Islamic terrorism | WarSclerotic | Page 47

Posted tagged ‘Islamic terrorism’

Nuclear Jihad

September 7, 2015

Nuclear Jihad, Gatestone Institute, Denis MacEoin, September 7, 2015

In the year 628, Muhammad, now ruling in Medina, signed the ten-year Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with his long-time enemies, the tribal confederacy of Quraysh, who ruled Mecca. Twenty-two months later, under the pretext that a clan from a tribe allied with the Quraysh had squabbled with a tribe allied to the Muslims, Muhammad broke the treaty and attacked Mecca, conquering it. It is as certain as day follows night, that the Iranian regime will find a pretext to break the deal. Already, on September 3, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene’i made it clear that he would back out of the deal if sanctions were not completely removed at once.
The Iranian regime not only despises democracy; it considers all Western law, including international law, invalid.
The Shi’a consider themselves underdogs, who are willing to sacrifice all to establish the rights of their imams and their successors. That was what the 1979 revolution was all about, and it is what present the Iranian regime still insists on as the justification for its opposition to Western intrusion, democracy, women’s rights and all the rest, which are deemed by Iran’s leadership as part of a plot to undermine and control the expansion of the Shi’i faith on the global stage. These are not Anglican vicars.
The Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “have responsibility… for a religious mission, which is Holy War (Jihad) in the path of God and the struggle to extend the supremacy of God’s law in the world.” — Iran’s Constitution, Article “The Religious Army”.
A Third World War is already taking place. The Iran deal strengthens the hands of a regime that is the world’s terrorist state, a state that furthers jihad in many places because its clerical hierarchy considers itself uniquely empowered to order and promote holy war.
Obama’s trust in Khamene’i’s presumed fatwa of 2013, forbidding nuclear weapons, rests on the assumption that it even exists. It does not. Even if it did,fatwas are not permanent.
Why, then, is this deal going ahead at all? Why is one of the world’s most tyrannical regimes being rewarded for its intransigence, and especially for repeatedly violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

“[Some] analysts,” writes the historian and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, “claimed the president [Barack Obama] regarded Iran as an ascendant and logical power — unlike the feckless, disunited Arabs and those troublemaking Israelis — that could assist in resolving other regional conflicts. I first heard this theory at Georgetown back in 2008, in conversation with think tankers and former State Department officials. They also believed Iran’s radical Islam was merely an expression of interests and fears that the United States could with sufficient goodwill, meet and allay. … Iran, according to Obama was a pragmatic player with addressable interest. For Netanyahu, Iran was irrational, messianic, and genocidal – ‘worse,’ he said, ‘than fifty North Koreas.'”[1]

Since the signing of the deal at the UN, hot-tempered criticisms and defences have gone into overdrive in the political, journalistic, and diplomatic spheres. Acres have been written and are still being written about the deal, making it the hottest political potato of recent years. Expert analysts such as Omri Ceren and, more recently, Joel Rosenberg have cut through the deliberate obfuscation to show the extent of the dangers the deal presents to the Middle East, the United States, Israel, and the world.

The deal’s supporters insist that it will bring peace and calm to the region, while a host of denigrators — chief among them Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu — have exposed the enormous risks it entails. Already, a vast majority of American citizens are opposed to the deal.

Within the U.S. Congress, bipartisan opposition to the deal is high and mounting. Yet, on September 2, President Obama succeeded in winning over a 34^th senator, enough that ultimate passage of the deal is a foregone conclusion. That does not, however, mean that the debate will end. In all likelihood, it will grow fiercer as time passes and true consequences become clearer to the public and politicians alike.

Recent revelations that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which oversees nuclear developments worldwide, has agreed that only Iranians will be allowed to inspect the most controversial of Iran’s nuclear sites, have raised anxieties about proper monitoring of the deal. The military complex of Parchin, where Iran is suspected of work on nuclear weapons, will be closed to outside inspection, making it certain that, if Iran decides to cheat (something it has done before), it will be able to do so with impunity. Sanctions will not be re-imposed. And, as we shall see, cheating on the deal can be justified by the Iranians who could always refer to the practice of the prophet Muhammad with the Quraysh tribe in Mecca.

Obama, his Secretary of State John Kerry, and the entire US administration are not merely behind the deal, but almost fanatically so. Many argue that Obama is more interested in securing his “legacy” as the world’s greatest peacemaker (or war-creator, as the case may well turn out to be), the statesman par excellence who alone could bring the theocratic regime of Iran in from the cold and shower the Middle East with true balance in its troubled affairs.

To bring this about, Obama has had to diminish, if not leave totally open to obliteration, American support for Israel, the single country in the world most clearly exposed to a possible genocide should the Iran’s Islamic regime choose to exterminate it, as it has so often threatened to do.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words mellal-e Eslami bayad Esra’il-ra qal’ o qam’ kard – “the Islamic nations must exterminate Israel” — have been given renewed vigour now that it is highly likely that Iran, evading serious inspections by the IAEA, will soon possess the weapons to do just that.

Even if the treaty is a done deal, it is time to show yet another massive hole in the administration’s strategy. Already, Obama, Kerry and the tightly knit administration have shown themselves remarkably obdurate in turning a blind eye to the many concerns that surround the deal. At the end of the “sunset period,” if not sooner, Iran gets to have, legitimately, as many bombs as it likes. Other problems include breakout times; centrifuge production; centrifuge concealment; uranium enrichment by stealth; refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect military sites; the acquisition of intercontinental ballistic missiles — presumably to be used intercontinentally at guess who. It is no secret that the hardliners in Iran still speak of America as “The Great Satan” and consider it their enemy. That does not even include the implications of lifting sanctions on, and paying billions of dollars to, the world’s main sponsor of terrorism.

As Michael Oren has shown, however, the American president presumably thinks he is doing a deal with a logical and pragmatic regime. Barack Obama, an intelligent, well-read man of Muslim origin, knows almost nothing about Islam; that is the greatest flaw in the Iran deal he has fought so hard to inflict on the human race. With access to platoons of experts, to some of the greatest libraries with holdings in Islamic doctrines and history, and with the Mullahs and Iran’s public still daily promising to destroy America, Obama apparently still believes Islam is a religion of peace and that a theocratic, terror-supporting, medieval regime should have the power to make nuclear bombs. The obverse is that he might like, perhaps not wittingly, to see America, Israel and the West brought to their knees.

This author has previously exposed one aspect of Iran’s serious lack of logic, rationality, or pragmatism — namely the extent to which apocalyptic thinking, messianic prophecy, and dreams of Islamic transcendence through universal conflict pervade the clerical elite, a high percentage of the masses, and even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. One might assume that this would be especially true when they are flush with cash and nuclear weapons, and the risk to their own survival is substantially lower.

On August 17, just over a month after the signing of the nuclear deal, Iran’s Supreme Leader, ‘Ali Khamene’i, addressed a religious conference, where he expressed his undying hatred for the United States. He said, for example:

We must combat the plans of the arrogance [i.e. the West, led by the U.S.] with jihad for the sake of Allah. … jihad for the sake of God does not only mean military conflict, but also means cultural, economic, and political struggle. The clearest essence of jihad for the sake of God today is to identify the plots of the arrogance in the Islamic region, especially the sensitive and strategic West Asian region. The planning for the struggle against them should include both defense and offense.

The deal has done nothing whatever to stop military threats to Israel, an ally of the United States (though treated with disrespect by America’s president). Speaking on 2 September, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s top commander in Tehran province, Brigadier General Mohsen Kazemayni, stated that, “… they [the US and the Zionists] should know that the Islamic Revolution will continue enhancing its preparedness until it overthrows Israel and liberates Palestine.”

There is a simple word for this: warmongering.

Why is the U.S. President insisting on a bad deal with a warmongering regime?

When a military force at its strongest fantasizes about the coming of a Messiah (the Twelfth Imam) to lead them to victory over all infidels, talk of logic, rationality and pragmatism seems acutely out of touch with reality.

Obama’s assumption that there is something solid about the Iranian regime that makes it suitable as a recipient for such largesse and the chance to enrich uranium until kingdom come seems to be based on false consciousness. The regime has been in place for almost forty years, quite a respectable time for a dictatorship. In part, that has been because it has mastered the art of suppression, giving its people a degree of freedom that is missing in several other Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, or Afghanistan. These partial freedoms, especially for young people, lull the population into risk-averseness, possibly helped along by the memory in 2009 of pleas for more freedom, which the United States ignored and the mullahs savaged.

Obama, in his ongoing attempt to portray Islam as benign — and a dictatorial regime as a sold basis for peace and understanding in the Middle East — ignores the religious element of the theocracy, as well as the sadistic repression, and in doing so misses a lot.

First of all, Shi’ite Islam is different from its Sunni big brother. It is deeply imbued with features largely absent from Sunni Islam. The most important Shi’i denomination is that of the Twelvers (Ithna’ ‘Ashariyya), who, from the beginning of Islam, have believed themselves to be not only the true version of the faith, but the group destined by God to rule in its name. Beginning with ‘Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet and the fourth Caliph of the Sunnis, the Shi’a began as his supporters. (Please see the Appendix that follows this article: it contains material that even Barack Obama and his advisors need to know; without it, they simply will not “get” what the ayatollahs are about. It comes to an important conclusion that has considerable bearing on today’s events — and not the one you may expect.)

Beneath the smiles and banter lie the unsmiling masks and the taqiyya-flavoured lies. Beneath the wheeling and dealing and the refusals to compromise lies a sense of destiny for the regime, a belief that it stands on the brink of the realization of the centuries-old Shi’ite dream: that God will finally set his people on the pinnacle of the world and usher in the never-ending reign of the Imam Mahdi, with all injustice gone, the martyrs in paradise, the ayatollahs and mujtahids andmaraji’ in glory, and all the infidels in hell.

It is precisely because Barack Obama and his aides have never got down and dirty to take in hard information that they have remained utterly out of touch with the real springs and cogs of Iranian Shi’ite thinking.

Obama has, when all is said and done, let himself be deluded by the charm offensive of Hassan Rouhani and his henchman Javad Zarif. Obama may not believe in the mystical land of Hurqalyaor the white steed on which the Twelfth Imam will ride to the world’s last battle any more than you or I do. But the clerical elite of Iran, and those who follow them blindly — men and women brought up from birth on these tales, and who travel in the thousands every day to send a message to the Imam at the Jamkaran Mosque near Qom — believe these things with absolute devotion, and that is why this story matters, because it has political consequences.

Shi’i Muslim law enshrines jihad, holy war, as fully as does Sunni law. For Sunnis, jihad has always been possible under the authority of a Caliph, whether fought under his orders or led by kings and governors under his broad aegis.

The Shi’a, however, do not recognize the Caliphate and have often been the victims of Sunni jihads. They may feel impelled to fight a holy war, but under what authority could they do so?

The power of the clergy had waned under the anti-clerical reign of Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), only to burst out more strongly than ever in the Islamic Revolution, which placed all authority in a new system of government: rule by a religious jurist, a faqih.[2] Overnight, a jihad state was brought into existence; a jihad state with vast oil reserves, modern military equipment, and, at first, the support of almost the entire Iranian population. The clerical hierarchy under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not just intend to prepare the way for the coming of the Mahdi. They were now his earthly deputies, in whose hands lay life and death for millions.

The new Shi’ism allowed the clergy to take on powers they had never imagined. More and more economic and legal power came to be concentrated in the hands of a narrow body of scholars, and sometimes a single man could be the source of religious and legal authority for the entire Shi’i world — in Iran, Afghanistan, eastern Arabia, Bahrain, and so on. Thus were the foundations laid for the revolutionary rank of Supreme Leader, taken by the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamene’i.

Look for a moment at the preamble to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.[3] You will see quickly that this does not read like any other constitution you have seen. The preamble sets the tone. Here, in an account of the circumstances leading to the revolution we read of the clergy as the ruhaniyyat-e mobarez, “the militant or fighting clergy.” These are not Anglican vicars at their prayers or rabbis studying Talmud. A mobarez is a warrior, a champion, a fighter. Not far down the preamble, one encounters a description of their struggle as “The Great Holy War,”jihad-e bozorg. We are not in Obama’s world of logical and pragmatic striving for political and diplomatic coherence. This is made even clearer in one of the constitution’s earlier articles, “The Religious Army.” Here, we read that the Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “have responsibility… for a religious mission, which is Holy War (Jihad) in the path of God, and the struggle to extend the supremacy of God’s law in the world.”

How do you reach a compromise and a pragmatic deal with a regime that thinks in this way? Are the U.S. administration and the P5+1 blind to something the Iranians have never even bothered to conceal? Do they really take everything in the talks at face value? Perhaps they think references to jihad and fighting clergy are nothing more than pious talk “for domestic consumption,” as they tried to explain — as real and everyday as the myths and legends of other faiths. If they do, then they have far less excuse for their blindness, for the Iranian regime is already at war and is already fighting its jihad.

In Iraq, for example, a country with a majority Twelver Shi’i population, Iranian-backed militias have been at war for many years, first against the Americans, then the Sunnis, and now the hordes of Islamic State. In June 2014, Grand Ayatollah al-Sayyid ‘Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling on Iraqis to fight against Islamic State, justifying their fight as jihad wajib kafa’i: a Jihad that is compulsory for those who choose it, but not for the entire population. The ruling calls for a struggle against ISIS’s irhab – their “terrorism.” Jihad is a religious and legal duty, and even though ISIS may call its fighting jihad, it is here condemned as terror.

