Post Paris: Liberals Can’t Blame Terror Attack on Muslims, PJTV via You Tube, November 19, 2015
Posted tagged ‘Islamism’
Post Paris: Liberals Can’t Blame Terror Attack on Muslims
November 19, 2015Obama: Federal law is un-American!
November 19, 2015Obama: Federal law is un-American! Power Line, Jonn Hinderaker, November 18, 2015
On Monday, President Obama denounced Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, who suggested that the U.S. should admit Christian refugees fleeing persecution in Syria, but not Muslims from the same country. Obama called such a “religious test” “shameful” and “not American.” Today he doubled down, asserting that Republicans who object to resettling tens or hundreds of thousands of Islamic refugees from Syria in the U.S. are helping ISIS.
President Obama apparently is unaware of the controlling federal law, or maybe he just doesn’t care what the law says. It wouldn’t be the first time. Andy McCarthy tries to set Obama straight:
In his latest harangue against Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and other Americans opposed to his insistence on continuing to import thousands of Muslim refugees from Syria and other parts of the jihad-ravaged Middle East, Obama declaimed:
When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s shameful…. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.
Really? Under federal law, the executive branch is expressly required to take religion into account in determining who is granted asylum. Under the provision governing asylum (section 1158 of Title 8, U.S. Code), an alien applying for admission
must establish that … religion [among other things] … was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant.
Moreover, to qualify for asylum in the United States, the applicant must be a “refugee” as defined by federal law. That definition (set forth in Section 1101(a)(42)(A) of Title , U.S. Code) also requires the executive branch to take account of the alien’s religion:
The term “refugee” means (A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality … and who is unable or unwilling to return to … that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of … religion [among other things] …[.]
The law requires a “religious test.” And the reason for that is obvious. Asylum law is not a reflection of the incumbent president’s personal (and rather eccentric) sense of compassion. Asylum is a discretionary national act of compassion that is directed, by law not whim, to address persecution.
There is no right to emigrate to the United States. And the fact that one comes from a country or territory ravaged by war does not, by itself, make one an asylum candidate. …
In the case of this war, the Islamic State is undeniably persecuting Christians. It is doing so, moreover, as a matter of doctrine. Even those Christians the Islamic State does not kill, it otherwise persecutes as called for by its construction of sharia (observe, for example, the ongoing rape jihad and sexual slavery). To the contrary, the Islamic State seeks to rule Muslims, not kill or persecute them. …
And it is downright dishonest to claim that taking such religious distinctions into account is “not American,” let alone “shameful.” How can somethingAmerican law requires be “not American”?
There are strong practical as well as legal reasons for distinguishing between Islamic applicants for asylum and similar applications by Christians or others. We know that ISIS is trying to infiltrate terrorists into groups of migrants leaving Syria; there is some evidence that they have succeeded. As McCarthy says, no one has a right to emigrate to the U.S. The government’s first duty is to protect the American people, not to extend favors to foreigners. Moreover, Obama’s “compassion” argument falls flat. A recent Center for Immigration Studies report found that, for the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we could instead care for 12 refugees overseas. That is a much more cost-effective approach, and one that will not impose needless dislocation either on us, or on the refugees.
JOE adds: I have to say that by far the most disconcerting thing about Barack Obama as a man is–and this is a matter of objective observation, not of interpretation–that the only thing that really gets him emotionally fired up is his own conservative countrymen. The South China Sea, Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Iran, North Korea–nothing seems to faze this guy quite like Americans who read Burke.
Why Muslim Migrants Always = Terrorism
November 18, 2015Why Muslim Migrants Always = Terrorism, American Thinker, Selwyn Duke, November 18, 2015
Studies have shown that young Muslims in Europe are actually more radical than their elders.
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What’s the point in the West sending troops to the Middle East if we bring the Middle East to the West? The preceding is a money line, one that should be used by Islam realists from Germany to Georgia.
The Paris terror attack has inspired much debate, from conservatives saying we need to confront ISIS aggressively overseas to liberals wringing their hands over rising anti-Islam sentiment that they claim will exacerbate the jihadist problem. And while I’m more sympathetic to the former sentiment than the latter, nothing should distract us from what must be our number-one priority: stopping the Muslim influx into the West cold.
Many say this is a cold position. And, unfortunately, their prescription for (misguided) compassion is seldom sufficiently refuted.
In an attempt to salvage a failing multicultural model and strategy for importing left-leaning voters, we hear that the Muslim migrants must be “vetted” better. A simple practical problem with this notion is that Syria’s and other Middle Eastern countries’ databases are woefully inadequate, making accurate information on many migrants impossible to obtain. This confronts us with a simple matter of probability: if 1 million migrants enter a nation over time and just 1/10th of 1 percent are terrorists, that’s 1000 dangerous jihadists. Is this acceptable? Note that my estimate may be conservative.
Yet there’s also a fundamental problem with vetting that goes unmentioned: even with complete information, it only tells you about the past.
It cannot tell you about the future.
In other words, even if those one million migrants have “clean records,” how many will become terrorists in the future? Again, 1/10th of 1 percent is 1000.
And what of their children? How many of them will become terrorists? No point repeating best-case-scenario percentages.
One response here is that the children will be more integrated and thus the problem should diminish over time. This is logical, but, unfortunately, also apparently untrue.
Studies have shown that young Muslims in Europe are actually more radical than their elders. This certainly is counterintuitive, but only because the average Westerner’s cranial database also doesn’t contain accurate information. For example and related to this, moderns take as a given that religion is declining in our “enlightened times.” Yet religious belief is actually increasing worldwide, a phenomenon poised to continue. Islam’s adherents are growing in number, and Catholicism’s are, too, slightly in excess of the increase in world population. Religious belief is only declining in the West — and, most significantly, among Westerners in the West.
