Tag Archives: Islamic extremism

Washington’s Endless Policy Bankruptcy in Syria, by Doug Bandow

Posted on January 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

The fiasco in Syria easily makes the list of the ten dumbest things the US government has done since the turn of the century. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

US Should Avoid Other Nation’s Civil Wars

It took a particularly perverse and misguided mindset to watch the tragic collapse of Syria and insist that Washington intervene. One of the most important benefits of living in a nation that is stable politically (well, sort of these days!) and prosperous economically is to escape precisely that sort of devastating collapse. The U.S. government’s job is to protect its own people, and that should mean avoiding unnecessary involvement in destructive wars, not embracing them.

Yet in the nation’s capital foreign conflict attracts armchair field marshals like lights draw moths. There is an overwhelming desire throughout government bureaucracies, think tanks, and media newsrooms to get involved or, more accurately, to make others get involved. Opinion leaders rarely go themselves. But they are only too happy to send others to do the dirty work. Successive administrations have imposed sanctions, provided weapons, trained soldier, introduced troops, launched bombing raids, seized resources, occupied territory, and done more in assorted civil wars, including Syria.

The latter is a terrible tragedy, with an estimated half million deaths. It is not genocide, however, as oft-claimed. It is a civil war. And one with multiple factions, many if not most ugly, brutal, and murderous. Unfortunately, President Bashar al-Assad has no monopoly on evil. Yet the US cheerfully collaborated with most any killer of most any ideology if he opposed Assad, a perverse policy of dubious morality and dismal effectiveness.

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Spain: Does the Term ‘Islamist’ Constitute Hate Speech? by Soeren Kern

Posted on April 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

Believe it or not, using the term “Islamist” is the issue in a hate speech trial in Spain. From Soeren Kern at gladstoneinstitute.org:

  • “The external enemies want to tell us how to run our country…. Angela Merkel and her fellow travelers, George Soros, the immigration mafias, believe that they can tell us who can and cannot enter our country. They demand that our boats pluck so-called castaways out of the sea, transfer them to our ports and shower them with money. Who do they think we are?” — Ortega Smith, Secretary General of the Vox party, Spain.
  • “These…. groups stand out not because of prejudice (‘Islamophobia’ or racism) but due to their being the least assimilable of foreigners, an array of problems associated with them, such as not working and criminal activity, and a fear that they will impose their ways on Europe…. Other concerns deal with Muslim attitudes toward non-Muslims, including Christophobia and Judeophobia, jihadi violence, and the insistence that Islam enjoy a privileged status vis-à-vis other religions” — Daniel Pipes, historian, “Europe’s Civilizationist Parties,” Commentary, November 2018.
  • “We all know about the lack of freedom, if not direct persecution, suffered by women and Christians in Islamic countries, while here they enjoy the generosity characteristic of freedom, democracy and reciprocity, of course, all of which they systematically deny….” — Santiago Abascal, President of the Vox party, “Trojan Horse,” Libertad Digital, December 2014.
  • “The left defends any gratuitous offense, even the most beastly ones, against Christians as ‘freedom of expression.’ At the same time, the mere fact of criticizing Islam is branded as ‘Islamophobia.’ …. Is this still Spain or are we in Iran?” — Elentir, blogger, Contando Estrelas.
Vox, a fast-rising Spanish populist party, describes itself as is a socially conservative political project aimed at defending traditional Spanish values from the challenges posed by mass migration, multiculturalism and globalism. Vox’s foundational mission statement affirms that the party is dedicated to constitutional democracy, free-market capitalism and the rule of law. Pictured: Santiago Abascal, President of Vox, arrives at a party rally in Granada, Spain on April 17, 2019. (Image source: David Ramos/Getty Images)

Spanish prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation to determine whether the secretary general of Vox, a fast-rising Spanish populist party, is guilty of hate speech for warning of an “Islamist invasion.”

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Sweden Prosecuting Pensioners, Welcoming ISIS, by Judith Bergman

Posted on February 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

In Sweden, as in other politically correct districts in Europe, you get in more trouble if you complain about Islamic crime than if you commit it. From Judith Bergman at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Perhaps the Council of Europe considers Åberg’s successful efforts of turning in fellow Swedes to the police for perceived thought crimes an example that other European countries should emulate?
  • The pensioner explained during questioning, “I was angry when I read about how it worked with immigrants and how they avoid punishment for everything they do. They get acquitted, though they steal and do other things. It is unfair that those who commit gross crimes can go free….” The pensioner said that she would not have written what she did, had she known that it was illegal. She evidently labored under the misconception that she was still living in a democracy. In January, she was sentenced to a fine of 4,000 Swedish kroner ($443). She lives on a monthly pension of only 7,000 Swedish kroner ($775).
  • Swedish authorities clearly cannot — or will not — prosecute or convict the jihadists whom they so generously welcome to the country; yet they have no qualms charging and prosecuting harmless elderly pensioners. One might add that a culture that respects the human rights of returning ISIS fighters more than that of the elderly women who are afraid of them, is all but done.

