Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

Pew on Muslim Extremists

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue, Tunisia, Turkey

The Pew Foundation has recently released a report entitled Most Muslims Want Democracy, Personal Freedoms, and Islam in Political Life on July 10, 2012. Click here to read the overview and gain access to a free pdf of the full report.


Here is what they say about Muslims views of extremists…

“Extremist groups are largely rejected in predominantly Muslim nations, although significant numbers do express support for radical groups in several countries. For instance, while there is no country in which a majority holds a favorable opinion of the Palestinian organization Hamas, it receives considerable support in Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt.

The militant Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah receives its highest overall ratings in Tunisia, where nearly half express a positive opinion. Sizable minorities in both Jordan and Egypt also have a favorable view, but Hezbollah’s image has been declining in both countries in recent years. In its home country, views about Hezbollah are sharply divided along sectarian lines: 94% of Shia, 33% of Christians, and 5% of Sunnis give the group favorable marks.

Across all six nations, less than 20% have a positive opinion about al Qaeda or the Taliban. In Turkey and Lebanon, support for these groups is in the single digits. However, fully 19% of Egyptians rate these extremist organizations favorably.”

MBBBB (Muslim Brotherhood Bashing by Bachman)

Ethics, Islam in America, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue


Anti-Obama propaganda on Americans Stand with Israel website

Ellison Challenges Bachmann: Put Up or Shut Up

by James Zogby, The Huffington Post, July 14, 2012

A few weeks back, the sensation-seeking Representative Michele Bachmann did her best imitation of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy. She and four of her Congressional colleagues released letters they had collectively sent to the Inspectors General of the Departments of State, Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, and the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence calling on them to investigate whether “influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood” have “had an impact on the federal government’s national security policies.”

Warning of “determined efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood to penetrate and subvert the American government as part of its ‘civilizational jihad'” the representatives wanted the Inspectors General to identify the Muslims who were influencing U.S. policy.

In making these charges, Bachmann and her cohorts were relying on the work of a Washington-based group the Center for Security Policy — a notorious player in the anti-Muslim industry that has been working for several years to smear Muslim American groups. The head of the Center served as one of Bachmann’s advisers during her ill-fated run for the presidency and the only source cited in the Congressional letters was the Center’s “training program,” “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within.” Continue reading MBBBB (Muslim Brotherhood Bashing by Bachman) →

Iconclasm Again

"Arab Spring", Architecture, Sufism, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Once again AQAP/Ansar al-Shari’a shows its mean spirit, not only destroying the lives of the living but resorting to desecrating the dead. Before pulling out of Ja’ar in southern Yemen, several of the iconclasts destroyed the shrine of al Ja’dani in Al Tareyyah, among other shrines. Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish, a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay and now a senior AQAP leader, issued a video taking credit for the demolition work. Here is what he is reported to have said:

“Here are the mujahideen by the grace of Allah the Great and Almighty carrying out what Allah commanded them to do and reviving their jihad in the Cause of Allah…. So, just as they fought democracy and representative councils which make laws alongside Allah, they are destroying the domes which are being worshipped other than Allah, along with the graves and mausoleums, which people try to get close to other than Allah the Great and Almighty.”

“We fight the idolatry of the palaces and the graves – both are the same.”

The idolatry he does not see is his own intolerance, as though Allah has made him a successor of the prophet. Yemen’s south is dotted with shrines, reflecting the generations of Sufis and other devout scholars who have lived in Yemen over the centuries. Rubaish, who is in fact a Saudi and not Yemeni, places himself above all these Yemenis of the past. Like the other AQAP leaders, he is not likely to last long, but the destruction he touts adds salt to the wounds of the current turmoil in Yemen. Yemen has a rich Islamic history of monuments and saints tombs. Unlike the Taliban blasting in 2001 of the Buddha images at Bamiyan, also a senseless act, Rubaish cannot even claim to be destroying an image from another religion. He thinks he is fighting “the palaces and the graves,” but he is really fighting against time and doing more to harm Islam than promote it.

Where is the salam dunk?

