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AP Claims ISIS Recruits Have a Poor Grasp of Islam

August 24, 2016

AP Claims ISIS Recruits Have a Poor Grasp of Islam, PJ Media, Robert Spencer, August 24, 2016

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At last the universal claim has been proven: Islamic terrorism has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with Islam! The proof?

A new report from the Associated Press claims that recruits to the Islamic State (ISIS) knew little or nothing about Islam. After all, if they did, they would have known Islam is a religion of peace. So they wouldn’t have joined an outfit as violent and brutal as ISIS, right?

Wrong, of course.

This AP study is one of an endless stream of mainstream media articles intended to show us that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, that the real Islam is peaceful and benign, and therefore we need have no concern about the elites’ suicidal Muslim immigration policies.

The study is, as one might expect, vague and anecdotal. Apparently much of the AP’s assumptions rest on jihadis’ self-evaluation of how much they knew about Islam, as well as their refusal to expound on Islamic theology in court. The AP tells us about a “jihadi employment form”:

[The form] asked the recruits, on a scale of 1 to 3, to rate their knowledge of Islam. And the Islamic State applicants, herded into a hangar somewhere at the Syria-Turkey border, turned out to be overwhelmingly ignorant.

AP also notes:

[W]hen pressed by the judge on his knowledge of Shariah and how the IS group implements it, Mohammad-Aggad, a former gas station attendant, appeared dumbfounded, saying repeatedly: “I don’t have the knowledge to answer the question.”…

[O]ne of his co-defendants, Radouane Taher, was also pressed by the judge on whether beheadings carried out by the IS group conformed to Islamic law. He couldn’t say for sure, answering: “I don’t have the credentials.”

Very well. But even if jihadis might rate their knowledge of Islam as low, and not feel competent as non-clerics to explain the teachings of the religion, that does not imply they are “ignorant” of Islam. Further, it answers nothing about whether the Islamic State has anything to do with Islam.

Meanwhile, in selecting its anecdotes, the AP ignored those that don’t fit its agenda. We hear nothing in the AP report about the Islamic State propagandist whose parents said of him:

Our son is a devout Muslim. He had learnt the Quran by heart.

Nor does the AP say anything about the Muslim politician from Jordan who said:

[ISIS] doctrine stems from the Qur’an and Sunnah.

Most telling about the AP’s motives, their report ignores the central importance that the Islamic State places upon the Qur’an: In its communiqués, it quotes the Qur’an copiously. They quote it in threats to blow up the White House and conquer Rome and Spain; in explaining its priorities in the nations it is targeting in jihad; in preaching to Christians after collecting the jizya (a Qur’an-based tax, cf. Qur’an 9:29); in justifying the execution of accused spies; and in its various videos.

ISIS’s beheadings (47:4), sex slavery (4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30), subjugation of Christians (9:29), global imperative (8:39) and more are all based upon the Qur’an.

ISIS has also awarded $10,000 prizes and sex slaves in Qur’an memorization contests. One of its underground lairs was found littered with weapons and copies of the Qur’an. Children in the Islamic State study the Qur’an and get weapons training.

As for misrepresenting the Qur’an? One Malaysian Muslim said that the Qur’an led him to join the Islamic State. A Muslima in the U.S. promoted the Islamic State by quoting the Qur’an.

AP also hauls out the evergreen anecdote that two jihadis ordered The Koran for Dummies andIslam for Dummies from Amazon. This factoid has been seized upon before by apologists for Islam — including Mehdi Hasan and Karen Armstrong — as evidence that Muslims going to Syria and Iraq to join the jihad don’t really know anything about Islam and are motivated by other factors.

However — and of course — no one actually knows why the jihadis ordered the books. Maybe they wanted to learn how to explain it better, or were planning to give the books to others relatives, or had one of any number of other possibilities in mind. But any irrational argument will do for the likes of the AP, Hasan, or Armstrong when it comes to exonerating Islam from all responsibility for crimes committed in accord with its texts and teachings.

The AP even invokes Tariq Ramadan to emphasize that Islam forbids the killing of innocents.

But it doesn’t ask Ramadan to explain the Islamic perspective that considers all non-Muslims to be guilty, or the Islamic State’s view that they are fighting against people who are not innocent because they have rejected the authority of the ISIS caliphate.

Not in the AP report, of course, is any information about the slick pseudo-moderate Ramadan himself, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna and formerly a paid employee of the Iranian mullahcracy. Ramadan is skillful at manipulating credulous infidels into thinking that he is the very model of the modern moderate Muslim.

In reality, Ramadan has never called for any genuine reform or rejection of any Sharia provision — including jihad warfare against infidels. In the eye-opening book Brother Tariq, Caroline Fourest examines Ramadan’s positions and actions in immense detail. She concludes: “[Ramadan is] remaining scrupulously faithful to the strategy mapped out by his grandfather, a strategy of advance stage by stage” toward the imposition of Sharia in the West.

In the course of this work, says Fourest, Ramadan “disarms those who are wary of Islamism.”

Disarming those who are wary of the jihad threat is what this AP report is all about.

Categories: Islamic State, Media and Islam, Quran
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Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb: Meet the World’s ‘Most Influential Muslim’

August 24, 2016

Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb: Meet the World’s ‘Most Influential Muslim’, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, August 24, 2016

(Please see also, Muslim cleric from terror sponsor Iran praises Pope for saying Islam is peaceful — DM)

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There’s nothing like knowing Arabic—that is, being privy to the Muslim world’s internal conversations on a daily basis—to disabuse oneself of the supposed differences between so-called “moderate” and “radical” Muslims.

Consider the case of Egypt’s Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb.  Hardly one to be dismissed as a fanatic who is ignorant of the true tenets of Islam, Tayeb’s credentials and career are impressive: he holds a Ph. D in Islamic philosophy from the Paris-Sorbonne University; formerly served as Grand Imam of Egypt, meaning he was the supreme interpreter of Islamic law; and since 2003 has been president of Al-Azhar University, considered the world’s leading institution of Islamic learning.   A 2013 survey named Tayeb the “most influential Muslim in the world.”

