The Reporting of Information of Events associated with Islam

Some guy on my fb posted this with a meme about the American flag, so I answered his ass.

[12:17:29 PM] Sirius 17:

7 hrs ·
well.... to me, it is just another form of a blinding false man made religion, that some will choose to bow down to, each of us has a choice, all any of us can do at this point is speak the truth that is within us, the truth is like that of a seed, planted in the darkest of minds, water it with as much kindness as one can muster, cause it takes time to rise up through the bullshit that was piled on, keep the faith friend cause just like you, the truth that has taken root in you and i, was seeds planted along our journey by the hands of another traveler like you and I


View: https://youtu.be/N6uVV2Dcqt0




View: https://youtu.be/N6uVV2Dcqt0

Statism: The Most Dangerous Religion (feat. Larken Rose)
YOUTUBE.COM


Sirius 17 said:

"This meme is a propaganda attack itself and it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. My grandfather and father both fought in wars to protect and serve the freedom that you and other Americans enjoy and take for granted on a daily basis. Sure this country has fought in senseless wars, Viet Nam and Iraq/Afghanistan come to mind, but this should not cause us to hate or despise our nationalistic identity. I really have to question where this self hate comes from, who the hell wants us to hate our freedom and everything that this flag represents? This is the question we all should ask. Ah but there is one ideology that really fucking hates everything we stand for...Islam comes to mind. Islam LOVES it when we self criticize and turn our noses at our flag because they have an entirely different view of 'nationalism' it is called Sharia law. So take your pick, the American flag or the black flag of IS.IS. Personally I will take our flag any day over the cult of death."
Like · Reply · Just now



[12:18:13 PM] Sirius 17:
[12:18:26 PM] Sirius 17: This is the meme above if you can download and find it
[12:22:48 PM] Sirius 17: there are many memes like this painting our flag as something it isn't
[12:26:27 PM] Sirius 17: the nabs world and crackpot liberals being fed BS by the MB likely in a huge disinformation campaign to make Americans hate themselves and our freedoms. And while I do understand the bigger picture of nationalism being sort a non issue in the NW it shouldn't be now either. The failed policies of the ptb in using America as an economic hit man and strong arm of the world in trying to bend governments to their will is what occurred in the 20th century. Abuses of our nationalistic power and pride. But to take it as far as to hate everything the flag stands for is a bit much.
[12:27:51 PM] Sirius 17: if the true government of the people had not been stripped from this country when they killed Kennedy things would likely have been vastly different. whenever money comes into politics this shit is what occurs
[12:30:09 PM] Sirius 17: when America started out as a nation it had these ideals of decentralized power and power of the states
[12:30:17 PM] Sirius 17: local government
[12:30:20 PM] Sirius 17: NW shit
[12:30:36 PM] Sirius 17: the blue bloods came in and ruined it for everyone
[12:32:46 PM] Sirius 17: England just could not sit by and watch America be independent of its BS and so they infiltrated us from the beginning by inserting a long line of 'inheritors' from the so called royal bloodlines into our democracy.
[12:33:28 PM] Sirius 17: and now as you can see they have taken full power now, our politics are completely bought out by them
[12:34:10 PM] Sirius 17: most of the population is too stupid to see it
[12:35:25 PM] Sirius 17: it really irks me because our government and constitution was set up to protect us from this shit
[12:35:38 PM] Sirius 17: but after 200 years of editing and policy change
[12:35:40 PM] Sirius 17: ...
[1:22:52 PM] Sirius 17: http://www.cosmosdawn.net/forum/ind...d-the-brain-series-with-stuart-hameroff.1502/
[1:23:45 PM] Sirius 17: I posted this series and have not watched it all myself but wondered what you thought of it. This guy has done work with Penrose and it caught my eye.
[1:24:06 PM] Sirius 17: feel free to comment on it after you watch it on the thread

​

 

Robert Spencer in Front Page: The Global Outbreak of Mental Illness

May 13, 2016 9:55 am By Robert Spencer 59 Comments
And you thought global warming was the biggest crisis the world faces. My latest in FrontPage:


On Tuesday, a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” and “Infidel, you must die” stabbed four people, killing one, at a train station near Munich. Nonetheless, Bavarian security officials immediately denied that he “had an Islamic extremist motive.” Then what caused the attack? Bavaria’s state interior minister Joachim Herrmann said that the attacker had “mental disorders.”
There you are. Nothing to do with Islam here, folks. Don’t go jumping to conclusions that these stabbings had something to do with Islam just because he screamed “Allahu akbar” and “Infidel, you must die.” He was mentally ill. That’s all.

In fact, we have seen this kind of mental illness in Muslims before:
France: Muslim destroys Christmas decorations, screams “Allahu akbar”: “His mental state, quickly found wanting, required his placement in the specialized hospital Allonnes.”

France: Muslim driver ramming pedestrians while screaming “Allahu akbar” was “absolutely not an act of terrorism”: “‘This is absolutely not an act of terrorism,’ Prosecutor Marie-Christine Tarrare told reporters during a press conference, adding that the man had a ‘long-lasting and severe psychological disorder’ and had been hospitalised over 150 times since 2002.”

UK: Imam accused of recruiting for jihad group doesn’t have to wear electronic tag — it breaches his human rights: “A terror suspect last night won a human rights case to have his tag removed – because he thinks MI5 has put a bomb inside it. A judge said the dangerous preacher of hate has mental health problems, and wearing the electronic monitoring device was making him ‘delusional’.”

California: Muslim arrested in mosque vandalism: “His older sister describes Khan as having schizophrenia.”

Muslim NYPD cop killer told passers-by to watch: “The gunman who fatally ambushed two New York City police officers in their squad car had a long criminal record, a hatred for police and the government and an apparent history of mental instability that included an attempt to hang himself a year ago, police said Sunday.”

France: Muslim who stabbed rabbi gets four years: “Haddouche was deemed unfit to stand trial because of mental issues following a psychiatric evaluation…”

Toronto Muslim charged with carrying concealed meat cleaver into Parliament: “RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson told reporters that Ali is known to authorities, but ‘not in the sort of counter-terrorism context.’ In fact, Paulson does not believe that the man’s actions were politically motivated or an act of terror. ‘I understand it is less a concern around so-called national security considerations as it is a mental health issue,’ he said. ‘There is a history of behaviours that are odd.’”

Austria: Muslim drives car into crowd, killing 3, then gets out and stabs passersby: “Police are not currently investigating terrorism as a motive and the man is believed to be suffering from mental illness.”

Canada: Police shoot Muslim wearing apparent suicide vest and holding triggering device: “In the aftermath of the shooting, police downplayed the incident saying only that the call involved ‘an emotionally disturbed person.’”

Muslim bangs on cockpit door, threatens to down plane, “wanted to see Allah”: “After being held back from the cabin door, which could not have been opened anyway, the man, who fellow passengers said appeared to have mental health issues, was then guarded by staff and the sports stars in business class.”

Muslima who beheaded toddler recently became religious, started wearing hijab: “One theory is that the woman is mentally ill and that she may have been exploited by a man or men she knew.”

Canada: Ottawa shooter’s father waged jihad in Libya in 2011; shooter not a recent convert but a longtime Muslim: “Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the slain 32-year-old suspected killer of a Canadian Forces soldier near Parliament Hill, was a labourer and small-time criminal – a man who had had a religious awakening and seemed to have become mentally unstable.”

Canada: Muslim acting “in the name of Allah” runs down two soldiers, flips car after chase, charges officers with long knife, is shot: “‘We are at the beginning of an investigation. Several hypotheses are being looked at,’ said Sgt. Michel Brunet, adding that investigators would study various angles, including mental illness and terrorism.”

Philly cop shooter: “I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic State. That is why I did what I did.”: “Archer’s mother has indicated that he is mentally ill and Ross said investigators do not know yet if the suspect was indeed radicalized or tied to terrorism.”

Oklahoma: School evacuated after “Middle Eastern” woman says she came there to “take the kids to heaven”: “During the news conference, police also said that the woman had been having mental health concerns recently.”

Chattanooga jihad murderer viewed Awlaki material online, spoke of Islamic martyrdom as long ago as 2013: “As the F.B.I. sent more investigators into this city Monday to explore dozens of possible leads, a picture took shape of a deeply troubled young man who struggled with mental illness and drug abuse at the same time he found himself alienated from United States policies in the Arab world, according to the authorities, friends and the family representative.”

Colorado Muslim stabs cop, drops Qur’an during struggle: “At about 2 p.m. Saturday, the suspect’s family told law enforcement that they were worried because Clark left his residence in Penrose and said he wasn’t going to return. They also said Clark was mentally disturbed, had been working out a great deal during the last two months and recently had broken up with his girlfriend.”

NYC police commissioner: Hatchet attack by convert to Islam was terror: “Authorities also are trying to determine if Thompson had any history of mental illness.”

UK Muslim who admitted sharing jihad videos rants about “enemy of Islam court”: “Ahmed, who has a history of mental health problems, pleaded guilty to two counts of dissemination of a terrorist publication.”

France: Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” tries to strangle police officer: “Other police officers saw the events on the video surveillance system and rushed to save their colleague, who had been thrown to the ground. His assailant was said to have a history of psychiatric problems.”

Spain: Violent Muslim screaming “Allahu Akbar, all you Christians will die!” gets arrested: “Later, he was administered comprehensive tests to ascertain if he was under the influence of drugs or suffered from a mental illness.”

UK Muslim gets 20 years for trying to set up jihad training camp in Oregon: “Haroon Aswat, who has been treated for mental illness in the UK, had pleaded guilty to the charges in March after being extradited from Britain to the US last year.”

France: Knife-wielding Muslim teen screams “Allahu akbar,” shoots teacher with BB gun: “A psychiatric examination was scheduled for 13 October, with the teenager is likely to be brought before a judge.”

Colorado Muslima pleads guilty to conspiring to aid Islamic State: “Moore set sentencing for Jan. 23, saying he wanted time for Conley to undergo more complete psychiatric testing. ‘I desire more information’ on her mental state, he said, asking for both a psychological and personality evaluation.”

Are you starting to see a pattern?
What could account for this global outbreak of mental illness, that always manifests itself in similar ways? Authorities should start asking themselves why so many mentally ill people embrace Islamic jihad violence. This sort of thing happens so often that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders should consider adding “Islamic jihad” as a mental illness to its next edition.
Forget global warming – what are Obama and Kerry and the learned theorists in North America and Europe doing about this curious epidemic of mental illness?

