An demonstrator shouts at a group of Jews to 'go back to the oven' at a Gaza protest in Fort Lauderdale. Protest organizers accused supporters of Israel of being 'barbaric' terrorists.

Like many other protests of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, this one ended badly — police had to cool an ugly fight between supporters of Israel and Gaza, breaking up the warring sides as their screaming and chanting threatened to turn into something worse.

But some protesters at this rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., took their rhetoric a step further, calling for the extermination of Israel — and of Jews.

Separated by battle lines and a stream of rush-hour traffic outside a federal courthouse last week, at least 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators faced off against a smaller crowd of Israel supporters.

Most of the chants were run-of-the-mill; men and women waving Palestinian flags called Israel’s invasion of Gaza a “crime,” while the pro-Israel group carried signs calling the Hamas-run territory a “terror state.”

But as the protest continued and crowds grew, one woman in a hijab began to shout curses and slurs that shocked Jewish activists in the city, which has a sizable Jewish population.

“Go back to the oven,” she shouted, calling for the counter-protesters to die in the manner that the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.

“You need a big oven, that’s what you need,” she yelled.

• Click here to see video from the protest.

Millions of Jews were gassed and burned in crematoria throughout Europe during Adolf Hitler’s rule of Germany. The protest organizers, asked to comment on the woman’s overt call for Jewish extermination, said she was “insensitive” but refused to condemn her statement.

“She does not represent the opinions of the vast majority of people who were there,” said Emmanuel Lopez, who helped plan the event, one of many sponsored nationwide on Dec. 30 by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism ) Coalition.

Lopez, a state coordinator for ANSWER, admitted there is a problem with anti-Semitism within his organization’s ranks. But then he went on to call the supporters of Israel across the street “barbaric, racist” Zionist terrorists.

“Zionism in general is a barbaric, racist movement that really is the cause of the situation in the entire Middle East,” Lopez said.

The unidentified woman, who protest organizers said was a Muslim, wasn’t the only protester who raised hackles that day. Other demonstrators held signs that said “Nuke Israel,” and a number made comparisons to the Holocaust, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

More than 670 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, have been killed in the 12 days of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. At least 30 were killed Tuesday by Israeli shelling of a U.N. school that had been housing refugees. (Israel said its forces fired at militants who launched mortars from that location.)

“This is absolutely inhumane,” said Ahmed Suid, who attended the demonstration, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “This is a modern-day Holocaust.”

The comparisons of the Israelis to the Nazis has Jewish organizations concerned about a “growing trend” at protests in America, where they say hatred of Israel and Jews is being increasingly preached.

“We’re worried about hate speech. We’re worried because hate speech eventually leads to pain and suffering and death,” said Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, which has been tracking Gaza protests.

“Comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are a deeply cynical perversion of history, an attempt to turn the tragedy that befell the Jewish people into a bludgeon against Israel,” he said.

Even though police had to intercede and break up a potentially violent confrontation between the two factions at the Fort Lauderdale protest, organizers called it a success, saying it drew crowds of new activists.

“It was not just an academic exercise . . . not just a protest,” Lopez told FOXNews.com. “It’s a material force.”

Shariah-compliant banking, sometimes called Islamic banking, is growing in popularity in the Western and Islamic worlds. But critics say American interest in the system at a time of economic crisis is opening the door to increased Islamic influence in the American banking system. Worse yet, some fear the banks may be helping to finance international terrorism.

In Shariah-compliant banking, lenders may not charge interest and investors cannot make money from forbidden industries like gambling, alcohol, pork and pornography. Selling debt, devising derivatives and short selling are also prohibited, and investments must be closely tied to actual assets.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones Islamic Index tracks Shariah-compliant companies and funds, and funds have sprung up like the Amana Mutual Funds Trust and the Azzad Asset Management.

American investment funds, like those offered by TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab, can invest in Shariah-compliant companies, and those companies can offer investments in American companies. Top holdings in the Azzad Ethical Midcap Fund, for example, include Western Digital Corp., Southwest Electric Co. and Apple Computer, Inc.

But allowing Shariah-compliant finance in the U.S. is green-lighting a seditious system that supports jihad, said Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.

