A Saudi judge has told a seminar on domestic violence that it is OK for a man to slap his wife for lavish spending, a newspaper has reported.


Jeddah judge Hamad al-Razine gave the example of overspending to buy a high-end abaya, the head-to toe black shroud Saudi women have to wear in public, as justifying a smack for one's wife, Arab News said.


"If a person gives 1200 riyals ($US320) to his wife and she spends 900 riyals to purchase an abaya from a brand shop, and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment," he said.


The judge's remarks sparked an outcry at the seminar on the role of judicial and security officials in preventing domestic violence, the paper reported.


The seminar was attended by officials as well as activists on domestic violence, including representatives of the National Family Safety Programme.


Razine acknowledged the depth of the problem of domestic violence, until recently not acknowledged as a serious issue in the ultra-conservative Muslim country, where family problems traditionally remained behind closed doors.

Saudi women have in the past few years become more vocal about the problem of husbands beating wives and fathers mistreating children.


But Razine said some of the blame must be shouldered by wives for their behaviour. "Nobody puts even a fraction of the blame on them," he said, according to the report.

FOUR men have been arrested on charges linked with planning attacks against a synagogue and New York military bases, prosecutors said today.

The men, who according to a US congressman were all born in the US, were arrested “on charges arising from a plot to detonate explosives near a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York,” according to the complaint filed at a White Plains, New York federal court.

The group, residing in New York, where al-Qa'ida extremists with hijacked commercial airliners destroyed the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001, also “planned to shoot down military planes located at the New York Air National Guard Base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh, New York, with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles,” officials said.

They were set to appear in federal court in White Plains, New York today. The charges hold a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Three of the men were of Arabic descent and one of Haitian descent, according to New York Governor David Paterson. They all used Arab aliases. New York Representative Peter King said the men were Muslim and that some had converted to Islam in prison.
The suspects - identified as James Cromitie, also known as Abdul Rahman; David Williams, also known as Daoud or simply DL; Onta Williams, also known as Hamza; and Laguerre Payen, also known as Amin and Almondo - had been tracked for over a year, officials said.

To obtain weapons, the defendants dealt with an FBI informant, who provided the group “with an inactive missile and inert explosives,” officials said.

According to the complaint in June 2008 when a Federal Bureau of Investigations informant met with Cromitie in Newburgh, New York, the suspect explained his anger over the US-led war in Afghanistan.

At that time Cromitie “expressed an interest in 'doing something to America'," the complaint said.

Beginning in October 2008, the informant began meeting with Cromitie regularly along with David Williams, Onta Williams and Payen at a house in which the FBI had concealed video and audio equipment.

The group “expressed desire” to attack targets in New York, and Cromitie “asked the informant to supply surface-to-air guided missiles and explosives, according to prosecutors.

In April this year the group agreed on the synagogue they intended to attack and proceeded to conduct surveillance, including taking photographs of the warplanes at the military base.

“As alleged in the complaint, the defendants wanted to engage in terrorist attacks,” said acting US attorney Lev L Dassin.

“Fortunately, the defendants sought the assistance of a witness cooperating with the government. While the weapons provided to the defendants were fake, the defendants thought they were absolutely real,” Dassin added.

New York Congressman Peter King told CNN television that the attacks would have involved exploding bombs in cars parked outside the Jewish temple and a community centre.

“This would have been a tragic loss of life if the FBI and the NYPD (New York Police Department) had not been monitoring it.”

King said he believed all four of the men were born in the US, and that they were all Muslim. “One is of Afghan descent,” he said, adding that some of the group converted to Islam in prison.

“Thank God for the NYPD and it shows what a real threat we face from homegrown terrorists, and it shows especially those of us living in New York, we live with this every day,” he said.

“We can rest secured tonight because this plot was stopped but we don't know how many others are out there, and it's why we can never let our guard down and we have to be extremely vigilant and realize the true diabolic nature of this enemy.”

THE battle for the Somali capital of Mogadishu has entered its second day.

Witnesses say three were killed and 30 wounded in clashes between government forces and Muslim insurgents who have taken control of key neighbourhoods in recent weeks.

A human rights group says more than 50 have been killed and more than 180 wounded.

In the battered central Somalia town of Dusa Marreb Sufi clerics, with their imams being murdered, are now doing what many other men have chosen to do in anarchic Somalia: they have picked up guns to fight back against the Shabab, one of the most fearsome extremist Muslim groups in Africa.

"Clan wars, political wars; we were always careful to stay out of those," said Sheik Omar Mohamed Farah, a Sufi leader. "But this time, it was religious."

In the past few months, a new axis of conflict has opened up in Somalia, essentially a nation without a central government and ripped apart by rival clans since the ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Now, in a definitive shift, fighters from different clans are forming alliances and battling one another along religious lines, with deeply devout men on both sides charging into fire-fights with checkered head scarves and assault rifles.

It is a Muslim-versus-Muslim war, and the Sufi scholars are part of a broader moderate Islamist movement that Western nations are counting on to repel Somalia's increasingly powerful extremists. .Whether Somalia becomes a terrorist incubator and a genuine regional threat — which is already beginning to happen, as hundreds of heavily armed foreign jihadists flock here to fight for the Shabab — or whether this country finally steadies itself and ends the years of hunger, misery and bloodshed may hinge on who wins these battles in the next few months,
If Mogadishu falls, Somalia will be dragged deeper into the violent morass.

