A history of Arab Terrorism

I wrote this history in 2005, almost 8,000 words, so not a casual read. It recounts the rise of terrorism by Arab groups through its three stages of the 20th century: insurgency against Arab countries' secularist rulers; political terrorism against Israel; and finally Islamist terrorism against both insufficiently Islamic Arab rulers and the West, mainly the United States.

A terrorist of the PLO at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich,
where 11 Israeli hostages and five of the eight terrorists were killed. 

The Old is New AgainThe war that radical, violent Islamists are waging against the West springs from the fact that Islamism and Westernism are fundamentally incompatible. But both are too deeply embedded in both sides' culture, social systems, politics and religion to be very easily altered. Compared to this centuries-old struggle, the Cold War was a brief respite. Rather than the new millennium inaugurating a golden age of human progress and well-being, what was old is new again. History has returned.

Just click here.

A Muslim wants to know, and so should we

Muslim writer Dr Rakib Ehsan:

Following the mosque massacres in Christchurch, political figures across the Western world did not hesitate in accurately describing what they were – white-supremacist terrorist attacks on Muslims in their places of worship during Friday prayers.

In the aftermath of Christchurch, Hillary Clinton expressed her solidarity with the global Muslim community – the Ummah – and said ‘we must continue to fight the perpetuation and normalisation of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms’. Former US president Barack Obama tweeted that himself and his wife Michelle were grieving with the people of New Zealand and the ‘Muslim community’. Our own prime minister, Theresa May, correctly labelled Christchurch as a ‘horrifying terrorist attack’.

Now, contrast this with the language used by the same three figures following the coordinated series of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. Affectionate expressions of solidarity with persecuted Christian communities have been missing. The Christians killed in their own churches have been referred to by Clinton and Obama as ‘Easter worshippers’. Despite the clearly sophisticated, well-planned nature of the terrorist attacks, which very much had the aim of killing a large number of Christians, the British PM – a vicar’s daughter – referred to them as ‘acts of violence’.

The differences in tone and nature between the condemnations of the Christchurch and Sri Lanka terrorist attacks are striking. After Christchurch, there was no hesitation about stating the religious backgrounds of the victims and directing emotion and affection towards Muslim communities. Politicians took no issue with categorising the events in Christchurch as terrorism.

In contrast, the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘Christianity’, along with their associated terms, have so far failed to feature in much of the reaction to the attacks in Sri Lanka. ...

The fact is that the persecution and victimisation of Christians continues to take place in many parts of the world, often at the hands of Islamists.

Would that we had such clarity from our own religious and political leaders.

Related: Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, writes in the Toronto Sun, "Why Islamic terrorists slaughtered Christians in Sri Lanka."

Almost no one dared to mention the word “Christian” let alone identify the terrorists as Muslim or Islamist or whatever safe word they could find in the politically correct dictionary that only the chattering classes employ. Using ordinary plain English to describe the atrocities would of course open one to be labelled “White Nationalist” or “Islamophobe.”

It’s no wonder the trio of America’s living liberal saints, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren all used the phrase, “Easter Worshippers,” instead of Christians. It was almost as if the C word was beneath them. ...

Here are the words of the suicide bomber Mohamed Zaharan from his YouTube channel where he declares: “It is a sin to live in Dar Al Kufr, (a country with a non-Muslim majority)” and “Even if a Kaffir (non-Muslim) does good things, I hate him, because he is a non-believer [in Islam].”

Such hate may not be a dominant trait among ordinary Muslims, but as one, I am aware where such hate is planted in our minds. Seventeen times a day, every Muslim child in every mosque, in every country, hears the Imam read a prayer where both Christians and Jews are referred with derision, yet no one dares to intervene.

Whereas Islam’s foundation is based on ‘Tawhid’ (invoked in the name of the Sri Lankan terrorist group), which means strict monotheism, its exact opposite is the concept of ‘Shirk’ (the Christian belief in the Trinity). No amount of inter-faith dialogue can bridge the zeal of the Muslim to answer the call to end ‘Shirk’ from the surface of earth.

Colombo is not the last city to be attacked. It’s just the latest in a long list that began with Constantinople.

This, too, by another Muslim writer: "When Christians Are Under Attack, Muslims and the Left Need to Defend Them."

To call these acts of violence heartless and barbaric would be an understatement. Nevertheless, they aren’t the first such Easter-related attacks on Christians. In Egypt, on Palm Sunday 2017, Islamic State suicide bombers murdered 45 people in two Coptic churches. In Pakistan, in 2016, a suicide bomber affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban targeted Christians celebrating Easter at a public park, killing 75 people. In Nigeria, on Easter Sunday 2012, a suicide bomber believed to be a member of Boko Haram targeted Christians outside a church, killing 38 people.

I am a Muslim, and I consider myself to be on the left, but I’m embarrassed to admit that in both Muslim and left circles, the issue of Christian persecution has been downplayed and even ignored for far too long.