Hezbollah, created and backed by Iran, is by far the largest terrorist group in the region. Hezbollah is considered a state within a state, with forces and infrastructure inside Lebanon and Syria. It has used the name “Islamic Jihad Organization” to cover its attacks on Israeli forces in Lebanon. In its 1988 Open Letter (Risala maftuha), it describes its followers as “Combatants of the Holy War” and goes on — in terms similar to those in the Hamas Covenant — “our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

Hezbollah and its creator, the Iranian Islamic regime, have a curious link to the Palestinian terror movement, Hamas, despite Hamas being exclusively Sunni. By financing, arming, and defending Hamas, Iran is fighting a strange proxy jihad that serves its own purposes of defying the West, achieving regional hegemony, and winning praise from all Muslims in the world for its own war against Israel. It also furthers the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch) in the same struggle.

I have dragged you through the briars and mud because it is important here to see another culture through its own eyes. If we insist in pretending that Shi’i Muslims think like Sunni Muslims or, worse still, like Jews or Christians — if we brush all that history and all those doctrines under the carpet of “any deal is better than no deal ” — we will go on making the same mistakes. We will believe that a purely political and diplomatic enterprise to bring Iran in from the cold and create a new trading alliance will transform an evil regime into a land of sweetness and light.

Members of the U.S. Congress must wake up and examine, in however cursory a fashion, these views that motivate the Iranian leadership, and must stop pretending that they are as logical and pragmatic as would be convenient for the wishes of the West.

Not that Obama and Kerry have ever sounded logical or pragmatic in how they have approached this debate and this deal-making process. In an act of supreme folly, the White House has dismissed Ayatollah Khamene’i’s recent call for “Death to America;” they pretend it is just empty rhetoric for the Iranian people.

1169

Left: Senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, speaking on July 17 in Tehran, behind a banner reading “We Will Trample Upon America” and “We defeat the United States.” Right: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, proclaims “Death to America” on March 2

We are walking with a blindfold toward sure disaster. Forget the dreams of a Messiah if you will, but do not for one moment let yourself be lulled into thinking that only ISIS is serious about waging a jihad.

Despite their oft-expressed delusion that “Islam is a religion of peace,” President Obama, Secretary John Kerry and other leaders are, like it or not, already engaged in a war against jihad. They have already fought it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. However much Obama wants to stand off from involvement in the jihad struggles of the Middle East, he cannot: Western states are fighting jihad, sometimes abroad, increasingly at home.

A Third World War is already taking place, a war the Islamists and Islamic states understand, but which many in the West still refuse to grasp. They are not even willing to respect the true motivations of the enemies against whom they fight. The Iran deal strengthens the hands of a regime that is the world’s terrorist state, a state that furthers jihad in many places because its clerical hierarchy considers itself uniquely empowered to order and promote holy war.

Let us for the moment ignore the nuclear aspect of this deal and look instead on what it offers the world’s leading jihad state. The removal of sanctions coupled with the business deals Europeans and others are rushing to secure, the delivery of perhaps $150 billion to Tehran, and the turning of many blind eyes to both Iran’s internal repression and its jihad wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, and Lebanon leave the ayatollahs poised to dominate much of the Middle East.

And that is not all. Obama’s belief in the stability of the Iranian regime seems to rest on its endurance since 1979. His trust in Khamene’i’s presumed fatwa of 2013, forbidding nuclear weapons rests on the assumption that it even exists. It does not. No one has ever seen it. Even if the fatwa did exist, fatwas are not permanent. They are always regarded as temporary rulings with Twelver Shi’ism. This is a crucial technical point that the White House seems incapable of — or ill-disposed to — grasping.

Further, Obama’s faith in Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a reformer and moderate flies in the face of Rouhani’s devotion to the hardline clerical leadership of which he is a part. Here are a few facts:

‘Ali Khamene’i is 76 years old, but his health is poor and he may not live much longer. Already, factions within the hierarchy will be jostling for the Supreme Leadership.
In the Usuli Twelver version of Shi’ism, once a Mujtahid dies, his fatwas are no longer valid. A new Mujtahid or, in this case, a new Supreme Leader, has to issue fatwas of his own. A new fatwa may confirm an old one or radically differ from it.
A new Supreme Leader is an unpredictable personality.
The Iranian nuclear program is already up and running.
The breakout time for weapons grade materials may be as short as three months.
Iran already has and is acquiring ballistic missiles with an intercontinental range.
Jihad is hard-wired into the regime’s philosophy.
Iran is already conducting a series of jihad wars abroad.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expressed a hope to return to the presidency in 2017. Ahmadinejad and his clique are bent on apocalyptic outcomes and actions to bring the Hidden Imam back to this world.

We only have to get this wrong once. Chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” are not narcotic iterations of slogans but sincerely felt expressions of intent.

Khamene’i last month praised the Iranian people for calling for the deaths of the USA and Israel, and said that he hoped God would answer their prayers because in at most ten years, the Iranian mullahs and their IRGC will possess the power to exterminate Israel, if they and their God so wish.

Why, then, is this deal going ahead at all?

Why are sanctions against the world’s leading exporter of jihadi terrorism being lifted, not strengthened?

Why is one of the world’s most tyrannical regimes being rewarded for its intransigence, and especially for repeatedly violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Why has Israel’s Prime Minister been vilified and sidelined simply for drawing attention to the weaknesses of a deal that could lead to the death of all of his people?

Why have the P5+1 never taken seriously the Shi’ite rule that it is permitted to lie to infidels and conceal one’s own true intentions?

Why are secrets being kept — such as the contents of the two side-deals?

Why is the U.S. Congress being asked to vote without the benefit of full disclosure?

Why is the IAEA banned from spontaneously inspecting only declared Iranian nuclear sites, and why are military sites completely off-limits?

The questions are so many and so critical that we remain in the dark about where this will lead mankind. No one who has ever done a financial or political deal would ever sign on the dotted line until they had answers to all their questions. Far more hangs on this deal than perhaps any deal in history. Yet those who want to make it enforceable under international law are uninformed about the most basic contents of the deal, as well as the beliefs and historical roots of their enemy.

Such folly is almost without precedence, except possibly in the process of appeasement that endeavoured to placate the Third Reich and treat Adolf Hitler as the best friend of democracy.

The Iranian regime not only despises democracy, it considers all Western law — including international law — invalid. This view has several deep roots. For both Sunni and Shi’i Muslims, only rule under God is valid, under a Caliph or a clerical theocracy under a Supreme Ruler. Human beings have no right to interfere. Democracy leads to the making of human laws that may contradict shari’a law, and such effrontery is considered arrogant and presumptuous. The democratic elements in Iran are tightly controlled, and supremacy rests in all areas beneath clerical authority. The same principle applies to international law, UN resolutions, treaties and so forth.

Iran has openly genocidal intent, as well as a devotion to holy war that goes to the very deepest level.

Before we leave the subject of jihad, there is one other factor that everyone has overlooked. It is the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, the most important agreement in early Islamic history. In the year 628, Muhammad, now ruling in Medina, signed the ten-year Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with his long-time enemies, the tribal confederacy of Quraysh, who ruled Mecca. Twenty-two months later, under the pretext that a clan from a tribe allied with the Quraysh had squabbled with a tribe allied to the Muslims, Muhammad broke the treaty and attacked Mecca, conquering it.

What is important about this is that Muhammad had made the treaty while he was still relatively weak. But in the months after signing it, his alliances and growing conversions meant that he now possessed superior military strength — and that was when he pounced.

In 1994, the treaty became crucial to the issue of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.[4]In September 1993, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat signed the Oslo Accords along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the following year the two leaders were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

However, even as he awaited that prize, Arafat spoke at a mosque in Johannesburg alluded to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and referred to “a jihad to liberate Jerusalem”: “I see this agreement,” he said, “as being no more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh in Mecca.”

Non-Muslims may well have misunderstood this as a reference to some early Muslim peace-making. But Arafat made his meaning clear: “We now accept the peace agreement, but [only in order] to continue on the road to Jerusalem.”[5]

The nuclear deal that President Obama and his supporters have imposed will strengthen Iran considerably, removing sanctions and delivering perhaps $150 billion to the country. It is as certain as day follows night, that the Iranian regime will find a pretext to break the deal. Already, on September 3, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene’i made it clear that he would back out of the deal if sanctions were not completely removed at once.

Whatever happens in the days ahead, the U.S. Congress, backed by a majority of the American public, needs to strike this madcap deal down before it wreaks a storm of tribulations on everyone.

Denis MacEoin has a PhD (Cambridge 1979) in Persian Studies and has written widely on Iran and its religious beliefs.

Appendix

‘Ali became the first in a line of twelve imams, all deemed the true leaders of Islam, but all denied their right to rule and all but one assassinated (or so it is claimed) by the Sunni Caliphs. From this comes the Shi’i sense of suffering, injustice, oppression by despots, neglect and rights — all of which played an important part in the 1979 revolution and continue to play out across society.

The Shi’a are the underdogs who are willing to sacrifice all to establish the rights of their imams and their successors. That was what the 1979 evolution was all about, and it is what present the regime still insists on as the justification for its opposition to Western intrusion, democracy, women’s rights and all the rest, which are deemed by Iran’s leadership as part of a plot to undermine and control the expansion of the Shi’i faith on the global stage.

The twelfth imam, according to Shi’ite legend, was a young boy, Muhammad al-Mahdi, the son of the murdered eleventh imam. Born in 869 in the Iraqi city of Samarra during the reign of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate, his father, Hasan al-‘Askari, died when Muhammad was born.

It is said that young Muhammad, in order to avoid his enemies, went into something called Occultation (ghayba). Even if this originally was physical, he was never seen alive again and is supposed to have entered the celestial realm of Hurqalya, from which he will one day return as the promised Saviour, the Qa’im bi’l-Sayf, the One Who will Arise with the Sword to do battle with injustice and infidelity.

This belief is what waters modern Shi’i apocalypticism, something promoted intensely by former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This expectation has considerable significance for Iran’s drive to nuclear power. But that is not why I raise the issue here. There is another, more mundane, aspect to the Imam’s disappearance and continued Occultation, and it may be even more relevant to the matters at hand.

The answer to what authority they could fight under was that only the Imam in each generation could order or lead jihad. But when the twelfth Imam vanished from human sight, was jihad to remain in abeyance until his return or could it be fought under another authority? The answer was not at first simple, but one thing started to happen: the Shi’a began to consider their religious scholars to be the intermediaries with the Imam, and this laid the basis for the possibility that they might have the right to order jihad. For some time, this was just conjectural, for the Shi’a had little worldly power.

In 1501, a new dynasty, the Safavids, came to power in Iran, forced most of the population to convert to Shi’ism, and created a line of kings under whom the clerical class became more and more powerful. The Shah could still lead jihad, but the clergy were needed to give permission. The Safavid dynasty lasted till 1722, and an interregnum was followed by the emergence of a new line of Shahs, the Qajars, who ruled from 1796 to 1925.

Under the Qajars, the Shi’i clerical hierarchy underwent deep and lasting changes, producing today’s version of Twelver Islam, the Usulis.

The newly powerful ‘ulama of the 19^th century took on the mantle of deputies for the Hidden Imam and ordered jihads in 1809 and 1826 (against Russia), 1836, 1843, and 1856-7 (against the British). In 1914, when the British occupied Iraq at the start of World War I, the Shi’i clergy in the shrine centres there declared jihad to reinforce the call for Holy War by the Ottoman empire.

__________________________________

[1] Ally by Michael Oren

[2] As in Khomeini’s theory and book, Velayat-e Faqih, the Custodianship of the Jurisprudent.

[3] Here in English, here in Persian.

[4] For a detailed discussion of the treaty and its implications for making peace with Muslims, see Daniel Pipes, “Lessons from the Prophet Muhammad’s Diplomacy,” The Middle East Quarterly, September 1999, pp. 65-72.

[5] Natasha Singer, “Arafat Text Raises Ire,” Forward, May 27, 1994.

Categories: Death to America, Death to Israel, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Fatwa, Foreign policy, Freedom, Hamas, Hezbollah, Hidden Imam, Human rights, IAEA, Iran / Israel War, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Javad Zarif, Kerry, Khamenei, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's affinity for Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Political Islam, Rouhani, Sanctions, Shiite, Sunni, Theocracy
Tags: Death to America, Death to Israel, Diplomacy, Fatwa, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Hamas, Hezbollah, Hidden imam, human rights, IAEA, Iran / Israel war, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian threats, Islamic Jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Javad Zarif, Khamenei, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's affinity for Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Political Islam, Rouhani, Sanctions, Shiite, Sunni, Theocracy

Comments: Be the first to comment

The hijrah into Europe

September 4, 2015

The hijrah into Europe, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, September 4, 2015

lampedusa_noborder_2007-2

If you don’t accept the brave new world that is sure to bring more jihad and more Sharia to Europe, you’re a Nazi and a racist.

************************

Approximately 104,460 asylum seekers arrived in Germany during the month of August, setting a new record. That makes 413,535 registered refugees and migrants coming to Germany in 2015 so far. The country expects a total of around 800,000 people to seek asylum in Germany this year. And that’s just Germany. The entire continent of Europe is being inundated with refugees at a rate unprecedented in world history. This is no longer just a “refugee crisis.” This is a hijrah.

Hijrah, or jihad by emigration, is, according to Islamic tradition, the migration or journey of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Yathrib, later renamed by him to Medina, in the year 622 CE. It was after the hijrah that Muhammad for the first time became not just a preacher of religious ideas, but a political and military leader. That was what occasioned his new “revelations” exhorting his followers to commit violence against unbelievers. Significantly, the Islamic calendar counts the hijrah, not Muhammad’s birth or the occasion of his first “revelation,” as the beginning of Islam, implying that Islam is not fully itself without a political and military component.