Another common argument was expressed by Charles Grant, director of pro-E.U. think-tank Centre for European Reform. He said that ratcheting up the anti-Islamic rhetoric would serve ISIS’ ends and that “Europe’s game must be to resist that and not repeat the mistakes we made after September 11 which played right into al-Qaeda’s hands. We must hold our nerve and embrace our values of tolerance of faith and religions which we share in common and against the Islamic State,” reported the Telegraph. Many leftists echo this, the idea being that we must not further “alienate” Muslim communities. This overlooks that you can only alienate those who aren’t already alien.
Note again that the pattern evident is for younger Muslim generations to become more alienated from the West, not less. Some would blame this on the West itself, saying that despite indulging multiculturalism, outlawing anti-Muslim rhetoric and offering generous government benefits, we still aren’t opening our arms and hearts to these newcomers. Kill ‘em with kindness, the thinking (feeling?) goes.
Of such people ask a simple question: can you cite one time in history in which large numbers of Muslims have willingly assimilated into a non-Muslim culture?
Just one?
While there may be some exception, I can’t think of any. Note here a recent poll showing that a slim majority of U.S. Muslims prefer living under Sharia law to American civil law (and how many wouldn’t admit such a thing to pollsters?). The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and the historical record informs that “Muslim assimilation” is a contradiction in terms.
In fact, I don’t know of even one instance in which large numbers of Muslims were ever shaken from Islam other than by the sword, and that wasn’t done very much, if at all. There was an attempt by a group of medieval Christian missionaries to peacefully convert Middle Eastern Muslims, but the effort was found futile and abandoned after a short time.
Then there’s the myth of “assimilation.” The term is thrown around thoughtlessly much as is “diversity,” and seldom mentioned is that assimilation is never complete. For while large groups who immigrate to a nation often do change, they also are agents of change. Did the large waves of Irish, Italian and German immigrants not alter America somewhat? This might have been a good, bad or neutral thing, but it’s assuredly a real thing.
There are also those who don’t assimilate markedly, if at all. Have the Amish or Hasidic Jews assimilated noticeably into the wider culture? Again, I’m not here making a value judgment on their particular different-drummer walk. The point is merely that assimilation is, foolishly and dangerously, taken as a given when there’s great precedent proving it’s not.
And this also is a numbers game. The rare Muslim who contemplated going to the West many years ago had to be a different kind of Muslim, one who understood he was entering a Christian culture that wouldn’t cater to his desires. He and his co-religionists would be so few and far between there’d be no prospect for “Halal” groceries, Islamic interest-free financing or Muslim schools for his children. So he’d be forced to assimilate by having to work within the established institutions of the host nation. But great numbers of Muslims form their own enclaves and their own institutions; this reality not only makes the journey west more inviting to pious Muslims, but also enables them to reinforce each other’s beliefs.
There’s another problem with assimilation: a prerequisite for it is providing something attractive to assimilate into. The communist political activist Willi Munzenberg once reportedly said, “We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.” This has been accomplished. Decadence is everywhere, and we no longer even know what marriage is or what boys and girls are. French president Francois Hollande recently canceled a dinner meeting with the Iranian president because he refused to bow to a demand to serve Halal meat and no wine. It’s good he took at least that stand, but one could just imagine his hurling accusations of “intolerance” at Christians who refused to refrain from saying the Lord’s Prayer before a meal with Muslims. It’s an example of how Western Europe has been hollowed out, how it has the superficialtiies of its culture but not the substance. What are foreigners today supposed to assimilate into in today’s France, Italy, Germany and U.S.? Bread and wine; pasta fagioli; Wiener schnitzel; and baseball, hot dogs and reality TV, all lathered in moral relativism? Are they really going to follow the lead a dying anomaly in a world of growing religiosity? Heck, I’m a Westerner, and as a believing Christian I refuse to assimilate into my country’s wider culture (although I save my cutting off of heads for broccoli). Thus, with assimilation, even if Muslim migrants were buyin’, they wouldn’t be buyin’ what we’re sellin’.
Of course, none of this means we should toss the post-Christian West from the frying pan into the fire. If you want to destroy liberalism, though — both the suicidal modern ideology and the extant remnants of the classical variety — Islamization is a sure way to do it.
Muslim Activists Demand Action vs Islamist Extremism
November 17, 2015Muslim Activists Demand Action vs Islamist Extremism, Clarion Project, Elliot Friedland, November 13, 2015
(Shhh. Don’t tell Obama, but these Muslims think that the Islamic State is Islamic and want reform. He might treat them as he does Egyptian President Sisi.– DM)
Protesters in Iraq march against anti-women sharia legislation. (Photo: © Reuters)
“The threat of global terrorism is unlikely to end until the resolution of the civil war of ideas between Muslim modernisers and those adhering to an outmoded theology of Islamic dominance.”
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In the aftermath of Friday’s Paris attacks, Muslim human rights activists around the world are galvanizing the fightback against the Islamist extremist ideology and those who deny the conection between the Islamic State and Islam.
The chairman of the UK’s Conservative Muslim Forum, Mohammed Amin, slammed the inaction of Muslim groups saying “condemning terrorism is not enough if you are unwilling to acknowledge its causes.”
He said condemnations of terrorism from groups like Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Council of Britain left him “feeling frustrated – because they look so incomplete.”
“I am utterly fed up with hearing people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, argue that the religious views of the terrorists are irrelevant,” he said.
