Saudi Arabia Calls for Quick End of War

RIYADH - Saudi Arabia on 24 March called for a speedy end to the US-led war on Iraq and reiterated its total rejection of a military occupation of Iraq.

The Council of Ministers, chaired by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz, also said that Saudi Arabia would not take part in any military action against Iraq.

"While following the painful events taking place in Iraq and the killing of civilians, Saudi Arabia stresses the necessity of ending the military operations soon," the Cabinet said in a statement.

"Saudi Arabia reaffirms that resolving the Iraqi crisis and its consequences must be done through joint global effort within the framework of international legitimacy," Information Minister Dr. Fouad Al-Farsy said, quoting the Cabinet statement.

The Cabinet also called for implementing UN Security Council resolutions and affirmed the need to preserve Iraq's security, unity, independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Cabinet sought measures to safeguard "Iraq's civil establishments for the service of the Iraqi people."

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia has submitted a peace proposal to the US as part of its attempt to end the war in Iraq, according to Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal.

Prince Saud was addressing a crowded press conference in the Foreign Ministry on 25 March on the situation in Iraq and the Saudi Arabia's efforts - in tandem with the international community - to find a peaceful solution to the war.

In Washington, US state Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We are not aware of any peace proposal from Saudi Arabia. There has been no particular approach or proposal made to us by Saudi Arabia at this stage."

"The time for co-operative solutions with this Iraqi regime has passed. Peace proposals that leave the current Iraqi regime in place... are just not worth it," he added. - SPA

MWL Calls for Immediate Halt to War on Iraq

MAKKAH - The Muslim World League (MWL) on 27 March called for an immediate end to the war on Iraq, which it described as part of a series of conflicts between the Muslim Ummah and its enemies.

"While denouncing this war, the Muslim Ummah demands that it be stopped immediately according to the call of wisdom and international legitimacy," said MWL Secretary-General Dr. Abdullah Ibn Abdul Mohsin Al-Turki.

The MWL, which represents a large number of Islamic centres and organizations around the world, urged the Muslim Ummah to rise from its slumber and stand united to face growing challenges.

"The Muslim countries must keep away from provocative acts that are aimed at dragging Muslims on a collision course with those who want to achieve domination over them and occupy their land and resources," he said.

Referring to the killing of innocent people in Iraq by US and British invasion forces, the MWL Secretary-General said the Palestinian people were subject to similar aggression at the hands of Israeli occupation forces.

The MWL stressed the need to study the causes of international conflicts to prevent them in future. "Muslims would not have been vulnerable to attack if they had followed the teachings of Islam and avoided internal differences," the MWL chief said.

Dr. Al-Turki urged Muslims to unite under the banner of Islam. "Hold fast the rope of God, all of you together, and be not divided among yourselves," he said quoting a verse from the Holy Qur'an.

Dr. Al-Turki warned against creating divisions and factions among Muslims and said God would punish those responsible for causing division in the Islamic religion and weakening the strength of the Muslim Ummah.

He called upon Islamic scholars to work for the unity of the Ummah and enhance the Islamic awareness of Muslims. He also urged Muslim countries to implement Islamic law and adopt a united stand on regional and international issues.

200,000 Stage Anti-US March in Pakistan

LAHORE -- An estimated 200,000 people took to the streets of Lahore on 23 March in what is believed to have been Pakistan's biggest demonstration yet condemning the US-led attacks on Iraq.

Chanting slogans and burning effigies of US President George Bush, protesters demanded an immediate end to the war.

Responding to a call by a six- party bloc, the Islamic alliance

of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), protesters swarmed a three-kilometre stretch of the eastern city's main Mall Road.

"It was like a human tempest, one could see only heads of people," an AFP reporter watching the crowd from a rooftop said.

Chanting "Allah-o-Akbar) (God is great), the marches carried banners attacking Bush and Blair. "Stop spilling blood, no to US terrorism" and "Iraqi Muslims, we are with you," posters read.

MMA leader Fazlur Rahman told the emotional crowd the US would be trapped in a "quagmire" in Iraq.

"It did not attack Iraq, it signed its own death warrants," he said from a makeshift stage at the heart of the demonstration.

"This massive rally has proved that the government stance is not the stance of 140 million Pakistanis," he said, urging the people to boycott US products. MMA President Mian Maqsood said it was the biggest ever anti-war demonstration in Pakistan.

