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The New, Improved Axis of Jihad: Clare M. Lopez, Gatestone Institute, May 24, 2013—Two years into the seismic shift that brought the forces of Islamic jihad and Sharia law to power in country after country in the Middle East and North Africa — with the astonishing and extensive assistance from the U.S. — Iran, Hizballah and al-Qa'eda apparently judge that the U.S. and its Western allies still need another nudge to ensure their complete retreat from "Muslim" lands. That nudge, according to independent, reliable and mutually-corroborating sources, has now been prepared by this Axis.
Optimism in Struggle with Radical Islam: Robert Sibley, Ottawa Citizen, May 24, 2013— Westerners…need to recognize that the Islamist ideology is on par with fascism and communism as a threat to liberal democracy, and in order to fight it they need to know their enemy. “Just as a doctor can’t diagnose a disease without identifying it and understanding it, we can’t fight Islamism without identifying it for what it is.”
To Defeat Islamic Terror, We Must First Acknowledge What it Is: Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail, May 26, 2013—Ever since the spectre of Islamic terrorism in the West first manifested itself, Britain has had its head stuck firmly in the sand. After both 9/11 and the 7/7 London transport bombings, the Labour government promised to take measures to defend the country against further such attacks. It defined the problem, however, merely as terrorism, failing to understand that the real issue was the extremist ideas which led to such violence.
Berkeley Profs: ‘Islamophobia’ Greater Threat than Islamic Terrorism: Cinnamon Stillwell & Rima Greene
Front Page Magazine, May 27, 2013
Islam and its Infidels: Daniel Pipes, The Washington Times, Monday, May 13, 2013
40 Days After Boston Bombing, We Must Stop Radical Jihad: Karima Bennoune, The Guardian, May 27, 2013
U.S. Praises Sharia Censorship: Deborah Weiss, The Legal Project, May 24, 2013
THE NEW, IMPROVED AXIS OF JIHAD
Clare M. Lopez
Gatestone Institute, May 24, 2013
Indicators and warnings continue to grow concerning the resurgence of an "Axis of Jihad" comprised of Iran, Hizballah, and al-Qa'eda. This axis is not new: its three actors, both national and sub-national, have been working together in an operational terror alliance for over two decades. Still, so many seem unaware not just of this alliance, but of the ideological bonds that brought them together in Khartoum, Sudan, in the early 1990s and have kept them together to the current day. The bond is as old as Islam, and includes the commitment to jihad [war in the name of Islam] and Islamic Shariah law; the threat is to all free and democratic societies which stand in the way of global Islamic government and the forcible application of Islamic Shariah Law.
Foundation of the Axis of Jihad
This modern-day Axis of Jihad was formed in the Sudan under the aegis of the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Omar al-Bashir and his sometime political ally, National Congress Party chairman Hassan al-Turabi. Al-Qa'eda as such had not yet taken its current form, but after the end of the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviet Union, Usama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri had found safe haven in the Sudan. Al-Bashir and Turabi are pan-Islamists, meaning they see the world in terms of the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam, where Shariah is enforced) versus the Dar al-Harb (everywhere that is not under Islamic Law). Such a worldview chooses to disregard the ancient intra-Islamic schism between Sunni and Shi'a and instead to unify the entire Islamic world in jihad against the "infidel."
So it was that al-Bashir and Turabi invited the Iranian regime leadership and its Hizballah terror proxies to Khartoum in late 1990 to meet with the future leadership of al-Qa'eda. Then-Iranian president (and once again a 2013 candidate for the office) Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, intelligence director Ali Fallahian, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohsen Reza'i and other top Iranian leadership figures accepted al-Bashir's invitation and traveled to Khartoum, along with Islamic jihadis from around the region.
