All Discussions Tagged 'Islamic' - The 4 Freedoms Library2024-03-29T08:21:30Zhttp://4freedoms.com/group/terrorism/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=Islamic&feed=yes&xn_auth=no'How We Trained Al-Qaeda' - The Bosnian War Taught Islamic Terrorists to Operate Abroadtag:4freedoms.com,2019-04-29:3766518:Topic:2031192019-04-29T14:13:14.580ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p>Brendan O’Neill says the Bosnian war taught Islamic terrorists to operate abroad<br></br>– The Spectator, 13. September 2003</p>
<p>Fulor all the millions of words written about al-Qa’eda since the 9/11. attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked — the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin of the 1980s into the roving Islamic terrorists of today.</p>
<p>Many writers and reporters have traced al-Qaeda and other terror groups’ origins back to the Afghan war of…</p>
<p>Brendan O’Neill says the Bosnian war taught Islamic terrorists to operate abroad<br/>– The Spectator, 13. September 2003</p>
<p>Fulor all the millions of words written about al-Qa’eda since the 9/11. attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked — the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin of the 1980s into the roving Islamic terrorists of today.</p>
<p>Many writers and reporters have traced al-Qaeda and other terror groups’ origins back to the Afghan war of 1979-1992, that last gasp of the Cold War when US-backed mujahedin forces fought against the invading Soviet army. It is well documented that America played a major role in creating and sustaining the mujahedin, which included Osama bin Laden’s Office of Services set up to recruit volunteers from overseas. Between 1985 and 1992. US officials estimate that 12.500 foreign fighters were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and guerrilla warfare tactics in Afghan camps that the CIA helped to set up.</p>
<div class="media-p"><div class="media file-default"><img height="1033" width="631" class="media-element file-default img-responsive" src="http://russia-insider.com/sites/insider/files/styles/1200xauto/public/screenshot_2019-04-28_at_12.14.50_pm.png?itok=Ke12vC90" alt=""/></div>
</div>
<p>Yet America’s role in backing the mujahedin a second time in the early and mid1990s is seldom mentioned — largely because very few people know about it, and those who do find it prudent to pretend that it never happened. Following the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and the collapse of their puppet regime in 1992, the Afghan mujahedin became less important to the United States; many Arabs, in the words of the journalist James Buchan, were left stranded in Afghanistan with a taste for fighting but no cause’. It was not long before some were provided with a new cause. From 1992 to 1995. the Pentagon assisted with the movement of thousands of mujahedin and other Islamic elements from Central Asia into Europe, to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs.</p>
<p></p>
<div class="ads within1"><div class="ads desktop"><div class="adsbyvli"><div id="vi_3551050_2"></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>The Bosnia venture appears to have been very important to the rise of mujahedin forces, to the emergence of today’s cross-border Islamic terrorists who think nothing of moving from state to state in the search of outlets for their jihadist mission. In moving to Bosnia. Islamic fighters were transported from the ghettos of Afghanistan and the Middle East into Europe; from an outdated battleground of the Cold War to the major world conflict of the day; from being yesterday’s men to fighting alongside the West’s favoured side in the clash of the Balkans.</p>
<p></p>
<p><img alt="albright-clinton-izet" src="https://mightynose.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/albright-clinton-izet.jpeg?w=700"/></p>
<p>If Western intervention in Afghanistan created the mujahedin, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have globalised it. As part of the Dutch government’s inquiry into the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995, Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University compiled a report entitled ‘Intelligence and the War in Bosnia’, published in April 2001 In it he details the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamic groups from the Middle East, and their efforts to assist Bosnia’s Muslims. By 1993, there was a vast amount of weapons smuggling through Croatia to the Muslims, organised by ‘clandestine agencies’ of the USA, Turkey and Iran, in association with a range of Islamic groups that included Afghan mujahedin and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah. Arms bought by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia were airlifted from the Middle East to Bosnia — airlifts with which, Wiebes points out, the USA was ‘very closely involved’.</p>
