Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The danger of saying ISIS is not Islam

By Liz Lightstone

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and posted this morning on twitter about David Cameron’s comment (“they are monsters, not Muslims”). I’m very concerned by growing reprise that “Islamic State” (IS) is not Islam, that they are not Muslims. I can understand where it’s coming from but its a very dangerous form of political correctness. Clearly not all Muslims support IS, nor are all terrorists Muslim. But there is no doubt that IS say they are acting on behalf of Islam, they are Muslims and they want to establish an Islamic Caliphate.

If you detach their monstrous ideology from what we like to think of as Islam, then do you detach from the Muslim community responsibility for denouncing it? I have no problem if moderate Muslims — as some have done (albeit late in the day) — stand up and say that IS does not represent what they believe to be Islam. I similarly say that Naturei Karta, the “ultra-Orthodox” anti Zionist Jews — who by the way simply throw words, not stones, not swords and are nonviolent — do not represent Judaism in any form that I know. But I want the moderates to stand up and say it.

More importantly, do you, by saying IS is not Islam, they’re not Muslims, detach from the Muslim community at large the responsibility for helping prevent radicalisation which we know full well goes on in certain mosques and on campuses? (It is astonishing how many campuses world wide have HUGE investment from Saudi and Qatar and huge investment in BDS, anti Israel, and radicalisation programmes.)

I am not blaming any particular Muslim community but just as I hung my head in shame when extremist Jews murdered that poor young man in Jerusalem after the death of the three Jewish teenagers, so the Muslim community worldwide must say, not that IS is an Israeli / CIA conspiracy (as Iran currently claiming) but that something is rotten within the Muslim world and it must be stopped.

There are Middle East and other Muslim societies, particularly Iran, bringing up their children on a relentless feast of hate — against Jews, against the US, against the West. There has also been dreadful oppression of Sunnis by Shias in Iraq, of Shias by Sunnis in Iraq (depends which year and who’s in charge) and all over the ME, Iran and Pakistan etc. IS, a radical Sunni movement, has grown out of those struggles and has been strongly funded by Qatar (they would claim not but even if not directly, certainly indirectly and they directly fund Hamas, another murderous Sunni regime). But we must wonder why so many well educated EU-born men AND women are flocking to take part in the barbaric IS regime. It is a shame for the whole of British society that some of the absolutely worst offenders (“Jihadi John”, the women in charge of the sex slaves) are British Muslims who have turned their backs on their homes and gone to Iraq. Some might just be hot headed young people looking for an ideology. But some have been indoctrinated and that must stop, now.

We need interfaith discussions; we need to avoid the vile rhetoric that appeared everywhere, instantly, over the Israel Gaza conflict. The rhetoric which painted the problems in black and white, condeming Israel without contemplating the impact, the propaganda and the lies that Hamas were feeding the West and that were so willingly believed (and spread by the media which apparently Jews control — if we do, we do it very badly!). We need to open our eyes to how the hate is poisoning the youth of our land.

We have to consider the anti-Semitism (and sorry that’s what it is) that led to the huge disparity (disproportion to use an emotive term) in the speed, ferocity and extent of the response to the Israel Gaza conflict compared with, for instance, how many months it took anyone to notice and even quietly protest that Assad was slaughtering hundreds and hundreds of civilians (nearly 300,000 dead in three years in the conflict, many many civilians including thousands of children but none of the emotive hour by hour accounts we had over Gaza); that IS was truly ethnically cleansing Mosul of Christians, was waging a genocide (still is) against the Yazidis, was systematically raping women and children as a punishment (there has never been a single case of rape by an IDF soldier — not something to celebrate but notable in modern warfare).

Why were so few people raging over these mass slaughters and war crimes and yet out on the streets in minutes over Israel defending itself against 100s of rockets raining down aimed at civilians.

My take was that it was fuelled fundamentally by anti-Semitism (the singling out of a particular state etc) but also importantly there is no sanction for criticising Israel (and Jews). However, Muslims don’t/won’t criticise Muslims and others are afraid of doing so. I realise that’s a generalisation and some, such as the Quiliam Foundation are doing wonderful work in this area. But you only have to look at how slow the UN (with one member one vote, and just one Jewish state but 50+ Muslim states) has been to denounce Syria and even ISIS, yet has criticism of Israel as a standing agenda item.

