Saudi Arabia Fueling Religious Persecution And Extremism

If yesterday we were speaking about Saudi private donors being one of the main sources of Islamic terrorism, today we know more about textbooks inciting hate against non-believers produced by Saudis and exported throughout the world.

America's top financial counter-terrorism official, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey, believes there's a strong link between education and support for terror. As he wrote in the Washington Post last June, to end support for such terror, among other steps,

"we must focus on educational reform in key locations to ensure that intolerance has no place in curricula and textbooks. . . . [U]nless the next generation of children is taught to reject violent extremism, we will forever be faced with the challenge of disrupting the next group of terrorist facilitators and supporters."

Saudi Arabia is one such "key location." The kingdom is not just any country with problematic textbooks. As the controlling authority of the two holiest shrines of Islam, Saudi Arabia is able to disseminate its religious materials among the millions of Muslims making the hajj to Mecca each year. Such teachings can, in this context, make a great impression.

In addition, Saudi textbooks are also posted on the Saudi Education Ministry's website and are shipped and distributed free by a vast Sunni infrastructure established with Saudi oil wealth to many Muslim schools, mosques and libraries throughout the world. In his book The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright asserts that while Saudis constitute only 1 percent of the world's Muslims, they pay "90 per cent of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions of Islam." Others estimate that, on an annual basis, Saudi Arabia spends three times as much in exporting its Wahhabi ideology as did the Soviets in propagating Communism during the height of the Cold War. From the Netherlands and Bosnia, to Algeria and Tunisia, to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to Somalia and Nigeria, nationals of these countries have reported that over the past twenty to thirty years local Islamic traditions are being transformed and radicalized under intensifying Saudi influence. The late President of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid wrote that Wahhabism was making inroads even in his famously tolerant nation of Indonesia.

To understand why Jim Woolsey and other terrorism experts call Wahhabism as it spreads through the Islamic diaspora "kindling for Usama Bin Laden's match," it is important to know the content of Saudi textbooks. They teach, along with many other noxious lessons, that Jews and Christians are "enemies," and they dogmatically instruct that that it is permissible, even obligatory, to kill various groups of "unbelievers" -- apostates (which includes Muslim moderates who reject Saudi Wahhabi doctrine), polytheists (which can include Shias and Sufis, as well as Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists.), Jews, and adulterers. The texts also teach that the "punishment for homosexuality is death" and discusses that this can be done by immolation by fire, stoning or throwing the accused from a high place.

Four years ago, the Saudis gave a solemn and specific promise to the United States. Its terms were described in a letter from the U.S. assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs to Sen. Jon Kyl, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security: "In July of 2006, the Saudi Government confirmed to us its policy to undertake a program of textbook reform to eliminate all passages that disparage or promote hatred toward any religion or religious groups." Furthermore, the State Department letter reported that this pledge would be fulfilled "in time for the start of the 2008 school year."

Saudi Arabia has failed to keep its promise to the United States. One Wikileak cable from the US embassy reports that Saudi education reform seems "glacial." In its newly released 2010 annual report on religious freedom, the State Department itself asserted, albeit with diplomatic understatement, with respect to Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks: "Despite government revisions to elementary and secondary education textbooks, they retained language intolerant of other religious traditions, especially Jewish, Christian, and Shi'a beliefs, including commands to hate infidels and kill apostates."

via Saudi Arabia Fueling Religious Persecution And Extremism.

Cross-posted from T&P.

Posts for Oct 29th: French schools, Spanish weapons, violent Muslim wins election in India, Islamism vs Copts, Swiss couple in Maldivas, Sisters in Islam, weapons in Nigeria

1. 