<p>The Pentagon’s secret alliance with Islamic elements allowed mujahedin fighters to be ‘flown in’, though they were initially reserved as shock troops for particularly hazardous operations against Serb forces. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times in October 2001, from 1992 as many as 4,000 volunteers from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, ‘known as the mujahedin’, arrived in Bosnia to fight with the Muslims. Richard Holbrooke, America’s former chief Balkans peace negotiator, has said that the Bosnian Muslims ‘wouldn’t have survived’ without the help of the mujahedin, though he later admitted that the arrival of the mujahedin was a ‘pact with the devil’ from which Bosnia is still recovering.</p>
<p><img alt="klinton grob džihad" src="https://mightynose.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/klinton-grob-dc5beihad.jpg?w=700"/></p>
<p></p>
<p>By the end of the 1990s, State Department officials were increasingly worried about the consequences of this pact. Under the terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accord, the foreign mujahedin units were required to disband and leave the Balkans. Yet in 2000, the State Department raised concerns about the ‘hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists’ who became Bosnian citizens after fighting against the Serbs, and who pose a potential terror threat to Europe and the United States. US officials claimed that one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants had sent operatives to Bosnia and that during the 1990s Bosnia had served as a ‘staging area and safe haven’ for al-Qa’eda and others. The Clinton administration had discovered that it is one thing to permit the movement of Islamic groups across territories; it is quite another to rein them back in again.<br/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx-REROXvtg" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx-REROXvtg</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Indeed, for all the Clinton officials’ concern about Islamic extremists in the Balkans, they continued to allow the growth and movement of mujahedin forces in Europe through the 1990s. In the late 1990s, in the run-up to Clinton’s and Blair’s Kosovo war of 1999, the USA backed the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbia. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post in 1998, KLA members, like the Bosnian Muslims before them, had been ‘provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries’, and had been ‘bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters or mujahedin . . . [some of whom] were trained in Osama bin Laden’s terrorist camps in Afghanistan’. It seems that, for all its hand-wringing, the USA just couldn’t break the pact with the devil.</p>
<p><img alt="ali Hamad" height="317" src="https://mightynose.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/ali-hamad.jpg?w=423&h=317" width="423"/></p>
<p>Why is this aspect of the mujahedin’s development so often overlooked? Some sensible stuff has been written about al Qaeda and its connections in recent months, but the Bosnia connection has been left largely unexplored. In Jason Burke’s excellent Al-Qa’eda: Casting a Shadow of Ten-or, Bosnia is mentioned only in passing. Kimberley McCloud and Adam Dolnik of the Monterey Institute of International Studies have written some incisive commentary calling for rational thinking when assessing al-Qa’eda’s origins and threat — but again, investigation of the Bosnia link is notable by its absence.</p>
<p>It would appear that when it comes to Bosnia, many in the West have a moral blind spot. For some commentators, particularly liberal ones, Western intervention in Bosnia was a Good Thing — except that, apparently, there was too little of it, offered too late in the conflict. Many journalists and writers demanded intervention in Bosnia and Western support for the Muslims. In many ways, this was their war, where they played an active role in encouraging further intervention to enforce ‘peace’ among the former Yugoslavia’s warring factions, Consequently, they often overlook the downside to this intervention and its divisive impact on the Balkans. Western intervention in Bosnia, it would appear, has become an unquestionably positive thing, something that is beyond interrogation and debate.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Yet a cool analysis of today’s disparate Islamic terror groups, created in Afghanistan and emboldened by the Bosnian experience, would do much to shed some light on precisely the dangers of such intervention.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Brendan O’Neill is assistant editor of spiked-online.</p>
