Thursday, March 28, 2024
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Get the Daily
Briefing by Email

Subscribe

ISLAMISM, TERRORISM & THE FUTURE OF EUROPE

An Onslaught of Islamist Violence Is Europe's New Normal: Sam Westrop, Daily Caller, Apr. 24, 2017 — Following similar attacks in London, Stockholm, Paris, Nice, Berlin and Israel, Europe is waking up to the fact that these abrupt acts of murder — using knives, guns and cars — are the new norm.

Europe’s Rising Islam-Based Political Parties: Abigail R. Esman, Algemeiner, Apr. 23, 2017 — For the past several months, eyes across the world have been trained on the growing far-right movements sweeping Europe and America — from the neo-Nazi groups in Germany and the United States, to the increasing popularity of France’s National Front. But another, far less noticed — but sometimes equally-radical movement — is also emerging across Europe: the rise of pro-Islam political parties, some with foreign support from the Muslim world. And the trend shows no sign of stopping.

The Muslim Brotherhood Has Earned Its Terrorist Designation: Cynthia Farahat, The Washington Times, Apr. 23, 2017 — In an April 11 Brookings Institution report titled "Is the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization?" senior fellow Shadi Hamid states that the Trump administration's proposed designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group "could have significant consequences for the U.S., the Middle East, and the world."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Islam’s Most Eloquent Apostate: Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 7, 2017 — We are in a secure room at a sprawling university, but the queasiness in my chest takes a while to go away. I’m talking to a woman with multiple fatwas on her head, someone who has a greater chance of meeting a violent end than anyone I’ve met (Salman Rushdie included). And yet she’s wholly poised, spectacles pushed back to rest atop her head like a crown, dignified and smiling under siege.

 

On Topic Links

 

If You Still Think There Is Such Thing As a Moderate Muslim, Watch This and Think Again…: Israel Video Network, Apr. 27, 2017

A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Germany: March 2017: Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute, Apr. 28, 2017

The Purge of a Report on Radical Islam Has Put NYC at Risk: Paul Sperry, New York Post, Apr. 15, 2017

Is Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood Still the Loyal Opposition?: Nur Köprülü, The Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2017

 

AN ONSLAUGHT OF ISLAMIST VIOLENCE IS EUROPE'S NEW NORMAL

Sam Westrop                                              

Daily Caller, Apr. 24, 2017

 

Last Thursday, in an attack that has started to feel routine, Karim Cheurfi opened fire on French police on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, killing a police officer. Cheurfi then wounded two others before he was shot and killed. Police later found a note in which he expressed support for the Islamic State, which later declared him their "soldier." Following similar attacks in London, Stockholm, Paris, Nice, Berlin and Israel, Europe is waking up to the fact that these abrupt acts of murder — using knives, guns and cars — are the new norm.

 

Over the last five years, there has been a noticeable change in jihadist methods. During the 2000s, Al Qaeda and other violent Islamist groups were preoccupied with large explosions –terrorist acts that took months of planning, networks of contacts, sources of funding, and supplies of explosive material. The effects, when successful, produced enormous casualties and made for dramatic television. But these plots were also ripe for discovery by law enforcement: large money transfers were noticed, explosive materials were tracked, conspirators were surveilled and Muslim informants exposed whole Islamist cells.

 

On the other hand, acquiring a gun, picking up a knife, or simply getting into your car requires hardly any planning at all. Islamists have realized that ersatz terror may kill fewer people than showpiece terror, but its effects are just as terrifying and its success rate is far higher. Islamist low-tech terrorism was first advocated seriously in 2010. Al-Qaeda in Yemen (led by the late American Islamist, Anwar Al-Awlaki) encouraged Muslims to get in their pick-up trucks, which they referred to as "Ultimate Mowing Machines," and "mow down the enemies of Allah."

 

Then, in 2014, ISIS called on Western Muslims to use vehicles, knives – anything to hand: "If you are not able to find an I.E.D. or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him."

 

Cheurfi was born in France, and had a long criminal record. From 2001, he was imprisoned for 11 years after shooting at two police officers from a stolen car. He was not identified as a possible Islamist until December 2016, according to Le Monde, after police were warned that he was planning an attack. In February, he repeated the threats on a messaging app, and was questioned by police. Then, in March, he attempted to contact ISIS fighters in Syria. By that point, he had been included on a list of 16,000 Islamists the security services deemed potential violent extremists.

