Andrew Klavan: Good News, Beheaded Christians, Truth Revolt, Andrew Klavan via You Tube, February 26, 2015
Archive for the ‘Islam’ category
Andrew Klavan: Good News, Beheaded Christians
February 27, 2015Special Report: How Iran’s military chiefs operate in Iraq
February 25, 2015Special Report: How Iran’s military chiefs operate in Iraq, Reuters, February 24, 2015
A tank belonging to the Shi’ite Badr Brigade militia takes position in front of a gas station in Suleiman Beg, northern Iraq in this September 9, 2014 file photo. CREDIT: REUTERS/AHMED JADALLAH/FILES
The face stares out from multiple billboards in central Baghdad, a grey-haired general casting a watchful eye across the Iraqi capital. This military commander is not Iraqi, though. He’s Iranian.
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(Reuters) – The face stares out from multiple billboards in central Baghdad, a grey-haired general casting a watchful eye across the Iraqi capital. This military commander is not Iraqi, though. He’s Iranian.
The posters are a recent arrival, reflecting the influence Iran now wields in Baghdad.
Iraq is a mainly Arab country. Its citizens, Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims alike, have long mistrusted Iran, the Persian nation to the east. But as Baghdad struggles to fight the Sunni extremist group Islamic State, many Shi’ite Iraqis now look to Iran, a Shi’ite theocracy, as their main ally.
In particular, Iraqi Shi’ites have grown to trust the powerful Iranian-backed militias that have taken charge since the Iraqi army deserted en masse last summer. Dozens of paramilitary groups have united under a secretive branch of the Iraqi government called the Popular Mobilisation Committee, or Hashid Shaabi. Created by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s predecessor Nuri al-Maliki, the official body now takes the lead role in many of Iraq’s security operations. From its position at the nexus between Tehran, the Iraqi government, and the militias, it is increasingly influential in determining the country’s future.
Until now, little has been known about the body. But in a series of interviews with Reuters, key Iraqi figures inside Hashid Shaabi have detailed the ways the paramilitary groups, Baghdad and Iran collaborate, and the role Iranian advisers play both inside the group and on the frontlines.
Those who spoke to Reuters include two senior figures in the Badr Organisation, perhaps the single most powerful Shi’ite paramilitary group, and the commander of a relatively new militia called Saraya al-Khorasani.
In all, Hashid Shaabi oversees and coordinates several dozen factions. The insiders say most of the groups followed a call to arms by Iraq’s leading Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. But they also cite the religious guidance of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, as a key factor in their decision to fight and – as they see it – defend Iraq.
Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organisation, told Reuters: “The majority of us believe that … Khamenei has all the qualifications as an Islamic leader. He is the leader not only for Iranians but the Islamic nation. I believe so and I take pride in it.”
He insisted there was no conflict between his role as an Iraqi political and military leader and his fealty to Khamenei.
“Khamenei would place the interests of the Iraqi people above all else,” Amiri said.
FROM BATTLEFIELD TO HOSPITAL
Hashid Shaabi is headed by Jamal Jaafar Mohammed, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, a former Badr commander who once plotted against Saddam Hussein and whom American officials have accused of bombing the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in 1983.
Iraqi officials say Mohandis is the right-hand man of Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Mohandis is praised by some militia fighters as “the commander of all troops” whose “word is like a sword above all groups.”
The body he heads helps coordinate everything from logistics to military operations against Islamic State. Its members say Mohandis’ close friendships with both Soleimani and Amiri helps anchor the collaboration.
The men have known each other for more than 20 years, according to Muen al-Kadhimi, a Badr Organisation leader in western Baghdad. “If we look at this history,” Kadhimi said, “it helped significantly in organizing the Hashid Shaabi and creating a force that achieved a victory that 250,000 (Iraqi) soldiers and 600,000 interior ministry police failed to do.”
Kadhimi said the main leadership team usually consulted for three to four weeks before major military campaigns. “We look at the battle from all directions, from first determining the field … how to distribute assignments within the Hashid Shaabi battalions, consult battalion commanders and the logistics,” he said.
Soleimani, he said, “participates in the operation command center from the start of the battle to the end, and the last thing (he) does is visit the battle’s wounded in the hospital.”
Iraqi and Kurdish officials put the number of Iranian advisers in Iraq between 100 and several hundred – fewer than the nearly 3,000 American officers training Iraqi forces. In many ways, though, the Iranians are a far more influential force.
Iraqi officials say Tehran’s involvement is driven by its belief that Islamic State is an immediate danger to Shi’ite religious shrines not just in Iraq but also in Iran. Shrines in both nations, but especially in Iraq, rank among the sect’s most sacred.
The Iranians, the Iraqi officials say, helped organize the Shi’ite volunteers and militia forces after Grand Ayatollah Sistani called on Iraqis to defend their country days after Islamic State seized control of the northern city of Mosul last June.
Prime Minister Abadi has said Iran has provided Iraqi forces and militia volunteers with weapons and ammunition from the first days of the war with Islamic State.
They have also provided troops. Several Kurdish officials said that when Islamic State fighters pushed close to the Iraq-Iran border in late summer, Iran dispatched artillery units to Iraq to fight them. Farid Asarsad, a senior official from the semi-autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan, said Iranian troops often work with Iraqi forces. In northern Iraq, Kurdish peshmerga soldiers “dealt with the technical issues like identifying targets in battle, but the launching of rockets and artillery – the Iranians were the ones who did that.”
Kadhimi, the senior Badr official, said Iranian advisers in Iraq have helped with everything from tactics to providing paramilitary groups with drone and signals capabilities, including electronic surveillance and radio communications.
“The U.S. stayed all these years with the Iraqi army and never taught them to use drones or how to operate a very sophisticated communication network, or how to intercept the enemy’s communication,” he said. “The Hashid Shaabi, with the help of (Iranian) advisers, now knows how to operate and manufacture drones.”
A MAGICAL FIGHTER
One of the Shi’ite militia groups that best shows Iran’s influence in Iraq is Saraya al-Khorasani. It was formed in 2013 in response to Khamenei’s call to fight Sunni jihadists, initially in Syria and later Iraq.
The group is responsible for the Baghdad billboards that feature Iranian General Hamid Taghavi, a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Known to militia members as Abu Mariam, Taghavi was killed in northern Iraq in December. He has become a hero for many of Iraq’s Shi’ite fighters.
Taghavi “was an expert at guerrilla war,” said Ali al-Yasiri, the commander of Saraya al-Khorasani. “People looked at him as magical.”
In a video posted online by the Khorasani group soon after Taghavi’s death, the Iranian general squats on the battlefield, giving orders as bullets snap overhead. Around him, young Iraqi fighters with AK-47s press themselves tightly against the ground. The general wears rumpled fatigues and has a calm, grandfatherly demeanor. Later in the video, he rallies his fighters, encouraging them to run forward to attack positions.
Within two days of Mosul’s fall on June 10 last year, Taghavi, a member of Iran’s minority Arab population, traveled to Iraq with members of Iran’s regular military and the Revolutionary Guard. Soon, he was helping map out a way to outflank Islamic State outside Balad, 50 miles (80 km) north of Baghdad.
Taghavi’s time with Saraya al-Khorasani proved a boon for the group. Its numbers swelled from 1,500 to 3,000. It now boasts artillery, heavy machine guns, and 23 military Humvees, many of them captured from Islamic State.
“Of course, they are good,” Yasiri said with a grin. “They are American made.”
In November, Taghavi was back in Iraq for a Shi’ite militia offensive near the Iranian border. Yasiri said Taghavi formulated a plan to “encircle and besiege” Islamic State in the towns of Jalawala and Saadiya. After success with that, he began to plot the next battle. Yasiri urged him to be more cautious, but Taghavi was killed by a sniper in December.
At Taghavi’s funeral, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, eulogized the slain commander. He was, said Shamkhani, one of those Iranians in Iraq”defending Samarra and giving their blood so we don’t have to give our blood in Tehran.” Both Soleimani and the Badr Organisation’s Amiri were among the mourners.