   Añadir leyenda

   "Islam not invasive": Impositions grow in French schools. "Teachers often faced objections when they taught courses about world religions, the Holocaust or France’s war in Algeria, or discussed events related to Israel and the Palestinians or American military actions in Muslim countries, the study said".
2. Spain: $3b arms deal with Saudi Arabia targeted. "The newspaper said without citing the source of the news that Spain hopes to reach a deal to General Dynamics Santa Barbara to sell between 200 and 270 model from the tank (Leopard 2 no) when the Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khaled bin Sultan (what a name) official visit to the country in November".
3. India: man who choffed off blasphemer's hand, wins election. "Anas won from the Vanchinad division of Vazhakkulam block in Ernakulam district on a ticket of Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI), political arm of Popular Front of India (PFI), whose activists were allegedly behind the attack on Joseph for preparing a question paper containing blasphemous references to Prophet Mohammed".
4. Answering Islamist's' accusations against Copts. 
5. Video: dream wedding Swiss pair, humiliated at Maldivas. "A video of the ceremony was then posted on the internet. “You are swine. The children that you bear from this marriage will all be bastard swine,” the couple were told as they smiled and nodded. “Your marriage is not a valid one. You are not the kind of people who can have a valid marriage. One of you is an infidel. The other, too, is an infidel and — we have reason to believe — an atheist, who does not even believe in an infidel religion.”
6. Malaysia: women group gets to keep "Islam" in its name.
7. Nigeria: secret police intercepts weapons' system. They identified the artillery rockets as Norinco rockets – a type used by the Taliban in Afghanistan – suitable for high-intensity warfare.

Spain: "Extremist" imams' ideology blamed on "disorganized Islam", according to El País

"We can say I worked as shepherd," he smiles. "I was in charge of a herd of goats in northern Morocco." Until he crossed the Straits and settled in the province of Tarragona. Unemployed, handicapped by the lack of training and a chronic disease for many years improvised direction of prayers in several mosques in the vicinity of Valls and Torredembarra. Rachid H. worked as an imam. "Not really, but I know Islam better than others", said after admitting that no studies that Muslim countries call for the task.

What kind of prayers were performed by this improvised imam? "I talked about everything: the relationship between men and women, life's problems," he says. Witnesses say those prayers castigated women and young Muslims who were related to people outside this belief. Rachid denies without elaborating. But at home, he stores magazines, recordings and videos that shed some clue to his speeches. The material supports that an adulterous wife should be punished with death and supports other repressive behaviors on the role of women relative to men, according to the report of the register details of the property conducted by the Autonomous Police in 2009. Rachid, who asked not to reveal his name for his legal situation, only occasionally leads prayers, due to his poor state of health and also because he is on probation after being charged with promoting violence linked to radical Salafism, Islam's ultra-conservative current.

I don't care about his health. If he is Moroccan, he should have been expelled after learning about his sermons.

Rachid's sexist diatribes and repressive tone are common elements between the improvised imams. They are people without religious training that have emerged as leaders of the prayers of their communities, generally in the most precarious and isolated from major urban centers and without the means to hire a minimally trained imam.

Abu Omar Hussein

As Abu Omar Hussein, the president of the Muslim community in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) (he said that "forbidding the hijab is a crime", last April), who, in an interview with this newspaper goes on to say that killing by stoning an adulteress is fair and in line with Islam and that the ultimate goal is to defend children, stigmatized if they are born out of wedlock. He reflects on this: "God wants you to be clean. Stoning has an objective: that no adulterer has sons. He (will give birth to) a child without a father, with hatred, (as) he has no rights (sic). Islam does not want many children of adulterers in the world."

For that reason, Omar Hussein, referring to the Iranian Sakineh Ashtiani, sentenced to death, should be stoned: "That woman and her lover killed her husband. They should kill that woman one by one, man for man (...) Islam respects human rights and women. Islam does not attack a very clean woman. "

The imam of Alcalá believes that in Europe sexual promiscuity is promoted: "Changing partners is offered. Is this is civilization? Six people make love in the same bed, without shame. It allows two women or two men marry . The nude beaches ... If Jesus son of Mary, arrived today would be ashamed. "

Another one who is in the same situation: he is Egyptian, so if he doesn't like Spain, he can go back there or be expelled, because he clearly isn't integrated in Spanish society.

What he considers as "sexual promiscuity", means only that people are free to take decisions about their life. No one is obliged to marry another human being of their own sex, no one is obliged to go around naked on beaches and also no one is obliged to change partners. But if someone wants to do it, he can. That's not "promoting sexual promiscuity", that's just freedom to choose. And there are also people who are not the least "promiscuous", because that's their choice, and not because some barbaric imam tells them that they should be stoned if they are. But this guy doesn't know about this other people, because they aren't on TV 24/7 and they give no scandals.

"Illegitimate" childs don't exist, either. They have the same rights as the children from married couples. So no hatred and no tales to support stoning.

