Quote:Inside Isis: The first Western journalist ever to be given access to the 'Islamic State' has just returned – and this is what he discovered



Jürgen Todenhöfer, 74, spent 10 days in Isis-controlled territory. He says the reality on the ground is different from what anyone in the West realises



Adam Withnall

Adam Withnall writes for http :// independent.co.uk



Sunday 21 December 2014





The first Western journalist in the world to be allowed extensive access to Isis territories in Syria and Iraq has returned from the region with a warning: the group is “much stronger and much more dangerous” than anyone in the West realises.



Jürgen Todenhöfer, 74, is a renowned German journalist and publicist who travelled through Turkey to Mosul, the largest city occupied by Isis, after months of negotiations with the group’s leaders.



He plans to publish a summary of his “10 days in the Islamic State” on Monday, but in interviews with German-language media outlets has revealed his first impressions of what life is like under Isis.



Speaking to the website Der tz, Todenhöfer revealed that he actually stayed in the same hotel in Benghazi as James Foley, the US journalist who was beheaded on camera by Isis in August.



“Of course, I’ve seen the terrible, brutal video and it was one of my main concerns during the negotiations as to how I can avoid [the same fate],” he said.



Timeline: The emergence of Isis



Once within Isis territory, Todenhöfer said his strongest impression was “that Isis is much stronger than we think here”. He said it now has “dimensions larger than the UK”, and is supported by “an almost ecstatic enthusiasm that I have never encountered in any other warzone”.



(Note, Todenhoefer is specifically not describing any normal warlike sentiment seen in brave populations who have standing martial communities. No. He is describing islamaniacs' peculiar willingness - shared by christians, as also seen during christians crusades and in the terror acts of christians in India's NE - for total war, especially their christo-islamic eagerness to commit butchery and other crimes against humanity. Note that Todenhoefer's description is exactly the same state of mind islamaniacs were in when they first started raiding/convert-or-killing from their locus in Arabia. And the same islamic bloodlust was there in the massive genocides perpetrated all the way to Iran not to mention into greater India. Islam killed at least 90 million Hindus as per the estimates of Faithfreedom's Ali Sina from the records *he* has seen summarised. Islam was always ready to torture-then-massacre 500 millions or even the whole world.

And the same enthusiasm for genocide was reported to exist in christians by the Greco-Romans who documented christians' crazed murders of heathens, and destruction of their temples, and in the christian Roman court cases against heathens who privately continued practising heathenism. And as documented at ysee.gr's timeline, christians of Rome did institute the first concentration camps: where they gathered their heathen victims for genocide. The same christian thirst to commit genocide was seen in how readily christians massacred heathen native Americans, burnt them alive and "dashed out children's brains" after baptising the children. Nothing has ever changed. Just this week, the christian NDFB terrorists have killed 62 Vanavasis=Hindoos in Assam.)



“Each day, hundreds of willing fighters arrive from all over the world,” he told tz. “For me it is incomprehensible.”



Todenhöfer claims to have been able to move among Isis fighters, observing their living conditions and equipment. On his Facebook page, he has posted images which he said show German Heckler & Koch MG3 machine guns in the hands of Isis. “Someday this German MG could be directed to us,” he said.



@EjmAlrai Jürgen Todenhöfer arrived today turkey. Back from 10d in IS. pic.twitter.com/2tp3s6H79z



— Tommy Mommy (@watchpigs) December 16, 2014

Isis’s fighters themselves sleep, he said, in barracks formed from “the shells of bombed-out houses”. They number around 5,000 in Mosul, and are spread so widely that were the US to bomb them all “they would have to reduce the whole of Mosul to ruins”, he said.



(That can be arranged. Well, it should be arranged. Be honest, do these terrorists deserve death for their genocide amd gangraping? If this were the Nuremberg trials, it would be "off with their heads" already. So why not evacuate the Yezidis, then "reduce the whole of Mosul to ruins". Pity about any ancient artefacts, but can't be helped. It's called amputation.)



Todenhöfer says that this ultimately means Isis cannot be beaten by Western intervention or air strikes – despite US claims last week that they have proven effective. “With every bomb that is dropped and hits a civilian, the number of terrorists increases,” he said.



(Nonsense. Islam is 1 billion on the planet that definitely poses an existential threat to the remaining 6 billion. Christowest refused to try to de-program islamaniacs - because to do so would be to admit that christianism is as much a contender for de-programming as islam - and instead always apologised for islam and blamed anything and everything else, so now the west is left with the ugly prospect of 9 stitches instead of just a timely one. Or to do yet more of nothing.



Either develop a quick and effective de-programming scheme - and know that all such will work on christianism too [it's the same meme, so the same anti-viral agents/de-programming will work on both] - or wait for islam to come knocking closer to home. It certainly has every intention to. After all, it;s playing the great and bloody game of the monotheists which is based on numbers+determination. Islam > christianism on the latter count, which will also make islam > christianism on the former count in the long run. E.g. numbers of christian Syrians - like that of Lebanese - was once greater than that of muslims there. As for determination, islam is #1 in the missionary pecking order, christianism #2: christianism will *always* lose against islam, despite both being willing to resort to total war. The rabies-infested christians of Syria and Egypt who brutally cannibalised the GrecoRomans got cannibalised by islamania eventually. Because -eventually- islam will always beat christianism.



If Hindus had been given a free hand, they'd have reverted subcontinental islamaniacs by now. But no, Indian christianism is subcontinental islam's #1 friend and #1 facilitator of jihad and worked hard to tie up Hindus' natural response to the christoislamaniac/missionary menace. But what goes around comes around, eventually every single Indian christist is going to end up on islam's menu, no less than Hindoos are on the menu now.

But this is the first era in which monotheisms have faced non-religious govts [some European govts aren't religious]. Maybe they will act decisively and with finality against islam.)



Speaking in a TV interview with RTL’s Nachtjournal programme two days after his return to Germany last week, Todenhöfer said Isis has worked hard to establish itself as a functioning state. He said it has “social welfare”, a “school system”, and that he was even surprised to see it has plans to provide education to girls.



#Journalist #Todenhöfer after 10 days visit: #IS has enormous popularity & will conquer the whole world if it can pic.twitter.com/3LNz3vo7mq



— AbdulElah Shyea (@AbdulEla) December 21, 2014

Most concerning of all, he said, was Isis fighters’ belief that “all religions who agree with democracy have to die”.



He said the view that kept being repeated was that Isis want to “conquer the world” and all who do not believe in the group’s interpretation of the Koran will be killed. The only other religions to be spared, Todenhöfer said, were the “people of the book” – Jews and Christians.



(No wonder Indian christians - Suzanna Roy to every single christist commenter in Indian ELM - are the greatest facilitators of islam in the Indian subcontinent. Christianism has constantly colluded with islamania to kill India's heathens, since otherwise christianism would have to bloody its hands killing Hindus itself, as it has had to do in India's NE.)



“This is the largest religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history”, he told RTL.





Another photo of Jurgen Todenhöfer, the journalist from #Germany who just got back from 10 day trip to #IS in #Syria. pic.twitter.com/PSWQJh4LxS



— Charlie Winter (@charliewinter) December 19, 2014

Isis-affiliated social media accounts have already started responding to Todenhöfer's reports, hailing his comments about the group's territories being made into functioning societies.



The tweet below quotes “German journalist Jürgen” as saying: “The Caliphate state is working to create life in the style of the Rightly Guided Caliphs who lived after the Prophet (PBUH) and it can move mountains.”



الصحفي الألماني يورغن: دولة #الخلافة تحاول تشكيل الحياة بنمط الخلفاء الذين عاشوا بعد النبي محمدﷺويمكنهم تحريك الجبال pic.twitter.com/LNVllDMipz



— إبن الجزيرة (@3in100) December 21, 2014

Charlie Winter, a researcher for the anti-extremism thinktank Quilliam, said such comments about Isis being "a group that is formidable militarily and politically" were quoted by pro-Isis accounts because it is "a bitter pill for policymakers to swallow".



"That said, Todenhöfer's comments on the massacre of the Yazidis and displacement of hundreds of thousands in Mosul have been routinely ignored by Isis supporters," Mr Winter said. "The facts are being cherry-picked to give a very narrow view of the situation that Todenhöfer was met with in Syria and Iraq."



Todenhöfer plans to use his first-hand experience of Isis in a book he is writing about the group. He says on Facebook that he has always “spoken to both sides” in his 50 years reporting from war zones, including interviews with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and al-Qaeda, with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and with leaders of the Taliban.



