That new U.S. Army patch with scimitars is downright creepy

American Thinker, by Carol Brown, Sep. 30, 2015:

The United States Army has created a new patch for soldiers who are fighting ISIS in Iraq.

USA Today reports that “the Army’s patch features crossed scimitars, a palm wreath and stars. The scimitars, short swords with curved blades, are meant to symbolize the twin goals of the U.S.-led coalition: to defeat the Islamic State, also referred to as ISIL, and to restore stability in the region, according to Army documents. The palm wreath is symbol of honor. While the stars and the buff-and-blue colors on the patch indicate the three-star command and the land, air and sea forces involved in the fight.”

Sure.  Whatever.

AT readers, you be the judge.  As featured at Atlas Shrugs, here is an image of the new patch on the right, next to an image of a Muslim Brotherhood symbol on the left.

As Pamela Geller notes, this patch is a sign of submission.

All the words used to rationalize the design are an example of pretzel-twisting mental gymnastics of epic proportions.  As for the scimitars, I think most AT readers are familiar with these symbols.  If so, or even if not, here’s a bit of information about these swords, per Wikipedia:

A scimitar (/ˈsɪmɨtər/ or /ˈsɪmɨtɑr/)^[1] is a backsword or sabre with a curved blade, originating in the Middle East.

The curved sword or “scimitar” was widespread throughout the Middle East from at least the Ottoman period…. (snip)

Many Islamic traditions adopted scimitars, as attested by their symbolic occurrence, e.g., on the Coat of arms of Saudi Arabia.

The earliest known use of scimitars is from the 9th century, when it was used among Turkic and Tungusic soldiers in Central Asia.^[2][4]

The sword (or saif) is an important symbol in Arab cultures, and is used as a metaphor in many phrases in the Arabic language. [T]he scimitar is also used in Saudi Arabia as an executioner’s tool for beheading.

(Thomas Lifson adds: Don’t fail to notice that the red, white, and blue of American tradition have been replaced by green, the color of Islam.)

So let’s not get lost in the lies being peddled about the symbolism behind the swords or any other aspect of the design of this despicable new patch.  We’re awake, and we know what it means.  It is yet another act to undermine our military – and indeed our nation – by aligning the United States with the enemy as Obama sends signal after signal to the Muslim world that he stands with them and not with the United States.

As Maj. Gen. Robert Dees (U.S. Army, ret.) stated this past weekend at the Values Voters Summit, and as reported by CNS News, the military readiness of the United States is being “degraded by social experimentation. … Not only are we losing physical readiness to fight, we have to fix the problem of moral readiness.”  In his interview with CNS News, Dees continued: “… social experimentation is improperly named because it’s not an experiment at all. It’s a top-driven mandate for social agendas that occurs by this administration within the military, which is a captive audience.”

“Social agenda?”  I think that’s putting it mildly.

We are being undermined, mocked, weakened, degraded; you name it.

And why is the military a “captive audience”?  When will our military leaders say “enough!”?

I understand there is a chain of command.  And I understand that the Obama administration has infected the military, as it has infected every arm of our government, with cowards and dhimmis.  But are there no leaders left who will take a stand?

If our military is willing to become an arm of an Islamophile president who is actively helping to advance the caliphate while weakening the United States, then what’s left?

Obama Proselytizes for Islam at UN Summit for “Countering Violent Extremism”

Atlas Shrugs, by Pamela Geller, Sep. 30, 2015:

Platitudes, self-righteousness, distortions, tortured reasoning, self-promotion — that’s right, it’s another major speech by Barack Obama. Mind you, while the sharia-compliant president was bloviating at the UN, another major city in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban and the House Committee on Homeland Security released a blockbuster report that called the thousands of foreign fighters who have joined to fight ISIS the “largest global convergence of jihadists in history.” “Remember that violent extremism is not unique to any one faith,” Obama told a U.N. meeting Sept. 29. “No-one should be profiled or targeted simply because of their faith… [and] we have to commit ourselves to build diverse, tolerant, inclusive, societies that reject anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry that creates the divisions, the fear, and the resentments upon which extremists can prey.”

Comments interspersed below.

“Remarks by President Obama at the Leaders’ Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism,” United Nations Headquarters, September 29, 2015:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, heads of state and government. Last year, here at the United Nations, I called on the world to unite against the evil that is ISIL, or Daesh, and to eradicate the scourge of violent extremism. And I challenged countries to return to the General Assembly this year with concrete steps that we can take together.

He challenged countries? It was up to them to come up with concrete steps to beat ISIS? This from a man who confessed in August 2014 that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to beat the Islamic State, and said in June 2015 that the U.S. had no “complete strategy” for training Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. Apparently he was waiting for other countries to draw up a strategy for him. Putin obliged him, but he rejected that one.

I want to thank everyone who is here today, including my fellow leaders, for answering this call. We are joined by representatives from more than 100 nations, more than 20 multilateral institutions, some 120 civil society groups from around the world, and partners from the private sector. I believe what we have here today is the emergence of a global movement that is united by the mission of degrading and ultimately destroying ISIL.

He used that language before. Since then, the Islamic State has only grown in strength, while Obama’s Pentagon had to resort to falsifying data to make it look as if Obama’s cosmetic airstrikes were successful.

Together, we’re pursuing a comprehensive strategy that is informed by our success over many years in crippling the al Qaeda core in the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we are harnessing all of our tools — military, intelligence, economic, development and the strength of our communities.

The al Qaeda core in Afghanistan is crippled? But al Qaeda’s ally, the Taliban, just took Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, a major city far from its usual sphere of influence. The Taliban doesn’t seem crippled at all.

Now, I have repeatedly said that our approach will take time. This is not an easy task. We have ISIL taking root in areas that already are suffering from failed governance, in some cases; in some cases, civil war or sectarian strife. And as a consequence of the vacuum that exists in many of these areas, ISIL has been able to dig in. They have shown themselves to be resilient, and they are very effective through social media and have been able to attract adherents not just from the areas in which they operate, but in many of our own countries.

They’re not attracting adherents because they’re effective through social media. That’s just the medium; the message is what attracts adherents. But Obama is bound as a matter of policy to ignore their message, so he has to pretend that the way they package it is what counts. And then he has the audacity to say we must combat their ideology — an ideology he has consistently refused to acknowledge even exists:

There are going to be successes and there are going to be setbacks. This is not a conventional battle. This is a long-term campaign — not only against this particular network, but against its ideology. And so with the few minutes I have, I want to provide a brief overview of where we stand currently.

Our coalition has grown to some 60 nations, including our Arab partners. Together, we welcome three new countries to our coalition — Nigeria, Tunisia and Malaysia. Nearly two dozen nations are in some way contributing to the military campaign, and we salute and are grateful for all the servicemembers from our respective nations who are performing with skill and determination.

Nigeria is the home of Boko Haram, which has allied with the Islamic State. Tunisia has sent a huge number of jihadis to join the Islamic State. It is likely that there are more Nigerians and Tunisians on the side of the Islamic State than will be joining the coalition against it.

In Iraq, ISIL continues to hold Mosul, Fallujah and Ramadi. But Iraqi forces, backed by coalition air power, have liberated towns across Kirkuk province and Tikrit. ISIL has now lost nearly a third of the populated areas in Iraq that it had controlled. Eighteen countries are now helping to train and support Iraqi forces, including Sunni volunteers who want to push ISIL out of their communities. And, Prime Minister Abadi, I want to note the enormous sacrifices being made by Iraqi forces and the Iraqi people in this fight every day.

Obama’s claims about the Islamic State losing territory have already been discredited.

In Syria, which has obviously been a topic of significant discussion during the course of this General Assembly, we have seen support from Turkey that has allowed us to intensify our air campaign there. ISIL has been pushed back from large sections of northeastern Syria, including the key city of Tal Abyad, putting new pressure on its stronghold of Raqqa. And ISIL has been cut off from almost the entire region bordering Turkey, which is a critical step toward stemming the flow of foreign terrorist fighters.