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Saudi Arabia Financed the Killers of American Troops I Commanded, by Maj. Danny Sjursen

Posted on October 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

For decades, the Saudis have been financing Islamic extremists who kill Americans. From Maj. Danny Sjursen at antiwar.com:

It’s time to ask an uncomfortable question: What exactly is the U.S. getting out of its partnership with Saudi Arabia? The answer is: nothing but headaches, human rights abuses and national embarrassment. In the cynical past, the US could at least argue that it needed Saudi oil, but that’s no longer the case, due to the shale-oil boom (though that fact is not necessarily good for an ever-warming planet).

Recently, the crimes of the Saudi government managed to pierce the Trump-all-the-time-Kanye-West-sometimes media-entertainment complex due to Riyadh’s likely murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That the U.S.-Saudi relationship is, however briefly, coming under the proverbial microscope is a good thing. Still, it is astonishing that this incident—rather than dozens of other crimes—finally garnered attention. Even so, President Trump appears reluctant to cancel his negotiated $110 billion record arms deal with the kingdom.

For me, it’s personal. Saudi Arabia’s fingerprints—both of its government and private-citizen donors—have been all over America’s various opponents these past 17 years of war. I patrolled the streets and suburbs of Baghdad from 2006 to 2007. Sunni Islamist insurgents, which were funded by the Saudis, shot a few of my soldiers and paralyzed one permanently. We regularly found Saudi Wahhabi Islamist literature in the homes and caches of our insurgent enemies.

Years later, from 2011 to 2012, I led a cavalry reconnaissance company in Kandahar, Afghanistan. We chased the Taliban—really a collection of disgruntled farm boys—around the fields and valleys of the Zhari district. Guess where those Taliban fighters—who killed three of my men and wounded 30 others—went to school? In Saudi-financed madrassas across the border in Pakistan.

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France’s Marine Le Pen Charged Over Islamic State Tweets, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 5, 2018 | 2 comments

Civil liberties are being extinguished in Europe. Don’t think it couldn’t happen in the US. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

In the latest example of the European Union’s disturbing new tendency toward outright suppression of any speech that bureaucrats in Berlin, Brussels, and elsewhere find unacceptable for any number of reasons, former French National Front leader Marine Le Pen has been formally charged with circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism” for a series of tweets she sent after the massacre at Paris concert hall the Bataclan back in 2015.

The move comes after French President Emmanuel Macron announced early this year that, in an effort to “defend liberal democracy”, he would push through legislation this year to fight the spread of “fake news” in France.Macron went on to criticize Russian media in particular and accusing RT, a Moscow funded TV channel, of deliberately sowing disinformation and discord (sound familiar?).

While Macron’s announcement was cheered by many on the left, conservatives and those with anti-establishment or right-wing views are (so far justifiably) worried that they might become targets (because there’s no better way to defend an open society than to crack down on free speech and enforcing not only official censorship, but, by extension, the self-censorship that these policies encourage.)

And now they have even more reason to be concerned as French prosecutors move to punish – and possibly imprison – a political rival despised by the ruling party.

The charges stem from a series of tweets Le Pen sent in the weeks after the Bataclan massacre, where she shared disturbing photos including images from the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Le Pen later took the photos of Foley down after being contacted by his family. 

Other pictures showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being run over by a rank – another showed a man being burned alive in a cage.

“Daesh is this!” Le Pen wrote in a caption. The tweets were a response to a TV journalist drawing a comparison between ISIS and the French far-right.

To continue reading: France’s Marine Le Pen Charged Over Islamic State Tweets

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Does Jihad Really Have “Nothing to do with Islam”? by Denis MacEoin

Posted on February 24, 2018 | 1 comment

Is politically correct ideology blinding us to real connection between Islamic extremists and Islam? Yes, say Denis MacEoin, at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • “National Security officials are prohibited from developing a factual understanding of Islamic threat doctrines, preferring instead to depend upon 5th column Muslim Brotherhood cultural advisors.” — Richard Higgins, NSC official.
  • At the heart of the problem lies the fantasy that Islam must be very similar to other religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity, out of which it was, in fact derived.
  • The use of force, mainly through jihad, is a basic doctrine in the Qur’an, the Prophetic sayings (ahadith), and in all manuals of Islamic law. It is on these sources that fighters from Islamic State, al-Qa’ida, al-Shabaab, and hundreds of other groupings base their preaching and their actions. To say that such people have “nothing to do with Islam” could not be more wrong.