In his view, Isis will soon come to the West to negotiate a level of co-existence. “The only ones who could stop this now are the moderate Iraqi Sunnis,” he said, adding: “If you want to defeat an opponent, you must know him.”



(There is no such thing as a moderate christoislam. There is only the apostate (=non-adherent), the backslider, the sleeper and the faithful. Those indulging in taqiyyah like India's cryptochristians and Indian muslims that privately feel solidarity with IS are not sleepers. They are part of the faithful and they quickly turn into the Christian State/Islamic State when the opportunity arises, as it has done in Iraq/Syria.)

Quote:ISIS Says It Will Conquer Europe Soon, Undertake Religious Cleansing And Kill Ruthlessly



ISIS Says It Will Conquer Europe Soon, Undertake Religious Cleansing And Kill RuthlesslyArticleRate this Story

By Kalyan Kumar | December 23, 2014 3:56 PM EST



The radical terror group ISIS has claimed that it is only a matter of time before its fighters conquer Europe. The claim was made by the spokesman of the outfit to veteran journalist Juergen Todenhoefer, who undertook a risky visit to the the ISIS controlled areas in Mosul of Northern Iraq.





[photo caption:]

A Kurdish protester sits behind a sign reading " STOP ISIS terror" in front of the United Nations headquarters in Vienna October 9, 2014. A group of Kurdish people living in Austria are on hunger strike since Monday in solidarity for Syrian Kurds who are fighting to defend the Syrian-Turkey border town of Kobane from Islamic State militants.



"We will conquer Europe one day. It is not a question of we will conquer Europe, just a matter of when that will happen. But it is certain. ... For us, there is no such thing as borders. There are only front lines," the spokesman identified as a German ISIS fighter told the German journalist.



Religious Cleansing



Defending mass enslavement and beheadings, the ISIS spokesman said it is planning to carry out "the largest religious cleansing campaign" in history and will not hesitate to kill hundreds of millions of people, if required, reported the Christian Post.



"Our expansion will be rapid and perpetual. The Europeans need to know that when we come, it will not be in a nice way. It will be with our weapons. Those who do not convert to Islam or pay the Islamic tax will be killed," the spokesman said. Todenhoefer visited the Iraqi city of Mosul, which had a large Christian population before it was taken over by ISIS in June and clamped Islamic laws on the land, forcing people to convert to Islam or face death.



On Shiite Muslims not ready to share the same beliefs as ISIS, the spokesman said anyone refusing to convert will be killed. "150 million, 200 million or 500 million, it does not matter to us, we will kill them all." The ISIS has already captured a number of cities across Iraq and Syria and continues to shock people with its horrendous acts like beheading of prisoners on camera and enslaving of religious minorities and women, including Christians.



The terror group claims it is on a divine mission to establish an Islamic caliphate across the Middle East region and eventually take over the world. The German journalist in his comments noted that Islamic State is a lot more dangerous than it has been perceived by Western leaders, reported Independent.



Brave Journalist



Todenhöfer, 74, is the first Western journalist in the world to be allowed access to ISIS territories in Syria and Iraq. Todenhöfer took the challlenge of travelling through Turkey to ISIS held Mosul, after holding months of negotiations with the group's leaders.

Quote:AG • 10 hours agoISIS fighters, Bako Haram, Al Quieda, Taliban etc read only Quran and Hadiths. They don't view TV or read magazines. All their actions exactly match Quranic Verses. In short they are pure Islamists.

(That's correct. These pure muslims don't read islamic apologetics by Indian and alien pseculars. Unlike them, they read the koran.)



valakos >WhiteRabbit • 8 hours ago

leftists are simply being used by islamists to further their goals, just as islamists used leftists in iran, then subsequently executed them once islamists were in power - leftists in europe are too stupid to see the same pattern



(As happened with communist left in Bangladesh. Etc. Good riddance to the left.)

Quote:anyone refusing to convert will be killed. "150 million, 200 million or 500 million, it does not matter to us, we will kill them all.

Quote:Terror arrests revealed 'vision to turn Blue Mountains into killing ground': reports

Nine News

Nine News

20 hrs ago



NSW Police and Australian Federal Police officers raid a house. © AAP Image/Dean Lewins NSW Police and Australian Federal Police officers raid a house.



One of two men arrested on terror offences on Christmas Eve may have envisioned the NSW Blue Mountains as a playground for guerrilla warfare, according to reports.



On Christmas Eve, Sulayman Khalid, 20, and another man aged 21, were arrested as part of an ongoing counterterrorism investigation.



Mr Khalid, from Regents Park, has been charged with being in possession of documents designed to facilitate a terrorist attack.



The 21-year-old man from Marsfield was charged with breaching a control order.



Details of the terrorist activity of Sydney jihadists in the wake of the Martin Place siege was reportedly presented to the National Security Committee just hours before federal police were given the go ahead for the raids that nabbed the two men.



A police source reportedly told News Corp part of the alleged terror plot related to the killing of random people in bushland in the NSW Blue Mountains west of Sydney.



Guerilla warfare has been a key ISIS tactic in Iraq and Syria with ambushes and sabotage by small contingents of militants.



Security has been heightened for today’s Boxing Day test match and the Sydney Harbour New Year’s Eve celebrations as Prime Minister Tony Abbott concedes a new terror attack on Australian soil is “likely” amid a heightened level of chatter.



It’s alleged the document seized in the raid pinpointed a number of potential government targets, which have been put under watch by authorities as part of the increased security.



Mr Abbott said the actions of Sydney siege gunman Man Monis had increased the likelihood of a new attack.



AFP deputy commissioner national security Michael Phelan said there was no new specific threat uncovered by police.



Both men will appear in Parramatta Local Court this morning.

Quote:Terror arrests revealed 'vision to turn Blue Mountains into killing ground': reports



On Christmas Eve, Sulayman Khalid, 20, and another man aged 21, were arrested as part of an ongoing counterterrorism investigation.



Mr Khalid, from Regents Park, has been charged with being in possession of documents designed to facilitate a terrorist attack.



The 21-year-old man from Marsfield was charged with breaching a control order.



Details of the terrorist activity of Sydney jihadists in the wake of the Martin Place siege was reportedly presented to the National Security Committee just hours before federal police were given the go ahead for the raids that nabbed the two men.



A police source reportedly told News Corp part of the alleged terror plot related to the killing of random people in bushland in the NSW Blue Mountains west of Sydney.



Guerilla warfare has been a key ISIS tactic in Iraq and Syria with ambushes and sabotage by small contingents of militants.

[...]

Quote:Britain's Most Popular Boys' Name... Mohammed



Sky News 01/12/2014

© Provided by Sky News



Mohammed has become the top boys' name chosen by parents in Britain after a huge surge in popularity for Arabic names generally, according to new research.

(Interesting would be to know if this in any way correlates with the burgeoning of islam into Islamic State roundabout 2014?)



The UK's top baby names of 2014 showed Mohammed has risen 27 places from last year to claim the number one spot for the boys, data carried out by website BabyCentre showed.





Also within the boys' top 100, Teddy was the biggest climber, Kian and Jonathan were the highest new entries, and Omar, Ali, and Ibrahim were all new entries.



For the girls, Sophia was top, Maryam was the biggest riser, and Nur, Emilia and Gracie were the highest newcomers.



Sarah Redshaw, managing editor for BabyCentre, said: "With the increase of Arabic names plus Aarav, an Indian boys' name, the top 100 shows the ever-increasing diversity of the UK today.

(That is not what it shows. Are the Brits trying to do an equal-equal - with a token Indian name (in the singular) that made it into the top 100 - in order to make themselves feel less alarmed? Or is Redshaw really this naive in her reasoning? What is concealed in the above careless description of the data is that 'Aarav' -Aarav? Really?- was merely popular in 2014 for being given by Hindu Indians who all pointlessly copied each other, not because of a demographic explosion of UK Hindus let alone because UK Hindus are planning some sort of demographic jihad. It's because every year for the past decade at least, Indians - like many others - foolishly copy each other in naming their kids.

However, the rise of the name "Mohammed" to a rather high rank among UK baby names of 2014 - and the sudden appearance of other islamic names within the top 100 - actually says something about demographic jihad. Brits are free to dismiss it, but 5-to-1 that time will prove I'm right.)



"Parents have also been influenced by celebrity name choices. The Beckhams and Simon Cowell have been big influences this year. Eric, the name Simon Cowell chose for his son, increased by 314%."



The names of David and Victoria Beckham's offspring have also prompted a trend among new parents. Harper is a new entry in the top 100 this year, while Romeo is up 67% and Cruz is up 400%.