University of London panel: Solve global antisemitism by annihilating Israel
Surprise! After secret talks, tiny Vermont town gets 100 Muslim migrants


And now, a word from deep inside the Department of Justice

May 14, 2016 11:25 am By Robert Spencer 29 Comments
We get a steady stream of hate mail, but we also occasionally receive messages like this one, which I publish with the sender’s permission because it is a welcome indication that, contrary to appearances, the Justice Department is not entirely compromised and in thrall to deceptive Islamic supremacists:


Subject: Thank you from an avid reader
Message: To Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald, and the rest of the Jihad Watch writers and researchers…Thank you. I am not sure if you get these messages often, though I think you should, but this message is just to say thank you for everything you do.
My name is [redacted], and I am a 9 year veteran federal agent for the United States Department of Justice. As you all know, it has become incredibly difficult in my position to speak the truth, especially when it comes to Islam. I just want to say that because of scholars like Robert Spencer, Hugh Fitzgerald, Raymond Ibrahim, Daniel Greenfield etc…I will never be afraid to speak the truth against evil. I am eternally grateful for the knowledge all of you have instilled in me and will continue to fight to speak against this evil ideology, even if it means that my job is on the line. Truth comes before all, and thank you for teaching me that. Stay safe always.


Robert Spencer in Front Page: The Global Outbreak of Mental Illness

Muslim nanny who beheaded 4-year-old, paraded head while screaming “Allahu akbar” won’t face trial: she’s insane

May 16, 2016 3:56 pm By Robert Spencer 48 Comments

She screamed “Allahu akbar” while brandishing the girl’s hea
d and said that Allah had ordered her to behead the girl. She seems to have had an Islamic State boyfriend. She had become religious not long before the beheading, and started wearing hijab. She says the beheading was revenge for Russian airstrikes on Muslims in Syria. She told her son to pray five times a day and live in accord with Sharia.
Yes, this woman is clearly insane, just the way so very many Islamic jihad terrorists these days are insane. The establishment line is that Islamic jihad terror has nothing to do with Islam, and those who perpetrate it are simply crazy. The global outbreak of mental illness remains unexplained.


“‘Smirking’ Russian nanny who beheaded girl, 4, and paraded her head in the street will NOT face murder trial as she is ‘insane,'” by Will Stewart, MailOnline, May 13, 2016 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
The nanny who decapitated a girl, four, and paraded her severed head in the streets of Moscow will never face trial, say sources close to the criminal investigation.
Gyulchehra Bobokulova, 38, claimed she was inspired to kill the helpless child in a copycat of gruesome jihadist beheadings which she watched online.
She was trusted nanny to the girl she confessed to decapitating in north west Moscow – Anastasia Meshcheryakova – in a brutal act which caused shock around the world.
Earlier, the burka-clad babysitter had claimed that she killed the child on February 29 in revenge for Putin’s aerial bombardment of Muslims in Syria. She claimed she ordered by Allah to cut off the girl’s head.

Now the native Uzbek and mother of three – who is the subject of a murder charge – will be ruled ‘insane’, a source with knowledge of the situation told Interfax news agency.
Experts of the Serbsky State Scientific Centre for Social and Forensic Psychiatry have found that the nanny is not fully responsible for her actions, and committed the crime in a bout of insanity.

Their report is to be formally handed to state investigators next week, reported Interfax.
As such, Bobokulova ‘is not liable for criminal prosecution and the investigation will have to specify the necessity of administering compulsory measures of a medical nature to her in the indictment’, reported Interfax.

In other words, she is likely to be committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Bobokulova was moved from the Serbsky Centre to the psychiatric hospital at Butyrka detention facility in Moscow, following the conclusion of her psychiatric assessment, said the press service of the Moscow Department of the Federal Penitentiary Service.

Pending the psychiatric analysis, a court in Moscow this week extended her custody until 29 May.
Investigators demanded her continued detention as she sat stern-faced in a metal cage in the court room.
‘Bobokulova may pose a threat to society if she is released,’ Judge Tereza Zhrebets was warned.
The nanny admitted to setting fire to the flat after killing the girl.

She was later detained near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station.
Bobokulova was walking around with the girl’s head in her hand, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (Arabic for God is Great) and threatening to blow herself up….

Al-Qaeda calls for jihad murder of U.S. business leaders
Oregon pastor accused of "bigotry" for church sign saying Qur'an is "just another book"

 

The Left’s love affair with Islam

December 1, 2009 11:20 am By Robert Spencer

The Left’s love affair with Islam
By Chuck Hustmyre

The union between the American Left and fundamentalist Islam seems like a marriage made in hell.
The Left hates religion, particularly Christianity, and has succeeded in ripping nearly all vestiges of it from American public life. Through the legal machinations of its lapdog, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Left has banned Christmas from public schools , nativity scenes from City Hall, and the Ten Commandments from courthouses.

In liberal newspeak, “Happy holidays” has replaced “Merry Christmas." Holiday trees have replaced Christmas trees, and Christmas break has become “fall break.”
Yet a few years ago, seventh-grade students in California were required to participate in a religious studies program during which they were told to wear Muslim clothing, memorize passages from the Quran, and choose an Islamic name for themselves.


Interestingly enough, the ACLU did not file a lawsuit.
The American Left champions causes such as gay rights (including gay marriage), equality for women (suffrage, the right to work, etc.), and religious freedom (usually in the form of freedom from religion). Yet, fundamentalist Islam opposes nearly everything the American Left stands for.
In many Islamic countries, homosexuality is punishable by death. In Iran, a top government official recently said that torture followed by death is the appropriate punishment for being gay.
In Saudi Arabia, women can’t vote, run for public office, or drive cars. Women are routinely jailed and beaten for merely being in the presence of a man not related to them. The Saudi version of Dr. Phil provides televised lessons to men on how to properly beat their wives.

In many Islamic countries, women are forced into arranged marriages and held as property by their husbands, something not exactly in line with progressive Western thinking. In some Muslim countries, women aren’t even allowed to decide what clothes to wear. To reveal even the smallest patch of skin is a crime.
Religious freedom is often nonexistent under Islamic rule. In countries like Afghanistan and Iran, people who convert from Islam to another religion face public execution.
So why does the American Left hate Christianity yet love Islam?

In this country, a shadow army of apologists works tirelessly to provide alternative explanations for faith-based Islamic violence–shootings, bombings, stabbings, and beheadings. These shadow soldiers work in government, media, and on college campuses. Most are members of the American Left. The rest are bureaucrats who have been cowed by the omnipresent specter of political correctness. You hear these apologists every time a Muslim goes berserk and murders people in the name of Islam.

That’s an important distinction I’d like to be clear about. Every week someone goes nuts in this country and commits a sensational crime that captures the attention of the media for a few days. Last weekend, a convicted felon from Arkansas murdered four Seattle-area cops at a coffee shop. Before that, some nut shot up an Orlando office building.
Truly impulsive and insane acts of violence are unpredictable. But when horrific violence is based on a theology that preaches hatred, intolerance, and global conquest, there are usually plenty of warning signs. According to the FBI, imams preach jihad in at least 10 percent of the United States’ 2,000 mosques.

Certainly Army Major Nidal Hasan signaled his intent when he told fellow Army doctors that infidels (those who don’t accept Allah as the one true God) should have their heads cut off and have burning oil poured down their throats. After telling everyone around him that non-Muslims should be killed and that the U.S. Army was engaged in a war against Islam, Hasan murdered 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas.
Practically before the sounds of the last gunshots had faded, professional apologists in government and the media were saying Hasan was not a terrorist and that the shootings had nothing to do with his belief in Islam. Of course, the exact opposite is true. Nidal Hasan is a jihadist and he committed mass murder because of his belief in Islam.
Nearly a month after the shootings, the American Left is blaming the Ft. Hood murders on everything but Islam. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley took the opportunity of announcing the expansion of the city’s Arabic language program in public schools to blame the killings on America’s love affair with guns.

Other apologists blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming Hasan, a psychiatrist, suffered from “secondary trauma” after hearing of the horrors of war from the soldiers he was counseling. Still others invented a new psychological malady, pre-traumatic stress disorder, meaning the mere thought of going into a combat zone so traumatized Hasan that he snapped.
The proof that all of these excuses are just so much hot air is that Hasan himself told us why he shot more than 40 people before he did it.

Major Hasan’s business card identified him as a “Soldier of Allah.” He was in email contact with a militant Muslim imam who fled the United States and now operates in Yemen. He tried several times to contact al Qaeda.
To anyone but an American Left apologist, Hasan’s motive for murdering 13 fellow soldiers and wounding another 30 is quite clear: He did it because he was fighting for Islam. As Hasan repeatedly told fellow Army doctors, he is a Muslim first, an American second.

In unambiguous terms, fundamentalist Islam has announced again and again that it despises the values, culture, and traditions of America. The American Left does too.
Consistent with the Arabic proverb that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the American Left has formed an alliance with fundamentalist Islam to transform this country into something far removed from its Judeo-Christian origins and ideals.
The mistake the Left is making is that its so-called progressive goals have nothing in common with the medieval tenants of fundamentalist Islam. Militant Muslims have no respect for American progressives, any more than they respect the very existence of Israel.
Fundamentalist Islam is using the American Left to advance its own agenda. Militant Muslims want Islam and sharia law to dominate the West. Their goal is to subvert the U.S. Constitution and our way of life to the will of Allah. The word Islam means submission.

What members of the American Left seem blind to is the fact that in countries where Islam dominates, their progressive ideas would be crushed and many of them would be thrown in jail simply because of their lifestyle choices.
Yet, the American Left continues to serve as apologist-in-chief for fundamentalist Islam.
Why?

Because deep down American Leftists are terrified of Islamic fundamentalists.
Last year, publishing giant Random House canceled the publication of Sherry Jones’s novel The Jewel of Medina because it might be offensive to some Muslims. According to its own press release, the publisher feared Muslim violence against its offices and employees. Apparently, Random House’s fears were well founded.
In September 2008, three Muslim terrorists firebombed the home and office of the British publisher who bought the rights to the novel.
In 2006, the Apple computer company drew howls of rage from Muslims who claimed the glass cube the company built outside its midtown Manhattan store was modeled on the Kaaba, the Muslim shrine in the Saudi city of Mecca, and was meant as an insult to Islam.

The American Left’s affair with fundamentalist Islam is essentially a love-fear relationship. The Left loves Islam’s hatred of America and its desire to radically change this country, but the Left also fears what militant Muslims are capable of, especially if they turn their murderous rage on their so-called friends.
So the Left, like Neville Chamberlain with the Nazis, walks a tightrope, appeasing Muslims at every turn, offering excuses for Islamic violence, and hoping Muslim fundamentalists won’t bite the hand that feeds them their excuses.
***

Chuck Hustmyre is an award-winning journalist and a retired federal agent. He is the author of three books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. For more information visit www.chuckhustmyre.com.

