“NOTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM”? — W. WILLED IGNORANCE IN FACE OF MURDEROUS ISLAMIST VIOLENCE

Whose Islam?: Mark Steyn, National Review, Oct. 14, 2013 —  The "war" part of the war on terror is pretty much over, and we're now fighting it culturally, rhetorically. Which is not something we do well.                                                                                                                 The Racism of Radical Islam: Raymond Ibrahim, Algemeiner, Nov. 19, 2013 — Arguing that Muslim blood is more precious than infidel blood, Muslim clerics in and out of Sudan are outraged because a Sudanese court has condemned a Muslim man to death—simply because he murdered a non-Muslim, the American diplomat John Granville on January 1, 2008.

Canada’s Growing Islamic Radicalization a Warning Sign: Abigail R. Esman, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Nov. 4, 2013  — The man who calls himself Abu Muslim sits with his fellow fighters, members of the group Katiba al Muhajireen, and raises his rifle for the camera.

Islam in the Arab Spring: Dr. Mordechai Nisan, Nov., 2013— From the beginning, the Arab Spring radiated an Islamic flavor, but that was only part of the story.

On Topic Links

The Taliban’s Enablers: A.J. Caschetta, Middle East Quarterly, Fall, 2013

How Historic Revisionism Justifies Islamic Terrorism: Raymond Ibrahim, Frontpage, Oct. 31, 2013

Jihadi Clouds Over Bangladesh: Tarek Fatah, Sun News Network, Nov. 6, 2013

Turkey’s Trajectory – Islamism: Robert G. Kaufman, Orange County Register, Nov. 1, 2013

WHOSE ISLAM?

Mark Steyn

National Review, Oct. 14, 2013

The "war" part of the war on terror is pretty much over, and we're now fighting it culturally, rhetorically. Which is not something we do well. Take the British prime minister and his traditional nothing-to-do-with-Islam statement, issued in the wake of the Kenyan shopping-mall carnage: These appalling terrorist attacks that take place where the perpetrators claim they do it in the name of a religion: They don't. They do it in the name of terror, violence and extremism and their warped view of the world. They don't represent Islam, or Muslims in Britain or anywhere else in the world.

Same with the Muslims who beheaded a British soldier, Drummer Rigby, on a London street in broad daylight. On that occasion, David Cameron assured us that the unfortunate incident was "a betrayal of Islam. . . . There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act." How does he know? Mr. Cameron is not (yet) a practicing Muslim. A self-described "vaguely practicing" Anglican, he becomes rather less vague and unusually forceful and emphatic when the subject turns to Islam. At the Westgate mall in Nairobi, the terrorists separated non-Muslim hostages from Muslims and permitted the latter to leave if they could recite a Muslim prayer—a test I doubt Mr. Cameron could have passed, for all his claims to authority on what is and isn't Islamic. So the perpetrators seem to think it's something to do with Islam—and, indeed, something to do with Muslims in the United Kingdom, given that the terrorists included British subjects (as well as U.S. citizens).

It was a busy weekend for Nothing to Do with Islam. Among the other events that were nothing to do with Islam were the murder of over 85 Pakistani Christians at All Saints' Church in Peshawar and the beheading of Ricardo Dionio in the Philippines by BIFF, the aggressively acronymic breakaway faction (the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters) from the more amusingly acronymic MILF (the Moro Islamic Liberation Front). Despite a body count higher than Kenya, the Pakistani slaughter received barely a mention in the Western media. You'd be hard put to find an Anglican church in England with a big enough congregation on a Sunday morning to kill 85 worshipers therein, but in Peshawar, a 99 percent Muslim city, the few remaining Christians are not of the "vaguely practicing" Cameron variety. Viewed from London, however, they've already lost: One day there will be no Christians in Peshawar and the city will be 100 percent Muslim. It may be "nothing to do with Islam," but it's just the way it is: We accept the confessional cleansing of Pakistan, as we do of Egypt, because it's part of "the Muslim world." Nairobi, on the other hand, is not, and a murderous assault on an upscale shopping mall patronized by Kenya's elite and wealthy secular expats gets far closer to the comfort zone wherein David Cameron "vaguely practices": In a "clash of civilizations" in which one side doesn't want to play, a shattered church has less symbolic resonance than a shattered frozen-yogurt eatery.

On this side of the Atlantic, meanwhile, the Canadian branch of the Islamic Society of North America lost its charitable status after it was revealed to be funding all that jihad stuff that's nothing to do with Islam. This presented a small problem for Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal party, son of Pierre, and on course to be the Queen's dimmest prime minister of her six-decade reign: Where David Cameron is a silky, slippery deceiver who surely knows better, young Justin seems genuinely to believe the mush he serves up. Asked to explain his recent photo-op at the now-discredited ISNA, he replied: "Part of my job is to speak with as many Canadians as possible and talk to people about the kinds of shared values we have."