"Easter worshippers" and other Democrat denials

Unless you have been living on the moon, you know that on Easter morning,

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka—A series of blasts tore through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter morning, killing at least 290 people and wounding more than 400 in coordinated attacks on tourists and the country’s minority Christian community.

At least eight explosions, most blamed on suicide bombers, took place across the country. Restaurants and houses of worship that moments earlier were hosting holiday feasts and joyful services were plunged into chaos, filled with rubble, broken furniture, shards of glass and the wounded and dead.

Remains of a church in Sri Lanka, bombed during worship on Easter morning

Let's see whether we can identify who was targeted by the bombers:

1. The targeted buildings were churches. Only the Christian religion refers to its houses of worship as churches.
2. It happened during worship on Easter morning. Easter is a religious occasion of significance to no one in the world except Christians.
3. Easter is always on the Sunday following the Jewish day of Passover. Passover can be any day of the week, but Easter is only on a Sunday. 
4. Therefore, it stands to reason that the killed and wounded were "Easter worshippers" gathered during a "holy weekend for many faiths." But should we identify them as "Christians"? Of course not. 

Think I jest? Well, here you go (click image to enlarge):

You can't make this stuff up. Do Democrats text each other to set the approved phrases and use of boldface before making public statements? Or is there some secret "message controL web site they consult first? Or is groupthink so deeply embedded in them that they automatically come up with the exact same euphemisms? As Martin G. commented elsewhere, "You've got to admire the message discipline. There was more message diversity at Stalin's 1936 party congress. A Rockette kickline has more individuality. They move through the political landscape with the single mindedness of army ants."

Gosh, as Harry K. tweeted, if only there existed a single word they could have used instead of "Easter worshippers." (I will also add that they unanimously misspelled "worshipers.")

I focus on Hillary's truly insulting tweet, since she is at least nominally a Methodist like me.

First, as I indicated above, this was not a "holy weekend for many faiths." Easter weekend is a holy weekend for exactly one faith: Christianity. This particular year, the Jewish holy day of Passover happened to have begun Friday evening and ended Saturday evening. But that is coincidental since Passover can occur on any day of the week. In 2014, Passover began on Monday evening. But Easter always occurs only on a Sunday. ("Easter Sunday" is repetitive.)

If Hillary had tweeted, "holy this year for two faiths" I would have no complaints except calling the victims "worshippers" instead of Christians. At least she acknowledged that hotels were also targeted because of their foreign guests, so not all the killed were "worshippers." (Three of the four children of Denmark's richest man were killed, for example.)

But the tweet that she sent proves positively that she simply refuses to identify Christian victims of terrorism as Christians because - oh, who the heck knows why? There is no rational basis for such evasions, by her or the other lockstep-language tweeters. (Update: Dennis Prager explains why.)

However, compare Hillary's Sri Lanka tweet to the one she sent out after a gunman attacked Muslims inside their mosques in New Zealand in March:

Note the specificity of the victims, the perpetrator, and the ideology behind the shooter:

• Victims? Muslims.
• Perp? A white supremacist
• Ideology? Islamophobia. 

After New Zealand, Hillary's heart broke for New Zealand and Muslims everywhere in the world. But after Sri Lanka? No heartbreak, only prayers for "everyone affected." The bombers' ideology? Gosh, she has no idea even though the Sri Lankan government knew almost immediately that the bombers were belonged to "Nations Thawahid Jaman (NTJ), a little-known local Islamist group which has previously defaced Buddhist statues" and which "was likely to have been inspired by ISIS," with connections to a "a wider international network" (link). 

Remains of St. Sebastian's Church, north of Colombo.

From CNN web site

 But at least the New York Times was not afraid to name names in the headline: "Blasts Targeting Christians Kill Hundreds in Sri Lanka."

 a few hours on Sunday, suicide bombings hit three Catholic churches and three upscale hotels in the Indian Ocean island nation of Sri Lanka, still recovering from a quarter-century civil war in which the suicide bomb was pioneered. ...

The bombings were the deadliest attack on Christians in South Asia in recent memory and punctuated a rising trend of religious-based violence in the region.

But for Democrat politicos, Newspeak is the order of the day.

Update: Mark Steyn dissects some other media coverage. "Taqiyya for Easter."

Yet throughout Sunday the UK, Aussie, Danish and the rest of the world's media saw their job as thorough obfuscation of the truth. I heard about yesterday's attack from the BBC, which had extensive rolling coverage with correspondents on the ground - and yet seemed mainly to be trying to tell us as little as possible. A lady think-tanker from Chatham House was keen to focus on the brutality with which the Sri Lankan government had ended the Tamil insurgency a decade ago: a fascinating topic no doubt, but utterly irrelevant to the mound of Christian corpses in Colombo that morning. In the entire hour, hers was the only mention of Islam - when she cautioned that it would be grossly irresponsible and "Islam-phobic" even to bring up the subject.

