Salafism is a form of Islam that seeks to bring the religion’s practice back to its original form as delineated by the first Muslims in the seventh century. While not all Salafists are violent, those that are support bringing the world under a global caliphate ruled by sharia (Islamic) law.
The Islamic State, al-Qaeda and most of the world’s Islamist terror organizations practice Salafist Islam.
***********************
Salafism has increased dramatically in Germany in 2015, according to a survey commissioned by German security services.
The report, conducted by Focus Online, showed that between January and June of 2015, there has been a 25 percent increase in German Muslims identifying themselves as Salafists. This unprecedented jump compares to the usual annual increase of about six percent.
As of June, estimates show that 7,900 people identify as Salafists, versus 6,300 at the beginning of the year.
Salafism is a form of Islam that seeks to bring the religion’s practice back to its original form as delineated by the first Muslims in the seventh century. While not all Salafists are violent, those that are support bringing the world under a global caliphate ruled by sharia (Islamic) law.
Salafists also believe, among other anti-Western doctrines, that democracy must be eradicated, because it is a man-made form of government.
The Islamic State, al-Qaeda and most of the world’s Islamist terror organizations practice Salafist Islam.
Last month, the head of Germany’s intelligence services warned Germany’s Salafists were aggressively recruiting migrants who have arrived in Germany by the hundreds of thousands.
“We have in recent weeks increasingly seen attempts by Salafists to register as workers in refugee camps,” he said at the time.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), regards the Salafist groups as a threat to German security. However, Salafists have had a free reign in the country, even though Salafist preachers are known regularly to preach hatred against the West in mosques and prayer centers across Germany.
Salafists have also been at the forefront of conversion and recruitment campaigns in Germany, a phenomenon documented over recent years.
In 2012, Salafists launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign called Project “Read!” to distribute 25 million free copies of the Quran translated into German. The goal was to place one Quran into every household in Germany.
In 2014, it was reported that at least 25 schools across Hamburg had been infiltrated by Salafists and other fundamentalist Muslim groups, according to German media reports.
(Mr. Greenfield seems to have missed at least one significant problem. As reported at Investors.com on November 17th, the UNHCR
is working “hand in hand” with an international Islamist group of 57 Muslim nations — the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — whose founding charter seeks to propagate “legitimate jihad” and “the norms of Islamic Shari’ah.” Saudi-based OIC, in fact, is tied to the radical Muslim Brotherhood. [Emphasis added.]
“We are delighted to work … with the OIC,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.
So it’s really the U.N. and radical Islamists who are choosing your new Muslim neighbors.
What could possibly go wrong? — DM)
The official talking points about vetting so-called Syrian refugees, mainly Muslims from UN camps, a population that mostly excludes actual refugees, Christians, Yazidis, etc, talk about how “multi-layered” the vetting is.
Here’s John Kerry laying out the process.
First, many candidates for refugee resettlement in the United States are interviewed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to determine whether they meet the definition of refugee…
In the interview, UNHCR identifies any red flags which would render individuals ineligible for resettlement under our laws and security protocols. UNHCR also screens applicants to determine whether they fall within the priorities the United States has established for resettlement those refugees who are deemed most vulnerable.
This means that we outsource our refugee policy to the UN and also the first layer of security screening. UNHCR is both notoriously corrupt and incompetent.
Obama Inc and its media allies try to pretend that we have a more reliable security screening policy than Europe does, but they both begin in the same place, with the overburdened disastrous UNHCR.
But it gets even better…
Second, a refugee applicant is referred by the UNHCR to the United States along with a package of information. At that point, the State Department takes over the process. Resettlement support centers, operated by faith-based and international organizations contracting with the State Department, first interview the applicant to confirm information about the case and collect any identification documents and aliases used by the refugee applicants and initiate security checks, which are exclusively conducted by the US. Government.
When the State Department takes over the process, Kerry means that the next stage gets outsourced to contractors who get paid money every time they resettle a refugee. These groups obsessively lobby for more refugees. They have a basic conflict of interest here… and yet they and UNHCR are the original sources of information used for the vetting.
Whatever interviews happen next, UNHCR and the resettlers have already given the applicant a script to follow, shown him what questions will be asked and helped prep him for them.
Neither organization is looking for “red flags” or has security concerns. Their priority is to move the settler further down the road.
Next, cue the databases.
