1,900 Hajj pilgrims airlifted to Saudi Arabia

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• ALHAJJ 12 years ago

  ALHAMDU LILLAAHI RABBIL AALAMEEN.

  ALHAMDU LILLAAHI RABBIL AALAMEEN.

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• Big Name 12 years ago

  The turbaned gunmen who infiltrated Nairobi's Westgate Mall arrived with a set of religious trivia questions: As terrified civilians hid in toilet stalls, behind mannequins, in ventilation shafts and underneath food court tab ...
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  The turbaned gunmen who infiltrated Nairobi's Westgate Mall arrived with a set of religious trivia questions: As terrified civilians hid in toilet stalls, behind mannequins, in ventilation shafts and underneath food court tables, the assailants began a high-stakes game of 20 Questions to separate Muslims from those they consider infidels.
  A 14-year-old boy saved himself by jumping off the mall's roof, after learning from friends inside that they were quizzed on names of the Prophet Muhammad's relatives. A Jewish man scribbled a Quranic scripture on his hand to memorize, after hearing the terrorists were asking captives to recite specific verses. Numerous survivors described how the attackers from al-Shabab, a Somali cell which recently joined al-Qaida, shot people who failed to provide the correct answers.
  Their chilling accounts, combined with internal al-Shabab documents discovered earlier this year by The Associated Press, mark the final notch in a transformation within the global terror network, which began to rethink its approach after its setbacks in Iraq. Al-Qaida has since realized that the indiscriminate killing of Muslims is a strategic liability, and hopes instead to create a schism between Muslims and everyone else, whom they consider "kuffar," or apostates.
  "What this shows is al-Qaida's acknowledgment that the huge masses of Muslims they have killed is an enormous PR problem within the audience they are trying to reach," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization. "This is a problem they had documented and noticed going back to at least Iraq. And now we see al-Qaida groups are really taking efforts to address it."
  The evolution of al-Shabab is reflected in a set of three documents believed to be written by the terrorist group, and found by the AP in northern Mali earlier this year. They include the minutes of a conference of 85 Islamic scholars, held in December 2011 in Somalia, as well as a summary of fatwas they issued last year after acceptance into the al-Qaida fold.
  Baptized with the name al-Shabab, meaning The Youth, in 2006, the group began as an extremist militia, fighting the government of Somalia. As early as 2009, it began courting al-Qaida, issuing recordings with titles like, "At Your Service Osama."
  Until the Westgate attack, the group made no effort to spare Muslim civilians, hitting packed restaurants, bus stations and a government building where hundreds of students were awaiting test results. And until his death in 2011, Osama bin Laden refused to allow Shabab into the al-Qaida network, according to letters retrieved from his safehouse in Pakistan. The letters show that the terror leader was increasingly troubled by regional jihadi operations killing Muslim civilians.
  In a letter to Shabab in 2010, bin Laden politely advised the Somali-based fighters to review their operations "in order to minimize the toll to Muslims." Shabab did not get the green light to join al-Qaida until February 2012, almost a year after bin Laden's death.
  In an email exchange this week with The Associated Press, it made its intentions clear: "The Mujahideen carried out a meticulous vetting process at the mall and have taken every possible precaution to separate the Muslims from the Kuffar before carrying out their attack." However, even at Westgate, al-Shabab still killed Muslims, who were among the more than 60 civilians gunned down inside.
  Their attack was timed to coincide with the highest traffic at the upscale mall after 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 21, a Saturday. More than 1,000 people, including diplomats, pregnant women with strollers and foreign couples, were inside when the fighters armed with grenades and AK-47s burst in and opened fire. At first the attack had the indiscriminate character of all of Shabab's previous assaults.
  Rutvik Patel, 14, was in the aisles at Nakumatt, the mall's supermarket which sells everything from plasma TVs to imported kiwis, when he heard the first explosion. "They started shooting continuously, and whoever died, died," he said. "Then it became calm and they came up to people and began asking them some questions. If you knew the answer, they let you go," he said. "They asked the name of the Prophet's mom. They asked them to sing a religious verse."
  