He is also regularly described by Western media and academia as a “moderate.”  Georgetown University presents him as “a strong proponent of interfaith dialogue.”  According to The National, “He is considered to be one of the most moderate and enlightened Sunni clerics in Egypt.”  In February 2015, the Wall Street Journal praised him for making “one of the most sweeping calls yet for educational reform in the Muslim world to combat the escalation of extremist violence.”

Most recently he was invited to the Vatican and warmly embraced by Pope Francis.  Al Azhar had angrily cut off all ties with the Vatican five years earlier when, in the words of U.S. News, former Pope Benedict “had demanded greater protection for Christians in Egypt after a New Year’s bombing on a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria killed 21 people.  Since then, Islamic attacks on Christians in the region have only increased.”

Pope Francis referenced his meeting with Tayeb as proof that Muslims are peaceful: “I had a long conversation with the imam, the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar University, and I know how they think.  They [Muslims] seek peace, encounter.”

How does one reconcile Tayeb’s benevolent image in the West with his reality in Egypt?

For instance, all throughout the month of Ramadan last June, Tayeb appeared on Egyptian TV explaining all things Islamic—often in ways that do not suggest that Islam seeks “peace, encounter.”

During one episode, he reaffirmed a phrase that is almost exclusively associated with radicals: in Arabic, al-din wa’l-dawla, meaning “the religion and the polity”—a phrase that holds Islam to be both a religion and a body of rules governing society and state.

He did so in the context of discussing the efforts of Dr. Ali Abdel Raziq, a true reformer and former professor at Al Azhar who wrote a popular but controversial book in 1925, one year after the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate.  Titled, in translation, Islam and the Roots of Governance, Raziq argued against the idea of resurrecting the caliphate, saying that Islam is a personal religion that should no longer be mixed with politics or governance.

Raziq was vehemently criticized by many clerics and even fired from Al Azhar.  Concluded Tayeb, with assent:

Al Azhar’s position was to reject his position, saying he forfeited his credentials and his creed.  A great many ulema—in and out of Egypt and in Al Azhar—rejected his work and its claim, that Islam is a religion but not a polity.  Instead, they reaffirmed that Islam is both a religion and a polity [literally, al-din wa’l-dawla].

The problem with the idea that Islam must govern the whole of society should be obvious: Sharia, or Islamic law, which is what every Muslim including Tayeb refer to when they say that Islam is a polity, is fundamentally at odds with modern notions of human rights and, due to its supremacist and “anti-infidel” aspects, the source of conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims the world over.

That this is the case was made clear during another of Tayeb’s recent episodes.  On the question of apostasy in Islam—whether a Muslim has the right to abandon Islam for another or no religion—the “radical” position is well known: unrepentant apostates are to be punished with death.

Yet Tayeb made the same pronouncement.  During another Ramadan episode he said that “Contemporary apostasy presents itself in the guise of crimes, assaults, and grand treason, so we deal with it now as a crime that must be opposed and punished.”

While his main point was that those who do not follow Islam are prone to being criminals, he especially emphasized those who exhibit their apostasy as being a “great danger to Islamic society. And that’s because his apostasy is a result of his hatred for Islam and a reflection of his opposition to it. In my opinion, this is grand treason.”

Tayeb added what all Muslims know: “Those learned in Islamic law [al-fuqaha] and the imams of the four schools of jurisprudence consider apostasy a crime and agree that the apostate must either renounce his apostasy or else be killed.”  He even cited a hadith, or tradition, of Islam’s prophet Muhammad calling for the execution of Muslims who quit Islam.

Meanwhile, when speaking to Western and non-Muslim audiences, as he did during his recent European tour, Tayeb tells them what they want to hear.  Recently speaking before an international forum he asserted that “The Quran states that there is no compulsion in religion,” and that “attempts to force people into a religion are against the will of God.”  Similarly, when meeting with the Italian Senate’s Foreign Policy Commission Pier Ferdinando Casini and his accompanying delegation, Tayeb “asserted that Islam is the religion of peace, cooperation and mercy….  Islam believes in freedom of expression and human rights, and recognizes the rights of all human beings.”

While such open hypocrisy—also known as taqiyya—may go unnoticed in the West, in Egypt, human rights groups often call him out.  The Cairo Institute for Human Rights recently issued a statement accusing Al Azhar of having two faces: one directed at the West and which preaches freedom and tolerance, and one directed to Muslims and which sounds not unlike ISIS:

In March 2016 before the German parliament, Sheikh al-Tayeb made unequivocally clear that religious freedom is guaranteed by the Koran, while in Cairo he makes the exact opposite claims….  Combating terrorism and radical religious ideologies will not be accomplished by directing at the West and its international institutions religious dialogues that are open, support international peace and respect freedoms and rights, while internally promoting ideas that contribute to the dissemination of violent extremism through the media and educational curricula of Al Azhar and the mosques.

At any rate, if Tayeb holds such draconian views on apostasy from Islam—that is, when he’s speaking in Arabic to fellow Muslims—what is his position concerning the Islamic State?  Last December, Tayeb was asked why Al Azhar refuses to issue a formal statement denouncing the genocidal terrorist organization as lapsing into a state of kufr, that is, of becoming un-Islamic, or “infidel.” Tayeb responded:

Al Azhar cannot accuse any [Muslim] of being a kafir [infidel], as long as he believes in Allah and the Last Day—even if he commits every atrocity….  I cannot denounce ISIS as un-Islamic, but I can say that they cause corruption on earth.