Counter-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz supported Amin on Facebook saying,“None of us Muslims deserves an infantile pat on the back merely for condemning ISIS, which even al-Qaeda does.”
Anti-extremism activist and journalist Felix Marquardt went further, demanding “We Muslims must hunt down these monsters who make a mockery of our religion” in a fiery op-ed in Britain’s The Daily Telegraph.
He called out Muslims who merely say ISIS has “nothing to do with Islam,” despite that being the first reaction of a Muslim. He labelled it “dubious intellectually and altogether irresponsible to keep our reaction at that.”
Dr. Zudhi Jasser, head of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, identified a “cultural battle, a battle of ideologies” as the root cause.
Raheel Raza of the Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow implored both Muslims and non-Muslims to “connect the dots to get to the root of terrorism,” arguing that “Since 9/11, the West has been waffling in the quicksand of political correctness and refuse to call a spade a spade.”
She too identifies the root cause of the Islamic State as the ideology of radical Islamism.
The former ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, Hussein Haqqani, also pointed to extremist ideology as the root cause of the Paris attacks.
“Just as the post-9/11 war against al-Qaeda degraded Osama bin Laden’s group but gave rise to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)” he writes, “extremist Islamist ideology will likely give birth to ‘Terrorism 3.0’ once the world has fought, contained and eliminated ISIL.”
This is because, he argues, “The threat of global terrorism is unlikely to end until the resolution of the civil war of ideas between Muslim modernisers and those adhering to an outmoded theology of Islamic dominance.”
Haqqani resoundingly concludes “only a concerted ideological campaign against medieval Islamist ideology, like the one that discredited and contained communism, could turn the tide.”
These are just a handful of the growing number of Muslims who are fighting the Islamist ideology on the front lines and within their own communities.
They, more than anyone, know that this is not a “clash of civilizations” between East and West but a political battle between tolerance and intolerance, between fundamentalism and openness and between theocracy and democracy.
These brave thinkers and leaders are sounding the charge and deserve our support.
Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation names the Islamist ideology:
Cartoon of the day
November 17, 2015
The West and Islam
November 17, 2015The West and Islam, Washington Times, Robert W. Merry, November 16, 2015
Illustration on the clash of civilizations by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
France’s 4.7 million Muslims now constitute about 7.5 percent of the country’s population, and that number is projected to hit nearly 7 million by 2030. Generally, these people have not assimilated well into French society and hence constitute a mass of political and cultural anger that can only intensify in coming years.
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As the full magnitude of Friday’s Paris carnage became known, President Obama spoke to America people and the world about the horrific bloodshed in that great Western city. The president said this was not an attack simply on Paris or the French people. “It was an attack,” he said, “on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”
This is dangerously wrongheaded. History is not about all of humanity struggling to preserve and protect universal values against benighted peoples here and there who operate outside the confines of those shared values. History is about distinct civilizations and cultures that struggle to define themselves and maintain their identities in the face of ongoing threats and challenges from other civilizations and cultures.
Compare the president’s gauzy notion to what the late Samuel P. Huntington, probably the greatest political scientist of his generation, had to say about the relationship between the West and Islam. “Some Westerners,” wrote Huntington, ” have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.”
This is not to say, of course, that all or even most Muslims are Islamist extremists or that Western values don’t inspire many within that civilization. But the Islamist fervor we see bubbling up within Middle Eastern Islam today emanates directly from the doctrines and history of Islam. Most Muslims of the Levant know in their hearts, in a way that most Westerners don’t recognize, that Islam and the West have been locked in a civilizational struggle for centuries — reflected in the Moors’ conquest of Spain and incursion into France in the 8th century; the centuries-long Spanish struggle to push the Moors south and finally expel them entirely from Iberia; the wars of the Crusades, inexplicable as anything but a civilizational clash; the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans and slow push up the Danube to Vienna; the two Ottoman sieges at Vienna; the long effort to push the decaying Ottoman forces back toward Istanbul (a highly civilized seat of Christianity before it fell to Islam in 1453); the European takeover of large segments of the Islamic Middle East after World War I; and the eventual pushback by angry and frustrated Muslims bent on protecting their civilization through whatever means they can devise.
That’s a lot of civilizational clash, and it belies the notion that the Paris slaughter reflects the forces of civilization struggling to preserve universal values against the forces of darkness bent on destroying those values. Huntington again: “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world.”
If Huntington presents the more accurate depiction of the relationship between the West and Islam, then certain conclusions follow. First, expect the clash to intensify with Western military incursions into the lands of Islam. This isn’t conjecture. President George W. Bush played into the hands of Islamist extremists when he invaded Iraq, and Mr. Obama did the same when he expanded the Afghanistan mission to reshape political structures and behavior in the Afghan countryside. The threat to the West is greater today than it was before those actions were undertaken.
Second, Muslim immigration into the West inevitably will heighten prospects for bloodshed of the kind we saw in Paris on Friday. We learn from news reports that at least one of the Paris killers probably entered the country with the refugees now flooding into Europe. That should not surprise anyone, certainly not those who understand the true nature of the civilizational clash between the West and Islam.
France’s 4.7 million Muslims now constitute about 7.5 percent of the country’s population, and that number is projected to hit nearly 7 million by 2030. Generally, these people have not assimilated well into French society and hence constitute a mass of political and cultural anger that can only intensify in coming years.
And yet we see the Continent’s most influential leader, Germany’s Angela Merkel, beating the drums for ever greater infusions of Muslim refugees into Europe. And we see the editors of The Economist labeling her “the indispensable European.” This is what happens when humanitarian universalism supplants civilizational consciousness.
