Monday, April 05, 2004
Is this Islam?
Four Americans, who were providing security for food deliveries in the violent Sunni triangle, were killed by militants in Fallujah, their bodies dismembered, burned and hanged on display.
Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi, deputy chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, wrote "it is permissible to mutilate the dead ... in case of retaliation."
Other sheikhs offered dissenting opinions on whether mutilation is ever warranted or justified.
Television pictures broadcast outside the United States showed the incinerated body of one of the four contractors being kicked and stamped on by people in a jubilant crowd in Fallujah, while another body was dragged down the road by its feet. Two bodies also were temporarily hung from a bridge.
Iraqi Shiites, an oppressed majority during the regime of Saddam Hussein, turned on the U.S.-led coalition yesterday in a bloody uprising that resulted in the deaths of dozens, including many American soldiers.
The Shiite militia revolt was coordinated and hit several parts of the country - including the heart of Baghdad.
WND's Joseph Farrah sees yesterday's events as an attack on the US coordinated through Iran
Japan presses competing proposal for Russian oil pipeline that would bypass China
Japan has extended as much as $6 billion to finance its construction, and billions of dollars more via private companies for oil exploration in eastern Siberia,
If a pipeline could instead (of going directly to China) reach the Pacific, running about 2,500 miles, it would allow Russia to sell crude to Japan as well as South Korea, China and perhaps refineries on the West Coast of the United States.
Only a decade ago, China was an oil exporter. Now, it is the third-largest importer after the United States and Japan. Beijing reckons it will need to import up to 600 million tons of oil a year by 2020, more than triple its anticipated domestic production.
Queen urges Britain and France to stand together against terrorism
In a rare foray into the political arena, she emphasised that the two countries, at odds over the military campaign in Iraq, must not allow "immediate political pressures" to divide them at a time of great uncertainty and threat.
