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Violence Around Muslim World this Ramadan
WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The holiest month in the Muslim calendar began Friday with hopes of a new dawn in Afghanistan, where the U.S. continued bombings with no change in operations, contrasting with a crushing sense of gloom in the Middle East where thousands prayed for an end to a vicious cycle of violence.
"We are bombing today," said Pentagon spokesman Richard McGraw. "No change in operations as a result of Ramadan."
Leaders of some Muslim countries, including Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, had appealed for a halt to the bombing during the holy month because of religious sensitivities, news agencies said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had noted that while the Pentagon would take into account those concerns, Muslims themselves had a history of fighting through Ramadan in past wars.
The number of U.S. strike sorties rose noticeably on the eve of Ramadan, but McGraw had no information on how many air strikes have been conducted since its start, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The sighting of the crescent moon ushered in this year's Ramadan at a tempestuous juncture in world affairs that has convulsed the global Islamic community and stoked anti-Western bitterness in some Muslim hearts.
Many Muslims have denounced the U.S.-led strikes on the hardline Taliban militia as a war against Islam, triggering fears of an irreversible polarization of world affairs.
In Jordan, King Abdullah II, whose family traces their roots back to the Prophet Mohammad (SAW), entrusted his uncle with a mission to try to bring together the different Islamic sects to promote a more moderate view of Islam around the world.
In Kabul, the irony of ejecting a regime blamed for harboring the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks in the U.S., and hated for its religious intolerance in the week leading up to Ramadan was not lost on some residents.
"Here we are just having got rid of the Taliban, and congratulating ourselves on putting religion in its place, but then as soon as the new moon rises we'll all become the most devout Muslims again," said Abdul Rashid, a 35-year-old shoeseller.
Daily fasting during Ramadan keeps observing Muslims away from food, drink, smoking and sex from dawn to dusk, increasing their patience and their understanding of those less fortunate. Ramadan is also a time for greater reflection and prayer, for charity, good works and remembrance of God.
But on Friday, the advent of the month in which Muslims believe God first revealed the Qur'an to the Prophet Mohammad (SAW) was stained with yet more bloodshed across the Muslim world.
Although tens of thousands of Palestinians attended prayers at the al-Aqsa compound without any violence, dispersing peacefully under the watchful gaze of two thousand Israeli police, violence elsewhere left one Palestinian dead and another injured.
A total of 972 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in the Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which broke out in September 2000.
And there was no let-up in the grinding violence in the troubled Indonesian province of Aceh, where four more people, including a policeman, were killed in clashes.
The Free Aceh Movement has been fighting since 1976 for an independent Islamic state in the oil and gas-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra island. More than 1,600 people have died there this year alone.
In Kashmir, where more than 35,000 people have been killed in a decade-long insurgency against Indian occupation, an Indian government minister appealed to separatist activists to restore peace.
"We once again appeal to militants to shun violence and join the national mainstream," Kashmir's works minister, Ali Mohammad Sagar, said in a written message circulated to local reporters.
But as the "militants" continued their struggle to win their state's right to self-determination, officials reported that 14 more, along with three civilians and an Indian army officer, were killed in fresh violence Friday.
U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly said the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam, and he struck a conciliatory line again in a Ramadan message.
"We send our sincerest wishes to Muslims in America and around the world for health, prosperity and happiness during Ramadan and throughout the coming year," he said.
But as the U.S. remained true to its pledge to continue its bombing campaign over Ramadan, heavy U.S. bombing of Kandahar destroyed a foreign ministry building and a mosque, killing 11 civilians and injuring more than 25, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press.
And the continued violence led to calls from hardliners for retribution.
"We will not sit quiet during Ramadan. On every Friday we will protest against the American aggression and the civilian deaths in Afghanistan," a spokesman for Pakistan Afghan Defense Council, a coalition of more than 30 religious parties, told AFP.
For many Muslims, Ramadan this year is causing much soul-searching.
"This is not a Ramadan I want to remember, with my country in pieces and Islamic brothers fighting against each other instead of fasting side by side," Mullah Akhmad Jabar told AFP at a Kabul mosque.
Asim Hussain, a Muslim in the Pakistani eastern border city of Lahore, said, "This Ramadan is very troubling for us. Two Muslim states, Afghanistan and Palestine, are in deep problems. There are calls for
jihad [struggle] around the world."
Authorities in the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, are making sure there will be no untoward activities by ordering the closure of bars, discos and nightclubs in Jakarta during Ramadan.
But the hardline Front for the Defenders of Islam, complaining that the decree does not go far enough, has threatened to burn down any nightspots that stay open during the holy month.
Meanwhile, Muslims in schools and government offices in the remote northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang were forbidden from fasting, the German-based Uighur group, the East Turkestan Information Center said.
Beijing has denounced the separatist Uighurs as terrorists and rights groups have told of increasing repression of ethnic Uighur Muslims since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
But for Ahmed Sardar, a 29-year-old lawyer in Kabul, Friday was a time to rejoice. "How suitable that Ramadan should begin at the end of a week in which we have successfully purged our country of the wicked Taliban regime," he said.
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