Europe is beginning to show some signs of civilizational consciousness, and that sentiment likely will intensify in the wake of the Paris bloodshed. But humanitarian universalism is powerfully embedded into the Western consciousness. Mrs. Merkel’s remarks after the Paris massacre showed little inclination to adjust her view of the world or of Europe’s future. Certainly the editors of The Economist and other like-minded liberals will never alter their gauzy notions. And news coverage of the Paris aftermath reflected the prevailing sentiment by habitually characterizing those who want to curtail Europe’s Muslim immigration as “xenophobic” and “radical.”
But the Muslim infusion represents an existential threat to Europe and the West. Maybe the people there will get rid of their current leaders now living in another world and install leaders who understand the true nature of the threat. Then again, maybe not.
What France and Europe Might Learn
November 15, 2015What France and Europe Might Learn, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, November 15, 2015
- By constantly endorsing pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli policies, France has obviously been seeking to appease Islamic countries. France seems convinced that such policies will keep Muslim terrorists from targeting French nationals and interests. The French are now in grave danger of mistakenly believing that the November 13 attacks occurred because France did not appease the Muslim terrorists enough.
- When the terrorists see that pressure works — increasing the pressure should work even more!
- The French and Europeans would do well to understand that there is no difference between a young Palestinian who takes a knife and sets out to murder Jews, and an Islamic State terrorist who murders dozens of innocent people in Paris.
- The reason Muslim extremists want to destroy Israel is not because of the settlements or checkpoints it is because they believe that Jews have no right to be in the Middle East whatsoever. And they want to destroy Europe because they believe that Christians — and everyone — have no right to be anything other than Muslim.
- The terrorists attacking Jews also seek to destroy France, Germany, Britain and, of course, the United States. These countries need to be reminded that the Islamist terrorists’ ultimate goal is to force all non-Muslims to submit to Islam or face death.
Earlier this year, France was one of eight countries that supported a Palestinian resolution at the United Nations Security Council, calling for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines by the end of 2017.
This vote means that France supports the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, likely to be ruled by the same type of people who on Friday carried out the most grisly terror attacks in France since World War II.
Scenes from Friday’s grisly terror attacks in Paris.
Today, every Palestinian child knows that in the best case, a future Palestinian state will be run by Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and in the worst case by the Islamic State and its affiliates. Has it occurred to anyone in Europe that the Palestinian people might not want to live under the rule of any of the groups, any more than Europeans would?
France and the rest of the EU countries have long been working against their own interests in the Middle East. By constantly endorsing pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli policies, France has obviously been seeking to appease the Arab and Islamic countries. France seems convinced that such policies will keep Muslim terrorists from targeting French nationals and interests. That is probably why the French have made the catastrophic mistake of believing that the policy of appeasement toward Arabs and Muslims would persuade the Islamist terrorists to stay away from France. The French are now in grave danger of mistakenly believing that the November 13 attacks occurred because France did not appease the Muslim terrorists enough.
Sadly, the two earlier terrorist attacks that took place in Paris this year — against the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and the HyperCacher Jewish supermarket — failed to convince the French that the policy of appeasement towards Arabs and Muslims is not only worthless, but also dangerous.
Instead of learning from these previous mistakes and embarking on a new policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general and extremist Islam in particular, the French continued with their strategy of appeasement even after the Charlie Hebdo and the HyperCacher supermarket attacks.
Most recently, France voiced its backing for EU plans to label products from Israeli settlements, doubtless thinking that such a move would make the Muslim terrorists happy with the French. But, as last Friday’s terrorist attacks showed, the Islamic State and its supporters are not particularly impressed by anti-Israel moves.
Muslim terrorists do not care about the settlements. For them, that is a trivial issue compared to their chief goal and dream: truthfully, to kill all infidels and establish an Islamic empire. The Muslim terrorists who have been murdering Jews in Israel and other parts of the world also seek to kill anyone they perceive as being friends of Western values in general. These include, above all, Christians — either those unfortunate enough still to be living in the Middle East, but also those living in France and other Western countries.
The reason Muslim extremists want to destroy Israel is not because of the settlements or checkpoints. They want to destroy Israel because they believe that Jews have no right to be in the Middle East whatsoever. And they want to destroy Europe because they believe that Christians — and everyone — have no right to be anything other than Muslim. That is also why Muslims seem not particularly interested in the EU’s decision to label products from Israeli settlements. It is worth noting that the decision to label Israeli goods was not even an Arab or Islamic initiative.
The EU’s decision to boycott products from Israeli settlements has sent entirely the wrong message to the enemies of Israel and the enemies of Western values. These enemies of the West see the decision to label products as just the first step toward labeling all of Israel as an “illegal settlement.” It is no surprise that the first to celebrate the decision were Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
What France and other Western countries do not understand is that concessions and gestures are being misinterpreted by the terrorists as signs of weakness, which just invite more violence. When the terrorists see that pressure works, increasing the pressure should work even more!
The European boycotts are seen by the people here as nothing but cynical and heartless — attempts to court a thieving leadership at the expense of the people. The boycotts are seen here as nothing but keeping the Palestinian people in the grip of its corrupt leadership and prompting us to take another look at the extremists — the only choice offered up.
What the Europeans might have learned is that the assaults in Paris are what all of us here — Muslims, Christians and Jews — have been living with for decades.
During the past 22 years, all Israel’s territorial concessions and goodwill gestures have resulted only in increased terrorism against Israel, including us Arabs. Many Palestinians incorrectly saw the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 only as a retreat and a sign of weakness. If shooting at Jews made them leave Gaza — as it appeared — keep shooting at Jews. The result was that Hamas took credit for driving the Jews out of the Gaza Strip with rockets and suicide bombings, and quickly rose to power.