For every single refugee applicant, the Department of State conducts biographic checks of the refugee?s primary name and any aliases against its Consular Lookout and Support System database (CLASS).
I sure hope we have the right name and the right spelling. If we don’t, the system is useless. If he’s not in the system, which the majority of members of ISIS, let alone assorted members of Jihadist groups in Syria aren’t, the system is useless.
USCIS collects biometric information, consisting of fingerprints, for each refugee applicant, ages 14 to 79. USCIS coordinates the screening of refugee applicant fingerprints against the vast biometric holdings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?s Next Generation Identification system.
That’s really useful for identifying people who have been in trouble with the law before here. But again, the average ISIS member does not have his fingerprints in our database.
At the same time, a team of highly-trained USCIS refugee officers is responsible for personally conducting the refugee status interviews. These officers undergo five weeks of specialized and extensive training that includes comprehensive instruction on all aspects of the job, including refugee law, grounds of inadmissibility, fraud detection and prevention, security protocols, interviewing techniques, credibility analysis, and country conditions research.
Yup. 5 weeks of specialized training.
Our final line of defense, the refugee status interview, the one that unlike the useless UNHCR and the downright destructive resettler interview, is theoretically being conducted by people who have the interests of the United States at heart.
And the folks conducting them have a whole 5 weeks of training in “all aspects of their job”. Somewhere in there they fit in some “country conditions research”. The odds are good this interview will be conducted through an interpreter anyway and a friendly one at that.
But I’m sure the terrorists will just spill that he’s an ISIS member to the guy or gal who has 5 weeks of training in refugee law. Still wait… there’s an extra bonus week of training.
Officers conducting interviews of Syrian applicants now undergo an additional one-week training focusing on Syria-specific topics, including classified intelligence briefings.
That’s right. 1 whole extra week of extensive coffee breaks and snoozing through somebody mispronouncing Al-Nusra Front. What more do you people want?
Fourth, before an approved refugee arrives in the United States, US. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at DHS receives a manifest of all refugees who have prior approval to travel to the United States. CBP receives this manifest eight days before a refugee’s scheduled travel.
Eight days.
No way ISIS is getting through.
To summarize, if the terrorist doesn’t have fingerprints in a database, he’ll get coached in multiple interviews how to respond and the only way he’s getting caught is if he announces during the actual interview that he’s a terrorist.
And even if he does, he’ll probably get a pass. Nidal Hassan did.
(If this brilliant strategy is not completely successful, Obama plans to tell Supreme Leader Khamenei to issue a fatwa against violent extremism. — DM)
“This administration will not hesitate to use any method in the fight against the evil that is ISIS, up to and including international condemnation or the deployment of additional hashtags to the region.”
**********************
WASHINGTON — White House spokesman Josh Earnest announced today that at President Obama’s request, Congress has allocated an additional $176 billion dollars to the military budget for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to weaponize the thoughts and prayers which are routinely offered then discarded after tragedy and terrorism.
Earnest said the program reaffirms President Obama’s commitment to degrading, and ultimately defeating ISIS.
“It is really a brilliant concept,” notes Miles Chamberlain, program lead for the new Mk II “Wishful Thinking” Air Deliverable Engagement Device. “After a major terrorist event, the number one thing guaranteed to come out of western countries are thoughts and prayers. Millions of them. If we can find a way to use them tactically our military options would be limitless.”
“The T&P program has multiple facets,” Earnest said. “The highest priority is better targeting systems for our special operators. Currently the thoughts and prayers are used indiscriminately on family members, friends, and even ordinary citizens in an affected area. We hope to provide a surgical strike capability, eventually being able to deliver millions of thoughts and prayers onto a single target, with devastating effect.”
Chamberlain highlighted the advanced nature of the testing, while acknowledging some setbacks for the program.
“The biggest issue we’re facing is a delivery system. First we proposed printing the thoughts and prayers and air-dropping them over a target area, but we had to stop after environmentalists protested, claiming that the thoughts and prayers from the East Coast alone would cause the deforestation of two national parks,” Chamberlain said.
“Then we collected approximately 650 million tweets, emails, and Facebook posts offering thoughts and prayers to Paris and uploaded them onto a hard drive, but that was canceled after Lockheed demanded a $300 billion dollar software update to synch them with the F-35 targeting computers.”
“We’re still optimistic about this whole process. I just hope this project doesn’t end up as a casualty of the budget wars like other failed programs, including the DX6-Good Intentions Radar, the surface-launched Candlelight Vigil 3.0, or Diplomacy.”
