"An American Muslim convert from Fairfax county in Virginia has pleaded guilty to ties with Somali Islamist militants and of urging attacks on perceived blasphemist writers of a popular television cartoon show, reports said on Wednesday.

Zachary Adam Jesser (Photo: Jawa Report)

Zachary Adam Chesser, 20, was apparently incensed by the alleged disparaging depiction of Prophet Mohammed in 'South Park.'

Chesser pleaded guilty to three counts including communicating threats, soliciting others to threaten violence and providing material support to al-Shabaab, the Somali militant outfit with suspected links to al-Qaeda proscribed by the U.S. 

He also published residential addresses of the writers of South Park and urged online readers to 'visit' them.

The charges carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years.

According to prosecutors, he also tried to travel twice to Somalia to join al-Shabaab and even attempted to carry his infant son in the belief that it could help evade detection."

"Some immigrants from the Middle East are Christians escaping persecution... But the vast majority are Muslims. Plausible estimates of the number of Muslims in America vary widely, from 1.3 million to five million. But there is a consensus that Muslim Americans’ share of the population is climbing.

According to a large survey by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), the number of people in America who described themselves as Muslims more than doubled between 1990 and 2008, from 527,000 to 1.35 million.

By other measures, too, American Muslims are thriving. According to the ARIS study, 35 percent of American Muslims age 25 years and older have college degrees, a share equal to or higher than that of any other religion except Judaism and “Eastern religions.” And a Cornell University study found that Muslim Americans generally earn more money than Americans of other religions.

The deeper irony in the ongoing debates over religious liberty and freedom of speech in America is that these debates wouldn’t even be allowed to take place across most of the Muslim world.

A December 2009 Pew Forum survey on religious freedom found that 70 percent of the world lives in areas of high restrictions of religion. Many of those affected are Christians living in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, freedom of religion is defined as the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. No matter how it is defined, religious freedom is not a right enjoyed by most of the approximately 12 to 17 million Christians in the Middle East."

Foto: Imago (Msn).

"Police and domestic intelligence agencies are now investigating in both the city-state of Hamburg and the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after CDU officials said their party sites were paralysed overnight when hackers replaced their homepages with a black background featuring a Turkish crest and critical comments.

Hackers “GHoST61” and “Emre Y” had left their mark claiming responsibility for sabotaging the site, with the comment, “Hi Hamburg: We are from Turkey.”

In Hamburg the CDU took its website offline by mid-morning on Tuesday, spokesperson Anna Christina Hinze said.

The Mecklenburg-Western Pomeranian arm of the CDU had a similar experience, discovering that their website had been replaced with an Ottoman Empire crest and some pointed questions about the party’s immigration policies. Their site was repaired by afternoon.

The hackers left a message asking: “Where is the money for integration? Where is the money for mosques?” and “Where is the tolerance? Where is the freedom of religion?“"

Dutch prosecutors are asking judges to acquit anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders of all charges of inciting hate and discrimination against Muslims.

The move by prosecutors signals their belief the case against Wilders is weak, but judges could still disagree and convict him. The trial continues next week.

Prosecutor Paul Velleman told the court Friday that most of Wilders' remarks -- which include comparing Islam with Naziism -- appear to target Islam as an ideology, not single out Muslims for abuse.

Prosecutors initially declined to press charges, but were ordered to do so by an appeals court that ruled there was significant evidence against the influential politician. 

"Prosecutors in the trial of anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders say he should be acquitted of group defamation.

The populist Dutch MP is standing trial for defamation of Muslims as a group because of his comparison of the Qur’an to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He is also charged with inciting hatred and discrimination.

Public prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman now say his comments on the Qur’an referred to Islam and its holy book, and not to Muslim people.

In explaining their call for acquittal on the defamation charges, the prosecutors also explained that statements contained in the MP’s film, Fitna, referred to Islam as a religion and not to its followers. Even though the statements could hurt the feelings of Muslims, that was not the same as defamation of the group.

On Friday, the prosecutors will either press for Mr Wilders to be found guilty on the incitement charges or for him to be acquitted. If they call for a guilty verdict, they will also put forward what they consider an appropriate sentence."

The Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the political party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was forced on Tuesday to cancel a public debate organized in its headquarters, amid concerns that the debate would spark new accusations of racism and discrimination.

Titled “Immigration, Islamism: Is France Threatened?,” the controversial debate did not come at a good time for UMP, which is now presenting a new bill on immigration in the Assemblee Nationale (National Assembly), the lower house of French bicameral Parliament.

“We have chosen this time to really participate in Parliament discussions on future immigration law, as they are starting this week and will be at full intensity on that day,” explained the Droite Libre (Free Right), the UMP-associated group that organized the meeting.

“These issues are a concern to our fellow citizens, yet they almost never have a chance to discuss them; those who dare to mention immigration and Islam are framed by the intellectual terror of ‘political correctness.’”

