06/9/15

The Secret Russian Role in Global Conflict

In an extraordinary judgment that throws U.S. policy in the Middle East into complete turmoil, strategic analyst Michael Ledeen has concluded, in regard to the activities of the Islamic State, “I think the Russians are involved, in tandem with the Iranians, who have had their own troops on the Syrian battlefield for years.”

This means that a U.S. congressional declaration of war on the Islamic State would miss the point, and that the Russians and the Iranians are the bigger threat.

“It’s part of the global war, of which Syria is only one killing field, and IS [Islamic State] is one of the band of killers,” says Ledeen.

The analysis of Ledeen, who previously served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department, should serve as an opportunity to review what is really happening in the Middle East, and to examine whether the Islamic State is a Russian creation that is designed to pave the way for Iranian expansion.

Ledeen notes evidence that the top IS military commander, Abu Omar al-Shishani, is a Russian asset, and that “the Russians are exploiting their strategic position in Ukraine to set up transit facilities for IS.” He adds that Ukrainian security forces recently arrested five IS volunteers coming from Russia or the former Soviet republics.

Last September we reported on some of this evidence, noting, “We have heard repeatedly about Americans and Europeans fighting for ISIL [the Islamic state], but little attention is being devoted to the Russian-speaking foreign fighters that make up the group. Their numbers are estimated at 500 or more. Omar al-Shishani is usually described as a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen. In fact, he was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was trained there.”

Those who believe the Russians are incapable of such deception and misdirection have conveniently forgotten about the history of the old Soviet intelligence service, the KGB. It is represented in the Kremlin today by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer once based in East Germany.

In another area of global affairs that reveals a hidden Russian role, The New York Times has taken note in a June 7 story of evidence that the Russians under Putin are financing conservative movements and political parties around the world. The Times reports, “Not only is it [the Kremlin] aligning itself with the leftists traditionally affiliated with Moscow since the Cold War, but it is making common cause with far-right forces rebelling against the rise of the European Union that are sympathetic to Mr. Putin’s attack on what he calls the West’s moral decline.”

This is actually an old story. We have been reporting for more than a year about Putin acquiring agents of influence or dupes in the West, even in the United States. Perhaps the most prominent name associated with this pro-Moscow trend is veteran conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan. The World Congress of Families is the most prominent organization to embrace Moscow’s alleged devotion to Christian values.

It is quite natural for conservatives in favor of traditional values to abhor the Obama administration’s embrace of the so-called LGBT agenda, here and abroad. But to adore Putin in reaction to this trend is a major miscalculation that assumes Moscow is genuinely interested in preserving Western values.

It is a welcome development that The New York Times has finally taken note of Moscow’s hand in right-wing political movements.

But there’s more. The paper added, “American and European officials have accused Moscow of financing green movements in Europe to encourage protests against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a move intended to defend Russia’s gas industry. And a shadowy ‘troll farm’ in St. Petersburg uses Twitter to plant fake stories about chemical spills or Ebola outbreaks in the West.”

Another example of how Putin is deceiving the world lies in his exploitation of Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee still being hailed as a whistleblower in the United States.

Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, has written about how figures on the U.S. political right such as Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley have rallied to Snowden’s defense. In a recent column, Shirley condemned “the senior GOP leadership’s embrace of the National Security Agency’s enveloping surveillance activities.”

What Shirley and other Snowden supporters ignore is the fact that the NSA’s surveillance activities rely mostly on a Ronald Reagan Executive Order (12333) and that funding and manpower for the NSA increased dramatically under Reagan.

In fact, President Reagan used the NSA to undermine America’s enemies, especially the old USSR.

National security reporter Bill Gertz wrote in 2013 about how a former “top-secret” document, “United States Cryptologic History, Series VI, Vol. 5: American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-89,” contained a section on how President Ronald Reagan realized the value of the NSA’s unique electronic intelligence collection capabilities.

The history notes that “the best known exposure of SIGINT [signals intelligence] since the Pearl Harbor hearings of 1945 had actually come in 1983, when the Reagan administration played the intercepted cockpit conversations of the Soviet pilot as he shot down KAL-007. The SIGINT gave the administration a tremendous foreign policy coup.”

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down the civilian airliner KAL-007, killing 269 people.

In 1986, the document states, Reagan became the first American president to visit the NSA, as he gave the official dedication speech for the NSA’s two new buildings. He wanted to loosen “the legal reins governing intelligence,” the document says, giving rise to Reagan executive order 12333. It gave the NSA latitude in SIGINT collection that the agency had not had during the disastrous Carter years.

This executive order remains in effect. Not even Obama has tried to revoke it.

