The real beauty- listen 2 this exraordinary Arabic song....

NOVA SCOTIA CANADA

Gay Iranians ‘can be free’

Couple facing persecution, even death, welcomed to Halifax- NOVA SCOTIA CANADA

MIKE LIGHTSTONE STAFF REPORTER

mlightstone@herald.ca @CH_Lightstone

A gay couple from Iran received a warm welcome on a chilly day after stepping off a plane in Halifax Wednesday to start a new life together in Nova Scotia.

Several adults and children greeted Navid and Hadi at the quiet arrivals area in the airport.

The welcome-to-Canada group included members of the Rainbow Refugee Association of Nova Scotia, a local organization spons oring the men . Navid and Hadi (surnames withheld) are in their 20s and fled Iran because they said their lives were in danger. They’ve been living in Turkey for more than a year.

Mixed emotions were apparent on their faces during their arrival, which attracted photojournalists and reporters dispatched to the airport. Relief, excitement, anxiety, happiness, timidity — all s eemed evident during an event that was probably a blur of sights and sounds for both men.

“Homosexuality in Iran is illegal and punishable by execution," Navid told The Chronicle Herald, in a hushed tone. The man’s demeanour suggested perhaps he’s still not sure he can speak freely in a place that allows same-sex marriage after a court ruling in 2 004 said banning it was unconstitutional.

“We had so much stress there," Navid said. “So, we can be free here."

The commercial flight that brought the men to Halifax landed Wednesday afternoon. It came from Toronto where they sp ent a night after arriving on a plane from Frankfurt.

Navid said he’s never been to Canada before, and laughed when a reporter said: “So you know it’s cold here."

The duo will have a support system in Halifax, and, thanks to the refugee association, a furnished apartment. It includes donated household items, clothing and fo o d.

Kyle DeYoung, an association board member, said Navid and Hadi are the first people his group has helped get to Halifax. He acknowledged that, in general, immigrants may prefer larger centres such as Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver.

“But specifically with refugees, there are so many people trying to come to Canada who just need a safe place to live . . . that most refugees are happy to be sponsored and go anywhere."

In Halifax, Navid and Hadi will be looking to further their education, DeYoung said. “Halifax is a good fit, in that sense, because there are so many post-secondary options."

The two men made it here safely but a piece of luggage was left behind and the couple’s first task in Canada’s Ocean Playground was to file a lost-baggage claim at the Halifax airport.

ISIS, U.S. Media and The Muslim World
Posted: 09/10/2014 8:29 am EDT Updated: 11/10/2014 5:59 am EST
JAKARTA -- On her first visit to Washington, D.C. in late August, Darshini Kandasamy stopped by the Newseum, the expansive building in downtown Washington dedicated to the history of journalism in America, looking forward to a lesson on the freedom of the press in the United States. She was easily impressed by the seven-story, 250,000-square-foot museum's interactive exhibits on some of the highest moments of TV and print reporting, but it was a much simpler digital gallery of the day's front pages that stuck with her.
"Islamic group beheads journalist," one of the American newspapers said in big, bold print. Others similarly described the tragedy of James Foley, the journalist murdered by members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It was days before another innocent reporter, Steven Sotloff, would suffer the same barbarism.
Kandasamy, a journalist who works for Kuala Lumpur-based Malaysiakini, an independent online newspaper, was appalled and confused.
"Why didn't they just say terrorist group?" she asked me later as she reflected on her travels throughout the U.S. "Nearly every Muslim country has condemned what they do as un-Islamic," added Kandasamy, who is a practicing Hindu in the majority-Muslim nation.
That kind of question is one I've heard repeatedly over the last three weeks as I've traveled with a group of 13 international journalists throughout the U.S. and Indonesia with the Honolulu-based East-West Center to study Islam in America and Asia. Most of the reporters and editors I'm with are Muslims who hail from places with Muslim majorities, such as Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Others come from countries with significant Muslim minorities, like India and Singapore. During visits to mosques and temples and between panels with professors and activists, we've differed on religion, politics and the role of the media. But the consensus on ISIS among these journalists, whose colleagues, friends, kids and families are proudly Muslim, has been unified.
"They are just crazy. That's all," said Khaldoun Barghouti, foreign news editor at Alhayat Aljadeeda, a newspaper in Ramallah in the West Bank. "That's what we print. This is not Islam. We are as worried as Americans."
As President Barack Obama prepares to give a primetime address on Wednesday night to outline his strategy against ISIS, many of my new friends are also wondering if the American media will make its own shift on its coverage of extremism and Islam in general.
"ISIS is not a Middle Eastern phenomenon and it's not one just about Islam. It's a global problem," reflected an Asian reporter in our group, citing fighters that have been recruited from Singapore and Malaysia. Here in Jakarta, daily headlines English and Indonesian-language newspapers highlight fears of ISIS. The government officially banned support for the group in early August after it released a YouTube recruitment video featuring Indonesians. The nation's minister of religious affairs has threatened to revoke citizenship from anyone who dares support the group.
Still, problems persist. When the Jakarta Post, a liberal English-language daily, recently printed an editorial cartoon satirizing ISIS, a Muslim organization reported it to the police for defamation of religion, a punishable crime. The complaint? The cartoon's use the phrase "la ilaaha illallah" ("there is not God except Allah") on a drawing of a flag with skull, which the Muslim group said promoted the idea of Islam being violent.
"If you touch the topic of religion... that's where the fault lines lie," the Post's editor-in-chief, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, told us last week during a panel at the Indonesian Press Council.
Similar contrasts are found elsewhere. While a poll released in late August by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion found that 85 percent of Gazans opposed ISIS, 13 percent were in support. There are reports of ISIS literature now being distributed in Pakistan's tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan, though polls have shown that a majority of Pakistanis are unsupportive of extremists. Last week, four Indians were arrested in Kolkata on charges of planning to travel to Dhaka, Bangladesh, to meet an ISIS-related contact.
"It's painful" to see signs of extremism and intolerance in her country, said Syeda Gulshan Ferdous Jana, the co-founder of Somewhere In, a platform of 160,000 Bangla-language bloggers that's based in Dhaka. But "bloggers are so extremely powerful at criticizing the government, opposition parties and extremists," she added. "They are trying to educate the whole nation that we are not the kind of Islamic country where there can be divisions between the communities," such as the the Yazidi and Christian communities ISIS has targeted in Iraq. The nation is largely one of peace and embrace of diversity, she said, despite recent skirmishes where bloggers have been arrested for criticizing the government's promotion of Islam.
Muhammad Yasir Pirzada, a Lahore-based Columnist for Daily Jang, Pakistan's largest newspaper, had a slightly different point of view. Extremism is real, as is support for ISIS, he said. It should be covered in the media, be it the U.S. or back home. But "while you will find Urdu-language papers talking about the (global Muslim nation) and saying anti-American things," he said, "you won't find them supporting beheadings against journalists. In English papers, you'll find a different, more liberal picture."
What Pirzada would like to see in the U.S. media, he added, was "more balanced coverage" of Islam. In other words: Where is the good news?
Zeyed Nihad Al Zabaidi had the same question. An employee of the U.S.-owned Alhurra TV station in Baghdad, he said the climate is especially difficult for media when covering the ever-growing international story of ISIS that's just a day's drive from his home.
"After the 2003 (U.S.-led invasion), media has expanded, but it has gotten polluted. A lot of (political) parties have come from outside and taken up authority, building their own media and channels, but they are appointing their own followers as journalists even though they do not have backgrounds themselves as reporters," he said. "And it's very difficult to cover Mosul," where ISIS has taken over, he said. "We have to depend on the government footage and pictures."
Still, he hopes that the global media will take a wider look at his country and his religion. "I'm optimistic," said Al Zabaidi, a Sunni who was born to a Kurdish mother and whose wife is Shia. "We are are united. We need to work together against the enemy."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jaweed-kaleem/isis-media-muslim-world_b_5796048.html
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Why have u let them steal ur face?

In Open Letter To Muslim World, French Muslim Philosopher Says Islam Has Given Birth To Monsters, Needs Reform

NEDA- WE HAVE NOT 4GOTTEN

VIDEO

12/12 Arts United 4 Iran - We have not forgotten

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmmbxfXNKE8

NEDA SOLTAN- "the voice" of innocence and promise- murdered in Iran by Iranian leaders- 2009

Through Iranian Eyes - children, union, gays, women, girls.... any and all..

IRAN-

Throwing off the covers

An official report blows the lid off the secret world of sex

·Aug 9th 2014 | TEHRANThey don’t think it’s a sin

IT IS the last thing Iran’s religious rulers want to talk about, but they may just have to. An official report has documented the nation’s worst-kept secret: sex of every kind is taking place outside the marital bed in the Islamic Republic. Something, in the ruling ayatollahs’ view, must be done.

An 82-page document recently issued by Iran’s parliamentary research department is stark in its findings. Not only are young adults sexually active, with 80% of unmarried females having boyfriends, but secondary-school pupils are, too. Illicit unions are not just between girls and boys; 17% of the 142,000 students who were surveyed said that they were homosexual.

In Tehran, the capital, long known for its underground sex scene, chastity is plainly becoming less common. The scope and pace of change are challenging the government and posing a headache for the clerics who dispense guidance at Friday prayers.

The report is also a rare official admission of the unspoken accord in Iran: people can do what they want so long as it takes place behind closed doors. Parliament’s researchers, on this occasion, were allowed to say the unsayable.

Their suggestion for stopping unsanctioned sex is remarkably liberal. Instead of seeking to cool the loins of the youngsters altogether, they should be allowed publicly to register their union by using sigheh, an ancient practice in Shia Islam that lets people marry temporarily. A legal but loose and much-deprecated arrangement, which can last from a few hours to decades, sigheh is often viewed as a cover for promiscuity or prostitution. Clerics themselves have long been suspected of being among its biggest beneficiaries, sometimes when they are on extended holy retreats in ancient religious cities such as Qom.

For less conservative Iranians, some of whom even jokingly describe themselves as “not real Muslims”, the report is merely an admission of reality—and an amusing distraction from the austere topics usually occupying their leaders’ minds. “This is what every human body needs,” says Zahra, a 32-year-old chemist who lives with her boyfriend in northern Tehran and declares that she has no intention of seeking authorisation to have sex. “I have one life and though I love my country, I cannot wait for its leaders to grow up,” she adds.

Iran’s media, always wary of being shut down, have played safe by ignoring the report. So have members of parliament. In most official circles, sex in Iran is still too hot to talk about.

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21611117-official-report-blows-lid-secret-world-sex-throwing

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Islam, Political Islam and Women in the Middle East.

The situation of women living in Islam-stricken societies and under Islamic laws is the outrage of the 21st century. Burqa-clad and veiled women and girls, beheadings, stoning to death, floggings, child sexual abuse in the name of marriage and sexual apartheid are only the most brutal and visible aspects of women's rightlessness and third class status in the Middle East.

This is Nothing but Islam

Apologists for Islam state that the situation of women in Iran and in Islam-stricken countries is human folly; they say that Islamic rules and laws practiced in the Middle East are not following the true precepts of Islam. They state that we must separate Islam from the practice of Islamic governments and movements. In fact, however, the brutality and violence meted out against women and girls in nothing other than Islam itself. According to the Koran, for example, the fornicatress and the fornicator must be flogged a hundred stripes (The Light: 24.2). Those who are guilty of an 'indecency' must be 'confined until death takes them away or Allah opens some way for them.' (The Women, 4.15). 'Men are the maintainers of women' and 'good' women are obedient. Those that men fear 'desertion', can be admonished, confined and beaten' (The Women, 4.34). Wives are 'a tilt for you, so go into your tilt when you like' (The Cow, 2.223). Veiling is promoted in the Koran: 'O Prophet! Say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments' (The Clans, 33.59).

Apologists for Islam say that these verses have been misinterpreted. They go so far as to claim that there is gender equity in Islam and Islam respects the rights of women! Regarding the verse in the Koran sanctioning violence against women, they say that Islam only permits violence after admonishment and confinement and as a last resort. They say, since men would beat their wives mercilessly at that time, this is a restriction on men to beat women more mercifully (Women Living Under Muslim Laws, For

Ourselves Women Reading the Koran, 1997).

In a Web Site promoting Islam's gender-equity, this verse is explained in this way: 'In extreme cases, and whenever greater harm, such as divorce, is a likely option, it allows for a husband to administer a gentle pat to his wife that causes no physical harm to the body nor leaves any sort of mark. It may serve, in some cases, to bring to the wife's attention the seriousness of her continued unreasonable behavior.' On the verse that says women are men’s fields, they say the Koran is encouraging sexuality (Women Living Under Muslim Laws, For Ourselves, Women Reading the Koran, 1997), even though women are killed for expressing theirs. Regarding the fact that women are not to judge or consult, one mullah from Qom using a female pseudonym says: “Or, Let’s suppose that in other planets, women are stronger and more learned than men, do we accept their custom or do we reject it totally?” (Zanan 4 and 5).