One step forward, two steps back: Turkey is more interested in fighting the Kurds than fighting the Islamic State. Turkish attacks on the Kurds weaken the most effective ground force currently facing the Islamic State. The U.S. has been accused of selling out the Kurds to gain Turkish support against ISIS, and that support has been meager in any case.

Following the special Security Council meeting I chaired last year, more than 20 additional countries have passed or strengthened laws to disrupt the flow of foreign terrorist fighters. We share more information and we are strengthening border controls. We’ve prevented would-be fighters from reaching the battlefield and returning to threaten our countries. But this remains a very difficult challenge, and today we’re going to focus on how we can do more together. In conjunction with this summit, the United States and our partners are also taking new steps to crack down on the illicit finance that ISIL uses to pay its fighters, fund its operations and launch attacks.

How successful has the U.S. been in stopping foreign jihadis from joining ISIS? Now 30,000 foreign jihadis from 100 countries have joined the Islamic State.

Our military and intelligence efforts are not going to succeed alone; they have to be matched by political and economic progress to address the conditions that ISIL has exploited in order to take root. Prime Minister Abadi is taking important steps to build a more inclusive and accountable government, while working to stabilize areas taken back from ISIL. And our nations need to help Prime Minister Abadi in these efforts.

In Syria, as I said yesterday, defeating ISIL requires — I believe — a new leader and an inclusive government that unites the Syrian people in the fight against terrorist groups. This is going to be a complex process. And as I’ve said before, we are prepared to work with all countries, including Russia and Iran, to find a political mechanism in which it is possible to begin a transition process.

Obama’s repeated claims that the Islamic State can only be defeated if Assad is removed is based on the assumption that ISIS is not Islamic, and is just an opposition group to Assad, so that if Assad is gone, the Islamic State will vanish. Putin’s view is more realistic: he knows ISIS is Islamic, and claims to be the caliphate, and has global ambitions. He knows that if Assad falls, the Islamic State will be the main beneficiary.

As ISIL’s tentacles reach into other regions, the United States is increasing our counterterrorism cooperation with partners, like Tunisia. We’re boosting our support to Nigeria and its neighbors as they push back against Boko Haram, which has pledged allegiance to ISIL. And we’re creating a new clearinghouse to better coordinate the world’s support for countries’ counterterrorism programs so that our efforts are as effective as possible.

Ultimately, however, it is not going to be enough to defeat ISIL in the battlefield. We have to prevent it from radicalizing, recruiting and inspiring others to violence in the first place. And this means defeating their ideology. Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they’re defeated by better ideas — a more attractive and compelling vision. Building on our White House summit earlier this year, and summits around the world since then, we’re moving ahead, together, in several areas.

Ideologies are not defeated by guns? Really? Yet if National Socialism and Shinto militarism were not defeated by guns, what defeated them? Any serious and thoroughgoing effort to refute them as ideologies came after the guns had stopped firing, during the occupation of Germany and Japan, when the Allies worked to turn the hearts of the citizenry away from the beliefs in which they had been relentlessly indoctrinated for years.

What’s more, the United States is not trying to defeat the Islamic State, or the global jihad in general, with “a more attractive and more compelling vision.” Instead, we supervised the installations of constitutions that enshrined Sharia as the highest law of the land in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Imposing Sharia is the goal of all jihad groups, including the Islamic State. The United States has never stood in Iraq or Afghanistan, or anywhere else, for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, equality of rights for women, etc. — all of which are denied in Sharia. In other words, we didn’t counter their ideas with a more attractive and compelling vision. We didn’t counter them at all, and still aren’t doing so, because to do so would be considered “Islamophobic.”

How is Obama going to counter their ideology when he won’t even acknowledge what it is? Three years ago, his administration banned the truth about Islam and jihad from counterterror training, bowing to the demands of Muslim, Arab and Pakistani organizations that wrote to John Brennan claiming that FBI and other agents were being imbued with “Islamophobia.” Since then, Obama, Brennan, John Kerry, Joe Biden and other Administration spokesmen have steadfastly refused to acknowledge that Islamic jihad has anything to do with Islam whatsoever – thus foreclosing upon any possibility that the United States will confront the jihad ideology in any serious or effective manner.

We’re stepping up our efforts to discredit ISIL’s propaganda, especially online. The UAE’s new messaging hub — the Sawab Center — is exposing ISIL for what it is, which is a band of terrorists that kills innocent Muslim men, women and children. We’re working to lift up the voices of Muslim scholars, clerics and others — including ISIL defectors — who courageously stand up to ISIL and its warped interpretations of Islam.

It’s interesting that he says that the Islamic State’s killing innocent Muslims is what will discredit them. He seems to know that their killing of non-Muslims won’t sway Muslims to oppose them. And as for the clerics and scholars who are exposing the Islamic State’s “warped interpretation of Islam,” does he mean these, who endorsed the concept of the caliphate, as well as jihad and dhimmitude in the course of condemning the Islamic State?

We recognize that we have to confront the economic grievances that exist in some of the areas that ISIL seeks to exploit. Poverty does not cause terrorism. But as we’ve seen across the Middle East and North Africa, when people, especially young people, are impoverished and hopeless and feel humiliated by injustice and corruption, that can fuel resentments that terrorists exploit. Which is why sustainable development — creating opportunity and dignity, particularly for youth — is part of countering violent extremism.

We recognize we also have to address the political grievances that ISIL exploits. I’ve said this before — when human rights are denied and citizens have no opportunity to redress their grievances peacefully, it feeds terrorist propaganda that justifies violence. Likewise, when political opponents are treated like terrorists and thrown in jail, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So the real path to lasting stability and progress is not less democracy; I believe it is more democracy in terms of free speech, and freedom of religion, rule of law, strong civil societies. All that has to play a part in countering violent extremism.

So he is going to address their poverty, even while admitting that poverty doesn’t cause terrorism, and their political grievances. In doing these things, he thinks their religious vision will fade away. This is, of course, because he refuses to face it for what it is, has no idea of its strength, and won’t believe it has anything to do with Islam. The result will be that he will shower money on Muslim countries and make political concessions to them, and then, to his dismay, will find that the jihad continues.

And finally, we recognize that our best partners in protecting vulnerable people from succumbing to violent extremist ideologies are the communities themselves — families, friends, neighbors, clerics, faith leaders who love and care for these young people.

Remember that violent extremism is not unique to any one faith, so no one should be profiled or targeted simply because of their faith. Yet we have to recognize that ISIL is targeting Muslim communities around the world, especially individuals who may be disillusioned or confused or wrestling with their identities.

“No one should be profiled or targeted simply because of their faith.” If he was referring to attacks on innocent Muslims, of course, no innocent Muslims should suffer any harm or injustice. He seemed to be saying more than that. The idea that it is wrong to fight Islamic jihad by paying attention to Muslim communities more than Baptist or Jewish or Hindu or Amish communities is absurd. Islamic jihad is committed by Muslims. Obama won’t even call it Islamic jihad or admit that it is a specifically Muslim phenomenon, and insofar as he diverts any resources to tracking “right-wing extremism” on the basis of bogus studies, he makes us all less safe.

But as far as Obama is concerned, that the Islamic State is “targeting Muslim communities” makes Muslims the victims, deserving of special favors:

And in all our countries, we have to continue to build true partnerships with Muslim communities, based on trust and cooperation, so that they can help protect their loved ones from becoming radicalized. This cannot just be the work of government. It is up to all of us. We have to commit ourselves to build diverse, tolerant, inclusive societies that reject anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry that creates the divisions, the fear and the resentments upon which extremists can prey.

Islamic advocacy groups have worked for years to stigmatize all resistance to jihad terror as “bigotry.” Now the President of the United States is echoing their talking points.

…Like terrorists and tyrants throughout history, ISIL will eventually lose because it has nothing to offer but suffering and death. And when you look at the reports of those who are laboring under their control, it is a stark and brutal life that does not appeal to people over the long term. So we will ultimately prevail because we are guided by a stronger, better vision: a commitment to the security, opportunity and dignity of every human being. But it will require diligence, focus and sustained effort by all of us. And I am grateful that all of you who are already participating are committed to this work.