Based on this history, one would have to conclude that President Reagan would defend the NSA, just as the GOP leadership in the U.S. Senate has done. Leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) defended the NSA against the Obama administration, liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans.

The tragedy is that, with Obama in office rather than a conservative like Reagan, some conservatives decided to join the campaign to undermine the agency that Reagan considered absolutely essential to America’s security and survival.

Could it be just a coincidence that the Islamic state, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and aggressive Chinese cyber-warfare against the U.S. have emerged as major problems in the wake of Snowden’s arrival in Moscow?

Those who blame Obama alone for all of our foreign policy setbacks should examine the evidence that Putin and the Russians may ultimately be pulling the strings. At the same time, the NSA can’t be blamed for Obama’s failure or unwillingness to use the agency effectively against our enemies.

When the next president takes office, he will need an NSA capable of gathering the intelligence information the nation needs to defend itself. The next administration will have to consider apprehending and then prosecuting Snowden for operating as a Russian/Chinese agent of influence and committing espionage against the United States.

Hopefully, those who defended or praised Snowden will one day have to answer for their foolishness.

05/5/15

Radical Islam: a Communist tool against the West

By: Renee Nal
New Zeal

ISIS via BBC Radio

“The KGB boss described the Muslim world as a waiting petri dish, in which we could nurture a strain of hate-America.” – Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa

The Cold War’s “most important defector,” Ion Mihai Pacepa, recently revealed that Liberation Theology “was the creation of the KGB, who exported it to Latin America as a way of introducing Marxism into the continent” and is traced to the 1968 “Conference of Latin American Bishops” as reported in a must-read article posted at Breitbart.

But Liberation Theology is only one of the many subversive creations of the KGB, who also fosters and promotes radical Islam as a “weapon against the West,” according to political commentator and New Zealand native Trevor Loudon, who is not at all surprised at the recent revelation that Liberation Theology was an invention of the KGB.

Loudon, whose book The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the US Congress is currently being made into a feature documentary, has been sounding the alarm about activities by communists in America for years. In fact, it was Loudon who first made the connection between President Barack Obama and his communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis.

Radical Islam “serves Moscow as a deniable weapon against the West,” Loudon said. The connections between radical Islam and communism have been documented here, here and here.

Consider the following by Daniel Greenfield:

Former KGB General Oleg Kalugin had said that many Al Queda terrorists were actually trained by the KGB. A sizable number of the Taliban’s top military people had Russian training as well.

Additionally, former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko “alleged that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB [formerly KGB] in Dagestan in the years before the 9/11 attacks,” as reported in his obituary at the BBC. As noted at the New American back in 2005, “al-Zawahiri had been very active as the purported top leader of Islamist terrorist operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina during Yugoslavia’s civil war.” As an aside, one of Litvinenko’s accused assassins opined that the whistle-blower accidentally poisoned himself last month.

Former KGB lieutenant colonel Konstantin Georgiyevich Preobrazhenskiy was granted asylum in the United States in 2006. According to Preobrazhenskiy, communists long considered Muslims as the “human resource” for the world revolution.

Watch a discussion here:

This article has been cross-posted at Broadside News.

02/15/15

Are We Seeing History Repeat Itself?

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is the famed quote of George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher (1863-1952). I am beginning to think that the world is making its way toward a future that repeats the horrors of the last century’s wars and earlier times when Europeans battled Islam to free Jerusalem, to protect their homelands in Europe, and to eject Muslims from Spain.

In his book, “Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7^th to the 21^st Centuries” historian Paul Fregosi documented the history of Islam and its attacks on European nations, characterizing jihad as “essentially a permanent state of hostility that Islam maintains against the rest of the world.” It is a Muslim sacrament, a duty they must perform.

Occurring at the same time is the agenda of the global environmental movement and on February 4 Christina Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves; which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” (Italics added)

Figueres was wrong. The objective of the 1917 Communist revolution that began in Russia and Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958-1961) was the same that is now being openly embraced by the United Nations in 2015. The result of both was the death of millions.

Humanity is under attack from an Islam that intends to impose its barbaric seventh century Sharia law and from the environmental movement’s intention to end capitalism and replace it with the income distribution central to Communism.

Both spell a terrible future for the people of the world.

The President of the United States is devoted to pursuing both of these goals as the defender of Islam and the opponent of “income inequality.” We have twenty-two months to survive Barack Obama’s remaining time in office.

Obama was first elected on the promise to end the U.S. engagement in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. After many years Americans welcomed the prospect of ceasing the loss of lives and billions those wars represented. With the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) they are now seeing the true price of that policy. Just because we don’t want to fight a war doesn’t mean our enemy will cease to pursue it.