At the press conference Earnest affirmed that the White House is totally committed to defeating the Islamic State, and that in addition to the Wishful Thinking weapons program the President has already initiated a severe hashtag campaign (#StopTerrorismNow), and has facilitated the live-streaming of hundreds of anti-violence and equality rallies on college campuses around the nation.
“Make no mistake,” he said. “This administration will not hesitate to use any method in the fight against the evil that is ISIS, up to and including international condemnation or the deployment of additional hashtags to the region.”
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM
In largely secular western societies, Islam and its history are viewed by many non-Muslims as substantially irrelevant to how devout Muslims behave. Perhaps the view that religion is of little importance to devout Muslims is based on the role, minor if any, that religion and religious history play in their own secular lives. However, both Islamic teachings and history give devout Muslims their grounding in Islam and teach them that Islam is the religion of war, not peace: Islam must become the world’s only religion by extirpating all others.
Islam was founded by Mohamed ( c. 570 CE – 8 June 632 CE) in the sixth century. Mohamed
Islam considers the words of Mohamed, as transcribed in the “Holy” Quran and Hadith, to be the words of Allah. “Restoring” other monotheistic religions means changing them to comport with Islam as dictated to Mohamed by Allah; unaltered, those other religions cannot continue to exist; it is the duty of Muslims to force them to change or to exterminate them.
Islam provides the basis for Sunni and Shiite (principal branches of Islam) efforts to govern world civilization according to Islamic principles as voiced by Allah through his prophet, Mohamed. Since Islamic principles tolerate no religious or political freedoms (let alone contemporary gender equality or homosexuality notions), such western ideas must be extirpated — as they have been in Saudi Arabia (now the head of the UN Human Rights Council) and Iran. Islamic principles are also manifested by the hopes and efforts of the Islamic State (Sunni, like Saudi Arabia) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (Shiite) to achieve their own caliphates.
Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr is a scholar of Islamic law and a graduate of Egypt’s Al Azhar University — regularly touted as the world’s most prestigious Islamic university. Al Azhar University co-hosted Obama’s 2009 “New Beginnings” address in Cairo, to which Obama insisted that at least ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood be invited. According to an article at Jihad Watch,
It 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 [extracting tribute from religious minorities]. Al Azhar teaches stoning people. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic? [Emphasis added.]
Nasr joins a growing chorus of critics of Al Azhar. Last September, 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… and the simplest example is Ibn Kathir’s Beginning and End.”
Since the world’s preeminent Islamic university teaches Islam as proclaimed by the Islamic State, how can non-Muslims claim that the Islamic State is not Islamic? Why do many, even conservatives, refer to the Islamic State and its allied Islamic terror groups as “radical” or “extremist?”
Martin Luther was “radical” and “extreme” because he tried to reform aspects of Roman Catholicism which he deemed malign.
Unlike Martin Luther’s eventually successful efforts to reform aspects of Roman Catholicism, the efforts of Egyptian President Sisi and other moderate Muslims to reform Islam have thus far gained little traction. Obama appears to support President Sisi’s principal opponent in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sisi and other moderates — rather than the Islamic State and Islamic nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia — should be characterized as “radical” or “extreme” because they dispute the teachings of Allah as relayed through his prophet, Mohamed. The proponents of Islam as it now exists are “mainstream,” and therefore neither “radical” nor “extreme.” We should support “radicals” like President Sisi.
All Islamic terrorists — not only the Islamic State group and al-Qaida — systematically and deliberately target civilians, stabbing their Muslim and “infidel” host countries in the back, abusing their hospitality to advance 14 centuries of megalomaniac aspirations to rule the globe in general, and to reclaim the “waqf” (Allah-ordained) regions of Europe in particular.
Emboldened by Western indifference, these destabilizing and terror-intensifying aspirations have been bolstered by the Islamic educational systems in Europe, the U.S. and other Western countries. These proclaim a supposedly irrevocable Islamic title over the eighth-century Islamic conquests of Lyon, Nice and much of France, as well as all of Spain; the ninth-century subjugation of parts of Italy; and the ninth- and 10th-century occupations of western Switzerland, including Geneva. [Emphasis added.]
