Author: sheikyermami

Pakistan troops comb mosque for holdouts

Abdul Rashid Ghazi, deputy head of the Red Mosque, announces the release of Chinese hostages during a press conference in Islamabad. Students from a radical mosque kidnapped and then released Saturday nine people from an alleged brothel in the Pakistani capital, a mosque leader and officials said.(AFP/Aamir Qureshi)

*

By SADAQAT JAN, Associated Press Writer 5 minutes ago

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistani troops cornered holdout Islamic militants and combed the warren-like Red Mosque complex for booby traps Wednesday after assaulting the compound and killing its pro-Taliban cleric, the army spokesman said.

“The final phase is going on,” Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad told the private Geo television network. He said three of the remaining die-hard defenders had been killed overnight, and that troops were meeting resistance in just “one or two places” of the sprawling compound in the heart of the Pakistani capital.

More than 50 militants and nine soldiers have been killed since the assault began in the early hours of Tuesday, including the mosque’s pro-Taliban cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the army said.

Commandos went in after unsuccessful attempts to get the mosque’s militants to surrender to a weeklong siege mounted by the government following deadly street clashes with armed supporters of the mosque on July 3.

The extremists had been using the mosque as a base to send out radicalized students to enforce their version of Islamic morality, including abducting alleged prostitutes and trying to “re-educate” them at the compound.

More than 80 people have been killed overall since the violence began.

By early afternoon Wednesday, nearly 35 hours after the assault began, the intermittent explosions and gunfire earlier heard from the inside the complex, which includes the mosque and a women’s religious school, had ceased.

An army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to press, said earlier that troops were moving from room to room in basements of the compound, blowing up foxholes where militants had been entrenched. He said the three militants reported killed Tuesday night were trapped in foxholes by commandos.

The army asked reporters to prepare for a tour of the embattled site, indicating the operation was nearing its end. No details of where exactly the press would be taken were provided.

Relatives of young women, men and children who had been inside waited behind army barricades around the mosque or inquired at morgues Wednesday.

Ghazi’s body was found in the basement of a women’s religious school after a fierce gunbattle involving militants, senior Interior Ministry official Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema said.

More? click above link

Editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette, who won a Pulitzer Prize while working at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was killed in a single-car accident Tuesday in Mississippi, authorities said. He was 57.

Marlette was a passenger in the car, which struck a tree in wet conditions just before 10 a.m., said John Garrison, the coroner in Mississippi’s Marshall County. “Evidently, it hydroplaned, left the highway and struck the tree. There was heavy rain in the area at the time.”

‘What would Muhammad drive?’ WND

Atlas Shrugs Link 

Pulitzer-winner’s cartoon terrorist spurs death threats from Muslims

A Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist is under fire from Muslims for his depiction of a Middle Eastern-looking man behind the steering wheel of a nuclear-bomb laden truck under the headline, “What would Muhammad drive?”

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim World League are demanding an apology from Doug Marlette’s syndicator, Tribune Media Services, and from his employer, the Tallahassee Democrat.

The cartoon shows a Ryder rental truck like the one used by convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

In a phone interview, Marlette told WorldNetDaily he would not apologize, though he has received more than 4,500 e-mails from angry Muslims, with some threats of death and mutilation.

The Tallahassee Democrat also has declined to apologize, but primarily because it did not publish the cartoon in its print edition. The drawing appeared inadvertently on its website, however, before being pulled, according to the paper’s executive editor.

He explained that “to a cartoonist working in the current geo-political atmosphere, it is a natural step to ask, ‘What would Muhammad Drive?'”

Cartoonist Doug Marlette, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988, died Tuesday.

Rest in peace…

* Well, I guess when its done by ‘militants’ it doesn’t hurt that much. As you can see they’re just ‘suspected militants’ – the mind boggles. But maybe they’re just following their Islamic belief, which commands them to kill and die for Allah and to strike terror in the hearts of the enemy until the world is Islamic.

*
* Islam explained: The true believers were expected not only to fight but also to contribute materially towards the cost of war (4:66-67, 9:88, 9:111), to kill and be killed. Those who did this were promised a higher rank in paradise (4:74, 4:95). The believers were asked to prepare whatever force in their ability, troops, horses, etc. to strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers (remember Dr. Mahathir’s famous Jewish-bashing speech at OIC conference in late 2003?) (9:73, 123, 8:60).