She didn't really need to spell that out, did she? It used to be said that ninety per cent of news is announcing Lord Jones is dead to people who were entirely unaware that Lord Jones was ever alive. Now the trick is to announce Lord Jones is dead and ensure that people remain entirely unaware of why he is no longer alive. One senses that a line was crossed in yesterday's coverage. As one of our Oz Steyn Club members, Kate Smyth, put it, the media have advanced from dhimmitude to full-blown taqiyya.

And if you are The But if you are the Washington Post, the real problem with the Sri Lanka mass murder of Christians is this: "Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West." Gratefully, the comments left there are fantastic. Australian Arthur Chrenkoff, who was born and raised in Communist Poland, responds:

This effort to use language as a cudgel has several sinister implications. It delegitimises perfectly normal political ideas through guilt by association. It also creates the impression that the (genuine) far right is much bigger, more influential and more threatening and dangerous than it actually is. This in turn is used to downplay and minimise the dangers of Islamist and far-left extremism and terrorism. But perhaps the scariest aspect of it all is that the left, by manufacturing the far right monster, are actually genuinely contributing to the growth of far-right extremism. The relentless flood of identity politics, grievance and victimhood, and shaming and guilting entire sections of population based on their skin colour and culture is genuinely radicalising some misfits into fascism, like the Christchurch terrorist, for example. For every action there is eventually an equal and opposite reaction. The left might think it’s courageously
defanging the fascist dragon but instead it’s just sowing its teeth.

Another response to the WaPo:

The coming mosque of Notre Dame?

Bruce Bawer on the French government's response to  the fire of Notre Dame cathedral:

One thing that jumped out at me, as I watched Notre Dame burn in real time on BBC and Sky News, was the statement of some reporter or commentator or architectural expert that the cathedral could and would be rebuilt, although perhaps the new structure would be “more modern” than the old one. Later that evening, in his speech to the nation, President Macron vowed: “We will make the Cathedral of Notre Dame even more beautiful.”

More modern? More beautiful? My alarm bells went off, and they weren’t fire alarms. ...

 So it is that when one hears talk of a the construction of new Notre Dame that will be “more modern” or “more beautiful” than the original, it’s only natural – especially given that the cathedral, like all such structures in France, belongs not to the Catholic Church but to the French state –  to picture a building that, in the eyes of national and municipal officials, their interfaith advisors, and whatever cockamamie commission of postmodernism-loving architectural experts they end up putting together, ends up being some multipurpose multicultural monstrosity centered on a non-denominational worship area and/or containing different spaces for different faiths, with plenty of prayer rugs, wudu units, etc., for Muslims.

After all, in today’s Paris, Muslims already make up the majority of people who go to a house of worship at least once a week, n’est-ce pas? And given the way that these things work in most of Western Europe nowadays, it seems a foregone conclusion – barring some powerful, persuasive, and unprecedented movement to the contrary – that the voices that prevail as this project goes forward will be those arguing that the new Notre Dame must be a Notre Dame (although of course something needs to be done about that name) for the twenty-first century, for an increasingly non-Christian Paris, for an era of fundamental transformation in regard to matters spiritual. Why, after all, resurrect a cathedral that was already mainly a museum, a tourist mecca, a reminder of dead glories, when you can replace it with a spectacular mosque that will be a living place of worship for armies of believers, and will thereby serve as a dynamic, forward-looking symbol of the Paris, the France, the Europe of the twenty-first century and beyond, and hence affirm Paris’s place as the heart of a dramatically transformed Europe and – Allah willing – usher in a new Belle Époque?

Read the whole thing. I have maintained for double-digit years (though not on this blog) that Notre Dame cathedral will become a mosque during my lifetime. France's Muslim population is growing far more rapidly than ethnic French. In 2016, 8.8 percent of France's population were Muslim; in 2050 the figure will approach 20 percent.

Update: The question, "Why build it back the way it was?" is already being asked: How Should France Rebuild Notre Dame?

Much of the structure survived the blaze — but as rebuilding efforts move forward, the country will be left with a big question: What does the cathedral mean to 21st-century France?

And you better believe that a lot of answers are about to be offered.

Update: As the cathedral burned, there was jubilation from the strange alliance of Islamists and Leftists, because of what French philosopher " Bernard-Henri Lévy calls Islamo-Leftism, an 'anti-American religion' opposed to the existence of Western Civilization itself."

Meanwhile, Arab posts on an Israeli friend's Facebook page cheered Notre Dame's destruction: “This church was the HQ for the Templar Knights and was their operations room for carrying out attacks on Muslims wherever they were. We kneel (in prayer) thanking Allah and (hope) the same thing happens to the Vatican only this time the Pope is inside it.”

“God rain fire on it”.

“We’re all in solidarity with the fire. We are all the fire”.

Likewise, Social Justice Warriors posted taunts on Twitter:

“Notre-Dame burning is cosmic karma for all the historical sites and artifacts France destroyed and stole when being colonialist scum.”

"The most aesthetically pleasing visually (sic) I’ve ever seen.”

Which reminds me of destructors. "These persons simply must have an enemy, someone or some group who opposes them. For the 'my way' that destructors must get is inextricably linked to triumph over an opponent. That's why anyone who does not agree or assent to their demands is a target: the issue is not the demands, but the opposition."