Muslims who support democracy, who reject a Caliphate, who reject the barbarism of IS now need to speak up. In Britain and the EU and all Western liberal democracies, we cannot have increasing ghettoisation, we cannot have areas run by Sharia law where police turn a blind eye to abuse of women and children, and we have to say, this is Britain and the law is British. We have to have mutual respect for all faiths and people of all faiths have to abide by the laws of the land.

I have not set out to offend with this post and I am trying to read it as if everything I’ve said about Muslims mentioned Jews instead (a la the terrible piece by Matthew Parris in The Times a few weeks ago). But we do not solve the problem by pretending that fundamentalist Islam is not Islam and is not run by Muslims. As Edmund Burke so wisely said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” I truly believe the Muslim communities in Britain (I can’t speak for the rest of the world) are now speaking out louder and more strongly — from my perspective they weren’t and there has been a reluctance to criticise bad Muslims in direct contrast to the willingness to denounce Israel at the drop of the hat.

At least with IS it is very clear, no one can blame Israel and in fact Israel is the front line for the West against IS. Thank God Israel is there. Not least, it’s proving a safe haven for UN troops running away from IS in Syria on the Golan border. We need to unite in our condemnation of Islamic terrorists whether ISIS, Hamas, Al quaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood – they all subvert democracy, fail to respect other faiths and are murderous in their methods; they may differ in the detail but not in the fundamental ideology. And that is what all of us, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists need to speak out and act against else evil will triumph.


If They’re Not Islamic Fanatics, What Are They, Martians?

By Ileana Johnson

The keynote speaker at the ACT for America conference on September 11, 2014 was Judge Jeanine Pirro. ACT for America is a non-profit organization led by Brigitte Gabriel, a leading terrorism expert.

Judge Pirro's speech centered on the threat of ISIS, mirroring the non-profit organization's goal of fighting Shariah Islamic Law in the United States and maintaining our freedoms and our Judeo-Christian foundation as intended by our Founding Fathers.

Echoed by many speakers during the three-day conference, Judge Pirro challenged the deliberate misrepresentation that ISIS, the Islamic terrorist army alleged to number 30,000 in Iraq and Syria, is not about Islamic fanaticism. "If they're not Islamic fanatics, what are they, Martians?" asked Pirro.

"The President says ISIS is not Islamic. Really? What is it, German? Have you read the Quran. Read the d-n thing and you'll figure it out."

Pirro criticized in her speech the administration's domestic policy in regard to Islam. "They've removed all references to Islam and jihad from the training manuals and label the shooter of Fort Hood as committing an act of workplace violence," even though the jihadi major talked to Anwar al-Awlaki, "a guy who was so dangerous that we had to kill him," and the major carried around business cards with the words, "Soldier of Allah."

She questioned this administration's true allegiance and intent as reflected by U.S. actions in Egypt.

"We take out Mubarak, who was actually an ally. We take out Gadhafi. We supported the Arab Spring, and it wasn't democratic. But, Morsi gets elected. Obama's first speech he gave in Cairo was about apologizing for who we are. We support Morsi because he was democratically elected. So was Hitler. They kick out Morsi and elect al-Sisi and the administration is still holding back. The administration is angry that the Muslim Brotherhood is out in Egypt. The Egyptians had the strength to throw out the Muslim Brotherhood! Shame on us because we don't have the strength to throw them out of the U.S."

Emphasizing that we need to be "morally right," not "politically correct," Judge Pirro said, "The people who started this country are turning over in their graves asking what in the world they did all of that for." She repeated her warnings that the jihadist killing Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East "are coming for us," here on U.S. soil, and are probably already here, entering through the southern border sieve.

Judge Pirro discussed the Benghazi attack and its implications. "I think about Benghazi. I wonder if the people in our government really want to protect us." The four Americans who died two years ago "didn't choose to be victims of that attack. Then our President and Secretary of State blamed the Benghazi attack on a video. Are you kidding me?"