As critics, such as Egyptian talk show host Ibrahim Eissa pointed out, however, “It’s amazing.  Al Azhar insists ISIS are Muslims and refuses to denounce them.  Yet Al Azhar never ceases to shoot out statements accusing novelists, writers, thinkers—anyone who says anything that contradicts their views—of lapsing into a state of infidelity.  But not when it comes to ISIS!”

This should not be surprising considering that many insiders accuse Al Azhar of teaching and legitimizing the atrocities that ISIS commits.  Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr, a scholar of Islamic law and Al Azhar graduate once exposed his alma mater in a televised interview:

It [Al Azhar] can’t [condemn the Islamic State as un-Islamic].  The Islamic State is a byproduct of Al Azhar’s programs.  So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?  Al Azhar says there must be a caliphate and that it is an obligation for the Muslim world [to establish it].  Al Azhar teaches the law of apostasy and killing the apostate.  Al Azhar is hostile towards religious minorities, and teaches things like not building churches, etc.  Al Azhar upholds the institution of jizya.  Al Azhar teaches stoning people.  So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?

Similarly, while discussing how the Islamic State burns some of its victims alive—most notoriously, a Jordanian pilot—Egyptian journalist Yusuf al-Husayni remarked on his satellite program that “The Islamic State is only doing what Al Azhar teaches.  He went on to quote from textbooks used in Al Azhar that permit burning people—more specifically, “infidels”—alive.

Meanwhile, Tayeb—the face of and brain behind Al Azhar—holds that Europe “must support all moderate Islamic institutions that adopt the Al-Azhar curriculum,” which “is the most eligible one for educating the youth.”  He said this during “a tour [in Germany and France] to facilitate dialogue between the East and the West.”

As for the ongoing persecution of Egypt’s most visible non-Muslim minorities, the Coptic Christians, Tayeb is renowned for turning a blind eye.  Despite the well-documented “severe persecution” Christians experience in Egypt; despite the fact that Muslim mobs attack Christians almost “every two to three days” now—recent examples include the burning of churches and Christian homes, the coldblooded murder of a Coptic man defending his grandchild from Muslim bullies, and the stripping, beating, and parading in the nude of a 70-year-old Christian woman—Tayeb recently told Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros that “Egypt represents the ultimate and highest example of national unity” between Muslims and Christians.

Although he vociferously denounces the displacement of non-Egyptian Muslims in Buddhist Myanmar, he doesn’t have a single word for the persecution and displacement of the Copts, that is, his own Egyptian countrymen.  Instead heproclaims that “the Copts have been living in Egypt for over 14 centuries in safety, and there is no need for all this artificial concern over them,” adding that “true terrorism was created by the West.”

Indeed, far from speaking up on behalf of Egypt’s Christian minorities, he has confirmed that they are “infidels”—that same label he refused to describe ISIS with.   While he did so in a technical manner—correctly saying that, as rejecters of Muhammad’s prophecy, Christians are infidels [kafir]—he also knows that labeling them as such validates all the animosity they feel and experience in Egypt, since the mortal enemy of the Muslim is the infidel.

This is consistent with the fact that Al Azhar encourages enmity for non-Muslims, specifically Coptic Christians, and even incites for their murder.  As Egyptian political commentator Dr. Khalid al-Montaser once marveled:

Is it possible at this sensitive time — when murderous terrorists rest on [Islamic] texts and understandings of takfir [accusing Muslims of apostasy], murder, slaughter, and beheading — that Al Azhar magazine is offering free of charge a book whose latter half and every page — indeed every few lines — ends with “whoever disbelieves [non-Muslims] strike off his head”?

The prestigious Islamic university—which co-hosted U.S. President Obama’s 2009 “A New Beginning” speech—has even issued a free booklet dedicated to proving that Christianity is a “failed religion.”

One can go on and on.   Tayeb once explained with assent why Islamic law permits a Muslim man to marry a Christian woman, but forbids a Muslim woman from marrying a Christian man: since women by nature are subordinate to men, it’s fine if the woman is an infidel, as her superior Muslim husband will keep her in check; but if the woman is a Muslim, it is not right that she be under the authority of an infidel.  Similarly, Western liberals may be especially distraught to learn thatTayeb once boasted, “You will never one day find a Muslim society that permits sexual freedom, homosexuality, etc., etc., as rights.  Muslim societies see these as sicknesses that need to be resisted and opposed.”

To recap, while secular Western talking heads that don’t know the first thing about Islam continue squealing about how it is being “misunderstood,” here is arguably the Muslim world’s leading authority confirming many of the cardinal points held by ISIS: he believes that Islam is not just a religion to be practiced privately but rather is a totalitarian system designed to govern the whole of society through the implementation of its human rights abusing Sharia; he supports one of the most inhumane laws, punishment of the Muslim who wishes to leave Islam; he downplays the plight of Egypt’s persecuted Christians, that is, when he’s not inciting against them by classifying them as “infidels”—the worst category in Islam’s lexicon—even as he refuses to denounce the genocidal Islamic State likewise.

Yet this well credentialed and respected scholar of Islam is considered a “moderate” by Western universities and media, from Georgetown University to the Wall Street Journal.  He is someone whom Pope Francis trusts, embraces, and quotes to reassure the West of Islam’s peacefulness.

In all fairness of course, Tayeb is neither a “moderate” nor a “radical.”  He’s merely a Muslim trying to be true to Islam.   Put differently, he’s merely a messenger.

Critics would be advised to take it up with the Message itself.

Categories: Al Azhar University, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Moderate Muslims, Taqiyya
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New Study: Extremist Literature Common in Canadian Mosques

August 24, 2016

New Study: Extremist Literature Common in Canadian Mosques, Clarion Project, Elliot Friedland, August 24, 2016

Islamic-State-Fighter-1-HP_1Illustrative picture. (Photo: © Screenshot from video)

Extremist literature is widely available in mosques and Islamic schools in Canada, according to a new study, reported by the National Post.