A NEW IRAQI SOUL
Saraya al-Khorasani’s headquarters sit in eastern Baghdad, inside an exclusive government complex that houses ministers and members of parliament. Giant pictures of Taghavi and other slain al-Khorasani fighters hang from the exterior walls of the group’s villa.
Commander Yasiri walks with a cane after he was wounded in his left leg during a battle in eastern Diyala in November. On his desk sits a small framed drawing of Iran’s Khamenei.
He describes Saraya al-Khorasani, along with Badr and several other groups, as “the soul” of Iraq’s Hashid Shaabi committee.
Not everyone agrees. A senior Shi’ite official in the Iraqi government took a more critical view, saying Saraya al-Khorasani and the other militias were tools of Tehran. “They are an Iranian-made group that was established by Taghavi. Because of their close ties with Iranians for weapons and ammunition, they are so effective,” the official said.
Asarsad, the senior Kurdish official, predicts Iraq’s Shi’ite militias will evolve into a permanent force that resembles the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. That sectarian force, he believes, will one day operate in tandem with Iraq’s regular military.
“There will be two armies in Iraq,” he said.
That could have big implications for the country’s future. Human rights groups have accused the Shi’ite militias of displacing and killing Sunnis in areas they liberate — a charge the paramilitary commanders vigorously deny. The militias blame any excesses on locals and accuse Sunni politicians of spreading rumors to sully the name of Hashid Shaabi.
The senior Shi’ite official critical of Saraya al-Khorasani said the militia groups, which have the freedom to operate without directly consulting the army or the prime minister, could yet undermine Iraq’s stability. The official described Badr as by far the most powerful force in the country, even stronger than Prime Minister Abadi.
Amiri, the Badr leader, rejected such claims. He said he presents his military plans directly to Abadi for approval.
His deputy Kadhimi was in no doubt, though, that the Hashid Shaabi was more powerful than the Iraqi military.
“A Hashid Shaabi (soldier) sees his commander … or Haji Hadi Amiri or Haji Mohandis or even Haji Qassem Soleimani in the battle, eating with them, sitting with them on the ground, joking with them. This is why they are ready to fight,” said Kadhimi. “This is why it is an invincible force.”
The Islamic ‘Ghosts on the Roof’
February 23, 2015The Islamic ‘Ghosts on the Roof’, Front Page Magazine,
Chambers’ warnings were largely ignored by Western leaders whose willful blindness to the true nature of communism sealed the fate of millions behind the iron curtain in Europe, in China, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, and elsewhere.
Today, perhaps the ghosts of Mehemed II and Sulieman the Magnificent are looking down and smiling as Western leaders fecklessly attempt to negotiate with the Iranian mullahs and search for “root causes” of ISIS terror and aggression. The Muse of History would understand, and her sister Melpomene, unfortunately, still has work to do.
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Seventy years ago, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta to lay the foundations of the post-World War II world order. Less than one month after their historic meeting,TIME magazine on March 5, 1945, published an unsigned article entitled “Ghosts on the Roof.” The article was written by Whittaker Chambers, then TIME’s foreign news editor and formerly a member of a Washington, D.C.-based Soviet espionage ring. Chambers broke with communism in the late 1930s and in doing so remarked to his wife that they were joining the “losing side” in the great world struggle between communism and the West.
Chambers’ repeated efforts during the late 1930s and early 1940s to alert the State Department and the FBI to communist penetration of our government and the existence and activities of the espionage ring fell on deaf ears, so he used his position at TIME to attempt to warn the American public about the true nature of communism and the goals of Stalin’s Soviet Union.
The Yalta Conference, which took place during February 4-11, 1945, was immediately heralded as foreshadowing a peaceful postwar world order. Chambers, having been in the belly of the beast, knew better. He showed “Ghosts on the Roof” to T.S. Matthews, TIME’s associate executive editor, but doubted thatTIME would publish it. According to Chambers’ biographer Sam Tanenhaus, Matthews showed it toTIME’s owner Henry Luce who called it “a forceful piece of journalism” but was otherwise non-committal on publishing it. Other TIME staffers urged Matthews not to publish the piece fearing that it would poison relations between the wartime allies. With some hesitation, and characterizing it as a “political fairy tale,” Matthews decided to publish it.
Chambers’ story has the ghosts of the murdered Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family descend on the roof of the Livadia Palace, their former estate and the site where the “big three” allied war leaders negotiated the fate of the world. Clio, the Muse of History, greets them and discusses with Nicholas and Alexandra what just occurred there. Nicholas, the Tsarina remarks, is fascinated by Stalin. “What statesmanship! What vision! What power!,” says Nicholas. “We have known nothing like this since my ancestor, Peter the Great, broke a window into Europe by overrunning the Baltic states in the 18th century. Stalin has made Russia great again.”
“It all began with the German-Russian partition of Poland,” Chambers has Alexandra say, reminding readers that the Second World War was started by Hitler and Stalin. “Stalin,” says the Tsar, “is magnificent. Greater than Rurik, greater than Peter! . . . Stalin embodies the international social revolution . . . the mighty new device of power politics which he has developed for blowing up other countries from within.” The Royal couple then lists the countries conquered by Stalin—Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland—and those soon to be conquered because of Western appeasement. The Tsarina marvels at Stalin’s ability to persuade Churchill and Roosevelt solve the issues of Central and Eastern Europe to Stalin’s liking in a friendly fashion, remarking that “even peace may be only a tactic of struggle.”
At the end of the tale, the Muse of History foresees the consequences of Yalta as “more wars, more revolutions, greater proscriptions, bloodshed and human misery.” If you can foresee such troubles, the Tsarina asks Clio, why don’t you prevent them. The Muse of History replies that she must leave something for her sister Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, to do.
Readers reacted negatively to the piece. TIME’s Moscow correspondent lost his access to Kremlin officials. Chambers, some said, was zealously trying to destroy U.S.-Soviet collaboration that was so essential to world peace. TIME’s own editors noted in a subsequent issue that they did not believe that U.S.-Soviet relations were doomed to failure.
History vindicated Whittaker Chambers. His courageous efforts to reveal the truth about communism and Stalin’s intentions are not unlike the current efforts by writers—several associated with this journal—to alert the United States and the world to the true nature and goals of Islamic jihadists.
In Chambers’ time, the West was confronted by a murderous, expansionist secular totalitarian ideology whose leaders sought a communist world empire. Today, the West is confronted by a murderous, expansionist religion-based totalitarian ideology whose leaders seek a world caliphate where all must submit to Allah or be eradicated.
Chambers’ warnings were largely ignored by Western leaders whose willful blindness to the true nature of communism sealed the fate of millions behind the iron curtain in Europe, in China, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, and elsewhere.
Today, perhaps the ghosts of Mehemed II and Sulieman the Magnificent are looking down and smiling as Western leaders fecklessly attempt to negotiate with the Iranian mullahs and search for “root causes” of ISIS terror and aggression. The Muse of History would understand, and her sister Melpomene, unfortunately, still has work to do.
Does Obama Love America or Islam?
February 23, 2015Does Obama Love America or Islam? Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, February 23, 2015
What are the things that Obama is passionate about?
In his first days in office, he signed a number of executive orders. Of his first five orders, three involved Muslim terrorists captured and held in Gitmo. His third executive order was about the “humane” treatment of terrorists. His fourth executive order sought to close Gitmo. Like the man who can’t wait to get away from his wife so he can call his mistress, Obama made his priorities clear from the start.
It took Obama a month to set up the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. It took him two days to set up a Special Interagency Task Force on Detainee Disposition to free Gitmo terrorists.
Obama prioritized helping Muslim terrorists over the economic recovery. Why? Because that was a subject he was passionate about.
People will always prioritize what they are passionate about over what they aren’t. It’s easy to look at a mission shift and see the choice that has been made.
For example, is Obama passionate about space exploration? He told the head of NASA that his “foremost” priority was making Muslims feel good about themselves.
