RUTHFULLY YOURS

Abbas decided to hold local and municipal elections because his advisors convinced him that Hamas would boycott the vote, according to senior Fatah official Husam Khader.

The first sign of Hamas’s frightening platform emerged when one of its top muftis, Yunis Al-Astal, issued a fatwa banning Palestinians from voting for any other party other than Hamas. “Any person, male or female, who votes for a party other than Hamas will be considered an infidel and apostate and his or her repentance will not be accepted even if they fasted or prayed or performed the hajj [pilgrimage] to Mecca,” the mufti ruled.

This Hamas tactic has worked in the past. In the previous parliamentary election, Hamas used the same propaganda to brainwash and scare Palestinian voters.

By calling the election and allowing Hamas to participate, Abbas is digging his own grave, and presiding over the burial of any so-called peace process with Israel.

It is election season in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians are preparing to cast their votes in the local and municipal elections, scheduled to take place on October 8. The upcoming elections will be different from the last one, held in 2012 only in the West Bank, when Hamas boycotted the vote, allowing the rival Fatah faction to claim victory.

This time Hamas has decided to join the political fray — a move that caught Fatah and its leaders, including Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, by surprise.

Hamas’s decision to participate in the local and municipal elections has further aggravated tensions with Abbas’s Fatah faction, which continues to suffer from deep internal divisions and rivalries.

Young Muslims in Sweden, both men and women, defend honor killings. It reports the Göteborgs-Posten.
Social media star Qandeel Baloch has been described as Pakistan’s answer to Kim Kardashian. Last month she was strangled to death by her brother because she had posted scantily clad pictures of themselves online.

When the event was discussed in the Swedish-language Facebook group VIP Room, bringing together over 28,000 members, there were many who praised the killing.

“Sharaflös bride! She would lower her family’s reputation with their porn-like videos online. She comes from a religious family, her brother said to have warned her from before, but she did not listen, so he strangled her to death. Walla she deserves it!”

So write for example a 18-year-old Mohammed lives in Malmo in a post which, according to GC received 18 “like”.

“To all of you who think we email pigs would kill our own daughter / sister if they committed adultery greatly. You must understand that consequences exist. This chick died of their consequences, that she died because of his own actions,” explains one 20-year-old Muslim man from Stockholm according to GP.

“Heavy dude, should take a selfie with him since,” writes another Muslim man speaking of his brother.

The spike in anti-LGBT vitriol, predominantly during January and February this year, has intensified violence against sexual minorities throughout Indonesia, the report said.

Indonesia’s largest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama, in February described gay lifestyles as perverted and a desecration of human dignity.

In Aceh, the only Indonesian province that applies Islamic law, the local government urged business owners to refuse to hire gay citizens.

In interviews with activist groups, HRW reported gay rights organisations shut their offices and even hid staff as threats mounted against them.

In Yogyakarta an Islamist group forced the closure of a transgender Islamic boarding school, while a peaceful rally in the same Central Javan city in support of Indonesia’s LGBT community was shut down.

“The impact of anti-LGBT rhetoric from government officials is enormous for us as individuals. For those of us who have worked so hard and risked so much to come out, it is a major step backward,” a lesbian activist in eastern Indonesia told HRW.

A former Winnipeg man who was a known Islamic State sympathizer is dead following a police operation late Wednesday in the southern Ontario community of Strathroy.

Aaron Daniel Driver, 24, formerly of Charleswood, was living in Strathroy, 225 kilometres west of Toronto, after agreeing to a peace bond earlier this year that stopped him from communicating with Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

Driver was killed inside a Strathroy home and was suspected of plotting a suicide bomb attack in an unnamed major Canadian city. He was acting alone, media reported.

CTV News said “a loud explosion and gunshots” were reported by neighbours and the RCMP, a bomb squad and military special forces were involved in the operation.

Quoting “an internal government memo obtained by CTV News, the suspect allegedly planned to use an IED (improvised explosive device) to carry out a suicide bombing mission in a public area. His alleged plan, according to the document, was to create mass casualties.

“Officials feared that the plot could’ve been carried out on Wednesday during rush hour in a busy location,” CTV added.

Driver, who also went by the alias Harun Abdourahman, was released on a peace bond in February with 12 conditions — some expiring in August and others in December. He was not facing criminal charges, and no trial was scheduled.

The peace bond meant federal justice officials believed there were reasonable grounds Driver might aid a terrorist group or terrorist activity.

Roger Franklin :Holding the Man in Dubai

Given the discriminatory intent of the AFL’s programme to favour Muslim back-office recruits, it is difficult to imagine a more blatant hypocrisy. Not after this weekend’s Rainbow Round, which will see the League promote homosexuality while taking money from desert kingdoms that persecute gays.
The world’s greatest sport, Australian Rules football, has some problems at the moment. The recently re-vamped rules regulating when the ball has been forced out of bounds on purpose prompt much booing and bafflement in the stands. Likewise the high-tackle. Did the nippy rover duck into the knee that knocked him silly, or was flattened by an adversary’s contemptuous disregard for his safety? While these matters are moot, another aspect of the homegrown game is beyond dispute: its executives’ galloping hypocrisy.

Tonight (Friday, August 12) will see the first game of this weekend’s so-called Pride Game, which Chief Executive Gillon McLachlan is presenting as something akin to a manifestation of the AFL’s moral obligation to promote acceptance of the gay lifestyle. Just why a sporting code feels obliged to push alternate forms of human affection remains a mystery, one explained not at all by McLachlan’s conceit that the popularity of his code imposes an obligation “to lead” on this and other social issues. As Tim Blair points out, this agenda also includes preferential scholarships for Muslims, but adherents of no other creed. If you’re a devout Calathumpian who can slot six-pointers from the intersection of the boundary line and fifty, bad luck.

Given the bare-faced and discriminatory intent of that programme, it might be difficult to imagine a more blatant example of hypocrisy. Yet, as is so often the case with the AFL, it strives to exceed even its own worst standards.

Of around 850 Britons believed by authorities to have made their way to Syria and Iraq, more than 50 are women, say police.

LONDON—A British schoolgirl who ran away to Syria to join Islamic State is believed to have died in an airstrike, her family’s lawyer said Thursday.

Seventeen-year-old Kadiza Sultana made headlines last spring when she and two of her friends from an east London high school left their homes to marry fighters for the extremist group in Raqqa, the Syrian city that it controls.

Ms. Sultana’s family were told of her death “weeks ago,” by their own sources, said Tasnime Akunjee, the family’s lawyer.

“Her body was pulled from the rubble of a building hit by a bomb dropped from a Russian plane,” said Mr. Akunjee in a telephone interview.

It hadn’t been possible to verify whether she had died, he added. The family had informed authorities, he said, but they haven’t received any information on Ms. Sultana’s status in response, said Mr. Akunjee.

The U.K. Foreign Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.