Recently, US National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster once again downplayed the significance of faith by claiming that Islamic ideology is “irreligious”; meanwhile, up to 1.5 billion Muslims continue claiming, as they have done for 1400 years, that it is.

As Stephen Coughlin, an expert on Islam, told Gatestone, “It is the believers who define their religion, not the non-believers. If someone says his religion is that the moon is made of green cheese, that has to be your starting point.”

On February 20, 2017, President Trump appointed McMaster, a serving Lieutenant General of the US Army, to the important position of National Security Advisor, after the forced resignation of Michael T. Flynn. McMaster came to the post with a reputation for stability, battlefield experience, and intelligence. According to the Los Angeles Times:

“It is not an overstatement to say that Americans and the world should feel a little safer today,” tweeted Andrew Exum, an author and academic who saw combat in Afghanistan and writes widely about military affairs.”

After the controversies surrounding McMaster’s predecessor in office, McMaster came as a safe hand.

To continue reading: Does Jihad Really Have “Nothing to do with Islam”?

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China To Deploy Elite Troops In Syria To Fight Alongside Assad’s Army, by Tyler Durden

Posted on November 30, 2017 | 1 comment

China is escalating its military involvement in Syria. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

According to multiple reports in Middle East regional sources, China plans to send elite military units to Syria to advise and assist the Syrian Army in an attempt to root out the country’s terrorist insurgency, especially Chinese Islamist foreign fighters who have shown up in increasing numbers in Syria’s north since the start of the conflict.

If confirmed this won’t be the first time China – one of the five veto-wielding powers of the UN Security Council – has sent assistance to the Assad government: according to previous reporting by Middle East Eye, China began quietly sending soldiers in an advisory capacity into Syria earlier this year to assist government forces in weapons systems, intelligence collection, logistics, and medicine. But this certainly marks a dramatic and more public escalation in terms of Chinese operations in the region as Beijing will reportedly send special forces to work closely with government troops, and likely in coordination with the Russians as well.


File photo via “Life of Soldiers” blog

Sources told the Saudi Arabia based newspaper New Khaleej that the Chinese Ministry of Defense intends to send two units known as the “Tigers of Siberia” and the “Night Tigers” – both elite special operations units – to assist the Syrian government’s fight against the jihadist insurgency.The news follows a high level meeting last week in China between Syrian Presidential Advisor Bouthaina Shaaban and Chinese Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who praised Damascus’ efforts in fighting foreign militants from the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM, also commonly called the Turkestan Islamic Party, or TIP). The Muslim separatist group was founded by ethnic Uighurs and is based in the Xinjiang province of northwest China.

The militarized Uighur separatist movement has long been a thorn in the side of the Beijing government, which began actively fighting the group soon after 9/11 when reports began surfacing that notable al-Qaeda terrorists as well as Osama bin Laden himself were actively supporting Uighur extremists and their operations. Various Uighur Islamist groups have claimed terror attacks in Chinese cities over the years, most notably a Shanghai blast which occurred days before the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics were set to begin.
To continue reading: China To Deploy Elite Troops In Syria To Fight Alongside Assad’s Army

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Is a Tolerant Culture Being Replaced by an Intolerant One? by Saher Fares

Posted on August 18, 2017 | 1 comment

Islamic extremist violence takes aid and comfort from the Koran and many Islamic texts. From Saher Fares at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • One need not go back centuries to the Muslim conquest of the Christian late classical world — the medieval Barbary corsair raids, the Ottoman yoke in Central and Eastern Europe or the slave markets of Kaffa in Tatar Muslim Crimea — to understand that this violence clearly predates the European colonial era, the creation of the modern state of Israel, or the issue of climate change.
  • Countries such as China, Nigeria or Kenya that are not Western, not“imperialist”, not whatever the excuses that Islamists make, are still spectacularly attacked by similar stabbings. Month on month, there seems almost nowhere that Islamic terror did not strike.
  • Volumes of revered Islamic texts establish in great detail the grounds of violence and oppression of non-believers and those deemed heretical. These supposed grounds — made alive daily in madrassas and mosques across the world before being acted upon by religiously-trained terrorists — are childishly dismissed by Western liberals as immaterial.
  • The first step towards a solution is to question the received knowledge tirelessly dished out by media pundits in the West. What is lacking is simply seeing a huge body of evidence of theological justification for Islamist terror.

How thin can excuses wear every time an atrocity is committed in the name of Islam?

When 13 people were killed and scores more injured this week in a vehicle-ramming attack in Barcelona, Spain, and stabbing men shouting “This is for Allah!” on London Bridge and in Borough Market in June, what the victims least cared about was the Western elite pontificating that the latest atrocity “had nothing to do with Islam”.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said, “It is time to say enough is enough” and promised a review of her country’s counter-terrorism strategy.

