Archive for January 25, 2016

Report: Islamic State, Al-Qaida, Muslim Brotherhood Discuss ‘Mega-Merger’ in Libya

January 25, 2016

Report: Islamic State, Al-Qaida, Muslim Brotherhood Discuss ‘Mega-Merger’ in Libya, Breitbart,  Aaron Klein and Ali Waked, January 25, 2016

(Here’s a video of an interview with Islamic reformist Dr. Zuhdi Jasser about the current situation in Libya. H/t Counter Jihad Report.

— DM)

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TEL AVIV – The Libyan branches of the Islamic State, Al-Qaida, and the Muslim Brotherhood are in discussions to complete a “mega merger,” the London-based A Sharq al Awsat newspaper reported.

Leaked documents have revealed that Libya’s biggest Islamist organizations are considering an alliance and the establishment of a joint council of sages, the Arabic language daily reported.

The prospective move comes in the wake of reports of an imminent international effort to form a unity government that would bring Libya’s numerous parties and militias together.

The paper said the Muslim Brotherhood is considering a united Islamic front even though the movement is officially in favor of forming a unity government. However, sources within the movement told the paper that their support for the international endeavor is merely tactical, and they’re waiting for it to collapse.

Negotiations between the three Islamic groups began because of reports of a rapprochement between the internationally recognized government based in Tobruk and the unrecognized government in the capital Tripoli, the paper said.

The groups wish to send a message to the forces coalescing around a unity government that they are not opposed by IS alone, but “all the Islamist opposition elements speak in one voice and should be treated as such,” a source said.

According to the documents, Muslim Brotherhood leaders said that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s regime “isn’t supported by the Americans because of his close relations with Russia. They can’t wait to see him leave the scene.”

The parties agreed to form a joint Shura (advisory) council and territories that are currently under Islamic control will be divided between them, echoing a similar agreement that is already underway in Benghazi.

Al-Qaida’s representative was quoted as saying that the move would inspire Islamists in Algeria and Egypt to follow suit.

This follows Breitbart Jerusalem’s own exclusive reporting on mediation efforts between the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Hamas in Gaza and Salafists aligned with the Islamic State.

Breitbart Jerusalem previously reported that Shadi al-Menai, one of the leaders of Wilayat Sinai, the Islamic State branch in Sinai, visited Gaza in a bid to mediate between Hamas and local Salafi groups after clashes erupted, resulting in the arrests of dozens of jihadists by Hamas forces.

Earlier this month, a leading Salafi source revealed that Menai mediated a deal whereby Hamas would give the Gaza Salafi opposition groups more leeway in exchange for Wilayat Sinai’s help in bypassing the Egyptian army’s restrictions on smuggling rocket parts into Gaza

This is not the first report of Hamas-IS cooperation in arms smuggling.

A Middle East think tank charged last month that there is information Hamas has been paying off the Islamic State’s Sinai branch to smuggle weapons into Gaza. “Over the past two years, IS Sinai helped Hamas move weapons from Iran and Libya through the peninsula, taking a generous cut from each shipment,” stated a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Despite the rapprochement between Hamas and IS-Sinai, tensions between the ruling faction and Salafi opposition groups in Gaza are rampant.

The Army of Islam, a Salafi group that aspires to become IS’s sole representative in Palestine, recently released an acerbic video in which it blames Hamas for straying from Sharia law and cooperating with anti-Islamic players, including Shi’ite Iran.

Pakistan: “Christian Girls Are Only Meant for the Pleasure of Muslim Men”

January 25, 2016

Pakistan: “Christian Girls Are Only Meant for the Pleasure of Muslim Men” Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, January 25, 2016

♦ “Around 700 Christian women in Pakistan are abducted, raped and forced into Islamic marriage every year – that figure is almost two a day and the world does nothing.” — Wilson Chowdhry, human rights activist, citing the Muslim non-governmental organization, “Movement of Solidarity and Peace.”