The study was conducted by Thomas Quiggin a former intelligence analyst with the Privy Council Office and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Saied Shoaaib, a journalist originally from Egypt.

The study found that not only was the material available, but in some places it was the majority of the literature available.

The co-authors argued that politicians have reacted insufficiently to the threat, and that extremists were gaining the upper hand ideologically.

“Further research is required to determine the depth and breadth of this problem,” the study concluded.

The findings are especially troubling in the light of another study, published earlier in August, which interviewed Canadian citizens who had travelled to Syria or Iraq to fight for jihadist organizations such as the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL), as reported by Macleans.

In this study, titled Talking to Foreign Fighters: Socio-Economic Push versus Existential Pull Factors, researchers questioned 40 foreign fighters, 60 family members, friends and associates, and 30 online supporters from December 2015 to February 2016.

They have so far they have published findings from an initial sample of 20 jihadists. Their findings indicate that ideology was a primary motivating factor in the radicalization journeys by of those to whom they spoke.

“None of our sample indicated coming from familial situations of poverty or marginality,” they said. “On the contrary, many indicated they had fairly happy and privileged, or at least comfortable, childhoods. In general, there was almost no discussion of the economic situation of their families.”

Those interviewed “run the gamut from troubled youth with personal problems to accomplished young men and women from stable backgrounds,” the authors wrote.

“Anger and frustration have their role to play in the process, but it is the positive investment in an alternate world-saving role that matters most, no matter how strange it may appear to outsiders.”

They also saw that many seemed to radicalize and travel in “clusters,” as opposed to lone wolves.

Furthermore, they added that mentoring from someone seen as a religious figure was necessary for many to complete the process of radicalization. “In most cases, we would say the help and encouragement of some other outside mentors is required to complete the process of radicalization, to turn wannabe terrorists into deployable agents or independent martyrs for the cause. The process of self-radicalization needs to be legitimated to be complete.”

With the presence of extremist literature available in mosques, the ability of Canadians to be drawn into such an ideology seems clear.

Categories: Canada, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic indoctrination of children, Islamic radicalization, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamists in Canada, Mosques, Schools
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Calling for Another Nice-Style Attack, ISIS Suggests Jihadists Try Baseball Bat, Power Screwdriver

August 21, 2016

Calling for Another Nice-Style Attack, ISIS Suggests Jihadists Try Baseball Bat, Power Screwdriver, PJ Media, Bridget Johnson, August 21, 2016

(Islamist terror tactics evolve while “our” submissive anti-Islamophobia strategy plods along. — DM)

truck jihadA policeman looks at the truck used for an attack on Bastille Day crowds in Nice on July 15, 2016. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

A new video out of ISIS’ Al-Khayr province in Syria suggests jihadists emulate the on-hand weaponry of the Nice attack with at-home items such as a power screwdriver, baseball bat or hypodermic needle.

The death toll in the July 14 attack on the French coastal city, in which a Tunisian living in Nice drove a cargo truck into a Bastille Day crowd, rose to 86 a few days ago as another man died of his injuries. Eighty-three were killed at the scene.

French authorities initially declared that the truck driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, had no known links to terrorism. The attacker’s uncle said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, claimed by ISIS as one of their own, was recruited by an Algerian shortly before the attack even though he “didn’t pray, didn’t go to the mosque and ate pork.”

His choice of a truck as a weapon has been fueling the ISIS call for lone jihadists to use whatever weapons are convenient and less likely to arouse suspicion.

As far as targets, the new video focuses largely on France and the United States. After giving weapons suggestions, the video shows a white man in a white T-shirt and jeans carrying a black bag and approaching a gate with a French flag flying overhead.

white guy(ISIS video screenshot)

The video begins, though, with footage of Israel Defense Force soldiers clashing with Palestinians. It soon shows Catholics celebrating Mass and talks about kuffar (disbelievers) paying jizya tax to the Islamic State.

Among the multiple terror montages in the nearly 20-minute video are scenes from the World Trade Center on 9/11, specifically those trapped by the fire trying to summon help from windows or jumping.

They highlighted Hamas’ statement after the Nice attack, in which the Gaza terror group condemned the France attack “out of principle and moral and humanitarian rejection of all forms of extremism and terrorism.”

That July 15 Hamas statement added: “The movement emphasizes in this context that the Palestinian people are more than stung by the fire of Israeli terrorism, which our people are still suffering from for decades.” ISIS hopes to poach recruits from Hamas fighters in Gaza as they push toward Israel.

The ISIS video shows American polling places, including at the former Berryville Primary School in Arkansas, but does not show either candidate, just President Obama and his European counterparts. They also use footage of U.S. service members and drone operation, and a short clip that appears to be either news footage or a city video showing police officers receiving a briefing. The officers shown are from Medford, Ore. Another Medford officer lingers near the trunk of a patrol car.

isis screen(ISIS video screenshot)

The images of the West are broken up by people describing coalition strikes that hit their homes and photos of children allegedly killed in coalition airstrikes, telling jihadists that they have to get revenge.

After showing images of the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Rome, and the Statue of Liberty, the video encourages jihadists to diversify in their choice of weapons like the truck driver in Nice. They briefly show a do-it-yourself gun pattern, followed by a multi-bit ratcheting power screwdriver, a Louisville Slugger bat, a stock photo of a hand holding a test tube with an orange liquid, and a another stock photo of a hand holding a hypodermic needle with clear fluid inside.

Other suggestions include homemade explosives, a rock and a knife.

The video wraps up with footage of the Orlando shooting and praise of Mohamed Belkaid, an Algerian candy maker living in Belgium who was connected to the November Paris attacks and was killed by Belgian police in March, and Najim Laachraoui, one of the suicide bombers at the Brussels airport in March.

