have been changed to allow women to cover their heads for religious reasons is a step forward. It removes additional barriers for heroic women like Tahmina Kohistani from Afghanistan, who had to overcome extraordinary hurdles in her war-torn and very conservative country just to be able to compete. For her, wearing a headscarf is necessary to avoid severe repercussions at home. Her performance nevertheless presents Afghans with a bold vision of what women can do.

For Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, having women compete in the Olympics is a major change. However, it is worth remembering that participation in sport, like politics and business, is not new for Muslim women. They were active even on the battlefields of the Arabian peninsula centuries ago. In our own time, women drove freely in the streets of Saudi Arabia. Patriarchal forces, like the Saudi authorities, have attempted to wipe out this history. Only such amnesia could make their assertion that female oppression is required by Islam seem credible.

Media coverage that buys this story only reinforces the claim that women who do not cover are somehow less Muslim. This only slows down the progress made by women in conservative societies against barriers that have everything to do with patriarchy and nothing to do with faith.

 

Eva Sajoo is a research associate with the Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures at Simon Fraser University.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/2012-summer-games/Covering+Muslim+women+Olympics+beyond/7072809/story.html#ixzz23TGIvUuf

Female Syrian hurdler disqualified for doping

Female Syrian hurdler disqualified for doping

USA Today, 8/10/12

LONDON (AP) – A female hurdler from Syria was kicked out of the London Olympics on Saturday after failing a drug test.

The IOC said that 400-meter hurdler Ghfran Almouhamad tested positive for the banned stimulant methylhexaneamine Aug. 3. Her backup “B” sample confirmed the positive finding.

The 23-year-old athlete finished eighth and last in her first-round heat Aug. 5.

The IOC said Almouhamad had been disqualified and stripped of her Olympic accreditation.

The IOC sent her case to the IAAF to officially change the results and consider any further action against the athlete.

Almouhamad was one of 10 Syrian athletes, six men and four women, registered to compete in seven different sports in London. The Syrians came to the Olympics despite the escalating violence in their homeland.

Protests against President Bashar Assad’s regime began in March 2011 and became a civil war activists say has killed at least 20,000 people.

The head of the Syrian Olympic Committee, Gen. Mowaffak Joumaa, was denied a visa to come to London by British authorities.

Almouhamad’s is the seventh positive case reported by the IOC since the Olympic body started its games testing program July 16. She is the second athlete who competed in London to be sanctioned for doping. The others were caught before competing.

American judo fighter Nick Delpopolo was expelled after testing positive during for marijuana, which he said he unintentionally consumed in something he ate.

Gymnast Luiza Galiulina of Uzbekistan and weightlifter Hysen Pulaku of Albania were expelled for failing pre-Games tests. Galiulina tested positive for the diuretic furosemide, while Pulaku was caught for using the steroid stanozolol.

Russian track cyclist Victoria Baranova was disqualified after testing positive for testosterone July 24 in Belarus, and Colombian 400-meter runner Diego Palomeque was suspended for a testosterone positive July 26 in London.

Italian race walker Alex Schwazer was formally disqualified by the IOC after the Italian Olympic Committee removed him from the team for a positive EPO test in Italy before the games.

 

Ex Brotherhood Official Showcases Islamist Doublespeak

Ex Brotherhood Official Showcases Islamist Doublespeak

IPT News
August 10, 2012

It “is no difficult task for Allah” to bring America to its knees, a prominent former Muslim Brotherhood official said at a recent discussion in Egypt.

American leaders are “all criminals” plotting to stifle Arab revolutions and defend “that criminal and plundering state of Israel,” Kemal Helbawy, the Brotherhood’s former spokesman in the United Kingdom, said in a video dated July 26 and posted this week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“If we use all the capabilities at our disposal properly, America will be brought to its knees and will be defeated like the Soviets in Afghanistan,” he said. “This is no difficult task for Allah.”

The remarks came during a sit-in outside the American embassy in Cairo.

Behind him is a poster of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik considered the inspiration behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who is serving a life sentence in the United States for a subsequent plot to bomb New York tunnels and landmarks. New Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has promised to seek Abdel Rahman’s release when he meets U.S. officials.

Helbawy left the Brotherhood last spring, blasting the group for trying to monopolize power in Egypt after a peaceful revolution ousted former President Hosni Mubarak. But Helbawy remains a staunch Islamist and, despite a long record of violent rhetoric, is welcomed among American Islamists and academic groups.

He hailed Osama bin Laden as “a great mujahid” last year just after the American raid in Pakistan killed the al-Qaida leader. He prayed that bin Laden “join the prophets, the martyrs, and the good people” and questioned whether America’s proof al-Qaida was behind the 9/11 attacks “was a trick and a bait … All evidences and indications refer that the Americans are the ones who planned this matter, not the Afghans who have weak resources.”

The London-based Quilliam Foundation, which works to counter jihadist influence,called this “the latest example of senior Muslim Brotherhood members giving different messages to different audiences. When speaking to mainstream audiences Helbawy presents himself as a moderate reformer; when speaking to Islamists he praises Osama bin Laden. This doublespeak undermines trust between Muslims and non-Muslims and hinders genuine efforts to tackle extremism and terrorism.”

