What is “Sati”?

Sati is the practice of widow burning (being cremated with her dead husband). A woman who dies burning herself on her husbands funeral fire was considered most virtuous, and was believed to directly go to heaven, redeeming all the forefathers rotting in hell, by this “meritorious” act.

The woman (Hindu widow) who committed Sati was worshipped as a Goddess, and temples were built in her memory.

The most high-profile Sati incident was in Rajasthan in 1987 when 18-year-old Roop Kanwar was burned to death.

The case sparked national and international outrage.

Police charged Roop Kanwar’s father-in-law and brother-in-law with forcing her to sit on the pyre with her husband’s body.

Sati is believed to have originated some 700 years ago among the ruling class or Rajputs in India.

The Rajput women burnt themselves after their men were defeated in battles to avoid being taken by the victors. But it came to be seen as a measure of wifely devotion in later years.

The custom was outlawed by India’s British rulers in 1829 following demands by Indian reformers.

But this cruel inhumane Hindu practice still occurs rarely, mostly in parts of northern and central India.

Source: http://arabnews.com/

JEDDAH, 29 November 2007 — Saudi authorities yesterday announced the arrest of 208 terror suspects, including 32 terror financiers and a 16-member media cell, adding that some of the suspects had planned to attack oil installations in the Eastern Province.Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the arrests took place following pre-emptive operations carried out by security forces over the last few months. He said the suspects had been influenced by a deviant ideology.

“Security forces foiled an impending attack on a support oil facility in the Eastern Province,” the spokesman said, adding that an eight-member cell led by an expatriate man was behind the plan.

The expatriate explained to police how he mobilized other militants to carry out the attack after encouraging them to take part in suicide operations inside and outside the Kingdom.

The arrested militants also included an 18-member cell, which had smuggled eight missiles into the Kingdom in order to launch terrorist operations, the Saudi Press Agency quoted the spokesman as saying. An infiltrator, who is an expert in missile launching, headed the team, he added.

“There was a 22-member cell which formed a special team to assassinate Islamic scholars and security officers,” Al-Turki said. The assassination move came after imams and khateebs across the country joined the fight against terrorism and extremism. “As many as 112 suspects were arrested for coordinating with foreign parties to facilitate the travel of militants to disturbed regions,” he said in reference to those that convince Saudis to travel to Iraq in order to fight alongside insurgents.

Al-Turki said the arrested terror financiers included Saudis as well as expatriates, adding that they had provided financial support to Al-Qaeda militants in the Kingdom and abroad.

Speaking about the media cell that was operating in Madinah to promote deviant ideologies and thoughts, he said the cell had provided militants every encouragement to commit various crimes. The media cell published a news bulletin named Sada Al-Rafidain (Echo of Iraq) and facilitated the travel of militants to the war-torn country.

During the security operations police confiscated a number of means of communication and documents, the spokesman said. Details of the confiscated items will not be disclosed at present in order to protect public interest. “Investigations made with the help of arrested militants have also led to information about persons who have links with the militants,” the spokesman said.

The Interior Ministry called upon Saudis who have been approached by deviant ideologists to contact the nearest security agency if they are in the Kingdom or the nearest Saudi mission abroad to clarify their stand. “This will be taken into consideration when dealing with their cases,” the spokesman said.

Press Association
The Guardian
Wednesday November 14 2007

A “torrent” of negative stories has been revealed by a study of the portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the media, according to a report published yesterday.

Research into one week’s news coverage showed that 91% of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative. The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, who commissioned the study, said the findings were a “damning indictment” of the media and urged editors and programme makers to review the way they portray Muslims.

“The overall picture presented by the media is that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west,” he said. “There is a scale of imbalance which no fair-minded person would think is right.” Only 4% of the 352 articles studied were positive, he said.

Livingstone said the findings showed a “hostile and scaremongering attitude” towards Islam and likened the coverage to the way the left was attacked by national newspapers in the early 1980s. “The charge is that there are virtually no positive or balanced images of Islam being portrayed,” he said. “I think there is a demonisation of Islam going on which damages community relations and creates alarm among Muslims.”

