Caliphate | WarSclerotic | Page 11

Archive for the ‘Caliphate’ category

The Plight of the Yazidis

February 7, 2015

The Plight of the Yazidis, Front Page Magazine, Arnold Ahlert, February 6, 2015

(They are probably doomed unless the relevant U.N. high commissioner decrees that they are endangered by climate change rather than by the forces of “peaceful” Islam. Then Obama and Kerry, who claim that climate change is the greatest threat of all, might help. — DM)

Yazidis-450x331

Despite the current focus on ISIS, the ongoing barbarity inflicted against the Yazidis, a group of people who have inhabited Iraq’s mountainous northwestern region for centuries, remains largely below the radar. And while this estimated population of approximately 500,000 has been the target of hatred by Muslims who see them as heretical devil-worshipers, ISIS has upped the ante. While the world largely looks away, a genocidal level of extermination proceeds apace. “Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth,” warned Yazidi leader Vian Dakhil—last August.

Early August was the time the carnage ramped up in earnest. Approximately 40,00 Yazidis, including many women and children, were trapped in nine locations around Mount Sinjar, identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah’s ark. Sinjar was once home to as many as 300,000 Yazidis, but as ISIS advanced, 130,000 fled north to Dohuk, capital of the Dohuk governate of Iraqi Kurdistan, or to Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region and its largest city. Since last June authorities in Irbil have been forced to deal with one of the largest and most rapid refugee movements in decades. As of now approximately 350,000 Yazidis are encamped around Dohuk.

Those remaining behind faced a terrible choice of death by dehydration, or death at the hands of ISIS, who murdered 500 Yazidis, including 40 children, in an initial killing spree. By October the death total inflicted by ISIS had reached into the thousands. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic aptly described what was occurring. “The evidence strongly indicates an attempt to commit genocide,” he said, adding that the only options being given to the Yazidis are “to convert or be killed.”

Not quite. As ISIS has boasted in its propaganda magazine Dabiq, around 300 Yazidi women and girls were abducted, subjected to sexual assault and subsequently sold as slaves to its fighters in Syria. The Islamist terror group considers the women and girls to be “al Sabaya,” defined by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) as “women captured in war.”

The main reason the Yazidis have slipped below the media radar is because they apparently believe President Obama sufficiently addressed the problem last August, when he announced airstrikes aimed at a twofold purpose: protecting U.S. personnel stationed in Erbil, and saving those Yazidis trapped in around Sinjar without food or water. “People are starving. And children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yazidi people, which would constitute genocide,” Obama said at the time. “And when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.”

The strikes and humanitarian aid were initially successful in alleviating some of the suffering, and also opened up an escape route allowing many of those trapped to flee. Yet by October, with U.S. attention diverted elsewhere and airstrikes dwindling, ISIS surrounded Mount Sinjar again. More than 10,000 Yazidis were once again trapped, and ISIS reprised its bloody rampage, capturing one mountain village after another, killing the men and selling the women and children into slavery.

Furthermore, the humanitarian airdrops were also halted. Iraqi helicopters were employed to pick up the slack, but they are old and fly only once or twice a week, according to Sameer Karto Babasheikh, the son of the Yazidi Supreme Religious Council leader, who met with a contingent of senior White House and State Department officials that same month to discuss the problem. “Our hostages, children, women, and girls, between 4,000 and 5,000 of them, have been captured by ISIS and sent to other areas. We need help to rescue these hostages,” he explained. “In Mosul, they opened a market to sell Yazidi girls. Some of them ended up in Fallujah, some of them were taken to Saudi Arabia and Raqqa in Syria.”

Kamal Elias, a Yazidi activist who was part of the delegation that came to Washington, put the crisis in far blunter terms. “President Obama promised that they are not going to let ISIS get any more land, that they are not going to let them get another genocide on the Yazidis,” he said. “But this is going to be worse than in August. If ISIS gets to the mountain, all of these people are going to be slaughtered, and then it’s going to take years for the U.S. or anyone else to get them out of the mountain.”

Elias also illuminated another facet of the problem. “Most of the ISIS members are from the towns around ISIS,” he said. “They were our neighbors. We lived with them for hundreds of years. Now all of a sudden they are ISIS. They joined ISIS.”

The animus directed towards the Yazidis spans centuries. “To this day, many Muslims consider them to be devil worshipers,” says Thomas Schmidinger, an expert on Kurdish politics the University of Vienna. “So in the face of religious persecution, Yazidis have concentrated in strongholds located in remote mountain regions,” he adds.

In fact Yazidis whose total population is around 700,000, the vast majority of whom have been concentrated in northern Iraq around Sinjar, are predominantly Kurdish. But they remain religiously distinct from Iraq’s Sunni Kurdish population. Some scholars contend the religion was founded during the 11th century by an Ummayyad sheikh. Others attribute its origins to Sufi leader Adi ibn Musafir, who settled in Kurdistan in the 12th century and founded a community mixing elements of Islam with local beliefs that predated it. The faith combines elements of Zoroastrianism, a 3500 year old monotheistic religion founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran, with elements of Christianity and Islam. Thus Yazidis embrace Christianity’s sacrament of Baptism, Islam’s tenets on circumcision, and Zoroastrianism’s belief that fire must be revered as a manifestation from God.

The devil-worshipping accusations derive from their worship of a fallen angel, Melek Tawwus, or Peacock Angel. Unlike the permanent fall from grace of Satan in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Melek Tawwus is forgiven by God and returned to heaven, becoming a force for good in Yazidism.

Nonetheless, beginning around the late 16th and early 17th centuries, accusations of devil-worship arose because Muslims believe the story of Tawwus Melek resembles the Qur’an’s Shaytan, a rebellious “djinn” (Muslim spirit) who leads men away from goodness.

Unfortunately, goodness is currently in short supply in among the members of the international community. There is no doubt they are aware of the Yazidi’s continuing plight, but they continue to fail those who are facing imminent extermination.

Murad Ismael, a Yazidi activist in the Sinjar Crisis Group, reported on his December journey during which he reached Sinjar accompanied by Peshmerga forces who have seen 999 fighters killed, and 4596 wounded since they began standing against ISIS last June. It was the first time Yazidis had reached Sinjar since the mass exodus last August.

“We did not see any civilians in Sinjar, except for a few Yazidis who had returned there to retrieve some of their personal belongings,” Ismael revealed to Aljazeera America. “For the 150 kilometers to the Mount Sinjar area, all has been abandoned. No sign of life, except for the forces defending the roads.” Ismael also downplayed reports stating Kurdish fighters had re-captured most of Mount Sinjar in December. “The peshmerga and the Yazidi volunteers did get inside the city of Sinjar.,” he explained. “About three-quarters of the city has been recaptured. However, there are still ISIL (ISIS) snipers. ISIL have been cleared from the northern side of the mountain, but they left behind IEDs. The southern side of the mountain is not safe.”

Ismael also revealed what ISIS left behind. “At least three mass graves have been found,” he said. “Seventy-five bodies have been found. Another mass grave of about 25 or 26 people. I did not get to that location. We saw evidence of destruction. People’s clothes alongside the road. My town, Khanasour, to see how it is now — it’s emotionally overwhelming. Everything’s been burned. All Islamic State banners or writing on the walls. Lots of mass graves, lots of people dead inside the houses. We didn’t look inside.”

Mass grave sightings were confirmed by the Peshmerga four days ago.

The plight of those in the aforementioned refugee camps has been largely ignored as well. Bill Devlin, a co-pastor of the Infinity Bible Church in the Bronx, New York who travelled with Ismael, was appalled. “We visited three camps today, with approximately 5,000 people each,” he said “They’re living in unfinished buildings, living in the street, living with literally nothing. We’ve been going from house to house of unfinished buildings. No food, no kerosene heaters—it’s beyond belief. Some one million Yazidis are dispersed outside the official camps. The need is critical. The issue is dire.”

Co-traveler Lee Mason, a producer for Cumulus Media, illuminated the details, noting there are three types of camps. The first type consists of tent cities organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Yet that organization is belied by dirt streets, no hot water and latrines as much as a half mile away. The second type consists of unofficial camps where people put up tarps or plastic sheeting to protect from the freezing rain. There are dangerous makeshift electricity systems and self-created toilet systems consists of sheds covered with blankets, but no running water. The last group of camps consists of unheated, abandoned buildings with similar makeshift electrical systems.

