DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Iran Increases Stockpile of 20-Percent-Enriched Uranium (Fars-Iran)
    The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Ali Akbar Salehi, announced on Wednesday that the country has, thus far, produced almost 30 kg of 20%-enriched uranium.
    Salehi said in June that Iran is potentially capable of producing 5 kg of 20% enriched uranium per month.

Blast in Hamas Compound in Gaza Wounds Five Children - Ibrahim Barzak (AP)
    A powerful explosion ripped through a Hamas military compound in a densely crowded neighborhood in Rafah in Gaza on Wednesday, wounding five children, three women and five others, Hamas said.
    The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights has repeatedly called on Hamas not to store explosives in civilian areas.
    Internal explosions are common, with bombs and rockets going off prematurely. A similar explosion in August wounded 58 people and destroyed seven houses.

Hizbullah Riding on a Wave of Confidence - Daniel Steinvorth (Der Spiegel-Germany)
    When Hizbullah organizes a major rally, al-Wilaya is always there - a revolutionary choir of young bearded men wearing paratrooper boots and brown combat uniforms - who sing about "glorious martyrs" and the "bloodsucker America."
    For weeks now, a new song by al-Wilaya has been booming from the loudspeakers of street cafes in southern Beirut - dedicated to Ahmadinejad: "You noble knight from Persia, you pride of the nations."
    "Even if Hizbullah is perhaps nothing more than a plaything of the Iranians, the Lebanese Shiites are enjoying finally being recognized as the strongest voice in the country," says Beirut political scientist Hilal Khashan.
    However, Shiite publisher and filmmaker Lokman Slim, 48, says, "The world unrelentingly overestimates Hizbullah as a parliamentary force."
    "If there were truly free elections in Lebanon, which were not based on religious proportional representation, group pressure and corruption, Hizbullah would certainly not be the strongest party among the Shiites," he believes.

Egypt's Christians Fed to Muslim "Lions" - Raymond Ibrahim (Hudson Institute New York)
    A prominent Egyptian, Muhammad Salim al-Awwa, ex-secretary general of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, appeared on Al Jazeera on Sep. 15, and accused Egypt's Coptic Christian minority of "stocking arms and ammunition in their churches and monasteries" - arms imported from Israel, no less, as "Israel is in the heart of the Coptic Cause" - and "preparing to wage war against Muslims."
    To make matters worse, Islamist leaders began to circulate baseless rumors that the Church and Pope Shenouda III "kidnap" Coptic women, who willingly convert to Islam, and torture and re-indoctrinate them back to Christianity.
    Since last month there have been at least ten mass demonstrations in Egypt condemning the Copts, who make up 12% of the population.
    The government not only has not prevented or dispersed the increasingly rabid demonstrations, but Egyptian security actually facilitates, and sometimes participates, in them.
    As history teaches, whenever a majority group casts all its woes onto a minority group, tragedy often follows.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Is Jerusalem Sacred for Muslims? - Hagai Mazuz and Harold Rhode (Hudson Institute New York)

• Muslims were initially commanded to pray toward Jerusalem. But when the Jews refused to convert to Islam, Muhammad changed the prayer direction toward Mecca. Islamic sources from the first 50 years after Muhammad's death make clear that Jerusalem had absolutely no holy status for Muslims.
• Some centuries later, Muslim cleric Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) wrote extensively about Jerusalem, and how there were only two holy cities in Islam - Mecca and Medina. He eventually became the intellectual godfather of Wahhabism, the dominant Islamic doctrine of the Saudi government.
• Ibn Taymiyya went to great lengths to explain that the veneration of Jerusalem is nothing more than the "Judaization" of Islam and that Muslims must rid themselves of all non-Muslim innovations and return to the early Islam of Muhammad.
• He wrote that after the second caliph 'Umar conquered Jerusalem in 637, he and his aide Ka'b al-Ahobar [a Jewish convert to Islam] went up to view the Temple Mount. 'Umar decided to build the place to pray on the southern part of the Temple Mount - the place today known as the Aqsa Mosque. 'Umar's choice of location meant that the Muslims bowed down only to Mecca and that their backs (rear ends) were facing the Rock on the Temple Mount.
• Ibn Taymiyya wondered how Muslim clerics could have accepted Ka'b's attempts to incorporate Jewish traditions into Islam, because Ka'b did not cite any of Muhammad's companions as the source of his claim. Ibn Taymiyya also accused Ka'b of fabricating Muslim traditions and incorporating Jewish writings, i.e., the Bible, Talmud, etc., into Islam.
• So how did Jerusalem become holy in Islam? In the 680s, a civil war erupted among the Muslims. The caliph who ruled from Damascus wanted to put down a revolt by the people who controlled Mecca. In order to weaken them, he chose to build a dome over the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and to encourage people to make pilgrimages there instead of to Mecca. So in essence, Jerusalem's sanctity to Muslims stems from a local revolt which occurred some 50-plus years after Muhammad's death.