Work for most part unaffected in country with world’s largest Muslim population

For hundreds of millions of Muslims, this week marks the start of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and praying. In some Middle Eastern countries, government and business virtually shut down during Ramadan, but in Indonesia, with the world’s largest Muslim population, work for the most part goes on unaffected.  

On Wednesday, the first day of Ramadan, loudspeakers broadcast the call to prayer at the Sunda Kelapa mosque in Jakarta, but the scene is quieter than usual.

The food vendors and merchants who usually line the entrance to the mosque are gone. There is little demand for their products during the Islamic holy month, when Muslims focus on fasting and spiritual introspection.

Hananto Prasetyo says Ramadan is special time for Muslims. He says in this one month they evaluate and test themselves, from desire and other forbidden things, to get closer to God.

Away from the mosques, few concessions are made to accommodate the sacrifice Muslims in Indonesia make during Ramadan.

Some Muslim majority countries basically shut down for the month to allow people to rest and pray. History professor Azyumardi Azra at the State Islamic University says that is not the case in Indonesia.

“In the few early days of Ramadan of course life is getting slower a bit for a few days, but, and then probably on Monday next week life is getting back to normal,” said Asra.  “It is different from fasting in Ramadan in many Middle Eastern countries because in many Middle Eastern countries people are awake all night and then they sleep all day.”

Indonesian Muslims like Edi Hadiman must perform their religious obligations in addition to regular jobs. And he says that is the way it should be.  He says it is a test for Muslims, but religious people should remember that it is difficult to get into heaven.

There are some restrictions on businesses in Indonesia. Most bars and nightclubs must either shut down or stop selling alcohol.

Some strict Muslim groups, such as the Islamic Defense Front or FPI, have tried to enforce these restrictions in the past by raiding bars and restaurants.

Azra says these groups are supported by authorities who want to been seen as standing up for Islamic values.

“They have some kind of collaboration. In fact now they ask FPI and other groups to help the police. So they use them actually. The police use them. So I think this is not appropriate, you know you cannot use this group as supporting police,” Azra added.  “The police should enforce law and order without involving this kind of group.”

But he says for the vast majority of Indonesians observing Ramadan is personal choice that reinforces Islamic values of tolerance and peace.

Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan of Rochester, indicted last week, weren’t collecting cash for poverty-stricken grandparents, but for the violent terrorist organization Al-Shabab, officials say.
They were a regular sight among the dimly lit stalls of the Somali shopping malls and the narrow hallways of the high-rise apartment towers in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood known as Little Mogadishu.

Two conservatively dressed women — one older, one younger — often carrying pictures of destitute grandfathers or desperate children to make their pleas more poignant.

Few questioned their work. After all, charity is an obligation, a virtue among the Muslim faithful. Even the poorest of those solicited found a way to spare a few dollars.

But it was all a ruse, the FBI said late last week as the two were indicted in a vast anti-terrorism investigation, the largest since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The women, Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan of Rochester, collected cash not for poverty-stricken grandparents, but for the violent terrorist organization Al-Shabab, the FBI says. Al-Shabab, which is tied to Al-Qaida, has trained foreign fighters and carried out suicide bombings.

How did the two women manage to conceal what the FBI said was their true intent as they sought donations in the Minnesota Somali community, the largest outside of Somalia?

Women collecting for charity, area Somalis say, would have provided the perfect cover.

In a culture where females are the most devoted keepers of causes and the most trusted couriers of cash, local Somalis say women collecting for charities is common. These women in particular — pious, hard-working, bold — would not have been doubted, said Abdifatah Abdinur, a Rochester community leader.

“Women are the backbone of the Somali community; they do these things,” Abdinur said. “But this is the first time anyone has heard of them doing something wrong.”

An Amsterdam court has decided to extradite 10 suspected Somali pirates to Germany to face trial on the charge of hijacking a German ship miles off the Somali coast.

Dutch marines arrested the pirates off the coast of Somalia two months ago during an exchange of fire.

“The court assumes that Germany has jurisdiction over the offence,” the court said in a statement on Friday.

The suspects’ defense lawyers have argued against the decision, saying the suspects should be tried in the Netherlands.

They rejected the claim that the attacked ship had been registered in Germany.

“If we can prove that we don’t know under which flag the ship was sailing, if we can prove that there is no documentation verifying the owner of the ship, why does the court now say so easily, it’s enough, you have to go to Germany?” lawyer Michael Balemans told Reuters.

The coast off essentially lawless Somalia has become a piracy hub, as hijackers demand payment for the release of ships. The pirates have collected tens of millions of dollars in ransom.

At least 21 Somali civilians were killed and 59 wounded in fierce Mogadishu clashes between government forces backed by African Union troops and Islamist insurgents, medics said. 

Somali soldiers on Thursday launched a major counter-offensive to recapture recently lost ground from Islamist insurgents in Mogadishu, sparking a fierce battle that left at least 21 civilians dead.

Newly-trained government forces backed by the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) kicked off their operation early in northwestern Mogadishu, drawing a barrage of retaliatory fire from rebel groups, witnesses said.