Last December, Yazidi women who escaped from ISIS detailed their abuse to the BBC. “They said: ‘Yazidis are infidels,” a woman using the pseudonym “Hannan” reported. “Now you will live as Muslims.’ They took many girls for sex. They told us: ‘Forget the life you knew.’” She further reveals that ISIS took the younger girls first and sent many of them to the Syrian city of Raqqa ISIS considers its capitol. Many of women grew so desperate from the abuse they considered suicide a viable alternative. One actually carried it out. “She slashed her wrists,” Hannan revealed “(ISIS) didn’t let us help her. They put us in a room and shut the door. She died. They said: ‘It doesn’t matter, we’ll just dump the body somewhere.’”

Upping the ante on depravity, ISIS has published guidelines on the “proper” use of women as slaves, including a Q&A pamphlet, a video of men awaiting their turn at the slave market, and a statement in Daqib describing the events:

“After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to Sharia [Islamic law] amongst the fighters of Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations…Before Satan sows doubt among the weak-minded and weak-hearted, remember that enslaving the kuffa [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly-established aspect of Sharia.”

The Yazidis blame several entities for their current predicamen,t including an Iraqi government that has never sufficiently protected them, Kurdish forces who abandoned the fight for Sinjar last August—and an Obama administration whose lack of continuity has given ISIS the impression they can exterminate Yazidis with impunity.

Last month Ismael traveled to Baghdad to plead for help. He met a list of VIPs that included U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart E. Jones, French Ambassador to Iraq François Bartley, Iraqi President Fuad Masum and Minister of Women’s Affairs Bayan Nouri. Al Jazeera America columnist John Batchelor confirms from a separate source that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power is also aware of the Yazidis’ precarious circumstances. Yet he further notes that she and her staff have “several explanations for why so little has been done for the Yazidis, including the lack of security without U.S. forces in the region.”

No doubt. In the meantime, hundreds of Yazidi women abducted by ISIS remain unaccounted for, children in refugee camps freeze to death, and the Peshmerga remain without the necessary firepower to limit ISIS’s gain, much less defeat them.

Yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama once again reminded the world how far he was willing to push the boundaries of moral equivalency in order to spare bloodthirsty Islamists from being singled out. “Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Those would be the very same Christians, much like the Yazidis, currently being eliminated in the Middle East—even as the same can be said for leadership and morality in the White House.

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Freedom, Heresy, Human rights, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Obama, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists, Torture, Yazidis
Tags: Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Heresy, human rights, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Mount Sinjar, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists, Torture, Yazidis

Comments: Be the first to comment

Obama: Christianity No Different From the Islamic State

February 7, 2015

Obama: Christianity No Different From the Islamic State, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, February 6, 2015

(Some Christians did awful things during the crusades and inquisition, particularly during the Spanish inquisition. Assume arguendo that they did evil things comparable to those of the Islamic State, its cohorts and other Islamists, as commanded by the Koran. In recent centuries, Christians in general managed to get over it. Islam, however, remains stuck in a former millennium of barbarism and seems to be regressing. So what’s Obama’s point, assuming that he has one? — DM)

Obama-at-2015-National-Prayer-Breakfast-450x315

As the world reacts with shock and horror at the increasingly savage deeds of the Islamic State (IS)—in this case, the recent immolation of a captive—U.S. President Obama’s response has been one of nonjudgmental relativism.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, Obama counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that Christians have been equally guilty of such atrocities:

Unless we get on our high horse and think this [beheadings, sex-slavery, crucifixion, roasting humans] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.

There is so much to be said here. First, the obvious: the wide gulf between violence and hate “justified in the name of Christ” and violence and hate “justified in the name of Muhammad” is that Christ never justified it, while Muhammad continuously did.

This is not just a theoretic point; it is the very reason that Muslims are still committing savage atrocities. Every evil act IS commits—whether beheading, crucifying, raping, enslaving, or immolating humans—has precedents in the deeds of Muhammad, that most “perfect” and “moral” man, per Koran 33:21 and 68:4 (see “The Islamic State and Islam” for parallels).

Does Obama know something about Christ—who eschewed violence and told people to love and forgive their enemies—that we don’t? Perhaps he’s clinging to that solitary verse that academics like Philip Jenkins habitually highlight, that Christ—who “spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a parable spoke not” once said, “I come not to bring peace but a sword.” (Matt. 10:34, 13:34).

Jesus was not commanding violence against non-Christians but rather predicting that Christians will be persecuted, including by family members (as, for example, when a Muslim family slaughters their child for “apostatizing” to Christianity as happens frequently).

Conversely, in its fatwa justifying the burning of the Jordanian captive, the Islamic State cites Muhammad putting out the eyes of some with “heated irons” (he also cut their hands and feet off). The fatwa also cites Khalid bin al-Walid—the heroic “Sword of Allah”—who burned apostates to death, including one man whose head he set on fire to cook his dinner on.

Nor is the Islamic State alone in burning people. Recently a “mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily.”

As for the Islamic “authorities,” Al Azhar—the Islamic world’s oldest and most prestigious university which cohosted Obama’s 2009 “New Beginning” speech—still assigns books that justify every barbarity IS commits, includingburning people alive. Moreover, Al Azhar—a religious institution concerned with what is and is not Islamic—has called for the cutting off of the hands and feet of IS members, thereby legitimizing such acts according to Islamic law.

On the other hand, does Obama know of some secret document in the halls of the Vatican that calls for amputating, beheading or immolating enemies of Christ to support his religious relativism?

As for the much maligned Crusades, Obama naturally follows the mainstream academic narrative that anachronistically portrays the crusaders as greedy, white, Christian imperialists who decided to conquer peace-loving Muslims in the Middle East.

Again, familiarity with the true sources and causes behind the Crusades shows that they were a response to the very same atrocities being committed by the Islamic State today. Consider the words of Pope Urban II, spoken almost a millennium ago, and note how well they perfectly mirror IS behavior:

From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks] … has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country [as slaves], and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion …. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent…. On whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily activity, and strength…

If the crusaders left their own lands and families to come to the aid of persecuted Christians and to liberate Jerusalem, here is Obama portraying them as no better than the Islamic State—which isn’t surprising considering that, far from helping persecuted Christians, Obama’s policies have significantly worsened their plight.

According to primary historical texts—not the modern day fantasies peddled by the likes of Karen Armstrong, an ex-nun with an axe to grind—Muslim persecution of Christians was indeed a primary impetus for the Crusades.

As for the Inquisition, this too took place in the context of Christendom’s struggle with Islam. (Isn’t it curious that the European nation most associated with the Inquisition, Spain, was also the only nation to be conquered and occupied by Islam for centuries?) After the Christian reconquest of Spain, Muslims, seen as untrustworthy, were ordered either to convert to Christianity or go back to Africa whence they came. Countless Muslims feigned conversion by practicing taqiyya and living as moles, always trying to subvert Spain back to Islam. Hence the extreme measures of the Inquisition—which, either way, find no support in the teachings of Christ.

Conversely, after one of his jihads, Muhammad had a man tortured to death in order to reveal his tribe’s hidden treasure and “married” the same man’s wife hours later. Unsurprisingly, the woman, Safiya, later confessed that “Of all men, I hated the prophet the most—for he killed my husband, my brother, and my father,” before “marrying” her.

In short, Obama’s claim that there will always be people willing to “hijack religion for their own murderous ends” is patently false when applied to the Islamic State and like organizations and individuals.

Muhammad himself called for the murder of his enemies; he permitted Muslims to feign friendship to his enemies in order to assassinate them; he incited his followers to conquer and plunder non-believers, promising them a sexual paradise if they were martyred; he kept sex slaves and practiced pedophilia with his “child-bride,” Aisha.

He, the prophet of Islam, did everything the Islamic State is doing.

If Muslims are supposed to follow the sunna, or example, of Muhammad, and if Muhammad engaged in and justified every barbarity being committed by the Islamic State and other Muslims—how, exactly, are they “hijacking” Islam?

Such is the simple logic Obama fails to grasp. Or else he does grasp it—but hopes most Americans don’t.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign policy, Freedom, History, Hostages, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Moral equivalence, Obama, Terrorism, Torture
Tags: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign Policy, Freedom, History, Hostages, human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Moral equivalence, Terrorism, Torture

Comments: 1 Comment

Al Qaeda jihadists celebrate release of anti-Islamic State ideologue

February 7, 2015

Al Qaeda jihadists celebrate release of anti-Islamic State ideologue, Long War Journal, Thomas Joscelyn, February 5, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-02-05 at 4.25.03 PM-thumb-560x740-5716

No official explanation for Maqdisi’s release has been given. But a Jordanian “security source” told Reuters that “Maqdisi was expected to denounce the immolation of the Jordanian pilot” as being contrary to “faith values.”

