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Vote for Me Or Else
Islamists' Latest Excuse to Kill Minorities
by Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute, September 17, 2013
In what seems to be a pattern in many Muslim nations of finding new pretexts to justify anti-Christian—and "anti-Other"—behavior, Egypt's Christians and their churches are under attack, ostensibly because Christians joined the June 30 Revolution, which led to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Lesser known is that, even before the revolution back during the 2012 presidential elections, Christians were often threatened andsometimes attacked simply for not voting for the Muslim Brotherhood—an absurd expectation considering that it has long been the Brotherhood and its many Islamist/jihadi offshoots that have terrorized Egypt's Christians for decades.
Even popular columnist Khaled Montasser, an Egyptian Muslim, had scoffed at the idea that Copts could ever vote for Morsi in an article published around presidential elections. Among other things, Montasser documented how the Brotherhood had in years past issued fatwas calling for the destruction of churches and the prevention of burying unclean Christian "infidels" anywhere near Muslim graves. Concluded Montasser, "After such fatwas, Dr. Morsi and his Brotherhood colleagues can ask and wonder—'Why are the Copts afraid?'"
Even so, due to the good showing of presidential Ahmed Shafiq, Morsi's then opponent—many insist he actually won the elections—the Islamists blamed the Copts. Tarek al-Zomor, a prominent figure of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya—the notorious "Islamic Group" which earlier slaughtered some 60 European tourists during the Luxor Massacre—even "demanded an apology from the Copts" for voting for Shafiq, adding that "this was a fatal error."
Now consider how this same paradigm—threatening Christians to vote for or support the same Islamist leaders who persecute them, or else—has manifested itself in other countries, for example, Pakistan.
According to a May 20 report by Morning Star News,
A Muslim political candidate suspected of murdering a Christian has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11 election loss. Tensions were high in Punjab Province's Okara district after provincial assembly seat candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar, sought by police in connection with a 2008 murder, on May 13 arranged for mosque calls for violence against Christian villages. "Burn their homes to the ground … Punish them such that they forget Gojra and Joseph Colony," was the cry from village mosques in the district [emphasis added].
"Gojra and Joseph Colony" are references to two separate incidents when Pakistani Christians were especially persecuted: in 2009 in Gojra, eight Christians were burned alive, 100 houses looted and 50 homes set ablaze after a blasphemy accusation; and last March in Joseph Colony, Lahore, some 3,000 Muslims attacked Christians, destroying 175 homes and burning their churches, again, because a Christian was accused of insulting Islam.
And the calls for violence against the Christians who did not vote for Mehr Abdul Sattar have been effective. Among other things, his supporters ambushed a convoy of about 100 Christians on their way to congratulate his opponent on his victory.
Though notified, police failed to respond. This is unsurprising, considering that Sattar himself is connected to the murder of Javed Masih, a Christian who had opposed him in a 2008 election, according to the Morning Star News report.
"The late Javed Masih used to tell the peasants to vote according to their conscience and not get intimidated by gangsters like Mehr [Abdul Sattar]," said Younas Iqbal, chairman of a peasant movement fighting for land rights: "His efforts bore fruit, and Mehr lost the general election in 2008. Unfortunately, Masih had to sacrifice his life for the cause, while several others were injured in an armed attack by Mehr's men.
This latest "humiliating defeat further stoked anger in Mehr, and he's now bent upon punishing us," added Iqbal, pointing out that Sattar has targeted no Muslims for opposing him.
If modern systems of governance, such as voting, elections, and democracy are being utilized as new ways to persecute Christians and other minorities in countries such as Egypt and Pakistan—which differ in many ways except for the practice of Islam—intimidation by fundamentalists is alive and well across the Islamic world.
Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War in Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, April 2013). He is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Anti-Christianism, Egypt, South Asia | Raymond IbrahimThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
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REALITY CHECK ON EUROPE:
A very strong testimony to the true situation in our world!
What really died at Auschwitz?
Here's an interesting viewpoint:
The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian
Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15 2011.
It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest
of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world.
THIS WAS IN A SPANISH NEWSPAPER:
"EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ"
By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez
"I walked down the street in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth –
Europe died in Auschwitz.
We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world.
These are the people we burned.
And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an
unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.
We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better
future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our
children and theirs.
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe .
A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves.
Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.
It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.
It is now more than sixty years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated.' Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.
This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people. Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.
How many years will it be before the attack on the WorldTradeCenter 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?