Obama is more passionate about Muslim self-esteem than he is about visiting other planets.
Is he passionate about god and religion? That depends on which god and which religion.
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Walk into a store and you’ll see piles of red and pink in the Clearance box. Everything from heart-shaped cards and boxes of chocolate candy to plastic flowers and teddy bears clutching plush red hearts will be 50 percent off because Valentine’s Day comes but once a year. And Valentine’s Day is over.
Obama’s love for America also comes but once a year. He tosses it into a speech in the Midwest when his poll numbers are down and then it goes into the clearance box where you can buy his love and his patriotism for 50 percent off. And it’s still expensive at the price because the heart-shaped box is empty.
Greeting card sentiments come easily to the man who will say anything. Obama promised to eliminate income tax for seniors making less than $50,000, vowed transparent open government and promised that you could keep your doctor. His words were empty promises.
Love, of a person or of a country, is not judged by what we say. It is judged by what we do.
Every politician with ambition claims to love America. Most only love themselves. Some love other things. No one can know what is it in Obama’s heart, which is why the media’s shrill demands that Scott Walker affirm Obama’s love for America are silly and cynical, but we can certainly follow his passions.
We show our passions in the things that we really care about. We all have our duties and obligations. Obama’s obligations include delivering speeches praising America, occasionally placing his hand on his heart during the pledge of allegiance (when he can find it) and badly saluting soldiers with a latte cup.
But are these the things he loves and cares about?
We can follow Obama’s passions the way that an adulterer’s trail to his mistress can be followed no matter how many cards or stuffed bears he gives to his wife.
What are the things that Obama is passionate about?
In his first days in office, he signed a number of executive orders. Of his first five orders, three involved Muslim terrorists captured and held in Gitmo. His third executive order was about the “humane” treatment of terrorists. His fourth executive order sought to close Gitmo. Like the man who can’t wait to get away from his wife so he can call his mistress, Obama made his priorities clear from the start.
It took Obama a month to set up the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. It took him two days to set up a Special Interagency Task Force on Detainee Disposition to free Gitmo terrorists.
Obama prioritized helping Muslim terrorists over the economic recovery. Why? Because that was a subject he was passionate about.
People will always prioritize what they are passionate about over what they aren’t. It’s easy to look at a mission shift and see the choice that has been made.
For example, is Obama passionate about space exploration? He told the head of NASA that his “foremost” priority was making Muslims feel good about themselves.
Obama is more passionate about Muslim self-esteem than he is about visiting other planets.
Is he passionate about god and religion? That depends on which god and which religion.
Obama left out “Under God” when reciting the Gettysburg Address. The DNC’s platform initially left out “God” and booed the reinsertion. Obama’s invocation at his inauguration also dropped “Under God”.
However Obama cheerfully recited “Allahu Akbar”, the opening of the Islamic supremacist call to prayer, and called it “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.” He had a man jailed for making a YouTube video attacking Mohammed and blamed him for Muslim acts of terror against America.
Obama’s religious beliefs, such as they are, remain locked in his head. But there is only one religion that he is passionate enough to protect by imprisoning those who blaspheme against it.
He may botch salutes and the pledge of allegiance, but he has retained the ability to chant “Allahu Akbar” with a “first-rate accent”.
He may think that the “good book” says “don’t throw stones in glass houses”, but he accurately quotes the Koran. The things that we remember are the ones that we really care about.
Obama has an obligation to reference the Gettysburg Address, to wait out the pledge of allegiance and to praise America. He has no obligation to quote the Koran or chant “Allahu Akbar”. These are things that he does because he wants to do them. They are the things that he is actually passionate about.
Does he love them more than he loves America? No one can know what is in another person’s heart.
There are married couples who have lived together for decades only to discover that the love of their life had been cheating on them all along. And who is to say that the adulterer doesn’t love? We can’t pass a final verdict on his feelings. But we can know his faithlessness by his deeds.
We can say of him and of Obama that they broke faith with the covenant that they had entered into. We can say that they betrayed those who trusted them, lied to them, used and abused them, and then feigned outrage when their actions were questioned.
Can the media’s furious talking heads denouncing Giuliani deny that Obama lied to Americans? Can they deny that he harmed them? Can they deny that he refused to take responsibility for his actions?
The facts are clear. Only the interpretation is in doubt. And the interpretation is what we are debating.
Does Obama lie to Americans because he loves them? Does he weaken America abroad because he loves it? And if Obama loves America, what does he love about it and how does he show that love? Does he love the Constitution? If he did, he wouldn’t constantly violate it. Does he love Americans? Which Americans? The ones whose health plans he took away for ObamaCare or the ones whose jobs he took away to legalize illegal aliens? The ones whose votes and wishes he ignores and snidely mocks?
Is it the Americans who no longer believe in the future under his rule that he loves? Is it the unemployed Americans he loves? Is it the Americans he jailed under his new laws and regulations that he loves?
If Obama loves Americans, then it’s a clear case of hurting the ones you love.
And if Obama doesn’t love Americans, what America does he love; the rock band or the Walt Whitman poem, the town America in the Netherlands or the Neil Diamond song?
Questioning Obama’s love for America is alleged to be unacceptable gutter politics, but accusing his critics of being racists is a standard debating tactic for those same outraged media talking heads.
It wasn’t gutter politics when Obama claimed that the national debt under Bush was “unpatriotic”. Is Obama at least as “unpatriotic” for increasing the debt by 70 percent? Is it possible that his spending spree proves that he doesn’t love America? Or is indebting our children the way that he shows his love?
Can we question the patriotism of a man who frees terrorists or only of a man who locks them up?
Is asking whether Obama loves America an unacceptable question because the answer is obvious or because it isn’t?
Obama will go on making speeches in which he claims to love America while making the country poorer, more dangerous and weaker. He will also go on making speeches praising Islam while increasing the power, influence and wealth of Muslims in America and around the world.
As the clearance box after Valentine’s Day shows, anyone can buy a card or a teddy bear. It’s the actions that count. It’s not what we say that shows love. It’s what we do that shows what we truly care about.
Hero of the Middle East: Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
February 23, 2015Hero of the Middle East: Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, February 23, 2015
(Please see also Obama kept reform Muslims out of summit on extremism. — DM)
The courageous, historic speech yesterday by the Grand Imam of al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni Islam, calling for the reform of Islam, was the result of the even more courageous, historic speech delivered a few weeks ago by Egypt’s devoutly Muslim President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the current American administration’s great friend, is the poison tree whose fruit is the Islamist terrorism embodied by the ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al-Nusra Front, Boko Haram and others.
Apparently some of the Sunni Arab States have not yet realized that their own national security, and ability to withstand Iran, depend on how strong Egypt is.
It is possible, in fact, that U.S. policy is to weaken the Sunni world seeking to unite under el-Sisi’s flag of modernity. With European complicity, the U.S. Administration is trying to defraud the Arabs and turn the Israel-Palestine conflict into a center of Middle Eastern chaos, in order to hide the nuclear deal they are concocting with Iran.
The treachery of the U.S. Administration is the reason why Egypt’s faith in the United States, which is supposed to defend the Arabs against a nuclear Iran, has effectively evaporated.
And now the greatest American insanity of all time: America and Turkey are arming and training Islamist terrorist operatives in Turkey, on the ground that they are “moderates” opposed to Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria. They either ignore or are unaware that there is no such thing as a moderate Islamist terrorist. The other name of the “moderates” opposing Assad is ISIS.
The Muslim Brotherhood, in effect, runs Turkey. According to recent rumors, Turkey is also planning to build a nuclear reactor, “for research and peaceful purposes.”
Sheikh Dr. Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni Islam, yesterday delivered a courageous, historic speech in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, urging reform in religious education to curb extremism in Islam. Al-Tayyeb’s address was the result of an even more courageous and historic speech, delivered a few weeks ago by Egypt’s devoutly Muslim President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, at Al-Azhar University.