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  Imagen cedida por la presidencia de Kenia muestra el colapso de la planta superior del centro comerc …
  
  Just across from the Nakumatt supermarket, a 31-year-old Jewish businessman was cashing a check inside the local Barclays branch when he, too, heard the shooting. The people there ran to the back and shut themselves in the room with the safe, switching off the lights. They learned, via text messages, that the extremists were asking people to recite an Arabic prayer called the Shahada.
  "One of the women who was with us got a text from her husband saying, they're asking people to say the Islamic oath, and if you don't know it, they kill you," said the businessman, who insisted on anonymity out of fear for his safety.
  He threw away his passport. Then he downloaded the Arabic prayer and wrote it on his palm.
  Al-Shabab's attempts to identify Muslims are clear in the 16-page transcript from the conference of Islamic scholars held in the Somali town of Baidoa, an area known to be under Shabab control in 2011, according to Somalia specialist Kenneth Menkhaus, a political science professor at Davidson College in North Carolina. The scholars issued several fatwas defining exactly who was a Muslim and who was an apostate.
  The document states it is halal, or lawful, to kill and rob those who commit crimes against Islam: "The French and the English are to be treated equally: Their blood and their money are halal wherever they may be. No Muslim in any part of the world may cooperate with them in any way. ... It leads to apostasy and expulsion from Islam," it says. Further on it adds: "Accordingly, Ethiopians, Kenyans, Ugandans and Burundians are just like the English and the French because they have invaded the Islamic country of Somalia."
  Former FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who investigated the bombing of the United States embassies in East Africa as well as the attack on the USS Cole, said that the gathering of dozens of religious scholars in an area under Shabab control harkens back to an al-Qaida conference in Afghanistan around 1997. That conference defined America as a target, Soufan said, leading to the bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
  "You see something very similar here," said Soufan. "It's the same playbook."
  In a second document dated Feb. 29, 2012 — just two weeks after al-Shabab joins al-Qaida — the organization warns Muslims to stay away from buildings occupied by non-Muslims, chillingly predicting and justifying the death of Muslims at Westgate.
  "And so all Muslims must stay far away from the enemy and their installations so as not to become human shields for them, and so as not to be hurt by the blows of the mujahedeen directed at the Crusader enemies," it says. "There is no excuse for those who live or mingle with the enemies in their locations."
  Yet at the same time it says: "The mujahideen are sincere in wanting to spare the blood of their brother Muslims, and they don't want a Muslim to die from the bullets directed at the enemies of God."
  This is a concession for an organization that since its inception had killed people constantly, said Rudolph Atallah, who tracked Shabab as Africa counterterrorism director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2003 to 2007.
  
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  A mourner walks past portraits of Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta's nephew Mbugua Mwangi, left, and …
  
  "They would just go and mow people down," Atallah said. "They are now sending a clear message that, 'Look, we're different ... We're no longer indiscriminately killing. We're protecting innocent Muslims and we are trying to kill quote-unquote 'infidels,' nonbelievers."
  A similar tactic paid off in January after al-Qaida-linked terrorist Moktar Belmoktar attacked a gas installation in Algeria, Atallah said. When his fighters freed hundreds of Muslim employees, a Facebook page dedicated to him exploded with "Likes."
  Several hours after the gunshots at Westgate Mall, the people cowering inside the Barclays bank heard a commotion. As the attackers approached, the Jewish businessman spit on his hand to erase the words he had by then committed to memory.
  The door opened.
  He exhaled. It was the police.
  Several floors above, 14-year-old Patel looked for a place to hide on the roof. When the jihadists came up the stairs and threw a grenade, he didn't hesitate. He jumped, crushing his ankle on the pavement below.
  He said he would not have known how to answer their questions.

