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Contents:
ISIS Claims Bloody Tunis Attack: Jamie Dettmer, Daily Beast, Mar. 19, 2015 — The so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the murderous assault Wednesday on a landmark museum in Tunis that left 20 foreign tourists and three Tunisians dead…
The Allure of the Islamic State Vandals: David Pinault, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 6, 2015— On Thursday the Islamic State assault on Iraq’s cultural heritage continued, with jihadists using trucks to wreck large statues in the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, according to government officials.
What Drives Islamic State Fangirls: Margaret Wente, Globe & Mail, Mar. 3, 2015 — In late 2013, a 19-year-old girl named Aqsa Mahmood said goodbye to her parents in Glasgow and slipped away from home.
Islam’s Improbable Reformer: Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 20, 2015 — When then-Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi appointed a little-known general named Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to be his new defense minister in August 2012…
ISIS ‘Hacking Division’ Releases Hit List of 100 U.S. Military Personnel, Including Names and Addresses: Joseph Brean, National Post, Mar. 22, 2015
Why Islam Needs a Reformation: Wall Street Journal, Mar. 22, 2015
Can the U.S. Beat ISIS in a Twitter War?: George F. Will, National Post, Feb. 23, 2015
The Islamic State’s Utopian Vision: Ian Tuttle, National Review, Feb. 27, 2015
ISIS CLAIMS BLOODY TUNIS ATTACK
Jamie Dettmer
Daily Beast, Mar. 19, 2015
The so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the murderous assault Wednesday on a landmark museum in Tunis that left 20 foreign tourists and three Tunisians dead, describing the attack by gunmen dressed in military uniforms as a “blessed invasion of one of the dens of the infidels and vice in Muslim Tunisia.” It said the attack was carried out by “two knights of the caliphate,” naming them as Abu Zakariya al Tunisi and Abu Anas al-Tunisi.
The attack is the biggest terror incident associated with the ISIS outside Iraq and Syria—prompting fears that more attacks are in the offing, not only in North Africa but in nearby Europe, by a group that until recently appeared focused on the Levantine region. Only a few months ago American officials were arguing reassuringly that ISIS was focused to the exclusion of all else on the consolidation of its caliphate straddling the Levant—and therefore posed no immediate major transnational threat. But last month it released a video in which one of its minions threatened to attack “Rome,” meaning the West, and underscored the threat by beheading Egyptian Christians.
The claim of responsibility for the Tunis attack carried in an audio message posted on a forum used by the militant group came as Tunisian officials announced they had arrested nine people in connection with the attack on the Bardo Museum, five of them allegedly involved in the planning and logistics for the violence. The other four had “ties to the terror cell,” officials said. Two gunmen were shot in the museum by security forces hours after the militants sprayed tourist buses outside with automatic gunfire and stormed the building holding several foreigners hostage. The authorities have named them as Tunisians Yassine Laabidi and Hatem Khachnaoui and say Laabidi was known to security services and was being monitored, raising questions about why he was still at large and able to participate in the deadly attack.
Jihadist sources tell The Daily Beast that both gunmen had recently been in eastern Libya and trained with the ISIS affiliate Mujahideen of Libya, which announced its formation last October in the eastern Libyan town of Derna. The group is thought to number about 800 fighters. The importance ISIS is placing on North Africa was signaled last autumn when ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dispatched his deputy in Syria, Abu Ali al-Anbari, a former major general in the Iraqi army, to orchestrate the final takeover of Derna, a city of 100,000 that has been a hotbed of Salafism since the 1990s. Mujahideen of Libya claimed responsibility for the beheadings last month in Libya of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. "We tell the apostates who sit on the chest of Muslim Tunisia: Wait for the glad tidings of what will harm you, o impure ones, for what you have seen today is the first drop of the rain," the ISIS message said.
It remains unclear, though, whether the assault was directed and coordinated by ISIS strategists from their stronghold of Raqqa in Syria, or from Derna in Libya, or if the attack was more homegrown by an affiliate of the terror organization, allowing ISIS to claim overall credit. Tunisian authorities are avoiding being specific in their remarks about the affiliation of the assailants, with Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui refusing to go beyond describing them as “Islamists” and talking of just one terror cell.
