RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13581/mohammad-al-issa

Dr. Mohammad Bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa is special. His thoughts are definitely constructive and pro-peace. One of his wishes, Al-Issa said, is that the prospective meeting in Jerusalem will be “a step toward what will some day be a more broad cross-faith acceptance of different faiths.” As a previous Minister of Justice in Saudi Arabia, he speculated that the time will come when people of different religions can go to any country, including Saudi Arabia, and publicly practice their faith.

One might agree with Al-Issa when he says that extremists attempt “to hijack the true religion, specifically through poisoning the minds of some young people with the idea of clash of civilizations and embedding the overstated idea of conspiracy.” There is, nevertheless, plain as day, the role played by that set of Quranic verses, hadiths, and the resultant interpretations and fatwas that regrettably still fuel a hatred of non-Muslims and “unbelievers.”

A project that the new Saudi Arabian crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, might consider is assembling a panel to see if anything in the hadith might be inauthentic.

The question facing many Muslims and their religious leaders who have similar attitudes is: will they be able to begin directly discussing the root causes of Muslims’ extremism and hatred of non-Muslims?

Dr. Mohammad Bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, Secretary General of Muslim World League, has been one of the most outstanding Muslim leaders; he has recognized the brutality of the Holocaust and criticized any denial of it.

Last January, he wrote a letter to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In the letter, he labeled the Holocaust as “an incident that shook humanity to the core, and created an event whose horrors could not be denied or underrated by any fair-minded or peace-loving person.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/finally_signs_of_hope_for_venezuela.html

Is it too soon to cheer for the Venezuelan people, who have taken their future into their own hands – at grave risk? Is it too soon to cheer the Trump administration for offering the interim government of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó support and recognition? Is it too soon to cheer the solidarity of the Western Hemisphere (minus Cuba and, sadly, Mexico)?

No. It is not.

Regardless of what happens tomorrow, this is a moment to hope, pray, hold our breath, and cheer. Video is available showing tens of thousands of Venezuelans marching through Caracas in support of Guaidó; other clips show security forces using live ammunition on people running through the streets. Thus far, the Venezuelan military has appeared loyal to Maduro, and at least eight people were reported killed in the streets.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo said, “We call on the Venezuelan military and security forces to continue protecting the welfare and well-being of all Venezuelan citizens, as well as U.S. and other foreign citizens in Venezuela.” It can be taken as a warning.

The Russians are there. Perhaps sensing trouble, in December, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that “two Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bombers, an Antonov An-124 heavy military transport aircraft and an Ilyushin Il-62 long-haul plane arrived at in Caracas.” Venezuela’s defense minister said up to 100 Russian personnel would arrive as part of a joint exercise. Not to be left out, Iranian naval deputy commander Rear Admiral Touraj Hassani Mogaddam announced, “Among our plans in the near future is to send two or three vessels with special helicopters to Venezuela in South America on a mission that could last five months.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tens-of-thousands-protest-venezuelan-president-maduro-11548264274?mod=hp_lead_pos

By Maolis Castro in Caracas, Venezuela, and Juan Forero and Kejal Vyas in Bogotá, Colombia

President Trump took on Venezuela’s leftist authoritarian president and his regime’s Russian and Chinese backers on Wednesday by recognizing the opposition leader of the oil-rich country’s congress as its legitimate head of state.

The U.S. move came just minutes after Juan Guaidó, the National Assembly’s 35-year-old leader, declared himself interim president and took an oath of office before a crowd of tens of thousands in the capital.

President Nicolás Maduro responded by vowing to stay in office and said he was severing diplomatic relations with the U.S.

“The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out” against Mr. Maduro “and demanded freedom and the rule of law,” Mr. Trump said. He said he would “use the full weight of United States economic and diplomatic power to press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy.”

http://newageislam.com/radical-islamism-and-jihad/tashny-sukumaran

Religion is a tricky subject for Kuala Lumpur-based freelancer Muhammad Ali. Born to a conservative Muslim family, he became an atheist but cannot express his beliefs publicly in Malaysia. The multiracial country is largely Muslim and apostasy from Islam is a criminal offence in some states, while the law decrees that only a sharia court can decide if a person is Muslim – their own agency counts for nothing.

Several years ago, there was a proposal to introduce the death penalty for leaving the religion, although this was swiftly dispensed with when the Pakatan Harapan coalition formed government, dethroning the more conservative Barisan Nasional last May.

In nearby Indonesia, where most of its 260 million people are Muslim, non-believers who comment on Islam and atheists vocal about their views face the spectre of blasphemy laws.

