With the United Kingdom’s successful prosecution of noted radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary for providing material support to ISIS, British officials are now faced with the dilemma of what to with him when he is sentenced Sept. 6.
While he is sure to receive a lengthy period of incarceration, that may create even more problems for counter terrorism officials. In going to prison, he is not actually moving from the frying pan to the fire. A more appropriate analogy is akin to the fox in the hen house. Anjem Choudary has spent the better part of 20 years preaching, proselytizing, and recruiting individuals to a radical form of Islam that encourages jihad as a necessary tenet of the faith. He has done it on street corners, mosques, and in front of television cameras. And like a sly fox, he avoided prosecution in the past because no direct contact between him and a terrorist organization could be proven until now. British authorities uncovered a video of Choudary pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
When he goes into prison, Choudary will have the opportunity to continue his evil work in an environment that guarantees him a captive audience of people who already have a disdain for government and a predisposition for violence. It is fertile soil.
How successful will he be? We already know of his effectiveness with ex-cons such as shoe bomber Richard Reid, who attended the Finsbury Mosque after his release from prison. Finsbury was one of the places that Choudary was allowed to preach his message of hatred and intolerance to all things non-Muslim. Many of his converts are already in prison for committing terrorist acts.
One of them is Michael Adebolajo, convicted in the brutal murder of 25-year-old Lee Rigby, a Fusilier in the British Army as he was returning to barracks. Since his incarceration, prison officials have had to transfer Adebolajo from the general prison population in Belmarsh because of his attempts to influence and radicalize other inmates. Another Choudary protégé, Richard Dart, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2013 for his part in a plot to bomb a memorial service for British soldiers at Royal Wooten Basset. Also in prison is Junead Khan, convicted last spring for conspiring to kill U.S. servicemen stationed at the RAF Lakenheath Base.
Authorities believe Khan was radicalized by Choudary and inspired to act in similar fashion as the Lee Rigby killing.
Prison walls are porous and it is virtually impossible to completely isolate one inmate from others. It remains to be seen whether Choudary will have direct contact or will communicate through kited letters or other illicit prison communication methods. But he will continue to get the radical Islamic message out unless authorities stay one step ahead of him.
The effects of Islamic radicalization in the prison system have been well documented both in the United States and Europe. The threat has been acknowledged by counter terrorism officials around the globe, although effective ways to combat it have not been clearly defined. We know that one catalyst in the radicalization process is the presence of unvetted Islamic clergy in prison mosques. We have also seen what can happen when a convicted Islamic terrorist is allowed to work in the chaplain’s office or the prison mosque as in the case of El Sayyid Nosair, who was the chaplain’s clerk in Attica State prison when he plotted with others to bomb the World Trade Center and other New York City landmarks in 1993.
This poses serious questions as to what Choudary will be allowed to do while incarcerated. Will he be allowed to attend religious services, or be allowed to participate in congregational prayer with other Muslim inmates? Before you think that could never happen, we should remember the case of convicted Islamic terrorist John Walker Lindh. Lindh was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 fighting against the United States alongside members of al-Qaida and the Taliban. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison under special administrative measures, including solitary confinement, for his treasonous crimes.
He sued the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in 2010 for the right to gather openly five times a day with other Muslim inmates in the maximum security prison at Terre Haute, Ind. In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson ruled in his favor.
Another question surrounding Choudary’s sentence involves rehabilitation. What efforts should be afforded to inmates prior to their release to lower the risk of recidivism? Does the U.K. have an effective or successful de-radicalization program designed specifically to address Islamic radicalization? Recent attacks in Paris and Brussels by radicalized ex-cons show whatever they have now isn’t working. We know that the United States does not have any program aimed at de-radicalizing inmates.
Our latest endeavor in dealing with incarcerated Islamic terrorists has been to send 15 of them from Guantanamo Bay to Montenegro.
Hopefully the United Kingdom would not seriously consider sending Anjem Choudary to the newest member of NATO for any type of alternative to prison supervision.
Sadly it seems that what will probably happen is that another fox will be let loose in the hen house. And nobody wins with that except the fox.
(The views expressed in this article are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
An “Islamist” is a Muslim who seeks to impose Islamic (Sharia) law worldwide, including in America. There are Muslims in America who do not want that to happen, yet few of them seek actively to prevent it. I refer here to those who do try, not as “moderate Muslims” — an essentially badly used and hence meaningless term — but as “Muslim reformers.”
On August 15th, Donald Trump delivered an address, generally well-received in conservative circles, on the dangers of Islamist immigration and how he intends to guard against those who intend to have Sharia law imposed and/or to engage in terrorist activities.
In his foreign policy speech on Monday, Donald Trump stated that he would “amplify the voice” of moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East, saying, “Our Administration will be a friend to all moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East, and will amplify their voices.”
He also said that he would work with Egypt, Jordan and Israel in combating radical Islam, saying, “As President, I will call for an international conference focused on this goal. We will work side-by-side with our friends in the Middle East, including our greatest ally, Israel. We will partner with King Abdullah of Jordan, and President Sisi of Egypt, and all others who recognize this ideology of death that must be extinguished.” [Emphasis added.]