Categories: Islamic State, Islamist terror attacks, Islamist terror tactics
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Gorka: The war is real and the war is here

August 18, 2016

Gorka: The war is real and the war is here, Fox News via YouTube, August 17, 2016

Categories: Democrats, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and immigration, Hillary Clinton and Islam, Islamic State, Islamic terror groups, National secuity, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State
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Ten Most Troubling Finds Inside House Probe of Pentagon’s ‘Distorted’ Intel on Islamic State

August 13, 2016

Ten Most Troubling Finds Inside House Probe of Pentagon’s ‘Distorted’ Intel on Islamic State, Breitbart, Aaron Klein, August 13, 2016

(Please see also, The Trickle-Down Erosion of Honesty in Obama’s White House. — DM)

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TEL AVIV – A damning investigation by House Republicans released on Wednesday has found that the intelligence arm of the U.S. Military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) routinely produced intelligence that “distorted, suppressed, or substantially altered” the results of the campaign against the Islamic State.

Breitbart Jerusalem reviewed the House report and herein presents the ten most troubling finds, in no particular order.

1 – Top CENTCOM leaders modified intelligence assessments to present an “unduly positive” assessment of combating the Islamic State and training the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).

The complaint alleges that senior leaders within the CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate and JIC, including the Director of Intelligence and other senior intelligence staff, violated regulations, tradecraft standards, and professional ethics by modifying intelligence assessments to present an unduly positive outlook on CENTCOM efforts to train the ISF and combat ISIL.

Media outlets have also raised allegations of possible reprisals against individuals within the CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate. …

According to multiple interviewees, operational reporting was used as a justification to alter or “soften” an analytic product so it would cast U.S. efforts in a more positive light. No interview provided any instances where operational reporting was used as a justification to come to a more pessimistic conclusion. Additionally, numerous interviewees indicated that analytical products which conflicted with operational reporting were routinely subject to more stringent scrutiny than those that did not.

2 – Intelligence analysts declined to be interviewed, possibly out of fear of reprisals from CENTCOM leadership, while the interviews that did take place were under the watchful eyes of DOD officials.

Additionally, the Joint Task Force requested interviews with four more analysts whose positions provided them with visibility into the allegations. These analysts declined to be interviewed. Although they did not express their reasons for declining, the Joint Task Force is concerned that some of the analysts may have done so out of fear of potential reprisals for their testimony.

For example, as the Joint Task Force’s interviews were commencing, the Director of the DIA publicly characterized reports of the whistleblower’s allegations as exaggerations.

It must also be noted that, pursuant to longstanding arrangements between DOD and the Armed Services Committee, DOD insisted on having department officials present during Joint Task Force interviews.

3 – CENTCOM intel agents operated within a ‘toxic’ leadership environment.

The Republican lawmakers fingered CENTCOM leaders, and noted the intelligence process was cleaner under previous officials and Lloyd Austin III, who served as commander from 2013 to 2016. Dozens of analysts viewed the “subsequent leadership environment as toxic”:

Survey results provided to the Joint Task Force demonstrated that dozens of analysts viewed the subsequent leadership environment as toxic, with 40% of analysts responding that they had experienced an attempt to distort or suppress intelligence in the past year.

4 – General Austin’s claim to Congress that IS was in a “defensive crouch” did not reflect the data possessed at the time by CENTCOM senior leaders.

Although no interviewee remembered the process of preparing the specific press releases and congressional testimony highlighted here, interviewees described a process in which congressional testimony and public affairs statements did not necessarily reflect contemporaneous intelligence assessments. In particular, the Joint Task Force was dismayed to learn that Intelligence Directorate senior leaders seemed unfamiliar with General Austin’s statements to Congress that ISIL was in a “defensive crouch” and indicated this characterization did not reflect their best assessments at the time.

5 – CENTCOM established an intelligence “fusion center” for IS-related intel, but kept out analysts whose views conflicted with senior intelligence leaders.

In June 2014, with the ISIL threat apparent, CENTCOM established an intelligence “fusion center,” a specially equipped JIC facility staffed around-the-clock, to serve as a “focal point” for ISIL-related intelligence. Interviewees recalled only informal communications noting the center’s establishment, and some were also uncertain about the center’s organizational structure, responsibilities, and how it was determined which JIC analysts would participate. The establishment of the Intelligence Fusion Center also removed some analysts who had the most experience with respect to ISIL and Iraq, including those whose analytic views often conflicted with those of CENTCOM’s senior intelligence leaders, from the production of daily intelligence products. This impact was especially significant given the critical analytic tasks of the Intelligence Fusion Center at this time of paramount importance in the theater.

6 – Restrictions were implemented for analysts whose views dissented from the mainstream inside CENTCOM.

Public statements by CENTCOM representatives emphasized close collaboration with other elements of the IC, but many interviewees indicated that in late 2014, senior CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate leaders instructed analysts to cease all external coordination with other IC analysts. The authority to coordinate was restricted to senior officials only, including to leaders of the Fusion Center. Other special arrangements were also put into place to notify the Director of Intelligence in the event that analysts sought to formally “dissent” from analysis produced elsewhere. The restrictions on collaboration have since been partially rescinded.

7 – Analysis was minimized in favor of details from coalition forces while intelligence was skewed to be ‘optimistic.’

Furthermore, senior leaders also relied on details reported from coalition forces rather than more objective and better documented intelligence reporting. The Joint Task Force can find no justifiable reason why operational reporting was repeatedly used as a rationale to change the analytic product, particularly when the changes only appeared to be made in a more optimistic direction. By supplanting analytic tradecraft with unpublished and ad hoc operational reporting, Joint Intelligence Center (JIC) leadership circumvented important processes that are intended to protect the integrity of intelligence analysis.

8 – Shocking survey results showed analysts believed data was “distorted, suppressed, or substantially altered” by their supervisors.