There, and in subsequent meetings that took place in Khartoum throughout the early 1990s, the alliance was formed among Iran, Hizballah, and what soon would be known as al-Qa'eda. Usama bin Laden was especially interested in the explosives expertise coupled with a "martyrdom" mentality he had seen demonstrated by Hizballah with such deadly effect against Western targets. It was arranged that Imad Mughniyeh, Hizballah's top terror operative, would commit to training Usama bin Laden's growing cadre of terrorists in explosives techniques, especially those involving suicide truck bombings that could bring down large buildings. Training camps were set up in Sudan, Lebanon, and elsewhere where al-Qa'eda's would-be shahid recruits could learn this craft. The attacks at Khobar Towers, the U.S. East Africa Embassies in Dar Es-Salaam and Nairobi, against the USS Cole, and eventually the 9/11 attacks themselves were all the result of this terror alliance.
The Axis Resurgent
The Axis of Jihad did not end on 9/11, as subsequent attacks in Tunisia, Istanbul, Riyadh, Madrid and elsewhere that were attributed to the al-Qa'eda Shura Council operating out of Iran post-9/11 all testify. After 9/11, however, the Axis did not again succeed in attacking the American homeland; the fierce U.S. response to 9/11 aggressively put al-Qa'eda on the defensive as across the globe its leadership was pursued, arrested, sanctioned, and eliminated. As Iran stubbornly forged ahead during the period with its nuclear weapons program, its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Qods Force, and Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) leadership also was sanctioned repeatedly, even as Israel dogged its scientists and security operatives in the so-called "War in the Shadows.'
The Iran-Hizballah-al-Qa'eda alliance survived, nevertheless — despite setbacks both external and internal — only to emerge once again from the shadows in 2013. Iran had reactivated its Hizballah terror proxy even earlier to attempt avenge the February 2008 Mughniyeh assassination. Attacks and plots — launched by Hizballah's rejuvenated Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) terror operations unit either independently or in conjunction with the IRGC/Qods Force (and sometimes, criminal elements as well) — seemed to multiply in places as far-flung as Baku, Tbilisi, New Delhi, Istanbul, and Nairobi. At first, even as the tempo of attacks markedly picked up, many of the plots were disrupted by the authorities — until July 18, 2012, when a busload of Israeli tourists was blown up by a suicide bomber in Burgas, Bulgaria, with the loss of five Israelis and the Bulgarian bus driver (in addition to the bomber). Dozens more were injured.
It was the U.S.-Canada railway attack plot, though, announced, with arrests, by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in April 2013, that signaled the revival of the Axis. According to the RCMP, the plot, which would have derailed a NYC-Toronto passenger train over the Niagara River gorge, was directed by the Iran-based al-Qa'eda Shura, led by al-Qa'eda's Egyptian operations commander, Saif al-Adl. Alarmingly, even though the FBI was reportedly working closely with the RCMP on the U.S. side of the border, there were no arrests announced inside the U.S. and additional members of the plot network likely remained on the loose. The reluctance of U.S. intelligence and national security officials to acknowledge either the reality and critical threat of the Iran-al-Qa'eda alliance, or the fact that al-Qa'eda is not defeated but instead, since 2001, has metastasized on a global level, contributes to uncertainty about their ability to address Iran and al-Qa'eda's joint operations rather than treating them always as separate phenomena.
Indicators and Warnings
The new indicators and warnings come to us most urgently from Reza Kahlili, a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] officer and undercover CIA agent and operative, whose contacts inside Iran advised him of a major 2013 attack to come inside the U.S. that would target a major (but unidentified) hotel in a Mumbai-style assault. Earlier, in February 2010, as Kahlili reports, a key meeting occurred inside Iran to coordinate the terror operations of the Qods Force, Hizballah, and al-Qa'eda. In attendance at that meeting were Qassem Suleimani, Qods Force commander; Seif al-Adl, the Iran-based operations chief for al-Qa'eda; and Mustafa Badr al-Din, the Hizballah terror operations commander who took the place of his brother-in-law, Imad Mughniyeh, as head of the "Special Research Apparatus" comprised of several hundred crack Hizballah cadre whose mission is international terror operations.
