Well Here We See The Islamic Goal Of World Control – Read The Evidence
Clearly they are NOT for freedom of religion.
The Return of Al Qaeda and Jihad
by Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPageMagazine.com
August 8, 2013
http://www.meforum.org/3575/al-qaeda-return
In the ousting of Muhammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, al-Qaeda has been vindicated and the terror-jihad exonerated, in the opinion of many Islamists, that is.
According to the Associated Press, in a new video, al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri "said the military coup that ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi provides proof that Islamic rule cannot be established through democracy and urged the Islamist leader's followers to abandon the ballot box in favor of armed resistance [i.e., jihad]."
In fact, in the Arabic video, Zawahiri gloats over two points that he has championed for decades despite widespread opposition: that the Brotherhood was foolish to engage in democracy and elections in the first place, and that the triumph of Islam can only be achieved through jihad.
Interestingly, these two points go back to a long but internal debate between nonviolent Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, and violent jihadis, like al-Qaeda. While both groups pursue the same exact goals—a Sharia-ruling caliphate followed by the subjugation of the "infidel" world, according to Islamic teachings—they follow different strategies. The Brotherhood has long argued that, because the Islamic world is militarily weaker than the West, now is not the time for an all-out jihad, but rather a time for infiltration and subversion, a time for taqiyya and short-lived promises. Conversely, jihadis generally disavow pretense and diplomacy, opting for jihad alone.
Since the 1960s in Egypt, Ayman Zawahiri was an outspoken proponent of jihad (see "Ayman Zawahiri and Egypt: A Trip Through Time for a brief biography). In the early 1990s, he wrote an entire book titled Al Hissad Al Murr, or "The Bitter Harvest," where he argued that the Brotherhood "takes advantage of the Muslim youths' fervor by bringing them into the fold only to store them in a refrigerator. Then, they steer their onetime passionate, Islamic zeal for jihad to conferences and elections…. And not only have the Brothers been idle from fulfilling their duty of fighting to the death, but they have gone as far as to describe the infidel governments as legitimate, and have joined ranks with them in the ignorant style of governing, that is, democracies, elections, and parliaments."
Even so, after the terror strikes of 9/11, many became critical of al-Qaeda, whose actions were seen as setting back the Islamist agenda by creating more scrutiny and awareness in the West. The attacks further set off the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and gave many Arab governments—including former President Mubarak's—free reign to suppress all Islamists. As Montasser al-Zayyat, Zawahiri's biographer, wrote:
The poorly conceived decision to launch the attacks of September 11 created many victims of a war of which they did not choose to be a part…. Bin Laden and Zawahiri's behavior was met with a lot of criticism from many Islamists in Egypt and abroad…. In the post-September 11 world, no countries can afford to be accused of harboring the enemies of the United States. No one ever imagined that a Western European country would extradite Islamists who live on its lands. Before that, Islamists had always thought that arriving in a European city and applying for political asylum was enough to acquire permanent resident status. After September 11, 2001, everything changed…. Even the Muslim Brotherhood was affected by the American campaign, which targeted everything Islamic.
If the West "targeted everything Islamic," that was obviously short lived; for, from a different perspective, the post 9/11 world has proven to be the heyday of the Muslim Brotherhood. For starters, many Islamists began to see the wisdom of the Muslim Brotherhood's strategy of publicly renouncing violence (jihad) and appropriating Western language and paradigms in an effort to infiltrate and subvert.
And it certainly worked: the Brotherhood got what they wanted; their strategy of opting for elections and renouncing jihad, coupled with a highly sympathetic Obama administration, culminated with the Brotherhood leaving Egypt's prisons and filling the highest posts of government, beginning with the presidency.
However, now that the Brotherhood and Morsi have been ousted, the jihadis—chief among them Zawahiri, leader of al-Qaeda—are in full "we told you so" mode, renewing the argument that Islamic Sharia can never be established through infidel democracy, but rather only through jihad, long recognized as the only way to force people—including Muslims themselves—to comply with Allah's rule on earth. And it's becoming harder for nonviolent Islamists to argue otherwise, especially the now disgraced Brotherhood.
Thus, among an increasing number of Islamists, al-Qaeda's strategy—jihad and terror—has been justified and may well return in full force. Indeed, it's in this context that one must understand recent news that the U.S. "ordered the unprecedented closure of embassies in 19 countries across the Middle East and Africa," a decision sparked by Ayman Zawahiri's recent communiques.
No doubt Western apologists will now argue that it's in the West's interest to support and make concessions to the Muslim Brotherhood, since the alternative will be a renewal in jihadi terror. However, aside from the fact that such an argument is tantamount to submitting to blackmail—or that the resumption of jihad is just another reminder that al-Qaeda and the Brotherhood are two faces of the same coin—is it not better to get the ugly truth out in the open now, while the U.S. still has some power and influence, rather than later, when it will likely be even more infiltrated and handicapped?
Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War in Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, April 2013). He is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Radical Islam, Terrorism | Raymond IbrahimThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
The Turkish criminal courts have increasingly been used to further Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist agenda through hate-speech prosecutions. The May 22 sentencing of Turkish-Armenian Sevan Nisanyan continues this disturbing trend of strangling political and social discourse.
Mr. Nisanyan is a man of many interests and talents. Linguist, journalist and hotel entrepreneur, Mr. Nisanyan is not only known for his guidebook to small, affordable hotels in Turkey, but also was awarded the 2004 Freedom of Thought Award by Turkey's Human Rights Association for advocating the open discussion on the Armenian genocide. In 2008, he authored "The Mistaken Republic: 51 Questions about Ataturk and Kemalism," arguing that Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, established a fascist dictatorship under the guise of nationalism. Mr. Nisanyan continues to frequently publish witty critical posts against the authoritarian bodies of the Turkish government on his blog, often with direct critiques on the Erdogan regime.
Following the worldwide protests last September by Muslims enraged by the release of the satirical YouTube film "The Innocence of Muslims," Mr. Nisanyan argued in a Sept. 29 post that such discourse should not be criminalized. While mocking Muhammad is "ugly," it does not constitute a "hate crime." Putting emphasis on the distinction, Mr. Nisanyan wrote:
"Mocking an Arab leader — who claimed that he contacted God hundreds of years ago and who gained political, financial and sexual profit from this — is not a hate crime. Almost at the level of kindergarten, it is a test case of the thing called 'freedom of expression.'"
Mr. Nisanyan subsequently explained that his 377-word posting was spawned by Mr. Erdogan's uproar over "that cheapo Muhammad film" and his demand that the West recognize "Islamophobia as a crime against humanity."
The post not only prompted 15 separate criminal complaints, but Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag, an Erdogan confidant, called on prosecutors to launch an investigation. Breeching the sovereignty of the Turkish judiciary, he declared, "I'm announcing a crime. This is a typical hate crime. It is a hate crime, and it is a crime that is defined in our penal code."
On Oct. 15, Mr. Nisanyan appeared on CNN Turk's "Contrary to the Questions" to discuss the "The Innocence of Muslims" riots and the Turkish government's denouncements of the film. The Supreme Board of Radio and Television fined the private broadcast on the grounds that Mr. Nisanyan's comments "insulted the Prophet Muhammad," "exceeded the boundaries of freedom of expression" and were "insulting and injurious" to society.
In April, a month before Mr. Nisanyan's trial, world-renowned pianist Fazil Say was handed a 10-month suspended jail sentence under Article 216(3) for tweets made in jest about a call to prayer and heaven. On April 15, European Union foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton's office criticized Mr. Say's sentence, calling for Turkey "to fully respect freedom of expression." Three days later, Mr. Bozdag defended the conviction because Mr. Say "was swearing at someone's values," and "[n]obody should confuse freedom of thought with freedom of swearing."
With both Mr. Bozdag's public declaration of Mr. Nisanyan's guilt and endorsement of the Say verdict, combined with the radio-TV board's ruling, Mr. Nisanyan could not expect an impartial trial. Prosecuted under Turkish Criminal Code Article 216(3), which declares, "Any person who openly disrespects the religious belief of a group is punished with imprisonment from six months to one year if such act causes potential risk for public peace," the magistrate judge of course found Mr. Nisanyan guilty, sentencing him to a 13-month prison sentence, six weeks beyond the statutorily permissible punishment.
Currently appealing his conviction in the Court of Cessation, Mr. Nisanyan will have to serve the entire jail sentence should the magistrate's sentence be upheld. The sentence violates the European Convention on Human Rights' Article 6 (right to a fair trial) and Article 10 (freedom of expression). Mr. Nisanyan's next best course is an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights.
Reporters Without Borders immediately condemned the sentence as a "grave violation of freedom of information" and called for the immediate repeal of the "draconian" Article 216(3), which "has no place in a secular country such as Turkey."
While the Turkish government is secular, the Erdogan regime is not. Following his narrow 2002 victory, Mr. Erdogan declared, "Secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions. We are the guarantors of this secularism, and our management will clearly prove that." Now in the 11th year of his rule, Mr. Erdogan has abandoned any moderate facade.
Neither the State Department nor any EU agency has issued a statement about Mr. Nisanyan's plight. At this critical juncture, human rights organizations should file appeals on his behalf in the European Court of Human Rights. It is imperative that the international community become engaged; otherwise, opinions will continue to be criminalized by the Erdogan regime.
Sam Nunberg serves as director of the Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum.
This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
More Proof That Islam Does Not Believe In Freedom Of Religion For Others:
Egypt: Islamists hit Christian churches
CAIRO (AP) — After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like "prisoners of war" before a Muslim woman offered them refuge. Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.
In the four days since security forces cleared two sit-in camps by supporters of Egypt's ousted president, Islamists have attacked dozens of Coptic churches along with homes and businesses owned by the Christian minority. The campaign of intimidation appears to be a warning to Christians outside Cairo to stand down from political activism.
Christians have long suffered from discrimination and violence in Muslim majority Egypt, where they make up 10 percent of the population of 90 million. Attacks increased after the Islamists rose to power in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that drove Hosni Mubarak from power, emboldening extremists. But Christians have come further under fire since President Mohammed Morsi was ousted on July 3, sparking a wave of Islamist anger led by Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.
Nearly 40 churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others have been attacked and heavily damaged since Wednesday, when chaos erupted after Egypt's military-backed interim administration moved in to clear two camps packed with protesters calling for Morsi's reinstatement, killing scores of protesters and sparking deadly clashes nationwide.
One of the world's oldest Christian communities has generally kept a low-profile, but has become more politically active since Mubarak was ousted and Christians sought to ensure fair treatment in the aftermath.
Many Morsi supporters say Christians played a disproportionately large role in the days of mass rallies, with millions demanding that he step down ahead of the coup. Despite the violence, Egypt's Coptic Christian church renewed its commitment to the new political order Friday, saying in a statement that it stood by the army and the police in their fight against "the armed violent groups and black terrorism."
While the Christians of Egypt have endured attacks by extremists, they have drawn closer to moderate Muslims in some places, in a rare show of solidarity. Hundreds from both communities thronged two monasteries in the province of Bani Suef south of Cairo to thwart what they had expected to be imminent attacks on Saturday, local activist Girgis Waheeb said. Activists reported similar examples elsewhere in regions south of Cairo, but not enough to provide effective protection of churches and monasteries.
Waheeb, other activists and victims of the latest wave of attacks blame the police as much as hard-line Islamists for what happened. The attacks, they said, coincided with assaults on police stations in provinces like Bani Suef and Minya, leaving most police pinned down to defend their stations or reinforcing others rather than rushing to the rescue of Christians under attack.
Another Christian activist, Ezzat Ibrahim of Minya, a province also south of Cairo where Christians make up around 35 percent of the population, said police have melted away from seven of the region's nine districts, leaving the extremists to act with near impunity.
Two Christians have been killed since Wednesday, including a taxi driver who strayed into a protest by Morsi supporters in Alexandria and another man who was shot to death by Islamists in the southern province of Sohag, according to security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.
The attacks served as a reminder that Islamists, while on the defensive in Cairo, maintain influence and the ability to stage violence in provincial strongholds with a large minority of Christians. Gamaa Islamiya, the hard-line Islamist group that wields considerable influence in provinces south of Cairo, denied any link to the attacks. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has led the defiant protest against Morsi's ouster, has condemned the attacks, spokesman Mourad Ali said.
Sister Manal is the principal of the Franciscan school in Bani Suef. She was having breakfast with two visiting nuns when news broke of the clearance of the two sit-in camps by police, killing hundreds. In an ordeal that lasted about six hours, she, sisters Abeer and Demiana and a handful of school employees saw a mob break into the school through the wall and windows, loot its contents, knock off the cross on the street gate and replace it with a black banner resembling the flag of al-Qaida.
By the time the Islamists ordered them out, fire was raging at every corner of the 115-year-old main building and two recent additions. Money saved for a new school was gone, said Manal, and every computer, projector, desk and chair was hauled away. Frantic SOS calls to the police, including senior officers with children at the school, produced promises of quick response but no one came.
The Islamists gave her just enough time to grab some clothes. In an hourlong telephone interview with The Associated Press, Manal, 47, recounted her ordeal while trapped at the school with others as the fire raged in the ground floor and a battle between police and Islamists went on out on the street. At times she was overwhelmed by the toxic fumes from the fire in the library or the whiffs of tears gas used by the police outside.
Sister Manal recalled being told a week earlier by the policeman father of one pupil that her school was targeted by hard-line Islamists convinced that it was giving an inappropriate education to Muslim children. She paid no attention, comfortable in the belief that a school that had an equal number of Muslim and Christian pupils could not be targeted by Muslim extremists. She was wrong.
The school has a high-profile location. It is across the road from the main railway station and adjacent to a busy bus terminal that in recent weeks attracted a large number of Islamists headed to Cairo to join the larger of two sit-in camps by Morsi's supporters. The area of the school is also in one of Bani Suef's main bastions of Islamists from Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Salafis.