On the Gender Equity in Islam Web Site it states that Islam regards women's role in society as a mother and a wife as her most sacred and essential one. This may explain why a married woman must secure her husband's consent if she wishes to work. However, there is no decree in Islam that forbids women from seeking employment whenever there is a necessity for it, especially in positions which fit her nature best and in which society needs her most.'

In reality, these 'Islamic feminist' interpretations are an insult to our intellect and cannot be taken seriously. Islam has wreaked more havoc, massacred more women, and committed more holocausts than can be denied, excused, re-interpreted, or covered up with such feeble defences. Misogyny cannot be interpreted to be pro-woman even if it is turned on its head just as fascism, Zionism and racial apartheid cannot be interpreted to be pro-human. These are mere justifications for reactionary people who want to legitimise their beliefs and religion or reactionary states and movements with a vested interest in maintaining Islamic rules and laws. They apologize because even Islamists don't want to associate with the outrages committed by Islam throughout the world. Nothing can hide the fact that Islam, like other religions, is anti-woman and misogynist and antithetical to women's rights and autonomy.

Political Islam is a Contemporary Reactionary Movement

Of course there are always those who say that we can't blame Islam for the status of women in Islam-stricken countries. Apologists like Jackie Ballard, an ex-MP from the UK who is now living in Iran says blaming religion for the denial of women's rights in countries like Iran 'disguised as concern for human rights' is tantamount to 'blaming Protestantism in Britain or Catholicism in Mexico for endemic domestic violence' and to

seeing 'pedophilia as a symptom of a Christian or western culture'. This is nonsense. Islam is in political power in Iran and many countries of the Middle East and North Africa and cannot be compared to Protestantism in Britain. The Bible is not the law of the land in Britain, while the Koran is in Iran; it is not in the constitution and penal code nor enforced in the courts and by morality police in Britain, while it is in Iran.

And that is exactly why Islam, and not Christianity for example, is at the forefront of the debate on women's rights in the 21st century. Islam in political power (political Islam) which is as much a political ideology as it is a religion aims to establish Islamic states and rules and needs political power to do so; this political power has enabled it to maim, gag and kill women on a mass scale.

Political Islam is a reactionary contemporary movement that was the Right's alternative during the Cold War and also the result of Arab nationalism's failure. In Iran, in particular, political Islam was brought to the fore of the 1979 revolution vis-à-vis the Left and as a Cold war tool and because of an anti 'westernization' and Islam-ridden tradition dominant in a majority of the intellectual and cultural sections of society.

It was in Iran that the Islamic movement became a notable political force vying for power. This meant that the misogyny in Islam was given a state, laws, courts, the military and herds of police, Pasdars, Baseej, sisters of Zeinab, and Hezbollahs at its

disposal to carry out its laws. In Iran, women were slashed with razors and had acid thrown in their faces, many were killed and imprisoned until the Islamic regime in Iran was able to enforce compulsory veiling and establish its rule.

It is Racist not to Condemn Islam and Political Islam

This vile political Islam - which has sentenced women who have been raped to death for 'adultery', and has blamed mothers for not satisfying husbands as the cause of child sexual abuse - also has its defenders. Some of them say that women in England, like in Iran and Afghanistan, also face violence. Of course women face violence everywhere but surely the situation of women in Afghanistan and Iran are incomparable to situation of

women living in France and England. And since when do we excuse violations because they happen elsewhere? When speaking of the status of women in Iran, they compare it with Afghanistan and state it is better. As if that's all those born in the region can expect. They even go so far as to state that women in Iran have 'freedoms denied to many in the west', including that a friend can breastfeed in restaurants, or that Iranian women 'keep their own names after marriage' (Jackie Ballard). According to these racist cultural relativists, it is as if women living in Iran cannot expect more freedoms or don't want them. They say Iran is an Islamic society and are incensed when we say it is not Islamic but Islam-stricken. They choose one of the many complex characteristics of a number of people living in Iran and label the entire society with it. Did they call it Islamic during the Shah's rule? They say it's the people's culture and religion. They ignore the fact that Islam imposed its rule in Iran through violence and terror. They say Iran is Islamic so that they

can more easily ignore the violations committed against women by implying it is people's choice to live the way they are forced to. In fact, there is an immense anti-Islamic backlash in Iran with people resisting Islam and its state despite the repression. They call Iran Islamic so they can prevent us from condemning Islam and political Islam by implying that any condemnation is an insult to people's beliefs. They call it Islamic in

order to make it so. Though it’s untrue, even if every person living in Iran had reactionary beliefs, it still wouldn’t be acceptable. If everyone believes in the superiority of their race, does that make it okay?

Respecting people's freedom of expression, belief and religion or atheism is one thing; that doesn't mean that we must respect any belief, however heinous. Of course human beings must be respected, but that doesn't mean that all beliefs must also be respected. Should we respect fascism, racism, nationalism, and ethnocentrism - they are all beliefs after all. And when we raise these realities, condemn Islam and political Islam and defend women's rights, they say we are racists and are promoting abuse against Muslims.

Criticizing beliefs is not racism. Is it racist to condemn fascism, nationalism, capitalism, sexism, religion? Does a critique of fascism, nationalism or racism promote abuse against fascists, nationalists, and racists? If I criticize child labour, does it mean I am promoting abuse against children? This is the pathetic whining of reactionaries who want to silence defenders of women's rights, frighten them into inactivity and submission. Racism, rooted in capitalism, exists in society and has nothing to do with a critique of Islam. Don't

non-Muslims also face racism? These apologists go so far as to call it Islamophobia. Rubbish! Xenophobia and homophobia, for example, are the hatred of people - foreigners and homosexuals. You cannot have a phobia against an idea. If I am opposed to racial or sexual apartheid, does it make me an apartheid-phobic! If we are opposed to racism and fascism does that mean we are racist-phobic and fascism-phobic? Come on. Opposing

violations of women's rights in Islam-stricken countries does not serve racism - just like opposing Zionism does not make one an anti-Semite. In fact, it is racist to assume that all those living or born in the Middle East are supporters of Islam and political Islam and that these vile governments and movement represent women when in fact women are their first victims.

Labelling women's rights activists as racists is a dim-witted ploy to justify and excuse women's status under Islam and political Islam, and deny women and people living in the Middle East and Iran universal rights and freedoms. Those who say these things do so because they want to maintain Islam. They want to justify it. Excuse it. They have an interest in safeguarding religion and political Islam. Or at best, they believe women in Iran and the Middle East to be such sub-humans that they actually enjoy being segregated, veiled, stoned, flogged and dehumanized.

Like Islam, political Islam is antithetical to women's rights. It is not just a matter of consciousness-raising and creating a renaissance that pushes religion out of the public sphere and eliminating its role in people's social lives (as was done with Christianity), but also completely eliminating political Islam and Islamic states and its movement. Well-meaning people assert that we need to separate Islam from political Islam in order to succeed. In fact, to succeed, we must have the courage to confront both. Any compromise with Islam is a compromise for women's rights. There can be no compromise on people's rights and dignity.

September 11: The True Face of Political Islam

On September 11, the world came to know political Islam as never before. What happened in New York is happening everyday to women and people living under the sword of Islam. On September 11, the monster created by Western governments left its control and it is now moving to contain it. The USA and Western governments want to contain only aspects of it - those aspects of it that are moving outside of its territory. It

has no problem leaving it contained in the region to continue its reign of terror. That is where 'fundamentalism' comes into good use. It distinguished between the Islamists acceptable to the West and those not.

This is an important moment for those of us who have struggled against Islam and political Islam. For us, though none is acceptable. Just as it not acceptable for women, men and children to be massacred it New York, it is unacceptable for them to be massacred in Iran, Afghanistan and Northern Iraq. Getting rid of political Islam is a precondition to any improvements in the status of women and people in the Middle East. The establishment of a Palestinian state and an end to sanctions against Iraq are essential. An end to these injustices will get rid of the grounds for political Islam's recruitment. The separation of religion from the state, education, and a citizen's identity, relegating religion to the private affair of people is not only realizable but a necessity after the experience in Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a pillar of political Islam; its overthrow is being delayed by Western government support. The overthrow of the Islamic regime in Iran will weaken political Islam considerably. It is our task to get public opinion behind people's movements in Iran and the Middle East for secularism, freedom and equality and universal rights and away from both poles of USA and Islamic terrorism.

The 21st Century must be the century that rids itself of political Islam. This will begin in Iran.

http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/Namazie/Women_in_ME.htm

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Pakistan must confront Wahhabism

As the Saudi-financed Wahhabi Islam supplants the tolerant indigenous Sufi Islam, its violent creed is inspiring terrorism

Despite the recent offensive by the Pakistani army in the Swat Valley and by Nato in Helmand province, the "Talibanisation" of both Afghanistan and Pakistan proceeds apace. Vast parts of the Afghan south and a large region in western Pakistan are still under de facto control of Taliban militants who enforce a violent form of sharia law.

Western responses oscillate between calls for a secular alternative to the religious fundamentalism of the Taliban and attempts to engage the moderate elements among them. Neither will solve the underlying religious clash between indigenous Sufi Islam and the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi extremism. The UK and US must change strategy and adopt a policy that supports the peaceful indigenous Muslim tradition of Sufism while thwarting Saudi Arabia's promotion of the dangerous Wahhabi creed that fuels violence and sectarian tension.

As Afghanistan goes to the polls this week, western political and military leaders now recognise that stability and peace in the country cannot be created by military force alone. Like the "surge" strategy in Iraq which reduced suicide bombings by driving a wedge between indigenous Sunnis and foreign jihadists, the US and its European allies will try to separate the Taliban from al-Qaida fighters who infiltrate Afghanistan from across the border in Pakistan. By combining "surgical" strikes against terrorists in the Afghan-Pakistani border region with a political strategy aimed at "moderate" Taliban, President Obama hopes to save the US mission from disaster.

The problem is that those Taliban who would be prepared to talk have little leverage and those who have influence feel that they have little incentive to compromise, as they have gained the upper hand. Unlike many Sunnis in Iraq, most Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have embraced the puritanical and fundamentalist Islam of the Wahhabi mullahs from Saudi Arabia who wage a ruthless war not just against western "infidels" but also against fellow Muslims they consider to be apostates, in particular the Sufis.

Sufi Islam is not limited to the southern Pakistani province of Sindh on the border with India. It also exists elsewhere in Pakistan and has been present in Afghanistan for centuries, as exemplified by the 18th-century poet and mystic Rahman Baba whose shrine at the foot of the Khyber Pass (linking Afghanistan and Pakistan) still attracts many Sufi faithful from both sides of the border.

All this changed in the 1980s when during the Afghan resistance against the Soviet invasion, elements in Saudi Arabia poured in money, arms and extremist ideology. Through a network of madrasas, Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi Islam indoctrinated young Muslims with fundamentalist Puritanism, denouncing Sufi music and poetry as decadent and immoral. At Attock, not far from Rahman Baba's shrine on the Khyber Pass, stands the Haqqania madrassa, one of the most radical schools where the Taliban leader Mullah Omar was trained. Across the Pakistani border, the tolerant Sufi-minded Barelvi form of indigenous Islam has also been supplanted by the hardline Wahhabi creed.

This madrassa-inspired and Saudi-financed Wahhabi Islam is destroying indigenous Islam in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Crucially, it is imposing a radical creed that represents a distortion and perversion of true Islam. Wahhabi followers beheaded a Polish geologist in February (as revenge for Polish troops in Afghanistan) and blew up a century-old shrine dedicated to Rahman Baba in the Pakistani town of Peshawar in March.

The actions of the west and its Afghan and Pakistani allies are making matters worse. By causing civilian deaths through aerial bombings, the US is driving ordinary Afghans and Pakistani into the arms of the jihadi terrorists. By declaring sharia law in Pakistan's northwestern Swat region to appease the local Taliban and by using Islamism in the ongoing conflict with India over Kashmir, Pakistan's government is emboldening the extremists and undermining Sufi Islam.

What is required, first of all, is to prevent Saudi Arabia from playing a duplicitous game whereby the authorities in Riyadh help the Afghan President Karzai in his attempts to woo moderate Taliban while promoting the violent creed of Wahhabism across this volatile region. The west should call Saudi Arabia's bluff and not surrender to Riyadh's threats of ending security co-operation and information exchange on international terrorism which thrives on Saudi-exported Wahhabi ideology.

The west and Muslim countries such as Jordan should also put pressure on the Pakistani authorities to confront Wahhabism by expelling Saudi hate preachers, closing the Wahhabi madrassas and establishing schools that teach the peaceful Islam of Sufism.

By itself this strategy will of course not be sufficient to eradicate violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But without an alternative policy based on religion, this religious conflict will further escalate.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/20/pakistan-wahhabi-islam-sufi-terrorism

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FROM CANADA WITH LOVE- WE WALK THE TALK

PEACE OF CHRIST NEDA AND HER BROTHERS....... JUNE 2009- FREEDOM.... IT ALL STARTED IN IRAN.... FOR NEDA- ALL RELIGIONS...RACE...CREED....COLOUR ETC.... ALL CAME AS ONE....

