Maddog, as it was stated in the release and from what the
company revised, I think the i-box info should be updated.

The i box needs some upgrading too.

Iran Acknowledges Widespread Human Rights Violations In Prisons
by ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Sun Jul 24


TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - In an unprecedented report, Iran's hard-line judiciary Sunday acknowledged widespread human rights violations in prisons, including use of torture and solitary confinement, state-run media reported Sunday.

The report, which was broadcast by state-run radio Sunday, said prison guards and officials in detention centers have ignored a legal order banning torture. It also said police have made several arrests without sufficient evidence and held suspects in undeclared detention centers.

The report was a front page story in several newspapers on Sunday including the government-owned daily "Iran."

"Blindfolding and beating defendants, jailing a 13-year old boy for stealing a hen in the worst detention center, holding a 73 year-old woman in prison for lack of financial ability and taking a woman to prison because her husband is on the run are clear examples of human rights violations discovered by the judiciary in months of investigations," the report said.

The report said the judiciary also discovered a man in a prison since 1988 while no verdict had been issued against him. It didn't elaborate.

The detailed report has been handed over to the head of judiciary Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.

Abbas Ali Alizadeh, head of the Tehran Justice Administration, who drafted the report, said some detention centers run by the hard-line elite Revolutionary Guards had refused to admit inspectors or investigate whether prisoners' human rights were being respected.

Last year, Shahroudi ordered a ban on the use of torture for obtaining confessions - a move seen as Iran's first public acknowledgment of the practice.

Iran's constitution specifically outlaws torture, but human rights groups say the Islamic Republic's security forces routinely use it to extract confessions.

Iranian hard-liners have jailed several dozen reformist journalists and political activists and closed about 100 pro-democracy publications in the past five years for criticizing the rule of the country's unelected clerics.

In 2003, a special U.N. envoy visited Iran, during which he said he received "many complaints" regarding human rights violations, including torture, from pro-reform dissidents, writers and activists.

The bleak situation in Iranian prisons was highlighted by the case of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who died in jail July 2003 about three weeks after being detained for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during anti-government protests. Reformers said she was beaten to death.

Hard-line officials have long denied the use of torture in Iranian detention centers, despite complaints by intellectuals and student leaders of intolerable physical and psychological torture while being incarcerated.

Several journalists and political dissidents have said they made false confessions under duress.

aad-jk

How's everything been with you?

It's always good to keep an eye on what goes on all the time.

When's the restructuring going to take affect?

I'll be folloing nwau soon as well again.

Too bad we didn't catch CAFE.But I'm looking for a good Nasdaq
trading cie.

Any others to look out for this week?

Disturbing story:
Attacks on UK will continue, radical cleric says By Gideon Long
Fri Jul 22,10:57 AM ET



LONDON (Reuters) - Militant Islamists will continue to attack Britain until the government pulls its troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the country's most outspoken Islamic clerics said on Friday.

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Speaking 15 days after bombers killed over 50 people in London and a day after a series of failed attacks on the city's transport network, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed said the British capital should expect more violence.

"What happened yesterday confirmed that as long as the cause and the root problem is still there ... we will see the same effect we saw on July 7," Bakri said.

"If the cause is still there the effect will happen again and again," he said, adding he had no information about future attacks or contacts with people planning to carry out attacks.

Bakri, a Syrian-born cleric who has been vilified in Britain since 2001 when he praised the September 11 hijackers, said he did not believe the bombings and attempted attacks on London were carried out by British Muslims.

He condemned the killing of all innocent civilians but described attacks on British and U.S. troops in Muslim countries as "pro-life" and justified.

In an interview with Reuters, Bakri described Osama bin Laden, leader of the radical Islamist network al Qaeda, as "a sincere man who fights against evil forces."

Bakri said he would like Britain to become an Islamic state but feared he would be deported before his dream was realized.

"I would like to see the Islamic flag fly, not only over number 10 Downing Street, but over the whole world," he said.

MESSAGE OF PEACE ... MESSAGE OF WAR

A hate figure for the British tabloid press, the bearded and bespectacled Bakri said Islam contained "a message of peace for those who want to live with the Muslims in peace."

"But Islam is a message of war for those who declare war against Muslims," he said.

"I condemn any killing and any bombing against any innocent people in Britain or abroad, but I expect the British people to condemn the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan."

