[Why did they pick on a white child?-ed]

A court in Dubai, in the UAE, has jailed two men for 15 years for the abduction and sexual assault of a 15-year-old French-Swiss boy.

The men, one of whom is HIV positive, took the teenager to the desert and raped him at knifepoint.

The victim’s mother, Veronique Robert, says the authorities lied about the defendant’s medical status to hide the fact that Aids is present in the UAE.

“Fifteen years is nothing for someone who knew he had Aids,” she said.

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A private Islamic school supported by the Saudi government should be shut down until the U.S. government can ensure the school is not fostering radical Islam, a federal panel recommends.
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In a report released Thursday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom broadly criticized what it calls a lack of religious freedom in Saudi society and promotion of religious extremism at Saudi schools.

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For the first time since a demonstration in 1990, a group of Saudi women is campaigning for the right to drive in this conservative kingdom, the only country in the world that prohibits female drivers.

After spreading the idea through text messages and e-mails, the group’s leaders said they collected more than 1,100 signatures online and at shopping malls for a petition sent to King Abdullah on Sunday.

“We don’t expect an answer right away,” said Wajeha al-Huwaider, 45, an education analyst who co-founded the group. “But we will not stop campaigning until we get the right to drive.”

The kingdom follows one of the world’s strictest interpretations of Islam. Women in Saudi Arabia, a deeply patriarchal society, cannot travel, marry or rent lodging without permission from a male guardian.

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The Finnish Islamic Party plans to collect 5,000 signatures in order to qualify for official registration by the end of the year. Counting on support from the 55,000 Muslims living in Finland, the party anticipates some success in next year’s municipal elections as well as in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Party spokesman Abdullah Tammi acknowledged to reporters that to date the party has enrolled only a few dozen members.

The Finnish Islamic Party platform supports a ban on alcohol sales, the option for Muslim children to be excused from school music classes and outings to swimming pools, legal status for ritual animal killing and male circumcision, and the eventual introduction of shari’a law in Finland. Tammi added that the purpose of Sharia law was to prevent crime.

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Taliban militants agreed today to free 19 South Korean church volunteers held hostage for more than a month after Seoul agreed to end all missionary work and keep a promise to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

The agreement, reached in direct talks between Taliban negotiators and South Korean officials meeting in central Afghanistan, ends a hostage crisis that had exposed the growing security problems facing Afghanistan.

Relatives of the hostages in South Korea welcomed news of the impending release.

“I would like to dance,” said Cho Myung-ho, mother of 28-year-old hostage Lee Joo-yeon.

South Korean presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-sun said from Seoul, the South Korean capital, that the deal had been reached “on the condition that South Korea withdraws troops by the end of year and South Korea suspends missionary work in Afghanistan.”

There was no word on when the captives would be released.

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A suicide bomber blew himself up next to a group of NATO troops helping to build a bridge in eastern Afghanistan today, killing three soldiers and wounding six others, the alliance said in a statement.

The bomber was also killed in the blast, the statement said. NATO did not disclose the nationalities of the victims or the exact location of the blast.

Most foreign troops in the east of the country are American.

The attack came a day after fighting between NATO troops and Taliban fighters killed eight soldiers — including six westerners — in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

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Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo’s campaign stood by his assertion that bombing holy Muslim sites would serve as a good “deterrent” to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from attacking the United States, his spokeswoman said Friday.

“This shows that we mean business,” said Bay Buchanan, a senior Tancredo adviser. “There’s no more effective deterrent than that. But he is open-minded and willing to embrace other options. This is just a means to deter them from attacking us.”

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A 70-year-old British grandmother is facing life imprisonment after being convicted on Thursday of the “honor killing” of her son’s wife who she murdered after luring her to India.

Bachan Athwal, 70, who has 16 grandchildren, is believed to be one of the oldest women ever to be convicted of murder in England. Her son was also found guilty of murder.

They will be sentenced on September 19.

The two killed Sikh Heathrow Airport worker Surjit Kaur Athwal, who disappeared in December 1998 after she decided to walk out of her arranged marriage.

Bachan Athwal, a mother-of six, was furious about her daughter-in-law’s plans to leave, which she believed would bring disgrace on the family, London’s Old Bailey court heard.

The pensioner was said to have told one family member that any divorce proceedings would “would happen over my dead body”.

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Confidential reports by the Central Intelligence Agency have found that a prominent Saudi banking family, Al Rajhi, is a major financier of jihadist activities in Kosovo and Bosnia and their bank, the Al Rajhi Bank, is the most favored bank by the world’s extremists to funnel money for violent Muslim activities across the globe.

“There is no reliable estimate of how much the Al Rajhis have given to promote Islam over the years,” assesses the Wall Street Journal after examining the secret CIA documents and concludes that the “overseas money went to aid embattled Muslims in Kosovo, Chechnya and the Palestinian territories and to finance Islamic instruction.”

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Police in central Italy say they have uncovered a bomb school for Islamist militants after raiding a mosque in Perugia and making three arrests.

Evidence of training in explosives and poisons, and instructions on flying a Boeing 747 were reportedly found.

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