******************

Jordanian officials announced the release of Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, a pro-al Qaeda, anti-Islamic State jihadist ideologue earlier today. And the news was quickly celebrated by Maqdisi’s allies on social media.

A Twitter feed associated with Abu Qatada, one of Maqdisi’s closest comrades, tweeted the news of the release. One tweet praises Allah and shows a picture of the two longtime jihadist thinkers sitting together. The picture can be seen above, with Maqdisi on the reader’s left and Abu Qatada on the right.

The pair has helped lead al Qaeda’s ideological attack against the Islamic State, which claims to rule over large parts of Iraq and Syria as a “caliphate.” Al Qaeda officially disowned Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s organization in February 2014.

The celebratory tweets posted in Abu Qatada’s name were quickly retweeted by other al Qaeda jihadists, including Sami al Uraydi, a Jordanian who serves as the Al Nusrah Front’s chief sharia official. The Al Nusrah Front is al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria.

Abu Mariya al Qahtani, another official in Al Nusrah, praised Maqdisi’s release. And so did Dr. Abdallah Muhammad al Muhaysini, an al Qaeda-linked cleric who works with Al Nusrah in Syria. Muhaysini tweeted the photo shown above as well.

Maqdisi’s release comes just days after the Islamic State posted a grotesque video online showing a Jordanian pilot, Mouath al Kasaesbeh, being burned alive.

No official explanation for Maqdisi’s release has been given. But a Jordanian “security source” told Reuters that “Maqdisi was expected to denounce the immolation of the Jordanian pilot” as being contrary to “faith values.”

And a Jordanian television station is already advertising an “exclusive interview” with Maqdisi, who criticizes the Islamic State once again. He reportedly will say that he tried to negotiate the pilot’s freedom in exchange for the release of Sajida al Rishawi, a failed al Qaeda in Iraq suicide bomber. Rishawi was executed by the Jordanian government after Kasaesbeh’s death was publicly confirmed.

One of the Islamic State’s most influential critics

It has long been assumed that Jordanian authorities are willing to tolerate some of Maqdisi’s activities, as he is one of the Islamic State’s most authoritative critics within the jihadist community. But such an arrangement puts the Jordanians in the awkward position of being tacitly allied, even if only on occasion, with a thinker who strongly backs al Qaeda and its leader, Ayman al Zawahiri.

In January 2014, Maqdisi denounced the Islamic State’s fatwas, which “obligate Muslims to make a grand pledge of allegiance to [Abu Bakr al] Baghdadi as a caliph.” Maqdisi also explained that the fatwas from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS), as it was known at the time, led to the shedding of Muslim blood and incited jihadists “to disobey the authorities’ orders, particularly the orders of Sheikh Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri.”

While still imprisoned in May 2014, Maqdisi released a statement blasting the Islamic State as a “deviant organization.” The message was promoted online by the Al Nusrah Front.

In the jailhouse letter, Maqdisi revealed that he had attempted to broker an end to the dispute between the Islamic State and al Qaeda, as the two jihadist organizations had been openly at odds since April 2013. He claimed to have advised Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and Zawahiri. Maqdisi even said that he had been in direct contact with Zawahiri, whom he referred to as “our beloved brother, the Sheikh, the Commander.” He blamed the failure of his mediation efforts solely on Baghdadi.

Maqdisi has been periodically released from prison, only to find himself behind bars once again. He was released for a time in mid-June of 2014 and, in short order, issued another statement concerning the Islamic State. He refused to disavow his rebuke of the group from the month before, saying the speculation that Jordanian authorities put him up to it was false. Officials in the Al Nusrah Front praised Maqdisi’s short-lived freedom at the time.

Jihadists from around the world have attempted to impeach the Islamic State’s credentials by relying on Maqdisi’s teachings. For instance, Ali Abu Muhammad al Dagestani, the head of the Islamic Caucasus Emirate (ICE), has spoken of Maqdisi, along with Zawahiri and other al Qaeda ideologues, in glowing terms. Some ICE jihadists have defected to the Islamic State, but web sites affiliated with the organization continue to advertise Maqdisi’s anti-Islamic State writings.

Maqdisi’s animosity for the West and the US is clear. On Sept. 30, 2014, he and other jihadist thinkers released a proposal calling for a ceasefire between the warring factions in Syria. Their main argument was that the Islamic State, Al Nusrah and other groups had a common enemy in the “Crusaders.” The US-led coalition began bombing Syria one week earlier. The proposed ceasefire appears to have been rejected by the Islamic State.

Last December, the Guardian (UK) reported that Abu Qatada and Maqdisi had attempted to negotiate with the Islamic State on behalf of Peter Kassig, an American aid worker who was held captive by the group. Their effort failed as Kassig was ultimately beheaded. Some al Qaeda officials objected to Kassig’s murder on the grounds that he was assisting Muslims in Syria and had been welcomed by their co-religionists. In their view, therefore, it was illegal under sharia law to kill him.

The Islamic State, however, consistently disregards the sharia arguments made by al Qaeda officials, Maqdisi, and others.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Caliphate, Coalition, Foreign policy, Islamic State, Jordan, Jordanian pilot
Tags: Al Qaeda, Caliphate, Coalition, Foreign Policy, Islamic State, Jordan, Jordanian pilot

Comments: 1 Comment

The Glamor of Evil

February 6, 2015

The Glamor of Evil, Mark Stein on line, February 5, 2015

1157

President Obama’s response was to go to the National Prayer Breakfast and condescendingly advise us – as if it’s some dazzlingly original observation rather than the lamest faculty-lounge relativist bromide – to “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ“.

[C]ivilization is a fragile and unnatural state of affairs. Droning on about the Crusades and Jim Crow, Obama offers the foreign policy of Oscar Wilde’s cynic: He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And so, as the world burns, he, uh, redoubles his, uh, vigilance, uh uh uh… Whatever. That and $16.4 million will buy you coffee and some trauma counseling in Kiev.

****************

On Tuesday the Islamic State released a 22-minute video showing Flight Lieutenant Muath al-Kasasbeh of the Royal Jordanian Air Force being doused in petrol and burned to death. It is an horrific way to die, and Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh showed uncommon bravery, standing stiff and dignified as the flames consumed him. And then he toppled, and the ISIS cameras rolled on, until what was left was charred and shapeless and unrecognizable as human.

King Abdullah’s response to this barbaric act was to execute two ISIS prisoners the following morning, including the evil woman who was part of the cell that blew up the lobby of my favorite hotel in Amman, the Grand Hyatt.

President Obama’s response was to go to the National Prayer Breakfast and condescendingly advise us – as if it’s some dazzlingly original observation rather than the lamest faculty-lounge relativist bromide – to “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ“.

Gee, thanks. If you’re watching on ISIS premium cable, I’m sure that’s a great consolation when they’re reaching for the scimitar and readying you for your close-up. Oh, and, even by the standards of his usual rote cookie-cutter shoulder-to-shoulder shtick that follows every ISIS beheading of western captives, the President could barely conceal his boredom at having to discuss the immolation of Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh:

Aaand it, I think, will redouble [pause] the vigilance aaand determination on the part of our global coalition to, uh, make sure that they are degraded and ultimately defeated. Ummmm. [Adopting a whimsical look] It also just indicates the degree to which whatever ideology they’re operating off of, it’s bankrupt. [Suppressing a smirk, pivoting to a much more important subject.] We’re here to talk about how to make people healthier and make their lives better.

The lack of passion – the bloodlessness – of Obama’s reaction to atrocity is always striking. He can’t even be bothered pretending that he means it.

I am not a great fan of the Hashemites, and there is great peril for Jordan in getting sucked deeper into a spiral that could quickly consume one of the weakest polities in the region and turn the least-worst Sunni monarchy into merely the latest Obama-era failed-state – after Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc. The UAE took advantage of Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh’s capture to cease participation in sorties entirely, and, given the general halfheartedness of Obama’s “coalition”, King Abdullah could have been forgiven for also deciding to head for the exit.

Yet he understood the necessity of action. Obama, by contrast, declares action, and then does nothing. His war against ISIS was supposed to be one in which the US would not put “boots on the ground”, but instead leave that to our allies. The allies have the boots, but they could use some weapons, too. Obama has failed to supply the Kurds or anybody else with what they need to defeat our enemies. It’s becoming what they call a pattern of behavior. Elliott Abrams draws attention to this passage in a New York Times story about Ukraine:

The Russians have sent modern T-80 tanks, whose armor cannot be penetrated by Ukraine’s aging and largely inoperative antitank weapons, along with Grad rockets and other heavy weapons. Russian forces have also used electronic jamming equipment to interfere with the Ukrainians’ communications….