It was certainly moving to hear the heartbreaking testimony of Tyrone Woods' father. Tyrone chose to disobey orders and tried to save Ambassador's Stevens' life, paying with his own life in the process.

Judge Pirro explained how the administration "took Islam out of the talking points on Benghazi because we didn't want to offend Muslims," and how a video was purposefully blamed for the vicious attack even though, she reminded the audience, if a video was the culprit, which it was not, we still have freedom of speech in this country.

Why would officials deliberately misrepresent the reality that Islamists are out of control worldwide? "What do they gain by lying to us? They gain political office by lying to us," Judge Pirro emphatically stated. Spending taxpayer money to apologize to the man who made the video was a fantasy to cover up for the claim that "Libya was normalized."

She criticized the fact that this administration took two years to capture the mastermind of Benghazi. "They could not get him because he would say they were stupid for believing that a video caused it. The mastermind would say that we are stupid. It doesn't take a video to make them hate us!"

Referring to the CIA operative, identified as Bob, who ordered the stand down and delay to save our trapped men, Pirro asked, "Who's the stupid idiot that we have in our government that would order something like that?"

Judge Pirro ended her speech by warning Americans about the weakness of the electric grid, a grid vulnerable to terrorist physical and cyber-attacks. She reminded the audience about the attack on Silicon Valley a year ago when two individuals lifted heavy concrete slabs and cut the fiber optic cables underneath, and then shot transformers with AK47s. She told the audience that an "attack on the power lines left the entire nation of Yemen (23 million people) without power for a day."

According to Forbes, "shortly after the damage of the first attack was repaired, militants reappeared for a second round, which led to the national power outage. The military responded with an operation that killed two attackers while wounding another six."


Muslim Scholar: Obama 'Wrong' About 'Not Islamic' Islamic State

By Paul Sperry

President Obama's notion that the Islamic State is "not Islamic" and that "no religion condones killing" doesn't square with the army of Muslims that the terror group is attracting. The CIA figures as many as 31,500 Muslims have joined IS.

It's hard to believe there's more than 30,000 serial killers in the world, including at least 2,000 in the West, and they're all suddenly flocking together in search of victims. In the entire U.S., there are at most 50 active serial murderers by FBI estimates.

Clearly, something else is motivating all these Muslims, yet Obama insists it's not their faith.

"He is wrong," said Islamic scholar Dr. Muhammad Zareef.

"They are true Muslims fighting in the cause of Allah," he added in an interview. "The Quran makes it very clear that a good and faithful Muslim has every reason to kill non-Muslims. ISIS and other groups like them take these verses into their hearts."

The forbidden truth is, the Islam that IS practices is firmly rooted in Islamic scripture and sanctioned by Islam's most influential scholars, says Zareef, who studied Islamic law for eight years after growing up in a devout Muslim home in the Mideast. Now living in the U.S., he became a reformer after 9/11.

"One of the things that disturbed me most was the Quran made it very clear the only assurance of going to heaven is if a Muslim kills an infidel (unbeliever) in jihad or dies in jihad," he said, citing Surahs 2:190-193; 5:33-34; 8:39-41; 9:20; 9:29; 9:111; 9:123; 22:58-59; and 47:1-4, among other verses.

"Muslims are instructed to use warfare to defend and promote Islam," explained Zareef, author of "Allah's Plan for Muslims." "All unbelievers are regarded as being at war with Allah and his religion; therefore, they deserve to die. Muslims have permission to kill all who don't believe in Allah."

Jihadists, he says, are following the example of the Muslim prophet set forth in Al-Bukhari book 52 of the Hadith, a sacred text supplementing the Quran. They "are trying to honor Prophet Muhammad's speech and the Quran verses by killing non-Muslims," he said. "And if I, as an ordinary Muslim, say anything against such violence, they will treat me the same way as they do non-Muslims."

Zareef says the Quran "encourages terrorism" against infidels, citing Surah 2:216, 243-244; 3:157-158; 4:74; 8:12; 9:5; and 47:4-6, while repeatedly directing jihadists to "smite at their necks."


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