We are at a critical moment in time because it is evident that Obama wants to provide Iran the opportunity to build its own nuclear weapons arsenal. It is a time as well when the military capability of the U.S. has been diminished to what existed before the beginning of World War II. All of Europe and much of Asia would have fallen under the control of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan if the U.S. had not stepped up to the task of defeating them.

Relentlessly, Obama has done everything he can to reduce the size of our military fighting force and the ships, planes and other weapons needed to protect our security or support that of our allies. He has withdrawn the U.S. from its position of global leadership and left behind allies that no longer trust us and enemies who no longer fear us.

Raymond Ibrahim of the Middle East Forum wrote on February 5 that “approximately 100 million Christians around the world are experiencing the persecution by Muslims of all races, nationalities, and socio-political circumstances.”

At the same time, we are witnessing a new exodus of Jews from Europe, mindful of the Holocaust in the 1940s. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2013 the Jewish population worldwide was approximately 14 million. Just over 6 million reside in Israel, another 6 million are U.S. citizens, and the rest are in Europe and elsewhere around the world. What has not changed from the last century, however, is the level of anti-Semitism and it appears to be on the rise.

What we are witnessing is a full-scale attack on the West—Christianity and Judaism—and upon Western values of morality, democracy, and freedom.

Whether it will erupt in a new world war is unknown, but if history is a guide, we are moving in that direction.

02/6/15

Why the West is Losing to Islamic Supremacists

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

During a recent lecture on the nature of and threat posed by Iran, with whom President Barack Obama’s Chamberlainian negotiations continue apace, an existential question arose: Why does the West remain asleep regarding Islamic Supremacism and the doctrine on which it is based?

I posit that there are three main reasons, which also go a long way towards explaining why we are currently losing to the global jihad: (i) Progressive multiculturalism, moral relativism and materialism; (ii) Profound willful ignorance; and (iii) An inability to cope with the staggering implications of the threat we face.

Since the days of George W. Bush, we have heard the oft-repeated trope that Islam is a religion of peace, and moreover one of the world’s great religions, with the same ethics, values and principles as Judaism and Christianity.

Originally, the Western elite argued that those who killed in the name of Islam were merely misinterpreting and perverting the religion. These, one should note, were the relatively more clear-eyed ones. Others attributed genocidal jihadism to poverty, lack of education or global warming.

Now we have completely severed the jihadist head from the Islamic body (theo)politic, arguing that the barbarians who comprise Islamic State, or as the Obama administration obediently likes to say, Daesh, in spite of the first “I” standing for “Islamic,” are nihilists.

For a people steeped in progressivism for decades, this can be the only reasonable conclusion.

Islamic supremacism does not comport with the belief system of our elites, who assert that all peoples are the same, all religions consist of the same values and beliefs, and that material concerns trump all others, including spiritual or idealist ones.

For those who honestly believe such things — as opposed to the ones who spout platitudes out of political expediency and to gloss over threats they dishonestly claim to have already defeated – throwing up one’s arms and claiming that jihadism stems from an ideology of nothingness is the most coherent of an entirely incoherent set of answers. Even better is to declare that violent extremism is the enemy, so as to smear conservatives while they’re at it.

This pervasive misunderstanding of Islam reflects a profound ignorance, in that it neglects the fact that the Koran and hadith comprise a unique belief system fundamentally different from, and in fact antithetical to the historically Judeo-Christian West.

For those interested, there is a mass of literature from authors such as Dr. Andrew Bostom, Andrew McCarthy, Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq and Bat Ye’or who lay this out in concrete and copiously sourced terms.

Better yet, look to the texts and words of leading Islamic scholars such as Hassan Al Banna and Sayyid Qutb, prominent modern-day figures like Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ayatollah Khameini, Hassan Nasrallah, and the content being taught at mosques right here in America.

If you would like to ignore the compendium of Islamic doctrine that calls for and compels Muslims to bring about a totalitarian world under which all submit to Allah’s rule, all one has to do is look at states whose governments are based in Shariah law to see Islam in practice.

Theory and practice aside, I am willing to wager that the vast majority of those commenting on Islam in the media and political establishment have never opened up a Koran, let alone heard the word hadith. Of the small percentage who have, invariably you will hear the argument that while parts of the Koran are violent, others are peaceful. Such a view evinces further ignorance however, as it fails to address two essential Islamic concepts: (a) Abrogation and (b) taqiyya.

Abrogation refers to the fact that as the Koran reflects Allah’s divine revealed word, where there are textual contradictions, those passages revealed later must supplant those that preceded it. These later passages are frequently more violent than the earlier peaceful ones.