These are examples of the improvisation with which Islam has been installed in Spain: there are no rules, standards or criteria in relation to ministers of religion to Islam. They are not properly Islamic radicals (sic): mixed religion with repressive traditions imported from their country of origin and spread as sacred mandates. This enables that cases such as the Cunit's imam, who is awaiting trial and sentence for coercing and threatening a Muslim because she lived a Western lifestyle, that generate social alarm against Islam and demonize the figure of the imams inside Spanish society. In Cunit, the imam is actually a worker who lost his job after suffering a leg injury and went on to lead the prayer of his group even though he only knows the Koran by heart, by his own account.

You see: for El País, someone who is supporting stoning in the name of religion is not "properly an Islamic radical".

However, experts warn that it's greater the risk of social exclusion that a hypothetical terrorist threat. What messages are disseminated by imams without proper training and considered radical? "If a Muslim is mixed with a Western, if only to shake hands, is contaminated by their sins." "Women can not leave home except to attend the funeral of the husband." "Children should learn the Koran and you must not associate with other children are not Muslims." "The West is against Islam, would pervert and threatens us because we are noble." These are excerpts from the prayers that magnets on Fridays, according to some followers of the mosques in the area of Reus and Tarragona. After being consulted on these statements, the imams who led the prayers have categorically denied.

Riad Tatary

"The possibility that any imam can lead prayers is a problem but controversial cases are exceptional," defends Riad Tatary (born in Syria although now he's a Spanish national), secretary general of the representative body of Islam with the Government since 1992, the Islamic Commission of Spain (CIE). "But the media generalize these cases and have created a very dangerous Islamophobia" he notes. Controversial cases are, in effect, a minority among the thousand imams is estimated that lead prayers in Spain. "But they can't be considered as exceptions from the rule because no one has set this standard. The Islamic Commission should impose criteria to control who can and who can not exercise as imam. For their own good: untrained imams are the ones who spread the most radical and dangerous messages, "argues Jordi Moreres, sociologist expert in Islam. But they aren't so exceptional, according to other experts. "After 15 years living in Spain, I have not seen in the whole country, a single valid imam," says Hesham El Sadr, founder of the Islamic Cultural Association Attawwhid.

The indefinite figure of the imam is the main obstacle to the normalization of Islam in Spain: 1.3 million people follow this belief in the country and it is not immigrants only but a growing majority has or is in the process of achieving Spanish nationality.

Abdelwahab Houzi

Nevertheless, anyone able to convince their fellow Muslims, can be constructed into an imam, whether he is liberal-leaning, conservative or just a visionary. It is a reality that has taken root among the Muslim communities in impoverished areas, with virtually illiterate immigrants who barely know the language, laws or Spanish customs. This cocktail caused cases of imams that encourage isolation and rejection of Western people or situations such as Lleida's imam, Abdelwahab Houzi, monitored by the National Intelligence Center as one of the most dangerous because of his radicalism and that according to several faithful advocates polygamy in his prayers, a tradition alien to Islam (sic). Others promote criticism and attacks on Western values that lead to suspicion of terrorism.

Polygamy is a tradition alien to Islam? In what world?

And if you fear that you cannot act equitably towards orphans, then marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice (between them), then (marry) only one or what your right hands possess; this is more proper, that you may not deviate from the right course.

Ye are never able to be fair and just as between women, even if it is your ardent desire: But turn not away (from a woman) altogether, so as to leave her (as it were) hanging (in the air). If ye come to a friendly understanding, and practise self-restraint, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. (Verses 3 and 129 from Sura An-Nissa, Women).

Those two verses state that:
1. Polygamy is allowed.
2. It's limited to four wifes.

The article ends:

"It's possible that extremist imams living in Spain are spreading this type of message, as an attempt to assert the traditions of their country of origin. We need time and quiet to contact them and make them understand," claims Tatary. ICE, on paper, is the referee that should regulate and account for the activity of the imams, and it's engaged in a reform to settle the current crisis of representation that encourages lawlessness. There are a thousand of Muslim communities in Spain, about 800 of them registered. More than 400 are not represented in this body.

"It's possible...". It seems Mr. Tatari doesn't believe that these cases really exist. And no, these extremist imams are not waiting for Tatari and friends to reform anything (if that's their intention indeed), they are spreading this message now.

Source.

Cross-posted from T&P.

(Translation: T&P).

France: Conference about "Immigration, Islamism: Is France Threatened?" Cancelled

The Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the political party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was forced on Tuesday to cancel a public debate organized in its headquarters, amid concerns that the debate would spark new accusations of racism and discrimination.