To emigrate in the cause of Allah – that is, to move to a new land in order to bring Islam there, is considered in Islam to be a highly meritorious act. “And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance,” says the Qur’an. “And whoever leaves his home as an emigrant to Allah and His Messenger and then death overtakes him, his reward has already become incumbent upon Allah. And Allah is ever Forgiving and Merciful.” (4:100) The exalted status of such emigrants led a British jihad group that won notoriety (and a shutdown by the government) a few years ago for celebrating 9/11 to call itself Al-Muhajiroun: The Emigrants.

And now a hijrah of a much greater magnitude is upon us. Evidence that this is a hijrah, not simply a humanitarian crisis, came last February, but was little noted at the time and almost immediately forgotten. The Islamic State published a document entitled, “Libya: The Strategic Gateway for the Islamic State.” Gateway into Europe, that is: the document exhorted Muslims to go to Libya and cross from there as refugees into Europe. This document tells would-be jihadis that weapons from Gaddafi’s arsenal are plentiful and easy to obtain in Libya – and that the country “has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat.”

The Islamic State did not have in mind just a few jihadis crossing from Libya: it also emerged last February that the jihadis planned to flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. Now the number is shooting well beyond that in Germany alone. Of course, not all of these refugees are Islamic jihadis. Not all are even Muslims, although most are. However, no effort whatsoever is being made to determine the refugees’ adherence to Sharia and desire to bring it to their new land. Any such effort would be “Islamophobic.” Yet there are already hints that the Islamic State is putting its plan into effect: jihadis have already been found among the refugees trying to enter Europe. There will be many more such discoveries.

Eight hundred thousand Muslim refugees in one year alone. This will transform Germany, and Europe, forever, overtaxing the welfare economies of its wealthiest nations and altering the cultural landscape beyond recognition. Yet the serious public discussion that needs to be had about this crisis is shouted down by the usual nonsense: the Washington Post Wednesday published an inflammatory and irresponsible piece likening those concerned about this massive Muslim influx into Europe to 1930s Nazis ready to incinerate Jews by the millions. Hollywood star Emma Thompson accused British authorities of racism for not taking in more refugees – as if British authorities haven’t already done enough to destroy their nation.

And so it goes. If you don’t accept the brave new world that is sure to bring more jihad and more Sharia to Europe, you’re a Nazi and a racist. Meanwhile, no one is bothering even to ask, much less answer, one central question: why is it incumbent upon Europe have to absorb all these refugees? Why not Saudi Arabia or the other Muslim countries that are oil-rich and have plenty of space? The answer is unspoken because non-Muslim authorities refuse to believe it and Muslims don’t want it stated or known: these refugees have to go to Europe because this is a hijrah.

This is also Europe’s death knell.

Categories: Arab nations, Britain, Europe, Germany, Human rights, Immigration, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Libya, Racism, Sharia law
Tags: Arab nations, Britain, Europe, Germany, human rights, Immigration, Islamic Jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Libya, Racism, Sharia law

Comments: 2 Comments

Germany’s Muslim Demographic Revolution

August 31, 2015

Germany’s Muslim Demographic Revolution, The Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, August 31, 2015

The surge in Germany’s Muslim population — propelled by a wave of migration unprecedented since the Second World War — represents a demographic shift of epic proportions, one that critics of the country’s open-door immigration policy warn will change the face of Germany forever.
“There are 20 million refugees waiting at the doorstep of Europe.” — Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations.
According to Aiman Mazyek, head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, attendance at many mosques has doubled in the past month alone.
A large number (40%) are from countries in the Balkans, including Albania and Kosovo. This implies that nearly half of those arriving in Germany are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing war zones. — Thomas De Maizière, German Interior Minister.
Muslim men residing in Germany routinely take advantage of the social welfare system by bringing two, three or four women from across the Muslim world to Germany, and then marrying them in the presence of an imam. Once in Germany the women request social welfare benefits, including the cost of a separate home for themselves and for their children, on the claim of being a “single parent with children.” — From an exposé broadcast by RTL television.
“For us today, what is at stake is Europe, the lifestyle of European citizens, European values, the survival or disappearance of European nations, and more precisely formulated, their transformation beyond recognition. Today, the question is not merely in what kind of a Europe we would like to live, but whether everything we understand as Europe will exist at all.” — Viktor Orbán, President of Hungary.

Germany’s Muslim population is set to skyrocket by more than 700,000 in 2015, pushing the total number of Muslims in the country to nearly 6 million for the first time.

The surge in Germany’s Muslim population — propelled by a wave of migration unprecedented since the Second World War — represents a demographic shift of epic proportions, one that critics of the country’s open-door immigration policy warn will change the face of Germany forever.

At a press conference on August 19, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière revealed that a record 800,000 migrants and refugees — the equivalent of nearly one percent of Germany’s total population — are expected to arrive in Germany in 2015, a four-fold increase over 2014. He said that 83,000 migrants had arrived in July alone, and that the figure for August would be higher still.

De Maizière said that although many of the migrants are from the Middle East and North Africa, a large number (40%) are from countries in the Balkans, including Albania and Kosovo. This implies that nearly half of those arriving in Germany are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing war zones.

1229

According to German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the Berlin refugee center pictured here receives up to 2000 applications for asylum per day. (Image source: Deutsche Welle video screenshot)

Of the 800,000 migrants and refugees arriving in Germany in 2015, at least 80% (or 640,000) are Muslim, according to a recent estimate by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland, ZMD), a Muslim umbrella group based in Cologne. This estimate is not in dispute.

In addition to the newcomers, the natural rate of population increase of the Muslim community already living in Germany is approximately 1.6% per year (or 77,000), according to data extrapolated from a recent Pew Research Center study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe.

Based on Pew projections, the Muslim population of Germany reached an estimated 5,068,000 by the end of 2014. The 640,000 Muslim migrants arriving in Germany in 2015, combined with the 77,000 natural increase, indicates that the Muslim population of Germany will jump by 717,000, to reach an estimated 5,785,000 by the end of 2015. This would leave Germany with the highest Muslim population in Western Europe.

By way of comparison, the surge in Germany’s Muslim population would be equivalent to the Muslim population of the United States increasing by 3 million in just one year.

Critics say that German officials, under pressure to solve Europe’s migration crisis, are ignoring the long-term consequences of taking in so many migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

In addition to security concerns (Islamic radicals are almost certainly trying to enter Germany disguised as refugees), they say, the surge in Muslim immigration will accelerate the Islamization of Germany, a process that is already well under way.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in post-Christian Germany. This is evidenced by the fact that an increasing number of churches in Germany are being converted into mosques, some of which are publicly sounding calls to prayer (the adhan) from outdoor loudspeaker systems. The increase is such that some neighborhoods in Germany evoke the sights and sounds of the Muslim Middle East.

Islamic Sharia law is advancing rapidly throughout Germany, with Sharia courts now operating in all of Germany’s big cities. This “parallel justice system” is undermining the rule of law in Germany, experts warn, but government officials are “powerless” to do anything about it. At the same time, German judges are increasingly referring and deferring to Sharia law in German law courts.

Polygamy, although illegal under German law, is commonplace among Muslims in all major German cities. In Berlin, for example, it is estimated that fully one-third of the Muslim men living in the Neukölln district of the city have two or more wives.

According to an exposé broadcast by RTL, one of Germany’s leading media companies, Muslim men residing in Germany routinely take advantage of the social welfare system by bringing two, three or four women from across the Muslim world to Germany, and then marrying them in the presence of an imam (Muslim religious leader). Once in Germany the women request social welfare benefits, including the cost of a separate home for themselves and for their children, on the claim of being a “single parent with children.”

Although the welfare fraud committed by Muslim immigrants is an “open secret” costing German taxpayers millions of euros each year, government agencies are reluctant to take action due to political correctness, according to RTL.

Spiraling levels of violent crime perpetrated by shiftless immigrants from the Middle East and the Balkans have turned parts of German cities into “areas of lawlessness” — areas that are de facto “no-go” zones for police.

In Wuppertal, groups of bearded Muslim radicals calling themselves the “Sharia Police” have tried to enforce Islamic law on the streets by distributing yellow leaflets that explain the Islamist code of conduct in the city’s Sharia zones. In Hamburg, Muslim radicals have infiltrated dozens of primary and secondary schools, where they are imposing Islamic norms and values on non-Muslim students and teachers.

In Berlin, local officials have waived rules prohibiting religious dress in public buildings so that Muslim women can wear headscarves. In Bavaria, Muslim children are being exempted from mandatory visits to former concentration camps as part of Holocaust education programs.

In Bremen, city officials signed an agreement with the city’s 40,000-strong Muslim community. The agreement guarantees the protection of Muslim community properties, the approval of the construction of mosques with minarets and domes, the allotment of land for Muslim cemeteries, the supply of halal food at prisons and hospitals, the recognition of three Muslim holidays, Muslim representation in state institutions and other rights and privileges.

More than 700 German Muslims have joined the Islamic State and traveled to Syria and Iraq, and some of them have continued to receive welfare benefits from the German state while on the battlefields of the Middle East. Jihadists who have returned to Germany and pose an acute threat to national security threat are nevertheless eligible to receive benefits once again.

Germany is home to more than 7,000 Salafists who adhere to a branch of radical Islam that is vehemently opposed to Germany’s democratic order. German officials say that 1,000 of these individuals are especially dangerous (some are believed to have joined sleeper cells) and could attack at any time.

At the same time, however, Salafists are allowed to openly proselytize on German streets to find new recruits and thereby increase their numbers. In a recent recruitment initiative, Salafists launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign, “A Koran in Every Home,” to distribute 25 million copies of the Koran, translated into the German language, to every household in Germany, free of charge.

And yet the guardians of German multiculturalism have been working overtime to silence critics of the rise of Islam in Germany. In Bavaria, for example, German activists opposed to the construction of a mega-mosque in Munich have been classified as “extremists” and are being monitored by German intelligence.

German media consistently accuse commentators on the rise of Islam of engaging in hate speech, in an underhanded effort to try to intimidate them into silence. A particular object of wrath is a very popular German-language website called Politically Incorrect (PI), which over the years has grown into a major information resource for people concerned about the spread of Islam in Germany. PI’s motto reads “Against the Mainstream, Pro-American, Pro-Israel, Against the Islamization of Europe.” Not surprisingly, German media elites want PI shut down.

It is quite possible that German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who recently admitted that German multiculturalism has failed — views mass immigration from the Muslim world as the solution to Germany’s collapsing birth rate, which is among the lowest in the world.

The German government expects the population to shrink from roughly 81 million today to 67 million in 2060, although Germany’s statistics office, Destatis, recently reported that high levels of immigration would cause the country’s population to shrink more slowly than previously expected.

A study by the Hamburg-based World Economy Institute has warned that the low birthrate threatens the long-term viability of the German economy. “No other industrial country is deteriorating at this speed despite the strong influx of young migrant workers,” the report said. “Germany cannot continue to be a dynamic business hub in the long-run without a strong jobs market.”

Germany will need to do a far better job of integrating immigrants if they are to be a net gain for the German economy. A recent study by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research showed that Muslim immigrants were more likely to be unemployed and living off the social welfare state than any other migrant group in Germany. The report said that root cause for the high unemployment rates is the lack of educational attainment and job training qualifications.

Meanwhile, the migration crisis shows no sign of abating. At a summit on migration held in Vienna on August 27, the EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, said: “There are 20 million refugees waiting at the doorstep of Europe. Ten to 12 million in Syria, 5 million Palestinians, 2 million Ukrainians and about 1 million in the southern Caucasus.”

On August 21, Germany suspended the so-called Dublin Regulation — a law that requires people seeking refuge within the EU to do so in the first European country they reach — for asylum seekers from Syria. This means that Syrians reaching Germany will be allowed to stay while their applications are being processed. Critics say the move will encourage even more migrants to make their way to Germany.

Most Germans seem to be unfazed by what is happening to their country. An August 21 poll for German broadcaster ZDF showed that 60% of Germans thought their country could cope with the high number of refugees, and 86% said that Germany was a country of immigration.

In an interview with the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, Aiman Mazyek, the head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said that so many Muslims have been flowing into the country that attendance at many mosques has doubled in the past month alone. Commenting on the demographic revolution sweeping Germany, Mazyek summed it up with an understatement: “The number of Muslims in Germany will increase significantly.”

In nearby Hungary, President Viktor Orbán has been one of the few European heads of state to sound the alarm. “A year ago I said that we live in times when anything can happen, and I still say so today,” he said recently. “Who would have thought that Europe would not be capable of protecting its own borders against unarmed refugees?” He added:

“For us today, what is at stake is Europe, the lifestyle of European citizens, European values, the survival or disappearance of European nations, and more precisely formulated, their transformation beyond recognition. Today, the question is not merely in what kind of a Europe we would like to live, but whether everything we understand as Europe will exist at all.”