CANADA- STANDING UP FOR GLOBAL NEDAS... AND HER BROTHERS...... JUNE- 2009- WE REMEMBER NEDA

CANADA'S BLURRED VISION: (Hey Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone!)
Another Brick In The Wall - with consent of Pink Floyd....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIP38eq-ywc
http://www.facebook.com/blurredvisionmusic

Download the single on Itunes, proceeds donated to Amnesty International.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/another-brick-in-the-wall/id413761516

Directed by Babak Payami
http://www.payamfilms.com

Visit the Official Blurred Vision Website for all the latest news on the band.
http://www.blurredvisionmusic.com

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PERSIAN GULY ARAB STATES FEAR THE MONSTER THEY CREATED: HEZBOLLAH MINISTER

Lebanese Minister Hussein Hajj Hasan has slammed countries supporting and financing the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group, saying those Persian Gulf Arab countries now fear the “monster” they created.

The Muslim world should confront the conspiracy which is distorting the image of Islam, Hajj Hasan who is a Hezbollah member said during a ceremony in the coastal city of Sidon.

“The biggest conspiracy against Islam is distorting its image and making every Muslim be seen as a terrorist,” Hajj Hasan added.

“Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians and everyone, including Christians, Muslims, Shiites and other sects, are concerned with confronting this [conspiracy] culturally and socially - in defense of Islam not a party, a sect or a people,” he said.

“We have to defend Christians and Muslims, not against killing but against this social, psychological and infrastructure destruction that is threatening countries.”

While voicing Hezbollah’s undying support for the resistance in Gaza, Hajj Hasan said countries now feared "the monster they created."

"We are facing a real challenge in security, military, economic and social fields. I am not only talking about Lebanon and Syria ... but Persian Gulf Arab states are now concerned about the monster they created in order to destroy the resistance,” he said.

American authorities have officially said that a government minister from one of its closest Persian Gulf Arab states, Kuwait, has been actively involved in funding Takfiri terrorists in Syria in a bid to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Other Persian Gulf regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also widely suspected of supporting the Takfiri terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

RA/SHI

http://en.alalam.ir/news/1625696

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Illusions About Why Muslim Brothers Kill

April 19, 2013 by Bruce Thornton 88 Comments

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents

Despite the fervent wishes of the progressive media and the buffoonish David Sirota, who hoped the culprit was “a white guy,” the terrorists who bombed the Boston Marathon have turned out to be not white, Tea Party, tax-hating bitter clingers, but Chechen Muslims. Quelle surprise, as the French say. Now we’ll start hearing all the rationalizing interpretations for their act, few of which will state the obvious: they murdered people because Islam gives them the theological sanction to use violence against infidels whose existence threatens the Islamic hegemony sanctioned by Allah.

Of course, for the secular materialists and pundits of the left, whose minds are furnished with tired received wisdom and banal clichés, such as statement is Islamophobic hate speech. Only Christianity and Judaism lead to violence, from the Crusades to Zionism. Islam is the tolerant “religion of peace” that created the Renaissance and treated Jews and Christians kindly. If Muslims act violently––over 20,000 violent attacks since 9/11––then they must have been provoked by Western bad behavior: colonialism, imperialism, greed for oil, support for Israel, disrespect of Islam and Mohammed, the War on Terror that has demonized Muslims. Or the terrorists are created by the inequities and costs of global capitalism, which give young Muslim men few educational or economic opportunities, creating frustration and despair that make them turn to a distorting heresy of Islam for relief. Or they are the products of oppressive political regimes that limit their freedom, violate their human rights, and stifle their aspirations.

We’ve heard all these explanations for over a decade now from both the left and the right. What we haven’t seen is very much evidence that they are remotely true. History provides no evidence that America’s alleged foreign policy sins outweigh the demonstrable concrete benefits to Muslims of our actions. America never had colonies in Muslim lands, and indeed after World War II resisted French and British attempts to reassert their authority over their one-time colonies, most obviously in the Suez Crisis of 1956. Since then, the U.S. armed the Afghans and helped them drive out the Soviets, rescued Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from the psychopathic sadist Saddam Hussein, bombed Christian Serbs to rescue Muslim Kosovars and Bosnians, liberated Shiite Iraqis from Hussein, liberated Afghans from the brutal Taliban, poured billions of dollars of aid to terrorist Palestinian regimes, used our jets to help the Muslims in Libya free themselves from the psychotic Gaddafi, and supported in word and coin the jihadist, America-hating, anti-Semitic Muslim Brothers in Egypt so that Muslims can enjoy “freedom and democracy.”

And that’s not all. We have incessantly protested our respect for the wonderful Islamic faith, censored our official communications and training programs to remove any references to jihadism or the Islamic theology that justifies holy war, euphemized jihadist attacks like the Fort Hood murders as “workplace violence,” invited sketchy imams to pray in the White House, filled our schools with curricula praising Islam and its contributions to civilization, scolded and prosecuted writers or cartoonists who exercise their First Amendment right to criticize Islam, abandoned “profiling” as a technique for identifying possible terrorists trying to board a plane or enter the country, hired as advisors to the FBI, the Pentagon, and the CIA Muslim apologists who recycle blatant lies and distortions––we have done all this liberating of Muslims and flattering of them and their faith, and they still don’t like us, and they still want to kill us.

This disconnect between our alleged bad behavior and the motives of the jihadists is starkly obvious in the case of the Boston terrorists. If Chechen Muslims have a beef with anyone, it’s the Russians. When jihadist terrorism became a problem in Chechnya, there were no “hearts and minds” campaigns, no solicitous outreach, no infusions of foreign aid, no apologies for past sins, no careful adherence to the laws of war, the Geneva conventions, or human rights, no courting of imams to provide insights into the wonderfulness of Islam. The Russians employed torture, assassination, group reprisals, and in the end ringed Grozny with artillery and left it in ruins. In the two Chechen wars the Russians killed around 150,000 people. In fact, Russia has been killing Muslims since the 18^th century, and occupied Muslims lands in Central Asia for 80 years under the Soviet Union. So tell me, Senator Rand Paul or Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, if our foreign policy misbehavior explains jihadist hatred, how is that two centuries of Russian violence against Muslims is ignored, and all our blood and treasure spent to liberate and help Muslims count for nothing?

No more convincing are the other rationalizations for Muslim violence. Lack of education and economic opportunity exist all over the world, but African Christians and animists, or Indian Hindus and Buddhists don’t commit acts of terrorism with anywhere near the same frequency as Muslims. Plenty of people across the globe live under oppressive dictators who routinely violate human rights, and they don’t turn to terrorism against distant strangers in response. Tibetans aren’t donning suicide vests or bombing marathons. Millions and millions of impoverished everywhere don’t kill innocent people in random attacks in countries far from their homes. Every excuse for Muslim violence collapses beneath the weight of such facts. Meanwhile, the one factor all these killers––rich or poor, educated or not, politically oppressed or otherwise––have in common, Islam, is preemptively rejected as the explanation for the violence.

This “willful blindness,” as Andy McCarthy calls, has become dangerous. It reflects the arrogance of secular materialism, which has discounted religion as a mere life-style choice, usually benign––unless you’re talking about gun-toting, racist, misogynist, homophobic evangelical Christians, or racist, land-grabbing Zionist Jews. No, it’s about psychological trauma caused by globalization, or Islamophobia, or insensitive insults to Mohammed, or Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, or anything and everything other than the numerous passages in the Koran, hadiths, and 14 centuries of Islamic jurisprudence and theology, which clearly and consistently set out the doctrine of violent jihad against infidels.

So expect in the coming weeks the same old commentary about foreign-policy blowback, or two-bit psychological analyses of personal trauma, or Israel’s sins and Bush’s wars, or American intolerance and xenophobia, or our need to “reach out” and “engage” and “respect” and “understand” the fanatics who don’t want our outreach, tolerance, or respect, but our deaths. In short, expect more public reasons for the jihadists to believe we are weak and corrupt and thus deserving to die.

Filed Under: Daily Mailer, FrontPage Tagged With: Denial, Islam, Left, Media, progressive illusions, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

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About Bruce Thornton

Poupic

Bravo! You tell it like it is. Almost 100% terror world wide is done by, you guessed it, Islamic terrorists. Yet when I said the chance of the Boston Marathon horror not being done by Islamic terror I am called an Islamophobe. and that it could be domestic terror to which I answered. Yes domestic Islamic terror. I was right on the money. It may turn out much more terrible because in fact it may have been ‘lone wolfs Islamic terrorists. How do you protect against your next door possibly being a Islamic terrorist? This is what the two brothers were until the Marathon horror.

o elaine smith

Double the bravo!! Telling it like is – How about Chris Matthews. Before the "streets were clear" he unequivically said it was the work of a "far right white supremist": And he is still allowed to have air time so that he can spew forth more falsehoods to gullible persons. "Sleeper cells" of fanatic jihadists are here in America – Do we wait for the next 9// and now 5/13? Do we listen to obamaspeak -in which the muslim-in-chief has great difficulty in saying the words "act of terrorism by fanatic jihadists in the name of allah"– -"sugar coating" terrorism does not make it go away – it just invites more terror.

§ Poupic

You and I and all like minded people who can think for themselves. We should shout to the top of our lungs about Islamic terror every time someone calls us Islamophobic. about Islamic terror. People have to learn that any package left unattended in crowded places should be an immediate warning and call the authorities. It is vital to our survival in this wold endangered by Islamic terror.

§ KarshiKhanabad

I agree completely that we must raise public consciousness about Islamic terrorism. It's just a little discouraging that the terrorists have already altered our "infidel" lifestyle: TSA goons, police home invasions in Boston & the lockdown of an entire city, keyword espionage of our emails.

Unattended packages – all the little muzzie bastards have to do is start leaving lots of dummy backpacks full of rocks in public places, and bingo! Lockdowns, police tape everywhere, citizens harassed & inconvenienced, no bombmaking materials necessary.

§ Poupic

Unthinking people like you complaining about TSA and the like are in fact by their complaints agents of Islamic terror. If no TSA how many airliner would blow up out of the sky? Not reporting unattended packages in public places how many people could be blown up to pieces. Personally I will never complain against measures done to protect the public from Islamic terror. That is the price we all have to pay to continue living and living free from Sharia they aim to force on the whole planet.

· Michael Copeland

But, but, but these are all FACTS: they cannot possibly be allowed to get in the way of FANTASY.

· Irandissident

Honestly, if there is anyone who cares enough to defend, justify of even find sense in the Islamist movement ( terrorist, political or cultural), and spends a lot of time insulting everyone else, he is expected to spend as much as it takes, to learn about Islam from first hand Islamic sources, mainly the ones they use to teach their children in Pakistani Madrassas, Iranian Husseiniehs and Seminaries and etc…. Otherwise, I would consider them opportunists who just insult others out of spite for America (for example), not caring who they are promoting and defending.

Of course, ON THE OTHER HAND, perhaps America should NOT have used such fanatics to confront the Russians and secular regimes in the Middle East. The 9-11 attacks were just ONE year after America helped Kosovo Muslims win a war based on fake information ( where were the "anti war" people back then, during the Clinton's war ?) . The "Arab Afghans" ( the most fanatic Muslims on the face of the earth… they have a new name now!!!) bit the hand that fed them.

Will anyone finally agree that it is time to stop playing this "Islamist" card, time to come to terms with the idiot Russians ( how bad can they be????) and shut down the whole Islamist movement for good. Stop fighting the Russians and secular dictatorships in the Arab countries with FANATIC Islamists. Find a new way to solve world problems.

We won the cold war, fine. It is finished. Time to do away with cold war fanatics whose only aim in life is to set America against Russia at all costs ( does this remind you of Brzezinski — the single issue, anti Russian, Polish fanatic… and the father of the modern Islamist movement theory?????). Give them each a medal of freedom , a million dollar prize and ban them from politics !!!

Think about it !

o Mary Sue

America should have totally let Russia HAVE Afghanistan….though come to think of it, the Soviets didn't do a very good job of repressing Islam in the rest of the 'stans, now, did they?

· Cathy

Mother Of Boston Bombing Suspects Says FBI Was In Contact With Her Son
Apr. 19, 2013
http://www.businessinsider.com/tsarnaev-brothers-…

Boston Marathon suspects Islamic terrorists, not Chechen separatists
Published April 19, 2013
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/04/19/boston-…

Ties between Islamic extremist groups and Chechnya well-documented
Published April 19, 2013
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/19/ties-b…

· Puc

I worked for a while in Mexico after I retired in Canada. There I met an American couple who were fun to be with. They had the traits of Americans that I admire,generous,open, good humoured always ready to help. But they denigrated their country, blamed it for all the ills of the world. I defended the USA and totally disagreed with them for all the reasons cited by Bruce above. In parting with them I assured them that I would continue to love their country and defend it. I believe we are suffering from a universal loss of wisdom a direct consequence of the rejection of what made western civilization great p, our Judaeo Christian history.
Puc

o mcmorrowpc

Well done. Thank you.

