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Obama: Islam Inherently Violent? Absurd!

March 31, 2016

Obama: Islam Inherently Violent? Absurd! Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, March 31, 2016

islamicjihad1

Barack Obama is amused.

“I’m amused,” he said in remarks published Tuesday, “when I watch Republicans claim that Trump’s language is unacceptable, and ask, ‘How did we get here?’ We got here in part because the Republican base had been fed this notion that Islam is inherently violent, that this is who these folks are. And if you’ve been hearing that a lot, and then somebody shows up on the scene and says, well, the logical conclusion to civilizational conflict is we try to make sure that we’re not destroyed internally by this foreign civilization, that’s what you get.”

Where would anyone get the crazy idea that Islam was inherently violent? Well, the day’s headlines might give us that very strong impression, but Obama would tell us (and has told us) that those Muslims who are screaming “Allahu akbar” as they murder non-Muslims are, despite appearances, not really Muslims at all, but just people who have twisted, hijacked, misunderstood the Religion of Peace.

It is, true, however, that there are plenty of Muslims who tell us that Islam is inherently violent. Here are a few of them:

“Jihad was a way of life for the Pious Predecessors (Salaf-us-Salih), and the Prophet (SAWS) was a master of the Mujahideen and a model for fortunate inexperienced people. The total number of military excursions which he (SAWS) accompanied was 27. He himself fought in nine of these; namely Badr; Uhud, Al-Muraysi, The Trench, Qurayzah, Khaybar, The Conquest of Makkah, Hunayn and Taif . . . This means that the Messenger of Allah (SAWS) used to go out on military expeditions or send out an army at least every two months.” — Abdullah Azzam, co-founder of al-Qaeda, Join the Caravan, p. 30

“If we follow the rules of interpretation developed from the classical science of Koranic interpretation, it is not possible to condemn terrorism in religious terms. It remains completely true to the classical rules in its evolution of sanctity for its own justification. This is where the secret of its theological strength lies.” — Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

“Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims. Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.” — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 defendants

“Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfill God’s orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world.” — Taliban terrorist Baitullah Mehsud

“Jihad, holy fighting in Allah’s course, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is given the utmost importance in Islam….By jihad, Islam is established….By abandoning jihad, may Allah protect us from that, Islam is destroyed, and Muslims go into inferior position, their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.” — Times Square car bomb terrorist Faisal Shahzad

“So step by step I became a religiously devout Muslim, Mujahid — meaning one who participates in jihad.” — Little Rock, Arkansas terrorist murderer Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad

“And now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives, and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for Jihad.” — Texas terrorist bomber Khalid Aldawsari.

Obama would dismiss all these as “extremists” who are not really Muslim at all and have nothing to do with Islam. Yet one also might get the impression that Islam is inherently violent from the authoritative sources in Sunni Islam, the schools of Sunni jurisprudence (madhahib):

Shafi’i school: A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)…while remaining in their ancestral religions.” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).

Of course, there is no caliph today, unless one believes the claims of the Islamic State, and hence the oft-repeated claim that Osama et al are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But they explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes “obligatory for everyone” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: ‘Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until “the final descent of Jesus.” After that, “nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent” (o9.8).

Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”

However, “if the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)

Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”

This is also taught by modern-day scholars of Islam. Majid Khadduri was an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown. In his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject, Khadduri says this about jihad:

The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world….The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. (P. 51)

Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.

All this makes it clear that there is abundant reason to believe that Islam is indeed inherently violent. It would be illuminating if Obama or someone around him produced some quotations from Muslim authorities he considers “authentic,” and explained why the authorities I’ve quoted above and others like them are inauthentic. While in reality there is no single Muslim authority who can proclaim what is “authentic” Islam, and thus it would be prudent not to make sweeping statements about what “authentic Islam” actually is, clearly there are many Muslim who believe that authentic Islam is inherently violent.

One might also get the impression that Islam is inherently violent from these Qur’an verses:

2:191-193: “And slay them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, slay them — such is the recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.”

4:34: “Men are the managers of the affairs of women, for Allah has made one superior to the another, and because they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for Allah’s guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them; Allah is All-high, All-great.”

4:89: “They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of Allah; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper.”

5:33: “This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.”

5:38: “And the thief, male and female: cut off the hands of both, as a recompense for what they have earned, and a punishment exemplary from Allah; Allah is All-mighty, All-wise.”

8:12: “When thy Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them!”

8:39: “Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s entirely; then if they give over, surely Allah sees the things they do.”

8:60: “Make ready for them whatever force and strings of horses you can, to strike terror thereby into the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not; Allah knows them. And whatsoever you expend in the way of Allah shall be repaid you in full; you will not be wronged.”

9:5: “Then, when the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”

9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and do not practice the religion of truth, even if they are of the People of the Book — until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”

9:111: “Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding upon Allah in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Koran; and who fulfils his covenant truer than Allah? So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; that is the mighty triumph.”

9:123: “O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness; and know that Allah is with the godfearing.”

47:4: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if Allah had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will not send their works astray.”

There are some tolerant verses in the Qur’an as well — see, for example, sura 109. But then in Islamic tradition there are authorities who say that violent passages take precedence over these verses. Muhammad’s earliest biographer, an eighth-century Muslim named Ibn Ishaq, explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare. But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight. Ibn Ishaq explains offensive jihad by invoking a Qur’anic verse: “Then God sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e. until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.”

The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” — that is, until Allah alone is worshipped. Ibn Ishaq gives no hint that that command died with the seventh century.

The great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350) also outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”

In other words, he initially could fight only defensively — only “those who fought him” — but later he could fight the polytheists until Islam was “fully established.” He could fight them even if they didn’t fight him first, and solely because they were not Muslim.

Nor do all contemporary Islamic thinkers believe that that command is a relic of history.