♦ “Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war.” — Local residents, Pakistan.

Three Christian girls in Pakistan, who rejected the advances of some wealthy Muslim young men, were recently mauled by them. One of the girls died.

The London-born Chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) and human rights activist, Wilson Chowdhry, who broke the story, reported that one of the men had said: “Christian girls are only meant for one thing, the [sexual] pleasure of Muslim men.”

The incident occurred on January 13 in Lahore. The three girls—aged 17, 18, and 20—were walking home after a hard day’s work. Four Muslim youths in a vehicle followed the girls and accosted them. The men “misbehaved,” yelled “suggestive and lewd comments,” and harassed the girls to get in their car for “a ride and some fun.”

The girls declined the “invitation,” and added that they were “devout Christians and did not practice sex outside of marriage.”

This caused an immediate change in the demeanour of the boys who became more aggressive and started to threaten the girls to enter the car or to be physically forced in. Terrified of the increasingly dangerous situation they were in the girls started to run in a fit of panic. This only enraged the young Muslim men further, one of them shouted out at the girls, he said: “How dare you run away from us, Christian girls are only meant for one thing, the pleasure of Muslim men.”

The Muslim men chased the girls and ran the car into them. Two girls fell to the ground; one’s hip was broken, the other’s ribs were shattered. The youngest, Kiran Masih, aged 17, flew up in the air and crashed into the speeding car’s windshield. The Muslims, laughing and with the girl on the windshield, accelerated. Then the driver apparently slammed on the brakes, hard. The force of the stop catapulted the girl into the air. She then crashed to the ground, cracking her skull open and smashing her bones. Within minutes she was dead.

1438Twenty-year-old Sumble, a Pakistani Christian, had her hip broken when a group of Muslim men rammed a car into her and her girlfriends. The men attacked the Christian girls for refusing to have sex with them. Sumble’s friend, 17-year-old Kiran Masih, was murdered in the attack. (Image sources: British Pakistani Christian Association [left]; Investigative Project on Terrorism [right])

As usual, Pakistani police are reportedly “doing little to apprehend the young men and are allegedly delaying the investigative process.” Chowdhry said:

In any other nation [than Pakistan] the perpetrators would be arrested, convicted for murder and sentenced for a long term…. Violence against Christians is rarely investigated and highly unlikely to be met with justice…. Women have a low status in Pakistan, but none more so than Christian women who find themselves under the grip or terror, especially after this attack. Muslim NGO “Movement of Solidarity and Peace” state[s] that around 700 Christian women in Pakistan are abducted, raped and forced into Islamic marriage every year – that figure is almost two a day and the world does nothing.

Accounts like this — including the claim that it is a Muslim man’s right to rape Christians and other “infidels” — are common in Pakistan.

A Muslim rapist, while attacking a 9-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan, her told her “not to worry because he had done the same service to other young Christian girls.”

Local residents, discussing the man’s remark to his 9-year-old rape victim, said: “It is shameful. Such incidents occur frequently. Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war.”

The Islamic concept of “spoils” is explained by one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic law and jurisprudence, the late Majid Khadduri, in War and Peace in the Law of Islam:

The term spoil (ghanima) is applied specifically to property acquired by force from non-Muslims. It includes, however, not only property (movable and immovable) but also persons, whether in the capacity of asra (prisoners of war) or sabi (women and children). … If the slave were a woman, the master was permitted to have sexual connection with her as a concubine.

Even in Western nations, Muslims from Pakistan believe it is their right to rape and sexually abuse “infidel” women – or even Muslim women if they are out at night unaccompanied or not wearing a veil. Of course a veiled woman might also be attacked, but then the rape would be the same as for a non-Muslim rapist — he wants what he wants and that’s that. But if she is a Muslim out on her own, he can rationalize away or justify the rape as “his right” since she is acting like an infidel, so supposedly deserves what she gets. This author knows of no instance where a Muslim man targeted a Muslim woman because he thinks it is his “right.”