The Ideology That Binds
The ideology that holds Sunni al-Qa'eda so closely affiliated (at least in terror operational matters) with Shi'ite Iran and Hizballah over the course of decades is, simply, Islam. It is the fervent belief that Allah, the deity of Islam, commands all of his faithful to a pathway of supremacism and conquest. Obedience to Qur'an, Sunnah, and Shariah law is the highest form of devotion for Muslims who respond to the call to jihad.
In this, the Axis of Jihad rightly must be expanded to include those Muslims who pursue "civilizational jihad," as the Muslim Brotherhood terms it, rather than only the immediately violent sort of jihad identified with al-Qa'eda. The Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, reminded the 2012 presidential election crowds of the essential oneness of the Islamic creed when he recited the Brotherhood's motto to their roars of approval:
Allah is our objective, The Prophet is our guide, The Qur'an is our law,Jihad is our way, And dying in the way of Allah our highest aspiration
The false split that some analysts establish between these varieties of jihad misses the key underlying truth: they aim for the same objectives, namely Islamic government [Caliphate] and universal subjugation to Shariah law. If anything, the flamboyant jihad attacks of al-Qa'eda, HAMAS, Hizballah, or the Taliban serve to condition a society to the feeling of terror, as Brigadier General S.K. Malik explained so clearly in "The Quranic Concept of War:"
Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved.
This "condition of terror" is meant so to demoralize a targeted people that acquiescing to the seemingly non-violent Shariah demands of a Muslim Brotherhood front group seems eminently preferable, even reasonable, by contrast. Of course, imposition of Shariah law, by stealth or by overwhelming violence in the wake of assault and terror, or gradually from within, is the whole point of the exercise.
Why Now?
Despite the still-ongoing military campaign against "al-Qa'eda and its affiliates," the U.S. and more generally Western failure to acknowledge and counter the underlying Islamic ideology as the animating force that drives both al-Qa'eda and the Muslim Brotherhood, combined with a baffling willingness to welcome Brotherhood affiliates and operatives into the top ranks of the U.S. government elicits both anger and contempt from the jihadist enemy. Two years into the seismic shift across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that brought the forces of Islamic jihad and Shariah law to power in country after country after country — with astonishing and extensive assistance from the U.S. — the Axis of Jihad apparently judges that the U.S. and its Western allies still need another nudge to ensure their complete retreat from "Muslim" lands.
That nudge, according to reporting from Kahlili and other independent, reliable and mutually-corroborating sources, has now been prepared under the joint command of the Iran-Hizballah-al-Qa'eda axis. The Iranian regime began to build the operational networks in the Western Hemisphere in earnest about 2005, the year that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in Iran. He initiated a diplomatic expansion across Latin America that saw an increase in Iranian Embassies from six to ten between 2005 and 2010. Each of those, and the Imam Ali Islamic Centers that serve as command and control centers for special units of the IRGC/Qods Force, provide cover positions for Iranian intelligence and security service operatives whose jobs include liaison with narcotrafficking, organized crime, and terror groups such as Hizballah.
The Tri-Border region of South America, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay met, served as an early hub of terror operations from the 1980s onward for the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires and Hizballah, which jointly directed the 1992 and 1994 terror attacks against the Israeli Embassy and Jewish Cultural Center, respectively, from this lawless area. Since 2005, Iran's operational base in Venezuela has become the nexus for its operations across the Western Hemisphere, including South, Central, and North America. Diplomatic relationships with Venezuela and other Latin American regimes hostile to the U.S., such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua also provide Iran with a means of evading international isolation and sanctions, obtaining a ready source of fraudulent travel documents, and laundering money.