According to a 20th century Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah . . . as mentioned in Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) . . . and other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).” (The Roman numerals after the names of the chapters of the Qur’an are the numbers of the suras: Sheikh Abdullah is referring to Qur’anic verses such as 2:216, 3:157-158, 9:5, and 9:29.)

Here again, obviously there is a widespread understanding of the Qur’an within Islamic tradition that sees it, and Islam, as inherently violent. And we see Muslims who clearly understand their religion as being inherently violent acting upon that understanding around the world today, in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Nigeria and elsewhere. We can hope that those who embody the true, peaceful Islam that Obama assumes to exist come forward and work against the Muslims who believe in violence, instead of just issuing pro-forma condemnations. So far we have not seen that. On the contrary, we see reformers threatened and cowed into silence. The Moroccan activist Ahmed Assid condemned violence in Islam’s name and was immediately declared an apostate and threatened with death by Muslim clerics. If the Ahmed Assids of the world represent the true Islam that is not inherently violent, the message has not gotten through to all too many of their coreligionists.

We may hope it does someday. In the meantime, it is imperative to continue to speak about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, so as to alert all people of good will to the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, and its motives and goals. This is not indulging in hateful generalizations; it is simply to speak honestly and realistically about a threat all free people face. If we cannot speak about it, it will nonetheless keep coming, and catch us unawares.

Categories: Islamic history, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Obama and Islam
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An Up-close Look at the Liberal-Muslim Alliance

March 31, 2016

An Up-close Look at the Liberal-Muslim Alliance, American Thinker, Jack Cashill, March 31, 2016

(In Shiite Iran,  “Homosexuality is a crime punishable by imprisonment,[2] corporal punishment, or by execution.” In Sunni Saudi Arabia, “Homosexuality and transgenderism are widely seen as immoral and indecent activities, and the law punishes acts of homosexuality or cross-dressing with death, imprisonment, fines, corporal punishment, or whipping/flogging.” — DM)

I have read about the paradoxical alliance between Islam and the left for years. I have even written about it — at some length, in fact, in my newest book Scarlet Letters. But it was only a few weeks go that I got to see up close the mechanisms that allow people who celebrate homosexuals to find common cause with those who, when the law allows, happily sever their heads.

As a result of my book, I was invited to sit on a panel titled “Muslim in the Metro,” an event sponsored by an enterprise called American Public Square and televised in edited form — fairly, I must say — on the regional PBS channel here in Kansas City, KCPT.

There were five panelists — myself, a Republican state rep from Kansas, a fiftyish Muslim woman in the diversity business, a U.S. attorney appointed by Obama, and a female Muslim college student who used the word “microagression” as something other than a punch line to a joke. The moderator was also a former Obama appointee.

I would use names, but I am confident if American Public Square ran a comparable event in other cities, the four Muslim advocates — the moderator included — would espouse almost identical views. They represent a type. So too did the overwhelmingly liberal audience. I could have written their questions for them.

These American Public Square debates feature an active online fact checker and a civility bell. I was a little queasy about the civility bell, but I welcomed the fact checker. He proved to be my greatest ally.

The state rep did a fine job. As an elected official he had to be a little cautious, but he made his case about terror and immigration well.

My strategy was a little different. Knowing that I was not about to convert anyone, I thought I could at least confuse the audience members with the truth, and the truth is that their affection for Islam makes no apparent sense. This proved to be a difficult assignment, and here is why.

The left has a unique ability to deny the obvious.

In attempting to establish my premise, I said to the panel, “Muslims are culturally very conservative around the world,” adding rhetorically, “Is that fair to say?”

This premise struck me as inarguable. My fellow panelists felt otherwise. The two women, both wearing Hijabs, and the moderator all shouted out “No” or some variant. Said I, “When it comes to issues like family, women, abortion, gay rights, you’re telling me they’re not conservative?”

The moderator admonished me. “Jack,” he said, “you’re asking a question, and they didn’t give you the answer you want.” He then challenged me to make my case or move on.

Knowing there was a fact checker, I pulled out my one file card and read through the numbers from Pew Research Foundation, a liberal but generally reliable source. When asked about gay rights, 87 percent of Germans approved but no more than 9 percent of Muslims in any country surveyed and as little as 2 percent in some.

On the question of whether a women should always obey her husband, 87 percent of Muslims approved. On the question of whether apostates should be executed, 56 percent of Muslims who approved of Sharia law said yes. Asked whether they held “highly unfavorable” views of Jews, 99 percent of Jordanians and 100 percent of Lebanese sad yes. The fact checker could not deny what I was saying.

My fellow panelists could and did. They protested that these attitudes did not reflect American Muslims, but I had to repeat that I began my discussion by saying these surveys were done in the countries that comprise our immigration pool, and that the threat of immigration motivated the anti-Muslim sentiment about which they complained.

The left instinctively denies the worth of America.

I did concede that American Muslims were likely more moderate in their views. This relative moderation, I argued, reflected the “palliative effect of American culture on Islam.” This comment drew boos from the audience. From the left’s perspective, nothing America does is palliative.

The left controls the debate.

When I added, “If you go to Cologne, Germany you’re going to meet people who haven’t had that [palliative] experience,” the moderator insisted that I stick to local issues. Europe seemed particularly off limits. Although this was billed as a nonpartisan event, it proved to be no more nonpartisan than PBS in general or CNN or NBC or the New York Times. The moderator unabashedly took sides.

The left inevitably falls back on false moral equivalence.

Indeed, from the Muslim women and especially from the U.S. Attorney, there was so much talk of Timothy McVeigh, Clive Bundy, the KKK, the Sovereignty movement, and even the mid 19th-century Know-Nothing Party, a latecomer might have thought the event about Christian terrorism. Of course, in none of these conversations did the moderator insist the speaker restrict himself to local issues.

The left is plagued with cognitive dissonance.