In the same manner, each time Israel has released Palestinian prisoners (including dozens with blood on their hands) as a gesture to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas or U.S Secretary of State John Kerry, the Palestinians regarded the gesture as having their demands met. So the next step is to increase the violence and demand more. The Palestinians saw Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Gaza, and the release of Palestinian prisoners, not as a sign that Israel was interested in peace and calm, but as a reward for terrorism.
Two months ago, France took another step in appeasing the Arabs and Muslims. This time, the French voted in favor of raising a Palestinian flag at the UN headquarters. “This flag is a powerful symbol, a glimmer of hope for the Palestinians,” UN French Ambassador Francois Delattre said. Again, the French apparently thought that the vote would satisfy the Arabs and Muslims and persuade the terrorists that France was on their side in the fight against Israel.
France’s — and Europe’s — flawed policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not start in the past year or two. Four years ago, France voted in favor of granting the Palestinians full membership of the UN’s Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Last month, the Palestinian Authority leadership unsuccessfully tried to use UNESCO to pass a resolution declaring the Western Wall a holy site for Muslims only. The resolution was changed at the last minute into one just condemning Israel, but instead of opposing the resolution, an embarrassed France chose to abstain. UNESCO, however, did vote that two ancient Jewish heritage sites symbolic of the Biblical era, Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, would henceforth be known as Muslim heritage sites. The same week, another Biblical site, Joseph’s Tomb, was set on fire (for the second time; the first was in 2000) by people whose government, the Palestinian Authority, had agreed to protect it.
For the past few weeks, Palestinians have been waging a new wave of terrorism against Israelis. This time, the Palestinians are using rifles, knives, stones and cars to murder as many Jews as possible. But we still have not heard any real condemnation — from France, Europe or anyone — of the Palestinian terrorism.
We have also not heard France or other EU countries demand that President Mahmoud Abbas condemn the terrorist attacks against Israelis. Most French media outlets and journalists have even refused to refer to the Palestinian assailants as terrorists — despite many of the terrorists being affiliated two Palestinian groups that share the same ideology as Islamic State: Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
By failing to condemn the terrorist attacks against Israelis and name the perpetrators for what they are — ruthless murderers and terrorists — France and Western countries are once again sending the wrong message to the Islamists: that killing Jews is not an act of terrorism.
What these countries do not realize is that the terrorists who are attacking Jews also seek to destroy France, Germany, Britain and, of course, the “Big Satan” (the United States). These countries need to be reminded every day that the Islamist terrorists’ ultimate goal is to force all non-Muslims to submit to Islam or face death. Sometimes, the terrorists do not even have the patience to offer this choice to the “infidels,” and just kill them while they are watching a concert or a soccer match.
It now remains to be seen whether the French will wake up and realize that radical Islam is at war with the “unbelievers” and all those who refuse to accept the dictates of Islamic State and other Muslim extremists. This is a war that Israel has been fighting now for more than two decades, but, sadly, with little support — and most often with venomous obstruction — from countries in Europe, including France.
The French and Europeans would do well to understand that there is no difference between a young Palestinian who takes a knife and sets out to murder Jews, and an Islamic State terrorist who murders dozens of innocent people in Paris. Once the French and other Europeans understand this reality, it will be far easier for them to engage in the battle against Islamic terrorism.
Western leaders ignore ‘apocalyptic Islam’ at their peril
November 15, 2015Western leaders ignore ‘apocalyptic Islam’ at their peril, Israel National News, Ari Soffer, November 15, 2015
Bataclan concert hall following terror attackReuters
[G]laringly absent from the discussions [of the Paris attack] are any serious attempts to understand the ideological motivations of the Muslim extremists, several of them French citizens, who carried out the worse terror attacks in France in a generation – including the first-ever suicide bombings on French soil.
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Despite years of warnings by intelligence agencies that radicalized Muslims would eventually emerge from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq to launch bloody attacks in the West, Europe has been blindsided by one of the most brutal terrorist atrocities in recent memory.
The coordinated attacks by three teams of ISIS terrorists in Paris on Friday sent shockwaves far beyond France, with the massacre of at least 129 people reigniting the debate around immigration after it was revealed that at least two of the attackers entered Europe posing as “refugees.”
The attacks also fueled debate over how to end the Syrian civil war, as well as over ongoing efforts to defeat ISIS on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, the latter of which has seen several successes over the past few weeks.
But glaringly absent from the discussions are any serious attempts to understand the ideological motivations of the Muslim extremists, several of them French citizens, who carried out the worse terror attacks in France in a generation – including the first-ever suicide bombings on French soil.
That, says best-selling author Joel Rosenberg, is the reason such acts of terror are bound to repeat themselves.
Joel spoke to me prior to the attacks at the recent Jerusalem Leaders Policy Summit, and voiced concern that by failing to grapple with the apocalyptic ideology behind actors such as ISIS, Western states would never be able to decisively defeat them.
Watch: Author Joel Rosenberg speaks in Jerusalem:
A jovial, somewhat self-deprecating character, Rosenberg – who worked for Binyamin Netanyahu during his failed prime ministerial bid in 1999, as well as Natan Sharansky – describes himself as “a failed political consultant,” but boasts a rather more successful career as writer, selling millions of novels highlighting the threat of radical Islam.
Today he lives in Netanya in northern Israel with his family, having made aliyah from the US last August at the height of Operation Protective Edge (though a practicing Christian his father was Jewish, making him eligible for aliyah under the Right of Return). From there, he has continued his efforts to explain “the threats we mutually face as Israelis and Americans from radical Islam” – a threat he says he only fully appreciated after working with Netanyahu.