But out on the windswept plains of Somalia's central region, the moderates are holding their own and the newly minted Sufi militia is about the only local group to go toe-to-toe with the Shabab and win

The several-hundred-square-kilometre patch of central Somalia that the Sufis control is not nearly as strategic as Mogadishu. But the Sufis have achieved what the transitional government has not: grassroots support, which explains how they were able to move so quickly from being a bunch of men who had never squeezed a trigger — a rarity in Somalia — to being a cohesive fighting force backed by local clans.

"We see the Sufis as part of us," said Elmi Hersi Arab, an elder in Dusa Marreb. "They grew up here."

According to aid agencies, two weeks of fierce clashes have displaced 46,000 people from Mogadishu, a city ravaged by 18 years of almost uninterrupted civil conflict and emptied of hundreds of thousands of residents by the violent fighting that erupted in the Horn of Africa nation following Ethiopia's 2006 invasion.

TWO leaders of what was once the largest Muslim charity in the US have been sentenced to 65 years in jail for supporting Palestinian militants.

The Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and five of its leaders were convicted late last year of funnelling more than $US12 million to Hamas in the largest terror financing case in US history.
Jurors returned guilty verdicts on 108 charges of providing material support to terrorists, money laundering and tax fraud.

“These sentences should serve as a strong warning to anyone who knowingly provides financial support to terrorists under the guise of humanitarian relief,” said David Kris, assistant US attorney general for national security.

Holy Land chief executive officer Shukri Abu Baker, whose brother Jamal Issa is the head of Hamas operations in Yemen, was sentenced to 65 years in jail.

Chairman and cofounder Ghassan Elashi, who is related by marriage to Hamas political leader Mousa Abu Marzook, received the same sentence.
“I would like to declare my innocence of all the charges,” said a defiant Elashi, who called the case an “unjust political prosecution.”

Holy Land cofounder Mohammad El-Mezain, a cousin of Marzook, and Abdulrahman Odeh, the charity's New Jersey representative, both received 15 years. The two men declared they were innocent in remarks to the judge and courtroom.

Fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader, brother of Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal, received 20 years.
“I do acknowledge the verdict in this trial,” Abdulqader said during the sentencing hearing. .............

[The head of Iraq's Sunni parliamentary bloc has been assassinated at a mosque in the capital, in an attack that has killed at least four other people.

Harith al-Obaidi, a human-rights advocate, was shot as he left a mosque in the Yarmouk area of western Baghdad.

Iraqi police said a teenager carried out the attack. He was shot dead by a guard as he tried to escape.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said violence is likely to increase before Iraq's general election next year.

Mr Obaidi was the leader of Iraq's Accordance Front. A university professor with a doctorate in Islam, he had just finished delivering the sermon at Friday prayers.

Iraqi police said the youth opened fire as worshippers began to leave the mosque, killing Mr Obaidi and one of his body guards. He then threw a hand grenade to cover his escape, causing further casualties.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says the assumption will be that this attack was carried out by insurgents from Mr Obeidi's own Sunni community, who have often targeted Sunnis involved with the government.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090615/od_nm/us_musicians

MUSICIANS ATTACKED AT WEDDING
Mon Jun 15, 2009

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Taliban fighters beat musicians, shaved their heads and left them tied to trees overnight because they performed at an Afghan wedding, a village tribal chief said Monday, a sign of the fighters' growing influence.
While in power from 1996-2001, the Taliban banned music as un-Islamic.
The militants have returned to areas in the east and south of the country, where violence has sharply spiked in recent years. They attack government officials, Afghan police, foreign troops and schools that teach girls, another practice they forbid.
"A party was going on when a group of Taliban grabbed five musicians and started beating them and smashing their musical instruments," said Rahmatullah Khan, a head of Merke Khel village in the east of the country.
"The musicians were tied up with rope to trees last night and villagers found them in the morning when going out for prayers," Khan said.
Khan said Taliban fighters shaved the heads of the musicians and made them take oaths in the presence of villagers that they would not sing or play music at weddings again.
Afghan weddings and engagement parties in rural areas are traditionally celebrated with hundreds of guests, music and singing that often continues until late at night.
(Reporting by Rafiq Sherzad; Writing by Hamid Shalizi)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/07/2618560.htm?section=justin

IRAQ INSURGENTS 'PROUD TO BE ON TERRORISM LIST'

An Iraq-based Shiite insurgent group rejoiced at the US Government's decision to designate it a foreign terrorism organisation, calling it a point of pride, a US militant monitor said.
Just days after Kata'ib Hizballah was designated a foreign terrorist group by US President Barack Obama's administration, the group posted a triumphant message on a Shiite jihadist forum praising the move, according to SITE Intelligence.
"It is an invitation to pride that the children of Hezbollah Brigade be put on the list that frightens the occupation, chases them and plants terror in their hearts," SITE described the message as saying.
"Classifying us on the American terror list means that we are still marching on the right path," it said.
The designation for the group, which the United States believes is linked to Lebanon's Hezbollah, means its assets will be frozen and Americans will be prohibited from providing it with any resources.
Washington blames the group for numerous bomb and other attacks in Iraq, including a November 2008 rocket attack that killed two United Nations workers.
Reuters