Titled “Immigration, Islamism: Is France Threatened?,” the controversial debate did not come at a good time for UMP, which is now presenting a new bill on immigration in the Assemblee Nationale (National Assembly), the lower house of French bicameral Parliament.

“We have chosen this time to really participate in Parliament discussions on future immigration law, as they are starting this week and will be at full intensity on that day,” explained the Droite Libre (Free Right), the UMP-associated group that organized the meeting.

“These issues are a concern to our fellow citizens, yet they almost never have a chance to discuss them; those who dare to mention immigration and Islam are framed by the intellectual terror of ‘political correctness.’”

Source.

Read more »

An Article Which Displays Astonishing Ignorance of the Threat We Face

THE INDEPENDENT:
An Attack on Ian McEwan by Adrian Hamilton >>>

THE INDEPENDENT:
Ian McEwan: ‘I Despise Islamism’ >>>

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>

The seven Islamists imprisoned at A Lama prison accused of March 11th bombings ask for help to the prison Catholic chaplain

The islamists who are imprisoned in the Galician prison of A Lama after being condemned because of the March 11th bombings, which killed 191 and hurt 1824 people, have asked the Catholic Church for help.

The seven imprisoned -sentenced from 12 to 23 years in jail- have interviewed themselves with the prison's chaplain to try to reach their goals. Their target is to make the priest intercede in their behalf to benefit from pensions, company and ill people's attention which can only be reached by the Penitentiary Catholic Service, whose boss is the priest. Volunteers of the Catholic Pastoral Service have confirmed the contacts.

(...) The Islamists' strategy to resort to the Catholic priests to improve their situation in prison, is not only used in A Lama. They already stated in their conversation with the priest that in the prisons they were before that moment, they had the assistance of Catholic priests. They were interested in the possibility that the priest interceded for them to get benefits through the Penitentiary Pastoral to have the opportunity of receiving personal mail.
In Spain the packages for the inmates, even if they are duly inspected, before reaching them, cannot be sent by mail and should be given by hand. A job which is done generously by the team of laic volunteers to whom it's solicited for not having any relatives or because they live far away.

(...) Even if the risk exists of recurring to one of their main enemies, the Catholic Church, to clean their image, the help petitions to Penitentiary Pastoral are something very regular among the elevated number of Muslim inmates (around 200, nearly 80% of all the foreign inmates in A Lama).

Excellent: Phillipe Karsenty wins the al Durah case

Finally, some justice has been found in this most notorious blood libel. As Richard Landes now reports at the Augean Stables, Phillipe Karsenty has won the case. If you can read French, here's something about this from Nouvel Observateur.

We now need to hope that France 2 television will fire Charles Enderlin, and have nothing more to do with the libelous fauxtographer who filmed the propaganda in the first place. They should and must do so if they're to hang onto their credibility as a TV network.

Not only that, but the law in France that allows "high-ranking" people like Enderlin to sue for alleged slander should be changed, just like Canada's alleged Human Right Commission should be discarded. Some calls should be start being made for the abolition of such foolish laws.

Until then, it's relieving to finally see the blood libel of the al Durah hoax discredited.

Indonesia: Non Muslims to wear hijab and massageuses to wear padlocks in their pants

About the obligation for non-Muslims to wear hijabs:

In Padang, capital of the province of West Sumatra, the atmosphere is increasingly that of an Islamic state. Female students who do not wear the headscarf (hijab) are frequently suspended from school. The requirement to observe Islamic customs, sanctioned by the controversial regional law of 2005, is also imposed on non-Muslim girls, and has generated an atmosphere of strong pressure on religious minorities. The proliferation of local laws inspired by sharia (perda syariat) is a growing phenomenon in Indonesia, but the central government has chosen not to intervene for now, in spite of protests from religious minorities and human rights NGO’s.

About the massageusses:

Chastity belts are gaining popularity in Indonesian massage parlors as a way to stop clients and masseuses from getting too close, parlor owners say.
A number of massage parlors in Batu, Indonesia, are requiring female masseuses to wear padlocks over their pants zippers to prevent men from bombarding workers for sex, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

Indonesia has already a terrible history about Islamic fundamentalism, with campaigns which included sexual violence against Timorese females, recognised by UN, and more than 500.000 communists killed because they opposed Suharto, whose troops also carried abductions and mass killings in the mid-1980s.
Last year 100.000 people in Indonesia, asked for the coming of the Global Caliphate in an event. They were summoned there by Islamist group Hibz ut-Tahrir.

Peter Taylor: Algeria and the Rise of Islamist Extremism

BBC: Watch seven-year-old Abdelkahar Belhadj address a political rally
BBC: One of the most remarkable archive sequences we came across while researching the Age of Terror programme, features a seven-year-old Algerian boy called Abdelkahar Belhadj. He is seen addressing a political rally of thousands in 1991 with all the confidence and fire of a mature adult.

"There are a billion Muslims and we don't have a state that rules by God's Holy Law. Isn't that a dishonour and a shame on us?" he proclaims in the voice of a child.

He is cheered ecstatically and lifted on high. It was revelatory to hear the philosophy of jihad - the struggle to overthrow infidel regimes and replace them with Islamic states under Sharia law - emerging from the lips of one so young.

In 2007, 16 years later, we watched another clip, a propaganda video announcing the launch of al-Qaeda in North Africa featuring non other than Abdelkahar Belhadj, now a fully-fledged jihadi.

When I first saw the clip of the young Belhadj, I was instantly reminded of an interview I'd done in an IRA stronghold in Belfast in the mid-seventies with a little boy called Sean. I vividly remember he had the initials IRA inked on the back of his hand.

Sean told me he wanted to fight and die for Ireland. Years later I met him again, this time on an IRA wing inside the Maze prison. He had gone to jail after fighting for the cause he had embraced all those years ago.

Sean and Abdelkahar Belhadj illuminate the bigger picture of the Age of Terror: how the "cause", be it Islamist or Republican, Basque or Palestinian, flows from one generation to the next and on through the veins of history. Algeria and the Rise of Islamist Extremism >>> By Peter Taylor | April 29, 2008

BBC:
Age of Terror Website

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)

Yemen: 8-year-old girl demands a divorce because she wants to "have a respectful life"

Nojoud Muhammed Nasser, 8, went to court by herself in Yemen.

Nasser (8-year-old) complained about her husband's behavior.

He used to do bad things to me, and I had no idea as to what a marriage is. I would run from one room to another in order to escape, but in the end he would catch me and beat me and then continued to do what he wanted. I cried so much but no one listened to me. One day I ran away from him and came to the court and talked to them. … Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him. This lasted for two months. He was too tough with me, and whenever I asked him for mercy, he beat me and slapped me and then used me. I just want to have a respectful life and divorce him.

The husband:

Thamer is unrepentant but willing to be flexible: "Yes, I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me. But if the judge or other people insist that I divorce her, I will do it, it's ok."

Just following Mohammed...

"Discussing Sharia here is an insult to our religion"

Those were the words pronounced by the representative of Egypt in UN when the representative form IHEU tried to discuss Sharia Law to with Human Rights... in the Human Rights Commission from UN. The reason they gave is that it was a "question out of order".

IHEU has responded to claims that the “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam” is “not an alternative” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but “complementary” to it. In a written statement to the UN Human Rights Council, IHEU opposed any resolution that seeks to limit the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration.

On Human Rights Day, 10 December 2007, the Pakistani Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council claimed that the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, adopted in 1990 by the 56 member states of the Orgainsation of the Islamic Conference “is not an alternative” to the Universal Declaration but “complementary”. Complementary? Yet the Cairo Declaration makes no mention of the Universal Declaration and clearly states that: “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah”, and “The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.”

The video containing the moment of the intervention of IHEU (International Humanist and Ethical Union) and the statement sent to UN by this organization can be found here.

Philippines and the "peace conversations" with the MILF

Philippines decided to modify the Constitution to create an Islamic state, after the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front)'s campaign which has caused more than 150,000 deaths in 30 years of conflict.This is one of the results of the peace conversations that the Government has been maintaining with the MILF for some time now, and which could finally end in some kind of "peace". And I say it like that, because both the MILF's leaders AND its fighters are worried about having to live in peace!!!

For many of the 12,000 MILF rebels, especially the young, peace is likely to bring an uncertain future.

MILF
chief Murad Ibrahim, in a rare interview with AFP, said he was worried
for their future, especially for those born into war and the many whose
parents and older relatives have died as "martyrs". [...]

They are not used to it, so even in case the conversations end in some kind of peace, they will search for another target to "achieve". Now they are going to have a "limited autonomy", then they will ask for independence...