Truth about the invasion of Europe

This is from "an interview with the German artist, activist for the rights of indigenous peoples, and UN advisor Rebecca Sommer, by the Polish website EuroIslam from January 18, 2018.

"Rebecca used to support Muslim 'refugees' in Germany, and describes how her experience made her gradually change her mind over core issues."

[A]fter looking back through the years of repetitive experiences and myself in my work environment as a volunteer, I had to admit to myself that when it comes to Muslim refugees, they have grown up with completely different values, into wich they have been brainwashed and are indoctrinated by Islam, and have no intention of adopting our values – worse, they look at us, unbelievers with superiority and arrogance. I call it “headscarf in the head”. And additionally, after their arrival here, many of them fall into the tentacles of fundamental Imams, political Islam (imported from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran etc.) who strengthen them in their fundamentalism, which prohibits them from mixing with us, infidels, and our way of life, prohibits the adoption of our perception of the world and our scientific achievements, which the German state unfortunately no longer has any control over. ...

For example, after a volunteer spent three months teaching German to a Syrian twice a week, she was convinced that everything was going well and that she was just trying to be kind and accepted the invitation for a meal together. She just thinks that he wants to thank her for help, and he thinks that the “whore” wants sexual encounter. These women do not realize that they are perceived by men from this cultural circle as infidel, immoral, and always sexually subordinate to the man, because at first the refugees seem very nice, polite and well-mannered – that is, they practice the aforementioned taqqiya. And then there was a very unpleasant surprise when a friendly – until now – immigrant dragged her by her hair into the bathroom at the moment when she wanted to say goodbye. And the reason for this is that he cannot understand that she wants to go now, because why did the “whore” come alone to his room?

Read the whole, eye-opening thing.

"There’s No Such Thing as Islamophobia"

The notion of Islamophobia is meant to give the religion of the Prophet a status of exemption denied to other spiritual systems. Thus, we have the reprehensible law enacted by the Canadian Parliament this March that prohibits criticism of Islam, while other confessions still can be denigrated without any problem. Such a law is a poisoned gift that risks producing the opposite of what it intends, since it can incite anger and resentment against the believers of the crescent. To regularize the presence of Islam in free societies means giving the faith exactly the same status as other confessions: neither moronic demonizing nor blind idealizing. Muslims in free societies must accept what Jews and Christians have accepted: that it is not a superior religion that should benefit from advantages refused to other confessions. We must beware when fanaticism borrows the language of human rights and dresses up as a victim in order better to impose its grip on power. There is an old saying: the devil also likes to quote scripture.

Read the whole thing at City Journal.

Muslim attacks Christian priest during wedding

Muslim Man Runs Into Christian Wedding in Spain, Attacks Priest

Last Saturday, a 22-year-old man interrupted a Catholic wedding in the San Pablo Church in Valladolid, Spain, when he ran inside, shouted "Allahu Akhbar," and attacked the priest. The shocked couple could do nothing but watch in sheer amazement at what was happening:

Witnesses for the groom were eventually able to chase the man off the altar and out of the church building after he tried to attack several people present at the wedding. He even tried to throw Catholic sacramental objects at the churchgoers.

Police were able to identify and arrest the attacker, who will now be prosecuted for causing public disorder, threatening others, and for insulting religious sensibilities. The priest who blessed the wedding explained afterward that a "group of young troublemakers" started making noise at the back of the church. Next, one of the "young people" shouted "Allahu Akhbar" and charged the altar. "A lot of people," the priest went on to explain, "including the bride's mother, were crying, and there were people who had already jumped out of the pews because we did not know whether this person came alone or not, or if he was armed.".

It's not exactly Muslim excommunication . . .

... but it's somewhat conceptually similar (except excommunication can be reversed): "130 British imams refuse to perform funerals for London, Manchester attackers."

Will not happen for London murderers.

Over 130 imams from across the United Kingdom have said they will refuse to perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer for the London and Manchester terror attackers. The ritual is normally carried out for every Muslim, regardless of their actions.

In what is a highly unusual move, Muslim religious leaders from different schools of Islam -- both Sunni and Shia -- issued a statement late Monday saying their pain at the suffering of the victims of Saturday's attacks had led to their decision, and they called on others imams to follow suit.

"We are deeply hurt that a spate of terror attacks have been committed in our country once more by murderers who seek to gain religious legitimacy for their actions. We seek to clarify that their reprehensible actions have neither legitimacy nor our sympathy," the statement put out by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), an umbrella body representing over 500 organizations, read.

"Consequently, and in light of other such ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam, we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer for the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege. This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam," the statement continued.

Notice that the imams did not say there would be no funeral. They said, "we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer" at the funeral. What is the significance of of the prayer and what does its omission mean?

In Arabic, the prayer is called the Janazah Prayer. Prayerinislam.com explains,

There is a consensus among scholars that Janazah (funeral) Prayer for a deceased person whether male or female is a communal duty (fard kifayah) as the Prophet commanded Muslims to offer it ... .