El-Sisi’s monumental statement, truly worthy of a Nobel Prize, is having a seismic result. Al-Sisi directed his remarks, about the ills of Islam to Islamic clerics in Egypt and around the world. It was enormously brave of him. He did not single out radical Islam, but he did call on all Muslims to examine themselves, carry out a religious revolution and renew their faith.
El-Sisi, a man of monumental courage, urged Muslims not to behave according to the ancient, destructive interpretations of the Qur’an and Islam that make the rest of the world hate them, destroy Islam’s reputation and put Muslim immigrants to Western countries in the position of having to fight their hosts. He claimed that it is illogical for over a billion Muslims to aspire to conquer and subdue six billion non-Muslims.
Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, delivered a historic speech to top Islamic scholars and clergy at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, December 28, 2014. (Image source: MEMRI)
Islam deals in depth with uniting the Muslim nation (umma) and mutual responsibility among Muslims, as though they were one entity. The Prophet Muhammad (S.A.A.W.) said that every drop of Muslim blood is more precious than the entire Kaaba. Thus the liberty ISIS took upon itself to burn alive a Jordanian pilot and 45 Egyptians, to spread terrorism throughout Syria, Iraq and Egypt and to kill other Muslims in various locations around the globe, claiming they were “infidels,” is heresy in and of itself.
The calls for the deaths of “a million shaheeds” and the killing of Jews for the sake of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, as was done by Arafat in the past, and is being done now by his heirs in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, are a crime; they are extremist incitement that is opposed to the forgiving and compromising spirit of Islam. The murder and terrorism carried out by terrorist organizations such as ISIS, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ] and other Islamist organizations against Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims is contrary to the modern Islam needed in the contemporary era.
El-Sisi was correct that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Sunni ideology, which drives most of the extremist Islamist organizations around the world, preaches forced conversion of “infidels” to Islam at any price, or death. Some of the “infidels” are supposed to join Islam of their own accord(targ’ib), out of self-serving interest, and some not of their own accord (tarhib), out of fear and death threats. Such conversions are also contrary to the original Islam, which states that no one is to be forced to convert to Islam and that a calm religious dialogue should be held.
However, a few days after President el-Sisi’s speech, which attempted to unify Muslims and Christian Copts, the Muslim Brotherhood and their affiliated terrorist organizations increased their attacks on Egyptian civilians and security forces throughout Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula, as well as murdering 21 Egyptian Christian Copts in Libya. The Muslim Brotherhood knows that behind the scenes, U.S. President Obama supports the movement, especially the branch in Egypt seeking to overthrow President Sisi. This approval from the U.S. encourages the Muslim Brotherhood to be even more determined to subvert and undermine Egypt’s stability, sabotage its economic rehabilitation and destroy the el-Sisi regime.
In this atmosphere of American support, the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis terrorist group in the Sinai Peninsula operates under Muslim Brotherhood protection. It recently changed its name to the “Sinai Province” of the Islamic State and swore allegiance to the “Caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It is currently working hand-in-hand with Hamas in the Gaza Strip to weaken el-Sisi’s Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula.
Other Islamist terrorist organizations also kill Egyptian civilians and security forces with bombs and assault rifles. In the name of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, they indiscriminately attack people on public transport, in airports and in public places, with the intent of retaking control of Egypt.
For this reason, an Egyptian court recently designated Hamas a terrorist organization, along with its military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and outlawed both of them. In response, Qatar, a slippery agent in the service of America but also, treacherously, in the service of Iran, allowed armed Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operatives to be interviewed by its Al-Jazeera TV. The operatives called the Egyptian president a traitor to the Islamic-Arab cause and to those seeking to “liberate Palestine.”
At the same time, Qatar continues to use its Al-Jazeera TV to broadcast hate propaganda targeting the el-Sisi regime, to disseminate videos and to fabricate insulting quotes intended to cause friction between el-Sisi on one side and the leaders of the Arab world and the Gulf States on the other — and to keep them from giving hungry Egyptians economic aid.
As the date for the economic conference in Sharm el-Sheikh (in the Sinai Peninsula) nears, Al-Jazeera’s propaganda machine has moved into ever-higher gear. Apparently, some of the Sunni Arabs states have not yet realized that their own national security and ability to withstand Iran depend on how strong Egypt is.
The U.S. Administration could easily halt the subversion of Egypt, but not only does it turn a blind eye, it suffers from a peculiar form of ignorance that makes it fight ISIS while at the same time supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, the hothouse of most Islamic terrorist organizations, including ISIS. The damage done to Egypt and the cracks in the weak Sunni Muslim ranks in the Middle East will eventually harm American interests and expose the Gulf States to the increasing Iranian threat.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the current American administration’s great friend, is the poison tree whose fruit is the Islamist terrorism embodied by ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al-Nusra Front, Boko Haram and others. This linkage has become obvious to all the Arab states, while the U.S. and Europe steadfastly ignore the danger to their own survival, and refuse to outlaw them.
It is possible, in fact, that U.S. policy is to weaken the Sunni world that is seeking to unite under el-Sisi’s flag of modernity. With European complicity, the U.S. Administration is trying to defraud the Arabs and turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a center of Middle Eastern chaos, in order to hide the nuclear deal they are concocting with Iran. That is why the West does not really want to rehabilitate the Palestinian refugees by settling them in the Arab states, and why the West continues to nourish false Palestinian hopes that perpetuate this conflict.
The treachery of the U.S. Administration is the reason why Egyptians’ faith in America, which is supposed to defend the Arabs against a nuclear Iran, has effectively evaporated.
In the meantime, Iran’s Houthi proxies have taken over Yemen, threatening the entire Persian Gulf from the south. The el-Sisi regime is currently in the market for new allies, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin recently paid a visit to Egypt to examine the possibilities of building a nuclear reactor, sounding the first chord of a regional nuclear arms race.
The problems of the Middle East begin in the United States: that was the claim of participants in the Al-Jazeera TV show, “From Washington.” They described American policy towards Egypt as hesitant, indecisive and undemocratic. They claimed that the U.S. Administration had not yet decided whether or not to support el-Sisi, who heralded change and the willingness to fight radical Islam (a fight America used to participate in) or to remain neutral and waffle, in view of Egypt’s presumed instability. The Americans seem to be putting their all money on the extreme Islamists, who they seem to think will eventually win the bloody conflict currently being waged in Egypt.
The Americans have forgotten that under Mubarak, the regime turned a blind eye to attacks against Israel that were carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood and their carefully fostered agents. Unfortunately, since el-Sisi was elected, Egypt itself has become a victim of radical Islamic terrorism. The U.S. Administration, however, appears clearly to hate el-Sisi, and seems to be doing its utmost to undermine him and see him thrown out.
Under ousted President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt was tolerant and patient toward the U.S. Administration’s best friends, the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Islamist and Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, Al-Qaeda, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, all of which set up camp in the Sinai Peninsula. These terrorist groups smuggled weapons in from Iran, Sudan, Libya and Lebanon; dug smuggling and attack tunnels; developed missiles and carried out terrorist attacks “only” against Israel, the current U.S. Administration’s other apparent enemy, even though so many American Jews foolishly voted for them.
Now those same Islamist and Palestinian terrorist organizations are striking a mortal blow to the security or Egypt, and killing its civilians and security personnel.
The Muslim Brotherhood, mindful of America’s pro-Islamist policy toward it, is deliberately indulging in a wave of terrorism in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. Muslim Brotherhood operatives there are targeting civilians, public transport, airports and natural gas pipelines, all to undermine Egypt’s internal security and bring down el-Sisi’s regime in favor of extremist Islamists and a nuclear-threshold Iran.
In the current international situation, the U.S. Administration has apparently finally cut a deal with Turkey — which will be flimsy and ethereal — that allows Turkey to do the only thing it really cares about: to bring down the regime of Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad.
The U.S. is also trying to cut a deal with Qatar, which along with Turkey openly supports the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist proxies in Egypt, Gaza, Syria and Iraq, who in general work against Western interests.