I don't suppose M. Trudeau really means he "shares values" with terrorism supporters, but he does get to the heart of the problem: To put it at its mildest, there seem to be insufficient "shared values" between Western societies and a not-insignificant number of young Muslim men who are nominally and legally citizens thereof. One survivor of the Westgate mall said, "I don't understand why you would shoot a five-year-old child." But what's to understand? The child was shot because he was not Muslim. Five-year-olds died at All Saints' Church for the same reason—because, even in a town that's 99 percent Muslim, a non-Muslim kindergartner is a provocation. Crazy, huh? Yet it is not inconceivable that the man who executed the five-year-old at the Westgate mall was one of those "British subjects" or "U.S. citizens." That's to say, he's not some primitive from the fringes of the map but someone who has grown up in the same society as Justin Trudeau and decided that Justin's "shared values" are worthless.

To be charitable to Mr. Cameron, he is trying to point out that very few Muslims want to stare a five-year-old in the eye and pull the trigger. But, likewise, very few of them want to do anything serious—in their mosques and madrassahs—about the culture that incubates such men. The prime minister is betting that all the clever chaps like him can keep the lid on and hold things to what, at the height of the Northern Irish "Troubles," cynical British officials privately called "an acceptable level of violence." A combined weekend corpse count of 150 is, apparently, "acceptable"—or at any rate not sufficiently unacceptable to prompt any reconsideration of a British, Canadian, and European immigration policy that makes Islam the principal source of Western population growth.

But don't worry: As John McCain says of our Syrian "allies," "Allahu akbar" simply means "Thank God." Thank God for that.

                                                                        Contents

THE RACISM OF RADICAL ISLAM

Raymond Ibrahim

Algemeiner, Nov. 19, 2013 

Arguing that Muslim blood is more precious than infidel blood, Muslim clerics in and out of Sudan are outraged because a Sudanese court has condemned a Muslim man to death—simply because he murdered a non-Muslim, the American diplomat John Granville on January 1, 2008.

A 2009 report offers context: The court had sentenced the men [originally four] to death in June for killing Granville and his driver in January 2008, but the sentence was cancelled in August after [his Muslim driver] Abbas’s father forgave the men. Under Islamic law, the victim’s family has the right to forgive the murderer, ask for compensation (fedia) or demand execution. Granville’s mother, Jane Granville, at the time had asked for the men’s execution, but her letter was rejected because it was not notarized. The judge said the sentence was confirmed because Granville’s family, from Buffalo, in northern New York State, had requested it. Then, in 2010, the four men convicted of murder, in the words of the U.S. State Department, “escaped from a maximum security prison” in Khartoum. One of the men, Abdul Ra’uf Abu Zaid Muhammad Hamza, was recaptured and is currently in prison awaiting execution.

Finding the punishment unjust, several international Islamic organizations, most recently, the London-based Islamic Media Observatory, have been trying to commute the death sentence, mostly by arguing for Abdul Ra’uf’s “human rights.” However, the Legitimate League of Scholars and Preachers in Sudan (an influential body of Muslim clerics) issued a statement last month titled “Let no Muslim be killed because of an infidel”—a verbatim quote, in fact, from Islam’s prophet Muhammad—revealing the true reason why so many Muslims are trying to overturn the death sentence. The Arabic language statement begins by asserting that “Allah has honored human beings over creation and multiplied the Muslim’s honor over the infidel’s, because Islam elevates and nothing is elevated above it. The value of the blood of Muslims is equal, or should be, but not so the value of the blood of others.”  (The Koran itself, e.g., 2:221, confirms this idea that even the lowliest Muslim is superior to any non-Muslim.)

Next, the statement quotes the clear words of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, as recorded in a canonical hadith: “Let no Muslim be killed because of an infidel.”  It then elaborates on the meaning of this statement by quoting from “the consensus of Islamic scholars,” or ijma‘, a legitimate source of Islamic jurisprudence.

The Legitimate League of Scholars and Preachers then elaborate on the prophet’s injunction as meaning that, when judging between Muslims and non-Muslims, under no circumstances are Muslim rulers ever permitted to execute Muslims – even if they murder non-Muslims in cold blood, including those groups that are nominally “protected” by Islamic law, such as dhimmis (subjugated, tribute-paying non-Muslims) and foreign non-Muslims granted aman, or a pledge of security to enter Muslim lands. Finally, after chastising the offending judge of North Khartoum’s felony court, Sayed Ahmed al-Badri, the statement concludes by warning all Muslim rulers and judges “to fear Allah, to apply Allah’s law in every matter, whether big or small, to seek justice according to the consensus of Islamic scholars, not to seek to please the infidels, not to rush the verdict, and to know that Allah prefers the annihilation of the entire earth over the spilling of the blood of one innocent Muslim” (emphasis added).

