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4-Star Admiral Slams Obama: Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrated All Of Our National Security Agencies

February 11, 2015

4-Star Admiral Slams Obama: Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrated All Of Our National Security Agencies, You Tube, January 28, 2015

During a press conference on how to combat radical Islamic extremism, Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons (U.S. Navy, Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated that under the leadership of Barack Obama the Muslim Brotherhood have infiltrated all of the National Security Agencies of the United States. Furthermore, Lyons said that Obama is deliberately unilaterally disarming the military and spoke to the need for the new GOP controlled congress and Military leaders to stand up to the administration and uphold their oaths.

 

 

Categories: Caliphate, Department of Defense, Egypt, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, International Community, Iran, Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama administration, Sisi, U.S. Congress, US national security agencies
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The Plight of the Yazidis

February 7, 2015

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

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

Yazidis-450x331

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Freedom, Heresy, Human rights, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Obama, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists, Torture, Yazidis
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Obama: Christianity No Different From the Islamic State

February 7, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign policy, Freedom, History, Hostages, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Moral equivalence, Obama, Terrorism, Torture
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ISIS Purifies Islam Through Fire

February 4, 2015

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

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

Islamic purification

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Freedom, Honor killings, Hostages, Human rights, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jordanian pilot, Obama, P5+1, Purification by fire, Terrorism, Torture
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Are Liberals Actually Admitting Islamic Terrorists Exist?!?

January 30, 2015

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

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

Categories: Caliphate, Executions, Foreign policy, Freedom, Iraq, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Media, Mosul, Obama, Sharia law, Syria, Torture
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Andrew Klavan: Attack of the But-Heads!

January 29, 2015

Andrew Klavan: Attack of the But-Heads! Truth Revolt via You Tube, January 29, 2015

 

Categories: Andrew Klavan, Christians, Foreign policy, Free world, Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Terrorism
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How to lose friends and empower radicals: the peace prize president’s more dangerous world

January 29, 2015

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

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

obama-binoculars-AP-640x480AP Photo/Susan Walsh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Caliphate, Europe, European Union, Foreign policy, Free world, Freedom, Human rights, International Community, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic State, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sisi, Turkey
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The Imaginary Islamic Radical

January 28, 2015

The Imaginary Islamic Radical, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, January 28,2015

(Ask Secretary Kerry.

Please see also Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department. — DM)

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Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.

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The debate over Islamic terrorism has shifted so far from reality that it has now become an argument between the administration, which insists that there is nothing Islamic about ISIS, and critics who contend that a minority of Islamic extremists are the ones causing all the problems.

But what makes an Islamic radical, extremist? Where is the line between ordinary Muslim practice and its extremist dark side?

It can’t be beheading people in public.

Saudi Arabia just did that and was praised for its progressiveness by the UN Secretary General, had flags flown at half-staff in the honor of its deceased tyrant in the UK and that same tyrant was honored by Obama, in preference to such minor events as the Paris Unity March and the Auschwitz commemoration.

It can’t be terrorism either. Not when the US funds the PLO and three successive administrations invested massive amounts of political capital into turning the terrorist group into a state. While the US and the EU fund the Palestinian Authority’s homicidal kleptocracy; its media urges stabbing Jews.

Clearly that’s not Islamic extremism either. At least it’s not too extreme for Obama.

If blowing up civilians in Allah’s name isn’t extreme, what do our radicals have to do to get really radical?

Sex slavery? The Saudis only abolished it in 1962; officially. Unofficially it continues. Every few years a Saudi bigwig gets busted for it abroad. The third in line for the Saudi throne was the son of a “slave girl”.

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? The “moderate” Islamists we backed in Syria, Libya and Egypt have been busy doing it with the weapons and support that we gave them. So that can’t be extreme either.

If terrorism, ethnic cleansing, sex slavery and beheading are just the behavior of moderate Muslims, what does a Jihadist have to do to be officially extreme? What is it that makes ISIS extreme?