Categories: Free world, Germany, Ideology, Immigration, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Political correctness, Sharia law
Tags: Europe, Free world, Germany, Ideology, Immigration, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Political correctness, Sharia law

Comments: 1 Comment

The IKEA Murders: Sweden in Crisis

August 23, 2015

The IKEA Murders: Sweden in Crisis, The Gatestone Institute, Ingrid Carlqvist, August 23, 2015

The mosque fire received huge attention, while the rape epidemic is basically ignored. When a Swedish woman and her son are brutally knifed to death in the most Swedish of all places – an IKEA store – the Prime Minister has nothing to say.
The normal democratic order, where citizens can contact politicians or the media to make their voices heard, has all but evaporated in Sweden. Newspaper websites have removed the reader comment fields, and the politicians hide behind a wall of officials who brand callers expressing concern “racist,” and hang up. Sweden is governed by a power that has shut down the democratic process.
Questions flooded the social media: Who are these people that are let into Sweden? How many of them are not innocent victims of war, but in fact war criminals and other criminals, hiding among the refugees?
The most relevant question is: Why has one government after another chosen to spend Swedish taxpayers’ money to support and shelter citizens of other countries, while some of them try to kill us?
None of the mainstream media has confronted the government about the violent crimes committed by asylum seekers against Swedes. On the contrary – the media have done the utmost to convince Swedes that everything is safe and sound in Sweden. Better than ever, in fact.
“Where do I apply for asylum… when the day comes that I can no longer live here?” – “Ewa,” on Facebook.
Violent crime is up 300% and rape is up 1,472% since 1975, the year the Swedish Parliament decided to turn homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country.

A surge of rage has washed over otherwise docile Sweden. After a double homicide at an IKEA store in Västerås, where an illegal alien stabbed two random Swedes to death, more and more people are questioning why the government is exposing Swedish citizens to murderers from across the globe.

On August 10, news of the IKEA murders shocked Sweden. Two asylum seekers from Eritrea (the second largest source of asylum applicants in Sweden), were suspected of having grabbed knives from the kitchenware department and attacked two random Swedes. The victims were 55-year-old Carola Herlin and her 28-year-old son, Emil.

1218

Carola Herlin, Director of the Moro Backe Health Center, was murdered on August 10, along with her son, in the IKEA store in Västerås, Sweden.

The elder of the two asylum seekers, a 36-year-old man, had twice been denied residency status in Sweden — because he had already been granted residency it in Italy — but he had not yet been deported. (Eritreans without residence permits in other EU-countries automatically get to stay in Sweden.)

The killer also inflicted life-threatening injuries on himself, and underwent several surgeries before the police could finally question him. On August 14, he confessed. His 23-year-old compatriot was released from custody, because the police no longer believe he had anything to do with the murders or had even known what his friend was planning to do.

Fear has now struck the Swedes. Even those who had routinely brand critics of immigration and multiculturalism racist, were shaken to the core. Questions flooded the social media: Who are these people that are let into Sweden? How many of them are not innocent victims of war, but in fact war criminals and other criminals, hiding among the refugees? And should we pay billions in taxes to support and shelter citizens of other countries, while some of them try to kill us?

The fact that the police refuse to deny the persistent rumor that one of the IKEA victims was beheaded, only adds fuel to the fear.

So many questions and no answers. No one from the government has even bothered to make a statement about the horrific double murder. None of the mainstream media has confronted the government about the violent crimes committed by asylum seekers against Swedes. On the contrary – the media have done the utmost to convince Swedes that everything is safe and sound in Sweden. Better than ever, in fact. The day after the double murder, Sweden’s largest morning paper, Dagens Nyheter, published an article titled, “After all, deadly violence on the decline.” The article begins:

“In recent weeks, several brutal murders have been committed, and many people ask themselves where society is headed. The answer is that Sweden has, after all, become a safer place. Deadly violence has been on the decline for some time.”

Nowhere does the article explain that the reason deadly violence has been on the decline is that emergency medicine is now able to save the lives of a lot more victims of knife- and gunshot-injuries. The so-called Laser Man, for example, shot a number of immigrants in Sweden in the 1990s. Forensic pathologist Jovan Rajs commented, “The Laser Man shot eleven people, and one of them died. In the 1930s eight or nine would have died, in the 1970s about five, and today probably none.”

Ergo, deadly violence remains on an even level thanks to better health care in Sweden, but all other kinds of violent crime (including attempted homicide) has gone off the charts. Violent crime is up 300% and rape is up 1,472% since 1975, the year the Swedish Parliament decided to turn homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country.

Ninety percent of asylum seekers to Sweden lack proper identification papers, so in reality no one knows how many murderers, rapists and thugs hide among the 100,000 or so people granted asylum in Sweden every year.

Frustrated Swedes are now howling with powerlessness on social media. The normal democratic order, where citizens can contact politicians or the media to make their voices heard, has all but evaporated. Newspaper websites have removed the reader comment fields, and the politicians hide behind a wall of officials, who brand callers expressing concern “racist,” and hang up. Thousands bear witness to this on Facebook. One person who actually got to talk about her uneasiness is Ewa, who writes on Facebook about calling Immigration Services:

“Well, I’ve unleashed the devil now. I called Immigration Services and demanded to talk to a Unit Manager. … I gave him an earful about every injustice I could think of, like how badly we treat our elderly and how we take away their homes and give them to asylum seekers. I also told him how unsafe Swedish women feel due to all these gang rapes perpetrated by asylum seekers and other foreigners. Also asked him if we all have to be beheaded before they stop taking in these kinds of people. … Now I’m sitting here, feeling completely empty after crying, screaming, discussing, raging and getting all this frustration out of me. Told him there are many of us who feel depressed because of what Immigration is doing. He was really sorry I feel this way. Yes, I told him, a lot of people feel this way but they are afraid to open their mouths because then they are labeled racist. You don’t even have to be a Sweden Democrat to see that our country is falling apart more and more with each passing day. Something you and all the rest at Immigration Services are responsible for. Where do I apply for asylum, I asked, when the day comes and I can no longer live here? Our country is ruined economically, socially and so forth and you are responsible. He answered that it was the politicians who decided about this, but that they would do everything in their power to make things better.”

Another woman, Amanda, wrote on Facebook that she e-mailed Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. She noted that “nothing may change, but at least I’ve made my voice heard.” Her e-mail read:

“Hi, why did the Prime Minister feel it was essential and urgent to go and talk about the fire at the mosque in Eskilstuna, no one even knew what started it when he held his speech? But now, he’s as silent as the grave. Why? It’s his/your unconditional and lax immigration policies that have enabled this culprit to move freely in society, despite having received a deportation order not just once, but twice. Can you tell me if this is something the citizens of this country should get used to, that immigrants, upon receiving deportation orders, kill people in order to get a lifelong contract with the Swedish state? It is your personal responsibility every time this happens, I hope you know that. Because this is nothing if not a political issue regarding immigration, and… its massive consequences to an entire nation.”

The mosque fire in Eskilstuna that Amanda referred to happened December 25, 2014, and is one of many incidents affecting Muslims and other immigrants that have received huge attention, while the rape epidemic in Sweden is basically ignored. After the fire, the Prime Minister was quick to make a statement:

“It is despicable, a despicable act. We will never tolerate this type of crime. People who want to practice their religion should have the right to do so. Today I feel great sympathy and empathy for those affected.”

Three months later, it turned out no crime was behind the mosque fire, and police dropped the investigation. Most likely, it was caused by an accident or children playing with fire.

But when a Swedish woman and her son are brutally knifed to death in the most Swedish of all places – an IKEA store – the Prime Minister has nothing to say.

The Swedes are not prone to rebellion. To find a citizen that took up arms and marched on the citadels of power, one has to go back to the days of Gustav Vasa – the king who during his reign, 1523-1560, founded the nation-state of Sweden.

Although Sweden today is not occupied territory, it is governed by a power that has shut down the democratic process by the “December Agreement” of 2014. In the general election that year, the only party critical of mass immigration, the Sweden Democrats (SD), became the third-largest party in Parliament. The left-wing and center-right blocs then agreed to lock SD out of political power, but SD refused to be silenced. When the left-wing minority government budget was presented one month after the election, SD voted for the opposition’s budget – a shocking and unique occurrence in the Swedish Parliament. Here, it is considered “good manners and decorum” to vote for your own budget proposition first, then lay down your vote and let the government win. But after the Sweden Democrats’ “coup,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (of the Social Democratic Party) was forced to govern with a center-right budget during his first year in office.

One would think that this came as a pleasant surprise to the center-right opposition, but that was not what happened. No one wants support from the “racist” Sweden Democrats. Rather than call a snap election, the two blocs entered into an agreement in which the center-right opposition promises to abstain from voting when it comes to important issues such as a proposed budget.

Thus, the December Agreement is in reality a kind of “relay-race” dictatorship: The left-wing government gets to do what it wants for the next four years, and after that, for next the four years (if there is a change of power), it will be the center-right government’s turn. This means both parties are free to ignore the 58% of Swedes who now feel that immigration is too high, and may choose to vote for the Sweden Democrats in the next election.

When the Swedes got the news about the December Agreement, they did what they usually do – clenched their fists in their pockets, formed Facebook groups and wrote angry comments on Twitter and Facebook. But the politicians congratulated each other on once again restoring order; they ignored the people’s concern that democracy had now become even more eroded.

A well-known stand-up comedian, Magnus Betnér, thought it a good idea to mock frightened Swedes in a YouTube clip:

“Yes, it’s really tragic two people were murdered in IKEA. … but… it’s not dangerous; Sweden has never been safer than it is now. … Very few of you guys watching this clip will be murdered. And those of you who are, will be murdered in your own homes.”

When the establishment refuses to take people’s concerns seriously, rumors on social media spread fast. A stubborn rumor claims that Carola Herlin was beheaded by the Eritrean murderer. According to sources interviewed by Gatestone, the woman had her throat slit and was also stabbed in the abdomen. Her son tried to defend himself, but received a deadly stab wound to the stomach.

When Dispatch International called Per Ågren, the police investigator in charge of the case, and asked him about the rumor, he said: “I’m not going to confirm… describe anything at all about what happened, except to say that two people were murdered. You won’t find out how from me.”

One of the first measures taken by the police after the IKEA murders was to start guarding all the buildings housing asylum seekers in the county. There was some apprehension concerning “dark forces,” the police claimed, without specifying who these “dark forces” were. The night of August 15, an asylum house in Arboga had to be evacuated after someone shouted something about a bomb outside. Now the mainstream media were really on their toes: Carola and Emil Herlin, according to their reports, had been “at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The newspaper Aftonbladet interviewed an anonymous woman who said, “My cousin has lived here for over a year. He told me the Swedes are the nicest people in Europe. Then something like this happens. I could never have imagined.”

Once again, it is supposedly the Swedes who should bow their heads in shame. Supposedly, we are not the ones grieving; we do not have the right to be frightened to death over the immigration policy of our rulers – it is the asylum seekers who are the victims, even when they kill, rape, rob and abuse.

The burning question is: What will the people do, whom no one will listen to? In East Germany of 1989, the people took to the streets, scaled the Berlin wall and made the government to resign. The other communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe fell in similar ways. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the right to bear arms), exists to ensure that the citizens are able to seize power from a tyrannical government.

If powerlessness drives people to answer violence with violence, maybe one should not ask why Swedes are “racists” if they do not want the highest immigration level in Europe?

The most relevant question is why one government after another has chosen to spend Swedish taxpayers’ money on citizens of other countries. While Swedish students take a plunge in the PISA tests, 60% of the welfare benefits go to immigrants who make up about 15% of the population. Healthcare and other social services are deteriorating, according to many Swedes, while violence is exponentially increasing. When more and more Swedes feel that they are being badly treated in their own country, the politicians have created a powder keg ready to explode at any minute.

The truth is that even the docile Swedish people have a limit. When those in power expose us to bloodbaths, whether in the Big Square of Stockholm in 1520 or at IKEA in Västerås in 2015, there will always be those who are ready to overthrow the mighty. Just as in Gustav Vasa’s day, a lot of Swedes have firearms. They are not as easy to come by as in the United States, but more and more Swedes are getting hunting licenses, and are thereafter legally able to buy guns. From now on in Sweden, anything can happen.

Categories: Asylum seekers, Europe, Human rights, Immigration, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Media, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Political correctness, Racism, Sweden, Terrorists
Tags: Asylum seekers, Europe, human rights, Immigration, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Media, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Political correctness, Racism, Sweden, Terrorists

Comments: 3 Comments

Britain: The “Struggle of Our Generation”

August 10, 2015

Britain: The “Struggle of Our Generation”, The Gatestone Institute, Samuel Westrop, August 10, 2015

“We’ve got to show that if you say ‘yes I condemn terror — but the Kuffar are inferior’, or ‘violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter’ — then you too are part of the problem. Unwittingly or not, and in a lot of cases it’s not unwittingly, you are providing succour to those who want to commit, or get others to commit to, violence.” — Prime Minister David Cameron.
In a series of religious rulings published on its website, the Islamic Network charity advocated the murder of apostates; encouraged Muslims to hate non-Muslims; stated that when non-Muslims die, “the whole of humanity are relieved;” and described Western civilisation as “evil.”
The Charity Commission’s solution, however, was to give the charity’s trustees booklets titled, “How to manage risks in your charity,” and warn them not to do it again.

On July 20, Prime Minister David Cameron outlined his government’s plans to counteract Islamic extremism, which he described as the “struggle of our generation.”

In a speech before Ninestiles School, in the city of Birmingham, Cameron articulated a view of the Islamist threat that, just a couple of years ago, few else in British politics would have dared to support.

In a report for BBC Radio 4, the journalist John Ware described Cameron’s speech, and the government’s proposed counter-extremism measures, as “something no British government has ever done in my lifetime: the launch of a formal strategy to recognize, challenge and root out ideology.”