“If you understand what Shariah is, you understand that it is a pretty awful system. Not something that you’d want insinuated in your society and becoming a major feature of your economic system,” Gaffney said.

“Shariah (Islamic law as dictated by the Koran) governs all aspects of life, from the personal practice of the faith to how you relate to your family to how you relate to your business partners, to your community … all the way up to how the world is run, and it is all one seamless program. You can’t say ‘I’ll take the personal pietistic practice … and skip the beheading and the flogging and the stoning and the global theocracy,’” he said.

Punishments for some crimes under Shariah law include amputation and stoning to death. On Tuesday it was revealed that a 53-year-old Egyptian doctor had been sentenced under Shariah law in Saudi Arabia to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes for allegedly getting a Saudi princess in his care addicted to drugs.

But despite Islamic banking’s association with Shariah’s harsh practices, the U.S. government is taking an interest in it.

On Oct. 25, while on an official visit to Saudi Arabia, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert M. Kimmitt told reporters that the U.S. was interested in learning more about Islamic finance, and the Treasury Department held an “Islamic Finance 101″ course in Washington on Nov. 6 to educate government officials on its ins and outs.

Islamic banking and investment products sprang up beginning in the 1970s when the Middle East experienced its first oil boom, and have been growing in popularity as oil prices soared in the past few years.

Yet it’s unclear who is investing in Shariah-compliant mutual funds and other investments, Gaffney said. “An awful lot of them seem to be petrodollar-rich potentates and companies and royal families.”

Nicholas Kaiser, fund manager at Amana Mutual Funds Trust in Bellingham, Wash., said that his company’s Shariah-compliant mutual fund products are no different from any other religious funds and that the company carefully screens its investors.

“Our shareholders are American. We don’t take money from non-Americans because of money-laundering laws. We have to know our shareholders and be sure they aren’t engaged in nefarious activities. We screen and check and verify every shareholder,” Kaiser said.

He disagrees with Gaffney’s assertion that Islamic funds are a threat to the American way of life.

“We simply take people’s money, invest it and give it back to them when they want it. We don’t try and convert the country. We don’t have any religious position. We aren’t evangelical. We aren’t zealots. We’re money managers,” Kaiser said. “I happen to be Episcopalian.”

Azzad Asset Management declined to be interviewed for this story.

Estimates put the Islamic banking industry in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And while it’s a small portion of the global finance industry, the Islamic sector is growing — by more than 30 percent in 2007.

A board of Shariah scholars determines which investments are compliant.

As Shariah law forbids charging interest, Shariah-compliant mortgages, like those offered by Devon Bank in Chicago and Guidance Residential, which operates in 23 states, are attracting pious Muslim buyers.

In one type of Shariah-compliant mortgage the bank buys a home and then either leases or re-sells it to the purchaser in monthly installments — interest-free, but at a higher price.

The bank’s profit and the buyer’s payments wind up being similiar to what they would be if the bank charged interest, said Ibrahim Warde, adjunct professor of international business at Tufts University.

“In the Koran there’s a verse saying that making money from trade is good and making money from money lending is not, so basically whenever transactions are structured, they are sales transactions,” he said.

Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, said that whether they’re sound investments or not, conforming to Shariah shouldn’t be American policy.

“We should not allow Islamic banking to continue and definitely not to flourish in this country,” Ehrenfeld said.

“Muslims in the United States who want to conduct their business according to Islamic banks can do it with mortgages … but to allow Islamic banking as a rule to operate — it’s our money and we shouldn’t be abiding by Islamic laws. Period. I don’t want to have any kind of association with any laws that dictate wife-beating in Saudi Arabia,” she said.

Ehrenfeld said that the practice of “zakat” — giving alms to the poor — while innocent on the surface can in fact be used to promote terrorism and the spread of radical Islam.

She said that that the money the Shariah banks give to charities goes to build madrassas and mosques and spread radical Islam and anti-American sentiment.

“They also send money to Hamas. They also send money to Al Qaeda,” she said. “This is a huge Pandora’s box. We don’t know what the hell is going on with their charities … even if nobody will say openly that they’re giving money to terrorism.”