With regard to the reward of offering the funeral prayer, there are many authentic narrations that prove the excellence of this prayer. For example, the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Whoever follows the funeral procession and offers the funeral prayer for it, will get a reward equal to one Qirat, and whoever attends it till burial, will get a reward equal to two Qirat.” It was asked, “What are two Qirat?” He replied, “Equal to two huge mountains.”

Islamreligion.com says,

A prayer service should be held for every dead Muslim, young or old, even infants who have lived who died before their birth.  Women are permitted to attend the funeral prayer just as they are permitted to perform other non obligatory prayers.  In order to keep the time between death and burial to a minimum this should be held in the same city or area in which the person died.  It is not necessary for the body to be sent to another country.

The funeral prayer should be performed in congregation, it is a rewarding act and believers should not hesitate to participate in any funeral prayer even those of people not known to them.  Prophet Muhammad encouraged this saying that whoever attended the funeral prayer until it was finished would earn rewards as hefty as a great mountain. 

Note that the deceased receives no benefit from the prayer. There is no such thing in Islam as intercessory prayer for the dead as there is in some Christian traditions. Instead, Muslims who recite the Janazah are committing a meritorious act for which Allah will reward them, not the dead person. Offering the Janazah even for deceased Muslims not known to the one praying counts as merit.

And that is the key point, because the Janazah may be rightfully offered only at funerals of Muslims, not for non-Muslims. It is not a generic funeral prayer, it is very specifically Islamic.

What the British imams have said is:

• that there is no merit before Allah for offering the prayer for the London terrorists because
• the terrorists were not Muslims when they committed their rampage.

The imams' announcement is not exactly the same as pronouncing the terrorists to be apostates, but it is not far.

This is a very positive development because, as I have explained before, Islam is what Muslims do, which is not my original insight, it is the stated position of leading Muslim scholars. So if Islam is ever truly to be a religion of peace, "excommunications" of terrorists from the Muslim fold - by Muslim clerics and scholars, not Western apologists - is the only place it can begin.

But there is a long, long way to go.

What is Jihad and why?

Ramadan is ...

Part of the aftermath of a Baghdad bombing in May 2017.

... a Muslim month when drinking a cup of water during the daytime can condemn you to Hell but massacring other Muslims and especially infidels guarantees salvation.

Katy Perry forces Middle East Peace!

More here.

Methodist terrorists

The Spectator blog sums up British media coverage of the massacre of children in Manchester at the end of an Ariana Grande performance in We must come together – and repeat the mantra ‘hope not hate’

We must all come together. Hope, not hate. Nothing to do with Islam. Nothing to do with Muslims. Just a rogue individual, possibly in the employ of some mysterious foreign agency. Just terrorism, bad people. Unaligned wickedness. Nothing to do with religion. We must all come together. And show love. And solidarity. Hope not hate.

Je Suis Ariana Grande. Already viciousness is being expressed on social media sites. People jumping to all sorts of conclusions. Horrible, horrible, people – no better than the murderer. Who might just as easily have been a Methodist. Remember Jo Cox? That wasn’t them, was it? There, you see.

So we should come together. Hope not hate. Nothing to do with immigration. Nothing to do with Islam. Nothing to do with Muslims. Just horridness of no discernible provenance. Hope not hate. [boldface added]

Let it be noted that the media in Britain are state controlled. Not state organs, mind, but Her Majesty's government has the authority under law to prohibit British media from covering stories or using angles of coverage that the government doesn't approve of. And so you get pablum like above. As British singer Morrisey tweeted,

The Queen receives absurd praise for her 'strong words' against the attack, yet she does not cancel today's garden party at Buckingham Palace - for which no criticism is allowed in the Britain of free press.

Manchester mayor Andy Burnham says the attack is the work of an "extremist". An extreme what? An extreme rabbit?

At least US media are actually acknowledging that the Manchester bombing was carried out by person(s) who at least thought of themselves as Muslims (even though, you know, they weren't, not really). ABC News went straight to the point and expressed deep concern About Potential ‘Anti-Islamic Backlash’ After Manchester Terror Attack.

But why would there be a backlash against Muslims if the attack objectively had nothing to do with Islam? You may as well be worried about a backlash against Seventh Day Adventists or, well, Methodists.

Well, at least Methodists can be held partly responsible for the destruction of Rock Ridge:



And that is about the level of coverage of most media.

ISIS is full of slackers!

No, its' not The Onion or Duffelblog, it's hard news reporting: "Fair-weather fighters: ISIS jihadists claim headaches, bad backs to get out of battle, documents show."

Headaches, bad backs and general malaise are plaguing the ranks of ISIS, with jihadists calling out sick from the fight to save their caliphate, according to a report. 

Foreign fighters in particular seem to be going soft in the face of an offensive led by the Iraqi national military, Kurdish fighters and international forces. Documents discovered in recently liberated sections of Mosul show how the fair-weather jihadists go to great lengths to get out of combat. 