Ukraine has requested arms and equipment, including ammunition, sniper rifles, mortars, grenade launchers, antitank missiles, armored personnel carriers, mobile field hospitals, counterbattery radars and reconnaissance drones.

Hmm. So how much of that shopping list have we responded to? Obama won’t write Ukraine a blank check, but he will write them a blanket check:

The $16.4 million in aid that Mr. Kerry will announce in Kiev is intended to help people trapped by the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk. The aid will be used to buy basic items like blankets and clothing, along with counseling for traumatized civilians.

Could be worse. He might have thrown in another James Taylor singalong. Then they really would need trauma counselors.

With at least another two years of civilizational retreat to go, we’re gonna need a lot more security blankets, which is good news for whichever Chinese factory makes them.

~As Kyle Smith points out, the video of Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh’s death is an extremely sophisticated and professional production. US news media have declined to run it, because it’s too disturbing, as opposed to, say, Brian Williams’ ripping yarns of derring-do about being shot out of the sky by an RPG. There are really two parallel media structures now: Consumers of Brian Williams-delivered “news” aren’t even aware of the metastasizing of evil. Meanwhile, out there on Twitter and Facebook it’s the hottest recruiting tool on the planet. You’ll recall Hannah Arendt’s tired and misleading coinage “the banality of evil”, derived from her observation of Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem. As I wrote last August:

Hitler felt obliged to be somewhat coy about just how final the final solution was. As Eichmann testified at his trial, when typing up the minutes of the Wannsee conference, “How shall I put it? Certain over-plain talk and jargon expressions had to be rendered into office language by me.” Even the Nazis were reluctant to spell it out.

The Germans didn’t have social media, but they had newsreels, and Hitler knew enough not to make genocide available to Pathé or “The March of Time”. He had considerations both domestic and foreign. Pre-Wannsee, in Poland and elsewhere, German troops had been ordered to shoot Jewish prisoners in cold blood, and their commanders reported back to Berlin that too many soldiers had found it sickening and demoralizing. So the purpose of “the final solution” was to make mass murder painless, at least for the perpetrators – more bureaucratic, removed, bloodless.

As for foreign considerations, Germany expected to be treated as a civilized power by its enemies, and that would not have been possible had they been boasting about genocide.

Seventy years on, the Islamic State has slipped free of even these minimal constraints. They advertize their barbarism to the world, because what’s the downside? Let’s say the guys who burned Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh are one day captured by Americans. They can look forward to a decade or two of a soft, pampering sojourn in the US justice system, represented by an A-list dream-team that’ll string things along until the administration figures it’ll cut its losses and ship them to Qatar in exchange for some worthless deserter.

As for the upside, “the banality of evil” may have its appeal for lower-middle-class Teuton bureaucrats, but the glamor of evil is a far more potent and universal brand. The Islamic State has come up with the ultimate social-media campaign: evil goes viral! At some level German conscripts needed to believe they were honorable soldiers in an honorable cause, no different from the British or Americans. But ISIS volunteers are signing up explicitly for the war crimes. The Islamic State burned Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh alive not only to kill him but to inspire the thousands of ISIS fanbois around the globe, like Moussa Coulibaly, the guy who stabbed three French policemen outside a Jewish school in Nice this week.

For many of its beneficiaries, modern western life is bland, undemanding and vaguely unsatisfying. Some seek a greater cause, and turn to climate change or LGBTQWERTY rights. But others want something with a little more red meat to it. Jihad is primal in a way that the stodgy multiculti relativist mush peddled by Obama isn’t. And what the Islamic State is offering is Jihad 2.0, cranking up the blood-lust and rape and sex slavery and head-chopping and depravity in ways that make Osama-era al-Qaeda look like a bunch of pantywaists.

Success breeds success. The success of evil breeds darker evil. And the glamorization of evil breeds ever more of those “recent Muslim converts” and “lone wolves” and “self-radicalized extremists” in the news. That’s a Big Idea – a bigger idea, indeed, than Communism or Nazism. Islam, as we know, means “submission”. But Xtreme-Sports Hyper-Islam, blood-soaked and baying, is also wonderfully liberating, offering the chance for dull-witted, repressed young men to slip free of even the most basic societal restraints. And, when the charms of the open road in Headchoppistan wear thin, your British and Canadian and Australian and European welfare checks will still be waiting for you on the doormat back home.

By contrast, civilization is a fragile and unnatural state of affairs. Droning on about the Crusades and Jim Crow, Obama offers the foreign policy of Oscar Wilde’s cynic: He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And so, as the world burns, he, uh, redoubles his, uh, vigilance, uh uh uh… Whatever. That and $16.4 million will buy you coffee and some trauma counseling in Kiev.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Executions, Foreign policy, Holocaust, Hostages, Iraq, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Jihad, Jordan, Jordanian pilot, Mark Steyn, Obama, Terrorists, Torture
Tags: Caliphate, Christians, Executions, Foreign Policy, Holocaust, Hostates, Iraq, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jihad, Jordan, Jordanian pilot, Mark Steyn, Royal Jordanian Air Force, Terrorists, Torture

Comments: 1 Comment

Islam and Appeasement

February 4, 2015

Islam and Appeasement, American Thinker, G. Murphy Donovan, February 4, 2015

The US State Department is one of the few institutions in America, other than the Nation of Islam, blessed with the gift of prophecy. Logic, reason, and morality have been subverted to serve the cause of appeasement. Pandering to savages has always been the one policy choice that guarantees that things will get worse.

**********************

Europe and America are impaled on the horns of a strategic dilemma. On the one hand, the world is besieged by jihadi religious terror, barbarity, and serial wars with jihadists. Concurrently, most of the civilized world defends the very religious cultures, Sunni and Shia Islam especially, where the problems originate. To be clear at the outset; with Islam today, there seems to be less and less daylight between secular and religious imperatives.

Rehana

ISIS Islamist with the head of “Rehana,” Peshmerga fighter.

Theology, for the most part, is the a priori premise for Muslim politics and evangelism, Islamism if you will. Culture proceeds from or is conditioned by religious writ or tradition in the Ummah. The adjective “Islamic” before the noun “republic” is not just an historical artifact.

Indeed, since the 1979 Shia religious coup in Persia, the political trend lines throughout dar al Islam are clearly theocratic. You might call the recent Shia coup in Yemen a copycat killing. Secular Islam is in the crosshairs. The trend suffered a setback in Egypt recently, but only at the expense of a military coup.

Theocracy or the generals are the two political default settings in the Muslim world today. Priests and brass hats are never far from the nexus of power. If behavior is a measure of merit in the Ummah, the generals are to be preferred over the ayatollahs, Islamic scholars, mullahs, or imams. Cairo might take a nervous bow here.

A priori or unwarranted assumptions are not limited, however, to the Islamic side of the geo-strategic conundrum. European and American intellectuals, politicians, generals, and academics, are handicapped with the same infirmity.

Terror provides a snapshot of the logic that flows from flawed premises, foregone conclusions that attempt to absolve Islam.

After most atrocities, East or West, the specter of the late Edward Said reappears. Said is the Palestinian apologist, tenured at Columbia University, who coined the theory of “Orientalism,” a grab bag of complaints that cover a host of shibboleths that permit blanket absolution for the Muslim majority today.

Infidels in the West usually begin with ritual handwringing about the horrors of bombs, bullets, and beheadings, followed immediately by a logical hairball where moral poles are reversed — a universe where the Islamist villain morphs into the Muslim victim. Shooters and bombers are rhetorically excommunicated by Western Quislings. Such is the “logic” that allows a black politician from Chicago to declare emphatically that “ISIS is not Islam,” a little like parsing jackals from coyotes.

In contrast, few prominent Muslims condemn or ostracize jihadists. Jihad is as Muslim as Mohammed. Indeed, nearly 50 countries in dar al Islam now send Islamist fighters to ISIS, hirsute recruits that are happy to execute, in the name of Allah, any European, American, or East Asian that falls into their hands. Most recently, two Japanese civilians lost their heads. The executioner of choice at the moment apparently carries a British passport.

Before the blood dries after such barbarism, politicians and media pundits go on defense lest atrocity stain the veil of immunities created for all Muslims. Indeed, when the President of the United States or the Prime Minister of Britain says that ISIS, or any terror group, is not Islamic, they confer blanket amnesty on a sixth of the world’s population, the now celebrated “pacific,” passive-aggressive, Muslim majority.

The anointing of Islam as victim is underwritten by a litany of lesser and equally unsupportable excuses including but not limited to: colonialism, exploitation, poverty, illiteracy, imperialism, racism (sic), and moral equivalence. Of these, moral equivalence is the most absurd.