Europe has underestimated the critical significance of this long anti-Western history in shaping contemporary Islamic education, culture, politics, peace, war, and the overall Islamic attitude toward Europe, North America, Australia, and other “arrogant infidels.” “Infidel” France has been the prime European target for Islamic terrorists, with 11 reported attacks in 2015, despite France’s systematic criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian Authority — dispelling conventional “wisdom” that Islamic terrorism is Israeli or Palestinian-driven.
Europe has ignored the significant impact the crucial milestones in the life of the Prophet Muhammad have had on contemporary Islamic geostrategy, such as his seventh-century Hijrah, when Muhammad, along with his loyalists, emigrated or fled from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina), not to be integrated and blend into Medina’s social, economic or political environment, but to advance and spread Islam through conversion, subversion and terrorism, if necessary. Asserting himself over his hosts and rivals in Medina, Muhammad gathered a critical mass of military might to conquer Mecca and launch Islam’s drive to dominate the world. [Emphasis added.]
Our political leaders have been restricting the definition of this problem to whichever jihadist group is causing them the biggest headache at the present time, while ignoring the fact that they are all borne of the same Islamist ideology. Before ISIS emerged, the U.S. State Department strangely took to naming the problem “al Qaeda-inspired extremism,” even though it was not al Qaeda that inspired the radicalism. Rather, Islamist extremism inspired al Qaeda. And in turn, ISIS did not radicalize those 6,000 European Muslims who have traveled to join them, nor the thousands of supporters the French now say they are monitoring. [Emphasis added.]
This did not happened overnight and could not have emerged from a vacuum. ISIS propaganda is good, but not that good. No, decades of Islamist propaganda in communities had already primed these young Muslims to yearn for a theocratic caliphate. When surveyed, 33 percent of British Muslims expressed a desire to resurrect a caliphate. ISIS simply plucked the low-hanging fruit, which had been seeded long ago by various Islamist groups, and it will now require decades of community resilience to push back. But we cannot even begin to do so until we recognize the problem for what it is. Welcome to the full-blown global jihadist insurgency. [Emphasis added.]
The author of that article claims that Islamism (often referred to as “political Islam“) is not Islam:
I speak as a former Liberal Democrat candidate in the U.K.’s last general election and as someone who became a political prisoner in Egypt due to my former belief in Islamism. I speak, therefore, from a place of concern and familiarity, not enmity and hostility to Islam and Muslims. In a televised discussion with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on the issue, I have argued that of course ISIS is not Islam. Nor am I. Nor is anyone, really. Because Islam is what Muslims make it. But it is as disingenuous to argue that ISIS has “nothing to do with Islam” as it is to argue that “they are Islam.” ISIS has something to do with Islam. Not nothing, not everything, but something. . . . [Emphasis added.]
It is important to define here what I mean by Islamism: Islam is a religion, and like any other it is internally diverse. But Islamism is the desire to impose a very particular version of Islam on society. Hence, Islamism is Muslim theocracy. [Emphasis added.]
Islamism has been rising in the UK for decades. Over the years, in survey after survey, attitudes have reflected a worrying trend. A quarter of British Muslimssympathised with the Charlie Hebdo shootings. 0% have expressed tolerance for homosexuality. A third have claimed that killing for religion can be justified, while 36%have thought apostates should be killed. 40% have wanted the introduction of sharia as law in the UK and 33% have expressed a desire to see the return of a worldwide theocratic Caliphate. Is it any wonder then, that from this milieu up to 1,000 British Muslims have joined ISIS, which is more than joined the Army reserves.
I wish Mr. Nawaz well and hope that his efforts to change Islam succeed. However, in drawing distinctions between Islam and Islamism, he seems to have forgotten, or perhaps to have chosen to ignore, the teachings of Allah as relayed by his messenger and Islam’s founder, Mohamed, referenced at the beginning of this article. Mohamed (and presumably Allah himself) would be surprised by and even horrified at such notions as “Islam is what Muslims make it” and that Islam does not contemplate a Muslim theocracy. So, in all probability, would be many of the clerics at Egypt’s Al Azhar University.
Here are a few videos of Islamic clerics spreading their messages of Islamic peace, love and tolerance. The last of the bunch is about one of Obama’s favorite Muslims.
To close on a somewhat lighter note, here are a few observations by Jonah Goldberg taken from his Goldberg file (November 20, 2015 e-mail),
If you Google “Christian terrorism,” you’re probably a jackass to begin with. But if you do — bidden not by your own drive to jackassery but by the natural curiosity inspired by this “news” letter — you’ll find lots of left-wingtrollery about how the worst terrorist attacks on American soil have been committed by Christians. Much of it is tendentious, question-begging twaddle. But I really don’t want to waste a lot of time on whether Tim McVeigh was a Christian or not (he really wasn’t).
