Rabi' al-Thani 4, 1425/ May 25, 2004 #61
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ELECTION 2004:
THE
BUSH
SLIDE SEEMS TO HAVE BEGUN. Bush's approval ratings have dropped to 41%.
[CBS
May 24]
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A STUNNING QUESTION FOR DUMMIES
From Sis. Nadrat:
The
U.S.
claims that it does not know what was going on in the Abu Ghraib prison,
where 35,000 plus Iraqis have been "processed," yet the U.S. claims it knows
exactly how many
Iraqis
Saddam killed and in which graves they are buried!
The whole justification of the war is built on "Saddam's crimes"
[all without impartial inquiry], and yet the U.S. claims it did not know
what went on in a prison under its direct control!
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THOUGHTS OF THE Day:
1) PRESIDENT BUSH"S LATEST SPEECH: {May 24}
Is he totally out of touch with reality or is he being kept out of touch?
All this talk of the
"Iraqi people"
want this and the "Iraqi people" want that, and the
"Iraqi people"
are "our friends" etc! Who feeds
him this disinformation?
Dear Mr. President, the Iraqi people are FIGHTING YOU with everything they
have. Do your intelligence services work at all? At least watch American TV
if you don't have any access to reality.
2) IT's THE RESISTANCE, STUPID !
At Fallujah, the U.S. juggernaut was stopped and the American retreat began.
The resistance is the call of the mullah whom the U.S. despises, the call
of the
Qur'an
and the Sunnah, the call of those much abused MEDRESSAS. The dreams of
Sharon, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Krauthammer, Friedman, Judith Miller,
and the entire lineup of
Jews
trying to use American power to help
Israel
have been shattered by the humble fighters of
Jihad.
It's time to study strategy all over again, just as at one time the raids
of KHALID ibn al-WALID, r.a., forced the world powers to realize that they
could not win.
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Jamaat al-Muslimeen
News
[An Islamic movement which uses peaceful means to oppose oppression and war.]
1. Jamaat al-Muslimeen
North Carolina.
A documentary film "A STONE'S THROW AWAY: CHILDREN UNDER SIEGE"
was sponsored by the Islamic Center of the Triad & North Carolinians for
Truth and Justice in
Palestine.
This film is about three 13-year old boys from Dheisheh Refugee Camp on the
outskirts of Bethlehem. The camera follows the children as they struggle
under occupation providing intimate insight into their thoughts and lives,
raising questions about how children are influenced by the conditions in
which they live. The film won the Best Documentary Amanda Award in Norway
and the first prize at the Norwegian Short Film Festival.
The filmmaker, Line Halversen, is a Norwegian journalist who spent the last
two years living and working in Bethlehem along with her husband.
To show the film in your area, contact Badi Ali:
badi323@aol.com
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2. BOYCOTT BUSINESSES WHICH SUPPORT ISRAEL:
The latest distribution of Jamaat al-Muslimeen's Boycott Brochure was at
the Islamic Center in Augusta, Georgia on May 21. The brochure was given to
92 people.
The join this nationwide effort, contact Jamaat al-Muslimeen's Director of
Boycott at:
Pradia2@aol.com
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3. SUPPORT POLITICAL PRISONERS:
This is the best time to bring up the issue of Muslim political prisoners
in America, Br. Khalil Abdur Rahman reports from North Carolina.
SUPPORT
IMAM JAMIL al-AMIN.
Urge the authorities to restore his religious rights, his prayer facilities
with others, his beard.
Write to: Warden Hugh Smith, 2164 Hwy 147
Georgia State Prison, Reidsville, GA 39499-9701
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To help other political prisoners, contact:
Secretary General, Jamaat al-Muslimeen at:
pansygen@yahoo.com
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WAR NEWS:
IRAQ: MOQTADA al-SADR FIGHTS ON: US DESTROYS MOSQUE in KUFA, BOMBS NAJAF:
FALLUJAH Again
According to the INDEPENDENT of UK, U.S. tanks smashed through the gates of
a mosque complex in Kufa in an attempt to chase down Islamic fighters
organized by Moqtada al-Sadr. More than 20 Iraqis were killed in the attack.
[May 24]
Other reports indicate that U.S. forces bombed Najaf, the holiest city of
Shia Islam. Several people were killed.
The Independent also reported new fighting at Fallujah in which two U.S.
troops were killed and 4 injured.
KASHMIR:
NEW GOVERNMENT, OLD POLICIES
The change in the
Indian
government has not helped improve things in Kashmir. A new wave of Indian
army brutalities have resulted in the murder of 10 Kashmiris in separate
incidents. Also, the resistance has carried out a bomb attack resulting in
casualties.
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Most of the coverage of abuse at Abu Ghraib has focused on male detainees.
But what of the five women held in the jail, and the scores elsewhere in
Iraq? Luke Harding reports
The scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was first exposed not by a digital
photograph but by a letter. In December 2003, a woman prisoner inside
the jail west of Baghdad managed to smuggle out a note. Its contents were
so shocking that, at first, Amal Kadham Swadi and the other Iraqi women
lawyers who had been trying to gain access to the US jail found them hard
to believe. The note claimed that US guards had been raping women detainees,
who were, and are, in a small minority at Abu Ghraib. Several of the women
were now pregnant, it added. The women had been forced to strip naked in
front of men, it said. The note urged the Iraqi resistance to bomb the jail
to spare the women further shame. Late last year, Swadi, one of seven
female lawyers now representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to
piece together a picture of systemic abuse and torture perpetrated by US
guards against Iraqi women held in detention without charge. This was not
only true of Abu Ghraib, she discovered, but was, as she put it,
"happening all across Iraq". In November last year, Swadi visited a woman
detainee at a US military base at al-Kharkh, a former police compound in
Baghdad. "She was the only woman who would talk about her case. She was
crying.
She told us she had been raped," Swadi says.
"Several American soldiers had raped her.
She had tried to fight them off and they had hurt her arm. She showed us
the stitches. She told us, 'We have daughters and husbands. For God's sake
don't tell anyone about this.'"
Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the US military in January,
headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed that the letter
smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor" was entirely
and devastatingly accurate. While most of the focus since the scandal broke
three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their sexual
humiliation in front of US women soldiers, there is now incontrovertible
proof that women detainees - who form a small but unknown proportion of the
40,000 people in US custody since last year's invasion - have also been
abused. Nobody appears to know how many. But among the 1,800 digital
photographs taken by US guards inside Abu Ghraib there are, according to
Taguba's report, images of a US military policeman "having sex" with an
Iraqi woman.
Taguba discovered that guards have also videotaped and photographed naked
female detainees. The Bush administration has refused to release other
photographs of Iraqi women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts
(although it has shown them to Congress) - ostensibly to prevent attacks
on US soldiers in Iraq, but in reality, one suspects, to prevent further
domestic embarrassment. Earlier this month it emerged that an Iraqi woman
in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and
another coalition detention centre after being arrested last July. Labour MP
Ann Clwyd, who investigated the case and found it to be true, said,
"She was held for about six weeks without charge. During that time she was
insulted and told she was a donkey." In Iraq, the existence of photographs
of women detainees being abused has provoked revulsion and outrage, but
little surprise. Some of the women involved may since have disappeared,
according to human rights activists. Professor Huda Shaker al-Nuaimi, a
political scientist at Baghdad University who is researching the subject
for Amnesty International, says she thinks "Noor" is now dead.
"We believe she was raped and that she was pregnant by a US guard.
After her release from Abu Ghraib, I went to her house.
The neighbours said her family had moved away.
I believe she has been killed."
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2004-05-26 Wed 19:16ct