Taqiyya refers to strategic lying and deception – covering up one’s true intentions so as to defeat one’s enemies. This manifests itself in acts of sabotage, subversion and the propagation of strategic disinformation, not unlike what the Communists did during and after the Cold War.

Others will argue that just as the Koran has violent verses, so too do the Old and New Testaments. But Jews and Christians do not go out and slaughter in the name of their G-d in a modern-day global Crusade like the jihadists are waging. Moreover, the values and principles that flow from these two religious systems have led to the miracle that is Western civilization. The Muslim world on the other hand, especially where Islamic doctrine is followed in its purest form, resembles the seventh century one that preceded it.

Lest you think those who have studied Islam in schools are better off, in America’s universities taqiyya has become an art form. Many of the Middle Eastern departments at our country’s most prestigious academic institutions have been found to put on a “moderate” public face while serving as Trojan horses for anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Westernism — all consistent with Islamic doctrine.

This should come as no surprise, as these departments – and even K-12 schools — are often funded by Islamic nations who are the primary backers of Islamic supremacism themselves.

For those able to see past multiculturalism, moral relativism, materialism and actually study Islam in theory and practice, recognizing that the religion at the very least as understood by millions of Muslims is not only incompatible with, but hostile to our very existence, this is a staggering realization. It offends our pluralistic, tolerant sensitivities to think that such a massive, religiously-justified threat could exist. For while similarly savage enemies marched throughout the 20th century, none were tinged with theology, and Communism for its part was explicitly anti-religious.

Moreover, there are uncomfortable practical questions that such a threat raises. Who exactly are we fighting if there are millions of jihadists, aiders, abettors and enablers all over the world? How are we to fight them? What measures can we take to secure the homeland that are both sufficient and consonant with a free society?

Today, the West is clearly not even at the point of asking these questions, which reflects a lack of education on behalf of some, and denial on the part of others. That it is considered a bold act to utter phrases like “Radical Islam,” or “Islamic extremism” or “Islamism,” in the face of now over 25,000 jihadist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001 indicates as much. Imagine what kind of stones it would take to repeat after Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdoğan, that in effect there is no such thing as “moderate Islam” or “Islamism,” and such “descriptions are very ugly…offensive and an insult to our religion…Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

Rather than deal with reality, we figuratively bury our heads in the sand. Meanwhile, savage jihadists lop off and literally bury infidel heads in the sand.

If we are going to turn the tide in a war that we are currently not fighting, it is imperative that a sizable number of Americans wake up. It behooves all men and women of good conscience to educate their fellow citizens, and spark this awakening.

The future of Western civilization depends upon it.

01/26/15

No, Hollywood. Islam Does Not have a PR Problem.

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Ever since the savage attacks in France, our pencil-waving, cartoon-pixelating media and Islamic theologian body politic have gone on an Islamic charm offensive.

In the face of 24,935 jihadist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, we are told over and over again that Islam, one of the world’s great religions, is peaceful and merely being distorted by misunderstanding violent extremists with no particular ideology.

Whether or not you believe this, in spite of Islam’s supremacist goals and history, Koran-endorsed strategic lying and deception by way of taqiyya, the totalitarian theopolitical doctrine of Shariah that compels the systematic persecution of women, gays and non-Muslims, the sermons of influential imams let alone the definition of Islam itself, “submission,” is besides the point and distracts us from the real issue at hand.

The real issue is that there are millions of Muslim jihadists, aiders, abettors and sympathizers in the world – including all throughout the West – working through means, overt and covert, violent and peaceful, to unite the world under the rule of Allah.

Not Islamophobia.

Not America’s support for Israel (pre-Obama at least).

Not drone strikes.

Not Abu Ghraib.

Not Guantanamo Bay.

Not a YouTube video.

Not a cartoon.

The fact that the largest casualties of jihadist savagery are Muslims, renders moot almost all of these points.

And the fact that only a small percentage of Muslims may be jihadists should give comfort to absolutely no one. If even 0.1 percent of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world are jihadists, aiders, abettors or sympathizers, then 1.6 million people seek to destroy Western civilization.

As borne out by the latest Pew poll on Muslim views on suicide bombings from July 2014, 0.1 percent would in fact be a shockingly low figure:

One other data point that the folks in Hollywood or Washington, D.C. would prefer not be printed: As of 2013, after New York City, Dearborn, Michigan — with a population of under 100,000, and the largest percentage of Arab-Americans in the country — had the highest number of individuals classified as “known or suspected terrorists” by our government. So it was with great consternation that I read an article in Variety that reflects so well why we are losing a war that only Islamic supremacists are fighting.

Behold:

Given the volume of terrorists who have committed hideous acts of violence in the name of Allah over the years, there will be those who will be convinced there is something intrinsically problematic about Islam if it is linked to so much hatred and bloodshed.