From Game Of Thrones, the name Emilia was a new entry at number 53, with parents also registering the names Daenerys and Tyrion this year. The name Piper was up 267%, thanks to popular TV series Orange Is The New Black.



Breaking Bad also continued to influence, as Skyler, Jesse and Walter all increased in popularity.



But Ms Redshaw added: "Parents are wary of names associated with celebrities who exhibit bad behaviour, the controversial pop singer Miley Cyrus being a prime example."



The name Miley has fallen, as have Amy and Nick, following the release of the mystery thriller book and movie Gone Girl.



Royal names in general continued to fall in popularity with George dropping a further five places. The name slipped out of the top 10 to number 13 shortly after the future king's birth last year.



Here are the UK's top 10 most popular baby names:



BOYS



1. Mohammed

2. Oliver

3. Jack

4. Noah

5. Jacob

6. Charlie

7. Harry

8. Joshua

9. James

10. Ethan



GIRLS



1. Sophia

2. Emily

3. Lily

4. Olivia

5. Amelia

6. Isla

7. Isabella

8. Ava

9. Sophie

10. Chloe

Quote:Baby names survey 2014: Is Muhammad REALLY the most popular boy's name?



Parentdish UK Keith Kendrick 1/12/2014

© Provided by Parentdish UK Baby names

A baby names survey has revealed that Muhammad is Britain's most popular boy's name in 2014.



Really? If you delve deeper into the figures, you'll find it ain't necessarily so.



The numbers, from BabyCentre.co.uk, looked at 56,157 babies born to its members so far this year to come up with their list:



1. Muhammad



2. Oliver



3. Jack



4. Noah



5. Jacob



6. Charlie



7. Harry



8. Joshua



9. James



10. Ethan



But although Muhammad tops the list, it is deceptive – because it combines names with variant spellings - so Mohammed, Muhammad and Mohammad were all grouped under one name.



However, other boys' names weren't combined with their permutations, and so dropped down the ranking as a result.



For example, second placed Oliver and its variant Ollie were listed separately. So too were Samuel and Sam, Benjamin and Ben, James and Jamie, and Thomas and Tommy.



In addition, despite the apparently huge number of baby names surveyed, the 56,157 babies born to BabyCentre members was only around 8 per cent of the 698,512 UK births in 2013.



The Office for National Statistics uses the latter figure to compile a more complete list of baby names of children born in England and Wales, the latest of which was released in August 2013 (the 2014 list will come out NEXT August).



In the ONS data, Oliver tops the boys' names charts for 2013 - and Muhammad, without combining variants, lags behind in 15th, with Mohammed at 23rd, and Mohammad comes 57th.



Added together, the combined names total 7,445, thus beating Olivers at 6,949.



However, the name Ollie is also in the top 100 (number 80 in the list) and if the 'Ollies' are added to the 'Olivers', it again becomes the most popular name, with 7,749 babies named this way.



So what is REALLY the most popular baby name of all – when you combine its variants?



Answer: Harry/Henry, with over 9,000 babies receiving the name last year.

Quote:Melbourne jihad bride flies to Syria to marry ISIL pinup boy



Nine News ninemsn

ninemsn 3 days ago



[photo caption:] © Nine News Mahmoud Abdullatif.





A young Melbourne woman has slipped out of the country to marry a playboy-turned-jihadist in Syria.



Zehra Duman, 21, declared she would burn her passport as she travelled in late November to meet Mahmoud Abdullatif, a former "party boy" also from Melbourne who joined Islamic State earlier this year, News Corp reports.



The pair reportedly announced their marriage online on December 11 with the hashtag, #TheIslamicState.



It is not clear how Duman met Abdullatif, who has been ridiculed in the Australian media as a "bimbo" for the things he says on social media, but it has been reported that young Australian Muslim women are being seduced via online social networks to travel to Syria to get married.



Duman is now thought to be living in the de facto ISIL capital, Raqqa, where the former Isik College Keysborough student is mainly confined indoors while Abdullatif fights in conflict zones.



Duman has also reportedly posted hate comments on Twitter and Facebook condemning US military air strikes on Syria.



Her distraught parents are working with authorities to bring her home.



"She's been brainwashed, she wasn't like this three or four months ago," her father, Davut Duman, was quoted as saying.



(Uh, she was brainwashed a long time ago. Into christoislam. By her parents, who are now whining. Now's not the time for her faithful islamic parents to be denying their responsibility in all this. Zehra/Zero Duman joining ISIS was the natural consequence of her being brought up muslim.)

Quote:Isis booklet issues guidelines to mothers on how to raise 'jihadi babies'

The Independent



Adam Withnall 1 day ago



[img caption:] An image posted on 21 October by an Isis-linked Twitter feed, with a caption in Arabic calling these children 'new graduates of Jihad School'



Isis has reportedly released a guide for mothers in its self-proclaimed caliphate on how to raise a jihadi baby in preparation for war.



The publication, entitled "Sister's Role in Jihad", suggests that the "most important" way women can contribute to the so-called Islamic State is by indoctrinating children with the militant group's values.



"Don't wait until they are seven to start, for it may be too late by then!" the handbook reads.



The list of "dos" and "don'ts" has surfaced online via Isis social media accounts, and was highlighted by the monitoring group Memri as part of a report into the militants' treatment of children.



Its suggestions include showing children jihadi websites with graphic content, reading them stories about militants' exploits at bedtime and encouraging them to play with toy guns, the Mail Online reported.



Steven Stalinsky, executive director of Memri, told the website that 2015 was expected to see a marked increase in "effort to indoctrinate the next generation of fighters".



He said: "'No matter what happens in Iraq and Syria in the near future, the next generation - the children of Baghdadi and grandchildren of bin Laden - have already been brainwashed to hate the West and to strive for jihad and martyrdom."

Timeline: The emergence of Isis



It is not the first time Isis has deliberately released details of the way it treats children, apparently with one eye on how it will be received in the West.



In October apparent jihadists on Twitter shared images showing so-called Isis "cubs" graduating from "the School of Jihad".



Memri's report says Isis wants the West to know that this indoctrination is happening.



"They (children) have been trained on the battlefield and know how to create bombs and suicide belts and to behead and crucify the innocent. This is something we must be prepared for and understand."

Quote:12 dead in Paris newspaper attack: prosecutors

Agence France-Presse (AFP)



Fran BLANDY 1 hour ago



[Photo caption:] Police forces gather in street outside the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, 2015, after armed gunmen stormed the offices leaving at least 10 people dead according to prosecutors. © MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images





News alert: 12 dead in Paris newspaper attack: prosecutors. More details to come. Previous story is below.



At least 11 people were killed when gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs and a rocket-launcher opened fire in the offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.



President Francois Hollande, who immediately headed to the scene of the shooting in Paris, described it as a "terrorist attack."



Hollande said 11 people were killed and another four were in critical condition after the attack, branding it an "act of exceptional barbarism" and calling an emergency cabinet meeting.



He called for "national unity" as the government raised its alert level to the highest possible in the greater Paris region.



He added that "several terrorist attacks had been foiled in recent weeks".



Wednesday's shooting is one of the worst attacks in France in decades.



A source close to the investigation said two men "armed with a Kalashnikov and a rocket-launcher" stormed the building in central Paris and "fire was exchanged with security forces".



[Photo caption:] French President Francois Hollande arrives after a shooting at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, January 7, 2015. © Christian Hartmann/Reuters



The source said a gunman had hijacked a car and knocked over a pedestrian while attempting to speed away. He added that two police officers had died in the attack.



Television footage showed large numbers of police in the area, bullet-riddled windows and people being carried away on stretchers.



The gunmen shouted "we have avenged the prophet," according to a police source.



It was not immediately clear what happened to the attackers.



In the first reaction from abroad, British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the shooting.



"The murders in Paris are sickening. We stand with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press," he said in a message on Twitter.



The satirical newspaper gained notoriety in February 2006 when it reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that had originally appeared in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, causing fury across the Muslim world.



Its offices were fire-bombed in November 2011 when it published a cartoon of Mohammed and under the title "Charia Hebdo".



Death threats



Despite being taken to court under anti-racism laws, the weekly continued to publish controversial cartoons of the Muslim prophet.



In September 2012 Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of a naked Mohammed as violent protests were taking place in several countries over a low-budget film, titled "Innocence of Muslims", which was made in the United States and insulted the prophet.



French schools, consulates and cultural centres in 20 Muslim countries were briefly closed along with embassies for fear of retaliatory attacks at the time.



Editor Stephane Charbonnier has received death threats and lives under police protection.



