Al Qaeda launches its first online magazine in English

Called "Inspire," the magazine has features including one on "How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom."

It could help the terror group recruit inside the US and Europe.

The magazing is being run by Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen, which has been linked to the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt of a US-bound airliner.

Radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (pictured here) is at the heart of the Al Qaeda propaganda effort. Authorities say his online sermons, in English, have inspired several recent terrorist plots in the United States.

Here's the magazine: Inspire Magazine.

Read more: Al Qaeda launches its first online magazine in English.

The Worst Islamic Country in the World

And we thought the Soviet Union was repressive! The following are excerpts from an article by Forum 18, the organization in Norway that works to help people gain the right to believe and worship as they wish. The Maldives is the most extreme example of religious repression I have ever read about.

The Maldives is one of the few states — such as Saudi Arabia — that allows only one faith to be practiced publicly, and even insists that all citizens must be Muslims.

The Republic of the Maldives is a collection of 1,190 coral reef islands in the Indian Ocean, south west of Sri Lanka. Only 200 islands are inhabited, with 44 used exclusively as holiday resort islands. The Maldives has a population of about 300,000 citizens.

In the Maldives, citizens cannot practice any other religion than Islam, and they have to practice it in the way the government says.

Due to internal and external pressure to give their citizens freedom of religion, the Maldivian government instituted a reform. But here's how they reformed it: Okay, you can practice any religion you want, but if it's not Islam, you are no longer a citizen.

Maldivian non-Muslims and other Maldivians who do not want to practice their faith in the state approved way cannot practice their own faith. They cannot even pray the way they want. Kneeling down, folding hands or using religious symbols like crosses, candles, pictures or statues can lead to government action. Performing movements in the Namaadu (namaz or Islamic ritual prayer) differently to the state-approved way can also lead to arrest by the police.

Maldivians are not allowed to possess religious material — whether holy books, audio and video tapes, CDs and DVDs, pictures or artifacts — that is not approved by the government. Sometimes private houses and mosques are raided by police in their search for non state-approved religious material. When found, all such material is confiscated. Electronic media, radio broadcasts, the internet, and printed material are all censored by the government.

The luggage of Maldivians returning to the country is searched and all unauthorised religious material is confiscated. Foreign citizens arriving in the Maldives — whether as migrant workers or tourists — also have their luggage searched for "un-Islamic" materials. Small quantities of non-Muslim literature for personal use are generally permitted to foreign tourists.

Maldivians are also not allowed to discuss their faith with anyone. No-one is allowed to discuss religion without the explicit permission of the government. They do not even dare to discuss their beliefs with their spouses and children. The political intimidation of the public and the official denigration of religiously non-conformist people have led to widespread mistrust and fear. Children of people who are suspected of holding alternative religious convictions are sometimes interrogated by their teachers about their parents' opinions and convictions.

Constant intimidation and oppression leads people to act contrary to their own convictions and beliefs. Some people feel forced to perform Muslim ritual prayers (in the state-approved way) to avoid any possible suspicion. They also feel forced to teach their children according to the government's will instead of their own conviction. They are forced to observe the fast during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. After the first week of this year's Ramadan, which began in early September 2008, a Maldivian radio station announced that the police had already arrested 76 people for not fasting.

Maldivians are — justifiably — fearful that they will face severe consequences if they publicly and identifiably defend everyone's right to freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Because of this fear, Maldivians hope the international community will support their struggle. One step to do this is for states and human rights organizations to urge the Maldivian government to implement the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Asma Jahangir, in her report (A/HRC/4/21/Add.3).

When I read this last paragraph, I thought, "This is one of those situations where someone is going to have to fight and die for freedom." Probably it will be Maldivians. They have more at stake in the matter than anyone else.

We've seen many times that "international pressure" on Muslims has about as much impact as sticking our tongues out at them. What they need is not international pressure, but guns and walkie-talkies.

Islam is Gaining Ground

Rita Katz, the author of Terrorist Hunter, worked in terrorism research — trying to discover which charitable organizations were legitimate and which were funding jihad, trying to find out where the money goes, trying to discover which organizations have ties to which, and working to discover if there are known terrorists involved. Sometimes she dressed up as a Muslim, taped a hidden camera and recording device inside her robes, and went to mosques and Islamic conventions in the U.S. to see what she could find.

And what she found was shocking. Right there in downtown Chicago or San Fransisco, she found known terrorists speaking to thousands of people, telling them that they have a holy duty to undermine and ultimately overthrow the government of the United States and replace the Constitution with Shari'a Law.

And technically, that's true. If any of the Muslims in those groups had read their Qur'an and their Hadiths, they would know the speaker was telling the truth.

What was shocking was that they were getting away with what is essentially sedition, right under the noses of Americans.

Rita started this work in the 90's, before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. But the book's story continues until well after 9/11, and surprisingly, not much has changed.

Rita discovered an enormous amount of money pouring in from Saudi billionaires to cleverly set-up "relief organizations" and "charitable organizations" and "think tanks" and she traced how the money gets transferred to one organization, who then gives it to another, and around and around it goes until it would be almost impossible to follow. But she tracked it down. The money ends up creating new mosques in America that advocate jihad against the West, and the money goes to paying families to send their sons on suicide missions into Israel.

One of the many ironies she discovered: Sometimes money is actually given to these charitable organizations by USAID!

Here's another one: Ordinary Americans, thinking they're helping the poor orphans of war-torn Palestine, are actually creating orphans with the money they privately donate to these groups. It is just unbelievable.

The Religion of Peace has this ongoing widget that shows the number of deadly attacks, including the Madrid and London bombings, since 9/11. Watch this number. It goes up every single day:

Islam must be stopped. Here's what you can do about it.