I kept returning to the transparently separate standards liberals held for traditional Christians and traditional Muslims. I pointed out, for instance, that the Kansas City Star designated a prominent liberal pastor a “drum major for justice” for his denunciation of the Christian right as “a threat far greater than the old threat of Communism.”

The fact checker confirmed that to be an exact quote. And the threat the pastor alluded had nothing to do with violence. No, what troubled him was that Christian conservatives were running for office. They were “anti-pornography,” he warned, and opposed — he noted daintily — a woman’s “having a say about what goes on in her own body.”

Had he said something half as outrageous about Muslims, he would have lost his pulpit, if not his head. Focusing his spite on Christians, however, got his speech excerpted in the New York Times and won him the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award.

The alliance validates the left’s moral superiority.

At one point, the older Muslim woman claimed to have been so appalled by the “anti-Muslim” tenor of the Republican debates that she would not let her children watch them. Echoed the U.S. Attorney, “Their children see grown men espousing hate.”

Bingo! There was the money quote. Indeed, if there is one shared feel good experience among leftists of all stripes it is the imputation of “hate” to others. Author Shelby Steele coined the phrase “zone of decency” to describe the sacred preserve in which progressives imagine themselves clustering. By aligning themselves with Muslims, liberals assure themselves a place in the zone and “decertify” those not quite so keen on self-destruction.

Did I mention that the left denies the obvious?

My opponents on the panel repeatedly insisted that terrorists did not represent Islam. “You have places called the Islamic State,” I countered. “These guys think they’re the real deal.”

“What one chooses to call oneself is not necessarily the only test we have to apply,” said the moderator who had long since abandoned anything resembling neutrality.

“There is an element of disingenuousness about this conversation tonight,” I replied. I pointed out that there are millions of Muslims who subscribed to ISIS or who supported ISIS “To make believe that there is not a religious thread to this,” I concluded, “is to deceive ourselves.”

“What’s disingenuous is to blithely say there are millions,” the moderator snapped back. He then made the fatal mistake of asking for a fact check on my numbers. Said the fact checker, “Pew says 63 million Muslims support the Islamic State in the eleven Muslim countries polled.”

“That,” I said with my final words, “is a lot of Muslims.”

Categories: Islam and homosexuality, Islam and human rights, Islam in America, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic State, Leftist perspectives, Multiculturalism
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Shifting blame, White House faults war general’s 2014 ISIS assessment as he departs

March 31, 2016

Shifting blame, White House faults war general’s 2014 ISIS assessment as he departs, Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough, March 30, 2016

obama_lea_c0-80-4500-2703_s885x516President Obama (center) and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. (left) greet Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, on the apron at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Army Gen. Lloyd Austin relinquished command in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday of the U.S. forces fighting the Islamic State –– as a bit of a sour note hung in the air back in Washington.

President Obama has been consistently criticized for a 2014 comment to the New Yorker magazine that the Islamic State, as it invaded Iraq from Syria, was merely the “jayvee.” In other words, it was not to be taken seriously. Months later, the terror army controlled large swaths of Iraq and Syria, forcing Mr. Obama to ordered a new war.

Then, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed Mr. Obama and came out with a long favorable story this month on the commander in chief’s foreign policy views. In the story is this:

“Early in 2014, Obama’s intelligence advisers told him that ISIS was of marginal importance. According to administration officials, General Lloyd Austin, then the commander of Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told the White House that the Islamic State was ‘a flash in the pan.’ This analysis led Obama, in an interview with The New Yorker, to describe the constellation of jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria as terrorism’s ‘jayvee team.’”

The quote clearly showed the White House was shifting blame from Mr. Obama to Gen. Austin, a 40-year Army combatant, leader and commander, as he went out the door.

Gen. Austin, through his public affairs office at U.S. Central Command, has denied ever making such a remark.

His supporters point out that, as the last four-star general to leave Iraq in December 2011, he had recommended to the White House that more than 20,000 American troops remain in the country because the gains there were reversible.

At the time Mr. Obama downplayed the Islamic State, then known by a different name, it had built a large army in Syria and had begun its expansion into Iraq.

Mr. Obama has a track record of shifting blame. For example, when the White House plan to train a Syrian army to fight the Islamic State failed, he told an interviewer that he always knew it would not work.

Gen. Austin turned over command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., to Army Gen. Joseph Votel, who had been chief of U.S. Special Operations Command.

At the ceremony, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter heaped praise on Gen. Austin, a West Point graduate and recipient of the Silver Star for gallantry in battle.

As CentCom leader for three years, he has directed operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and kept watch on an expansionist Iran in the Persian Gulf.

“The people of CentCom have met these challenges under the extraordinary leadership of a towering figure in the life of our military, General Lloyd Austin,” Mr. Carter said. “It’s one of the highest compliments in the Army to be called ‘a soldier’s soldier.’ For more than four decades, Lloyd Austinhas not only demonstrated what it means to be a soldier’s soldier. He has come to define it.”

At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Peter Cook, Mr. Carter’s spokesman, was asked if the secretary would clear the four-star general of the “flash in the pan” quote at the change of command.

“I don’t think Secretary Carter needs to clear General Austin of that,” Mr. Cook said. “I think General Austin himself has indicated that that statement is factually incorrect, and I believe there are others who have said the same.  So I’m not aware that General Austin ever made that comment, and I think I would refer you to the White House as well if you want to check with them.

“But General Austin does not need to have his name cleared for any reason.  He has led admirably and with distinction for, as I said earlier, close to 40 years, and I think his record of accomplishment speaks for itself.”