Few Muslim scholars, ayatollahs, or imams make any claim of moral equivalence. Mohamed, Islam, the Koran, and Hadith are thought to be a unity, the final, singular, and unalterable truth. The Islamist sees all other religions, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu especially, as infidels or apostasies, vessels of ignorance. Ecumenism and multiculturalism is only possible, and only a tactic at that, in polities where Muslims are a minority. Tolerance is nearly absent where Muslim majorities prevail.

Within major religions, moral consistency is now an oxymoron. Discrimination in the West is a still a vice while bigotry in Islam has been ordained a cultural virtue.

Jews and Christians have been removed from most Arab states and are in peril in the Muslim world at large. Jews in Europe are also under siege now by a coalition of traditional anti-Semites on the Left, augmented by irredentist Muslim immigrants on the Right. In contrast, 1.5 million Muslim Arabs still thrive in the tiny state of Israel.

Equality is a claim made by western apologists on behalf of Islam. Few Sunni or Shia clerics or scholars confer equality, civic or religious, on the unbeliever — infidel or apostate. Among Muslims, small minorities like the Kurds, the Zezidi, Ahmadiyya, and the Sufi might legitimately think of themselves as moderates, but they represent only five percent of Islam.

Premature absolution of Islam is now the knee jerk response to all atrocity. Never mind that most terror groups are Muslim and proudly array themselves with all the predictable kit: incantations, black surah flags, the Koran, the Hadith, beards, and burkas — all in the name of Mohammed. Somehow we are supposed to believe that none of this has anything to do with true Islam. The Ummah plays the victim with the passive approvals of believers and the active collaboration of infidels. “Great religion” indeed!

A standard mantra claims that the majority of Islamist victims are Muslims, another absurd tautology. The summary execution of milquetoast Muslims by righteous Muslims is a kind of cultural masochism. Jihadists who kill, or are themselves killed, are celebrated from Gaza to Kabul as heroes or martyrs.

There is no organized, universal opposition to the bomb, bullet, or the knife in the Arab League or the 56 nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Indeed, the surah, the sword and the gun are the staples of modern Muslim iconography. Flags and banners alone put the lie to the “moderate” meme.

194001_5_

Islam in London

When the goal is submission, the modalities for victory are clear, indeed, endorsed by scripture. No Muslim cleric argues that any surah, Koranic admonition, needs amendment or reform. Individual or isolated voices might be raised against violence, but there is no reform movement.

The reform vacuum has its own logic. The reformer would be an apostate and a target in any case. The penalty for apostasy is death! Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie are examples. What is there to alter if you believe that you have the immutable word of God as guidance? And why change anything if you are winning?

The imperial Islamic 5^th column in the West now punctuates evangelism with periodic massacres like Charlie Hebdo in Paris just to remind infidels which side has the upper hand. Global terror may not be orchestrated by any one Muslim group or Islamic state. Alas, centrifugal terror is a tactical conundrum for the West and a strategic asset for the Islamist. Nothing succeeds like viral success.

Strategy in Brussels and Washington has deteriorated to what amounts to “whack-a-mole,” a carnival game where the hammer falls only where the rodent raises its head. ISIS is the rodent du jour. The tunnels of Gaza are the literal incarnation of such Muslim tactics, the strategic significance of which is designed to bleed Israel, in particular, and the West, in general, into submission.

Appeasement in the West and serial terror in the East makes for a calculus where new terror groups or Islamic states are likely to proliferate. ISIS, Boko Haram, and Hisb ut Tahrir provide some of the more recent evidence.

ISIS is the new and now more candid face of Islamo-fascism, savage and uncompromising, with a flair for public relations. Brute force is the attribute that merits the fascist label. Preliminary evidence suggests that ISIS tactics, on a global scale, are better proselytizers and recruiters than any al Qaeda atrocities. Al Baghdadi is not just another Sunni Osama bin Laden. Baghdadi is worse — and more effective at the same time.

When American soldiers like Chris Kyle used words like “savages” to describe Islamists, he was only giving voice to the least offensive description of those who kill in God’s, Mohamed’s, or Islam’s name.

Boko Haram is another metastasizing menace. With the assistance of the US State Department, these Islamic slave traders flew under the terror radar for decades. The ninnies at Foggy Bottom can’t bring themselves to put the words “black Muslim slave trading terrorists” in the same sentence. Political correctness in Washington is a kind of Yankeefatwa nowadays, a death warrant, especially for African schoolgirls.

Political correctness is now the official Achilles heel of social democracies.

Hizb ut Tahrir is another caliphate proselytizer flying under the media radar with an assist from the US State Department and the Intelligence Community. HT activities seldom see the light of day although this mutation of Sunni Islamism now operates openly, like al Ikhwan (aka, the Muslim Brotherhood), without a US terrorist designation and associated scrutiny. If the activists of HT, al Ikhwan, and affiliates were audited, the totals would number in the hundreds of millions.

Moderation among Muslims is not a function of kinetics so much as it is a function of cultural affiliations and sympathies. The Pew Research Center and World Health Organization surveys provide ample testimony to toxic Islamic attitudes and social abuses like capital apostasy, polygamy, and consanguinity.

At the moment we live in an era where the Muslim Brotherhood, and affiliates (see CAIR), are welcomed at the Oval Office, but the Prime Minister of Israel is snubbed and reviled. The reasons for such folly are clear: fear for the economy, fear for energy sources, fear of global Muslim numbers, and ultimately the fear that terrorism might get worse.

The US State Department is one of the few institutions in America, other than the Nation of Islam, blessed with the gift of prophecy. Logic, reason, and morality have been subverted to serve the cause of appeasement. Pandering to savages has always been the one policy choice that guarantees that things will get worse.

Categories: Appeasement, Caliphate, Cognitive dissonance, Foreign policy, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Media, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama administration, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists
Tags: Appeasement, Caliphate, Cognitive dissonance, Foreign Policy, human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Media, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama Administration, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists

Comments: 1 Comment

ISIS Purifies Islam Through Fire

February 4, 2015

ISIS Purifies Islam Through Fire, Front Page Magazine, Dawn Perlmutter, February 4, 2015

(The “non-Islamic” Islamic State is not the only Islamic entity that “purifies” by fire. That’s how many “honor killings” are done. When The Islamic Republic of Iran uses nukes against its enemies, it will “purify” them wholesale.– DM)

Islamic purification

Fire is symbolic of the destruction of evil. Symbolically people who are burned alive are human sacrifices that are expiating evil from the community. Tainted victims are purified through fire.

Filming and disseminating the ritual killing strikes fear into the hearts of enemies and attracts new recruits. Similar to an arsonist that is fascinated with fire, disaffected young people will be attracted to this ritual burning. Like moths to a flame.

*****************

On Tuesday February 3, 2015 the Islamic State released a video showing Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, 26 being burned alive while locked in a metal cage. The 22 minute video includes footage of Jordan’s King Abdullah II declaring his support for the anti-ISIS coalition. It shows Lt. Al-Kaseasbeh, who was captured by the Islamic State in December after his aircraft crashed over Syria, being interrogated, paraded in front of heavily armed men, walking towards the cage, and then standing inside the cage wearing an orange jumpsuit that is doused in flammable liquid. The executioner uses a torch to light a trail of gasoline that leads to his feet. Lt. Al-Kasasbeh is engulfed in flames and remains alive for over 1 minute and half and collapses to the floor. Militants pour broken masonry and other debris over the cage which is then flattened with a bulldozer with the body still inside. Despite the surprise and shock of seeing a young man burned alive, this is not a new tactic. In fact it is a common method of ritual murder in Iraq and other countries particularly in honor killings and the murder of Christians. The significant difference is that the Islamic State media films the execution using sophisticated editing and highly choreographed techniques turning the killing into a scripted reality show.