If our Judeo-Christian heritage is offensive to Muslims, they should pack up and move to Iran , Iraq or some other Muslim country.
[source - retrieved from an email on 9/30/2013]
REALITY CHECK ON EUROPE:
A very strong testimony to the true situation in our world!
What really died at Auschwitz?
Here's an interesting viewpoint:
The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian
Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15 2011.
It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest
of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world.
THIS WAS IN A SPANISH NEWSPAPER:
"EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ"
By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez
"I walked down the street in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth –
Europe died in Auschwitz.
We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world.
These are the people we burned.
And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an
unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.
We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better
future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our
children and theirs.
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe .
A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves.
Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.
It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.
It is now more than sixty years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated.' Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.
This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people. Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.
How many years will it be before the attack on the WorldTradeCenter 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?
If our Judeo-Christian heritage is offensive to Muslims, they should pack up and move to Iran , Iraq or some other Muslim country.
[source - retrieved from an email on 9/30/2013]
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International 'Islamophobia' Conference Promotes Sharia Agenda
by Andrew Harrod and Sam Nunberg
Breitbart
September 28, 2013
Print Send RSS Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Google +1] Be the first of your friends to like this.Objective observers should be rightfully concerned by the "International Conference on Islamophobia: Law & Media" held by the Turkish government's Directorate General of Press and Information (DGPI or BYGEM in Turkish) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) this past September 12-13 in Istanbul's Grand Tarabya Hotel. Conference participants substantiated all too many threats emanating from various Muslims and their allies, calling into question their respect for free speech and freedom of expression.
The conference website defined "Islamophobia" according to the Greek suffix phobia as a "groundless fear and intolerance of Islam and Muslims." By "culminating in hate speech and attitudes towards Muslims," this phobia is "detrimental to international peace." There should be "recognition of Islamophobia as a hate crime and Islamophobic attitudes as human rights violations."
In Istanbul, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated his well-known meme (seehere and here) that "Islamophobia" as a "kind of racism" is a "crime against humanity." "No monotheistic religion," Erdoğan elaborated, "adopts, supports, permits or leads terror."
"If Christianity and Judaism cannot be mentioned with terrorism," Turkish Deputy Prime MinisterBülent Arinç seconded in his remarks, "then our noble religion Islam cannot be defamed this way either." Arinç discerned the main cause of "Islamophobia" in the belief that "Islam and democracy are not compatible," yet "Muslims are democrats in essence."
Representing the OIC's 57 Muslim-majority states (including "Palestine"), a fellow Turk, OIC Secretary General Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, reprised themes from the OIC'slongstanding attempts to restrict criticism of Islam. Ihsanoglu decried the "exploitation....of freedom of speech."
The conference's first session featured internationally renowned Islam scholar and regular Islamist apologist John Esposito. Esposito cited "irrational fear" being behind "anti-Sharia legislations" in the United States. Turning toward Egypt, Esposito criticized those who "think it is legitimate to overthrow a democratically elected government."
Joining Esposito on the panel to compare anti-Semitism with "Islamophobia" was Norman Gary Finkelstein. The Jewish child of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein has a long record of comparing Israel to Nazism and supporting groups such as Hezbollah while having his views of fellow Jews celebrated among anti-Semites.
Nathan Lean appeared at the conference as well. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jeffrey Taylor hascriticized Lean's recent "maladroit, bungling critique" of atheist Richard Dawkins as an "Islamophobe." Bête noir among Lean's ilk, Islam scholar Robert Spencerhas likewise condemned various sloppy errors in Lean's public correspondence. Spencer has also condemned Lean as a "stalker" for threatening to release publicly supposed pictures of Spencer's home and family.
Joining Lean on a panel were American and Iranian professors Stephen Sheehi and Saied Reza Ameli. During a 2011 visit to the University of Florida, Sheehi had defined "Islamophobia" as merely being a "hatred of brown people." Ameli, meanwhile, was afounder and leading member of the United Kingdom's Islamic Human Rights Commission(IHRC), a "radical Islamist organization" in the assessment of Israel's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism.
The self-proclaimed Turkish "Marxist academic" Ali Murat Yel and his American colleagueHatem Al Bazian were also in Istanbul. Yel has praised Erdoğan's ruling AKP party for having "paved the way for…a democratic society" in Turkey despite Islamist concerns. "The West," Yel has also opined, "may come to appreciate the Muslim experience of both Andalusia and the Ottoman past in dealing with their religious minorities." The "outspoken anti-Zionist" Bazian, meanwhile, has in the past stated notoriously genocidal Islamic hadith against the Jews.