Cameron’s speech was wide-ranging. It addressed the causes, methods and consequences of Islamist extremism.

1199

(Image source: BBC video screenshot)

We must recognize, Cameron reasoned, that Islamist terror is the product of Islamist ideology. It is definitely not, he argued, “because of historic injustices and recent wars, or because of poverty and hardship. This argument, what I call the grievance justification, must be challenged. … others might say: it’s because terrorists are driven to their actions by poverty. But that ignores the fact that many of these terrorists have had the full advantages of prosperous families or a Western university education.”

“Extreme doctrine” is to blame — a doctrine that is “hostile to basic liberal values … Ideas which actively promote discrimination, sectarianism and segregation. … which privilege one identity to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of others.” This is a doctrine “based on conspiracy: that Jews exercise malevolent power; or that Western powers, in concert with Israel, are deliberately humiliating Muslims, because they aim to destroy Islam.”

People are drawn to such extremist ideas, Cameron argued, because:

“[Y]ou don’t have to believe in barbaric violence to be drawn to the ideology. No-one becomes a terrorist from a standing start. It starts with a process of radicalisation. When you look in detail at the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were first influenced by what some would call non-violent extremists.

“It may begin with hearing about the so-called Jewish conspiracy and then develop into hostility to the West and fundamental liberal values, before finally becoming a cultish attachment to death. Put another way, the extremist world view is the gateway, and violence is the ultimate destination.”

To counteract the extremist threat, Cameron concludes, the government will “tackle both parts of the creed — the non-violent and violent. This means confronting groups and organisations that may not advocate violence — but which do promote other parts of the extremist narrative.”

Further, no longer will extremist groups be able to burnish their moderate credentials by pointing to ISIS as the Islamic bogeyman:

“We’ve got to show that if you say ‘yes I condemn terror — but the Kuffar are inferior’, or ‘violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter’ – then you too are part of the problem. Unwittingly or not, and in a lot of cases it’s not unwittingly, you are providing succour to those who want to commit, or get others to commit to, violence.

For example, I find it remarkable that some groups say ‘We don’t support ISIL’ as if that alone proves their anti-extremist credentials. And let’s be clear Al-Qaeda don’t support ISIL. So we can’t let the bar sink to that level. Condemning a mass-murdering, child-raping organisation cannot be enough to prove you’re challenging the extremists.”

Rather radically for a Western leader, Cameron also asserted that, “simply denying any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists doesn’t work… it is an exercise in futility to deny that. And more than that, it can be dangerous. To deny it has anything to do with Islam means you disempower the critical reforming voices; the voices that are challenging the fusing of religion and politics…”

Cameron’s speech was groundbreaking. No previous Prime Minister in past decades would have dared to make such statements. This is not to say, however, that it is without fault.

Cameron is not just talk. An “Extremism Analysis Unit” has been set up within the Home Office, which will serve to tackle Islamist extremism, including “non-violent” groups. According to the journalist John Ware, the new body is currently preparing lists of extremist preachers and groups.

More importantly, a variety of new legislation is being brought before Parliament. However, some of the proposed laws, critics argue, are draconian. “Banning Orders” will outlaw designated “extremist groups.” “Extremism Disruption Orders,” meanwhile, will restrict designated “extremists” from appearing on television, or publishing without the authorities’ approval. And “Closure Orders” will allow the government to close any institution deemed guilty of promoting extremism.

Cameron has correctly and radically diagnosed the problem of Islamic extremism. His solutions, however, do not appear promising.

A more useful next step would be for the government to tackle its own relationships with extremist groups. Britain’s registered charities offer a particularly vivid example of Islamist extremism going unchallenged.

In 2014, I wrote about the Islamic Network, a group that describes itself as “a da’wah[proselytizing] organisation which aims to promote awareness and understanding of the religion of Islam.”

In a series of religious rulings published on its website, the Islamic Network charity advocated themurder of apostates; encouraged Muslims to hate non-Muslims; stated that when non-Muslims die, “the whole of humanity are relieved;” and described Western civilisation as “evil.” Further, the Islamic Network directed a great deal of hatred towards the Jews. Its website claimed: “The Jews strive their utmost to corrupt the beliefs, morals and manners of the Muslims. The Jews scheme and crave after possessing the Muslim lands, as well as the lands of others.”

In spite of these views, the Islamic Network is a registered charity, which means it is entitled to subsidy from the taxpayer.

As a result of revealing the material published on the Islamic Network’s website, as well as several complaints submitted to the Charity Commission, the government opened an inquiry into the charity. After a year of deliberation, the Charity Commission published its report, which concluded that the Islamic Network had indeed published extremist material.

The Charity Commission’s solution, however, was to give the charity’s trustees booklets titled, “How to manage risks in your charity,” and warn them not to do it again.

Britain may finally have a government that understands the problem of Islamist extremism, but if government bodies fail to challenge extremist charities such as the Islamic Network, then what use is this enlightenment?

The Islamic Network is but one of many dozens of examples. Why is the British organizationInterpal, for example, still allowed to be a registered charity? Interpal is a designated terrorist organization under United States law. Its trustees regularly meet with senior leaders of the terror group Hamas. In 2013, for instance, Interpal trustee Essam Yusuf took part in a ceremony with the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, at which they expressed praise for Hamas’ military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, and glorified “martyrdom.”

Or what of Islamic Relief, one of Britain’s largest charities? Established by the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Relief’s directors have included Ahmed Al-Rawi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who, in 2004, supported jihad against British and American troops in Iraq; and Essam El-Haddad, who is accused by an Egyptian court of divulging Egyptian state secrets to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and using Islamic Relief to finance global terrorism.

Despite Islamic Relief’s links to Islamist extremism, the charity continues to receive millions of pounds from the British government.

David Cameron’s speech on July 20 should be applauded. If another political party had won the recent general election, no such speech would have been made. But before the Prime Minister turns his hand to censorship, perhaps the government should address extremist groups closer to home.

Categories: Antisemitism, Culture, David Cameron, England, Hamas, Human rights, Iranian proxies, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Khamenei, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Palestinians, UK
Tags: Antisemitism, Culture, David Cameron, England, Hamas, human rights, Iranian proxies, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Khamenei, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Palestinians, UK

Comments: 1 Comment

Obama’s Strategy Of Equilibrium

August 6, 2015

Obama’s Strategy Of Equilibrium, Middle East Media Research Institute, Yigal Carmon and Alberto M. Fernandez, August 5, 2015

(The conflict between Shiite and Sunni factions has been going on since shortly after the death of Mohamed. Obama is not likely to bring reconciliation. — DM)

This article will analyze the strategy of creating an equilibrium between Sunnis and Shiites as a means to promote peace in the Middle East. It will examine the meaning of the strategy in political terms, how realistic it is, and what its future implications might be on the region and on the United States.

“It is worth noting that the first Islamic State created in the Middle East in the last 50 years was not the one created in the Sunni world in 2014 and headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Rather, it was the Islamic Republic of Iran created in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and currently ruled by his successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who maintains – even following the Iran deal – the mantra “Death to America,” continues to sponsor terrorism worldwide, and commits horrific human rights violations.

********************

Introduction

In an interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times (“Obama Makes His Case on Iran Nuclear Deal,” July 14, 2015), President Obama asked that the nuclear deal with Iran be judged only by how successfully it prevents Iran from attaining a nuclear bomb, not on “whether it is changing the regime inside of Iran” or “whether we are solving every problem that can be traced back to Iran.” However, in many interviews he has given over the last few years, he has revealed a strategy and a plan that far exceed the Iran deal: a strategy which aims to create an equilibrium between Sunnis and Shiites in the Muslim world.

President Obama believes that such an equilibrium will result in a more peaceful Middle East in which tensions between regional powers are reduced to mere competition. As he told David Remnick in an interview with The New Yorker, “…if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion…you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare” (“Going the Distance,” January 27, 2014).

In discussing the Iran deal, the President recalled President Nixon negotiating with China and President Reagan negotiating with the Soviet Union in order to explain the scope of his strategy for the Middle East and the Muslim world. President Obama seeks, as did Presidents Reagan and Nixon with China and the Soviet Union, to impact the region as a whole. The Iran deal, even if major, is just one of several vehicles that would help achieve this goal.

This article will analyze the strategy of creating an equilibrium between Sunnis and Shiites as a means to promote peace in the Middle East. It will examine the meaning of the strategy in political terms, how realistic it is, and what its future implications might be on the region and on the United States.

The Meaning Of The Equilibrium Strategy In Political Terms

Examining the strategy of equilibrium requires the recollection of some basic information. Within Islam’s approximately 1.6 billion believers, the absolute majority – about 90% – is Sunni, while Shiites constitute only about 10%. Even in the Middle East, Sunnis are a large majority.

What does the word “equilibrium” mean in political terms? In view of the above stated data, the word “equilibrium” in actual political terms means empowering the minority and thereby weakening the majority in order to progress toward the stated goal. However, the overwhelming discrepancy in numbers makes it impossible to reach an equilibrium between the two camps. Therefore, it would be unrealistic to believe that the majority would accept a policy that empowers its adversary and weakens its own historically superior status.

Implications For The Region

Considering the above, the implications of the equilibrium strategy for the region might not be enhancing peace as the President well intends; rather, it might intensify strife and violence in the region. The empowered minority might be persuaded to increase its expansionist activity, as can be already seen: Iran has extended its influence from Lebanon to Yemen. Iranian analyst Mohammad Sadeq al-Hosseini stated in an interview on September 24, 2014, “We in the axis of resistance are the new sultans of the Mediterranean and the Gulf. We in Tehran, Damascus, [Hizbullah’s] southern suburb of Beirut, Baghdad, and Sanaa will shape the map of the region. We are the new sultans of the Red Sea as well” (MEMRITV Clip No. 4530). Similarly, in a statement dedicated to the historically indivisible connection between Iraq and Iran, advisor to President Rouhani Ali Younesi stressed that, “Since its inception, Iran has [always] had a global [dimension]; it was born an empire” (MEMRI Report No. 5991).

In view of this reality, this strategy might create, against the President’s expectations, more bitterness and willingness on the part of the majority to fight for their status. This has already been realized; for example, when Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen after facing the Houthi/Shiite revolution, which it perceived as a grave danger to its survival, and created a fighting coalition within a month to counter it. Similarly, Saudi Arabia has previously demonstrated that it regards Bahrain as an area where any Iranian attempt to stir up unrest will be answered by Saudi military intervention. According to reports, Saudi Arabia has been supporting the Sunni population in Iraq, and in Lebanon, a standstill has resulted because Saudi Arabia has shown that it will not give up – even in a place where Iranian proxy Hizbollah is the main power. Hence, the strategy of equilibrium has a greater chance of resulting in the eruption of regional war than in promoting regional peace.

Implications For The United States

Moreover, this strategy might have adverse implications for the United States and its interests in the Sunni Muslim world: those countries that feel betrayed by the strategy might, as a result, take action against the United States – hopefully only politically (such as changing international alliances) or economically. These countries might be careful about their public pronouncements and might even voice rhetorical support to U.S. policy, as the GCC states did on August 3, but the resentment is there.

Realpolitik Versus Moral Considerations

The analysis presented here is based on principles of realpolitik: in politics, one does not align with the minority against the majority. However, sometimes other considerations take precedence. Morality is such an example: the Allies could not refrain from fighting Nazi Germany because it was a majority power – ultimately, they recognized the moral obligation to combat the Third Reich. However, with regard to the Middle East, the two adversaries are on equal standing: the Islamic Republic of Iran is no different than the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. President Obama and Secretary Kerry would be wrong to think that Mohammad Javad Zarif, the sophisticated partygoer in New York City, represents the real Iran. Zarif, his negotiating team, and President Rouhani himself, all live under the shadow and at the mercy of the Supreme Leader, the ayatollahs, and the IRGC.

“It is worth noting that the first Islamic State created in the Middle East in the last 50 years was not the one created in the Sunni world in 2014 and headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Rather, it was the Islamic Republic of Iran created in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and currently ruled by his successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who maintains – even following the Iran deal – the mantra “Death to America,” continues to sponsor terrorism worldwide, and commits horrific human rights violations.

Categories: Arab nations, Caliphate, Death to America, Foreign policy, Human rights, Ideology, Imperialism, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Khamenei, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Religion, Shiite, Sunni
Tags: Arab nations, Caliphate, Death to America, Foreign Policy, human rights, Ideology, Imperialism, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Khamenei, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Religion, Shiite, Sunni

Comments: 1 Comment

Mark Moyar: Lurching without direction

August 5, 2015

Mark Moyar: Lurching without direction, Power Line, Mark Moyar, August 5, 2015

Because crisis management focuses on reducing symptoms rather than eliminating causes, its practitioners typically resort to half measures and token gestures. By demonstrating that the White House is “doing something,” symbolic actions often suffice to alleviate press scrutiny and public pressure for action, at least temporarily. They seldom remedy the problem that they were ostensibly addressing.

**********************

Mark Moyar is Visiting Scholar at The Foreign Policy Initiative and the author, most recently, of the important new book Strategic Failure: How President Obama’s Drone Warfare, Defense Cuts, and Military Amateurism Have Imperiled America. We invited Mark to write something for us bearing the subject of his book. He has responded with this column:

Last year, shortly before Barack Obama fired him, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel chided America’s President for “lurching from crisis to crisis without direction.” The treatment of foreign policy as an exercise in ad hoc crisis management has characterized Obama’s entire Presidency, as indeed it has every Democratic Presidency of the last half century. Fixated on domestic affairs and reluctant to assert American power overseas, Democrats from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama have viewed foreign policy challenges as nuisances to be kept off the front page of the New York Times, rather than problems to be solved through a coherent grand strategy.

