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I knew Scientology was in trouble when the media moved on from the usual silly gossip about its celebrity members to much darker, disturbing issues at the heart of the movement – issues, as I have come personally to understand, that actually matter, Jonny Jacobsen writes in Herald Scotland.

After a Paris court last month convicted several Scientologists and two organisations associated with the movement in France of organised fraud, and amid other investigations in France looking at a suicide and an alleged abduction, Oscar-winning film-maker Paul Haggis, a long-time member, quit Scientology.

Haggis, who wrote and directed Crash, denounced the practice of “disconnection“, which sees members forced to cut off contact with anyone – even their loved ones – if they are deemed an enemy of Scientology.

In Edinburgh in the early 1990s, I found out just what the practice of disconnection could do to ordinary people when a close friend became involved in Scientology. It was an experience which marked me so profoundly that I have been tracking the movement ever since…
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The Dutch are marking the fifth anniversary of the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim fanatic, a brutal killing that continues to shape politics in the Netherlands, AP writes.

Watch the movie Van Gogh was murdered for.
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The St. Petersburg Times is continuing to expose the Church of Scientology to daylight — by reporting on the destructive cult’s unethical tactics.

Billed as The Truth Rundown, its series of special reports highlights the alleged abusive behavior of current Scientology leader David Miscavige, as well as other criticism leveled at Scientology by a number of high-level defectors. [video]
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A demonstration of Muslim hardliners calling for sharia law to be imposed in Britain was cancelled in London over the weekend amid planned counter-protests by democratic Muslims.

Anjem Choudary, leader of the radical Islamic group Al Muhajiroun, said that organisers of the Islam4UK demo had cancelled the march from the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square on 31 October 2009 because of security concerns.

The Islamic Society of Britain, which was planning to join other organisations in staging a “dignified, non-violent” counter-demonstration, hailed the cancellation as a “great success”.
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A Detroit imam shot and killed Wednesday in a gunfight with federal agents belonged to a Muslim separatist sect led by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, better known as 1960s militant H. Rap Brown, according to a federal complaint filed Wednesday.

The FBI says the dead man was an imam, or prayer leader, of a local faction of Ummah, a group that seeks to establish an Islamic state within the U.S
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Two Chicago men have been charged in what officials said was a plot to attack employees of a Danish newspaper that in 2005 published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that offended many Muslims, according to criminal complaints unsealed Tuesday in federal court in Chicago.

One of the men had initially targeted a building occupied by the Danish newspaper, Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen.
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Paul Haggis, the Hollywood film director, has resigned from the Church of Scientology after 35 years as a member in protest against its apparent opposition to gay marriage.

In his letter Haggis also highlights a lie told by Scientology spokesperson Tommy Davis, who in an interview with CNN denied Scientology’s policy of disconnection — in which the destructive cult forces some of its members to sever relationships with friends and family members. [video]
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Two Christians in Gojra, Pakistan who allegedly fired warning shots as an Islamist mob approached that burned seven Christians to death on Aug. 1 told Compass they were tortured after police arrested them.

From his jail cell, Naveed Masih told Compass that he and his brother were taken to the Police Training Centre in Choong, where they were kept in illegal detention for 18 days and were tortured “in so many ways ruthlessly and in inhumane ways.”
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Muslim hate preacher Anjem Choudary — considered an ‘extremist nut’ by moderate Muslims — has sparked controversy by asking for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to convert to his faith.

In relation to the upcoming UK elections the extremist also said: “Britain does not need a new leader, it needs a revolution – an Islamic revolution.”
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In a letter sent to the Christian community in the northeastern city of Sargodha, Taliban militants said Christians should convert to Islam, pay an Islamic tax imposed on religious minorities, known as ‘Jizya tax’, or leave the country.

If Christians refuse to accept these choices, Christians “will be killed, their property and homes will be burnt to ashes and their women treated as sex slaves,” said the letter.
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A hardline Islamist group in Somalia is publicly whipping women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a “deception”, it was claimed yesterday.

Gunmen from al Shabaab have been rounding up any women with a “firm bust” and whipping them, say residents in the capital Mogadishu.

One woman said: “They first introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women’s chests. They are now saying breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.”

The group has also banned movies, football, musical ringtones and dancing at weddings.

The group’s hardline interpretation of Islamic law has shocked many Somalis, who are traditionally moderate Muslims.

Naturally Religion News Blog files these type of items under the category, ‘religious insanity.’
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Radical Muslim group Islam4UK has launched a campaign to impose sharia law on Britain, starting with a rally in London, according to a report.

The hate group — an offshoot of the banned Al-Mahajiroun extremist sect — says “we have had enough of democracy and man-made law and the depravity of the British culture.”

Tory MP Philip Davies replies, ““The simple solution is for these people to move to a country which already has sharia law.””