But that’s a leap in logic steeped in ignorance. And that ignorance is rooted partly in an unfamiliarity with Muslims.

Could Hollywood help remedy that? In the wake of a tragedy borne from a dastardly desire to silence freedom of speech, there’s a crying need for an artistic expression of a very different kind than Charlie Hebdo’s brand of satire.

What is needed now is more depictions of average Muslims in popular culture. Not the kind ripped from the headlines that paints them as violent zealots but the kind that shows them to be the normal friends, neighbors, business associates, etc., that millions of them are all over this nation.

Got that?

According to Hollywood, the proper response to jihadist slaughter is to show Americans that not all Muslims are jihadists.

Islam just has a PR problem.

It is reminiscent of an Obama administration that blames demonstrably disastrous policies on the ignorance of those simple Americans, fooled by poor “optics,” or, when it’s taking responsibility, the administration’s failure to explain its policies well enough.

The author continues:

Would there even be a question of whether the evil radicals who took the lives of innocents were any kind of reflection on Muslims in general if more people, particularly non-Muslims in the U.S., had any sense of what average Muslims are actually like?

Lacking any normative alternative, it’s almost understandable that people lapse into lazy, dangerous stereotypes. Too many associate Islam with the actions of a radical fringe because of the absence of cultural signposts that modern Muslims exist, breathe, love and eat just like the rest of us.

Those bitter clingers are just not sophisticated enough to understand that Islam is peace.

Leave aside for a second the fact that folks in tolerant, progressive, diverse and clearly hypocritical Hollywood show profound ignorance of Islam as practiced throughout wide swaths of the world, where the very groups Hollywood purports to care about most are discriminated against and routinely slaughtered.

Leave aside for a second the fact that the America outside of the New York-Los Angeles-Washington, D.C. axis actually contains a far higher number of folks who have interacted with average Muslims in the flesh, while serving in our armed forces.

While Islamic supremacists are at war with us as part of a global jihad, why is Hollywood’s first obligation to make sure that all Muslims don’t get a bad name – to fight a PR battle that only exists because Muslims are killing people?

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Shouldn’t Hollywood’s job actually be to expose us to the truth that there are those in the world who pose an existential threat to our way of life, including the free expression on which Hollywood relies and cherishes?

What is wrong with America is not that as progressives would have us believe, ignorant bigots in flyover country are Islamophobes engaging in a hypothetical Teahadist crusade.

What is wrong with America is that people have been burying their heads in the sand for years, ignoring, whitewashing, and showing extreme cowardice – dhimmitude — in the face of Islamic supremacists carrying out a slow motion, mass ethnic cleansing against non-Muslims for decades.

While the comparison becomes tired, it must be asked of Hollywood: During World War II, would our response to Nazi aggression have been to script movies portraying Germans as moderate, peaceful people?

Regardless of what helps America’s elites sleep at night, in the real world, evil exists. And evil does not care for Western projection, whether it comes to the mullahs in Iran or the comrades of the Kremlin.

Culture really does matter, and Hollywood, which has already done a great deal of damage to the fabric of America in its promotion of moral relativism, victomology and other values antithetical to our Judeo-Christian heritage, will only make things that much worse by undertaking the efforts described in this Variety article.

What Hollywood should be doing is educating Americans on the actual nature of her enemies, not idealizing, coddling or humanizing them.

Where Hollywood should be placing its emphasis and empathy is on the victims of said enemies, not the victimizers, and the heroes like Chris Kyle who protect us from them.

The problem is not that the American people are ignorant of Islam, but that our media and government continue to distract us from the real threat, and are themselves Islamophobic – unable or unwilling to critically examine Islamic doctrine, facts and history.

It has and will continue to get Americans killed the longer we ignore it.

01/20/15

Egypt’s Al-Azhar Institute: The key to ending terror or the reason for it?

By: Dr. Ashraf Ramelah
Voice of the Copts

Al-Azhar

Just one month before the Paris massacre of Charlie Hebdo and his staff, the prestigious Sunni Muslim Al-Azhar Institute organized and held a conference at its headquarters in Cairo to address worldwide terrorism. It was entitled, “Al-Azhar in the face of extremism and terrorism.” After two full days of discourse focused on the ISIS (Islamic State Iraq Syria) terror group, Al-Azhar concluded with a statement aligned with an earlier one made by President Obama. ISIS is not Islamic. The President saw fit to omit this opinion from his subsequent speech at the UN, but Al-Ahzar is sticking to it.

Al-Azhar religious scholars (an autonomous body separate from the state but financed by taxpayers) form the center for Koranic interpretation and spiritual guidance to the largest Muslim sect in the world, the Sunnis, estimated at one billion believers — eighty percent of the worldwide Muslim community. If the religion of Islam were governed by a hierarchy of leadership, Al-Azhar would surely be its head.

Renowned for its doctrinal instruction to imams and its slightest pronouncement (fatwa) obeyed by Muslim followers, Al-Azhar wields a subtle but powerful authority over Muslim believers. Its influence over the West’s perception of Islam is as great. In this capacity, Al-Ahzar has the power to significantly contribute to the eradication of Muslim violence around the world. But instead, what has its impact been as spiritual head with a state role?

Unlike the American president, Al-Azhar would not condemn ISIS when put to the test. Surely, if Al-Ahzar posited that ISIS terror is Islamic then a denunciation of ISIS’ actions would be a condemnation of its own doctrine. But, if ISIS terror is not Islam as Al-Ahzar proclaims what is the harm done with condemning it? This contradiction alone clues us in on a leadership that is allowing if not fostering crimes against humanity.

This ambiguity coming from the reverential summit of Islamic scholarship transmits confusion and inauthenticity to the West which seeks to find a benign Islam to tolerate. Al-Ahzar’s unwillingness to clarify Islam in relation to current realities and the relative terms sought to define them – Islam, Islamist, Islamic terror, terror, Islamic extremism, extremism, etc. – is suspicious at best. Anselm Choudary, an outlier, does a better job at being concise and consistent on the Hannity show.

No matter how many millions march for “freedom and tolerance” in Paris and the anti-terror cause in the days following the Hebdo attacks little will change without Al-Azhar Institute — the preeminent Islamic authority — making clear, concise statements to properly identify and condemn violence by Muslims. It could begin by reversing a silence dating back to its 880 AD origins regarding Muslim attacks on the Coptic Christians. This Cairo institute has never condemned the violence or the propaganda of Muslims against Christians within its own state. Tragically, this lack of responsibility has advanced jihad throughout the state and the world.

Al-Ahar excluded Jews from this worldwide summit on terrorism. Its failure to invite synagogues and Jewish leaders was not disguised by its otherwise inclusiveness. Joining the Egyptian Mufti, Dr. Shawki Allam, Al-Azhar University chairman and deputy, and six hundred Muslim scholars (including those of minor sects) from 120 countries were heads of the Eastern Orthodox churches, including Egyptian Copts, and Vatican representatives. Protestant denominations from the West were present, and speakers from communities persecuted by terror groups (Pakistan, Syria, and others) attended.

Did this important conference at the heart of Sunni-Muslim religious learning hold the least promise for genuine examination of worldwide terror? Not really. We’ve seen Al-Ahzar fail to denounce Muslim Brotherhood members as terrorists when the pro-democracy presidency of Al Sisi banned the organization from Egypt last year. Also, the Grand Mufti of Al-Ahzar, who is required by law to confirm or deny death sentences issued by the Egyptian courts, reversed the death penalty of Badeh and others — all convicted murderers from the Muslim Brotherhood. So far, the Sunni authority of Al-Ahzar has placed itself at odds with Muslims in the Egyptian streets and the rest of the modern world presumably in order to remain true to Islamic doctrine.

At the conference, a Mufti from Nigeria gave a speech in which he recognized ISIS as a terror organization. Generally, any recognition or instruction stated by a Muslim cleric anywhere is considered a fatwa duly acknowledged and followed by all Muslims around the world. In a panic, Al-Ahzar countered the Mufti by issuing a statement negating the Mufti’s point — overriding it and declaring that ISIS is not a terror organization. The Al-Ahzar statement went on to say that members of ISIS are not Muslim and their actions are not that of Muslims. Then, for good measure, Al-Ahzar emphasized another Koranic verse in order to warn the Nigerian Mufti that it is not his place to condemn ISIS. In short, the reminder stated that any action taken by one Muslim (ISIS members) cannot be judged by another Muslim (Nigerian Mufti). It didn’t matter that Al-Ahzar just declared ISIS a non-Muslim group.

In reaction to Al-Azhar statement, the Egyptian media, attempting to protect the image of Islam, demanded that Al-Azhar label, identify and condemn ISIS as explicitly “Kafir” (non-Muslim) in order to further the deception that terror groups in operation could readily be regarded as being from non-Muslim sources. In response, Dr. Abbas Shoman of Al-Ahzar claimed that the institute had never condemned any believer by disavowing his Muslim identity (assigning him “Kafir”) – a flat out lie. The well-known Egyptian, Farag Fuda, a secular Muslim scholar and human rights advocate critical of Islam and Al-Ahzar, was accused of blasphemy by Al-Ahzar clerics and condemned. The “fatwa” dutifully led to Fuda’s murder, the intended consequence.

