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Baghdad, July 21: Abject poverty across Iraq is fuelling an illegal trade in human organs. Hundreds of people are believed to have sold kidneys and other organs through dealers in the capital, Baghdad, over the last year.

Karim Hussein made the long journey from Amara, a province in the south of Iraq, to Baghdad because he was desperate for the $3,000 he would get from the sale of a kidney there.

“I thought I would be able to get work in order to be able to pay my debts back, but the daily amount I am getting is not enough to feed my family, I have eight children.”

A first of a kind lexicon in Australia is going to guide politicians, police and public servants on how to speak about Islam and terrorism without implicating the peaceful religion, in a bid to defuse growing anti-Muslim sentiments in the country.
“Talk about ‘violent extremists’, because that’s what they are, or name the group,” Hass Dellal, head of the Australian Multicultural Foundation (AMF), told The Age on Monday, July 20.

The book, A Lexicon on Terror, is sponsored by Dellal’s Foundation and the Victoria State Police.

This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza.

Muslims on Monday celebrate, “Isra wal Miraj,” the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Allaihi Wassalam’s “Night Journey and Ascension,” which Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Datu Zaldy Uy Ampatuan has declared a non-working holiday in the region’s five provinces and one city.

On 27th Rajab (40 Aamul Feel) the Holy Prophet (PBUH) made known to the people his mission of Prophet hood.

The 27th is therefore, a highly blessed night.

1. Take a bath and put on clean clothes.
2. Give alms in the way of Allah.
3. Just before midnight pray 12 Rak-a’t Namaaz, in 6 sets of 2 Rak-a’t each. In every
Rak-a’t recite Soorah Al Faatih’ah and any other Soorah (any one soorah from Soorah Muhammad to An Naas).

After the salaam recite each of the following Soorahs 7 times:

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

American Muslims are slamming a draft law in the northwestern state of Oregon to ban teachers from wearing religious dress such as hijab at public school.
“This legislation forces Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and others to choose between their faith and entering the teaching profession,” Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a press release.

The Oregon state legislature has passed a bill banning teachers from wearing religious dress at schools and will be signed by the Oregon governor into law.

In a new bid to prevent the opening of a Muslim school in the area, the New South Wales government is seeking to put its hand on a Muslim-owned land, tearing down a two-year dream of having a new school to serve 1200 Australian Muslim pupils.
“I did deliberated long and hard on this decision,” Education Minister Verity Firth told ABC on Friday, July 17.

Firth issued a decision to buy back a plot of land owned by Al Amanah College, arguing the land would be used to build a special school for children with disabilities.

Founded in Geneva, Switzerland in 1863, the International Committee of the Red Cross is an “impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence and to provide them with assistance.” It also tries “to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles.”

Tehran, July 18: In a sign of endurance for Iran’s protest movement, demonstrators clashed with police Friday as one of the nation’s most powerful clerics challenged the supreme leader during Muslim prayers, saying country was in crisis in the wake of a disputed election.

One is not sure what had been the context of William Gladstone’s prophetic warning that justice delayed is justice denied. But it’s as though the British politician had India’s Liberhan Commission in his mind and the charade it has unleashed on an unsuspecting country when he proffered that much worn-out advice.

Egypt has finally decided to fight the rising phenomenon of sexual harassment on its streets, choosing mosques as the launching pad of its war against stalkers.
“Harassment has reached very dangerous levels,” Sheikh Saad al-Takky, a senior Ministry of Religious Endowments official, told IslamOnline.net.

“There must be some serious action to curb it and our ministry has decided to take this action.”

Having the country’s second largest oil producer, a versatile economy and located as a buffer zone against hot spots, resources-rich, Muslim-majority Xinjiang province is vital to China’s economic and geopolitical interests.

“It is China’s northwest frontier, and like Tibet, is absolutely vital to the country’s security,” Wenran Jiang, a China expert at the University of Alberta, told.

“Beijing will not compromise in any way on these regions.”

Spanning over 1.6 million km2, Xinjiang makes up about one sixth of China’s territory.