This week's front page featured controversial author French Michel Houellebecq, whose latest book "Soumission", or "Submission," which imagines a France in the near future that is ruled by an Islamic government, came out Wednesday.



The book has widely been touted as tapping into growing unease among non-Muslim French about immigration and the rise of Islamic influence in society.

Quote:12 dead in Paris newspaper attack: prosecutors

Agence France-Presse (AFP)



At least 11 people were killed when gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs and a rocket-launcher opened fire in the offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.



Hollande said 11 people were killed and another four were in critical condition after the attack

[...]



He added that "several terrorist attacks had been foiled in recent weeks".



[...] two police officers had died in the attack.



Television footage showed large numbers of police in the area, bullet-riddled windows and people being carried away on stretchers.



The gunmen shouted "we have avenged the prophet," according to a police source.

[...]

Quote:'Whatever happened in Paris was absolutely justified': Vile UP cleric ...

Daily Mail-8/01/2015

Addressing journalists in Meerut on Wednesday evening, Haji Yaqub Qureshi, who is also a former state government minister, said: “Any work ...

BSP Leader Says Charlie Hebdo Journalists Deserved Death ...

International Business Times, India Edition-8/01/2015

Add promoting enmity charges to case against Qureshi: IPS officer

The Indian Express-10/01/2015

BSP leader booked for 'defending' terror attack

The Hindu-9/01/2015

Maya's silence on Qureshi triggers speculation

Times of India-9/01/2015

Explore in depth (128 more articles)

Quote: Updated: January 10, 2015 01:34 IST

BSP leader booked for ‘defending’ terror attack

First Transfer Fee Free - Great Rates on International Money Transfers. Low Fees. Big Savings. www.nzforex.co.nz



Bahujan Samaj Party leader Haji Yaqoob Qureshi was booked on Thursday for allegedly defending the terror attack on the Paris satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo by saying disrespect to Prophet Mohammad should invite death.

Quote:'Whatever happened in Paris was absolutely justified': Vile UP cleric offers Rs 51 crore REWARD to Charlie Hebdo butchers

• Haji Yaqub Qureshi said magazine 'committed a crime by attacking religion'
  
  
• Qureshi said 'any work against the Prophet must not be tolerated'
  
  
• He offered reward to 'any individual or organisation' claiming responsibility
  
  
• Qureshi has declared himself the most popular Muslim politician in India
  
  
• UP police have launched a probe into Qureshi's statement
  
  

By Piyush Srivastava



Published: 23:03 GMT, 8 January 2015 | Updated: 23:03 GMT, 8 January 2015

Quote:January 14, 2015 7:00 pm JST

Journalists in the crosshairs

In South Asia, say 'Je suis Charlie' at your own risk



KARL KALTENTHALER





[Img caption:] Pakistanis in Peshawar rally Jan. 13 in support of the recent murders of journalists, cartoonists, an economist and others in Paris. © AP



Attacks on staff at Charlie Hebdo and shoppers at a kosher supermarket in Paris this month have left Europe stunned and uneasy. Many felt, while they mourned, that this type of attack could happen again.



Then it did. Only two days after the satirical magazine's two main attackers were killed Jan. 9, the office of the Hamburger Morgenpost in Germany was firebombed. The paper was attacked for publishing satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Security forces throughout Europe are on alert for further attacks.



Most of the world watched the events in Paris unfold in horror. In South Asia, however, the news was greeted with relative indifference, or even outright support for the attackers. Why did reactions in South Asia differ to those in much of the rest of the world?



Sadly, attacks on journalists in South Asia, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are frequent and deadly. Pakistan often ranks as the most dangerous country in the world to practice journalism; Afghanistan is not far behind. Being a journalist in Bangladesh is also dangerous, though lethal attacks are less frequent.



Journalists die in these three countries every year for reporting news taken for granted in other parts of the world.



Reasons to be fearful



Why is practicing journalism so dangerous in South Asia? One reason is that Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan are numerous and powerful. They very frequently target journalists for reporting negative news about their actions, justifying attacks by arguing reporters oppose their "sacred mission" to bring Sharia law to their countries.



They also frequently target commentators for alleged "blasphemy" against Islam. The militants frequently stage attacks because they know that violent action against left-wing or secular commentators often boosts their popularity among the masses.



Public opinion does not, in general, support freedom of speech over the protection of a "correct" portrayal of Islam in South Asia. Pakistan has a blasphemy law that prescribes the death penalty for anyone who is convicted of denigrating the Prophet Muhammad. The law is quite vague in its definition of denigration, and thresholds for accusation and indictment are low. The law has widespread support in the country.



If the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo worked in Pakistan, they could have been put to death for their work by the Pakistani state. That is, if militants or mobs did not kill them first.



"Je suis...?" Hardly



In Afghanistan, the situation is worse. The liberal and secular element in Afghan society is extremely small: Most Afghans support the death penalty for those who stray from Islam or insult the prophet. Public demonstrations in support of the Paris attacks took place in the country.



You would be hard-pressed to find people in Pakistan and Afghanistan willing to say "Je suis Charlie" in a public venue.

Quote:Turkey vows to thwart 'Mohammed insults'



POSTED: 15 Jan 2015 18:54



Turkey on Thursday (Jan 15) condemned the publication of cartoons of the Muslim prophet as an "open provocation," warning that it would not tolerate insults of Mohammed in the controversy over the post-attacks Charlie Hebdo issue.

(Note the hint of a very real threat.)



ANKARA: Turkey on Thursday (Jan 15) condemned the publication of cartoons of the Muslim prophet as an "open provocation," warning that it would not tolerate insults of Mohammed in the controversy over the post-attacks Charlie Hebdo issue.



"Freedom of the press does not mean freedom to insult," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara before heading for talks with EU leaders in Brussels.



His comments came day after leading Turkish daily Cumhuriyet and Turkish websites published cartoons featuring the prophet from the first issue of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after the attack on its offices on Jan 7 that left 12 people dead.



The publications revived a controversy over freedom of speech in officially secular Turkey which has been run for over a decade by an Islamic-leaning government and pious Muslim Recep Tayyip Erdogan, first as premier and now president. "We do not allow any insult to the prophet in this country," Davutoglu said. "As the government, we cannot put side by side the freedom of press and the lowness to insult."



Davutoglu said people were sensitive about their religion in the overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey and could not be expected to show patience towards insults to the prophet. "If some print cartoons that insult the prophet - and this is the situation and there is a sensitivity in Turkey - it is a provocation ... it is an open provocation."



(The final statements again hint at the actual threat he is making. A provocation to something.

I'm not critiquing Turkey - it's an islamic country like Pukestan, though less of an islamic pardees - and the faithful can do whatever, including ban their own islamic media from publishing the cartoons of their puppet.

But it's better for the EU if Turkey were kept out of the EU, plus the question remains: why has the Indian response over the whole incident been to behave like Turkey - by christomedia - and like Pukestan by islamaniacs? A: Because of the power of christoislamania in India, which is still heavily entrenched in the christomedia.)



'PROTECT THE HONOUR'



He said Turkey had squarely condemned the Paris attacks that killed 17 people in total but would fight with equal vehemence against insults to the prophet. "We are determined to protect the honour of the prophet the same way as we are determined in our stance against terrorism in Paris ... It is not correct to link this to the freedom of the press."

(That last line is practically what journalists of India's christomedia said.)



A Turkish court on Wednesday ordered a block on access to websites featuring the latest cover of Charlie Hebdo, after a petition from a single lawyer claiming that the printing of the cartoon had the potential to endanger the public order.

(Oh, like in India? And India isn't even officially a monotheistic country yet.)



Charlie Hebdo's new cover, which sold out at news stands across France, contains a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed - depicted with a tear in his eye, under the headline "All is forgiven" in French and holding a sign saying "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie).



The pull-out edition of Cumhuriyet did not include the controversial front cover but a small version of the cartoon featuring the prophet was included twice inside the newspaper to illustrate columns by commentators on the subject. Employees at the newspaper said their telephones did not stop ringing throughout the day and they received death threats.



Cumhuriyet, founded in 1924 at the behest of the founder of modern Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, considers itself to be a staunch upholder of the secular values he championed and which the opposition now fears Erdogan is eroding. Many Muslims consider images of the prophet, not least ones satirising him, to be blasphemous under Islam.



The new issue has already caused controversy within the Islamic world, raising fears of a repeat of the violent 2006 protests over the cartoons of Mohammed printed in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.



Dozens of Muslims staged an angry protest against the paper in Istanbul, brandishing slogans like "Our dear Prophet, don't be upset, Muslims are with you" and "Cumhuriyet will be brought to account".