On 23 March's Protest was the first large-scale demonstration against the invasion since US and British bombs and cruise missiles began raining down on Iraq at dawn. Before the march, protesters thronged the city's main Nasir Bagh Park, burning US flags and Bush in effigy.

MMA spokesman Riaz Durrani earlier told AFP "The rally was the biggest in the country since US started bombing Iraq on 19 March."

"People are furious over US brutalities," he said, adding the demonstration was to express "public anger and hatred against US tyrannies." Anti-war protests have been staged by angry Pakistanis daily since the war erupted in Iraq. - SG

Saudi Shoura Council Calls for End to War

RIYADH - The Shoura (Consultative) Council on 22 March called for an immediate halt to the US-led war on Iraq, and accused the United States and Britain of undermining international law.

"The lives of millions of brothers in Iraq is in danger," the Council said following its regular meeting in a statement carried by the official SPA News agency.

It called for "an immediate halt to war, a return to the (UN) Security Council, and the implementation of international resolutions."

The United States, Britain and their allies have opted for war instead of diplomatic means, making a farce of international law and the calls of millions around the world for peace.

The Council, presided over by its Chairman Sheikh Dr. Saleh Ibn Abdullah Ibn Humeid, stressed that the international legitimacy resolutions should be adhered to in all conflicts.

The Council expressed its solidarity with the brotherly Iraqi people and called for maintaining Iraq's independence and national unity and for running its resources by its citizens.

The Council stressed that the Kingdom's religion and unity at this juncture and under all circumstances are the major pillars to protect the country from dangers that might threaten it.

The Council expressed its support for all steps taken by the government of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques to save the region from the consequences of war that will cause destruction and damage to the region's peoples and threaten world peace.

The Council prayed to Almighty Allah to maintain security for Saudi Arabia and preserve the country as well as Arab, Islamic and all countries from any harm. - SG

Nearly 50 Killed As US Targets Kurdish Islamist Groups

HALABJA, IRAQ - The United States widened its war in Iraq on 21 March with a massive missile blitz on two Islamist groups in Iraqi Kurdistan alleged to have links to Al-Qaeda, killing at least 50 people, officials said.

Mustafa Sayed Khader, a top military leader of the pro-US Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said the US attack on Ansar Al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) in the early hours of the day included a two-hour bombardment by some 50 cruise missiles.

And in a apparent retaliation, an Australian journalist was killed in a car bombing while visiting an area near the strikes. "Ansar positions were bombarded by around 40-50 cruise missiles. The missiles hit Ansar centres.

There are many dead and injured, although we don't know how many for sure," Khader told reporters in Halabja, a PUK-held town near Ansar-held territory.

Ansar Al-Islam controls a tiny pocket of territory between Halabja and the Iranian border, an area around 80 kilometres (50-miles) southeast of the PUK's administrative centre of Suleimaniya.

The group, which models itself on Afghanistan's deposed Taleban, has been accused by the US of trying to develop crude chemical weapons, and of having links to both Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network and Saddam Hussein's regime.

But in a surprise move, the US also conducted strikes against the base of a mainstream Islamic party, Komala Islami Kurdistan (Islamic Society of Kurdistan), in the small town of Khormal, killing at least 50 people.

An official from a local moderate Islamic group, the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan (IMIK), said he saw at least 50 bodies from a missile strike on another Komala office and added that the injured had been taken over the border to Iran for treatment.

"Near Khormal there is another Komala office that was destroyed. There were 45 people inside and all of them were killed," said the IMIK's Kamal Haji Ali.

Another IMIK official later put the toll at more than 50, while residents fleeing the town in terror said up to 100 died in the strikes, which scored accurate hits on Komala offices where faction officials were meeting. It was nuclear why Komala was targeted, but the Khormal site was identified last month by US Secretary of State Colin Powell as an Ansar chemical weapons plant.

And a top PUK official said the group, which has offices across Iraqi Kurdistan, had failed to co-operate with the PUK in their fight against Ansar.

Komala's base at Khormal lies between PUK and Ansar positions. Residents were pouring out of Khormal throughout the day, and an Australian journalist working near the entrance to Khormal was killed when a taxi packed with explosives drove out of the town and blew up. Three PUK Kurdish peshmerga were also killed and another journalist wounded. The driver of the taxi was also killed, witnesses and colleagues of the dead journalists said.