In reality, he never dares articulate that “stronger, better vision” in anything but platitudes. To do so in any realistic manner would require he discuss Islam and Sharia. And he will never do that.

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12 Hair-Raising Facts from Congressional Terror Report

Clarion Project, by Ryan Mauro, Sep. 30, 2015:

Yesterday, the House Homeland Security Committee released the final report of its Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel and its conclusions weren’t pretty. The following are a dozen hair-raising facts from the bipartisan report:

“Today, we are witnessing the largest global convergence of jihadists in history.”

If you consider how the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets impacted the terrorist threat to the West, then we’re in for a heap of trouble due to the jihad in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

About 10,000 foreign fighters joined the jihad against the Soviets over roughly a 10-year period, with only 3-4,000 fighter joining at once. Today, over 25,000 foreign fighters are currently in Syria and the civil war is only four years old. When it started in 2011, the number of foreign fighters was a mere 1,000.

“We have largely failed to stop Americans from traveling overseas to join jihadists … Several dozen also managed to make it back into America.”

This stunning conclusion will add ammunition to efforts to revoke the passports of Americans who are believed to have joined jihadists overseas. Aside from constitutional objections, one rebuttal has been if the government has the evidence to show an American has joined terrorists, then it can simply arrest them if they try to re-enter. The report shows that these American traitors have been able to evade detection and come back home to potentially carry out attacks and/or radicalize others.

“The U.S. government lacks a national strategy for combating terrorist travel and has not produced one in nearly a decade.”

This statement, unfortunately, speaks for itself.

“The unprecedented speed at which Americans are being radicalized by violent extremists is straining federal law enforcement’s ability to monitor and intercept suspects.”

Over 250 Americans have joined or tried to join the jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria, including around 30 females. They come from 19 states, with 26% coming from Minnesota, 12% from California and 12% from New York/New Jersey.

“There have now been twice as many ISIS-inspired terror plots against the West in 2015 than there were in all of 2014.”

This conclusion is unsettling—and charitable. A review by terrorism expert Patrick Poole found that the number of Islamist terrorism cases in the U.S. this year was double that of the previous two years combined. And that was as of about four months ago.

“[ISIS] is believed to have inspired or directed nearly 60 terrorist plots or attacks against Western countries, including 15 in the United States.”

“Military officials estimate airstrikes have killed over 10,000 [ISIS] extremists, but new foreign fighters replace them almost as quickly as they are killed.”

This substantiates the admission that the U.S. fight with ISIS was at a “stalemate.” Our analysis of the numbers led to thesame conclusion back in May. If you look at ISIS’ membership and territorial expansion, the U.S. is barely making a dent.

Additionally, optimistic claims of success exempt ISIS’ growth outside of Iraq and Syria. The Committee mentions reports that there are “hundreds, if not thousands” of ISIS members in Afghanistan now and the Libyan government believes it is dealing with 5,000 of its own jihadist foreign fighters now.

“Gaping security weaknesses overseas—especially in Europe—are putting the U.S. homeland in danger…”

The report raises several warnings about European security procedures, a pressing issue considering that about 1,550 fighters from France, 700 from Germany and 700 from the United Kingdom have joined the jihad in Syria and Iraq. The Committee found that counter-terrorism checks at European borders and airports are insufficient.

One-third of the international community does not issue fraud-resistant E-Passports or utilize the INTERPOL databases that contain the names of terrorists.

“In short, information about foreign fighters is crossing borders less quickly than the extremists themselves.”

The report emphasizes that intelligence-sharing remains a severe problem. There isn’t even an international comprehensive database of foreign fighter names.

“The federal government has failed to develop clear early intervention strategies—or ‘off-ramps’- to radicalization—to prevent suspects already on law enforcement’s radar from leaving to join extremists.”

Someone who is actively trying to join a group like ISIS or Al-Qaeda is probably too far gone to be rescued, unless they get a brutal wakeup call when they see the caliphate first-hand. The report states that 80% of foreign fighters download extremist propaganda and/or engage a jihadist online. It is critical that we target the ideology that precedes the violent act.

“Few initiatives exist nationwide to raise community awareness about foreign fighter recruitment and to assist communities with spotting warning signs.”

The report says that 75% of foreign fighter arrests in the U.S. happen due to the involvement of a confidential informant who is close enough to the suspect to provide the critical evidence. Presumably, this would be a Muslim in most cases. This is why Islamist propaganda that demonizes the FBI and its informants must be rebutted, such as when the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claims that the War on Terror is “made up” by the FBI and its informants are paid to frame innocent Muslims.

“The Administration has launched programs to counter-message terrorist propaganda abroad, but little is being done here at home.”

The report isn’t exactly kind to our ideological strategy abroad, either. It says the U.S. government has not exploited the opportunity presented by “jaded jihadists”—Islamist terrorists who join the caliphate, realize it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and flee. For example, a State Department video featuring such testimonies had only 500 views over two months.

Day After Meeting With Obama, Putin Bombs Syria

Breitbart, by John Hayward, Sep. 30, 2015:

Fox News is exclusively reporting that Russia has demanded American warplanes exit Syrian airspace immediately, as Russia begins its bombing campaign on behalf of Bashar Assad.

The news came from a senior U.S. official, who said there was “nothing to indicate” the U.S. was complying with Russia’s demand.

Another defense official said, “We have had every indication in recent weeks that (the Russians) were going to do something given the build-up.”  That’s an interesting claim, because just a few days ago, Secretary of State John Kerry was saying Russia’s long-term intentions were unclear, and he thought their buildup of air power in Syria was merely for “force protection.”

The inventory of aircraft and weapons Russia moved into Syria includes advanced air supremacy fighters and surface-to-air missiles, which would have no conceivable use against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, or any other Syrian rebel group, as none of them have an air force.  The planes were slipped into Syria using clever subterfuge designed to defeat satellite surveillance, which is something else no element of the Syrian rebellion has.

“The Russian demand also mirrors one made by Turkey this past July, when Ankara asked U.S. planes to fly only in airspace south of Mosul, Iraq. In that case, 24 Turkish jets bombed Kurdish positions, catching the U.S. off guard,” Fox News writes.

Also on Wednesday, the Russian parliament unanimously voted to give President Vladimir Putin war-fighting authority in Syria.  Putin’s chief of staff, Sergey Ivanov, said only a “time-limited” air campaign is envisioned.

Russian bombs are already falling on Syria according to some sources, and the first targets reported include a rebel group vetted and supplied by the United States:

Update, 10:30 AM EST: According to CNN, the Russians sent an official to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad to announce the Russian strikes, and “request” the removal of American planes from Syrian airspace, with only an hour or two of warning before the Russian strikes began.

The CNN report also notes that the Russians have given “no geographical information” about where they planned to strike.  That’s a remarkable gesture of contempt, an incredibly reckless and dangerous approach, and possibly an indication that the Russians are planning to blow up some people they think the United States would have warned.

Update, 11:00 AM EST: Further testimony that Russia isn’t primarily interested in bombing ISIS positions, and has caused significant civilian casualties with its first wave of bombings:

About Those 50 Centcom Whistleblowers — Where Are All the Others?

Center for Security Policy,by Fred Fleitz, Sep. 29, 2015:

Video: Radical Islam Is Now The World’s Most Dangerous Ideology

 

The Hayride, by Scott McKay, Sep. 28, 2015:

Here’s a very succinct, no-nonsense video which puts Sharia Islam in a proper historical perspective. Namely, that for the last 100 years or so the world has been wracked with conflict originating from ideologies which legitimize state tyranny along utopian lines. First came fascism, as it emerged in Germany, Italy and Japan, and to a lesser extent in Spain (though the Spanish government of Francisco Franco was distinctly inward in its worldview and didn’t project itself on its neighbors). Then came international communism in the wake of fascism’s demise in World War II. But the victory of free people in the Cold War in the second half of the 20th century made us believe the fight against “isms” was over.