Heraldsun

SUSPECTED Islamic militants beheaded four Philippine Marines who were involved in the search for a kidnapped Italian priest, the military has said.

Nine other troops were injured and ten were missing after the gun battle Tuesday near Tipo-Tipo town on Basilan island, a known hideout for militants from Abu Sayyaf and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The troops had been dispatched to the area to check reports that Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi, 57, had been sighted with his captors there, said Marine spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ariel Caculitan.

But they ran into a large group of armed men believed to be members either of Abu Sayyaf, an Al-Qaeda-linked group, or the MILF, which is in the final stage of peace talks with government.

* Peace in Islam is the peace of the grave…

Lt Col Caculitan said the fate of the missing Marines remained unknown.

“They may be alive, they may be dead. They remain to be accounted for,” he said.

The headless bodies of the four soldiers were recovered early Wednesday by provincial authorities in Basilan and they have been turned over to the military, he said.

Mr Bossi, of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), was seized by heavily armed men near his parish church on June 10.

Update from JW.  Its worse: Jihadists kill 14 Philippine marines, behead 10

BASILAN, Philippines – Islamic militants killed 14 Philippine marines searching for a kidnapped Italian priest during a major gunbattle, and later beheaded 10 of them, the military said on Wednesday.
The troops were ambushed on the southern island of Basilan by a joint force from the Philippines’ main Islamic rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf, a marine spokesman said.
Lieutenant Colonel Ariel Caculitan said 14 marines were killed in the eight-hour clash, increasing an earlier death toll after more bodies were recovered. Ten had been discovered beheaded, he said in Manila.
“All 10 marines earlier reported missing have been found dead,” Caculitan told reporters, without explaining a discrepancy in earlier numbers.
“All were beheaded,” he added.
“Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks…” –

Qur’an 47:4.

From LGF:

What the Hell is Wrong with the Los Angeles Times?

Los Angeles’ relentlessly left-wing newspaper bottoms out, joining the New York Times and the Washington Post in publishing the propaganda of genocidal terrorists as if it were legitimate “opinion,” in an op-ed from Mousa Abu Marzook—described by the LA Times as “the deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.”

Hamas’ stand.

Disgusting. Disgraceful. Our media are completely lost in a wilderland of moral equivalence, eagerly prostituting themselves to monsters and terrorists.

A Thorough Rebuttal To The LA Times

Irrespective of Marzouk’s “moderate” message to English-language media, he, like the rest of Hamas, advocates the destruction of the State of Israel. If you don’t believe it, watch this video of Marzouk openly expressing these sentiments to an Arabic-speaking audience. As for some of the false claims made in his LA Times op-ed:

Claim 1: Hamas “resistance” is justified under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
However, even Human Rights Watch, an organization not regarded as friendly towards Israel, clearly stated: “Hamas has repeatedly failed to respect a fundamental rule of international humanitarian law by attacking civilians and civilian objects.”

Claim 2: Hamas deserves a place at the international negotiating table.
This, despite the Hamas Charter which states: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

Claim 3: Israel is guilty of “foundational crimes of murder and ethnic cleansing by means of which Israel took our towns and villages, our farms and orchards, and made us a nation of refugees.”
Marzouk conveniently forgets that the 1948 war was the direct result of an Arab invasion and rejection of the UN Partition Plan, which Israel accepted. Had the Arabs also accepted this, there would never have been a Palestinian refugee problem.

Claim 4:   Israeli leaders made “repeated calls for the destruction of Palestine’s non-Jewish inhabitants”.

There has never been any official Israeli policy of this nature in nearly 60 years of statehood. The existence of a million-strong Arab minority living as citizens in Israel is testament to the utter absurdity of Marzouk’s statement. Moreover, while Marzouk makes false claims regarding non-existent Israeli policies, he attempts to distance Hamas from its own charter, which clearly lays out the organization’s murderous and anti-Semitic discourse.

Marzouk’s false claims, when properly deconstructed, demonstrate the danger of granting Hamas access to the mainstream media. Hamas clearly recognizes the value of reaching a Western audience. Editors and publishers must not allow their publications to be exploited by a terrorist organization that speaks in two voices – a “moderate” one for the West and its true, extremist voice which is often unheard except in the Arab media.

Read it all… 

Al Qaeda Quack Al Zawahiri Calls For Jihad Against UK (again)

Al Zawahiri, OBL’s sidearm and AQ #2 operative, is discontent with the knighthood bestowed on ‘Satanic Verses’ author Salman Rushdie, something that clearly calls for jihad in the world of Islamo-fascist terrorists

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 issued a new tape on Tuesday threatening to retaliate against Britain for having honored novelist Salman Rushdie, a U.S.-based intelligence monitoring group said.

Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy, lashed out at Britain for having knighted Salman Rushdie last month.

Ayman al-Zawahri’s 20 minute and 43 seconds speech was entitled “Malicious Britain and its Indian Slaves.” It was produced by as-Sahab, the multimedia wing of al-Qaeda, to be distributed to extremist web sites, said the US-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors al-Qaeda messages.

The authenticity of the tape, also reported by another US-based intelligence monitoring group, could not be independently confirmed.

Osama bin Laden’s deputy lashed out at Britain for having awarded a knighthood to Rushdie last month, saying it was defying the Islamic world by granting the honor to the author of “The Satanic Verses,” deemed to insult Islam.

A “very precise response” is in preparation to retaliate against this offense, al-Zawahri was quoted as saying by SITE.

Addressing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the al-Qaida deputy chief said Britain’s strategy in the Middle East “has brought tragedy and defeat upon you, not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in the center of London.” This appeared to be a reference to the deadly London transit network bombings which occurred just about two years ago.

“And if you did not understand, listen, we are ready to repeat it for you,” al-Zawahri was quoted as warning the British prime minister.

More…

Muslims declare sovereignty over U.S., UK

Hear Islamic leaders in London: ‘Queen Elizabeth, go to hell!’

By Art Moore
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Protesters at London Central Mosque
Across town from the site of the recent attempted car-bomb attacks, several thousand Muslims gathered in front of the London Central Mosque to applaud fiery preachers prophesying the overthrow of the British government – a future vision that encompasses an Islamic takeover of the White House and the rule of the Quran over America.

“One day my dear Muslims,” shouted Anjem Choudary, “Islam will govern Britain!”

Choudary was a co-founder of Al Muhajiroun, the now-banned group tied to suspects in the July 7, 2005, London transport bombings and a cheerleader of the 9/11 attacks.

“Democracy, hypocrisy,” Choudary chanted as the crowd echoed him. “Tony Blair, terrorist! Tony Blair, murderer! Queen Elizabeth, go to hell!”

World Net Daily

There is, as always, a method in the madness:

What have these two characters above in common?

Just softening up the free world as a prelude for the war to come.

INFILTRATION.

DISINFORMATION.

APPEASEMENT.

Open Season on Britain’s Jews

Here’s an excellent scary documentary on the rise of a new antisemitism in Britain, from UK Channel 4, in six parts. Only the first part is here on the front page; click ‘read the rest…’ at the bottom of this post to see the others.

The war on the Jews Part 2

Red Mosque Battle Update

The head fanatic of the Red Mosque in Islamabad has been killed in an assault on the compound by Pakistani special forces: Chief siege cleric killed as rebel mosque falls.

Former mosque leader: Abdul Rashid Ghazi

* CNN reported that he was ‘caught in the cross-fire’.
Like he was an innocent by-stander or something….

By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad

The chief cleric of the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad has been killed after Pakistani special forces launched a bloody assault on his compound.

The body of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who earlier had predicted that his “martyrdom was certain”, was discovered in a basement this afternoon.

Around fifty of his Islamist followers have also been killed in the offensive to reclaim the mosque, which the Pakistani authorities say is now 90 per cent complete. But hundreds of women and children are thought to be still holed up in underground bunkers, as the last remaining militants mount a desperate defence.

* Wait a minute, let it sink in:...hundreds of women and children are thought to be still holed up in underground bunkers, as the last remaining militants mount a desperate defence.

What’s a mosque without underground bunkers? Normal thing, right? Doesn’t your church or synagogue have underground bunkers?

Pakistani commandos stormed the mosque compound before dawn today in an attempt to end an eight-day stand-off between militants and the government. Troops fought house-to-house as they battled their way through the mosque complex as militants and radical students returned fire from among the minarets and debris.

* As always, when Muhammedan’s are ‘whipped into a fanatical frenzy which is more dangerous than hydrophobia in a dog’ (Churchill) they set out to burn Western aid agencies to the ground.

