New Trend Magazine (www.newtrendmag.org)

[Biggest Islamic web site in the U.S.]
P.O. Box 356, Kingsville, MD 21087.
Phone: 410-435-5000.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are not necessarily shared by editorial committee.
Responses (positive or negative) up to 250 words are welcome.
Names will be withheld on request.
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IRAQ WILL COST $100 Billion: A War Which was Illegal [A letter from Canada]

Ms. Liz Claman
CNBC TV

Dear Liz:

I watch your show every day and admire you as a hard working woman who wakes up in the wee hours of the morning to rush to the studios of CNBC.

When Allen Murray, quoting Paul Bremer, said in your show, that it would cost 50, 60 to 100 billion dollars to rebuild Iraq, I couldn't help chuckling when you retorted "Why should we be saddled with such a cost".

The answer is simple. "Who asked you to invade a sovereign nation, under false evidence?" Not the Iraqi people, not the UN, not the rest of the world.

In the entire history, there has never been such a ground swell of protests around the whole world - including the USA- against this manufactured war, engineered by pro-Israeli neo-con Likudniks. You and many of the CNBC anchors were cheerleaders for this murderous war. You broke my heart, because I had always admired you as nice person. Now, our young men and women are being hunted down like pariah dogs by the Iraqis, who do not want to see their faces on their soil. They are happy to see a cruel dictator gone, but they also don't want a cruel occupier to stay. They have seen what the people of Palestine are going through in their daily lives under occupation.

Are you one of those innocents duped by the 'liberation' hoax, or as a Jewish girl, you were just happy to destroy a country, war criminal Ariel Sharon ordered the USA to do?

[By the way, don't worry, the US taxpayers hard earned tax dollars can still go to Israel and not to Iraq. The cost for rebuilding Iraq will be financed by Iraq's massive oil reserves. Also, most of the major contracts awarded in Iraq will be to US companies, so the money will be coming right back into the USA. Iraqis will end up filling the US coffers for many many years to come. As all colonial powers enriched their treasuries, the USA will enrich hers too!!!].

Meer Sahib
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CAIR or SCARE? The Case of Two Murdered Pakistanis

There is an offshoot of ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) which calls itself CAIR and has a cushy business center in an expensive area of Washington, DC. CAIR claims that it is the biggest human rights organization of Muslims in America. That's a bogus claim, Islamic observers tell New Trend. CAIR has a track record that it has never fought for a case which would put it in opposition to the U.S. government. Recently it steered clear of the cases of 8 Muslims in Virginia, Br. Hammad and others. It even ignored Ismail Royer who had worked for CAIR at one time.

In the case of Ahmed ‘Abdel Sattar, CAIR has steered clear of even the vaguest interest in the case. Sis. Lisa, Br. Ahmed's wife, told New Trend that CAIR has refused to acknowledge the letters she sent them.

CAIR has a history of this kind of opportunism. In the cases of Shaikh Omar ‘Abdel Rahman and Imam Jamil al-Amin, CAIR actually sided WITH the government in a variety of ways.

To justify its existence [it reportedly got $500,000 from Saudi Arabia last year], CAIR every now and then issues communiques about alleged hate crimes against Muslims. It keeps repeating the story of the Sikh who was killed soon after 9.11 and gives the impression that the American public is attacking Muslims and their mosques, though hate crimes have been insignificant. CAIR's most misleading effort was its recent appeal to the FBI to investigate the murder of two Pakistanis in P.G. County Maryland as a hate crime. Then it tried to link the murders to the cross burning at Masjid Darussalam (also in PG County) which turned out to be a prank by two stupid teenagers who have been arrested with great fanfare.

CAIR claimed that the murder of the two Pakistanis could be hate crime because nothing was stolen from the two in the incident, not even their brand new car!

Perhaps, with the lavish funds available to it, CAIR should hire an Urdu language expert. If it had one, it would have known the details of the murder of two Pakistanis, Sair Saeed Butt and Hammad Afzal Chaudhery. The information as it has appeared in the Urdu language papers published in USA indicates that it was a "regular" murder (the kind which occurs every day in the American paradise) and certainly NOT a hate crime.

For instance, Mohsin Zaheer writing from Maryland for the SADA-e-PAKISTAN states clearly that the two were killed "during the process of a dacoity." [Pakistani language for armed robbery.] The crime took place at typical American crime time, ONE AM. The paper gives these details:

"Hammad Afzal Choudhery, on the night between Sunday and Monday, at nearly one AM, after finishing his job, went to meet his friend Saer Saeed Butt in Forestville, Prince George County. He called his friend on his cell phone (from the parking lot). Saer Butt came down from his apartment still in his sleeping suit. When he approached his car, four or five Black men surrounded the two, aimed a pistol at them and started searching them. We are told that during this dacoity, Saer Saeed Butt, dressed in his sleeping suit and with his pocket empty tried to resist and was shot in the chest. He died on the spot. After that Hammad Choudhery was shot in the stomach. The killers took whatever was in his (their) pockets, stole Hammad Choudhery's cell phone and succeeded in escaping. At the sound of shots some local person called the police which arrived soon after...... It is said that the killers used Hammad Chaudhery's stolen cell phone to call various numbers and the police is tracing these numbers to catch the killers."

Reports in Pakistani papers indicate that the killers were attracted to the victims by the brand new car which Hammad had bought and which he was excited about showing Saer at one in the morning. It was the perfect recipe for a crime. Murders and robberies are common in the Washington, DC and its close by Maryland suburbs. It has nothing to do with anyone's race, religion or nationality. Drugs have proliferated and created a pattern of serious crime.

Our condolences go out to the families of the two murdered young men. They had just taken admission at a university in Fairfax, Virginia. Saer had recently moved from Canada. Probably he had no idea that America is not the paradise many immigrants imagine it to be.

We urge CAIR not to try and scare the Muslim community. Hate from American people is not the issue. Persecution by the U.S. government is the issue and in that area CAIR has failed miserably.
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2003-08-02 Sat 18:34ct