Articles from Jul 8, 2014

Jihadi Rhetoric: Tiresome but Deadly

I just spent the better part of the day reading and listening to sermons by the leaders and jihadis of the new “caliphate” in Mesopotamia, the Islamic State (formerly “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”).

I did so in the vain hopes of learning something “new.”

But it was absolute déjà vu—taking me back to a decade ago, when I was reading and translating the Arabic writings and speeches of al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, as collated in The Al Qaeda Reader.

Now as then, it’s the same Koran verses; the same hadiths of Islamic prophet Muhammad waging and praising jihad; the same threats of hellfire for the munafiqun (hypocrites or lukewarm Muslims); the same carnal rewards in the now or hereafter for those who join the “caravan” of jihad.

Consider for instance the following opening words of a recently released short video from the Islamic State titled, “There is No Life Without Jihad”:

If you wish to know the way to glory and power, to goodness, security and joy, you must learn that there are no rights without jihad, no justice without jihad, no dignity without jihad, no security without jihad, no future without jihad, no life without jihad, no life without jihad.

After this rather hackneyed opening, one Abu Muthana, a jihadi from Britain, appears quoting some more of the usual Koran verses, hadiths, and ulema, in this case, Imam Qurtubi, who wrote that “jihad gives life.” Finally he summarizes the goal of the jihad—in case anyone is still not sure—namely, to fight until “the law [Sharia] of Allah is implemented and the caliphate restored.”

To reiterate, there is little new or original in the videos and communiques from the Islamic State. Just static Islamism.

If one turns to the speeches of other Islamic and jihadi groups around the world—from the African groups such as Boko Haram (Nigeria) and al-Shabaab (Somalia), to Asian groups such as Abu Sayyaf (Philippines) and the Islamic Movement (Uzbekistan)—it’s the same thing, same themes, same scriptures, same quotations, same exhortations, same condemnations. Only their temporal circumstances and vicissitudes of victory or defeat differ.

While the Western mentality, so used to seeing and hearing about the “latest” or “newest” fad, may deem the Islamist approach as static or insipid, it is, quite the contrary, immensely effective for its purposes, and thus dangerous.

Consider: It’s the same exact message—of supremacism, hate, and violence, capped off with divine sanctioning—repeated over and over again, from a myriad of sources and organizations, all of which claim authority.

One can think of few better ways to brainwash and indoctrinate young and impressionable minds—to the point that they eagerly embrace death, including through suicide (AKA “martyrdom operations”).

Nor is this message of jihad, conquest, and death-to-the-infidel, limited to the verbiage that transpires among terrorist organizations; instead, this sort of rhetoric has spread far and wide, thanks to modern technology—including the Internet and social media—and the rich Gulf States, chief among them Saudi Arabia, which have seen to it that the jihadi books and passages being quoted are available to all and sundry.

Indeed, and has been demonstrated repeatedly, such jihadi rhetoric is regularly used in mosques all throughout Europe and America—explaining why an inordinate amount of jihadis in Syria and Iraq, such as Abu Muthana, the aforementioned “Brit,” are in fact from the West.

If the West, in the name of “religious freedom,” is still too fretful to monitor and ban such sermons, in Egypt—a Muslim nation in the heart of the Islamic world—the post Muslim Brotherhood government has come to understand the necessity of outlawing “certain” kinds of rhetoric from the mosques, specifically, those about jihad against infidels and apostates.

Of course, such a move sounds extremely “anti-freedom” to the liberal mentality; the New York Timesbemoaned it, without considering that such a clampdown on sermon topics actually combats terrorism and saves human lives. For example, the overwhelming majority of attacks on Egypt’s Christian Copts occur on Friday—the one day of the week Muslims congregate in mosques to hear sermons.

Ultimately, however, such a move from Egypt—an Islamic nation—is an indicator of just how problematic unregulated (i.e., jihadi) sermons can be: if “moderate” Muslims are fearful from the repercussions of “radicalized” sermons, shouldn’t we “infidels” be even more wary of them?

In the end, there’s good news and bad news in all this: the good news is that one need not be familiar with the constant communiques, videos, and messages emanating from this or that jihadi group—for they are all recycled, all the same. To hear one, is to hear them all.

The bad news is that, due to the severe lack of common sense and censorship in the form of political correctness that plagues the West, the rhetoric of jihad and its unvarying message of hate remains wholly unintelligible.

If the jihadis, like parrots, are forever repeating each other—and luring other parrots to join them—Western leaders and politicians, like ostriches, are forever sticking their heads in the sand, lest they acknowledge the cacophony of hate surrounding them, and us.

Raymond Ibrahim

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Obama, Benghazi and the Muslim Brotherhood

By Bob Taylor

Communities Digital News

CHARLOTTE, NC, July 8, 2014 – While the West treads water in a sea of diplomatic incompetence and abstract debate, Islamists are gaining in strength by the hour. A recent report in “Gulf News” provides valuable insights into the manner in which the United States has given the Muslim Brotherhood and its jihadist allies increased power in the Middle East.