<p><a href="https://russia-insider.com/en/how-we-trained-al-qaeda-bosnian-war-taught-islamic-terrorists-operate-abroad/ri26890">https://russia-insider.com/en/how-we-trained-al-qaeda-bosnian-war-taught-islamic-terrorists-operate-abroad/ri26890</a></p> Major Islamic Terror Atrocities: all TooFKDtag:4freedoms.com,2016-03-23:3766518:Topic:1767272016-03-23T07:37:05.385ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p>I think we will soon run out of unique number pairs to describe these terrorist atrocities, which are, as we all know NTDWI (Nothing To Do With Islam). We already have a duplicate pair for 25/6. So I'll list the ones we've had so far to make sure we don't get confused. Of course, this is only a small subset of the 28,000 Islamic Terror attacks since 9/11, (which were also nothing to do with Islam).</p>
<p>One characteristic we can use to measure these attacks is, did they kill enough…</p>
<p>I think we will soon run out of unique number pairs to describe these terrorist atrocities, which are, as we all know NTDWI (Nothing To Do With Islam). We already have a duplicate pair for 25/6. So I'll list the ones we've had so far to make sure we don't get confused. Of course, this is only a small subset of the 28,000 Islamic Terror attacks since 9/11, (which were also nothing to do with Islam).</p>
<p>One characteristic we can use to measure these attacks is, did they kill enough kuffar to cause an acknowledgement of the ideological justification of them, by the Quran and by Islamic Theology? If the response to the attacks is statements like the ones below, then we can say that not enough were killed to cause the dumb kuffar of the West to face up to the existential threat they face.</p>
<p>The interpretation of TooFKD is not purely literal. For example, if God forbid, the Queen is assassinated by a Muslim thug, only one person has died, but the assault that represents on our values and indeed the security of our entire state, is colossal. Then you can see a pattern of decreasing sensitivity, as if Islamists are testing to see at what point the lumbering behemoth of the Western State will wake up and react. So, from the Fatwa against the <em>writer</em> Salman Rushdie (effectively no response) to the killing of the <em>soldier</em> Lee Rigby (effectively no response) we see the same failure. The jihadists surmise that if we fail to respond to the first incursion, we will be similarly cowardly when it comes to the second, even more existential one, and so on.</p>
<p><strong>TooFKD Responses</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>"This attack will not cause us to lose our fundamental Western values of Free Speech (including the free speech of Islamists), Respect for individual human rights (including the human rights of Islamists), Egalitarianism (including treating Islamists just like everyone else), Secularism (including a refusal to monitor political statements if made by a 'religion') for that would be to descend to their level"</li>
<li>"The most important thing here, is that we do not let this incident cause us to feel Islamophobia. This atrocity is nothing to do with Islam because Islam is a religion of Peace." Of course, if you report that <a href="http://4freedoms.com/group/terrorism/forum/topics/brussels-3-22-bombings-2016?commentId=3766518%3AComment%3A176532&groupId=3766518%3AGroup%3A95907" target="_self">Muslims are celebrating the dead Belgian kuffar</a>, the police come to your door and caution you.</li>
<li>"Our thoughts go out to the dead and maimed from this great tragedy" - yes, our thoughts go out, but that's all. If we catch anyone connected with the atrocity we'll read him his rights and give him a massive pay-off if we've slightly mis-stepped somewhere along the way</li>
<li>Endless showing of balaclava clad special units looking menacing and pointing their weapons into empty space or checking the credentials of all the kuffar that are fleeing the bomb site after the jihadis have fled</li>
</ul>
<p>If those are the responses, then we can say the situation is TooFKD or Too Few Kuffar Died. However, if the response is as below, we can say the situation is TooMKD, or Too Many Kuffar Died.</p>
<p><strong>TooMKD Responses</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>We want to have identification in every passport of a person's religion (or a separate religious ID card which must be produced) and we require that every person attending a mosque show their ID on entry (monitored by video) to prove that they have been authenticated and are known to the authorities</li>
<li>We want to have separate airports for Muslim and Non-Muslim flights, as non-Muslims are sick of being blown up and all the trouble they have to go thru on check in. </li>