"We are nuns. We rely on God and the angels to protect us," she said. "At the end, they paraded us like prisoners of war and hurled abuse at us as they led us from one alley to another without telling us where they were taking us," she said. A Muslim woman who once taught at the school spotted Manal and the two other nuns as they walked past her home, attracting a crowd of curious onlookers.
"I remembered her, her name is Saadiyah. She offered to take us in and said she can protect us since her son-in-law was a policeman. We accepted her offer," she said. Two Christian women employed by the school, siblings Wardah and Bedour, had to fight their way out of the mob, while groped, hit and insulted by the extremists. "I looked at that and it was very nasty," said Manal.
The incident at the Franciscan school was repeated at Minya where a Catholic school was razed to the ground by an arson attack and a Christian orphanage was also torched. "I am terrified and unable to focus," said Boulos Fahmy, the pastor of a Catholic church a short distance away from Manal's school. "I am expecting an attack on my church any time now," he said Saturday.
Bishoy Alfons Naguib, a 33-year-old businessman from Minya, has a similarly harrowing story. His home supplies store on a main commercial street in the provincial capital, also called Minya, was torched this week and the flames consumed everything inside.
"A neighbor called me and said the store was on fire. When I arrived, three extremists with knifes approached me menacingly when they realized I was the owner," recounted Naguib. His father and brother pleaded with the men to spare him. Luckily, he said, someone shouted that a Christian boy was filming the proceedings using his cell phone, so the crowd rushed toward the boy shouting "Nusrani, Nusrani," the Quranic word for Christians which has become a derogatory way of referring to them in today's Egypt.
Naguib ran up a nearby building where he has an apartment and locked himself in. After waiting there for a while, he left the apartment, ran up to the roof and jumped to the next door building, then exited at a safe distance from the crowd.
"On our Mustafa Fahmy street, the Islamists had earlier painted a red X on Muslim stores and a black X on Christian stores," he said. "You can be sure that the ones with a red X are intact." In Fayoum, an oasis province southwest of Cairo, Islamists looted and torched five churches, according to Bishop Ibram, the local head of the Coptic Orthodox church, by far the largest of Egypt's Christian denominations. He said he had instructed Christians and clerics alike not to try to resist the mobs of Islamists, fearing any loss of life.
"The looters were so diligent that they came back to one of the five churches they had ransacked to see if they can get more," he told the AP. "They were loading our chairs and benches on trucks and when they had no space for more, they destroyed them." [SOURCE - RETRIEVED FROM http://www.mail.com/news/world/2280240-egypt-islamists-hit-christian-churches.html#.7518-stage-set3-3 ON 8/18/2013]
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth. "Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today, and go to www.jw.org!
Muslim Persecution of Christians: June, 2013
by Raymond Ibrahim
Gatestone Institute
September 11, 2013
http://www.meforum.org/3609/muslim-persecution-of-christians-june-2013
The degradation of Christian women living in the Islamic world continued in the month of June. In Syria, after the al-Qaeda linked rebel group conquered Qusair, a city of the governate of Homs, 15-year-old Mariam was kidnapped, repeatedly gang raped according to a fatwa legitimizing the rape of non-Sunni women by any Muslim waging jihad against Syria's government, and then executed.
According to Agenzia Fides, "The commander of the battalion 'Jabhat al-Nusra' in Qusair took Mariam, married and raped her. Then he repudiated her. The next day the young woman was forced to marry another Islamic militant. He also raped her and then repudiated her. The same trend was repeated for 15 days, and Mariam was raped by 15 different men. This psychologically destabilized her and made her insane. Mariam became mentally unstable and was eventually killed."
In Pakistan, Muslim men stormed the home of three Christian women, beat them, stripped them naked and tortured them, and then paraded them in the nude in a village in the Kasur district. Days earlier, it seems the goats of the Christian family had accidentally trespassed onto Muslim land; Muslims sought to make an example of the Christian family, who, as third-class citizens, must know their place at all times.
The rest of June's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not according to severity:
Attacks on Christian Worship: Churches and Monasteries
Iraq: During the middle of the night, armed men attacked St. Mary's Assyrian Catholic Church in Baghdad; they wounded two Christian guards, one seriously. Later the same day, bombs were set off at two Christian-owned businesses, both near the church; they killed one Christian shop owner, a parishioner at St. Mary's. Since the U.S. "liberation" of Iraq in 2003, 73 churches have been attacked or bombed, and more than half of the country's Christian population has either fled or been killed.
Kenya: Motorbike assailants hurled an explosive device into the Earthquake Miracle Ministries Church in Mrima village church compound during the Sunday of June 9, injuring 15 people, including one pastor who had both his legs broken, another pastor who sustained serious injuries, and a 10-year-old child. Said another church leader, "The Christians living around the scene of the incident are still in shock and are wondering as to the mission behind the attack, while several pastors looked demoralized. But others said prayers will help them stand strong in sharing the Christian faith." Islamic extremists from Somalia's jihadi organization Al Shabaab are suspected of this and other attacks on Christians in the coastal areas of Kenya.
Nigeria: Four churches were burned in an attack committed by members of the jihadi group Boko Haram in Borno State in the Muslim-majority north of the country. According to Agenzia Fides, "A group of armed men with improvised explosive devices and petrol bombs attacked the Hwa'a, Kunde, Gathahure and Gjigga communities on Gwoza Hills, burning the 4 churches, raiding and looting cattle and grain reserves belonging to the population." Discussing the ongoing terrorism Christians in the north are exposed to, one pastor lamented, "There are Christian villages that have been completely wiped out by these Muslim terrorists… Christian fellowship activities and evangelism outreaches are no longer possible…. For a number of years, the attacks on Christians in these three local government areas have caused the displacement of thousands of Christians there. There is a very lamentable problem, as we are no longer able to worship God as Christians in this part of Nigeria."
Syria: An Islamic jihadi rebel wearing a suicide belt reportedly detonated himself outside the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church in an old Christian quarter in Damascus; the attack left four people dead and several injured. Rebel sources confirmed the attack but said it was caused by a mortar bomb. Around the same time, jihadi rebels massacred the Christian village of al-Duwair near Homs, while destroying its churches. Also, according to Agenzia Fides, a Belgian Catholic priest, Fr. Daniel Maes, 74, of the religious Order of "Canons Regular Premonstratensian," was last reported as being "in the sights of jihadi groups who intend to eliminate him and invade the monastery of San James mutilated in Qara," which dates back to the fifth century. Earlier the priest had denounced the "ethnic cleansing" carried out on Christians in Qusair, after the town was taken by the rebels and jihadi groups: "The surrounding Christian villages were destroyed and all the faithful who were caught were killed, according to a logic of sectarian hatred… For decades, Christians and Muslims lived in peace in Syria. If criminal gangs can roam and terrorize civilians, is this not against international laws? Who will protect the innocent and ensure the future of this country? … Young people are disappointed, because foreign powers dictate their agenda. Moderate Muslims are worried, because Salafists and fundamentalists want to impose a totalitarian dictatorship of religious nature. The citizens are terrified because they are innocent victims of armed gangs."
Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism
Indonesia: The Indonesian Ulema Council in Tegal issued a fatwa against Catholic schools, saying they are "forbidden" and "morally unsound" for young Muslim students, despite its pupils, both Muslim and Christian, routinely scoring higher than in other schools. "For the schools," reported Asia News, "the fatwa is a great blow, coming in the wake of attacks from Muslim extremists and local governments that included threats of closure that were however eventually dropped… [M]any Muslim families have come to the defence of the two schools, claiming their right to a quality education. In fact, many schools run by nuns, priests and lay Catholics offer such excellence in education that they are sought after by non-Christians." Earlier the influential Indonesian Ulema Council lashed out during flag-raising "because Mohammed never did it;" before that announcement, the Islamic clerics "launched anathemas against Facebook for its 'amoral' nature, as well as yoga, smoking and voting rights, in particular for women."
Pakistan: A 16-year-old boy who converted to Christianity from Islam a year ago, and began attending Bible lessons in a Protestant community, was abducted in Peshawar. Local sources said he was kidnapped by Taliban-linked Islamic militants "and his fate may already be marked, as he is considered 'guilty of apostasy,'" the penalty of which is death. As one Pakistani pastor explained: "If a young Muslim converts to Christianity in Pakistan, he is forced to live in hiding. Every Muslim might feel compelled to kill him. The change of religion is not punished by the civil law, it is punishable by Islamic law. For this reason cases of Muslim conversion to Christianity are very rare and some convert in secret."
Somalia: Islamic terrorists from Al Shabaab ("The Youth") publicly executed a 28-year-old man after determining that he had in fact become a Christian. Aiming at his head, he was shot "to death." As Morning Star News explains, "Somalis are considered Muslim by birth, and apostasy, or leaving Islam, is punishable by death." After the execution, the man's parents, widow and son fled the region. The Al-Qaeda linked Al Shabaab has vowed to cleanse Somalia of all Christian presence, and its members have murdered dozens of Muslim converts to Christianity.
Uzbekistan: Four police officers raided the home of a 76-year-old Christian woman, ill with Parkinson's disease. After removing her from her bed and without producing a search warrant, they "turned everything in the home upside down," and confiscated her Bible and other Christian materials. Since then, the woman has been subjected to innumerable legal proceedings. Most recently, she was convicted of "Illegal production, storage, or import into Uzbekistan with a purpose to distribute or distribution of religious materials by physical persons." The judge ordered that her Bible, 14 Christian books, six DVDs and a video be destroyed. She was told by court officials, "This is a Muslim country and all of your Christian books including the Bible are outlawed." Because these proceedings have caused her extreme anxiety, after one hearing an ambulance was called for her.
Dhimmitude: A Climate of Hate and Contempt
Bangladesh: A mob of some "60 extremists" raided a predominantly Christian village. According to the Barnabas Aid group, "they plundered the residents' livestock and other possessions and threatened to return to burn down homes. The attackers then moved on to nearby Bolakipur and targeted a Christian seminary. Battering down the doors, they forced their way into the building and severely beat the rector and a number of students. The previous day, two church leaders from Tumilia were beaten and robbed."
Egypt: "Unknown persons" kidnapped a 7-year-old Christian girl in Dakhaleya Province in northern Egypt. The girl, Jessica Nadi Gabriel, was attending a wedding ceremony with her family when she was seized and torn away. Her father later revealed that the 7-year-old girl's abductors called him demanding a ransom of 650,000 Egyptian Pounds (nearly $100,000 USD). Two weeks earlier, a 6-year-old Coptic boy who was kidnapped and held for ransom, was still killed and discarded in the sewer—even after his family paid the Muslim kidnapper the demanded ransom. Also, a Coptic Christian man named Milad, living in Tanta, said that "unknown persons" invited him and his family to renounce Christianity and submit to Islam and convert. According to widely-read Egyptian newspaper,Youm7, "They also snatched at the crucifix he was wearing around his neck, and threatened to kidnap his children and wife if he refused to convert to Islam." As they wore the trademark white robes and long beards, the man identified them as members of the Salafi movement in Egypt. Meanwhile, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson was urging the Coptic pope to forbid the Copts from protesting against Muslim Brotherhood rule -- even though they, as Christians, would suffer under it most -- while Al Azhar, the world's oldest Islamic university, based in Cairo, called on new Catholic Pope, Francis I, to declare that "Islam is a peaceful religion."
Iran: According to a June 19 Morning Star News report, "Six more Christians were sentenced for practicing their faith last week, while Iran's presidential election of a moderate politician was not expected to soften the regime's persecution of religious minorities." The same six Christians had been arrested earlier in February 2012, when police raided their house-church meeting. Officials rejected their appeal for release on bail; they are being held in Adel Abad Prison in Shiraz, which houses hardened criminals and often lacks heating or health facilities, and where officials routinely deny medical treatment to prisoners.
Pakistan: Three months after a mob of 3,000 Muslims attacked a Christian neighborhood in Lahore, burning down two churches and 160 Christian homes, few of the perpetrators are in prison. Hundreds of those detained immediately after the incident were released; of the 83 who were arrested, 31 have been released on bail. "Most of the people who were stopped after the attack were declared innocent by the police and immediately released, for corruption or political pressure," said a Christian lawyer. Meanwhile, the Christian whose arrest on blasphemy charges was the occasion for the rampage has gone on trial, even as he insists he never insulted Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
Palestinian Authority: Five schools in Gaza—two Catholic and three Christian—face closure if the Hamas government follows through on an order forbidding co-educational institutions. According to Fr. Faysal Hijazin: "This will be a big problem. We hope they will not go through with it, but if they do, we will be in big trouble. We don't have the space and we don't have the money to divide our schools." In addition to finding additional space, he said, the schools face having to hire more teachers. Under Islamic law, men and women teachers would not be allowed to teach classes to members of the opposite sex older than the age of 10. "It is a concern that in education things are getting more conservative," said the priest. "It reflects the whole society. This is of concern to both Christians and moderate Muslims. It is not easy to be there."
Tanzania: Two Christian pastors were attacked by Muslims. On the night of Sunday, June 2, a Muslim mob broke into the home of Robert Ngai, the pastor of the Evangelical Assemblies of God Church in northeastern Tanzania, and attacked him with machetes. The pastor received serious cuts on his hands and arms when he raised them to protect his head from the blows; when last heard of, he was in the intensive care unit. Two nights earlier, the home of Daudi Nzumbi, Pastor of the Free Pentecostal Church of Tanzania congregation in Geita, also came under attack. However, the attackers fled after they were confronted by Pastor Nzumbi's large, barking dogs. When Nzumbi called police, the officer in charge told him, "I cannot protect every pastor!"
About this Series
Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching pandemic proportions, "Muslim Persecution of Christians" was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:
1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians.
2) To show that such persecution is not "random," but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Sharia.
Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; apostasy and blasphemy laws that criminalize and punish with death those who "offend" Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like dhimmis, or second-class, "tolerated" citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination.
Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to India in the East, and throughout the West wherever there are Muslims—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.
Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War in Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, April 2013). He is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Anti-Christianism | Raymond IbrahimThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral
whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth. "Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today, and go to www.jw.org!