However, asked about Islamist attacks on British and U.S. troops and on Israelis, he said: "If violence is pro-life I don't condemn it."

Britain has around 1,100 troops in Afghanistan and 8,500 in Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Blair supported the United States in its respective invasions of both countries in 2001 and 2003.

Bakri, a 46-year-old father of six, was born in Syria and lived in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. When the Saudi government expelled him in 1985 he came to London.

Nicknamed "The Tottenham Ayatollah" after the area of north London in which he lives, he has infuriated many Britons with his firebrand speeches and refusal to condemn suicide bombings.

He founded the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which describes itself as a non-violent political party dedicated to creating an Islamic caliphate centered on the Middle East.

But he split from the group in 1996 and set up al Muhajiroun, which won notoriety in 2001 for celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Bakri has Syrian and Lebanese citizenship and says he thinks the British government might deport him to one of those two countries in the wake of this month's bombings.

"But I think that would be political suicide for the British government if they started to deport and imprison all extremists and radicals," he said.

"Because if, God forbid, something happened again, they would have nobody left to blame."

My point is, take your time, get the facts, and be rewarded
if you convert someone to Christian faith.

Jesus: "Convert and live"
mohammed: "convert or die"

Islam in Fast Demise
In Africa Alone Everyday, 16,000 Muslims Leave Islam


By Ali Sina

Hitler said if a lie is repeated often enough and long enough, it would come to be perceived as truth. One such lie often repeated is “Islam is the fastest growing religion”.

Despite the fact that Muslims by virtue of being poor and uneducated are much more reproductive than others, Islam as a religion is not growing but dying fast.

More and more Muslims are discovering that the violence evinced by some of their coreligionists is not an aberration but is inspired by the teachings of the Quran and the examples set by its author. Muslims are becoming disillusioned with Islam. They find out that the mechanistic ritual of praying five times per day, reciting verses that they do not understand and indeed mean nothing, getting up at taxing hours of the morning and abstaining from food and water until the sunset are not means to becoming more spiritual but are instruments to control their mind. These enlightened Muslims no more heed to the fear mongering verses of the Quran that threaten to burn them and roast them in the fires of hell if they dare to think and question the validity of that book.

Every day thousands of Muslim intellectuals are leaving Islam. They find Islam inconsistent with science, logics, human rights and ethics. Millions of Iranians already have left Islam. The enlightened Muslims of other nationalities are not far behind. This is the beginning of a mass exodus from Islam. It is a movement that is already in motion and nothing can stop it.

However the exodus from Islam is not reserved to the intellectuals but also the average Muslims are finding that Islam is not the way to God but to ignorance, poverty and wars. They are leaving Islam to embrace other religions especially the Christianity.

Perhaps it is best to listen to the truth coming from the mouth of the horse. The Internet site aljazeera.net published an interview with Ahmad Al Qataani أحمد القطعاني An important Islamic cleric who said: “In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Ever year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity."

What Muslims say among each other, is not the same thing that they say for the consumption of the Westerners.

These are huge numbers. If this trend continues we can expect to see Islam become insignificant in Africa in just a few decades. This is good news for those who are concerned about the on going slavery in Africa and the prospects of war and genocide.

In fact with the weakening of Islam, we can hope to see peace in many war-ridden parts of the world including Palestine. By now it should be clear that any road map to peace between Israel and Palestine will be blocked by the Islamists and the terrorists. Peace in Middle East is not possible as long as Islam is the ideology of the masses.

It is important that we realize that this terrorism that is threatening the peace of the world and these wars that bleed the Muslim nations are not economically motivated but are they are hate motivated. They are religious wars. The weakening of Islam means peace for mankind.

Al Qataani and al Jazeera Network were alarmed by these huge numbers of Muslims leaving Islam, but humanity must rejoice over these numbers. The weakening of Islam means the triumph of mankind.

The following is part of the transcript of Al Jazeera's Interview with Al Qataani translated to English. Here is the original transcript in Arabic

This interview is also posted here



Maher Abdallah:
Dear viewers, peace of Allah be upon you, greetings and welcome to a new episode of the program Islamic Law and Life.

Our topic this evening will be Christianization in the Dark Continent ... Africa. For after Islam was the religion of the majority, the great majority of that continent, the number of Muslims now is no greater than a third of the population. This is taking into consideration, of course, that a large portion of this group are Arab Muslims. No doubt that the missions of evangelization and Christianization played a great role in this demographic shift of Muslims in the continent.