Categories: Gen. Lloyd Austin, Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama - Middle East, Obama and Islamic State, Shifting blame
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Europe Still Sleeps, and Europeans Still Die

March 30, 2016

Europe Still Sleeps, and Europeans Still Die, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, March 30, 2016

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While England Slept is the title of Winston Churchill’s 1938 book documenting the failure of England to counter Germany’s rearmament. Despite the gruesome price paid for ignoring Churchill’s warnings, postwar Europe has slumbered for decades while its cultural dysfunctions have nurtured the jihadist violence erupting across Europe. Last week’s attacks in Brussels, coming four months after the Paris attacks that killed 130, suggests there are more attacks to come. According to AP, 400-600 ISIS-trained terrorists are making their way to Europe.

Europe can’t say it wasn’t warned. In 2002 Oriana Fallaci published The Rage and the Pride, a passionate defense of Western civilization and an indictment of those who appease Islamic illiberalism.  Ten years ago Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept gave first-hand reports of Europe’s feckless immigration policies that fostered and appeased Muslim radicalism and violence. A year later Claire Berlinski’s Menace in Europe and Melanie Phillips’ Londonistan sounded the same alarms. And there are the dystopian novels of Michel Houellebecq like Platform and last year’s Submission, which link Europe’s cultural and spiritual exhaustion to the rise of homegrown jihadism and Islamization.

An even more important prophet is Bat Ye’or, whose Eurabia (2005) documented “Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it.” The result is the dhimmi mentality of Europe’s elites, which manifests in word and deed Western inferiority to Islam, and guilt over alleged crimes against the Muslim world.

But a secularized Europe committed to multicultural fantasies and la dolce vita as the highest goods has dismissed these prophets as bigots and “Islamophobes” who distort the “religion of peace.” Yet after the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate in 1923––the “catastrophe” Osama bin Laden mentioned after 9/11–– the theorists of modern jihadism were forthright and plain in expressing the intolerant and triumphalist Islamic beliefs and jihadist imperative consistent with Ye’or’s analysis. Islam’s nature, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna wrote, is “to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations, and extend its power to the entire planet.” Fellow Muslim Brother Sayyid Qutb concurred: “Islam has a right to remove all those obstacles which are in its path.” The Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution, agreed: “The great prophet of Islam carried in one hand the Koran and in the other a sword; the sword is for crushing the traitor and the Koran for guidance . . . Islam is a religion of blood for infidels but a religion of guidance for other people.”

Nor are these sentiments alien to traditional Islamic beliefs as codified in the Koran, Hadith, Muslim histories, and the biographies of Mohammed. As such, the jihadist imperative, despite anticolonial and nationalist rhetoric, was the foundational motivation for the military attacks on Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and today it still drives the terror campaigns against Israel waged by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO. Jihad in the name of Allah sparked the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the subsequent launching of the Iranian terrorist mother ship from which numerous jihadist organizations have continued to receive training and financial support. The Taliban who gave sanctuary to al Qaeda in Afghanistan are close students of jihad and shari’a law, executing transgressors in a soccer stadium paid for by the EU.

Nor has the West been spared. Jihad lay at the heart of al Qaeda’s serial attacks on the U.S. and its military in 1993 (first World Trade Center bombing), 1996 (Khobar Towers), 1998 (East African embassies), 2000 (U.S.S. Cole), and the spectacular carnage of September 11, 2001, as well as inspiring the terrorist murders in Madrid (2004), London (2005), Fort Hood (2013), Boston (2013), San Bernardino (2015), Paris (January and November, 2015), and now Brussels. And don’t forget the torture, rape, and murders perpetrated by ISIS, the latest and most successful example of modern jihadism inspired by traditional Islamic doctrine.

We know the terrorists’ Islamic bona fides because they continually tell us why they want to kill us, in speeches, internet videos, and writings filled with Koranic verses and precedents from the life of Mohammed. Yet despite this evidence, elites in Europe and the U.S. refuse to confront the religious origins of jihadism, settling for the stale environmental and psychological causes dear to the materialist mentality. Thus they continue to chant the “nothing to do with Islam” mantra, as our president did in response to the Brussels attack. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’” the president asserted. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.” The first two clauses are patently false to Koranic commands and Islamic history, and the third is a non sequitur.

But the most powerful refutation of this common delusion is the scarcity of public protests by observant Muslims against the “extremists” who allegedly have “hijacked” their faith. After each jihadist atrocity there is typically more celebratory ululation and cries of “Allahu Akbar” in the Muslim world than marches against terrorism by heretical “extremists.” There are no “million Muslim marches,” no “not in our name movements,” no large scale Muslim attendance at memorial services for the victims. Yet perceived insults to Islam or Mohammed will produce violent mobs and lethal rampages.

Nor should this surprise us, when poll after poll registers significant pluralities and majorities of Muslims who approve of violence against infidels, and support the implementation of illiberal shari’a law. The latest evidence for such support from “moderate Muslims” comes from Brussels, where the planner of the Paris and Brussels attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was hiding in plain sight in the Muslim-dominant district of Molenbeek. Yet it still took four months for Belgian police to find him, and when they moved in for the arrest, they were met with rocks and bottles from residents who knew he was there and never tipped off the authorities.

Yet this is just one of many such enclaves in Europe. Ca n’Anglada in Barcelona, Marxloh and Neukölln in Germany, Seine-Saint-Denis and Clichy-sous-Bois in France, Malmo in Sweden, and many other towns and neighborhoods across Europe house disaffected and unassimilated Muslim immigrants whose faith predisposes them to contempt for the infidel and his secular laws, and justifies violence against the enemies of Islam. And despite the segregation, unemployment, crime, costly welfare transfers, and jihad-preaching mosques in these neighborhoods, Europe has accepted hundreds of thousands more Muslim immigrants in 2015 alone. Undoubtedly among them are untold numbers of ISIS-trained terrorists, many of them from the 5000 European Muslims who have gone to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

That is the reality everyone knows who wants to know. But too many in the West do not want to know, just as those enamored of Soviet communism did not want to know about the gulags and show-trials and engineered famines that killed at least 20 million. Like yesterday’s communist sympathizers, today the sleepwalkers of Europe are trapped in their ideological fever-dreams––fashionable self-loathing, guilt for colonialism and imperialism, sentimental one-worldism, and noble-savage multicultural fantasies. Worst of all, they are crippled by a refusal to appreciate and defend their political and cultural inheritance––prosperity, human rights, freedom, consensual government, and tolerance––created by their ancestors.