The internationally-backed government had lost ground last month when insurgents, mainly from the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab movement, punched through a strategic frontline and closed in on the presidential compound.

“The Somali government forces advanced on the terrorists’ strongholds this morning,” Colonel Ahmed Ibrahim, a government security official, told AFP.

“They took control of several neighbourhoods which had been held by the rebels and the fighting is still going on. There are several bodies strewn across the streets,” he added.

Medical sources counted at least 21 civilian deaths after the first few hours of fighting but expected the toll to rise, with no immediate information on combatant casualties and several areas impossible to access independently.

“Today’s clashes are very heavy. The artillery and mortar fire exchanged by both sides is reaching distant neighbourhoods,” Ali Muse, head of Mogadishu’s ambulance services, told AFP.

“Our teams have so far collected 16 dead civilians and 59 wounded,” he said. “But the toll is likely to be higher since the fighting is continuing.”

Duniya Ali, an official at Mogadishu’s main Medina hospital, also said that five of the wounded brought in Thursday morning had died of their wounds, among them three children.

This year alone hundreds of civilians have died in the crossfire as a result of both insurgent attacks and retaliatory fire by African Union or government forces.

Thousands have been killed in such incidents over the past three years and hundreds of thousands forced out of the city into crowded camps.

On May 21-22, even as President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was in Turkey mustering further support for his embattled transitional federal government (TFG), the Shebab and its Hezb al-Islam allies launched a devastating attack in Mogadishu.

They seized large swathes of the Shibis and Bondhere neighbourhoods, moving them within barely more than a stone’s throw of the shrivelling perimetre housing the presidency and other key institutions.

It also gave them a strategic vantage point over Mogadishu port and the ability to disrupt supplies to the government and AMISOM.

AMISOM said at the time that the insurgents had crossed “a red line” and that the rebel advance warranted tough reprisals.

AFP – At least 21 Somali civilians were killed Thursday and 59 wounded in fierce Mogadishu clashes pitting government forces backed by African Union troops against Islamist insurgents, medics said.

The fighting broke out when newly-trained government forces backed by the soldiers of the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) apparently launched a major offensive to recapture key Mogadishu neighbourhoods.

The internationally-backed government had lost ground last month when insurgents, mainly from the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab movement, punched through a strategic frontline and closed in on the presidential compound.

“The Somali government forces advanced on the terrorists’ strongholds this morning,” Colonel Ahmed Ibrahim, a government security official, told AFP.

“They took control of several neighbourhoods which had been held by the rebels and the fighting is still going on. There are several bodies strewn across the streets,” he added.

Medical sources counted at least 21 civilian deaths after the first few hours of fighting but expected the toll to rise, with no immediate information on combatant casualties and several areas impossible to access independently.

“Today’s clashes are very heavy. The artillery and mortar fire exchanged by both sides is reaching distant neighbourhoods,” Ali Muse, head of Mogadishu’s ambulance services, told AFP.

“Our teams have so far collected 16 dead civilians and 59 wounded,” he said. “But the toll is likely to be higher since the fighting is continuing.”

Duniya Ali, an official at Mogadishu?s main Medina hospital, also said that five of the wounded brought in Thursday morning had died of their wounds, among them three children.

WASHINGTON – A former Somali prime minister is not protected by sovereign immunity from a lawsuit in the United States for alleged torture and human rights abuses, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

In a unanimous decision, the high court handed a defeat to Mohamed Ali Samantar, who served as Somalia’s defense minister in the 1980s and then as prime minister from 1987 to 1990.

Justice John Paul Stevens said in the ruling that a U.S. law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, protected foreign states and their agencies, but not an official acting on behalf of the state and did not provide Samantar with immunity.

The case had been followed closely for its foreign policy implications. Granting immunity could allow foreign torturers in this country to escape responsibility, human rights groups said.

The lawsuit, seeking financial damages from Mr. Samantar, was filed by a small group of Somalis who said they suffered torture or other abuses in their homeland by soldiers or other government officials under Mr. Samantar’s general command.

The five plaintiffs do not claim that Mr. Samantar personally committed the atrocities or that he was directly involved.

But they said the Somali intelligence agencies and the military police under his command engaged in the killings, rapes and torture, including the use of electric shocks, of civilians.

Mr. Samantar has lived in Virginia since 1997 while some of the plaintiffs are naturalized U.S. citizens. They brought the lawsuit in 2004 under a U.S. law called the Torture Victim Protection Act.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, but a U.S. appeals court reinstated it, ruling the 1976 sovereign immunity law does not apply to individuals. That decision prompted Mr. Samantar to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Stevens upheld the appeals court’s ruling. He emphasized that the Supreme Court’s decision was narrow, limited only to the reach of the 1976 law and he sent the case back to the judge for more proceedings.

Mr. Stevens said whether Mr. Samantar may be entitled to immunity under the common law, which is based on judicial precedent rather than legislation, and whether Mr. Samantar may have other valid defenses to the charges against him are matters to be decided by the judge.