What I find interesting is that many of the same people who clutch their pearls at the mere suggestion that Islamic terrorism has anything to do with — oh, what’s the word again? — oh right: Islam, seem to have no problem making the case that “Christian terrorism” is like a real thing. Remember how so many liberals loved — loved — Obama’s sophomoric and insidious tirade about not getting on our “high horses” about ISIS’s atrocities in the here and now because medieval Christians did bad things a thousand years ago? They never seem to think that argument through. Leaving out the ass-aching stupidity of the comparison, it actually concedes the very point Obama never wants to concede. By laying the barbaric sins of Christians a thousand years ago at the feet of Christians today, he implicitly tags Muslims with the barbarism committed in their name today. [Emphasis added.]
Now, I see no need to wade too deeply into the theology here, but I think I am on very solid ground when I say that Islamic terrorism draws more easily and deeply from the Koran than Tim McVeigh drew from the Christian Bible. Of course, you’re free to disagree. In a free society, everybody has the right to be wrong in their opinions. (But don’t tell anyone at Yale that.)
. . . .
But it is simply a lie — an obvious, glaring, indisputable, trout-in-the-milk lie — that Muslims have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.
Simply put, this is nonsense. . . . The jihadists say they are motivated by Islam. They shout “Allahu akbar!” whenever they kill people. “Moderate Muslims” in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have been funding Islamic radicals around the world for nearly a century. This morning in Mali, terrorist gunmen reportedly released those hostages who could quote the Koran. The leader of ISIS has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and openly talks about restoring the Caliphate. [Emphasis added.]
Despite all of this, don’t be distracted from the greatest threat to our security; or perhaps we should be:
Belgian soldiers patrolled a nearly deserted street on Saturday in central Brussels, after the government raised the country’s threat level to its highest. Credit Youssef Boudlal/Reuters
BRUSSELS — The Belgian authorities halted public transit, canceled soccer games and warned citizens to avoid shopping centers, airports, train stations and concerts in the Brussels region early Saturday, warning that the capital was vulnerable in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks.
The Belgian government’s threat analysis unit raised the country’s threat level to 3 on Monday, warning of a “possible and likely threat.” On Friday night, it raised the threat level to 4 for the capital region, Prime Minister Charles Michel announced.
“Level 4 means that the threat is serious and imminent,” Mr. Michel told reporters on Saturday. “The raising of the threat is a result of information, relatively precise, of a risk of an attack similar to the one that unfolded in Paris.” He said the threat involved “multiple individuals capable of striking a number of sites with weapons and explosives, maybe at the same time.”
At least four of the Paris attackers lived in the Brussels area.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is believed to have been the chief planner and who died in a police raid outside Paris on Wednesday, lived in the Molenbeek neighborhood, as did Ibrahim Abdeslam, one of the suicide bombers, and his brother Salah, who is at large. Another suicide bomber, Bilal Hadfi, lived in the Neder-Over-Heembeek district.
The arrests of two other Belgians in connection with the attacks have further raised alarm here.
A person who was arrested on Friday in Brussels has been charged with “participation in terrorist attacks and participation in the activities of a terrorist organization,” a federal magistrate, Eric Van der Sijpt, announced on Saturday.
A search of the person’s house came up with a weapon, but no explosives, Mr. Van der Sijpt said. He did not name the person, but several Belgian newspapers described him as a 39-year-old Moroccan who lives in the Jette section of Brussels, gave help to Salah Abdeslam after the attacks and has a brother who is fighting in Syria. The government had already arrested two other Belgians, accusing them of helping Mr. Abdeslam by driving him from Paris to Brussels.
Also on Saturday, Turkish authorities arrested an Islamic State militant at a luxury hotel in Antalya, along with two others. They identified him as Ahmad Dahmani, 26, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, and said he was trying to illegally cross the border into Syria.
“We believe that Dahmani was in contact with the terrorists who perpetrated the Paris attacks,” said a Turkish official who spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with government protocol.
Mr. Dahmani arrived from Amsterdam on Nov. 14 — the day after the Paris attacks. “There is no record of the Belgian authorities having warned Turkey about Dahmani — which is why there was no entry ban,” the official said, adding, “Had the Belgian authorities alerted us in due time, Dahmani could have been apprehended at the airport.”