To discuss this topic, it is my pleasure to introduce today a man who is an expert on the issue of evangelization and Christianization in Africa, even though he will concentrate on the issue of Christianization first and foremost…. Sheikh Ahmad Al Qataani; the president of The Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, which is an institution specializing in graduating imams and Islamic preachers.

Sheikh Ahmad, welcome to you on the program.

Ahmad Al Qataani:
Greeting to you.

Maher Abdallah:
If we start by inquiring about your strict stance against the Christian missions in Africa, don’t the followers of every religion have the right to seek new converts, exactly as you train and graduate young Muslims to propagate Islam?

Ahmad Al Qataani:
I seek refuge in Allah the Seer, the Knower, from the stoned devil. In the name of Allah the Merciful the Beneficent. Thanks to Allah the One, the Only, the Permanent One, who did not give birth nor was born, to whom no one was equal. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah who has no partners, and I bear witness that our master Muhammed – Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him - is his messenger and seal of prophets; Allah prayers be upon him and his brothers the prophets and messengers and their families.

The question that you pose is a result of not comprehending the difference between the concept of Christianization and the concept of evangelism.

The concept of evangelism: is inviting the non-Christians to the Christian or Nazarene religion, and this is the right of every Christian and the right of every believer to call others to his faith. However, we are talking about a different matter; which is Christianization. Christianization means the following: preparing plans, and executing these plans and evolving these plans to change Muslims into Christians by taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty (of the people) and whatever necessitates from similar circumstances.

So, we are faced with the issue of taking advantage of circumstances, taking advantage of humanitarian needs, taking advantage of the lack of education for example, that these people (missionaries) use to take Muslims out of their religion.

Maher Abdallah:
Fine. This is a big and dangerous phrase. Taking advantage of poverty, of ignorance, of lack of education, of some need is something that a Muslim can also be accused of. So if you don’t back up what you say with examples, with references, your words remain in the air without much weight to them.

Ahmad Al Qataani:
The reality is that these words say a lot less than they should. As we said in the beginning, everyone has the right to invite others to his religion; this is what is known as evangelism (or proselytizing). As for Christianization, no one has the right to take Muslims out of their religion, and you asked for references and the references are too numerous.

Islam used to represent, as you previously mentioned, Africa’s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316 million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in the section of Africa that we are talking about, the non Arab section, the number of Muslims does not exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the entire population of Africa is one billion people, we see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly from what it was in the beginning of the last century. On the other hand, the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882 thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number to 330 million in the year 2000.

As to how that happened, well
.there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Ever year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity
These numbers are very large indeed …..

Maher Abdallah (interrupting):
Hold on! Let me clarify. Do we have 6 million converting from Islam to Christianity or converting from Islam and other religions?

Ahmad Al Qataani:
Great (question)! The other religions are not placed on the list of Christianization; rather they are placed on the list of evangelization. The other religion in Africa is paganism; so it’s Islam, Christianity or paganism. There isn’t something similar to Asia for example where you have Buddhism or Zoroastrianism. In Africa it is just these three, so if you talk about Christianization then it targets the only other heavenly religion which is Islam. As for paganism, those people worship animals and planets and the like.

Maher Abdallah:
So 6 million Muslims a year convert?

Ahmad Al Qataani:
Every year ….. In the African nations this century a tragedy happened. Take for example what happened in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is an Arab nation and I am not saying a muslim nation. If any student looks up the word Habasha (Ethiopia) in the book Ocean Dictionary written by Al-Fairuz Abady, he will find that the word Habashat means “people of different tribes” and this is what happened. Ethiopia was a place where Arabs from different tribes would go to live for a while. We all know that Islam entered Ethiopia before Islam entered the city of Medina. We all know that AL-Najashy (the ruler of Ethiopia) was a Muslim. It is mentioned by Al-Darkatny in his biography of the prophet – Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him – that during the month of Rajab in the 9th year of the Hijra (Muslim calendar) that the prophet said to his companions: “Rise up and pray on your brother Al-Najashy.” From that year on the practice of praying on the absent was established. Therefore from the time of the prophet – Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him – Islam entered Ethiopia. So what has happened to Ethiopia?