He said that, as President, he would establish a “Commission on Radical Islam,” saying, “That is why one of my first acts as President will be to establish a Commission on Radical Islam – which will include reformist voices in the Muslim community who will hopefully work with us. We want to build bridges and erase divisions.” [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Under the Obama Administration, US policy has not been friendly towards our Muslim allies such as Egypt. Hillary Clinton recently said in a primary debate with Bernie Sanders that, in Egypt, you basically have an “army dictatorship”.
Egypt is one of the most catastrophic foreign policy failures of the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton’s State Department. President Obama started his outreach to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood when he delivered his 2009 Cairo speech. The US Embassy invited 10 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend the speech, undermining US ally Mubarak – who had rejected to previous U.S. efforts to reach out to the Brotherhood. [Emphasis added.]
Islamism
Islamism is a totalitarian vision to impose Sharia law worldwide:
Unfortunately, Obama’s “countering violent extremism” farce has chosen to ignore, if not to encourage and even adopt, Sharia law and its consequences:
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is a Muslim reformer of the type Trump hopes to recruit for his efforts. A video of an interview with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim of Syrian descent and a proponent of an Islamic reformation, is provided below. However, first it will be useful to understand the goals of Dr. Jasser and his His organization, American Islamic Forum for Democracy:
The American Islamic Forum for Democracy’s (AIFD) mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.
AIFD is the most prominent American Muslim organization directly confronting the ideologies of political Islam and openly countering the common belief that the Muslim faith is inextricably rooted to the concept of the Islamic State (Islamism). Founded by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD looks to build the future of Islam through the concepts of liberty and freedom.
AIFD’s mission is derived from a love for America and a love of our faith of Islam. Dr. Jasser and the board of AIFD believe that Muslims can better practice Islam in an environment that protects the rights of an individual to practice their faith as they choose. The theocratic “Islamic” regimes of the Middle East and some Muslim majority nations use Islam as a way to control Muslim populations, not to glorify God as they portend. The purest practice of Islam is one in which Muslims have complete freedom to accept or reject any of the tenants or laws of the faith no different than we enjoy as Americans in this Constitutional republic.
AIFD believes that the root cause of Islamist terrorism is the ideology of political Islam and a belief in the preference for and supremacy of the Islamic state. Terrorism is but a means to that end. Most Islamist terror is driven by the desire of Islamists to drive the influence of the west (the ideas of liberty) out of the Muslim consciousness and Muslim majority societies. The underlying philosophy of Islamism is what western society should fear most. With almost a quarter of the world’s population Muslim, American security will never come without an understanding and winning out of the ideas of liberty by Muslims and an understanding of the harm of political Islam by non-Muslims.
AIFD seeks to build and establish an institution that can provide an ideological infrastructure for the ideas of liberty and freedom to Muslims and our future generations. We seek to give Muslims a powerful intellectual alternative to political Islam (Islamism) ultimately seeking the defeat of political Islam as a theo-political ideology.
Some readers will likely think that Dr. Jasser’s efforts to reform Islam would, in the unlikely event that they prove successful, create something that is not Islam. I disagree. Mohamed (and hence Islam) changed quite radically when he was driven out of Mecca and settled in Medina, where he became a warlord. In Mecca, he had been relatively peaceful and tolerant of other religions. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali states here,
In the early days of Islam, when Muhammad was going from door to door in Mecca trying to persuade the polytheists to abandon their idols of worship, he was inviting them to accept that there was no god but Allah and that he was Allah’s messenger.
After 10 years of trying this kind of persuasion, however, he and his small band of believers went to Medina, and from that moment, Muhammad’s mission took on a political dimension. Unbelievers were still invited to submit to Allah, but after Medina, they were attacked if they refused. If defeated, they were given the option to convert or to die. (Jews and Christians could retain their faith if they submitted to paying a special tax.) [Emphasis added.]
No symbol represents the soul of Islam more than the Shahada. But today there is a contest within Islam for the ownership of that symbol. Who owns the Shahada? Is it those Muslims who want to emphasize Muhammad’s years in Mecca or those who are inspired by his conquests after Medina? On this basis, I believe that we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims.
The first group is the most problematic. These are the fundamentalists who, when they say the Shahada, mean: “We must live by the strict letter of our creed.” They envision a regime based on Shariah, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version. What is more, they take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else.
I shall call them Medina Muslims, in that they see the forcible imposition of Shariah as their religious duty. They aim not just to obey Muhammad’s teaching but also to emulate his warlike conduct after his move to Medina. Even if they do not themselves engage in violence, they do not hesitate to condone it. [Emphasis added.]
It is Medina Muslims who call Jews and Christians “pigs and monkeys.” It is Medina Muslims who prescribe death for the crime of apostasy, death by stoning for adultery and hanging for homosexuality. It is Medina Muslims who put women in burqas and beat them if they leave their homes alone or if they are improperly veiled.
The second group—and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world—consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence. I call them Mecca Muslims. Like devout Christians or Jews who attend religious services every day and abide by religious rules in what they eat and wear, Mecca Muslims focus on religious observance. I was born in Somalia and raised as a Mecca Muslim. So were the majority of Muslims from Casablanca to Jakarta. [Emphasis added.]