Cairo's Al-Azhar university, Sunni Islam's most prestigious centre of learning, had warned that new Mohammed cartoons in Charlie Hebdo will only serve to "stir up hatred" while there was also an angry reaction from Iran and Islamic State (IS) militants.



- AFP/ec

Quote:bbc.com/news/world-europe-30798534

13 January 2015 Last updated at 16:16 ET



German leaders attend Muslim community rally





The BBC's Jenny Hill: "It's been described as a rally for tolerance"

Continue reading the main story

Paris attacks





German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck have attended a Berlin vigil organised by Muslim groups to promote tolerance and religious freedom in the country.



Organisers say the event aimed to condemn the Paris attacks and show solidarity with the victims.



They are also responding to the recent "anti-Islamisation" rallies staged by the Pegida organisation across Germany.



The group's latest rally in Dresden drew a record crowd of 25,000.



Large anti-Pegida demonstrations took place in other German cities on Monday.

'Terrorism, not in our name'



President Gauck addressed the vigil at the Brandenburg Gate, saying: "We are all Germany."



He added: "Germany has become more diverse through immigration - religiously, culturally and mentally. This diversity has made our country successful, interesting and likeable."



Aiman Mazyek, head of the German Council of Muslims, told the crowd: "We stand together for a Germany that is open to the world, with a big heart, which honours freedom of opinion, of the press and of religion."

Members of German social democratic party SPD holds a banner displaying a crossed swastika and reading "Berlin against Nazis" during a rally to protest against Germany's anti-Islamisation movement "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident" PEGIDA, on 12 January 2015 near the Chancellery in Berlin Protesters in Germany marched against the "anti-Islamisation" group Pegida on Monday



The event was shown live on German television in a special broadcast entitled "Germany is Charlie".



Senior figures from across the political spectrum took part along with Christian leaders and representatives from Germany's Central Jewish Council.



The Central Council of Muslims in Germany and the Turkish community in Berlin have called the event: "We Muslims say: Let's stand by each other. Terrorism, not in our name."

Quote:There have been conflicting accounts about the attitudes and backgrounds of Pegida’s supporters. They are said to include both convinced neo-Nazis and impoverished pensioners who feel that they are the losers of Germany’s 1990 reunification.



Supporters of the Pegida movement wave German flags during their protest in Dresden, Germany, on Monday Supporters of the Pegida movement wave German flags during their protest in Dresden, Germany, on Monday (Getty)



However, a study conducted by Dresden’s Technical University concluded, alarmingly, that the average Pegida protester was well-educated and middle-class. They attended protests because they were “dissatisfied with politics”, according to the study.

Quote:Dresden's PEGIDA Movement: How Germany's Anti-Muslim Protesters Are Using Charlie Hebdo To Recruit Followers

By Dennis Lynch @neato_itsdennis on January 14 2015 2:25 PM



Pegida supporters wore black arm bands in solidarity with France and the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a move that many criticized as trying to capitalize on a tragedy. Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch



A growing anti-Muslim movement in Germany is using the Charlie Hebdo massacre to recruit followers in an effort that has alarmed German leaders and raised questions about the country's tolerance for non-European immigrants. What's unclear is whether Pegida (a German acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) will be able to win over mainstream followers and cement its status among Germany's many political groups focused on immigration amid the growing anti-Muslim backlash spreading across Europe since last week's terror attacks in Paris.



Pegida held its largest rally to date Monday, less than a week after the fatal shooting at Charlie Hebdo's Paris office, with more than 25,000 people marching across Dresden to protest Muslim immigrants in Germany. That marked an increase of more than 7,000 from the group's previous rally the week before. Pegida's growing popularity comes as nearly all of Germany’s main political parties, including Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, have shifted toward the left over the last six election cycles, according to a 2013 WZB Berlin Social Research Center study. That has left many in overwhelmingly conservative Dresden, in the formerly Communist east, feeling like they have lost their political voice, something Pegida has seized on.



“In the next few weeks and months, they’re going to try to build a legitimate movement,” said Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer in German and European Studies at King’s College in London. “They are going to motivate a lot of people who might feel that if they don’t go out on the street then they’ll slowly get pushed out of the political spectrum. But if they don’t win now, I think this will sort of be the Alamo for them. It’s their last shot.”



The Pegida rally Monday drew all kinds of people, with businessmen and families marching down the streets of Dresden alongside known activists of the National Democratic Party, the far-right, allegedly neo-Nazi party that led similar marches in the 1990s. Many protesters were adamant that they did not support Nazis, but had legitimate concerns that the political establishment hadn't answered over Germany’s growing immigrant population.



“If you look at a lot of the people at Pegida rallies, they look like normal, everyday people. That tells you that there is some deeper malaise underneath all this,” said Dr. Henning Meyer, editor-in-chief of the progressive journal Social Europe and a research associate at the London School of Economics. “It’s a wider section of the population that feels alienated and insecure, that the media doesn’t report things properly, that politicians don’t take them seriously and that political correctness means the real debates aren’t had.”



Germany is the second most popular destination in the world for immigrants behind the United States. Roughly 1.2 million people emigrated to Germany in 2013, and many Germans, including Merkel, have expressed concern that immigrants are coming to take advantage of the country's generous welfare programs. Instability in recent years has pushed hundreds of thousands of people from war-torn Syria, Iraq and across the region to apply for asylum in Germany. Last year, 180,000 applied, up 57 percent from 2013, according to Reuters.



Pegida was founded in October 2014 in Dresden by 41-year-old businessman Lutz Bachmann after he witnessed a clash between supporters and opponents of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, a separatist rebel group banned in Turkey. His Pegida colleague Kathrin Oertel has said immigrants must not be allowed to import foreign conflicts into Germany.



Many Pegida protesters stress that all immigrants are welcome, but only under the condition that they assimilate into German culture and do not abuse Germany’s liberal immigration policies. “We want to keep our culture, to keep our traditions, to keep our Christian values,” Pegida spokesman Udo Ulfkotte told RT.



Bachmann's first rally in October drew only 350 people, but the crowds have grown exponentially with each week. As the group became more more visible, Germans demanded their national leaders respond. Facing widespread backlash, conservative leaders rushed to denounce the rallies, leaving Pegida with little mainstream backing. At one recent anti-Pegida demonstration, more than 22,000 people protested the group's anti-Muslim views. In Berlin, Merkel joined a Muslim solidarity rally this week, telling the crowd that "hatred of foreigners, racism and extremism have no place in our country."



Dresden has long been an epicenter for far-right groups in Germany, beginning soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when many East Germans were left jobless and adrift during reunification and the transition to capitalism. At the time, rallies led by the National Democratic Party drew thousands to the streets, but Dresden’s politicians eventually pulled their support for the movement after business leaders complained.



Clarkson, who grew up in Hanover, Germany, recalled the clashes in the 1990s between the left and right-wingers in Leipzig, a former East German city 50 miles away from Dresden. The leftists prevailed, Leipzig has been generally liberal ever since, he said. He suspects many of Pegida’s now-middle-aged followers are the same right-wing youth who felt alienated after the NDP fell out of favor. He predicted the tide will likely eventually turn against Pegida, too.



“I think a lot of people in Dresden are getting embarrassed by this,” he said.

Quote:Photo of Muslim woman `holding bra` sparks outrage

Last Updated: Saturday, April 14, 2012 - 15:21



Ottawa: A Muslim student at the University of British Columbia, Canada, has been slammed by her peers for displaying a provocative photograph of a woman wearing a niqab and holding up a bra.



Sooraya Graham, 24, who is enrolled in a fine arts programme at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, took a black and white picture of her friend as a part of a class assignment.



A Muslim student offended by the image tore the photo down and hid it in protest, despite Graham’s attempt to humanise the figure of a modern Muslim woman wearing the customary veiled outfit, The Daily Mail reports.



According to the paper, Graham feels there is nothing wrong with trying to demystify the appearance of Muslim women in Canada by showing that she too wears underwear just like any other person.



"I found it really intrusive. There are things I encounter in the world I don’t like or I don’t agree with, but I would never take something down," the paper quoted her, as saying.



Since the protest has gone public, an education centre in the city funded by the Saudi Arabian embassy has expressed its opposition to the black and white image.