· kafir4life

I've said before. I'll say again.
DON'T hire muslims (we don't). DON'T shop in their stores. DON'T patronize businesses that employ muslims, and explain to management as a courtesy. It's a SAFETY issue, people!!! Nothing more! Not all, but some muslims go ka-boom, or cause other things to go ka-boom. NEVER take a muslim as a friend. NEVER allow your children or pets to come in contact with a muslim. For safety's sake. Just watch them. Look at them. See what they are doing. Stare! If it makes them uncomfortable, so be it. It's all about safety.

o JustSayin

On April 1, 1933, the Nazis carried out the first nationwide, planned action against Jews( I mean Muslims): a boycott targeting Jewish (Muslim) businesses and professionals. The boycott was both a reprisal and an act of revenge against Gruelpropaganda (atrocity stories) that German (American) and foreign Jews (muslims) assisted by foreign (liberal) journalists, were allegedly circulating in the international press to damage Germanys (American) reputation.

On the day of the boycott, Storm Troopers (FrontPage Readers) stood menacingly in front of Jewish(muslim) -owned department stores and retail establishments, and the offices of professionals such as doctors and lawyers. The Star of David (Cresecent) was painted in yellow and black across thousands of doors and windows, with accompanying antisemitic (arab) slogans. Signs were posted saying "Don't Buy from Jews(muslims)" and "The Jews (Muslims) Are Our Misfortune." Throughout Germany (America), acts of violence against individual Jews (muslim) and Jewish (msulim) property occurred; the police intervened only rarely.

Yes you are on an original and thoughtful course of action, need less to say its been done before.

§ reader

You're a perversely malicious imbecile. Muslims predate Nazis. Koran predates Mein Kampf. The hero of "Arab Street" Al Husseini was a Nazi SS Gener, a personal Hitler's friend and a war criminal responsible for mass murder of Serbs and Jews in the Balkans.

§ reader

Al Husseini was a Nazi SS General who personally created muslim SS Hanzar division committing mass murders in the Balkans.

§ http://frontpagr richard sherman

Muslims loved Hitler…they still love him: MEIN KAMPF is still a best seller throughout the Muslim world…That’s s why the the Boston Marathon Koranic Killers are celebrated throughout the Muslim world…including Patterson New Jersey, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Dearborn, Michigan.

§ Horace

Just brayin, Jews werent blowing the legs off Germans. Jews werent forcing people to convert to Judaism at swordpoint (gunpoint), Jews don't kidnap non Jews' daughters and rape and forcibly convert them to their religion. Jews don't blow up rival sects-like mohammedans do. Get a grip. Subscribe to reality. Islam is a Satanic murder cult.

§ SCREW SOCIALISM

Just Brayin' HT Horace…

1941 The Grand Mufti meets Hitler http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSUEx1cKUlg

Google Images “arab nazi salute”

§ dartson

Only the Jews did not blow themselves up in German buses or planted bombs in German cities, while screaming "In the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob". The Jews were also well assimilated in the German society and did not dream about converting all Germans to Judaism and killing the ones that refuse to convert. And the German Jews did not belong to the international Jewish terrorist organization "The martyrs of gefilte fish" that called upon them to kill the infidels.

o Cassandra

I agree but we quit profiling in this country which is VERY BAD and also STUPID/ That's what the Israelis do and they are quite successful in their security programs.Too bad if they feel secluded. We want to be secured.

§ defcon 4

If the muslimes feel secluded they have 57 islamic states they can relocate to where they won't be bothered by the filthy kufr/infidel ever again.

o Tom

Hos in the world do you get from Thornton's argument to this nonsense. By your reasoning, I could never hire anyone. It's a SAFETY issue, people! Not all, but some Christians go ka-boom…..no, wait….Not all, but some atheists go ka-boom….no….I've got it….Not all, but some Buddhists go boom. In fact, not all, but some humans go ka-boom – so NEVER take a human as a friend. NEVER allow your children or pets to come in contact with a muslim. For safety's sake. Just watch them. Look at them. See what they are doing. Stare! If it makes them uncomfortable, so be it. It's all about safety.

Believe it or not, one can agree with Thornton's argument – that we would be a lot better off facing the truth about the motivation behind many (but not all) recent acts of terrorism without resorting to the kind of knee-jerk reactions that you are advocating.

o EarlyBird

Great idea, Kafir: let's do every single thing we can do to alienate and enrage American-born Muslims, make them feel hated and apart from the mainstream American society, so that it can make it easier for them to become terrorists.

Oh wait! All Muslims are either terrorists or would-be terrorists in this Front Page insane asylum.

§ defcon 4

Fifth column.

o EarlyBird

Kafir, you're the type of idiot who, after 9/11, would assault Sihks, cuz they worse turbans and beards so they GOTTA be Muslim terrorists!

You're a perfect example of someone who does not deserve the gift of democracy, so willing are you to take it away from others the moment you get scared. You are truly anti-American.

· M McL

the judges ruled, it did not protect Zionist beliefs or “an attachment to Israel,” because they were not “intrinsically a part of Jewishness,”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/no-regrets-for-uk-je…

o defcon 4

Ever heard of argument by red herring islamotard/nazitard? What the hell does Judaism or Zionism have to do w/islamofascist terrorism dimwit?

§ Ruth Ben-Or

It shouldn't have a damn thing to do with it, but blaming Jews or Zionists goes with blaming the USA or the West, its a "progressive" article of faith.

o Mary Sue

Mr Mc Loser, what the heck does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

· MHM

Yes, pat yourselves all on the back for showing the world that the stereotype of Americans as ignorant, imperialist, bigots is alive and well. It will be a nice counter-point to the blanket hatred you are trying to spread about religions and peoples. What a disgraceful and shameful piece of writing to come from a “professor” of all people. I think the professor’s employers should be looking at the hate views he is promoting with skewed statistics against Muslims while dismissing with a wave of the hand the long history of unjustified US wars and brutality.

o tanstaafl

How many Muslim jihadi attacks have occurred since 9/11? How many unbelievers have been killed by Islam in its 1400 year history? Read the Qur'an…..

o Horace

No, pat youself on your communist Islamophile little brain for being such an ignoramus. No atrocity committed by Jihadis could penetrate your bony head. The next ten 9-11's wouldn't mean a thing to your suicidal self hating ego. You probably enjoyed seeing the blood of young, marathon fans all over American streets.

o gray man

mhm, are you a moron? No, seriously, are you?

o Alvaro

If you like Muslims so much, go live in Egypt for a few years. While you are at it, shout to everyone at the Tahrir square that you are a Jew and that you have as much right to promote your religion as everyone else.

§ defcon 4

Egyptian muslimes also raped some women for the crime of being Christian so maybe MHM could play that angle as well..

o Mary Sue

Muslims were slaughtering kuffar (unbelievers) LONG before the USA even existed.

o Jay Stein

The Great Murderer-Prophet Mohammed (Piss Be Upon him) is every bit as responsible for the Boston Marathon Bombing as Charles Mansion was for the Tate-LaBianca murders. They are very similar characters, but Mohammed had sex with even more, and much younger women than Manson.

o defcon 4

Uh oh, a muslime's feelings have been hurt, it's time to call the waaaaaaaaaambulance.

o Atty Tude

MHM, instead of spewing the tired old college campus knee-jerk reaction about "America the Evil," why don't you show us, point by point, how and why the author's statistics are "skewed"? See if you can manage to come up with concrete facts, instead of generalities. And while you're at it, you might also want to explain how an alleged "religion of peace" can be so brutal, oppressive, and intolerant of women and homosexuals, even when they are their own fellow-country men and women.

We're ready whenever you are.

o http://frontpagr richard sherman

Over 20000 jihad attacks worldwide since 9/11..
Over 21000 dead…
There is only one reason for the actions of the Boston Marathon Koranic killers…and it is spelled: KORAN…The sociopath Muhammad decapitated 900 unarmed Jews at Quarayza..the Boston sociopaths were just trying to emulate his sociopathic example.

o jstan442

muslims have not even given the world a decent 'religion' to compare with ALL other religions–pl go to a muslim country and be a dhimmi for them–i as an american would enjoy your servitude to them–then they can use your family as target practice instead of americans who are running in a race

· tanstaafl

According to the Qur'an, it is halal for Muslims to kill unbelievers.

· https://twitter.com/BostonPoverty Boston Poverty Law

This is it. Bookmark this article.

· Jeff Bargholz

MuhammadHandjobMonkey,

your factless mini-screed didn't even address reality, much less what the author wrote. You are a true muslim scholar.

· http://www.adinakutnicki.com AdinaK

Muslims wage jihad against "infidels" because of Islam's DIRECT linkage to blood, as well as all the underpinnings of Sharia Law – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/07/13/islam-blood-a…

EVERY American must understand the contents of the above embedded policy paper and it must be spread wide and far, if survival is the goal.

Adina Kutnicki, Israel http://adinakutnicki.com/about/

· κατεργάζομαι

RE: "Illusions About Why Muslim Brothers Kill"

NO! They kill because they are.

Shakes Spear: ……A Rose, …. is A Rose,…. is A Rose

IT is NOT "WHY?" it is A Rose, – (America!)

……rather, it is BECAUSE it is a Rose….

………….ISLAM IS ISLAM, IS ISLAM, IS ISLAM,
~ BECAUSE………ISLAM IS ISLAM !

· Alvaro

Putin and his cohorts love Muslims and hate the West. No wonder there is peace in Chechnya: As long as they are loyal to Russia, Putin doesn't mind if they take a one way ticket to the 7th century.

o defcon 4

"As long as they are loyal to Russia", who would be stupid enough to pin their hopes on that?

o Drakken

A slight corection my friend, the Russians know how to deal with their muslim problem, they simply eliminate them.Do you ever hear about the Russians when they deal with their muslims? No you don't, do you know why? They never allow the press anywhere near an anti muslim insurgency operation, and not to defend Putin, at least he is a patriot to Russia, I have no idea what Comrade Obummer is other than he makes this nation weaker.

§ Alvaro

I know several Russians and I know how they deal with Muslims pointing their weapons towards Russian soldiers – with artillery and bombs against heavily populated areas. I know that.

But also, anyone who knows Chechnya can see that it steps towards the 7th century – with Putin's blessing. Putin just wants loyalty.

§ Drakken

Putin has the muslims in Chechnya on a very short leash, if they go all islamic they will be dealt with in typical Russian fashion, they will eliminate them all. I have a quite a few Russian Spetznaz types that work for me, and they are without a doubt are awesome when it comes to counter muslim insurgencies.

· http://twitter.com/SamirSHalabi1 @SamirSHalabi1

The only way to deal with Muslims who are so full of hate and violence to any non-Muslim is as one of your blogers put it most succinctly, 'a rose is a rose is a rose' Islam is is Isam is Islam' so 'bomb it, bomb it, bomb it into dust for all times.'

· http://twitter.com/kattaB4 @kattaB4

The Mainstream Media is the same all over the Western World today. Always trying to find excuses for terror and crime as long as it is a Muslim who done it! Quite sick and tired of it tbh!

o Victoryman

Are you trying to tell me that muslims committed this act of war against Boston, our country and the rest of the civilized world? Color me confused. I always thought it was those Norwegian Nuns behind these acts. After all, haven't we all seen screeners at airports ALWAYS giving nuns the 100% check while obvious muslim chicks get a smile and a wave through the security machine?

· Mohamed Shahid

I tell you , Islam will never be peaceful and it is a must for all Muslims to wage Jihad until all convert to Islam. Can non Muslims practice their religion in Saudi Arabia, Maldives, no, you can’t even take your bible or any holy books other than Qur’an with you to these two countries. What are we talking about. Muslims are not Christian-phobia or Hindi-phobia or Jews-phobia, but you carefully watch what they preach at mosques around the World. They teach hatred and intolerance and supremacy. Whenever someone criticize Islam he will be labelled as Islam-phobia. The main goal of OIC is to silence people who say anything against Jihad. So it is time to say enough is enough and we will never accept Islam as a peaceful religion.
Whatever I have said is based on my experience being an ex Muslim.

o Cassandra

Mohammed I totally agree with you I read extensively on Islam and I also read the Coran and some of the hadith. But many people do not want to read these sorts of books so they stay ignorant and blind to Islam.

o defcon 4

To renounce islam, that takes courage all by itself — especially in any muslime state.

o Mary Sue

it's an absolute travesty how so many Muslims don't actually understand the writings in the Koran because they do not have any access to it in their own language but instead memorize it by rote in Arabic, a language foreign to them. So they have no idea what their holy books teach. On one hand this is a good thing when it means they don't know they're supposed to Jihad. On the other hand, maybe more Muslims would check out of their religion if they knew all the horrific stuff in the Koran and Hadiths.

§ defcon 4

If they can't read it for themselves, they always have their imams teaching them the intolerant hatred and violence that the koran commands. After all, most muslimes aren't Arabic at all.

· Victoryman

But, but, but, but………last night the vacationer in chief's teleprompter instructed us NOT to "Rush to judgment on individuals or groups of people"…………UNLESS they are from the following groups: Stupid cops who arrest the golfer in chief's communist professor friend, Christians, Jews, Home schoolers, Tea Partiers, Bible readers, Pro-life, gun owners, Conservatives, Republicans, Veterans, etc. (State run media take note…..you may denigrate any of these groups to your heart's content.)

· pacific_waters

You're dead wrong. It was a white guy, 2 in fact, but the important part is that they were muslim. The problem is not race but ideology.

· Mark

Chechens are as much white as ashkenazi jews are. Just like you have dark jews and light jews, you also have light chechens and dark chechens. Look at the President of Chechnya or even the uncle of the perpetrators:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QfVWU-2pVL4/SeiHkT-I0zI…

Uncle Looks Jewish:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/…

If Chechens aren't white, then neither are Jews.

o Mary Sue

b-but, they're Caucasians, they're from the Caucasus [/sarcasm]

· http://www.clarespark.com clarespark

The remedy for our current coddling of terrorists is to recognize that America-hating is institutionalized in all our public schools and most universities. It is not "secular materialism" that caused the tolerance of terrorism, for we enjoy cultural pluralism, and we are not compelled to be religious. The problem as I see it is nihilism, America-hating exploited by communists, and bad statist educational policies. I distinguished between the original Progressive movement and New Left nihlism here, focusing on Bill Ayers and Maoists who infiltrated and radicalized SDS at the end of the 1960s. See http://clarespark.com/2012/05/15/progressive-upli….

o Dale

Allowing millions of Muslims into the West and then protecting them with hate laws that don't allow TRUTH to be used as a defense, and then indoctrinating people via schools and the media that this "religion" of hate and violence, is not to be faulted for the millions of atrocities committed in Islams name, speaks to the conspiracy by our Secret Society elites to attack Christianity by proxy, start WW 3, and reduce population. This is The New World Order being formed through chaos so that we lose faith in the Nation State to protect us and welcome in the NWO Totalitarian World Gov't!

§ http://www.clarespark.com clarespark

You are correct about the threat of Islamo-fascism, but confused about other matters of importance. See http://clarespark.com/2013/04/21/fascism-what-it-…. "Fascism: what is it, and what it is not."

· http://twitter.com/kattaB4 @kattaB4

Flag of Islam soon to fly over The White House http://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/eg…

o Peter B.

With Obama at the helm, it may come about indeed!

§ http://twitter.com/kattaB4 @kattaB4

Be afraid, be very afraid, I know I am!

· Ellman

"If Muslims act violently––over 20,000 violent attacks since 9/11––then they must have been provoked by Western bad behavior:…" Just like criminals and thugs from minority groups are "provoked" by racism, discrimination and bigotry into committing crimes, raping women, attacking seniors, stealing credit cards, etc. To the Left it is never the perpetrators of crimes who are responsible for them. It is the victims of crime. The victims somehow incite the murderers and rapists into committing their acts against them. If this is not complete lunacy and insanity then what is? The Left have been sick, are sick and are getting sicker every day. It's time to quarantine them and to contain the disease they are spreading around the globe.

o Mary Sue

Of course, because in Identity Politics, they assume the Muslim falls under "minority status" and thus, are "oppressed" by the majority by simple logistical existentialism. In this they pretend that the world = USA (or at least N. America) and ignore the actual MAJORITY OPPRESSION BY ISLAM which is oppression even by their own standards and rules! According to Identity Politics, the "oppressed" may use ANY MEANS NECESSARY to fight their "oppression".

· Ellman

"This “willful blindness,” as Andy McCarthy calls, has become dangerous. It reflects the arrogance of secular materialism, which has discounted religion as a mere life-style choice, usually benign––unless you’re talking about gun-toting, racist, misogynist, homophobic evangelical Christians, or racist, land-grabbing Zionist Jews. No, it’s about psychological trauma caused by globalization, or Islamophobia, or insensitive insults to Mohammed, or Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, or anything and everything other than the numerous passages in the Koran, hadiths, and 14 centuries of Islamic jurisprudence and theology, which clearly and consistently set out the doctrine of violent jihad against infidels." It is difficult to determine who has more screws missing in their heads, the Muslim jihadists who love to kill infidels or those who defend their doing so. Regardless, they both should be institutionalized and provided with appropriate professional medical services and drug therapies. Anyone who finds any rationality or justification for what the Chechen brothers did in Boston should seriously consider a thorough mental health checkup. The sooner the better.

· Ellman

“…understand” the fanatics who don’t want our outreach, tolerance, or respect, but our deaths."
The fate of the world and those in it will not be determined by "understanding" and "justifying" the acts of monsters who are driven by irrational and destructive forces even they don't comprehend. It will be determined by the "ignorance" of those who refuse to acknowledge the existence of "evil" and its manifestations in the barbarism and insanity of the world today.

· Eagle in NYC

Curious why no one has made the connection between the Chechen Muslim elder bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and his larcenous, oedipal mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva in this 2013 Boston Marathon terrorist bomb attack; with the Chechen Muslim, larcenous, oedipal mother “Dorothee” “Burkart” and her arsonist son, “Harry” responsible for the terroristic wave of arson attacks in 2011 Los Angeles.

Both couples are sociopathic Chechen Muslims, pathologically arrogant in their belief that they are superior to all around them and therefore narcissistically deserving of others’ wealth, as well as the right to kill and maim and destroy the dhimmi of Dar al-Harb. (“For the Koran told them so.”)

Of course, there are other similarities too, such as the establishment media’s political agenda that Islam be censored from each story, so that, even now, years after it is known that the Los Angeles arsonist and his thieving mother are Chechen Muslims, the legacy media still refers to them as “Germans”. And have no fear, they will strip all “Chechen” and “Muslim” references from the Boston Marathon stories about Tamerlan (the 14th Century Muslim war lord) and his thieving, Chechen, Muslim mother.

Already, I’ve seen USA Today spin this family as being of “Russian” ethnicity, just like The Establishment Media continue their lie about the 2011 arson terrorists being “German”.

Down the memory hole. Just like Benghazi. And the West, Texas explosion. And the Beltway Sniper (a Black Muslim and his twink, who were sucked down the memory hole immediately after their arrest. “Not the ‘white man in a white van’ promised to us every night for a month by the ubiquitous Police Chief Charles Moose, so this story holds no interest to the far-Left ideologues who run The Establishment Media.”)

The father and paternal uncle of Tamerlan seem genuinely distraught by the horror of his terrorism. It’s his mother and maternal aunt who curse and swear that Tamerlan is innocent, was framed, was controlled by the FBI, et al.

Again, oedipal. Larcenous. Sociopathic. Narcissistic. Chechen. Muslim.

· Michael Copeland

Surely it is all because of a video on the internet, isn't it, Hillary?

o defcon 4

Either that or islamophobic websites that feature news stories and Opeds that portray islam in a negative light.

· EarlyBird

Islam is a horrid, repressive and violent religion and the source of the Islamic world's backwardness and misery.

AND, throughout the heart of the Islamic world, the US and the West have been involved in a lot of really rotten meddling, manipulation, coups, wars, support of tyranny and oppression of these people.

A sick people are reacting sickly to understandable rage against West and modernity.

Yes kids, both things can exist, and acknowledging that the US and West have made some very serious mistakes in that part of the world does not make me "anti-American" or "pro-jihadist" or "communist" or whatever idiocy you decide to spew at me.

It is fundamentalists who believe "their side" is fully, completely pure, and keeps them from learning lessons and altering course. Sort of like, well, fundamentalist Islamists.

· tagalog

It's true that they are/were Muslims, but there's no doubt that they're Caucasian. Literally.

· James

Let's cut to the chase on this one. Islam is not a religion. It's a mental illness so therefore, delusional incompetent buffoons who fall for this crap needs to check themselves into a mental health facility.

· psyvant

THORNTON: EX NIHILO NIHIL FIT – PART TWO
Within an historical context, then, Thornton’s rather odd jeremiad therefore takes on a bit more significance: By assailing what he apparently believes is a monolithic and ongoing liberal apologia for Islamic Terrorism, he reveals not simply his principal objective—that of generating more fear—but the tremendous intellectual deficits inherent in conservative problem-solving on any level, of any topic.

Still, one could ordinarily dismiss Thornton’s piece as trivial: An essentially minor and dull political essay, ineffectual and transparent at best, it much more effectively demonstrates an especially objectionable pseudo intellectual pedantry. But, really: Does this article do anything other than serve to further deepen the ideological void in American society? Well, yes and no; I’ll get to that.

But—and this is important—something intrinsically disturbing does emerge from this quasi-political dalliance: It fosters ignorance. In fact, it is predicated upon—and directed toward—the peculiarly philistine anti-intellectualism of the American (conservative) mind, which simply cannot embrace a world in other than completely binary terms. There are no gradients in that world, no flexibility of thought, no way to subtilize experience. This, I believe, is Mr. Thornton’s target demographic.

At first, I thought, well, it will be a simple enough task to simply deconstruct his faulty premises, syllogistic errors or obvious gaffes. Then, I reread it: It is, quite simply, a word salad. Put another way, the man has strung together nearly every catch phrase, shibboleth and obligatory polysyllabism extant in mainstream print in a vainglorious attempt to make his point—and still accomplishes only one thing: The uniquely conservative predilection for seeking refuge from highly complex sociopolitical issues in simplistic, almost puerile, terms: Islam is Evil, Thornton seems to be saying. Perhaps he’s correct. But then one must ask: How does his obfusatory rant advance either our understanding of radicalization and/or it’s potentially complex etiological links to a multidisciplinary array of other issues?

The point is, once I understood Thornton’s perspective, negotiating his diatribe became infinitely more manageable. He—like his conservative brethren—simply avoid the facts by ignoring them. But they don’t ignore facts because they’re necessarily bad or stupid people. The conservative mind simply works at a disadvantage when confronting difficult concepts.

Putting it plainly, Thornton dismisses, out of hand, the following: Concepts such as PTSD-related behaviors, especially as related to children from war-ravaged countries (the Boston case); The taxonomy of mental disorders (DSM-IV and V); Epigenetics; Nascent sciences like neurotheology; Well studied and documented maladaptive behaviors associated with emigration—none of these appear to be on Mr. Thornton’s radar. For that matter, the Brookings Institution has even arrived at conclusions such as “failure to socially integrate”, et al—with respect to the Boston incident. And those are folks that even the brilliant Mr. Thornton might have to concede significant IQ points.

Indeed, understanding and dealing with the horrific problem of Islamic terrorism will require not simply an examination or indictment of any particular religion, whether it be Abrahamic, Dharmic or, for that matter, Scientology. We need instead to rigorously examine the evolutionary psychology of religion. Is it an adaptation? A phenotype? Or, frankly, as I suspect, is it a manifestation of psychotic neuropathology? Certainly, Thornton might agree it cannot be bombed out of existence by Obama’s “precision-targeted” drone strikes (which, of course, cause no collateral damage). Nor, is it likely that either jingoistic posturing or President Obama’s “Kum ba yah” appeasement will work. In this one respect, Thornton is deadly on target: Radicalized Islamic terrorists mean to kill us. But, should we terrified?

In the final analysis, Thornton doesn't answer this. Instead, he offers nothing but criticism of how the rest of us “dullards” have attempted to solve the problem of Islamic Fundamentalist-driven terror. His is an approach which, instead, typifies the academic insularity endemic to specialization. One wonders, for example, if Thornton has even heard of the Milgram experiment on “Obedience to authority figures.”

Overall then, Thornton’s piece, inspires—at least in the educated mind—a Cartesian response: "Ex nihilo nihil fit." Yes, I know they mean to kill us, Bruce. And, no, you provided me no enlightenment or path to it.

But I’ll concede this: Thornton concludes his exegesis with an interesting statement:

“In short, expect more public reasons for the jihadists to believe we are weak and corrupt and thus deserving to die.”

To which I would respond: Do you mean like shutting down an entire city of some 1 million residents because of the actions of 2 obviously psychotic individuals? Yes, that does send precisely the wrong message.

· psyvant

Front Page won't print Part one of my post? Why? No profanity used, No ad hominem attacks.

· psyteam

THORNTON: EX NIHILO NIHIL FIT: PART ONE
Most people of normal sensibilities are able to set aside their treasured ideological meme or personal agenda in the face of real tragedy. Not so, the logorrheic Bruce Thornton. Indeed, this appears to be an article written by an archetypal conservative, in which anything CAN be exploited–even the recent murder and maiming of children—if it advances an anti-liberal political agenda. This is a classic illustration of incestuous amplification – the echo chamber by which the conservative, anti-intellectual thought process, is advanced.

But, to quote Thornton “Quell Surprise:” In much the same fashion, the conservative Bush war machine similarly exploited both the human tragedy and sequelae of fear surrounding of 911. Indeed, by doctoring intelligence reports, fabricating false linkages between Iraq and al Qaeda, conjuring horrific images (“Mushroom clouds”-Condoleezza Rice) and spewing out mantric chants of war, the hegemonic Bush regime effortlessly created a casus belli for military action against Iraq. And when questioned about his actions, Bush Jr., with dictatorial hubris, even brazenly admitted Iraq had never been linked to 911. The rest, of course, is history: The entire administration subsequently wrapped itself in the flag, and then hid behind the protection of the Military Commissions Act—the latter most certainly enacted to avoid later indictments for war crimes related to numerous human rights’ violations—including, but not limited to torture.