What happened is that in the days of Emperor Hela Silasi who used to force Muslims to bow to the Christian, and if he refused then he was whipped 45 lashes and jailed between 2 and 5 years. In the year 1948, a massacre occurred at the hands of the Amharic tribes; the Amharic being Christians and collaborators, who continued to slaughter Muslims for 7 months and perform the most horrific acts imaginable. For example they deprived them from the most basic human rights, to the point that they mutilated the male Muslim’s reproductive organs so that no more Muslim children would be born. Ethiopia was rewarded after all these horrific acts; rewarded by being made the head quarters of the African Unity League.

Let us move to another location in Africa, let it be Nigeria. Nigeria is known by Muslims by the name of the Land of Takror. Nigeria was founded at the beginning of the last century by the British, and many Islamic sources mention it’s name as the Land of Tekror. There is even a letter by the reciter Suyuti, who died in the year 911 Hijri, where the title is: Opening the blessed request and relating the hidden openly to the questions of the people of Takror. So there was an established relationship, and they used to send questions to the scholars of Islam, so this letter (of questions) was sent from one of the sheikh scholars of Nigeria that was called Takror to the Muslim scholar AL Suyuti in Egypt and he in turn responded and the contents of this letter are published and printed and is found in the book “The collection Islamic decrees”.

Nigeria’s population is 120 million people, 70% of whom are Muslim. In the 1960’s a British missionary came and declared that he will Christianize North Nigeria, the majority of whom are Muslim. As a result, Ahmad Banulo (from the leaders of the Msulims) was forced at the time to move him to Lagos the capital. As a result the butcher Arorese, that was present at the time, eliminated all the Muslim rulers and killed Ahmad Banulo, why? Because he merely dared to move this missionary who declared that he wishes to Christianize North Nigeria.

In another country, Zanzibar, is an Arabic African nation and I am not saying Muslim. Zanzibar was always connected to the Sultanate of Oman (in the Persian Gulf). Concerning Zanzibar, there was a priest by the name Julius Niriry, president of Tanzania, who annihilated 20,000 Muslims (male and female) with a military force lead by a chicken thief. This thief was imprisoned for being accused of stealing chickens; he was released and asked to command the military brigade that annihilated 20,000 Muslims.

Maher Abdallah:
My dear viewers welcome back to this episode where we are speaking about the topic of Christianization in the African continent and we are speaking with the Sheikh who is observing and following this issue, as each hour Islam loses just under 700 Muslims who join the Christian religion which leads us to the number of 6 million Muslims every year.

Our sir, you mentioned that there are advantages being taken of necessities: poverty, ignorance; what you mentioned then are waves of elimination, waves of religious eradication, and there is no need to call is racial eradication….. However, let us go back to the topic necessity and exploitation. This may have all been in the past; the military expeditions that you spoke of were all in the beginning or middle of the last century, but what is happening today in regards to exploiting necessities?

Ahmad Al Qataani:
What I wanted to say is that these military expeditions and wars paved the way for what we are seeing today; converting 6 million Muslims every year did not happen from nothing, but was a result of what I mentioned earlier.

As for the topic of necessity exploitation, then a nation like Somalia, whose population is 9.5 million people, are all Muslim without exception. There are no Christians or pagans. And if you did find any then they are an insignificant number that are not even on official statistics. A Belgian missionary by the name of Sabeh came to Somalia and purchased 30,000 Muslim youth, he took advantage of their parents poverty, and we all know the terrible situation that Somalia is going through now and what it went through a few years ago. This is taking advantage of a humanitarian need that any human can go through.

Mohammed the False Prophet - Islam the False Religion

Rivka Olenick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



"A prophet will the Lord, thy God raise unto thee, a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren." Deuteronomy 18:15

The false prophet, the navi sheker, the "madman" Mohammed, as the Rambam calls him, convinced his followers of Islam that there are several verses in our scriptures that allude to his being a prophet. The Rambam states: "These arguments have been rehearsed so often that they have become nauseating. It is not enough to declare that they are altogether feeble; to cite as proofs these verses is ridiculous and absurd in the extreme. Neither the untutored multitude nor the apostates themselves who delude others with them believe in them or entertain any illusion about them. Their purpose in citing these verses is to win favor in the eyes of the Gentiles by demonstrating that they believe the statement of the Koran that Mohammed was mentioned in the Torah. The Muslims themselves put no faith in their arguments, they neither accept nor cite them, because they are manifestly so falicious."