MORE PROOF THAT ISLAM DOES NOT BELIEVE IN FREEDOM OF RELIGION:
Guillaume Lavallee
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - A devastating double suicide attack on a church in northwest Pakistan has triggered fears among the country's beleaguered Christian community that they will be targeted in a fresh wave of Islamist violence.
The blasts that tore through the congregation at All Saints church in Peshawar after the service on Sunday morning, killing 82 people, are believed to be the deadliest attack ever on Pakistan's small Christian community.
The country has been wracked by years of Islamist violence and a rising tide of sectarian attacks among Muslims, but before now the biggest concern among Christians has usually been mob violence triggered by blasphemy allegations.
Shaloom Nazir, 14, was getting ready for Bible study at the 100-year-old church when the bombers struck just before noon.
In an instant he lost his mother, father, sister, brother and uncle.
"I was going to sit down in the church for a Bible class when I heard the explosion, so I ran out," Shaloom Nazir told AFP, his voice choked with grief, his eyes fixed lifelessly on some distant point.
"There were about 300 people lying on the ground. I recognised my mother, I took her in my arms." It was to no avail -- she later died of her injuries.
Pakistani Christians and security officials gather outside the Church after two suicide bomb attacks …
The walls of the courtyard were pockmarked with the ragged metal ball bearings that had been packed into the suicide bombers' explosive vests to cause maximum carnage.
Many Pakistani Christians are the descendants of low-caste ancestors who converted during the days of British rule, and most are poor, relegated to dirty, undesirable jobs.
They make up just two percent of Pakistan's 180 million population and have suffered attacks and riots in recent years over allegations of profaning the Koran or Prophet Mohammed.
Sectarian violence between majority Sunni Muslims and the Shiites, who make up about 20 percent of the population, has risen alarmingly in recent years, but Christians have largely escaped the bloodshed.
Sunday's carnage has raised fears that this might change.
"We have been treated like sinners. We have no lands, we have no factories, we have no business," said Saleem Haroon, who came to see two wounded cousins at Peshawar's main Lady Reading hospital.
"It is a new war. Before, the Shias were the target, but now we are the target. They want to create a new battle, a new battleground."
In a corner of a room at the hospital, the blood of some of the victims mingled on the tiled floor with rubbish and dirty water.
Christians mourn beside the coffins of relatives killed in suicide bomb attacks on a Peshawar church …
"We are just sweepers and still we have been treated like this. Look over there in the washroom," he said, gesturing angrily at the mess.
"If all the Christians die, who will clean it? All the sweepers died yesterday."
Danish Yunas, 35, a driver who was lucky to escape from the blast with just a leg wound, said Christians and Muslims had got on well in the past, but he feared those days were at an end.
"We had very good relations with the Muslims -- there was no tension before that blast, but we fear that this is the beginning of a wave of violence against the Christians," he told AFP.
The Bishop of Peshawar, Humphrey Peters, said he had asked the authorities to review security for Christians but to no avail.
"I am afraid that this is the beginning, it can spread to the rest of Pakistan. We are the soft target. The Christians are the soft target," he told AFP.
"We are the poorest of the poor in this particular region and then we are also marginalised."
A militant faction linked to the Pakistani Taliban claimed Sunday's attack, but the main spokesman for the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group denied responsibility.
Men prepare for the burial of the victims of a suicide bombing that targeted a church in Peshawar on …
The government has proposed talks with the Taliban and TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said the church bombing was an attempt to sour the atmosphere.
Speaking in London on Sunday Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the government was "unable to proceed further" with talks following the church attack.
Thousands of angry Christians protested around Pakistan on Monday to demand better protection from the authorities.
In the poor, grimy streets around All Saints church, they raged against the national government in Islamabad and in particular against the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government led by former cricketer Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
"We have been betrayed.... Yesterday, none of the government came here," said teacher Asif Nawab outside the church.
PTI came to power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in elections in May on the promise of a "tsunami" of change.
But after losing most of her family in the attack, Shaloom's aunt Afia Zaheen was left to wonder if the change that had come was a new fear of attacks.
"In the elections Imran Khan said this is a tsunami, it will bring change, but where is the tsunami? Is this the change?" she said. [SOURCE - RETRIEVED FROM http://news.yahoo.com/christians-fear-attacks-pakistan-church-bombs-030223064.html ON 9/24/2013]
Muslim Persecution of Christians: July, 2013
by Raymond Ibrahim
Gatestone Institute
September 19, 2013
http://www.meforum.org/3616/muslim-persecution-of-christians-july-2013
On July 4th, the day after the Egyptian military liberated the nation of Muslim Brotherhood rule, Christian Copts were immediately scapegoated and targeted. All Islamist leaders—from Brotherhood supreme leader Muhammad Badi, to Egyptian-born al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri, to top Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi—made it a point to single out Egypt's Copts as being especially instrumental in the ousting of former Islamist president Morsi, ushering in a month of pogroms against the nation's Christian minority.
Among other things in July, unprecedented numbers of Christian churches were attacked, plundered, desecrated, and torched. According to one Egyptian human rights lawyer, "82 churches, many of which were from the 5th century, were attacked by pro-Morsi supporters in just two days." Al-Qaeda's flag was raised above some churches; anti-Christian graffiti littered the sides of other churches and Coptic homes. Due to extreme anti-Christian sentiment, many churches ceased holding worship services until recently. Dozens of Coptic homes and businesses were also attacked, looted, and torched.
In the Sinai, a young Coptic priest was shot dead in front of his church, while the body of Magdy Lam'i Habib, a Copt, was found mutilated and beheaded. Four other Christians were slaughtered by Muslims in Luxor province. Whole towns and villages have been emptied of Copts, including more than 100 Christian families from El Arish in the terror-infested Sinai.
Due to the many death threats to Coptic Pope Tawadros II, for a time he left the papal residence at St. Mark Cathedral—which was earlier savagely attacked, when Morsi was still president—and temporarily ceased holding services.
The rest of July's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not according to severity:
Attacks on Christian Worship: Churches and Monasteries
Guinea: During a mob-led frenzy, Christians and their churches were savagely attacked in the Muslim-majority nation, with some 95 Christians slain and 130 wounded. In Nzérékoré, five churches as well as the homes of pastors were attacked by Muslim mobs. One priest recounted the violence: "The two Catholic and Protestant churches have all been ransacked and burned… Almost all the houses and shops belonging to Christians or people affiliated with Christians, have not escaped the fury of the attackers." Similarly, the Catholic area, including the quarters of the nuns, was looted before being torched. In Moribadou, the violence lasted three days and saw some 10 churches destroyed.
Indonesia: According to the Annual Report published by IndonesianChristian.org, a Protestant organization monitoring the nation's Christian community, the pressures against Christian communities in Aceh "have become intolerable. Within a year, with non-existent legal pretexts, 17 house churches have been closed: these also include Catholic chapels. The Islamization of the province continues, just as promised by the governor Abdullah." The forced closure of places of worship and threats against Protestant congregations, says the text, "increase unabated… The behavior of local authorities is a potential threat to the tolerant atmosphere we see deteriorating over time." Behind this upsurge is the aforementioned current governor of Aceh, Zaini Abdullah, who earlier spent years in exile in Sweden for his Islamist and separatist activities. During his election campaign, the Islamic politician frequently said that "he would not hesitate to apply the Koranic laws in the province." Months after his victory and his words have become reality.
Nigeria: Members or supporters of the Islamic organization Boko Haram set off four bombs planted near three Protestant churches in Kano city, killing at least 45 people. Local Christians were meeting for Bible study at Christ Salvation Pentecostal Church when one explosion hit, and 39 bodies were recovered in the area; Christians were also meeting at St. Stephen's Anglican Church when another bomb went off; and an explosion apparently targeting Peniel Baptist Church failed to affect the building.
PA Territories: Nuns of the Greek-Orthodox monastery in Bethany sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urging him and other PA leaders to respond to the escalation of attacks on the Christian house, including the throwing of stones, broken glass, theft and looting of the monastery property. "Someone wants to send us away," wrote Sister Ibraxia to Abbas, "but we will not flee." Added to complications, and as increasingly happens to other monasteries—such as a 5th century monastery in Turkey—a local Muslim family has, according to local Christians, "arbitrarily" claimed the monastery's land.
Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism
Pakistan: Asia Bibi, a Christian mother languishing on death row since June 2009 for allegedly blaspheming Islam's prophet Muhammad, may have to wait another two more years before the appeal against her blasphemy conviction is heard. In November 2010 she was sentenced to death. The chairman of the Human Liberation Commission in Pakistan has been lobbying the country's chief justice for Asia's appeal to be heard as soon as possible but has received no response. Also, a Christian couple was arrested for allegedly sending blasphemous text messages to a Muslim cleric in Gojra, where a week before a young Christian man was sentenced to life in prison on the same charge. Shafqat Masih, 43, and his wife Shagufta, 40, who have four children between the ages of 5 and 11, were taken into custody on a complaint by Muslim cleric Rana Muhammad Ejaz, who alleged that he had received blasphemous text messages from Masih. Gojra City police registered a case under Section 295-C of Pakistan's widely condemned blasphemy laws for allegedly defaming Islam's prophet, Muhammad. Conviction is punishable by death or life in prison, which is 25 years in Pakistan.
Iran: Mostafa Bordbar, a Muslim convert to Christianity who, along with several other Christians, was arrested in December 2012 while celebrating Christmas, was tried in Tehran's Revolutionary Court. He is one of several Christian prisoners currently being held in ward 350 of Evin prison for their faith. According to Mohabat News, the court registered the charges against him as "illegal gathering and participating in a house church." If found guilty, he can be sentenced to anywhere from two to 10 years in prison. Five years earlier, he was arrested for converting to Christianity and participating in a house church. His interrogator at the time charged him with "apostasy,"a charge which still remains on his record.
Sudan: Apparently responding to the vitality of the Christian church, Ammar Saleh, the head of the Islamic Centre for Preaching and Comparative Studies, chastised the government for not taking decisive action against Christians operating "boldly" and thus leading to the apostasy of many Muslim converts to Christianity. According to International Christian Concern (ICC), Saleh "argued that anyone who believes there's growth in Sudan's Islamic faithful is 'living on Mars,' drawing attention to increasing proselytization and an exodus of Muslims to Christianity… He also stated that the government's efforts to curb the rise of Christianity were timid as compared to efforts of missionaries to lead people to Christ." Meanwhile, according to ICC "Churches are being forced to close down, foreign workers are being kicked out of the country and Christians are constantly pressurized by the government and society in all kinds of ways, so much so that the recent increase in Christian persecution in Sudan moved the country from being ranked 16th on the 2012 Open Doors World watch List to 12th in 2013."
Dhimmitude: A Climate of Hate and Contempt
Iraq: Kidnapped on May 27, the body of Salem Dawood Coca, a Christian, was found inside the truck he was driving when abducted. According to AINA News, "The truck was booby trapped with explosives, and it is believed that he was forced to carry out a suicide bombing, but refused to do so. The kidnappers had contacted Mr. Coca's family but had not demanded a ransom and described him as a 'Christian infidel.'" Mr. Coca leaves behind a wife and several children.
Kurdistan: A Muslim ambulance driver refused to transport the deceased body of a Christian woman from the hospital to the church, citing that it was forbidden in Islam. According to Asia News, "The body of the Assyrian woman, who died last Sunday at Zarkari hospital in Erbil, had to be brought to the town of Ankawa, but the Muslim ambulance driver refused to drive to the church because it is "haram" (forbidden) in Islam." In traditional Muslim theology, being near the deceased body of an infidel is dangerous, as the torture reserved for them could spread.
Nigeria: Growing numbers of Christian girls in Muslim-majority areas, where the Islamic group, Boko Haram holds sway, are being abducted, kept in the homes of Muslim leaders and forced to renounce their faith. According to Professor Daniel Babayi, secretary of the Northern Christian Association of Nigeria, the issue is getting worse: "Christian girls below the age of 18 are forcefully abducted and made to denounce their faith… They have been kept in the houses of emirs or imams. When we report to the police, they tell you there is nothing they can do. The police have become very helpless. In some instances, they are part of the conspiracy." Last year, Boko Haram had declared that it would begin doing precisely this—kidnap Christian women—as a way "to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam."
Pakistan: Farhad Masih, a 16-year-old Christian boy, was arrested and beaten on the accusation that he was involved with a Muslim girl (which is forbidden in Islam). A Muslim mob also tried to burn and loot his family's house. Local Muslim leaders have made several draconian stipulations, including that the boy must either convert to Islam or die. The same thing happened earlier in April 2013, when three Christian youth were arrested, tortured, and killed by Pakistani police for allegedly having "love affairs" with Muslim girls.
Syria: According to the Assyrian International News Agency, the "Assyrian village of Tel Hormizd was attacked on Saturday, July 27 at about midnight. Fifty Arab Muslims on motorcycles entered the village and began a shooting rampage. According to residents, theMuslims fired indiscriminately, wounding two Assyrians, one of whom is still in hospital." Also, al-Qaeda linked rebel fighters abducted Fr. Paolo Dall'Oglio, a prominent Italian Jesuit priest, most likely for ransom or beheading. Ironically, Fr. Paolo had reportedly championed the uprising against Bashar al-Assad.
Nigerian Slaughter
July saw several atrocities during the jihad on Nigeria's Christians, including:
• At least 28 were killed in a series of explosions throughout a Christian neighborhood in the Muslim-majority northern city of Kano. The attacks happened in the evening while people were out "to enjoy the area's nightlife." The same neighborhood had been targeted in the past by Boko Haram. The group has been responsible for the killing of more than 2,000 people; and although several nations have designated the group as a terrorist organization, the Obama government refuses to do so, even asseveral American policymakers push for the designation.
•
• At least 30 Christian men, women and children were slain in three villages in southern Plateau state on June 27 by Islamic extremists suspected to be from outside of Nigeria who raided the villages massacring all in sight. Initially a Muslim spokesman for the military's Special Task Force said the Christian residents of Magama, Bolgong and Karkashi were attacked by Fulani herdsmen "in apparent retaliation for cattle theft." Later, however, the military said that many of the culprits were not even Nigerian. "The number of Christians killed may be as high as 70, as corpses of Christians killed while fleeing these attacked villages still litter the bushes," said a witness. "The Muslim attackers chased their Christian victims on motorcycles and were killing them as they tried to escape. So many dead bodies have been recovered from the bush, and we believe that more may still be found…. So far, we have recorded over 100 houses that have been burnt down by the rampaging Muslim Fulani attackers in these villages."
•
• According to Christian Today, Boko Haram "has repeatedly attacked Christian communities and churches, most recently killing 40 at a boarding school in Yobe state on 6 July. A dormitory was set alight in the attack and those fleeing gunned down. A dormitory was set aflame while the children were sleeping; those trying to escape were gunned down. A month earlier, 16 other students were shot dead in attacks on a secondary school in Yobe and another school in Borno. True to its name, "Boko Haram," or "Western Education is a Sin," the group recently asserted, "Teachers who teach western education? We will kill them! We will kill them in front of their students, and tell the students to henceforth study the Quran."
•
• Islamic gunmen raided Dinu village in southern plateau state, a Christian village, on an early Sunday morning, before church services, as increasingly happens, and slaughtered six Christians, a month after Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot another Christian to death in a nearby village and destroyed the churches of four villages.
About this Series
Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching pandemic proportions, "Muslim Persecution of Christians" was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:
1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians.
2) To show that such persecution is not "random," but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Sharia.
Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; apostasy and blasphemy laws that criminalize and punish with death those who "offend" Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like dhimmis, or second-class, "tolerated" citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination.
Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to India in the East, and throughout the West wherever there are Muslims—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.
Related Topics: Anti-Christianism | Raymond IbrahimThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
On September 11, 2011, three lifelong friends—Brendan Mess, age 25, Erik Weissman, 31, and Raphael Teken, 37—were brutally murdered in Mess's apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts. The graphic crime scene was discovered in the early afternoon of September 12, 2011, by Mess's girlfriend, who ran screaming from the apartment. The victims had been dragged to three different rooms and killed there. Their bodies had multiple stab wounds; their throats were slit from ear to ear with such force that they were nearly decapitated, and their mutilated corpses were covered with drugs and money. In addition to the seven pounds of marijuana found on their bodies, $5,000 in cash was left at the scene. Two of the three victims were Jewish, and several sources have identified all three victims as such.[1]
The men were described as having been physically strong: Mess was a mixed martial arts fighter, Weissman, a body builder, and Teken, a personal trainer. Their strength, the location of the bodies, and the forensic evidence led investigators to conclude that there had been more than one perpetrator at the scene. Additionally, two unidentified men had been seen at the apartment before the murders, and there was no evidence of forced entry, indicating that the offenders and victims probably knew each other, that the victims had let the killers in, and that the murders were not random. No motive was discovered, but because of the drugs and money found in the apartment and the fact that all three victims had a history of drug use or drug dealing, investigators logically presumed that the homicide was related to the drug trade.
The murder investigation went cold until the Boston marathon bombings of April 2013 when the Middlesex County District Attorney's office began actively investigating connections between the crime and the Boston marathon bombing suspects, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. What was not immediately apparent is that the same jihadist motivations that impelled the brothers to murder innocent Americans on that April afternoon were the likely motives behind the Waltham murders.
Questions about Motive
Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died after a shootout with police, had several close connections to the case. One of the victims, Brendan Mess, was described as his best friend; they lived a few blocks from each other, were sparring partners where they spent hours training together, and went to fighting and social events together. Mess and Tsarnaev had once been roommates, and Tsarnaev had regularly visited Mess's apartment where the murders took place. Tsarnaev was one of the last people to see Mess alive but neither attended his friend's funeral nor his memorial service. A relative of Mess's said that animosity had developed between the two friends "over Brendan's lifestyle."[2] On May 10, 2013, news accounts reported that forensic evidence, including DNA from the Waltham crime scene, provided a match to the two Tsarnaev brothers and that records of cell phones used by the Tsarnaevs put them in the area of the murders on that date.[3]
On May 22, 2013, a third person of interest in the murders, Ibragim Todashev, was fatally shot by an FBI agent in a Florida apartment while being interviewed in connection with the Boston marathon bombings and the Waltham homicides. Todashev, a 27-year-old Chechen native and former mixed martial arts fighter, knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev and was friendly with one of the Waltham victims when he lived in Allston, Massachusetts. During the interview, Todashev began writing a formal statement implicating both himself and Tsarnaev in the Waltham murders, but before signing the confession, he violently attacked an FBI agent who fired in self-defense, killing him. Reports asserted that Todashev had flipped over a table and threatened the agent with a metal pole or a ceremonial sword that had been hanging in his living room. It was also reported that Todashev confessed that the murders were the result of a drug robbery gone wrong. An official said, "So Tamerlan says they have dope; they rip them off. Tamerlan says, 'They can identify me, so let's kill them.' And they kill them."[4]
Todashev's confession is highly problematic. The claim that he and Tamerlan robbed the victims is not consistent with the money and drugs left at the scene. Additionally, Todashev did not provide an explanation for taking the time to pose the bodies by dragging them into three separate rooms and covering them with marijuana and money. In drug-related murders, victims are killed either because they broke the rules of the drug distribution gang, were informants, infringed on the territory of another drug dealer, or stole drugs, money, or other goods from the dealer or the customer. The victims often have a history or association with the drug trade such as an arrest record, a history of drug use, or association with other known drug offenders. The offender almost always will have a known association with the drug trade as a user, manufacturer, or distributor.[5] Although the Waltham victims fit this profile—and it was the most conventional explanation for the murders—the inconsistencies are significant.
In a drug-related homicide, the crime scene is usually not staged to mask the true motive or misdirect the investigation, particularly because the intention is to send a message. Mexican drug trafficking cartels, which often mutilate, behead, and display dead bodies in humiliating positions, leave narco messages, and take credit for their kills. In addition, in most drug-related murders in the United States, the weapon of choice is a large caliber and semiautomatic firearm brought to the scene and removed by the offender.[6] Experienced gang and homicide detectives find it highly unlikely that an offender in a drug crime would leave any monies or drugs at the scene, much less such a large amount, just to confuse investigators. Significantly, robbers do not take the time to drag three men into separate rooms and symbolically cover their bodies with drugs and pose their mutilated corpses.
It is more likely that Todashev told the investigators the murders were drug-related so as to avoid disclosing a terrorist conspiracy that could reveal other members in Chechnya or the United States.
Weaknesses in Law Enforcement Training
A triple murder, particularly one with ritual aspects, is rare in any city much less in a college town like Waltham. It is not difficult to understand why detectives were working on the premise that this crime was drug-related. Death investigation training typically covers homicide crime scenes that are characteristic of gangs, organized crime, domestic disputes, or property crimes such as robberies and burglaries. Although there is an abundance of terrorism training for law enforcement personnel, instruction usually focuses on threat response and mitigation, first response, physical security, infrastructure protection, and specific weapons detection such as bombs or weapons of mass destruction. Counterterrorism training may also provide extensive information on international terrorist groups, financing, operations, and threats to the homeland. However, there is nothing that prepares local detectives even to consider, much less know how to investigate, jihadist-related murders in the United States.
Most police officers are unaware that there even are jihadist-related homicides with similar patterns of specific ritualistic trauma in which perpetrators are Muslim and associated with Islamist ideologies.[7] Particularly, knife wounds to the neck or complete beheading, overkill, and mutilation are indicators of Islamic murder, and there have been dozens of "honor" killings in the West with similar forensic profiles.
The most recent Islamist ritual murder occurred on May 22, 2013, in broad daylight on the streets of London when two jihadists used meat cleavers to publicly behead and disembowel a British soldier while shouting the Muslim declaration of faith, "Allahu Akbar." Instead of leaving the scene, they wanted to make certain their attack was not misinterpreted, so one of the men asked bystanders to film him. Holding the murder weapon with bloody hands, one of the killers made it clear that the attack was in the cause of Islamic jihad: "We swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."[8] The two offenders calmly waited for the police to arrive and then charged at them with a rusty revolver, knives, and meat cleavers. One of the men shot at the police, but the old gun backfired and blew his thumb off; seconds later they were shot and wounded by police marksmen.
Ritual murders appear to be the latest tactic in the war on terror, but they are not recognized as such in homicide investigations. There is no training in jihadist ritual murder and little to none in Islamist terrorist identifiers. Similar to gangs, however, Islamists have emblems, symbols, flags, graffiti, special clothing, hand signs, and expressions that are specific to particular groups as well as to the global jihadist movement. A further impediment to recognizing these connections is that, in 2010, the Obama administration scrubbed all Federal training materials of any references to jihad or Islamism as an underlying ideology motivating extremist attacks around the world because Muslim groups claimed such terminology and discussions were offensive.[9]
Political correctness can be most clearly seen in the FBI's Crime Classification Manual (CCM), the standard system for investigating and classifying homicides and other violent crimes. The CCM has categories for "Individual Extremist Religious Homicide" [127.02] and "Group Cause Religious Homicide" [142.02],[10] which accurately describe the crime scene characteristics of the Waltham murders and correctly profile the offenders. However, although the manual correctly details the attributes of a religious extremist murder, it does not include any case studies of jihadist-motivated murder in either the individual or group categories. The manual does include case studies of cults, right- and left-wing ideologically inspired murders, and white and black supremacist-inspired murders but offers no examples of Islamist supremacist homicides. Furthermore, honor killings are not mentioned once in the entire 566-page CCM including in the category for domestic homicide.
New sections in the third edition include classifications for biological and chemical attacks, bioterrorism, hostage taking, bombs, explosives, and aerial hijackings, but there are only a few sentences that reference the 9/11 attacks or Islamic terrorist groups. "Islam" is only referred to twice in the entire manual, and curiously, in both instances, the references are in the section that is most applicable to the Waltham investigation.
The relevant passages in the CCM that offer defining characteristics for individual or group cause religious extremist homicide deserve extensive citation especially as they have direct bearing on the Waltham case:
Predominantly, the victim represents the antithesis of the offender's system of beliefs; therefore, victimology depends on this doctrine. If multiple victims are involved, there will be similarities of race, religion, political beliefs, or social or economic status. … Those who carry out religion-inspired crimes concern themselves more with their deity than misleading law enforcement … Therefore … religion inspired crimes are not staged to appear like something else ... The forensics often demonstrate the calling card or signature aspect of the group … In religions that encourage homicide, from violent cults to intolerant sects of Islam, proscription for homicide can be found in writings or preaching of spiritual leaders the assailant identifies with … Religious influence on a crime is reflected in religious symbols and messages at the crime scene. These may include artifacts left behind, religious references in notes, even corpse defacement … a religion-inspired killer adds his or her own sense of holiness to the scene rather than removing items from it. When a killing appears to have a ritualized quality without a sexualized aspect, religious motive needs to be considered … part of a religious ritual may mandate a specific weapon. Use of uncommon weapons, such as swords, warrant special consideration as to their relationship to religious symbolism.[11]
These criteria suggest investigating a religious motive for the Waltham murders. Unfortunately, investigators focused on drugs as the commonality among the victims and either did not know that the victims were Jewish or did not understand those implications. It was also assumed that the crime scene was staged as a counter-forensic measure to mislead the investigation. The drugs on the body were interpreted as a way to confuse detectives and steer them away from investigating the crime as a drug-related burglary. Some officials uphold this theory arguing that more money and drugs were probably taken from the apartment while some were left behind. This theory may be based on a previous search of Weissman's apartment where police seized more than $21,000 in cash and a wide assortment of drugs.
Specifically, detectives simply had no training to prepare them to recognize the neck trauma as a ritualistic act in keeping with Islamist ideology or to expect that jihadists would commemorate 9/11 with murders and not bombs. There may even be additional symbolic evidence that was initially overlooked or has not been made public such as defiling the victim's Jewish head covering or stab wounds in the eye. Previous jihadist murders have included multiple victims, neck trauma, and "an eye for an eye" symbolic mutilation. If training materials had not been scrubbed of references to jihadist ideology, if the CCM had at least one Islamist example of "Group Religious Cause Homicide," or if investigators were made aware of the signs of jihadist murder and allowed to investigate without the restraints of political correctness, then the numerous pieces of symbolic, forensic, and crime scene evidence found at the Waltham apartment may have led to Tamerlan Tsarnaev long before the Boston bombings.
Islamic Ritual Murder
An objective and unobstructed investigation that employs a symbolic analysis of the crime scene produces both an alternative profile of the offenders and motive for the Waltham murders. A symbolic anthropological analysis of a ritual murder interprets the significance of dates, times, places, body position, mutilation, cause of death, symbols, drawings, and other evidence at the crime scene in the context of the perpetrator's cultural point of view. This analysis is different than typical criminal profiling in that it interprets the evidence and violent acts through the meanings that the offender assigns to them as opposed to examining evidence in terms of psychopathy and criminal personalities. This interpretive approach examines how offenders create meaning out of their own experiences by uncovering their cultural beliefs, worldviews, and motivations for violent acts. Many detectives instinctively use the same method, but to be fully effective, it is necessary for them to be aware of the method of operation (MO) and the signs and symbols of jihadist violence alongside those with which they are already familiar. Many European countries are now reexamining domestic violence murders in the context of "honor" killings. In a similar vein, cold case ritual homicides in the West need to be reexamined in the context of a jihadist MO. Unsolved murders that involve decapitation or stab or cut wounds to the neck or cases in which victims were associated with intra-Muslim controversies or allegations of blasphemy need to come under renewed scrutiny. Those crimes that occurred on a symbolic date or in a special place and involved unusual body positioning or other symbolic evidence should also be reconsidered.
A symbolic anthropological analysis of the Waltham crime scene in the context of jihadist ideology and propaganda as well as Chechen culture provides unique insights into why the Tsarnaev brothers and Ibragim Todashev likely ritually murdered three men, one of whom had been their friend.