Our government’s definition of moderate often hinges on a willingness to negotiate regardless of the results. The moderate Taliban were the ones willing to talk us. They just weren’t willing to make a deal. Iran’s new government is moderate because it engages in aimless negotiations while pushing its nuclear program forward and issuing violent threats, instead of just pushing and threatening without the negotiations. Nothing has come of the negotiations, but the very willingness to negotiate is moderate.

The Saudis would talk to us all day long while they continued sponsoring terrorists and setting up terror mosques in the West. That made them moderates. Qatar keeps talking to us while arming terrorists and propping up the Muslim Brotherhood. So they too are moderate. The Muslim Brotherhood talked to us even while its thugs burned churches, tortured protesters and worked with terrorist groups in the Sinai.

A radical terrorist will kill you. A moderate terrorist will talk to you and then kill someone else. And you’ll ignore it because the conversation is a sign that they’re willing to pretend to be reasonable.

From a Muslim perspective, ISIS is radical because it declared a Caliphate and is casual about declaring other Muslims infidels. That’s a serious issue for Muslims and when we distinguish between radicals and moderates based not on their treatment of people, but their treatment of Muslims, we define radicalism from the perspective of Islamic supremacism, rather than our own American values.

The position that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and Al Qaeda is extreme because the Brotherhood kills Christians and Jews while Al Qaeda kills Muslims is Islamic Supremacism. The idea of the moderate Muslim places the lives of Muslims over those of every other human being on earth.

Our Countering Violent Extremism program emphasizes the centrality of Islamic legal authority as the best means of fighting Islamic terrorists. Our ideological warfare slams terrorists for not accepting the proper Islamic chain of command. Our solution to Islamic terrorism is a call for Sharia submission.

That’s not an American position. It’s an Islamic position and it puts us in the strange position of arguing Islamic legalism with Islamic terrorists. Our politicians, generals and cops insist that the Islamic terrorists we’re dealing with know nothing about Islam because that is what their Saudi liaisons told them to say.

It’s as if we were fighting Marxist terrorist groups by reproving them for not accepting the authority of the USSR or the Fourth International. It’s not only stupid of us to nitpick another ideology’s fine points, especially when our leaders don’t know what they’re talking about, but our path to victory involves uniting our enemies behind one central theocracy. That’s even worse than arming and training them, which we’re also doing (but only for the moderate genocidal terrorists, not the extremists).

Secretary of State Kerry insists that ISIS are nihilists and anarchists. Nihilism is the exact opposite of the highly structured Islamic system of the Caliphate. It might be a more accurate description of Kerry. But the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood successfully sold the Western security establishment on the idea that the only way to defeat Islamic terrorism was by denying any Islamic links to its actions.

This was like an arsonist convincing the fire department that the best way to fight fires was to pretend that they happened randomly on their own through spontaneous combustion.

Victory through denial demands that we pretend that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. It’s a wholly irrational position, but the alternative of a tiny minority of extremists is nearly as irrational.

If ISIS is extreme and Islam is moderate, what did ISIS do that Mohammed did not?

The answers usually have a whole lot to do with the internal structures of Islam and very little to do with such pragmatic things as not raping women or not killing non-Muslims.

Early on we decided to take sides between Islamic tyrants and Islamic terrorists, deeming the former moderate and the latter extremists. But the tyrants were backing their own terrorists. And when it came to human rights and their view of us, there wasn’t all that much of a difference between the two.

It made sense for us to put down Islamic terrorists because they often represented a more direct threat, but allowing the Islamic tyrants to convince us that they and the terrorists followed two different brands of Islam and that the only solution to Islamic terrorism lay in their theocracy was foolish of us.

We can’t win the War on Terror through their theocracy. That way lies a real Caliphate.

Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.

Our enemy is not radicalism, but a hostile civilization bearing grudges and ambitions.