 

Europe faces an onslaught. France, in particular, has far more potential terrorists than security service resources to stop them. Along with more effective counter-terrorism work, the only possible long-term solution for Europe, is to actively stamp out all violent and non-violent Islamist influence, and back reformist Muslims instead.

 

Over the past few decades, Europe's radicalization problem has been severely exacerbated by the attitudes of government towards their Muslim communities. European state multiculturalism policy regards its citizens not as individuals, but as blocs — or communities — delineated by ethnicity, race and religion. In order to interact with these communities, governments need intermediaries to manage them. Among European Muslims, where there is no organized clergy, only the Islamists have had the wherewithal to proclaim themselves representatives of the dozens of different, fractious political and religious Islamic sects. To run the communities, governments have handed these Islamist leadership groups taxpayers' money, political power, and influence over schools, hospitals, prisons, chaplaincy programs, among other things.

 

Consequently, an entire generation of European Muslims have grown up attending Islamist-run mosques, schools and community centers. Islamist politicians are elected to government offices, Muslim prisoners are placed in the care of Islamist chaplains, and Islamist charities move money to and from the Middle East – much of it partly subsidized by European taxpayers. In strictly secular France, its multiculturalism policy funds ethnic groups rather than religious ones. But because the clear majority of French Muslims are from North Africa, taxpayer subsidy of these communities ends up being claimed by the Islamists as well.

 

For Karim Cheurfi, radicalization was not necessarily the result of slick propaganda videos produced by Islamic State, or a particularly convincing contact on social media. His introduction to Islamism was offline – it occurred simply by virtue of the fact he was a European Muslim, surrounded and politically represented by a community under the thumb of Islamist ideologues.

 

For Europe to survive, the Islamists must be squashed. Funding must be cut off, both from Western governments and foreign Islamist regimes. Extremist mosques must be shut down, extremist foreign clerics should be deported, and moderate, anti-Islamist Muslims must be funded and supported. Most importantly, Western Europe must stop organizing its Muslim citizens into homogenous religious and ethnic blocs, ripe for radicalization.

 

Contents   

                       

EUROPE’S RISING ISLAM-BASED POLITICAL PARTIES

Abigail R. Esman

Algemeiner, Apr. 30, 2017

 

For the past several months, eyes across the world have been trained on the growing far-right movements sweeping Europe and America — from the neo-Nazi groups in Germany and the United States, to the increasing popularity of France’s National Front. But another, far less noticed — but sometimes equally-radical movement — is also emerging across Europe: the rise of pro-Islam political parties, some with foreign support from the Muslim world. And the trend shows no sign of stopping.

 

Holland’s Denk (“Think”) party, established and led by two Turkish immigrants, is among the most significant. Denk won three seats in the Dutch parliament last month, becoming the country’s “fastest-growing” new party, according to the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad. Its platform is to replace ideas of integration with “mutual acceptance” — a charming but antiquated idea in a culture where one group accepts gay marriage and the other is taught that homosexuals should be shoved off of tall buildings. It also proposes the establishment of a dedicated “anti-racism” police force.

 

While not the first of such Islamic parties in European politics, Denk’s March 15 election victory has made it an inspiration to others. Islamist parties now see a new chance for success, while political aspirants across Europe are making plans to start similar parties of their own. Hence, while the focus of this week’s French elections will be on Marine Le Pen’s National Front, many European Muslims will also be watching the Equality and Justice Party (PEJ), led by French-Turk Sacir Çolak.

 

Like Denk, this French party claims to be a voice for the downtrodden, fighting “inequalities and injustices,” according to a report by the Turkish Anadolu news agency. But also like Denk, PEJ has been accused of representing Turkey’s president — a man who has spoken out against assimilation and integration, and called on European Turks to reject Western values. And the PEJ is not alone in France:

 

The French Union of Muslim Democrats (UDMF), founded in 2012, made headlines when it entered the 2015 electoral race. Its platform seemed more moderate than many of its fellow Muslim parties across Europe; UDMF founder Nagib Azergui has insisted in interviews that he respects the secular foundation of the French republic, and advocates philosophy and civic education classes that would help mitigate against the recruitment efforts of Muslim extremists. The party does, however, seek to establish sharia-compliant banks, and calls for Turkey to become a member of the European Union. Further, UDMF seeks to re-install the right of Muslim girls to wear headscarves in public schools, a move that could be seen as a gesture towards re-introducing religion into the secular sphere.