Sadly, it wasn’t. Islamism, or Sharia Islam, has made a roaring comeback out of the ash-heap of history that Western colonialism had relegated it to in the 19th century and is now in an ascendant position in a significant swath of the globe. Even more frightening is that Islamism is creeping into states which aren’t even Muslim, and those states – specifically in Europe – are in swift demographic decline. Islamism is a far more primitive and unappealing ideology than fascism and communism before it; fascism and communism purported to bring heaven on earth through scientific principles and thus create equality and prosperity and technological advancement as never seen before, while the utopia Islamism promises contains a host of features non-Muslims generally find abhorrent on their face.

And yet in the face of Western cultural decline it’s Islamism that’s on the rise. Which is perplexing, and unnerving.

A full explanation comes in this video, narrated by Raymond Ibrahim, the author of The Al Qaeda Reader…

Europe’s Migrant Crisis Is Simply Muslim History vs. Western Fantasy

Progressive Europe erased or rewrote its own history. Now they can’t recognize an invasion by people to whom history is everything.

PJ Media, by Raymond Ibrahim, September 29, 2015:

The world as understood by Islamic nations varies wildly from the Western nations’ understanding of the world. Whereas Muslims see the world through the lens of history, the West has jettisoned or rewritten history to suit its ideologies.

This dichotomy of Muslim and Western thinking is evident everywhere. When the Islamic State declared that it will “conquer Rome” and “break its crosses,” few in the West realized that those are the verbatim words and goals of Islam’s founder and his companions as recorded in Muslim sources — words and goals that prompted over a thousand years of jihad on Europe.

Most recently, the Islamic State released a map of the areas it plans on expanding into over the next five years. Not only are Mideast and Asian regions included, but the map includes European lands: Portugal, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, parts of Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, and Cyprus.

The reason for this is simple. According to Islamic law, once a country has been conquered (or “opened,” as the euphemistic Arabic words it), it becomes Islamic in perpetuity.

This, incidentally, is the real reason Muslims despise Israel. The motivation is not sympathy for the Palestinians — if it was, neighboring Arab nations would’ve absorbed them long ago, just as they would be absorbing all of today’s Muslim refugees. No, Israel is hated because the descendants of “apes and pigs” — according to the Koran — dare to rule land that was once “opened” by jihad and therefore must be returned to Islam. (Read more about Islam’s “How Dare You?” phenomenon to understand the source of Islamic rage.)

All of the aforementioned European nations are seen as being currently “occupied” by Christian “infidels” and in need of “liberation.” This is why jihadi organizations refer to terrorist attacks on such countries as “defensive jihads.”One rarely hears about Islamic designs on European nations because they are large and blocked together, altogether distant from the Muslim world. Conversely, tiny Israel is in the heart of the Islamic world, hence it has received most of the jihadi attention: it was a more realistic conquest. But now that the “caliphate” has been reborn and is expanding before a paralytic West, dreams of reconquering portions of Europe — if not through jihad, then through migration — are becoming more plausible, perhaps more so than conquering Israel.

Because of their historical experiences with Islam, some central and east European nations are aware of Muslim aspirations. Hungary’s prime minister even cited his nation’s unpleasant past under Islamic rule (in the guise of the Ottoman Empire) as a reason to disallow Muslim refugees from entering. But for more “enlightened” Western nations — that is, for idealistic nations that reject or rewrite history according to their subjective fantasies — Hungary’s reasoning is unjust, inhumane, and racist.

To be sure, most of Europe has experience with Islamic depredations. As late as the 17th century, even Iceland was being invaded by Muslim slave traders. Roughly 800 years earlier, in 846, Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Muslim raiders.

Some of the Muslims migrating to Italy vow to do the same today, and Pope Francis acknowledges it — yet he still suggests that “you can take precautions, and put these people to work.”

We’ve seen this sort of thinking before: the U.S. State Department cited a lack of “job opportunities” as reason for the existence of the Islamic State.

Perhaps because the UK, Scandinavia, and North America were never conquered and occupied by the sword of Islam — unlike the southeast European nations that are rejecting Muslim refugees — they feel free to rewrite history according to their subjective ideals. Specifically, they stress that historic Christianity is bad and all other religions and people are good. Indeed, books and courses on the “sins” of Christian Europe from the Crusades to colonialism abound. (Most recently, a book traced the rise of Islamic supremacism in Egypt to the disciplining of a rude Muslim girl by a Christian nun.)

This “new history” – which claims that Muslims are the historic “victims” of “intolerant” Western Christians — has metastasized everywhere, from high school to college and from Hollywood to the news media, institutions which are becoming increasingly harder to distinguish from one another. When U.S. President Barack Obama condemned medieval Christians as a way to relativize Islamic State atrocities — or at best to claim that religion, any religion, isnever the driving force of violence — he was merely being representative of the mainstream way history is taught in the West.

Even good, authoritative books of history contribute to this distorted thinking. While such works may mention “Ottoman expansion” into Europe, the Islamic element is omitted. Turks are portrayed as just another competitive people, out to carve a niche for themselves in Europe with motivations no different than, say, the Austrians, their rivals. That the “Ottomans” were operating under the distinctly Islamic banner of jihad, just like the Islamic State is today, is never made clear.

Generations of this false history have led the West to think that being suspicious or judgmental of Muslims is unacceptable, and that Muslims need to be accommodated. Perhaps then, they’ll like the West.

Such is progressive wisdom.

Meanwhile, in schools across much of the Muslim world, children are being indoctrinated into glorifying and reminiscing about the jihadi conquests of yore — conquests by the sword and in the name of Allah. While the progressive West demonizes European/Christian history — when I was in elementary school, Christopher Columbus was a hero, when I got into college, he became a villain — Mehmet the Conqueror, whose atrocities against Christian Europeans make the Islamic State look like boy scouts, is praised every year in “secular” Turkey on the anniversary of the savage sack of Constantinople.

The result of Western fantasies and Islamic history is that today Muslims are entering the West unfettered in the guise of refugees. They refuse to assimilate with the “infidels,” and form enclaves — in Islamic terminology, ribats – that serve as frontier posts to wage jihad against the infidel one way or another.

This in not conjecture. The Islamic State is intentionally driving the refugee phenomenon, and has promised to send half a million people — mostly Muslims — into Europe. It claims that 4,000 of these refugees are its own operatives:

Just wait. … It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.

It is often said that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it. What happens to those who rewrite history in a way to demonize their ancestors while whitewashing the crimes of their ancestors’ enemies? The result is before us. History is not repeating itself; sword-waving Muslims are not militarily conquering Europe. Rather, they are being allowed to walk right in.

New Cold War

Anxious about Russia’s intentions, Eastern European countries fear that Obama is about to surrender to Putin. I discuss this on the John Batchelor Radio Show (9 min). The article I referred to:

Countering Russia’s Strategic Maskirovka

By Professor Dr Julian Lindley-French, Senior Fellow, Institute of Statecraft

Riga, Latvia. 24 September. Power and freedom speak with a clarity and eloquence that is matched only by history here in Latvia. Tonight I will address NATO commanders with a speech entitled “Countering Strategic Maskirovka”. I coined the term Strategic Maskirovka because it seemed to me terms such as hybrid or ambiguous warfare are far too limited and too military to describe contemporary Russian ambition, strategy and actions.

Rather, Moscow has adapted its traditional art of military deception (maskirovka) into a strategic campaign from the head of state down in a bid to exploit the many divisions within Europe and the wider West and offset Russia’s many weaknesses. Strange then that in the past fortnight Russia suggests it is open to partnership in the struggle against ISIS and despatched upwards of fifty combat aircraft to Syria to reinforce the point. What is Moscow up to?

In fact, Russia’s actions over the past fortnight or so all conform to the tenets and goals of strategic maskirovka, including the forced removal of a hard-line separatist leader from ‘office’ in eastern Ukraine. The aims implicit in Russian strategy can be thus summarised:

• the creation of a contested but de facto ‘buffer zone’ to Russia’s south and east, and acceptance of a special sphere of Russian interest incorporating EU-NATO ‘neighbourhood’ state such as Latvia;
• to keep Europe and the wider West strategically-divided and politically off-balance,
• to establish de facto legitimacy for Russia’s conquest of Crimea and much of eastern Ukraine;
• and to use the threat of ISIS to establish a transactional strategic relationship with the US over the heads of the EU, NATO and most Europeans.