The storming on Friday of a hotel in Bamako, Mali, added to the anxieties in Belgium. Six Belgians were held hostage in the hotel, of whom four were released and two were killed, Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said on Saturday.
Mr. Michel, in his news conference, said the suspension of service on the Brussels Métro would be reassessed on Sunday afternoon.
“We ask you to remain peaceful and avoid panic,” Mr. Michel said. “It is a serious situation and we are trying with the security forces to do everything to keep the situation under control.”
Earlier in the week, Mr. Michel said he would push legal changes to make it easier to capture and try suspected terrorists operating in Belgium and seek constitutional changes to extend, to 72 hours from 24 hours, the period terrorism suspects can be held by the police without charge.
[T]he phenomenon known as “ISIS” is not a temporal aberration within Islam but rather a byproduct of what is considered normative thinking for Al Azhar—the Islamic world’s most authoritative university.
*************************
Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr, a scholar of Islamic law and graduate of Egypt’s Al Azhar University—regularly touted as the world’s most prestigious Islamic university—recently exposed his alma mater in a televised interview.
It 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 [extracting tribute from religious minorities]. Al Azhar teaches stoning people. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?
Nasr joins a growing chorus of critics of Al Azhar. Last September, 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… and the simplest example is Ibn Kathir’s Beginning and End.”
Ibn Kathir is one of Sunni Islam’s most renowned scholars; his Beginning and End is a magisterial history of Islam and a staple at Al Azhar. It is also full of Muslims, beginning with Muhammad, committing the sorts of atrocities that the Islamic State and other Islamic organizations and persons commit.
In February, Egyptian political writer Dr. Khalid al-Montaser revealed that Al Azhar was encouraging enmity for non-Muslims, specifically Coptic Christians, and even inciting for their murder. Marveled Montaser:
Is it possible at this sensitive time — when murderous terrorists rest on 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.”
In short, the phenomenon known as “ISIS” is not a temporal aberration within Islam but rather a byproduct of what is considered normative thinking for Al Azhar—the Islamic world’s most authoritative university.
Russia has launched a merciless blanket air campaign, backed by Kalibr cruise missiles fired from the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas, for the object of wiping the Islamic State’s Syrian center of Raqqa off the map, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.
Western and Middle East sources tracking the campaign since Friday, Nov. 20, report that at least 75 air sorties have been conducted and are systematically razing the town of 200,000 inhabitants 160km east of Aleppo, district by district, irrespective of civilian town dwellers.
Moscow wants the entire Middle East and Muslim world to see the price exacted for launching a terrorist attack on Russia after the downing of the Metrojet airliner that killed 224 people over Egyptian Sinai on Oct. 31. Russian bombers and cruise missiles rained death and destruction on the ISIS administration center after the jihadists claimed responsibility for that disaster and published photos of a soft drink can claimed to have been rigged as a bomb for blowing the plane up.
When the Russians are done, the town will be a pile of rubble, an intelligence source told DEBKAfile.
The Russian defense ministry ran photos Friday of Russian technicians loading bombs on the Tupolev 95 bombers (dubbed “Bears” in the West). Ground crews marked the bombs “For ours,” and “For Paris.”
Last Tuesday, our military sources first revealed that the Tupolev’s were taking off from Morozovsk air base in the Rostov district of southern Russia instead of from the Russian military enclave outside the Syrian town of Latakia.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported Friday that 15 Syrian oil facilities seized by ISIS had been destroyed this week and 525 of their trucks, costing the jihadists $1.5 million a day in revenue.
As for casualties, the published figure of 600 jihadists killed in one day is probably far below the real figure. Our sources report that the Islamist terrorists’ death toll most probably runs into thousands with many more injured.
To sustain the hectic tempo of its aerial war, Moscow has doubled the number of bombers assigned to Syria from 34 two weeks ago to 69 by Saturday, Nov. 21.
Our military sources add that this augmented air power allows the Russians to expand their targets to other parts of Syria. On Friday, they renewed sorties against Syrian rebel forces holding the southern town of Deraa near the Jordanian border.