Hundreds of women in the Muslim world have been murdered by fire in honor killings. The murders were often disguised as suicides or accidents. In the first six months of 2007, in Iraqi Kurdistan, 255 women were killed, three-quarters of them by burning. An earlier report cited 366 cases of women who were the victims of so called fire accidents in Dohuk in 2006, up from 289 the year before. In Irbil, there were 576 burn cases since 2003, resulting in 358 deaths. In 2006 in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq there were 400 cases of women burned. In Tunisia in May 2014 a father burned his 13 year old daughter to death for walking home with a boy. In October 2013 a 15 year old Yemeni girl was burned to death by her father for communicating with her fiancé. In March 2009, a sixteen year old Muslim girl suspected of having a relationship with a boy was burned to death by four male neighbors in her village in Ghaziabad, North India. They came to the girl’s house and demanded to know why the young man frequently visited her, and then the men beat her, doused her with kerosene and set her on fire. There are numerous more examples of women burned alive. This form of punishment is not just reserved for women. In April 2011 three men were set on fire in Iraq for being gay. A video of that incident is easily accessible online. In June 2008, the Taliban burned three truck drivers of the Turi tribe alive for supplying the Pakistan Armed Forces. There have been numerous reports of Christians burned alive by Islamist jihadists. In November 2014 a Christian couple in Pakistan Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were burned alive in a brick furnace after it was rumored that they had burned verses from the Quran.”Bibi, a mother of four who was four months pregnant, was wearing an outfit that initially didn’t burn…… The mob removed her from over the kiln and wrapped her up in cotton to make sure the garments would be set alight.” These incidents are rarely reported by the mainstream media and were difficult for most people to comprehend as real until ISIS started filming documentaries of their ritual murders.

Fire is symbolic of the destruction of evil. Symbolically people who are burned alive are human sacrifices that are expiating evil from the community. Tainted victims are purified through fire. Fire is considered a powerful transformer of the negative to the positive. Because of such properties, fire is commonly found in purification rites throughout the world. In other cultures polluted persons may be required to walk around, jump over, or jump through fire. Historically, burning a person to death was reserved for the most threating evil, such as heresy or witchcraft and considered an extreme form of purification. In the context of honor killing the use of fire is not only symbolic but practical. Practical in Iraq because most of the homes do not have electricity so every house has a large supply of oil which makes it easier to conceal honor killings under the guise of suicide or kitchen accidents. In the context of the murder of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh fire is an Islamic purification ritual that serves vengeance and restores honor and purity to the community of believers.

Islamist jihadists from different movements, countries, sects, and factions all emphasize the need to cleanse Islam of its impurities. Al Qaeda’s ideological belief is the purification of Islam through violent struggle. Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri have continually called on supporters to purify Muslim holy lands of infidels, un-Islamic beliefs, and practices. The Islamic State cleanses Islam of its impurities while protecting its territory in the same manner as Mexican cartels, using brutal tactics that are justified as vengeance.

The title of the video, Healing the Believers’ Chests, is a quote from the Quran: “Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you over them, heal the breasts of Believers.” (Qur’an 9:14). It was reported to mean ‘giving them pleasure’ – interpreted as a reference to achieving revenge. That is one interpretation, however healing is symbolic of purification, the title Healing the Believers’ Chests can be understood as cleansing the community of the contamination of impurity. Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh’s alleged crimes symbolically unleashed an epidemic of contagious evil. The function of the burning ritual is a communal act of expiation, expelling the contagious evil of an infidel enemy through fire. Having ISIS fighters participate and watch makes it a communal sacrificial ritual. Ritualizing the violence justifies it and makes it sacred. Once the transgressor is ritually killed the impurity is removed, the evil has been expelled, taboo has been ameliorated and justice is served. The body is immediately buried under the earth, another purifying element, restoring honor and purity.

Filming and disseminating the ritual killing strikes fear into the hearts of enemies and attracts new recruits. Similar to an arsonist that is fascinated with fire, disaffected young people will be attracted to this ritual burning. Like moths to a flame.

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Freedom, Honor killings, Hostages, Human rights, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jordanian pilot, Obama, P5+1, Purification by fire, Terrorism, Torture
Tags: Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Freedom, honor killing, Honor killings, Hostages, human rights, Iran Scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jordanian pilot, Purification by fire, Terrorism, Torture

Comments: Be the first to comment

Basis in Islamic Jurisprudence (Shariah) and Scripture for Execution of Jordanian Pilot

February 4, 2015

Basis in Islamic Jurisprudence (Shariah) and Scripture for Execution of Jordanian Pilot, Counter Jihad Report, February 4, 2015

(Please visit Counter Jihad Report frequently for information about Islam and Jihad. It is an invaluable source.

When the Islamic State and its cohorts are branded as “non-Islamic” and as “having nothing to do with any religion,” we substitute fantasy for reality. We cannot, and therefore will not, defeat an enemy whose rightful context we are unwilling even to mention. — DM)

Obama refers to this “bankrupt ideology” that has come, apparently, out of nowhere. King Abdullah, in Washington, is apparently amazed and flabbergasted at these people, who have absolutely nothing to do with Islam. And the rest of the world’s leaders are also horrified, and amazed, and presumably puzzled, as to this “ideology” that comes out of nowhere, that has “nothing to do with Islam” and for which no texts, not a single sentence, can be found that is not in the Qur’an, or not in the Hadith, or not in essence discoverable in the biography (Sira) of Muhammad, beginning with that of Ibn Ishaq.

This menace, and this misinformation about that menacee, and this growing mistrust of those all over the West who have a duty to instruct as well as protect us, will not go away. It will not lessen. It will only get worse.

**************

Terror Trends Bulletin, by Christopher Holton, Feb. 3, 2015:

“Indeed, those who disbelieve in Our verses – We will drive them into a Fire. Every time their skins are roasted through We will replace them with other skins so they may taste the punishment. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted in Might and Wise.”

Quran Sura 4:56

In the burning scene video the Islamic State gave the Islamic edict straight from the top Islamic authority of Ibn Taymiyya’s jurisprudence:

“So if horror of commonly desecrating the body is a call for them [the infidels] to believe [in Islam], or to stop their aggression, it is from here that we carry out the punishment and the allowance for legal Jihad”

Ibn Taymiyya was one of the most esteemed Sunni Islamic scholars of all time. He is considered one of the originators of the Hanbali school of Shariah. He originated the practice of declaring Jihad on Muslims who did not follow the Shariah based on the belief that they were not true Muslims, despite their claims to the faith.

taymiyya

***

“Healing The Chests Of Believers,” And The Duty To Instruct As Well As Protect

NER, by Hugh Fitzgerald

That was the title, that was the theme, that was the point, of the video of the burning alive of Moaz Al-Kasasbeh. Obama refers to this “bankrupt ideology” that has come, apparently, out of nowhere. King Abdullah, in Washington, is apparently amazed and flabbergasted at these people, who have absolutely nothing to do with Islam. And the rest of the world’s leaders are also horrified, and amazed, and presumably puzzled, as to this “ideology” that comes out of nowhere, that has “nothing to do with Islam” and for which no texts, not a single sentence, can be found that is not in the Qur’an, or not in the Hadith, or not in essence discoverable in the biography (Sira) of Muhammad, beginning with that of Ibn Ishaq. Perhaps someone should offer a sufficiently high reward — say, $25 million, the price the American government put on the head of Osama bin Laden — to anyone who can come forward with the presumably fictional quotes from Qur’an and Hadith that the Islamic State relies on.

If you happen to google — it takes about 30 seconds — “heal the chests of believers” or a variant, you will find what I found, in Sura 9, ayat 14.

Read here.

For a story about setting fire to someone regarded as an enemy — a Jew of the Khaybar Oasis, because he didn’t want to give up all of his property to Muhammad and his marauding followers at Khaybar — who was set alight, and then decapitated, google “Kinana” and, if you need to, “Ibn Ishaq,” and you will discover that Kinana first had his chest set alight. And then he was decapitated. And his propoerty taken. And his wife Safiya taken by Muhammad to be his sex slave. Youu can read more about it, in Ibn Ishaq and in the Hadith, here.

Obama — and other Western leaders — cannot continue this attempt to hide from those to whom they have a duty not only to protect, but to instruct — what is in the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira. They think they can continue this indefinitely. They apparently think it is possible to “keep the support” — what support, really? — of our “staunch allies” in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, and also “keep the support” — what support, really? — of Muslims in the West, and yet not lose the support of non-Muslims who in ever greater numbers will be alarmed, as they find out what is being kept from them, and will, already do, distrust their governments, distrust much of the media, and wonder why they cannot be properly informed so that they may, in turn, vote for candidates who understand the problem abroad, and the problem within our countries too.

This menace, and this misinformation about that menacee, and this growing mistrust of those all over the West who have a duty to instruct as well as protect us, will not go away. It will not lessen. It will only get worse.

Categories: Caliphate, Executions, Foreign policy, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jordan, Jordanian pilot
Tags: Caliphate, Counter Jihad Report, Executions, Foreign Policy, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jurisprudence, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jordan, Jordanian pilot

Comments: 2 Comments

Are Liberals Actually Admitting Islamic Terrorists Exist?!?