Yet the Mecca Muslims have a problem: Their religious beliefs exist in an uneasy tension with modernity—the complex of economic, cultural and political innovations that not only reshaped the Western world but also dramatically transformed the developing world as the West exported it. The rational, secular and individualistic values of modernity are fundamentally corrosive of traditional societies, especially hierarchies based on gender, age and inherited status.
Trapped between two worlds of belief and experience, these Muslims are engaged in a daily struggle to adhere to Islam in the context of a society that challenges their values and beliefs at every turn. Many are able to resolve this tension only by withdrawing into self-enclosed (and increasingly self-governing) enclaves. This is called cocooning, a practice whereby Muslim immigrants attempt to wall off outside influences, permitting only an Islamic education for their children and disengaging from the wider non-Muslim community.
It is my hope to engage this second group of Muslims—those closer to Mecca than to Medina—in a dialogue about the meaning and practice of their faith. I recognize that these Muslims are not likely to heed a call for doctrinal reformation from someone they regard as an apostate and infidel. But they may reconsider if I can persuade them to think of me not as an apostate but as a heretic: one of a growing number of people born into Islam who have sought to think critically about the faith we were raised in. It is with this third group—only a few of whom have left Islam altogether—that I would now identify myself. [Emphasis added.]
These are the Muslim dissidents. A few of us have been forced by experience to conclude that we could not continue to be believers; yet we remain deeply engaged in the debate about Islam’s future. The majority of dissidents are reforming believers—among them clerics who have come to realize that their religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an interminable cycle of political violence.
How many Muslims belong to each group? Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations estimates that only 3% of the world’s Muslims understand Islam in the militant terms I associate with Muhammad’s time in Medina. But out of well over 1.6 billion believers, or 23% of the globe’s population, that 48 million seems to be more than enough. (I would put the number significantly higher, based on survey data on attitudes toward Shariah in Muslim countries.)
In any case, regardless of the numbers, it is the Medina Muslims who have captured the world’s attention on the airwaves, over social media, in far too many mosques and, of course, on the battlefield.
The Medina Muslims pose a threat not just to non-Muslims. They also undermine the position of those Mecca Muslims attempting to lead a quiet life in their cultural cocoons throughout the Western world. But those under the greatest threat are the dissidents and reformers within Islam, who face ostracism and rejection, who must brave all manner of insults, who must deal with the death threats—or face death itself. [Emphasis added.]
For the world at large, the only viable strategy for containing the threat posed by the Medina Muslims is to side with the dissidents and reformers and to help them to do two things: first, identify and repudiate those parts of Muhammad’s legacy that summon Muslims to intolerance and war, and second, persuade the great majority of believers—the Mecca Muslims—to accept this change. [Emphasis added.]
Islam is at a crossroads. Muslims need to make a conscious decision to confront, debate and ultimately reject the violent elements within their religion. To some extent—not least because of widespread revulsion at the atrocities of Islamic State, al Qaeda and the rest—this process has already begun. But it needs leadership from the dissidents, and they in turn stand no chance without support from the West. [Emphasis added.]
Is Dr. Jasser a Mecca Muslim, who wants Islam to revert to the religion as practiced in Mecca? So it seems to me, and that is by no means what the Council on American Islamic relations (CAIR) wants. It has labeled Dr. Jasser and his organization “Islamophobic:”
Jasser was featured in that report as an enabler of anti-Muslim bigotry. The report noted that Jasser heads a group that “applauded” an amendment to Oklahoma’s state Constitution that would have implemented state-sponsored discrimination against Islam.
Jasser also narrated “The Third Jihad,” a propaganda film created by the Clarion Fund, which depicts Muslims as inherently violent and seeking world domination. Following revelations that the film was shown as part of training at the New York Police Department, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly called it “wacky” and “objectionable.”
Here is the “propaganda film” referred to by CAIR:
Finally, here is Dr. Jasser’s video about Trump’s plan to evaluate the ideological views of Muslims who attempt to enter the United States with a view to keeping out those who favor Sharia law, terrorism and the Islamisation of America. Dr. Jasser favors it and also offers good advice.
If, as seems likely, President Trump replaces the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-linked organizations such as CAIR with non-Islamist, Muslim reform organizations such Dr. Jasser’s, the focus will shift from the Department of Homeland Security’s “Countering Violent Extremism” program of demonizing “Islamophobia” to excluding Islamists from American and preventing their domestic terror activities as well as defeating their efforts directed to the Islamisation of America and the imposition of Sharia law.
Dr. Jasser and his reformist colleagues have not been shy about how they view Islam and how they want it to change. As Hirsi Ali noted in the article quoted above,
[T]hose under the greatest threat are the dissidents and reformers within Islam, who face ostracism and rejection, who must brave all manner of insults, who must deal with the death threats—or face death itself.
I submit that it up to us, not to reject them on the notion that all Muslims are dangerous, but to accept them — as Donald Trump appears to have done — and to work with them in their efforts to change not only Islam but how it functions in America.
Will national security finally bring warring Republicans together?