<li>We want to have audio and video recording and monitoring of all sermons/prayers/whatever given in the main hall of every religious building. There would also be a video feed of the entrance, to check that every person is showing their religious id on entry. This is a legal requirement, and the religion itself must pay for it or be shut down. The data feed will be relayed to a central monitoring body (e.g.at Cheltenham), and will be inspected for tampering on a monthly basis.</li>
<li>We want to have collective guilt applied to families for terror acts which are suicidal, since in such a case the legal system has no other possible form of retribution and deterrent</li>
<li>We want a parliamentary enquiry into the political instructions (AKA hate and violence) of Islam, to determine which parts may be legally propagated within the UK</li>
</ul>
<p>There are plenty of other measures possible, buy you get the idea. If we start to see measures like that being proposed, then we can say that the situation is TooMKD. </p>
<p>So let's list the events so far. As you will see, the events get more and more shocking, but all it seems to do is provoke the kuffar into making more and more excuses. Please tell me of any big ones I've missed out.</p>
<p>TooFKD 5/9 1972 Munich Israeli Olympic Team taken hostage, 11 killed</p>
<p>TooFKD 4/11 1979 Tehran US Embassy hostage blackmail: 53 held for 444 days</p>
<p>TooFKD 30/4 1980 London Iranian Embassy siege, 2 tortured to death</p>
<p>TooFKD 20/10 1983 Beirut US baracks bombing, 301 killed (then USA leaves Lebanon)</p>
<p>TooFKD 7/10 1985 Egypt Achille Lauro hijacking, 1 wheelchair bound man killed</p>
<p>TooFKD 12/12 1988 Lockerbie Pan Am flight bombed, 270 died</p>
<p>TooFKD 2/26 1993 New York World Trade Centre - car park bombing</p>
<p>TooFKD 25/6 1996 Saudi Arabia USAF Khobar Towers bombing, 19 killed, 515 injured</p>
<p>TooFKD 26/6 1996 Egypt Luxor tourist shooting, 71 killed</p>
<p>TooFKD 9/11 2001 New York World Trade Centre - aircraft bombing, 3000 died</p>
<p>TooFKD 23/10 2002 Moscow Dubrovka Theatre seige</p>
<p>TooFKD 6/2 2004 Moscow Underground bombing, 41 killed </p>
<p>TooFKD 1/9 2004 Beslan Primary school hostages, 334 killed</p>
<p>TooFKD 2/11 2004 Amsterdam Theo van Gogh murdered (for making movie 'Submission')</p>
<p>TooFKD 3/11 2004 Madrid Train station bombings (then Spain leaves Iraq)</p>
<p>TooFKD 7/7 2005 London Tube and bus bombings</p>
<p>TooFKD 26/11 2008 Mumbai 12 co-ordinated atrocities across the city</p>
<p>TooFKD 29/3 2010 Moscow Underground bombings</p>
<p>TooFKD 22/5 2013 London Soldier Lee Rigby murdered</p>
<p>TooFKD 21/9 2013 Nairobi Westgate Shopping Mall shooting, 67 killed, 175 wounded</p>
<p>TooFKD 4/14 2014 Nigeria 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram</p>
<p>TooFKD 1/7 2015 Paris Charlie Hebdo killings (then European cartoons stop)</p>
<p>TooFKD 13/11 2015 Paris Stade de France & Bataclan Theatre atrocities</p>
<p>TooFKD 22/3 2016 Brussels Airport and Metro bombings</p>
<p>If you can please take the time to read this list, the surprising thing is how many of those massive newsworthy events we have now forgotten. Of course, if the academics and media were doing their job and showing the patterns, we would have been reminded of them, but of course, that's the last thing they want. They want all these atrocities to disappear into a collective black hole of memory.</p>
<p>The big take away from this chart of course, is that everything is TooFKD. I'm not sure how to fix it, but probably those people with the massive brains at the Guardian and in Parliament can figure it out.</p> Possible Responses to the problem of Islamic Terrortag:4freedoms.com,2015-07-05:3766518:Topic:1687072015-07-05T23:37:21.688ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p>I have been saying for some time that suicide bombers are not invulnerable. Yes, their own bodies are, effectively invulnerable, since they don't mind dying, but they still have connections - to their own family, their own mosque, and even their own tribe/clan, in some countries. You can argue that medieval problems like beheading, sex slavery, child execution, even forcing mothers to eat their own children - warrant medieval solutions. One of those solutions was the concept of collective…</p>
<p>I have been saying for some time that suicide bombers are not invulnerable. Yes, their own bodies are, effectively invulnerable, since they don't mind dying, but they still have connections - to their own family, their own mosque, and even their own tribe/clan, in some countries. You can argue that medieval problems like beheading, sex slavery, child execution, even forcing mothers to eat their own children - warrant medieval solutions. One of those solutions was the concept of collective guilt. Therefore, unless the family and mosque could show that they had completely rejected and disowned the suicide bomber long before his final act, they too would be held accountable, stripped of assets, and punished. His mosque, if implicated, would be leveled to the ground. Then, the suicide bomber, far from being feted as a hero by his family and friends, would instead be cursed for all living memory. The first step to that end, the step that I would have taken in Iraq and possibly Afghanistan, would have been a comprehensive DNA and fingerprint database of every citizen in the country.</p>