The character of Michel in Houellebecq’s Platform (2001) articulates the failure of civilizational nerve that has paved the way for metastasizing jihadist violence. Europe’s forbears, the jaded hedonist Michel muses, “believed in the superiority of their civilization,” and “invented dreams, progress, utopia, the future.” But their “civilizing mission,” their “innocent sense of their natural right to dominate the world and direct the path of history had disappeared.” All that is left is the dwindling cultural capital being squandered by their descendants, who have lost “those qualities of intelligence and determination,” and who exist only for the present and its material pleasures. Like like Michel, they are “decadent” and “given over entirely to selfishness.”

But at least Michel, unlike the sleepwalking European elite, recognizes that this is cultural suicide: “I was aware, however, that such a situation was barely tenable, that people like me were incapable of ensuring the survival of a society. Perhaps, more simply, we were unworthy of life.”

The terrorists of Paris and Brussels agree.

Categories: Europe, Foreign leaders, Free world, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and human rights, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Muslim assimilation, national security
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Turkish Gov’t Children’s Magazine Promotes Martyrdom

March 30, 2016

Turkish Gov’t Children’s Magazine Promot, Clarion Project, March 30, 2016

Islamic-State-Afghan-School-IP_1Illustrative Photo: An Islamic State school for children in Afghanistan. (Video screenshot)

A cartoon published by the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs shows a father extolling the virtues of Islamic martyrdom to his son.

The issue of the children’s magazine is meant to promote dialogue between parents and children. In the cartoon, a father asks his son, “Do you want to be a martyr?” The son replies, “Of course I want to be a martyr. Who doesn’t want to go to heaven?”

The son then explains that “heaven is happy with martyrs” and that much praise is heaped upon the martyr making him wish that he could have been martyred 10 times.  The cartoon ends with the son saying, “I wish I could be killed as martyr.”

According to the Turkish news outlet Cumhuriyet, the magazine has met harsh criticism. Psychologist and Professor Dr. Serdar Degirmencioglu, a critic of Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented, “Religiosity has, in recent years, turned into a literal political tool. They do not even hide it. The Ministry of Religion was provided more money than several other ministries combined and continues intensive work for religious children.”

He added, “They want to use the drawings to transfer the message of martyrdom to children because they think it will be more attractive. ‘Martyrs suffer,’ ‘sins forgiven’ it says. So it’s a painless death and a promise of heaven.”

Degirmencioglu noted the similarity between this worldview and the Islamic State remarking, “Turkey is overwhelmed with the pain of these massacres and with those pursuing the mentality of religiosity. All this has led to the death of people, an exact same mentality, that blinds people to the horrors of what the Religious Affairs Ministry is trying to spread to children in Turkey.”

“The children will grow up and they will run toward death when those in power tell them to,” he said.

Categories: Islam and child soldiers, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic State, Turkey
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US Residents Linked to Terrorism Increased 200% in 2015

March 30, 2016

US Residents Linked to Terrorism Increased 200% in 2015, Truth Revolt, Tiffany Gabbay, March 29, 2016

anwar-al-awlaki-story-top

In the wake of terror attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and Brussels, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a new report that exposes the rise of terrorist activity among US-based Muslims.

ADL reports that in 2015, 80 US residents were inspired by ISIS and linked to terrorism themselves, marking a nearly 200 percent increase from 2014. PRNewswire reports:

“The tragic attacks in Brussels remind us of the need to continuously evaluate the threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations and the influence they have on communities around the world,” said Oren Segal, Director of ADL’s Center on Extremism. “While there are significant differences in the threats to the U.S. and Europe, this report identifies some meaningful similarities, which can help us understand the threats and develop solutions to counteract them.”

As in Europe, the vast majority of U.S. residents linked to terror plots and other activity motivated by Islamic extremist ideology in 2015 acted in support of ISIS. ISIS and other terrorist groups continue to take advantage of technology to mobilize followers, spread their messages and expand their influence worldwide. While in-person networks are stronger and more prevalent in Europe, and particularly in Belgium, than in the U.S., the internet and social media sites remain a pivotal element of the modern radicalization process worldwide.

The ADL report uncovered terror plots across 22 states, with the largest portion occurring in New York, Minnesota and California. The report found that these US resident-terrorists engaged in plotting attacks and furnishing material support for attacks. Key aspects of the report found that 20 of the terror-linked US residents converted to Islam and came from a diverse array of ethnic backgrounds:

“Understanding the backgrounds, demographics, and aspirations of U.S. residents engaged in activity motivated by Islamic extremist ideology can provide valuable insights into the trends and nature of terrorism we currently face and how we can best be equipped to combat it,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “As we saw the events tragically unfold in Brussels, ISIS terror has far reaching influence across the globe.  And the risk is not only from ISIS members themselves, but from those who might be radicalized by their hateful message.”

The way we can combat it is by abandoning our obsession with multiculturalism and political correctness. Crucial to that is purging the invented term “Islamophobia” from the popular lexicon. Further, our intelligence and law enforcement communities must not be impeded in their responsibility to monitor all mosques and Islamic centers for hate speech and questionable practices among congregates and faith leaders. Nor should they be barred from monitoring self-segregated communities that have refrained from assimilation or engaging in profiling whenever and wherever applicable.

Most important, we must exhibit strength — not capitulation — in our foreign and domestic policy concerning terrorism or the infiltration of any values anathema to our own. We must not turn on our allies. We must not tamp down any regime, however repugnant, that aids us in crushing Islamic extremism. The Islamic world bows only to the iron fist. Diplomacy works on those with whom there is leverage, not on those who aren’t even afraid of losing their own lives or the lives of their children.