Iranian officials have canceled today the residence of the correspondent of El País in Tehran, Angeles Espinosa, who has been given two weeks to leave the Islamic Republic. The move is further evidence of the nervousness of the regime against any criticism. Espinosa, who was credited to work in Iran for five years, was arrested in Qom last July when he went to interview Ahmad Montazeri, the son of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who died last year, and since then authorities had withdrawn the journalist card.

"Journalists have no freedom to travel outside Tehran. We must apply for permission and I never would have obtained for that interview," admits Espinosa. However, after a severe reprimand those responsible for the Office of Foreign Press gave it that recover your card when she return from vacation.

Back in Teheran the journalist tried to regain her accreditation, but instead, she was deprived of her passport for three weeks. All foreigners residing in Iran need an exit visa to leave the country and Espinosa was unable to be stamped with the seal, which kept it in a troubling limbo. Until yesterday, when they finally surrendered her passport with the residence permit canceled and an order to leave Iran before Oct. 24th.

"Nobody has given me any explanation. Since returning from my vacation, the General Director for Foreign Press has refused to see me and the new head of the office made me understand that he could not help me, that the orders came from the other side" Espinosa said. "Through others, I have been informed that the interview with Montazeri, in which he criticized the Supreme Leader, has been the drop that overflowed the glass, but they were already very upset with my work since the last elections and El País campaign in defense of Sakineh Ashtiani.

The sentence by stoning imposed on that woman has mobilized the international community. Iran, one of the few countries that still maintains the stoning in its criminal code, has tried unsuccessfully to neutralize this new blow to its already tarnished image.

"The level of tolerance of criticism has been greatly reduced since the arrival to the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," said Espinosa. Last year, following protests that the Iranians were his controversial re-election, Iran also expelled the BBC correspondent and urged the departure of the envoys who had come to cover the elections. Since then the Govt has given visas sparingly and censorship has grown exponentially internal.

There are no reformist newspapers in the streets and at least fifty Iranian journalists in prison, which according to Reporters Without Borders makes Iran the biggest prison for reporters. Although initially many independent journalists took refuge in the blogs, the regime has also increased control of the internet and imprisoned numerous bloggers. A few days ago, Hossein Derakhshan, known as the father of blogging, was sentenced to 19 years and six months in jail. Another well-known blogger, Hengame Shahidi, has been denied necessary medical care in prison.

Morocco's topselling Arabic language weekly 'Nichane', which had taken up in the past taboo subjects like monarchy and Islam, closed shop last week blaming "the highest circles of power" for organising a boycott of advertisers.

The trouble for the magazine began last year after Nichane, its French-language sister publication TelQuel and France's Le Monde newspaper conducted an opinion poll on the monarchy. The poll, which found that King Mohammed VI had done a good overall job in the first decade of his reign but needed to do more to reduce poverty, was swiftly censored. About 100,000 copies of the magazine were destroyed, and the particular edition of Le Monde was banned from selling in Morocco. The reason given was that the monarchy "cannot be the object of debate even through a poll".

The royal holding company Omnium Nord-Africain Group was the first to boycott Nichane (which means "straighforward" or "direct"), followed by state-owned and quasi-state businesses close to the government. The boycott was brazen. After the revenues dipped to 80 percent, the shareholders decided it was time to take a call. They met last week and decided to close down the magazine, the TelQuel group said in a statement later.

TelQuel, meanwhile, will continue to publish. Since most of its French-language advertisers are based outside of Morocco, it does not face any immediate danger.

The Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders has gone on trial in Amsterdam accused of inciting hatred against Muslims.

Mr Wilders, whose statements have included comparing the Koran with Hitler's Mein Kampf, told the court freedom of expression was on trial.

If found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of a year in jail.

Mr Wilders' Freedom Party is the third biggest in the Netherlands after June's elections, and is expected to play a key role in the next parliament.

Prosecutors have brought five charges of inciting hatred and discrimination, and the trial will scrutinise statements he made between 2006 and 2008.

Norwegian historian Halvor Tjønn has written a biography of Muhammad the founder of Islam and Oslo publisher Kagge had agreed to publish the book and even listed it in last year’s fall catalog.

However the publisher has suddenly pulled out of the project and now refuses to give any explanations of why it will no longer publish the book.

According to the author there should be nothing in the book that would upset Muslims. There are no illustrations of Muhammad and all of the key references used in the work are from the 8th and 9th centuries.

CNSNews thanks to AOW:

The Quran-burning controversy in the United States has prompted the Islamic bloc at the United Nations to revive its call for the U.N. to set up an “international monitoring mechanism” to track incidents of “Islamophobia.”

Muslim nations must collectively resist growing Islamophobia in the US and Europe, the head of the world's largest organization of Islamic countries told ministers from the 57 member nations gathered here this week. 

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu urged members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to work with Western leaders to dispel misconceptions about their faith. They met on the edge of the UN General Assembly. 