Last December, a Tunisian jihadist group called Jund al-Khilafah announced its allegiance to ISIS. That pledge coincided with another video posted online by three Tunisian volunteers with ISIS warning that the country would not be secure “as long as Tunisia is not governed by Islam.” One of the fighters in the video was Boubakr Hakim, who is wanted in connection with the 2013 assassination of leftwing Tunisian politician, Chokri Belaid. Since December there has been a stream of jihadist tweets and chatter in militant forums about a likely terror attack—with strong hints that the targets would be cultural or foreigners. That. Too, raises questions about whether the Tunisian security services should have been more alert and high-profile around landmark tourist sites—in this case one adjacent to the national parliament, where deputies were discussing new anti-terror legislation as the assault unfolded. The deputies were evacuated quickly by security forces. One Tunisian lawmaker, Sayida Ounissi, told BBC Radio that intelligence officials told him that the gunmen had originally planned to attack the parliament but had been prevented from doing so and changed their targets.
The counter-terror operation mounted to clear the gunmen from the museum and to rescue more than a dozen foreigners being held hostage by the militants also seems to have been less than efficient. The museum doesn’t appear to have been searched exhaustively once the security forces had regained control. A Spanish couple and a Tunisian security guard hid in the museum for 24 hours after the gunmen had been shot, not realizing the siege was over, according to Spain’s foreign minister, José García-Margallo. The couple, Juan Carlos Sanchez and his wife Cristina Rubio, four months into a pregnancy, “spent the whole night hidden in the museum and didn’t even dare to use their cell phones, which is why we were unable to contact them,’’ García-Margallo told reporters.
They weren’t the only tourists who hid for hours during the attack and after. Shocked tourists said the gunmen were shooting at anything that moved in the fifteenth century museum. "After they entered the museum, I saw their faces: They were about 10 meters 32 away from me," Josep Lluis Cusido, the mayor of a small Spanish town told Spain's Cadena Ser radio station. “I managed to hide behind a pillar; there were unlucky people who they killed right there," he said, adding that he and his wife spent nearly three hours behind the pillar until they fled.
Despite shortfalls in the security operation Tunisian leaders are endeavoring to establish confidence — both among Tunisians and overseas—insisting they can defeat terrorism. Army units are being deployed to major cities across the country. Tunisia relies on foreign visitors and nearly half-a-million jobs are dependent on tourism, which has only recently started to recover from the 2011 Arab spring uprising that led to the ouster of dictator Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali. But the country’s recently elected President Beji Caid Essebsi admitted in a statement that Tunisia was facing “exceptional circumstances,” adding, “terrorist operations have now moved from the mountains to the cities.” In recent months, Tunisian security forces have mounted a series of counter-terror operations, focusing partly on training camps in remote parts of the country…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THE ALLURE OF THE ISLAMIC STATE VANDALS
David Pinault
Wall Street Journal, Mar. 6, 2015
On Thursday the Islamic State assault on Iraq’s cultural heritage continued, with jihadists using trucks to wreck large statues in the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, according to government officials. The rampage followed the recent release of a propaganda video showing the destruction of priceless artifacts in the Mosul Museum. In the video, one of the jihadists takes a sledgehammer to an ancient Mesopotamian statue. Another applies a power drill to the face of a winged man-bull of Nineveh. Three thousand years of history smashed, while the perpetrators celebrate with a mix of smug piety and aggressive malice.
I am a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, and my first reaction to news of this cultural vandalism was a sense of personal loss. These artifacts didn’t belong only to the people of today’s Iraq. They belonged to anyone who has ever spent a childhood reading “The How & Why Wonder Book of Lost Cities” or visited the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and gazed up into the blank stone eyes of its bearded animal-human genii (cousins of the gate-guardians that shattered on the Mosul Museum floor).
In the video, the destruction—repulsive to watch—is accompanied by the haunting, elegant sound of a jihadist chanting from the Quran. As a longtime student of Islamic culture, I know that such recitation is a demanding discipline, requiring finely timed breath control and mastery of the intricacies of seventh-century pronunciation and grammar. The fusha (“eloquent Arabic”) of Islamic scripture is revered by Muslims as a language nobler and purer than any Arabic dialect spoken today. Listening to good Quran chanting (and the chanter on this video was very good indeed) is a pleasure akin to hearing a fine performance of Shakespeare—Patrick Stewart, say, reciting Prospero’s lines in “The Tempest.”