 

Hugh Fitzgerald: The Education of Donald Trump

May 15, 2016 9:15 am By Hugh Fitzgerald 59 Comments



The new golden boy of multicultural politics and Moderate Islam, Mayor Sadiq Khan of London, fresh from his electoral triumph, told an interviewer on May 13 that he would like to “educate” Donald Trump about Islam. Certainly Trump, like many of those who oppose him, could stand to be educated about Islam, but what he needs to know is not what Sadiq Khan surely has in mind. Sadiq Khan plans for his tutorial a few innocuous verses from the Qur’an that are always trotted out by the “moderates”: 2:256 and 5:32 without 5:33 (we’ll be getting to them later on). He also no doubt plans to offer Trump a potted history of Islam’s conquests, and a sanitized version of Muhammad’s biography, that will leave out as much of the gory bits as he, Sadiq Khan, thinks he can get away with omitting. And a good time will be had by all, if by all we mean Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Bill de Blasio. It won’t do.
It is not that Trump has been misinformed, but that he has not been sufficiently informed to do more than speak in dismissive generalities about Islam. He knows there is something worrisome about Islam, and thinks – sensibly – that it might be a good idea to put a stop to Muslim immigration “until we figure out what is going on.” Who could disagree? Well, apparently a great many of those people who, knowing so little about Islam, assume they know all they need to know, and believe there is nothing more to “figure out” – they could and do disagree with the “islamophobic” Donald J. Trump.

Now instead of softening his previous statements by re-labelling them as “suggestions,” Trump might have held off and done what Muslims fear most, which is to educate himself, and without their “help,” about Islam. He’s a combative sort, and were he to put in hours of study of the canonical texts (and Robert Spencer has published a verse-by-verse exegesis, Blogging the Qur’an, that Trump would find most useful) – and not allow himself to be scared off by the usual claims, e.g., that non-Muslims simply can’t understand the Qur’an because they don’t know Arabic, or can’t interpret a verse or a Tradition (Hadith) correctly unless they know the “context,” the results could be salutary and bracing. Imagine that Trump, fortified with his new knowledge, came out from his corner quoting, able to clarify for his rapt audience what the Qur’an contains, and what the Hadith are, and why both matter to Muslims as sources of authority. Imagine a Trump able to explain how, through the interpretative doctrine of naskh, or abrogation, Muslims are able to reconcile contradictory passages in the Qur’an by abrogating the earlier, “softer” verses in favor of the later, more uncompromising verses. Imagine a Trump who could focus attention (and he now garners far more attention than any other candidate) on a few dozen or so of the most disturbing “Jihad verses” that are cited by ISIS and other terrorists as the textual justification for their behavior. When ISIS smites the necks of the Infidels, its killers are not silent; they tell us they are simply following 8:12 and 47:4 (or other relevant verses for other atrocities). In lieu of uttering general and sometimes vague remarks, Trump can locate his worries in specific verses. “Until we figure out what is going on,” while reasonable, is not as forceful as “so, we need to take a look at those verses Muslim killers keep quoting, such as 8:12 and 47:4 and 9:5 and 9:29 – lemme just read out some of these to you…(here Trump quotes Qur’anically ad libitum).” Trump could force the issue, and brusquely deal with the expected excuses: “Yeah, somebody told me because I don’t know Arabic I can’t really understand these verses, but 80% of the world’s Muslims don’t know any Arabic – and no one says that they can’t possibly understand Islam” or “Don’t go telling me these verses can only be understood in a particular historical context — Muhammad is the ‘perfect man’ (al-insan al-kamil) for all time.” I cannot imagine any candidate except Trump daring to hold up for inspection Muhammad’s marriage to little Aisha, or Muhammad’s expression of pleasure at hearing of the assassinations of Asma bint Marwan and Abu ‘Afak. But he needs to learn, and be ready to deploy in his forthright fashion, these facts and more. This would enrage Muslims, and other defenders of the faith, precisely because Trump would be adducing those biographical episodes (about little Aisha, the Khaybar Oasis, the Battle of the Trench, the poetess Asma bint Marwan, the sex slave Safiyya bint Huyayy) that Muslims, however much for granted they take these things, also know that among the Unbelievers such “details” could be a source of deep embarrassment.

Sadiq Khan, now sensing that Trump is on the defensive (having re-characterized his blunt remarks as “suggestions”), will likely have the chutzpah to continue to insist that “Islam” means “peace.” He will certainly quote 5:32, possibly even as it appeared in Obama’s 2009 remark: “Mr. Trump, perhaps you’ve forgotten – even though your own president Barack Obama quoted verbatim – what the Koran says about killing at 5:32. He said, and I quote, ‘The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.’” But then Trump, properly prepared, could come back immediately with: “Hey, you forgot 5.33. Remember? Here it is: ‘The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land.’ That doesn’t sound so peaceful to me.”

And there is still that other Qur’anic verse always trotted out in defense of a kinder, gentler Islam: “There is no compulsion in religion” (2.256). Imagine Sadiq Khan quoting that staple of Muslim propaganda with smug assurance, convinced that Trump will not have ready a Retort Plausible. And imagine what Trump’s reply could be if he has been properly prepped about the Jizyah: “Oh no, Sadiq? You think the Jizyah-tax is nothing? What if everyone in Europe had to pay 50,000 euros a year in order to stay alive and avoid having to convert to Islam? Just how many people do you think would pay the 50,000 euros? Come on! If that isn’t ‘compulsion,’ I don’t know what is.” What could Sadiq suavely respond?

Sadiq Khan, his smooth front now furrowed, may want to wait a while for a rematch. He’s got a lot on his plate, determined as he is to show those doubting Infidels how moderate he is, and Islam, too, if rightly understood. He’s planning a trade mission to Tel Aviv, which presumably is meant, in its obvious “some of my best friends” way, to signify that all those charges of Muslim antisemitism are baseless. And he’s certainly got to make time to reply to his many well-wishers, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and Bill de Blasio, and so many others whose congratulations are also self-congratulations.
As for Donald J. Trump, hope that he burns the midnight oil, with Qur’an and Hadith and the right guides to both, in order that he might put his combativeness, and even his studied outrageousness, as imagined here, to their best and highest use.


Danish professor: Wrong to see Muslims as victims, they act according to the Qur'an
Petraeus calls for self-censorship to avoid offending Muslims

 

Danish professor: Wrong to see Muslims as victims, they act according to the Qur’an

May 15, 2016 9:46 am By Nicolai Sennels 30 Comments


Excellent point by professor Thomas Hoffmann (photo above): Violent Muslims act upon the Qur’an and the Qur’an’s commandments on how to react to criticism and towards non-Muslims and non-Islamic values. Not upon “racism,” “islamophobia” etc…


Related:
• Danish professor: Islamic State’s terror is founded in the Qur’an

Translated from Uriasposten:
“There is a need to understand the hostility towards the West and Western values on its own terms,” says professor in religious history Thomas Hoffmann: “We must believe what people say. If Muslims say they do something because it is in the Qur’an, we must take their word for it and take their sincerity seriously,” says Thomas Hoffmann. …
“I’ve been a little tired of the description of Muslims as people who are always reactive. As if all that Muslims do is done in a reaction to something that others have done, and that they can not be proactive and take the initiative for better or for worse. Many want to articulate Muslims as passive victims, and thus ignore some theological structures and patterns that are actively used by Muslims themselves.”

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Hugh Fitzgerald: The Education of Donald Trump


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Danish professor: Islamic State’s terror is founded in the Quran


Danish professor: Islamic State’s terror is founded in the Quran

10News December 1, 2015 , by Nicolai Sennels 13 Comments on Danish professor: Islamic State’s terror is founded in the Quran 1011
(Photo above: Thomas Hoffmann)

Radio interview with Thomas Hoffmann, Danish professor in Islamic studies.
Translated from JP:

“To follow the Prophet’s example, his sunna is simply a part of Islam’s DNA – if there is a crisis and times of war, one must of course follow Muhammad’s example: ‘I have a beautiful example of God’s emissary’ (Qur’an 33:21). Sharia is arising out of the attempt to correlate Quranic creed of the Prophet’s exemplary life.’

‘… The Islamic theology developed and crystallized in an unprecedented sovereign power position. In contrast to both Christianity and (rabbinic) Judaism, which developed their earliest theologies of other religious sovereigns than themselves (Romans and Persians), Islam developed under its own Islamic sovereignty. Jihad becomes in this context a theological matter of course – part of the Islamic empires creation.‘ …

“There is an element of this logic in today’s jihad – the powerful and evil West simply deserves to be punished. For the jihadists the Quran includes the ultimate legal authority, namely the principle of reciprocity, for example. 2: 194 … ”

“The special spectacular and cruel tactics used in terrorist attacks, are also founded in Quranic advice on scare tactics.

If we look at the Islamic States’ ‘communiqué’ in connection with the attacks in Paris, we can see for instance. that they begin by quoting the Koran 59:2:

‘It is He who expelled the ones who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture from their homes at the first gathering. You did not think they would leave, and they thought that their fortresses would protect them from Allah ; but [the decree of] Allah came upon them from where they had not expected, and He cast terror into their hearts'”

 

​

An Open Letter To Rita Panahi
By New Matilda on January 16, 2015 Civil Society

Dear Rita Panahi,

I picked up your article in the Daily Telegraph recently entitled ‘Islam, you have a very serious problem’. As I began reading, I was bombarded with your overuse of hyperbolic and emotive language, sweeping generalizations and complete lack of structure.
As each paragraph progressed, I became further enraged with your utter disregard for the consequences of your rash words and bulldozer-like approach to handling the complex issue of terrorism.
As mentioned above the language you used, such as “death cult” perfectly fulfills its desired purpose of whipping loyal Daily Telegraph readers into a frenzy. It is this frenzy that terror attacks like the assault on the offices of Charlie Hebdo are designed for.
The Charlie Hebdo attack wasn’t aimed at suppressing free speech or cartoonists. It was to encourage people like you and your readers to abuse the freedom of speech to play the game of division. This game breeds resentment and hatred towards ordinary Muslims, creating a nightmarish “us” versus “them” scenario, which will drive ordinary Muslims to the stark choice between remaining victims of hatred, or joining the war of hate by turning to extremism.

But, Rita, I hear you say in your article that there is only an “imaginary backlash against the Muslim community”. I beg to differ Rita, as it was hours after the Sydney siege when I saw propositions of “bash a burka day” being made on my Facebook newsfeed, and reports of women wearing veils being assaulted in the street.
I am proud to say that these sick acts and comments promptly initiated the #iwillridewithyou campaign. But, as I type, I am reading of revenge firebomb attacks that have been carried out across mosques in France. In fact, even when I went to read your article again online, regrettably I decided to load the comments section.
This is what was found: “In my opinion, Islam is outdated and has no place on Australian shores” or better yet Rita, “I make it policy never to get into a taxi with a Middle Eastern looking driver. Not that I feel I might be in danger, but I want no part of lining their pockets with our currency”.