(Pretending that the Islamic State is not Islamic won’t defeat it. Neither will pretending that it is “radical” and therefore not representative of “mainstream” Islam. –DM)
While working on a documentary about Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, I had the chance to meet Abu Omar, a former IS operative who was once an inmate in the infamous Camp Bucca facility that brought together all those who later became the ruling elite of the most notorious terrorist group in modern history. I asked Abu Omar whether there was any recipe to defeat IS, which seemed unbeatable. In response, he smiled and said, “First, the world will have to really believe it exists — that it’s not an American conspiracy, nor a Turkish secret project, nor an Iranian-Syrian backed organization — that it’s simply the most advanced edition of global jihad resulting from 30 years of experience. It also must not be conceded that no one can win this war.”
Since the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924, the dream of reviving the caliphate has been alive in the souls of those adopting political Islam as a doctrine. Ordinary Muslims’ feelings of weakness and a sense of disconnection with and lack of support from the regimes that have ruled the Arab and Muslim world grew over time and was inherited by members of the Muslim millennial generation who wanted to belong to an entity that blends power, religion and modernity. IS came with the three together. While many might debate the last point, IS is using cutting-edge technologies in many of their activities, including in the professional use of media tools that fulfill a feeling of superiority through well-crafted videos and clips. As for power, IS was able to prove its strength by creating a de facto state within the borders of Syria and Iraq, challenging the world powers and showing a high level of discipline in the areas under their control. The other element, religion, is the magnet that directly or indirectly attracts people to IS, for the group introduces itself as the guarantor for the application of God’s rule on Earth, and that the caliph is a continuation of the Prophet Muhammad’s legacy.
The fact is that the Islamic State, as a doctrine and practice, has been an unbeatable model in the Sunni Muslim world to those seeking this blend of religion, power and modernity. Sunni and Shiite Islamists shared many similar aspirations until the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran succeeded in toppling the Shah; at the time, Sunni Islamists such as Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the co-founder of al-Qaeda with Osama bin Laden, celebrated Imam Ruhollah Khomeini’s victory in one of Amman’s mosques. Later it became clear that the revolution was more an answer to the aspirations of Shiite Islamists than Sunnis; therefore, the next stop for Azzam and his comrades was Afghanistan, and they later became what were called the Afghan Arabs.
When the creation of the Islamic State was announced, one of the main strategies adopted by its leadership was social engagement. The de facto, self-styled state opened its doors to jihadi foreigners, and thousands came with their families and settled in cities under IS control; according to a UN report, more than 25,000 from over 100 nations have made it to IS territory. Some of them get married to women from tribes in the areas in order to strengthen ties and complicate any attempts to oust IS. The foreign jihadis are persona non grata in their home countries, and if IS falls, their lives and future may be endangered wherever they may be; they have no safe haven but the Islamic State and therefore will fight to the last man standing to keep it alive.
Part of its social and economic strategy was to engage the main tribes in control of the oil business; this helps not only in providing profits but also in strengthening ties with local tribes.
The thinking is that IS tied several knots around its core to make it extremely difficult for enemies to target it effectively. This apparently meant that three years of ground and air operations, international and regional attempts to counter IS and direct media and public campaigns did not effectively harm the group, and now it is able to function in several countries in several continents and is capable of carrying out its tactics with effective command and control, with the multiple attacks in Paris being a strong example.
To defeat IS, the world needs to hit the core of the group, and this means untying the shroud of knots surrounding it and cutting blood off from IS’ heart. A counter model is needed to fight the IS model, a model that is powerful, modern and shows real respect and appreciation for Islam. With such a model it would be easier to deprive the terrorist entity of sympathizers who might become future operatives. As former IS operative Abu Omar told me, “IS is very clever and smart in attracting people with potential; they know how to talk to them and how to address their ambitions. They are also very smart in exploiting mistakes committed by their enemies, and use these mistakes to prove to their supporters why they are the right choice.” He said, “I was behind their walls; therefore, I understand the mentality. If you really want to finish IS, you need to address people’s concerns, let the sheikhs talk to youths and stop making big mistakes. IS is surviving as the result of the dire mistakes committed by governments of the region.”
Defeating IS should not be impossible if the above is addressed and serious military and economic steps are taken to prevent the group from expanding both financially and geographically. This means doing battle on the war fronts and imposing sanctions on countries and individuals financing the group or allowing money to flow to it or buying goods, mainly oil, from territories under its control. Long-term strategic steps must be taken or IS will be here to stay and expand.
In 2012, Salafists in Germany launched a campaign to place a Quran translated into German in every home in the country. (Photo: © Reuters)
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments