Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:33 pm Post subject: Political Correctness With Regard Islam Is Suicide
[size=18]Political Correctness With Regard Islam Is Suicide [revised]
INTRODUCTION:
A short compilation of three articles showing how the concept of ‘Political Correctness’ with regard is suicide as they hide behind it to commit violence in western lands. These two news items well illustrate how deadly practicing ‘political correctness’ when it comes to Islam; to wit, it is imperative all wake up to REALITY and the danger Islam jihadist represent.[/size]
One - When political correctness kills
by Adam Turner
Daily Caller
March 23, 2012
Starting on March 11 and ending on March 19, a terrorist wearing a motorcycle helmet that covered his face conducted a vicious killing spree in Toulouse, France, murdering three French military officers (two of Arab ancestry, one of Caribbean ancestry) and four French Jewish civilians (a 30-year-old Rabbi, his 5-year-old son, his 4-year-old son and an 8-year-old girl). Much speculation as to the possible motives and background of the terrorist followed. On March 21, 2012, the French armed forces surrounded an apartment in Toulouse where the killer lived and released his identity: It was a French Islamist named Mohammed Merah. On March 22, Merah was shot dead while jumping out of his apartment window
What was most disturbing about this terrorist act — aside from its occurrence — was that the elite Western public officials' and media's speculation about the true killer, prior to the discovery of his identity, heavily focused (also here and here and here) on the belief that he was a white European neo-Nazi, or perhaps another Anders Breivik, a white, European Christian killer who hated Islam and may have hated Jews.
Granted, the fact that both French Muslims and French Jews had been killed, and the fact that some neo-Nazis had recently been dismissed from the French military, made this a plausible assumption. But it was not the only possible assumption, and it was almost certainly not the most likely one.
The most likely assumption was what was eventually found to be true — that the killer was a Muslim jihadist who hated Jews and hated those "traitorous" fellow Muslims who served in the "infidel" French army. Indeed, not to toot my own horn, but this was my initial belief. The neo-Nazi Frenchmen who were originally focused on had never been accused of any actual violence against anyone, unlike the actual killer, Mohammed Merah.
Merah had numerous acts of violence on his record along with two short prison terms, in 2007 and 2009. And there was plenty more circumstantial evidence pointing to Merah. He had made two trips to Afghanistan and one to Pakistan — vacationing in a war zone, he claimed — had trained in a jihadist camp in Afghanistan, had been caught planting bombs in Afghanistan in 2007 but escaped from jail in 2008 to return to France, terrorized his French neighbors who in 2010 reported him to the police as a physical threat, was arrested in 2011 during his second trip to Afghanistan and sent back to Toulouse, was under surveillance by French authorities since 2008 for his Islamist beliefs and was even on a U.S. no-fly list. In fact, it turns out that after the first terror attack, Merah was actually placed on a list of possible suspects alongside his older brother Abdelkader, but little was done to trace either of them until after the Jewish school massacre, when the police secured the mobile phone of the first victim, the soldier in Montauban, which showed conversations between him and Merah.
Aside from this evidence, there were other good reasons why the police and observers should have suspected an Islamist killer. Since the 1990s, a large majority of the acts of terrorism in the West have been conducted by Islamic jihadists. This is simply a fact. According to one unscientific count, since 1992 there have been 72 Islamist terrorist attacks on Western targets. Taking a more global view, others cite a number of 18,616 terrorist attacks by jihadists since 9/11. Max Boot says "it is undeniable that the most prominent acts of terrorism in the past several decades have been committed by Islamists, whose ideology has displaced Marxism and even nationalism as the primary propellant for terrorism, as it was in the 1960s-1970s."
Meanwhile, during this same time, there have been very few non-Islamist acts of terrorism. The two most commonly mentioned are the attacks in Oklahoma City in 1995 and in Oslo, Norway in 2011. Breivik, by the way, was not a neo-Nazi, nor a Christian fundamentalist; he was ruled "a paranoid schizophrenic" by a Norwegian court.
Yet, in 2012, when these brutal acts of terrorism occurred in France, the immediate working assumption by the Western elites was that the perpetrator was a neo-Nazi. Let's be very clear about this. We all understand why this delusional thinking occurs — the desire to be politically correct and to not single out a specific religion as producing most of the world's terrorists for the past few decades. But facts are facts, and these PC feelings are dangerous. In the Toulouse case, Mohammed Merah was not even hiding, he was sitting in his apartment because he was "confident that police sought a neo-Nazi." It is even possible that he might have been caught sooner, perhaps prior to the killing of the children, had the French tracked down this terrorist criminal who was well-known to them.
Two – Muslim reveals true objective, destruction of the west.
Philip J. Frye [source - retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/sarkozy-bar-radical-imams-entering-france-095536056.html - comment 198 on 3/26/2012]
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's leader, Mohammed Badie - Oct 2010
"Arab and Muslim regimes are betraying their people by failing to confront the Muslim’s real enemies, not only Israel but also the United States. Waging jihad against both of these infidels is a commandment of Allah that cannot be disregarded. Governments have no right to stop their people from fighting the United States. “They are disregarding Allah's commandment to wage jihad for His sake with [their] money and [their] lives, so that Allah's word will reign supreme” over all non-Muslims."
Mohamed Akram, an operative of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Largest Islamic organization in the World, in a memorandum outlining the strategic goals and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and its front groups - CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, NAIT, MSA, IIIT, in the United States:
"The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. […] It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is…"
CAIR founder Omar Ahmad:
"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, will be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
"If we cannot defeat them in war, we will defeat them through the wombs of our women."
Yasser Arafat
"They call me Hitler, well Hitler has a great man."
Louis Farrakhan Leader of the Nation of Islam.
[Ed. note: this essay appears at American Thinker as, "No, Hasan and Bales Are Not Equivalent."]
Last week, Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used his blog "What Would Muhammad Do" at the Religion News Service to claim a moral equivalency between Ft. Hood jihadist Major Nidal Malik Hasan and U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales. "When Americans Kill vs. When Muslims Kill" is a morally repugnant attempt to claim a double standard in the way Americans react to mass murder. In this, Safi echoes the party line of the Middle East studies establishment, which blames the West for the region's political and technological backwardness while largely ignoring its systemic social problems, from the subservient roles of women to the glorification of terrorism.
Rather than proving his claim, however, Safi highlights what he attempts to deny -- that the double standard in Americans' treatment of Muslims leads Americans to turn a blind eye toward Islamic radicals while condemning non-Muslims harshly. Willful blindness, not bigotry, is the hallmark of the contemporary West's treatment of Islamic radicalism.
He writes:
When Americans kill, it is portrayed as an aberration, an act of a tormented and troubled individual. When Muslims kill, it is covered as a signal of a communal, global genocidal tendency.
And:
In short, the assumption that [sic] when we Americans kill, it is an aberration from our good nature. Even if the act is abominable, it is said to be purely an individual act totally disconnected from any larger institutional or political context. However, when Muslims kill, it is a sign of a world-wide, evil ideology of jihad and terrorism.
Hasan, a psychiatrist who slaughtered thirteen fellow soldiers while shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"), psychologically abused his patients -- weary, sometimes mentally fragile Iraq War veterans seeking medical treatment. He condemned their service to their country, attempted to convert some to Islam, and told an Army captain that she was an infidel who would be "ripped to shreds" and would "burn in hell" because she was not a Muslim. His file reveals years of unprofessional, highly aggressive behavior toward Army personnel driven by his desire to carry out jihad -- holy war -- against Americans. Private business cards found in his apartment after his arrest stated that he was an "SoA (SWT)," an acronym found on jihadist websites that stands for "soldier of Allah" and "Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala," or "Glory to God."
Yet, in spite of a mountain of evidence against Hasan, official government reactions to his murderous rampage and to other actions by radical Islamists reveal anything but bigotry against Muslims:
The official Department of Defense report on the murder of the thirteen servicemen at Fort Hood does not mention Hasan by name, nor does it mention the words "jihad" or "Muslim," while "Islam" occurs only in a reference footnote.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder refused to state that radical Islam played any role in the Fort Hood shooting or the attempted bombing of Times Square in New York City in 2009.
Federal officials regularly resort to euphemisms, including "overseas contingency operation," "a campaign against extremists who wish to do us harm," and "countering violent extremism" to describe America's wars against radical Islamists and terror-sponsoring nations.
That Hasan got away with his actions without being expelled from the Army, if not prosecuted, is testimony to the West's pusillanimity in the face of radical Islam and its apologists, not its bigotry against them.
Hasan is entirely representative of jihadists who infiltrate Western institutions and kill in the name of Islam. Bales, who gunned down sixteen innocent Afghan civilians, is undeniably unrepresentative of U.S. military personnel, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere. Countless Americans have given their lives to protect Muslims from those same Muslims' brethren, including Americans lost through the implementation of military tactics that place U.S. personnel in increased danger of death in order to spare civilians from casualties.
Safi's analogy fails also because Hasan was in fact in contact with radical Islamists and jihadist websites around the world (although Safi claims he acted as a "lone person"), including the late Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni cleric with whom Hasan exchanged ten to twenty e-mails and at whose mosque he worshipped in Virginia. In the wake of Hasan's actions, al-Awlaki called him a "hero" and wrote:
The fact that fighting against the U.S. army is an Islamic duty today cannot be disputed. Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims.
There is utterly no evidence that Bales acted from any religious motivation, or that he was part of a larger network. Moreover, where is any praise of Bales, from anyone? Both President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called Afghan president Karzai to apologize for Bales's act. Bales is under arrest, held in solitary confinement, and faces charges that could lead to the death penalty. Safi, desperate to link two disparate killers, is grasping at straws.
Safi has a long history of defending radical Islamists and smearing his critics, all while posing as a progressive Muslim fighting for justice. From classroom assignments in which scholars with whom he disagrees are labeled "Islamophobes" to charging falsely that Robert Spencer threatened to kill him, Safi lashes out at those who would expose his efforts to shill for Islamists. In his latest apologia for terrorists, he insults the professionalism of the American military, the decency of the American people, and the truth.
Winfield Myers is director of academic affairs at the Middle East Forum. This essay was written for Campus Watch, a project of the Forum.
Contact information for the chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill:
Let’s look at reality. FACT:
90%-95% OF ALL THE CONFLICTS ON THIS PLANET TODAY
INVOLVE MUSLIMS FIGHTING NON-MUSLIMS OR EACH OTHER!
There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine," Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, etc...
ISLAM: "Religion of Peace?" [source - retrieved from http://www.masada2000.org/islam.html on 3/5/2012]
That excerpt from world news says it all with respect to the religious inspired violence on earth.
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth."Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today!
Western Survival Depends on Western Pride
by David J. Rusin
FrontPage Magazine
March 28, 2012
http://www.islamist-watch.org/9604/western-survival-depends-on-western-pride
Claude Guéant, the French interior minister, sparked a firestorm last month when he praised Western values as "superior" to the oppressive ones found elsewhere, namely the Islamic world. Yet the controversy did more to spotlight an area in which the West clearly trails its rivals: self-confidence. If a government official cannot extol the unique virtues of freedom and equality that define Western life without being cast as a bigot by the politically correct, how can they be safeguarded against the highly motivated forces of Islamism, which doubt neither the superiority of their own principles nor the righteousness of imposing them on others?
"Contrary to what the left's relativist ideology says, for us, all civilizations are not of equal value," Guéant, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, told a conference on February 4. "Those which defend humanity seem to us to be more advanced than those that do not," he averred. "Those which defend liberty, equality, and fraternity seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred" — a truth that would be hammered home a month and a half later by a jihadist murdering Jewish children in Toulouse. Thus, Guéant underscored the need to "protect our civilization."
The response from the aforementioned relativists was swift and hostile, led by the Socialist Party of François Hollande, the apparent frontrunner in this spring's presidential race. Pierre Moscovici, Hollande's campaign chief, called Guéant's observations "a premeditated, willful, conscious gesture" to secure rightist votes for Sarkozy. He is "targeting Muslims," Moscovici added. Prominent Socialist Harlem Désir condemned Guéant's words as a "pitiful provocation" reflecting his party's supposed "moral decline." Hollande spokesman Bernard Cazeneuve accused Guéant of attempting to "hierarchize humanity," while the Young Socialist Movement decried his speech as "xenophobic and racist." Serge Letchimy, representing Martinique in the National Assembly of France, went farthest of all when he addressed Guéant in parliament, saying, "You bring us back day after day to those European ideologies which gave birth to the concentration camps."
To their credit, Guéant stood by his remarks and Sarkozy supported him. "Obvious words to note that not all civilizations have the same worth regarding the humanist values that are ours," Guéant later explained to Le Figaro. "Who can contest that there is a difference in values between a civilization that favors democracy, protects individual liberties … promotes the rights of women, and a civilization that accepts tyranny, accords no importance to liberties, and does not respect equal rights between men and women?" Many people, it seems.
Guéant is hardly the first politician to be raked over the coals for touting the exemplary characteristics of the West and shining a negative light, directly or indirectly, on Islam. Indeed, the row recalls one that erupted days after 9/11 when Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister at the time, maintained: "We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights, and — in contrast with Islamic countries — respect for religious and political rights." The reaction was fierce. Belgium's prime minister cautioned that such "dangerous" language "could feed a feeling of humiliation" among Muslims, an Italian opposition leader chided Berlusconi for "using terms that no statesman worthy of the name has used," and another likened him to Osama bin Laden. Berlusconi quickly backtracked, with his office citing his "deep respect for Islam, a great religion … which preaches tolerance" and "respect of human rights."
Of course, the political figure best known for bluntly comparing the Western and Islamic worlds while suffering the establishment's wrath is Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. "We will have to end cultural relativism," he stressed in Rome last year. "To the multiculturalists, we must proudly proclaim: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Only when we are convinced of that, we will be willing to fight for our own identity."
The ancient military thinker Sun Tzu taught that victory in any conflict is achieved by understanding not merely one's adversary, but also oneself. Applied to the struggle against Islamism, this starts with Westerners grasping that which they are charged with preserving: a unique cultural patrimony — born in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem and nurtured during the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and American Revolution — that sustains the freest and most prosperous civilization in the historical record.
Yet as the response to Guéant demonstrates, appreciation of this Western "self" has grown thin in many circles. Due to "post-modernism, moral relativism, and multiculturalism, the West has lost all self-confidence in its own values, and seems incapable and unwilling to defend those values," argues Ibn Warraq, author of Why the West Is Best. "By contrast, resurgent Islam, in all its forms, is supremely confident, and is able to exploit the West's moral weakness and cultural confusion to demand ever more concessions from her."
Warraq declares that if their system is to endure, Westerners must acknowledge that "the great ideas of the West — rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy — are superior to any others devised by humankind." Likewise, it is critical to compare Western ideals to those of the Islamists, which are antithetical to liberty and increasingly threaten it. A glance at how women and minorities are treated by strict Islamic law is sufficient to expose multiculturalism's "lie that all cultures are worthy of equal respect and equally embracing of individual freedom and democracy," to quote reformist Muslim Salim Mansur.
The advance of Islamism can be checked only if the West unabashedly reasserts its core values. As feminist icon Phyllis Chesler warns in her review of Warraq's book, liberalization of the Islamic world "will never happen unless Westerners engage in the most spirited defense of Western freedoms," because "this is the best way we can strengthen our like-minded allies who are trapped in theologically fundamentalist Muslim countries." The same vigor is required at home to reverse deleterious multicultural policies that have fostered extremism, not integration. David Cameron, the British prime minister, has contended that the remedy involves "less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism" that "believes in certain values and actively promotes them. … It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe in these things."
At the very least, governments need to draw a clear line between Western principles that will not be surrendered and Islamist ones that will not be tolerated. Hints of the requisite approach are seen in Canada's citizenship guide, which states that the country's "openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices" such as honor violence and female genital mutilation, and the German interior minister's recent comments that "those who reject freedom and democracy have no future here."
Jihadists' ultimate success or failure at "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within" and institutionalizing Islam in its place, a goal enunciated by the Muslim Brotherhood, depends more on the West than the Islamists. It will never come to pass unless it is facilitated by a slow-motion cultural suicide at the hands of leftist elites who insist that no society is better than any other, downgrade their own civilization's accomplishments, do nothing to protect the West, and smear anybody who contradicts them.
Will the decades ahead be shaped by unapologetic pride in the West's objectively superior system, as voiced by Claude Guéant? Or will the mindset of his critics prevail, thus sapping morale, projecting weakness, emboldening Islamists, and accelerating the decay? If the former, the West will survive — because it will have chosen survival. If the latter, the new barbarians will not have to climb over the gates as in days of yore; they will simply stroll through the ones opened for them by Western apathy.
David J. Rusin is a research fellow at Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. _________________ Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth."Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today!
Commenting on the recent massacre of 17 Afghan civilians that was allegedly carried out by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, Glenn Greenwald, a leading pundit on the American political left, wrote the following:
There is, quite obviously, a desperate need to believe that when an American engages in acts of violence of this type, there must be some underlying mental or emotional cause that makes it sensible, something other than an act of pure hatred or evil. When a Muslim engages in acts of violence against Americans, there is an equally desperate need to believe the opposite: that this is yet another manifestation of inscrutable hatred and evil, and any discussion of any other causes must be prohibited and ignored.
This is a typical example of how Greenwald engages in overblown rhetoric. To take just a couple of examples that refute his inaccurate generalizations here, no one attempted to rationalize the Mahmudiyah killings in 2006, which involved the massacre of an Iraqi family -- including the gang rape and killing of a 14-year old girl -- by some U.S. soldiers from the 502nd Infantry Regiment.
Indeed, the unequivocal condemnation was entirely justified, and the motivation for the massacre was made clear for all observers: namely, a hatred for Iraqis as a people and a desire to engage in a punitive revenge attack. We know this because that is how one of the perpetrators -- James P. Barker -- explained it. As he said in an interview in 2009, "Because I hated Iraqis. They smile at you, then shoot you in the face."
As for acts of violence perpetrated against Americans by individual Muslims, one need only look at the cases of Nidal Malik Hasan, who was responsible for the spree shooting at Fort Hood, and Faisal Shahzad -- the failed Times Square bomber -- to see how many commentators, officials, and media outlets tried to explain their actions in terms beyond "inscrutable hatred and evil."
For example, on NPR radio in the aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre, Tom Gjelten -- covering the story for the outlet -- referred to "a phenomenon that you could maybe call a pre-traumatic stress disorder" as an underlying cause behind Hasan's rampage.
In a similar vein, Muqtedar Khan, writing in the Washington Post's "On Faith" section, made the following argument: "It is important to understand that Major Hasan is an isolated, alienated and sad individual who was clearly not well adjusted to his life. In a community that values family life, he was single at 39 and still looking desperately for a wife, according to his former Imam.… He was frequently taunted and harassed for being a Muslim by his own colleagues… [H]e did not feel as if he belonged and perhaps that was the key to why he could turn on his own." It is hardly as though Khan was subject to widespread condemnation for what he wrote.
Likewise, many observers were quick to note that Shahzad "had faced the loss of his family home to bank repossession," a supposed stepping-stone on his path to radicalization. Others primarily focused on Shahzad's anger over American drone attacks in Pakistan.
Greenwald's writings on this matter come in the wider context of attempts to equate the Afghan massacre with the recent spree killing in Toulouse, the work of a French Muslim called Mohammed Merah. A case in point is a blog post by Harvey Morris at the New York Times, in which the author rhetorically asks: "Robert Bales? Mohammed Merah? Maybe they were both mad."
The issue of massacres and motivations behind them needs to be clarified on several counts. When it comes to incidents of spree-killings, it is always good to start by asking whether the attack is planned in advance and the targets are intentionally chosen.
In the case of Merah, who killed three Muslim paratroopers and then four Jews at a Sephardic school, it is clear that the perpetrator's attacks were premeditated, and in keeping with al Qaeda's jihadist ideology that not only deems non-Muslims who do not live under Sharia as legitimate targets for jihad -- whether "offensive" or "defensive" -- but also Muslims perceived to be apostates for serving in the armed forces of Western countries, inter alia.
The latter concept is known as takfir, and is well illustrated in statements made by Islamist thinkers in the West aligned with al Qaeda. For example, Abu Izzadeen, a former spokesman for the banned Islamist group al-Ghurabaa, was filmed proclaiming that any Muslim who joins the British Army should be beheaded. Further, Merah proclaimed himself to be a "mujahideen," and Jund al-Khilafah ("Army of the Caliphate"), a group linked to al Qaeda, took responsibility for the attacks. It is therefore evident that Merah's acts were driven by his ideology.
As for Robert Bales, the problem is that many details of the massacre have still been withheld from public disclosure, hence the wide variety of speculation on causes and motives and whether the attacks were premeditated. What might suggest premeditation is that Bales may have carried out the massacre in "two episodes, returning to his base after the first attack and later slipping away to kill again."
If this be the case, then it is plausible to suggest that Bales was driven by a desire to carry out what he saw in his mind as a punitive revenge raid on Afghans, not dissimilar to the perpetrators of the Mahmudiyah massacre. What will be crucial to determining Bales' motivations is his own testimony at his forthcoming trial, where he could be facing the death penalty.
In fact, the Bales affair demonstrates the failure of trying to draw equivalence between his actions and those of Mohammed Merah. The very fact that Bales is being prosecuted shows that the U.S. military does not have a policy of inciting hatred against Afghans, does not encourage soldiers to engage in revenge attacks on civilians, and does not promote any sort of supremacist ideology. On the contrary, the American armed forces pursue a policy of accommodation towards local cultures.
If it turns out that Bales is simply "mad," it does not follow that the same is true of Merah. It is untrue to claim, as Nicolas Sarkozy recently did, that the "Islamic faith has nothing to do with the insane motivations of this man [Merah]," for the concept of takfir has a precedent in earlier Islamic thought, specifically in the works of Ibn Taymiyyah, while jihad against non-Muslims has much broader elements in traditional theology that justify it.
To round off, it is worth coming back to Greenwald, who regards the likes of Faisal Shahzad as driven solely by political grievances (in Shahzad's case, U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan) rather than any Islamist ideology. Where Greenwald errs is to assume that these grievances and ideology are mutually exclusive. Of course Shahzad is angry about American drones, but what he himself said in a video released by al-Arabiya illustrates that his motivations go beyond an aim to end drone strikes.
In particular, Shahzad declared, "You'll see that the Muslim war has just started… until Islam is spread throughout the whole world." This fits in with traditional ideas about jihad as warfare to expand the realm of Dar al-Islam. It is also notable that Shahzad affirmed his desire to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, who was the leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban until he was killed by a drone strike in August 2009. Mehsud outlined his goals as follows: Drive out the non-Muslims from Muslim lands, and then attack them in the West until they pay jizya or convert to Islam.
Recognizing that the problem of Islamist terrorism is foremost an issue of ideology with roots in traditional theology does not amount to characterizing the actions of Islamist militants as manifestations of "inscrutable hatred and evil" (to use Greenwald's words). Rather, it is simply based on examining what the militants themselves say they want to achieve.
I am no fan of Obama's "surge" in Afghanistan (based on the erroneous assumption that the primary cause of the decline in violence in Iraq from 2007 onwards was the increase of U.S. troop numbers and COIN strategy) or the use of drones, but these policies should not be changed merely because Faisal Shahzad is angered by them. It is difficult to think of a counter-terrorism measure against his fellow Islamist militants that would not similarly anger him.
Instead, a policy of containment is needed, and on the understanding that Islamism is ultimately rooted in questions of identity and the role of Sharia in the modern world, it should be acknowledged that the burden of stopping Islamist terrorism lies in the hands of Muslims.
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and an adjunct fellow at the Middle East Forum. _________________ Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth."Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today!
PARIS (Reuters) - Police arrested 10 suspected Islamist militants in dawn raids across France on Wednesday after a shooting spree by an al Qaeda-inspired gunman prompted President Nicolas Sarkozy to order a security clampdown, just ahead of an April 22 election.
The DCRI domestic intelligence service, supported by elite police commandos, carried out arrests in the southern cities of Marseille and Valence, two smaller towns in the southwest, and in the northeastern town of Roubaix, a police source said.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant pledged there would be no respite in France's pursuit of militants.
"The pressure on radical Islam and the threats it represents will not stop," he said.
The raids, which followed Friday's arrest of 19 suspects, came 13 days after police snipers shot dead 23-year-old gunman Mohamed Merah, who had killed three Jewish school children, a rabbi and three soldiers in a spate of attacks around Toulouse.
"Those arrested have a similar profile to Mohamed Merah," a local police source said. "They are isolated individuals who are self-radicalized."
He said the suspects were tracked on Islamist forums expressing extreme views and were preparing to travel to areas including Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Sahel belt of West Africa to wage jihad (holy war). Some of those arrested had already visited these areas, the source said.
Sarkozy, who faces an uphill task to win re-election in an April-May two-round vote, has vowed to root out any form of militancy following Merah's killing spree.
Television channels showed images of the early morning raids, with police taking suspects away handcuffed and with their faces covered. Officials also confiscated bags.
Some French media had been tipped off about the raids and police did not cordon off the areas ensuring mass coverage.
SARKOZY RISING
The Toulouse killings lifted domestic security up the political agenda 2-1/2 weeks before the April 22 first-round vote and may have improved Sarkozy's odds against Socialist Francois Hollande, who he trails in polls for the May 6 runoff.
Sarkozy, a former hardline interior minister, has been accused by some opponents of capitalizing on the Islamist threat for electoral purposes even though only 20 percent of voters consider it their main concern, surveys show.
Centrist election candidate Francois Bayrou accused the government of using the situation for its own political ends.
"It's fine that the state fulfills its responsibility by controlling and banning gatherings or suspected groups," he told i-Tele television. "But I find it surprising that it takes place in front of journalists who have been asked to come."
Speaking on RTL radio, Hollande declined to be drawn on whether he thought the raids were politically driven.
"If there are suspicions and risks, then they must be acted upon," Hollande said. "But why do it after a terrorist act? I am not questioning what is being done, but maybe we could have done more before," he said.
Thirteen of the 19 people arrested last Friday are alleged to have links to radical French Islamist group Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride). They are being investigated on suspicion of terrorism, the Paris public prosecutor said on Tuesday.
Wednesday's raids were not directly linked to either those arrests or the Merah attacks, the source said.
(Additional Reporting By Nicolas Bertin; writing by John Irish; Editing by Ben Harding and Daniel Flynn) [source - retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/french-police-launch-swoops-suspected-islamists-051838839.html on 4/4/2012] _________________ Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth."Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today!
The false religion of Islam founded by a 7 th. Century criminal who attacked and robbed caravans pose a threat as revealed below to America. But let’s face it the scriptures warned at 2 Timothy 3:1-5 that evil men would, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” [American Standard Version; ASV], so we should NOT be surprised that many of his followers today would only have evil and violence on their mind. Now let’s look at the news account:
* U.S. officials debate virulence of Iran-backed Hezbollah's threat
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The warning last month from Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, was blunt: An investigation by his staff had determined that "hundreds" of people he described as "Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists" were in the United States.
But interviews with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, as well as private experts, about the Iranian-sponsored group paint a more nuanced picture. There is a threat, though whether it is imminent or extensive is far from clear, they say.
An alarming part of the officials' assessments focuses on the apparent surveillance missions that Iranian diplomats and possible Hezbollah operatives have been seen conducting at sensitive targets such as New York subways and bridges, and at nuclear power plants and tunnels elsewhere in the United States in the past 10 years.
At the same time, U.S. officials caution that Hezbollah, a Shiite militia based in Lebanon, has largely avoided attacking U.S. targets since it carried out mass-casualty bombings in the 1980s against the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut. One reason may be that it does not want to endanger its lucrative North American fund-raising operations.
The renewed focus on Hezbollah - which U.S. counter-terrorism officials regard as the most potent and disciplined of Islamic militant groups, even more so than al Qaeda - comes amid a growing confrontation over Iran's nuclear program.
An Israeli or U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear sites could prompt Hezbollah to change strategy, moving from surveillance and fund-raising in North America to launching retaliatory attacks on either country, several U.S. officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.
BROADER RISKS DOWNPLAYED
Israel's leaders, while acknowledging the likelihood of retaliation by Iran or its agents, have sometimes downplayed the risk of a broader conflict.
Iranian-inspired surveillance missions in the United States have been scattered over a period of years. But, when combined with a handful of recent attacks or plots around the world, they have contributed to an assessment within the U.S. government that considerable violence directed against U.S. targets - at overseas installations or businesses, or at American soil - could follow any strike on Iran's nuclear program.
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, along with private experts, say there is little doubt Hezbollah has an extensive network of supporters, fund-raisers and potential operatives in the United States.
A law enforcement official said that the New York Police Department, whose monitoring of Muslim communities has prompted political controversy, believes that between 200 and 300 Hezbollah sympathizers live in New York City. Between 10 and 20 of those are relatives of Hezbollah leaders or fighters who were killed in action, said the official.
The NYPD's knowledge of Hezbollah's infrastructure is sufficiently detailed that it has identified four Lebanese towns - Bint, Jbeil, Yanoun and Yatar - to which suspected sympathizers of the group have ties. At least a handful of people in New York connected with Hezbollah have also undergone military training in Lebanon, the official said.
A preliminary report issued by investigators for King, a New York Republican, said that pinpointing the number of Hezbollah operatives inside the United States was difficult because of the group's operational security. The committee report nonetheless cited the estimates of "some officials" that the group "likely" has "several thousand sympathetic donors" in the United States as well as "hundreds" of operatives.
But other officials familiar with up-to-date U.S. intelligence on Hezbollah said there was a big difference between a Hezbollah "supporter" and someone who would be willing to engage in violent activity. The officials said such distinctions have been blurred in public discussions about the domestic threat the group allegedly poses.
CRIMINAL CASES
Over the years, U.S. federal authorities have brought numerous criminal cases against alleged Hezbollah operatives, most of them related to fund-raising or other support activity rather than plotting against U.S. targets.
The access to potential funding sources is one reason why Hezbollah has avoided targeting the United States or its interests, said Evan Kohlmann, an investigator who monitors militant websites for the government and private businesses.
"For the last 15 years, Hezbollah has regarded North America as a piggy bank," Kohlmann said.
Reliable figures for Hezbollah's fund-raising, which is done covertly, are not available.
Because the United States is such a critical source for funds and equipment such as night-vision devices that might be useful to its paramilitary operations, Kohlmann said, Hezbollah might be reluctant to embark on attacks inside the United States - even if prodded to do so by patrons in Iran. Attacks against U.S. targets overseas might be more likely, he said.
Kohlmann said that Hezbollah regards the U.S. as such an important supply point that the group supposedly has planted its own "procurement manager" somewhere in North America.
One factor heightening U.S. officials' concern about Hezbollah-related attacks is the accumulation of accounts of alleged attempts by Iranian operatives to "case" potential U.S. targets.
According to a New York law enforcement source, there have been several notable incidents of this nature involving individuals who turned out to be accredited to Iran's U.N. mission.
In a 2003 incident, New York police patrolmen observed a group of men videotaping the tracks out of the front window of a subway train traveling between Queens and Manhattan at 2 a.m. The Iranians were arrested, but later released after they produced diplomatic credentials. The law enforcement source said they were asked to leave the country.
In a 2006 incident, the captain of a sightseeing boat became suspicious after a group of Iranians taking his cruise along the East River broke into two smaller groups and started snapping pictures of the undersides of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. The six men all turned out to be covered by diplomatic immunity, the law enforcement source said.
In September 2008, three more Iranians with diplomatic status were observed taking pictures of rail tracks going into Grand Central Station that are not routinely accessible to members of the public.
And in a 2010 incident, security personnel at a heliport near Wall Street observed a group of men who claimed to be affiliated with an Iranian broadcasting network taking pictures of the framework supporting the heliport deck which was cantilevered over the river.
A federal official said that similar surveillance incidents had been reported in other cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Targets under observation included nuclear power plants, tunnels and casinos.
Some of the officials said that anxieties about possible Hezbollah- or Iranian-related attacks were increased in the wake of an alleged plot by Iranian agents to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington and other alleged Iranian plots uncovered recently in Thailand, India, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
(Editing by Philip Barbara) [source - retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/u-officials-debate-virulence-iran-backed-hezbollahs-threat-173235408.html on 4/5/2012]
If you wish more information and/or wish to ask a question or what ever, contact me by leaving me a message on the CONTACT thread at http://religioustruths.yuku.com/topic/58/CONTACTS-A-place-to-leave-comments-for-me _________________ Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth."Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today!
The false religion of Islam founded by a 7 th. Century criminal who attacked and robbed caravans pose a threat as revealed below to America. But let’s face it the scriptures warned at 2 Timothy 3:1-5 that evil men would, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” [American Standard Version; ASV], so we should NOT be surprised that many of his followers today would only have evil and violence on their mind. Now let’s look at the news account:
* U.S. officials debate virulence of Iran-backed Hezbollah's threat
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The warning last month from Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, was blunt: An investigation by his staff had determined that "hundreds" of people he described as "Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists" were in the United States.
But interviews with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, as well as private experts, about the Iranian-sponsored group paint a more nuanced picture. There is a threat, though whether it is imminent or extensive is far from clear, they say.
An alarming part of the officials' assessments focuses on the apparent surveillance missions that Iranian diplomats and possible Hezbollah operatives have been seen conducting at sensitive targets such as New York subways and bridges, and at nuclear power plants and tunnels elsewhere in the United States in the past 10 years.
At the same time, U.S. officials caution that Hezbollah, a Shiite militia based in Lebanon, has largely avoided attacking U.S. targets since it carried out mass-casualty bombings in the 1980s against the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut. One reason may be that it does not want to endanger its lucrative North American fund-raising operations.
The renewed focus on Hezbollah - which U.S. counter-terrorism officials regard as the most potent and disciplined of Islamic militant groups, even more so than al Qaeda - comes amid a growing confrontation over Iran's nuclear program.
An Israeli or U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear sites could prompt Hezbollah to change strategy, moving from surveillance and fund-raising in North America to launching retaliatory attacks on either country, several U.S. officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.
BROADER RISKS DOWNPLAYED
Israel's leaders, while acknowledging the likelihood of retaliation by Iran or its agents, have sometimes downplayed the risk of a broader conflict.
Iranian-inspired surveillance missions in the United States have been scattered over a period of years. But, when combined with a handful of recent attacks or plots around the world, they have contributed to an assessment within the U.S. government that considerable violence directed against U.S. targets - at overseas installations or businesses, or at American soil - could follow any strike on Iran's nuclear program.
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, along with private experts, say there is little doubt Hezbollah has an extensive network of supporters, fund-raisers and potential operatives in the United States.
A law enforcement official said that the New York Police Department, whose monitoring of Muslim communities has prompted political controversy, believes that between 200 and 300 Hezbollah sympathizers live in New York City. Between 10 and 20 of those are relatives of Hezbollah leaders or fighters who were killed in action, said the official.
The NYPD's knowledge of Hezbollah's infrastructure is sufficiently detailed that it has identified four Lebanese towns - Bint, Jbeil, Yanoun and Yatar - to which suspected sympathizers of the group have ties. At least a handful of people in New York connected with Hezbollah have also undergone military training in Lebanon, the official said.
A preliminary report issued by investigators for King, a New York Republican, said that pinpointing the number of Hezbollah operatives inside the United States was difficult because of the group's operational security. The committee report nonetheless cited the estimates of "some officials" that the group "likely" has "several thousand sympathetic donors" in the United States as well as "hundreds" of operatives.