A 14-year-old boy, Irfan, was crossing the road near his house in Delhi when a Tavera car screeched to a halt near him, he was bundled into the car and pinned down under the heavy feet with pistol kept to his head.

The mother kept searching for the boy. Had it not the car’s numberplate and the judiciary’s help, the boy may not have been tracked and released in ten days, from a secret Abu Gharaib-like torture cell in faraway Gujarat where he underwent such torture which even the adults can’t even dream to endure.

War for supremacy is on in Pakistan between President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Army-ISI, and the Opposition led by Mian Nawaz Sharif.

Although Iranian authorities were quick to condemn the killing of a Muslim Egyptian woman by an alleged racist in a German courtroom last week, allowing protesters to organize a demonstration and hurl eggs at the German Embassy in Tehran, they’ve been less than compassionate about scores of Muslims killed in western China.

Conservationists have expressed concern over the decision to allow free entry to the Taj Mahal for three days from July 19 when the annual Urs pilgrimage of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan starts.

“The ‘carrying capacity’ of the monument, which has exercised both the experts in the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Supreme Court in the past few years, is not a laughing matter,” said Surendra Sharma, president of the Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation Society.

Historian R. Nath has also expressed concern about the safety of the monument from increasing human load.

The inhabitants of the Arabian Gulf have enjoyed the use of perfumes for several centuries. Arabian perfumes date back to before the era of Islam and their use is encouraged in Islam. The Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) encouraged believers to wear perfume, especially on Fridays for the “Jumaa prayer” (Friday noontime prayers).

In the gulf region a woman’s beauty has always been associated with perfume and Emirati men and women both use perfumes on a frequent basis.

THE EVENTS of that night are only too well known, they are etched in the nation’s conscience. That night, on 26/11, terror unfolded, step by step and went something like this — ten well-armed terrorists got off a dinghy and walked ashore in the posh Gateway of India area and broke up into pairs. Trained to navigate the high seas and wage high-tech urban jehad, each pair had been tasked to separate locations. The first bullet rang out at Colaba’s popular Leopold Café, just after 9.30.

A Muslim center in Australia can no longer hold Friday prayers in Cannington, Perth, a court ordered Tuesday, citing complaints that the faithful jam the neighborhood on a weekly basis and exceed the center’s designated limit.

The court complained Muslims attending the congregational prayer, held once every week, exceed their numbers and take over all parking spots in the industrial neighborhood in Perth,western Australia,where the Daawah Association of Western Australia prayer center is located.

As the latest inquiry into Israel’s war on Gaza hears the harrowing testimonies of Palestinian survivors, Edward Platt exposes the obstacles in the way of truth and a fair trial

Where political leaders have failed to come up with a plan to save the planet from global warming, religious leaders have succeeded. On July 6, Islamic leaders from over 50 Muslim countries, including heads of states of Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, will meet in Istanbul to sign an agreement on environment conservation.

An announcement is expected on Haj pilgrimage becoming green from next year and environment studies being included in religious schools. Already, a mosque in Leicester, Britain has become the world’s first green mosque.

The day US President Barack Obama reached out to Muslims around the world through his speech at the Turkish Parliament, saying the United States “is not and will never be at war with Islam,” Muslim Americans described what looked like a war on their community in the US. The American Muslim Taskforce (AMT) on Civil Rights and Elections, a coalition of major national Islamic organizations, discussed their concerns at a briefing at the National Press Club on April 6.

American Muslims are distributing thousands of free copies of the Noble Qur’an to US officials and policymakers as part of a wider campaign to educate Americans about Islam.
“Educating our nation’s leaders about Islam and the Qur’an is the American Muslim community’s responsibility,” Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement e-mailed to IslamOnline.net.

The “Share The Qur’an” campaign includes distributing 100,000 free copies of Qur’an among local, state and national officials.

Jerusalem, July 03: Amnesty accused Israeli forces on Thursday of war crimes in Gaza, saying they used children as human shields and conducted wanton attacks on civilians, in a report rejected as “unbalanced” by Israel.

The London-based human rights group also accused Hamas of war crimes, but said it found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Gaza’s Islamist rulers used civilians as human shields during Israel’s massive 22-day offensive.