Quilliam warned western governments to treat the Brotherhood “with the greatest suspicion,” adding that there are moderates in the group, but “anyone who thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole has ‘reformed’ is clearly deluded.”

Helbawy demonstrated that doublespeak two years earlier, during the 10th annual conference of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy. The event attracted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat and first Muslim elected to Congress.

He was on a panel on “Improving Relations between the U.S. and the Muslim World.” In his abstract for the conference, Helbawy waxed fondly about the benefits of democracy and life in the West. As a Muslim, he said he he “deeply appreciate[s] most of the values and blessings of the democratic society and wish that Muslim countries were more like the UK or Europe in this respect.”

“God created us into different nations, tribes, people, ethnic groups and races to know each other,” he wrote, “so as a Muslim I am fulfilling one of the many aims and objectives of my existence when I meet and know and work with other people to improve community relations. More broadly, living in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society enables us to appreciate our differences and overcome obstacles towards greater understanding.”

That lovely, humanistic embrace was absent in Helbawy’s 1992 speech in Oklahoma City before the Islamic Association for Palestine – a Hamas propaganda wing – and the Muslim Arab Youth Association:

Do not take Jews and Christians as allies. For they are allies to each other. Oh Brothers, the Palestinian cause is not of conflict of borders and land only. It is not even a conflict of human ideology and not over peace. Rather, it is an absolute clash of civilizations, between truth and falsehood. Between two conducts – one satanic, headed by Jews and their co-conspirators – and the other is religious, carried by Hamas, and the Islamic movement in particular, and the Islamic people in general who are behind it.

Lastly I am going to say something about Imam Hassan al-Banna, may he rest in peace, who had been trying to establish 70,000 fighters, and he started with the first battalion with 10,000 fighters, and today the Palestinians became strong fighting battalions. Let us stand and support this great nation and the future is for Islam. And I ask God’s forgiveness for you and for me and the Muslims. We ask God to give victory to our brothers and we ask God to release the leader of the Intifada, [Hamas founder] Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, praise be upon him.

Statements like that may have prompted government officials to prohibit Helbawy from coming into the United States in 2006 for a New York University conference. It’s not clear why the Obama administration saw fit to reverse that course, or why Secretary Clinton would agree to appear at a conference with someone espousing such hostility toward Jews and Christians and outward support for terrorist groups like Hamas.

In addition, Helbawy frequently appears on Iran’s official FARS News Agency, a rarity for someone from the Sunni Brotherhood movement. In 2010, he was interviewed on Iran’s English-language television outlet, Press TV, along with Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper about “Islamophobia” in America. CAIR officials routinely appear on the Iranian media outlet.

Fear of Islam “has the highest level in America unfortunately,” Helbawy said. “This implied democratic superpower in the world.”

Hooper didn’t challenge the statement, and blamed the Tea Party movement, saying it “unfortunately has given bigots a voice.”

The discussion was prompted by a Florida pastor’s threat to burn the Quran. Helbawy hinted darkly at widespread violence.

“You’re seeing the demonization of the faith itself. If you demonize the faith of Islam and you have millions of American Muslims, what is going to be done with those people? There are logical conclusions to ideologies. If you say Islam is intrinsically evil and Muslims are intrinsically evil, you must have a policy that flows from that very dangerous thing.”

It’s an odd concern from someone who envisioned “America will be brought to its knees” because it continues to incarcerate a convicted terrorist and who praised Osama bin Laden as “a great mujahid.” The Quilliam Foundation called on British Muslims to distance themselves from Helbawy’s radicalism last year.

It’s time American Muslims, along with government and academic officials, did too.

Anti-Islamist activists call for action against Morsy

Anti-Islamist activists call for action against Morsy

Egypt Independent, 1/8/12

Anti-Islamist activists distributed statements Tuesday advocating a second revolution on 24 August against the Muslim Brotherhood and calling for the downfall of President Mohamed Morsy and the Freedom and Justice Party.

The statements, distributed next to Fateh mosque in downtown Ramses Square, coincided with messages circulating on Facebook for the so-called “Second Revolution Movement.”

The movement claimed in a statement that the armed forces supported the people’s demands, but then Islamist groups took over the revolution and made the real revolutionaries step aside. It also accused Islamists of manipulating unrest for their own gains.

Morsy won office through a fraudulent election, the statement alleged, and his decisions as president have conformed to Brotherhood interests, while neglecting social and labor issues.

Ayman Yaqoub, the movement coordinator, said the group is made up of revolutionaries from Tahrir Square who joined the 2011 uprising with specific goals that they are still waiting to see realized.

They claim Morsy has achieved nothing during his short time in office and that the Brotherhood is destroying Egypt.

Pro-military activists have also joined calls for the 24 August demonstration against what they describe as Islamist domination over the state.

Eissa Sadoud, the secretary general and spokesperson of The Egyptian Front for the Defense of the Armed Forces, said his group would coordinate with former lawmakers Mohamed Abou Hamed and Mostafa Bakry as well as supporters of former presidential candidate and once-Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, two pro-Mubarak groups and anti-Islamist political forces.