Meanwhile a spokesman for the Islamic Society of Britain said: “99.999 per cent of Muslims despise these people. This only serves to fuel racial ­tensions.”
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In Indonesia, a series of attacks on followers of the Ahmadiyah sect by fanatical Muslims — who consider the movement to be a cult of Islam — continues to draw criticism.

Alfred C. Stepan, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion at Columbia University in New York, an expert in religion and democracy urging the government to exercise its authority when there are violations of human rights.
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Two controversial films about Radical Islam have aired around the world, but never in the United States until now.

A cable network plans to air the films despite the objections of North Texas Muslims who say the movies present a narrow view of their world. But does it? Watch an abridged version of one of the movies — The Third Jihad — right here. [video]
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Sabri Husibi, a former Muslim who is now an atheist, says he has been ostracized and threatened with death since publication of a Tulsa World article Saturday in which he was critical of Islam and all other religions.

One caller offered Husibi’s young Muslim wife $10,000 to leave him and return to her native Syria, he said.
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The European Court for Human Rights has fined Russia for refusing to register Scientology churches in the cities of Surgut and Nizhnekamsk as religious groups.

The Strasbourg court’s statement says the country has broken Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and must pay €10,000 for punitive damages and another €10,000 in legal costs, RIA-Novosti news agency reports. [video]
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A federal appeals court has thrown out a US$5 million ($7 million) verdict against fundamentalist Christian protesters who carried signs with inflammatory messages like “Thank God for dead soldiers” outside the Maryland funeral of a US Marine killed in Iraq.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church — a cult-like hate group — have deluded themselves into thinking they are Christians.
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Scientology has a lot to hide — and a lot of it has been exposed to daylight by the cult’s many critics.

That must hurt in the pocketbook, and thus the ‘church’ — which among other things is behind an anti-psychiatry hate group — has launched yet another on free speech.
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Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims.

“It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up,” he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed.

Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi’s group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone.

So reports The Guardian.

Question is: what reputation does Abu Hamizi think Islam has build up over the centuries? Surely he and the fellow members of his hate group must at some point realize that while Islam claims to be a ‘religion of peace’ his actions represent the kind of barbarism that gave Islam the nickname ‘religion of the sword.’

Islamism has no place in modern, civilized society.
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British intelligence chiefs have targeted war-torn Somalia as the next major challenge to their efforts to repel Islamic terrorism, after scores of youths left the UK for “jihad training” in the failed African state.

A number of the “liquid bomb” plot terrorists convicted last week had Pakistani connections and the bomb makers are believed to have received training at an al-Qa’ida camp in Pakistan.
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LONDON (Reuters) – A government minister said a recent rise in right-wing anti-Islamist militancy bore echoes of 1930s attempts by fascists to spread fear in Jewish areas of east London.

Communities Secretary John Denham said far right groups were deliberately trying to provoke ethnic minority groups into conflict in a bid to cause divisions within communities.

His comments came after members of the Stop Islamisation of Europe group were confronted by about 1,000 opponents outside a mosque in north London on Friday.
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Excellent news about the release of Parwiz (aka Perwiz or Pervez) Kambakhsh, the young Afghan student journalist sentenced to 20 years for downloading and distributing material from the internet about the rights of women under Islam. Initially, Kambakhsh had been sentenced to death.

Predictably, conservative and religious groups in Afghanistan have reacted with fury at President Hamid Karzai’s secret pardon for the 24-year-old, who was arrested in October 2007 and quietly freed from jail some weeks ago.

See also Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh is freed and goes abroad, a related article by Reporters Without Borders.
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Scientology ‘vultures’ have latched onto another tragedy. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights — a Scientology front group that runs on ongoing hate campaign against psychiatry and psychiatrists — free DVDs about anti-depressant drugs in the area where killer Shane Clancy lived.

Reports have indicated that gardai are investigating whether Shane, who murdered Seb Creane (22) before killing himself, may have misused anti-depressants that had been prescribed for him a week before the tragic night.

Here’s another look at Scientology’s ambulance chasers.
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An art exhibit depicting various female Palestinian suicide bombers as the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus, which opened at the Sokolov House press center in Tel Aviv on Thursday, was quickly taken down following an outcry from the families of those killed or wounded in the attacks, as well as by organizations that represent terror victims.
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Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on Muslims around the world to mobilize their troops alongside Iran against Israel and the United States to prepare for the coming of the “”Mahdi” seen as “the savior of Islam”.

Iran’s supreme leader is described as “a direct representative” of the Mahdi and said following his orders is like “obeying the guided one.”
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1. KKK on the rise?
2. Escalating violence tied to Aryan Brotherhood gang
3. Pastor leaves after church turns away biracial boy
4. The Most Hated Family in America
5. Inside world's most evil sect
6. Matt Hale listed as attorney
7. Aryan Brotherhood: New details arise in suspected hate group murder
8. [Westboro Baptist Church] Anti-Gay Kansas Church Cancels Protests at Funerals for Slain Amish Girls
9. Westboro Hate group plans to preach at Virginia Tech funerals
10. The deplorable speech of Westboro Baptist Church

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