Turkish academic Bülent Şenay oversaw the conference declaration drafting. In a 2010 presentation to the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Senay deemed "Islamophobia" as "today…the strongest form of hate crime," extending to the "psychological terror" of "cultural terrorists." Şenay condemned "hate speech…targeting all the tenets and adherents of Islam…under the banner of the freedom of expression." Additionally, "hate crimes originate from hate speeches," Şenay argued in another 2010 OSCE presentation. Şenay is the founder of theEuropean Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion (EMISCO), an entity prominent in the past for seeking OSCE opposition to "Islamophobia" speech (see here, here, and here).
Dahlia Mogahed rounded out the conference participants. This Esposito protégé and Obama Administration appointee has had numerous associations with MB-linked groups in the United States. She has also downplayed the extent of violent extremism among Islamists globally as well as the dangers of sharia.
Distinguishing between "legitimate criticisms…and hate-filled or irrational criticisms" was for BYEGM Director General Murat Karakaya in the conference final statement a "fundamental question." Yet the conference did not inspire the confidence that freedom of expression was a consideration in the discussion, particularly in light of host country Turkey's own harsh treatment of irreverence towards freedom of expression (see here andhere). The Istanbul agenda is yet another example of Islamists seeking to internally codify blasphemy under Sharia.
Andrew E. Harrod serves as a Legal Clerk for The Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum. Sam Nunberg serves as Director of The Legal Project.
This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
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ISLAM PERMITS TERRIBLE CRIMES – SEE THE FACTS:
Jihadist Ritual Murder and Mutilation at the Mallby Dawn Perlmutter
FrontPageMagazine.com
October 1, 2013
During the four-day siege in Kenya's Westgate shopping Mall al-Shabaab jihadists raped, tortured, beheaded, dismembered, castrated, gouged out eyes, amputated fingers and hung hostages on hooks from the roof. According to a forensic medical doctor, "They [the al-Shabaab attackers] removed eyes, ears, noses. Fingers are cut by pliers, noses ripped by pliers"… "Those are not allegations. Those are f****** truths,"… "They removed balls, eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood. They drive knives inside a child's body. Actually, if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers." There were also reports that hostages were beheaded and their heads thrown out of the windows.
This inexplicable savage violence is typically attributed to psychological warfare, military tactics or individual acts of brutality but for Jihadists they are justifiable sacred acts against the enemies of Islam. They are ritual murders that are consistent with a growing global Jihadist method of operation [MO]. Similar acts of torture, rape, beheading and mutilation regularly occur in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria and other countries. The Westgate Mall massacre is comparable to the mass murder of 166 people by members of the Islamist Jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, in ten coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India on November 26 -29, 2008. During their siege operation the LeT Jihadists also took the time to sexually humiliate, torture and mutilate some of the victims before shooting them dead.
The Jihadist M.O. is also evident in murders, honor killings and war crimes. On June 20, 2006 in al-Yusufiyah outside of Baghdad, Iraq, the bodies of American soldiers Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, members of the 101st Airborne division, were found mutilated beyond recognition. Like the hostages in the Westgate shopping Mall there were reports that their eyes were gouged out, they were castrated, their ears and noses were cut off and they were beheaded. Jihadist murders that involved throat slashing, multiple stabbings and body desecration also occurred in London and in Waltham, Massachusetts. On May 22, 2013 on the streets of London two jihadists used meat cleavers to publicly behead and disembowel a British soldier while shouting "Allahu Akbar". On September 11, 2011 in Waltham, MA the suspects in the Boston Bombings and their Chechen friend are suspected of ritually murdering three men by slitting their throats from ear to ear with such force that they were nearly decapitated and of desecrating their mutilated corpses. [Read the entire case at Prelude to the Boston Bombing]. These are just a few examples of dozens of Islamist ritual murders that involve torture, dismemberment and mutilation.
Islamist mutilation entails a specific kind of ritualistic crime; a collective, provocative and incendiary desecration of the enemy. Mujahideen throughout the world expend extra effort brutalizing the enemies of Islam including women and children. To understand the significance of these violent ritualistic acts they have to be analyzed in the context of Islamist honor and shame. The primary motivations of Islamist atrocity is an irrepressible impulse to alleviate shame and a sacred duty to restore honor, serve vengeance, preserve purity, maintain tradition and save face. For Islamists honor is signified by stereotypical male characteristics such as courage, bravery, heroism, power, virility, and strength; dishonor is signified by stereotypical female characteristics such as weakness, vulnerability, helplessness and submissiveness.