The ironic result is that Turkey plays host to both NATO and senior Hamas figures, while it deliberately ignores the slaughter by ISIS of Kurds and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood, in effect, actually rules Turkey. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP party make it easy for foreign fighters to cross the Turkish border into Syria and join the ranks of ISIS. Meanwhile, the Turkish government wages a diversionary propaganda war against Israel. According to recent rumors, Turkey is also planning to build a nuclear reactor, “for research and peaceful purposes.”
Another surreal result is that Qatar hosts the U.S. military bases, while it finances and encourages terrorist organizations operating against Israel and the Egypt. It also panders to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist terrorist who issues fatwas permitting the murder of civilians and approves death sentences for apostasy.
And now the greatest American insanity of all time: the U.S. and Turkey are arming and training Islamist terrorist operatives in Turkey, on the grounds that they are “moderates” opposed to Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria. They either ignore or are not aware that there is no such thing as a moderate Islamist terrorist.
The other name of the “moderates” opposing Bashar Assad is ISIS; Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah are now even saying that the U.S. is arming ISIS.
In the meantime, the Egyptian army continues its struggle against Islamist terrorist targets in the Sinai Peninsula and Libya, unaided, and even undermined, by the U.S.
In view of the U.S. Administration’s collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, I am persuaded that in the near future it will be possible to find a joint Egyptian-Israeli-Palestinian formula for eradicating the Hamas-PIJ enclave of terrorism, this time by Arabs.
Most ironically of all, in the shadow of American zigzagging, a joint Arab-Israeli front is developing against Sunni and Shi’ite radicalism, and the Palestinians can only profit from it. Thus el-Sisi, who, with towering vision and courage, dares to speak openly about the poison tree of radical Islam and its fruit, when others are afraid, is a truly great Islamic hero.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Obama Must Confront the Threat of Radical Islam
February 21, 2015Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Obama Must Confront the Threat of Radical Islam, Time, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, February 20, 2015
ISIS is recruiting young Muslims from around the globe to Jihad, and the White House apparently doesn’t understand why.
Aiding Islamic Terrorists Is Our Foreign Policy
February 20, 2015Aiding Islamic Terrorists Is Our Foreign Policy, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, February 20, 2015
In the White House, Obama has tried to shape an Islamist future for the Middle East, favoring Islamist governments in Turkey and Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood. He saw his role as paving the way for the next generation of regional regimes that would be explicitly Islamist.Obama’s foreign policy in the region has been an elaborate exercise in trying to draw up new maps for a caliphate. The inclusion of terrorist groups in this program isn’t a mistake. It’s not naiveté or blindness. It’s the whole point of the exercise which was to transform terrorist groups into governments.
Obama’s foreign policy in the region has been an elaborate exercise in trying to draw up new maps for a caliphate. The inclusion of terrorist groups in this program isn’t a mistake. It’s not naiveté or blindness. It’s the whole point of the exercise which was to transform terrorist groups into governments.
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Obama says that we are not fighting a war on Islam. What he leaves out is that under his administration the United States is fighting in a civil war that is taking place within Islam.
It’s not a conflict between the proverbial moderate Muslim and the raging fanatic. That was an outdated Bush era notion. Instead Obama has brought us into a fight between Muslim governments and Muslim terrorists, not on the side of the governments we were allied with, but on the side of the terrorists.
It’s why Egypt is shopping for French planes and Russian nukes. Yemen’s government was run out of town by Obama’s new Iranian friends in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia. And the Saudis are dumping oil.
Iran and Qatar are the regional powers Obama is closest to. What these two countries have in common, is that despite their mutual hostility, they are both international state sponsors of Islamic terrorism.
Obama’s diplomats will be negotiating with the Taliban in Qatar. Among the Taliban delegation will be the terrorist leaders that Obama freed from Gitmo. And Iran gets anything it wants, from Yemen to the bomb, by using the threat of walking away in a huff from the hoax nuclear negotiations as leverage.
In Syria and Iraq, Obama is fighting ISIS alongside Islamic terrorists linked to Al Qaeda and Iran. In Libya, he overthrew a government in support of Islamic terrorists. His administration has spoken out against Egyptian air strikes against the Islamic State Jihadists in Libya who had beheaded Coptic Christians.
At the prayer breakfast where he denounced Christianity for the Crusades was the foreign minister of the Muslim Brotherhood government of Sudan that has massacred Christians. Unlike Libya, where Obama used a false claim of genocide to justify an illegal war, Sudan actually has committed genocide. And yet Obama ruled out using force against Sudan’s genocide even while he was running for office.
The United States now has a strange two-tier relationship with the Middle East. On paper we retain a number of traditional alliances with old allies such as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, complete with arms sales, foreign aid and florid speeches. But when it comes to policy, our new friends are the terrorists.
American foreign policy is no longer guided by national interests. Our allies have no input in it. It is shaped around the whims of Qatar and Iran; it’s guided by the Muslim Brotherhood and defined by the interests of state sponsors of terror. Our foreign policy is a policy of aiding Islamic terrorists.
It’s only a question of which terrorists.
Obama’s familiar argument is that ISIS and Al Qaeda fighters shouldn’t be called Islamic terrorists. Not even the politically correct sop of “Radical Islam” is acceptable. The terrorists are perverting Islam, he claims. The claim was banal even before September 11, but it bears an entirely new significance from an administration that has put Muslim Brotherhood operatives into key positions.
The administration is asserting the power to decide who is a Muslim. It’s a theological position that means it is taking sides in a Muslim civil war between Islamists.
This position is passed off as a strategy for undermining the terrorists. Refusing to call the Islamic State by its name, using the more derogatory “Daesh,” denying that the Islamic terrorists are acting in the name of Islam, is supposed to inhibit recruitment. This claim is made despite the flood of Muslims leaving the West to join ISIS. If any group should be vulnerable to our propaganda, it should be them.
But that’s not what this is really about.
According recognition to a state is a powerful diplomatic tool for shaping world politics. We refuse to recognize ISIS, as we initially refused to recognize the USSR. Obama resumed diplomatic ties with Cuba. His people negotiate and appease the Taliban even though it was in its own time just as brutal as ISIS.
Obama is not willing to recognize ISIS as Islamic, but he does recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as Islamic. Both are violent and murderous Islamists. But only one of them is “legitimate” in his eyes.
Those choices are not about terrorist recruitment, but about building a particular map of the region. Obama refuses to concede that ISIS is Islamic, not because he worries that it will bring them more followers, this is a tertiary long shot at best, but because he is supporting some of their rivals.
The White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism has brought a covert strategy out into the spotlight. Despite its name, it’s not countering violence or extremism.
The new director of the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, the axis of Obama’s CVE strategy, is Rashad Hussain who appeared at Muslim Brotherhood front group events and defended the head of Islamic Jihad. In attendance was Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, yet another Muslim Brotherhood linked group, who had urged Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI and defended Hamas and Hezbollah.
In Syria, the United States is coordinating with Assad and backing the Syrian rebels, who have their own extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and even Al Qaeda. This could be viewed as an “enemy of my enemy” alliance, but this administration backed the Brotherhood before it viewed ISIS as a threat. Top Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry, had focused on outreach to Assad under Bush.
They’re not allying with Assad and the Brotherhood to beat ISIS. They’re fighting ISIS to protect the Brotherhood and their deal with Iran.
In the White House, Obama has tried to shape an Islamist future for the Middle East, favoring Islamist governments in Turkey and Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood. He saw his role as paving the way for the next generation of regional regimes that would be explicitly Islamist.
The Arab Spring was a deceptive code name for a clean sweep that would push out the old leaders like Mubarak and replace them with the Muslim Brotherhood and other likeminded Islamists. Islamic terrorism, at least against the United States, would end because their mission had been accomplished.
Stabilizing unrest by putting the destabilizers in charge wasn’t a new idea. Carter helped make it happen in Iran. And the more violent an Islamic terrorist group is, the more important it is to find a way to stop the violence by putting them in charge. The only two criteria that matter are violence and dialogue.