We aren’t fighting nihilists or radicals. We are at war with the inheritors of an old empire seeking to reestablish its supremacy not only in the hinterlands of the east, but in the megalopolises of the west.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Caliphate, Charlie Hedbo, Cognitive dissonance, Foreign policy, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Human rights, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Kerry, Koran, Middle East, Moderate rebels, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sharia law, Terrorism, Turkey
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What Bobby Jindal Gets about Islam — and Most People Still Don’t

January 24, 2015

What Bobby Jindal Gets about Islam — and Most People Still Don’t, National Review on line, Andrew C. McCarthy, January 24, 2015

(This is the best post I have read thus far on “no go zones” and their significance to civilized societies. — DM)

With Western Europe still reeling from the jihadist mass-murders in Paris at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Kacher Jewish market, Governor Jindal outlined a bold, Reaganesque vision of American foreign policy guided by three imperatives — freedom, security, and truth. It is on the last one, truth, that our capacity to ensure freedom and security hinges. “You cannot remedy a problem,” Jindal explained, “if you will not name it and define it.”

The world’s most influential Islamic supremacists have told us in no uncertain terms that they see Muslim immigration in the West as part of a conquest strategy.

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Footballs are deflating, the president is detached from reality, the Saudi king is deceased, and the sharia state next door, Yemen, is descending into bloody chaos. With mere anarchy loosed upon the world, it would be easy to miss the fact that, in England this week, Bobby Jindal gave as important and compelling a speech as has been delivered in years about America — our leadership role on the world stage, our preservation as a beacon of liberty.

In the birthplace of the Magna Carta, it has nonetheless become legally risky to speak with candor (even when quoting Churchill). Yet Louisiana’s Republican governor became that rarest of modern Anglo or American statesmen. Bobby Jindal told the truth about Islam, specifically about its large radical subset that attacks the West by violent jihad from without and sharia-supremacist subversion from within.

With Western Europe still reeling from the jihadist mass-murders in Paris at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Kacher Jewish market, Governor Jindal outlined a bold, Reaganesque vision of American foreign policy guided by three imperatives — freedom, security, and truth. It is on the last one, truth, that our capacity to ensure freedom and security hinges. “You cannot remedy a problem,” Jindal explained, “if you will not name it and define it.”

And so he did: Our immediate security problem today “is ISIS and all forms of radical Islam.” That is, the challenge is not limited to violent jihadists who commit barbaric atrocities. Jindal elaborated: “In the West, non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home.”

The campaign to implement and spread sharia is antithetical to Western liberty. Freedom, Jindal said, means “the ability to conduct commerce both inside and outside your borders; it means the right to speak freely, to publish any cartoons you want. It means the right to worship freely. It means the right to self-determination.” By contrast, “radical Islamists do not believe in freedom or common decency, nor are they willing to accommodate them in any way and anywhere.” Moreover, the version of sharia law to which they adhere

is not just different than our law, it’s not just a cultural difference, it is oppression and it is wrong. It subjugates women and treats them as property, and it is antithetical to valuing all of human life equally. It is the very definition of oppression. We must stop pretending otherwise.

It cannot credibly be denied that this is so, as I have documented — using not only notorious examples of how sharia is applied in countries like Saudi Arabia (where it is the law of the land), but also Reliance of the Traveller, a classic sharia manual certified as accurate by prominent Islamic scholars, including at both al-AzharUniversity (the seat of Sunni jurisprudence since the tenth century) and at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (an influential Muslim Brotherhood think tank).

Still, Governor Jindal has been pilloried since his courageous speech by tendentious critics across the spectrum, from the usual Islamist grievance chorus to Fox News commentators and British prime minister David Cameron.

Why? Because he dared notice what ought to be an inarguable fact: The non-assimilationist Muslim campaign has resulted in the rise throughout Western Europe of what Jindal described as “unofficial” “so-called” “no-go zones.”

Jindal was clearly right about this. His timing, however, was wrong: He had the misfortune to dilate on “no-go zones” at the same time that Steven Emerson, the usually astute terrorism analyst, made a no-go gaffe. Steve erroneously claimed that the entire British city of Birmingham is “totally Muslim” and has become a “no-go zone” where “non-Muslims simply don’t go in.”