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• muk 12 years ago

  is on course the chairman is honest no short cut we love him so so much.we need such men long time ago.may Allah protect him from this bad men who wish to see him fail.Ameen

  is on course the chairman is honest no short cut we love him so so much.we need such men long time ago.may Allah protect him from this bad men who wish to see him fail.Ameen

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• Big Name 12 years ago

  Terrorists organization is Islamic religion.They don't have change of mind. The more they go to Mecca the more they terrorize innocent people. Islam is armed wing of Satan. It is no good for humanity. We don't need you in Gha ...
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  Terrorists organization is Islamic religion.They don't have change of mind. The more they go to Mecca the more they terrorize innocent people. Islam is armed wing of Satan. It is no good for humanity. We don't need you in Ghana.Go to HELL !!!!!!

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• Mohammed 12 years ago

  They know the terrorists among them, and they will never give the terrorists up.
  Islam will remain terrorist organization till the end of the world.

  They know the terrorists among them, and they will never give the terrorists up.
  Islam will remain terrorist organization till the end of the world.

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• Noyode Asaba 12 years ago

  "Arabia in Muhammad’s time was polytheistic in its conception of the cosmos and tribal in its social structure. Each tribe had its own god(s) and goddess(es), which were manifest in the forms of idols, stones, trees, or sta ...
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  "Arabia in Muhammad’s time was polytheistic in its conception of the cosmos and tribal in its social structure. Each tribe had its own god(s) and goddess(es), which were manifest in the forms of idols, stones, trees, or stars in the sky." (Islamic Studies, A History of Religions Approach, Richard C. Martin, 2nd Ed., p 96).
  
  "Before Islam, the religions of the Arabic world involved the worship of many spirits, called jinn. Allah was but one of many gods worshiped in Mecca. But then Muhammad taught the worship of Allah as the only God, whom he identified as the same God worshiped by Christians and Jews." (A Short History of Philosophy, Robert C. Solomon, p. 130).
  
  "Historians like Vaqqidi have said Allah was actually the chief of the 360 gods [one for each day of the year] being worshiped in Arabia at the time Muhammad rose to prominence. Ibn Al-Kalbi gave 27 names of pre-Islamic deities...Interestingly, not many Muslims want to accept that Allah was already being worshiped at the Ka'ba in Mecca by Arab pagans before Muhammad came. Some Muslims become angry when they are confronted with this fact. But history is not on their side. Pre-Islamic literature has proved this." (Who Is This Allah?, G. J. O. Moshay, 1994, p 138).
  
  "Allah" is NOT the true and living God of the Bible. The Godhead was manifest in the man, Christ Jesus--God in the flesh (John 1:1-3,14; Colossians 2:9; 1st Timothy 3:16). Islam is repackaged polytheism. Islam is paganism wrapped in monotheistic dogma.

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• Uceph 12 years ago

  May God forgive you

  May God forgive you

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• Big Name 12 years ago

  Quran is full of lies and contradictions. Don't let the Immans deceive you. Why do you think your Allah loves the shedding of innocent blood? Your Allah is demonic. I pity my fellow Ghanaians who being deceived by these Imman ...
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  Quran is full of lies and contradictions. Don't let the Immans deceive you. Why do you think your Allah loves the shedding of innocent blood? Your Allah is demonic. I pity my fellow Ghanaians who being deceived by these Immans.

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• RAJ -LONDON 12 years ago

  Big name, from your comment it is obvious how ignorant and clueless you are as far as Islam is concerned, such is the common folk-lore among the Christians, I believe you have never read or even seen the Holy Quran. I pity mo ...
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  Big name, from your comment it is obvious how ignorant and clueless you are as far as Islam is concerned, such is the common folk-lore among the Christians, I believe you have never read or even seen the Holy Quran. I pity most Christians, bcos they lack the common courage to read the HOLY QURAN, so no wonder you always spew these ignoramus comments, but when the angel of death comes upon you, you will realise how lost you are. hmmmmmmm