Do you not read your comments section before making sweeping statements Rita? Or are you so focussed on keeping up your persona of ‘telling it how it is’ to your consistently racist following that you just don’t care?
From reading the above, it is blatantly obvious that there has been backlash against the Muslim population and that a number of Australians hold strong prejudices towards them. But I do not understand why.
You attempt to make the differentiation between extreme Islamists and regular, moderate Muslims in your article, but that does not explain why you are stating that extremists are the problem of regular Muslims.
More than several Muslim leaders and scholars have publicly disassociated themselves with and condemned the jihadists from the Parisian attacks. Beyond this, they have called for Muslims to attend rallies and peaceful demonstrations so that their stance would be clearly known.
Many of the people in your comment section didn’t think this was happening at all, and that Imams’ silence was “deafening”, so at the end of this letter I have attached a few links regarding their statements.
You will have also noticed the supportive cartoons featured in the Arab press clearly endorsing freedom of speech. Perhaps the Daily Telegraph would consider giving them a little more air-time, so that their readership wasn’t so misinformed by articles such as yours.

Even though Muslims in positions of authority are speaking out, I do not feel that extremists and the action of denouncing extremists are the responsibility of moderate Muslims. I, as a Christian, was not pressured by any group within society to speak out against the atrocities committed by the Christian Anders Breivik, who in 2011 brutally murdered 77 people in Norway.
This example also shows that your point that “in the 21st century only one religion is at the centre of terror attacks around the World” is entirely invalid, as it can also be backed up by the killings of Muslims by Bhuddists in Myanmar.
Certain elements of my own religion do not support “our cherished values of equality, freedom and democracy” as you put it Rita. Take the Westboro Baptist Church for example; they are renowned for their extreme ideologies towards homosexuals, their views on gay people do not reflect equality, yet I do not see you calling them out?



I also don’t feel the need to apologize for them Rita, because I do not remotely share their views or affiliate myself with them in any way, shape or form, similarly to how regular Muslims do not share any kind of connection with terrorists or extremists.
Yet why are you still forcing regular Muslims to apologize, take the blame for and perform damage control for the actions of extremists?
I am not asked to justify why the Bible says a man should not lay with another man. I am not asked to justify why the Bible states that a woman should remain silent. I am not asked to justify basically everything that is written in the book of Leviticus, Rita! Why the double standards?

The “cherished values” that you speak of are also as cherished by Muslims, as they are by the rest of Australians. That’s right, they are Australians. Not just Muslims. There are thousands of Muslims who are second and third generation Australian and call Australia their home.
There are also Australian Muslims whose ancestry can be traced right back to pre-colonial Australia. The two Kouachi brothers responsible for the attacks in Paris were both born in France. They had not “fled” from their “homeland”, they were French. Islam is a faith, stop turning this into an immigration issue.
But if it is Islam that has the problem, as you persistently mentioned in your article, how do you suggest that ordinary Muslims attack “their problem” of “radicalized elements” of their religion? You yourself say jihadists cannot be “reasoned with or counselled into adopting our values of humanity, tolerance and liberty” – values which the majority of Muslims living in the West and abroad have upheld and helped shape wholeheartedly – so how can you expect ordinary Muslims to succeed where the World’s greatest military powers have failed in terms of exterminating the cancer that is extremism.

I am one of the so called “progressives” that searches for ways in which we as united Australian people, Muslim and non-Muslim, can attempt to prevent extremism by looking inwards, something you call “insulting to victims”.
The examples you give of the “progressives’ finger pointing” are heavily weighted towards government policies and in fact do not blame the victims of these attacks, who are regular civilians off the street. Last time I checked, “raising the terror alert, supporting Israel’s right to exist and joining the US-led coalition in the Middle East” were not directly in the hands of the general public.
What is further insulting Rita, is by your reasoning, we owe it to the Muslim victims of the Paris attacks to tell them that their religion was not and is not compatible with the society they were living in. Their deaths are going to be used by you as examples or bargaining chips in the fight for division over unity.

What I find even more disrespectful, Rita, is that you chose to patronizingly say that I as a “progressive” or “enlightened soul” are disrespectful towards victims when you, Rita, write for a newspaper that actively puts lives at risk by running a front page Sydney Siege spread of hostages pressed against a window for their families to see, with a title that had absolutely zero conclusive evidence behind it.
If that isn’t disgusting, degrading and irresponsible behaviour towards victims and their families Rita, I don’t know what is. If you feel so strongly about respecting victims, perhaps you should think about finding a new place of employment.

Finally Rita, following your lead I feel “comfortable to readily call out” YOU and YOUR newspaper for being “incompatible with our cherished value of equality” through your bigoted discrimination against ordinary Muslims by insinuating that Islam alone is to blame for extremists and Islam alone has to deal with this problem.
The world shares universal values Rita, and the world will stand united and fight against the evil that is terrorism. It will not crumble to the division your article encourages.
* Gabi Meek is an 18-year-old Sydney resident, self-described as a “third culture kid” who has recently relocated back to Australia after spending the last 10 years abroad. She is preparing to move to Canberra to begin a flexible double degree in law and international relations at ANU.

ADDITIONAL LINKS
Muslim scholars speaking out against the attacks
Muslim countries speaking out against the attacks
Arab newspaper reactions to the attacks

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Damian Zoot ·
School of guruism
Well said gabi. Did Rita ever respond to this letter?

Like · Reply · Jan 14, 2016 12:35pm




Grahame Charles Gould ·
Administration Position at Medical Facility
Why on earth would she bother? But I have.

Like · Reply · 5 · Jan 26, 2016 5:13pm




Grahame Charles Gould ·
Administration Position at Medical Facility
What a load of twaddle. You spend a lot of time on a very personal attack before getting to your point. You make a lot of fact free assertions.

Rita does well to use the phrase "self-loathing lefties" of people who cannot see how evil Islam is and how great Australia is.

I wonder if you would have used the same tone towards Jews who warned against the Holocaust?

Let's try it.


Let's try it.

"Elie Wiesel, I picked up your article in the <.....> recently entitled ‘Nazism, you have a very serious problem’. As I began reading, I was bombarded with your overuse of hyperbolic and emotive language, sweeping generalizations and complete lack of structure.

As each paragraph progressed, I became further enraged with your utter disregard for the consequences of your rash words and bulldozer-like approach to handling the complex issue of politics.

As mentioned above the language you used, such as “death cult” perfectly fulfills its desired purpose of whipping loyal <......> readers into a frenzy. It is this frenzy that terror attacks like the assault on the offices of <........> (insert a store damaged in Krystalnacht) are designed for."

Hmm.

Yeah, you're right. Jews should not have stirred the Nazis up and caused the Holocaust, like Rita (and me and others) are stirring up Islamic terrorists (who are simply following the commands in the Koran). Yeah, it's the fault of the victims.

Like · Reply · 21 · Jan 26, 2016 5:13pm



Corrie Marnett
Well said Grahame! Excellent comparison. Especially since both the Nazis and the Muslim "faith" have the same ideology in many aspects. Westboro Baptist? LOL What, all of its 90 members? How many people have they killed in 2015? And most people rightly hold contempt for this little group of imbiciles (except for maybe one group who actually kills homosexuals by throwing them off of buildings instead of just writing it on a sign). And, yes, let's blame the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack and all the cartoonists and anyone who exposes the truth about their prophet for the fatwas issued for their deaths! The Quran actually calls for the murder of anyone who dares to criticize Mohammad so we should put the blame with the Quran. ISIS terrorists are just practicing their religion as comanded in their scriptures. How dare anyone point out how misogynistic, anti-Semitic, anti-homosexual, etc the Islamic faith really is. 67% of the Quran is filled with scriptures on what to do with the kafir/infidel "problem"- either tax them and give them dhimmi status, rape them, kill them, behead them, enslave them.... Islamic teachings ARE responsible for Islamic teachings. Who is fighting against the Islamic slavery of 30 million or more slaves in the world TODAY? Is that "racist"? Terrorists and those who support them with funds are actually practicing their faith. Why do we have to pretend that the Quran is not FILLED with verse after verse of killing infidels and dominating the world with violence and perversion until everyone has submitted to Allah?

Like · Reply · 18 · Jan 29, 2016 3:53am



Veronica Wood
Corrie Marnett even Christians dont like the westboro baptists!!!!!!!!
Like · Reply · 2 · Feb 12, 2016 12:49pm



Sally Madgwick
I'm having trouble sharing this on Facebook...
Like · Reply · Jan 27, 2016 2:36pm



Sharon Green ·
Sydney, Australia
Just highlight the link in the URL and copy it (press CTRL + C) then paste (CTRL + V) into the facebook comment panel, and voila!
I'm reposting this is a very large group I admin in. It's Sundat and I think we could all use a good laugh smile emoticon

Like · Reply · Feb 7, 2016 9:51am



Geoff Monohan ·

Goodness Gabi, an opinion is often inhanced when it has some knowledge of the actual subject.
That rebuttal sounded more like a, well there's no need to insult you. You've fallen into the role of a Muslim apologist, one of the distinct charcteristics of almost every Muslim I've known is an inability to except responsibility, the cause of their actions or decisions is always reasoned away as the fault of another, and that narrative is well supported unknowingly by the apologist.
Lets see the Charlie Hebro attacks, a long history there between the Islamists and the magazine. The Islamists have attacked the Hebro building on numerous occasions over the years, a red line for Muslim's is mocking their prophet, depicting MO is forbidden in Islam and drawing him in a cartoon fashion is offensive to Muslim's, and loads of Muslim's wouldn't think twice about defending his honor with lethal violence.

Nothing to do with trying to create division or encouraging us to abuse free speech, purely to avenge MO that one, which also carries significant brownie points (rewards) in Jannah.
You see by not understanding what's going on, the us vs them narrative and apparent hatred towards Muslim's is pedaled by you the apologist, which in turn means a Muslim takes the default position of victim and doesn't have take responsibility for his actions of decision, because you've already justified his response for him.
When the Israel v Palestine tensions flare, or a cartoon of Mo appeared in a Dutch newspaper in 07', or a video appeared online mocking Mo and Islam in 12', Muslim's have took to streets on mass in western countries violent riots breaking out all oer the world, it was a pretty clear how passionate Muslim's felt issue.
When an extremist groups like Boko or IS commit heinous acts, or things like Hebro or the recent Paris attacks takes place. We might get a token press release condemning the atrocities or if it's particularly heinous a Muslim leader might front the press, and condemn the atrocity and reinterate that killing innocent people in Islam is forbidden, yet fail to mention that Muslim's decide who's innocent or not, they might also through in a causitive factor like western foreign policy. Anyway the point is the response comes across like it's a chore being forced, like they don't rally care. Especially when you compare it too a rally supporting Palestine or the riots of 12', they have passion you can tell they mean it. There's been a few a rallies organised against terrorism but very few show.