Any such ‘partnership’ would be fraught with dangers. Russia’s aim is to blur the distinction between influence, co-operation and competition by exploiting ‘strategic ambiguity; i.e. the refusal of many European leaders to face up to the reality of Kremlin’s strategy and actions. The very act of deception is an eloquent statement of influence designed to force leaders who want to look west to look instead east.

This goal is both implicit and explicit in recent ‘snap’ military exercises around this region all of which imply the political circumcision of the Baltics from the rest of Europe and the nuclear intimidation of allies who might seek to come to their rescue is a strategic end in and of itself. . . . (read the rest)

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Russians, Syrians, and Iranians setting up military coordination cell in Baghdad (centerforsecuritypolicy.org)

Russian, Syrian, and Iranian military commanders have set up a coordination cell in Baghdad to begin working with Iranian backed Shia militias fighting the Islamic state. US officials say it is unclear if the Iraqi government is involved, but the cell includes Russian generals. Russia has been building up their support in Syria, worrying U.S. policymakers who fear it could have a destabilizing effect. Moscow has fostered ties with both the Syrian and the Iraqi government. The coordination comes after Russia has greatly extended its role in Syria, moving armor and fighter aircraft into the country to back Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. U.S. officials say the Russians successfully camouflaged the fighter jets by hiding them among the increased flow of cargo flights, beginning September 18^th and 19th. Russian destroyers are also in position off the Mediterranean coast.

Mark Steyn: Last Laughs in Europe

Under a giant portrait of Mohammed, Mark speaks to a capacity crowd at the Landsting Hall at the Danish Parliament. We doubt either the US Congress or the UK Parliament would have hosted such an event.

by Mark Steyn
Steyn on Europe
September 28, 2015

Reader Artie Bleppo complains, in all-caps, about the priorities of my week in review:

POPE CAME TO THE USA, O ALMIGHTY GLOBAL CONTENT PROVIDER

So what? His speeches were fatuous and evasive pabulum, and already forgotten. I am not a Catholic but I understand that, unlike the position of Archbishop of Canterbury, where total contempt from the congregants more or less comes with the job, the Bishop of Rome is generally held in some respect by his church. So last week, out of deference to Catholic readers’ sensibilities, I confined myself to an aside:

Best to talk about the dangers of “climate change”, as the Pope is doing this week, even as in the heart of Christendom the post-Christian future is showing up at the express check-in.

As the years go by, I like to write about what matters. And in this last seven days, the Mohammed cartoons and the “refugee” tide now engulfing Europe both matter more than “POPE CAME TO THE USA”. His Holiness in fact has chosen not to matter, even as European politicians take decisions that will guarantee “Christendom” will be non-Christian. There is something shallow and decadent about a pontiff who prioritizes “climate change” even as every last Christian is driven from the Archeparchy of Mosul. What will they say of such a pope? That he fiddled with the thermostat while Rome burned?

And let’s not even mention his appalling response to the Charlie Hebdo slaughter. So I wrote nothing about his remarks to Congress – just as he wrote nothing about my remarks in the Danish Parliament. So we’re quits.

~Speaking of which, we were a merry band, all things considered, at Christiansborg Castle. I thank my friend Katrine Winkel Holm, of the Danish Free Press Society, and her delightful sister, Marie Krarup, defense spokeslady for the Danish People’s Party, for arranging to host us behind the fortress-like walls of Parliament – so nobody could bust in and shoot us, as they did at a similar free-speech event in February. I was heartened to meet fellow free-speechers who had traveled from Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Britain and even Canada. My fellow panelists included Henryk Broder, author of The Last Days of Europe; Vebjørn Selbekk, whom the quislings of Norway’s government treated disgracefully for publishing the cartoons; and Douglas Murray, who’s already written up the event in The Spectator:

My main message for the audience was to keep in mind that freedom has never been particularly popular. Most people prefer their security and comforts to freedom and although history shows that although everyone benefits from being free, it has always been a small minority who actually pursue and protect the cause. I suppose one has to wrestle whatever comfort one can from that. It was a terrible thing to see the security now needed in Denmark, as elsewhere, for people who are simply asserting their right to write and draw what they want, even – shock horror – things that might be mildly critical of the founder of one religion. That a journalist or historian should need bodyguards in 21^st century in an indictment on our continent. But still, surveying the room on Saturday I think we’ve got enough people. A few Danes, a few Swedes and Norwegians. A few Americans and a couple of Brits might be all that is needed. Perhaps by the 15^th anniversary things will be better.

Perhaps. On Europe’s present course, though, the security we’ll need in 2020 doesn’t bear thinking about. But I’ll be there.

~A transcript of Vebjørn Selbekk’s powerful speech can be found here:

We had interviewed leading Norwegian cartoonists. One of them was Finn Graaf. He is maybe the hardest hitting cartoonist in the history of the Norwegian press. One of his specialities is drawing Israeli prime ministers as Holocaust camp guards. He has done that with almost every Israeli prime minister since Menachem Begin in the late Seventies.

But Mister Graff told us that he would never draw the prophet Mohammad. Not because he had more respect towards the Muslim faith than other religions or ideologies. No, he bluntly put it this way in the interview:

‘I have to draw the line somewhere. I do not want to get my throat cut. Therefore I will refrain from drawing Muhammad.’

One-way “hard-hitting” isn’t really hard-hitting at all, is it? As I said ten years ago, it’s the easiest thing in the world to be tediously provocative with those who refuse to be provoked.

~My own remarks came last, and can be heard below. I’ll post the other speeches, as we get them. But click below to listen:

The Free Speech Society has a report here:

Steyn gjorde gældende, at problemet er de vestlige samfunds mangel på selvtillid. Vi tror ikke længere på os selv og vores grundlæggende værdier. Vi er villige til at give køb på dem. Terrorismens mål er at kapre debatten og terrorisere os til at undlade visse emner. Og den har succes med det, anførte Steyn.

Which comes out as:

Steyn claimed that the problem is the western world’s lack of self-confidence. We no longer believe in ourselves and our basic values. We are willing to trade them away. Terrorism’s goal is to hijack the debate and terrorize us to steer clear of certain subjects. And it’s had great success with it, argued Steyn.

This Swedish report concludes thus:

Därefter slutade konferensen. Några av deltagarna fick splittra upp sig eftersom den förhandsbokade restaurangen blivit rädda för att befatta sig med TFS och de inresta föreläsarna.

Which translates to something like:

After that the conference ended. Some of the participants had to split up because the pre-booked restaurant became afraid to deal with the Free Speech Society and the speakers they’d invited.

That’s true. They did. We were escorted by officers from the PET, the Danish Security Service. But the minute the restaurant discovered that, the management – some joint called Fiat – canceled. Compared to what happened to Charlie Hebdo, that’s a small price to pay, but it is still a price, and a telling one. Those who defend freedom for all wind up with less than anybody: airlines that won’t fly them, theatres that won’t book them, and even crappy Italian restaurants that won’t serve ’em a few pasta shells at the end of a hard day defending liberty.

One more quote from our Swedish correspondent:

Mark Steyn lovade dock från talarstolen att nästa gång så ska han tala på Det Konglige Teater som en fri människa inför fria människor och inte bakom låsta dörrar med säkerhetskontroller och vakter på det danska riksdagshuset.

Which translates as me getting a bit carried away:

Mark Steyn, however, promised from the podium that next time he’ll speak at the Royal Theatre as a free man before free people, and not behind locked doors with security checks and guards from the Danish Parliament.

We’ll see how that works out.

~Nobody needs the Pope to hitch up his robes and be the last world leader to jump on the climate bandwagon. But it might be helpful for him to take the lead in saving the heart of Christendom. Indeed, some might think it’s part of the job description, no?

At The U.N., Obama Refuses To See The Chaotic World He Has Made

Breitbart, by John Hayward, Sep. 28, 2015:

President Obama’s address to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday morning was a rambling journey through a fantasy world where his foreign policy hasn’t been an unmitigated disaster.

Perhaps the most bizarre moment came when he tried to tout his Libyan adventure as asuccess.