Categories: Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Obama's America
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The Gaza Time Bomb

March 30, 2016

The Gaza Time Bomb, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Yaakov Lappin, March 30, 2016

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On the surface, the Gaza Strip looks relatively calm, with few security incidents occurring since the end of the protracted 2014 summer conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Behind the scenes, pressure within the Islamist-run enclave is gradually building again, just as it did prior to the 2014 war.

Gaza’s civilian population is hostage to Hamas’s dramatically failed economic policies, and its insistence on confrontation with Israel, rather than recognition of Israel and investment in Gaza’s economic future.

Ultimately, the civilian-economic pressure cooker in Gaza looks likely to explode, leading Hamas to seek new hostilities with Israel, for which it is preparing in earnest.

Right now, Hamas remains deterred by Israel’s firepower, and is enforcing its part of the truce. Hamas security forces patrol the Strip’s borders to prevent Gazans from rioting, to stop them from trying to escape Gaza into Israel, and to stop ISIS-affiliated radicals who fire rockets at Israel.

Hamas is using the current quiet to replenish its rocket arsenal, dig its combat tunnel network, and build up sea-based attack capabilities. It is investing many resources in cooking up new ways to surprise Israel in any future clash. These efforts have not gone unnoticed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Hamas has not fired a single rocket into Israel since August 2014, but it encourages violence in the West Bank as part of a strategy to destabilize its Palestinian rival, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. Hamas in Gaza also works remotely to set up and orchestrate terrorism cells in the West Bank, while plotting way to overthrow Fatah from power. The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, has successfully foiled nearly all of these efforts thus far, saving many Israeli lives, and the PA’s rule, too.

A deeper look at processes under way in Gaza reveals why the status quo seems untenable in the long run. Thirty percent (910,000) of Gaza’s population of 1.85 million are aged 15 to 29, and out of these, 65 percent are unemployed. This represents one of the highest unemployment rates for young people in the world. Many are university educated and deeply frustrated. The overall unemployment rate in Gaza is 38.4 percent, and rising steadily. Eighteen thousand Gazan university students graduate every year. Most of them have nothing to do with their degrees, and return home to a life of idle unemployment. Many Gazans dream of leaving. The suicide rate is growing. Under Hamas’s rule, these young people see no change on the horizon.

Out of the total population of Gaza, 1.3 million receive assistance from United Nations aid workers, without which, a humanitarian crisis would likely ensue.

Those who dare complain, such as Gazan bloggers, find themselves whisked away into Hamas police custody, where they receive firm warnings to remain silent, or else.

Meanwhile, the Gazan population is growing at an unsustainable rate. Since Israel pulled out all of its soldiers and civilians in 2005, 600,000 Gazans have been born. This is a generation that has never been to Israel (unlike the older Gazans), and its only experience of Israel is through air force missiles fired at Hamas targets following clashes sparked by the jihadist regime’s military wing.

Many of these young people are exposed to the propaganda of Hamas’s media outlets, like the Al-Aksa television station, which is a major source of incitement. Some are also exposed to the wider world through the Internet, and are aware that life can be different for them.

By 2020, Gaza’s population will hit 2.3 million people. It could run out of drinking water. This might prompt a civilian revolt, which could push Hamas into starting a new war with Israel to distract attention.

To try to relieve the pressure, Hamas leaders make promises that they cannot keep, such as the setting up of a sea port, and the opening of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which the anti-Hamas Egyptian government opened just 18 times in 2015 for fear of allowing jihadists in Gaza to pour into the restive Sinai Strip.

A Hamas delegation traveled to Egypt earlier this month to try to mend relations with the Cairo government. The effort resulted in failure, after Egyptian officials accused Hamas of failing to acknowledge its collaboration with the ISIS-affiliated Sinai Province insurgents.

Changes are underway within Hamas itself, which are causing the Izzadin Al-Qassam Brigades military wing to gain power at the expense of the political wing, which is led by Ismael Haniyeh.

Yiyhe Sinwar is a senior Hamas member with growing power, operating in the gray zone between both wings. He is close to military wing chief Muhammed Def, and to Haniyeh. Sinwar’s power represents the rise of military wing’s influence, where many members are finding their way into political elite positions in Gaza.

Marwan Isa is another senior Hamas member, influential to both wings. While the political wing has, behind closed doors, been hesitant to support the military wing’s disastrous adventures against Israel, its ability to veto future attacks may vanish.

Additionally, Hamas is running out allies as it did before the 2014 war.

Iran continues to fund its military wing, as well as Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Yet Tehran’s ability to traffic weapons into Gaza has been ruined by Egypt’s tunnel demolition drive.

Iran’s overall influence on Gaza, therefore, is limited.

The Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Qatar has also stepped back from Hamas, limiting its funding projects in Gaza to civilian reconstruction only, building a modern highway in Gaza and a fancy new neighborhood in Khan Younis. However, no Qatari funds go to Hamas’s military build-up. Turkey’s assistance to Hamas is limited, too. It paid for a new Gaza hospital and 11 mosques, but beyond that, its support is mostly rhetorical.

The Arab world is indifferent to Gaza, meaning that Hamas is in strategic distress.

ISIS-inspired ideology is penetrating Gaza, and a few thousand former Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad members have defected to small Salafist-jihadist groups there. These groups have been responsible for all rocket fire into Israel since the summer of 2014.

In fact, the only state that makes major efforts to care for Gaza’s civilians is Israel. Israel provides 60 percent of Gaza’s electricity (30 percent is locally produced and Egypt provides the remaining 10 percent).

