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from FaithWorld:
Bin Laden deputy claims U.S. faces “jihadist renaissance” in Muslim world
(Ayman al-Zawahiri (R) and Osama bin Laden (L) during an interview with Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir (not pictured) in this file photo image supplied by the Dawn newspaper on November 10, 2001/Hamid Mir)
Osama bin Laden's longtime lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, said the United States faces rebellion throughout the Muslim world after killing the al Qaeda leader, according to a YouTube recording posted on Wednesday. In what appeared to be his first public response to bin Laden's death in a U.S. commando raid in Pakistan last month, the Egyptian-born Zawahri warned Americans not to gloat and vowed to press ahead with al Qaeda's campaign against the United States and its allies.
"The Sheikh has departed, may God have mercy on him, to his God as a martyr, and we must continue on his path of jihad to expel the invaders from the land of Muslims and to purify it from injustice," Zawahri said in the 28-minute clip. "Today, and thanks be to God, America is not facing an individual or a group ... but a rebelling nation which has awoken from its sleep in a jihadist renaissance challenging it wherever it is."
While the bespectacled Zawahri has been touted as successor to bin Laden, experts on al Qaeda say that another Egyptian militant, Saif al-Adel, is in interim command of al Qaeda. In the video, Zawahri warned Americans not to rejoice at bin Laden's death: "You should await what will befall you after every celebratio n." He condemned U.S. forces for burying bin Laden at sea, a move opposed by senior Muslim clerics as un-Islamic. The Americans said the burial included Muslim rite and took place at sea to deny bin Laden's followers a shrine.
from FaithWorld:
Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, aka Dr. Death, dies
(Dr. Jack Kevorkian poses at the 62nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California August 29, 2010/Mario Anzuoni)
Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, known as "Dr. Death" for helping more than 100 people end their lives, died early on Friday at age 83, his lawyer said. Kevorkian died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, where he had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and heart problems, said Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkian's attorney and friend.
from FaithWorld:
Prayers and religious terms removed from Texas public school graduation
(High school graduates, 25 May 2007 /Chris Moncus)
A U.S. federal judge has ruled that a high school graduation in a suburb of San Antonio, Texas may not include an opening and closing prayer or the words "invocation" or "benediction." District Judge Fred Biery ruled on Tuesday that using those words would make it sound like Castroville's Medina Valley High School is "sponsoring a religion."
"We think that the district has been flouting the law for decades," said Ayesha Kahn, an attorney for Americans United for Church and State, which filed the lawsuit. "We're glad that the court is going to put an end to it."
from FaithWorld:
Distraught family of DSK accuser looks to God
(Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn gestures during his bail hearing inside of the New York State Supreme Courthouse in New York May 19, 2011/Richard Drew)
In a living room bare but for a few family photos and Islamic texts, the African man who says he is the brother of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's accuser says he has not slept or eaten properly for days.
from FaithWorld:
Judgment Day forecaster points to new doomsday date
(Harold Camping during an interview at Family Stations Inc. offices in Oakland, California May 16, 2011/Reuters Television )
The evangelical Christian broadcaster whose much-ballyhooed Judgment Day prophecy went conspicuously unfulfilled on Saturday has a simple explanation for what went wrong -- he miscalculated. Instead of the world physically coming to an end on May 21 with a great, cataclysmic earthquake, as he had predicted, Harold Camping, 89, said he now believes his forecast is playing out "spiritually," with the actual apocalypse set to occur five months later, on October 21.
from FaithWorld:
Camping’s Judgment Day a dud, believers baffled
(Harold Camping, 89, the California evangelical broadcaster who predicted that Judgment Day would come on May 21, 2011, in an interview at his Family Stations Inc. offices in Oakland, California May 16, 2011/Reuters Television)
With no sign of Judgment Day arriving on Saturday as forecast by an 89 year-old California evangelical broadcaster, followers were faced with trying to make sense of his failed pronouncement. Harold Camping, the former civil engineer who heads the Family Radio Network of Christian stations, had been unwavering in his message that believers would be swept to heaven on May 21.
from FaithWorld:
Islamist militants hold prayers for bin Laden in Pakistan
(A supporter of the banned Islamic organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa clears tears while taking part in a symbolic funeral prayer for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Karachi on May 3, 2011/Athar Hussain)
The founder one of Pakistan's most violent Islamist militant groups has told Muslims to be heartened by the death of Osama bin Laden, as his "martyrdom" would not be in vain, a spokesman for the group said on Tuesday.
from FaithWorld:
Bin Laden sea burial not in line with Islam, Muslim clerics say
(Aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, from which Osama bin Laden was buried at sea somewhere in the north Arabian Sea/U.S. Navy)
Clerics in Saudi Arabia, a staunch U.S. ally and the country of Osama bin Laden's birth, dismissed Washington's assertions it observed Islamic rites in disposing of the al Qaeda leader's body in the Arabian Sea. Bin Laden, shot dead by U.S. forces in a raid on a compound in Pakistan on Monday, was placed in a weighted bag and dropped into the north Arabian Sea from the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, the Carl Vinson, the U.S. military said.
from FaithWorld:
Bin Laden ‘eased’ into sea in contentious burial
(Aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, from which Osama bin Laden was buried at sea somewhere in the north Arabian Sea/U.S. Navy)
He may have been America's enemy number one, but after U.S. forces killed him, Osama bin Laden was afforded Islamic religious rites by the U.S. military as part of his surprise at-sea burial on Monday.
from FaithWorld:
Osama’s Islam-violence link weighs heavy on Muslims
(A video grab from an undated footage from the Internet shows Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden making statements from an unknown location. CNN said on July 14, 2007 that the video was intercepted before it was to appear on radical Islamist Web sites/REUTERS TV)
Osama bin Laden's radical Islamism has had a devastating impact on Muslims around the world by linking their faith with violence and using religious texts to justify mass killings. His "jihadist" strategy has claimed the lives of many thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as in the United States, Europe and Africa. It has also tarred Muslims with suspicion and helped feed prejudice against them. Especially in the West, many Muslims felt pressured to denounce a man they never identified with.