Anyway, this last week Philippine Government has detained two "suspects from Middle East" allegedly involved to bomb the US; British and Australian embassis in Manila. They have also detained a Jordanian recently, linked to the same plot.

Spain: Islamic Radicals have planned to give some conferences for Imams' indoctrination

Justice and Spirituality (JyS), a radical movement which has spread throughout Spain and which wants the removal from power of the Moroccan King Mohammed VI and to substitute it by the Islamist State of Morocco, is going to celebrate next March 4th a course to train imams. And they want to do it without notice, using the Islamic Federation of the Murcia's Region, an organization they control.

So, it is scheduled that in these conferences take part several leaders of this Moroccan Islamist movement. Among others, Mohamed El Abbadi, number 2 of the Direction's Council and president of the Council of Uprightness from Justice and Spirituality. In 2006 he was detained in Morocco and condemned to a year in prison for violating the precint the authorities have instaled to his home, where he was meeting Islamist leaders of the opposition to the Moroccan King. He has several judicial processes against him in his country. El Abbadi has recommended as President of the Islamic Federation of the Murcia's region his own son-in-law, Said Mendi, an imam who lives in Cartagena, who was sent important quantities of money from the Moroccan country.

Continue reading here.

Jihadist Strategies In The War On Terrorism

The following is a transcript of a talk given by Mary R. Habeck, Ph.D., an associate professor of history at Yale University, reprinted with permission from the Heritage Foundation. The talk was originally published in Heritage Foundation's Policy Research and Analysis.

I AM GOING TO BE TALKING about a group of people who are generally known as fundamentalists, extremists, or (as I have grown to call them) "jihadis." The term jihad suggests what they believe their lives are about — holy war that is directed against people they believe are their enemies and the enemies of their way of life.

Yet there is more to what they are doing than simple warfare. In fact, I believe they are involved in a war that has a definite strategy behind it, not simply the sort of random attacks that people talk about all the time. However, if you watch the news it is really hard to see that. You look at the news and you see Muslims being killed, you see churches being attacked, you see Jews being killed. You see all sorts of people being targeted and attacked, and in some cases those attacks seem to be counterproductive. After all, it does not make sense to kill the Muslims that you are trying to win over to your side of the argument. It does not make sense to target churches or other places of worship when all this does is win sympathy for the victims of these attacks.

There are also things like the Madrid attack, which, while it seemed to attain their ends, was accompanied by a second plan for a second attack on April 2 — an attack that, if it had been carried out, would have had nothing to do with the elections, or with Spanish participation in Iraq. In fact, it could not have been sold as anything except an apparently random attack — a counterproductive attack on the Spanish. It might have convinced the Spanish themselves to get re-involved in Iraq, or at least (in some way) with the war on terrorism.

However, I am going to argue that, in fact, this is not true. These are not random attacks; they are not entirely counterproductive. They do have strategies that are rational, systematic, and followed rigorously. Unlike other groups — such as the Anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th century (which really did seem to carry out pretty random attacks), or the Communists (whose pragmatism allowed them to pretty much get away with anything as long as they could make some sort of argument that it was helping the cause) — these new terrorists believe that they have an ideology that is so important that it must be followed rigorously. There are many different groups and each one of them is carrying out its own rational systematic strategy.

To understand each attack, therefore, you have to get into the mindset of the group that carried out that attack and not try to make broad generalizations about jihadis, extremists, or fundamentalists. These are very different people and very different groups with very different arguments about how they should be carrying out their warfare. To understand their arguments and attacks you have to understand their ideology, and in some cases understand theological arguments that they are having with the rest of the Islamic world.


Levels of Strategy

I am going to differentiate in this talk between four different levels of strategy or tactics. First, there are grand strategies; then there are military strategies; operations (or operational art, as some people call it); and then there are tactics. I am only going to be talking about the first two levels here, that is, grand strategies and military strategies.

Grand strategy is basically the same for almost every jihadi group. This is, I think, the only place where you can say that there is something unifying these groups and holding them together. The objective is, almost across the board, the same. They want to restore the greatness of their vision of Islam by defeating every rival to its power. The means by which they are going to attempt this are also the same and fit into this grand strategic vision. They are hoping to create an Islamic state. They all argue about what that means and how it is going to be created, but somewhere they want to create an Islamic state. They also want to defeat all of their rivals through military means — that is, through violence of some sort. Additionally, they hope to win over the rest of the Islamic world to their vision of what Islam is about and how to restore Islam to greatness.