So why isn’t Obama talking to ISIS? Because ISIS won’t talk back. It’s impossible to support a terrorist group that won’t engage in dialogue. If ISIS were to indicate any willingness to negotiate, diplomats would be sitting around a table with headchoppers in less time than it takes a Jordanian pilot to burn.
And that still might happen.
Obama isn’t trying to finish off ISIS. He’s keeping them on the ropes the way that he did the Taliban. Over 2,000 Americans died on the off chance that the Taliban would agree to the negotiations in Qatar. Compared to that price in blood, the Bergdahl deal was small potatoes. And if Obama is negotiating with the Taliban after all that, is there any doubt that he would negotiate to integrate ISIS into Iraq and Syria?
Obama’s foreign policy in the region has been an elaborate exercise in trying to draw up new maps for a caliphate. The inclusion of terrorist groups in this program isn’t a mistake. It’s not naiveté or blindness. It’s the whole point of the exercise which was to transform terrorist groups into governments.
Stabilizing the region by turning terrorists into governments may sound like pouring oil on a fire, but to progressives who believe in root causes, rather than winning wars, violence is a symptom of discontent. The problem isn’t the suicide bomber. It’s our power structure. Tear that down, as Obama tried to do in Cairo, and the terrorists no longer have anything to fight against because we aren’t in their way.
Bush tried to build up civil society to choke off terrorism. Obama builds civil society around terrorists.
Obama does not believe that the terrorists are the problem. He believes that we are the problem. His foreign policy is not about fighting Islamic terrorists. It is about destroying our power to stop them.
He isn’t fighting terrorists. He’s fighting us.
Why is Obama fixated on Iran?
February 20, 2015Why is Obama fixated on Iran? Israel Hayom, David M. Weinberg, February 20, 2015
America is ready to legitimize a seismic shift in the global balance of power through a grand civilizational bargain with the ayatollahs of Iran.
It is ardor for Islam and sympathy for Islamic ambitions of global leadership, not just distaste for American overreach, that apparently fuels Obama’s secretive dash toward a deal with Iran.
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Why does U.S. President Barack Obama so desperately want a deal with Iran? Why is he so fixated on a grand bargain with the Islamic republic, the world’s biggest killer of Americans? What explains the president’s passion to embrace the radical mullahs of Tehran, despite the fact that all America’s traditional allies in the region are calling for him to check Iran’s advances? Why the deferential approach that seeks Iran’s partnership, instead of its isolation?
The question becomes even sharper when you consider the fact that Iran is patently not seeking integration in the Middle East or reconciliation with the West, but rather obviously domination of the region and apocalyptic victory over the West.
After all, you don’t have to be an expert to discern the expansionist and threatening Iranian strategy. Tehran is seeking to create a land corridor under its domination from the Persian Gulf through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean. The only missing link in this land bridge of Shiite supremacy is Anbar province in western Iraq, now under Islamic State control. Now you understand why Iranian troops are leading the fight against ISIS in this zone.
What is harder to understand are American airstrikes against ISIS in Anbar, which seem to be tailored to match the movements of Iranian ground advances. The clear U.S.-Iranian military coordination in this theater of operations gives lie to Washington’s denials that it has already entered into a tacit alliance with Iran.
While the defeat of ISIS is a rational American policy goal, acquiescence to Iranian ascendancy in ISIS’s stead is not. Nor is American acceptance of the Iranian takeover of Yemen, through its Zaydi/Houthi Shiite allies — which gives Iran choke-off control of the vital Bab el-Mandeb waterway at the opening the Red Sea. Obama’s Washington hasn’t even whimpered in protest or concern about this.
We also have no indication that in its current negotiations with Tehran the administration has tackled Iranian adventurism in Syria and Lebanon, and along Israel’s northern and southern borders. Just the opposite: The administration says that the talks with Iran have been narrowly focused on centrifuges and uranium stockpile limits. Iran’s regional subversion (plus its long-range missile capabilities and its human rights record, etc.) has not been on the agenda.
I don’t believe for a second that Obama truly thinks he can bring about substantial moderation of Iranian diplomatic and military behavior; that by giving Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the comprehensive sanctions relief and renewed international legitimacy that Iran seeks, the Islamic republic will stop being the expansionist and aggressive Islamic republic it is.
That’s just not believable. Iran has consistently cast its quest for regional power as a movement of “Islamic resistance” against the U.S. and its sidekick, Israel. There is no basis for the assumption that moving to a less polarized relationship with Iran will accelerate a transition toward a more democratic, less theocratic, and less expansionist regime within Iran. On the contrary: A nuclear deal that lifts sanctions without addressing Iran’s regional ambitions would have the effect of greatly strengthening Iran’s hand.
And indeed, an Iranian Islamic empire is emerging in vast swaths of territory, from Shiraz to Sanaa and from Tabriz to Tripoli, right under Obama’s nose.
So again, what could possibly explain Obama’s relentless pursuit of strategic partnership with Iran — a partnership that is so perceptibly detrimental and dangerous to the West and to Israel and other long-standing American allies in the region?
A spate of recent articles by American analysts (Anthony Cordesman, Bill Kristol, Colin Dueck, Eli Lake, Elliott Abrams, Eric Edelman, Jonathan Tobin, Josef Joffe, Michael Doran, Michael Ledeen, Raymond Ibrahim, Victor Davis Hanson, Walter Russell Mead) have sought to plumb the depths of Obama’s fervor for rapprochement with Iran.
They mostly conclude that the roots of Obama’s approach rest in the fairly widespread, basically liberal, and quintessentially leftist convictions that America has for decades been sinful and diplomatically domineering, and must atone for its arrogance through retrenchment and accommodation. Obama shares the progressive aversion to the use of American power. Hence his chronic need to apologize for it.
Thus, U.S. Cold War culpability — in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, South America and Cuba — is a burden on America that must be addressed by shrinking America’s global footprint, and allowing indigenous, revolutionary movements to legitimately emerge and stabilize.
As such, the rules of nuclear non-proliferation are an unfair Western construct and need not apply to Iran. China is an authentic power with vast continental rights. And Israel is an abnormality, a Western outpost of capitalism and privilege where it has never really belonged, an irritant that should be treated like any other country as much as politically possible — no more.
In short, Obama believes that he will be leaving the world a better place by cutting America down to size.
To me, this is an insufficient explanation of Obama’s symptoms. Nor does it help to call Obama messianic and self-absorbed — as in George Will’s delicious quip this week that “If narcissism were oil, this president would be Saudi Arabia.”
None of this explains the depth of commitment to a deal with Iran that Obama has evinced since his first day in office (and perhaps, even before taking office, as Michael Doran has sought to show in Mosaic magazine). Nor does it explain the administration’s commitment to keeping everybody in the dark about the extent of its apparent pact with Iran.
It seems to me that Obama’s fervor for Iran lies somewhere much more fundamental: In a deep-seated ideological belief that Islam has a rightful leadership place in the world.
Consider the fact that Obama’s inaugural address abroad was “A New Beginning,” delivered in Cairo in 2009 — a contrite appeal to the Muslim world for forgiveness and for partnership. Go back and listen to Obama wax eloquent about “hearing the call of the azaan” as a young man in Indonesia, and about the historical achievements of Islamic civilization in algebra and architecture. This is Obama speaking from the recesses of his soul.
Consider Obama’s refusal to acknowledge the Manichean and irreconcilable nature of the challenge posed to the West by radical Islam; his refusal to even mutter the words “Islamic extremism” or “jihadism”; and his absolute unwillingness to connect terrorism to Islam or even admit that Islamic terrorists deliberately target Jews (like those Jews in Paris’ Hyper Cacher grocery).
The terms radical Islam and Islamic terrorist aren’t in Obama’s lexicon because deep down Obama doesn’t believe that Western (or Judeo-Christian) civilization is any better than Islamic civilization.