“Misunderstanding the nature of the threat… of evil, is to risk being blindsided by it,” he said, citing Peal Harbor and 9/11 as examples. “And we’re going to be blindsided by a nuclear Iran, just like we’re being blindsided by ISIS.”
“At the core of it, American leaders are refusing to deal with the theology and eschatology of our enemy,” he said. “Not every Muslim is a terrorist, not every Muslim is a threat, not every Muslim is a problem – in fact the vast majority are not.
“The question is, the ones who are – what do they want? What do they say they want? What motivates them?”
The current US administration is particularly hesitant to label the threat as it is.
“Obama refuses to even acknowledge radical Islam. Come on – really? At this stage in the 21st century you’re not even ready to acknowledge the ideology that is motivating these folks? That’s a problem.”
Days later, as the attacks in Paris unfolded, some criticized the US president for once again failing to mention radical Islam at all in his speech reacting to the massacre.
Watch: Obama delivers response to Paris attacks:
But beyond the relatively wide umbrella of “radical Islam” Rosenberg warns of a far deadlier threat.
“Radical Islam encompasses a wide range of groups… Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Al Qaeda – all of these are serious threats,” he noted. “But apocalyptic Islam is now the biggest threat. this is the Iranian leadership, this is ISIS.”
He argues that the hyper-messianic ideologies shared by both sides of the Shia-Sunni jihadist coin are unprecedented in the history of modern western civilization.
“Apocalyptic Islam is motivated by the idea that the end of days has come, that the Mahdi [Muslim messiah – ed.] is coming at any moment to establish a global Islamic kingdom or Caliphate, and that the way to hasten his coming is to annihilate two countries: Israel the ‘Little Satan,’ and America the ‘Big Satan,'” he explained, describing the messianic beliefs shared by both ISIS and the “Twelver Shia” sect which figures prominently among Iran’s leadership.
“But the western political class doesn’t want to even deal with the theological ideas that are driving the radical Islamists – let alone to explain the end of times theologies of two ‘nation states’,” he continued, referring to Iran and ISIS’s self-declared “Islamic State,” which encompasses huge swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.
“Never in history have we had one, much less than two states, whose leaders are trying to force the end of the world,” Rosenberg noted.
While Jews and Christians also have their own beliefs in the “end of times” or the messianic age, the difference is that “we don’t believe we have to commit a genocide to bring about the end of times.”
While some strategic and doctrinal differences do clearly exist between Iran and ISIS – who are themselves mortal enemies – Rosenberg emphasized that the fundamental threat was essentially the same.
“Shia apocalypticism and Sunni apocalypticism are similar. Both believe the messiah is coming soon, that his kingdom is coming, they need to change their behavior to accelerate his coming… but the eschatology and strategies are different.
“ISIS’s strategy is to commit genocide today, because the goal is to build the caliphate, to force the hand of the messiah to come.
“Iran is not trying to build a caliphate today. They’re building the infrastructure to build nuclear weapons. Why? Because while ISIS wants to commit genocide today Iran wants to commit genocide tomorrow. The point is: don’t launch until you’re ready. Rather than kill thousands in one day, Iran wants to eventually kill millions.”
He disagreed with assessments shared by some experts that the Iranian regime, while extreme, ultimately functions as a rational actor, insisting their words, beliefs and actions only led to one conclusion.
“When you look a the messages of annihilation they are saying… when you look at the infrastructure they’re building and when you look at the eschatology, these roads converge.
“They’re not interested in negotiating something together with us – they’re taking a gift,” he said of the nuclear deal Tehran signed with world powers. “You’re giving us two paths to a nuclear bomb: if we cheat, or if we don’t cheat? OK we’ll take it!”
In the shorter term Iran might they use its nuclear capabilities for more limited political goals such as “blackmail or to give a cover for terror,” he said.
But in the long term its goals were just as bloodthirsty as ISIS. In facing down both threats, the West must recognize it is facing a zero-sum game.
“For these guys killing is at the center of what they’re doing. When you bear that in mind making concessions isn’t just a mistake or misguided – it’s insane.”
How the Paris Attacks Increase the Threat to America
November 15, 2015How the Paris Attacks Increase the Threat to America, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, November 15, 2015
A woman takes part in a vigil in front of the French Consulate in Los Angeles as a show of solidarity with the people of France. (Photo: © Reuters)
The coordinated attacks in Paris and suspected Islamic State bombing of a Russian airliner raises the risk that Islamic State supporters in the U.S. and other Western countries will spur into action. The opening of a new phase in Islamic State (ISIS) terror will also result in a fresh wave of recruits radicalized by the appearance that the Islamic State is quickly ascending.
You can watch Clarion Project National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro discuss this increasing threat on FOX News’ “America’s News HQ” on Saturday afternoon below:
First, there is a risk of “copycat” attacks by the Islamic State and other Islamist terrorist supporters, including those who are loyal to Al-Qaeda and want to show that the group hasn’t become a “has-been” in the jihadist world. It is hard to express the excitement that an aspiring jihadist will feel at two breakthrough moments in the war against the West in such short order. At this sensitive time, any kind of an attack—even a simple shooting or pipe bombing—takes on much greater significance.
If an Islamist terrorist is planning or considering an attack, it is difficult to resist the temptation to strike now. Even a relatively minor attack becomes part of a bigger story, rather than being forgotten amongst the wave of headlines about acts of violence. On an egotistical level, a jihadist will want to attach his name to this dramatic story.