Somalia has been without central rule since warlords toppled former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. A cycle of civil conflicts has ensued. In the latest chapter of Somalia’s bloody recent history, al Qaeda-linked Islamists have been waging an insurgency against a U.N.-backed interim government.

France will push for Africa to have membership of the G20 economies in a similar capacity to the European Union when it takes helm of the group next year, a French political source said.

France is using the 25th Africa-France summit, which ends in Nice today, to pave the way for reform proposals at next year’s G8/G20 meetings, aimed at giving Africa more of a say on the international stage.

“They (African leaders) are quite enthusiastic that we want to make the African Union a permanent member of the G20 like the presidency of the European Commission,” the source said late last night.

South Africa is the only African state represented on the group of the world’s richest economies.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday it was time for the world to make a place for Africa on the global stage to discuss international crises and reform, calling for the United Nations to be reformed and Africa to have a permanent member of the Security Council.

The source said the African leaders had agreed to discuss proposals for an interim reform on the Security Council at the next African Union summit.

African nations have been asking for two rotating permanent seats since 2005, given the continent has about 27 per cent of members at the United Nations, its size and the involvement of global powers on its territory.

The source said France had suggested a compromise, whereby there would now be three categories of membership on the Security Council: permanent members, members elected in the current system and a third option of members elected for five or six years.

China, the United States, Russia, Britain and France are the permanent members of the Council. Opec member Nigeria, Gabon and Uganda are among 10 members that hold rotating seats.

“They have accepted to discuss that at the next African Union summit in Kampala in a month … we think it (the issue) has really made a lot of progress,” the source said.

NAIROBI — Agence France-Presse’s Somalia correspondent Mustafa Haji Abdinur has been awarded the CNN Multichoice African Journalist of the Year Award in the Free Press category.

Abdinur, 28, who has been AFP’s Mogadishu-based correspondent since 2006, was among several African journalists recognised at the ceremony in the Ugandan capital Kampala on Saturday.

“Friends, I live in a country whose name has unfortunately become a synonym for lawlessness, where human life is not worth a lot and where press freedom simply does not exist,” said Abdinur.

He was chosen “for his work in Somalia including the ‘Peace Journalism’ initiative which he launched with the help of fellow Somali journalists earlier this year,” organisers said.

The CNN Multichoice Free Press Africa Award has previously been presented to the late Deyda Hydara from Gambia and the imprisoned Eritrean journalist Seyoum Tsehaye Musa Saidykhan.

The CNN African Journalist of the Year Award was founded in 1995 by Edward Boateng and the late Mohamed Amin to recognise and encourage excellence in journalism throughout Africa.

In November 2009, Abdinur won the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) International Press Freedom Awards.

A Somali diplomat said Thursday he is concerned that a member of the al-Shabaab terrorist group from his country may be trying to get into Texas through Mexico. 

But Omar Jamal, first secretary of the Somali mission at the United Nations, added that he fears oppressed Somalis in Latin America trying to gain asylum in the U.S. will get caught up in a terror alert issued by American authorities.

U.S. Homeland Security has asked law enforcement in Houston to be on the lookout for a suspected member of al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida ally based in Somalia.

Jamal said his nation “is in a constant battle with al-Shabaab” and urged American authorities “to be careful who is bad and good in this new alarm.”

The impoverished Horn of Africa nation is caught up in an Islamic insurgency and has not had a functioning government since 1991. It also is home to pirates who have been seizing vessels for ransom in the Indian Ocean.

Jamal said his UN mission for months has been fielding inquiries from Somalis who believe missing loved ones throughout Central and South America are trying to flee to the United States.

“We don’t want them to get caught in the middle of this war on terror,” he said.

He encouraged law enforcement authorities to pursue leads “if they have a lead.”

“But they also need to be very careful and vigilant of those who are really innocent,” he said.

Harris County Sheriff’s Department officials have confirmed the terror alert but refused to discuss specifics. A Houston Police Department spokesman said the department doesn’t publicly discuss such matters. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said they don’t discuss specific intelligence matters.

Jamal said he learned of the alert earlier this week.

“They’re trying to be extra cautious, but we didn’t think it was that much of a situation,” he said. “We’ve been working with them on this issue for a very long time.

“It’s not the first time.”

Raqiya Abdalla of the Fairfax, Virginia-based Somali Family Care Network said her advocacy group has no official estimate of the number of Somalis in the U.S., but said a fair estimate would be 200,000.

The alert issued last week came after federal prosecutors added new charges earlier this month against a 24-year-old Somali man, Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane, who had been picked up in Brownsville in 2008.

He pleaded not guilty May 14 in federal court in San Antonio to three counts of immigration fraud.

Without elaborating, authorities in Harris County, which includes Houston, have confirmed a connection between Dhakane’s case and the Homeland Security alert.

Dhakane is accused of making false statements under oath in support of his application for asylum.

According to his indictment, Dhakane failed to disclose that he was a member or associate of the al-Barakat financial transfer network and Al-Ittihad al-Islami, or the Islamic Union, which wants to impose Islamic law in Somalia. Both are on the Treasury Department’s list of global terrorist groups with links to al-Qaida, according to the indictment.