That was what was on my mind when I perused an email from Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s national policy director, describing a roundtable on defeating radical Islamic terrorism the Trump campaign held Wednesday. It read in part:
The participants talked about improving immigration screening and standards to keep out radicals, working with moderate Muslims to foster reforms, and partnering with friendly regimes in the Middle East to stamp out ISIS. This is a stark contrast to Hillary Clinton who wants to bring in 620,000 refugees with no way to screen them…
All well and good, I thought, but nothing extraordinary there, until I scanned the list of the sixteen participants. Besides the usual Trump spokespeople—Rudy Giuliani, Jeff Sessions, General Mike Flynn—some surprising names popped up that had been critics of Donald, often severe ones. Among them were former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who once called a Trump presidency dangerous in that notorious January 2016 edition of the National Review when a boatload of conservative intellectuals ripped into the real estate tycoon as the Devil’s son; Congressman Peter King, who as recently as August 10 remonstrated with Donald for his “dumb remark” on the Second Amendment that allegedly encouraged gun owners to go after Hillary (King agreed that it didn’t really, but insisted Trump should choose his words better); and Andrew C. McCarthy, the former U. S. attorney famed for his successful prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 first bombing of the World Trade Center.
McCarthy—now a best-selling author and columnist for the National Review and PJ Media, among other venues—had this to say on NRO about Trump after his July convention speech:
On Thursday night came the harvest: The party was formally taken over by an incoherent statist whose “conservatism” is not done justice by scare quotes. Oh… and he has trouble telling the good guys from the bad guys.
Whoa. Words like that don’t usually get you invited to the subject’s roundtable, at least without some considerable advance peacemaking. And yet there was McCarthy, sitting at Trump’s table.
Andy McCarthy has been a friend of mine for some years, so I decided to call him and pick his brain about what went down.
As it turned out, McCarthy told me, the event was not contentious at all. Bygones were apparently bygones. In fact, Trump was so cordial to him, Andy wondered whether Donald knew who he was. (I strongly suspect he did. As we all know, Trump watches TheKelly File—where McCarthy appears frequently—with some devotion.)
The meeting was quite substantive from Andy’s perspective with all agreeing that we are at war not with “terror” (a tactic) but with radical Islam (a violent ideology). A good deal of time was spent in this lawyer-rich environment on the legalisms of how to pursue that war. Congress originally authorized the use of military force against terrorists only three days days after September 11, 2001. Given the gravity of the current situation, would that need to be amended or reauthorized for a Trump administration? And if so, how? (One can assume a Hillary Clinton administration would not even go near this question. For them, fighting terror is a police problem.)
McCarthy—who said he spoke seven or eight times, quite a bit for a two-hour session—delineated three goals for the war:
To strike down jihad wherever it arises.
To squeeze all terror-supporting regimes (not give them millions and billions as Obama just did Iran). And:
To rid ourselves of political correctness so we can oppose and destroy the evil doctrine of radical Islam.
Also in attendance were the newbie Trump campaign leaders: new-media mogul Stephen Bannon (now CEO) and pollster Kellyanne Conway (now campaign manager). Much has been made by the MSM and, alas, by some of Trump’s more persistent Republican critics that the candidate supposedly blew it again by announcing these promotions just after he made a well-received speech on urban policy. Of course, these same people were complaining a week before that Trump was understaffed.
So it goes in our incessantly back-biting political world where few people want to keep their eye on the ball because that ball—radical Islam—is more than a little frightening. This roundtable group convened by the Trump campaign evidently intends to keep its eye on that ball and if Republicans have any brains they will rally around them, finally rally around Trump. Because here’s the painfully obvious truth: If we don’t extinguish radical Islam, if it continues to spread throughout the world, nothing else matters. Who cares if the tax rate is 5% or 500% when you don’t have a head.
And now, in his latest speech, Trump has said “in the heat of debate” he “may have caused personal pain.” Get that? The long-awaited apology. Now let’s win!
An Islamic group tied closely to jihadi terror groups is complaining that Donald Trump will violate the constitution by helping Americans better understand the nature of radical, jihad-promoting Islam.
“One of my first acts as President will be to establish a Commission on Radical Islam – which will include reformist voices in the Muslim community,” Trump declared in a reformist foreign policy speech on Monday.
“The goal of the commission will be to identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of Radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalization, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalization … [and] we will pursue aggressive criminal or immigration charges against anyone who lends material support to terrorism,” he said.
That promise of legal charges is a direct threat to the jihad-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has many material links to domestic and foreign groups that support Islamic war. CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding operation.
CAIR responded to Trump’s speech by suggesting that rhetorical and religious support (although not actions) for Islamic jihad terrorism is a constitutional right, both for Americans and for would-be immigrants who wish to introduce jihad and other Islamic ideas into the United States.
Trump’s proposal for a ‘commission’ that would identify for Americans the tenets of ‘radical Islam’ crosses the line into government interference in religious beliefs. Will a Trump administration entangle itself in interpretation of [Islamic] religious principles? Who will Trump appoint to decide what constitutes ‘radical Islam’? His current stable of Islamophobic [sic] advisers indicates that this commission would be packed with anti-Muslim bigots.