When American soldiers desecrated copies of the Koran – a book – media maelstroms occurred and grandstanding politicians condemned it. But when the scholars of Islam, quoting the words and teachings of their prophet, openly assert that the blood of non-Muslims is cheaper than the blood of Muslims – and hence the murder of an American “infidel” by a Muslim cannot be punished blood-for-blood – such hate-filled supremacy and racist-like contempt is not even deemed worth reporting by Western media or condemned by Western politicians.

                                                                            Contents
                                 

CANADA’S GROWING ISLAMIC RADICALIZATION A WARNING SIGN

Abigail R. Esman

Investigative Project on Terrorism, Nov. 4, 2013

The man who calls himself Abu Muslim sits with his fellow fighters, members of the group Katiba al Muhajireen, and raises his rifle for the camera. He has come to Aleppo to fight, he tells the man who has come to interview him for Britain's Channel 4. A Muslim convert, he – like some 100 others joining the jihad in Syria's civil war – has left his family at home. In Canada. The United States' neighbor to the north is experiencing a radicalization problem, according to a confidential report by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). Made public earlier this year through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Canada's National Post, the report confirms that "Islamist extremists are now radicalizing Canadians at a large number of venues," ranging from mosques to dinner parties and even the family home.

"Parents have radicalized children, husbands have radicalized wives (and some wives have radicalized or supported their husbands," the study's authors contend, "and siblings have radicalized each other."

Indeed, according to one assessment cited by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), "with the exception of the United States, there are more terrorist groups active in Canada today than in any other country in the world." And while most of their activity is based abroad, a study published earlier this year by the International Institute for Counterterrorism (IIC) shows that 25 individuals have developed or been involved in four plots against Canadian targets since 2006. Of these, eight were Canadian born; three were converts to Islam; and 20 – nearly all – were between the ages of 18 and 35. Most were affiliated with al-Qaida. Among them: The "Toronto 18," arrested in 2006 for plans to behead Canada's prime minister, along with a host of other schemes, including bombing the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service office in Toronto, and other targets; A group of three Muslims, Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh, Misbahuddin Ahmed, and Khurram Syed Sher – a physician and former "Canadian Idol" contestant – accused in 2010 of plotting terrorist attacks and making bombs; Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser, arrested earlier this year on charges they were planning to bomb an Amtrak/Via passenger train running between New York and Toronto; John Nuttail and Amanda Korody, converts charged with planning to celebrate Canada Day (July 1) this year by using pressure cooker bombs to blow up the British Columbia Provincial legislature in Victoria.

This does not include the hundreds more suspected of taking part in terrorist attacks abroad, including at least 100 of Canada's jihadists who, like Abu Muslim, have headed off to join the fighting in Syria. (Abu Muslim is now suspected to have taken part in an attack on an Abu Duhur military airport this past summer.) Notably, while the Muslim population of Canada is smaller than that of the U.S., more Canadian than American Muslims are thought to have joined radical groups in the Syrian conflict. But it isn't just in Syria: Canadian radicals have also been involved in attacks elsewhere: the suicide bombing of a courthouse in Mogodishu; the bombing, by members of Hizballah, of a bus in Bulgaria carrying a group of Israeli tourists; and the attack on a gas plant in January which killed hundreds of refinery workers in Algeria. Most visible, and certainly among the most active of these Muslim extremists, is the controversial Khadr family, most or all of whom are alleged to be members of al-Qaida. (Father Ahmed Said Khadr, who emigrated to Canada in 1977 from Egypt and was killed battling Pakistani forces in Afghanistan in 2003, was believed to be an al-Qaida founding member and financier.)

Not all of Canada's Islamic terrorist activity involves violence, however. Financing for foreign terror groups has a long history in the country, as terror expert Ilan Berman testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security in 2011. Other Canadian investigations during the 1990s also revealed connections to Hizballah that "reportedly includes the procurement of funds, human smuggling, especially into the United States, and the provision of safe houses from which future attacks can be plotted." (Whether or not those connections still exist today is unclear.)

What does seem clear, however, is that the radicalization of Canadian Muslims is not only continuing, but growing, as the ICC report indicates. It is a problem moderate Muslims can sense as well; Algerian-born Zakaria Fellah, a U. S. citizen who lived in Canada from 2000-2001, says that there are "hotbeds for – I am careful not to say extremism, but certainly an orthodox view of Islam." Indeed, several high-profile honor killings in Canada, as the IIC report also notes, would seem to confirm the solid presence of orthodox radical Muslims within the Canadian Muslim community.