In June, the Kuwait-based charity Revivial of Islamic Heritage Society was designated by the U.S. Treasury for providing money and material support to Al Qaeda, its affilitates and to acts of terrorism.

“It is illegal for anyone in the United States to provide funds to charities that have been designated by the Treasury Department as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224. If the Treasury Department has information that anyone in the United States were engaged in such activity, we would take appropriate action,” said Treasury spokesman Andrew DeSouza.

Warde, however, said that there is no reason to think that all Islamic financial institutions have terrorist ties.

“There are some people who equate all things Islamic to terrorism,” he said. “Some people look at the world that way. We’ve seen that during the presidential campaign with the insinuations that Obama was a Muslim, therefore a terrorist. I don’t think we should give much credence to that.”

He said critics are not being fair to the system.

“People who don’t like Islam and who are afraid of Islam would obviously not like the notion of Islamic finance. I’m not sure that those who hold this view necessarily know much about it, but it’s some kind of visceral view that some people hold,” Warde said.

Read more at : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,451416,00.html

BAGHDAD — Two Iraqi insurgent groups called on President-elect Barack Obama to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan and abandon the war on terror, an Internet monitoring service reported Friday.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, self-styled head of the Al Qaeda front group the Islamic State of Iraq, said in a speech posted on an extremist Web site that it would be better “for you and us” to “withdraw your forces” and “return to your homes,” according to the SITE Intelligence Group that monitors militant Web sites.

Al-Baghdadi blamed the global financial crisis on the wars “launched in Muslim countries” and said he was issuing the call on behalf of “my brothers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Chechnya,” SITE said.

The U.S. military says al-Baghdadi is an actor who provides a voice for Al Qaeda in Iraq propaganda.

In a separate statement, the Mujahedeen Army, a Sunni insurgent group, urged Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq or face “days that will be more difficult than the nightmare experienced by his predecessor.”

According to SITE, the statement said both Democrats and Republicans share attitudes hostile to Muslims and both support Israel, which means there will be little change in U.S. policy in the Middle East.

“The one who won the presidential election won the approval of the Jewish lobby, which controls, to a large extent, the administration of American foreign policy,” the Mujahedeen Army statement said.

The Islamic State of Iraq purports to be an umbrella organization of religious extremist groups including Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The Mujahedeen Army emerged in late 2004 and has distanced itself from al-Qaida because of opposition to the terror movement’s attacks on Shiite civilians.

Barack Obama’s election on Tuesday set off international celebrations and ignited a fervor for the United States that has been unseen since the days immediately following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

To some observers, the international reaction has elevated America’s president-elect to an unparalleled post: president of the world.

A resident of Obama, Japan holds Obama fish burgers to celebrate Barack Obama's victory in the U.S. presidential election. Obama is being embraced worldwide as a symbol of a new beginning for relations with the U.S. (AP photo)

In Kenya, where Obama’s father was born, a national holiday was declared on Thursday. In Indonesia, children danced at the school Obama attended when he was a young boy, embracing him as much for what he represents abroad as for the policies he advocates at home.

Click here to see photos of celebrations around the world.

“People from all over Africa, especially in Kenya, where this is a holiday, are feeling that the most powerful person in the world does not have to be a white guy. That’s a huge breakthrough for the United States and for humanity,” said Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten,” Rama Yade, France’s junior minister for human rights, told French radio. “On this morning, we all want to be American, so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes.”

America’s popularity abroad waned dramatically during the Bush administration, and some voters expressed hopes that in electing Obama, they could restore the country’s image. The wave of good feelings since Tuesday night suggests that even before taking office, Obama has made substantial inroads.

“This may be the beginning of a new world. It marks the end of old elites and opens the door for new approaches worldwide,” an Israeli man in his mid-50s said in Tel Aviv.

Foreign observers, who paid rapt attention during the long election season, are taking a personal stake in the outcome of a vote a world away. Expectations are high for the 47-year-old Obama, who will take over on January 20 amid a financial collapse and who will preside over two wars on his first day in office.

“The standing of everybody in the world is going to be affected by what President Obama does or doesn’t do,” said Mead, noting that all eyes will be looking to the new president for a way out of the global financial crisis.

