Islamic Terrorism in the West ( Mega thread)

[CougarKing]

The man who once wanted to be "America's mayor" weighs in on walking the precipice of too much political correctness:

National Post link

Culture of ‘political correctness’ on Islamist terrorist threat blunted effort to stop home-grown attacks, Rudi Giuliani says

Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York at the time of the September 11 attacks, has questioned whether a culture of “political correctness” towards the Islamist terrorist threat had blunted efforts to stop home-grown attacks such as the Boston marathon bombings.

Speaking hours before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — the alleged surviving Boston bomber — was arraigned in court, Mr. Giuliani took aim at the Obama administration for creating a climate that had made U.S. security agencies over-cautious about pursing potential Islamist threats.

“You can’t fight an enemy you don’t acknowledge,” Mr. Giuliani told the House homeland security committee inquiry into the intelligence failures that led to the Boston bombs.

“In order to confront this threat effectively, we have to purge ourselves of the practice of political correctness when it goes so far that it interferes with our rational and intellectually honest analysis of the identifying characteristics that help us to discover these killers in advance.”

In the days immediately following the Boston attacks, President Barack Obama was attacked by the Right for his reluctance to identify the bombings as the work of Islamist terrorists — a sign, they said, of the president’s excessive caution on the issue.

Mr. Giuliani said he believed that the FBI’s failure to track the older Tsarnaev brother, Tamerlan, despite his return to his native Dagestan, a known centre of jihadism, might have been caused by over-caution on civil liberty and religious issues.

“The fear of incorrectly identifying [Tamerlan] Tsarnaev as a suspected Muslim extremist might have played a role in not taking all the steps that seemed prudent given his suspicious behaviour,” he said, “He obviously wasn’t going back to listen to the Moscow symphony.”

(...)

 

[CougarKing]

I considered posting this in the "dumbest thing you've heard today" thread instead...

Yet another instance of barbarism of such backward clerics as pointed out in other threads.

Sun News link

Stoning is good for your soul, says Canadian cleric

TORONTO — Death to sinners. That is the religious message brought to you by YouTube. Homosexuals and adulterers, you’d better start running because it’s directed at you.

Don’t believe me? Well, plenty of people watched Wednesday as Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak put his death by stoning show on the digital high road courtesy of the Internet.

A YouTube video featuring an insightful look at the ideas of the Brampton, Ont., preacher who stated that “sinners,” as defined by his own interpretation of Islamic law, can benefit from a jolly good stoning was running all day until it was belatedly taken down.

The sheikh explained that a Muslim who is sentenced to death by stoning under Sharia law actually benefits from this gruesome punishment as her soul is being purified even as the stones rain down on her sinful head.

It would possibly be funny if it were in a Monty Python movie. Almost, but not quite. There is no joke to be had in a medieval form of punishment like stoning. Nor should it be condoned.

Alas, it might be more widely spread than most Canadians would believe.

In 2010 the Pew Research Centre in Washington published the results of an extensive poll of Middle East countries and tapped into their views of modern life.

According to the results, at least three-quarters of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan say they would favour making each of the following the law in their countries: stoning people who commit adultery, whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion.

Majorities of Muslims in Jordan and Nigeria also favor these harsh punishments. Thankfully none will be proscribed in Canada because we are a free, open and tolerant society that will never become a theocracy where common law is subjugated to religious dogma.

Being free, open and tolerant also means that people such as Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak can take advantage of free speech to spread their own version of moral purification.

This from a man who serves as both president of the Islamic Forum of Canada and vice-president of the Islamic Council of Imams of Canada. Attempts were made to contact the sheikh for comment for this article but they were unsuccessful.

Still, that doesn’t mean we have to withhold our own opinion.

We can surely ask just why a clearly inflammatory piece of speech like that delivered by the sheikh is hosted on the popular video-sharing site. It’s got company, too.

It doesn’t take long to find plenty of disgusting material on YouTube that makes it less of a social site than a sewer of hate and bloody gore, most of it carried out in the sacred name of religion.

There are endless images of gruesome hangings, stonings, executions, assaults, assassinations, shootings and so-called honour killings.

It says a lot about the warped values of YouTube that it will vigorously protect the copyright of Saturday Night Live when an illegal video of a skit from the show is posted but let vivid examples of man’s inhumanity to man be run in all its glory.

A quick YouTube search reveals an alarming number of terrorist training videos from al-Qaida side by side with executions by Al-Shabaab and hate-filled sermons from across the globe.