There was plenty of tough-guy posturing that intimidated absolutely no one.  The Russian and Iranian delegations were especially good at looking bored and unimpressed when he called upon them to do this-or-that because The World supposedly demanded it. Obama hasn’t figured out he’s the only leader at the U.N. eager to sacrifice his nation’s interests to please The World.

Obama made the weird decision to vaguely threaten Russia over its invasion of Ukraine by claiming that The World would not stand idly by and allow it… when that’s exactly what The World, and especially First Citizen of the World Barack Obama, has been doing.  He essentially pleaded with Iran to stop supporting terrorist proxies and pursuing its aggressive regional ambitions, and focus on their economy instead.  (Of course, in Obama’s vigorous imagination, the U.S. has been enjoying an economic boom under his stewardship, instead of an endless grinding non-recovery and limp, sporadic growth, after Obama’s spending doubled the national debt in a single presidency.)

It was bad enough that the President talked about American troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan as the triumphant conclusion of an effective policy, rather than the hideous blunder that allowed ISIS to create a terror state, al-Qaeda to rise from the ashes, and the Taliban to begin planning its return to power.  At the same moment Obama was speaking, the Taliban was conducting a major offensive in Afghanistan, on par with the importance of ISIS taking Mosul in Iraq.  Obama’s pitifully small “New Syrian Force” of U.S.-backed rebels just handed a good deal of its American equipment over to al-Qaeda, and no one really knows what became of the unit itself.  Their predecessors were destroyed by al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria, with less than half a dozen survivors still on the field.

When Obama boasted of the Libyan operation as the successful removal of a tyrant, jaws must have hit the floor around the room.  Libya is an unholy disaster, a wasteland of warlords fighting to keep ISIS off their turf.  It’s a key gateway for the incredible migratory tide blasting out of Africa and the Middle East and now surging across Europe.  And yet, Obama portrays it as laudable example of tyrant removal… while modestly admitting that “our coalition could have, and should have, done more to fill a vacuum left behind.”

Of course he blamed everyone else in the “coalition” for the disaster in Libya.  He’s Barack Obama.  The day may come when he takes responsibility for something, but today is not that day, and tomorrow isn’t looking good either.

The scary thing about Obama is that he believes so completely in the power of his own rhetoric.

He thinks he can reshape reality with his words.  When he scolds the Iranians for their “Death to America!” rhetoric by saying bloodthirsty chants don’t create jobs, he’s asking Iran to live up to the silly talking points he foisted off on the American people to cover the Iranian nuclear deal.  He’s commanding Iran to act like the enlightened, responsible nation-state he gambled the future of Israel, America, and much of the Western world on.

The Iranians, on the other hand, see no reason to knock off the “Death to America!” chants, disband their theocracy, and begin spending their days arguing about stimulus bills.  Belligerence has gotten them everything so far.  They’ve been rewarded for it… by Barack Obama.  They’ve got $150 billion in sanctions relief coming their way.  They can afford to send a few guys to sit in the U.N. General Assembly with pissy expressions on their faces while Obama rambles on about how geo-political crime does not pay.  They know for a fact it pays, quite handsomely.  The Iranians are already using their Obama loot to reinforce terror proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, and secure Bashar Assad in power.

Ah, yes, Bashar Assad… the dictator Obama still blathers on about removing from power, even as his own diplomatic apparatus gets used to the idea Assad is not going anywhere.  The only really good part of Obama’s speech was when he spent five seconds glaring at the Syrian ambassador before launching into his denunciation of barrel bombs and chemical weapons.  But you know what?  That Syrian ambassador gets paid enough to take a few seconds of hairy eyeball from the ineffectual American president.  The Russians are smoothly replacing American influence across the Middle East, in partnership with Iran.  The new order is taking shape.  Obama isn’t going to reverse that process by telling aggressive, bare-knuckle conquerors they should be ashamed of themselves.

The other dangerous thing about this delusional President is his belief in the “judgment of history.”

He’s constantly hitting on the idea that all of the world’s villains are on the wrong side of history, and will find themselves buried in the sands of time any day now.  It’s a dodge, a way of Obama evading responsibility.  Bashar Assad is going to remerge from the Wrong Side of History in pretty good shape.  ISIS is very comfortable there, as is Iran.  Qaddafi didn’t assume room temperature because History caught up with him. Vladimir Putin has a lovely view of Crimea from the wrong side of history.  The history of Europe is being reshaped by the tramping of a million “refugee” feet.

In every example, Obama clings to the idea that he can change the world by talking and scoring debate points, while his adversaries seize territory and control the course of events.  It’s not as though Obama has some deep-seated reluctance to use deadly force – there have been a lot of deaths by drone strike since he won that Nobel Peace Prize.  What Obama lacks is commitment.  His foreign policy is all about gestures and distractions.  He cooks up half-baked plans that will blow up a terrorist here and there, so he can’t be accused of doing “nothing,” but he won’t do anything that could cost him political capital at home.  Even Libya was half-hearted and calculated for minimum risk, which is why the place went to an even deeper Hell after Qaddafi was overthrown.

Obama talks as if he’s taken action against numerous crises, but all he ever did was talk about them.  The men of action are stacking up bodies, and raising flags over conquered cities, while this President is writing speeches and trying to win applause from editorial boards.  The men of action know that Obama’s promises all have expiration dates, his vows of action always have escape clauses, and no matter how he loves to boast that he heads up the most powerful military the world has ever seen, he’s done everything he can to make it weaker.

President Obama is still clinging to a romantic vision of the “Arab Spring” as a flourishing of democracy, despite all evidence to the contrary.  He’s giving the same foreign policy speeches he gave in 2009 because he can’t bear to live in the world he made.  He talks about filling vacuums and voids… but those voids are already filled, by hard characters with plans to make the most of the extraordinary opportunity Barack Obama afforded them.

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Jihad By Court: A Modern Strategy To “Terrify The Enemy Of Allah”

IKHWANINFO, by Valentina Colombo and Magdi Cristiano Allam, Sep. 27, 2015: (h/t Creeping Sharia)

Hasan al-Banna in the Letter of teachings, which is still one of the key documents in the Muslim Brotherhood curriculum, explained the meaning of jihad in the following way: “By jihad, I mean that imperative duty until the day of Resurrection which is reflected in the following saying of the Messenger of Allah – praise and benediction of Allah upon Him: “Whoever dies without carrying out a military expedition, or wishing to do so, dies a pre-Islamic death.” Its lowest degree is the heart’s abhorrence of evil, and its highest degree is fighting in the path of Allah. Between these two degrees are other forms of jihad: jihad with the tongue, pen, hand, and speaking a word of truth to the unjust authority. The call can survive only with jihad. The more lofty and far reaching is the call, the greater is the jihad in its path. The price required to support it is immense, but the reward given to its upholders is more generous: ‘And strive in the Way of Allah as you ought to.’ By this you know the meaning of your slogan ‘Jihad is our path’.”

Jihad by court is another form of “intermediate” jihad and is a modern and aggressive form of jihad through legal means. It is the Westernised and pseudo-democratic form of the Islamic institution called hisba which is derived from the Qur’anic order upon every Muslims of “commanding good and forbidding wrong”: “Ye are the best of peoples, evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong, and believing in Allah. If only the People of the Book had faith, it were best for them: among them are some who have faith, but most of them are perverted transgressors” (Qur’an 3: 110).

Jihad by court is one of the favourite means of the organizations and individuals ideologically linked with the Muslim Brotherhood in the West and sometimes is connected with the accusation of islamophobia. The strategy is clear: any journalist, writer, intellectual, academic, activist or any newspaper, organisation, association criticising or exposing an MB individual or organisation is very likely to be sued for defamation. The Legal Project, based in the USA, has given a very useful definition of this tactic: “Such lawsuits are often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning, but undertaken as a means to bankrupt, distract, intimidate, and demoralize defendants. Plaintiffs seek less to prevail in the courtroom than to wear down researchers and analysts. Even when the latter win cases, they pay heavily in time, money, and spirit. As counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson comments, “Legal action has become a mainstay of radical Islamist organizations seeking to intimidate and silence their critics.” Islamists clearly hope, Douglas Farah notes, that researchers will “get tired of the cost and the hassle [of lawsuits] and simply shut up.”

