Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Ongoing jihadist recruiting in Malaysian universities

Or as Captain Renault from 'Casablanca' might have deadpanned, "I'm shocked, shocked to find 'militant recruiting' going on in here."

This headline from AFP reads "Malaysian colleges a hotbed for militant recruiting".  Uh, militant what, exactly?  Militant Christianity?  Militant Buddhism?  Militant environmentalism?

Remember that the media encodes their coverage of the Islam's Great Jihad against the World--'militant' is always a codeword for 'a devout follower of Islam' or 'one who wages jihad (violent or otherwise) against kufr,apostates, and other enemies of Islam.'

Besides, since we all, ahem, know that 'militancy' is caused by poverty, a lack of education, and a lack of knowledge of the supposedly peaceful teachings of Islam, shouldn't Malaysian universities be the last place such recruiting would take place?

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia's universities have become prime recruiting grounds for Islamic militants looking for youngsters to draw into terrorist networks, security experts warn.

Unlike neighbouring Indonesia and Thailand, the moderate Muslim-majority nation has remained largely free of terror attacks but there are fears that lax admission policies have created a haven for jihadists. (Of course, the creation of jihadists has absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of the Quran and Islam. Never ever think about that, dear reader!)

A string of arrests and detentions this year have highlighted the growing presence of radicals using Malaysia as a base to sign up supporters and plan attacks.

"The terror threat to Malaysia is very real in terms of terrorists who come in as students," Zamihan Mat Zin, deputy head of the Malaysian Islamic Training Centre, told AFP.

"They are under the radar so they can recruit and create terrorists in our midst," said Zamihan, who is among a group of Muslim scholars engaged by the government to rehabilitate terror suspects in custody. (They're 'under the radar' when your heads are in the sand, yes?)

In June, authorities deported 45-year-old Al-Qaeda-linked Syrian scholar Aiman Al Dakak along with eight other foreigners from Syria, Yemen, Nigeria and Jordan, most of them students. (Most of those places are majority Muslim countries...just a coincidence, n'est-ce pas?)

Al Dakak gave lectures to Malaysian and foreign students at his Kuala Lumpur home, allegedly indoctrinating them with jihadist ideology and urging them to carry out bombings on places of worship in the multi-ethnic nation. (What's the difference between 'jihadist ideology' and Islam? Isn't it a distinction without a difference?)

The following month, engineer Mohamad Fadzullah was detained under internal security laws for trying to recruit students at Malaysia's national university and technical institutes for the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) extremist group.

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said after the deportations that the phenomenon was an "unhealthy trend which can affect national security". (Yeah, piles of dead bodies and explosions in major cities can be 'unhealthy'.)

He said foreign militants were using Malaysia as a base to carry out financial transactions, share information and sign up new followers. (emphasis added)

Apparently the wise Muslims who run this country have conveniently forgotten about the last two terrorist kingpins that came from this country.  Both, as it were, were highly educated MUSLIMS who taught in Malaysian universities.

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