 

Austria, too, has seen a rise in Islamic political parties, such as the New Movement for the Future (NBZ), which, like Denk and the PEJ, was founded by Turkish immigrants. Unlike the others parties, however, NBZ has made little effort to hide its loyalty to Turkey. Following the failed 2016 Turkish coup, for instance, its leader, Adnan Dinçer, called on Austria to respect Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s clampdown and the mass arrests that followed. It is worth noting, however, that Austria’s far right has been particularly virulent in its anti-Islam activity, calling for Islam itself to be banned from the country. Such motions inevitably bring forth counter-movements from the targeted groups, and it was those actions that inspired Dinçer to form the NBZ.

 

But it was Denk’s success, above all, that inspired Lebanese-Belgian activist Dyab Abou Jahjah to establish his newest political effort: a party (to date, unnamed) aimed at “Making Brussels Great Again, a la Bernie Sanders,” according to an interview in the Belgian newspaper de Morgen. This would be a third attempt at political relevance for Jahjah, who first came into the public eye in 2002 as the founder of the Brussels-based Arab-European League, a pan-European political group that aimed to create what he called a Europe-wide “sharocracy” — a sharia-based democracy.

 

In 2003, the AEL organized a political party, RESIST, to run in the Brussels elections; it received a mere 10,000 votes. Now, Jahjah, who also runs an activist group called Movement X, hopes to run in Brussels’ 2018 elections. While his party has yet to declare a platform, his anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian and anti-European rants on Facebook and elsewhere give an indication of his plans. So, too, did a recent blog post in which he wrote: “we must defeat the forces of supremacy, the forces of sustained privileges, and the forces of the status-quo. We must defeat them in every possible arena.”

 

And he is not alone. Days after Denk’s win, fellow Belgian Ahmet Koç announced his own initiative, the details of which are also yet to be determined. But some things are easy enough to predict on the basis of his past: the Turkish-Belgian politician was thrown out of Belgium’s socialist party in 2016 for supporting Erdogan’s efforts to censor Europeans who insulted him publicly. He also called for Belgian Turks to rise up against the “traitors” of the 2016 coup.

 

Both Koç and Jahjah will have to reckon with the ISLAM party, which has already established itself in the Brussels area. Founded in 2012, ISLAM–which is as an acronym for “Integrité, Solidarité, Liberté, Authenticité, Moralité”— is unapologetically religious. Its leaders pride themselves on following the koran, not party politics. With branches already in place in the Brussels districts of Anderlecht, Molenbeek (the center of Belgian radicalism) and Luik, the party now plans to expand throughout the Brussels region.

 

So far, none of the existing parties has had a great deal of success — and the emerging parties have yet to make their platforms known, let alone acquire active supporters. But as Denk founder Tunahan Kuzu proudly announced after the March elections, a new voice has now gained power in European government. But what that voice ultimately will be, and the strength of its commitment to secular and democratic values, remains yet to be seen.      

 

            Contents   

                       

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD HAS EARNED ITS TERRORIST DESIGNATION

Cynthia Farahat

The Washington Times, Apr. 23, 2017

 

In an April 11 Brookings Institution report titled "Is the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization?" senior fellow Shadi Hamid states that the Trump administration's proposed designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group "could have significant consequences for the U.S., the Middle East, and the world." Among many astounding claims in the report, the three most misleading among them begin with his statement that the Muslim Brotherhood is a "non-violent Islamist group," that "there is not a single American expert on the Muslim Brotherhood who supports designating it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization," and that President Trump's advisors were enlisting Americans in what Mr. Hamid calls "civilization struggle."