Honor is what defines Islamists as men and psychologically is experienced as dignity and pride; conversely dishonor is indicated by female traits of weakness experienced as humiliation and shame. Islamists are in a constant struggle with fear of disgrace and maintaining manhood particularly those that are living in countries that they consider to be occupied or run by 'un-Islamic regimes'. Emotions of weakness, helplessness, shame are always just below the surface triggered by a hypersensitivity to any real or perceived act of humiliation. Even a sideways glance can be misinterpreted as a questioning of manhood. Islamist recruitment and indoctrination functions to cultivate the honor shame paradigm so that boys will grow to be ruthless soldiers that require blood vengeance to restore honor and maintain power.
The fear of even the appearance of weakness or vulnerability provides one explanation for the torture of men, women and children. For Mujahideen mercy, compassion, sympathy and kindness symbolize weakness; cruelty, brutality, violence and atrocity symbolize strength. This explains incomprehensible cruel violent acts. Jihadists want to evince their strength and alleviate feelings of shame. Through murder and mutilation these Islamist jihadists experience relief from a sense of humiliation. Psychologically they equate their relief with violent atrocity. Symbolically blood cleanses their impurity. Culturally the violence is sanctioned and they are viewed as heroic. It becomes natural and moral to punish disrespect with torture, mutilation and ritual murder. Strategically it sends a message that there is no mercy for infidel unbelievers.
From a Western behavioral science perspective torture, murder and mutilation are categorized as pathological acts of violence. However, from the jihadist worldview these seemingly inexplicable acts of violence are neither random nor pathological. Atrocity has historical and theological precedents in Islam, is a socially acceptable punishment for infidels and significantly is a projection of cultural taboos. For Islamists the blood of enemies washes away dishonor, disrespect and the Western impurities that have polluted Islam. A symbolic analysis of the types of mutilation reveals jihadists motivations. Mutilating the body is a deliberate act of defilement, impurity and stigmatization. Islamists torture hostages to humiliate and shame them. Cutting off fingers, hacking off noses, cutting out tongues, castration, and dismemberment represent power and control of the body at the moment of death. The slow destruction of the body prevents the person from having any dignity in death.
Rape and gang rapes are a common form of Islamist punishment including men raping other men. The symbolic meaning of male on male rape is that the victims are being turned into women, which in a machismo and homophobia culture is one of the worst forms of humiliation. Similar to prison culture the victims become their bitch. For the same reason castration is the archetypal sign of dishonor and signifies that the victim is no longer a man. Another common form of Jihadist mutilation is gouging out eyes and/or chopping off parts of a person's face such as lips, ears and most often the nose. It was reported that all of these atrocities were inflicted on the hostages in the Westgate Mall. Disfigurement has historical, symbolic and theological meaning in the context of Islamism. In fact mutilation is a form of judicial corporal punishment that occurs in many Islamic countries and includes among other things amputations, floggings, beheadings and stoning to death. In Saudi Arabia and Iran eye gouging is considered a legitimate judicial punishment. Surgically removing one or both eyes is based on the literal interpretation of lex talionis, the law of retaliation or best known from the formulation "an eye for an eye". There are hundreds of women in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Turkey and other countries who are mutilated for dishonoring their families and men accused of being traitors, spies or simply designated as infidel unbelievers who are victims of similar atrocities.
Victims of torture and mutilations are always potential witnesses to jihadists unspoken and often imagined shame. The Somali jihadists had to gouge out the hostages eyes so they could not mock them, cut out their tongues so they could not talk about them and cut off their ears so they could not hear of their offenses. They were indoctrinated to believe that non-Muslims disregard them and think of them as less than. This imagined disrespect is experienced as shame that originates and resides in the eyes of the innocent people who unfortunately went to the mall that day. Killing the hostages kills shame, without witnesses shame no longer exists. Honor, purity and respect is restored. Torture felt good.