Secondly, there are those who will worry that they might now lose their chance to strike and earn their ticket to Paradise by dying in jihad as a “martyr.” Supporters of the Islamic State have every reason to expect Western governments to become extra aggressive in rounding up possible terrorists. ISIS supporters who believe they are on the authorities’ radar could choose to act sooner instead of patiently preparing their plot and risk being foiled.
The attacks in Paris and on the Russian airliner show that the threat from the Islamic State is greater than ever, and we’ve entered a new period where they’ve moved towards more sophisticated, Al-Qaeda-style attacks in the West. They are engaging in pre-planning and dispatching teams of operatives instead of just hoping to inspire a random supporter into committing violence independently. This upgrade in quality is a powerful tool in the Islamic State’s propaganda arsenal.
The organization’s ability to recruit is largely based on the appearance of success. No one wants to join an organization whose recent history is filled with losses. Moreover, success is seen as Allah‘s endorsement; the ultimate winning argument in a theological debate among those dabbling in Islamist extremism.
Just as the Islamic State’s burst onto the scene with the capturing of Mosul in 2014 earned it a wave of recruits, these attacks will also earn it a wave of recruits and it will encourage the millions of Islamic State supporters who have yet to take up arms to finally act upon their beliefs.
It is critical that the West push back against the Islamic State’s convincing narrative of success. Those in the region understand the importance of this. We saw many tweets from people in the Middle East directed towards ISIS that told the group that their attacks in Paris cannot erase their setbacks elsewhere.
Dramatic events like these make recent losses like the killing of “Jihadi John” and the Kurds recapturing Sinjar seem like distant memories, but they deserve to be a part of the news coverage and U.S. government’s international messaging. Instead of focusing on single events that the Islamic State hopes will grab our attention, we must put them into a broader context that the Islamic State is less eager for the public to know about.
EXCLUSIVE: As Paris Burned, UK Muslims Told To ‘Struggle’ For Islamic State In Unprecedented Islamist Show Of Force
November 15, 2015EXCLUSIVE: As Paris Burned, UK Muslims Told To ‘Struggle’ For Islamic State In Unprecedented Islamist Show Of Force
14 Nov 2015
BEDFORD, United Kingdom – As the distressing attacks in Paris were occurring last night, some of Britain’s most high profile and notorious Islamist extremists gathered just north of London, unimpeded, to tell hundreds of British Muslims to “struggle” for an “Islamic State.” Breitbart London was there.
At the “Quiz a Muslim” event held last night in the Corn Exchange in Bedford, panelists called British values “junk”, demanded that Muslims should “define” British law, and ominously, appeared to suggest Muslims were at war with the British.
The event was organised and chaired by Bedford-born blogger Dilly Hussain; an avid Islamist and a supporter of a global Islamic caliphate.
Mr Hussain described the event as “sort of like an Islamic Question time” – except during Question Time, there are usually disagreements. This event saw an all-male panel of “community leaders” talking to a completely segregated room, with little to disagree on.
One panellist billed to appear – Hamza Tzortzis – did not show. It is not known whether this was related to the recent revelations that showed him appearing on the extra-marital affairs website, Ashley Madison.
From left to right: Haitham al-Haddad, Sulaiman Ghani, Adnan Rashid, Dilly Hussain, Taji Mustafa, Abdur Raheem Green, Moazzam Begg (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
The group addressed the issue of how anyone could possibly have a negative opinion of some interpretations of Islam.
“Television is a form of hypnotism”, said Abdur Raheem Green, chairman of the Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA) which is known for sending hate preachers to UK campuses. Mr. Green is perhaps best known for his comment: “Islam is not compatible with democracy”, and for stating that a husband may use “physical force… a very light beating” against his wife.
Last night he said of television: “It is the most powerful form of indoctrination… the CIA knows…”
The other panellists agreed; the media was to blame for Islam getting a bad reputation.
The room was segregated (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
When Dr. Haitham al-Haddad, who was introduced as a scholar of “Islamic sciences”, asked the room if attendees were British, there was a long pause and an uncomfortable murmuring. Dr. Haddad has previously made deeply disparaging remarks about Jewish people, and is even claimed to have said that the late Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would go to heaven.
Taji Mustafah, a senior member of the global Islamist network Hizb ut Tahrir, which works towards a caliphate, interjected: “This is a loaded question… What does it mean?” he asked. Adding later: “All these things celebrated as English, it doesn’t mean a thing”. He called British values “junk”.
“We should not ask if we need to catch up with the British”, responded Dr. Haddad, “We should be partners in defining what British is… in what the law of the land is.” All seemed to agreed that “gods law” should always be “superior” to “man made law”.
Mr. Mustafah also took the time to clarify that Islam is a “religion of war and peace, it governs every aspect of life… politics… including what you eat and wear”.
Later, when former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg condemned ISIS because they are “killing Muslims”, a total of five people in the room of 200 could be heard clapping. When he said David Cameron was an “extremist”, almost the entire room applauded for a sustained period.
Immediately after condemning ISIS they each reaffirmed, however, the “Islamic” duty to “struggle” for an “Islamic state.”
As Maajid Nawaz, a government counter-extremism adviser explained on Facebook:
“Every single one of these speakers is a Caliphate-advocating Islamist, they believe in every core principle ISIS believes in, and they reject ISIS merely because they made their move for a Caliphate ‘too soon and too fast’.”
Adding: “You couldn’t make this sh*t up. Friday 13th nightmare, as all-male Islamist Rogues’ Gallery.”
Women dressed “modestly” (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Mr. Begg managed to produced an even more chilling moment however, when He appeared to suggest British Muslim were already at war with the UK in a strange analogy.
According to a Quranic story, explained Begg, “the people of Medina went to war with Persia.” One of the key characters in this tale, on the Muslim side, was of Persian origin. “He kept his name” said Begg, which contained the word “Persian.”