Traced to lies and murder, Al-Ahzar Institute is solely responsible in its actions and teachings for setting the common ethical underpinning of Islamic society. The world would be mistaken to rely upon the leadership of this esteemed Islamic institution for a solution to the world’s crisis.

01/10/15

U.S. & British Intelligence: Al Qaeda Planning Mass Attacks On West

Hat Tip: BB

Les Guingnols
The title simply reads: “Urgent: Hiring six new cartoonists.”
Note from NoisyRoom.net: If you are ever in town, the drinks are on us guys…

Double-Agent: Numerous Jihadist Sleeper Cells Prepared to Repeat Paris Attacks Worldwide

Let’s Laugh at Islam

Free Speech and Cartoons of Muhammad

UNCENSORED version of French police killing MUslim terrorist in Kosher grocery store

Leftists hurl insults and invective at Erick Erickson over his modest proposal for terrorists’ corpses

This ATF agent wants Obama to make a DECLARATION to make you stop calling ISIS ‘Muslim’

This guy actually says a Parisian-style attack would have been WORSE in America because we have GUNS

YES! Canadian PM says international Jihadist movement HAS DECLARED WAR and we MUST CONFRONT IT

Should This Be Next Week’s Charlie Hebdo Cover?

Al Jazeera English’s Muslim editor & exec producer: ‘I AM NOT CHARLIE’

‘KILL TERRORISTS, EXTERMINATE THEM, LEAVE BEHIND RUINS AND CRYING WIDOWS’: Lt. Col. Ralph Peter’s Recipe For Terrorism

KISS OUR @SS: Radical Dipstick, Anjem Choudary, Wants This Pic Of Him Removed From Internet

Jews Are Abandoning France

Obama’s remarks on Paris shooting ‘Shariah-compliant’

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Video: Robert Spencer on Hannity on Sharia No-Go Zones in France and the Charlie Hebdo jihadists

Canada: Muslim cleric says cartoons of religious leaders should be outlawed

Video: Robert Spencer on Sun TV on the Islamic war on free speech

Reactions On Twitter To Attack On ‘Charlie Hebdo’ – Including Hashtags #Paris Is Burning, #Vengeance For [Insulting] Allah’s Messenger, #Lone Wolves Are Terrorizing France

Watch VIDEO: Assault on the kosher supermarket where 16 Jewish people were held as hostages by devout Muslims in Paris

France: Jewish Hostages Taken By Devout Muslims Escaped by Hiding in -3 Degree Freezer

ITALY: Following Islamic terror attacks in Paris, the mayor of Padua has declared a ban on construction of any more mosques in the northern Italian city

BREAKING! France’s most wanted female Muslim terrorist is now thought to have escaped to Syria

#IamNOTcharlie: Exposing its fury over global support for Charlie Hebdo, leaked Al-Jazeera emails order its journalists to slam the cartoonists

01/10/15

Paris—The Latest Example of Islamic Jihadist Terrorism

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

While much of the media are doing contortions trying to explain why the latest terrorist attacks are either home grown, lone wolf, or committed by alienated youth, this misses the point. And yes, we realize that most victims of Islamic jihadists are other Muslims. Just look at the massacre in Pakistan last month of 141 individuals, including children and teachers. Or the one this week by Boko Haram in Nigeria that may have led to the death of at least 2,000.

The Islamic terrorists who attacked the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris this week, brutally murdering 12 people, were killed by authorities today. The situation is still fluid, but reports indicate that at least 15 hostages are now free, and one more terrorist may be on the loose following two hostage situations that ensued during the hunt for the terrorists. One might think that Paris—and France—might be able to breathe a sigh of relief. In reality, however, the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the two ensuing hostage situations were merely a continuation of the latest line of Islam-inspired terror attacks worldwide, be it on the Canadian Parliament; in Sydney, Australia; in Pakistan; on two policemen in New York City; or in Moore, Oklahoma.

The problem is not who these attackers are, or whether they are a card-carrying member of al Qaeda, Boko Haram, or the Islamic State—but that they are conducting such atrocious acts. Just in the U.S. and Canada alone in the last couple of months we’ve had a number of attacks occurring in the name of Allah. To the victims, and most of the rest of us, the rest doesn’t matter.

The Washington Post is reporting that Boko Haram may have executed thousands. “A video recently emerged, Genocide Watch reported, that shows gunmen shooting civilians as they lay face down in a dormitory,” reports Terrence McCoy. “A local leader explains they are ‘infidels,’ even though he admits they’re Muslim: ‘We have made sure the floor of this hall is turned red with blood, and this is how it is going to be in all future attacks and arrests of infidels. From now on, killing, slaughtering, destruction and bombings will be our religious duty anywhere we invade.’”