Much more important here though is one simple fact, Mr. Thornton, which you may chose to ignore: YOUR COUNTRY’S OWN CIA CONDEMNED PROJECT IRAQI FREEDOM—a stratagem of war adopted by Paul Wolfowitz, and taken directly from the drawing board of brutal Chilean dictator Pinochet. Specifically, the CIA said it was a misguided action, which was directly responsible for further radicalizing Islamic extremism on a global basis. Perhaps some history is germane, after al.

· Anonymous

I consider myself liberal on many issues: immigration, social services, the rights of lesbians and gays, abortion, women's rights, animal rights, racial equality, separation of church and state and tolerance. I have never been sympathetic to extremist Muslim terrorists nor have I ever felt Islam was a peaceful faith. I vote democratic, but am sickened by Muslim apologists. I think water boarding is torture but I'd gladly watch the executions of every jihadist who ever made me scared to leave my home. I don't know where that puts me politically, but people are not left or right, black or white. Don't call the apologists "left" or "progressive." Call them traitors.

· Abdi

Americans have killed hundred of thousands of muslims in Iraq after sadam died, and you expect the muslims in Iraq to say to “thanks”. and how many millions of innocent people have you guys murdered in the name of “war on terror”. if you don’t see all of those BIG facts, then something is wrong with you.

o OfficialPro

What is it with people like you and the “You killed thousands of Muslims, we hate you we hate you we hate you” line? Muslims kill EACH OTHER ALL THE DAMN TIME and nobody bats an eyelash. Nobody in the world goes “You know, you germans killed thousands of Canadians/Americans/Polacks during WW II, can you figure out why Canadians/Americans/Polacks hate Germans?”

How do you know “innocent” people got “murdered” in the “war on Terror”, let alone *millions*?

I’ll tell ya this much. In Iraq when Saddam’s empire fell, there were Muslims in Baghdad ON CAMERA CHEERING BUSH. You know why? Because Bush put down the regime that WAS KILLING THOUSANDS OF IRAQIS ON A DAMN DAILY BASIS, just for having the wrong brand of Islam. In case you didn’t get the memo, Shi’ites and Sunnis freaking HATE each other and want each other DEAD as “apostates” over something as frivolous as who Mohammed’s successor REALLY was.

This whole “Americans etc killed x number of Muslims therefore Muslims hate you” thing is ILLOGICAL. America doesn’t kill “muslims”, they kill enemy combatants. And terrorists. And maybe a bomb hits somewhere it’s not supposed to and accidentally kills someone. That’s why they call it an ACCIDENT, it’s NOT an “On Purpose”! Why do idiots keep insisting on acting like an accidental death of innocents is deliberate? Maybe you need to call into the Alex Jones show.

§ RETREAT

What are you writing boss? You think the so called SECT WARS will end? Probably they won’t.

Infact it shouldn’t. That is a really good thing for us – the non muslims. If we don’t keep muslims busy, fighting with each other, they will probably kill us. Example: 9/11 repeated OR boston repeated

Exactly in line with Quran 2:216

Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you. But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not.

Sahih international

o RETREAT

What a joke! Why don’t you join a Circus ??

//Americans have killed hundred of thousands of muslims in Iraq after sadam died //

So what? When Saddam was alive, he did kill a million. Million is greater than hundred of thousands. Right? By the way, is there any proof to your claim? OR you just cooked it up?

USA did invade Iraq but not to kill innocents rather to stop saddam hussein from fulfilling his evil agenda. The second issue was WMDs. The real reason why no WMD was found because it was transported to Iran via a secret route. It is still safer there. USA totally ignored that. If you have doubt, please read Iraqi newspapers for a day before USA invasion. Since, USA thought to attack those who could have WMDs; some of them have been died. Now, it is common sense that you don’t suspect a totally innocent person to possess WMDs. The rule is: You first analyze who could be the real culprit and then attack. How can those killed in that war be innocent then? Just because they didn’t had WMD at that time?

//and you expect the muslims in Iraq to say to “thanks” //

I don’t. It is stupidity to expect gratitude of any kind from a muslim. No matter how much we help them, those barbarians would still conspire against us.

// and how many millions of innocent people have you guys murdered in the name of “war on terror” //

Let us understand this by an illustration.

In a Forest. a lion was sleeping. A mad man came there and started teasing the lion. He disturbed the lion forcing him to get up. The furious lion ate up that mad man. Now, who is responsible for that death?

USA is the same lion. Sleeping and inactive. Al Qaeda was the mad man. War on Terrorism is the lion attacking the mad man. Who is responsible now? The lion (USA) who is sleeping / inactive OR the mad man (Al Qaeda) who disturbed the sleeping lion?

//if you don’t see all of those BIG facts, then something is wrong with you.//

Nothing is wrong with me BUT everything seems wrong with you.

By the way, here is a small proof of islamic terrorism: (Just copy paste in your browser)

thereligionofpeace.com

§ Hikaru

The one that invaded Iraq was made of a group of people, so there is a possibility that some of them did kill innocent people. Have you seen pictures and articles that proves them killing, raping, and degrading people? It was not a flaw of the country nor belief, some human are just animal.

Regardless, Muslim have no right to kill innocent non-Muslim. In fact, even in a war, Muslim should not invades or kill people that stays inside church, temple, etc. Also Islam forbid killing women and children even during a war. A Muslim is only allowed to kill non-Muslim that mean harm towards Islam only (defensive wars). So all the suicide bomber acts were utterly useless. They did not only kill innocent people but also commit suicide. If they’re truly upset with the mass killing in Iraq, they should join the war itself, take up a gun, and kill all those animal.

Those terrorist that claimed that they act for Islam is just a bunch of pitiful madman bomber. They had no chance to truly understand their own religion and died by carrying a lot of sins.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/illusions-about-why-muslim-brothers-kill/

------------------

THE NINE BIGGEST MYTHS ABOUT ISIS

T 1 2014, 2:29P

1. Myth #1: ISIS is crazy and irrational

2. Myth #2: People support ISIS because they like its radical form of Islam

3. Myth #3: ISIS is part of al-Qaeda

4. Myth #4: ISIS is a Syrian rebel group

5. Myth #5: ISIS is only strong because of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki

6. Myth #6: ISIS is afraid of female soldiers

7. Myth #7: The US can destroy ISIS

8. Myth #8: ISIS will self-destruct on its own

9. Myth #9: ISIS is invincible

10. How have these cards been updated?

11. Explore

Myth #1: ISIS is crazy and irrational

If you want to understand the Islamic State, better known as ISIS, the first thing you have to know about them is that they are not crazy. Murderous adherents to a violent medieval ideology, sure. But not insane.

Look at the history of ISIS's rise in Iraq and Syria. From the mid-2000s through today, ISIS and its predecessor group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, have had one clear goal: to establish a caliphate governed by an extremist interpretation of Islamic law. ISIS developed strategies for accomplishing that goal — for instance, exploiting popular discontent among non-extremist Sunni Iraqis with their Shia-dominated government. Its tactics have evolved over the course of time in response to military defeats (as in 2008 in Iraq) and new opportunities (the Syrian civil war). As Yale political scientist Stathis Kalyvas explains, in pure strategic terms, ISIS is acting similarly to revolutionary militant groups around the world — not in an especially crazy or uniquely "Islamist" way.

ISIS controlled territory in June. BBC

The point is that, while individual members of ISIS show every indication of espousing a crazed ideology and committing psychopathically violent acts, in the aggregate ISIS acts as a rational strategic enterprise. Their violence is, in broad terms, not random — it is targeted to weaken their enemies and strengthen ISIS' hold on territory, in part by terrorizing the people it wishes to rule over.

Understanding that ISIS is at least on some level rational is necessary to make any sense of the group's behavior. If all ISIS wanted to was kill infidels, why would they ally themselves with ex-Saddam Sunni secularist militias? If ISIS were totally crazy, how could they build a self-sustaining revenue stream from oil and organized crime rackets? If ISIS only cared about forcing people to obey Islamic law, why would they have sponsored children's festivals and medical clinics in the Syrian territory they control? (To be clear, it is not out of their love for children, whom they are also happy to murder, but a calculated desire to establish control.)

This isn't to minimize ISIS' barbarity. They've launched genocidal campaigns against Iraq's Yazidis and Christians. They've slaughtered thousands of innocents, Shia and Sunni alike. But they pursue these horrible ends deliberately and strategically. And that's what really makes them scary.

Myth #2: People support ISIS because they like its radical form of Islam

You have probably heard that ISIS has a degree of popular supportamong some Iraqi and Syrian Sunni Muslims. That's true: without it, the group would collapse. People sometimes assume that this says something about Islam itself: that the religion is intrinsically violent, or that Sunnis would support the group because they accept ISIS's radical interpretation of the Koran.

That's all wrong, and misses one of the most crucial points about ISIS: the foundation of its power comes from politics, not religion.

Let's be clear: virtually all Muslims reject ISIS' view of their faith. Poll after poll shows that violent Islamist extremism and especially al-Qaeda are deeply unpopular in Muslim-majority countries. The bulk of ISIS' victims are Muslims — many of them Sunnis (ISIS is itself Sunni). A popular revolt among Iraqi Sunnis, beginning around 2006, played a huge role in defeating ISIS's predecessor group, al-Qaeda in Iraq. That revolt was inspired, at least in part, by anger at ISIS's attempt to impose its vision of Islam on Muslims who disagree.

Iraqis displaced by ISIS collect Red Cross aid. Haidar Hamdani/AFP/Getty Images

ISIS's vision of Muslim life is pretty alien to actual Islamic tradition. Fundamentalist Islam — like most religious fundamentalisms — is a modern phenomenon. Fundamentalist groups, frustrated with modern politics, harken back to an idealized Islamic past that never actually existed. The al-Qaeda strain of violent radicalism owes more to 20th century writers like Egyptian Muslim Brother Sayyid Qutb than the actual post-Muhammed caliphate.

So if Sunnis disagree with ISIS' theology and don't like living under its rule, why do some of them seem to support ISIS? It's all about politics. Both Syria and Iraq have Shia governments. Sunni Muslims aren't well-represented in either system, and are often actively repressed. Legitimate dissent is often met with violence: Bashar al-Assad gunned down protesters in the streets during the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reacted violently a 2013 Sunni protest movement as well.

So Sunnis understandably feel oppressed and out of options. Some, then, seem to be willing to wait and see if life under their fellow Sunnis in ISIS is any worse than it was before. ISIS, for its part, appears to be attempting to exploit this concern: that's why it's set up community, child-care, and medical services in some of the Sunni communities it controls.

That doesn't mean ISIS is morally better than Assad or Maliki: they group is still hyper-violent and genocidal. It's just that outreach to Sunnis is part of their politico-military strategy.

Myth #3: ISIS is part of al-Qaeda

The key thing to understand about ISIS and al-Qaeda is that they are competitors, not allies, and certainly not part of the same larger group.

ISIS used to be al-Qaeda in Iraq. But the group split apart from al-Qaeda in February 2014 because it wouldn't listen to al-Qaeda HQ's commands, including orders to curtail its violence against civilians. (That's right: it was too violent for al-Qaeda.) This ISIS-AQ divorce is a key reason why ISIS is so unremittingly violent, yet many people still lump the two groups together.

For years, al-Qaeda was the clear leader of the global jihadist movement. The loose network of militant groups, internet forums, and "lone wolf" individuals saw al-Qaeda as the gold standard — and many pledged allegiance to it or established some kind of junior-partner working relationship.

Unidentified Iraqi militants. STR/AFP/Getty Images

When ISIS broke off, it upended everything. By taking a chunk of territory the size of Belgium in the heart of the Arab world, ISIS had come much closer to the end-goal of an Islamic caliphate than al-Qaeda ever did. All of a sudden, it didn't seem so clear that Islamist groups around the world should pledge themselves to al-Qaeda. ISIS fought openly with Jabhat al-Nusra, which is al-Qaeda's Syria branch — and outperformed it on the battlefield. Today, ISIS controls far more territory in Syria than Jabhat.

This ideological competition drives ISIS to be more violent. "They're in competition with al-Qaeda, and they want to be the leader," JM Berger, the editor of Intelwire and an expert on violent extremism, said. According to Berger, one way they do that is by broadcasting images of their military prowess worldwide. In the sick, screwed up world of Islamic extremism, images of massacres are a show of strength.

When ISIS executed American journalist James Foley and put the video on YouTube, or when it declared its intention to wipe out Iraq's Christians and Yazidis, it's not doing it just because they can, although among individual militants indulging a sick desire is certainly part of it. At a broader level, this part of ISIS's plan to beat al-Qaeda and spread the ISIS brand globally.

The worst part: There's some evidence this plan is working. Even before ISIS's rapid advance in June, ISIS was wresting groups in Tunisia and Libya away from al-Qaeda's allegiance to their own. There have been ISIS-linked suicide bombings as far afield as Malyasia.