 

First, there is overwhelming evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood is indeed a violent terrorist organization. The Brotherhood's slogan is "'Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Thus, it shouldn't come as a surprise that nearly every Sunni terrorist group in the world was either fully or partially founded by active or former Brotherhood operatives. Brotherhood-linked terrorist organizations include ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, and al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya. Moreover, the Brotherhood also has active militias such as the "95 Brigade," a Brotherhood terrorist group founded in 1995, which is currently operating under the direction of the Brotherhood Guidance office. The Brotherhood also has a well-funded transnational multi-lingual propaganda machine, which makes it more dangerous.

 

In a series of interviews with al-Jazeera TV, Osama Yassin, a minister in former President Mohammed Morsi's cabinet, revealed that the 95 Brigade engaged in the abduction, beating, and torture of "thugs" and threw Molotov cocktails at its opponents. The brigade's operatives were also implicated in the killing of anti-Brotherhood protestors. In March 2014, for example, two Brotherhood operatives were sentenced to death after an online video clip showed them killing a teenager by throwing him from a building.

 

Under Mr. Morsi's leadership, current Brotherhood leaders were personally involved in torture. During an interview with al-Jazeera TV in 2011, Brotherhood leader Safwat Hegazy bragged about his involvement in torturing a man whom he suspected was a police officer.

 

Egyptian Ambassador to Venezuela Yehyia Najm is among the numerous victims of what is known in Egypt as the "Brotherhood's Slaughterhouses." Ambassador Najm stated that the room where he was held captive and tortured with 49 other people, was "like a Nazi camp." This is Mr. Shadi Hamid's idea of a "non-violent group."

 

Second, Mr. Hamid's claim that there are no American experts on the Muslim Brotherhood who support its designation as a terror group, is wrong. The Middle East Forum, one of the America's most renowned think tanks that specializes in Middle East and Islamic terrorism studies, supports the Brotherhood's terror designation. Also, Mr. Trump's advisor, Walid Phares, one of America's most respected experts on Islamic terrorism and the Middle East, supports the Brotherhood's terror designation. Andrew C. McCarthy III, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others, also supports the Brotherhood terror designation. Yet, Mr. Hamid chooses to ignore them, as he also chooses to ignore other facts. Brotherhood-linked terrorist organizations include al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas.

 

Third, Mr. Hamid claimed that, "This language works to enlist Americans to join the "civilizational struggle" — an idea once reserved for those from the farthest fringes of the far right in the United States, now held by people in the very center of American power: the White House."

 

Mr. Hamid may have borrowed the term "civilization struggle," or "A'mali Jihadia Hadaria" (civilization jihad operation), from the Muslim Brotherhood's International Apparatus. The nihilistic term first appeared in a 1991 document titled "The Explanatory Memorandum," which outlined the Muslim Brotherhood's strategic goals for North America. This memorandum was entered as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding trial in 2008, the largest terror financing case in U.S. history.

 

This wouldn't be the first time the Brookings Institution engaged in misleading disinformation on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. For example, a Brookings Institution article stated that the fourth of the Muslim Brotherhood's 10 thawabet (precepts) in its bylaws specified that "during the process of establishing democracy and relative political freedom, the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to abide by the rules of democracy and its institutions." Hamid's report was published by the Qatar-financed Brookings Institution.

 

This is a bold misrepresentation of the fourth precept. According to the Brotherhood's own standards and internal bylaws, the fourth precept is violent jihad and martyrdom, which the Brotherhood states is an obligation of every individual Muslim, as well as the collective obligation of their organization. There is a civilization jihad or struggle as Mr. Hamid called it, but it's waged against America and the Western world by the very people he is defending. To answer Mr. Hamid's question as to whether the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, the answer is yes, indeed it is a terrorist organization.

Mr. Trump's administration needs to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group. Congress should also require think tanks to disclose any foreign funding received while lobbying Congress. These financial disclosures will help combat disinformation campaigns targeting lawmakers, including reports like Mr. Hamid's.