The immediate and obvious symbolism was the date of the murders, the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Jihadists place tremendous significance on anniversaries and tend to commemorate successful battles against their enemies. On or near every anniversary of 9/11, al-Qaeda releases videos of the attacks on America to commemorate their "success." Most recently, the violent demonstration held at the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the fatal attack on U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya were undertaken on that date. Unfortunately, the date of the Waltham murders was originally thought to be September 12.
The fact that two, and probably all three men, were Jewish is another significant indicator. The Qur'an declares: "O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends!" (5:51). Many Islamist leaders view Jews and Christians as infidels and enemies of Islam who can justifiably be slaughtered.[12]
Strewing the corpses with drugs and money is another highly symbolic indicator. This is so uncharacteristic of a drug-related homicide that the message should be plainly interpreted to mean that drugs and money were not the reason for the murder. It is more likely that the marijuana found on the bodies represented the victims' transgressions—specifically the perceived impurity of drug use—and a sign of moral corruption and lack of discipline.
Desecration of the corpses is another method to reveal symbolically the alleged sins of the victims: Rapists are often castrated; snitches have their tongues cut out; thieves have hands cut off, and infidel enemies of Allah have their throats cut ("When you encounter the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads." Qur'an 47:3). Psychologically, Tamerlan, who was already radicalized, may have still been attracted to the Western lifestyle and needed to eradicate the source of his own desires. Hence, the ritual execution would become in his eyes righteous slaughter, which removes the contagious impurity and seductive influence of unbelievers. This then is not the murder of personal enemies but rather a sacralized act of vengeance against the enemies of Allah.
In jihadist ritual murder, knives are the weapon of choice. The knife is reminiscent of the sword, a weapon that is a highly prominent symbol in warrior cultures in general and in Islam, in particular. The sword was the primary symbol of an Arab fighter until the introduction of the rifle and is a prominent symbol in the Qur'an. Qur'anic verses of war that sanction fighting against persecution are called the "sword verses." The sword verses command Muslims to slay pagans, Jews, Christians, and Arab polytheists who fought against Muhammad. Islamist terrorists often cite the sword verses to legitimate unconditional warfare against unbelievers.
Cause of death from sharp cuts or knife wounds to the throat often involving near decapitation or complete beheading is also a forensic signature of the global jihadist. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl; American civilians Nick Berg, Jack Hensley, and Eugene Armstrong; Kim Sun-il, South Korean; British engineer Kenneth Bigley; Shoshei Koda, Japanese; and American contractor Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr. are just a few of the many victims who were filmed being decapitated by jihadists. U.S. soldiers Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Thomas L. Tucker, 25, were beheaded and mutilated in Iraq, and dozens of civilian Muslims, Christians, including women and children, are beheaded by jihadists every year in the same manner as the Waltham murders. Smiting the necks of enemies is not only theologically sanctioned but has come to represent especially violent mujahideen. Brutal murders involving near or complete beheadings are highly respected by jihadists all over the world.
Videos and photos of such killings are modern day trophy heads, badges of honor that bestow heroic status on the killer and generate instant celebrity. Videotaped beheadings are one of the most successful types of Islamist propaganda with particular appeal to young Muslim men living in Western countries who view the violence as vengeance against perceived oppression of and offenses to Islam. Jihadists know that once their videos are uploaded, they will forever be enshrined on the Internet, which is why the recent London attackers wanted bystanders to videotape the violence. It would not be surprising if videos or photographs of the Waltham murders were taken and at some future point appear on jihadist websites. Islamists understand the symbolic power of mutilation. Beheadings function symbolically as sacrificial, initiation, and purification rites. Cleansing Islam of Western impurities and expelling unbelievers from Muslim holy lands is the ideological goal of Islamism. Ritually murdering enemies, either through beheading or suicide attacks, has an additional, personal function of expiating one's own sins, paving the way to paradise.
There is good reason to presume that both Tsarnaev brothers and Todashev were familiar with beheadings as a jihadist MO. One of the most popular beheading videos on the Internet is the 1999 Dagestan massacre that depicts the beheading of six young Russian conscripts by Chechen mujahideen. It is brutal even for a beheading video and went viral on the Internet around 2007. In the video, one of the young soldiers begs the terrorists to have mercy on him after he witnessed three of his friends beheaded and one shot to death. While he is being stabbed in the neck and back prior to being decapitated, he calls out for his mother. The video is a "classic" among Chechen radicals, and the murders are uncannily similar to the Waltham crime scene, particularly the method in which the heads of the three victims were pulled back so that their throats could be slit from ear to ear. The Dagestan massacre beheading video could have easily served as a training manual for the Waltham murders. After the Boston bombings, one of the Waltham investigators commented that "their throats were slashed right out of an al-Qaeda training video."[13] With this in mind, investigators should compare the crime scene photos with the photos of the Dagestan victims and search all of the suspects' computers for photos of them with their index fingers pointing heavenward. This is an al-Qaeda hand sign that is commonly used by jihadists, symbolizing their willingness to be killed, thereby attaining martyrdom and entry into paradise.
Most significantly, however, the Waltham murders should be viewed primarily as an initiation ritual. This was not a drug deal or burglary gone wrong: It was premeditated murder, an initiation rite that would have proved to other jihadists that Tamerlan, Dzhokhar, and Ibragim were ready for "martyrdom operations" and simultaneously demonstrated that they were not confidential informants. This initiation ritual is how the three radicalized Chechens may have earned their jihadist stripes and proved their loyalty and commitment to the global jihad. It also became the point of no return, the final commitment to a terrorist mission. The murders would have bestowed upon them the jihadist's highest honor—to be dubbed "ash-shahid al-hai"—the living martyr, one who has irrevocably committed himself to dying for the cause of holy war.
If the Tsarnaevs were to have backed out of the Boston bombing, it would have meant a loss of face and status, and they would have been reduced to being merely cold-blooded murderers, instead of righteous holy warriors. Once Tamerlan realized he could get away with murder, he traveled to his Chechen homeland and started bomb-making training for his suicide mission. The Waltham murders likely gave the Tsarnaev brothers the confidence to carry out the Boston terrorist attack. Further, as soon-to-be shuhada, they would not be taken alive, explaining why both Tamerlan and Todashev provoked deadly force and why Dzhokhar chose to die slowly hiding in a boat as he looked forward to joining his brother in paradise.
Tribal Shame Cultures
The radicalization of the Tsarnaev brothers and Todashev needs to be understood in the context of tribal shame cultures. The men were all ethnic Chechens, a tribal society characterized by blood relations, common ancestry, unwavering loyalty, solidarity, conformity, and most significantly an "us versus them" philosophy. Chechens live by a code of honor and are willing to die and kill to preserve their way of life. Vengeance is required to reinstate and protect honor, purity, and territory. Most significantly vengeance justifies violence and regulates social order.[14]
Unwavering family loyalty can be seen in the reactions of Tsarnaev's and Todashev's relatives, including their Muslim convert wives, who immediately and continually maintain that the young men were not responsible for any acts of murder or terrorism and had been set up. Past incidents also show how Tamerlan maintained his Chechen (and Islamist) behavioral norms by "protecting" the family honor: In May 2008, he beat up his brother-in-law after his sister Ailina complained that her husband had been cheating on her and beating her; the previous year, Tamerlan punched a Brazilian youth in the face for dating his younger sister, Bella, because he did not approve of his not being Muslim.[15]
In Chechen Islamist tribal culture, honor determines status, respect, and reputation for the individual, family, and community and regulates every aspect of individual and group conduct. If one person is insulted, the entire family is injured; if one person is esteemed, the entire family is respected. Humiliation and honor are felt by all. Honor for men is signified by characteristics of courage, bravery, heroism, power, virility, and strength. Any sign of weakness in words or action is seen as relinquishing honor.[16] It is not surprising that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Todashev chose to compete in macho warrior type athletics such as wrestling, boxing, and mixed martial arts.
One of the most significant differences between Islamists and Westerners is the distinction between what cultural anthropologists refer to as "shame cultures" and "guilt cultures." A shame culture is defined as "a culture in which conformity of behavior is maintained through the individual's fear of being shamed."[17] A shame culture puts high emphasis on preserving honor and on not being publicly disgraced. A guilt cultures is defined as "a culture in which conformity of behavior is maintained through the individual's internalization of a moral code."[18] In shame societies, symbolic expressions ranging from simple mannerisms to acts of violence revolve around avoiding shame and acquiring or restoring honor. Status, appearances, reputation, and honor are more important than notions of right and wrong. In a guilt culture, a transgression is always felt as a wrong, or even a sin, whether others witnessed it or not. In a shame culture, if no one witnesses the transgression, it is not felt or perceived as wrong. Significantly, there is no concept of sin, hence no guilty conscience and no remorse for what Westerners perceive as wrongful acts, including murder. In fact, deception and pretense are acceptable in order to avoid shame and maintain face.
There are many indications that both Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Ibragim Todashev followed the Chechen Islamist tribal code of honor, which did not conform to American values, resulting in feelings of not being respected, which could only be alleviated through violence. Violence restored respect and was further proof of masculinity. The two macho fighters were largely supported by welfare and their Muslim convert wives while attempting to compete on the professional circuit. They were both hypersensitive to insult and responded to perceived slights with excessive violence. Tamerlan was arrested in July 2009 for aggravated domestic assault and battery for assaulting his girlfriend.[19] There also were reports that he was abusive to his wife.[20] Todashev was arrested on May 4, 2013, on a charge of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm after getting into a fight over a parking spot with a father and son at an Orlando shopping mall. The son was knocked unconscious and hospitalized with a split lip and several teeth knocked out. Todashev had been previously arrested in 2010 after a road rage incident. "Witnesses told police that he argued with two other drivers and cut them off with his vehicle. According to a police report, he yelled, 'You say something about my mother, I will kill you.'"[21] In Todashev's worldview, this incident was more likely about protecting his mother's honor than about road rage.
Todashev had a reputation as a hothead and had been kicked out of several gyms for getting into fights with people[22] and was likely angry and frustrated. For him, the final humiliation was probably a knee injury sustained in a car accident in early 2013, which finished his professional mixed martial arts fighting career. For a Chechen warrior, such an injury would be a sign of weakness, a loss of strength and face. He may have attempted to restore his honor by killing an FBI agent. Similarly, the final humiliation for Tamerlan probably occurred when he was barred from boxing competitively at the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a U.S. citizen, despite having captured a second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of New England in 2010. Unable to compete and unable to save face, he would have seen murder and terrorism as a "heroic" way to restore honor.
Conclusion
For angry young Muslims who feel disrespected, the call to jihad is an opportunity to restore dignity, honor, and respect, and, most significantly, to alleviate feelings of humiliation and shame. Al-Qaeda intentionally recruits men engaged in a warrior ethos such as boxing, who are searching for a heroic cause and a sense of purpose. By supplying them with an ideology, weapons, training, and real life targets, their heroic warrior dreams can be fulfilled. Once they carry out a murder or bombing, they are rewarded with respect and praise. For example, the latest edition of the al-Qaeda online magazine Inspire devoted more than thirty pages to the April 15 marathon bombing, heaping praise on the bombers:
The Blessed Boston Bombings (BBB) have been an absolute success on all levels and domains … By tracking the course, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar—may Allah reward them—ran along April 15 until they crossed their own finish line ... we can confidently say that the real worthy winners of the Boston Marathon were the Tsarnaev mujahideen brothers.[23]
Murder in the cause of Islam is justified as sacred violence. Jihadist murder is a cleansing ritual that functions as expiation of individual shame and as a method to cleanse the impurity of the West. For frustrated young Muslims who may be ultra-sensitive to insult, exposure to Islamist messaging that reinforces their chronic feelings of disrespect by continually telling them they are being humiliated by Western infidels is a proven strategy for inciting violence. Killing in the cause of Islam restores respect, eliminates feelings of shame, and makes them feel both morally upright and good. Tamerlan and Ibragim were hypersensitive to feelings of shame evidenced by their conflicts with others, believing that others treated them with contempt or disdain even when they were not. Psychiatrist James Gilligan explains,
For such people, and they are the rule among the violent, even a minor sign of real or imagined disrespect can trigger a homicidal reaction. The purpose of violence is to force respect from other people … Furthermore, any experience that specifically intensifies feelings of shame simultaneously diminishes feelings of guilt and remorse ...Violence from the point of view of those who engage in it does not intensify shame, it diminishes it and even reverses it into its opposite, namely, self-respect and respect from others.[24]
Islamist propaganda is designed to convince believers that their honor has been disrespected, their prophet has been insulted, their territory has been occupied, their holy book has been defiled, and they have lost face. Symbols and loaded language are all calculated to trigger feelings of humiliation that can only be assuaged through violence. Exploitation of perceived desecration incidents is emphasized so that violence can be morally sanctioned as a defense of Islamic purity, which has been defiled, transforming murder into a sacred act. Purification through violence is a sacrificial ritual. Shedding blood, including one's own, restores honor and washes away shame. Killing and dying for Islam is considered sacred, and sacred violence is always justified. However, the violence must be transformed into something sacred to distinguish it from profane barbarism. For that reason, jihadist ritual murder must include symbolic gestures such as shouting "Allahu Akbar" while killing someone or reading a list of offenses prior to murder or, as in the Waltham murders, leaving drugs on the body to attest to the sins of the victims. As a result, jihadists can commit unspeakable atrocities without remorse because they consider their deeds righteous slaughter in defense of the purity of Islam. Enemies are not people: They are unclean animals, pigs, monkeys, or dogs, dirt that must be cleansed. Beheadings, throat slitting, body mutilation, corpse desecration, eye gouging, and other unspeakable acts are not atrocities, but rather, they are sacred blood rituals that restore purity and cleanse shame. Sacred killing becomes an ecstatic spiritual experience. Murder feels good.
Dawn Perlmutter is director and founder of Symbol & Ritual Intelligence and a leading expert on religious terrorism and ritualistic crimes. She trains and advises law enforcement and defense agency personnel.