But other officials familiar with up-to-date U.S. intelligence on Hezbollah said there was a big difference between a Hezbollah "supporter" and someone who would be willing to engage in violent activity. The officials said such distinctions have been blurred in public discussions about the domestic threat the group allegedly poses.
CRIMINAL CASES
Over the years, U.S. federal authorities have brought numerous criminal cases against alleged Hezbollah operatives, most of them related to fund-raising or other support activity rather than plotting against U.S. targets.
The access to potential funding sources is one reason why Hezbollah has avoided targeting the United States or its interests, said Evan Kohlmann, an investigator who monitors militant websites for the government and private businesses.
"For the last 15 years, Hezbollah has regarded North America as a piggy bank," Kohlmann said.
Reliable figures for Hezbollah's fund-raising, which is done covertly, are not available.
Because the United States is such a critical source for funds and equipment such as night-vision devices that might be useful to its paramilitary operations, Kohlmann said, Hezbollah might be reluctant to embark on attacks inside the United States - even if prodded to do so by patrons in Iran. Attacks against U.S. targets overseas might be more likely, he said.
Kohlmann said that Hezbollah regards the U.S. as such an important supply point that the group supposedly has planted its own "procurement manager" somewhere in North America.
One factor heightening U.S. officials' concern about Hezbollah-related attacks is the accumulation of accounts of alleged attempts by Iranian operatives to "case" potential U.S. targets.
According to a New York law enforcement source, there have been several notable incidents of this nature involving individuals who turned out to be accredited to Iran's U.N. mission.
In a 2003 incident, New York police patrolmen observed a group of men videotaping the tracks out of the front window of a subway train traveling between Queens and Manhattan at 2 a.m. The Iranians were arrested, but later released after they produced diplomatic credentials. The law enforcement source said they were asked to leave the country.
In a 2006 incident, the captain of a sightseeing boat became suspicious after a group of Iranians taking his cruise along the East River broke into two smaller groups and started snapping pictures of the undersides of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. The six men all turned out to be covered by diplomatic immunity, the law enforcement source said.
In September 2008, three more Iranians with diplomatic status were observed taking pictures of rail tracks going into Grand Central Station that are not routinely accessible to members of the public.
And in a 2010 incident, security personnel at a heliport near Wall Street observed a group of men who claimed to be affiliated with an Iranian broadcasting network taking pictures of the framework supporting the heliport deck which was cantilevered over the river.
A federal official said that similar surveillance incidents had been reported in other cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Targets under observation included nuclear power plants, tunnels and casinos.
Some of the officials said that anxieties about possible Hezbollah- or Iranian-related attacks were increased in the wake of an alleged plot by Iranian agents to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington and other alleged Iranian plots uncovered recently in Thailand, India, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
(Editing by Philip Barbara) [source - retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/u-officials-debate-virulence-iran-backed-hezbollahs-threat-173235408.html on 4/5/2012]
If you wish more information and/or wish to ask a question or what ever, contact me by leaving me a message on the CONTACT thread at http://religioustruths.yuku.com/topic/58/CONTACTS-A-place-to-leave-comments-for-me _________________ Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth."Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today!
Muslims Call Others Infidels, But They Are The True Infidels
INTRODUCTION
Members of Islam, a group founded by a 7 th. Century criminal named Mohammad who attacked and robbed caravans, call others infidels; however, they are the TRUE infidels. How so? Since they are not as old as Jewish or the Christian religions, they are the infidels as clearly they do NOT hold to the beliefs of either of these groups that existed before they did. In addition, they were, as previously mentioned, founded by a 7 th. Century highwayman, a robber of caravans and a murderer, as anyone who reads world history can readily ascertain.
Now let’s look at an example of their blatant name calling that occurred on an airplain and how one stewardess handled it.
EXAMPLE OF MUSLIM NAME CALLING
A 50-something year old Muslim man arrived at his seat on a crowded flight and immediately didn't want the seat. The seat was next to an elderly white woman reading her Bible.
Disgusted, the Muslim man immediately summoned the flight attendant and demanded a new seat. The man said "I cannot sit here next to this infidel." The flight attendant said "Let me see if I can find another seat."
After checking, the flight attendant returned and stated "There are no more seats in economy, but I will check with the captain and see if there is something in first class."
About 10 minutes went by and the flight attendant returned and stated "The captain has confirmed that there are no more seats in economy, but there is one in first class. It is our company policy to never move a person from economy to first class, but being that it would be some sort of scandal to force a person to sit next to an UNPLEASANT person, the captain agreed to make the switch to first class."
Before the irate Muslim man could say anything, the attendant gestured to the elderly woman and said, "Therefore ma’am, if you would so kindly retrieve your personal items, we would like to move you to the comfort of first class as the captain doesn't want you to sit next to an unpleasant person."
Passengers in the seats nearby began to applaud; some even gave a standing ovation.
CONCLUSION
This just shows how abusive and inconsiderate many Muslims are to others. They do NOT show love for others as Jesus (Yeshua) Christ said at John 13:34, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” [Authorized King James Bible: AV]. This negative behavior of theirs clearly show that they could in no way be other than an inconsiderate false religion.
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth."Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today! _________________ Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth."Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today!
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