The annual Analytic Objectivity and Process Survey, directed by the ODNI, was conducted from August through October 2015, and included responses from 125 analysts and managers within CENTCOM. The survey results were significantly worse than those of other IC agencies or COCOMs, and showed that a substantial number of CENTCOM respondents felt their supervisors distorted, suppressed, or substantially altered analytic products.

Over 50% of analysts responded that CENTCOM procedures, practices, processes, and organizational structures hampered objective analysis, and 40% responded that they had experienced an attempt to distort or suppress intelligence in the past year. Yet despite receiving these results in December 2015, CENTCOM and IC leaders did not take corrective actions to address many of the issues identified in the survey results.

9 – Even after whistleblower complaints and the “alarming” internal survey last year, the Pentagon took no steps to correct its allegedly distorted intelligence process.

The Joint Task Force is troubled that despite receiving the whistleblower complaint in May 2015 and receiving alarming survey results in December 2015, neither CENTCOM, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, nor the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) took any demonstrable steps to improve the analytic climate within CENTCOM. The survey results alone should have prompted CENTCOM and IC leaders to take corrective action without other inducements.

10 – Mirroring the Benghazi House Committee’s complaints against the State Department, the Joint Task Force here writes it “did not receive access to all the materials it requested” and details a process of denying information and records.

 

Categories: CENTCOM, Cover-up, Department of Defense, Islamic State, Islamic terror groups
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When Being Raped By ISIS Brings Shame on the Family

August 11, 2016

When Being Raped By ISIS Brings Shame on the Family, Clarion Project, Elliot Friedland, August 11, 2016

cryIllustrative picture. (Photo: © Creative Commons/MarLeah Cole)

Women held as sex-slaves by the Islamic State are remaining in the hands of ISIS because their families are too ashamed to rescue them, according to the pan-Arab outlet Al-Aan, which is based in Dubai.

Reports that were depending on testimonies from women who escaped ISIS show that Turkmen families whose daughters have been rescued from Islamic State captivity are treating the girls as a source of shame.

The paper claimed to know about 5 Turkmen girls who could have escaped ISIS and joined their families in the province of Al-Najaf and Karbala in the south of Iraq. But their families refused to cooperate with any rescue agencies that can give them information because of the fear of shame.

The liberation of six hundred women and girls has reportedly been prevented by concerns over honor.

In Iraq where tradition firmly controls society, women and girls are prohibited from having emotional relationships or eloping without the permission and knowledge of the family.

Girls who violate these social codes are typically murdered by their families.

Despite the fact that rape is by definition non-consensual, families still look down on rape victims because they regard the woman’s chastity as having been breached by the mere act of penetration regardless of the volition of the woman concerned.

Such brutal honor codes and what activists are doing to stand up against them were chronicled in Clarion Project’s award winning movie Honor Diaries.

Human rights organizations have to take on these problematic cultural trends if they are serious about rehabilitating women that have already undergone so many traumas.

The mindset that views women as property to be bought and sold in sexual slavery is the same as the mindset that views a woman to be damaged goods and a source of shame after she has been raped. She is not seen as a person in her own right but as a mere appendage to a male.

This toxic perception of women must be challenged.

Categories: Islam and females, Islam and honor, Islam and rape, Islamic State
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Attempted Suicide Bomber Shot and Killed in Canada

August 11, 2016

Attempted Suicide Bomber Shot and Killed in Canada, Clarion Project, August 11, 2016

Aaron-driver-canadian-suicide-bomber-screenshot-640-320Aaron Driver being arrested in 2015. (Photo: © Screenshot from video)

An Islamic State sympathizer armed with an explosive device was shot and killed by Canadian police on Wednesday evening, reported CBCNews.

Aaron Driver, 24, detonated an explosive device which injured himself and one other person in the town of Strathoy, Southern Ontario. Police responded to a terror threat reported earlier in the day and confronted Driver.

Police said he had another device which he planned to detonate on a suicide mission in a public area.

“A suspect was identified and the proper course of action has been taken to ensure that there is no danger to the public’s safety,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.

“As this is still an unfolding matter and that the investigation is still underway, we are not able to provide further comment at this time.”

Driver had been arrested previously on terror charges by the police in June 2015 and was released on a peace bond in February this year.He signed the peace bond agreement, meaning he was “consenting or acknowledging that there are reasonable grounds to fear that he may participate, contribute — directly or indirectly — in the activity of a terrorist group.”

The terms of his peace bond were that he had to register his address with the police and inform them of any change to his address. He also had a curfew of 9pm to 6am and could not have a computer or smartphone or log onto social media accounts.

Driver was also reportedly under police surveillance.

He had drawn the attention of Canada’s spy agency CSIS when he tweeted in support of the Islamic State under the alias Harun Abdurahman. Among other things, Driver said that the 2014 terrorist attack on Parliament Hill in which a Canadian soldier was killed was justified.

“I’m OK with soldiers or police officers being targeted for what they’re doing to Muslims” he told CBC in an interview in July.

“I think it’s a little hypocritical that people would take issue with people retaliating against them … when it’s the police and the military who are killing Muslims.”

He also downplayed suggestions he posed a terrorist threat in the interview, adding “I don’t think I’m a threat, and I don’t think there’s a reason for Canadians to think that I’m a threat.”

Categories: Canada, Islamic State
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Fighting Hate Speech — British Style

August 7, 2016

Fighting Hate Speech — British Style, Gatestone Institute, Judith Bergman, August 7, 2016

♦ The review found that chaplains at some prisons encouraged inmates to raise money for Islamic charities linked to international terrorism.

♦ In June, a Muslim cleric told the BBC that a manual used by imams to teach prison inmates about Islam risks “turning people into jihadis.” A section of the program on jihad says that taking up arms to fight “evil” is “one of the noblest acts.”