The Washington Post reported that Iraqi forces who took over an ISIS base in Mosul found a document lamenting 14 “problem” fighters from the Tariq Bin Ziyad battalion. On the surface, reports that militants are on the ropes in former stronghold cities appears to be a good thing, but some disenfranchised members may work their way back to Europe. 

“He doesn’t want to fight, wants to return to France,” one note reportedly said about a 24-year-old Algerian, who is  a resident of France. “Claims his will is martyrdom operation in France. Claims sick but doesn’t have a medical report.” 

Another man from Kosovo complained of a headache. A Belgian militant got out of fighting by offering a doctor's note saying he had back pain.

A former US Marine infantry officer with several years' Middle East service emailed me the article with the comment, 

I love the light-duty-chit approach that is shared by [slackers] around the globe - the mysterious, but ubiquitous, "Oh my back!!".

Yeah, "martydom operations" ain't all they're cracked up to be, right? So legions of jihadis seem to be as smart as Simpkins here:



Things will go rapidly downhill from here for ISIS, especially since the US Marines accidentally mis-routed one of their regimental clerks to Raqqa, Syria, capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

RAQQA, Syria — The self-proclaimed Islamic State has been reportedly paralyzed by administrative paperwork and bureaucracy after a U.S. Marine administrative clerk was mistakenly sent there, Duffel Blog has learned.

Marine Staff Sgt. Alonso Gray executed a mistaken set of permanent change-of-station orders to Raqqa earlier this month, moving to ISIS’s de facto capital and starting work in their administrative section. Within days of his arrival however, pay errors, late morning reports and “improperly routed routing sheets” have caused the group to crumble from within.

Seemingly unaware that he was working for the global terrorist organization, Gray insisted they submit their DTS vouchers to him at least 90 days prior to going TDY. Commanders then panicked when he told them that their units were “non-mission capable” due to incomplete annual training requirements.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of the group, says taking Gray on board was the worst decision he ever made.

“I was supposed to PCS from Mosul to Raqqa before the Iraqi Army attacked, but instead he sent me here,” said Baghdadi, speaking from his cell in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

I'll bet one reason that the Greeks' Trojan War lasted 10 years was because it took that long to get the requisitions approved for the Trojan Horse.

Saudi Arabia's religious tolerance

Which is to say, there ain't none: Saudi Arabia Bans National Geographic Cover Featuring Pope Francis

Pope Francis has won praise around the world for advancing a more humble, tolerant version of Catholicism, but there’s one country that he evidently hasn’t won over. Saudi Arabia banned the August issue of the National Geographic’s Arabic edition, whose cover featured Francis standing in the Sistine Chapel, due to what the magazine said were “cultural reasons.”

“Dear readers in Saudi Arabia, we apologize that you did not receive August’s magazine,” read a statement published on National Geographic’s Arabic-language Twitter account, from the editor in chief, Alsaad Omar al-Menhaly. “According to the distribution company, the magazine was refused entry for cultural reasons.”

The very act of putting the Vicar of Christ on a magazine cover could have been controversial enough for senior officials from a country where mosque and state are closely intertwined. But Saudi censors might have also seen dangerous implications for the Wahhabi state in how National Geographic framed its coverage, as the cover referred to Francis leading a “quiet revolution” to reform the Catholic Church.

An editor’s note published in National Geographic’s Arabic edition in August lauded Pope Francis for moving to revitalize his church by making changes that “will dislodge some of the ingrained principles of the followers of the church.” Its argument, however, went beyond Catholicism: It made the case that religious institutions must adapt to a rapidly changing world. Religious pillars, the article argued, “are only tools aimed at preserving something, and if they are no longer capable of that, they must be altered.”

It’s not hard to see why that could be read as a challenge to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi religious authorities, who insist on a literal interpretation of the Quran. Wahhabis strive for a return to the practices of the first generations of Muslims from the seventh century; the notion that religion should be fluid and change with the times is precisely the idea that they are arrayed against.

And the House of Saud simply can't have any of its subjects, especially women, getting any bright ideas.

Islamic terrorists target mainly other Muslims

I have been saying since 2003 that Islamist terrorists' principal targets are other Muslims, whom al Qaeda, ISIS, et. al. consider Muslim heretics.

And now it appears that this kind of terrorist attack has come to Canada: Canada says Quebec City mosque attack that killed 6 is terrorism.

MONTREAL — Canada’s prime minister said early Monday that a shooting at a Quebec City mosque during evening prayers that killed six people and injured eight was an act of terrorism.

"We condemn this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge," Justin Trudeau said in a statement. "It is heart-wrenching to see such senseless violence. Diversity is our strength, and religious tolerance is a value that we, as Canadians, hold dear."

The incident took place Sunday night. More than 50 people were in the mosque at the time of the assault. Police said two suspects were arrested and they don't believe there are further suspected perpetrators at large.

One suspect in Quebec attack is French-Canadian, one of Moroccan heritage:

One suspect was identified as Alexandre Bissonnette, a French-Canadian, the other as Mohamed Khadir, who is of Moroccan heritage although his nationality was not immediately known, according to the source.