Mohammed claimed that Deuteronomy 18:15 specifically refers to him. He said that it was he who God arose as "a prophet from the midst of thee." Of course, he himself nor anyone else ever found one word in the scriptures that proved that Mohammed arose as a prophet. Yet, he and his blind followers accuse us of manipulating the text of the Torah. They ignorantly claim that we purposely removed every trace of the name of Mohammed from it. However it was they that would not accept the main precepts of the Torah, out of defiance to the Revelation at Sinai. So in great desperation they created a book that horrendously warps and taints our scriptures and undermines Moses as the greatest Prophet. After all this they attempted to legitimize the Koran as a book of truth.

Isn't it amazing that exactly what they accuse us of - "altering" the Torah text - is exactly what they altered when they made up this "imitation" and called it the Koran. What they believe is so obviously false, yet the world is convinced that this is a book of truth only because of the vast numbers who read it, and not because it contains any real truth. The Rambam says: "Therefore, all the nations instigated by envy and impiety rose up against us, and all the kings of the earth motivated by injustice and enmity applied themselves to persecute us." There arose a new sect, which combined the two methods of conquest and controversy, into one, because it believed that this procedure would be more effective in wiping out every trace of the Jewish nation and religion. They claimed to prophecy and found a new faith, Islam, contrary to the Divine religion and to contend that it was equally God given. Thereby it hoped to raise doubts and create confusion, since one is opposed to the other and both supposedly emanate from a Divine source, which would lead to the destruction of both religions. For such a remarkable plan contrived by a man who is envious and querulous. He will strive to kill his enemy and to save his own life, but when he finds it impossible to attain his objective, he will devise a scheme whereby they both will be slain." He slays them both because he really knows that he cannot destroy God, but he cannot tolerate God's Divine word and so out of his own insanity he kills those who represent God and kills himself believing he will enter paradise.

The Torah states that the prophet that will arrive "from the midst of thee" is a person that will keep the Torah in tact as it was given to us by Moses from God. The Ninth Principle of our Thirteen Principles of Faith states: "I believe with perfect faith that the Torah will not be changed, and that there will never be another Torah given by God." As it says: "Thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it." Deuteronomy 13:1.

"A prophet will the Lord thy God raise unto thee, from the midst of thee, of thy brethren." Islam took this sentence completely out of context and made inferences. All the statements before and after must be understood so that the meaning and purpose of the statements is known. The sentence quoted above was taken from a paragraph in Deuteronomy that specifically warns the Jewish people about the prohibitions of soothsaying, astrology, divination, sorcery, etc. The Gentiles believe they can manipulate and use these practices in order to predict and/or prevent future events. They even depend on using these methods, rather than seeking truth. Judaism adamantly opposes such practices. The Torah commands us many times that we are not allowed to use these means. All future events that the Jewish people will learn of will be predicted by a Prophet and will all come true and that we would never have to resort to astrology or any other means in order to know truths. We rely on the truths spoken by our Prophets who will not give us any new laws or any new additions to the Torah.

"...of thy brethren" means that the Prophet will be one of us, meaning the descendants of Jacob, not Esau or Ishmael. "But My covenant will I establish with Isaac whom Sarah will bear unto thee at this set time in the next year." "But God said: Not so, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name Isaac. With him will I keep My covenant for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him." Genesis 17: 19 and 21. "It is, my co-religionists, one of the fundamental articles of the faith of Israel, that the future redeemer of our people will spring only from the stock of Solomon son of David. He will gather our nation, assemble our exiles, redeem us from our degradation, propagate the true religion, and exterminate his opponents, as it is clearly stated in Scripture, "I see him but not now, I behold him but not high, there shall step forth a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall arise out of Israel. And shall smite through the corners of Moab, and break down all the sons of Seth. And Edom shall be a possession, Seir also, even his enemies, shall be a possession, while Israel doeth valiantly." Numbers 24:17-18

"If any heretics rise up to corrupt the people, they will undermine the faith of the young folks and they will not find a savior. Beware of them and know that in our opinion, it is permitted to slay them, for they repudiate the statement in the prophecy of Moses who commanded us to act."

"According to the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which the shall tell thee thou shalt do." Deutoronomy 17:11.

