Western Decadence or merely intolerance?

[VTA]

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By Rungrawee C. Pinyorat
ASSOCIATED PRESS
10:32 a.m. September 18, 2005
PATTANI, Thailand – The open-air market in this southern Thai city falls eerily quiet on Fridays. Most vendors stay home, terrorized by leaflets threatening to kill or cut off the ears of anyone who works on the Muslim holy day.

After 20 months of insurgent violence, the no-work threat has driven another nail into what is becoming an economic coffin in Thailand's terrorized southern provinces.

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Among the hundreds killed in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are police and soldiers, but police records show that 80 percent are civilians – rubber tappers, shopkeepers, civil servants, construction workers and ice cream vendors...

 

[VTA]

Oh those decadent Indonesians...

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OPINION: Indonesian radicals in aggressive mode
AMY CHEW

Sept 20
Indonesia’s doctrine of diversity has come under attack in recent months from a group of extremists. Though small, they appear to enjoy the support of influential sections in the Government. AMY CHEW looks at the implications for Indonesian society.

ARMED with sticks and stones, hundreds of Indonesian Muslim extremists descended on the Ahmadiyah, a small peaceful Muslim group in Bogor, West Java, in July.

The attackers set fire to the women’s dormitory and knock- ed down a gate fronting the Ahmadiyah complex as its followers looked on helplessly. Some 300 policemen were on guard but failed to prevent the attack.

Shortly after, Emilia Renita, 38, a Shia Muslim in Jakarta started receiving threatening messages on her mobile phone saying: "Shias are deviant. Their blood is halal."

"I was shocked. I am Muslim and yet I am threatened. What more for those who are non-Muslims?" she said.

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So far, the radicals have targeted moderate, liberal and non-Sunni Muslims.

Ahmadiyah, which previously existed peacefully with other Muslims, is considered deviant as its followers believe their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is the successor to the Prophet Muhammad...

 

[VTA]

And for our decadent friends in BANGLADESH...

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BANGLADESH: Journalists targeted in rising tide of Muslim extremism

Letters containing death threats common for journalists.

South China Morning Post
Monday, September 19, 2005

A chill ran down the spine of journalist Mizanur Rahman when a neatly folded white cloth symbolising an Islamic burial shroud slipped out of the packet he received by post this month.

An accompanying letter said that for his "anti-Islamic" reporting for the Dhaka daily Janakantha he would soon be executed.

White shrouds and death threats also reached eight other newspaper journalists in Satkhira, a southern district of Bangladesh, the same day.

The letters were signed by leaders of the outlawed Islamic militant group Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh [JMJB or, Awakened Muslim Citizens of Bangladesh], the orthodox Islamic movement Ahl-e-Hadith [followers of sayings of the Prophet] and Jamat-e-Islami Bangladesh, an Islamic political party which is a partner in the ruling federal coalition in Bangladesh. The letters threatened that the journalists would be "slaughtered" because through their writings they were attacking the Islamic leaders who wanted to transform the country into a pure Islamic nation.

"We are determined to bring a total Islamic rule in Bangladesh through an armed revolution. You [the journalists] are some of the obstacles in our way to achieve the goals. So, you face removal from the Earth," the letter said...