Those three things are the same across the board. If you take a look at these extremist groups, they all agree, at least on those basic principles. The result of this grand strategic vision is that they must take on an immense number of enemies. They must take on, in fact, what they call "The West" (or as some of them say, "the Jewish crusaders"); "the agent rulers" (that is, the rulers in almost every single one of the Muslim states); "the apostates and the heretics," (which means any Muslim that doesn't agree with them as well as the Shi'a groups — because most of the groups I'll be talking about are Sunni). They also have to take on what they call "oppressors," but this is a term that they use in a very specific way and has little to do with the socialist or leftist use of this term. For instance, "oppressors" include all the Hindus in the world.

The military strategies, unlike this grand strategic vision, seem more random. However, the extremists do not attack all of these groups simultaneously. They have, in fact, prioritized which one of these groups has to be attacked first, second, and third; which is the most important; which is the most dangerous; how they are going to carry out these attacks. In other words, they have definite strategies, but differing definite strategies, even about how to carry out these military attacks. Behind the seeming randomness then, even of the military strategies, there are a few basic principles which will help you to understand, when you see on the news that this or that group has carried out an attack on X, Y, or Z, why they might have chosen them and why they might be choosing another group next.

read the rest >>

Victim of gang rape: abandoned by the Government and hunted by the rapists

From Gallia Watch:

"Just before the arrests the police told me that I had to leave my home." The wanderings begin. First the organization Ni Putes Ni Soumises gave her a studio apartment in Hauts-de-Seine. "Then, they told me to go to a small village near Grenoble." She stayed there until September 2006. "Then I returned to my father's house in Fontenay, in the project of les Larris. We had to leave very early in the morning. For weeks I didn't go out. Someone tried to break into our home at night." She then went to her mother-in-law's, near Paris, then to a young workers hostel until January, when she was recognized by a former resident of les Larris. Another move. Today she lives somewhere in the Parisian suburbs, in a state of anxiety and bitterness. "I can't stay here. We had let our guard down, but since the attack on my mother, I'm living again in fear. I have no news from anybody. I wrote to Sarkozy. The prefect of Val-de-Marne told me to apply for housing at city hall. This story has received much media attention, and then, they forgot about us, dropped us completely. We were promised an apartment, police and court protection, and I was even told I could change my name."

According to Le Figaro, the gang rapes took place betweeen the end of 1999 and 2005. The raped girls have been accused of "having psyquiatric problems", of "being easy women", or even of "not having an stable life". One of the girls has already psyquiatric problems but because of the gang rape.

As a result of the accusations, between 40 and 50 boys were detained. But most of the people considered that they were innocent and that they did not have had never any problem with women. The mistakes the raped girls made when describing them caused the freeing of some of them.

But the "youths" are now beginning to threaten them without any kind of restraint:

Last week her mother filed a complaint at the Fontenay police station after being attacked in the lobby of her building with a sharp object. "Now I know where you sleep, you and your w... daughter. Before the trial we're going to f... both of you. And that's just a sample of what you can expect," the unknown assailant said to her.

More here.

A car bomb for Flemming Rose

Yesterday one of the four defendants in a terror case in Odense, Denmark’s third largest city, revealed in court that in the summer of 2006 a fellow conspirator had suggested building a remote-controlled car bomb and driving it into my private home in order to kill me.

The reason: the publication of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in my newspaper Jyllands-Posten.”It was a bit of a joke, and we laughed a little, though I know that it wasn’t a laughing matter,” the defendant said.

Joke or no joke, the defendant acknowledged that in fact two men from the cell had a bit earlier detonated a bomb in a soccer field using a cell phone as the remote control. The purpose of this activity was to excercise their ”craft.” [yeah, I’m laughing heartedly about this… ].

The defendant is a 34-year-old Danish-born man who converted to Islam. He has provided the police with a lot of compromising information about the other three members of the cell. The convert told the police that AK, a 22 year old man born in Iraq, travelled to his home country in 2005 to become a suicide terrorist. The young man insists that he went to shoot a documentary.

Pajamas Media: Terror Threat Against Danish Cartoon Editor Flemming Rose
I have read it at JW.

Related news: Barclays planning a hedgefond for Muslims according to Sharia Law. (In German). Thanks to anti-anti-americanism.

Cross-posted from SP.

Blogged with Flock