Emerson has since apologized profusely. The damage, however, was done. Fox News is evidently so embarrassed at having been the forum for his faux pas (and at having been threatened with legal action by the city of Paris, which was the main target of Steve’s commentary), that the network is over-correcting. This helps stoke the Islamist meme that no-go zones are a hysterical figment of the “Islamophobic” imagination.

That is absurd, but follows naturally from two things: a common misunderstanding about sharia, and a misrepresentation that describing the incontestable fact that sharia is being applied de facto in Europe is the same as falsely claiming that sharia is now the de jure writ of Europe.

Dreamy Islamophiles like Mr. Cameron and many of his like-minded progressives in bipartisan Beltway circles have a sputtering snit anytime a commentator associates Islam with anything other than “peace.” Consequently, the doctrine of Islam (which actually means submission) remains taboo and poorly understood in the West. One major misconception is that Islamists (i.e., Islamic supremacists or Muslims who want sharia implemented) demand that all non-Muslims convert to Islam. A no-go zone is thus incorrectly assumed by many to be a place that Muslims forbid non-Muslims to enter.

In reality, sharia explicitly invites the presence of non-Muslims provided that they submit to the authority of Islamic rule. Indeed historically, as I related in The Grand Jihad, my book about the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist ideology, because sharia calls on these submissive non-Muslims (dhimmis) to pay a poll tax (jizya), their continued presence was of economic importance in lands conquered by Islamic rulers.

It is therefore easy for Islamists and their apologists to knock down their strawman depiction of no-go zones as places where non-Muslims are not allowed. That is not what no-go zones are — neither as they exist in fact nor as they are contemplated by sharia. The point of imposing sharia — the reason it is the necessary precondition for building an Islamic society — is to make Islam the dominant social system, not the exclusive faith. The idea is that once sharia’s systematic discrimination against non-Muslims is in place, non-Muslims will see the good sense of becoming Muslims. Over time, every one will convert “without coercion.” The game is to set up an extortionate incentive for conversion while maintaining the smiley-face assurance that no one is being forced to convert at the point of a sword.

So radical Muslims will be welcoming to any ordinary non-Muslims who are willing to defer to their mores. What they are hostile to are officials of the host state: police, firefighters, building inspectors, emergency medical personnel, and anything associated with the armed forces. That is because the presence of those forces symbolizes the authority — the non-submission — of the state.

Notice, however, that no sensible person is saying that state authorities are prohibited from entering no-go zones as a matter of law. The point is that they are severely discouraged from entering as a matter of fact — and the degree of discouragement varies directly with the density of the Muslim population and its radical component. Ditto for non-Muslim lay people: It is not that they are not permitted to enter these enclaves; it is that they avoid entering because doing so is dangerous if they are flaunting Western modes of dress and conduct.

There is a reason that Governor Jindal qualified his invocation of the term no-go zones, modifying it with “so-called” and noting that the term is used “unofficially.” His speech was about reality, particularly where it stressed the need for truthfulness in forming policy. If our premise is reality, it is not no-go zones that are imaginary; it is the suggestion that no-go zones do not exist simply because non-Muslim entry is not literally prohibited by law. As the Gatestone Institute’s Soeren Kern painstakingly demonstrates, “Muslim no-go zones are a well-known fact of life in many parts of Europe.” It has been amply acknowledged not only in press reports and academic analyses but by governments that must deal with them.

Have a look, for example, at the French government’s official listing of 750 Zones Urbaines Sensibiles­ — “sensitive urban zones.” France’s “ZUS” designation is significant. As the estimable scholar Daniel Pipes recounted in a column at NRO this week, when he coined the term “no-go zone” in 2006 it was intended as “a non-euphemistic equivalent” of ZUS. If that is how the term “no-go zone” is understood — as an enclave deferential to Islamic sensibilities rather than exclusionary of non-Muslims — the contention that no-go zones do not exist is plainly frivolous. This is so even if, as Pipes maintains, the term “no-go zone” itself was an overstatement. The term “semi-autonomous sectors,” he says, would more accurately convey the historical anomaly the West has created: “a majority population [that] accepts the customs and even the criminality or a poorer and weaker community,” and in a manner that involves far more than control over physical territory.