Hizballah's operations in the Western Hemisphere, including inside the U.S. and Canada, are noted with special concern by U.S. officials: former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff remarked that Hizballah made al-Qa'eda "look like a minor league team," while former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage has called Hizballah the "A team" and al-Qa'eda the "B team." Masters of clandestine intelligence tradecraft, as well as among the most highly trained and ideologically-committed special operations forces anywhere, Hizballah (which is trained by the Iranians) expends considerable effort establishing cell networks across the Americas. These cells are assigned to pre-attack casing and surveillance; fundraising via a variety of scams like cigarette smuggling as well as narcotrafficking; and operational planning for terror attacks. Former U.S. Ambassador Roger Noriega testifies regularly for Congress to detail Hizballah's collaboration with narcotraffickers and guerrilla groups (such as the FARC — Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) whose drug-running and terror training activities are becoming ever more complex, dangerous, and threatening to U.S. national security, as well as that of friends and allies throughout the hemisphere.
Venezuela's Margarita Island, better known as a prime tourist destination, has become a safe haven for terrorists and drug smugglers, as well as Hizballah's banking and finance hub in the Western Hemisphere. According to Noriega, Hizballah runs countless businesses and safe houses on the island. Even closer to home, Hizballah has forged operational relationships with Mexican drug cartels such as Los Zetas. The links are opportunistic, rather than ideological, on both sides; Hizballah increasingly uses narcotics trafficking to fill funding gaps left by cutbacks in Iranian largesse, while the cartels benefit from Hizballah's explosives, tunneling, and weapons expertise. Al-Qa'eda, too, has boasted about the ease of moving non-conventional arms and weapons of mass destruction into the U.S. via the Mexican drug tunnels. Kahlili's reporting names al-Qa'eda operative Adnan Shukrijumah, who has been spotted and tracked over the years by U.S. and allied security agencies from Canada to the U.S., and south into Latin America, among the list of operational commanders awaiting attack orders from Iranian Qods Force commander Qassem Suleimani, the overall Iran-Hizballah-al-Qa'eda coalition commander.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress in 2011 that senior Iranian officials "are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States…" Apparently either unaware or forgetful of the close Iranian and Hizballah coordination with al-Qa'eda in the 9/11 attacks, Clapper nevertheless conveyed the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that a shift in Iranian strategic thinking may presage new Iranian-sponsored terror attacks against the homeland. Iranian officials, too, have indicated the regime's willingness once again to aim its asymmetric warfare campaign at American streets: in May 2011, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmed Vahidi openly threatened a "tough and crushing response" to any U.S. attack against Iran.
Vahidi's warning points to what may constitute possible triggers for an Iranian "green light" to its network of al-Qa'eda, Hizballah, and Qods Force operatives already in place in American communities. In addition to finally exacting revenge for the killing of Usama bin Laden and Imad Mughniyeh, such triggers could include a combined Israeli/U.S., or simply Israeli, military strike against Iranian nuclear weapons facilities; a direct threat to the survivability of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria from either Israel or Syrian rebels perceived to be backed by the U.S.; or, as Kahlili describes it, an Iranian imperative to shake America's sense of safety and security in the homeland in order to compel and hasten both a U.S. retreat from influence and military power projection in the Muslim world.
Reportedly, more than 2,000 targets "including public places, government buildings and military installations" already have been selected and cased. Separate but parallel reporting indicates that the "go" order may already have been transmitted from Tehran to the al-Qa'eda and Hizballah cells inside the U.S., placing them essentially on autopilot status. Of course, all of Kahlili's published warnings have been passed in full detail to U.S. security agencies, but the threat from this Axis of Jihad remains critical and poses a serious threat to America's homeland security.
Effective measures from America's national security leadership are urgently needed. Those measures must begin with an honest acknowledgement of the precepts and objectives of the enemy threat —that is, as they are derived from the doctrine, law, and scriptures of Islam—and should include a comprehensive strategic counterjihad plan as complete as the Axis of Jihad's plan.
Clare M. Lopez is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on national defense, Islam, Iran, and counterterrorism issues.