OK why should Muslim's speak out against extremists or any way feel their associated with acts committed by extremists, and why are they pressured into speaking out. Well of course they don't have to. But Muslim's see themselves as part of an ummah, if a terror law is passed, you'll hear them speak out, social media lights up they feel it demonises all of them, suddenly there all being victimised.

Even know they may not know anyone in Palestine when Isreal does something they all feel a greivance, same the online video in 2012 one person posted that, but they all felt aggreviated and violently rioted in Sydney clashing with police, we didn't have anything to do with it. Drone attacks aimed at the Taliban, or airstrikes aimed at ISIS and the invasion of Iraq, they might not know anyone involved but because it's western agression against Muslim's they all feel a greivance from these actions. Also anything that ever goes a rye in the Islamic world is alwas the fault of the west, never the actions of Muslims they've got greivances against the west dating back to the crusades, being kicked out of Spain 500 years ago, being driven from the gates of Vienna, the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate. You name it they have an underlying greivance to feel persecuted by for every weel of the year.
The point is you can't really claim a greivance for anything that happens to a Muslim, if you're not prepared to feel same way when a Muslim is the perpretrator.
As for Bhuddists killing Muslim's in Myanmar, might want to read up on that one. The behaviour of Muslim's towards Bhuddists for decades finally drew that reponse, Muslim's brought that all upon themselves.

The fact is Gabi on every continant almost every other day someones committing a terorist act in the name of Islam. The reality is there is an extremist element within Islam, that causes some Muslim's to become radicalised and commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam, if Muslim's want to live in a civilised country like here or in the UK, they have to acknowledge the problem and jump on it. Muslim's are permanently the victim of something and constantly supported by the apologists, regardless of our actions the blame if a Muslim becomes radicalised will always be deflected elsewhere, that has to cease. We can't build a relationship based on everything being our fault.

Like · Reply · 22 · Feb 4, 2016 6:05pm



Sharon Green ·
Sydney, Australia
Very well said Geoff!!
I think young Gabi might have been expecting a flood of public support for her clueless teenage diatribe?
Bet she was rather disappointed. If I'd been stupid enough to write that article, I'd be requesting the publicaton remove it before I suffered any fruther ridicule for writing such drivel and you'd think the publication would want to disaccosiate itself from her ignorance too...
Like · Reply · 8 · Feb 7, 2016 9:49am



Peter Raffaelli ·
School of Common Sense, University of Life
One day you will grow up and attain enough life experience to make informed judgements, not just the ones that left biased professors and your perpetually offended social circle continually perpetuate.

There is no "integration" with the radical extreme that you continually apologise for this is a moment in history where we choose the fate for our Western culture at the fork in the road.

Preservation or annihilation.

Idiots like you push us toward the latter.

Like · Reply · 23 · Feb 6, 2016 5:49pm



Craig Fawcett
Yeah, blow it out your arse< Gabi! #4fuckssack

Like · Reply · 3 · Feb 6, 2016 8:13pm



Elaine Stokes
I only read a small amount of this shit, just couldn't go on! Sick and bloody tired of the likes of you waffling on , putting shit of someone who can see the situation as it is.
You haven't lived here for years so you would not have seen the downhill spiral this country is in, being a Uni student explains most of the rubbish your spouting, I would like to meet you in thirty years when you've grown up a bit, might have something worthwhile to say then.
Like · Reply · 9 · Feb 6, 2016 9:18pm


Ken McCarthy ·
Miller High
Don't hold your breath.

Like · Reply · 3 · Feb 9, 2016 10:47am



Sharon Green ·
Sydney, Australia
Not much to say here really other than the commenters below all express my thoughts very succinctly.
Gabi, stop trying to blow your own trumpet. You're EIGHTEEN for goodness sake ... just because you've lived overseas for ten years doesn't mean you have a clue about anything.

I'm taking a guess that Dad had a posting which saw you join the international expat community, go through an international school education where you became the quintessential Expat Brat?

Time to grow up love. You aren't special, you're just a kid trying to out word adults on an issue you clearly have no "true" understanding of.

Come back and tell us your opinions AFTER you have lived in an islamic country "as an adult" for a few years. Get out of home, where mummy and daddy protect you, and go start living life and learning how the world actually works before trying to join in with the big people. This is another trait of the expat brat.

Or better still - come bnack and let us know when you finally received your "flexible double degree in law and international relations at ANU". Good luck with that. I guess you've heard the rumour that you don't actually need to be intelligent to get a degree - you just need good memory?

(The funny thing was, as I was reading this article I thought "Gawd, this sounds like a silly kid, trying to get all wordy because his/her vocab isn't that great" .... imagine the giggle I had when I got to the bottom and read your blurb about being a "third culture kid" who spent ten years living "abroad"" ... indicating mainly the UK I would think?)

Like · Reply · 8 · Feb 7, 2016 9:45am



Matthew Hall ·
Works at Self-Employed
Come back and see us when you grow up...a lot!

Like · Reply · 5 · Feb 7, 2016 10:18am



Veronica Wood
whiny millenial maniacal ravings

Like · Reply · 5 · Feb 9, 2016 12:05am



Marie Billings
Uni students all have the wisdom of life. Yes 18 years old & knows it all. You have no idea what is really happening to our country. 20-30 years time, you might not be defending the scurge that is Islam. You may live in a completely different world. One where being a woman is not great. Do your research a little better love.

Like · Reply · 3 · Feb 9, 2016 11:43am



Phil Smith ·
Henry Fanshawe Grammar School
I think it's a case of ' I know everything now so I'd better say it before I change my mind after I realise what's really going on in the world ' write another letter in 30 years time Gabi if as a woman your allowed to .

Like · Reply · 2 · Feb 11, 2016 5:46pm



BD Cricket
Well written article Gabi. Rita is very envious of the progress Waleed Aly made and is probably very upset at the fact her raciophobic articles get her no nominations whereas Waleed is winning one after another. Good Luck as i see that you will become a speck of the dust in the horizon such mindless garbage that only speaks of hatred in your articles. If you want to become relevant, stop exploiting the race card as a vechicle to project you rather write about real issues that affect as a whole.

Like · Reply · Apr 11, 2016 12:08pm



Kon Cili ·
Melbourne, Australia
Gabi you need to grow up. Your letter is outright stupid and and such showed us your real
level in brain department - BIG FAT ZERO !!!!

Like · Reply · May 18, 2016 8:28am



Ken Tregoning
Question, What if the Son of GOD returned to earth at this time? Would the Muslims claim him or execute him cutting his head off as a threat to the memory of their beliefs, What would it take for all Muslims to make peace with and not war against christianity, If I could but change one Muslims mind that we are not his enemy nor that our faith is a threat to him, nor his faith to us, could we believe in one another again as brothers and sisters. God.... that I had that power.

Like · Reply · May 18, 2016 4:09pm · Edited



Peter Wiseman ·
Bendigo, Victoria
Yawn. Just another empty rant by a "self-loathing leftie" who'll fit in perfectly at ANU.

Like · Reply · 6 hrs

https://newmatilda.com/2015/01/16/open-letter-rita-panahi/

 

​

Robert Spencer in FrontPage: Huffington Post Calls on Christians to Recognize Muhammad as a Prophet

May 19, 2016 1:18 pm By Robert Spencer 32 Comments
When Leftists ally with Muslims, they begin to proselytize for Islam. My latest in FrontPage:


Can you imagine the Huffington Post publishing a series of articles calling upon Muslims to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Neither can I. But the HuffPo seems intent on compelling Christians to accept Muhammad as a prophet. In publishing Craig Considine and now Ian Mevorach both calling on Christians to accept Muhammad, the Huffington Post illustrates what happens to Leftists when they ally with Islamic supremacists: they fall completely under their sway and begin to proselytize for Islam.
Writes Mevorach: “I do not have space in this article to explore the many Qur’anic verses directly addressed to Christians, but if we were to receive them our religion would be transformed for the better and would come into balance with Judaism and Islam.”

So apparently the problem in the world today is Christianity, in being out of “balance” with Judaism and Islam, and that “balance” can be restored or attained by encouraging Christians to “receive” the “many Qur’anic verses directly addressed to Christians.”
But Mevorach, a cramped man, does “not have space” to “explore” those many verses. Mr. Mevorach, I am happy to help. Here are the principal Qur’an verses regarding Christians:

Jesus is not the Son of God, belief in the Trinity is “excess”: “O People of the Scripture, do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah and His word which He directed to Mary and a soul from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers. And do not say, ‘Three’; desist — it is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And sufficient is Allah as Disposer of affairs.” — Qur’an 4:171

“It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! when He determines a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.” — Qur’an 19:35

Jesus was not crucified: “And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah’s messenger — they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain.” — Qur’an 4:157

Those who believe in the divinity of Christ are “disbelievers”: “They have certainly disbelieved who say that Allah is Christ, the son of Mary.” — Qur’an 5:17

Christians “forgot a good part” of the divine revelations they received: “From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it is they have done.” — Qur’an 5:14

Muslims should not take Jews or Christians as friends: “O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.” — Qur’an 5:51

Those who believe that Jesus is God’s Son are accursed: “The Jews call Ezra a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth! ” — Qur’an 9:30

Christians who do not become Muslims “are the most vile of created beings”: “Nor did those who were given the Scripture become divided until after there had come to them clear evidence. And they were not commanded except to worship Allah, sincere to Him in religion, inclining to truth, and to establish prayer and to give zakah. And that is the correct religion. Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the most vile of created beings.” — Qur’an 98:6

Jesus’ mission was to proclaim the coming of Muhammad: “And when Jesus, the son of Mary, said, ‘O children of Israel, indeed I am the messenger of Allah to you confirming what came before me of the Torah and bringing good tidings of a messenger to come after me, whose name is Ahmad.’ But when he came to them with clear evidences, they said, ‘This is obvious magic.’” — Qur’an 61:6

Muslims must fight against and subjugate Christians: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, even if they are of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” — Qur’an 9:29

Ian Mevorach and the Huffington Post thus contend that if Christians deny the divinity of Christ and the crucifixion (and hence also the resurrection and redemption) and accept that those who hold such doctrines are under a divine curse and must be warred against and subjugated, their “religion would be transformed for the better.” The Huffington Post is asking them to abandon traditional Christianity and embrace Islam – while the reverse call would be unthinkable from them, and would in fact be denounced as “Islamophobic.”
A prominent Leftist publication openly proselytizing for Islam – the religion with a holy book that denies and heaps contempt upon the core doctrines of the religion that shaped the West’s ideology and identity, and that is best known for numbering hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of adherents who hate the West and are determined to destroy it. That’s how deep the cultural rot goes today.