Nevertheless, the problem with all this semantic nattering is its intimation that we can only infer the existence of no-go zones, and of the Islamist subversion they signal, by drawing inferences from what we see happening on the ground.

Nonsense. The world’s most influential Islamic supremacists have told us in no uncertain terms that they see Muslim immigration in the West as part of a conquest strategy.

As I recounted in The Grand Jihad, the strategy is often referred to as “voluntary apartheid.” One of its leading advocates is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood icon who is probably the world’s most revered sharia jurist. SheikhQaradawi, who vows that Islam will conquer America and Europe, and who has been crystal clear on the incompatibility of sharia and Western democracy, elaborates:

Were we to convince Western leaders and decision-makers of our right to live according to our faith — ideologically, legislatively, and ethically — without imposing our views or inflicting harm upon them, we would have traversed an immense barrier in our quest for an Islamic state.

Translation: To establish Islamic domination in the West, we do not need to resort to terrorism or to force non-Muslims to convert; we need merely a recognized right to resist assimilation, to regard sharia as superseding Western law and custom when the two conflict, as they do in fundamental ways.

This is precisely why the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — the bloc of 56 Muslim countries (plus the Palestinian Authority) — warned in a 2010 report on “Islamophobia” that “Muslims should not be marginalized or attempted to be assimilated, but should be accommodated.” (Here, at p. 30.) It is why Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist president of Turkey who has systematically dismantled that country’s secular, pro-Western system, pronounces that pressuring Muslims to assimilate “is a crime against humanity.”

At Oxford, Bobby Jindal bluntly asserted that the ideology of our enemy, radical Islam,

holds the view that it is wrong to expect assimilation, that assimilation is colonialist, assimilation is backward, and assimilation is in fact evidence of cultural bigotry and insensitivity. They think it is wrong to expect that people who chose to immigrate to your country should be expected to endorse and abide by your laws. They think it is unenlightened, discriminatory, and even racist to expect immigrants to endorse and assimilate into the culture in their new country. This is complete rubbish.

That is the truth. The United States will not get national-security policy right, nor reestablish our credentials as leader of the free world, until we accept that truth. Accept it and resolve, as Governor Jindal has resolved, to tell it boldly.

Categories: Bobby Jindal, Caliphate, Europe, Foreign policy, France, Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, No go zones, Obama, Political correctness, Sharia law
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“Unity”? About What Exactly?

January 22, 2015

“Unity”? About What Exactly? The Gatestone Institute, Jeremy Havardi, January 22, 2015

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia tried to fool the world by joining France’s “Unity March” for free speech just two days after a young Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi, received the first installment of 50 lashes — out of the 1000 he is to get — “very severely,” the lashing order says. Badawi still has 950 lashes to complete.

Mahmoud Abbas, whose genocidal, jihadi partner, Hamas, was just declared not a terrorist group by the European Union, joined the forefront of the “Unity March” at the same time as a Palestinian human rights groups published a report accusing the Palestinian Authority of “waging war” against university students in the West Bank.

What “Islamophobia” motivated the killing of Jewish customers in a kosher supermarket? What had those victims done to deserve that?

We may like to imagine that this is not Islam, and that the faith promotes peace and nothing else. But the murderers say it is Islam, and they act accordingly.

Much of the media has offered up a context for these killings that is false.

The real story is that despite a few sporadic incidents, there has been no backlash against the Muslim community.

The recent rally for free speech and against the terrorism in Paris initially appeared to have generated a surge of defiance and resolve, not just in France but around the world. People were actually talking about a turning point in the battle against terrorism and radical Islam.

If only it were true.

The reality is that much of the political class and media remain in denial about the events in Paris.

Ban Ki Moon explained that the tragic events had nothing to do with religion. Signing a condolence book for the victims of the attacks, he said: “This is not a country, a war against religion or between religions… This is a purely unacceptable terrorist attack – criminality.”