In the Muslim world, the response has been mixed. A journalist with a pan-Arab news channel told FOX News that on election night, workers were going around the newsroom congratulating each other, as if Obama were their president-elect.

Iraqis have expressed skepticism that any rapid changes will come as a result of the election, but many see their fates ineluctably tied to Obama’s foreign policy. “By God, the new American President Obama has promised to pull the troops out. This is in the best interest of the Iraqi people,” said one Baghdadi.

Arab heads of state have been more circumspect, waiting to see whether Obama’s Mideast policy will depart significantly from that of the Bush administration, and some newspapers in the Arab world have openly announced their distrust of the president-elect.

“There is no significant difference between Obama and McCain. They disagree only on the means to achieve America’s chief goal, which is to rule for another hundred years,” said an editorial in the Saudi daily Al-Watan, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors the Arab press.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated Obama Thursday for his win — the first time an Iranian leader has welcomed an incoming president since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. And some Iranians, speaking to FOX News, said they were excited by the prospect of the coming administration.

“I want to congratulate you on Barack Obama’s victory that really turned a new chapter in the world’s history — that an African-American man, decent and intelligent, became president of the world,” one Iranian said.

“This was done in America. Your nation has the credit for it.”

Not all observers expect this world embrace to be long-lasting. “I think overseas, as at home, opinion over the longer term will depend on what he actually does,” said John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Obama was issued an early challenge Wednesday, as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the deployment of short-range missiles near his country’s border with Poland.

“Those who have issues with us are certainly not giving him a honeymoon,” Bolton said of Russia’s action, which may have been intended to send a cold word of welcome to Obama and to test his resolve.

Russian citizens, too, have been wary in their evaluation of the next president.

“I don’t think he can really become the world political leader,” said Tatyana Solomonova, a real estate agent in Moscow. “The fact that he’s black can be an obstacle — there’s still a lot of racism in the world, in Europe and Russia too. I think he can take a leading role in the Western hemisphere, but not in this part of the world.”

In Moscow Thursday, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has a history of controversial remarks, was asked by a reporter about the prospect for U.S.-Russian relations after Berlusconi met with Medvedev.

Berlusconi responded by saying that the relative youth of Medvedev, 43, and Obama should make it easier for Moscow and Washington to work together.

Then he said, smiling: “I told the president that [Obama] has everything needed in order to reach deals with him: he’s young, handsome and even tanned.”

Italian news agencies said Berlusconi later defended his remark, calling the statement “a great compliment.”

“Why are they taking it as something negative? … If they have the vice of not having a sense of humor, worse for them,” the ANSA news agency quoted him as saying.

But Italy’s only black lawmaker, Jean-Leonard Touadi, called the comment embarrassing.

“In the United States, a joke like that wouldn’t just be politically incorrect, but a great offense to this amazing example of integration, which it seems the Italian premier should take as an example,” Touadi said.

For good or ill, all eyes are now on Obama.

“Not everybody is going to get what they want, but this is a moment of hope,” said Mead, who added that Obama was sure to fall short of some expectations.

“If you look at Jesus Christ, he walked on water and fed the 5,000 and he ended up getting crucified, so I think it’s not unlikely that President-elect Obama is gonna disappoint some people also.”

FOX News’ Dasha Bond, Courtney Kealy, Reena Ninan and Amy Kellogg contributed to this report

Across the globe, in concert halls and ballrooms, in plazas and beach parties and busy streets, the citizens of the world hailed the election of Barack Obama as a stroke for racial equality and voiced hopes his presidency would herald a more balanced, less confrontational America.

TOKYO — Across the globe, in concert halls and ballrooms, in plazas and beach parties and busy streets, the citizens of the world hailed the election of Barack Obama as a stroke for racial equality and voiced hopes his presidency would herald a more balanced, less confrontational America.

People crowded before TVs or listened to blaring radios for the latest updates. In Sydney, Australians filled a hotel ballroom. In Rio, Brazilians partied on the beach. In the town of Obama, in Japan, dancers cheered in delight when their namesake’s victory was declared.
Watchers — many of them in countries where the idea of a minority being elected leader is unthinkable — expressed amazement and satisfaction that the United States could overcome centuries of racial strife an elect an African-American as president.