This has been going on for years in Europe and the US. In some countries there are Western lawyers representing generations of leaders of political Islam from Yusuf Qaradawi to Rached al-Ghannouchi, from Tariq Ramadan to the UOIF, from the global Muslim Brotherhood to national organisations.

Only a few recent examples. On September 4, the Police Tribunal in Lille found Soufiane Zitouni guilty of non-public defamation and non-public insult toward the Lycée Averroès in Lille, linked with UOIF and his president Amar Lasfar, for an email he had sent colleagues accusing the school’s leadership of being a “hypocritical vipers’ nest.” The court assessed that Zitouni did not substantiate his claim and thus found him guilty. In a press communiqué, Averroes high school welcomed the court’s decision against Zitouni’s guilty verdict: “The Lille Court sentenced Soufiane Zitouni and found him guilty of defamation and insults against the Lycée Averroès.” It further stated that “this decision comes after a report from the Ministry of National Education which demonstrated no violation of the Republic’s values.” In the same press release the Lycée “mistakenly” wrote that Zitouni was condemned for public defamation instead of “non-public defamation”.

The court judgement has been an apparent victory for the Lycée, that however did not dare to sue Zitouni for his articles on Liberation where he exposed the methods and the contents of classes in the high school. A few days later, Mohamed Louizi, another prominent critic of the MB in France, announced on his Facebook page that he was being sued for public defamation by the President of the Association Lycée Averroès, Amar Lasfar for a series of critical articles he published last Spring on his Mediapart blog. If found guilty, he could be liable for a fine of up to 12,000 Euros.

On July 29, 2015, the Italian newspaper Il Giornale launched a call to financially support its journalist Magdi Cristiano Allam after an Italian court ordered him to pay more than 8,000 Euros because he linked the Italian Union of Islamic Organisations in Italy (UCOII) with the MB and Hamas during a TV program in 2006. Allam was condemned to death by Hamas and has been living under the protection of the Italian Ministry of Interior since 2003 as a result. During the program, he accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being at the origin of his death sentence.

Allam has been one of the staunchest accusers of the MB network in Italy and has been for years the target of the jihad by court, led by the Italian lawyer Luca Bauccio who counts among his clients Rached Ghannouchi, Tariq Ramadan, Yusuf Qaradawi, Youssef Nada and all Italian leaders of political Islam.

Another example is the lawsuit that was initiated by the Union of the Islamic Organizations of France and the Great Mosque of Paris against “Charlie Hebdo” for republishing the Danish cartoons about Muhammad is one of the most famous examples of this kind of jihad. In March 2008, the Paris Court of Appeals rejected all the accusations as, the cartoons, “which clearly refer only to a part not to the whole Muslim community, cannot be considered neither an outrage nor a personal and direct attack against a group of people because of their religious faith and do not go beyond the limits of freedom of expression.” However, the deadly attack against Charlie Hebdo on January 2015 confirms that jihad by court can turn out to be the green light to more radical organisations that decide to use less democratic means.

The French Court acted in a responsible and sensible way, but what happened to “Charlie Hebdo,” and keeps on happening to many writers and journalists should lead us to conclude that: first, the attacks of “jihad by court” do not come from all Muslims, they come from so-called “Islamic communities and organizations”, that usually are simple non-profit associations which do not represent anybody but themselves, and from individuals and organizations who protect themselves by attacking the others in the name of freedom and defamation.

In Europe and the US there is a long list of people who have been victims of jihad by court: from Daniel Pipes to Fiammetta Venner, from Mohammed Sifaoui to Magdi Cristiano Allam, from Soufiane Zitouni to Heiko Heinisch, from Souad Sbai to Mohamed Louizi. Most of them perfectly know political Islam, its actors and strategies. Some of them have also been in the past active members of political Islam. However, Western judges have not realised yet that anti-defamation laws have been exploited by political Islam in the West to silence the other, that political Islam is not Islam and does not represent the majority of Muslims living in Europe.

Last but not least, Western judges and law makers should realise that jihad by court is one of the new strategies to implement not only Hasan al-Banna’s Letter of teachings, but also the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood represented by the following Qur’anic verse: ““And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows. And whatever you spend in the cause of Allah will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged” (Surat al-Anfal, 60).

Jihad by court is the non-violent, but aggressive way to “terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy.”

Finally, A Plan To Defeat the Islamic State

Town Hall, by Jim Hanson, Sep. 28, 2015:

What if there was an actual strategy to defeat ISIS and stop their reign of terror? The state of affairs and the very existence of IS as a governing entity is intolerable so we developed a strategy called Cut Down the Black Flag – A Plan to Defeat the Islamic State, the second book in the Secure Freedom Strategy series.

President Obama has failed to articulate or implement anything resembling a strategy during his time in office. This fact is even more painful when considering the rise of the Islamic State (IS) occurred on his watch and was largely due to his shortsighted and foolish decision to cut and run from Iraq. He lost the peace after our troops won the war.

Unlike the President, we’re not interested in token gestures doomed to failure as IS kills, rapes, and tortures on ground won for freedom just a few short years ago. We will not stand on the sidelines as an Inter-Continental Caliphate calls for “Death to all Infidels.” We have a plan to win and cut down their blood-soaked, Black Flag of Jihad.

It will not be easy but it is an essential part of the war for the free world. If we do not make a full faith effort to destroy IS, we will have done a disservice to all who gave their lives and limbs to free Iraq from tyranny. We will also be leaving millions to suffer the chaos and killing fields created when the inevitable vacuum of our withdrawal was filled by IS and Iran.

This book details a strategy focused on victory, aimed for stability in the region with the possibility of actual peace. It recognizes this action must be part of a greater “long war” against the whole of the Global Jihad Movement (GJM). They are the collection of groups who, while not officially associated, share a belief in Islamic Supremacy and are working actively to achieve it.

The Violent Jihadists like the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and others are easily identifiable as our enemies. The Civilization Jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the groups it has spawned such as Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) are less overt but perhaps even more dangerous. Our overall strategy to defeat the Global Jihad Movement with a whole of government and culture approach is detailed in the Secure Freedom Strategy.

Our plan to defeat the Islamic State is a complete departure from the dismal failures of the current Commander in Chief leading from behind. The military might and will to win of the United States are vital to any chance of success. This does not mean we propose rolling tanks in a thunder run from Baghdad to Damascus. But we must take the handcuffs off the forces we already have deployed by allowing them to participate in combat missions with the forces they have trained to provide command and control and direct fire support. We must remove the cumbersome and overly risk-averse process for airstrikes that leave most of our aircraft returning to base with all munitions unused.

We must also work with the Sunni tribes who helped us defeat the precursor to IS; and, arm the Kurds who are our best friend and truest ally in the region. Both of these groups were left to the mercy of a central Iraqi government when U.S. forces withdrew and Iranian influence became dominant. We must look to a future where they govern by self-determination rather than remain forced into artificial borders established nearly 100 years ago; and, that have been largely erased over the recent war-torn years.

Our strategy is ambitious, but it does not require large deployments of U.S. troops or the expectation we will be the sole guarantor of security going forward. We aim to cut off the head of the jihadist snake by empowering the indigenous people who have suffered the most from its actions and then let them govern themselves. This strategy vigorously executed can do what the current half-hearted efforts never will: Defeat the Islamic State.

Major U.S. MB Leader Jamal Barzinji Passes Away

Center for Security Policy, by Kyle Shideler, Sep. 28, 2015:

Jamal Barzinji, a major U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leader has died.

Barzinji was one of the co-founders of the Muslim Brotherhood Think Tank known as the International Institute of Islamic Thought, located in Fairfax, Virginia. Barzinji was also a founding member of the Muslim Student’s Association (MSA), the founding general manager of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a member of the Majlis Ashura of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and director of the SAFA Group, a network of charities and companies headquartered in Northern Virginia, and raided by federal authorities over funding to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.  Barzinji was also a founding member of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (AMSS) and Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers (AMSE), both early Muslim Brotherhood organizations established out of the MSA.