>[1] The Forward (New York), Apr. 22, 2013; The Jewish Journal (Los Angeles), Apr. 23, 2013; Daniel Greenfield, "Did Boston Bomber Murder 3 Jewish Men on September 11?" FrontPage Magazine, Apr. 23, 2013.
[2] ABC News, Apr. 22, 2013.
[3] Ibid., May 10, 2013.
[4] The New York Times, May, 22, 2013.
[5] John Douglas, Ann W. Burgess, Allen G. Burgess, and Robert K. Ressler, Crime Classification Manual: A Standard System for Investigating and Classifying Violent Crimes, Third Ed. (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2013), p. 143.
[6] Ibid., p. 144.
[7] Daniel Pipes, "Muslim Acts of Beheading in the West," The Christian Post (Washington, D.C.), June 5, 2013.
[8] The Daily Mail (London), May 22, 2013.
[9] Fox News, Apr. 7, 2010; "Muslim Influence in Pentagon Prevails; Material on Radical Islam 'Purged,' Outstanding Army Officer 'Disciplined,' TMLC Enters Case," Thomas More Law Center, Ann Arbor, Sept. 17, 2012.
[10] Douglas, et al, Crime Classification Manual, pp. 244-6, 273-5.
[11] Ibid., pp. 270-1, 245-6.
[12] See David Bukay, "Islam's Hatred of the Non-Muslim," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2013, pp. 11-20.
[13] ABC News, Apr. 22, 2013.
[14] David Pryce-Jones, The Closed Circle, An Interpretation of the Arabs (New York: Ivan R. Dee, 2009), p. 22.
[15] Los Angeles Times, Apr. 28, 2013.
[16] Pryce-Jones, The Closed Circle, pp. 36-7.
[17] Oxford Dictionaries Online, s.v. "shame culture."
[18] Ibid., s.v. "guilt culture."
[19] "Timeline: A Look at Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Past," CNN, Apr. 22, 2013.
[20] The Daily Mail, Apr. 23, 2013.
[21] News 13 (Orlando), May 23, 2013.
[22] The Orlando Sentinel, May 22, 2013.
[23] ABC News, May 30, 2013.
[24] James Gilligan, Preventing Violence (New York : Thames and Hudson, 2001), pp. 35, 72, 73.
Related Topics: Muslims in the United States, Terrorism | Dawn Perlmutter | Fall 2013 MEQThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
Many around the world were recently made aware—got a small glimpse—of the Islamic jihad that plagues northern Nigeria, at the hands of Boko Haram, an organization dedicated to eradicating Christianity and enforcing the totality of Sharia law.
Last Sunday, September 29, around 1 a.m. Islamic terrorists dressed in Nigerian military uniforms invaded an agricultural college, shooting students as they slept in their dorms, killing a total of some 50 students.
As with the Islamic assaults in Kenya and Pakistan from the previous weekend—the former on a mall, the latter on a Christian church, leaving a combined total of nearly 200 people dead and hundreds injured—this latest jihadi attack in Nigeria is, far from an aberration, simply the latest in a tremendously long list of jihadi atrocities, most often targeting Christians.
Indeed, when it comes to Nigeria, it is difficult just keeping up with the atrocities—so frequent, sometimes daily, are they.
Thus the day before the agricultural college attack, in Kaduna state, Nigeria, Muslim herdsmen slaughtered 15 Christians. And the day before that, Islamic militants killed a Christian pastor and his son, torched their church in Dorawa, and killed another 28 people.
Jihadi attacks on schools and colleges are actually common. In July, 40 Christians were killed in an attack on a boarding school in Yobe state, Nigeria. The dormitory was set on fire in the attack and those fleeing gunned down. A month earlier, 16 other students were shot dead in attacks on a secondary school in Yobe and another school in Borno.
One year ago, in October 2012, Boko Haram jihadis stormed the Federal Polytechnic College, "separated the Christian students from the Muslim students, addressed each victim by name, questioned them, and then proceeded to shoot them or slit their throat," killing up to 30 Christians.
This business of separating Muslims from "infidels" and releasing the former occurs with regular occurrence during jihadi attacks (inasmuch as it is good to kill an infidel, it is bad to kill a fellow Muslim, according to Islamic law). Thus, the weekend before this most recent terror attack in Nigeria, after jihadis in Kenya had raided a packed mall, they, too, made it a point to differentiate between Muslims and non-Muslims before initiating the carnage.
While the religious identity of those slaughtered in the recent college attack is still not clear—most often, Boko Haram targets Christians and elements of the Nigerian government but Muslims are also sometimes killed as collateral—in the context of separating people according to religion, it is interesting to note that one surviving student told Reuters, "They started gathering students into groups outside, then they opened fire and killed one group and then moved onto the next group and killed them. It was so terrible."
Furthermore, the Associated Press reported that some of those killed were found with their "hands clasped under the chin, as if in prayer"—Christian prayer, that is, as Muslims do not pray with hands clasped under their chins.
That said, to a purist group like Boko Haram, Muslims who intermingle with Christians or who accept Western education, are apostate infidels, also worthy of death. Indeed, quite true to its name, "Boko Haram"—or "Western Education is a Sin"—recently declared, "Teachers who teach western education? We will kill them! We will kill them in front of their students, and tell the students to henceforth study the Quran."
Most recently a new report confirms that Boko Haram has "bombed, burned, or attacked" 50 churches in Nigeria since January 2012; 366 people—the overwhelming majority of whom were Christian—were killed in just these church attacks alone. Boko Haram has also engaged in "31 separate attacks on Christians or [southern Nigerians] perceived to be Christian, killing at least 166 persons; 23 targeted attacks on clerics or senior Islamic figures critical of Boko Haram, killing at least 60 persons; and 21 attacks on 'un-Islamic' institutions or persons engaged in 'un-Islamic' behavior, killing at least 74."
Boko Haram's attacks on half of Nigeria's population—the Christians—is so widespread and frequent that not one month ever passes without several atrocities appearing in my monthly Muslim Persecution of Christians series. Here, for instance, are some of the attacks Boko Haram launched on Christians from the last report I compiled, for the month of July, 2013, alone:
* Islamic terrorists set off four bombs planted near three Protestant churches in Kano city, killing at least 45 people.
*
* Growing numbers of Christian girls in Muslim-majority areas, where the Islamic group, Boko Haram holds sway, are being abducted, kept in the homes of Muslim leaders and forced to renounce their faith. Last year, Boko Haram had declared that it would begin doing precisely this—kidnap Christian women—as a way "to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam."
*
* At least 28 were killed in a series of explosions throughout a Christian neighborhood in the Muslim-majority northern city of Kano. The attacks happened in the evening while people were out "to enjoy the area's nightlife."
*
* At least 30 Christian men, women and children were slain in three villages in southern Plateau state by Islamic extremists, some of whom are suspected to be from outside of Nigeria; they raided the villages massacring all in sight and burning down approximately 100 Christian homes.
*
* Islamic gunmen raided Dinu, a Christian village on an early Sunday morning, before church services, as happensfrequently, and slaughtered six Christians, a month after Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot another Christian to death in a nearby village and destroyed the churches of four villages.
*
Again, the above anecdotes are from the month of July alone (for more, see the Nigerian sections in Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians, especially pgs. 70-75).
The lesson of last Sunday's jihadi attack on an agricultural college in Nigeria is one and the same with the lesson of the jihadi attacks from the previous weekend on a Pakistani church and a Kenyan mall: all these attacks are but the tip of the iceberg of widespread Islamic hostility for and violence against non-Muslim "infidels," Christians chief among them.
That the Obama administration still refuses to list Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (even though Boko Haram is now directing threats at the United States); and that the Obama administration threatens the Nigerian government when it responds to the jihadis with force (warning it not to violate the "human rights" of Boko Haram) is a reminder why the viral, international jihad—in Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, ad infinitum—is so little known in the United States, and likely will stay unknown until it strikes U.S. borders again.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (Regnery, April, 2013) is a Middle East and Islam specialist, and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth. "Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today, and go to www.jw.org!
One of the worst Christian massacres—complete with mass graves, tortured-to-death women and children, and destroyed churches—recently took place in Syria, at the hands of the U.S.-supported jihadi "rebels"; and the U.S. government and its "mainstream media" mouthpiece are, as usual, silent (that is, when not actively trying to minimize matters).
The massacre took place in Sadad, an ancient Syriac Orthodox Christian habitation, so old as to be mentioned in the Old Testament. Most of the region's inhabitants are poor, as Sadad is situated in the remote desert between Homs and Damascus (desert regions, till now, apparently the only places Syria's Christians could feel secure; 600 Christian families had earlier fled there for sanctuary from the jihad, only to be followed by it).
In late October, the U.S-supported "opposition" invaded and occupied Sadad for over a week, till ousted by the nation's military. Among other atrocities, 45 Christians—including women and children—were killed, several tortured to death; Sadat's 14 churches, some ancient, were ransacked and destroyed; the bodies of six people from one family, ranging from ages 16 to 90, were found at the bottom of a well (an increasingly common fate for "subhuman" Christians).
The jihadis even made a graphic video (with English subtitles) of those whom they massacred, while shouting Islam's victory-cry, "Allahu Akbar" (which John McCain equates to a Christian saying "thank God"). Another video, made after Sadad was liberated shows more graphic atrocities.
Here are the words of Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh, Syriac Orthodox Metropolitan of Homs and Hama (another detailed account, with pictures, appears here):
What happened in Sadad is the most serious and biggest massacre of Christians in Syria in the past two years and a half… 45 innocent civilians were martyred for no reason, and among them several women and children, many thrown into mass graves. Other civilians were threatened and terrorized. 30 were wounded and 10 are still missing. For one week, 1,500 families were held as hostages and human shields. Among them children, the elderly, the young, men and women…. All the houses of Sadad were robbed and property looted. The churches are damaged and desecrated, deprived of old books and precious furniture… What happened in Sadad is the largest massacre of Christians in Syria and the second in the Middle East, after the one in the Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Iraq, in 2010.
In the Iraqi attack of 2010, al-Qaeda linked jihadis stormed the church during service killing some 60 Christian worshippers (see here for graphic images of the aftermath).
While the archbishop is correct that this is the "largest massacre of Christians in Syria," it is but the tip of the iceberg of the persecution the nation's Christian minority has suffered—including beheadings, church bombings, kidnappings, rapes, and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of Christians—since the war broke out (see Syria entries in monthly persecution series).
A month before Sadad, another ancient Christian region, Ma'loula, one of the world's very few regions that still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus, was besieged by the jihadis, its churches bombarded and plundered, its inhabitants forced to convert to Islam or die. The last words of one man who refused were: "I am a Christian, and if you want to kill me for this, I do not object to it."
The archbishop concluded his statement concerning Sadad by asking: "We have shouted aid to the world but no one has listened to us. Where is the Christian conscience? Where is human consciousness? Where are my brothers? I think of all those who are suffering today in mourning and discomfort: We ask everyone to pray for us."
Serge Trifkovic—who hails from a European region especially acquainted with Islamic jihad—responds to the archbishop as follows:
That no "human consciousness" is to be found in the White House, or in the editorial offices of the leading Western media, is now a matter of well-established record. Just try searching for "Sadad" (or alternatively "Saddad") on the websites of the Department of State or The New York Times. Ditto the leading European dailies, the CNN/BBC/RTF, the human-rights defending "NGOs" et al.
The problem, of which Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh appears unaware, is no longer in the Western elite's mere indifference to the impending demise of Christianity in the lands of its birth, but in its active, ongoing, and open contribution to that demise. Cyprus (1974) and the Balkans (1991-9) provided the test, Iraq (2003-today) the conclusive proof. In Syria the Obama administration remains committed to supporting the rebels—ah, yes, only the "moderate" ones, like the Christian-murdering "Free Syrian Army" (discretion advised again), not "even though" the result will be the same, but precisely because it will be.
In one of the Arabic videos documenting the aftermath of the Sadad massacre, as the mutilated bodies of one family are drawn from a well (around :30 second mark), a middle-aged male relative, in tears, says:
The most precious in the whole universe [his family], are now gone, leaving me alone, but thank God I am still surrounded by these loving people who remain. I want to say, let people [the jihadis] return to their minds. The problems of the world can only be solved by knowledge and brains. Enough insanity, the nerves of the people are shredded. Enough, enough—return to your minds; you people, you humans—return to your humanity, enough crimes.
As a sign of the times, here is a Syrian, an "easterner," evoking rationalism and humanity, products of the Christian West, at a time when the post-Christian West is governed by anything and everything—propaganda, emotionalism, mindless indoctrination—but the twain.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (Regnery, April, 2013) is a Middle East and Islam specialist, and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Anti-Christianism, Syria | Raymond IbrahimThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
Many Members of Islam Hate Others and Love Violence – See Proof
Christians Under Attack in Africa's 'Forgotten Crisis'
Tens of thousands of Christians have fled violent attacks by Muslim rebels in the Central African Republic, and a French official warns that the country is "on the verge of genocide."
Some 400,000 people have been displaced during the ongoing conflict in the nation of 4.6 million, and thousands are seeking refuge at a Catholic mission in a town 250 miles north of the capital, Bangui. The United States estimates that 68,000 people have fled to another country.
An Islamic rebel alliance, the Seleka Coalition, is carrying out attacks on Christian civilians, with "murders, summary executions, pillaging, sexual violence, and church burnings reported," according to CNS News.
The landlocked Central African Republic (CAR) is about 50 percent Christian and just 15 percent Muslim.
Last March, Seleka overthrew President Francois Bozize, a Christian former army chief who seized power in 2003. The rebel coalition installed its leader, Michel Djotodia — a Soviet-educated Muslim — as president.
He supposedly disbanded Seleka, but the government has no power outside the capital and the attacks continue. Christian vigilante groups have been fighting back since September.
United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told the Security Council that the country is in the grips of "widespread horror."
"Some call this a forgotten crisis," he said, warning that "if this situation is left to fester," it "could easily spill over into neighboring countries."
