THIS DAY March 8

March 8, 2009: Jakarta, Indonesia – A MUSLIM cleric in Indonesia was questioned on Friday over his marriage to a 12-year-old village girl, police said.

The marriage between cleric Pujianto Cahyo Widiyanto, 43, and junior high school student Lutfiana Ulfa in August sparked an outcry from civic groups in the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Widiyanto and his supporters say his actions are acceptable under Islam but others say he should abide by state law, which sets 16 as the minimum age for marriage.

‘He has been questioned since this morning,’ a police officer told AFP from Semarang in Central Java.

Although Indonesian law carries stiff penalties for paedophilia, arranged marriages between older men and girls are not uncommon, especially in poorer rural areas.

Moralizing Clerics Back Anti-Porn Law but Take Child Bride

November 28, 2008 JAKARTA ~ Muslim clerics who claim to be protecting vulnerable women by backing a new anti-pornography law have come out in defense of a fellow preacher who has married a 12-year-old village girl.

The issue of child brides for religious men in the mainly Muslim country has became a subject of national debate since little-known cleric Pujianto Cahyo Widiyanto, 43, married junior high school student Lutfiana Ulfa in August.

His case went virtually unnoticed until Muslim conservatives started lobbying parliament to pass a new anti-pornography bill that was opposed by a broad spectrum of civil society groups and non-Muslims.

Passed in October with the backing of the very clerics who are now defending Widiyanto, the law criminalizes all movements and works, including poetry and music, deemed obscene and capable of violating public morality.

“These clerics are hypocrites,” lawmaker Said Abdullah, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, told AFP.

“They say the anti-porn law will protect young women, but yet they dehumanize them by marrying underage girls and supporting child marriage.”

Under Indonesian pedophilia laws, Widiyanto could face 15 years’ jail for having sex with a minor. He is under investigation but openly talks about his love of pubescent girls and his plans to marry more.

“There is no coercion. The girls like me and their parents have given their blessings,” Widiyanto was quoted as telling Detikcom news website.

And no one should interfere because child brides are allowed under Islam, according to Muslims such as Hilman Rosyad Syihab, the deputy head of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party which backed the pornography law.

He said Islam allowed marriage regardless of whether a girl had reached sexual maturity.

“But the husband can only have sex with her once she reaches puberty,” he explained, in contravention of the law which sets 16 as the minimum marriage age for women and 18 as the age of consent

Some thing stinks here because according to Indonesian Marriage Law 1974 (no. 1/74)

Marriage Age: minimum marriage age 19 for males and 16 for females; provision for marriage below minimum age, subject to judicial discretion and parental consent

March 8, 2009: Bangkok, Thailand. A Russian businessman dubbed the ‘Merchant of Death’ for allegedly arming dictators and warlords said on Friday there is no proof showing he’s the world’s biggest arms dealer and accused the US of pressuring Thailand to extradite him. Viktor Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, also complained of inhumane treatment at a Thai prison that he said was cramped, hot, uncivilised and ‘worse than Guantanamo’.

The 41-year-old Bout has long been linked to some of Africa’s most notorious conflicts, allegedly supplying arms to former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

He has been jailed in Thailand since his arrest in Bangkok a year ago and is accused of conspiring to arm Colombian rebels. Bout’s extradition hearing started in June but it has been repeatedly postponed by a shifting cast of attorneys and defence witnesses who have failed to appear.

His hearing was again delayed on Friday because his wife complained she was sick and could not testify. The hearing will resume on Monday with the defence planning to call Bout to testify. Shackled at the ankles with his face pressed against the bars of a holding cell, Bout shouted to reporters ahead of Friday’s hearing. ‘If they say I am the biggest arms dealer – so, where is the proof?’

Bout said at Bangkok’s Criminal Court, calling the accusations against him ‘lies and rumours’. When asked by reporters if he felt politics were behind his arrest, Bout shouted, ‘It’s a theatre!’ Dressed in an orange prison uniform, Bout also yelled at guards who tried to prevent him from speaking during a 10-minute exchange with reporters in French, English and Russian.

One of Bout’s lawyers, Lak Nitiwatanavichan, told the court Bout was illegally detained and requested his immediate release. Judges said they would consider the motion. The United States is seeking the extradition of Bout, who was arrested March 6, 2008, at a Bangkok luxury hotel.

Agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration posed as rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, looking to buy millions of dollars in weapons. Bout was charged with conspiracy for allegedly trying to smuggle missiles and rocket launchers to Farc, which is a US-designated terrorist organisation.

