Islamic Extremists

Earlier this year, after Comedy Central altered an episode of "South Park" that had prompted threats because of the way it depicted Islam's prophet Muhammad, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris proposed an "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day. " The idea was, as she put it, to stand up for the 1st Amendment and "water down the pool of targets" for extremists. The proposal got Norris targeted for assassination by radical Yemeni American cleric Anwar Awlaki, who has been linked to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight and also to several of the 9/11 hijackers.

The Shabab militant Islamic group retreated early Saturday from war-battered Mogadishu, leaving residents to awaken to hushed streets as the government claimed victory against extremist forces that had tormented the Somali capital for years. It was not clear whether the move signaled a lasting withdrawal by the Al Qaeda-linked group or was a tactical shift in preparation for a counterattack. The rebels have been pounded in recent months by 9,000 government-backed African Union soldiers and U.S. drone strikes that have targeted Shabab commanders.

A huge police dragnet through Cairo's sprawling slum of Imbaba, a district so dominated by Islamic fundamentalists that police had feared to enter parts of it after dark, has netted more than 600 arrests and an end to the extremists' reign, authorities said Sunday.

Tragedy in Norway Re " At least 87 die in Norway terror attacks: Suspicion falls on Islamic extremists or neo-Nazi groups after a blast in Oslo and a shooting rampage ," July 23, and " Muslims feel the sting of blame ," July 24 Muslims like me, who live in America, took a collective sigh of relief when it was learned that the person apparently responsible for this carnage was a Norwegian native of Christian faith. Western media seem to have jumped the gun in immediately pointing accusing fingers at "Muslim terrorists" being responsible for this mayhem.

Armed Islamic extremists warned all foreigners to leave Algeria within a month or risk "sudden death," according to a communique given to a released French hostage and made public Thursday. France, reacting to the threat, said it is reducing its diplomatic staff and urged French families who left Algeria last week for the All Saints' Day holiday not to return.

Islamic extremists claimed responsibility Wednesday for the killing of a Saudi Arabian Embassy employee, and the Saudi ambassador said his embassy had received more than 100 threatening letters before the attack. Police speculated that a sole gunman shot Abdulgani Bedawi, the embassy's telex operator, as he returned to his Ankara apartment Tuesday night, Ankara Gov. Saffet Arikan Beduk said.

Islamic militants kidnapped 16 Western tourists, including two Americans, in southern Yemen on Monday and demanded the release of two jailed leaders, security officials said. In exchange for the tourists' freedom, kidnappers from the Islamic Jihad extremist group wanted leader Saleh Haidara Atwi and another top militant released, officials said. The two were arrested by Yemeni authorities two weeks ago.

Mozart has survived grandiose conductors and abstract interpretations, but the librettos for his operas never cast Islamic radicals threatening a skittish theater company. On a day of messy drama and furious debate over free speech, German Opera in Berlin reaffirmed Tuesday its decision not to revive a production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" out of fear of inciting Islamic extremists over a scene showing the severed head of the prophet Muhammad.

The Rev. Eleya Komoss was seated in the confession room when the low murmurs inside the Mar Girgis Church where a weekly meeting of young Coptic Christians was in progress were replaced by the jarring staccato of machine-gun fire. "I opened the door and found everyone running about," the Coptic priest recounted Friday. "There were two girls who had been shot in the back. I pulled them inside. Another man shot in the back was calling out to me, 'Help me, Father,' so I pulled him inside too.

It turns out that killing Osama bin Laden was the easy part. Dealing with the political fallout from the May 2 raid on the Al Qaeda leader's Pakistan compound is proving trickier. And Congress isn't helping. President Obama evidently made a calculated decision not to inform Pakistani leaders in advance of the raid, which was probably the right move from a military standpoint but extraordinarily provocative diplomatically. With relations already seriously frayed because of civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes and the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in January, the raid was seen by Pakistanis as a humiliating violation of national sovereignty.