"They assert in wicked defiance that they believe most firmly in the prophecy of Moses, as the Arabs and Byzantines say yet they destroy and nullify his law and kill the adherents thereof. Whoever joins them is just like his seducer." The Rambam from Letter to Yemen.

So far everything the New Testament warns of Revelations,
false prophets, etc ...seems to becoming true.

I'll drink to that, but just one drink of course.

I don't find anything funny.What I do find funny is
I Love Raymond. That show cracks me up.

I totally agree. So then if I have 12000 shares ,I will
really only have 4?
When will it show up on my statement?

How will it work exactly? Will the existing shareholders get
1 for every 3 shares held?

Any news on this consumer choice biz?

I don't know if it will ever change.

I'll be watching others tomorrow ,Friday and next week

Saudis Shred Bibles, Rights Campaigners Claim
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
May 19, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - Bibles found in the possession of visitors to Saudi Arabia are routinely confiscated by customs officials, and in some cases copies allegedly have been put through a paper shredder, according to religious rights campaigners.

Reports from the Islamic world of the abuse of Bibles and other items important to Christians emerge from time to time, but generally have little impact - in contrast to the wave of Muslim anger sparked by a Newsweek report, since retracted, of Koran desecration by the U.S. military.

"The Muslims respect the Koran far more than Christians respect the Bible," says Danny Nalliah, a Sri Lankan-born evangelical pastor now based in Australia.

During the 1990s, Nalliah spent two years in Saudi Arabia, where he was deeply involved with the underground church.

"It's a very well-known fact that if you have a Bible at customs when you enter the airport, and if they find the Bible, that the Bible is taken and put in the shredder," he said in an interview this week.

"If you have more than one Bible you will be taken into custody, and if you have a quantity of Bibles you will be given 70 lashes for sure - you could even be executed."

Nalliah had not himself seen a Bible being shredded but said the practice was widely acknowledged among Christians in the kingdom.

Abuse of Christians and their symbols was not restricted to the destruction of Bibles, he added.

A friend of his, a fellow Christian in Saudi Arabia, told him of witnessing a particularly unpleasant incident involving a Catholic nun.

The man had been in the transit lounge at the airport in Jeddah - the gateway to Mecca, used by millions of Hajj pilgrims each year - when a nun arrived at the customs desk.

"Some fool [travel agent] had put her on a transit flight in Jeddah. You don't do that to a Catholic nun, because she's going to be tormented."

"They opened her bag, went through her prayer book, put the prayer book through the shredder ... took the crucifix off her neck and smashed it, tormented her for many minutes."

Eventually another Muslim official objected to their conduct, came across and "rescued" her, pointing out to the customs officials that she was not entering the country but only in transit and would be leaving on the next plane.

Briefed beforehand about the risks, Nalliah said he did not carry a Bible when he arrived in the kingdom in 1995.

Subsequently, however, he took possession of hundreds of Bibles that had been smuggled into Saudi Arabia to be used by believers there.

Nalliah said he had a close call one morning when armed members of the notorious Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice - the religious police, or muttawa - hammered at his front door at 1 a.m.

With 400 smuggled Bibles "sitting on the dining room table," he believed his life to be in serious danger. "That was a crime equal to rape, murder, armed robbery, and in Saudi Arabia you get the same punishment," he said - the death penalty.

Nalliah said he had prayed earnestly and, in what he could only describe as a miracle, the men left without entering his home.

'Contraband'

Claims of Bible desecration in Saudi Arabia have been made by others.

"One Christian recently reported that his personal Bible was put into a shredder once he entered customs," the late Nagi Kheir, spokesman for the American Coptic Association and a veteran campaigner for religious freedom in the Middle East, wrote in an article several years ago.

"Some Christians have reported that upon entering Saudi Arabia they have had their personal Bibles taken from them and placed into a paper shredder," the U.S.-based organization International Christian Concern said in a 2001 report.

In its most recent report on religious freedom around the world, the State Department made no reference to Bible destruction, but said they were considered contraband.

"Customs officials routinely open mail and shipments to search for contraband, including ... non-Muslim materials, such as Bibles and religious videotapes," it said. "Such materials are subject to confiscation, although rules appear to be applied arbitrarily."