Yet much of the blame for this, Fellah believes, stems not only from the Muslim community (though several mosques in Canada are known to be connected to extremist groups) but "the lax codes, the accommodation, the multiculturalism charter." That would, for instance, partly explain the 2004 efforts to introduce Sharia tribunals in Ottawa – a move shockingly supported by former attorney general Marion Boyd. (And given that a 2011 survey by Leuprecht and Winn showed that as many as 88 percent of Canadian Muslims support the idea of integrating Sharia law into Canadian society. , the subject is likely to come up again soon. The outcome is anyone's guess. That alone is an issue that other countries will probably confront as well in the near future; and it stems, in part, from the ease with which radicalization can take place. And it's not just in Canada; as the de-classified CSIS report states, since "radicalization involves the mutual confirmation of extreme views among a group of people, it can take place wherever these people gather" – or, in other words, just about anywhere. That viewpoint is not foreign to the international counterterrorism community, of course: it accounts for such oft-debated security measures as the monitoring of mosques and tapping of telephones – actions many condemn as "undemocratic."

And yet, consider that the authors of the International Institute for Counterterrorism review have come to one very clear conclusion: that "stopping radicalization is an impossible task." If they are right, then the challenges to world democracy may be greater than we think.

Contents

ISLAM IN THE ARAB SPRING

Dr. Mordechai Nisan

Nov, 2013

From the beginning, the Arab Spring radiated an Islamic flavor, but that was only part of the story. There is a not unjustified tendency to see the hand of Islam at every stop and turn in these heady days of Muslim assaults and advances, and while Islam’s agenda must be studiously monitored and analyzed, some other factors in the Middle East must be assessed as well.

1. Ethnicity competes with and contains the feasibility of a complete Islamic conquest. In Iraq and Syria, the robust Muslim-lite Kurds have proven robust in rejecting Arab nationalism and Islam alike. In Algeria, the Kabyle Berbers assert their own secular national spirit against sharia. The extraordinary case of southern Sudan’s secession is a resolute statement of Christian/animist African tribes successfully slipping from the vindictive Arab crush of oppressive jihadic Islam.
2.  
3. Culture as a variegated rich cloth of human liberty and individuality plays a role in checking the monolithic supremacy of Islam. In Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood was rather promptly thrown out of power, there is a large repertoire of cultural assets – the press, music, theatre, and literature – that parallel the Islamic identity of the country. In Lebanon, the creative and spirited Christians, especially the Maronites among them, have been leaders of cultural creativity in scorning the repressive character of much of Shiite Islam in the land of the cedars.

3. Tribalism as a native framework of loyalty and identity precedes the state structure and the Islamic religion. In Libya and Yemen, tribal resilience preempts the extensive religious pretentions of Islam to organize public and legal affairs.

4. Politics in the name of the incumbent regime denotes withstanding destabilizing religious rumblings. In Jordan the Hashemite dynasty, for all of its frail legitimacy, has deflected the challenge of the Muslim Brotherhood, by neutralizing Islam as a political principle. Much the same could be said of the Moroccan monarchy deftly keeping fundamentalist Islam at bay. Among Palestinians, the Fatah/Hamas split demonstrates the PLO’s unease with accepting Islam alone as the legitimizing stamp of Palestinian peoplehood.

Islam is undoubtedly strong and rampant, but is yet stymied in launching successful religious revolutions throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Religion has its place of honor in the minds of men and in organizing their need for something meaningful and uplifting in their lives. The transcendent and the realm beyond stir up imagination and direct us to a religious belief. But other forces are part of the public arena of ideas and levers of power. Religion is much but not everything in the Arab Spring, whose sprightliness is not Islamic at all.

(Dr. Mordechai Nisan is Emeritus Professor at the Hebrew University                                  of Jerusalem and a CIJR Academic Fellow)

On Topic Links

Visit CIJR’s Bi-Weekly Webzine: Israzine.

CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing is available by e-mail.
Please urge colleagues, friends, and family to visit our website for more information on our ISRANET series.
To join our distribution list, or to unsubscribe, visit us at https://isranet.org/.

The ISRANET Daily Briefing is a service of CIJR. We hope that you find it useful and that you will support it and our pro-Israel educational work by forwarding a minimum $90.00 tax-deductible contribution [please send a cheque or VISA/MasterCard information to CIJR (see cover page for address)]. All donations include a membership-subscription to our respected quarterly ISRAFAX print magazine, which will be mailed to your home.

CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing attempts to convey a wide variety of opinions on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world for its readers’ educational and research purposes. Reprinted articles and documents express the opinions of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.