Result can be seen here:

A man examines the damage at the tented offices of a Western aid agency after it was ransacked by angry protesters in Battagram, 200 km (125 miles) from Islamabad July 10, 2007. The protesters were protesting against an assault by Pakistani forces on the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque. REUTERS/Ibrar Tanoli (PAKISTAN)

“Pakistan military assault on mosque continues; at least 58 dead UPDATE,” from Thomson Financial via JW:

TERRORISM INTERVIEW WITH GERMAN INTERIOR MINISTER WOLFGANG SCHÄUBLE

* Schaeuble has his head screwed on: Nobody can accuse him of not having tried at all. He did. Sincerely, he did. But he realized somewhere along the line that Islam is a dead end street. Now he would like to move on into damage control mode.

The empty suits from SPIEGEL try to do a crocodile roll with him and drown him in mud, but he rocks them in his wheelchair…

We need more politico’s like him:

After a brief period of diddling,  Scheuble realized that the multiculti-diversity-why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along trap was just that: A trap.  Mohammedanism can’t be pacified. But it can be contained.

But we all know that speaking the truth in an age of PC and nutroot-mania is sure to backfire:

In an interview that has outraged politicians and media commentators alike, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, 64, calls for changes to Germany’s constitution to simplify the fight against terror. It’s a discussion that goes to the fringes of what’s allowed in a constitutional state: preventative detainments, clandestine seizure of private computer data and even targeted killings.

Germany’s Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is considered a hardliner on security issues. Many have criticized his proposals for redrafting parts of Germany’s constitution.

* ‘Many have criticized his proposals’ simply means that the usual red-green suspects with the old ‘better red than dead’– slogans are still chipping away on our society, civilization & culture. Before they were simply commies, now they are whoring for Islam.

SPIEGEL: Minister Schäuble, the British authorities hardly knew anything about the terrorists who struck in London and Glasgow last week. German intelligence agencies had never heard of the terrorists who deposited explosives in suitcases at German train stations in July 2006. Have investigators lost contact with potential terrorists in Europe?
Schäuble: The problem is that such groups now form spontaneously. In the case of the suitcase bombers last summer, the suspected perpetrators met each other only a few months before. It seems to have been similar in Britain, according to the first investigation results. To that extent, it is true that we are far from knowing all potential attackers.

SPIEGEL: It seems as if it were now purely a question of luck whether or not an attack can be prevented.

Schäuble: It was indeed luck that the suitcase bombs in Cologne did not detonate, but we must not rely on that. The intelligence agencies and the Federal Criminal Police Office in particular need to do everything conceivable. But in the case of us suffering a heavy attack, we should retain the necessary measure of composure, as the British are doing now. That is what I am thinking of when I say: We could be struck at anytime. It is a form of political precaution.

Read it all…

Fawaz Gerges and that “reforming Islam” grant money

* Pulling the wool over infidel eyes and ears and getting paid for it: Fitzgerald takes on the spin-doctors and the agents of Islam who pervert free inquiry and scrutiny of the ‘RoP’ with something called ‘hope’

Fawaz Gerges, professor and television “analyst,” wants to make sure that Infidels are greatly impressed with all the “ferment” and movement toward “reform” that is supposedly visible all over the “world of Islam.” It is guff and blague, but useful for a transparent propagandist for Islam, and the peoples and states suffused with Islam, all over Dar al-Islam.

Someone who is apparently impressed with Fawaz Gerges is one Anthony T. Sullivan, founder and main beneficiary of a “consulting firm” known as “Near Eastern Support Services” (think James Akins, think Eugene Bird, think Raymond Close, and you’ll know exactly what is going on here). Recently Sullivan managed to hornswoggle the editors of “Modern Age,” a publication put out by the Intercollegiate Studies Association (which should put one in mind of Richard Weaver, Friedrich von Hayek, and Josef Pieper, not of Muslim apologetics, and certainly not of Fawaz Gerges), into publishing his piece all about that ferment, that “reform,” within Islam that Infidels should do nothing to disrupt.

Read it all… 

The Question whether Islam is a Religion of Peace 

 * Lively discussions on JW on how to outlaw Islam:

While the knee-jerk response is still to brand as “bigots” all those who call upon Muslims to confront and work against the violence engendered by Islamic teaching, Youssef Ibrahim is not afraid to stand up and speak the truth.

From the New York Sun
The latest batch of attacks by Islamic terrorists raised fresh concerns among Muslims over what they fear may be “heinous attempts” to link terror with Islam.
British Muslims, who number 1.6 million, are reportedly funding advertising campaigns across Britain that proclaim Islam is “the religion of peace” — in the process also implicitly warning fellow Britons against criticizing their faith.