This government promotion of a state version of a particular religion would violate the First Amendment and put America on a path to a society in which those in power get to choose which beliefs are ‘correct’ and which are ‘incorrect.’
CAIR is so closely entwined with Islamists and with jihadis that court documents and news reports show that at least five of its people — either board members, employees or former employees — have been jailed or repatriated for various financial and terror-relatedoffenses.
Breitbart News has published evidence highlighted by critics showing that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas-based criminal effort to deliver $12 million to the Jew-hating HAMAS jihad group, was founded with $490,000 from HAMAS, and that the FBI bans top-level meetings with CAIR officials. “The FBI policy restricting a formal relationship with CAIR remains … [but] does not preclude communication regarding investigative activity or allegations of civil rights violations,” said an Oct. 2015 email from FBI spokesman Christopher Allen.
In 2009, a federal judge concluded that “the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR… with Hamas.”
The United Arab Emirates has included CAIR on its list of Muslim Brotherhood groups. CAIR has posted its defense here.
Trump’s call for a better understanding of Islam is part of his plan to reorient U.S. foreign policy to crush and delegitimize political Islam.
That is why one of my first acts as President will be to establish a Commission on Radical Islam – which will include reformist voices in the Muslim community who will hopefully work with us. We want to build bridges and erase divisions.
The goal of the commission will be to identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of Radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalization, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalization.
This commission will be used to develop new protocols for local police officers, federal investigators, and immigration screeners…. Finally, we will pursue aggressive criminal or immigration charges against anyone who lends material support to terrorism. Similar to the effort to take down the mafia, this will be the understood mission of every federal investigator and prosecutor in the country.
To accomplish a goal, you must state a mission: the support networks for Radical Islam in this country will be stripped out and removed one by one.
Immigration officers will also have their powers restored: those who are guests in our country that are preaching hate will be asked to return home
…. But just like we couldn’t defeat communism without acknowledging that communism exists – or explaining its evils – we can’t defeat Radical Islamic Terrorism unless we do the same.
This also means we have to promote the exceptional virtues of our own way of life – and expecting that newcomers to our society do the same.
Pride in our institutions, our history and our values should be taught by parents and teachers, and impressed upon all who join our society. Assimilation is not an act of hostility, but an expression of compassion.
Our system of government, and our American culture, is the best in the world and will produce the best outcomes for all who adopt it.
This approach will not only make us safer, but bring us closer together as a country. Renewing this spirit of Americanism will help heal the divisions in our country. It will do so by emphasizing what we have in common – not what pulls us apart.
Jihad is part of orthodox Islam, which also opposes the separation of religious law and the state. That makes it very different from Christianity, which theologically postpones the enforcement of religious law into the afterlife and so can theologically co-exist with secular governments, such as the United States government.
Islam’s twinning of jihad with religious piety explains the relative frequency of bloody jihad violence throughout the Muslim world, especially when inflicted on non-Muslims in the United States, Paris, Germany snd many other countries.
Also, Islam’s focus on Earthly rule, says critics, means that it is a hybrid idea that combines religion (which gets the protection of the First Amendment) with a violent political movement that can be constitutionally suppressed.
For example, Islam’s politicized ‘sharia law’ endorses the murder of Islam’s critics and of ex-Muslims — repeatedly, endlessly, forcefully — and its recommendations are deemed divine commandments by numerous killers and would-be killers.
Also, the Koran — which observant Muslims say is a list of verbatim commands from their deity, Allah — tells Muslims to “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah [penalty tax] willingly while they are humbled.”
Islamic scriptures say that Islam’s reputed founder, Muhammad, personally ordered or supported the death of many enemies, including at 10 critics and poets, who were the pre-modern equivalent of modern journalist and writers — such as the machine-gunned cartoonists at the Paris-based Charlie Hebdo magazine. Traditionalist or orthodox Muslims says Muhammad is a perfect model of behavior and should be emulated by Muslims today.
In contrast, some Western Muslims are trying to develop a modern, pacific Islam that emphasizes the long-discarded early and relatively peaceful commandments in Islam.
With some weeks now past since the event, the Brexit doom and gloom-mongers have taken a well deserved break from conjuring up the imminent demise of the U.K., the EU, and perhaps the world itself. This may be an appropriate opportunity to consider whether or not there might be an even better candidate for such end-of-times prognostications: Germany.
On the face of it, this is surely preposterous. Europe’s largest economy, its most stable government, and the main if not only pillar of the EU and the euro is hardly a destabilizing factor, most would agree. Germany may indeed be all of that, but only in comparison to the rest of the EU, which has been stagnating economically for a decade and is beset by major political instability and terrorism. Since 2007, German labor productivity growth has been close to zero, while GDP growth has averaged a miserable 0.8% per annum, even as Germany’s largest company, Volkswagen, is being prosecuted around the world for cheating, while its very symbol of stability, Deutsche Bank, has been called by the IMF “the biggest contributor to risk in global finance.”
Serious as these are, much more disturbing are unmistakable trends that Germany may be going in directions hardly congenial to European and Western policies vis-à-vis Russia. A case in point is the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, designed to bring up to 80% of the Russian gas supply to Europe while bypassing Ukraine and Eastern Europe. A blatantly political ploy by Mr. Putin and Gazprom, it will guarantee that Moscow can blackmail Eastern Europe at will. Despite that, the project enjoys support not only among companies likely to profit from Nord Stream 2, but also by significant parts of the German establishment, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, who quite disingenuously claims that it is just a commercial project.