"Arab Spring", Arab-Israeli Conflict, Egypt, Ethics, Terrorism Issue


The epitome of Arabic greetings is salam alaykum, peace be upon you, but it seems that the Middle East harbors more harb (war) than peace these days. It can be argued that this is hardly new for a region that has seen more warfare over time than any other. Perhaps the characterization of the region as the Holy Land has as much to do with the amount of human blood spilled on its soil as for the number of prophets preaching peace. But today’s news cycle is particularly sad because nowhere does there seem to be much hope for furthering the peace that most people are dying to achieve. The violence drones on and on.

As former President Mubarak lies in a coma, many Egyptians are once again flooding Tahrir Square to contest the military’s coup-like takeover of political power, although perhaps it should be styled a makeover, since they have held de facto power all along and will continue to do so no matter who is elected. To Egypt’s south far less individuals took to the streets in Khartoum, protesting the Sudanese government. Although Somalia has been pushed out of the major news cycle, the situation there remains as volatile as ever. Crossing over into Sinai, an Israeli construction worker was killed a few days ago and in the escalating tension Hamas has fired rockets at Israel and Israel has launched air raids in Gaza. Syrian violence continues but without the pretense of powerless monitors and the repaired helicopters that were being shipped from Russia. In Iraq pilgrims continue to be targets of bombs and pay for their devotion with their lives. In Yemen the military commander of the brigade that drove Ansar al-Sharia out of their southern base was killed earlier in the week by a suicide bomber. Even in Turkey there has been recent violence from Kurdish nationalists.

Long ago one of the prophets in this region said the immortal words: Blessed are the peacemakers. But how can they be blessed if they are absent? Why does the curse of the warmakers seem to outweigh efforts at peace? If Indeed we recently witnessed an “Arab Spring,” the reality is that spring is part of a seasonal cycle and not eternal. The “fall” of dictatorial regimes is still playing out, but the cold sectarian winds blowing out hopes for peace and the frosted rhetoric of intolerance do not bode well for the tender blossoming of sought freedoms. The region needs a Gandhi, not an Osama or an Assad. The region needs a salam dunk, not a harb to the right. But, if history is any gauge, there will still be no blessings to confer in tomorrow’s news cycle.

Ansar al-Sharia on the Ropes?

"Arab Spring", Terrorism Issue, Yemen


The news today is that Yemeni government troops and local tribal militia have finally dislodged the ultra-conservative Ansar al-Sharia from their base in the southern towns of Ja’ar and Zinjabar. These cities had been under de facto control of the rebels for over a year, with the military weakened during the long drawn-out political turmoil that eventually led to the removal of Ali Abdullah Salih. According to al-Jazeera, “Since the offensive began, 485 people have been killed, according to an AFP tally combined from different sources. This includes 368 al-Qaeda fighters, 72 soldiers, 26 local armed men and 19 civilians.” Without question this is a major blow to a group that used foreign fighters and was increasingly at odds with local tribes. During their tenure both towns had become virtual ghost towns where a distinctively non-Yemeni form of Islamic law was mandated by force. Details thus far are rather skimpy. but it appears that the remaining individuals of Ansar al-Sharia fled east to al-Shaqra.

The question remains, of course, of whether this is a major blow to Ansar al-Sharia and its affiliated partner al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula or a skirmish. Given the massive external support now being given to the central government, I strongly suspect that this is the beginning of the end for Ansar al-Sharia as a fighting force. It has survived thus far on weapons looted from the army with almost no direct outside support apart from an influx of foreign fighters from Afghanistan and Somalia. The agenda of Ansar al-Sharia, like that of AQAP, has failed to find fertile ground among the bulk of the population with outright antagonism from most tribal leaders. It has flourished primarily due to the weakness of the government over the past year. Continue reading Ansar al-Sharia on the Ropes? →

Al Qaeda in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Film and Video, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Frontline aired an interesting program on Al Qaeda in Yemen last night. It features the Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who was able to visit the towns of Jaar and Azzam in southern Yemen, both as they were controlled by Ansar al-Sharia. It is clear from his reporting that some of the fighters are from outside Yemen, as he specifically mentions Somalis and Afghans. At the end of his report he visited Lawdar, where the local Yemeni tribesmen drove out the militants and are defending the town from them. The Yemeni tribes do not support either al Qaeda or Ansar al-Sharia, whose strict interpretation and high-handed ways go against tribal customary law. Although the government troops are currently suffering internal conflict, the days of Ansar al-Sharia are surely numbered. You can watch the program online.