Yet a year ago, a weighty Muslim writer and pundit, Abdelrahman Al Rashed, manager of the pan-Arab TV network Al-Arabiya Television, famously launched a stormy debate when he opined, “While all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are now Muslims.”

Ever since, the question among Muslim scholars and activists is precisely how much of the terror inspired by Islam is due to the faith itself — and how much is due to the way it is being preached.

Clearly, the issue is enormously delicate, fraught with the pitfalls of prejudice and all sorts of other sensitivities.

But as hundreds of thousands of people from New York to Baghdad are butchered under Islam’s banners, failing to tackle it head-on is unacceptable.

Read the comments also, well worth it! 

* Making sense one step at the time. Perhaps too late, but better late than never. ‘Human rights’ laws that seem to be written in stone in civilized nations don’t count for much in Islamistan, and never will.  So what is the point of upholding such laws if they protect terrorists who want to destroy us and flock to our countries to bomb us into submission?

Richard  Ford/ Times Online

The UK must withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) because its interpretation by the courts encourages terrorists to come to Britain, according to a report published today.

Ministers will continue to find it almost impossible to kick out terrorist suspects or those who have served a sentence for terrorism while the UK remains in the convention.

Human rights laws should be rewritten to take account of the new age of terrorism by excluding terrorists from its provisions, the report by Migrationwatch said.

Migrationwatch says that the convention and its interpretation by the courts is acting as a “positive encouragement” to terrorists to come to the UK because it is almost impossible to deport them to foreign states with poor human rights records.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: “The ECHR was drawn up 50 years ago in entirely different circumstances. We must now pull out of it and write our own laws to protect human rights for the majority.

“We now face a terrorist threat of a completely different order from past threats.”

Migrationwatch says the UK should give six months’ notice that it will withdraw from the convention and announce that that any foreigners convicted of a terrorist offence will be deported to their home country at the end of their sentence. The report adds that the Government should also be allowed to detain suspects for long periods of time.

* comment:

The Human Rights Act should be amended, or better still scrapped. But there’s a much more proactive way to sort out these foreign terrorists who live in Britain. Once they’ve served their very long sentence they must be removed from this country and at the beginning of their sentence their whole family including relatives must be removed from this country as well. This is the only way to stop these people carrying out their poisoness ideals. If these families and relatives knew that they will lose the lifestyle which they enjoy living in Britain their loyalties will change radically. There should be no appeals, no waste of British tax payers money to line the pockets of solicitors and barristers, just removal to the country from whence they came. No ifs, buts or maybe. No excuses. All their assets or wealth accumulated in Britain should be confiscated to pay for the miscreants board and lodging during his incarceration. Attitudes may then change for the better
Lynda Plum, London, england

 No Liberals Here, but you are free to practice Islam

* Because in Saudi Arabia, Allah’s personal petrol station in the Middle East, ‘Liberty and Freedom’- are seen as western, decadent concepts that must be attacked by the defenders of the faith who are always on the attack to defend their faith. So now, after this fatwa, the ‘liberals’ and the ‘moderates’ will be shaking in their sandals. Because if they don’t, they’ll cop it. You get the idea…

*

By Andrew Hammond

RIYADH (Reuters) – A religious edict by a prominent Saudi cleric suggesting liberals are not real Muslims has inflamed debate over reforms in the conservative Islamic state, with self-professed liberals fearing they will be attacked.

Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that rules by strict application of Islamic law, giving clerics a powerful position in society, but Islamists fear that liberal reformers are gaining ground under the rule of King Abdullah.

Responding to an online request for a religious edict, or fatwa, Sheikh Saleh al-Fozan said last month: “Calling oneself a liberal Muslim is a contradiction in terms … one should repent before God for such ideas in order to be a real Muslim.”

The fatwa said that liberal in this context meant “freedom which is not subject to the bounds of sharia (Islamic law) and which rejects sharia laws, especially concerning women…”

“He who wants freedom with only the controls of man-made law has rebelled against the law of God,” it said.

Fozan was recently forced to issue a clarification in Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh after Islamists hailed the fatwa as a declaration that liberals are infidels. He said pronouncing someone an infidel was a separate issue in Islamic law.

Such declarations, called takfeer in Arabic, are sensitive because al Qaeda militants fighting U.S.-allied governments in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and elsewhere in the region use the idea to justify their campaign of jihad, or holy war.