To understand why this is now possible in Germany, one must note the rapid growth of pro-Russian, anti-Western, and anti-American sentiments in all segments of German society of late. These attitudes often run counter to the official policies of the Merkel government, which may actually make them even more significant. Mrs. Merkel, for instance, is known as a key supporter and architect of the sanctions regime against Russia following its aggression against Ukraine, yet her government coalition partner, the social-democratic party (SPD), argues ever more forcefully that the sanctions should be lifted or, at the very least, made less onerous. This not only undermines the authority of the Berlin government, but also makes the continuation of the sanctions when they expire at the end of the year unlikely. This will please Germany’s export community, but only at the cost of outraging its partners in Eastern Europe.
Even more striking is the emerging anti-Western consensus among radical parties at both extremes of the political spectrum. The former communist party of East Germany now repackaged as “Die Linke” and the right-wing, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) share essentially identical anti-Western and anti-American platforms that call for disbanding NATO and a new security alliance with Russia. These parties may be extreme, but they are not without influence. Die Linke is currently in power in one German state (Thuringia), while the AfD is supported by 12% of German voters according to the latest polls.
NATO is being undermined from yet another side, and that is the renewed EU discussions of the ostensible need for a European army independent of NATO. Both European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and French president François Hollande have publicly supported the idea, and so have German officials, who cite the limited German-Dutch armed forces integration as a model. The idea is, of course, complete nonsense if for no other reason than because no EU country is even contemplating, let alone seriously considering the massive amounts of money that would have to be spent to bring this about. It is nonetheless a dangerous bit of nonsense, since nothing will deny NATO’s very raison d’être, and with it American commitment to the defense of Europe, faster than a standing European army outside the alliance command structures.
Finally, the most destabilizing German policy by far continues to be immigration policy. Despite signs that it is an abject failure, Mrs. Merkel insists on continuing on the same course, leading to even greater conflict with Eastern Europe and others (Brexit) that reject it wholesale. Poland has already announced that it will refuse to take any migrants, while Czech president Milos Zeman, a socialist, has called for a referendum on EU membership and even urged the Czechs to arm themselves for self-defense.
Merkel government officials have already proclaimed their migrant policies to be a success, but such claims should be taken with a large chunk of salt. Here are the available statistics. In 2015, 1.1 million migrants came to Germany after Merkel essentially invited them in on Sept. 4, 2015. Of those, 476,649 applied for political asylum. The rest neither applied nor left the country, and their whereabouts are not known. According to Eurostat, in the first quarter of 2016, 287,100 migrants, or nearly 100,000 more than in 2015 applied for asylum in the EU, which would mean that even if migrants to Germany have fallen off from the 2015 pace, the EU as a whole will get more than 1 million by the end of the year, and a similar number is expected in 2017.
More important than the sheer numbers is what this massive influx means for society. Even though German authorities try to suppress such information, there is overwhelming evidence that rape and sexual assault by migrants has reached epidemic proportions in all 16 federal states, as documented in this report by the Gatestone Institute. More troubling still is evidence that large numbers of terrorists and jihadists have used the migrant wave to organize “hit squads” in Germany. According to Bavarian intelligence official Manfred Hauser, “irrefutable evidence exists that there is an IS [Islamic State] command structure in place.”
What all of this means for German and European security should not be difficult to foresee. German officials openly acknowledge that the police cannot handle this massive threat and are now openly discussing setting in place a 400,000-strong “national guard” type of organization. Before they do that, it might be useful to first consider changing Mrs. Merkel’s failed policies.
Despite evidence Saudi Arabian terrorists exploit the U.S. visa program, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton doubled the number of visas for Saudi visitors to the U.S., while helping cut a deal with the Kingdom to waive security procedures for Saudi nationals upon their arrival in the U.S, CounterJihad has learned.
The annual number of nonimmigrant visas issued to Saudi nationals soared 93% during Clinton’s tenure as secretary from 2009 to 2013, federal data show, hitting a record 108,578 in fiscal 2013 and reversing a post-9/11 pause in Saudi visa approvals.
Before leaving office, Clinton helped negotiate a little-noticed January 2013 administration deal with Riyadh to allow Saudi visa-holders to enter the U.S. as “trusted travelers” and bypass the normal border security process. The next year, the State Department issued an all-time-high 142,180 Saudi visas, consular data show.
All told, the Obama administration has opened the floodgates to more than 709,000 Saudi nationals, most of whom applied for student or business visas, records show. It’s as if 9/11 never happened and 15 Saudi terrorists never infiltrated the country on rubber-stamped visas. The surge represents a major shift from changes in immigration policy made in the wake of 9/11, when the number of visas issued to Saudi Arabians plummeted 69.7%. In fiscal 2002, Saudi visas slowed to a relative trickle of just 14,126.
