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At least 12 killed in Kabul car bombing

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:55:00 +0000

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber rammed his car into a NATO convoy in the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing at least 12 people, including two coalition troops, four civilian contractors and two children, officials said.

A Muslim militant group, Hizb-e-Islami, claimed responsibility for the early morning attack and said it had targeted an American convoy.

NATO did not immediately release the nationalities of the killed troops and contractors. Six Afghan civilians, including children, were also killed in the explosion, Kabul provincial police spokesman Hashmad Stanakzi said.

Hizb-e-Islami said its newly formed special "martyrdom" unit had been stalking the convoy for weeks. The announcement could mean a steep escalation for the movement, based in northeastern Afghanistan, which has fought against the American-led coalition but is also a fierce rival of the Taliban.

Severed body parts littered the scene of the blast in eastern Kabul, and one coalition vehicle was reduced to a mangled pile of metal. The explosion, which wounded more than 35 others people, was powerful enough to rattle buildings on the other side of the city.

Bombing suspect mentored by Muslim radical

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:46:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the years before the Boston Marathon bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell under the influence of a new friend, a Muslim convert who steered the religiously apathetic young man toward a strict strain of Islam, family members said.

Under the tutelage of a friend known to the Tsarnaev family only as Misha, Tamerlan gave up boxing and stopped studying music, his family said. He began opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He turned to websites and literature claiming that the CIA was behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Jews controlled the world.

"Somehow, he just took his brain," said Tamerlan's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, who recalled conversations with Tamerlan's worried father about Misha's influence. Efforts over several days by The Associated Press to identify and interview Misha have been unsuccessful.

Tamerlan's relationship with Misha could be a clue in understanding the motives behind his religious transformation and, ultimately, the attack itself. Two U.S. officials say he had no tie to terrorist groups.

Throughout his religious makeover, Tamerlan maintained a strong influence over his siblings, including Dzhokhar, who investigators say carried out the deadly attack by his older brother's side, killing three and injuring 264 people.

FBI: Anti-Muslim hate crimes still up

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:32:00 +0000

Hate crimes against perceived Muslims, which jumped up 50% in 2010 largely as a result of anti-Muslim propagandizing, remained at relatively high levels last year, according to 2011 hate crime statistics released today by the FBI.

The bureau reported that there were 157 reported anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2011, down slightly from the 160 recorded in 2010. The 2011 crimes occurred during a period when Islam-bashing propaganda, which initially took off in 2010, continued apace.

The FBI statistics, which are compilations of state numbers, are notoriously understated. Two Department of Justice studies have indicated that the real level of hate crimes in America is some 20-30 times the number reported in the FBI statistics, in part because some 56% of hate crimes are never reported to police and more than half of those that are are mischaracterized as non-hate crimes. Nevertheless, the FBI statistics can be used to get a sense of general trends.

Pakistan: America’s enemy in the making

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:27:00 +0000

The United States and Pakistan are by now a classic example of a dysfunctional nuclear family (with an emphasis on “nuclear”). While the two governments and their peoples become more suspicious and resentful of each other with every passing month, Washington and Islamabad are still locked in an awkward post-9/11 embrace that, at this juncture, neither can afford to let go of.

Washington is keeping Pakistan, with its collapsing economy and bloated military, afloat but also cripplingly dependent on its handouts and U.S.-sanctioned International Monetary Fund loans. Meanwhile, CIA drones unilaterally strike its tribal borderlands. Islamabad returns the favor. It holds Washington hostage over its Afghan War from which the Pentagon won’t be able to exit in an orderly fashion without its help. By blocking U.S. and NATO supply routes into Afghanistan (after a U.S. cross-border air strike had killed 24 Pakistani soldiers) from November 2011 until last July, Islamabad managed to ratchet up the cost of the war while underscoring its indispensability to the Obama administration.

Is Jerry Boykin the new McCarthy?

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:43:00 +0000

First came the hullaballoo over the “Mosque at Ground Zero.” Then there was Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, grabbing headlines as he promoted “International Burn-a-Koran Day.” Most recently, we have an American posting a slanderous anti-Muslim video on the Internet with all the ensuing turmoil.

Throughout, the official U.S. position has remained fixed: the United States government condemns Islamophobia. Americans respect Islam as a religion of peace. Incidents suggesting otherwise are the work of a tiny minority -- whackos, hatemongers, and publicity-seekers. Among Muslims from Benghazi to Islamabad, the argument has proven to be a tough sell.

It’s just a movie!

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:43:00 +0000

On Saturday, Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, Pakistan’s railways minister, held a press conference and declared that he would pay $100,000 of his own money to anyone who could capture the maker of a now-infamous YouTube movie trailer that depicts the Prophet Muhammad killing innocent men and juggling underage girls in his desert tent. The clip has careened around the Internet, inspiring violent protests and attacks in some Muslim-majority countries and cities. But it has also inspired bewilderment in the West—how could a trailer so farcically bad be construed by millions of Muslims as representative of the feelings of the majority of Americans toward Islam? Don’t they understand that the video doesn’t speak for the U.S. government? Can’t they lighten up? Don’t they understand freedom of speech?