In Britain in 2012, nine Muslim men—eight from Pakistan—were convicted of rape and sexual exploitation of children in Britain. And just as Christians and other “infidels” in Pakistan are told before they are raped, the men regularly “told their victims that it was all right for them to be passed around for sex with dozens of men ‘because it’s what we do in our country.'”

Today, as Muslims spread into the West, what they do to “infidel” women in their adopted countries is increasingly what they do to “infidel” women in their home countries—as thousands of women in Cologne and other cities recently found out.

A new US-Russian-Turkish military buildup over Syria: In unison or at odds?

January 25, 2016

A new US-Russian-Turkish military buildup over Syria: In unison or at odds? DEBKAfile, January 25, 2016

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The US and Russia are in the process of a military buildup in the Kurdish areas of northern Syria. It is ranged along a narrow strip of land 85 km long, stretching from Hassakeh in the east up to the Kurdish town of Qamishli on the Syrian-Turkish border. Facing them from across that border is a parallel buildup of Turkish strength. This highly-charged convergence of three foreign armies athwart a tense borderland is reported here by DEBKAfile’s military sources. It is too soon to determine whether the three armies are operating in sync or at odds, especially in view of the bitter relations between Moscow and Ankara.

US Forces 

American Special Operations troops and Air Force attack helicopters landed first at Remelan airport. They are the first US troops to operate from a ground base in Syria, accommodated in living quarters built for them in advance by a US engineering corps unit. The airport runway has been widened for US warplanes.

American Special Operations troops and Air Force attack helicopters landed first at Remelan airport. They are the first US troops to operate from a ground base in Syria, accommodated in living quarters built for them in advance by a US engineering corps unit. The airport runway has been widened for US warplanes.

Russian Forces

Next came two Russian military missions on Jan. 16.  One group, led by a general and consisting of air force and Special Operations officers, is preparing to take over a small abandoned base in Syrian army-controlled territory just 80 km from the new US facility at Remelan, and adapt it for Russian use.

The other group, which consists of intelligence officers – some from Russia’s FSB federal security service, the FSB – indicates that Moscow has decided it is high time for professionals to protect the classified information moving around the Russian Task Force in Syria and safeguard it from reaching the wrong hands. .

The abandoned base is less than 3.5 km from the Turkish border, and would act as a Russian barrier between US forces in northern Syria and the Turkish border contingents.

Turkish Forces

This Russian deployment set off alarm bells in Ankara, and so the Turkish army responded with the third troop buildup, arraying tanks and mobile artillery on the border across from Qamishli.

Over the weekend, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan stated, “We have said this from the beginning: we won’t tolerate such formations (in northern Syria) along the area stretching from the Iraqi border up to the Mediterranean.”

At the same time, US Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday, Jan. 23, that  the U.S. and Turkey are prepared for a military solution against ISIS in Syria should the Syrian government and rebel-opposition forces fail to reach a peace agreement during its upcoming meeting in Geneva.

However, Ankara views its war on terror as focused on both Kurdish separatists and ISIS, which is subjecting Turkey to multi-casualty attacks.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources note that Turkey’s military options are very limited. Its leaders know they dare not put a foot wrong because the Russian force in Syria is just waiting for an opportunity to avenge the downing of a Russian Su-24 warplane by the Turkish air force on November 24.

Another group of actors stirring the pot in northern Syria is the Kurds, particularly the YPG militia, the only fighting force in Syria capable of defeating ISIS, which has been reinforced by the Iraqi autonomous Kurdish region’s Peshmerga, as well as the outlawed Turkish PKK Kurdish organization.

At this stage, it is impossible to determine how this triple buildup will play out tomorrow – how far the US and Russia are in concert, at what point they may decide to vie for footholds in the Kurdish region of northern Syria and how far the Turks are clued into the joint US-Russian strategy for bludgeoning ISIS.