OPTIMISM IN STRUGGLE WITH RADICAL ISLAM
Robert Sibley
Ottawa Citizen, May 24, 2013
Twenty-five years ago, few Westerners had given any attention to the threat of militant Islam. Sure, there were the usual upheavals in the Middle East — remember the First Gulf War in 1991? — and the endless terrorist assaults on Israel, otherwise known as the First Intifada, and the odd airline and bus explosion. But the idea that a few fundamentalist zealots would pervert Islam to justify a full-fledged terrorist campaign against the West was for most far-fetched.
One of the few who didn’t think this way was the American historian Daniel Pipes. In 1995, the founder of the journal Middle East Quarterly, and the author of nearly a dozen books on Middle Eastern issues, wrote: “Unnoticed by most Westerners war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States.” The seemingly isolated terrorist attacks — the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 or the Bombay bombings that same year that killed nearly 300, for example — were part of a build up in a worldwide anti-western jihad. Only after the 9/11 attacks did Westerners begin to see their culture was under siege. As Pipes argued in a 2003 book, Militant Islam Reaches America, the Islamists “seek nothing less than to bring the Sharia to bear in the land of the free.” The question, of course, has always been how and why the West should respond….
The problem, he says, is that Islamist ideology is gaining influence in European and North American societies, slowly eroding traditions and values that have been a mainstay of western culture for centuries. He points, for example, to the allowance made in Britain for the Muslim practice of polygamy and the increasing acceptance of Shariah. “There are parts of London where you can’t get alcohol. There’s something like 100 Shariah courts in Britain, completely private courts that not only do civil law but criminal law. … There’s also a growing movement toward Muslim-only zones where not only is Shariah applied but non-Muslims are not welcome. This isn’t terrorism, but it is the gradual Islamization of Western society.”
Westerners, he says, need to recognize that the Islamist ideology is on par with fascism and communism as a threat to liberal democracy, and in order to fight it they need to know their enemy. “Just as a doctor can’t diagnose a disease without identifying it and understanding it, we can’t fight Islamism without identifying it for what it is.”
To know the enemy, it helps to know the enemy’s history. “The striking thing about Islam is its early success (in the 7th and 8th centuries). If you’d looked around the world at that time the cities of Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad were centres of commerce and technical development and literacy and medicine. This was the great period of Islamic civilization. Then things stopped roughly around 1200 A.D., partly as a consequence of the Mongol invasions and the dominance of the theocrats. There was a sudden hardening or attitudes toward things like philosophy and science that might question religious faith.
For some six centuries Muslims were able to ignore Europe as too backward to be of concern, but this complacency about their own cultural supremacy came crashing down in the late 18th and 19th centuries as Europeans used their science and a new-found impulse for exploration to make the West preeminent. This changed things dramatically, says Pipes. “Muslims saw this and asked themselves ‘what went wrong?’”
It a question they’re still asking, wondering why given the past successes of their culture they aren’t doing as well today. “It is this legacy of their great success in the past compared to today that weighs heavy on Muslims.” Efforts to shed this weight have differed — everything from emulating secular Europe to the pan-Arab socialism and nationalism. All have failed. And now we have the Islamist response. “The fundamentalists are saying ‘no, if you want Islam to be strong like it was 1,000 years ago, you have to live like we did 1,000 years ago.’ That means abiding by Islamic law, Shariah.”
Surprisingly, perhaps, Pipes sees the Islamist terror campaign ultimately failing. “If you looked around in 1943 you would likely have thought a 1,000 year Reich was possible. But it didn’t even last a dozen years. Islamism, I think, will be like that.” Despite outward appearances of strength, Pipes notes that Muslims are fighting each other in places like Syria and Egypt and takes encouragement from this. Much of the upheaval in Egypt is a backlash against the Islamist agenda, he suggests.
While Islamist terrorism will remain a problem, the greater concern is Islamists gaining influence in the institutions of the West. “I see terrorism as a tactic, and not a very good tactic … If I were an Islamist I would be counselling everyone to get jobs in the media, in the law courts, in the educational system, in the political process. That’s how you gain influence and change a society your way.” Will such change come to pass? I suspect we’ll find out over the next 25 years.