This is despite YouTube’s insufferably smug claims that it has “community guidelines” that prohibit “dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts” and only accepts “religious” films.

If you believe that, then you’ll also believe that a video snuff movie features people sneezing.

 

[George Wallace]

"Non-violence" is an oxymoron to this religion.  They have so many "excuses" to be violent. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

"Non-violence" is an oxymoron to this religion.  They have so many "excuses" to be violent.

It is not a religious issues, it is cultural. Until we understand that we are going to blunder about making strategic blunders because we have failed to grasp the most basic, simple problem.

Islam needs a reformation, but the Christian reformation (1400 (John Huss) to 1700 (Treaty of London)) was, largely, cultural rather than purely religious. Issues like language - the bible in the venacular - bother some Asian Muslims today and some are agitating against the notion that the Qur'an can only be "understood" in Arabic. The habit of relying upon Arab or Persian clerics who "import" their own cultural values and try to impose them in e.g. Malays or Indonesians or Canadians is also a cause of concern amongst many Muslims. So the stirrings of a reformation are already apparent.

But an Islamic reformation is only one step; many Muslim regions (Africa, the Near and Middle East, and West Asia) need cultural enlightenments such as we, in the West, had from about 1650 until about 1800 (overlapping the reformation) and which the Chinese had, arguably, 1,500 years earlier.

The bits of Islam which we find are offensive to all civilized peoples are the same as the bits of Judaism and Christianity that were wrung out of the fabric of (the mainstreams of) both those creeds over the past centuries. They can be wrung out of Islam, too ... by Muslims, just as Christians and Jews reformed themselves.

Now, clearly and without reservation, Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak does not belong in Canada. His views and his theology are barbaric and unacceptable to any Canadian, of any religion. He cannot be deported fast enough. And we, as a country, must not allow Muslims mosques to import people like him. They, Canadian Muslims, must educate and train their own, Canadian, imans. We, Canadians of any and all sorts, neither want nor should we accept barbarians, no matter what disguises they may adopt. But, sadly, Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak is not a whole lot different than some radical Christian preachers, and they're "home grown."

 

[myself.only]

It is not a religious issues, it is cultural. Until we understand that we are going to blunder about making strategic blunders because we have failed to grasp the most basic, simple problem.

Islam needs a reformation, but the Christian reformation (1400 (John Huss) to 1700 (Treaty of London)) was, largely, cultural rather than purely religious. Issues like language - the bible in the venacular - bother some Asian Muslims today and some are agitating against the notion that the Qur'an can only be "understood" in Arabic. The habit of relying upon Arab or Persian clerics who "import" their own cultural values and try to impose them in e.g. Malays or Indonesians or Canadians is also a cause of concern amongst many Muslims. So the stirrings of a reformation are already apparent.

But an Islamic reformation is only one step; many Muslim regions (Africa, the Near and Middle East, and West Asia) need cultural enlightenments such as we, in the West, had from about 1650 until about 1800 (overlapping the reformation) and which the Chinese had, arguably, 1,500 years earlier.

The bits of Islam which we find are offensive to all civilized peoples are the same as the bits of Judaism and Christianity that were wrung out of the fabric of (the mainstreams of) both those creeds over the past centuries. They can be wrung out of Islam, too ... by Muslims, just as Christians and Jews reformed themselves.

Now, clearly and without reservation, Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak does not belong in Canada. His views and his theology are barbaric and unacceptable to any Canadian, of any religion. He cannot be deported fast enough. And we, as a country, must not allow Muslims mosques to import people like him. They, Canadian Muslims, must educate and train their own, Canadian, imans. We, Canadians of any and all sorts, neither want nor should we accept barbarians, no matter what disguises they may adopt. But, sadly, Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak is not a whole lot different than some radical Christian preachers, and they're "home grown."

Very well said, sir.

Further to your post, IMHO the potential for reformation is best supported when non-Muslim countries such as Canada promote the inclusiveness of Muslims in general. Then the adoption of our culture can become a viable alternative without compromising religious identity.

 

[George Wallace]

Further to your post, IMHO the potential for reformation is best supported when non-Muslim countries such as Canada promote the inclusiveness of Muslims in general. Then the adoption of our culture can become a viable alternative without compromising religious identity.

Nice plan.  Like Communism, it looks good on paper.  Unfortunately, like Communism, it won't work.  So many of them have no intention of adopting our culture.  Therein lies the flaws of such logic.