ANI

Quote:Israeli newspaper edits out Angela Merkel from front page on Paris march



Small Jewish ultra-orthodox newspaper Hamevaser digitally removed female world leaders present at Sunday’s unity march after Charlie Hebdo attacks

Hamevaser front page

A crop of the photo from Hamevaser’s front page. Merkel who marched next to François Hollande was digitally removed. Photograph: Israel Sun/Rex



Associated Press in Jerusalem



Wednesday 14 January 2015 12.44 EST





A small Jewish ultra-Orthodox newspaper in Israel has found itself in the spotlight after digitally removing Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel from a photo of this week’s Paris march.



World leaders had linked arms to march in Paris against terrorism after Islamic extremists killed 17 people. At the march, Merkel stood in the front row between the French president, François Hollande, and Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.



But readers of the Hamevaser newspaper’s Monday edition didn’t know, as she had been digitally removed, leaving Abbas standing next to Hollande. Israeli media joked it was meant to bring Abbas closer to Israeli premier Binyamin Netanyahu, who was standing nearby.

European Commission President European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, EU president, Donald Tusk, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi march The un-edited line-up of world leaders at the unity march in Paris on Sunday. Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/AP



Within the insular ultra-Orthodox community, pictures of women are rarely shown, due to modesty concerns. In Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox vandals frequently deface buses and billboards with advertising deemed to be immodest.



Hamevaser full front page



‘Including a picture of a woman into something so sacred, as far as we are concerned, it can desecrate the memory of the martyrs and not the other way around,” Hamevaser’s editor said. Photograph: Israel Sun/Rex



The picture in Hamevaser also cut out other women, like the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, though the newspaper clumsily left her dark glove on the sleeve of a marcher. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, was cropped out.



Binyamin Lipkin, editor of Hamevaser, said the newspaper is a family publication that must be suitable for all audiences, including young children.



“The eight-year-old can’t see what I don’t want him to see,” he told Israel’s Channel 10 television station. “True, a picture of Angela Merkel should not ruin the child, but if I draw a line, I have to put it there from the bottom all the way to the top.”



He also said he did not want to tarnish the memories of the people killed in the attacks.



“Including a picture of a woman into something so sacred, as far as we are concerned, it can desecrate the memory of the martyrs and not the other way around,” he said.

Quote:Five charged with terrorism in Belgium

Deutsche Welle



Belgian police arrested more than a dozen suspected terrorists on Friday, charging five with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group" according to federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt. Van der Sypt told reporters that the suspects had been within hours of "carrying out terrorist attacks to kill police officers on public roads and in police stations."



The magistrate said he was fairly confident the authorities had dismantled the core of a dangerous terrorist cell, but that there was reason to believe other suspects may still be at large.



"I cannot confirm that we arrested everyone in the group," Van der Sypt said. He added that some of the group had recently returned to Europe from Syria, renewing fears about young Europeans going abroad and becoming radicalized.



Two other Belgians were arrested in France after allegedly fleeing the raids which left two suspected jihadists dead and a third injured on Thursday, possibly en route to Italy, police sources said. Belgium has requested their extradition.



Several suspects have been brought up on charges of terrorist activity. Reuters Several suspects have been brought up on charges of terrorist activity.



'The plan to attack our values'



Officers found Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition, explosives, and police uniforms during the anti-terrorism raids in which the 13 were arrested according to news agency AFP.



The raids follow one week after the terror attack that left 17 dead in Paris, although Belgian police said there was no apparent link between the plot in their country and the one in France. French PM Manuel Valls, however, said "the link that exists is the plan to attack our values."



Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said he was ready to call up the army to ensure security as he raised the country's terror alert to three on a scale of four.

Quote:Belgium deploys army as Europe remains on high alert

FRANCE 24



AFP / ANP / Marco De Swart Provided by France 24 EN AFP / ANP / Marco De Swart



Soldiers fanned out to guard possible terror targets across Belgium Saturday, as France and other European nations remained on high alert a day after police raids netted dozens of terrorism suspects across the continent.



Buildings within the Jewish quarter of the port city of Antwerp are among those being protected by the army - the first time in 30 years it has been deployed to reinforce police in Belgium's cities.



"You don't have the firepower to stop people with weapons of warfare, unless troops are involved", Antwerp Mayor Bart De Wever said. "We have an important Jewish community in this city which is very visible and an important target for Islamic terror," he told the VRT network.



Belgium has increased its terror warning to 3, the second-highest, following anti-terror raidson Thursday which left two suspects dead and led to the seizure of four Kalashnikov assault rifles, hand guns and explosives.



Several police uniforms were also found, which Belgian authorities said suggested the plotters had intended to masquerade as police officers.



Further arrests in France, Germany and Ireland meant a total of at least 30 suspects were put behind bars on Thursday and Friday as the continent steps up its anti-terrorism efforts in the wake of last week's attacks in Paris.

Quote:'Anti-Islamic' blogger hacked to death with meat cleavers by three Muslim attackers in Bangladeshi capital weeks after U.S. writer was butchered for criticising extremism



WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Washiqur Rahman Babu was butchered 'by students from Islamic schools'

Two suspects have been arrested, but a third is on run after fleeing scene

Babu was follower of Bangladeshi-U.S. blogger Avijit Roy killed last month



By Simon Tomlinson for MailOnline



Published: 13:22 GMT, 30 March 2015 | Updated: 15:43 GMT, 30 March 2015





A blogger was hacked to death by three Muslim attackers in Bangladesh's capital because of his anti-Islamic writings, police said today.



Washiqur Rahman Babu was declared dead as he was taken to a government hospital shortly after being attacked in Dhaka's Tejgaon area.



Two suspects were captured and three meat cleavers were recovered, Dhaka Metropolitan Police official Biplob Kumar Sarker said.



The captured suspects were students at separate Islamic schools and the third suspect fled the scene, he added.



The killing took place a month after a prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger known for speaking out against religious extremism was hacked to death in Dhaka.



Photo captions:

* Murdered: The body of Bangladeshi blogger Washiqur Rahman lies in a morgue at Dhaka Medical College in Dhaka after he was hacked to death in the capital allegedly because of his anti-Islamic writings



* Grief-stricken: A relative of Washiqur Rahman weeps after seeing his body at Dhaka Medical College in Dhaka



* A Bangladeshi policeman escorts Jikrullah (left) and Ariful Islam, two of the three attackers suspected of killing blogger Washiqur Rahman Babu





It was not immediately known what sort of blogging Babu did, Sarker said, adding that the suspects told police that they targeted him for his anti-Islamic writings.



Two of the victim's cousins told reporters at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where Babu's body was being kept, that he had recently joined a travel agency in Dhaka after finishing his studies.



But they said they were not aware of any blog he had kept.



Local media reported that Babu had a Facebook page that contained the line 'Iamavijit', meaning he was a follower of Avijit Roy, the Bangladeshi-American blogger hacked to death last month.

(Where are all those "I am Kaiser Sose" types - darn, forgot the name of that French lefty magazine - Ah "Je Suis Charlie".

Yeah, where are they? When the rationalists/freethinkers working on the real edge of civilisation are getting butchered by christoislam, and just for expressing solidarity with another freethinker who was also butchered by christoislam.)



Roy, a Bangladesh-born U.S. citizen, died after he was attacked on Dhaka University campus when he was leaving a book fair with his wife.



Photo captions:

* The killing took place a month after a prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger Avijit Roy (pictured with his wife Rafida Ahmed), who is known for speaking out against extremism, was hacked to death in Dhaka



* The scene following the attack on the couple shows Ms Ahmed covered in blood. An obscure militant group, Ansar Bangla 7, claimed responsibility for the attack it said was in retaliation for his 'crime against Islam'



A previously unknown militant group, Ansar Bangla 7, claimed responsibility for the attack.



An Islamic extremist, Farabi Shafiur Rahman, was paraded in court earlier this month over the murder.



The U.S. has sent a team of FBI investigators to Bangladesh to help probe the murder of the author of bestseller The Virus of Faith, who was visiting the city where he was born.



The 43-year-old's family has accused Bangladeshi authorities of failing to do enough to protect him after he received death threats for his anti-religious writing.



Photo caption:

Islamic extremist Farabi Shafiur Rahman (centre) has been arrested and appeared in court over the murder of Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death with a machete in the middle of the street last month



Roy, the founder of the Mukto-Mona (free mind) blog, was born in Bangladesh to a family of scholars but moved to Atlanta, Georgia, around 15 years ago.



He and his blogger wife Rafida Ahmed, who was also badly injured in the attack, were hauled off their rickshaw by two assailants in the attack.



He was on his way back from a university book fair in Bangladesh when he was targeted on Thursday by at least two men over his opposition to religious extremism.



They sliced his head with the long blades before turning on his wife, Rafida Ahmed, and cutting her finger off when she tried to save him.