<p>It seems that Kuwait is now catching up with this idea. Let's see what their next steps are. They already know what its like to be tortured to death, as they had that from Saddam's cronies after he took over the country. The royal palace was used as a torture chamber. Afterwards, the Emir took one look inside then abandoned it and built a new palace away from that cursed place. I think the Kuwaitis, with the benefit of the hindsight of their history, are applying Game Theory and arriving at the inevitable conclusions. I wonder if the dumb kuffar cattle will do that before they are overwhelmed and it is too late?</p>
<blockquote><p>Kuwait imposes mandatory dragnet DNA testing after mosque bombing<br/> <a href="http://rt.com/news/271435-kuwait-abuse-dna-database/">http://rt.com/news/271435-kuwait-abuse-dna-database/</a></p>
</blockquote> The Penny Drops: Washington Post says its time to examine the IDEOLOGY behind Islamic Jihad (NTDWI)tag:4freedoms.com,2014-07-04:3766518:Topic:1520122014-07-04T01:28:29.622ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<h3>Modern Jihadists</h3>
<div class="article_panel"><div class="image"><a href="http://www.defenddemocracy.org/images/sized/stuff/uploads/general/ISIL_260-260x190.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="http://www.defenddemocracy.org/images/sized/stuff/uploads/general/ISIL_260-260x190.jpg?width=260" width="260"></img></a></div>
<div id="tools"></div>
</div>
<p class="meta">Clifford D. May<br></br> 25th June 2014 - <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/24/may-talking-with-the-jihadists-is-a-strategy-for-l/">The Washington Times</a></p>
<p>A secret CIA plot was revealed last week: Beginning almost ten…</p>
<h3>Modern Jihadists</h3>
<div class="article_panel"><div class="image"><a href="http://www.defenddemocracy.org/images/sized/stuff/uploads/general/ISIL_260-260x190.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.defenddemocracy.org/images/sized/stuff/uploads/general/ISIL_260-260x190.jpg?width=260" width="260" class="align-right"/></a></div>
<div id="tools"></div>
</div>
<p class="meta">Clifford D. May<br/> 25th June 2014 - <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/24/may-talking-with-the-jihadists-is-a-strategy-for-l/">The Washington Times</a></p>
<p>A secret CIA plot was revealed last week: Beginning almost ten years ago, the agency set in motion a plan to make Osama bin Laden <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-hatched-plan-to-make-demon-toy-to-counter-bin-laden-influence/2014/06/19/cb3d571c-f0d0-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html">action figures</a>. Over time, the paint on the faces would fleck off, revealing a demon beneath. The idea was to dissuade children in the Muslim world from seeing al Qaeda’s leader as a hero.</p>
<p>The CIA eventually decided not to proceed with the scheme, and there is reportedly only one two-faced prototype Osama <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-hatched-plan-to-make-demon-toy-to-counter-bin-laden-influence/2014/06/19/cb3d571c-f0d0-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html">doll</a> left, sitting in some Langley office. But don’t count me among those making fun of this aborted “influence operation.” My only quibble: We should be targeting not just individuals but also the ideology that motivates them. </p>
<p>Both President Obama and Secretary of State John <a href="http://translations.state.gov/st/english/texttrans/2014/06/20140623302524.html#ixzz35Yz8V459">Kerry</a> recently spoke of the dangers posed by the “jihadists” now carving a blood-soaked trail through Syria and Iraq. In the past, they have generally talked instead of “violent extremists,” apparently in the belief that for most Muslims, “jihadist” has a positive connotation, and that it would be counterproductive to reinforce that by calling them what they call themselves. </p>
<p>But sound policy-making requires conceptual clarity. Besides, can it really make any difference how non-Muslims refer to those Muslims who claim they are killing (and being killed) for the sake of their fellow Muslims? </p>
<p>Having come this far, Mr. Obama and Mr. <a href="http://translations.state.gov/st/english/texttrans/2014/06/20140623302524.html#ixzz35Yz8V459">Kerry</a> should now ask some probing questions. Among them: What are the central pillars of jihadist ideology? Where does it fit within the history and theology of Islam? What are the jihdists’ goals? What are they prepared to do to achieve them?</p>