The short answer is, no, not in the same way that we in the West do.

What Obama should say about “Innocence of Muslims”

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:06:00 +0000

The current turmoil in the Muslim world that has unfolded over the YouTube video clip Innocence of Muslims offers the U.S. what educators call a “teachable moment:” an opportunity provided by circumstance to explain an idea that the audience might otherwise find abstract and irrelevant.
The idea is freedom of expression.

Several months ago, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a California producer posing as Israeli citizen Sam Bacile, produced, then posted on YouTube, a movie trailer meant to offend Muslims. Very likely, additional goals were to elicit violent reactions in the Middle East, portray President Obama as weak and force him into a confrontation with Islamists.

The trailer, which columnists have described as wooden, stilted, and cheap, goes out of its way to hit the nerves of Muslims. It calls Muhammad a bastard, depicts him as crawling around the legs of his wife Khadija and performing cunnilingus on her.

Protests of anti-Islam film across the world

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:40:00 +0000

A look at protests and events across the world on Tuesday responding to an anti-Muslim film, nearly a week after angry crowds began assaulting a string of U.S. embassies in the Mideast.

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AFGHANISTAN

A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a mini-bus in Kabul, killing at least 12 people in what a militant group said was revenge for the film. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the attack killed eight South Africans, three Afghans and a Kyrgyzstani — all aviation workers who were headed to the capital's airport. A spokesman for the Islamist militant group Hizb-i-Islami claimed responsibility for the dawn attack and said it was carried out by a 22-year-old woman.

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EGYPT

General prosecutor issued arrest warrants for seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and a Florida-based American pastor Terry Jones and referred them to trial on charges linked to an anti-Islam film. The prosecutor's office said in a statement that the accused, which includes the film's alleged producer, face charges of harming national unity, insulting and publicly attacking Islam and spreading false information. The office said they could face the death penalty, if convicted.

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ISRAEL

Courting leaders of an anti-Muslim hate fest

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:46:00 +0000

If there’s anything we know about evangelical Christians, it’s that they comprise a remarkably effective voting block, and the religious right has been a core part of the Republican coalition for decades.

So it comes as no surprise, perhaps, that the two top members of the Republican ticket, presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running-mate, Paul Ryan, would court the Family Research Council at its recent Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., where, on Friday, Ryan delivered a speech, and Romney appeared via video message. But what is appalling is that the event this duo endorsed quickly devolved into a hate fest directed against an American religious minority.

The Middle East’s secret revolution

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0000

Jihan Kazerooni and I drove past scores of armed riot police on Budaiya highway as her iPhone buzzed non-stop: phone calls, Skype calls and, incessantly, Twitter. I had wondered what the phrase “Twitter revolution” really meant when I heard it used in connection with Iran in 2009 and Egypt in 2011. Here, in the small Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain, I was beginning to grasp the concept.

I was in that country for three weeks as a part of the Witness Bahrain initiative, a group of internationals seeking to document and expose human rights abuses perpetrated by the regime against protesters and activists. Aside from brief spurts of coverage, the crisis in Bahrain had largely been ignored by the U.S. media.

Perhaps the lack of coverage of the predominantly Shi’a uprising against an increasingly repressive Sunni monarchy can be explained, in part, by this: Washington considers that monarchy its close ally; Bahrain is the home of the Navy’s 5th Fleet, and the beneficiary of U.S. arms sales. Perhaps it has to do with the U.S.-Saudi friendship, and the increasing tension between the U.S. and Iran. Bahrain has been portrayed as a battleground for influence between neighboring Saudi Arabia (a supporter of the monarchy) and nearby majority Shi’a Iran.

Protesters storm US Embassy in Yemen

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:15:00 +0000

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Chanting "death to America," hundreds of protesters angered by an anti-Islam film stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Yemen's capital and burned the American flag on Thursday, the latest in a series of attacks on American diplomatic missions in the Middle East.

The protesters breached the usually tight security around the embassy and reached the compound grounds but did not enter the main building housing the offices. Once inside the compound, they brought down the U.S. flag, burned it and replaced it with a black banner bearing Islam's declaration of faith — "There is no God but Allah."

Before storming the grounds, demonstrators removed the embassy's sign on the outer wall, set tires ablaze and pelted the compound with rocks.

It was similar to an attack on the U.S. Embassy in the Egyptian capital of Cairo on Tuesday night. A mob of Libyans also attacked the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday, killing American Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

In Egypt, protesters were clashing with police near the U.S. Embassy in the capital Cairo for the third day in a row.

The violence has raised worries that further protests could break out around the Muslim world as anger spreads over the movie.

Salon staff writer Alex Seitz-Wald on “360″

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 18:35:00 +0000

On Monday evening, staff writer Alex Seitz-Wald joined Anderson Cooper to discuss former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's investigation into supposed ties between the U.S. government and the Muslim Brotherhood. "These claims are just completely outrageous," Seitz-Wald said. "There's absolutely nothing to back them up."