“It shows that America truly is a diverse, multicultural society where the color of your skin really does not matter,” said Jason Ge, an international relations student at Peking University in China.
In an interconnected world where people in its farthest reaches could monitor the presidential race blow-by-blow, many observers echoed Obama’s own mantra as they struggled to put into words their sense that his election marked an important turning point.

“I really think this is going to change the world,” gushed Akihiko Mukohama, 34, the lead singer of a band that traveled to Obama, Japan, to perform — wearing an “I Love Obama” T-shirt — at a promotional event for the president-elect.

Many acknowledged that — for better or worse — America’s economic, military and cultural might made the election globally important.

“The eyes of the world are on this,” said Australian Phil Keeling, who had plastered his head-to-toe red, white and blue outfit with both Obama and McCain buttons as he crowded into a hotel ballroom in downtown Sydney to watch election results on two giant TV screens.

“There’s a chance the image of the U.S. may change dramatically, and it’s nice to be part of it,” said Keeling, who refused to say which candidate he preferred. Around him, Australians and American stood under a cloud of red, white and blue balloons and snacked on American treats like mini hamburgers and hot dogs.

Hopes were also high among many critical of President George W. Bush’s policies that an Obama victory would herald a more inclusive, internationally cooperative U.S. approach. Many cited the Iraq war as the type of blunder Obama was unlikely to repeat.

At a party in Rio de Janeiro where Brazilians and Americans watched results come in, 33-year-old music producer Zanna said an Obama win would show that “Americans have learned something from the bad experiences of the Bush administration and that they choose well — that they choose Obama.”

“Choosing Obama is a great opportunity for Americans to show the world they can change, be humble and learn from their mistakes, which were not small,” said Zanna, who uses only one name.

Umang Khosla, a senior marketing manager in Mumbai, India, with a multinational shipping company, said Obama would be widely welcomed after Bush, whom he said “was hated the world over.”

“With Obama, the world will see the Americans as having more sense, being more receptive to change. Bush was hated the world over,” Khosla said on his way to work. “If Obama even remotely changes things, perceptions will change.”

Obama’s victory capped a campaign that many millions around the world had watched with rapt attention.

In Germany, where more than 200,000 people flocked to see Obama this summer as he burnished his foreign policy credentials during a trip to the Middle East and Europe, the election dominated television ticker crawls, newspaper headlines and Web sites.

Obama-mania was evident not only across Europe but also in much of the Islamic world, where Muslims expressed hope that the Democrat would seek compromise rather than confrontation.
The Bush administration alienated Muslims by mistreating prisoners at its detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison — human rights violations also condemned worldwide.

Nizar al-Kortas, a columnist for Kuwait’s Al-Anbaa newspaper, saw an Obama victory as “a historic step to change the image of the arrogant American administration.”

Yet McCain had enjoyed a strong current of support in Israel, where he was perceived as tougher on Iran than Obama. Taking a cigarette break on a Jerusalem street corner, bank employee Leah Nizri, 53, favored McCain.

“He’s too young,” she said of Obama. “I think that especially in a situation of a world recession, where things are so unclear in the world, McCain would be better than Obama.”

And not everyone expected Obama to follow through on his promise to change U.S. policies. In Iraq, where the Bush government ignited a war in 2003 that has yet to end, some were skeptical of American intentions in the Middle East.

“I think Obama’s victory will do nothing for the Iraqi issue nor for the Palestinian issue,” said Muneer Jamal, a Baghdad resident. “I think all the promises Obama made during the campaign will remain mere promises.”

Still, many around the world found Obama’s international roots — his father was Kenyan, and he lived four years in Indonesia as a child — compelling and attractive.

In Jakarta, hundreds of students at his former elementary school gathered around a television set to watch as results came in, erupting in cheers when he was declared winner and then pouring into the courtyard where they hugged each other and danced in the rain.

“We’re so proud!” Alsya Nadin, a spunky 10-year-old in pink-framed glasses, said as her classmates chanted “Obama! Obama!”