Details on casualties from the strikes on Ansar - blamed for a series of suicide bombings against the secular PUK - were not immediately available.

Clashes could be heard between Komala and PUK forces on 21 March afternoon and eyewitnesses said there had been a retaliatory bomb attack on the nearby main road. Despite the blitz, Ansar appeared to be holding its ground, but there was a massive PUK build-up in the area. - AFP

Islam Has Definite Guidelines on Rights of Combatants & Non-Combatants

JEDDAH - The decades of suffering by the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation, the war in Kosovo and now the attack on Iraq - these and many other armed conflicts raise the issue of human rights in wartime.

After World War II, guidelines were set to protect the lives of innocent civilians at times of conflict and define the rights of all human beings at all times and everywhere. These guidelines were articulated by the countries that won the war and that had recently relinquished their control, grudgingly, over the countries they colonized for centuries.

The concepts they presented in their doctrines might have seemed new and inspirational to them, but a recent research paper entitled "Human rights in Islam" explains how Islam defined these concepts and implemented them more than 1400 years ago.

Dr. Rawya Al-Thahhar, professor of Islamic Jurisprudence at King Abdul Aziz University, Madinah branch, received the Madinah Award for Best Scientific Research in 2,000, and the paper was published two months ago.

It documents the human rights defined by Islam and compares them to the International Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. "I looked at the origins of human rights in Islam, their sources and regulations, and compare them to the International Declaration of Human Rights," Dr. Al- Thahhar told Arab News.

"I find that Islam is more deserving of being described as international than the International Declaration of Human Rights because it does not discriminate and does not favour certain groups of people over others," she said.

Unlike in the West, the concept of human rights is not new in the Islamic world. Islam declared from the start that all people are equal and free.

"There is deliberated misrepresentation of Islam by some non-Muslims who have studied it," said Dr. Al-Thahhar. For example, regarding the issue of women's rights, "Islam treated men and women equally at a time when the West was debating whether women and had a soul and treated them as property."

In war, Islam forbids the destruction of homes, trees and places of worship and the killing of women, children and the elderly. It called for the humane treatment of the dead, the wounded and prisoners. "These are Islamic principles which the West in all its wars has never respected," said Dr. Al-Thahhar. "The US, the country carrying the banner of human rights, is the first to disregard them when it comes to other people," she added.

Based on verses from the Holy Qur'an, the words and conduct of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him), and the of those caliphs after him, Dr. Al- Thahhar identified the rights of humans according to Islam.

"In Islam there are executive laws governing the treatment of people and the conduct of war, but with the International Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention the statements amount to nothing more than recommendations that are not enforced," Dr. Al-Thahhar said. - AN

15,000 Embrace Islam in 16 Years

RIYADH - The number of persons who embraced Islam in the last 16 years at the centre of foreign communities enlightenment in Bureida, Qassim region, amounted to more than 15,000, said report released by the centre.

The report noted that the centre included 37 branches throughout Qassim region, and the department of Call and Education at the centre had so far delivered more than 8,000 lectures in various languages

On the other hand, the centre organized training courses in the Holy Qur'an, Islamic creed and jurisprudence, the biography of Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) and means of Islamic call in Arabic, Urdu, Bengali, Filipino, Indonesian, English, Persian and other languages.

Meanwhile, the female department at the centre organized 1,700 lectures in the last 11 years. On the other hand, the centre printed about one million books at the cost of SR5million, and sent more than three million books in ten languages to more than 18 countries.

It also distribute more than 100,000 copies of the Holy Qur'an and more than 130,000 books containing the translation of the meanings of the Holy Qur'an inside and outside of Saudi Arabia.

The centre also built more than 170 mosques inside and outside of Saudi Arabia.

The report pointed out that the centre has been calling the non- Muslims to embrace Islam, and teaching the Muslims the fundamentals of Islam, and correcting all wrong ideas about it. - SPA

Sahih Al-Bukhari

Narrated Abu Saeed Al-Khudri: Somebody asked, "O Allah's Apostle (peace be on him)! Who is the best among the people! Allah's Apostle (peace be on him) replied "A believer who strives his utmost in Allah's Cause with his life and property." they asked, "Who is next?" He replied, "A believer who stays in one of the mountain paths worshipping Allah and leaving the people secure from his mischief."