Simply shooting the hostages would have demonstrated weakness and sympathy. Similar to gang initiations and narco cults the Somali jihadists earned their status by brutalizing victims. Dismemberment, eye gouging, castration, beheadings, and body desecration are marks of jihad, what genteel people use to refer to as unspeakable acts. The members of al Shabaab were able to torture and mutilate because Sharia law sanctions atrocities committed against infidel enemies of Islam. Ritualizing violence legitimizes it as acceptable punishment allowing the Somali jihadists to murder in the name of Islam. According to Sharia Law mutilation is not a barbaric act, the violence is prescribed so brutality is transformed into a sacred ritual that cleanses impurities through bloodshed. For the al Shabaab jihadists torture and murder was not immoral but righteous blood vengeance that restored honor to Somali Muslims. Through murder and mutilation the jihadists acquire strength, alleviate dishonor and achieve heroic status as ruthless Mujahideen warriors. Torturing and killing the hostages transformed them from men ashamed of their status in life into badass Mujahideen, soldiers of Allah, respected by Islamists all over the world.
Dawn Perlmutter Director and founder of Symbol & Ritual Intelligence and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum is considered one of the leading subject matter experts (SME) in the areas of symbols, unfamiliar customs, ritual murder and religious violence.
Related Topics: Radical Islam, Terrorism | Dawn PerlmutterThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
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MANY MEMBERS OF ISLAM CREATE VIOLENCE WHEREEVER THEY GO – SEE EVIDENCE OF ONE MORE PLACE WHERE THIS IS HAPPENING
China arrests 139 in Xinjiang for urging jihad
Beijing (AFP) - China has arrested 139 people in Xinjiang for allegedly spreading jihad, state-run media said Wednesday, as it warns of growing religious extremism in the far western region home to Muslim Uighurs.
Beijing has pointed to violent incidents to indicate a rising militant threat among the ethnic minority, but information in the vast region is tightly controlled and Uighur organisations complain of cultural and religious repression.
Police in Xinjiang have "handled an increasing number of cases in which individuals have posted or searched for religious extremist content on the Internet", the China Daily said, citing an unnamed source in the Xinjiang Daily.
In the two months to the end of August, 139 people were arrested for "spreading religious extremism including jihad", it said.
Also citing the Xinjiang Daily, the Global Times said a farmer in Hotan was detained after he uploaded 2GB of e-books about secessionism which were read 30,000 times.
Dilshat Rexit, a spokesman for the overseas-based World Uyghur Congress, which Beijing calls a separatist group, said the claims were a "total distortion of the truth" aimed at blocking Uighurs from going online.
Those detained had "expressed discontent with Chinese rule and systematic repression in the area", he said.
China's goal "is to suppress Uighurs' use of the Internet to obtain information and express different points of view", he added.
China's state-run media have previously reported that Uighurs have fought in Syria's civil war against the regime, then returned home to put their militant experience into practice.
Members of a gang behind what China called a "terrorist attack" in Lukqun in June that left 35 people dead watched extremist videos beforehand, the China Daily said, citing police.
A court sentenced three people to death and one person to 25 years in jail in September over the attack, saying they had taken part in a "terrorist organisation", the official news agency Xinhua reported at the time.
The clash was Xinjiang's deadliest since 2009, when riots between Uighurs and China's ethnic majority Han left 200 people dead.
Xinjiang's population is 46 percent Uighur and 39 percent Han, according to official statistics, but the latter largely dominate the economy and form a majority in the regional capital Urumqi. [source - retrieved from on 10/9/2013]
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On The Road To A Muslim Takeover
Muslim Russia?
by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
October 21, 2013
The stabbing murder on Oct. 10 of an ethnic Russian, Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, apparently by a Muslim from Azerbaijan, led to anti-migrant disturbances in Moscow, vandalism and assaults, the arrest of 1,200, and brought a major tension in Russian life to the fore.
Not only do ethnic Muslims account for 21-23 million of Russia's total population of 144 million, or 15 percent, but their proportion is fast growing. Alcoholism-plagued ethnic Russians are said to have European birth rates and African death rates, with the former just 1.4 per woman and the latter 60 years for men. In Moscow, ethnic Christian women have 1.1 child.
Eid al-Fitr prayers in Moscow on Oct. 15, demonstrating the Muslim numbers and solidarity in that city.
In contrast, Muslim women bear 2.3 children on average and have fewer abortions than their Russian counterparts. In Moscow, Tatar women have 6 children and Chechen and Ingush women have 10. In addition, some 3-4 million Muslims have moved to Russia from ex-republics of the U.S.S.R., mainly from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan; and some ethnic Russians are converting to Islam.
