Muslim Death Threat Update

From the WashTimes:

A chill ran down the spine of journalist Mizanur Rahman when a neatly folded white cloth symbolizing an Islamic burial shroud tumbled out of a package he received by mail last month.

An accompanying letter addressed to Mr. Rahman, a reporter for the Dhaka daily Janakantha (People's Voice), said that because of his "anti-Islamic" reporting, his days were numbered and he would soon be in a white burial shroud.

White shrouds and death threats also reached eight other journalists the same day in Satkhira, a district in southwestern Bangladesh.

The letters were signed by leaders of the outlawed militant group Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (Awakened Muslim Citizens of Bangladesh, often referred to by its initials, JMJB), the orthodox Islamist movement Ahl-e-Hadith (followers of the Sayings of the Prophet) and Jamat-e-Islami Bangladesh, an Islamist political party in the ruling coalition in Bangladesh. The letters threatened that the journalists would be "slaughtered" because their writings attacked clerics who want to transform the country into a pure Islamic state.

"We are determined to bring total Islamic rule in Bangladesh through an armed revolution," the letters said. "You are some of the obstacles on our way to achieve these goals. You are the country's enemies, so you face removal from this Earth."

Of the nine reporters who received these death threats, five are Hindus, and the letters warned them that as non-Muslims, they had no right to report on Islamic matters.

As President Bush says, the Global War on Terror has many fronts and many enemies. We can't fight them all. Bengaladesh needs to fight them, and they can call us whatever they want to in the process, as long as they fight them. And so it must go in nation after nation, so it's clear to the terrorists that the world stands against them.