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said: "The country is on the verge of genocide. France, CAR's neighbors, and the international community are worried. The United Nations will give permission to African forces, the African Union and France to intervene."
A 2,500-strong regional peacekeeping force is due to be beefed up in December and come under African Union command, Reuters reported. But there are appeals for broader international action as the conflict escalates.
France already has about 400 troops in the country, mainly protecting the airport and French assets in the capital.
The Christian religious freedom advocacy group Open Doors is reportedly helping victims of rape in the CAR to obtain medical attention and trauma counseling.
Open Doors USA President/CEO David Curry said the conflict is "not a world focus right now, but it should be." The international community are worried. The United Nations will give permission to African forces, the African Union and France to intervene."
The Christian religious freedom advocacy group Open Doors is reportedly helping victims of rape in the CAR to obtain medical attention and trauma counseling.
Open Doors USA President/CEO David Curry said the conflict is "not a world focus right now, but it should be."
[source - retrieved from international community are worried. The United Nations will give permission to African forces, the African Union and France to intervene."
A 2,500-strong regional peacekeeping force is due to be beefed up in December and come under African Union command, Reuters reported. But there are appeals for broader international action as the conflict escalates.
France already has about 400 troops in the country, mainly protecting the airport and French assets in the capital.
The murder trial of British soldier Lee Rigby, 25, the father of one, a member of the Corps of Drums with the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusilier and a veteran of the Afghan War, is underway in London. Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, are on trial charged with murdering Rigby as he walked back to Woolwich Barracks in southeast London on May 22, 2013. Adebolajo and Adebowale, both British citizens, drove a car straight at Rigby in broad daylight as he walked across the road, hitting him from behind and then repeatedly stabbing him with a meat cleaver and knives in front of a crowd of bystanders. Fusilier Rigby died of multiple stab wounds. Instead of fleeing the scene, Adebolajo gave interviews to the crowd while holding the murder weapon in his bloody hands. He wanted to make it clear that the Islamic motivation for the attack was known, he said: "We swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Adebolajo also handed a letter to one of the witnesses that read, 'To my beloved children know that to fight Allah's enemies is an obligation. …'Seek Shaheedala oh my sons so that you might be raised together." There is no dispute that the motivation for the murder was vengeance against the enemies of Islam. The two men were successfully radicalized and incited to murder by jihadist propaganda that continually asserts that their honor has been disrespected, that Muslim territory has been occupied, that Muslim holy lands must be purified of infidels and that cleansing Islam of infidel unbelievers is a function of jihad, holy war and a justification for murder.
Headlines and news reports of the trial describe the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby as shocking, chilling, barbaric and callous. The reporting demonstrates a serious lack of knowledge of the prevalence and trauma affiliated with Islamist murders. The murder of Lee Rigby was incorrectly described by the prosecutor and reported by some news agencies as an attempted decapitation. The prosecutor told jurors "He was repeatedly stabbed and Adebolajo made a serious and almost successful attempt to decapitate him with multiple blows to his neck with the meat cleaver. " Rigby was not decapitated he was beheaded. The distinction between decapitation and beheading is extremely significant in the prosecution of murders in the U.S. Decapitation occurs post mortem - after death- and is designated as abuse of a corpse which is a misdemeanor. Beheading occurs perimortem - at or around the time of death while the victim is alive -and can be designated as murder involving torture which is a capital offense punishable by death. Eyewitness testimony clearly establishes that Lee Rigby was unconscious but alive while having his throat cut. Specifically, Adebolajo held Mr. Rigby's head by the hair before repeatedly hacking at the right side of his neck with a meat cleaver. Exposing the neck by grabbing the hair of the victim is the standard jihadist execution method depicted in dozens of beheading videos easily accessible on line.
Both decapitation and beheading are ritual murders that have specific symbolic significance. Mexican Cartels leave narco messages and publicly display bodies in humiliating positions. Serial killers who commit similar atrocities imbue their own symbolism, victimology and trauma into the crime. However, jihadists who commit ritual murders have a shared symbolism, trauma, victimology and motivation establishing a pattern, a 'Jihadist Modus Operandi'. The jihadist MO involves neck trauma, partial or full beheading, decapitation, and often facial and other mutilation committed by Muslim offenders whose motivation and victimology are connected to Islamist ideology or Islamic controversies. Contrary to popular belief, a jihadist MO does not always entail a complete severing of the head from the body. Typically in beheadings in Western countries the throat is slit and not detached from the body. Complete severing of the head from the body is more common in the hundreds of Islamist beheadings that occur in Muslim countries and war zones. Cause of death from sharp cuts or knife wounds to the throat often involving near decapitation is a common forensic signature of the jihadist MO. Cutting the throat is consistent with Quranic scripture verse 47:4 'So, when you meet (in fight Jihad in Allah's Cause), those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them'.
The murder of Lee Rigby was inspired by the hundreds of beheadings committed by young Mujahideen all over the world. New beheading videos appear almost every day on the internet and the offenders are glorified on jihadist internet forums, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Jihadist ritual murders are occurring more frequently in Western countries. Examples include: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombers, and Ibragim Todashev who ritually murdered three Jewish men in Waltham, MA on September 11, 2011. Similar to Lee Rigby their bodies had multiple stab wounds and their throats were slit from ear to ear with such force that they were nearly decapitated. The case was initially investigated as a drug deal gone wrong. On September 15, 2013 Nabil Huruy, 23, attempted to behead Canadian firefighter Dominic Parker by repeatedly stabbing him with a knife in his face, neck and head.
The attack was unprovoked and the motivation appeared to be that Parker was sitting in a Middle Eastern Toronto cafe drinking a cup of tea. Mr. Parker who had been married for 23 years had two daughters,18 and 19 years old, died two days later from severe head wounds. On February 3, 2013, 27-year-old Yusuf Ibrahim of Jersey City, N.J., shot to death two Coptic Christians before severing their heads and hands and burying their bodies in the backyard of a relative's abandoned home in Buena Vista, N.J. Since the men were decapitated and not beheaded he was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of desecration of human remains. Authorities attributed the decapitation and dismemberment as an attempt to prevent identification of the victims. That may well have been the case; however, it is difficult for a medical examiner to determine the precise cause of death and whether the bodies were decapitated perimortem or postmortem when the body is moved from the crime scene. Although the murder was not a classic beheading and the victims were shot, the fact that the victims were Coptic Christians, the offender was Muslim and it involved decapitations initially indicates a jihadist MO.
On February 12, 2009, in Suburban Buffalo, New York Muzzammil Hassan used two hunting knives to stab his wife more than forty times in the face, back and chest and then behead her while she was still conscious. Aasiya Hassan had filed for divorce a few days earlier. Muzzammil Hassan did not just shoot his wife, he bought knives and took her head with them, a classic jihadist MO. In Houston, Texas, on August 6, 2003, 23 year old Mohammed Ali Alayed, a Saudi Arabian student at Houston Community College, slashed the throat of Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish college student, with a 6-inch butterfly knife nearly decapitating him. The two were friends until Alayed became radicalized and decided to commit a jihadist ritual murder. On November 19, 2003, Sebastien Selam a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey, was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel who slit Selam's throat to the point of near-decapitation, mutilated his face with a carving fork and gouged out his eyes. Afterward Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house and yelled, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven." Four days after the murder of Lee Rigby a French soldier was stabbed in the neck with either a knife or a box cutter while on patrol on the western outskirts of Paris by a man wearing a robe and Muslim prayer cap. Inspired by the London jihadists the soldier was targeted because of his military service. These are just a few examples of jihadist beheadings committed in Western countries.
Law Enforcement should investigate these murders in the same manner as gang murders. Similar to gangs these young jihadist are protecting territory (Muslim lands), defending honor (the honor of Islam or family honor) and earning respect through violence. When these jihadist gangbangers kill they achieve status, become rock stars on jihadi internet forums and are highly respected by fellow Islamists inside and outside of prison. They are not just members of People Nation or Folk Nation alliance of street gangs, they are Mujahideen who are part of the global Islamist movement, the largest gang in the world. Unlike gang members their murders are rooted in Islamic historical and theological precedents and a vision of the afterlife that promises rewards in Paradise making these true believers much more dangerous than typical gang members.
Unsolved murders and cold case homicides need to be reexamined in the context of the jihadist M.O. For example, on November 10, 2013, local news reported that Detroit police discovered a decapitated body burned beyond recognition in a vacant school building, the former Cody Ninth Grade Academy. The little information provided said that the property on Detroit's west side was dark due to several broken streetlights and that several homes close to the building were vacant. The assumption is that this murder was the result of gang violence. There was no mention that the abandoned school is one mile away from Dearborn, MI, and the largest mosque in North America, and within a two mile radius of 5 mosques and Islamic centers. Interestingly, in the nearby town of Farmington Hills there was an ongoing controversy and long legal battle over a mosque being built. The Islamic Cultural Association, which is linked to terrorist supporting organizations, had purchased a vacant elementary school that they planned to turn into a mosque.
The combination of a jihadist MO and the symbolism of the location and its proximity to mosques in Dearborn MI should not be overlooked. Court battles over mosques are perceived as disrespecting Muslims, a dishonor to the community and a personal insult. A few weeks prior to the body being discovered the mosque officially gave up the fight for the Eagle Elementary School and acquired a property in another location. Perhaps this incited a frustrated a young jihadist. Detroit investigators similar to the Waltham detectives are more than likely investigating the murder as gang violence which is a viable direction to pursue in the investigation. It is certainly possible that the decapitation and burning of the body was a forensic countermeasure to avoid identification of the body. The body being left in a vacant school could have been chosen because of its seclusion. However it is just as reasonable to investigate evidence associated with a jihadist MO. For instance, the location of the decapitated body could have been symbolic of the vacant school in the center of the mosque controversy. Decapitation as a jihadist identifier certainly should not be excluded due to political correctness or fear of offending Muslims. There should not be any qualms in looking at any Arabic or jihad graffiti on the walls, or if the murder occurred on September 11, or if the victim was Jewish, Christian, or someone who was actively protesting against the mosque. The shocking details of the Lee Rigby murder would not be shocking at all if investigators and prosecutors recognized Jihadist identifiers and acknowledged a Jihadist MO. Who knows how many other cold case homicides are connected to Islamist ideologies and controversies that would be solved if law enforcement were not hampered by limitations on training, political correctness or prohibited from acknowledging that the motivation is the direct result of Islamist ideology. Similar to calling the Fort Hood shooting workplace violence, not recognizing Jihadist murders diminishes the threat of Islamic terrorism and hampers murder investigations.
Dawn Perlmutter Director of Symbol & Ritual Intelligence and Shillman/Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum is considered one of the leading subject matter experts (SME) in the areas of symbols, unfamiliar customs, ritual murder and religious violence.
Related Topics: Radical Islam, Terrorism | Dawn PerlmutterThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
Learn the truth, Muslims persecute all others and do not believe in freedom of religion no matter what they say. It if NOT a peaceful religion as members of Islam claim. Read the proof, the news says it all.
Open Doors USA recently released its widely cited 2014 World Watch List—a report that highlights and ranks the 50 worst nations around the globe persecuting Christians.
The one glaring fact that emerges from this report is that the overwhelming majority of Christian persecution around the world today is being committed at the hands of Muslims of all races, languages, cultures, and socio-political circumstances: Muslims from among America's allies (Saudi Arabia) and its enemies (Iran); Muslims from economically rich nations (Qatar) and from poor nations (Somalia and Yemen); Muslims from "Islamic republic" nations (Afghanistan) and from "moderate" nations (Malaysia and Indonesia); Muslims from nations rescued by America (Kuwait) and Muslims claiming "grievances" against America (fill in the blank __).
A common denominator, a pattern, exists, one that is even more extensive than Open Doors implies. According to that organization's communications director, Emily Fuentes, "of the 50 worst nations for persecution, 37 of them are Muslim," or 74%.
In fact, while this number suggests that the other 13 countries making the top 50 are not Muslim—for example Kenya and Ethiopia—those doing the persecution there are.
In other words, those persecuting Christians in 41 of 50 nations are Muslims; that is, a whopping 82% of all persecution around the globe is being committed by the adherents of Islam—sometimes in Christian majority nations; for example, the Central African Republic which, after the 2013 Islamic takeover, now ranks #16, "severe persecution" (the Christian-majority nation did not even appear in the previous year's top 50).
As for the top ten absolute worst nations, where, according to the 2014 World Watch List, Christians suffer "extreme persecution," nine—that is, 90%—are Muslim. (Indeed, Open Doors' global map of Christian persecution can easily be confused with a global map of the Islamic world, with the exception of China (ranked 37, "moderate persecution") and some sporadic countries dominated by crime and godless tyranny, Columbia, North Korea, etc.)
Similarly, a recent Morning Star News report listing 2013's ten most horrific anecdotes of Christian persecution around the world finds that nine out of ten—again, 90%—were committed at the hands of those professing Islam.
Still, considering that the 2014 World Watch List ranks North Korea—non-Islamic, communist—as the number one worst persecutor of Christians, why belabor the religious identity of Muslims?
Here we come to some critically important but blurred distinctions. While Christians are indeed suffering extreme persecution in North Korea, these fall into the realm of the temporal, the aberrant, even. Something as simple as overthrowing the North Korean regime would likely end persecution there almost overnight—just as the fall of Communist Soviet Union saw religious persecution come to a quick close.
In the Islamic world, however, a similar scenario would not alleviate the sufferings of Christians by an iota. Quite the opposite; where dictators fall—Saddam in Iraq, Mubarak in Egypt, Qaddafi in Libya, and ongoing attempts to oust Assad in Syria—Christian persecution rises.
The reason for this dichotomy is that Christian persecution by non-Muslims (mostly communists) is often rooted to a temporal regime or ideology. Conversely, Muslim persecution of Christians is perennial, existential, and far transcends this or that regime or ruler. It is part and parcel of the history, doctrines, and socio-political makeup of Islam—hence its tenacity; hence its ubiquity.