Let me be clear: I’m a Christian, a Catholic. If I shut my eyes to the malicious violence being perpetrated in the video and just listen to the Arabic recital, I can conjure the pleasure of attending the Easter Vigil service (I was an altar boy once, when the mass was still said in Latin) while the priest sang the “Exultet” and lighted the Paschal candle. Yes, I can conjure all this—until I translate the particular Quranic verses chosen for the video by Islamic State. These are from Chapter 21, and involve the figure of Abraham. The Quran depicts him as having been reared in a family of idol worshipers. He condemns his own father’s paganism—“What are these statues, to which you’re so devoted?”—and then smashes the family’s idols to bits.
Immediately after the recitation of these verses, a militant is shown reminding viewers that the Prophet Muhammad “removed and destroyed the idols with his own exalted and noble hands when he conquered Mecca.” Historic accounts say that a circle of idols once surrounded the Meccan shrine of the Kaaba. But with the prophet’s conquest in 630, the Kaaba was “purified” and the idolatrous traces of Mecca’s pre-Islamic past were expunged.
Thus Islamic State marshals both Quranic scripture and the actions of Muhammad himself as precedents to justify the group’s attack on these ancient treasures. So much for President Obama’s claim that Islamic State’s actions have nothing to do with Islam. No question, we’re watching a recruitment video here. Think what it offers for young extremists: a chance to re-enact actions from the life of the prophet, to imitate Abraham, imitate Muhammad himself. Tempting, such an offer, for anyone confused by our disorderly 21st century, with its imperative that we come to terms with individualism, that we each find and test our own world views, with all their attendant doubts, in the modern world’s pluralistic societies. How tempting, then, to take a hammer to diversity, to strive to put an end to doubt—with a power drill.
WHAT DRIVES ISLAMIC STATE FANGIRLS
Margaret Wente
Globe & Mail, Mar. 3, 2015
In late 2013, a 19-year-old girl named Aqsa Mahmood said goodbye to her parents in Glasgow and slipped away from home. The next time they heard from her, she was crossing the Syrian border to join the Islamic State. When her father begged her to come back, she said, “I will see you on the day of judgment.” Three months later, she married an IS fighter. Aqsa (who now calls herself Umm Layth) has become one of the Islamic State’s chief recruiters. Her targets are ardent girls from across the Western world who dream of marrying an IS fighter. She tells them that the hardest part is leaving home – but that Allah requires it.
Three such girls, ages 15 and 16, left Britain last week. At least one is thought to have been in touch with Aqsa. They were last spotted in Istanbul, waiting for a bus to Syria. Several Canadian girls have disappeared too, including two from Quebec. One of Aqsa’s besties is a 20-year-old Canadian who has adopted the name Umm Haritha. Aqsa has posted pictures of the two of them online, in identical head-to-toe black. The IS groupies weren’t radicalized in the mosque but in their bedrooms, via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other social media. Private messaging makes it easy for them to make personal contact with women like Aqsa. Everything they need to know is on the Internet – how to talk your way through the border, what life will be like in your new home (plenty of housework), even what to pack (boots and a solar adapter for your Android when the electricity fails).
Islamic State fangirls now number in the thousands, although just a few dozen have made it to Syria so far. What strikes you about these girls is how normal they were. They came from moderate religious backgrounds and did extremely well in school. They wanted to be humanitarians and make the world a better place. They were the apples of their devastated parents’ eyes. They seemed to be role models for successful integration.
What could tempt a smart young woman to join a band of murderous fanatics who brutally oppress women, crucify their enemies and use mass rape as a weapon of war? The answer is a mix of passionate idealism, combined with the absolutist world view of a convert and the desire to belong to something greater than themselves. Plus hormones. There is a transgressive thrill to the idea of marriage to a violent warrior. Some IS heartthrobs have acquired devoted bands of female followers who want nothing more than to submit to them and have their babies. “Messianic fervour, millenarianism and magnetism can whip up female hormones alarmingly,” wrote Yasmin Alibhai Brown in The Independent. Besides, the romance of jihad seems a lot more exciting than studying for your accounting degree. “There’s a lot of that kind of mentality,” Melanie Smith, who is in touch with hundreds of IS groupies, told the Daily Mail. “It’s laziness, really.”