<p>They could begin to find answers in “The Mind of Jihad,” a book written seven years ago by the late Laurent Murawiec for the Pentagon’s Director of Net Assessment. Murawiec explained that jihad implies “warfare with spiritual significance.” He added that the concept “stems irrefutably from the Quran,” and that jihad cannot be seen – as so many of its apologists contend -- as “a response to “colonial aggression,’ ‘imperialist encroachments,’ ‘Zionist intrusion’ or “American crimes.’” </p>
<p>Jihad was the primary means by which the great Islamic empires of antiquity expanded their borders until, starting in the 1100s, European scientific and military developments began to shift the power equation, and Christian empires started to encroach “into lands that had long been conquered and ruled by Muslims.” </p>
<p>Over the centuries that followed, Islamic warriors increasingly found themselves on the defensive. “But as soon as some in the <em>umma</em> [the transnational Muslim community] could nurture again the belief that jihad could be victorious again, that the balance of forces would again favor the <em>umma</em>, sizeable groups and schools of thought went back to the offensive.”</p>
<p>Murawiec saw clearly that we are now in such an era. Within the Muslim world, “sizeable groups and schools of thought” view the West as weakening, in decline, unwilling and maybe unable to defend itself. They further believe that Muslims have a religious obligation to exploit this opportunity to expand “the writ and word of Allah.”</p>
<p>“Modern jihad,” as Murawiec called it, “erupted in full force with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 in both the Shiite and the Sunni world.” Thousands of jihadist attacks have followed over the years since.</p>
<p>After giving the order to kill bin Laden, President Obama was not alone in assuming that “the tide of war” would recede. In fact, however, jihadists of the Sunni variety are now fighting on more battlefields than ever, and the Shia rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with their eyes on future jihad, have spent an estimated $100 billion to develop a nuclear weapons capability. If they achieve it, our grandchildren will live in a very different world. (It’s amazing how many people still don’t grasp that.)</p>
<p>In “Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice,” Michael Bonner, a professor at the University of Michigan, points out that the literal translation of jihad is “striving,” though almost always intended in the “specific sense of fighting for the sake of God (whatever we understand that to mean).” To be sure: Many millions of Muslims do not believe that, in the 21<span>st</span> century, God is commanding them to behead infidels and strap bomb vests on their sons and daughters. The self-proclaimed jihadists, however, regard such moderate Muslims as apostates and traitors who deserve death as much as any “infidel.”</p>
<p>Does all this imply that the violence must continue until one side or the other is vanquished? Not quite. Bernard Lewis, perhaps the greatest that living scholar of Islam, noted in his 1998 book, “The Multiple Identities of the Middle East,” that while sharia, Islamic law, imposes “a perpetual state of jihad” on all lands not ruled by Muslims, the conflict can be “interrupted by truces as and when appropriate.” </p>
<p>In practice, this means that jihadists may accept a <em>hudna</em>, a temporary armistice, anytime they feel outgunned. But a permanent peace with infidels, followed by sincere rapprochement, is out of the question.</p>
<p>Jihadists also reject the Western construct of a world order based primarily on national rather than religious allegiance. In the Middle East in particular, as Efraim Karsh pointed out in his 2006 “Islamic Imperialism: A History,” the nation-state system “has been under sustained assault since its formation in the wake of World War I” which is when the last Islamic caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, collapsed. Its core became Turkey, a secular democracy now sliding toward Islamism. Its provinces came under the control of European empires before becoming independent nations. </p>
<p>Among them: Syria and Iraq, where today the full force of modern jihad is on barbaric display. Extinguishing these fires, or even just containing them, won’t be easy. Toys alone will not suffice.</p>
<p><em>Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a policy institute focusing on national security.</em></p> Russia: Muslim Kuffarphobes massacre children at Beslantag:4freedoms.com,2014-02-08:3766518:Topic:1447322014-02-08T13:51:41.596ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p>(somehow the original atrocity didn't get logged, so I will put it in here later)</p>