France’s President François Hollande said that the Charlie Hebdo fanatics had “nothing to do with Islam,” and he was joined in this view by commentators on France24, as well as the German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière.

The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland condemned the actions of a “handful of wicked fanatics against the rest of us.” The implication was that they merely acted in the name of Islam — purely coincidentally, as it were.

In the Daily Mail, Piers Morgan wrote that the perpetrators were “not ‘real’ Muslims” and that this was “not a religious war.” Why he thought he could act as the arbiter on that question is still unclear.

As for President Obama, he has effectively outlawed the term “Islamic terror.”

The United States, in what was widely seen as a snub, was only represented at the rally by the U.S. Ambassador to France, Jane Hartley. Since the President had declared in 2012 that “[t]he future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” — the implication was that they were not acting purely coincidentally.

There is in those comments a mixture of political correctness, wishful thinking and staggering ignorance. It is understandable and commendable not to lump a majority of law-abiding, patriotic and peaceful Muslims together with their violent counterparts. But calling for “unity” in a march leaves one asking: Unity about what exactly?

To pretend that there is a complete disconnect between Islam and terror is to ignore reality. Jihadis are gaining ideological succour from the tenets of their faith, drawing upon teachings promulgated by imams, including the late Anwar al Awlaki. We may like to imagine that this is not Islam, and that the faith promotes peace and nothing else. But the murderers say it is Islam, and they act accordingly.

To confront this problem properly, the ideological underpinnings of jihad need to be tackled comprehensively at source.

It is not enough to unite against terrorism, as every community must. We need to know what we are uniting for — free speech. And we need to know what we are uniting against — namely the militant war of extremist Islamism.

It is equally inaccurate to describe these jihadis as “lone wolves.” They will have spent time gaining combat experience abroad, perhaps in Yemen, Syria or Iraq, and will have received ideological indoctrination and funding from a network of other jihadis. They are recruits in a theocratic, totalitarian death-cult spread across the planet. It comes in different forms: Boko Haram, which slaughtered 2,000 people in Nigeria the weekend before last; the Taliban, which murdered schoolchildren in Pakistan; Hamas with its genocidal doctrine and many years of bombings, and the Islamic State, which seems busy ethnically cleansing nearly everyone in Syria and Iraq.

The murders in Paris, therefore, were merely the latest salvo in a global confrontation between jihadist Islam and its declared enemies, this time in the West.

Much of the media has offered up a context for these killings that is false. Within hours of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, the Telegraph led with a feature on the growing problem of “Islamophobia” in France. The Guardian, too, weighed in; one story headlined: “Muslims fear backlash after Charlie Hebdo deaths as Islamic sites attacked”. The Spectator spoke of the killings as an “attack on Islam;” and Robert Fisk in the UK Independent referred to the legacy of the Algerian war as a motive for the attackers. Other news outlets voiced fears of a “backlash” against Muslims in France and elsewhere.

But the real story is that while there have been some sporadic incidents against mosques and Muslim owned businesses in France following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, there has been no backlash against the Muslim community. Muslims across France even joined in the unity rally, an act that would have been impossible were there a climate of widespread public hostility.

The majority of hate crimes in France, as in a number of other countries, affects the Jewish community. It was a Jewish supermarket that was attacked. This does not mean that there will not be attacks — all of them naturally deplorable — against Muslim innocents, only that fears of a major widespread assault seem highly exaggerated. The same fears of widespread attacks against the Muslim community also proved unfounded after the 7/7 London bomb attacks.

Lumping terrorism and “Islamophobia” together ignores the real motivation of the latest killers in France. One of them, Amedy Coulibaly, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a video address prior to the supermarket attack. This hardly suggests a rant against perceived intolerance or racism. Invoking racism here also suggests, in a shifting of blame, that we in the West are somehow at fault for the violent behaviour of these Islamist terrorists. What “Islamophobia” motivated the killing of Jewish customers in a kosher supermarket? What had those victims done to deserve that?