Therefore, “you can be a ‘British Muslims’,” he said, “It’s fine to call yourself a ‘British Muslim’ right now” he said, as if to suggest that British Muslim were somehow set against Britons as early Muslims were with the Persians.
In days before, the event had cause some alarm in the old Saxon town, just 50 miles north of London, with a population of just 80,000. There were rumours it would be cancelled.
However, 5Pillarsuk, the organiser’s website, tweeted on Thursday that they “commend” Dave Hodgson, the Liberal Democrat Mayor of Bedford for “allowing” the event to go ahead. Mr.Hussain said last night that he “hoped more councils” would invite Islamists to town.
Mr. Hussain told Bedford Today: “Some of [the speakers] are very controversial, some of them have said things that have been deemed distasteful.”
“On the flip side” he said, “none of them have broken any laws and none of them are convicted criminals.
The event, which saw Islamists themselves pit Islam and their end goals against the idea of British values, took place just a few hours before word reached the international media of the Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris, France.
One terrorist was heard to make reference to Syria – a place where Mr. Begg has been arrested for travelling to, with allegations of terror-related activity raised by the police. The charges against Mr. Begg were eventually dropped.
WHO’S WHO FROM THE ISLAMIST RALLY LAST NIGHT
The speakers on stage last night were some of the country’s most notorious hate preachers who have been banned from university campuses and allied themselves with some of the most racist, hateful, and anti-Western rhetoric the country has seen in the last decade.
Haitham al-Haddad – Sits on the UK’s Islamic Sharia Council, is known for his radical statements like “Jews are the enemies of God and the descendants of apes and pigs”, and had his speeches at the University of Westminster cancelled after it emerged that Mohamed Emwazi (Jihadi John) attended, and was potentially radicalised there. Haddad has said that Muslims should “be ready to pay the price for this victory from our blood” and has told fellow Muslims “to prepare themselves for jihad, all over the world.” He has said the death sentence for apostasy (leaving Islam) “makes perfect sense”.
Sulaiman Ghani – Has spoken in support of convicted Al Qaeda terrorists, and even appeared side by side with the Labour Party’s 2016 London Mayor candidate Sadiq Khan during a rally against Guantanamo Bay. He has said that women should be “subservient” and never be leaders, and was exposed by the Daily Mail as having worked as a “Muslim chaplain” in Britain’s National Health Service, all the while opposing organ donations.
Adnan Rashid – Has written that “the Islamic model supported by Shari’ah is a cohesive model that allows a diverse multitude of ethnicities to co-exist”. Rashid has defended the pro-Bin Laden preacher Zakir Naik, stating, “If Zakir Naik is an extremist then who is normal? How many people has he killed? How many rapes is he responsible for? How many countries has he raided and plundered?” He has also asserted that Saudi Arabia is a better place to live for women: “I’d rather women live in Saudi Arabia under the protection of Islam (and not drive, which I dont agree with) than get raped and prostitute themselves to feed their families.”
Dilly Hussain – Has a hagiographic Wikipedia page despite only running a blog, and is obsessed with trashing the British Empire. He has described the expose around the Trojan Horse plot – where Islamists infiltrated schools around the United Kingdom and implemented hard line, Islamic procedures – as “debunked”. He has urged more Muslims to infiltrate the media to change the narrative around radicalism, extremism, and terrorism – conflating journalism with activism, laughably claiming that Muslim’s Facebook statuses should be turned into blogs and sent to the mainstream media to “get your foot in the door”
Taji Mustafa – Is a long-standing Hizb ut Tahrir activist. The organisation pushes for a global caliphate, but considers itself non-violent. The group’s website has previously hosted anti-Semitic material, and it is believed to be involved with radical university societies around the country which hide behind names such as the “Global Ideas Society” at the University of Westminster, where Jihadi John went to university. The British government promised in 2010 to ban Hizb ut Tahrir, but it never happened.
Abdur Raheem Green – Has said that “Islam teaches its followers to seek death on the battlefield” and that “dying while fighting Jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise and Allah’s good pleasure”. He has called for those serving in prison on terrorism charges to be released, while at the same time telling the BBC: “I surely have said some pretty radical things and maybe even written some radical things in the past… But one thing I have been very consistent on is terrorism, participating in terrorist activities, violent revolution – is not something that I have ever thought was part of the religion of Islam.” He was recently caught on camera in London’s Hyde Park, abusing a Jewish man. He said: “Why don’t you take the Yahoudi [Jew] over there far away so his stench doesn’t disturb us?”
Moazzam Begg – Perhaps the most famous on the list, Begg served as an inmate in Guantanamo Bay, where he signed a confession stating that he was an Al Qaeda recruiter. After his release, negotiated by the Blair government in Britain, he returned to the country and retracted such statements, but admitted being at Islamic training camps. His organisation, CAGE, which represents former Guantanamo Bay inmates, has described ISIS beheader Jihadi John as a “beautiful young man”. Begg is currently free in the United Kingdom, though he has been arrested and quizzed a number of times on terror-related offences in the past few years.
Abdur Raheem Green and Moazzam Begg (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Covered women on one side, men on the other (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Attendees (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
“Liberated” women (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Men queue for entry (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Left: Adnan Rashid, Centre: Haitham al Haddad and Taji Mustafa, Right: Dilly Hussain (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Dilly Hussain (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Haitham al Haddad (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Sulaiman Ghani (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Taji Mustafa (left) and Abdur Raheem Green (Right)
Moazzam Begg (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
Moazzam Begg (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
More “liberated” women (Breitbart London/Rachel Megawhat)
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