No better, perhaps, than even the Islamic State group. Speaking to the National Prayer breakfast in Washington on February 5, Obama said: “Before we get on our high horse and think this [ISIS beheadings, sex slavery, crucifixion, roasting of humans, etc.] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
This is tantamount to saying that the West is rooted in immorality, and that it is time for other, no less moral, and possibly more moral, powers to emerge — specifically, Islamic powers. It is equivalent to saying that the denouement of America and rise of an Islamic superpower will elevate world politics to a better sphere.
It is like saying — actually this is exactly what Obama is saying! — that America is ready to legitimize a seismic shift in the global balance of power through a grand civilizational bargain with the ayatollahs of Iran.
It is ardor for Islam and sympathy for Islamic ambitions of global leadership, not just distaste for American overreach, that apparently fuels Obama’s secretive dash toward a deal with Iran.
Humor: Organizing for Action will help lead Obama’s war on violent extremism
February 19, 2015Organizing for Action will help lead Obama’s war on violent extremism, Dan Miller’s Blog, Senator Ima Librul, imaginary guest author, and Dan Miller, February 19,2015
(The views expressed in this article are mine and those of my (imaginary) guest author, Senator Ima Librul. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Warsclerotic or any of its other editors. — DM)
Editor’s note: This is another post by my (imaginary) guest author, the Very Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the great State of Confusion Utopia. He is a founding member of CCCEB (Climate Change Causes Everything Bad), a charter member of President Obama’s Go For it Team, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of the Meretricious Relations Subcommittee.
Senator Librul is also justly proud of his expertise in interfaith dialogue, on the basis of which he has explained to the entire world that Islam is the religion of peace, grossly distorted by the non-Islamic Islamic State and other textual deviants. He was recently awarded the Obama Foundation’s cherished award for exemplary political correctness on the basis of his interfaith outreach. We are humiliated honored to have a post of this caliber by a quintessential Librul such as the Senator. Without further delay, here is the Senator’s article.
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The Non-Islamic Islamic State and its equally non-Islamic cohorts can be defeated only through the heroic efforts of community organizers: they are needed to help members and potential recruits find jobs and happiness. Our Dear Leader Obama cannot do everything Himself, even with His pen and His phone.
A spokesperson for the State Department recently announced that murdering affiliates of the non-Islamic State and other violent non-Islamic organizations will not end violent extremism. Instead compassion, particularly in providing suitable jobs and pathways to happiness and ultimately to true enlightenment, are needed.
Our Dear Leader is working tirelessly on just that, but even He needs help.
CAIR and Muslim Brotherhood
Many violent right wing terrorists — substantial numbers of them extremist Christians and Jews — have complained that our Dear Leader has sought help from benign Islamic organizations, such as the Council on American-Islam Relations (CAIR) and Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, to help win His war on violent extremism. Those organizations, and their members, have been among the victims of violent Islamophobia for years. Along with their successful efforts to organize Muslim communities, they have begun to emulate our Dear Leader in dealing with the curse of Islamophobia.
Islamophobia is the worst threat (other than climate change) now facing humanity and can cause even peaceful but depressed Muslims to become violent; even to become extremists. It can also enrage others, who also claim to be Islamic but are not, to intensify their violent extremism. Similarly, falsely characterizing violent extremists as Islamic gives them a false patina of legitimacy and encourages poor, ignorant savages Muslims to accept them as truly Islamic and hence to join them. That is among the reasons why our Dear Leader has steadfastly refused to do so.
CAIR, various Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and Organizing for Action are joining with our Dear Leader to fight on our behalf. We already know that CAIR is dedicated to thwarting Islamophobes who falsely accuse Islam of being violent and that the Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated only to promoting true brotherhood for all. Hence, the focus of this article will be on Organizing for Action.
Organizing for Action
The membership of this highly valued organization is diverse, but many members have been involved since early childhood. The following video is so inspiring that I find myself in tears every morning when I watch it to give me the strength I need to continue my fight against all evil forces.
As they and other kindred spirits have matured, their devotion to our Dear Leader has increased. They are now, and will continue to be, at the forefront of Organizing for Action. They applaud His righteous stand against Islamophobia and will now extend their efforts beyond what little is left of the Obama Nation’s borders to bring peace and understanding to those most in need.
The Non-Islamic State and its non-Islamic cohorts have mistakenly taken refuge in grossly distorted perceptions of Islam to justify their senseless, random violence. Only by awakening their adherents to the need to promote social justice, social progress and community service will they be led to the proper understanding of the Religion of Peace. The best way to accomplish this is by teaching them useful skills — vegan cookery, nursing, barbering, knife sharpening, business management, computer programming and Islamic sign language, for example. As they become increasingly aware of the benefits these skills will provide to them and to others, they will support their own governments in providing freedom, security, prosperity and health care for all. Free, or at least affordable, government mandated health care for all will come to be seen as their most urgent need. They will also gain the skills needed to implement their own versions of health care. No longer poor, sick and depressed they will become our friends.
Although fluency in the use of Islamic sign language will be very important, most Organizing for Action volunteers have not learned much Arabic. Sign language is easier, and our Dear Leader Himself will provide much of the necessary instruction. Here is a recent photo of Him expressing His vision of true Islamic peace to other Islamic leaders.
Here is a close up of His beautiful gesture:
Here is a photo of random Muslims returning His gesture of peace that passeth all understanding:
Although our Dear Leader has tried to use similar but different sign language in dealing with His disloyal opposition — violent right wing tea party terrorists all — they have rejected His conciliatory efforts.
We are truly blessed to have Dear Leader Obama in charge of our national destiny; all patriotic Americans must give Him their unstinting support. He is the way, the truth and the light unto all ages; all who oppose Him must convert or be silenced.
Editor’s comments:
Senator Librul has done a masterful job of presenting his and Obama’s views of Islam and how best to deal with it. Absurd, but that’s their custom.
In the following video, Pat Condell explains a big factor in Muslim unemployment:
Would better job skills ameliorate any of these problems?
As observed in a February 18th Wall Street Journal article titled The radicals are waging a war of ideas the West refuses to fight,
Above all, we need to recognize that the strength of radical Islamists is directly correlated to their battlefield success, and the growing perception that they are the strong horse against moderate Muslim leaders. Communist ideology lost its appeal when it was seen to fail against the prosperity and freedom of the West. Islamic State will lose its allure when it is defeated and humiliated in the arena it cares about most, which is the battlefield. Mr. Obama and other Western leaders must summon the will to win the war on the ground, or they will find themselves in permanent retreat in the war of ideas. [Emphasis added.]
After we and our allies had defeated Nazi Germany and Japan militarily, we tried to rebuild them substantially in our own image. Recognizing that Russia had been, at best, a temporary ally of convenience, and that our real allies lacked the necessary resources, we alone rebuilt Japan. The decision to exclude Russia — which wanted to “help” — from Japan was General MacArthur’s baby. Our reconstruction of Japan was far more successful than the reconstruction of Germany, which became Communist East and democratic West Germany. The points are, (1) first defeat them militarily and only then help them to recover and prosper; (2) don’t allow our enemies to “help.”
Islam is itself “extreme.” It is based on the Hadith, Sharia law and the Koran as Allah “dictated” it to Mohamed as he became a powerful warlord. Since Muslims believe that the Koran is the word of Allah, only Allah can change or interpret it. Not even Obama can do it. Hence, under the doctrine of abrogation, Allah’s later words rejected and displaced earlier conciliatory and contradictory passages, which therefore warrant no Muslim adherence. Nor is Islamic violence “random” or “senseless.” It is directed, purposefully, against those viewed as its enemies — non-Islamists and other Islamists of different brands. Until those in control of western governments realize at least these three points — and behave accordingly — we will continue to lose the battle against Islam.