In 2015, Israel allowed 104,000 Gazans through the Erez border crossings to assist traders and humanitarian journeys. At the Kerem Shalom vehicle crossing, 900 trucks pass each day from Israel into Gaza, carrying all manner of goods, from fuel, to construction materials and commercial goods.

For Gaza civilians, the only ray of light seems to shine from the reconstruction mechanism, which Israel quietly set in motion after Hamas cynically used Gazan civilian areas as rocket launching zones and urban combat bases.

Israel set up a computerized reconstruction system that closely monitors and enables the rebuilding, while preventing the use of concrete and dual use items from falling into Hamas’s hands. Gaza contractors who cannot account for their materials on the computerized systems are immediately removed from their positions, a heavy price to pay in the unemployment-rife Gaza Strip.

Funded by international donors and the Palestinian private sector, the mechanism, which Israel pushed to set up, has repaired 80,000 of the 130,000 housing units damaged during the conflict. Another 20,000 are currently being repaired.

Of the 18,000 homes completely destroyed in 2014, nearly 11,000 have already been rebuilt, and material for nearly 2,000 more homes has been bought and paid for.

The reconstruction program is providing jobs and a little hope for Gazans. But it is unlikely to be sufficient to stave off an economic collapse. Again, the rebuilding effort is funded almost entirely by outside sources while Hamas invests tremendous resources into terrorism-guerilla capabilities and denies the Gazan people the opportunity of economic development by refusing to recognize Israel.

Until Gaza is run by people with different priorities, its residents have little hope their lives will improve.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Gaza, Hamas, Islamic State, Israel
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Secrets and Lies: Turkey’s Covert Relationship With ISIS

March 29, 2016

Secrets and Lies: Turkey’s Covert Relationship With ISIS, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, March 29, 2016

Islamic-State-5-IPWith the aid of Turkish officials, Islamic State fighters’ have been able to travel through Turkey to reach Syria (Photo: Video screenshot)

A hot warning received by intelligence officials revealed that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is planning an “imminent attack” on Jewish children in Turkey. Officials believe the most likely target is in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, where a Jewish school is attached to a synagogue and community center.

The information was obtained after Turkey arrested six ISIS operatives in the southern city of Gaziantep last week.

“This is a more than credible threat. This is an active plot,” a Turkey source said.

Less than 10 days ago, a suicide bomber stalked Israeli tourists in Istanbul before blowing himself up near them, killing five people (four of them Israelis) and wounding many more.

“The so-called Islamic State is believed to be behind both sets of attacks and the organization continues in determined efforts to perpetrate further attacks in Turkey and elsewhere,” reported Sky News, quoting from an intelligence report seen by the news outlet.

In addition to the six arrested, another three ISIS operatives were arrested last week. Turkey, it seems is scrambling to protect itself from attacks the terror group has threatened to execute all across Europe.

After the Brussels attacks, Turkish President RecepTayyip Erdogan shocked the world by saying that Turkey had captured one of the perpetrators of the massacre last June and send him back to his country.  Erdogan specifically said that Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the suicide bombers in the Brussels airport, was detained in Turkey and sent back to Belgium with a warning (that was ignored) that he was a militant.

Yet, new documents obtained by Kurdish YPG fighters (People’s Protection Units) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who are fighting together, refute the claim made by Erdogan that Turkey is preventing ISIS and Al-Nusra (Al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria) from travelling through Turkey to reach Syria.

The documents seized from Islamic State headquarters in seven locations, including Kobane, show that ISIS fighters from all over the world – and particularly from Kazakhstan, Indonesia, and Tajikistan  — were given passage through Turkey to Syria.

The Firat News Agency (ANF), a Kurdish outlet whose websites have been repeatedly blocked in Turkey by Turkish courts, reports that the hundreds of documents show that since 2013, ISIS fighters have used the Istanbul and Adana airports and have received permits from the Turkish government to reside in Turkey until they cross over to Syria.

The documents also include bus tickets, electronic Turkish visas, residency permits, and documents with stamps from Turkish immigration officials.

Chillingly, the documents show that chemical and explosive materials was transferred from Turkey to Syria. One such document was signed by the manager of Istanbul’s Police Foreigners’ Department Erkan Aydoga. Manuals in Turkish as to how to use these materials were also given to the jihadis.

A sample of the documents can be viewed here.

Turkey, as has been previously reported, is playing a dangerous and duplicitous game with the West. As Clarion Project has wrote, Turkey’s arms transfers to al-Qaeda-linked Islamist jihadis in Syria have been long-documented, yet largely ignored by the Western media. A major raid by the U.S. on an Islamic State safe house in Syria in the summer of 2015 gleaned large amounts of intelligence undeniably linking Turkey to the Islamic State.

Similarly, the fact the Turkey has been the top financial sponsor of Hamas since 2012, with Erdogan arranging for the transfer of $250-300 million to this U.S.-designated terrorist group annually, is another oft-ignored inconvenience. Similarly, the West has brilliantly avoided confronting Turkey on its abysmal human rights record.

Using air-tight documentation, Nafeez Ahmed, editor of InsurgeIntelligence, writes about the many reasons the West has chosen to look the other way while Turkey facilitates oil sales for the Islamic State, which guarantees its strength and viability.

“There are many explanations,” writes Ahmed, “but one perhaps stands out: the West’s abject dependence on terror-toting Muslim regimes, largely to maintain access to Middle East, Mediterranean and Central Asian oil and gas resources.”

Since 2013, the Turkish government has been building a $100 million mega-mosque in Lanham, Maryland, taking Turkey’s“outreach” in America out of the realm of the subtle. This week in America, U.S. President Barack Obama will join Erdogan at the opening of the mosque, the largest in the U.S.

The show, it seems, must go on.