<p>(somehow the original atrocity didn't get logged, so I will put it in here later)</p> What is the answer to the worldwide problem of Islamic Terror?tag:4freedoms.com,2013-05-16:3766518:Topic:1249102013-05-16T20:13:19.264ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p>I'm going to raise some questions here and see where they lead.</p>
<p>For starters, do medieval problems require medieval solutions? Can you deal with the Mafia without employing some ruthless Mafia style methods? These are questions to do with how the world is organised, that you can ask generally, before even coming to apply them to Islam.</p>
<p>Unless you are prepared to accept the constant death and mutilation of the law abiding non-Muslims in your society, it seems that you have to…</p>
<p>I'm going to raise some questions here and see where they lead.</p>
<p>For starters, do medieval problems require medieval solutions? Can you deal with the Mafia without employing some ruthless Mafia style methods? These are questions to do with how the world is organised, that you can ask generally, before even coming to apply them to Islam.</p>
<p>Unless you are prepared to accept the constant death and mutilation of the law abiding non-Muslims in your society, it seems that you have to hand it to the Islamists, they are winning! From Iraq to Egypt, from France to the UK, from Australia to the USA, from Thailand to the Philippines, the dumb kuffar (and Muslims) are being slaughtered and abused with grinding regularity, and it seems the 'decent', moderate secular democratic authorities can't do anything about it.</p>
<p>Or can they? If you approach the problem as an example of Game Theory, and merely explore it in an apolitical morality judgement free environment, what are the total possible remedies, and the resulting possible outcomes, what do you find? After all, we've faced suicide attackers before in the Japanese in the 2nd World War, so is the problem really that insoluble?</p>
<p>Let's take one suggestion: that the mosque that a convicted terrorist attended (even if convicted after death) should be razed to the ground and its members therefore have to attend another mosque. What are the possible outcomes? </p>
<p>Of course, one possible <em>negative</em> outcome would be massed Muslim rioting and civil disorder, followed by an even more vicious campaign of terrorist attacks from the members of that mosque. Well, I leave you to make your own evaluation of what that option <em>means</em>.</p>
<p>But what about possible <em>positive</em> outcomes?</p>
<div><ol>
<li>the members of the destroyed mosque become ambassadors against Islamic terrorism</li>
<li>the members of the 'welcoming' mosques become converts to the cause against Islamic terrorism</li>
<li>This will require the implementation, enforcement and monitoring of a strict membership scheme, with photo id cards, for every mosque. Then membership can't be disputed and responsibility is clearly assigned. But this is a useful thing to have in its own right, as it lends itself to closer monitoring and control by the state, of illegal and terrorist activities. It would also help the mosque governors more tightly control their own operation, which is something I keep hearing that they want to do!</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>I leave the reader to draw his own conclusions about the merits or otherwise of those 3 <em>positive</em> outcomes, and their meaning, and balance them with the <em>negative</em> outcomes, and their meaning.</p>
<p>Now of course, the response to the above suggested remedy would be that it isn't fair to Muslims, and I would agree! But that is to make a statement in <em>absolute</em> morality, and as ? said, the only way to make statements of absolute morality is to ground your beliefs in religion - so secularists and the state should not be doing that.</p>
<p>However, statements of <em>relative</em> morality are a lot easier to make, and most people can happily do that. So shouting at someone is less bad than sticking a pin in them which is less bad than killing them.</p>
<p>In the same way, it is <i>more</i> fair to punish Muslims for the actions of one of their fellow Muslims who was also a member of their Mosque, than it is to punish me for their actions, be letting me and my loved ones be blown up, since I have <em>zero</em> connection to the terrorist thugs. The terrorist's fellow mosque members at least have a connection through religion and though their shared "sacred" texts, so they certainly have more culpability than I do, so they should shoulder a bigger burden.</p>
<p>This argument could surely be applied more widely, even, say, to the issue of the inconvenience of airport security searches. Again, I leave it to the reader to explore those options.</p>