January 30, 2015

Are Liberals Actually Admitting Islamic Terrorists Exist?!? PJ Media Trifecta via You Tube, January 29, 2015

(The phrase “literal Islam” is an excellent substitute for “radical Islam.” Literal readings of the Koran and other Islamic “holy” texts support and demand what so called “radical Islamic extremists” do. Perhaps Obama and others who claim that Islam is “the religion of peace” should be labeled “extremist” and/or “radical” because they — rather than the Islamic State, et al — pervert the basic teachings of Islam. They apparently want us to believe, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that Islam is just another peaceful religion much like others and is therefore not a problem for secular societies. — DM)

Categories: Caliphate, Executions, Foreign policy, Freedom, Iraq, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Media, Mosul, Obama, Sharia law, Syria, Torture
Tags: Caliphate, Executions, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Iraq, Islam, Islamic extremists, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, literal Islam, Media, Mosul, radical Islam, Sharia law, Syria, Torture

Comments: 1 Comment

Yazidis ask Israel for help

January 29, 2015

Yazidis ask Israel for help, Al-Monitor, Jacky Hugi, January 28, 2015

A man from the minority Yazidi sect stands guard at Mount Sinjar, in the town of Sinjar

A man from the minority Yazidi sect stands guard at Mount Sinjar, in the town of Sinjar, Dec. 20, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Ari Jalal)

[I]t is an unusual overture of friendship for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it will be interesting to see if and how Israel takes up the gauntlet. Given the sensitivity of the matter, it is quite uncertain whether anyone will hear about it.

******************

“They have already killed many of us. What do we have to fear?” Lt. Col. Lukman Ibrahim responded when I asked him if he was afraid to openly communicate with an Israeli in a recent long-distance phone conversation from Tel Aviv to Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq, near the Syrian border. Ibrahim, a Yazidi militia officer, is hoping to obtain military aid from the State of Israel.

“The Arab countries do not recognize us, nor do they recognize you,” he said. “They are telling us that we are infidels. Why should we be afraid to talk to you, when even neighboring Arab countries have become our enemies? We regard you as a friendly state, with an opportunity for relations on the basis of neutrality and respect. We do not want more than that.”

Ibrahim, a journalist by profession, serves as an assistant to Marwan Elias Badl, one of the senior field commanders of the Sinjar Protection Forces, the Yazidi militia established ad hoc in August 2014 to halt the Islamic State (IS) onslaught against Yazidi population centers west of Mosul. The militia numbers some 12,000 fighters, most of them untrained, ordinary men who rushed to take up arms to thwart IS’ designs. A few of them are rank-and-file fighters, while some are officers with the Kurdish peshmerga. According to internal estimates, the IS militants killed thousands in their pogrom against the Yazidis. About 5,000 Yazidis are still being held by IS.

The Yazidis have no formal relations with Israel, nor an organized leadership. Yet they need aid, in particular military assistance, and they have chosen to make a public plea for help. “We appeal to the Israeli government and its leader to step in and help this nation, which loves the Jewish people,” said Ibrahim. “We would be most grateful for the establishment of military ties — for instance, the training of fighters and the formation of joint teams. We are well aware of the circumstances the Israelis are in, and of the suffering they have endured at the hands of the Arabs ever since the establishment of their state. We, too, are suffering on account of them.”

When asked what kind of weapons they needed, Ibrahim cited protective measures. “We are not acting against anyone,” he clarified. “And we do not covet other people’s land. We just want to protect ourselves. For example, [we need] armored [Humvees], machine guns and light weapons.”

Contact with Israel is a dirty business in this neighborhood, military contact all the more so. Be that as it may, in a reality where all levees have been breached and the worst appears to have already befallen the Yazidis, what could they possibly lose by seeking a rapport with Jerusalem?

The conversation with Ibrahim was not the only call with Sinjar. Majdal Rasho, a native of Sinjar, had settled in Germany and built his life there. He married and had a family, making a living as a manufacturing supervisor at a chocolate plant. In his spare time, he served as a photographer for TV stations broadcasting in the Kurdish language. He returned to Sinjar as a fighter, but also in his capacity as a video photographer for German TV networks.

“What I have seen here, I just can’t describe,” he said by phone from a battle zone. “Our people had no choice but to flee. We are not Arabs, nor are we Muslims. We see ourselves as sharing a fate with the Israelis, who went through similar pogroms. Those besieged on the mountain approached me and asked, ‘Maybe our Israeli brethren could lend a hand?’”

Yazidism is a religion with no more than a million followers. Its adherents are centered around Mosul and the Sinjar mountain range, in northern Iraq. Their largest diaspora in the West is in Germany, estimated to number some 100,000.

A common destiny with the Jews is a recurring theme in the Yazidis’ discourse. “What happened to us is the biggest genocide since the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe,” said Dr. Mirza Dinnay, a pediatrician based in Germany. “In the Holocaust, the goal was to annihilate an entire people, the Jews. IS has a similar plan — to exterminate an entire people, the Yazidis. No such extermination process had taken place in the past 500 years, with the exception of the Holocaust and what came to pass in Sinjar.”

Dinnay left Germany for Sinjar at the outbreak of the pogrom, leading a delegation of human rights activists. During one of the aid flights arranged by the Iraqi air force, a helicopter carrying food supplies and medication to the besieged Yazidis crashed. Some of the passengers aboard, among them Dinnay, were injured.

The communication between the Yazidis and the Israeli media has been coordinated by Idan Barir, 34, a researcher at the Tel Aviv University Yavetz School of Historical Studies. In the months since IS’ offensive against Yazidi population centers, Barir has become Israel’s top expert on the Yazidis, thanks to his extensive connections with members of the Yazidi community.

“I can think of a range of activities that Israel is experienced in that would not undermine the world order,” Barir told Al-Monitor. “For example, providing military assistance to the Yazidi forces in Sinjar who are crying out for cooperation and aid; setting up a field hospital for medical and psychological treatment of the casualties among the displaced in northern Iraq — not only Yazidis, by the way; sending humanitarian aid to displaced Yazidis in the refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan; absorption of a symbolic number of displaced Yazidis in Israel, with preference given to humanitarian, whether medical or mental, cases; incorporation of young Yazidis into military service in Israel; and support of civil initiatives aimed at strengthening and deepening ties between Israelis and Yazidis. It all depends on the decision made by the Israeli government, on its determination and goodwill.”

So far, Israel has not officially responded to such calls, which have yet to be fully formulated and have only recently began over the last few days. In fact, no formal request has come from the Yazidis for asylum as refugees. Barir is currently trying to find a way to reach decision-makers in Israel to pass on the messages from his faraway friends. Without a doubt, it is an unusual overture of friendship for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it will be interesting to see if and how Israel takes up the gauntlet. Given the sensitivity of the matter, it is quite uncertain whether anyone will hear about it.

“It is a moral obligation to ring every bell and to do everything possible to stop the Yazidi tragedy,” said Attorney Zvi Hauser, the former Cabinet secretary in the most recent Netanyahu government (2009-13). “It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, someone’s attempt to eliminate an entire people, because of its faith and religion, is met with indifference.”

Hauser is the first senior figure in Israel who agreed to comment on the Yazidis’ call for help. As a private person, he refrained from reference to the Yazidis’ request for military aid, taking care to say nothing that might be interpreted as a promise. He believes, however, that Israel should favorably consider the Yazidis’ calls.

“The Yazidi narrative is evocative of ours. We, too, went through 2,000 years of existence without sovereignty, in the course of which we faced extermination schemes,” Hauser said. “Israel is a sovereign state, formed by an ethnic minority. It is the national manifestation of an ancient civilization. It would thus be appropriate to examine ways to establish relations and forge an alliance with them, if only to ensure a pluralistic Middle East. This issue has a universal aspect, as well. The development of human civilization is contingent on the diversity and multiplicity of [ethnic] groups and nations. Hence, the extinction of one of these would hurt not only the Yazidis, but also the entire fabric of human life.”

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Holocaust, Human rights, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, Netanyahu, Obama, Peshmerga, Syria, Yazidis
Tags: Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Holocaust, human rights, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, Netanyahu, Peshmerga, Syria, Yazidis

Comments: 1 Comment

How to lose friends and empower radicals: the peace prize president’s more dangerous world

January 29, 2015

How to lose friends and empower radicals: the peace prize president’s more dangerous world, Breitbart, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, January 29, 2015

(Please see the video at the link. — DM)

obama-binoculars-AP-640x480

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Since 2008, the world has become a significantly more dangerous place. In every region, new threats have emerged or old ones have reasserted them. The scorecard is clear: the bad guys are winning and America’s interests are being undermined daily.