It’s tempting to see these young women as innocent, naive dupes. But that would be a mistake. The Islamic State’s extreme self-publicized violence cannot possibly escape their notice. And the sisterhood in Syria give the brutality their wholehearted support. “OMG … Gut-wrenchingly awesome,” tweeted one female recruit after she saw a video showing the beheading of 18 Christians. “More beheadings, please,” tweeted another. The flow of female recruits is picking up, and it’s hard to see how to turn it off. You can’t turn off social media, and you can’t police a girl 24 hours a day. You’d hope that once they discover the harsh reality of life as jihadi brides, they would regret their choices and long to come back. But Ms. Smith says she has yet to be in touch with anyone who has regrets. “They see it as emigrating to a better life,” she told the Guardian. “They say they feel free.”
Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal, Mar. 20, 2015
When then-Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi appointed a little-known general named Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to be his new defense minister in August 2012, rumors swirled that the officer was chosen for his sympathy with the teachings of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. One telltale sign, people said, was the zabiba on the general’s forehead—the darkened patch of skin that is the result of frequent and fervent prayer.
A pious Muslim must surely also be a political Islamist—or so Mr. Morsi apparently assumed. But the general would soon give the world a lesson in the difference between religious devotion and radicalism.
“There are misconceptions and misperceptions about the real Islam,” now-President Sisi tells me during a two-hour interview in his ornate, century-old presidential palace in Heliopolis. “Religion is guarded by its spirit, by its core, not by human beings. Human beings only take the core and deviate it to the right or left.”
Does he mean to say, I ask, that members of the Muslim Brotherhood are bad Muslims? “It’s the ideology, the ideas,” he replies. “The real Islamic religion grants absolute freedom for the whole people to believe or not believe. Never does Islam dictate to kill others because they do not believe in Islam. Never does it dictate that [Muslims] have the right to dictate [their beliefs] to the whole world. Never does Islam say that only Muslims will go to paradise and others go to hell.” Jabbing his right finger in the air for emphasis, he adds: “We are not gods on earth, and we do not have this right to act in the name of Allah.”
When Mr. Sisi took power in July 2013, following street protests against Mr. Morsi by an estimated 30 million Egyptians, it wasn’t obvious that he would emerge as perhaps the world’s most significant advocate for Islamic moderation and reform. His personal piety aside, Mr. Sisi seemed to be a typical Egyptian military figure. Unflattering comparisons were made to Hosni Mubarak, a former air force general and Egypt’s president-for-life until his downfall in 2011. The similarities are misleading. Mr. Mubarak came of age in the ideological anti-colonialist days of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, trained in the Soviet Union, and led the air campaign against Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Anwar Sadat elevated him to the vice presidency in 1975 as a colorless second-fiddle, his very lack of imagination being an asset to Sadat. He became president only due to Sadat’s assassination six years later.
Mr. Sisi, now 60, came of age in a very different era. When he graduated from the Military Academy, in 1977, Egypt was a close American ally on the cusp of making peace with Israel. Rather than being packed off to Russia, he headed for military training in Texas and later the infantry course at Fort Benning, Ga. He returned for another extended stay in the U.S. in 2005 at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. Recalling the two visits, he notes the difference. “The U.S. had been a community that had been living in peace and security. Before 9/11, even the military bases were open. There was almost no difference between civilian life and life on a military base. By 2005, I could feel the tightening.”
The remark is intended to underscore to a visiting American journalist his deep sympathy with and admiration for the U.S. He also goes out of his way to stress that he has no intention of altering the pro-American tilt of Egyptian foreign policy, despite suggestions that he is flirting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin for potential arms purchases and the construction of Egypt’s first nuclear power plant. “A country like Egypt will never be mischievous with bilateral relations” with America, he insists. “We will never act foolishly.” When I ask about the delivery of F-16 fighters to Egypt—suspended by the U.S. after Mr. Morsi’s overthrow, and now pending a decision by President Obama—he all-but dismisses the matter. “You can never reduce our relations with the U.S. to matters of weapons systems. We are keen on a strategic relationship with the U.S. above everything else. And we will never turn our backs on you—even if you turn your backs on us.”