And the killers apparently shot in Islamist terrorist manner:

One of two gunmen who shouted 'Allahu akbar!' as they opened fire at a mosque in Quebec City was of Moroccan origin, a witness and local media reported Monday, revealing the first details about the attackers in the massacre that killed six men. ...

 A witness who asked to remain anonymous told Radio Canada the two shooters were masked.

“It seemed to me that they had a Quebecois accent. They started to fire, and as they shot they yelled, 'Allahu akbar!' The bullets hit people that were praying. People who were praying lost their lives. A bullet passed right over my head,” the person said.

Let us pray that this attack is not a harbinger of more such acts to come.

Update: Well, maybe this counts as good news, although "good" is a hard word to use in connection with this atrocity: Mohamed Khadir, the Moroccan, has been cleared by police as a suspect. They say now that the only shooter was Bissonnette. Details.

What comes after ISIS?

ISIS is crumbling - though there are miles to go before we rest - and the question looming ever larger is simply, "What comes after ISIS?"

The Islamic State could eventually lose control of Raqqa, but it is expected to regroup in remote areas, such as Al Bukamal and Al Qaim, along the Syria-Iraq border. The movement may be disrupted, but U.S. officials concede that it will be almost impossible to totally dismantle it. An end to Syria’s wider six-year war—in any way that both stabilizes one of the most important geostrategic countries in the Middle East and favors U.S. interests—also seems increasingly remote.

And the quest for a caliphate goes on. “Al Qaeda might lay claim to it for a moment, and the Islamic State may lay claim to it, but there’s always been this dream of recapturing and bringing back the caliphate,” a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told me. “Who’s going to tap into that next?”

Peace is definitely not on the horizon.

Science and religion? No, science is a religion

Reposted from November 2006

The vital necessity of recovering scientific faith

So said Michael Polanyi, a Fellow of the Royal Society and former professor of physical chemistry at the University of Manchester in an article entitled, “Scientific Conventions and the Free Society,” linked to by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The article is based on a previous work of 1949. Polanyi writes,

Any account of science which does not explicitly describe it as something we believe in, is essentially incomplete and a false pretension. It amounts to a claim that science is essentially different from and superior to all human beliefs which are not scientific statements, and this is untrue. To show the falsity of this pretension, it should suffice to recall that originality is the mainspring of scientific discovery. Originality in science is the gift of a lonely belief in a line of experiments or of speculations, which at the time no one else had considered to be profitable. Good scientists spend all their time betting their lives, bit by bit, on one personal belief after another. The moment discovery is claimed, the lonely belief, now made public and the evidence produced in its favor, evokes a response among scientists which is another belief, a public belief, that can range over all grades of acceptance or rejection. … Let me show how this works or has worked in some instances. Take the reception accorded to two papers published by two authoritative scientists in Britain at about the same time, not quite two years ago. One of these was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in June, 1947, by Lord Rayleigh, a distinguished Fellow of the Society. It described some simple experiments which proved in the author’s opinion that a hydrogen atom impinging on a metal wire could transmit to it energies ranging up to one hundred electronvolts. Such an observation, if correct, would be of immense importance. It would be far more revolutionary, for example, than the discovery of atomic fission by Otto Hahn in 1939. Yet when this paper came out and I asked various physicists’ opinion about it, they only shrugged their shoulders. They could not explain the results stated; yet not one believed in it, nor thought it even worth while to repeat the experiment. They just ignored it. Since Lord Rayleigh has subsequently died, the matter seems to have been already forgotten.

Polanyi recounts the history of science’s treatment of hypnosis, beginning with the thorough discrediting in the late 18th century of “Friedrich Anton Mesmer, a Viennese medical practitioner, whose hypnotic cures had spread his fame all over Europe” and whose name is the source of “mesmerized”). Hypnosis, says Polanyi, had been practiced for centuries throughout the world but had been dismissed as part of the realm of superstition that science sought to overwhelm. Other scientists investigating the phenomenon were scornfully dismissed for 100 years by their peers, including a professor of medicine at the University of London who was so professionally persecuted that he resigned his position.

The hatred against the discoverers of a phenomenon which threatened to undo the cherished beliefs of science was as bitter and inexorable as that of the religious persecutors two centuries before. It was, in fact, of the same character.

This is a densely-packed, five-page article worth the time of anyone interested in the relationship of science and religion. Now, what makes this more than an academic exercise is Polanyi’s demonstration of the cultural and political foundations of scientific belief. Scientific theory and practice under Marxism-Leninism took radically different directions in sveral important disciplines than it did in the West. Hitlerism denounced “Jewish science,” as degenerate. Mainstream Western scientists, by which I include those practicing anywhere whose methods are Western, may scoff that Soviet and Nazi researchers were not actually practicing science at all, but a political dogma that had co-opted scientific language. However,

The Marxists are quite near the truth in saying that in demanding freedom we merely seek to establish our own orthodoxy. The only valid objection to this is that our fundamental beliefs are not just one orthodoxy; they are true beliefs which we are prepared to uphold. This true vision also happens to open greater scope for freedom than other, false visions; that is so, but in any case, our commitments to what we believe to be true comes first.