Pakistani Muslim arrested crossing Texas border, lied to FBI
Dying GOP Senator spends his last days apologizing to Muslims for Trump

 

Hugh Fitzgerald: Pope Francis: Islam and Christianity Share “the Idea of Conquest”

May 19, 2016 12:45 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 22 Comments



Pope Francis continues to astonish. He has just said, in an interview with the French Catholic paper La Croix, that “the idea of conquest is inherent to the soul of Islam.” As far as his understanding of Islam goes, this is a marked improvement over his disturbing statement, back in November 2013, that the “Koran is a book of peace” and “Islam is a peaceful religion.” Now he at last recognizes – how could he not, after yet another year of Muslim bombs and bloodletting all over the place? – that Islam has something to do with “conquest,” that is, spreading Islam by conquering non-Muslim lands. He must have been doing some reading, possibly even learning more about the life and works of that prophet and warlord, Muhammad.

But then, remembering to act as advocate for Islam, he immediately supplies a preposterous Tu Quoque against Christianity (and thus against himself), claiming that “it is also possible to interpret the objective of Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.” The “same idea of conquest”? What is the similarity between peaceful missionaries armed only with the Bible, sent out to persuade the pagans, and the armed might of Muslim Arab armies waging Jihad, with a religious mandate to subdue by force the Infidels, and then to present them with a stark choice: to be killed, to be at once converted (no complicated theological discussions needed), or to endure the dismal and deliberately humiliating condition of dhimmi, with its many social, economic, and political disabilities? The sleight-of-word that would treat the two ways of spreading the respective faiths, as both involving “conquest,” is bizarre. The Pope does not say outright that the objectives are the same; with pusillanimity aforethought, he says “it is possible to interpret the objective in terms of the same idea of conquest.” But the “objective” of Muslims conducting Jihad is to subjugate and impose; the “objective” of those Christian disciples sent out to spread the Gospel was to persuade.

The Pope also demonstrates a desire to rescue Islam from suspicion: “Today, I don’t think that there is a fear of Islam as such but of ISIS and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam.” On what basis does he make this claim? Pope Francis claims there is fear only of ISIS, and not of Islam “as such.” But when non-Muslims are polled in France, in Germany, in Great Britain, in Italy, in Poland, in Denmark, in Sweden, as to whether they fear Islam, or are suspicious of Muslims, the answer increasingly is Yes, despite the frantic efforts of members of the media and political elites (and now Pope Francis) to substitute ISIS for Islam. Europeans are coming to understand that ISIS is merely Islam on stilts, a version that attempts to mimic the behavior and beliefs of the earliest Muslims. And why does Pope Francis claim that ISIS’ war of conquest is “partly drawn from Islam”? It is based entirely on Islam; had there been other, non-Islamic sources for ISIS’ ideology and its acts, you can be sure the Pope would have identified them.

The Pope says nothing about where the current “conquest” by Muslims is most in evidence – Europe itself — and by what means. He fails to discuss the duty of Jihad in Islam, or how Jihad can be conducted using whatever instruments are available and effective. In Western Europe, the most effective instrument at this point is not combat, qitaal, but the seemingly inexorable growth in Muslim numbers. Conquest need not be by force of arms; demography will do. Far from expressing any alarm over this amazing Muslim invasion of Europe, the Pope repeatedly has discussed the duty he thinks Europeans have to take in more and more of these Muslim migrants. And he is careful to minimize differences (between Islam and Christianity) where they are great, and exaggerate differences (between Islam and ISIS), where they are small. Both his heart, and his rhetoric, are in the wrong place.
Then there is the Pope’s duty to not misrepresent the past. It appears that he is willing to pass over in silence the role of Christianity in Europe’s history, in order – so he must think — to win temporary favor from Muslims in the present, and attain that famous interfaith dialogue on which he keeps placing his hopes. When asked why he never refers to the “Christian roots” of Europe, Pope Francis said he “sometimes dreads the tone [of those who mention those roots], which can seem triumphalist or even vengeful.” This objection is difficult to comprehend. The Pope refuses to make a simple statement of fact, which even the most convinced atheist could not deny; indeed, the Pope does not deny the “Christian roots” of Europe. Instead, he just won’t mention it, in his tender solicitousness for Muslim sensibilities, and his worry that because some people at some time have mentioned Europe’s “Christian roots” in a tone he describes as “triumphalist or even vengeful,” then he, Pope Francis, should refrain from mentioning those “Christian roots,” because he just might, you see, remind people of those who in the past have sounded “triumphalist or even vengeful.” And then, to complete the absurdity, he alludes to the Original Sin of White Western Christianity, Colonialism. Mention of “Christian roots” takes on, he claims, “colonialist overtones.” How? The “Christian roots” of Europe antedate colonialism by some 1600 years. The Pope, in a straightforward and sober tone, should be able to acknowledge those “Christian roots” of Europe without worrying about non-existent “colonialist overtones.” Don’t expect this Pope, by the way, ever to dare to recognize that the most successful example of colonialism in world history is that of Islam itself, where the colonized are taught to despise or forget their own pre-Islamic histories.

Is it really too much for the Pope to describe the differences between conducting Jihad and spreading the Gospel? Is it beyond him to proclaim the role of Christianity in Europe’s history, without sounding “triumphalist or even vengeful” or smuggling in “colonialist overtones”? If he doesn’t feel up to it, why not cut to the chase and try another solution: hand over the Papacy to the ghost of the islamochristian Arab Edward Said? What better way to win the trust of Muslims, so that the “dialogue” the Pope keeps hoping for can at long last begin? Or, taking a different tack, in an I-have-a-dream mode, why should Pope Francis not reverse course and ask for some history lessons from his predecessor, and put that dialogue-chasing on permanent hold?

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Raymond Ibrahim: Pope Francis’ Jihad on Christianity

May 20, 2016 1:34 pm By Raymond Ibrahim 19 Comments



The man known as the pope and the vicar of Christ – but who in light of what follows is probably best referred to by his real name, Jorge Mario Bergoglio – recently gave an interview demonstrating why “so many people think he is the anti-Christ.”
The more salient features follow:

Christ as Warmonger
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In classic relativistic fashion, Jorge claims:
It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.
Only someone who is ignorant of or hostile to Christianity can make such a claim. To state the obvious: yes, both Christianity and Islam seek to win converts. However, Jesus’s call to his disciples to “go forth and make disciples of all nations” in Matthew’s Gospel was understood and practiced peacefully. Disciples preached; people converted. No violence, no coercion. In fact, it was Christians – chief among them disciples and evangelists – who were persecuted and killed simply for preaching Christ, first by the pagan Roman empire and later (and still) by Islam.
Conversely, Muhammad said, “I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped – Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my commandments (The Al Qaeda Reader, p.12).” The Koran is replete with commands to do violence on those who refuse to submit to Islam – and yes, in ways that far transcend comparison with Old Testament violence.
Unlike the spread of Christianity, Islam spread through the sword. This is a simple, historic fact, acknowledged by more sober European leaders: the overwhelming majority of territory that today constitutes the “Muslim world” was seized from non-Muslims by great violence and bloodshed. Two thirds of Christendom – the Mideast and North Africa – was to be swallowed up by Islam a century after its founding. Even Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Arab raiders in the name of Islam in the year 846.
The making of martyrs is the only similarity that Christianity and Islam share when it comes to how they spread: while Christians were martyred for their faith, Muslims martyred whoever refused their faith.

Dislike for “Christian Roots” of Europe (or Dislike for Truth)
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According to Jorge:
[W]hen I hear talk of the Christian roots of Europe, I sometimes dread the tone, which can seem triumphalist or even vengeful. It then takes on colonialist overtones.
One expects such ahistorical multicultural drivel from a clueless atheist – not the pope. A quick education for Jorge: the “Christian roots of Europe” are a fact. For centuries, after the aforementioned Islamic conquests of the Middle East, the original heartland of Christianity, Europe became the heart and standard-bearer of the Christian faith. That’s why it was called “Christendom.” How can the supposed vicar, or representative, of Christ “dread” this fact, denouncing it as “triumphalist or even vengeful”?

Christianity as a Welcome Doormat

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Apparently for Jorge, Europeans may express their Christian roots and faith – but only by being “welcome” doormats:
Yes, Europe has Christian roots and it is Christianity’s responsibility to water those roots. But this must be done in a spirit of service as in the washing of the feet. Christianity’s duty to Europe is one of service. … Christianity’s contribution to a culture is that of Christ in the washing of the feet.
So according to the head of the Catholic Church, the entire purpose and message of Christianity is the “washing of feet” – or, in this context, taking in millions of Muslim migrants, many of whom are openly hostile to Christianity.
Yes, Christ served and washed his disciples’ feet and preached mercy and compassion – but that was hardly the sole or even primary purpose of his mission. He offered an entire worldview founded on profound theological assertions. When people erred by profaning the temple, he didn’t “turn the other cheek” (let alone wash their feet). He whipped them. He didn’t preach naivety – “open your doors to those who have a long history of subjugating and still seek to subjugate you” – but rather taught his followers to be “wise as serpents.” He spoke of everlasting hell and torments – indeed, more so than anyone else in the entire Bible. That’s why all Christian denominations have traditionally held that being Christian far transcends “the washing of feet.”
But for Jorge, the only aspects of Christianity to be expressed are those that benefit Muslim migrants, some of whom hate and persecute Christians in Europe.

The Muslim World’s Problems: Our Fault and Responsibility

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When asked if Europe has the capacity to continue accepting so many migrants, Jorge said “the deeper question is why there are so many migrants now.” Like a true apologist for Islam, he went on to cite anything and everything – arms manufacturers, hunger, and, parroting the Obama administration, unemployment – as causes for upheavals in the Middle East, while ignoring the elephant in the room: Islamic culture, which engenders dysfunctional, intolerant, violent, authoritarian, and tribal societies.
Simply look to the birthplace of Islam, where Islamic law is strictly upheld: Saudi Arabia is wealthier than most Western nations and has none of the problems cited by Jorge, yet it too is barbaric, corrupt, backwards, and hostile to all who do not profess Islam. Why?

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In the same Gospel of Matthew that Jorge disingenuously cited to conflate the mission of Jesus’s disciples with the mission of Muhammad’s jihadis, Christ declares, “Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.”
If ever there was a person whom this admonition seems to pertain to – a man who holds the authoritative office of “representative of Christ,” but who empowers the historic (and ongoing) enemy of Christianity, while urging Europeans to suppress their Christian heritage and express their faith exclusively by the “washing of feet,” that is, by meekly lying down before Muslims – surely Jorge Mario Bergoglio fits the bill.


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As I predicted, as did anyone who warned of the consequences of siding with the Muslims against the Christians in the Balkans.
The attacks against me for standing with the Serbs were merciless.
For years, I warned that we were paving the way for an Islamic state in the heart of Europe, and now they have it.
Of course, the NY Times is like the hunchback who can’t see its own hump.
They blame the Saudis, when it’s all driven by Islam. Period.
The American people deserve an explanation as to why we chose to aid the Islamic jihad in Kosovo. Instead, they are fed more lies, more taqiyya, in the efforts of dhimmi Western leaders to declare Kosovo an independent state, an Islamic state in the heart of Europe.