There is also a deeper purpose to Mr. Sisi’s pro-American entreaties and his comments on 9/11: He wants to remind his critics of the trade-off every country strikes between security and civil liberties. It’s a point he returns to when I note the anger and disappointment that so many Egyptian liberals—many of whom had backed him in 2013—now feel. New laws that tightly restrict street protests recall the Mubarak era. Last June several Al Jazeera journalists, including Australian reporter Peter Greste, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on dubious charges of reporting that was “damaging to national security,” though they have since been released. The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned, Mr. Morsi is in prison and on trial, and Egyptian courts have passed death sentences on hundreds of alleged Islamists, albeit mostly in absentia.
“My message to liberals is that I am very keen to meet their expectations,” Mr. Sisi rejoins. “But the situation in Egypt is overwhelmed.” He laments the Al Jazeera arrests, noting that the incident damaged Egypt’s reputation even as thousands of international correspondents “are working very freely in this country.” Later, while addressing a question about the Egyptian economy, he offers a franker assessment. “In the last four years our internal debt doubled to $300 billion. Do not separate my answer to the question regarding disappointed liberals. Their country needs to survive. We don’t have the luxury to fight and feud and take all our time discussing issues like that. A country needs security and order for its mere existence. If the world can provide support I will let people demonstrate in the streets day and night.”
Sensing my skepticism, he adds: “You can’t imagine that as an American. You are speaking the language of a country that is at the top of progress: cultural, financial, political, civilizational—it’s all there in the U.S.” But if American standards were imposed on Egypt, he adds, it would do his country no favors…All of this seems in keeping with Mr. Sisi’s military upbringing and reminds me of Pervez Musharraf, the former Pakistani general turned president. But the comparison is fundamentally inapt. Under Mr. Musharraf, Pakistan continued to make opportunistic deals with terrorists while giving safe harbor to leaders of the Afghan Taliban.
By contrast, it’s impossible to doubt the seriousness of Mr. Sisi’s opposition to Islamic extremism, or his aversion to exporting instability. In late February he ordered the bombing of Islamic State targets in neighboring Libya after ISIS decapitated 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. Egypt’s security cooperation with Israel has never been closer, and Mr. Sisi has moved aggressively to close the tunnels beneath Egypt’s border with Gaza, through which Hamas has obtained its weapons. Later this month, Mr. Sisi will host an Arab League summit, the centerpiece of which will be a joint Arab antiterrorism task force. He says he won’t put Egyptian boots on the ground to fight ISIS in Iraq, which he says is a job for Iraqis with U.S. help. And he takes care to avoid mentioning Iran’s regional ambitions or saying anything critical of its nuclear negotiations, which he says he supports while adding that “I understand the concern of the Israelis.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
ISIS ‘Hacking Division’ Releases Hit List of 100 U.S. Military Personnel, Including Names and Addresses: Joseph Brean, National Post, Mar. 22, 2015 —In a dramatic propaganda move, Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham terrorists have published a hit list of 100 American military personnel, including names, photos and addresses they claimed to have hacked from secure government computers.
Why Islam Needs a Reformation: Wall Street Journal, Mar. 22, 2015 —“Islam’s borders are bloody,” wrote the late political scientist Samuel Huntington in 1996, “and so are its innards.”
Can the U.S. Beat ISIS in a Twitter War?: George F. Will, National Post, Feb. 23, 2015 —The Obama administration’s semantic somersaults to avoid attaching the adjective “Islamic” to the noun “extremism” are as indicative as they are entertaining.
The Islamic State’s Utopian Vision: Ian Tuttle, National Review, Feb. 27, 2015—For his posthumous 1937 book Mahomet et Charlemagne: Byzance, Islam et Occident dans le haut Moyen Age, Belgian historian Henri Pirenne became an early victim of political correctness in the academy.
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