Islamists are much more ferociously anti-science than even the most rabid creationists in America. Science in the Western tradition claims to investigate, discover and know the “really real.” Over the last century-plus, science has displaced religion as the arbiter of the ultimate, according to Carl Sagan (in Broca’s Brain). Sagan told the story of Napoleon’s complaint to the Marquis de Laplace about Laplace’s work, Mecanique celeste. “Napoleon complained to Laplace that he had found no mention of God in the text. Laplace’s response has been recorded: ‘Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis.’” The idea that God could be hypothetical is a product of modernity, says Sagan. People who ask him whether he believes in God, he says, are really asking for reassurance that their belief system “is consistent with modern scientific knowledge.”

And so, following Polanyi’s line, we have a culture that is scientistic as well as scientific. Scientism is faith in science. As the dominant world view of of the West, it is considered self-validating. Scientism makes two major claims, neither of which, however, are testable using the scientific method:

(1) only science reveals the Real and only science can discover truth;

(2) scientific knowledge of reality is exhaustive, not inherently limited, is holistic and sees reality as reality really is.

Early modernity’s mechanistic view of creation was originally proposed as a way to preserve God’s agency. This view was soon supplanted by the view that knowledge about the world beyond the self was limited to what could be known through sense-perception of material things. The materialism of the modern world view is its central feature. Thus, “the modern world view simply has no natural place for God in it,” as philospher of science Langdon Gilkey put it.

Modern science has had a much more difficult time being accepted in Muslim lands than elsewhere in the world. In an article, “The Religion of Modern Science: Roots of modern God-free thinking,” published in the western-based Islamic Journal, Muslim author Harun Yahya wrote of Western scientific absolutists who, 

… regard modern science as absolute and true religion, and want to impose this view to all humankind. . . . However, the question is not that whether Islam is in line with science or not, but whether science is in line with Islam. What needs to be approved is science, not Islam.

There are many points of contention and conflict between Arab Islam and the West, but the chief religious contention between Islamists and the West is not really between Islam and Christianity but between Islam and Western scientific-materialism.

Because of the supremacy of the sciences in western thought, Western culture has become caught in a cycle of ever-increasing changes. Western societies contend with an exponentially increasing pace of cultural changes. The pace and kinds of changes that we adapt to (with greater or lesser difficulty, to be sure) are exactly the changes that Islamists correctly believe would destroy basic structures of their society which they believe are the divinely-commanded.

In their view, certain social structures (such as the status and role of women) are absolutely essential, required by Allah’s command as revealed in the Quran. Without those structures, a society is wholly corrupted. We see them as hopeless religious fanatics; they see us as godless and degenerate.

The tension between Islam’s historic traditions and modern pressures of scientific modernity is found throughout the Muslim world. Many Arab intellectuals know that their countries have fallen behind most of the rest of the world. They want to gain the benefits of technological society, but without the cultural baggage that comes with it. They want to modernize their societies but not Westernize them. Their vision of modernization is mostly technological, such as communications, medical science, education, transportation, and consumer goods. They want our DVD players but not our DVDs. Even al Qaeda will accept the trappings of tecnology, they just reject the foundation.

The war between Islamists and the West is fundametally an inter-religious war. It does not spring from grievances that can be resolved to mutual satisfaction of all concerned. It is a dynamic struggle between two irreconcilable world views and understandings of reality.
Polanyi concludes,

We are entering in this century into a period requiring great readjustments. One of these is to learn once more to hold beliefs. Our own beliefs. The task is formidable, for we have been taught for centuries to hold as a belief only the residue which no doubt can conceivably assail. There is no such residue left today, and that is why the ability to believe with open eyes Must once more be systematically re-acquired.

Dare I say that what we must recover is not merely “belief,” but faith itself.

The coming European civil wars

Giles Kepel, one of the foremost scholars of Islam in the Western world, has said Europe better get ready for war:

According to German newspaper Die Welt, Kepel said the terror group’s [ISIS] aim is to incite hatred towards Muslims from the rest of the society which would eventually radicalise others to the point that Europe could enter into full-blown civil war.

Kepel, who is a specialist on Islamic and contemporary Arab world, added these ISIS fanatics not only want to destroy Europe, but to eliminate more moderate Islamic opposition.

“The terrorism is above all an expression of a war within Islam,” he explained. “The long-term goal of the Jihad Generation is to destroy Europe through civil war and then build an Islamic society from the ashes.

See also my 2005 series, "The Forever Jihad."

And from January, "Europe's coming civil war," in which Swiss

Lieutenant-General André Blattmann has issued a warning to the Swiss people that society is dangerously close to collapse and advised those not already armed as part of the Swiss Army reserve to take steps to arm themselves.

A 15-year memorial

I made this video for the 10th anniversary, but I do not think I could do better now.

Islam by the numbers