At the international level Barzinji was also a founding member of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the Saudi-based organization, known for its ties to Al Qaeda funding,and the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations (IIFSO), a global federation of Muslim Brotherhood-controlled student organizations around the globe.

Barzinji’s funeral was held on Sunday at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, itself a Muslim Brotherhood organization tied to the SAFA Group. Many notable Muslim Brotherhood leaders have commented on the occasion of Barzinji’s passing, including Jasser Auda, a IIIT official with close ties to MB chief jurist Yusuf Al Qaradawi,and head of the Council on American Islamic Relations Nihad Awad. The Islamic Circle of North America, the front for Pakistan-based Jamat-e-Islami, which merged with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1990s, published a press release which, “expresses its deep sorrow at the passing away of Dr. Jamal Barzinji, a pioneer in establishing Muslim American institutions.” ISNA Vice President Altaf Hussain said,  “Personal legacy is not what drove him, rather it was the development of self-sufficient, thriving institutions (MSA National, ISNA Headquarters just to name a few) which could at once serve the Muslim community and society at large.”

In June of this year, Barzinji delivered the eulogy for another major MB figure who had passed away, Mohammed Al-Hanooti, in which he noted their long history of over 65 years working together. And as we noted at the time of Hanooti’s passing,

As we get further away from the generation that produced the Muslim Brotherhood documents submitted in the Holy Land Foundation Trial, it will require increased effort to identify and track younger U.S. Brotherhood members. These younger Brothers will have risen to prominence with newly established organizations during a period where they were accustom to the risk of surveillance of their radical activities that the earlier generation had not experienced. As a result open source researchers into the Muslim Brotherhood’s U.S. networks will need to redouble their own efforts.

Isna’S Interfaith Overreach

Frontpage, by Marilyn Stern,Sep. 28, 2015:

American interfaith groups are being infiltrated and undermined by the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliate, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).  In their eagerness to find Muslim faith partners whom they want to believe share their values of religious tolerance and mutual respect, Jewish interfaith leaders allow themselves to be exploited. Under the guise of interfaith dialogue, Islamist organizations like ISNA that have ties to extremism, insinuate themselves into faith organizations while advancing their hidden agendas.  Faith leaders who disregard ISNA’s ulterior motives place their congregations at risk.

In its June 2015 ruling in favor of Samantha Elauf, a Muslim woman who was denied employment for wearing a headscarf, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the American judiciary’s prohibition on workplace discrimination based upon religious practice.  In the American melting pot, there are benefits to all faiths that successfully negotiate societal challenges between the secular and the religious, but these benefits are only guaranteed by a legal system that upholds a universal human rights standard.  Blind spots in the interfaith movement, however, undermine common cause when religious leaders pursue interfaith outreach at any cost.

One such example was described in an article in a Jewish community paper written by a participant in a Christian/Jewish interfaith partnership with the Muslim organization, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).  The current head of ISNA’s interfaith relations, Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, a sociolinguist by training, is a founder and former executive of ISNA.  At the invitation of its rabbi, Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, Syeed met with faith leaders of various denominations, professors of religion, and “interested citizens” at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in suburban Philadelphia.  The rabbi presented Syeed “to guide our thinking about these issues.” Rabbi Kreimer is founding director of the Multifaith Studies Department of the RRC, the seminary of a branch of Judaism on the left side of the political spectrum and self-described as liberal progressive.

In Kreimer’s article, “Standing with American Muslims, Upholding American Values,” also the title of ISNA’s key interfaith program, the rabbi extolled the virtues of partnering with ISNA in its interfaith initiatives.  She stated that ISNA is the largest membership organization of Muslims in America to support the RRC’s plan to engage in “relationship-building” retreats.  Kreimer’s article was published in the March 10, 2015 issue of the Philadelphia Jewish Federation’s newspaper, the Jewish Exponent, under its editor at the time, Lisa Hostein, whose stated priority for the paper was “inclusiveness.”  Kreimer’s endorsement of ISNA was disseminated to the Exponent’s circulation of 30,000 households.

ISNA’s website page, “About ISNA,” states that it works with various religious organizations on a range of public policy issues to “provide…outreach programs…with religious communities and civic organizations.”  Touted among “ISNA Accomplishments,” is that it has “condemned and rejected the actions of terrorists and terrorism as being completely antithetical to the teachings of Islam.”

Among the “relationship building” ISNA initiatives Kreimer referenced are the program, Shoulder-to-Shoulder, part of an interfaith coalition “dedicated to ending anti-Muslim sentiment”; Walking the Walk, aimed at high school students as a project of the Interfaith Center of Philadelphia and Religions for Peace (USA); and ISNA’s online resource book, Sharing the Well: A Resource Guide for Jewish-Muslim Engagement.  Shoulder-to-Shoulder hosted a leadership seminar for Jewish and Christian “emerging religious leaders” who attended ISNA’s annual convention earlier this month.

What do all these initiatives share in common?  ISNA’s interfaith guide, Dr. Sayyid Syeed.

Who is Dr. Sayyid Syeed?

In 2003, prior to Syeed’s current role as ISNA’s interfaith guide, Syeed met with the editorial board of theDallas Morning News to discuss how reporters “needed to partner with ISNA to promote peace and tolerance.”  Rod Dreher, an editorial writer and columnist at the paper who had looked into ISNA’s board members, asked Syeed why, if ISNA claims to promote peace and tolerance, were so many of its board members directly connected to Islamic extremism.  Syeed’s mask of professorial demeanor abruptly dropped as he shook his fist at Dreher, comparing him to a Nazi inquisitor.  Rather than answering Dreher’s question, Syeed accused Dreher of bigotry and persecution with the veiled threat that Dreher should “repent.”

In Dreher’s words:

I told him mine was a fair question, and that I would appreciate an answer.  I didn’t get one.  But I had learned an important lesson about how groups like his operate: by evading legitimate queries, and browbeating journalists into retreat by calling them bigots and persecutors.

Soon after reporting his experience in the paper, Dreher found himself labeled “The New Face of Hate” on an Islamic blog because of his paper’s investigative articles uncovering “alleged connections between the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) charity and Hamas.”  HLF is a known affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a supremacist Muslim organization with its origins in the Middle East, and Hamas, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department since 1997.

The term “Islamophobia” is invoked by Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations to avoid scrutiny from journalists like Dreher, enforce Islamic sharia anti-blasphemy laws and restrict freedom of speech.  A mass media campaign to promote the use of the term was launched by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in 2005 as the Ten Year Programme of Action.    According to the OIC’s website, it is “the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations which has membership of 57 Member States spread over four continents.”  Since 1998, the OIC has pressed for a U.N. resolutionto counter what it calls discrimination against Islam.  The OIC’s public relations campaign adopted the term “Islamophobia” from a 1997 report by the Runnymede Trust, a British think tank, to muzzle critics of sharia anti-blasphemy law.

The OIC Secretary General endorsed ISNA’s interfaith programs and Syeed attended a June 2013 OIC-hosted meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, held to “determine how best to implement ‘measures to criminalize incitement to imminent violence based on religion or belief.’”  As a result of the OIC’s successful “Islamophobia” propaganda campaign, First Amendment-protected free speech in America has suffered, primarily through self-censorship.  This censorship ranges from a largely complicit mainstream media to individuals intimidated by U.S. Islamist entities attempting to silence them through lawsuits, as part of an intimidation strategy that has come to be called lawfare.  The “Islamophobia” label is a handy tactic employed by Brotherhood groups to shield Islamists from exposure as the OIC inches closer to their goal of criminalizing any perceived slight to Islam.

Dreher’s 2008 Hudson Institute article, “Reporting the Muslim Brotherhood,” included ISNA as one of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s front group organizations.  Challenging Syeed’s disingenuousness, Dreher concluded that while ISNA and other U.S. Muslim Brotherhood-related groups have the right to their beliefs as long as they don’t engage in violence, these groups deserve “informed opposition” to expose their hidden agendas and make them, and their apologists, accountable.

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