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• Ahmed Saed 12 years ago

  Who is ignorance about Islamic terror in this world. Islam is nothing but terrorism and cruelty. Have you read that Islamic terrorist, Al Shaaba spared the Muslims among people during Al Shaaba terror in Westgate Mall in Keny ...
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  Who is ignorance about Islamic terror in this world. Islam is nothing but terrorism and cruelty. Have you read that Islamic terrorist, Al Shaaba spared the Muslims among people during Al Shaaba terror in Westgate Mall in Kenya?
  Al Shaba considered the rest as infidels, who were unworthy to live. Is that not what your Quran teaches? We know Islam very well. Islam means destroy Christians and Jews if they won't submit to Muslim Allah and their pedophile prophet. I know what Islam is all about. I am not ignorance about satanic Islam. You are very ignorant about Islam. You don't know what Islam entails.

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• DAN 12 years ago

  nobody mention that a virus caught from camels is happpening there and they thought about closing Mecca to Foreigners this year! So when people start dying of flu/sars type illness remember the muslims brought it home

  nobody mention that a virus caught from camels is happpening there and they thought about closing Mecca to Foreigners this year! So when people start dying of flu/sars type illness remember the muslims brought it home

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• Uceph 12 years ago

  It's a pilgrimage they're undertaking not a fun trip so don't worry nothing will happen

  It's a pilgrimage they're undertaking not a fun trip so don't worry nothing will happen

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• Big Name 12 years ago

  Wicked demons who love to shed innocent blood.

  Wicked demons who love to shed innocent blood.

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• RAJ -LONDON 12 years ago

  You have tried to pour scorn on Islam with all your references, but I'm sorry, you are missing some vital points. Firstly, all the deities in the Kaba were called allah by the Arabs, allah is an Arabic word for anything being ...
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  You have tried to pour scorn on Islam with all your references, but I'm sorry, you are missing some vital points. Firstly, all the deities in the Kaba were called allah by the Arabs, allah is an Arabic word for anything being worshipped, for instance, the English called anything they worshipped, god, until the advent of xtianity (which is a man-made religion) but they started calling the Almighty, God with a big 'B'. So the fact that the deities were called allah and now we call the omnipotent Allah, does not mean we are worshipping a deity, its a language issue, anything worshipped in English is called god or God, and allah-Allah in Arabic, and so it is in as many languages, the Yoruba called anything they worship ''olon' dagombas, nawuni, busangas, wunsu, but when referring to the most high, they write it with a Capital i.e. first letter. Islam is the only true religion, whoever dies non-Muslim, after the coming of Prophet Mohammed is definitely going to hell. May the good God open your heart n mind for the truth. Peace

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• PUNE, OYIDE 12 years ago

  Big Name, where is Mohammed? Is he in the grave waiting for the resurrection of all the dead? or is he somewhere else?
  
  Why does the Kaaba receive blood sacrifice, and people kiss its rock, or point to it? Isn't that a tra ...
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  Big Name, where is Mohammed? Is he in the grave waiting for the resurrection of all the dead? or is he somewhere else?
  
  Why does the Kaaba receive blood sacrifice, and people kiss its rock, or point to it? Isn't that a transfer of human affection to an inanimate object?

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• Big Name 12 years ago

  Mohammed is definitely in hell for killing that pregnant woman, whom wicked Mohammed accused her of adultery.Have I answer your question?

  Mohammed is definitely in hell for killing that pregnant woman, whom wicked Mohammed accused her of adultery.Have I answer your question?

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• Jingo Bell 12 years ago

  I pity you. Let me quote you from your post "Islam is the only true religion."
  That was why your brothers Al Shaba let the Muslims leave before they sprayed the rest of bullets. Non Muslims haven't submitted to your Allah an ...
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  I pity you. Let me quote you from your post "Islam is the only true religion."
  That was why your brothers Al Shaba let the Muslims leave before they sprayed the rest of bullets. Non Muslims haven't submitted to your Allah and your prophet Mohammed, so they were not worthy to live. Right? Answer my question.

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