Another reason this is no turning point is that the press continues to engage in self-righteous self-censorship. Not one broadcaster — including the BBC, Fox, NBC and CNN — showed any of the Charlie Hebdo images that had been deemed provocative. Those outlets were joined by the Associated Press, which deliberately cropped a photograph of the magazine’s now-dead editor to avoid showing an image of the Prophet Muhammad. In a cringe replicated across almost all of Europe, not one major British newspaper published any of Charlie Hebdo’s satirical images of Islam, and only The Guardian showed the full front cover of the edition that the survivors published after the attack.

Big mistake. These newspapers and broadcasters are denying the public a dispassionate view of what the killers themselves say is causing them to kill. Worse again, by drawing a line against possibly offending Muslims — many of whom seem to have no problem offending Jews and Christians, among others, if not killing them — the media have acted as if there is already in place an unofficial blasphemy law: the terrorists’ key demand.

A violent mob, disastrously undermining Western values, is effectively dictating the boundaries of free speech.

It is all very well to praise Charlie Hebdo as an icon of free speech, but after the riots that followed the publishing of Muhammad cartoons in Denmark’s Jyllands Posten in 2006, Charlie Hebdo was virtually alone in reprinting them, and it was condemned widely for doing so.[1]

Time magazine, in 2011, likened Charlie Hebdo’s reprinting the cartoons as “the right to scream ‘fire’ in an increasingly over-heated theater.” In other words, the “Islamophobic” cartoonists were to blame for their own misfortune. There is a notion permeating Europe, that if you speak out, not only can you can be put on trial — as is the Dutch MP, Geert Wilders[2] — but that it will also, in an Orwellian twist, be your own fault; if you had just kept quiet, nothing unpleasant would be happening to you. Try telling that to the four Jews lying murdered on the floor of the French supermarket. What did they ever say?

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia tried to fool the world by joining France’s “Unity March” for free speech just two days after a young Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi, received the first installment of 50 lashes — out of the 1000 he is to get — “very severely,” the lashing order says. He was taken after Friday prayers to a public square outside a mosque in Jeddah. His declared “crime” is “insulting Islam,” for writing thoughts such as, “My commitment is to reject any repression in the name of religion… a goal we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way.” Badawi still has 950 lashes to complete. If he lives. There is no medical help.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — whose genocidal, jihadi partner, Hamas, was, in a burst of surrealism, declared not a terrorist group by the European Union — joined the forefront of the Unity March in Paris at the same time as a report was published by a Palestinian human rights group, accusing the Palestinian Authority of “waging war” against university students in the West Bank.

883World leaders link arms at the Paris anti-terror rally on January 11, 2014. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stands at the far right of the front row. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

Turkey, “named the world’s biggest jailor of journalists in 2012 and 2013” according to theWashington Post, was also there. Turkey “ended 2014 by detaining a number of journalists … including Ekrem Dumanli, editor in chief of Zaman, a leading newspaper” with links to an opposition movement.

Meanwhile, between January 8 and January 14, as over three million copies of Charlie Hebdowere selling out and four million more being printed, there was already talk in France of hardening its laws against free speech. So this may not be a turning point either for free speech or against radical Islam. So it may be a while before we can truly say, “Nous sommes Charlie.”

Jeremy Havardi is a historian and journalist based in London. His books include The Greatest Briton, analytical essays on Churchill.

[1] Ezra Levant, who reprinted the cartoons in Canada, was then compelled to appear before the Alberta Human Rights Commission to defend their publication, because of a complaint lodged by Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities.

[2] As also was Lars Hedegaard (for speaking in his own drawing room), Suzanne Winters, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, or at the very east need round-the-clock-bodyguards, such asFrench journalist Eric Zemmour, for saying that France might be facing a virtual civil war.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Ban Ki-Moon, Charlie Hedbo, Europe, Foreign policy, France, Freedom, Hamas, Human rights, International Community, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Obama, Political correctness, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Nations
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