In a 2003 report on Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent watchdog set up under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, said: "Customs officials regularly confiscate Bibles and other religious material when Christian foreign workers arrive at the airport from their home countries initially or return from a vacation."

Inquiries about the legality of Bibles and about the shredder claims, sent to the Saudi Embassy in Washington and the Saudi Information Ministry in Riyadh, were not answered by press time.

Koran vs. Bible

After Nalliah left Saudi Arabia in 1997, he went to the U.S. and took part in the lobbying effort on Capitol Hill in support of what eventually became the International Religious Freedom Act, signed into law the following year.

He heads an evangelical ministry in Australia, where late last year he and a colleague became the first people to be found guilty under a controversial state religious hatred law, after Muslims accused them of vilifying Islam during a post-9/11 seminar for Christians.

Nalliah said this week it did not surprise him that Muslims have reacted strongly to the claims that U.S. interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay base, where terrorism suspects are held, had thrown a Koran into the toilet.

While Bible scholars say the Bible is written by men who were inspired by God, Muslims believe the Koran is "the copy of an original that is sitting in heaven, and has been sent down [by revelation to Mohammed]."

The book is seen as something sacred in itself, he explained, its words having come "directly from Allah. That's why they are so mad when they think something [unseemly] is being done to the Koran."

A Muslim will never keep a Koran at ground level, for instance.

The Pentagon says a January 2003 memo issued to U.S. personnel at Guantanamo Bay instructed them to "ensure that the Koran is not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas."

Even in Western societies, Nalliah noted, copies of Bibles could often be found in witness boxes of courts, ready for use when witnesses are sworn in. But the Koran will generally be kept in safe storage elsewhere, covered in cloth, to be brought in when required by a Muslim witness.

He said such reverence for the Koran stood in stark contrast to some Muslims' feelings about the Bible, however.

Nalliah said the Koran was "confusing" on this score. In places (e.g.: sura 29:46-47) it appeared to urge Muslims to respect the Bible and those who believe in it; elsewhere it exhorts them to fight those who don't accept Islam until they pay tribute and accept inferior status (sura 9:29-31).

According to author and Islam scholar Robert Spencer, "a devout Muslim might very well mistreat a Bible, because traditional Islamic theology regards it as a corrupted and unreliable version of the genuine revelations that were given to Moses, Jesus, and other Prophets."

Spencer noted that in sura 9:30 the Koran says those who believe Jesus is the Son of God are under Allah's curse.

"Throughout history, most Muslim theologians have held that the New Testament has been tampered with since it teaches that Jesus is the Son of God."

Some of the more notorious reported incidents of Muslims abusing Christian symbols implicate Palestinian radicals, including the trashing of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002; and the desecration of Maronite churches in Damour, Lebanon in 1976.

In the Damour episode, Yasser Arafat's PLO killed more than 500 of the Christian town's inhabitants before turning it into a stronghold, and used the interior of the St. Elias church for a shooting range, according to published accounts.

See also:
US Still Mulling Consequences for Saudi Religious Persecution (May 19, 2005)

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Sweet!I'm looking for another buy this week.

Nice.We gotta catch other ones like that.I'm still looking
at ZP and APYM.

thanks

It's changing ticker and name soon

http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=4145 , so
it's like a 1 for 3 split ?

You think this is a good deal? I beleive it is the fastest
way to Nasdaq, imo.
I guess you must have heard about a pr clarifying things.

So for every 3 shares, you will only have 1 after the deal?

I'll be looking for others by Friday.

The deal sounds pretty good.

Honestly I can't understand the drop.

See NWAU today?

Looks like a few bailed out.

Ouch! Why the drop?

Good chance, imho that NWAU will get $3.00 by August.

Might see News this week of the closing of the merger and a listing. If we do, I see $3.00 this week. jmho
What others say doesn't matter as long as your making money.
It's your pocket, not anyone else's.

I think it already trades on rumour.Right or wrong?

Reject Jesus and there is no sacrifice for your sins (Hebrews 10:26).

I'd like to get your opinion, not advice, just opinion.I was
looking at NWAU, ZP ,LLLI and AYPM. ZP looks like it can go on
decent news or 'attention' and LLLI can make it(like TASR....
"maybe").
Who and why do you like any of the above?

or ...any other interesting ones out there.I was possibly looking for Nasdaq listed.EGHT looked interesting to me
once upon a time, but then again.