“Radicals say ‘Sheikh Fozan has issued the fatwa and we should act accordingly’, which is a little alarming,” said Hamza Mozainy, a well-known critic of the Saudi system, referring to Islamist Web sites that welcomed the fatwa.

Novelist Turki al-Hamad, a long-time target of Saudi Islamists, also said the fatwa could lead to violence.

“Even if his (Fozan) intention is not calling for violence, the implication is violence,” Hamad said.

Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment has for long focussed its attention on the word “secular”, which most Saudi reformers now avoid, but “liberal” has gained currency in its place.

Liberal and Islamist reformers both call for parliamentary elections limiting the desert country’s absolute monarchy.

But many liberals also want to see clerical influence rolled back, with, for example, Saudi Arabia’s religious police force disbanded and an end to strict gender segregation.

“When they hear ‘liberalism’ they perceive it as a form of moral corruption. They don’t know it’s a whole philosophy concerning freedom of the individual,” Hamad said.

“These fatwas are a kind of defence mechanism against this spreading idea.”

* Sure they are. Because if these ideas spread that would be the end of the cult…

Red Mosque: ‘High Value- Terrorists’ hide behind Brainwashed Children who plead to die as martyrs

Many of those inside the mosque compound are women and girls, and female students were among those led away.

In their standoff with the Pakistani government, the depraved holy warriors of the Red Mosque in Islamabad have surrounded themselves with children: Brainwashed children plead to die as martyrs in Red Mosque siege.

SAIMA KHAN wants to die a martyr. Life is transient, she told her father in a telephone call last week, and the real glory is to sacrifice it for Allah. Her statement would be alarming at any age, but Saima is only 10.

As she spoke, rifle shots rang out, the acrid smell of tear gas drifted over Islamabad and hundreds of troops surrounded the pro-Taliban Red Mosque, a religious school complex in the heart of Pakistan’s capital where Saima was among hundreds of children being held as virtual hostages in a stand-off between militants and the government.

Saima and her 14-year-old sister, Asma, were embroiled in a struggle for the soul of Pakistan in which up to 70 militants died last week and more than 100 were injured, according to mosque officials.

Holed up inside the complex behind the lines of troops and razor wire, the children – many of them girls whose families had sent them to the mosque to receive a strict Islamic education – repeatedly rejected relatives’ entreaties to leave before a threatened army onslaught.

There was evidence that many had been brainwashed into a cult of martyrdom, and the authorities feared last night that some were being prepared to be suicide bombers. In barely eight weeks, Saima had been transformed from a religious but fun-loving girl to a jihadi, grimly craving martyrdom.

ISLAMABAD: Eight “high value terrorists” wanted by Pakistan and other countries are holed up inside Lal Masjid, while another was killed by security forces in the ongoing operation, Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq said on Sunday.

“Nine suspected terrorists said to be far more dangerous and harmful than Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives were hiding inside the mosque compound,” Haq told a press conference here. He refused to reveal the identities of these militants.

* Wow!

“Nine suspected terrorists said to be far more dangerous and harmful than Al Qaeda and Taliban” – Sounds like they discovered a new species of Zombies…!

The mosque’s head cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz – who was seized as he tried to leave the building wearing a burka – said nearly 1,000 people – some armed – were still holed up inside.

Lal Masjid Update. “Eight top terrorists inside Lal Masjid,” from the Daily Times:

ISLAMABAD: Eight “high value terrorists” wanted by Pakistan and other countries are holed up inside Lal Masjid, while another was killed by security forces in the ongoing operation, Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq said on Sunday.
“Nine suspected terrorists said to be far more dangerous and harmful than Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives were hiding inside the mosque compound,” Haq told a press conference here. He refused to reveal the identities of these militants.

???????? Now, why would he do that?

He said that security forces killed one of these suspected terrorists inside Lal Masjid on the second day of the ongoing operation. He was the mastermind of the failed suicide attack on Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Attock in 2005, he said.
Haq said that the militants and not Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Lal Masjid’s deputy chief cleric, were controlling the mosque. “The militants are holding children and Ghazi hostage,” he said. He said that of those who had surrendered to the security forces, three girl students were still unclaimed. They were being kept at the Pakistan Sports Complex.
*

A curious and telling choice of words. In addition, Religious Affairs Minister Haq’s claim that Ghazi is a hostage seems highly unlikely, unless, of course, he was prevented from following in his brother’s footsteps and trying to escape in a burqa. Haq and many others may also be in denial that the problem could have roots in Pakistan, rather than being the work of outsiders.

Read it all…