 

[myself.only]

Nice plan.  Like Communism, it looks good on paper.  Unfortunately, like Communism, it won't work.  So many of them have no intention of adopting our culture.  Therein lies the flaws of such logic.

Well, I don't know if the opposite viewpoint - promoting that one cannot be both a good Canadian and a good Muslim - even has the advantage of looking good on paper.

 

[GnyHwy]

There is probably a significant amount of Muslims that adapt well to Canadian culture; they are what is called "whitewashed".

Maybe we can get them to take a survey to determine how susceptible they are.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Daily Mail, is foreign news but I suspect it applies around the world. But please see my comments at the end:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2416586/Gangs-Asian-men-grooming-MUSLIM-girls-plying-drink-drugs.html

Gangs of Asian men are grooming underage MUSLIM girls too, plying them with drink and drugs while promising marriage
    Older men target girls within their own Asian and Muslim communities
    Gangs rely on sense of shame and honour to ensure their victims' silence
    Victims to frightened to speak about because they fear not being believed
    Youngsters raped, severely beaten and burnt with cigarettes

By ANNA EDWARDS

PUBLISHED: 10 September 2013

Gangs of Asian men who groom and sexually exploit children have been targeting Muslims within their own communities as well as white girls, a damning report has revealed.

The study shows that offenders will target vulnerable youngsters of the same ethnicity - but rely on the Asian and Muslim culture of honour and shame to mask their vile crimes.

The Muslim Women's Network UK report focuses on Mulsim and Asian abused children, who they say have been sexually exploited but overlooked by authorities because they are too frightened to speak out.

The worrying study follows a series of high profile cases about gangs of Asian men who have targeted white girls.

But the report exposes how in the majority of cases offenders will groom members of their own community, feeding them drink and drugs and silencing them with promises of marriage to conceal the abuse.

It also reveals that victims were already vulnerable to being sexually exploited by gangs, as they had a limited knowledge of sex, suffered from disabilities, or were seeking to escape a harsh background.

The MWNUK claims there has been a 'deafening silence' surrounding this particular group of victims, pointing to the Asian and Muslim culture of honour and shame, which stops many victims speaking out about sexual abuse and seeking help.

They also say that the culture of men holding the authority and women must be respectable means that the abused females will often stay silent about their experiences, for fear of not being believed by their community.

The report found that victims often received little support when abuse was discovered.

It said: 'When the family became aware of any abuse they re-victimised them, which meant not believing them, blaming them, forcing them into a marriage, forcing them to leave the family home and in one case forcing the victim to have hymen repair surgery prior to a forced marriage.

Consequently the report claims that this vulnerable portion of society are often overlooked by statutory services and not identified as victims as they have not spoken up either to authorities or their own communities, who could have helped them.

The report identified how groups would target youngsters, typically using an older peer of the victim to play the role of 'older boyfriend'.

The targeted girl would be presented with gifts by the 'boyfriend', given rides in expensive cars and promised love and marriage, before being introduced to older men and the campaign of abuse would begin.

Sometimes she would be plied with drink and drugs, so she would not know the extent of her abuse or even how many men had violated her.

The shocking report found the gangs would rape the victims, beat them, burn them with cigarettes and film them being exploited on webcam.

Blackmail was a key way of controlling victims and ensuring their silence, the study discovered, as gangs threatened their victims with dishonour and shame should they speak up.

Honorary president and MWNUK's co-founding member Baroness Haleh Afshar OBE said: 'These case studies indicate that, contrary to media studies that accuse Muslim men of grooming non-Muslim girls, the majority of the abusers were from the same ethnic /faith background as the victims and perpetrators targeted girls that were most vulnerable and accessible to them.

'Like their non-Muslim counterparts some of the victims were silenced by fear of violence against them or their family, others had an emotional attachment to their attackers and others feared that they would not be believed by their own family and others.

'In addition, the attackers relied on the deep sense of honour and shame in their family and community to silence and control their victims.'

The report found that older men who targeted their own relatives would often intimidate their terrified youngsters into silence and, if necessary, use violence or arrange a forced marriage to mask their abuse.

The analysis collected 35 cases of abuse over five months, and had to speak to those who knew the victims and may have helped them, as victims were reluctant to speak of the abuse personally.

Key findings found that: 'Asian and Muslim female victims are also vulnerable to grooming and sexual exploitation and are also being targeted and sexually exploited and include children, young persons (16 to 18 years) and adults.