These trends point to Christians declining in numbers by 0.6 percent a year and Muslims increasing by that same amount, which will have dramatic effects over time. Some analysts foresee Muslims becoming a majority in the twenty-first century – a demographic revolution that would fundamentally change the country's character. Paul Goble, an expert on Russian minorities, concludes that "Russia is going through a religious transformation that will be of even greater consequence for the international community than the collapse of the Soviet Union." A Russian commentator he quotes envisions a mosque on Red Square in Moscow. The facile assumption that Moscow is and will remain Western-oriented "is no longer valid," he argues. In particular, he predicts that the Muslim demographic surge "will have a profound impact on Russian foreign policy."
Within a few years, Muslims will make up half the conscripts in the Russian army. Joseph A. D'Agostino of the Population Research Institute asks: "Will such a military operate effectively given the fury that many domestic Muslims feel toward the Russian military's tactics in the Muslim region of Chechnya? What if other Muslim regions of Russia—some of which contain huge oil reserves—rebel against Moscow? Will Muslim soldiers fight and kill to keep them part of the Russian motherland?"
Russia's increasingly confident Muslims, who constitute a majority of 57 out of the country's 182 ethnic groups, have started to use the term Muslim Russia to signal their ambitions. According to Muslim analyst Daniyal Isayev, this term affirms that Islam is "an inalienable part of Russia" and that "Russia as a state and civilization could not exist without Islam and the Muslims." He notes that Muslims preceded ethnic Russians in much of the territory that is now Russia. His sweeping claims for Muslims include the exaggerations that they made critical contributions to Russia's culture and its military victories.
Such talk causes ethnic Russians to shudder about the country's population loss of at least 700,000 people a year, return to their faith, and turn against Muslims. The results include biased media portrayals, attacks on mosques and other crimes, efforts to block Muslim immigration, and the rise of extreme Russian nationalist groups such as Alexander Belov's "Movement against Illegal Immigration."
Ethnic Russians yelling "Russia for the Russians" at an anti-migrant riot following the murder of Yegor Shcherbakov.
The Kremlin has responded to the issue in contradictory ways. Then-president Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 tried appeasement by stressing the importance of Islam to Russia, noting that "Muslim foundations are making an important contribution to promoting peace in society, providing spiritual and moral education for many people, as well as fighting extremism and xenophobia." He also announced that, due to its large Muslim population, "Russia does not need to seek friendship with the Muslim world: Our country is an organic part of this world."
Illustration by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times.
But, as Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council points out, "the Kremlin has discriminated against its Muslim minority and ignored (even abetted) the rise of corrosive xenophobia among its citizens. This has bred resentment and alienation among Russia's Muslims – sentiments that radical Islamic groups have been all too eager to exploit." Added to existing Islamic supremacist attitudes, this results in an increasingly restive Muslim minority.
Discussions of Islam in Europe tend to focus on places like Britain and Sweden but Russia, the country with the largest Muslim community in both relative and absolute terms, is above all the place to watch. The anti-migrant violence this week will surely be followed by much worse problems.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2013 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Related Topics: Demographics, Muslims in Europe, Russia/Soviet UnionThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
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MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN RUSSIA – LATEST:
Russian Suicide Bus Bombing Sparks Terrorism Fears for Sochi Olympics[Time.com]
By Simon Shuster
Naida Asiyalova, the suicide bomber who blew herself up on Monday on a crowded bus in the Russian city of Volgograd, killing six people and wounding dozens more, was born in the town of Buynaksk, a huddle of mosques and squat apartment blocks in the foothills of the Russian Caucasus. For at least a year, the town has been under a so-called KTO regime (the Russian initials for counterterrorism operation), which allows security forces to conduct random searches, impose curfews and detain any foreigners who do not carry a special visitor’s permit, as happened to me this spring. At the checkpoint leading into town, the troops who stopped me could not say exactly how long the counterterrorism operation had been going on. “A long time,” one of them said with a sigh. “Probably a couple of years. You should have known about it.” And when would it be over? “Not soon. Not with the Olympics coming up.”
The Olympic Games, which will be held about a day’s drive from Buynaksk in the Russian city of Sochi in February, were roughly nine months away at the time. But President Vladimir Putin’s campaign to stamp out the local Islamist insurgency had already been pushing ahead for at least that much time. Thousands of Interior Ministry troops had been sent to the region of Dagestan, where Buynaksk is one of the largest towns, to reinforce the local police against jihadi fighters, and KTO regimes were cropping up like brush fires in a heat wave. Some of them lasted only about a week, during which troops would seal off a town or village and bombard the hideouts of suspected insurgents until they were killed, captured or escaped. Others, like in Buynaksk, dragged on indefinitely, imposing on the local population a form of martial law, which in Russia usually amounts to police impunity.