McCoy notes that Boko Haram’s attacks seem more “wanton” than those perpetrated by other terror groups.

These attacks are coming at such an accelerated pace today that any sort of long term solutions, such as being more responsible and not insulting Islam or the prophet Muhammad, seem futile. Do we really think anyone at the school in Pakistan or in Baga, Nigeria had slandered the prophet?

“The Religion of Peace” website has documented the Islam-motivated terrorist attacks of 2014.

The Washington Post reported on January 7th that the “Paris attack lacked hallmarks of Islamist assaults in the West,” highlighting the possibility that this was an unofficial attack “without any direct ties to groups such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.”

The next day, The New York Times reported that one of two attackers “suspected of killing 12 people at a satirical newspaper in Paris traveled to Yemen in 2011 and received terrorist training from Al Qaeda’s affiliate there before returning to France.”

However the media decide to parse the latest Paris attacks, these Islamic jihadis clearly have been drinking from the same toxic stream of violent ideology.

As happened with the Moore, Oklahoma beheading by Alton Nolen, the media and liberal pundits were quick to separate the Charlie Hebdo killers from Islamic ideology—going to great lengths to find a parallel with any other case they could fathom.

One guest on MSNBC’s “Now with Alex Wagner” compared Jerry Falwell’s lawsuit against Hustler Magazine to the violent murder of 12 innocent people at Charlie Hebdo, without any rebuttal coming from Wagner. Jonah Goldberg of National Review condemned this as “The Dumbest 57 Seconds Ever on TV.”

I would also point to MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry’s characterization of Nolen’s beheading of a co-worker in Oklahoma as supposedly having as little to do with his alleged “workplace violence” as what he ate for breakfast. The FBI, apparently, swallowed the idea that Nolen’s attack was workplace violence, as well.

And recently, after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Howard Dean went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to condemn the attacks, but asserted, “I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists. They’re about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for anybody else’s life. That’s not what the Koran says. Europe has an enormous radical problem. I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.”

“When I watch Americans use words like cowardly, barbaric, murder, outrageous, shocking, etc., to describe a violent extremist organization’s actions, we are playing right into the enemy’s hands,” said Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, U.S. commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, in December regarding ISIS, according to The New York Times. “They want us to become emotional. They revel in being called murderers when the words are coming from an apostate.”

The Daily Caller cited an example of The New York Times removing a section from a previously posted article that told how one of the terrorists at the Charlie Hebdo offices spared the life of a woman who was there during the attack:

“Instead, she told French news media, the man said, ‘I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself,’ she recalled.”

Later on the Times altered the article, removing “but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself.” This is the type of political correctness that is commonplace in the media. It is not a matter of cowardice, fearful of being attacked like Charle Hebdo was, but rather an ideological, editorial decision to attempt to minimize the link to Islam.

As I asked in my recent column on the underreported and misreported stories of 2014, “What does it take to spark media outrage?… What is it going to take to end this ongoing slaughter by jihadists, acting in the name of Islam?”

In 2011, when Charlie Hebdo was firebombed for “an edition poking fun at Islam,” according to the UK Telegraph, Time Magazine’s Bruce Crumley blamed the publication for the violence perpetrated against it, writing,

“Not only are such Islamophobic antics [as publishing cartoons] futile and childish… but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?”

By such a measure the media should censor itself from publishing or disseminating the inflammatory Charlie Hebdo materials in any outlet at all. And if The Washington Post is any indication, that’s exactly what happened: it used a photograph that cleverly hides the Charlie Hebdo cover from view while featuring a copy of the publication amidst other magazines.

Ironically, a call to combat terrorism came, not from the media, but from Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al Sisi even before the attack in Paris. He made a speech that hopefully will prove to be a turning point, but don’t count on it. In his New Year’s Day address, he urged the Imams to lead a “religious revolution” against extremism. But he has a huge battle on his own turf, as he gained power after millions of Egyptians called for the removal of Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who had been elected president of Egypt after the removal of Hosni Mubarak. This is but a small step forward.

As President Al Sisi said, “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”

Why must such bold words come from Egypt’s president, and not our own, and other Western leaders, or from the mainstream media? Steve Emerson, of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, argued that “Indeed, the responses from our own president, French President Hollande and British Prime Minster David Cameron all spouted the same empty pabulum in asserting that the Paris attack had nothing to do with Islam or any religion for that matter. But the hollow comments coming from our own leaders are steeped in the stench of appeasement and cowardice.”