♦ Tommy Robinson was recently pictured at the Euro 2016 football championships in France wearing an anti-ISIS T-shirt and holding up a flag with “F**k ISIS” written across it. Upon his return to London, Bedfordshire Police immediately charged Robinson with inciting racial hatred.

♦ So, offending a murderous terrorist organization such as ISIS is apparently no longer protected by the rules of free speech and is now considered “inciting racial hatred” against Muslims.

In April, leaks from the review of extremism in prisons, which was commissioned by former British Justice Secretary Michael Gove and conducted by former prison governor Ian Acheson, revealed that Islamic hate literature — misogynistic and homophobic pamphlets and hate tracts endorsing the killing of apostates — is freely available on the bookshelves of British prisons. The hate literature is distributed to inmates by Muslim chaplains, who themselves are appointed by the Ministry of Justice.

According to the Daily Mail, a Whitehall source said that the material was kept in prison chaplaincy rooms and was available for anyone to come in and pick it up. The leaked review also found that chaplains at some prisons encouraged inmates to raise money for Islamic charities linked to international terrorism.

The review will finally be released to the public in August, after a long delay due, according to theDaily Mail, to the findings of the review sparking an urgent internal alert, because of the risk of “severe reputational damage” to the Ministry of Justice. Chris Phillips, the former head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office, a police unit that works closely with the government on its counter-terrorism strategy, warned last year that staff shortages in prisons were making it harder to tackle Islamic radicalization, because extremists were not properly monitored. Then Home Secretary Theresa May rejected the claim by saying that the government was looking at “and continue to look at” preventative measures.

One former prison officer told the BBC that the “problem within prisons now is getting to a critical point”, with “many Muslim prisoners basically taking over the law of the prison.”

In June, a Muslim cleric told the BBC that a manual used by imams to teach prison inmates about Islam risks “turning people into jihadis.” Sheikh Musa Admani, who according to the BBC is a chaplain and expert in interpreting Islamic texts, and has worked extensively on anti-radicalization programs in the UK and abroad, told the BBC that the so-called Tarbiyah programme, used in English and Welsh prisons since 2011, could turn people towards violence and should be withdrawn. A section of the program is on jihad, and it says taking up arms to fight “evil” is “one of the noblest acts.” According to the BBC, the Tarbiyah program was co-written by a number of imams and Ahtsham Ali, a prisons adviser to the Ministry of Justice. According to Sheikh Musa Admani:

“This document sets out the steps and then addresses various forms of jihad and then goes on to emphasise a particular type i.e. the killing and the fighting. It incites people to take up arms… It prepares people for violence. It could turn people when they come out of prison, supposedly rehabilitated, back into violence.”

Notably, all this is happening despite the fact that the British government’s anti-extremism Prevent strategy requires prisons to stop extremists radicalizing inmates. Clearly, that is not going very well.

Ian Acheson presented his findings from the review for the first time on July 13 at a meeting in the Commons Justice Committee. According to the Daily Mail, Acheson said that he found staff lacked the training to confront and deter Islamist extremist ideology, and were often fearful that they would be accused of racism if they did.

Judging by Acheson’s words, the review is damning of the National Offender Management Service (the institution in charge of prisons): “The service had made no provision at all to forecast the return of jihadi fighters from Afghanistan or ISIS-controlled territory or anywhere else… I found that quite astonishing.”

He also said that there were countless examples of extremist literature being present, while the recruitment, training and supervision of prison imams was “seriously deficient.”

Acheson spoke of an “institutional timidity” in “confronting this problem front and central” adding that the “extremism unit” at the National Offender Management Service “lacked an actual strategy to deal with extremism.”

He also said, “It seemed more concerned with briefing and collating information than providing robust operational support to the front line.”

British authorities are indeed in trouble, if a fear of being called “racist” interferes with their willingness to deal with Islamism.

Hate speech, moreover, is not only being preached in prisons. The young and impressionable are also getting their fair doses at British universities where, in the words of the Express, “Red-carpets [are] laid out for Islam hate preachers at universities and no one challenges them.” According to the Express, 27 events at UK universities had radical speakers in just four months, a rise of 35% in just the last year. This welcome exists despite the requirement of all universities to comply with the government’s anti-extremist program, Prevent.

According to the Express, the messages peddled at these academic events were contemplations such as “Jews are evil”, and a man wanting to marry a Muslim woman, if he did not pray, “should be executed.” Those universities in the British capital that hosted the most extreme events were London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, King’s College, Kingston University, the Institute of Education and University College London.

Among those given a platform at these universities were former Guantanamo inmate Moazzam Begg, director of the lobbying group CAGE, which opposes the British government’s anti-terror program, and South African politician Julius Malema — convicted of a hate crime for claiming a rape victim must have had a “nice time.”

In 2014, at least 70 events with Islamic hate preachers took place at British universities.

Under the Prevent strategy, British universities have to put in place policies to stop extremists radicalizing students and ensure they have measures in place to recognize and respond to signs of radicalization among their students. That, too, does not seem to be working very well.

While the British authorities do not seem equipped to deal with Islamic hate speech, they are impressively efficient when it comes to dealing with what they perceive as “Islamophobia.” British police acted promptly when Tommy Robinson was recently pictured at the Euro 2016 football championships in France wearing an anti-ISIS T-shirt and holding up an English Saint George Cross flag with “F**k ISIS” written across it.

Upon his return to London, Bedfordshire police immediately charged Robinson with inciting racial hatred and brought an application for a “football banning order” against him. Robinson, a Pegida UK organizer, previously received a three-year football ban, which expired in 2014. He has not been known to be involved in football disturbances since. The application against him claimed that he

“poses a significant risk of both violence and disorder… This is especially so in terms of his established capacity to organise disorder from an anti-Muslim perspective… Despite… recently reported ‘good conduct’ at Luton Town Football Club, significant concerns remain regarding his intentions and influences upon others to inflame racial hatred in a country where tensions are already high.”