Although Asiyalova’s motives remain unclear and the details of her biography sketchy, she seems to fit the profile of other Muslims from the Caucasus who have turned to terrorism as a form of revenge against Russia, taking out their anger on the nation they see as an occupying force. “The organizers of these terrorist attacks prey on people’s frustrations,” says Yulia Yuzik, a leading expert in Russia on female suicide bombers from the Caucasus. “They play on pride, on people’s desire to defend their religion, their nation and their dignity.”
The self-proclaimed leader of the insurgency in southern Russia is Doku Umarov, a warlord from the region of Chechnya, whose stated goal is to turn the Caucasus, including Sochi, into an Islamic caliphate governed by Shari‘a. This summer, he released a video message calling on his followers to use “maximum force” to disrupt the Sochi Olympics, which he called “Satanic games to be held on the bones of our ancestors.” Monday’s attack was the first suicide bombing to strike the Russian heartland since Umarov issued this directive. “My main worry is that it may be the first one in a series,” says Pavel Baev, an expert on the Caucasus at the Oslo-based Peace Research Institute. “Every rebel mastermind knows how vulnerable Putin’s pet Olympic project is.”
As the attack on Monday clearly showed, the militants who operate in Dagestan are perfectly capable of staging attacks far outside their home turf. According to Russian media reports, the bomber’s husband, a Russian convert to Islam named Dmitri Sokolov, was an active member of the insurgency in Dagestan and a self-trained explosives expert. Investigators claim he built the suicide vest for his wife and that the bombing was planned by a terrorist cell in Dagestan, one of dozens thought to be active in the region.
Amid the crackdown leading up to the Olympics, there has been little sign that these groups have been weakened or even contained. Between the start of July and the end of September, 133 people were killed in the conflict between militants and government forces in the North Caucasus; the majority of them — 86 people — were killed in Dagestan, including 32 police offices, according to Kavkaz Uzel, an independent news services that keeps a tally of the violence based on media reports. That is up from a death toll of 118 across the North Caucasus in the previous three months.
Anne Speckhard, who surveyed the motives of suicide bombers for her recently published book, Talking to Terrorists, says the brutal raids against insurgents in the Caucasus may actually be swelling their numbers in the lead-up to the Olympics. For the militant leaders, “the most important thing is consolidating recruitment and membership. And they are very cynically willing to manipulate traumatic bereavement for those ends,” says Speckhard. So when a counterinsurgency strike levels an entire building and kills its inhabitants — as is not uncommon in Dagestan — the grieving relatives and friends of the deceased turn into potential recruits. “They are angry, they want revenge, and they can be very quickly activated in a new terrorist operation.” [source - retrieved from on 10/23/2013]
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Members of Islam Are At It Again – Trying To Destroy A Nation – Read Reality
Bamako (AFP) - Islamists fired shells on Wednesday towards the airport in Gao, Mali's second-largest city, but did not cause any casualties, a source from the Malian army headquarters said.
"The Islamists fired shells towards the airport in Gao" where French and Malian soldiers are stationed, the source said.
There were no victims and the situation had been brought under control, the source added, as French army helicopters were dispatched to chase the militants.
The attack is just the latest to hit Mali's north in recent weeks in the aftermath of a French military intervention in January to oust armed groups linked to Al-Qaeda that had occupied the vast desert north for the previous nine months.
Under heavy attack in the cities of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal, the Islamists retreated into the desert and the cover of the Ifoghas mountains.
But the fragile peace did not last, and on September 28 the militants resumed their deadly insurgency, killing a dozen civilians and UN peacekeepers across the north in three weeks.
Jihadists wounded two civilians and killed a Malian soldier when they blew up a bridge and fired rockets on Gao in October.
The troubled west African nation and its allies launched Operation Hydra in late October after being taken aback by a recent upsurge in violence, just days after two Chadian UN peacekeepers and a civilian were killed in the northern town of Tessalit. [source - retrieved from on 10/31/2013]
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As Usual, Members Of The False Religion Of Islam Are Out To Destroy Nations And Not Integrate Into Society – see Further Proof
China paper blames blind faith of "uncultured" youth for Xinjiang unrest[Reuters]
By Adam Rose8 hours ago
BEIJING (Reuters) - Uncultured youth who have been misled by religious extremists are a main source of unrest in China's heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang, its top newspaper said on Tuesday, after the government blamed Islamists for an attack in central Beijing.