Whereas a good strategy drives an active foreign policy, crisis management is inherently reactive. International problems reach the President’s attention mainly when they generate inordinate press coverage or cause a spike in unfavorable polling. Active adversaries, like North Vietnam in 1964 and Russia and ISIS in 2015, have consistently beaten a reactive United States to the punch and dodged the counterpunches.

Because crisis management focuses on reducing symptoms rather than eliminating causes, its practitioners typically resort to half measures and token gestures. By demonstrating that the White House is “doing something,” symbolic actions often suffice to alleviate press scrutiny and public pressure for action, at least temporarily. They seldom remedy the problem that they were ostensibly addressing.

In the case of Syria, Obama rejected recommendations from his cabinet to arm moderate Syrian rebels until 2013, by which time most of the moderate rebels had been killed or co-opted by extremists. He then decided to train and equip rebel forces in such small numbers and with such restrictions on their activities as to render them insignificant. When ISIS advances compelled Obama to restart American training of Iraqi forces, Obama put a ceiling on the number of U.S. trainers that limited throughput to 3,000 trainees per year, too few to make a difference in the war against ISIS or to lessen the influence of the 100,000 Iraqi Shiite militiamen whom the Iranians were training.

In Afghanistan, Obama authorized a troop surge, but began withdrawing troops much earlier than his generals advised, preventing completion of the military’s counterinsurgency campaign and discouraging Afghans from siding with the pro-American government. In Libya, Obama joined a NATO campaign against Muammar Gadhafi after international outrage about Gadhafi’s atrocities reached fever pitch, but his refusal to send American military forces to help secure the peace or protect American interests led to the collapse of central governance and the killing of the U.S. ambassador at Benghazi.

Of the recent additions to the administration’s list of token gestures and half measures, the most flagrant offender is Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Less well known is his response to the crisis of Russian expansionism. For more than a year, Eastern European allies and American critics—some of them within the Obama administration—have been calling for tougher American actions to discourage further Russian advances. Obama finally made his token gesture at the end of June, announcing that the United States would send American troops and heavy weaponry to several eastern European countries.

The joy that the initial announcement may have brought the eastern Europeans quickly faded when they saw the fine print, which was issued by U.S. ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute. The United States, Lute explained, was not going to deploy forces to eastern Europe on a permanent basis. “The tanks are empty, the … vehicles are empty, and will be parked, stored and maintained in training areas across the six Eastern most allies for training purposes,” Lute said. “Then the soldiers, on exercise after exercise, will be flown in.” One doubts that the Latvians will feel secure, or the Russians will feel deterred, by empty American vehicles and occasional visits from jet-setting American soldiers.

Many of Obama’s token gestures and half measures are clearly intended to keep simmering crises from boiling over until Obama leaves office. Administration spokesmen have repeatedly said that defeating ISIS will be a “multiyear” effort. The diluted U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is scheduled to last until the end of Obama’s term. Most of the fallout from Obama’s bad Iran deal will not hit ground until someone else occupies the White House. Obama and his proxies will no doubt craft stories explaining how his successor’s errors undid all of his foreign policy masterstrokes.

The President’s tokenism also serves one of the few national security objectives that Obama has pursued with any consistency, the diminution of American military power. The White House ramped up drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen as a means of diverting the American people’s attention and showing that the United States could still do damage to terrorists without large military forces. While boasting about the number of people killed by drones, Obama quietly forced through drastic reductions in the armed services and withdrew American forces from critical regions. The drone strikes, in actuality, succeeded mainly in killing low-level fighters and antagonizing the Pakistani and Yemeni governments to the point that the United States eventually had to discontinue most strikes.

If one believes that Obama’s foreign policy should be driven by mitigation of immediate crises, particularly those that might detract from perceived domestic achievements such as Obamacare and environmental regulation, then there may be cause for optimism about the next year and a half. If, on the other hand, one believes that Obama’s foreign policy should be driven by protection of America’s enduring national security interests, then there is cause only for worry. Obama’s remaining months in office will give America’s enemies time and space to accumulate strength. The continuance of passivity and tokenism may even invite audacious provocations from enemies seeking to steal more sheep before a more vigilant shepherd comes along.

Categories: Domestic policy, Foreign policy, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Strategy, U.S. Military
Tags: Domestic policy, Foreign Policy, Iranian proxies, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Obama's motivations, P5+1, U.S. military

Comments: 1 Comment

Army is breaking, let down by Washington

August 3, 2015

Army is breaking, let down by Washington, Stars and Stripes, Robert H. Scales, August 2, 2015

(Last year I also wrote a depressing article on the lamentable combat readiness of our military. It’s here at my blog and here at Warsclerotic. The situation has continued to deteriorate. How could Obama’s America help to protect freedom, particularly against an enemy whose name must not be mentioned, without a combat effective military — even if Obama wanted to do it? — DM)

image military

U.S. paratroopers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade load a M119A2 howitzer at the 7th Army Joint Multinational Training Command’s Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, July 28, 2015.
GERTRUD ZACH/U.S. ARMY

Last month, Gen. Ray Odierno, outgoing Army chief of staff, and Gen. Mark Milley, his successor, testified to the difficulties faced by the Army. I’d like to make the same points by telling a story.

When I was a boy, tonsillitis was a dangerous illness. In 1952, it kept me in Tokyo General Hospital for weeks. I shared a cramped ward with dozens of soldiers horribly maimed in Korea. The hospital had only one movie theater. I remember watching a Western sandwiched between bandage- and plaster-wrapped bodies. I remember the antiseptic smells, the cloud of cigarette smoke and the whispers of young men still traumatized by the horrors of the war they had just left.

My dad came from Korea to visit me, and I recall our conversations vividly. At the time he was operations officer for the 2nd Engineer Battalion. He told me how poorly his men were prepared for war. Many had been killed or captured by the North Koreans. During the retreat from the Yalu River, some of his soldiers were in such bad physical shape that they dropped exhausted along the road to wait to be taken captive.

“We have no sergeants, son,” he told me, shaking his head, “and without them we are no longer an Army.”

In the early ’70s, I was the same age as my Korean-era dad. I had just left Vietnam only to face another broken Army. My barracks were at war. I carried a pistol to protect myself from my own soldiers. Many of the soldiers were on hard drugs. The barracks were racial battlegrounds pitting black against white. Again, the Army had broken because the sergeants were gone. By 1971, most were either dead, wounded or had voted with their feet to get away from such a devastated institution.

I visited Baghdad in 2007 as a guest of Gen. David Petraeus. Before the trip I had written a column forecasting another broken Army, but it was clear from what Petraeus showed me that the Army was holding on and fighting well in the dangerous streets of Baghdad. Such a small and overcommitted force should have broken after so many serial deployments to that hateful place. But Petraeus said that his Army was different. It held together because junior leaders were still dedicated to the fight. To this day, I don’t know how they did it.

Sadly, the Army that stayed cohesive in Iraq and Afghanistan even after losing 5,000 dead is now being broken again by an ungrateful, ahistorical and strategically tone-deaf leadership in Washington.

The Obama administration just announced a 40,000 reduction in the Army’s ranks. But the numbers don’t begin to tell the tale. Soldiers stay in the Army because they love to go into the field and train; Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently said that the Army will not have enough money for most soldiers to train above the squad level this year. Soldiers need to fight with new weapons; in the past four years, the Army has canceled 20 major programs, postponed 125 and restructured 124. The Army will not replace its Reagan-era tanks, infantry carriers, artillery and aircraft for at least a generation. Soldiers stay in the ranks because they serve in a unit ready for combat; fewer than a third of the Army’s combat brigades are combat-ready.

And this initial 40,000-soldier reduction is just a start. Most estimates from Congress anticipate that without lifting the budget sequestration that is driving this across-the-board decline, another 40,000 troops will be gone in about two years.

To be sure, the nation always reduces its military as wars wind down. Other services suffer reductions and shortages. But only the Army breaks. Someone please tell those of us who served why the service that does virtually all the dying and killing in war is the one least rewarded.

My grandson is a great kid. He’s about the same age I was when I was recovering at Tokyo General. Both of his parents served as Army officers, so it’s no wonder that in school he draws pictures of tanks and planes while his second-grade classmates draw pictures of flowers and animals. The other day he drew a tank just for me and labeled it proudly “Abrams Tank!”

Well, sadly, if he follows in our footsteps, one day he may be fighting in an Abrams tank. His tank will be 60 years old by then.

At the moment I’d rather he go to law school.

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Categories: Domestic policy, Economy, Foreign policy, Freedom, History, Ideology, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Korean conflict, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Rules of war, U.S. combat troops, Vietnam war
Tags: Domestic policy, Economy, Foreign Policy, Freedom, History, Ideology, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Korean conflict, Middle East, North Korea, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, U.S. combat troops, Vietnam war

Comments: Be the first to comment

Rant | Obama continues to fix the Creator’s worst mistakes

August 2, 2015

Rant | Obama continues to fix the Creator’s worst mistakes, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 2, 2015

(The views expressed in this rant — some of which are off-topic — are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

This is a partially updated version of Fixing the Creator’s worst mistakes, published on December 29, 2012. It deals mainly with Islam, Iran, the nuke “deal,” illegal immigration and Obama’s usurpation of power.

Islam and other religions

Obama is “our” Imam in Chief and in that capacity continues to preach that Islam is the religion of peace; there is neither Islamic violence nor any Islamic desire for it. Since the Islamic State is violent it is not Islamic.

Coptic Christians beheaded

Coptic Christians beheaded. So what? They weren’t other Muslims.

Christians and Jews? Islamists are intent upon removing what they consider the curses of Christianity and Judaism. Pope Francis appears to be far more concerned about Climate Change; so does Obama.

In Obama’s apparent view, Palestinians want the true peace of Islam. They abhor violence and want nothing more than to live in peace and harmony in Israel with their Jewish friends and neighbors. Their only obstacles are those senselessly thrown in their path by wicked, apartheid Israel at every turn.

That’s a lie.

The nuke “deal” with Iran

Since the Islamic Republic of Iran is also peaceful, it is Islamic and hence deserves nukes (which it claims neither to have nor to want) along with increased funding to support its hegemonic efforts to bring “stability” to the Middle East with the help of its many proxies.

It's not MY fault.

It’s not MY fault.

Here's more ObamaMoney. Have fun!

Here’s lots more ObamaMoney. Have fun with your virgins!

Obama conceals critical details of His Iran “deal” from members of Congress and from the people, while sending His minions forth to obfuscate and lie about it. Even Iran now claims that the Obama administration has been lying about the “deal.”

“Any time, anywhere” inspections to discover the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program are a farce and have been at least since November of 2013. We were recently advised that under one or more side deals between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran, the IAEA will neither inspect sites such as the Parchin military facility nor collect samples there; Iran will collect the samples and provide them (or perhaps samples taken elsewhere) to the IAEA.

Why is Obama doing this? Mr. Fleitz, the interviewee in the above video, suggests that Obama sees Iran as having been too long victimized by the West and in need of freedom from Western oppression.

Illegal immigration

Obama’s fundamental transformation of America in His image continues to accelerate. Illegal immigrants are already overwhelming the country and He demands more of them.

to follow the Constitution. It's to old and too slow.

to screw America even more

I am the greatest expert on the Declaration of Dependence

I am the greatest expert on the Declaration of Dependence

All power to ~~the People~~ Obama

Obama has also accelerated Congress’ partially self-imposed rush to impotence. States’ rights have become a sad joke and the United Nations has become even more powerful, wrongheaded and intrusive. Our military is more focused on climate change and “social justice” than on fighting our worst enemy, which cannot even be named.

Obama talks strategy with His chief military advisor

Obama confers with His chief military adviser

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

By His Supreme Excellency, Barack Humble Hussein Obama

The first paragraph of the Declaration of Dependence refers to “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” However, according to the second paragraph of the Declaration,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Emphasis added.)

This raises what some may see as an important question: just who is that Creator fella, anyway? Is it Nature, Nature’s God or its earthly manifestation, Government? We need not answer directly due to the partisan overtones of the question. Suffice it to say that fairness and justice dictate that the Government over which I rule — as I had long been destined to do — has an obligation to correct the worst error of judgment and implementation made by that fella, whomever it may be. By correcting that error, I intend no disrespect to it or to anyone else. With few exceptions, everyone makes mistakes and when they are made it is My duty as your President to correct them.

Are all men are created equal?

No they are not, and it is the job of My Government to transform the nation, as I deem appropriate, to make everyone as nearly equal as is feasible consistent with providing the best governance possible. That is a daunting task, but since I won two presidential elections overwhelmingly I have a mandate to do it. I can and shall do it, so help Me — ~~Allah~~ everyone! You have nothing to lose but the chains in which you have long been unfairly bound by unnecessary and unjust freedoms.

Our Black and Brown Brothers and Sisters, whether from My America or from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, no less than ~~invaders~~ immigrants from Islamic nations, deserve to come to a truly welcoming America. Travel and resettlement are costly for them and they deserve the very best subsidies I can provide to afford them the leisure they want and hence deserve. That will enable them to evaluate all political candidates and to decide who will best serve My their interests. To that end, My Executive Decree is now being written to require that all promotional materials of a political nature be in Ebonics and Spanish as well as in all languages spoken or written in all Islamic nations unless I decree that it is not necessary for specific candidates whom I favor.