Still, the significance of all this is often overlooked. Thus, "Dr. David Curry, CEO and president of Open Doors USA, told The Blaze 'Not every circumstance is the same. For example, in North Korea, you have a quasi-Stalinist government that is the most difficult place to call yourself a Christian on the planet — and has been for the last 12 years,' he noted. But while North Korea's government is the real culprit, in places like Iraq, 'roving extremist groups' are waging attacks against Christians, while government officials are seemingly powerless to stop the carnage, he explained."
True; but atheistic Stalinism/communism is a relatively new phenomenon—about a century old—and, over the years, its rule (if not variants of its ideology) has greatly waned, so that only a handful of nations today are communist.
On the other hand, "roving extremist groups" (also known in other contexts and countries as "Islamists," "terrorists," "mujahidin," "mobs," "radicals," "people-with-grievances," etc.) attacking and killing "infidel" Christians have been around since the dawn of Islam. It is a well-documented, even if suppressed, history.
To further understand the differences between temporal and existential persecution, consider: Russia, once a staunch Orthodox Christian nation, led the communist movement and persecuted its own Christians; yet today, a century later, it is becoming more orthodox again, prominent among Western nations for showing support for persecuted Christians.
North Korea—where its leader, Kim Jong-Un, is worshipped as a god and the people are shielded from reality, including outside their borders—seems to be experiencing what Russia did under the Soviet Union and thus living in a delusional state.
But if the once mighty USSR could not persevere, surely it's a matter of time before tiny North Korea's walls also come crumbling down, with the resulting religious freedom that former communist nations have experienced. (Tellingly, the only countries that were part of the USSR that still persecute Christians are Muslim, such as Uzbekistan, ranked #15, "severe persecution," and Turkmenistan, ranked #20, also "severe persecution.")
Time, however, is not on the side of Christians living amid Muslims; quite the opposite. Since the 7th century, when Islam came into being, Muslims have been invading and conquering Christian lands, so that more than half of the territory that was once Christian in the 7th century—including all of North Africa and the Levant—are today the heart of the "Muslim world."
Muslim persecution of Christians exists in 41 nations today as part of a continuum that started nearly 14 centuries ago. As I document in Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians, the very same patterns of Christian persecution prevalent throughout the Muslim world today are often identical to those from centuries past. The facts speak for themselves.
A final consideration: North Korea, the one non-Muslim nation making the top ten worst persecutors list, is governed by what is widely seen as an unbalanced megalomaniac (hence the "aberrant" persecution); conversely, the other nine nations are not dominated by any "cults-of-personalities" and are variously governed, including through parliamentarian democracies (Iraq), republics (Maldives, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen), Islamic republics (Afghanistan, Iran), and monarchies (Saudi Arabia).
The common denominator is that they are all Islamic nations.
Thus, long after North Korea's psychotic Kim Jong-Un has gone the way of the dodo, Islam will still be here and—short of a miraculous "reformation"—still treating Christians and other "infidels" like it did for centuries.
Confronting this understandably discomforting and better-left-unsaid fact is the first real step to alleviating the sufferings of the overwhelming majority of Christians around the world.
Unfortunately, however, while some are willing to point out that Christians are being persecuted around the Muslim world—why that is the case, why 82% of the world's persecution is committed by Muslims from a variety of backgrounds and circumstances—is the great elephant in the room that few wish to address. For doing so would cause some long held and cherished premises of the modern West to come crashing down.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (Regnery, April, 2013) is a Middle East and Islam specialist, and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth. "Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today, and go to http://www.jw.org!
Prominent indicators confirm that the U.S. is the chief facilitator of the persecution of Christians around the world today.
According to the recently released 2014 World Watch List, which ranks the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted, Syria is the third worst nation in the world in which to be Christian, Iraq is fourth, Afghanistan fifth, and Libya 13th. All four countries receive the strongest designation, "extreme persecution" (other designations are "severe," "moderate," and "sparse" persecution).
Aside from being so closely and harshly ranked, these four nations have something else in common: heavy U.S. involvement. Three—Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya—were "liberated" thanks to U.S. forces, while in the fourth, Syria, the U.S. is actively sponsoring "freedom fighters" against the regime, many of whom would be better labeled "terrorists."
The Syrian situation alone indicts U.S. foreign policy. According to Reuters:
Open Doors, a non-denominational group supporting persecuted Christians worldwide, said on Wednesday it had documented 2,123 "martyr" killings, compared with 1,201 in 2012. There were 1,213 such deaths in Syria alone last year, it said. "This is a very minimal count based on what has been reported in the media and we can confirm," said Frans Veerman, head of research for Open Doors. Estimates by other Christian groups put the annual figure as high as 8,000.
While most Americans are shielded from the true nature of the war by the U.S. media's reluctance to report on it, Arabic media, websites, and activists daily report and document atrocity after atrocity—beheadings and bombed churches, Christians slaughtered for refusing to convert to Islam, and countless abducted for ransom or rape—at the hands of those whom the U.S. supports.
It's enough to point out that "the largest massacre of Christians in Syria," to quote a top religious leader, was left wholly unreported by any major U.S. news network.
At any rate, the statistics speak for themselves: Syria, which used to be religiously tolerant, is now, in the context of the United States' trying to bring "democracy" to it, the third worst country in the world in terms of "extreme persecution" of Christians.
The Blaze reports that Dr. David Curry, president of Open Doors,
charged that the Obama administration has essentially declined to make the protection of religious minorities a priority . . . "There are many instances where the vacuum of leadership and spokesmanship has created a real problem," said the human rights leader. "I would say that every significant data point on this year's '2014 Watch List' is worse—and I think a factor in it is a lack of leadership from Western governments including . . . the U.S. in terms of religious freedom."
But it's worse than that. Far from taking any action or providing leadership—or simply ceasing to support the terrorists responsible—the Obama administration recently tried to go to war with Syria on behalf of the "freedom fighters," amazingly, in the name of "human rights" (Apparently the unsubstantiated rumor that Assad massacred people is enough for the U.S. to go to war, but the ongoing and well-documented massacres of Christians and other civilians at the hands of the opposition is not enough for the U.S. to stop supporting them.)
What's worse, even the most misinformed mainstream-media-watching American today knows that the so-called "Arab Spring," which was hailed to justify U.S. support for "rebels" of all stripes—in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (which months ago destroyed some 80 churches); in Libya, al-Qaeda, which has turned Benghazi into a terror zone; and now the "freedom fighters" in Syria—is not what it was touted to be.
In other words, at this point, whenever the U.S. intervenes in an Islamic nation, Islamists come to power. This is well demonstrated by the other three nations to which the U.S. brought "democracy" and where Christian minorities suffer "extreme persecution":
* Afghanistan: The supposedly "moderate" Karzai government installed by the U.S. upholds many of the draconian laws enforced by the Taliban—including the apostasy law, fiercely persecuting those who seek to convert to Christianity—and, in 2011, under U.S. auspices, it destroyed Afghanistan's last Christian church.
* Iraq: After the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein, Christian minorities were savagely attacked and slaughtered, and dozens of their churches were bombed (see here for graphic images). Christians have been terrorized into near-extinction, with well over half of them fleeing Iraq.
* Libya: Ever since U.S.-backed, al-Qaeda-linked terrorists overthrew Qaddafi, Christians—including Americans—have indeed suffered extreme persecution. Churches have been bombed; Christians have been tortured and killed (including for refusing to convert); and nuns have been threatened.
Surely a common theme emerges here: Where the U.S. works to oust secular autocrats, the quality of life for Christians and other minorities takes a major nosedive. Under Saddam, Qaddafi, and Assad, Christians and their churches were largely protected.
Moreover, while George W. Bush was responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq, the argument can be made that, back then (2001 and 2003), this pattern of Islamic radicalization that erupts once autocrats are gone was less well known than it is today. There weren't many precedents.
Conversely, the Obama administration has had both Afghanistan and Iraq to learn from—and yet still it supports Islamists and jihadis. But by now, what happens once they assume power—religious persecution, terror, oppression—is no longer a secret.
Incidentally, those who care little for the fate of Christians or other minorities in the Islamic world would do well to remember a simple truism: Wherever anti-Christian elements come to power, anti-American forces come to power. The two are synonymous.
Put differently, Muslim persecution of Christians is the litmus test of how radical an Islamic society has become. In all those Muslim nations that the U.S. has interfered in—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt (till the Egyptians revolted, tothe chastisement of the U.S.), and now Syria—the increase of religious intolerance is a reflection of the empowerment of forces hostile to Western civilization.
I am often asked, "How can we help persecuted Christians?" At this point, one must respond: "How about starting with getting the U.S. government to stop being the chief facilitator of Christian persecution?" Altruism aside, it would be in the interests of all who value freedom, religious or otherwise—and especially their descendants.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (Regnery, April, 2013) is a Middle East and Islam specialist, and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Anti-Christianism, US policy | Raymond IbrahimThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
TIME FOR THE US TO DEMAND THEY GIVE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM TO OTHERS:
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth. "Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today, and go to http://www.jw.org!
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth. "Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today, and go to http://www.jw.org!
Islam persecutes Christians and others because they believe differently than they do. But all people should have the basic human right of freedom of conscience as long as they are NOT harming others. However, Islam does NOT believe in extending this basic human right to others.
Let’s look at a news article by Raymond Ibrahim detailing this awful human fact.
PROOF THAT ISLAM DOES NOT EXTEND TO OTHERS FREEDOM OF RELIGION:
Why Are Christians the World's Most Persecuted Group?
by Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPageMagazine.com
February 28, 2014
http://www.meforum.org/3779/christians-persecuted
.
Why are Christians, as a new Pew report documents, the most persecuted religious group in the world? And why is their persecution occurring primarily throughout the Islamic world? (In the category on "Countries with Very High Government Restrictions on Religion," Pew lists 24 countries--20 of which are Islamic and precisely where the overwhelming
majority of "the world's" Christians are actually being persecuted.)
The reason for this ubiquitous phenomenon of Muslim persecution of Christians is threefold:
Christianity is the largest religion in the world. There are Christians practically everywhere around the globe, including in much of the Muslim world. Moreover, because much of the land that Islam
seized was originally Christian--including the Middle East and North Africa, the region that is today known as the "Arab world"--Muslims
everywhere are still confronted with vestiges of Christianity [[from whom they stole the land]], for
example, in Syria, where many ancient churches and monasteries are currently being destroyed by al-Qaeda linked, U.S. supported "freedom fighters." Similarly, in Egypt, where Alexandria was a major center of ancient Christianity before the 7th century Islamic invasions, there still remain at least 10 million Coptic Christians (though some put
the number at much higher). Due to sheer numbers alone, then, indigenous Christians are much more visible and exposed to attack by Muslims than other religious groups throughout the Arab world. Yet as
CNS News puts it, "President Obama expressed hope that the 'Arab Spring' would give rise to greater religious freedom in North Africa and the Middle East, which has had the world's highest level of
hostility towards religion in every year since 2007, when Pew first began measuring it. However, the study finds that these regions actually experienced the largest increase in religious hostilities in 2012."
Christianity is a proselytizing faith that seeks to win over converts. No other major religion--including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism--except Islam itself has this missionary aspect (these faiths tend to be coterminous with their respective ethnicities: Buddhists,Asians; Judaism, Jews; Hinduism, Hindus). Thus because Christianity is
the only religion that is actively confronting Muslims with the truths of its own message, not only is it the primary religion to be accused
of proselytizing but, by publicly uttering teachings that contradict Muhammad's, Christians are accused of blaspheming as well. Similarly,
this proselytizing element is behind the fact that most Muslims who apostatize to other religions overwhelmingly convert to Christianity.
Finally, if indigenous Christians are many in the Middle East, because that is the cradle of Christianity, in other regions with large Muslim
populations, such as sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, Christian missionaries have won over millions of converts to the faith--many of whom are now targeted and persecuted according to Islam's
anti-apostasy law, which often calls for the death penalty. Christianity is the quintessential religion of martyrdom. From its inception--beginning with Jesus followed by his disciples and the early Church--many Christians have accepted martyrdom rather than recant their faith, in ancient times at the hands of Romans, in Medieval and modern times at the hands of pious Muslims and others. Few other religions encourage their adherents to embrace death rather than recant, as captured by Christ's own words: "But whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my Father in heaven" (Matt 10:33; see also Luke 14:33)." Conversely, Islam teaches Muslims to openly renounce their faith (taqiyya)--not just when their lives are threatened, but even as a stratagem of war--as long as they remain Muslim in their hearts. Other religions and sects also approve of
dissimulation to preserve their adherents' lives. Back in the 1800s, for instance, Samuel M. Zwemer, a Christian missionary, observed that in Iran "Bahaism enjoys taqiyya (concealment of faith) as a duty, but Christianity demands public profession; and hence in Persia it is far easier to become a Bahai than to become a Christian."
To summarize, because of their sheer numbers around the globe, including the Muslim world, Christians are the most likely targets of Islamic intolerance; because sharing the Gospel, or "witnessing," is a
dominant element of Christianity, Christians are most likely to fall afoul of Islam's blasphemy and proselytism laws, as even the barest pro-Christian talk is by necessity a challenge to the legitimacy of Islam; because most Muslims who apostatize to other religions convert to Christianity, it is as Christians that they suffer persecution; and
because boldness in face of certain death--martyrdom, dying for the faith--is as old as Christianity itself, Christians are especially
prone to defy Islam's anti-freedom laws, whether by openly proclaiming Christianity or by refusing to recant it, and so they die for it.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (Regnery, April, 2013) is a Shillman Fellow at the David
Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Anti-Christianism | Raymond IbrahimThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole
with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
CONCLUSION:
Islam is anti-freedom religion only wanting freedom for itself, but NOT willing to extend this basic human right to others.
To learn more about religious freedom, Almighty God (YHWH) and the Bible, go to,
Francis David said it long ago, "Neither the sword of popes...nor the image of death will halt the march of truth. "Francis David, 1579, written on the wall of his prison cell." Read the book, "What Does The Bible Really Teach" and the Bible today, and go to http://www.jw.org!
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