 Contents                                  

                       

AYAAN HIRSI ALI, ISLAM’S MOST ELOQUENT APOSTATE

Tunku Varadarajan

The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 7, 2017

 

The woman sitting opposite me, dressed in a charcoal pantsuit and a duck-egg-blue turtleneck, can’t go anywhere, at any time of day, without a bodyguard. She is soft-spoken and irrepressibly sane, but also—in the eyes of those who would rather cut her throat than listen to what she says—the most dangerous foe of Islamist extremism in the Western world. We are in a secure room at a sprawling university, but the queasiness in my chest takes a while to go away. I’m talking to a woman with multiple fatwas on her head, someone who has a greater chance of meeting a violent end than anyone I’ve met (Salman Rushdie included). And yet she’s wholly poised, spectacles pushed back to rest atop her head like a crown, dignified and smiling under siege.

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia in 1969, is Islam’s most eloquent apostate. She has just published a slim book that seeks to add a new four-letter word—dawa—to the West’s vocabulary. It describes the ceaseless, world-wide ideological campaign waged by Islamists as a complement to jihad. It is, she says, the greatest threat facing the West and “could well bring about the end of the European Union as we know it.” America is far from immune, and her book, “The Challenge of Dawa,” is an explicit attempt to persuade the Trump administration to adopt “a comprehensive anti-dawa strategy before it is too late.”

 

Ms. Hirsi Ali has come a long way from the days when she—“then a bit of a hothead”—declared Islam to be incapable of reform, while also calling on Muslims to convert or abandon religion altogether. That was a contentious decade ago. Today she believes that Islam can indeed be reformed, that it must be reformed, and that it can be reformed only by Muslims themselves—by those whom she calls “Mecca Muslims.” These are the faithful who prefer the gentler version of Islam that she says was “originally promoted by Muhammad” before 622. That was the year he migrated to Medina and the religion took a militant and unlovely ideological turn …

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

Contents

On Topic Links

 

If You Still Think There Is Such Thing As a Moderate Muslim, Watch This and Think Again…: Israel Video Network, Apr. 27, 2017—It is not Islamophobic to note the tragic fact that, at this time in history, the Muslim world is dominated by bad ideas and bad beliefs. That is why millions of so-called moderate Muslims do not rise up to denounce Islamist terror – because the word “moderate,” as we understand it, doesn’t really apply.

A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Germany: March 2017: Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute, Apr. 28, 2017— "What is clear is that the financing of mosques by foreign actors must stop." — Jens Spahn, a member of the executive committee of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).

The Purge of a Report on Radical Islam Has Put NYC at Risk: Paul Sperry, New York Post, Apr. 15, 2017— The NYPD has had a stellar track record of protecting the city from another 9/11, foiling more than 20 planned terrorist attacks since 2001. But some worry the department is losing its terror-fighting edge as it tries to please Muslim grievance groups.

Is Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood Still the Loyal Opposition?: Nur Köprülü, The Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2017— The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, the key Islamist movement in the country, has had a long-standing symbiotic relationship with the monarchy and, until recently, was not considered a threat to the survival of the Hashemite Kingdom. But the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the growth of militant Islamist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) have alarmed the monarchy and led to a drastic shift in the nature of its relations with the Brotherhood from coexistence to persecution.

Donate CIJR

Become a CIJR Supporting Member!

Most Recent Articles

Day 5 of the War: Israel Internalizes the Horrors, and Knows Its Survival Is...

0
David Horovitz Times of Israel, Oct. 11, 2023 “The more credible assessments are that the regime in Iran, avowedly bent on Israel’s elimination, did not work...

Sukkah in the Skies with Diamonds

0
  Gershon Winkler Isranet.org, Oct. 14, 2022 “But my father, he was unconcerned that he and his sukkah could conceivably - at any moment - break loose...

Open Letter to the Students of Concordia re: CUTV

0
Abigail Hirsch AskAbigail Productions, Dec. 6, 2014 My name is Abigail Hirsch. I have been an active volunteer at CUTV (Concordia University Television) prior to its...

« Nous voulons faire de l’Ukraine un Israël européen »

0
12 juillet 2022 971 vues 3 https://www.jforum.fr/nous-voulons-faire-de-lukraine-un-israel-europeen.html La reconstruction de l’Ukraine doit également porter sur la numérisation des institutions étatiques. C’est ce qu’a déclaré le ministre...

Subscribe Now!

Subscribe now to receive the
free Daily Briefing by email

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • Subscribe to the Daily Briefing

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.