As the nation’s highest constitutional authority and scholar, I am uniquely qualified to interpret and otherwise ignore both the Constitution and the Declaration of Dependence. Both were written and adopted by White Male slaveholders, now despised by all good people.

Clearly, the statement that “all men are created equal” does not mean — as some have mistakenly claimed — equal before the law. Although the most humble of all men, I am so far above the law that I often have difficulty seeing it down below. The same is true in far lesser degree of accredited diplomats and many more. Others, such as those who maliciously oppose My sovereign will, are far beneath the law. No, equality does not mean “equal before the law.” It means equal in every respect except that. At least that’s what it should mean and it is My sworn duty to make it so. There cannot possibility be true equality without vigorous enforcement of My Decrees, to be promulgated now and in the future, mandating equality of both opportunity and result in all things.

Since it is my job to interpret and enforce our laws selectively I must also create those laws. That will be far more efficient.

An Executive Decree is now being drafted for My review, revision and signature. It will set forth the measures that are necessary to achieve our nation’s greatest dream — nay, her manifest destiny — of true equality for all. Very briefly, its directives will include the following:

1. Members of the Congress shall have no higher status or greater legislative authority than the poorest, lowest, most despised and least educated person in My nation — perhaps an illiterate, twelve year old, homeless transsexual drug abuser from Haiti. Hence, My Executive Decree shall declare the Congress in recess until truly representative members have been elected under Federal supervision to replace the elite obstructionists currently there.

In the meantime, I have my phone and veto pen ready.

2. During the congressional recess I shall, as your President, assume with great reluctance all legislative burdens which I have not already assumed. My people shall no longer be subjected to interminable partisan squabbles over such incomprehensible trivia as national debt limits, Federal budgets, tax fairness or anything else. The fruits of peace, love, joy and tranquility shall come to be enjoyed by all throughout My entire land.

3. Due to the peaceful outpourings of racial justice, tranquility, peace, love and joy due to My successful efforts to eliminate the scourge of White racism, there shall no longer be any excuse for privately owned Weapons of Mindless Destruction (WMDs). Hence, all shall be confiscated immediately and disposed of pursuant to Executive Decree.

4. All uniformed personnel of the armed forces shall have the same rank, pay and allowances. Staff Sergeant shall henceforth be the only military rank and all shall henceforth receive pay and allowances commensurate with that rank. The focus of all of My defense efforts will continue to be on social justice and the horrors of Climate Change. Accordingly, military personnel shall be given access to firearms only when called upon to enforce My Climate Change rules.

5. The gross unfairness of wealth maldistribution in the United States is unconscionable and that disgrace to humanity is compounded not only by an incomprehensible Internal Revenue Code but also by lengthy and even more incomprehensible IRS regulations. Accordingly, I shall decree a new and greatly simplified single tax rate of one hundred percent on all property and all earnings from any and all sources, with no deductions or credits. I shall also issue a new Revenue and Property Redistribution Decree granting $25,000 per person per year in cash as well as providing for the fair and just redistribution of all property confiscated in lieu of property tax payments. Since the unreasonably disparaged welfare safety net will no longer be needed it will be abolished.

6. Recognizing that My simplified tax plan may hamper states and other inferior governments in accessing revenues, all states and their subdivisions shall be abolished and the United States shall be divided into ten Federal Districts, to be governed by My appointed District Governors.

Conclusions

My simple, eminently fair and absolutely just decrees will transform My entire nation into a far better place for all of My people.

Islam absolutely must be recognized as the world’s preeminently peaceful religion; Christians, Jews and others must recognize this and accept the true enlightenment provided by the Holy Koran. If a few Jews or Christians are killed by Muslims who are ignorant of true Islamic teachings, that is far, far less hurtful to My people than the ravages of Climate Change. I believe that Pope Francis agrees with Me on this point.

As the monumental successes of My initiatives become clear throughout the world, I am confident that the United Nations will issue similar decrees for all nations, perhaps uniting some in UN protectorates to be governed in the fair and just ways of which the UN has over the years shown itself to be uniquely capable. The UN bows to no legitimate state or even to illegitimate states such as as Israel. Indeed, I am so confident that these wonders will come to pass that I have today notified the Secretary General that, when My work here is done, I shall give My service as his replacement higher priority than even My obligations to My own dear family.

Permit Me to commend those brave young people for their courage and superb intelligence in standing up for the highest, the best and brightest in our nation.

In closing, here’s another of my favorite songs. I hope you will enjoy it too:

Categories: Christians, Culture, Death to America, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Human rights, IAEA, Ideology, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Islam, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Judaism, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Palestinians, Satire, Two state solution, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Military, United Nations
Tags: Christians, Culture, Death to America, Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, human rights, IAEA, Ideology, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iran secret deals, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian threats, Islam, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Judaism, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Palestinians, Satire, Two state solution, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution, U.S. military, United Nations

Comments: 1 Comment

Christians Burn While Pope Worries about “Worldly” Matters

August 2, 2015

Christians Burn While Pope Worries about “Worldly” Matters, The Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, August 2, 2015

Although the Egyptian constitution stipulates equality before the law, the judiciary refuses the testimony of Christians against Muslims in courts. Islamic law maintains that the testimony of an “infidel” cannot be accepted against a Muslim.
Al Azhar University in Egypt continues to incite Egypt’s Muslims against Christians. Most recently, the university was exposed distributing a free booklet dedicated to discrediting Christianity. It is full of direct attacks on Christianity in general and the nation’s Coptic Christians in particular. Islam is hailed as the true and superior religion. No mention of violent Islamic conquests is made.
More than 200 girls, mostly Christian, remain missing in Nigeria after Boko Haram kidnapped them in 2014. Escapees testify that some were told to slit the throats of Christians and to carry out suicide attacks. Girls who cannot recite the Koran are flogged.
The “lawyers” of a Christian man imprisoned in Pakistan on the charge of desecrating the Koran last May are actually working against him. Faisal’s lawyers officially canceled the request for bail, previously submitted by other lawyers.
Christians and others in the southern Philippines say they fear that legislation meant to create an Islamic sub-state — legislation meant to appease Islamists — will only create more extremism against Christians. Critics say it would render the federal government powerless to redress human rights abuses under Islamic law. In some areas, violence has been increasing, including trademark Islamic attacks on churches and nuns.

In June, Pope Francis released his first independent encyclical. It merely served to highlight the indifference to the plight of persecuted Christians around the world.

The Pope warned about issues dealing with the environment, but he did not once mention the plight of persecuted Christians — even though he is well acquainted with it, and even though previous popes mentioned it when Christians were experiencing far less persecution than they are today.

Encyclicals are formal treatises written by popes and sent to bishops around the world. In turn, bishops are meant to disseminate the encyclical’s ideas to all the priests and churches in their jurisdiction, so that the pope’s thoughts might reach every church-attending Catholic.

If the plight of persecuted Christians had been mentioned in the encyclical, bishops and the congregations under their care would be required to acknowledge it. Perhaps a weekly prayer for the persecuted could be institutionalized, keeping the plight of those Christians in the spotlight so that Western Catholics and others would remember them, talk about them, and, perhaps most importantly, ask why they are being persecuted. Once enough people were familiar with Christian persecution, they could influence U.S. policymakers — for starters, to drop those policies that directly exacerbate the sufferings of Christian minorities in the Middle East.

Instead, Pope Francis apparently deemed it more important to issue a proclamation addressing the environment and climate change. Whatever position one holds concerning these topics, it is telling that the pope — the one man in the world best placed and most expected to speak up for millions of persecuted Christians around the world — is more interested in speaking up for a “safe” (politically correct, if scientifically questionable) subject, “the world” itself, rather than the pressing bloodbath in front of him, or a topic requiring real leadership from a Christian authority.

Meanwhile, Christians around the world and the Muslim world especially continue to be persecuted and slaughtered. In one little-reported story, the Islamic State burned an 80 year-old Christian woman to death in a village southeast of Mosul. The elderly woman was reportedly burned alive for refusing to comply with Islamic law.

In east Jerusalem, a group calling itself the “Islamic State in Palestine” distributed fliers threatening to massacre all Christians who failed to evacuate the Holy City. The leaflets, which appeared on June 27, said that the Islamic State knows where the city’s Christians live, and warned that they have until Eid al-Fitr — July 19, the end of Ramadan — to leave the city or be slaughtered. The leaflet was emblazoned with the Islamic State’s black flag.

In Egypt, after a foiled suicide attack on the ancient temples of Karnak in Luxor (a tourist destination), the Islamic State promised a “fiery summer” for Egypt’s Christian Copts. Abu Zayid al-Sudani, a leading member of the Islamic State, tweeted: “The bombing of Luxor, a burning summer awaits the tyrant of Egypt [President Sisi] and his soldiers, and the worshippers of the cross. This is just the beginning.”

The rest of June’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following accounts, listed by theme.

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches and Cemeteries

Turkey: On June 9, a Muslim man attacked a church in the Kadıköy district of Istanbul with a Molotov cocktail, setting the building’s door on fire. In a video of the attack, the man is seen shouting “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is Greater!”] and “Revenge will be taken for Al-Aqsa Mosque” as he throws a firebomb at the Hagia Triada Orthodox Church. The man was eventually detained by police.

Egypt: A bomb was placed alongside the Virgin Mary Coptic Christian Church in Helwan, part of Greater Cairo, but the security services managed to dismantle it before it exploded.

France: On June 7, two Muslim men were arrested by French authorities in connection to a thwarted terror plot to attack a church near Paris last April. Authorities said they had detained Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a computer science student, who had planned an attack on churches in Villejuif, south of Paris, and is suspected in the killing of a woman nearby. Documents in Arabic mentioning al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were found during a search of Ghlam’s home. Several military weapons, handguns, ammunition, bulletproof vests and computer and telephone hardware were also found in Ghlam’s home and car.

Zanzibar: Muslims on the majority-Muslim island harassed and persecuted two churches:

1) They drove Pastor Philemon, a father of five, into hiding and took over his New Covenant Church’s worship hall by getting the landlord to rent it to them before the church’s lease ended. Once a congregation of 100, members now number 25. “The church faithful are so scattered,” said Philemon. “Some members are always knocking at my door requesting a place for worship.” The pastor is also helping care for several converts from Islam who fled their homes after persecution, and he is struggling financially to help them while also providing for his own family, which includes five children.

2) Just outside Zanzibar City, in Chukwani, Muslims made false land claims to bleed dry a church with legal costs. Said Pastor Lukanula: “The Muslims are waiting for the time when we shall fail to attend the court hearing, implying losing the case and subsequently having to pay a substantial amount of money.” Before the false claims were made, regarding ownership of the land, the leader of a local mosque told the pastor, “We do not want to see a church building here in Chukwani.” In 2007, Muslims in the area had demolished the original structure under construction.

Iraq: The Islamic State posted notices around the captured city of Mosul announcing that the Syriac Orthodox Cathedral Church of St. Ephrem, seized a year ago, was to be become the “mosque of the mujahedeen,” or “jihadis.” The new name was announced on the anniversary of the date the church had been seized. The Islamic flag stating the shehada (“there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger”) was draped over the building. “If they changed a church to a mosque it is further proof of their cleansing,” said the president of A Demand for Action, a group advocating the protection of minorities in the Middle East. “They destroy our artefacts, our churches and try to erase us in any way they can.”

1181

The Syriac Orthodox Church of St. Ephrem in Mosul, Iraq, before if the captured by the Islamic State (left), and after.

Libya: Yet another Christian cemetery, in the old Christian section of post-“Arab Spring” Tripoli, was recently desecrated by Muslim militants. Described by witnesses as “Salafi” Muslims, the vandals of the grave destroyed crosses and tombstones, and dug up graves in the early morning hours of June 3. Security forces charged with protecting the region did nothing to stop or arrest the men.

Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: Two Christians were killed under questionable circumstances:

1) The only Christian in his army unit was found shot dead in a chair at the office of the military base in which he was stationed. On June 24, Bahaa Gamal Mikhail Silvanus, 23, a conscript in the Egyptian Army, was found with two bullet wounds in his chest and a gun at his feet. Relatives who later saw the body also say there were wounds on his head, as if he had been struck with a blunt object. The military’s official position is that the Copt committed suicide. Family, friends, and church leaders strongly disagree. They point out that those who commit suicide are rarely able to shoot themselves twice — or first hit themselves on the head with blunt objects. They also point out that Silvanus was a happy man with strong faith, a college degree in music, and plans to enter the monastic life. “My son was killed by someone. He didn’t kill himself,” said his father, Gamal Silvanus, who had advised his son to finish his military obligation, then work for five years to help support the family, and after that to join a monastery. A friend of Bahaa Silvanus, who wished to remain anonymous, said that Silvanus had confided to him that he was regularly pressured by other soldiers in his unit to convert to Islam or else: “He told me that the persecution of the fanatical Muslim conscripts in the battalion against him had been increased the last days, and they threatened him with death, that they would kill him if he wouldn’t convert to Islam.”[1]

2) According to MCN, “Police officer Mohammed Megalli, who killed a Coptic woman, Sarah Youssef Ghali, used to insult Copts of the district and treat them with contempt, said Nour Rashad, a cousin of the Coptic woman. Ghali was accidentally shot dead by Megalli, a police officer from Manshiet Nasser Police Station in Cairo.”