Quote:'Anti-Islamic' blogger hacked to death with meat cleavers by three Muslim attackers in Bangladeshi capital weeks after U.S. writer was butchered for criticising extremism



WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Washiqur Rahman Babu was butchered 'by students from Islamic schools'

Two suspects have been arrested, but a third is on run after fleeing scene

Babu was follower of Bangladeshi-U.S. blogger Avijit Roy killed last month



By Simon Tomlinson for MailOnline

Published: 13:22 GMT, 30 March 2015 | Updated: 15:43 GMT, 30 March 2015

Quote:19 March 2015

Boko Haram attacks Nigeria's Gamboru, women slaughtered in Bama

Quote:27 March 2015

Islamists storm Mogadishu hotel with gov't officials inside



Islamist militants blasted their way into a popular hotel in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Friday, killing at least seven people and trapping government officials inside, police and witnesses said.



Police surrounded the Hotel Maka Al Mukaram, but heavy gunfire from militants prevented them from mounting a rescue operation. The remains of two destroyed cars could be seen at the gates of the building.



"The hotel is now fully under the control of the militants," Major Ismail Olow, a Mogadishu police officer at the scene, told Reuters. "Al Shabaab fighters are on the top of the building and inside the hotel. It is not easy for us to go in."

Quote:24 Mar 2015

Gunmen kill bus passengers in Afghanistan

France 24

NEWS WIRES



Gunmen killed 13 passengers travelling on a bus in Afghanistan on Tuesday, underlining the country's fragile security situation as President Ashraf Ghani holds talks with the United States in Washington.



The attack in Wardak province, which lies close to Kabul, is the latest to hit civilians in Afghanistan's still-bloody conflict.

Quote:[quote]24 Mar 2015



Islamic State recruits 400 children since January: Syria monitor

Reuters



Islamic State has recruited at least 400 children in Syria in the past three months and given these so-called "Cubs of the Caliphate" military training and hardline indoctrination, a monitoring group said on Tuesday.



The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the children, all aged under 18, were recruited near schools, mosques and in public areas where Islamic State carries out killings and brutal punishments on local people.



One such young boy appeared in a video early this month shooting dead an Israeli Arab accused by Islamic State of being as spy. A French police source said the boy might be the half-brother of Mohamed Merah, who killed three soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish children in Toulouse in 2012.

Quote:19 March 2015

Nine arrested over Tunisia attack



BBC News



Tunisian security forces stand guard outside the National Bardo Museum in Tunis. 19 March 2015 ? © AFP Tunisian security forces stand guard outside the National Bardo Museum in Tunis. 19 March 2015



Nine people have been arrested in connection with a gun attack in Tunis that saw 23 people killed on Wednesday, including 20 foreign tourists.

Quote:British man fighting Islamic State: 'I'd be a fool if I wasn't nervous'

The Telegraph

By Harriet Alexander

2 day agos



© Associated Press



A British man fighting against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) has told of the surges of joy and fear he has felt during the past four months of combat, as he prepares to launch an audacious assault on the jihadists in Syria .



Macer Gifford, a 28-year-old from Oxford, is one of a number of Kurdish fighters positioned on the outskirts of an Isil-held village in northern Syria, awaiting the order to attack.



"It could come any minute - we know it is imminent," said Mr Gifford, who had no prior military experience beyond the odd day with the Territorial Army.



"Previously we've been asleep when the orders have come. Sometimes we are cooking, and have to throw everything down and go immediately into battle.



"Actually, it's quite stressful."



Neither a Kurd, nor a Muslim, nor speaking any Middle Eastern languages, Mr Gifford travelled to Kurdish territory at the end of December.



A public school-educated former Tory councillor, Mr Gifford was preparing to take up a lucrative job in the City when he decided to trade in his comfortable existence for the battlefields of the Middle East.



"I was sitting at my desk and watching it all with increasing horror," he said. "Islamic State is a barbaric, vile organisation. I wanted to help, and thought for a while about working with a charity, but this seemed the best for me."



Mr Gifford said he resents the description of himself as a mercenary, explaining: "I'm not here for money or fame - I'm not being paid."



But he said his motivation - and that of the other foreign fighters with him - was to defend democracy.



"I have always believed very strongly in that," he said. "It's totally wrong to see this as a Christian versus Muslim conflict - I'm an atheist, as are many Kurds, and there are Christians, Muslims, Yazidis, all sorts here.



© Getty "There are lots of other foreigners, although Britons are the largest group. Most are former soldiers, although some have just come for their ideals. It's a really good atmosphere."



Mr Gifford likened it to the crowds of idealists who signed up for the Spanish Civil War.



So far an estimated few dozen Westerners have joined Kurdish fighters battling Isil in northern Syria, including Americans, Canadians, Germans, and Britons.



The Syrian Kurdish armed faction known as the YPG has not released official numbers confirming foreign soldiers, and academics say it's hard to assess the total.



But the number pales compared to an estimated 16,000 fighters from about 90 countries who have joined Isil since 2012, according to the US Department of State figures.



For his first month with the YPG, Mr Gifford said he received training - much of it carried out by former members of the French Foreign Legion or Army Rangers.



His band of foreign recruits was assigned a translator - although he said he was beginning to pick up some Kurmanji, a dialect spoken by the Kurds.



"Just stuff like 'get down' or 'move forwards,'" he said. "Soldiering is a fairly simple game."



His first experience of conflict was part of a Kurdish operation to reclaim territory around Tal Hamis, in north east Syria.



"The first time I was shot at, I wasn't really frightened - I just remember thinking that we had to win," he said.



But it was during that battle to take Tal Hamis, at the end of February, that Mr Gifford's Australian friend Ashley Johnston, 28, was killed .



"We've all thought long and hard about coming here," he said. "You weigh the risks up. We are fighting for our beliefs."



Even if that kills you?



He paused.



"I am trying to avoid talking about dying, because it would upset my family. What I would say is that we all have strong beliefs and values."

(Speaks like a christian rather than the atheist he alleges himself to be. Haven't heard many atheists refer to "beliefs and values", but have heard evangelicals do so.)



His parents, he admitted, "would rather I was at home."



But he recalled his joy at seeing villages liberated from Isil, where residents would come out in celebration.



"It was scenes I did not expect. Women were taking off their burkas, running into the streets, and children would make the V for victory sign.



"People hate the Islamic State."



There were no reprisals?



"Absolutely not - 100 per cent," he said. "There's been no looting, or defacing of buildings. The YPG are liberators, not people seeking revenge."



He claimed that so genuine were the soldiers they would even send the bodies of Isil fighters back in coffins - many of them, he said, carried Turkish passports. Isil prisoners were taken to jail.



What does he think of those - including hundreds of Britons - who have joined Isil?



"They are absolutely crazy," he said. "And they know what they are getting in to. Isil murders people like humanitarian workers or journalists. They are barbaric. Anyone who joins Isil deserves to be in prison or a mental hospital."



And in the past few months, Kurdish forces have sliced through a swathe of northern Syria, thanks to air support from coalition forces. They were now, he said, edging towards Isil heartlands, and resistance was getting tougher.



For the past month Mr Gifford has been camped in the Rojava region, preparing for the order to attack Isil.



"I'd be a fool if I wasn't nervous," he said. "But I'm here to do a job. If you constantly think about worst case scenarios, then you get crippled. I'm ready for it."



But surely he must realise how much Isil would like to get their hands on him?



"I'm surrounded by 200 heavily-armed Kurds," he replied with a laugh. "I'm probably safer here than in London."



The one thing on Mr Gifford's mind, he said, was what happens next.



"I know we're going to take Rojava. But then what?"



He and his fighters want to carry on all the way to Isil's de facto capital, Raqqa . If there was progress, Mr Gifford said he would fight with his Kurdish comrades all the way. If not, he said he may return to the UK "and have a hot bath".



David Cameron, he said, must act.



"I feel really strongly that the British government must get on the side of the Kurds. We don't want boots on the ground here - that is not the answer. But we need political support, and equipment too.

(Equipment is also a request for weapons. Not just "other stuff".

Nikkei Asian Review IIRC had an American article - i.e. by AmriKKKans - on how great the current war-torn situation of Africa and the Middle-East was for American weapons manufacturers and how they were tailoring schemes [for both sides of each conflict]. AmriKKKa/christowest always comes out winning no matter who gets genocided. They can turn a buck out of everyone's misery.)



"I know that Britain doesn't want to support the Kurds because of Turkish pressure. But we shouldn't worry about what the Turks think - we should support the Kurds, because it is the right thing to do.