In the absence, however, of an honest and tempered look at the root causes of this terrorism, sacred or not, and a painful soul-searching by Muslims themselves of the grounds in their religion that give rise to such violence, it will never be “enough”.

To continue reading: Is a Tolerant Culture Being Replaced by an Intolerant One?

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The Forever War? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on June 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

If terrorism is the province only of a small segment of Islam, the extremists, why doesn’t the presumably mainstream of Islam that presumably abhors such violence, particularly the imams, denouce it? From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

On May 22, Salman Abedi, 22, waiting at the entrance of the Arianna Grande pop concert in Manchester, blew himself up, killing almost two dozen people, among them parents waiting to pick up their children.

Saturday, three Islamic terrorists committed “suicide-by-cop,” using a van to run down pedestrians on London Bridge, and then slashing and stabbing patrons of pubs and diners in the nearby Borough Market.

By all accounts, the killers bore no special grudge against those they murdered. They appear not even to have known their victims.

Why, then, did they kill these strangers, and themselves?

A BBC eyewitness suggests a motive: “They shouted, ‘This is for Allah’, as they stabbed indiscriminately.”

The murderers were Muslims. The rationale for their crimes lies in the belief that their bloody deeds would inscribe them in a book of martyrs, and Allah would reward them with instant ascension into the paradise that awaits all good Muslims.

Ideas have consequences. And where might these crazed killers have gotten an idea like that?

Is there a strain of Islam, the basis of which can be found in the Quran, that would justify what the murderers did at London Bridge?

On Palm Sunday, an explosion in Tanta, 56 miles north of Cairo, killed 29 and injured 71 Copts as they prayed at the Mar Girgis church. A second blast at a church in Alexandria killed 18 and wounded 35.

On May 26, masked gunmen stopped two buses carrying Coptic Christians to Saint Samuel the Confessor Monastery in Egypt, and opened fire, killing 26 and wounding 25.

“I call on Egyptians to unite in the face of this brutal terrorism,” said Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of al-Azhar, Egypt’s 1,000-year-old center of Islamic learning.

Yet, years of such atrocities have effected a near-complete cleansing of Christianity from its cradle provinces in the Holy Land.

To continue reading: The Forever War?

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Desperate Liberals Try To Blame The Manchester Terror Attack On Anyone Other Than Islamic Terrorists, by Michael Snyder

Posted on May 25, 2017 | Leave a comment

Those who kill innocents, regardless of their cause, are killers, and must be dealt with as such. From Michael Snyder at endoftheamericandream.com:

The left just can’t seem to understand that Islamic terrorists are going to try to destroy our way of life no matter how nice we are to them. On Monday night, a bombing at Ariana Grande’s Manchester concert made headlines all over the globe. 22 people, including an 8-year-old girl, were killed and 59 were wounded. It is exactly the sort of “soft target” attack that I have been warning about, and ISIS quickly claimed responsibility. Within the last 30 days, there have been 169 Islamic terror attacks in a total of 24 different countries. Last year, the number of global terror attacks was up 25 percent from the year before, and this year we will almost certainly see another all-time record high. But many liberals never even want to use the phrase “Islamic terror” because it doesn’t fit their agenda.

In fact, many liberals immediately jumped on Twitter after the terror attack in Manchester and started warning about the spread of “Islamophobia”.

For example, Quen Took posted the following tweet…

Don’t use incident as an excuse for Islamophobia. Stand with our beautiful Muslim siblings & don’t scapegoat innocent people.

And TheBardAsPundit warned that engaging in “Islamophobia” may provoke more terror attacks…

I have a good idea. Let’s piss off more Muslims with mindless Islamophobia. That should help.

Of course the mainstream media here in the United States attempted to put their own politically-correct spin on things. On ABC, there was far more concern about “anti-Islamic backlash” than there was for the victims of the attack…

Despite the horrific nature and impact, ABC was eager to downplay the motive behind the deadly attack. In fact, ABC was more worried about the perpetrators than the victims, warning that this could provoke an “anti-Islamic backlash” across Europe.

And on the Today show on NBC, counter-terrorism “expert” Richard Clarke seemed to blame President Trump for the rise in terror attacks that we have been seeing…

They have a good police and security service and so do we, but we have no ostracized, we’ve embraced our Muslim Americans. That’s why the talk against Muslims in the last year in the campaign and since has been very counterproductive. The only way to solve this problem is to have everyone think they’re on the same side.

Yes, let’s follow Clarke’s advice and try to convince the Islamic terrorists that we are on their side.

That should work.

To continue reading: Desperate Liberals Try To Blame The Manchester Terror Attack On Anyone Other Than Islamic Terrorists

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