'Asian and Muslim female victims are most vulnerable to offenders from their own communities as the overwhelming majority of the offenders were from the same background as the victims.

'Asian and Muslim children, young persons and adults have specific vulnerabilities associated with their culture which are exploited and also constitute a barrier to disclosure and reporting.'

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister for Faith and Communities, said: 'The case studies are finally shining much needed spotlight on a problem that has largely, and tragically, gone unnoticed in the past.

'The cases of Asian and Muslim female victims make for hard reading, but this report, and other research like it, is necessary if we are to take the action needed to stamp out these abhorrent crimes.'

Nazir Afazl OBE, the Chief Crown Prosecutor of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'We know that women and victims from minorities are even more reluctant to report these crimes, in part because of honour and shame issues.

'It is the availability of victims coupled with their vulnerability that leads to them being targeted by these predators.'

He urged communities and individuals to speak out about abuse if they knew it was happening.

The report comes after a series of high-profile child sex gang cases - including five men who were jailed for life in June for 'crimes of the utmost gravity' in Oxford.

Child sex gangs have also been caught in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, Cambridgeshire and Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

There is nothing Muslim about this, nothing Asian either, it is the sad fate of all immigrant and minority communities, everywhere; it was the same here, in Canada, 150 years ago and it is the same here now amongst many "communities" today.

But it, de faco slavery, is uncivilized and it ought to be grounds for deportation.

 

[The Bread Guy]

There is probably a significant amount of Muslims that adapt well to Canadian culture; they are what is called "whitewashed".

Maybe we can get them to take a survey to determine how susceptible they are.

<pedant>
FYI, Apu is Hindu, not Muslim.
</pedant>
;D

 

[CougarKing]

Fallout or not, he was still on the FBI's most-wanted list...

Good riddens.

National Post link

Jihadi rapper and former Toronto pizza deliveryman Omar Hammami killed in Somalia ambush after falling out with al-Shabaab, militants say

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A rapping jihadi from Alabama who ascended the ranks of Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked militant group and was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list with a US$5-million reward for his capture was killed Thursday in an ambush ordered by the militant group’s leader, militants said.

Omar Hammami, a native of Daphne, Alabama and former Toronto pizza deliveryman who was known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, or “the American,” died in southern Somalia following several months on the run after a falling-out with al-Shabaab’s top leader, the militants said.

Reports of Hammami’s death crop up every few months in Somalia, only for him to resurface a short while later. But a U.S. terrorism expert who closely follows the inner workings of al-Shabaab says he thinks that the current reports of the death are accurate.


“I think it’s very likely true based on the sources I am seeing,” said J.M. Berger, who runs the website Intelwire.com.

Militants did not immediately present proof of Hammami’s death.

A member of al-Shabaab who gave his name as Sheik Abu Mohammed told The Associated Press that Hammami was killed in an ambush in Somalia’s southern Bay region. Some of Mohammed’s associates carried out the killing, he said.

Along with Adam Gadahn in Pakistan — a former Osama bin Laden spokesman — Hammami is one of the two most notorious Americans in jihad groups. He grew up in Daphne, a community of 20,000 outside Mobile, the son of a Christian mother and a Syrian-born Muslim father.

His YouTube videos that featured him rapping and his presence on Twitter made him one of the most recognizable and studied U.S. foreign fighters. The U.S. put Hammami on its Most Wanted terrorist list in March and offered a US$5-million reward for information leading to his capture.

U.S. prosecutors had charged Hammami with providing material support to terrorists.

]The Alabama-born 28-year-old left Toronto in 2005 and made his way through Cairo to join the Somali jihad. “We are all Osama,” he declared in one of his many self-aggrandizing online videos.

But his holy war now appears to be over. He fought alongside al-Shabaab for years until they had a falling out amid signs of increasing tension between Somali and foreign fighters in the group. He first expressed fear for his life in a web video in March 2012 that publicized his rift with al-Shabaab.

The first serious attempt on his life was made in April.

“Just been shot in neck by shabab assassin. not critical yet,” Hammami tweeted after the April attack. He later wrote on Twitter that the leader of al-Shabaab was sending in forces from multiple directions. “we are few but we might get back up. abu zubayr has gone mad. he’s starting a civil war,” Hammami posted.