Now the NY Times is shocked and dismayed that Kosovo has gone ….. jihad.
And the millions of Muslim migrants in the current hijrah will just increase their army.
Look at what we did. Watch this documentary on the bombing of Serbia (in 1999).

- See more at:

http://pamelageller.com/2016/05/kos...he-heart-of-europe.html/#sthash.KkxOy0ft.dpuf

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How Kosovo Was Turned Into Fertile Ground for ISIS



Extremist clerics and secretive associations funded by Saudis and others have transformed a once-tolerant Muslim society into a font of extremism.

By CARLOTTA GALLMAY 21, 2016

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Every Friday, just yards from a statue of Bill Clinton with arm aloft in a cheery wave, hundreds of young bearded men make a show of kneeling to pray on the sidewalk outside an improvised mosque in a former furniture store.

The mosque is one of scores built here with Saudi government money and blamed for spreading Wahhabism — the conservative ideology dominant in Saudi Arabia — in the 17 years since an American-led intervention wrested tiny Kosovo from Serbian oppression.
Since then — much of that time under the watch of American officials — Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.

Kosovo now finds itself, like the rest of Europe, fending off the threat of radical Islam. Over the last two years, the police have identified 314 Kosovars — including two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children — who have gone abroad to join the Islamic State, the highest number per capita in Europe.
They were radicalized and recruited, Kosovo investigators say, by a corps of extremist clerics and secretive associations funded by Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab gulf states using an obscure, labyrinthine network of donations from charities, private individuals and government ministries.
“They promoted political Islam,” said Fatos Makolli, the director of Kosovo’s counterterrorism police. “They spent a lot of money to promote it through different programs mainly with young, vulnerable people, and they brought in a lot of Wahhabi and Salafi literature. They brought these people closer to radical political Islam, which resulted in their radicalization.”

After two years of investigations, the police have charged 67 people, arrested 14 imams and shut down 19 Muslim organizations for acting against the Constitution, inciting hatred and recruiting for terrorism. The most recent sentences, which included a 10-year prison term, were handed down on Friday.
It is a stunning turnabout for a land of 1.8 million people that not long ago was among the most pro-American Muslim societies in the world. Americans were welcomed as liberators after leading months of NATO bombing in 1999 that spawned an independent Kosovo.

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American bombing of Serbian positions in Kosovo in 1999 during the air campaign by NATO. Credit Jerome Delay/Associated Press


After the war, United Nations officials administered the territory and American forces helped keep the peace. The Saudis arrived, too, bringing millions of euros in aid to a poor and war-ravaged land.
But where the Americans saw a chance to create a new democracy, the Saudis saw a new land to spread Wahhabism.
“There is no evidence that any organization gave money directly to people to go to Syria,” Mr. Makolli said. “The issue is they supported thinkers who promote violence and jihad in the name of protecting Islam.”


A portrait of Bill Clinton on a back street in Pristina near Bill Clinton Boulevard. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times


Kosovo now has over 800 mosques, 240 of them built since the war and blamed for helping indoctrinate a new generation in Wahhabism. They are part of what moderate imams and officials here describe as a deliberate, long-term strategy by Saudi Arabia to reshape Islam in its image, not only in Kosovo but around the world.
Saudi diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2015 reveal a system of funding for mosques, Islamic centers and Saudi-trained clerics that spans Asia, Africa and Europe. In New Delhi alone, 140 Muslim preachers are listed as on the Saudi Consulate’s payroll.
All around Kosovo, families are grappling with the aftermath of years of proselytizing by Saudi-trained preachers. Some daughters refuse to shake hands with or talk to male relatives. Some sons have gone off to jihad. Religious vigilantes have threatened — or committed — violence against academics, journalists and politicians.

The Balkans, Europe’s historical fault line, have yet to heal from the ethnic wars of the 1990s. But they are now infected with a new intolerance, moderate imams and officials in the region warn.
How Kosovo and the very nature of its society was fundamentally recast is a story of a decades-long global ambition by Saudi Arabia to spread its hard-line version of Islam — heavily funded and systematically applied, including with threats and intimidation by followers.

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Idriz Bilalli, an imam in Podujevo, has sought to curb extremists and has received death threats. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times


The Missionaries Arrive

After the war ended in 1999, Idriz Bilalli, the imam of the central mosque in Podujevo, welcomed any help he could get.


Podujevo, home to about 90,000 people in northeast Kosovo, was a reasonably prosperous town with high schools and small businesses in an area hugged by farmland and forests. It was known for its strong Muslim tradition even in a land where people long wore their religion lightly.
After decades of Communist rule when Kosovo was part of Yugoslavia, men and women mingle freely, schools are coeducational, and girls rarely wear the veil. Still, Serbian paramilitary forces burned down 218 mosques as part of their war against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, who are 95 percent Muslim. Mr. Bilalli needed help to rebuild.
When two imams in their 30s, Fadil Musliu and Fadil Sogojeva, who were studying for master’s degrees in Saudi Arabia, showed up after the war with money to organize summer religion courses, Mr. Bilalli agreed to help.

The imams were just two of some 200 Kosovars who took advantage of scholarships after the war to study Islam in Saudi Arabia. Many, like them, returned with missionary zeal.
Soon, under Mr. Musliu’s tutelage, pupils started adopting a rigid manner of prayer, foreign to the moderate Islamic traditions of this part of Europe. Mr. Bilalli recognized the influence, and he grew concerned.
“This is Wahhabism coming into our society,” Mr. Bilalli, 52, said in a recent interview.
Mr. Bilalli trained at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s, and as a student he had been warned by a Kosovar professor to guard against the cultural differences of Wahhabism. He understood there was a campaign of proselytizing, pushed by the Saudis.
“The first thing the Wahhabis do is to take members of our congregation, who understand Islam in the traditional Kosovo way that we had for generations, and try to draw them away from this understanding,” he said. “Once they get them away from the traditional congregation, then they start bombarding them with radical thoughts and ideas.”
“The main goal of their activity is to create conflict between people,” he said. “This first creates division, and then hatred, and then it can come to what happened in Arab countries, where war starts because of these conflicting ideas.”

From the outset, the newly arriving clerics sought to overtake the Islamic Community of Kosovo, an organization that for generations has been the custodian of the tolerant form of Islam that was practiced in the region, townspeople and officials say.
Muslims in Kosovo, which was a part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, follow the Hanafi school of Islam, traditionally a liberal version that is accepting of other religions.
But all around the country, a new breed of radical preachers was setting up in neighborhood mosques, often newly built with Saudi money.
In some cases, centuries-old buildings were bulldozed, including a historic library in Gjakova and several 400-year-old mosques, as well as shrines, graveyards and Dervish monasteries, all considered idolatrous in Wahhabi teaching.
From their bases, the Saudi-trained imams propagated Wahhabism’s tenets: the supremacy of Sharia law as well as ideas of violent jihad and takfirism, which authorizes the killing of Muslims considered heretics for not following its interpretation of Islam.
The Saudi-sponsored charities often paid salaries and overhead costs, and financed courses in religion, as well as English and computer classes, moderate imams and investigators explained.

But the charitable assistance often had conditions attached. Families were given monthly stipends on the condition that they attended sermons in the mosque and that women and girls wore the veil, human rights activists said.
“People were so needy, there was no one who did not join,” recalled Ajnishahe Halimi, a politician who campaigned to have a radical Albanian imam expelled after families complained of abuse.








Gjilan, a town of about 90,000 where a moderate imam was kidnapped and beaten by extremists. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Threats Intensify

Within a few years of the war’s end, the older generation of traditional clerics began to encounter aggression from young Wahhabis.
Paradoxically, some of the most serious tensions built in Gjilan, an eastern Kosovo town of about 90,000, where up to 7,000 American troops were stationed as part of Kosovo’s United Nations-run peacekeeping force at Camp Bondsteel.
“They came in the name of aid,” one moderate imam in Gjilan, Enver Rexhepi, said of the Arab charities. “But they came with a background of different intentions, and that’s where the Islamic religion started splitting here.”

One day in 2004, he recalled, he was threatened by one of the most aggressive young Wahhabis, Zekirja Qazimi, a former madrasa student then in his early 20s.
Inside his mosque, Mr. Rexhepi had long displayed an Albanian flag. Emblazoned with a double-headed eagle, it was a popular symbol of Kosovo’s liberation struggle.
But strict Muslim fundamentalists consider the depiction of any living being as idolatrous. Mr. Qazimi tore the flag down. Mr. Rexhepi put it back.
“It will not go long like this,” Mr. Qazimi told him angrily, Mr. Rexhepi recounted.
Within days, Mr. Rexhepi was abducted and savagely beaten by masked men in woods above Gjilan. He later accused Mr. Qazimi of having been behind the attack, but police investigations went nowhere.
Ten years later, in 2014, after two young Kosovars blew themselves up in suicide bombings in Iraq and Turkey, investigators began an extensive investigation into the sources of radicalism. Mr. Qazimi was arrested hiding in the same woods. On Friday, a court sentenced him to 10 years in prison after he faced charges of inciting hatred and recruiting for a terrorist organization.

Before Mr. Qazimi was arrested, his influence was profound, under what investigators now say was the sway of Egyptian-based extremists and the patronage of Saudi and other gulf Arab sponsors.
By the mid-2000s, Saudi money and Saudi-trained clerics were already exerting influence over the Islamic Community of Kosovo. The leadership quietly condoned the drift toward conservatism, critics of the organization say.
Mr. Qazimi was appointed first to a village mosque, and then to El-Kuddus mosque on the edge of Gjilan. Few could counter him, not even Mustafa Bajrami, his former teacher, who was elected head of the Islamic Community of Gjilan in 2012.
Mr. Bajrami comes from a prominent religious family — his father was the first chief mufti of Yugoslavia during the Communist period. He holds a doctorate in Islamic studies. Yet he remembers pupils began rebelling against him whenever he spoke against Wahhabism.
He soon realized that the students were being taught beliefs that differed from the traditional moderate curriculum by several radical imams in lectures after hours. He banned the use of mosques after official prayer times.

Hostility only grew. He would notice a dismissive gesture in the congregation during his sermons, or someone would curse his wife, or mutter “apostate” or “infidel” as he passed.
In the village, Mr. Qazimi’s influence eventually became so disruptive that residents demanded his removal after he forbade girls and boys to shake hands. But in Gjilan he continued to draw dozens of young people to his after-hours classes.
“They were moving 100 percent according to lessons they were taking from Zekirja Qazimi,” Mr. Bajrami said in an interview. “One hundred percent, in an ideological way.”