On Islam, Romney Doesn’t Have the Slightest Idea What He’s Talking About

Obama Administration, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan


by Juan Cole, History News Network, May 7, 2012

Mitt Romney said Monday that of course he would have taken out Osama bin Laden and that “even Jimmy Carter would have made that call.”

Since Jimmy Carter ordered a brave and risky but failed military mission into Iran, that was a cheap shot on the part of someone who has never had anything to do with the military. Moreover, Jimmy Carter made peace between Egypt and Israel and played a major role in reducing the number of Africans stricken by the Guinea worm from 3.5 million to 1,100. So Romney, who has mainly been sending our jobs overseas, isn’t good enough to shine Carter’s shoes.

Moreover, Romney is forgetting what he said about Obama when bin Laden was killed:

“I think the president deserves credit for approving a relatively high-risk entry into the country with helicopters and special operations personnel, Navy SEALs,” Romney said. “That was the thing that proved to be successful.”

So at the time, Romney acknowledged that Obama made the decision, and that it was a high-risk strategy that he approved (advisors such as Joe Biden preferred a missile strike). Continue reading On Islam, Romney Doesn’t Have the Slightest Idea What He’s Talking About →

Googling the End of the World

Apocalypse Watch, CyberOrient, Humor and Satire, Terrorism Issue

Here is a moral teaser: is Google good or evil? Google and its browser kindred have completely transformed the way we get information. It is the cyberspatial ouija board that few people could do without. I will be using it while writing this post, for example. Yesterday morning I was reading an article posted on the LA Times website about a new study published in Science that argues how “Thinking can undermine religious faith.” In the left margin of the webpage there are two Ads by Google. Both are prime examples of what the article is saying: that a lot of what goes by the name of religion is gut level rather than thought out.

I clicked on “The End-Time is Here” Google ad and discovered a website with a free pdf of 2008 God’s Final Witness by Ronald Weinland, who gives updates on the book in his blog. My first gut level thought was how strange it was that a book about the end of the world with the date 2008 should still be touted on a Google ad. But upon further thinking, by actually reading parts of the book, I discovered that the magic date is in fact May 27, 2008, less than three weeks from today. Here is the blurb that says it all:

The year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind and the beginning in a countdown of the final three and one-half years of man’s self-rule that will end by May 27, 2012.

On December 14, 2008, the First Trumpet of the Seventh Seal of the Book of Revelation sounded, which announced the beginning collapse of the economy of the United States and great destruction that will follow. The next three trumpets will result in the total collapse of the United States, and once the Fifth Trumpet sounds the world will be thrust into WW III.

Silly me; the world was not supposed to end in 2008, since that was just the economic meltdown that God chose to let us all know that in a short time he would pull another Flood and this time 6 billion people would die. Bad news for Romney, I suppose, since I doubt any Mormons will be in the 144,000 elect who will then rule the earth (and unless God intervenes there will be a lot of stinking dead bodies to bury). I am not sure what or who they will rule over, since only the really good people are being saved, but then look what a terrible thing Noah’s son Ham did to his drunken, naked father. and given that curse of Ham, is it any wonder that Obama will be denied a second term? I wonder if having a socialist in the Oval Office, not to mention that God must have known that France would also just elect another socialist and the Commie Putin would sweep to victory again, was the final straw for the great God Jehovah.

Regarding this new date, pre-Mayan it would seem, both my gut and thinking part of my brain are skeptical, but it is only fair to reproduce the argument here so you as an educated reader can decide for yourself. So take a look at this:

Continue reading Googling the End of the World →