Categories: Erdogan, Islam and Jews, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Jews, Mosques, Obama and Islam, Obama and Turkey, Turkey
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Cartoons of the Day

March 28, 2016

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

Welcome to Saudi Arabia

 

H/t Joopklepzeiker

Turkey

Categories: Humor, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia
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Pakistan on the Mediterranean

March 28, 2016

Pakistan on the Mediterranean, Washington Free Beacon, , March 28, 2016

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens during a ceremony to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli in Canakkale, Turkey, Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned Europe that it, too, could fall victim to attacks by Kurdish militants following a terror attack in Ankara that killed 37 people. (Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service, Pool via AP)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens during a ceremony to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli in Canakkale, Turkey, Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned Europe that it, too, could fall victim to attacks by Kurdish militants following a terror attack in Ankara that killed 37 people. (Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service, Pool via AP)

President Obama will welcome Erdoğan to Washington this week for a strategy meeting about countering the ISIS.

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On March 18, European and Turkish diplomats signed off on a comprehensive deal on migrants pouring from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East through Turkey and into the European Union. Under the terms of the deal, for every illegal migrant the E.U. returns to Turkey, Turkey would send one refugee for resettlement in Europe. Additionally, Turkey and Europe agreed to re-open discussions concerning the Muslim country’s efforts to join the E.U., and Europe agreed to allow Turks visa-free travel throughout the Schengen zone.

Two days after the deal was announced, a Turk who had joined the Islamic State blew himself up among tourists on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street, one of the city’s major shopping and tourism districts. Two days after that, ISIS suicide bombers killed dozens in two separate attacks in Brussels. ISIS called what occurred in Belgium “a drop in the sea” compared with what the terrorists have in store for “nations of disbelief.”

Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have used the growing threat to argue that the West must better conform its policies to Turkey’s desires. In the wake of the Brussels attacks, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu chided Europe. “Europe has no partner other than Turkey to provide its regional security,” he declared, adding a subtle threat: “They should see this reality and act accordingly.” Meanwhile President Obama will welcome Erdoğan to Washington this week for a strategy meeting about countering the ISIS.

The reality Davutoğlu deliberately ignores, however, is his own country’s role in allowing ISIS to develop and metastasize. The Turkish government is adept at pulling the wool over Western officials’ eyes. Erdoğan pays lip service in meetings with European and American officials to the importance of both democracy and the Turkish partnership with the West, for example, declaring, “Secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions.” He speaks differently to his Turkish audience. As mayor of Istanbul, he described himself as “the imam of Istanbul” and declared, “Thank God almighty, I am a servant of Shari‘a.” He is famous for his quip, “Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.” In recent years, he has declared his goal to be to “raise a religious generation.”

This “religious generation” is flowing into the cauldron of Syria and Iraq. More than 30,000 foreign fighters from as many as 100 countries now fight with the Islamic State. The bulk of these soldiers—perhaps 90 percent—crossed into the Islamic State from Turkey. Turkish visa policy contributes to the problem. A direct correlation can be drawn between foreign fighters serving ISIS and those nationalities from which Turkish authorities require no visa or provide waivers: Several thousand more Moroccans and Tunisians, who need no visas to transit Turkey, fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq than Algerians and Libyans, who do. If Erdoğan simply required visas in advance for those under the age of 40 coming from countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan—or, for that matter, from Russia, the United Kingdom, and Australia—the flood of recruits into the Islamic State would slow to a trickle.

ISIS terrorists regularly traverse the Turkish border, not only for medical care but also for rest and relaxation. Some merchants in Istanbul openly sell ISIS propaganda and promise that proceeds from their sale will benefit the group’s fight in Syria and Iraq. Smugglers peddling contraband oil to fund ISIS rely on Turkey to bring the oil to market, paying off local and perhaps even national officials of the AKP, Turkey’s governing party, along the way.

Turkey has done more than lend passive support to Islamist radicals. In his 13 years in power, Erdoğan has transformed Turkey from a Western-leaning democracy into Pakistan-on-the-Mediterranean. There was, for example,the leak of documents from the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MİT), Turkey’s intelligence service, showing Turkish support of the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria. And, rather than give medals to the Turkish soldiers who intercepted truckloads of weaponry destined for Syrian radicals, Erdoğan ordered their arrest.

Likewise, when Turkish journalists exposed—with photographic evidence—the transfer of munitions and other supplies from the Turkish border to ISIS, Erdoğan’s response was not to applaud the media but to seize the newspaper and arrest its editors and many of its reporters.

There is also evidence that, as Kurds fighting ISIS in Kobani in 2014 began to turn the tide against the radical group, Erdoğan and Turkish intelligence officials allowed ISIS fighters to pass through Turkey and attack Kobani from across the border, a flank the town’s largely Kurdish residents assumed was secure.

From the beginning, Erdoğan has looked at the Syrian refugee crisis not as a humanitarian tragedy but an arrow in his quiver. Inside Turkey, he has offered Sunni refugees Turkish citizenship if they settle in Turkish provinces currently dominated by the Shi‘ite offshoot Alevi sect. And, whereas the world condemns ISIS “genocide” against the Yezidi, the Yezidi who sheltered in Turkey were then victimized, again, by local AKP-run municipalities who refused to provide services offered to Sunni refugees.

Allowing Turkey to choose which refugees to send to Europe and promising to eliminate visa restrictions for Turks only rewards Erdoğan for his behavior and gives him additional leverage in his dealings with the West. Nor is this the type of policy Erdoğan’s neighbors would support. Earlier this year, King Abdullah II of Jordan told Congress, “The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook.” He added that, “radicalization was being manufactured in Turkey.”

Abdullah’s message fell on deaf in ears in Washington, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin. It is Erdoğan who has the initiative as he pursues the Islamicization of Turkey and neo-Ottoman imperialism. He has built a Pakistan on the Mediterranean: an incubator of terror that markets itself as the only available partner of the West, with tragic results.

Categories: Erdogan, Europe, Foreign policy, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Middle East, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Turkey, Turkey
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