Barack Obama makes no secret about the half dozen or so Muslim Brotherhood advisers who are among his closest colleagues in the White House. Nor has the media expressed any concern that giving the rat access to the cheese does not raise the potential for major infestations in the future.

With so many players and alliances involved, a complete review of the “Gulf News” report might take three or four readings. Even then it might not clear the haze of confusion. In the Middle East everyone sleeps with anyone else on any given day just as a matter of self-preservation. Alliances and treaties are about as lasting as three inches of snow followed by 80 degree weather the next day.

“Gulf News” writes, “For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases. “The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the ‘Arab Spring’ erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt. The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other ‘political Islamist’ movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting ‘stability’ in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for ‘stable regimes’ even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing ‘moderate’ Islamic political movements.”

The key element of the “Gulf News” report following those initial paragraphs is that “To this day, PSD-11 remains classified, in part because it reveals an embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view of trends in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.” It began when Obama threw U.S. support to the Islamists in Egypt in an effort to depose Hosni Mubarak, who had been a Western ally for three decades. Egypt is where the MB was founded in the 1920s and they have been morphing in various aspects of evil ever since. The entire world witnessed how Egypt erupted into the largest revolution in the history of the world with Egyptians calling Obama a supporter of terrorism.

What the West seems incapable of grasping is that whoever a dictator is at any given time, be he Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Nouri al-Maliki, Bashar Assad or anyone else, “bad guys” all but with one important thing in common; they know how the game is played, both in the Middle East and, more importantly, in the West. Islam creates these people, not the other way around. So why do we continue to insist that we can alter 14 centuries of hatred, tribal incest and in-fighting to make accept democracy as we know it?

Middle East analyst Raymond Ibrahim gets it when he writes, “Mideast academics have long spearheaded the idea that there are ‘moderate’ Islamists and ‘radical’ Islamists, and that the U.S. should work with the former (in reality they are all radical—to be an Islamist is to be radical—the only difference is that the ‘moderate’ Islamists don’t wear their radicalism on their sleeves, even as they work toward the same goals that the more open ‘radicals’ work for, namely, a Sharia-enforcing caliphate).”

One State Department paper uncovered by “Gulf Press” was heavily redacted but contained enough information through talking points for Deputy Secretary of State William Burns who was scheduled to meet July 14, 2012 with Mohammad Sawan, head of the Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party.

The document clearly indicated Washington’s desire for the MB to be a major political force in post-Gaddafi Libya. It also recommended that Burns should express to Sawan that the U.S. share “your party’s concerns in ensuring that a comprehensive transitional justice process is undertaken to address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent.” As Ibrahim so deftly translates, “’To address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent’ is another way of stating another popular position among Mideast professors, namely that whenever Islamists engage in violence or terrorism, that is proof positive that they have a legitimate grievance, hence the US must ‘appease’ lest it ‘spark new discontent’ (perhaps the true backdrop of Benghazi).”

But here is the dirty little secret pointed out by “Gulf News” and Raymond Ibrahim, “In light of all the chaos the Islamists have been responsible for in Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, et al—is it now obvious why Arab autocrats like Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and currently Bashar Assad have always ‘banned’ and ‘fiercely pursued’ the Brotherhood and its affiliates?”

The Muslim Brotherhood was banned for more than 30 years from Libya and was “fiercely pursued by the Gaddafi regime.” In 2012, the LMB returned to Libya with plans to take an active role in the country’s political future. The evidence turned up by “Gulf Press”, though complicated and difficult to unravel, clearly shows the Obama administration’s desire for the Muslim Brotherhood to play a major political role in Libya following the death of Gaddafi. It’s not the sort of thing Obama wants to publicize, despite his proclivity to justify it and cover it up.

For now, the YouTube video still seems to be working. At least until the next round of congressional hearings.

Raymond Ibrahim

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Egyptian Salafi Sheikh: All Educated Women Are “Unoriginal and Common”

Coptic Solidarity

In order to expose the Islamist and Salafi mindset, Egyptian journalists continue posting and commenting on the assertions and observations made by the various clerics during former President Morsi’s one year reign and earlier, when the "radicals" felt especially free to speak their mind.

One of these, Sheikh Yusuf al-Huwaini—who earlier justified buying and selling captured “infidel” women for sex and said the face of a woman “is like her vagina”—was recently shown on video giving his thoughts on women, intelligence, and knowledge.

After he mocked women who, although wearing proper Islamic attire—including the niqab—still appear on television, including as authoritative hosts, he said the following:

On what basis does a woman appear on a satellite station facing millions of people all around the world? And what sort of knowledge could this woman have to offer? Knowledge belongs to men—knowledge belongs to men alone. Any woman—with all due respect, lest some woman think I’m attacking all—any woman, no matter how high and advanced she appears, is unoriginal and common.

Raymond Ibrahim

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