Evening prayer at the mosque of the radical imam Fadil Musliu on the outskirts of Pristina, the capital. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times


Extremism Spreads

Over time, the Saudi-trained imams expanded their work.
By 2004, Mr. Musliu, one of the master’s degree students from Podujevo who studied in Saudi Arabia, had graduated and was imam of a mosque in the capital, Pristina.
In Podujevo, he set up a local charitable organization called Devotshmeria, or Devotion, which taught religion classes and offered social programs for women, orphans and the poor. It was funded by Al Waqf al Islami, a Saudi organization that was one of the 19 eventually closed by investigators.

Mr. Musliu put a cousin, Jetmir Rrahmani, in charge.
“Then I knew something was starting that would not bring any good,” said Mr. Bilalli, the moderate cleric who had started out teaching with him. In 2004, they had a core of 20 Wahhabis.
“That was only the beginning,” Mr. Bilalli said. “They started multiplying.”
Mr. Bilalli began a vigorous campaign against the spread of unauthorized mosques and Wahhabi teaching. In 2008, he was elected head of the Islamic Community of Podujevo and instituted religion classes for women, in an effort to undercut Devotshmeria.

As he sought to curb the extremists, Mr. Bilalli received death threats, including a note left in the mosque’s alms box. An anonymous telephone caller vowed to make him and his family disappear, he said.
“Anyone who opposes them, they see as an enemy,” Mr. Bilalli said.
He appealed to the leadership of the Islamic Community of Kosovo. But by then it was heavily influenced by Arab gulf sponsors, he said, and he received little support.
When Mr. Bilalli formed a union of fellow moderates, the Islamic Community of Kosovo removed him from his post. His successor, Bekim Jashari, equally concerned by the Saudi influence, nevertheless kept up the fight.
“I spent 10 years in Arab countries and specialized in sectarianism within Islam,” Mr. Jashari said. “It’s very important to stop Arab sectarianism from being introduced to Kosovo.”

Mr. Jashari had a couple of brief successes. He blocked the Saudi-trained imam Mr. Sogojeva from opening a new mosque, and stopped a payment of 20,000 euros, about $22,400, intended for it from the Saudi charity Al Waqf al Islami.
He also began a website, Speak Now, to counter Wahhabi teaching. But he remains so concerned about Wahhabi preachers that he never lets his 19-year-old son attend prayers on his own.
The radical imams Mr. Musliu and Mr. Sogojeva still preach in Pristina, where for prayers they draw crowds of young men who glare at foreign reporters.
Mr. Sogojeva dresses in a traditional robe and banded cleric’s hat, but his newly built mosque is an incongruous modern multistory building. He admonished his congregation with a rapid-fire list of dos and don’ts in a recent Friday sermon.
Neither imam seems to lack funds.

In an interview, Mr. Musliu insisted that he was financed by local donations, but confirmed that he had received Saudi funding for his early religion courses.
The instruction, he said, is not out of line with Kosovo’s traditions. The increase in religiosity among young people was natural after Kosovo gained its freedom, he said.
“Those who are not believers and do not read enough, they feel a bit shocked,” he said. “But we coordinated with other imams, and everything was in line with Islam.”


The entrance to the grounds of the Serbian Orthodox monastery in Decani in western Kosovo. In January, four armed Islamists passed through the checkpoint and were arrested at the monastery gates.

Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times


A Tilt Toward Terrorism

The influence of the radical clerics reached its apex with the war in Syria, as they extolled the virtues of jihad and used speeches and radio and television talks shows to urge young people to go there.
Mr. Qazimi, who was given the 10-year prison sentence, even organized a summer camp for his young followers.
“It is obligated for every Muslim to participate in jihad,” he told them in one videotaped talk. “The Prophet Muhammad says that if someone has a chance to take part in jihad and doesn’t, he will die with great sins.”
“The blood of infidels is the best drink for us Muslims,” he said in another recording.
Among his recruits, investigators say, were three former civilian employees of American contracting companies at Camp Bondsteel, where American troops are stationed. They included Lavdrim Muhaxheri, an Islamic State leader who was filmed executing a man in Syria with a rocket-propelled grenade.
After the suicide bombings, the authorities opened a broad investigation and found that the Saudi charity Al Waqf al Islami had been supporting associations set up by preachers like Mr. Qazimi in almost every regional town.

Al Waqf al Islami was established in the Balkans in 1989. Most of its financing came from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, Kosovo investigators said in recent interviews. Unexplained gaps in its ledgers deepened suspicions that the group was surreptitiously funding clerics who were radicalizing young people, they said.
Investigators from Kosovo’s Financial Intelligence Unit found that Al Waqf al Islami, which had an office in central Pristina and a staff of 12, ran through €10 million from 2000 through 2012. Yet they found little paperwork to explain much of the spending.
More than €1 million went to mosque building. But one and a half times that amount was disbursed in unspecified cash withdrawals, which may have also gone to enriching its staff, the investigators said.

Only 7 percent of the budget was shown to have gone to caring for orphans, the charity’s stated mission.
By the summer of 2014, the Kosovo police shut down Al Waqf al Islami, along with 12 other Islamic charities, and arrested 40 people.
The charity’s head offices, in Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands, have since changed their name to Al Waqf, apparently separating themselves from the Balkans operation.
Asked about the accusations in a telephone interview, Nasr el Damanhoury, the director of Al Waqf in the Netherlands, said he had no direct knowledge of his group’s operations in Kosovo or the Balkans.
The charity has ceased all work outside the Netherlands since he took over in 2013, he said. His predecessor had returned to Morocco and could not be reached, and Saudi board members would not comment, he said.
“Our organization has never supported extremism,” Mr. Damanhoury said. “I have known it since 1989. I joined them three years ago. They have always been a mild group.”

Photo

Kosovars celebrating the independence of Kosovo from Serbia in 2008. Credit Bela Szandelszky/Associated Press

Unheeded Warnings

Why the Kosovar authorities — and American and United Nations overseers — did not act sooner to forestall the spread of extremism is a question being intensely debated.
As early as 2004, the prime minister at the time, Bajram Rexhepi, tried to introduce a law to ban extremist sects. But, he said in a recent interview at his home in northern Kosovo, European officials told him that it would violate freedom of religion.
“It was not in their interest, they did not want to irritate some Islamic countries,” Mr. Rexhepi said. “They simply did not do anything.”
Not everyone was unaware of the dangers, however.

At a meeting in 2003, Richard C. Holbrooke, once the United States special envoy to the Balkans, warned Kosovar leaders not to work with the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo, an umbrella organization of Saudi charities whose name still appears on many of the mosques built since the war, along with that of the former Saudi interior minister, Prince Naif bin Abdul-Aziz.
A year later, it was among several Saudi organizations that were shut down in Kosovo when it came under suspicion as a front for Al Qaeda. Another was Al-Haramain, which in 2004 was designated by the United States Treasury Department as having links to terrorism.
Yet even as some organizations were shut down, others kept working. Staff and equipment from Al-Haramain shifted to Al Waqf al Islami, moderate imams familiar with their activities said.
In recent years, Saudi Arabia appears to have reduced its aid to Kosovo. Kosovo Central Bank figures show grants from Saudi Arabia averaging €100,000 a year for the past five years.
It is now money from Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — which each average approximately €1 million a year — that propagates the same hard-line version of Islam. The payments come from foundations or individuals, or sometimes from the Ministry of Zakat (Almsgiving) from the various governments, Kosovo’s investigators say.

But payments are often diverted through a second country to obscure their origin and destination, they said. One transfer of nearly €500,000 from a Saudi individual was frozen in 2014 since it was intended for a Kosovo teenager, according to the investigators and a State Department report.
Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations were still raising millions from “deep-pocket donors and charitable organizations” based in the gulf, the Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David S. Cohen, said in a speech in 2014 at the Center for a New American Security.
While Saudi Arabia has made progress in stamping out funding for Al Qaeda, sympathetic donors in the kingdom were still funding other terrorist groups, he said.
Today the Islamic Community of Kosovo has been so influenced by the largess of Arab donors that it has seeded prominent positions with radical clerics, its critics say.
Ahmet Sadriu, a spokesman for Islamic Community of Kosovo, said the group held to Kosovo’s traditionally tolerant version of Islam. But calls are growing to overhaul an organization now seen as having been corrupted by outside forces and money.

Kosovo’s interior minister, Skender Hyseni, said he had recently reprimanded some of the senior religious officials.
“I told them they were doing a great disservice to their country,” he said in an interview. “Kosovo is by definition, by Constitution, a secular society. There has always been historically an unspoken interreligious tolerance among Albanians here, and we want to make sure that we keep it that way.”


Albert Berisha, sentenced to prison for going to Syria to fight, says he did not join the Islamic State. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times



Families Divided

For some in Kosovo, it may already be too late.
Families have been torn apart. Some of Kosovo’s best and brightest have been caught up in the lure of jihad.
One of Kosovo’s top political science graduates, Albert Berisha, said he left in 2013 to help the Syrian people in the uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. He abandoned his attempt after only two weeks — and he says he never joined the Islamic State — but has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison, pending appeal.

Ismet Sakiqi, an official in the prime minister’s office and a veteran of the liberation struggle, was shaken to find his 22-year-old son, Visar, a law student, arrested on his way through Turkey to Syria with his fiancée. He now visits his son in the same Kosovo prison where he was detained under Serbian rule.
And in the hamlet of Busavate, in the wooded hills of eastern Kosovo, a widower, Shemsi Maliqi, struggles to explain how his family has been divided. One of his sons, Alejhim, 27, has taken his family to join the Islamic State in Syria.
It remains unclear how Alejhim became radicalized. He followed his grandfather, training as an imam in Gjilan, and served in the village mosque for six years. Then, two years ago, he asked his father to help him travel to Egypt to study.
Mr. Maliqi still clings to the hope that his son is studying in Egypt rather than fighting in Syria. But Kosovo’s counterterrorism police recently put out an international arrest warrant for Alejhim.
“Better that he comes back dead than alive,” Mr. Maliqi, a poor farmer, said. “I sent him to school, not to war. I sold my cow for him.”
Alejhim had married a woman from the nearby village of Vrbice who was so conservative that she was veiled up to her eyes and refused to shake hands with her brother-in-law.
The wife’s mother angrily refused to be interviewed. Her daughter did what was expected and followed her husband to Syria, she said.

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Secretly, Alejhim drew three others — his sister; his best friend, who married his sister; and his wife’s sister — to follow him to Syria, too. The others have since returned, but remain radical and estranged from the family.
Alejhim’s uncle, Fehmi Maliqi, like the rest of the family, is dismayed. “It’s a catastrophe,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Making Kosovo Fertile Ground for ISIS.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/05/...-how-could-isis-represent-1-5-billion-muslims


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