Saudi immigration was tightened after it was revealed that the State Department’s Visa Express program benefited some of the Saudi hijackers on 9/11. Less known is that two other al-Qaida-tied Saudi nationals visiting America on student visas also took advantage of the lax policy. It turns out these other young Saudi men made a “dry run” to test airline security ahead of the 9/11 hijackings.
According to the recently declassified 29 pages of the congressional joint inquiry report on 9/11, Mohammed al-Qudhaeein and Hamdan al-Shalawi, both Saudi students living in the Phoenix area, tried several times to gain access to the cockpit of an America West flight while traveling to Washington to attend a party at the Saudi Embassy in 1999. Their airline tickets were paid for by the Saudi government, the documents reveal.
The FBI suspected al-Qudhaeein was a Saudi intelligence agent bankrolled by the Saudi Embassy, and agents subsequently received information that al-Shalawi trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and operated in the same circle with the Saudi hijacker who flew the plane into the Pentagon.
Coming into office in 2009, Clinton issued a cable warning diplomats that Saudi Arabia was still sponsoring al-Qaida terrorist operations.
“More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida,” states a Wikileaked secret December 2009 memo signed by the then-secretary of state. Her memo urged U.S. diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Saudi money reaching terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” Clinton said.
Nonimmigrant Visa Issuances, Saudi Arabia, FY1997-2014
In spite of her own warnings about continued Saudi-sponsored terrorism, however, she and President Obama quietly struck a deal to fast-track more Saudi students for U.S. entry during a series of high-level meetings in January 2013 with the Saudi interior minister, who had complained about delays in the security screening process and lobbied for more student visas.
Clinton, whose family foundation has received tens of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabian donors, can be seen here meeting at her State Department office with Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz on the same day — Jan. 16, 2013 — that Prince Mohammed signed an agreement to join America’s trusted traveler program known as Global Entry.
As a member of the trusted traveler program, the U.S. now trusts Saudi Arabians as much as it does Canadians, who as longtime program members are considered low-risk travelers and pre-approved for entry, and more so than Germans or French, who aren’t included in the program. Thanks to the Obama administration, Saudi visitors now enjoy expedited security clearance. They bypass the normal Customs screening and proceed toGlobal Entry kiosks, where they receive a transaction receipt that directs them to baggage claim and exit.
In other words, Saudi visitors now go to the front of the line and skip normal Homeland Security inspections. And federal authorities now share background checking and other pre-screening duties with the Saudis.
The trusted traveler program kicks the door open to thousands of young Saudi men who will be able to stay legally in the U.S. for five years on student and vocational visas. And they won’t be monitored while they’re here. The feds stopped tracking their stays here several years ago after the Saudi embassy, along with the terrorist front group Council on American-Islamic Relations, protested to the White House and State Department.
That means terrorists among the new Saudi entrants can enter the U.S. and continue to test flight security or plot attacks while pretending to go to college. Authorities now have no idea if a Saudi national entering on a student visa actually reported to campus.
“Why would we trust them?” 9/11 survivor Sharon Premoli demanded in an interview with the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Indeed, several Saudi visa-holders have been busted plotting terrorism or testing airline security in recent years. For example:
In 2013, a young Saudi immigrant living in Oregon on an expired visa was arrested for conducting a suspected dry run during a Continental Airlines flight bound for Houston. He screamed “Allah Akbar” while trying to light something in the plane’s cabin.
In 2011, a Saudi student was arrested on charges of plotting to bomb the Texas home of former President George W. Bush.
The Saudis can also use their vocational visas to enroll in U.S. flight schools as the hijackers did.
A recent study by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies found that three of the five top M-1 approved schools in the U.S. are flight schools. It also found that thousands of Saudis have arrived here on M-1 visas since Clinton loosened visa restrictions for travelers from the Kingdom.
Authorities are having a hard enough time dealing with all the homegrown terrorists cropping up. The FBI has more than 1,000 terrorism cases open on ISIS suspects in all 50 states. Agents don’t need new waves of young Muslim men from Saudi Arabia to worry about tracking, as well.
By dumping potentially thousands more Saudi extremists into the homeland security system, the administration is worsening the odds that law enforcement can catch terrorists before they strike.
♦ 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.
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.
The terrorist groups, which claim to be Islamic but whose actions are anything but, have been committing heinous crimes not only against non-Muslims, but mostly against Muslims in the region.
*********************
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Hossein Salami said certain Western countries are behind a plot to prevent the spread of Islam in the West by giving rise to Takfiri terrorist groups.
After the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Islam began to spread quickly in the West, Brigadier General Salami said in a speech in the western province of Lorestan on Saturday.
He added that nearly 50,000 Britons embraced Islam every year and the number of mosques in Europe rose “from a handful to thousands” during the early years after the revolution.
“The emergence of Takfiris was the West’s scenario to destroy Islam’s attractions, create hatred and stop spread of the religion in the West,” the commander said.
He further deplored the terrorist acts of Takfiri groups committed in the name of Islam, saying that Islam is a completely humane school of thought and regards killing one innocent human being as “killing the entire humanity”.
In recent years, the Middle East region has been plagued with Takfiri terrorist groups like Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), which are believed to have been created and supported by the West and some regional Arab countries.