A horrific shooting rampage at a summer youth camp and a massive bomb in downtown Oslo stunned Norway, leaving at least 87 people dead in apparently related terrorist attacks in a nation long known as the home of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attacks, but speculation swirled around both Islamic militant groups and domestic right-wing extremists. Al Qaeda previously has singled out Norway as an intended target, and a shadowy group affiliated with the terrorist network reportedly claimed responsibility, a statement that could not be verified.

A senior Pakistani army officer suspected of having links to an Islamic extremist group has been arrested, authorities said Tuesday, a move possibly aimed at deflating Western concerns that the nation's military is doing little to end ties with dangerous organizations. Ali Khan, a brigadier assigned to Pakistan's army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, has been in custody for some time, said a Pakistani military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss such issues.

It turns out that killing Osama bin Laden was the easy part. Dealing with the political fallout from the May 2 raid on the Al Qaeda leader's Pakistan compound is proving trickier. And Congress isn't helping. President Obama evidently made a calculated decision not to inform Pakistani leaders in advance of the raid, which was probably the right move from a military standpoint but extraordinarily provocative diplomatically. With relations already seriously frayed because of civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes and the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in January, the raid was seen by Pakistanis as a humiliating violation of national sovereignty.

The Temecula City Council early Wednesday morning unanimously approved a proposed mosque after a marathon eight-hour hearing that seesawed from vitriolic rants from residents castigating Muslims as terrorists to interfaith leaders praising the peaceful virtues of Islam. In the end, the council's decision was made solely based on mundane issues such as traffic, parking and environmental impacts, with the council agreeing that the project exceeded all legal requirements for approval.

Denmark Jyllands-Posten, Muhammad cartoon, terrorism: Five suspected militants arrested in Denmark terrorism plot Scandinavian authorities thwarted what they describe as a terrorist attack in Denmark targeting the newspaper that published the infamous caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, arresting five suspected Islamic militants Wednesday. According to a statement published by the Danish spy agency PET, the suspected militants' target was the Copenhagen offices of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that in 2005 published cartoons depicting Muhammad, who founded the Islamic religion in the 7th century.

Earlier this year, after Comedy Central altered an episode of "South Park" that had prompted threats because of the way it depicted Islam's prophet Muhammad, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris proposed an "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day. " The idea was, as she put it, to stand up for the 1st Amendment and "water down the pool of targets" for extremists. The proposal got Norris targeted for assassination by radical Yemeni American cleric Anwar Awlaki, who has been linked to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight and also to several of the 9/11 hijackers.

The assassination attempt against President Hosni Mubarak marks a major escalation in the three-year Egyptian insurgency, which has defied ruthless, often bloody attempts to quash it, Middle East experts and counterterrorism officials here said Monday. Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Ethiopia--the most daring and sophisticated of several recent plots against Mubarak--Islamic extremists are widely believed to be responsible.

Millions of voters in the North African nation of Algeria defied death threats and boycott calls from Islamic extremists to cast ballots Thursday in the country's first multi-party presidential elections. Few doubted that President Liamine Zeroual, the retired general appointed by the army two years ago to lead Algeria, would win the election, if not on the first ballot then on a second one next month.

Four Islamic extremists escaped from a prison in the Baghdad airport compound that the U.S. military had handed over to the Iraqi government with great fanfare last week, state television reported Thursday. The escape from under the noses of Iraqi and U.S. military forces was sure to raise questions about the competence and loyalties of officials running the prison system as the number of American troops falls to 50,000 by the end of next month. The detainees who escaped included men who served as de facto finance and interior ministers for the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant umbrella group dominated by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the report said.

Muslims throughout Temecula and Murrieta have saved up for years to build a mosque to replace the plain white industrial building, tucked between a pipeline company and packaging warehouse, where they now gather to pray. But as the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley moves ahead with plans to build on a four-acre plot of vacant land near Temecula's gentle hills and invading housing developments, plans for the new mosque have stirred hostility in this mostly conservative community in southwest Riverside County.