Among examples in the study was a report which claimed that Christmas was being banned in one area because it offended Muslims, which researchers said was “inaccurate and alarmist”. The report said that Muslims in Britain were sometimes depicted as a threat to traditional British values, and the coverage weakened government attempts to reduce extremism. The report is an amalgam of research projects individually prepared by members of a panel. Some research, examining published newspaper articles and reporting the experiences of Muslim journalists, involved Hugh Muir, of the Guardian.

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
P-I COLUMNIST
Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com

Their campaign of terror keeps spreading.They want to wipe out those who don’t agree with their way of life.

They’ve spilled blood across the planet for eons, finding justification for the evil they do in holy texts.

What do we call them?

What else? Christian-o-fascists!

While we’re at it, let’s give them a calendar slot — “Christian-o-Fascism Awareness Week” — to be celebrated on college campuses everywhere.

Yes, I drummed up this term this week to show extreme ideas aren’t confined to one religion. Zealots who wrap themselves in Christianity have blown up abortion clinics as well as claimed the lives of non-believers since antiquity. Jewish extremists whack Palestinians. Muslim nutcases bastardize Islam to justify suicide bombings that kill innocents.

Yet, it seems only the radical fringe of Islam gets slapped with a silly but dangerous label, designed to fan fears and taint a whole faith.

This brings me to — drum roll, please — “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,” celebrated at more than 100 campuses across the country, including the University of Washington.

Last week’s nationwide event was aimed at fostering awareness of the terror threat posed by a fraction of those in the Islamic faith. Organizers also wanted to blast the “silence of feminists” over the oppression of women of Islam.

Their effort would have been better served by looking at how extremists everywhere, across the spectrum of beliefs, crap up the world.

That actually could foster constructive dialogue about the perils of ultra-radicals.

Earnest dialogue, though, wasn’t on the agenda for the UW College Republicans, the local lackeys for the big week. They’re more about fanning flames of ignorance — and garnering attention — than kindling wisdom. They give wiser GOP minds a bad name.

I can’t say I’m shocked. In 2003, the College Republicans held an anti-affirmative action bake sale on the UW campus to spark “dialogue.” White students paid $1 for a cookie, for example, while minorities paid anywhere from a quarter to 95 cents.

Don’t get me wrong: The group had every right to exercise its free, if stupid, speech back then, as it does now. But what’s troubling about “Islamo-Fascism” week is the lack of voices from high places on campus countering the madness.

At least during the bake-sale shenanigans, the president of the UW Board of Regents wrote a letter saying the stunt was “tasteless, divisive and hurtful — learning is not advanced when the dialogue is demeaning and disrespectful.”

This time, a UW assistant provost wrote human rights activists — to reassure them there was “no indication” conservative pundit Michael Medved would speak on campus as part of a “terrorism awareness” tie-in. But, “it turns out that did happen,” Assistant Provost Patricia Huling said of Medved’s campus chitchat.

The university says Muslim and Arab students did pass out literature and set up a table on campus to offer counterpoints to the demeaning, disrespectful and narrow presentation of Islam.

But that was like talking into a hurricane. True learning, a thought-provoking dialogue, wasn’t advanced.

Maybe the stunt was fun and games for the publicity-seeking Republican college group. But it’s serious business for the folks behind last week’s national event, sponsored by David Horowitz of the Los Angeles-based Freedom Center, a conservative think tank. These right-wingers want to grab power by creating campaigns that spread fear and invoke made-up, hot-button words.

As Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times puts it: “There isn’t actually any such thing as Islamo-Fascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination.”

The term, he adds, became a fashionable way for Iraq hawks “to gloss over” the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked us, to Saddam Hussein, who did not.

But hey, the conservative kids on campus don’t sweat such pesky details.

They know sometimes it’s best to gloss over truths, exploit fear and be only as aware as you want to be.

