Maybe It's Time For Another Speech to the 'Muslim World'

Seems Obama's historically unprecedented speech last year fell on deaf ears. If the rest of the world loves again they sure have a strange way of showing it.

SAUDI ARABIA is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into Islamist groups in the Balkans, some of which spread hatred of the West and recruit fighters for jihad in Afghanistan.

According to officials in Macedonia, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to destabilise the Balkans. Strict Wahhabi and Salafi factions funded by Saudi organisations are clashing with traditionally moderate local Muslim communities.

Fundamentalists have financed the construction of scores of mosques and community centres as well as handing some followers up to £225 a month. They are expected not only to grow beards but also to persuade their wives to wear the niqab, or face veil, a custom virtually unknown in the liberal Islamic tradition of the Balkans.

Government sources in traditionally secular Macedonia (official title the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), said they were monitoring up to 50 Al-Qaeda volunteers recruited to fight in Afghanistan.

Classified documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal that Macedonian officials are also investigating a number of Islamic charities, some in Saudi Arabia, which are active throughout the Balkans and are suspected of spreading extremism and laundering money for terrorist organisations.

One of the groups under scrutiny is the International Islamic Relief Organisation from Saudi Arabia, which is on a United Nations blacklist of organisations backing terrorism. It did not respond to inquiries, but has previously denied involvement in terrorist activities, calling such claims “totally unfounded”.

According to its website, it works in 32 countries to provide relief to the victims of natural disasters and to carry out humanitarian, health and educational projects.

“Hundreds of millions have been poured into Macedonia alone in the past decade and most of it comes from Saudi Arabia,” said a government source. “The Saudis’ main export seems to be ideology, not oil.”

Sulejman Rexhepi, leader of the Islamic community in Macedonia, said a number of mosques had been forcibly taken over by radical groups. Four in central Skopje are no longer under the control of the official Islamic authorities. New imams claim they have been “spontaneously” installed by the “people”.

Saudi Pair Face Flogging For Having a 'Telephone Affair'

The primitive Mohammedans in Saudi Arabia are at it again, issuing outlandish sentences for a perceived "telephone affair" between a pair of researchers.

A Saudi appeals court is due this week to review the case of a biochemist and his female student sentenced to jail and flogging after a lower court ruled their research contact was a front for a telephone affair.

The man was sentenced to 8 months in prison and 600 lashes and his student to 4 months in prison and 350 lashes last November for establishing a phone relationship that led her to divorce her husband.

London-based Amnesty International says it will consider the two as prisoners of conscience if the verdicts are carried out.

"The charges ... do not correspond to recognizable criminal offences," the group said in a statement in April.

A spokesman for the government's Human Rights Commission said he was not immediately able to comment.

Howe funny is that? These savages have a Human Right's Commission.

Rights groups and some Saudi reformers have criticized what they say is an arbitrary justice system unsuited to the needs of a country of 25 million people.

Judges who are religious scholars apply the rulings of an austere version of sharia, Islamic law, often termed Wahhabism.

The government, a key U.S. ally, says the system ensures justice for Muslims and non-Muslims. It is in the process of overhauling the organization of courts and codifying a formal penal code.

Australian Muslim Clerics on Saudi Payroll

Here's a real stunner. Considering the oil ticks are funding madrassas, CAIR, and all sorts of other radicals groups in the West, it's no surprise they're bankrolling these radicals in Australia as well.

SIX Australian-based Muslim clerics who are leaders of the Islamic community in the country are on the payroll of the Saudi Government, receiving allowances of up to $2000 a month.

The Australian can reveal for the first time the identity of the clerics - some paid through the Saudi embassy in Canberra, others directly from Riyadh's Dawah (preaching) Office - who receive between 3500 and 7000 Saudi riyal ($1975) a month.

The payments to the six - who include former Howard government adviser Amin Hady and Melbourne Somali imam Isse Musse - are part of Saudi Arabia's multi-billion-dollar campaign to transform its hardline image in the West.

However, Sheik Hady told The Australian there were as many as 14 others in the country being paid by the Saudis.

The other four clerics on the list provided early last year by the embassy to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are understood to be Yousef Hussein, from al-Taqwa Mosque in Melbourne's southwest; Indian imam Mohammad Anas, from Auburn's Omar Mosque in Sydney's west; Mohammad Mahet Dahir, from the Albanian Australian Islamic Society; and West Australian Somali community leader Mohammad Abdullah Ahmed.

Security contacts say ASIO held no concerns about the clerics.

Saudi Arabia has pumped more than $120 million into Australia since the 1970s to fund mosques, Islamic groups and clerics to propagate Wahhabism, the puritanical brand of Islam espoused by al-Qa'ida.