He was later indicted in the US of four terrorism-related charges. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

A little about this skumbag

THIS DAY March 7

Before we begin, lets take a look what they have been up too today, and where better to look than the Land of The Pure

PAKISTAN

Pakistani Frontier Corps soldiers stand next to weapons allegedly seized from militants at the Frontier Corps headquarter in Mohmand Tribal Area,

March 7, 2009: Peshawar, Pakistan. Supporters of Pakistani opposition leader Nawaz Sharif hold an effigy of country’s President Asif Ali Zardari, wrapped with U.S. flag as they chant slogans during a rally against Supreme Court decision, Pakistan’s biggest political crisis in over a year began when the Supreme Court upheld a ruling that banned Sharif from contesting elections because of a past criminal conviction.Supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League burn tyres as they protest against the Supreme Court’s decision to disqualify former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, from elected office, in Peshawar

Well it make a change to

burning thousands of DVDs, videos and music CDs

Could be the musik that drives them to

March 7, 2009: Quetta, Pakistan. An injured victim, center, of suicide bombing in Pashin, is treated at a local hospital A suicide bomber attacked a girls’ religious school in southwest Pakistan while a local Islamic party leader was visiting, killing four people and wounding seven.

And when they are not blowing themselves up
THEY
Bomb poet’s shrine to protest women visitors

Suspected militants bombed the mausoleum in Pakistan of a 17th-century poet on Thursday, apparently because women have been visiting the shrine.

A letter delivered to the management of the mausoleum of Abdul Rehman, commonly known as Rehman Baba, on the outskirts of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan three days before the attack warned against “shrine culture,” Sahibzada Mohammad Anees, a top government official in the city told Pakistan’s English-language DawnNews television.

The letter also noted that women were coming to pray at the shrine.

No one was hurt in the pre-dawn blast but the mausoleum was badly damaged. The Sufi poet is revered in Pakistan and Afghanistan for his mystical, melodic poetry. Written in the Pashto language, his verses about love and peace are commonly quoted and have been translated into English, French, Russian, Urdu, Arabic and other languages.

A professor at Peshawar University told the television network that Rehman Baba’s poems are kept alongside the Islamic holy book, the Quran, in many homes.

Islamic militants have been stepping up attacks in Pakistan, especially in the Pashtun-dominated northwest, and are increasingly seen as a threat to the nation of 170 million people. They have tried to stamp out what they see as inappropriate practices such music and dancing. They also consider paying homage at graves heretical. And they believe Islam prohibits men and women from mingling unless they are husband and wife.

March 7, 2009: Peshawar, Pakistan. One woman has died and 28 people have been injured in an attack on the Presbyterian Christian community in the village of Songo, in the district of Gujranwala, province of Punjab. The attack took place on the evening of March 2: at 8 p.m., a group of Muslim inhabitants opened fire on the faithful who had gathered in the church for prayer. The woman, named Shakeela, died on the spot, while other members of the faithful suffered injuries of various kinds while they were seeking to flee from the bullets or to protect the pastor. The attackers broke the windows of the church, destroyed the Bibles and the other prayer books, and removed the cross from the roof of the building.The victims of the attacks say that this was a premeditated action, and recount that in the previous weeks they had received a number of threats from the attackers. The authors of the attack have been identified, and a report against them has been filed at the local police station. The Pakistan Christian Post says that for now, the security forces have turned down the request for investigations on the attackers. For this reason, the burial of the woman’s body has been delayed, to permit an autopsy in evidence of the attack.

The attack in Songo is added to a long list of violent events that are now being seen more or less everywhere in Punjab and in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The attacks are carried out by the Taliban, but also by ordinary people, and they are not coming to an end in the Swat Valley, where a fragile ceasefire has been attained by the government, thanks to the concession of introducing sharia in that district and in the district of Malakand.

During the night of March 5, the Taliban blew up 16 CD and DVD stores in Takhtbhai, in the district of Mardan northeast of Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP. It is one of the many places in the province that in recent months have come under the grip of the Taliban. In February, it was the theater of attacks against girls’ schools, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, and in spite of the fact that the agreement between the Taliban and the government provides for the reopening of schools to girls, many are afraid of fresh violence.

Since the beginning of the year, people have been abandoning the Swat Valley by the thousands. These include many families and a number of teachers, who have formally stated that they are going on vacation. One mother who left the district recounts: “All the best teachers from my children’s schools have left. I do not think they will go back. According to my relatives there, many children have gone back to school, but there are now too few teachers.”

Meanwhile while the boys are having fun, the girls have to be fed.

Pakistani local tribal residents wait to receive food supply and medical help provided by paramilitary forces in Landi Kotal in tribal area of Khyber near Peshawar,