Myth #4: ISIS is a Syrian rebel group

It is true that ISIS opposes Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria, and the two constantly fight one another in Syria. But calling ISIS a "Syrian rebel group" misses two critical facts about ISIS. First, it's a transnational organization, not rooted in any one country, with lots of fighters who come from outside the country and are motivated by global jihadist aims as well as the Syrian war specifically. Second, Assad and ISIS are not-so-secretly helping each other out in some crucial ways, even as they fight. ISIS and Assad are frenemies, not full-on opponents.

For one thing, ISIS predated the Syrian civil war. It started as al-Qaeda in Iraq in the mid-2000s and, after that group was defeated by Iraqis and American forces around 2008, reformed in the same country. Between 2008 and 2011, ISIS rebuilt itself out of former prisoners and ex-Saddam era Iraqi army officers. ISIS did not grow out of the Syrian rebellion: it took advantage of it.

Now, it's true the war in Syria benefitted ISIS tremendously. It allowed ISIS to get battlefield experience, attracted a ton of financial support from Gulf states and private donors looking to oust Assad, and a crucial safe haven in eastern Syria. ISIS also absorbed a lot of recruits from Syrian rebel groups — illustrating, incidentally, why arming the "good" Syrian rebels probably wouldn't have destroyed ISIS.

A Syrian rebel stands in the street in Aleppo. Ahmed Deeb/AFP/Getty Images

In a weird way, this has all benefitted Assad. The Syrian dictator has vigorously pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy during the war. He's tried hard to push the sectarian angle of the civil war, making it into a life-or-death struggle for his Alawite (Shia) and Christian supporters against the Sunni majority. ISIS' extremism has helped convince Alawites that defecting the rebels means the destruction of their homes and communities.

And Assad has also used ISIS to divide his other opponents: the moderate Free Syrian Army, other Islamist groups, and the United States. One way he's done that is by focusing Syria's military efforts on the moderate Syrian rebels, leaving ISIS relatively unscathed. By allowing ISIS and other Islamist groups to become stronger at the expensive of other rebels, Assad made it much harder for the US to intervene against him without benefitting the rebels. And ISIS and moderate rebels have begun fighting against one another, further dividing the war in a way that's beneficial to Assad.

In essence, Assad and ISIS seem to have made an implicit deal: ISIS temporarily gets a relatively free ride in some chunks of Syria, while Assad gets to weaken his other opponents. The two sides still hate each other, but both benefit from the status quo.

Myth #5: ISIS is only strong because of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki

There's a theory that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is solely, or mainly, responsible for ISIS's resurgence in 2014. It's true that Maliki's policies enabled ISIS's rise. But blaming him alone misses the real drivers of sectarianism in Iraq — and the complicated, multi-faceted sources of support ISIS enjoys.

Maliki did a number of things that unintentionally enabled ISIS' rise. He used Iraq's counterterrorism laws to imprison Sunni dissenters. He exploited laws that prohibit Saddam-era officials from holding office (a number of those officials had been Sunni) to boot Sunnis out of the upper echelons of the government and military. He arrested peaceful Sunni protestors, and aligned himself with non-governmental Shia militias that had slaughtered Sunnis during the post-invasion civil war. And that's only a partial list of Maliki policies that turned Sunnis against the Iraqi central government, and thus toward ISIS.

But it is simply incorrect to assign most of the blame for ISIS's rise to Maliki. For one thing, Sunni anger at Iraq's government, a quasi-democracy that empowers the Shia majority, runs much deeper than this one man. "Even if Maliki weren't in power, there are some Sunni grievances that any Shia government would have problems with," Kirk Sowell, a risk consultant and full-time Iraq watcher, says.

Maliki. Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

To take one example, many Sunnis wrongly believe that they're the largest demographic group in Iraq. This belief, spread during Saddam's time to justify Sunni minority rule, leads Sunnis to see any government they don't head up as fundamentally unjust. Neither Maliki nor his also-Shia successor, current Prime Minister-delegate Haider al-Abadi, can fix that.

More to the point, ISIS isn't just an Iraqi problem. Its base in Syria today is just as, if not more, important than the land it controls in Iraq. They've gotten funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, and wink-wink-nudge-nudge help from Syria's Bashar al-Assad.

The really important takeaway here is that Maliki's political defeat does not mean ISIS will wither away, nor that Baghdad political reforms could solve this problem alone. The Abadi government will need to undertake deep, structural reforms if it wants to address Sunni grievances. The Sunni community will have to reject ISIS and come to terms with the Shia majority. And even if all of that happens, ISIS will still have its base in Syria.

Myth #6: ISIS is afraid of female soldiers

A bizarre meme going around claims that ISIS is really afraid of fighting all-female Kurdish military units. The theory is that ISIS fighters believe that if a woman kills you, you don't get to go to paradise.

The truth is that ISIS' approach to women is much more complicated — and troubling — than Western stereotypes about Islamists would suggest. ISIS has its own female brigades, and the group uses them to enforce its deeply misogynistic ideology.

The "ISIS is afraid of female fighters" theory comes from a stray quote in a Wall Street Journal piece about Kurdish advances against ISIS. It quotes a female Kurdish soldier as saying "the jihadists don't like fighting women, because if they're killed by a female, they think they won't go to heaven." Note that it's not an ISIS fighter, a scholar, or necessarily someone who's interrogated an ISIS fighter: just a random Kurdish soldier, who may not be super-familiar with ISIS's ideology.

What we actually know about ISIS's approach to women, however, paints a rather different picture. ISIS has all-female battalions, called "al-Khansaa" and "Umm al-Rayan," that operate in Syria. ISIS female fighters wear full burqas and carry rifles; they exist to force other women to comply with ISIS's vision of sharia law. "ISIS created [them] to terrorize women," Abu al-Hamza, a local, media activist, said in an interview with Syria Deeply.

ISIS's use of women is part of a rising trend of jihadist women claiming roles in violent Islamic extremist groups. "There is a process of female emancipation taking place in the jihadi movement, albeit a very limited (and morbid) one," Thomas Hegghammer, an expert on violent Islamism at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, told The Atlantic. "Many of them are eager to portray themselves as strong women and often make fun of the Western stereotype of ‘the oppressed Muslim woman.'"

ISIS is dedicated to oppressing women, and uses rape as a weapon to terrify the population into submission in territory it controls. Somehow, perversely, it has managed to enlist large numbers of women to help in that awful effort.

Myth #7: The US can destroy ISIS

You've probably heard it a million times: if only the United States stepped up its bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria or did more to help moderate Syrian rebels, it could destroy ISIS. Indeed, the administration's big new escalation in Syria and Iraq, announced on September 10, is explicitly aimed at destroying ISIS.

The reality, however, is disappointing: There is no magic American bullet that could fix the ISIS problem. Even an intensive, decades-long American ground effort — something that is politically not on the table, anyways — might only make the problem worse. The reason is that ISIS's presence in Iraq and Syria is fundamentally a political problem, not a military one.

American aircraft are very good at hitting ISIS targets out in the open: on roads or in the desert, for example. That's why US air support was extremely effective in clearing a path for Kurdish and Iraqi forces to retake the Mosul dam in mid-August.

But American airpower is much less useful in dense urban combat, where it's also likely to cause unacceptable amounts of civilian casualties. In response to a stepped-up American bombing campaign, ISIS could hunker down in fortified city positions. That would force the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces to engage in bloody street-to-street combat. Historically, the Iraqi army has a bad track record in those fights. It spent a good chunk of early 2014 trying to dislodge ISIS from Fallujah, a city near Baghdad. It failed to permanently push them out, and killed a lot of Sunni civilians in the process.

What if the US also stepped up its campaign in Syria, arming the Syrian rebels and bombing ISIS positions? A pretty comprehensive review of research on arming rebels, by George Washington University's Marc Lynch, suggests that wouldn't have helped even back at the beginning of the civil war. The "moderate" Syrian rebels are too diffuse, and fighters shift in and out of alliances with ISIS and other radical Islamists.

A US soldier with an Iraqi child in Baghdad, 2008. Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

The US plan to intervene in Syria against ISIS today short of a full invasion requires enlisting either Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who benefits from ISIS's existence, or the moderate Syrian rebels, who are disorganized and hard-pressed by Assad already, to coordinate a major offensive. That seems improbable, to say the least.

Even if the United States reinvaded Iraq to destroy ISIS — which there is no indication it would do — there's no guarantee that even this would succeed. The United States did defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq in the late-2000s, but it had lots of Iraqi help. The Bush administration's 2007 troop surge would have failed if the Sunni population wasn't already turning against al-Qaeda there.

"I take the somewhat modest position that the action of 6 million Iraqis may be more important than those of 30,000 American troops and one very talented general," Doug Ollivant, the National Security Adviser for Iraq from 2005 to 2009, told me. Without changing Sunni views of ISIS and the Iraqi government, a stepped-up US ground presence might only further infuriate the Sunni population.

The key structural causes of ISIS's rise, the multi-sided Syrian war and Iraqi sectarian tension, cannot be solved by American bombs alone. The US can block ISIS's advances in some places, as it is doing in Iraqi Kurdistan, but eliminating ISIS is outside its power.

Myth #8: ISIS will self-destruct on its own

You occasionally hear, especially from supporters of the Obama administration's cautious policy, that ISIS will eventually destroy itself. ISIS's view of Islamic law is so harsh that no population would want to live under it for long, so a Sunni revolt against ISIS is inevitable. And ISIS will overreach: its desire to expand to new territory exceeds its actual military power, meaning that a devastating counterattack is inevitable.

This is certainly possible. But ISIS is not headed in that direction yet. That's because ISIS is both smarter and stronger than many people give it credit for.

ISIS learned from the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq, its predecessor group. Though ISIS still insists on imposing its extremist interpretation of Islamic law in the territory it controls, it also sets up institutions that look a lot like a proto-government. They've installed health care clinics, run public forums where ISIS operatives socialize with adults, held activities for children, policed neighborhoods, and collected taxes.

Shia Iraqi militias. Ahmed al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

The point of this, Washington Institute fellow Aaron Zelin wrote in September 2013, is to "lay the groundwork for a future Islamic state by gradually socializing Syrians to the concept." According to Zelin, "ISIS has shown that it wants to avoid repeating the mistakes that its predecessors made in Iraq." Since occupying Mosul in June, Iraq's second-largest city, ISIS's behavior has been similar (though not identical).

ISIS, then, is balancing its ideological desire to be brutal against its strategic imperative to maintain the support of local populations. It's still as evil as it always was — just smarter about it.

To make matters worse, ISIS has never been stronger in military terms. The incorporation of former officers with Saddam-era Iraq, plus years of fighting in Syria, has made ISIS more tactically astute than most of its battlefield opponents. In June, it captured enormous amounts of advanced American weaponry dropped by the retreating Iraqi army. And its ranks have swelled in the wake of all of its victories: one estimate, from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, claimed that ISIS recruited 6,000 fighters in July 2014 alone. That's obviously a ballpark estimate, but it almost certainly reflects real growth inside ISIS.

The bottom line: ISIS does not appear at all bound to simply fall apart on its own. To defeat the group, Iraqis and Syrians would need to do something done to separate ISIS from its base of support in Iraq and Syria. And ISIS needs to be broken on the battlefield, if only to stop the recruiting drive created by its aura of invincibility.

Myth #9: ISIS is invincible

Reading the news of ISIS's conquests in Iraq and Syria, and even its recent foray into Lebanon, you might get the sense that ISIS is unstoppable. That it'll sweep Iraq, and really, truly, establish an extremist Islamic state in Iraq and eastern Syria.

This isn't true. ISIS is smarter and more effective than it used to be, and it's too strong to collapse on its own, but it's still quite vulnerable. The Iraqi government, with Kurdish and American help, really could make major inroads against ISIS.

In June, when ISIS was sweeping Iraq, there were panicked predictions that Baghdad was about to fall to ISIS's advance. It didn't. ISIS didn't even try to take the city, likely because it knew it couldn't dislodge the huge concentrations of Iraqi troops there — or hold a majority-Shia city that would never accept it.

Iraqi demographics place a natural limit on ISIS's advance. Even high-end estimates of ISIS's strength — 50,000 troops — make it much smaller than the Iraqi army or Kurdish peshmerga. It'd be impossible for ISIS to take and hold majority Shia areas, where they'd be totally unable to build popular support. The Islamic State's borders in Iraq are limited to northern and western, Arab-majority, Sunni-majority Iraq.

That's a damning problem for ISIS. All of the major oil wells, which provide 95 percent of Iraq's GDP, are in southern Iraq or Kurdish-held territory in the northeast. ISIS can't advance on the Shia south, and a joint US-Kurdish campaign is reversing its gains in Kurdistan. ISIS has huge financial reserves for a militant group — maybe up to $1 billion dollars. But that's a relatively small amount for a government, and any attempt to actually govern northwestern Iraq in the long run would lead to economic disaster.