As a nation, America has yet to recover from the experience of September 11th, 2001. Public opinion on our national response to the attacks against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 is today divided. On one side we have the “Bush lied, People Died!” crowd who portray President George W. Bush’s response in terms of a conspiracy, despite the fact that we now know Saddam Hussein indeed possessed thousands of WMD warheads (and had used them in the past).

On the other, we have conservatives who are themselves split between the unsophisticated isolationists/non-interventionists who believe that an American withdrawal from the world will make us safe, and the quietly resurgent neoconservatives who see in the rise of ISIS/The Islamic State a justification for more foreign engagements.

For a moment, let us put Operations Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), and Operations Iraqi Freedom (OIF), to one side. Instead, let us take an unemotional snap-shot of the global geostrategic situation to see whether the administration whose head was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize during his first year in office has indeed make the world a safer and more peaceful place.

Europe: During most of the last century, American security was tied directly to the continent of Europe. Whether is was the generational genocide of World War One, the racial genocide of WWII, or the class-based totalitarianism of the Cold War, Europe was the source of strategic, and at times existential, threats to America.

During the first Obama Administration, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton declared a “Pivot to Asia” which would deemphasize Europe’s importance and see Washington focus more on our Pacific partners than on old Atlantic Allies.

Since that announcement, an emboldened Vladimir Putin has seen fit to break an almost 70-year-old international taboo by using force to redraw national borders with his annexation of Crimea. This includes, incredibly, the shooting down of a civilian jet-liner by forces armed by Moscow.

At the same time, we have seen the European Union become evermore centralizing and undemocratic as untenable economic and fiscal policies are propped up by a Brussels bureaucracy in the name of “broader and deeper union.” This has naturally led to two types of responses: the unprecedented success of a paleo-conservative backlash,f best typified by the insurgent victories of UKIP in Great Britain, as well the reverse: Utopian socialist populists such as the victorious Syriza party of Greece.

Then there are Europe’s ties to the Global Jihadist Movement. The recent slaughter in Paris, the beheading of a British serviceman on the streets of the UK, and Spanish and Belgian terror-related arrests all attest to the failure of the current international campaign against Islamist terrorism.

The flawed immigration policies of many EU nations have also facilitated the establishment of literally hundreds of ethnic and religious enclaves across the continent where integration is seen as a bad thing and where radical talent spotters for groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS/IS identify, indoctrinate and recruit murderers such as the Charlie Hebdo killers, as well as thousands of fighters for The Islamic State.

This has led to a grass-roots response from Europeans afraid of the future survival of their countries embodied in the ever-broadening PEGIDA movement that Breitbart London has covered in great detail. The failure of multiculturalist immigration policies has not only encouraged the enclave phenomenon, but is also clearly linked to the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism on the continent which has led to unprecedented numbers of European jews deciding to leave the nations of their birth for good.

If we include Turkey in our European snapshot, the situation is even worse, as we have seen the one viable example of a secular Muslim state slip even deeper into the corruption-ridden maelstrom of Islamic fundamentalism under the Erdogan government which is either incapable or unwilling to prevent Turkey becoming a pre-deployment site for jihadist fighters traveling into Syria and Iraq. All this from a formal NATO ally of the US.

Asia: The much-vaunted Pivot to Asia has clearly not worked. China has, over the last several years, openly challenged the post-Cold War peace in the region with a commitment to its own military build-up coupled with a concerted campaign of intimidation against its smaller and weaker neighbors.

While challenging and intimidating our regional partners, China has continued to grow economically at such a rate that the nation which was once universally ridiculed as the maker of plastic toys for McDonalds Happy Meals has now surpassed the US economy in terms of gross output. At the same time, China is waging a covert war against America in the cyber domain, stealing not only state secrets for use in developing its new weapons systems, but also billions of dollars worth of intellectual property and commercial secrets from American businesses. See the remarkable report from Mandiant on scale of the threat.

North Korea has also used the internet to assault American interests as the Sony hacking attack attests, while Washington has proven totally ineffective in undermining the world’s last truly fully-fledged Stalinist regime, or its regionally destabilizing nuclear weapons capabilities.

Africa: A giant continent, with threats as bad as they were in 2008, or in several cases much worse. The Global Jihadist Movement continues to consolidate its control in Nigeria through the horrific attacks of Boko Haram, the group made famous for the kidnapping of the girls from Chibok, an attack which is just one part of a vast campaign targeting Christians and anyone who does not want to live under a theocratically run system based upon sharia and 7th century interpretation of the Koran.

In addition to the insurgent-like threat of Boko Haram, we have also witnessed horrific hit and run terrorist tactics used by other African jihadists, as in the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi by Al Shabaab. At the same time, China proceeds to build its vast network of economic interests in the continent in ways that far outstrip American geostrategic investment in Africa.

Australasia: Of course, the Pivot to Asia should have pleased our Antipodean allies. But the concrete consequences of the declarations and speeches by Secretary Clinton and the White House have amounted to little more than the deployment of a handful of US Marines from Camp Pendleton to Australia. Instead of the security situation improving, Australia faced its own Jihadist attack just before Christmas last year as a self-styled imam took hostages and brought the violent jihad so familiar to New York, London, Madrid, and Paris, to the streets of Sydney.

The Americas: Canada likewise became a direct victim of the Global Jihadist Movement after a spate of attacks against its armed forces and even its parliament which was only stopped when a brave sergeant-at-arms applied deadly force in the face of a rampaging jihadi.

Those who like illicit quality cigars may be celebrating the White House’s “normalization” of relations with Communist Cuba, but if statements by the Castro regime are to be credited as expressing Havana’s true intentions, then the deal was good for the dictatorship and bad for America. And despite the US government’s historic decision, conditions inside Cuba have remained the same, or in many case deteriorated, with last year seeing record-breaking numbers of political arrests on the island nation. And Cuba’s anti-democratic influence is a problem for the region, not just its wretched population, with Raul Castro’s secret police providing aid and expertise in the oppression of dissidentsto the government of Venezuela.

The Middle East and North Africa: Leaving the worst for last we have, of course, the Middle East, and North Africa. The highs hopes for the Arab Spring turned very rapidly into a “Christian Winter” and a victory for the fundamentalist and anti-Democratic forces of the Muslim Brotherhood. One after another, one-man authoritarian regimes fell to Islamist MB governments, or collapsed into deadly civil wars which are still being fought in places like Syria and Libya. Throughout the region, proto-democrats and vulnerable minorities, especially ancient Christian communities, have been targeted for death or persecution, or have been forced to flee.

The one ray of hope, the people’s revolt in Egypt against the Brotherhood government of Mohammad Morsi, which led to his being ousted by a secular military, was rejected by the US administration as a coup, despite the fact that General, now President, Sisi, has been fighting his own war against Jihadi fundamentalists since he was the Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces.

And now Yemen, which was lauded just a few months ago by President Obama as the poster-child of his successful counterterrorism strategy, has collapsed under insurgent attacks and the resignation of the government in Sanaa.

Then there is Iran, which, much like Cuba, has squeezed concession after concession out of the administration without either stopping its acquisition of nuclear weapons capability, or curtailing its support of Shiite terrorist fighters in either Iraq or Syria.

I said I would leave Afghanistan and Iraq of our the equation, but nevertheless, it is important to recognize that this is a new jihadist threat that is even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. ISIS, the Islamic State, is today a full-fledged insurgency, one that in four dimensions is much more of a threat that [Sic] Al Qaeda ever was.

The Islamic State is more than a terrorist group, it now functions as a quasi-state and controls territory equivalent to the size of the UK. It is the richest non-state threat group in human history. It has an incredibly sophisticated understanding of information warfare and how to use social media as a propaganda platform, and lastly – and relatedly – it has recruited ten of thousands of young Muslim men from around the world, including Europe and the US, to fight for the new Caliphate of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Bin Laden dreamt of being this powerful. The Islamic State has turned his dream into a horrific reality.

There is not one area of the world of import to America in which we have either not lost friends, or failed to help our allies to defend themselves against the common enemies that threaten us all. Whatever your politics, or whomever you favor for the next Commander-in-Chief of the United States, one thing is certain: without resolute American leadership the world can become, and now is, a much more dangerous place.

Categories: Caliphate, Europe, European Union, Foreign policy, Free world, Freedom, Human rights, International Community, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic State, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sisi, Turkey
Tags: America, Caliphate, Europe, European Union, Foreign Policy, Free world, Freedom, human rights, International Community, Iran Scam, Islam, Islamic State, Nukes, Saddam Hussein, Sisi, Turkey

Comments: 1 Comment

Archives