The terrorist groups, which claim to be Islamic but whose actions are anything but, have been committing heinous crimes not only against non-Muslims, but mostly against Muslims in the region.
(How about pamphlets showing that Islamic terrorism causes global warming? And free ham sandwiches? — DM)
No matter how much money they pour into it, this program will fail on the drawing board until the State Department drops its willful ignorance about the ideology that fuels and motivates the jihad.
****************
Even in its final months, the Obama administration continues to pour taxpayer money into its disastrous projects designed to “counter violent extremism.” The projects have failed, and were foredoomed to fail because of the administration’s policy of denying and ignoring the enemy’s motivating ideology.
The New York Times reported Thursday:
[T]he Obama administration has revamped a program designed to lure foreign fighters away from extremist groups like the Islamic State, focusing on a series of new advertisements and social media posts that seek to appeal to emotion rather than logic.
Emotion, logic, whatever. No such approach can work as long as the administration refuses to admit what inspires Muslims to join jihad groups in the first place.
This latest bout of wishful thinking and fantasy-based policymaking comes at a high cost to the taxpayer:
Money for the program, which is managed by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, tripled this year, to $16 million, after administration officials concluded that past efforts that had attempted to scare potential militants away from the extremist groups were not working.
At least the government correctly concluded that, indeed, the programs were not working:
[M]ultiple reboots have shown how hard it has been for these programs to find traction. … [R]ecent attacks in Turkey, Iraq, France and Bangladesh seemed to show extremism has been spreading.
But this time, the Times assures us, it’s going to be different:
The new initiatives have been tailored to keep the United States government’s involvement as low-key — and in some cases, as secretive — as possible, because overt American backing for some projects had turned off the exact group of disaffected young men that the campaign is trying to reach.
So the State Department finally realized that Muslims who hate America will not be dissuaded via appeals from … America?
Baby steps! Still — not going to work. The Times reports:
“[T]hese new efforts include using Facebook videos, Instagram ads and other social media that have been designed to convince young men and women that joining the militants’ fight means breaking their mothers’ hearts, tearing apart their families and leaving their loved ones to lives of emptiness.”
So the latest plan from the Obama administration rests on this assumption: A young man who thinks he is serving Allah in a cause commanded by the supreme being — and who thinks that being killed will secure a place in Paradise for himself and (in accord with statements attributed to Muhammad) for his family — will be dissuaded by realizing his mother might miss him.
The State Department is forbidden, as a matter of policy, from studying or understanding the jihadi worldview. They instead operate under the assumption that Muslims aspiring to jihad have the same basic values and priorities of modern secular Westerners. This assumption is, at best, unproven.
This Keystone Kops myopia is longstanding. The Times writes:
[P]ast efforts from the administration had sought to frighten potential jihadists with warnings that waging war against the West would get them killed, but officials concluded that the warnings actually served the opposite purpose of glorifying militancy.
The willful blindness necessary to believe that jihadis — who repeatedly avow that they “love death” — could be dissuaded from jihad in any significant numbers by fear of death is breathtaking. It epitomizes how wrongheaded the administration’s approach has been from the beginning.
Even the Times acknowledges this about the initiative, while citing unnamed “critics”:
[The initiative] was unlikely to have done anything to dissuade young people from joining either Al Qaeda or the Islamic State.
However, while the New York Times admits that the administration’s program to dissuade jihadis has thus far been completely ineffective, it has no idea why.
In reality, all possible versions of this program are doomed to failure because they manifest no understanding whatsoever of the jihadis’ worldview, beliefs, assumptions, motives, and goals. None of this is surprising, since the Obama administration has forbidden the examination and discussion of all of that.
Take, for example, one image that the State Department published on Twitter. It says:
Women under ISIS are enslaved, battered, beaten, humiliated, flogged.
Obviously this would deter someone from becoming a jihadi only if he already thought it was terrible for women to be enslaved, battered, beaten, humiliated, and flogged.
The State Department wonks who came up with this weren’t allowed to learn from the Qur’an. So they obviously don’t know that the Qur’an mandates the enslavement of infidel women(4:3; 4:24; 23:1-6; 33:50; 70:30) and the beating of disobedient women (4:34).
A Muslim who knows that is unlikely to be troubled by the prospect of the Islamic State beating or enslaving women.
The Times adds:
On Sept. 11, 2014, for example, an Al Qaeda leader posted on Twitter that ‘on this day, in 2001, the USA’s largest economic shrine, the idol of capitalism was brought to the ground.’ The State Department quickly responded on Twitter by posting a photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader, wearing a Rolex watch: “Nobody’s a bigger fan of the fruits of capitalism than so-called #ISIS Caliph.”
This, too, was myopic: from an Islamic standpoint, the Rolex was not a sign of hypocrisy, since Islam does not have the reverence for asceticism that Christianity has. Rather, it was a sign that Allah had blessed the caliph, since blessings are promised to the pious in both this world and the next – and those blessings specifically include the spoils of war against non-Muslims.
The caliph could have been signaling to his followers: “Kill an infidel, take his Rolex.”
No matter how much money they pour into it, this program will fail on the drawing board until the State Department drops its willful ignorance about the ideology that fuels and motivates the jihad.
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