Truly secular Muslims are not a significant part of the root problem; religious Muslims are. Yet Obama’s convocation of Muslim leaders includes few if any secular Muslims. By proclaiming that the Islamic State and its cohorts in their war against what’s left of Western civilization are not Islamic, Obama will not precipitate an Islamic reformation. Similarly, no matter how often I may state that my stallion is a mare, I will not succeed in milking it; at best, I will only irritate it. More likely it will try to kill me; if I persist, it may well succeed. On balance, I need to reject any notion that I can milk my stallion and recognize it for what it is.
Senator Librul maintains that Islam is the religion of peace. It is, in its own way. Islamic peace comes through submission to whatever brand of Islam is in power; without submission there is no peace. Leaving aside the problems this presents for Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims, the various brands of Islam are hostile to each other and seek submission of those others through violence. Until, if ever, non-secular Muslims become secular or cease to exist that problem will persist. Nothing in Obama’s “war on violent extremism” is calculated, or likely, to achieve that end– even assuming that that is what He wants to happen.
UPDATE, with a hat tip to Iburt at Counter Jihad Report.
Obama defends Islam at all cost
February 18, 2015Obama defends Islam at all cost, American Thinker, Carol Brown, February 18, 2015
Think about it. Have you ever heard Obama criticize Islam? I never have.
[W]hen three individuals who were Muslim were recently shot in North Carolina in a crime that local police have not identified as a hate crime, Obama stated: “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.”
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How President Obama responds to events around him appears to be dictated by a highly specific set of rules, all of which fall within under broad umbrella of disdain for America. In this way, every word he speaks (and those he refuses to say) and every action he takes (as well as those he avoids) unfolds in a predictable, if not also menacing manner.
- Demonize the wealthy. (Unless the wealthy person is a Democratic Party supporter.)
- Blame white people and the United States for bad things that have happened, are happening, and may happen to black people. (Unless a black person is the victim of jihad, in which case Obama will not use the event to stoke racial hatred. Protecting Islam trumps the chip on his shoulder regarding black victimhood.)
- Defend Islam while never defending any other religion. Toward that end, denigration of Christians and/or Jews is permitted.
It seems like a long time ago that Colleen Hufford was the victim of a savage jihadist attack when a devout Muslim sliced off her head. But it was just a few months ago. And if you recall, after the attack Obama had no comment. None.
At least not about Colleen Hufford. Or jihad. He did, however, have a comment that was so important the message was hand-delivered and read aloud to members of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City where Obama expressed his sympathy for what a rough month the Muslim community had following the attack while offering thanks to all of them.
Beyond that, Obama remained silent on the matter, deferring to the FBI.
Of course he did not follow that script after Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson. Oh no. Obama, Eric Holder, and all the rest weighed in immediately and kept weighing for what seemed like forever.
Standard operating procedure for the Obama administration – something we saw on full display when earlier this month Jen Psaki would not say that the terror attack that killed four Jews at a kosher market in France was an act of anti-Semitism. Instead, the administration claimed the entire affair was random and deferred to French authorities to determine the pesky details of motive and truth.
Once again, just as the administration deferred to the FBI after Hufford was slain, they deferred to some other party – in this case the French authorities. And this may well sound official to those who lack critical thinking. It may even come across as sound, wise, appropriate, and even presidential.
But of course it’s all hogwash. The knee jerk over-reaction to certain things, the under-reaction to other things, and the distraction techniques they employ are all by design.
And the design was crystal clear when, earlier this month, as part of Obama’s desperate drive to absolve Islam of any responsibility for the murderous brutality that is unfolding around the world, he had the audacity to say that the media overstates the threat of terrorism. He accused the media of exploiting terrorism because “if it bleeds, it leads.”
He spoke as if referring to ambulance chasing coverage by a tabloid magazine. It was appalling to realize this man-child was talking about coverage of genocide. Of institutionalized kidnapping, rape, torture, and all manner of barbarity under the banner of the religion he seems to love so very dearly.
Depraved does not even begin to describe Obama’s words.
When reality does not fit his script, there is no depth to which he will not sink. We have seen this play out over and over again. His determination to turn the public eye away from the awful truth before us is relentless.
It is sick. And it feels sick to be exposed to it, to him, and the abject evil he seems to embody.
This sickness has been playing out for years, though with two years left to his presidency, Obama seems to be pulling out all the stops as he utilizes a variety of ways to defend Islam. Including when he does and does not jump to conclusions.
As Daniel Greenfield recently wrote in Front Page Magazine: “When Muslims kill Americans, then Obama is all about not jumping to conclusions.”
Greenfield noted that after the Boston Marathon bombing Obama stated: “We still do not know who did this or why and people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before they have all the facts.” And after the Fort Hood massacre, Obama stated: “We don’t know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.” And yet, when three individuals who were Muslim were recently shot in North Carolina in a crime that local police have not identified as a hate crime, Obama stated: “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.”
Then, last week, ISIS beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya. And just as Obama refused to acknowledge that four Jews who were murdered in the kosher market in Paris were targeted because they were Jews, Obama refused to identify the faith of the victims in Libya, as if they were targeted because they were Egyptian. The full statement put out by the White House reads:
The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one Egyptian citizens in Libya by ISIL-affiliated terrorists. We offer our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Egyptian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens. ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds. It is unconstrained by faith, sect, or ethnicity. This wanton killing of innocents is just the most recent of the many vicious acts perpetrated by ISIL-affiliated terrorists against the people of the region, including the murders of dozens of Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai, which only further galvanizes the international community to unite against ISIL.
This heinous act once again underscores the urgent need for a political resolution to the conflict in Libya, the continuation of which only benefits terrorist groups, including ISIL. We call on all Libyans to strongly reject this and all acts of terrorism and to unite in the face of this shared and growing threat. We continue to strongly support the efforts of the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General Bernardino Leon to facilitate formation of a national unity government and help foster a political solution in Libya.
“Twenty-one Egyptian citizens.” Never mind that the video ISIS made of the barbaric murders identified the victims by their faith. Per a report at Reuters:
A caption on the five-minute video read: “The people of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian church.” Before the killings, one of the militants stood with a knife in his hand and said: “Safety for you crusaders is something you can only wish for.”
(“Crusaders.” Where have I heard that reference in the recent past?)
Obama’s omission of the victims’ religion was not the only glaring confirmation of the nature of the man-child in the oval office. His statement that ISIS “is unconstrained by faith, sect, or ethnicity” was also telling since ISIS is absolutely constrained by (and motivated by) faith: the Islamic faith.
Once again, Obama used words (those said and those not said) to suggest that the daily jihadist bloodbath is some mysterious, amorphous, inexplicable horror. And in this way, he defends Islam by not implicating it in any of the hell on earth we are bearing witness to.
Think about it. Have you ever heard Obama criticize Islam? I never have.
Col. Ralph Peters had a pointed comment on this very thing recently when he said: “Look at the facts. The only religion this president is willing to come out and defend is Islam.”
It’s so patently obvious. And yet the media scarcely raises the issue.
Meanwhile, when Chris Matthews interviewed State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf Monday, she went on record saying that we can’t win the war by killing ISIS.
Why not? And what, pray tell does she suggest? She suggests that we try to figure out the root cause for why people join ISIS.
OK. That shouldn’t be too hard. Except we’re dealing with the Obama administration, so of course the glaring truth will be avoided at all cost. And so the hypothesis for the root cause is: poverty, lack of jobs, and lack of opportunity.
I have an idea. How about we tell the truth? How about if we say what the root cause is? How about if we point to the Quran and read some relevant excerpts so everyone can connect the dots? And how about if, in addition to identifying the root cause, we also kill as many terrorists as we possibly can?
Every time there is a terror attack, every time the violent teachings of the Quran play out on the world stage, every time the media engages in malpractice by not doing their research and informing the public, and every time the president of the United States defends Islam, the entire world is that much more at risk – each and every one of our lives is put in increased danger.
Whoever would have imagined that the President of the United States would be facilitating terror? And whoever would have imagined that such a person would be elected not once. But twice.
None of this may be news to most readers. But it will likely be news to some. Please help others understand.
May the victims of jihad rest in peace and may their deaths not be in vain.
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