A car ploughed through bystanders on the edge of Tiananmen Square and burst into flames on Monday last week, killing three people in the car and two bystanders. The government called the incident a terrorist attack carried out by Islamist militants from the far western region of Xinjiang.
More than 40 people were hurt, and the police have detained five people in connection with the attack for plotting what it said was a holy war.
A front-page commentary in the official Xinjiang Daily accused ethnic "splittists" of ignoring the great changes the ruling Communist Party has brought to the region, saying extremists were distorting Islamic teachings.
"In recent decades, you can see that most people who blindly follow religious extremist forces are elementary-school, secondary-school or uncultured young people," said the commentary, signed by a person the paper identified as an ethnic Uighur member of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles in Xinjiang.
"We loathe this kind of ignorant behavior, and detest these evil spirits."
Many of the Turkic-speaking Uighurs who call Xinjiang home chafe at restrictions on their culture, language and religion, though the government insists it grants them broad freedoms.
Xinjiang has been the scene of numerous incidents of unrest in recent years, which Beijing blames on the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement, even as many experts and rights groups cast doubt on its existence as a cohesive group.
"The authorities really need to take a step back and look at the results of their policies, and whether those are effective, in obtaining what we assume they want to obtain, which is less violence and more harmony," said Corinna-Barbara Francis, China researcher for Amnesty International.
China has not taken kindly to suggestions that its policies may be more to blame for the unrest than any terror group.
Prominent Beijing-based Uighur economist Ilham Tohti, a longstanding critic of Chinese policies in Xinjiang, told Reuters on Tuesday that state security agents had physically threatened him on Saturday for speaking to foreign reporters.
"I want to kill you," Tohti said an agent told him in a calm voice, after ramming his car from behind. "I want to kill your whole family."
Security has been stepped up in Beijing and Xinjiang following the incident on Tiananmen Square.
The main Uighur exile group, the World Uyghur Congress, said that a further 24 Uighurs had been detained recently, warning China risked provoking a backlash.
"The authorities have been stepping up their repression in Uighur areas ... using armed men to check them," the group's spokesman, Dilxat Raxit, said in an emailed statement.
"If the international community does not take emergency measures to stop China's provocations and repression, the Uighurs who have no hope will resist and fight back as a matter of survival."
(Editing By Ben Blanchard) [source - retrieved from on 11/05/2013]
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MEMBERS OF ISLAM AT IT AGAIN, TERRORISM IN ATTEMPT TO SET UP AN ISLAMIST REPUBLIC IN RUSSIA’S NORTH CAUCASUS
Moscow (AFP) - A Moscow region court on Monday sentenced three men to life in prison for their roles in a 2011 suicide bombing attack on a major Russian airport that killed 37 people.
The January 2011 Domodedovo International Airport strike was claimed by the Caucasus Emirate movement of Islamist warlord Doku Umarov.
The rebel commander is seeking to establish an Islamist republic in Russia's volatile North Caucasus in the south of the country and has threatened to disrupt next year's Winter Olympic Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
Russian authorities established the identity of the suicide bomber as Magomed Yevloyev -- a member of a militant group that answers to Umarov. Investigators said that his attack was plotted at a camp in Ingushetia run by a Caucasus Emirate leader Aslan Byutukayev.
The Moscow regional court ordered Yevloyev's brother Akhmed, who was accused together with Bashir Khamkoyev of hosting Yevloyev in the city of Nazran, providing him with money and putting him on a bus to Moscow, to serve a 10-year sentence in a standard-regime penal colony.
The Interfax news agency reported from the courtroom that Akhmed Yevloyev denied knowing his brother had planned to attack the Moscow airport.
Three others -- brothers Islam and Ilez Yandiyev and Khamkhoyev -- received life sentences in maximum security penal colonies on terrorism and other charges.
The brothers had met Yevloyev upon arrival in Moscow and organised his transportation and lodging in the capital, the Investigative Committee said.
Interfax said that Islam Yandiyev acknowledged his role in the attack and asked the court for forgiveness while Khamkhoyev denied his guilt. [source - retrieved from on 11/11/2013]
The report did not mention Ilez Yandiyev's plea.