Robert Sibley is a senior writer with the Citizen, currently attached to the editorial board.
TO DEFEAT ISLAMIC TERROR,
WE MUST FIRST ACKNOWLEDGE WHAT IT IS
Melanie Phillips
Daily Mail, May 27, 2013
Ever since the spectre of Islamic terrorism in the West first manifested itself, Britain has had its head stuck firmly in the sand. After both 9/11 and the 7/7 London transport bombings, the Labour government promised to take measures to defend the country against further such attacks. It defined the problem, however, merely as terrorism, failing to understand that the real issue was the extremist ideas which led to such violence….
Following last week's barbaric slaughter of Drummer Rigby on the streets of Woolwich by two Islamic fanatics, the Prime Minister has announced that he will head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalization Task Force. And the Home Secretary has said she will look at widening the banning of radical groups preaching hate.
But at the heart of these promises remains a crucial gap. That is the need to define just what kind of extremism we are up against. The Government has been extraordinarily reluctant to do this — because it refuses to face the blindingly obvious fact that this extremism is religious in nature. It arises from an interpretation of Islam which takes the words of the Koran literally as a command to kill unbelievers in a jihad, or holy war, in order to impose strict Islamic tenets on the rest of the world.
Of course, millions of Muslims in Britain and elsewhere totally reject this interpretation of their religion. Most British Muslims want to live peacefully and enjoy the benefits of Western culture. They undoubtedly utterly deplore the notion that the kind of carnage that occurred in Woolwich should take place in Britain And let's not forget that, worldwide, most victims of the jihad are themselves Muslims whom the extremists judge to be polluted by Western ideas.
Nevertheless, this fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran is what is being spouted by hate preachers in Britain and on the internet, and is steadily radicalising thousands of young British Muslims. Now the Prime Minister says he will crack down on such extremism. Yet after the Woolwich atrocity, he claimed it was 'a betrayal of Islam' and that 'there is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act'.
The London Mayor Boris Johnson went even further, claiming: 'It is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam' and that the cause was simply the killers' 'warped and deluded mindset'. Yet the video footage of the killers — who had shouted 'Allahu Akhbar' when butchering Drummer Rigby — records one of them citing verses in the Koran exhorting the faithful to fight and kill unbelievers, and declaring: 'We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.'
Frankly, these comments by the Prime Minister and London Mayor were as absurd as saying the medieval Inquisition, for example, had nothing to do with the Catholic Church, but was just the product of a few warped and deluded individuals. Their comments were also deeply troubling. For if politicians refuse to acknowledge the true nature of this extremism, they will never counter it effectively. But then, government officials have always refused to admit that this is a religious war. They simply don't understand the power of religious fanaticism.
Of course, there are fanatics in all religions. Within both Judaism and Christianity, there are deep divisions between ultras, liberals and those in between. In medieval times, moreover, Christianity used its interpretation of the Bible also to kill 'unbelievers', because early Christians believed they had a divine duty to make the world conform to their religion at all costs. That stopped when the Reformation ushered the Church into modernity, and today no Christian wants to use violence to convert others to their faith. The problem with the extremist teachings of Islam is that the religion has never had a similar 'reformation'.
Certainly, there are enlightened Muslims in Britain who would dearly love their religion to be reformed. But they have the rug pulled from under their feet by the Government's flat denial of the religious nature of this terrible problem. Some people instead ascribe the actions of the Woolwich killers to factors such as thuggish gang membership, drug abuse or family breakdown.
But it is precisely such lost souls who are vulnerable to Islamist fanatics and who provide them with father figures, a sense of belonging and a cause which gives apparent meaning to their lives. Many people find it incomprehensible that such fanatics remain free to peddle their poison. Partly, this is because the Security Service likes to gather intelligence through their actions. But it is also because of a failure to understand what amounts to a continuum of extremism.