... "The Muslim world is going through an unprecedented difficult and trying time," Ihsanoglu told the ministers during their annual meeting on Friday. "We are facing daunting challenges and severe hardships. Islam and Muslims are under serious attack, and Islamophobia is growing and becoming more rampant and dangerous by the day."

He said a "pandemic of Islam vilification" is sweeping through some parts of Europe and the United States, increasing misperceptions about Islam and eroding Muslims' human rights.

“We have a little bit of freedom,” said Khaled al-Ekhetyar, a 29-year-old journalist for a Web site whose business card shows a face with hands covering up the eyes and mouth. “We can say things that can’t be said in print.”

But that slim margin is threatened by an ever present fog of fear and intimidation, and some journalists fear that it could soon be snuffed out. A draft law regulating online media would clamp down on Syrian bloggers and other journalists, forcing them to register as syndicate members and submit their writing for review. Other Arab countries regularly jail journalists who express dissident views, but Syria may be the most restrictive of all.

Most of the Syrian media is still owned by the state. Privately owned media outlets became legal in 2001, as the socialist economy slowly began to liberalize following the accession of President Bashar al-Assad. But much of the sector is owned by members of the Syrian “oligarchy” — relatives of Mr. Assad and other top government officials. All of it is subject to intimidation and heavy-handed control.

“The first level is censorship,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, the founder of All4Syria.info, the independent Web site where Mr. Ekhetyar works. “The second level is when they send you statements and force you to publish them.” Like many other journalists and dissidents, Mr. Abdel Nour has left the country and now lives abroad.

A group self-called Islamic Ghosts Team (Islamic Ghosts) has cracked the website of the Sixth Biennial of Photography Miserachs Xavier de Palafrugell, leaving the all-black page with a single entry: the name of this group of crackers.

The biennial, which opened Sept. 11 and closes tomorrow, has eight exhibition halls spread over different municipality, including the photographer Alfonso del Moral (Valladolid, 1977), which presents a striking set of images on heroin addicts in Kabul.

Perhaps these photographs led the Islamic Ghosts Team to attack the web of the biennial, which at the time of this writing, is still hacked. A search on Google can see that the same group has carried out similar actions against other sites, including the ones of the Granollers Institute and the presidency of the Republic of Guyana.

The US government placed Anwar al-Awlaki, a key leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, on its list of terrorism supporters, froze his financial assets and banned any transactions with him.

The measures were outlined in Executive Order 13224 issued Friday by the US Treasury Department.

"Anwar al-Awlaki has proven that he is extraordinarily dangerous, committed to carrying out deadly attacks on Americans and others worldwide," said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey.

"He has involved himself in every aspect of the supply chain of terrorism -- fundraising for terrorist groups, recruiting and training operatives, and planning and ordering attacks on innocents."

Awlaki, now based in Yemen, rose to prominence last year after it emerged he had communicated by email with Major Nidal Hasan, a US army psychiatrist accused of opening fire on colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13.

The imam has also been linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian student accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound flight with explosives in his underwear on December 25.

A prominent Iranian rights campaigner has been sentenced to six years in jail after he recorded an interview for the BBC's Persian language TV channel.

Emad Baghi was convicted of engaging in propaganda against the Islamic system, a statement on his website said.

The court charges referred to his BBC interview with Iran's leading reformist cleric, the late Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri.

Mr Baghi, 49, remains free, pending an appeal hearing.

The interview was broadcast after the death of Ayatollah Montazeri in December 2009. His funeral sparked a series of anti-government demonstrations across Iran.

Mr Baghi was arrested days later, then freed on bail in June.

In a separate case, he was sentenced in July to one year in prison and banned from political activities for five years, after being convicted of endangering national security in relation to his work defending prisoners' rights. An appeal court upheld the sentence on Tuesday.

....He has spent four-and-a-half years in prison over the past decade, and suffers from serious heart and kidney ailments.

The public prosecution department announced on Tuesday it is dropping its case against a cartoonist arrested in 2008 on discrimination charges. 

The cartoonist, who operates under the pseudonym Gregorius Nekschot, published the controversial cartoons on his website. He was arrested in 2008 following a complaint made in 2005.

Although the department considers the cartoons discriminate against Muslims and 'people with dark skins', it made the decision to drop the case because the cartoons have not appeared on the website since shortly after Nekschot's arrest. In addition, the cartoonist spent 24 hours in jail following his arrest, reports the Volkskrant.

The fact that the complaint was made as far back as 2005 and there have been no further complaints also played a role, the paper says.

I have received two messages on my Facebook inbox, in the first message, the sender threatened of slaughtering me like sheep being slain! in the second message titled ” an appointment” , the sender says to me : “we shall meet at Elhajeb where murdering you is going to take a place!” Elhajeb, however, 15 km away from my village, is the nearest place which i often go to every now and then! This points out that the terrorist exerted extra efforts to find out my location!