Iraq battle after militia arrest

Two passers-by have died in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, after clashes between security forces and one of the militias which are backed by US forces.

The gun battle in the Fadil district of the city erupted shortly after the leader of the local Awakening group, Adil Mashadani, was arrested.

One account says US troops helped with the arrest alongside the Iraqi army.

Fadil was run by al-Qaeda in Iraq for most of 2006 and 2007, but they were driven out by the Awakening movement.

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Bloody clash in south Philippines

Muslim rebels and the army have fought an eight-hour battle in the southern Philippines, leaving 20 insurgents and seven soldiers dead, the military says.

Lt Col Jonathan Ponce said the army attacked rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to stop them from ransacking nearby villages.

The MILF blamed the army for the battle, on Mindanao island.

Hundreds have died and many thousands have been displaced on Mindanao since August, when peace talks foundered.

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Islamist threat to Turkey’s secular system

Turkish secularism on the ropes. Sharia is advancing in what is always held out to be that exemplary beacon of democracy in the Islamic world, Turkey. The reasons why Sharia supremacists are advancing there have not — unsurprisingly — been sufficiently explored by Western analysts, who of course dismiss out of hand the appeal of a call to restore Islamic authenticity.

“Erdogan Set for Election Win That May Revive Tension Over Islam,” by Ben Holland for Bloomberg, March 27

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to win a fresh mandate from voters that may embolden his challenge to the country’s military and courts, which see him as an Islamist threat to Turkey’s secular system.

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Palestinians who helped create Israel

Palestinians have so loudly and for so long (nearly a century) rejected Zionism that Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Yasir Arafat, and Hamas may appear to command unanimous Palestinian support.

But no: polling research finds that a substantial minority of Palestinians, about 20 percent, is ready to live side-by-side with a sovereign Jewish state. Although this minority has never been in charge and its voice has always been buried under rejectionist bluster, Hillel Cohen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has uncovered its surprisingly crucial role in history.

He explores this subject in the pre-state period in Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948 (translated by Haim Watzman, University of California Press); then, the same author, translator, and press are currently preparing a sequel, Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948–1967, for publication in 2010.

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Deeper Islamic radicalism among muslim youths

In yet another fissure within radical Islamist networks, one of the world’s most influential jihadi theologians is coming under fire from some former followers for allegedly moderating his views – a claim he denies.

The attacks on Jordanian cleric Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who was spiritual adviser for the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, are significant because of Mr. Maqdisi’s longtime stature as a revered spiritual mentor who legitimizes violence with his religious interpretations of Islamic sacred texts.

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Hello America, I’m a British Muslim

When British businessman Imran Ahmad was made redundant in January, instead of hitting the Job Centre he decided to arrange a one-man speaking tour of the United States to spread his message of peace and Muslim moderateness.

“Do you think the American drone raids in Afghanistan, in which women and children are killed, are actually obstructing the movement for an Islamic reformation?”

“What can be done about the alienation of young Muslim men in the UK?”

“Did you learn English in England?”

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Blast rips through Baghdad crowd

A car bomb blast which ripped through a crowd of shoppers near a bus stop in northern Baghdad has killed at least 20 people and injured more than 35.

The bomb went off near a busy market in the capital’s Shaab district, a mainly Shia area, officials say.

Iraqi police believe it was a deliberate attempt to kill the maximum number of civilians possible.

Violence has declined in Iraq recently but on Monday, a suicide bomber killed 25 people in the north of the country.

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Obama to increase Afghan force

US President Barack Obama plans to send an extra 4,000 US troops to Afghanistan to help train the Afghan security forces, US officials say.

They will reportedly be deployed later this year and come in addition to 17,000 troops already due to reinforce the 38,000 on the ground.

US Senator Carl Levin said the latest extra troops could be deployed in June.

Mr Obama is expected to announce the extra commitment on Friday when he outlines his new Afghanistan strategy.

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FBI and American Muslims at odds

Law enforcement efforts to root out home-grown terrorists are jeopardized by deteriorating relations between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Muslim and Arab-American communities.

The situation began last fall when the FBI quietly withdrew formal relations with all local chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the largest Muslim American civil rights organizations. The FBI cited “a number of distinct narrow issues” that it has refused to make public.

The situation worsened in February, when it became public that the FBI had planted an informant at a California mosque who, a coalition of more than a dozen Muslim American groups charges, actively tried to recruit terrorists.

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Sunni fighters say Iraq didn’t keep job promises

The American military marked another milestone the other day in the initiative perhaps most responsible for taming the violence in Iraq: All but 10,000 of the 94,000 Sunni militiamen — many of them former insurgents who agreed, for cash, to stop killing American soldiers — had been turned over to the control of the Iraqi military.

The same day, one group of the fighters north of Baghdad announced they were resigning from their Awakening Council, the Iraqi name for what the Americans call the Sons of Iraq. And in the town of Salman Pak, councils in southern Baghdad and its suburbs, an area once called “the ring of death,” met to denounce Iraqi efforts to integrate them.

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