There are too many British Muslims who, while abhorring violence at home, nevertheless support the killing abroad of British or American forces or Israelis, regard unbelievers as less than fully human, and homosexuals or apostates as deserving the death penalty. Such bigotry creates the poisonous sea in which dehumanisation and religious violence swim. To the failure to understand all this must be added the widespread terror of being thought 'Islamophobic' or 'racist'.
It is quite astonishing that universities mostly refuse to crack down on extremist speakers and radicalisation on campus — despite at least four former presidents of Islamic student societies having faced terrorist charges. In a devastating account published at the weekend, Professor Michael Burleigh, who advised the Government on revising its counter-radicalisation strategy, described how this process descended into a 'sad shambles'.
He related how the Federation of Islamic Student Societies (FOSIS) had created a sexually segregated environment in which young people were being systematically indoctrinated in anti-Jew, anti-homosexual and anti-Western hatred by Islamist speakers on campus.
But although the Government condemned FOSIS for its failure to 'fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology', with the Home Secretary even ordering that civil servants withdraw from its graduate recruitment fair, the Faith and Communities Minister, Baroness Warsi, actually endorsed it by attending one of its events at the House of Lords.
Nor has the Government done anything to stop extremist preachers targeting and converting criminals in British jails at a deeply alarming rate. On top of all this official incoherence is the paralysis caused by the excesses of the 'human rights' culture. Thus the Home Secretary is facing a monumental battle to get through Parliament a Communications Bill that would give police and security services access to records of individuals' internet use.
It is said that some of these extremist preachers exploit loopholes in the law. If so, then the law should be changed. But we all know what would befall any such attempt. It would be all but drowned out by shrieks that we were 'doing the terrorists' job for them' by 'undermining our own hard-won liberties'. Well, it's time to face down such claims as vacuous and lethal nonsense. The people threatening our liberties are Islamic radicals determined to destroy our way of life. It is those who refuse to acknowledge the true nature of this threat who are doing the terrorists' job for them. And unless Britain finally wakes up from its self-destructive torpor, all who love civilised values — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — will be the losers.
Berkeley Profs: ‘Islamophobia’ Greater Threat Than Islamic Terrorism: Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene
Front Page Magazine, May 27, 2013—The false narrative that “Islamophobia” is a growing threat received a boost at the “Fourth Annual International Conference on the Study of Islamophobia: From Theorizing to Systematic Documentation,” which took place at the University of California, Berkeley on April 19 and 20, 2013 under the chairmanship of its foremost conceptual proponent, Hatem Bazian
Islam and its Infidels: How Extremists Distorted a Religion Of Millions: Daniel Pipes, The Washington Times, Monday, May 13, 2013—What motives lay behind last month’s Boston Marathon bombing and the would-be attack on a Via Rail Canada train? Leftists and establishmentarians variously offer imprecise and tired replies — such as “violent extremism” or anger at Western imperialism — unworthy of serious discussion.
40 Days After Boston Bombing, We Must Stop Radical Jihad: Karima Bennoune, The Guardian, May 27, 2013—In many Muslim societies, the 40th day after a death is a time to gather and grieve again with loved ones. So, in honor of this the 40th day after the atrocities in Boston, I find myself thinking again about the 264 injured people, some of whom are learning to live without their legs, and about the dead victims: 23-year-old Chinese graduate student Lingzi Lu, who had just passed her exams, friendly 29-year-old waitress Krystle Campbell, and eight year-old Martin Richard who famously carried a sign that said "No more hurting people. Peace."
U.S. Praises Sharia Censorship: Deborah Weiss, The Legal Project, May 24, 2013—The United States is silent as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) passes its most recent UN Resolution that unravels global consensus to support freedom of speech. From 1999-2010, the OIC succeeded in passing its "defamations of religions" resolutions, which ostensibly would protect Islam from all criticism, including true statements of fact.
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