Hammami accused al-Shabaab’s leaders of living extravagant lifestyles with the taxes fighters collect from Somali residents. Another Hammami grievance is that the Somali militant leaders sideline foreign militants inside al-Shabaab and are concerned only about fighting in Somalia, not globally.

The leader of al-Shabaab, Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, is also known as Godane.

Berger said that Hammami has been “a thorn in the side of al-Shabaab” for more than two years and “one of the few surviving dissenters after Godane’s bloody purge over the summer.”

Militants in Somalia have long hosted foreign fighters in the country. U.S. officials say that al-Shabaab, which has been around since about 2006, counts several hundred foreign fighters among its ranks, including several dozen Somali-Americans from Minnesota.

Al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda announced formal merger in February 2012, but the Somali militant group maintained a reputation as being hostile to foreign fighters.

“Hammami brought a lot of unwelcome outside scrutiny on Shabaab from the international jihadist community. His story will likely be a case study on what can go wrong when Westerners join jihadist movements,” Berger said.

———

 

[x_para76]

What I find most disturbing is when people try to defend Islam by stating that the extremists only represent a small minority of the religion and that we shouldn't judge them all based on the actions or views of a few. However, I can't recall very many occasions where the moderates have come out and publicly criticized  or spoke out against the extremists. I've heard their apathy compared to that of the average German during the Second World War, where the majority of Germans weren't hardcore Nazi's but because of their omission of action allowed a small minority to commit mass murder.

 

[Journeyman]

What I find most disturbing is when people try to defend Islam.....

Islam requires defending?  It's somehow indefensible?    :

 

[myself.only]

FWIW, my impression from the (English translation of) the Koran was surprise at what was IMHO a very defensive tone.
Seemed an awful lot of preparing the faithful for confrontation and discrimination, a lot of "If the unbeliever does X...."

 

[Colin Parkinson]

What I find most disturbing is when people try to defend Islam by stating that the extremists only represent a small minority of the religion and that we shouldn't judge them all based on the actions or views of a few. However, I can't recall very many occasions where the moderates have come out and publicly criticized  or spoke out against the extremists. I've heard their apathy compared to that of the average German during the Second World War, where the majority of Germans weren't hardcore Nazi's but because of their omission of action allowed a small minority to commit mass murder.

It is a small number that do intimidate the masses, through violent and non-violent means. Islam is about submission and they play that card well. I have met many Muslims that will repeat what they are being told, despite seeing with their own eyes something different. It's not worth sticking your neck out, because these nutbars are real nutbars and they are serious. The one saving grace in all this is everytime these nutbars get into power, they can't restrain themselves and finally they push the masses to far.

 

[x_para76]

Oh I have no doubt that moderate Muslims are as wary of the crazy Muslims as I am.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Some may be back to walking among us after second thoughts?

"In 2009, six zealous young Somali-Canadians abandoned their studies and families in Toronto to join Al-Shabab, an armed extremist group fighting a losing battle to impose its harsh version of Islamic law on Somalia.

Four years later, four of them are dead and on Thursday another former Toronto resident, Omar Hammami, was reported killed. But according to a Toronto imam, the remaining two have now left Al-Shabab after seeing the error of their ways.

“They realized what they were doing was wrong,” said Sheikh Said Rageah, who spoke recently to one of the Canadians, both now settled in Hargeysa, capital of the northern breakaway region of Somaliland. “They’re not into that anymore.”

The imam said they had married and were working, one as an English teacher. “They got their lives together. I don’t think they plan to come back [to Canada] but they definitely went back to university and they work so they have different plans. One of them has, I think, two kids.” ....

National Post, 12 Sept 13

 

[CougarKing]

Somali terror group has 20 American members, prone to strike outside Somalia

The Somali terror group that stormed a Kenyan mall, killing more than 60 people, has a larger U.S. contingent than any other al Qaeda offshoot, said U.S. officials, and is now more prone to mount deadly attacks on targets outside Somalia.

Al Shabaab's attacks on foreign targets include an attempt to kill a U.S. congressman visiting Mogadishu in 2009. Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., was uninjured in the mortar attack.

Via Twitter, al Shabaab has claimed that six of the jihadis holding hostages at Nairobi’s Westgate mall are Americans, and provided names for what it said were individuals from Minneapolis, Kansas City, Maine, Illinois and Arizona.

More at...

NBC News

 

[Lightguns]

More at...

NBC News

When one wants to kill a high value target with precision, one should always turn to mortars!

 

[OldSolduer]

How many do we have here I wonder.