Dr Adnan Siddiqui

Confined in temperatures of over 100 F and humidity over 60% are conditions familiar to any one who has used the London Underground recently; but this is the daily reality for at least 9 months of the year for the prisoners at Camp Delta,Guantanamo Bay.

These conditions are not fit for animals, let alone human beings, yet the US administration assures the world that they are being treated humanely. Recently, this was strongly refuted in an editorial in the April edition of the British Medical Journal by Dr Derek Summerfield, who felt that torture is becoming a legitimate tool in fighting the “war on terror”.

France is not the only country where headscarves have proved contentious. A number of countries already ban the garment from schools and other public buildings, while elsewhere it is the failure of women to don a veil which prompts outrage.

Singapore

Singapore, keen to avoid racial and religious tensions between its ethnic Chinese majority and the Malay Muslim minority, has banned the scarf from schools. The Singapore government believes the ban is necessary to promote racial harmony, but Muslims say it infringes upon their religious freedoms. In 2002, the authorities became involved in a stand-off with four families who defied the ban.

French MPs have voted by a massive majority to ban the Islamic headscarf and all other overt religious symbols from state schools.

The bill was passed by 494 votes to 36. It now goes to the upper house, the Senate, for approval.

The wearing of Jewish skullcaps, large Christian crosses and probably Sikh turbans would also be banned. About 70% of French people back the controversial law - and even 40% of Muslim women, according to some polls.

Most French MPs backed the bill on the grounds that it protected the secularity of the French state, by keeping religion out of the classroom.

'Intolerant'

Exactly one year ago, the toppling of the famous statue of now-imprisoned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made the headlines and TV news coverage worldwide.

April 9, 2003 witnessed the fall of Baghdad to the U.S.-led occupation forces, the ousting of Saddam along with the Iraqi Baathist regime in what Washington dubbed “Iraq Freedom Operation”.

Friday, April 9, 2004 witnessed U.S. occupation forces using a ladder to remove posters of Shiite scholar Moqtada al-Sadr that were affixed to a sculpture symbolizing a “new Iraq”, erected on the plinth where Saddam's statue once stood in a Baghdad square.

BAGHDAD, (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Over 10,000 Iraqi civilians were killed since March 20, 2003 as a “direct result” of the U.S.-led military offensive on Iraq, Amnesty International said in a new report.

Iraqis also suffered random shooting, torture and ill-treatment at the hands of occupation forces, now in the oil-rich country for one year now, said the report released Thursday, March 18.

The London-based group said that the high number of deaths was either during the invasion or in violent incidents during the subsequent occupation.

The U.S. occupation forces should halt their "brutal genocide" against Iraqis and international community has to intervene for stopping this aggression that does not exempt even mosques or sanctities, 67 world Muslim scholars said in a statement.

"Muslim scholars condemn the brutal massacres perpetrated against children and women, and the aggression against mosques and sanctities ... in which heavy weapons and missiles are being used," the scholars said in a statement obtained by IslamOnline.net Thursday, April 8.

Sarah Hall, political correspondent, Monday 13 May 2004, The Guardian

Tony Blair's hopes of patching up relations with the Muslim community have been dealt a fresh blow by a leading Islamic organisation which is urging its members not to vote Labour at next week's European elections.

Underlining the government's fearthat it is facing a hammering at the polls because of Iraq, the Muslim Association of Britain is calling on Muslims across the country to back anti-war candidates.

May 10 2004, Tony Parsons

Daily Mirror Columnist

STOP me if I am missing something here, but if former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic can end up on trial for war crimes committed under his leadership, then why can't Tony Blair?

Former Yugoslav President Milosevic didn't personally murder anyone. He didn't actually rape anyone. And he didn't soil his suit by torturing anyone in a stinking prison cell.

And yet Milosevic stands accused of crimes against humanity. He faces life imprisonment for unspeakable atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo that happened when he was many miles away.

by Robert Fisk - 07 May 2004

First, our enemies created the suicide bomber. Now, we have our own digital suicide bomber, the camera. Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi. Take a close look at the leather strap, the pain on the prisoner's face. No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash.

The Muslim suicide bomber cries Allahu Akbar, God is great. And what does Lynndie England's partner-in-crime do? Why, his home garden is plastered with a legend from the Book of Hosea, about sowing and righteousness and ploughing.

Paul Routledge, 7 May 2004

MANY years ago, while serving as a foreign correspondent for The Times in south-east Asia, I met an American in a pub in Singapore.

Nothing unusual about that, except that he turned out to be a teacher of English on a US aircraft carrier docked in the harbour.

Why, I asked him, did the US Navy need an English teacher? Because, he admitted, a large proportion of new recruits were "functionally illiterate". They couldn't read or write - not like what we can.

Setting aside the scary factor of matelots not knowing how to follow the instructions to fire missiles, this was a terrifying indictment of education in the world's greatest superpower.