Offending a murderous terrorist organization such as ISIS is apparently no longer protected by the rules of free speech and is now considered “inciting racial hatred” against Muslims. Does this, then, mean that British police assume that all Muslims identify with ISIS and are thus in some way victims of “racial hatred” when someone wears a T-shirt or holds up a flag that says “F**k ISIS”?

Not only do British police know how to deal swiftly with other people’s “Islamophobia”, they also know how to censor their own speech, when need be, in order not to come across as “Islamophobic.” At one of the UK’s largest shopping centers, during a terror drill designed to be similar to the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, the Greater Manchester police had the fake suicide bomber shout “Allahu Akbar” before detonating a mock device.

1596 (1)A video still from the mock terrorist attack staged on May 9, 2016 by the police in Manchester, England.

For this realistic scenario — after all, that is what Muslim terrorists shout before they detonate themselves or their bombs — the Greater Manchester Police were subsequently criticized: The mayor of Greater Manchester and the area’s police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, said the operation had been “marred by the ill-judged, unnecessary and unacceptable decision by organisers” to have those playing the parts of terrorists shout the Islamic phrase. “It didn’t add anything to the event, but has the potential to undermine the great community relations we have in Greater Manchester.”

The new British government has its work cut out for it.

Categories: Britain, Britain and Islam, Hate speech, Islam - submission, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic radicalization, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamophobia
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DHS gives Somali Muslims special airport security tours because they felt harassed and profiled

August 4, 2016

DHS gives Somali Muslims special airport security tours because they felt harassed and profiled, Jihad Watch, , August 3, 2016

(Flying lessons next? — DM)

The Obama administration gave Somali Muslims behind-the-scenes tours at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport — the nation’s 17th busiest in terms of passenger traffic — after the group “complained to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about feeling harassed and profiled.” Johnson has been consistently failing in his department, which is a key part of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts; and engages our worst enemies in a well-practiced strategy of stealth jihadists of a victimology subterfuge.

“The special security tours not offered to any other group” followed round-table dialogue meetings with local Somali leaders to get their feedback for “modifications to practices that would allow for operations to be more culturally sensitive.”

Culturally sensitive? At the expense of public safety? Here’s a little background about the Somalian community in Minnesota:

“The FBI and Congress have launched probes into the radicalization of the Somali American community in Minnesota. Al Shabaab recruits young men in local mosques and ships them off to train and fight in Somalia. Last fall the area’s largest newspaper published a story confirming that Minnesota leads the nation in the number of people who have left or sought to leave the country to fight with terrorists aligned with ISIL or ISIS.”

The round-table events and airport tours were organized by Abdirizak Farah, whose salary jumped from $89,033 to $130,453 in five years.

somali tour“DHS Gives Somali Muslims Special Airport Security Tours after Harassment, Profiling Complaints”, Judicial Watch, August 2, 2016:

The Obama administration gave Somali Muslims behind-the-scenes tours at a major U.S. airport after the group complained to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about feeling harassed and profiled, government records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal. The special security tours not offered to any other group occurred at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) roundtable meetings with local Somali leaders to obtain feedback for “modifications to practices that would allow for operations to be more culturally sensitive.”

On at least two occasions—December 18, 2014 and February 18, 2015—federal authorities granted the unprecedented excursions of the facility’s sterile and secure areas, according to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) records obtained by Judicial Watch. The DHS agency that conducted the expeditions, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), provided the Muslim participants with “an in-depth, on-site tour and discussion of CBP’s airport, including both inbound and outbound passenger processing,” the TSA files state. Besides multiple roundtable meetings between CBP and Somali community leaders including imams, the records show that a luncheon and “cultural exchange and educational brief” also took place between December 2014 and February 2015 so that attendees could ask about the agency’s “specific practices” at the airport.

The roundtable events and airport tours were organized by Abdirizak Farah, who is identified in the records as a policy advisor in the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL). Farah joined DHS in 2010 with an annual salary of $89,033 and by 2015 his yearly pay increased to $130,453, according to a government database. The TSA’s “Somali liaison officer” in Minneapolis, Andrew Rhoades, told Judicial Watch that the special airport tours were organized for Somali Muslims after they complained to Johnson that they felt “harassed and profiled” by CBP at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. The DHS secretary had “a sympathetic ear to that,” Rhoades said, adding that no other group has been granted such airport access by DHS. “Now, I will say we’ve never done that, or we don’t do that, to let’s say the Hmong community living here in Minneapolis, uh, the Christian community, the Catholic community, the Irish… whatever you want to call it. This has been the only one,” Rhoades said.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is the nation’s 17th busiest in terms of passenger traffic, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It gets more than 35 million passengers annually and nearly 200,000 metric tons of freight. The region has a large Somali Muslim community and Somalia is a terrorist nation that’s largely controlled by the extremist group Al Shabaab. In June three Somali-American pals from Minneapolis were convicted by a federal jury of conspiring to commit murder in Syria on behalf of the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to provide material support to the designated foreign terrorist organization. Six of their buddies pleaded guilty and one was charged in absentia, presumed dead in Syria. Back in 2013 a mainstream news outlet reported that the Al Qaeda affiliate that terrorized a Kenyan shopping center and murdered scores of innocent people included Somalis from Minnesota. Among them was 22-year-old Ahmed Mohamed Isse of St. Paul and 24-year-old Abdifatah Osman Keenadiid of Minneapolis.

The FBI and Congress have launched probes into the radicalization of the Somali American community in Minnesota. Al Shabaab recruits young men in local mosques and ships them off to train and fight in Somalia. Last fall the area’s largest newspaper published a story confirming that Minnesota leads the nation in the number of people who have left or sought to leave the country to fight with terrorists aligned with ISIL or ISIS….

Categories: Dept. of Homeland Security, Islamic State, Minnesota, Somali airport tour, Victimology
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