Uganda: A mother of 11, who, along with her husband, left Islam (considered by many Muslims apostasy) and converted to Christianity almost a year earlier, was poisoned to death on June 17 in a village in eastern Uganda. Namumbeiza Swabura, the mother of a 5-month-old baby, died after her sister-in-law visited and offered to prepare a meal for her. She complained of stomach pain that started immediately after eating the food. According to Morning Star News:

Swabura’s pain grew worse as she began vomiting and her nose began to bleed uncontrollably; her face turned pale, and two hours later she died in their home as Muhammad [her husband] was trying to rent a car to take her to a hospital, they said. Her sister-in-law has gone into hiding, the sources said. Swabura and her husband have received several death threats since putting their faith in Christ, according to Muhammad. During a visit by Morning Star News to the area in late May, he said, “We are fearing for our lives as the Muslims are threatening to kill us if we continue in Christianity.” Besides her infant and husband, Swabura wife leaves behind 10 other children.

Dhimmitude: Generic Contempt and Discrimination against ‘Infidels’

Ethiopia: On April 25, police raided a Christian worship service in Asella, just south of the capital, Addis Ababa. The Church of Asella had just baptized 40 new converts to Christianity, an act that prompted mass arrests. One of those imprisoned, a former Muslim, known only as “Palus Ejigu,” who converted to Christianity, said, “We were gathered for sharing and encouraging each other with the Word of God. After we finished the service, police imprisoned us. Some of our friends ran away when they saw the way we were harshly handled.” After weeks of suffering unspeakable prison conditions and abuses, Ejigu was eventually released. But five days later, four masked men forced him on his knees, put a pistol in his mouth, and ordered him to kill two pastor friends, or his children would die.

His wife’s Muslim family, in accordance with Islamic law, had already taken the children away from him.

Egypt: The inferior status of Christian minorities was again on display. The principal of a school in Sohag has been openly refusing the enrollment of Christian students, simply on the basis of their religion. When Copts and others protested — the current law of Egypt is on their side — the principal declared that, “As long as I am present in the school, no Christian pupils will be accepted.”

Popular Egyptian columnist Karima Kamal wrote that although the Egyptian constitution stipulates equality before the law, the judiciary does not apply this provision, and refuses the testimony of Christians against Muslims in courts. Anecdotal evidence supports her claim. Some weeks earlier, the following letter was published:

Yesterday I suffered an extremely harsh psychological shock. I went to court with one of my neighbors, a widow, to serve as witness in an inheritance case. Another neighbor and witness accompanying us was a young Christian. We had all been living as one family. Imagine my shock, then, at the judge who very rudely and with incomprehensible disapproval rejected the testimony of the [Christian] youth: [saying]: “It is unacceptable for a Christian to testify against a Muslim.”

In fact, Islamic law maintains that the testimony of an “infidel” cannot be accepted against a Muslim.

Al Azhar — arguably the Islamic world’s most prestigious Islamic university — continues to incite Egypt’s Muslims against Christians. Most recently, the university was exposed distributing a free booklet dedicated to discrediting Christianity. It is full of direct attacks on Christianity in general and the nation’s Coptic Christians in particular. Christianity is referred to as a “failed religion,” while Islam is hailed as the true and superior religion. Because the “seeds of weakness” are inherent in Christianity and the Bible, says the booklet, Islam was easily able to supplant it in the Middle East. No mention is made of any violent Islamic conquests.

Iran: Iran’s revolutionary court sentenced 18 Christian converts on charges that include evangelism, propaganda against the regime, and creating house churches to practice their faith. The sentences totaled almost 24 years (the lack of transparency in Iran’s tightly controlled judicial system does not allow for a breakdown of individual sentences). The defendants were also barred from organizing home church meetings and given a two-year ban from leaving Iran. The Christians, many of whom were arrested in 2013, were sentenced in accordance with Article 500 of the Islamic Penal Code, which states that “Anyone who engages in any type of propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran or in support of opposition groups and associations, shall be sentenced to three months to one year of imprisonment.”[2]

Nigeria: More than 200 girls remain missing after Boko Haram stormed a government school in Chibok in 2014, kidnapping scores of mostly Christian young girls. Escapees continue to testify to the brainwashing that they encountered from their captors. Some were told to slit the throats of Christians and to carry out suicide attacks. One witness said that the Chibok girls have been given special status as “teachers” told to memorize the Koran and teach others to do so. Girls who cannot recite the Koran are flogged.

Pakistan:

1) The “lawyers” of a Christian man imprisoned in Pakistan on the charge of desecrating the Koran last May[3] are actually working against him. Humayun Faisal, a mentally disabled Christian, will remain in prison because his lawyers have withdrawn their request for bail. According to the pool of Christian attorneys of the NGO “Lead,” during the hearing on June 27 before the Lahore High Court, Faisal’s lawyers officially canceled the request for bail, previously submitted by other lawyers. Said Lead:

[There are lawyers who] intervene in cases in which Christians are accused of blasphemy or other crimes and, instead of obtaining justice, do not operate in the interests of the accused, their clients, but act for others purposes.

2) Mumtaz Masih, a Christian man, was recently released from forced slavery by his Muslim employer. Masih had an arrangement with his Muslim employer, part of which was that Masih remain on his employer’s property at all times except once a month when he would receive payment and could go home to visit his family. In July 2014, the employer stopped paying Masih, banned him from home visiting, and effectively turned him into a slave. Masih’s wife sought help when her husband stopped coming. After a habeas corpus court case on May 29, a court official was directed to find Masih, who was found on his master’s property in a locked room. Although slavery is illegal in Pakistan, many poor Christians live and work in such conditions.

Sudan: On June 25, 12 Christian girls were detained for wearing “scandalous outfits” by the Public Order Police as they left the Baptist church in El Izba, Khartoum. The young women, in trousers and skirts, were transferred to a police station; two were acquitted on Friday, after the agents of the Public Order Police reconsidered their opinion. The ten others were charged with “deeds against the public morality” under Article 152 of the 1990 Criminal Code. “The young women attended a religious festivity in the church, and were wearing fancy dress. The charges are an insult to the church,” argued their lawyer. “Furthermore, the students were forced to change their clothes inside the police station, which is an affront to their dignity.”

Turkey: Authorities shut down Christian schools belonging to the Association of Churches of Jerusalem. Schools in several districts of the southeastern city of Gaziantep, where many refugees from Syria had fled, and in three other regions, were closed. Although providing much needed humanitarian relief, the Christian schools were found giving Bibles and other Christian literature to their refugee students, many of whom come from Muslim backgrounds.

Philippines: Christians and others in the southern Philippines say they fear that legislation meant to create an Islamic sub-state on Mindanao Island — legislation meant to appease Islamists — will only create more extremism against Christians. They believe that if Bangsamoro, or “Moro Country” — Moro is colloquial for “Muslim” — were ruled under Sharia, non-Muslims would become second-class citizens with drastically reduced rights. Critics of the bill say it would render the federal government powerless to redress human rights abuses under Islamic law.[4] “What President Aquino is doing is treasonous to Christian communities in Mindanao,” said Rolly Pelinggon, national convener of Mindanaoans for Mindanao (M4M).

United Kingdom: Nissar Hussain, a former Muslim from Pakistan who converted to Christianity in 1996, recently wrote a letter to his local MP recounting some of the violence, abuse, and other attacks that he, his wife and their six children have suffered at the hands of Muslims in the area of Bradford where they live.[5]

Iraq: According to Nineveh Provincial Council member Anwar Mata, “more than 120 thousand Christians [were] displaced from Mosul and Nineveh after the Islamic State invaded Mosul. He further noted that, “about 20 thousand of them have migrated [from] Iraq since last year…. The lack of interest of the federal government towards the displaced Christians pushed them to migrate outside the country … the psychological and moral damage was greater than the loss of their money and property as a result of ISIS occupation of Mosul.” Meanwhile, the theft of Christian property was conducted, not only by IS but by local politicians in Iraq. Impostors and fraudulent groups, thanks to corrupt officials, have managed to acquire illegal possession of thousands of houses belonging to Christian families in Baghdad, who fled the city after the U.S-led ousting of Saddam Hussein uncorked a virulent jihad on them. Mohammed al-Rubai, member of the city council of Baghdad, said that almost 70 percent of Christian houses in Baghdad have been expropriated illegally, and property titles were forged with the tampering of land registers carried out by dishonest bureaucrats. The NGO “Baghdad Beituna” has calculated that the thefts of Christian properties carried out with the complicity of corrupt public officials were about seven thousand. Even members of the political and military apparatus have enjoyed the “legalized” theft of Christian properties.

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians is expanding. “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some — by no means all — of the instances of persecution that surface each month.

It documents what the mainstream media often fails to report.

It posits that such persecution is not random but systematic, and takes place in all languages, ethnicities and locations.

_________________

[1] Mikhial Shenouda, senior priest of Archangel Mikhial, adds: “A person who commits suicide is a disappointed and desperate person, but Bahaa was in a very good spirits. He was smiling always. He was keeping the word of God.” Although the Egyptian military and media have said little about this incident, hundreds attended his funeral.

[2] According to a 2015 U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom report, “Over the past year, there were numerous incidents of Iranian authorities raiding church services, threatening church members, and arresting and imprisoning worshipers and church leaders, particularly Evangelical Christian converts…. Since 2010, authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained more than 500 Christians throughout the country.” Christians make for less than one percent of Iran’s Shia Muslim majority population. “The Iranian regime’s systematic persecution of Christians, as well as Baha’is, Sunni Muslims, dissenting Shi’a Muslims, and other religious minorities, is getting worse not better,” said U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in a statement. “This is a direct consequence of President Obama’s decision to de-link demands for improvements in religious freedom and human rights in Iran from the nuclear negotiations.”

[3] On Sunday, May 24, Faisal was accused of blasphemy when some Muslims saw him burning newspapers that reportedly contained Arabic verses from the Koran. After the accusation, a Muslim mob caught the Christian, severely beat him, and even attempted to set him on fire. A few months earlier, another Muslim mob burned a Christian couple alive inside a kiln after they, too, were accused of insulting Islam. After the attack on Faisal, the Muslim mob, reportedly numbering in the thousands, rampaged through the neighborhood and set fire to Christian homes and a church.

[4] The Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), proposed by President Benigno Aquino III last September with the aim of ending decades of Islamist rebel violence in Mindanao, was approved by a House Ad Hoc Committee on May 20. The area, comprising five provinces with sizeable non-Muslim populations, already enjoys a measure of autonomy and the proposed BBL would give leaders sufficient independence to impose sharia (Islamic law). The BBL came about as part of a preliminary peace accord between the Aquino administration and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebel group. But it has done little to reduce violence.The BPFA was signed in 2013 as a precursor to a final peace agreement. The government claimed there would be no more Muslim rebel attacks in Mindanao after it was signed, but in some areas violence –including trademark Islamic attacks on churches and nuns — has been increasing.

[5] The letter reads:

Dear Naseem Shah MP,

Can I congratulate you on behalf of myself and family on your stunning victory and we can’t express our delight as our newly elected MP for the Ward of Manningham and wish you every success for the future. On a serious note can I express our utter misery and dire situation as Christian converts from a Mirpuri/Muslim background since 1996 [Mirpur is a region in Pakistan].

We were forced out of our previous home after over several years of suffering as converts and in short my family and I endured ‘hell’ by my fellow Pakistani young men in the form of persecution which entailed assault, daily intimidation, criminal damage to property: smashing house windows and also 3 vehicles written off whilst the community looked on and even endorsed this. One of vehicles was torched outside my home. Despite witnessing another vehicle being rammed deliberately by a man who I knew, the Police did not even take a statement never mind an arrest. Finally after being threatened to be burnt out of my home these young men deliberately set the neighbours’ house (which was vacant) on fire in the hopes that our house would catch fire. When I had reported it to Police prior to this happening the Police sergeant’s response was: “Stop trying to be a crusader and move out!” In short the Police had wilfully failed us so as not to be labelled racists or seem to cause the Muslim community offence at our suffering and expense.

After being forced to move out in June 2006 we settled in St Paul’s Rd and set about rebuilding our lives, which was going well and had no issues and forged good relations with neighbours until we contributed in a Dispatches documentary called ‘Unholy War’ highlighting the plight of converts from Islam to Christianity in September 2008. Then our problems began, largely posed by the A. family who have been engaged on a campaign to drive us out our home given their bigoted attitude and thoroughly unscrupulous conduct and since last July they have embarked upon criminal damage to my vehicle to the point I have now had my vehicle windscreens smashed for the fourth occasion. The most recent incident occurred on 24 April when I had my vehicle smashed in the early hours of the morning and cannot express the financial impact also as I have to wait 3 weeks at a time for the glass to be ordered from the States as my vehicle is American. And again as in our previous experience the Pakistani community has looked on at our suffering and turned a blind eye whilst others have been openly hostile, while they enjoy freedom and liberty religious or otherwise whilst imposing their will rule and reign upon us and we are treated as second class citizens.

As a result of the latest criminal damage, and after weeks of having no car until it was repaired, I took the liberty of parking my vehicle away from outside my home for peace of mind, as given the misery over the last several years I have been diagnosed with PTSD and my wife and family also suffer stress and anxiety. When I went this morning to get my car I was mortified to discover that my car has been smashed deliberately yet again. Clearly we cannot go on living like this; … our lives have been sabotaged, we fear for our safety and suffer anxiety daily, not to mention the financial costs to all of this wanton criminal damage.

I cannot express in words the Police failure over the years which has led to our suffering and have no confidence in them whatsoever and am desperate for your help.

Kind regards,

Nissar Hussain

Categories: Christians, Climate change, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Pope Francis
Tags: Christians, Climate Change, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Pope Francis

Comments: 1 Comment

Archives