A guard at a Kurdish oil facility. Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

"It'd be a permanent downward economic spiral — like Gaza, basically," Kirk Sowell, a risk analyst and Iraq expert, says. An ISIS mini-state is just not sustainable.

When you pair the inevitable economic crisis in ISIS-held Iraq with ISIS's brutal legal system, it seems like Sunnis will eventually tire of the group. That discontent may not be enough on its own to end the group's rule, especially if it still believes the Iraqi central government would be worse for them. But it creates an opening for Iraqi Prime Minister-delegate Haider al-Abadi to reach out to disaffected Sunnis. He might be able to make allies among Sunni tribal militias.

Meanwhile, ISIS may alienate some its core Iraqi allies: militias who support a Saddam-style Sunni dictatorship. They're generally secular and no fans of ISIS's vision of Islamic law, and are only allied with it to fight the government. If ISIS's Sunni allies turn against it, and the government does a better job making its rule look attractive, ISIS may lose the Sunni population — and most of its gains in northern Iraq. Again, that's not inevitable, and will require some tough political changes in Baghdad, but the point is that ISIS is far from invincible.

ISIS's hold in Syria, though, would be much, much harder to dislodge. It's hard to imagine either Assad or moderate anti-Assad rebels mounting an effective military campaign against ISIS in the near term. But rolling back ISIS in Iraq, and containing it to Syria, would be a major victory, though an incomplete one as it would leave ISIS with a chunk of Syria. Still, this would limit the group's reach in the Middle East and blunt its global appeal. And when Syria's civil war finally does end, whenever that happens, eliminating ISIS will be the winning side's first priority.

ow have these cards been updated?

This is a running list of substantive updates, corrections, and additions to this card stack. These cards were last updated on August 7th, 2014. Here is a summary of edits:

· September 10: Card 7 was updated to reflect the administration's new plan to combat ISIS in both Syria and Iraq.

http://www.vox.com/cards/isis-myths-iraq/crazy-irrational

ISIL must be confronted, says Arab League

September 7, 2014 Updated: September 7, 2014 09:41 PM

CAIRO // Arab League foreign ministers yesterday created the possiblity of military action by member states against ISIL after they agreed to use all necessary measures to confront the group.

Foreign ministers also agreed to cooperate with all international, regional and national efforts to combat militant groups and endorsed a UN Security Council resolution passed last month calling on member states to act to stem the flow of logistical, military and financial support to extremists in Iraq and Syria.

Before the meeting in Cairo began, secretary general Nabil Elaraby said ISIL and other militants threatened the existence of Arab states.

The meeting of Arab foreign ministers came as the United States expanded air strikes against the militants in Iraq and sought wider regional backing for its campaign.

“What is needed is a clear decision for a comprehensive confrontation, militarily and politically,” Mr Elaraby said a day after he and US secretary of state John Kerry discussed taking action against the group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq.

The league’s statement was a boost for Barack Obama, who last week said Arab support was crucial to help the US, and a coalition of nine other countries, fight the group.

“What we have got to make sure is that we are organising the Arab world, the Middle East, the Muslim world, along with the international community to isolate this cancer.”

The US president said on Sunday that he will make a speech to lay out his “game plan” to deal with and ultimately defeat ISIL on Wednesday, but warned he would not wage another ground war in Iraq.

Mr Elaraby criticised infighting between Arab countries, which he said had led to inaction by the 22-member bloc.

“While some states object to allowing the Arab League to intervene in their internal crises, the floodgates are opened to foreign intervention, including militarily,” he said.

Mr Elaraby, a former foreign minister of Egypt, called for the activation of an Arab defence treaty to allow for military action when needed.

Iraq on Saturday welcomed Mr Obama’s plan for an international coalition against ISIL fighters as a “strong message of support”, after repeatedly calling for aid in its fight.

Mr Obama outlined the plan at a Nato summit on Friday for a broad coalition to defeat ISIL, which led an offensive that overran parts of Iraq in June and also holds significant territory in Syria.

ISIL was originally an Al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq that expanded in the Syrian conflict.

The group’s astonishing rise in Syria and Iraq caught the weak government in Baghdad, and much of the region, off guard.

Mr Elaraby said ISIL was a threat to the entire region.

“What is happening in Iraq is that the terrorist organisation not only threatens a state’s authority, but threatens its very existence and the existence of other states.”

Arab countries have participated in western-led military campaigns in the past, including the first Gulf War and the aerial campaign against former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

Aside from fighting in Iraq, Arab states are concerned that ISIL is coordinating with domestic extremists and that militants who travelled to join the group may conduct attacks on their return home.

In Egypt, several militants who have carried out attacks on security forces since the army overthrew Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013 had travelled to fight in Syria.

Egypt’s main militant group, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, has not publicly pledged its loyalty to ISIL, but has referred to the militants as “brothers”.

The league also discussed the Gaza conflict, the political crisis in Yemen and peace talks in Sudan.

The UAE delgation in Cairo was led by Dr Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.

* Agence France-Presse and Wam

http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/isil-must-be-confronted-says-arab-league

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Pakistan must confront Wahhabism

As the Saudi-financed Wahhabi Islam supplants the tolerant indigenous Sufi Islam, its violent creed is inspiring terrorism

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/20/pakistan-wahhabi-islam-sufi-terrorism

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The Intellectual Battle Against ISIS

DUBAI – The global financial crisis taught the world how profoundly interdependent our economies have become. In today’s crisis of extremism, we must recognize that we are just as interdependent for our security, as is clear in the current struggle to defeat ISIS.

If we are to prevent ISIS from teaching us this lesson the hard way, we must acknowledge that we cannot extinguish the fires of fanaticism by force alone. The world must unite behind a holistic drive to discredit the ideology that gives extremists their power, and to restore hope and dignity to those whom they would recruit.

ISIS certainly can – and will – be defeated militarily by the international coalition that is now assembling and which the UAE is actively supporting. But military containment is only a partial solution. Lasting peace requires three other ingredients: winning the battle of ideas; upgrading weak governance; and supporting grassroots human development.

Such a solution must begin with concerted international political will. Not a single politician in North America, Europe, Africa, or Asia can afford to ignore events in the Middle East. A globalized threat requires a globalized response. Everyone will feel the heat, because such flames know no borders; indeed, ISIS has recruited members of at least 80 nationalities.

ISIS is a barbaric and brutal organization. It represents neither Islam nor humanity’s most basic values. Nonetheless, it has emerged, spread, and resisted those who oppose it. What we are fighting is not just a terrorist organization, but the embodiment of a malicious ideology that must be defeated intellectually.

I consider this ideology to be the greatest danger that the world will face in the next decade. Its seeds are growing in Europe, the United States, Asia, and elsewhere. With its twisted religious overtones, this pre-packaged franchise of hate is available for any terrorist group to adopt. It carries the power to mobilize thousands of desperate, vindictive, or angry young people and use them to strike at the foundations of civilization.

The ideology fueling ISIS has much in common with that of Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. What most worries me is that a decade ago, such an ideology was all that Al Qaeda needed to destabilize the world, even from a primitive base in the caves of Afghanistan. Today, under ISIS, adherents have access to technology, finance, a huge land base, and an international jihadist network. Far from being defeated, their ideology of rage and hate has become stricter, more pernicious, and more widespread.

The destruction of terrorist groups is not enough to bring lasting peace. We must also strike at the root to deprive their dangerous ideology of the power to rise again among people left vulnerable by an environment of hopelessness and desperation. And, on this note, let us be positive.

The solution has three components. The first is to counter malignant ideas with enlightened thinking, open minds, and an attitude of tolerance and acceptance. This approach arises from our Islamic religion, which calls for peace, honors life, values dignity, promotes human development, and directs us to do good to others.

Only one thing can stop a suicidal youth who is ready to die for ISIS: a stronger ideology that guides him onto the right path and convinces him that God created us to improve our world, not to destroy it. We can look to our neighbors in Saudi Arabia for their great successes in de-radicalizing many young people through counseling centers and programs. In this battle of minds, it is thinkers and scientists of spiritual and intellectual stature among Muslims who are best placed to lead the charge.

The second component is support for governments’ efforts to create stable institutions that can deliver real services to their people. It should be clear to everyone that the rapid growth of ISIS was fueled by the Syrian and Iraqi governments’ failings: the former made war on its own people, and the latter promoted sectarian division. When governments fail to address instability, legitimate grievances, and persistent serious challenges, they create an ideal environment for hateful ideologies to incubate – and for terrorist organizations to fill the vacuum of legitimacy.

The final component is to address urgently the black holes in human development that afflict many areas of the Middle East. This is not only an Arab responsibility, but also an international responsibility, because providing grassroots opportunity and a better quality of life for the people of this region is guaranteed to ameliorate our shared problems of instability and conflict. We have a critical need for long-term projects and initiatives to eliminate poverty, improve education and health, build infrastructure, and create economic opportunities. Sustainable development is the most sustainable answer to terrorism.

Our region is home to more than 200 million young people. We have the opportunity to inspire them with hope and to direct their energies toward improving their lives and the lives of those around them. If we fail, we will abandon them to emptiness, unemployment, and the malicious ideologies of terrorism.

Every day that we take a step toward delivering economic development, creating jobs, and raising standards of living, we undermine the ideologies of fear and hate that feed on hopelessness. We starve terrorist organizations of their reason to exist.

I am optimistic, because I know that the people of the Middle East possess a power of hope and a desire for stability and prosperity that are stronger and more enduring than opportunistic and destructive ideas. There is no power stronger than that of hope for a better life.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mohammed-bin-rashid-al-maktoum-calls-for-a-broad-development-agenda-to-defeat-the-middle-east-s-ideologies-of-hate

Let’s teach our youth to build, not destroy - Al Arabiya News

english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/10/... Cached

MIDDLE EAST; AFRICA; ... causing further resentment against Islam. They continue to scoff at any explanation or reasoning and ... Let’s teach our youth to build ...

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Take a Deep Breath and Build a Coalition to Confront ISIS (by ...

islamicommentary.org/2014/09/take-a-deep-breath-and... Cached

... than if America is seen as intervening in the Middle East against Muslims ... They must get the ... and build an enduring coalition to confront ISIS ...

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CANADA: True Patriot Love Foundation launches Highway of ...

nova0000scotia.blogspot.com/2014/08/i-stand-with-israel... Cached

Aug 03, 2014 · Decent civilized people must stop pandering 2 Islamic Muslim Monsters ... cause they are EBOLA has come.... and the monsters ... MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICAS ...

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CANADA: True Patriot Love Foundation launches Highway of ...

nova0000scotia.blogspot.com/2014/01/hey-world-what... Cached

Jan 04, 2014 · ... a fellow at the Middle East ... in militias vowing to confront ISIS and protect ... in Mosul from fleeing the ISIS fighters they ...

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Face up to ISIS, but don’t ignore Iran - Al Arabiya News

english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/09/... Cached

MIDDLE EAST; AFRICA; ... a broad coalition to confront ISIS, ... alienated the Sunnis and created a suitable atmosphere for ISIS and other extremist Sunni ...

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Inside the Middle East: Blog Archive - Iran promotes 'Islamic ...

www.cnn.com/blogarchive/insidethemiddleeast.blogs.cnn... Cached

Jul 08, 2010 · Although she is not Muslim,she wrapped her self up in typical Muslim attire and found it created far ... In Africa they have ... Middle East site for news ...

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Monday, June 22, 2009

Neda Soltan, the Face of the Iranian Revolution

Her name was Neda Agha Soltan and she was 27 years old. Stories on the web indicate that she was standing along side her father at a protest rally in Tehran, Iran. A regime police thug hiding on a roof shot her in the heart and she died in about two minutes.

Why shoot a harmless young woman? Perhaps the goal was to create terror among the protestors, to demoralize them and make them give up. The evil Iranian regime had faked a democratic election without any intent of abiding by the vote; it was all for show. President Ahmadinejad, the regime's goon, ran third in the vote but was declared the winner anyway. Then the protests began, resulting in the despots responding with deadly force.

The cowardly vermin who pepetrated this atrocity are beyond disgust. Our hearts go out to the Iranian freedom fighters. May this evil regime soon be consigned to the dustbin of history.

CANADA: True Patriot Love Foundation launches Highway of Heroes concert tour

Sunday, November 30, 2014

In Open Letter To Muslim World, French Muslim Philosopher Says Islam Has Given Birth To Monsters, Needs Reform

NEDA- WE HAVE NOT 4GOTTEN

VIDEO

12/12 Arts United 4 Iran - We have not forgotten

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmmbxfXNKE8

Illusions About Why Muslim Brothers Kill

About Bruce Thornton

Myth #1: ISIS is crazy and irrational

Myth #2: People support ISIS because they like its radical form of Islam

Myth #3: ISIS is part of al-Qaeda

Myth #4: ISIS is a Syrian rebel group

Myth #5: ISIS is only strong because of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki

Myth #6: ISIS is afraid of female soldiers

Myth #7: The US can destroy ISIS

Myth #8: ISIS will self-destruct on its own

Myth #9: ISIS is invincible

ow have these cards been updated?

Monday, June 22, 2009

Neda Soltan, the Face of the Iranian Revolution