By SEAN GAFFNEY, Associated Press Writer
Found On Yahoo News

JERUSALEM - Tears welling in his eyes, an elderly Holocaust survivor on Thursday embraced the son of the Albanian man who saved him from the Nazi death camps, highlighting the little-known role played by European Muslims in helping Jews during World War II.The two met for the first time at a photography exhibition at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, honoring Albanians who sheltered Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Albania, a tiny European country with a Muslim majority, sheltered about 1,000 Jews who, except for one family, survived Nazi occupation, according to officials.

“This is a very unique story,” said Yehudit Shendar, the exhibition’s curator. Though Islam has an anti-Jewish image, these were “Muslims who endangered their own lives to save Jews,” she said. Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II.

Albanians sheltered between 600 and 1,800 Jewish refugees, risking death or imprisonment, officials said. At the end of the war, Albania was the only European country with a larger Jewish population than before the war.

Yoshua Baruchowic, 84, wore a grim smile as he retold the harrowing story of his rescue. He stood next to Enver Alia Sheqer, the Albanian whose father saved him.

For decades, Baruchowic exchanged letters with Sheqer, 50, and his father, Ali Sheqer Pashkaj, who died in 2004. They often sent family photos, and he called Sheqer his “brother.”

Despite many invitations, Baruchowic, who moved to Mexico after the war and became a dentist, refused to visit Albania while the communists were in power, and later because of political turmoil.

Meeting Sheqer on Thursday, he said, “It’s glorious. It’s something I waited to do all my life.”

In 1941, a Nazi convoy transporting Jews passed the Sheqer family’s general store deep in the Albanian mountains. Sheqer’s father offered the soldiers food and wine. When they became drunk, he handed a message — hidden in a melon — to one of the prisoners, the 18-year-old Baruchowic.

Though they had never met, Baruchowic agreed when Ali Sheqer urged him to flee to the woods. The young Jew hid while Sheqer’s father feigned ignorance as he repeatedly stared down a Nazi gun barrel. He held out until the Germans left and then retrieved Baruchowic, hiding him for three years.

“My father was a devout Muslim,” Enver Sheqer said. “He believed that to save one life is to enter paradise.”

He said his father had to help Baruchowic because of the Albanian code of “Besa,” which means “to keep the promise.”

The exhibition is named after that code and features black and white photographs of Albanians holding family photos and awards honoring their heroism. Israel has honored 63 Albanians as “Righteous Among the Nations,” a title granted to non-Jews who helped Jews escape Nazi persecution.

The photo exhibit is the product of five years of “headhunting” by American Jewish photographer Norman Gershman, who said he was inspired culling the archives at Yad Vashem. Working through several organizations, Gershman spent four years in and out of Albania tracking down survivors.

“It started at Yad Vashem and now it’s going to take off from here,” he said. The exhibition is next going to the United Nations headquarters in New York for a display on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, he said.

At the exhibit Thursday, Baruchowic and Enver Sheqer stood beneath a photo of Sheqer sitting at the foot of a statue of the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg, a resistance general who led the fight against the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.

In the picture, Sheqer delicately clutches his chest while a furrowed brow looks poised for tears. A similar look covered his face as he struggled to the find words to describe meeting Baruchowic for the first time.

“I have such a good feeling,” Sheqer said. “I can’t begin how to describe.”

JEDDAH, 25 November 2006 — More than 10,000 Umrah pilgrims who had overstayed their visas were arrested by the Passport Department in Makkah in the last lunar month of Shawwal, which ended a couple of days ago, a source of the department told Arab News yesterday. They were identified at various safe homes in and around the holy city.

The Ministry of Haj reports that so far this year about 200,000 Umrah pilgrims have not left their Kingdom after their visas expired. “The campaign found two types of overstayers: one who is waiting to perform the upcoming Haj even though their pilgrimage visas have expired, and the other intending to remain in the Kingdom to work illegally,” said Capt. Mansour Al-Otaiby, director of the local Passport Department in Makkah.

Read the full story.

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