How both Southeast Asian countries handle the matter of Muslims leaving their faith became a topic of interest after Saudi Arabian teenager Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun barricaded herself in a Bangkok hotel room two weeks ago and lobbied for asylum. She said she had renounced Islam and fled from her family; apostasy in the kingdom can be punishable by death. Canada has since taken her in.

In Malaysia, besides the threat of prison, apostates face re-education in rehabilitation camps or whipping by state religious authorities. For Muhammad and many other atheists, this means “always looking over my shoulder”.

In 2017, he and his friends were viciously doxxed after a photo of them at an atheist gathering was shared online, with a federal minister even going so far as to say apostates – or murtads – had to “be hunted down”.

https://www.businessinsider.com/r-

BERLIN (Reuters) – Berlin has revoked Iranian airline Mahan’s right to operate in Germany, a senior government source told Reuters on Monday, giving both safety concerns and the suspicion that the airline was being used for military purposes as reasons.

The government suspects the airline, which has been on a United States sanctions list since 2011, is used for military purposes by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as well as for terrorist activities.

Several European Union countries accuse Iran of carrying out spying operations or planning attacks on the continent. The government source said that the flight did not constitute general sanctions against Iran.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-missile-defense-draws-a-new-iron-curtain-against-u-s-military-11548255438?mod=hp_lead_pos5

HMEIMIM AIR BASE, Syria—North from Syria, along the borders of Eastern Europe and rounding the Arctic Circle to the east, Russia has built a ring of air defenses that threaten the reach of the U.S. military, forcing Washington to rethink its place as the world’s undisputed air power.

Russia’s S-400 antiaircraft missile system, a nettlesome and potentially deadly aerial shield, is changing the calculus of the U.S. and its allies in potential hot spots, beginning with its deployment in Syria.

Radar employed by the S-400, which Russia claims can detect the latest stealth aircraft, casts a net around western Syria that stretches from Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea to Israel.

While it hasn’t been tested in battle, S-400 radar tracking has shooed away aircraft of the U.S.-led coalition in Syria “as soon as they see on their electronic indicators that they are being watched,” Lt. Gen. Viktor Gumyonny, commander of Russia’s air-defense forces, told a TV interviewer.

Russia’s hybrid warfare tactics against the West, including election meddling and online disinformation campaigns, have drawn the most attention from lawmakers and the U.S. government. Proliferation of the S-400 system demonstrates how Russia is also investing heavily in traditional military firepower.
Airborne Defense
Russia has disclosed only some locations of its S-400 antiaircraft missile system.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13595/palestinian-political-detainees

The Rome-based International Federation for Rights and Development last week condemned the Palestinian Authority for its crackdown on political opponents and said the detainees were being subjected to systematic physical and psychological torture in Palestinian prisons.

Palestinians say that Shaheen and Fattash are among dozens of “political detainees” who are being held in Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons and detention centers in various parts of the West Bank. According to some human rights organizations, the Palestinians held in PA prisons are often subjected to various forms of torture.

In a letter to Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a number of Palestinian human rights organizations recently demanded that the international agency speak out against the politically motivated arrests by the PA in the West Bank. It is highly unlikely, however, that the human rights organizations will receive any reply from the UN, whose various agencies continue to be obsessed only with Israel.

The UN does not seem to care about human rights violations committed by the PA against its own people. These are the type of stories that evidently do not interest either the UN or the international media because they lack an anti-Israel angle. The only “abuses” they see are those that can be blamed on Israel.

What is happening in the PA-controlled territories and prisons in the West Bank is a tiny taste of what life for the Palestinians would be like under a totalitarian regime that does not tolerate any form of criticism. In both the PA-controlled territories and Gaza, Palestinians must resort to the desperate measure of closing their mouths to food because they cannot open their mouths to demand decent treatment.

The mother and wife of a Palestinian man being held without trial in a Palestinian Authority (PA) prison in the West Bank have gone on hunger strike as part of a campaign to secure his release. Four days after they began their hunger strike, the two women were rushed to hospital for medical treatment. The women say they will not end their hunger strike unless the PA releases Abdel Rahman Shaheen, who was detained in early January.

The mother of another Palestinian being held in PA prison, Murad Fattash, has also gone on a hunger strike to protest the continued incarceration of her son, who was also detained by the PA in early January.

Palestinians say that Shaheen and Fattash are among dozens of “political detainees” who are being held in PA prisons and detention centers in various parts of the West Bank.

Most of the detainees were taken into custody for criticizing the PA and its leaders and policies. They include engineers, lawyers, university lecturers and students, journalists and political activists affiliated with opposition groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PLO’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.