(Imagine what would happen if Hindoos said something like: "Indian seculars won't support Hindoos in christoislamicly terrorised areas of India because of western pressure. But we shouldn't care what seculars/west thinks, all Hindoos should support the Hindoos living on the edge of christoislamic barbarism - i.e. by fighting with them against the christoislamic jihad, as the Brit Gifford above says about his fighting with the kurds - because it is the right thing to do."

Should work both ways, right?

But what would happen is that every christoislamic and psecular and secular in India - not to mention all of the christowest - will breathe down Hindoos' necks for daring to lift a finger against the ongoing genocide of Hindoos by the 'poor innocent' genocidal christoislamaniacs.)



"Who else will take the fight to Isil?"

Quote:'Jihadi John': Isis executioner Mohammed Emwazi wanted to wage jihad in Somalia until his friends were betrayed and killed by al-Shabaab



Londoner Mohammed Emwazi was diverted from his chosen path for jihad after hearing of the treatment of his friends from the 'London Boys' group at the hands of al-Shabaab. Kim Sengupta speaks to an acquaintance of the notorious terrorist in Gaziantep, Turkey

Kim Sengupta Author Biography

(Kim Sengupta - Indian christist? They seem to be *highly* active in British media too. Indian christomedia and their low standards infecting everyone.)



Tuesday 21 April 2015



Mohammed Emwazi, the Isis recruit from Britain now notorious as the savage executioner "Jihadi John", gave up an earlier plan to join al-Shabaab in Somalia when a succession of friends were killed amid accusations of deceit and betrayal within the organisation.



The Londoner turned from his first choice for jihad because he feared for his own life too if he joined the group that controls a swathe of Somalia and has brought carnage across East Africa.



Mohammed Emwazi had wanted to join the hardline Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab, the group that controls a swathe of Somalia and has brought carnage across East Africa (Reuters)



The extraordinary account of how he diverted from his preferred battleground in the Horn of Africa to become the masked murderer of Isis hostages came from a man who met him soon after his arrival in northern Syria, having apparently hoodwinked British security agencies to make his journey.



"He told me that if he had gone to Somalia he himself could well have been killed," Ayman, who worked for Isis but denies ever being a member, told The Independent.



Timeline: The emergence of Isis



"It was strange - we were in the middle of a war and he wanted to talk about another war. Mohammed was obsessed with al-Shabaab, he was angry about what had happened in Africa: some of his friends have been killed, some sent to prison and he thought they had been betrayed."



The foreign casualties in Somalia included Bilal al-Berjawi and Mohamed Sakr, members of a close-knit circle to which Emwazi belonged while growing up in north-west London. The three men knew Habib Ghani, the partner of Samantha Lewthwaite, the so-called "White Widow" of one of the 7/7 London bombers, along with Omar Hammami, an American jihadist. Emwazi was also an associate of Ali Adorus, now in prison in Ethiopia, whose family still lives in north London.



The men's deaths were accompanied by claims in Islamist circles of vicious internal strife within al-Shabaab, with enemies being eliminated in collusion with Western intelligence services.



The so-called "London Boys" raised funds and disseminated propaganda for al-Shabaab; six of them underwent military training in Somalia as early as 2006. One of them was involved with a cell which attempted to carry out bombings in London in 2005, two weeks before the suicide bombing by Lewthwaite's husband, Germaine Lindsay.



Emwazi had repeatedly claimed he was being hounded by MI5, which he said was trying to recruit him, after a thwarted attempt to reach Somalia alongside Adorus, a former security guard, five years ago. He had become convinced that al-Shabaab had been infiltrated by Western intelligence agencies.



[Photo caption:] The American journalist Steven Sotloff was among Emwazi's victims (EPA)



"He told me that he tried to warn some of them, but it was too late," recalled Ayman, a 29-year-old Syrian who asked that only his first name be used. "His view was that if they [the intelligence agencies] could not prevent people from going to Somalia, they had them killed there instead. He was full of suspicion about spies. It was his ambition to go to help al-Shabaab, but he couldn't, so he was frustrated."



READ MORE: Emwazi 'considered suicide to escape MI5 spies'

Emwazi the student and devout teenage Muslim

Al-Shabaab is facing a bloody crisis of its own



Sitting at a café in a town across the Turkish border, Ayman described his encounter with Emwazi at Manbij in northern Syria. They met in spring last year just after Isis had taken over the town from Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate, in the first stages of a vicious struggle between the two hardline groups - both of which were fighting the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.



Ayman, a slim man with restless eyes, insisted that he just carried out "some office jobs" in Manbij while al-Nusra and Isis took control and was never a member of either group. He fled to Turkey, he said, as soon as he could after ensuring that his family got to safety. "We had to work, otherwise Nusra and Daesh (Isis) would accuse us of being sympathetic to Bashar."



The Quintin Kynaston Academy where Islamic State militant Mohammed Emwazi, who has come to be known as Jihadi John, once attended The Quintin Kynaston Academy where Islamic State militant Mohammed Emwazi, who has come to be known as Jihadi John, once attended (Getty)



Ayman could not explain why Emwazi should choose to confide in him. "We knew some people in common. The first time I saw him he was with some foreigners - Chechens, Tunisians, Yemenis - hanging around. I thought he was a Yemeni. It was only after speaking to him that I realised he was from England. I never knew his family name, some called him al-Brittani like the other British here.



"He wasn't a commander, no one famous, and I only remember the conversation because it was an important time in our war, with Daesh (Isis) fighting Nusra. But this man, he wanted to talk about Somalia: it was big on his mind and he was following news from there when he could."



Ayman added: "Mohammed was not seen much in public in Raqaa [Isis 'capital' in Syria]. We heard that he was really trusted by the Daesh leadership, and he was becoming haughty." He said he did not know Emwazi was to be involved in beheading captives. "It was a shock to us all," he said.



Emwazi's known killing spree began in August 2014 with the decapitation of American photojournalist James Foley. This was followed by videos of similar murders of Steven Sotloff, another American journalist; Peter Kassig, a US soldier who had become an aid worker; and David Haines and Alan Henning, British aid workers. Two Japanese hostages, Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto, were also killed, as was a group of Syrian soldiers.



Previous testimony gave a brief glimpse of Emwazi's focus on Somalia even after he had joined Isis. A former hostage told The Washington Post newspaper that the man known as "Jihadi John" was obsessed by al-Shabaab and forced captives to watch videos of fighting in Somalia.



Emwazi, Adorus and a German Muslim convert called Marcel Schrödl were sent back to Europe after landing at Dar es Salaam in 2009. Emwazi claimed that an MI5 officer attempted to recruit him at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on his way back.



READ MORE: Mother of James Foley calls his radicalisation a 'tragedy'

Jihadi John suspect escaped Britain 'by hiding in freight lorry'

Emwazi's Relatives go into hiding under increased scrutiny



Former "London Boys" Berjawi and Sakr were similarly stopped and deported from Kenya on their way to Somalia at around the same time as Emwazi's travels. They managed to get through in a second attempt later that year. Both were subsequently killed in US drone strikes.



In an attempt to counter claims of a "set-up" over these and other deaths, al-Shabaab produced a captured "informant" who confessed to supplying a foreign intelligence service with the information leading to the air strikes.



Lewthwaite's Pakistani-born partner Ghani and the American Hammami were shot dead in a village 200 miles from Mogadishu in 2013. The killings were supposedly carried out on the orders of Ahmed Abdi Godane, who had become the head of al-Shabaab in an internal coup.



Ayman said very little was known about Emwazi inside Syria. "He just appears in these videos, before that he was a no-one. Perhaps the British should be sorry they did not let him go to Somalia, he would probably be dead by now like his friends," he reflected with a smile.

Quote:Rise of Saudi-funded Caucasian Salafist fighters in West Asia - I

by Ramtanu Maitra on 03 Apr 2015 0 Comment





The role of ethnic Caucasian fighters in Syria, and their subsequent contribution in helping the other Islamic State (IS) fighters to secure and control a large swath of Syrian and Iraqi land under Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been documented. A large number of analysts, experts and observers have reported on their superior fighting abilities. Ilya Rogachev, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for New Challenges and Threats, in an interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio station on January 16, said about 800 Caucasian militants were now fighting with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.







However, Rogachev claimed that they are not Russian citizens but Kists from Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, a breeding ground of Caucasian Jihadi fighters. He noted that Georgian Kists - ethnic Chechens from the Pankisi Gorge - were “among the most prominent warlords who have already proved themselves in IS.” IS’s military emir in Syria, Omar al-Shishani is from the Pankisi Gorge and a former conscript in the Georgian Army. Rogachev said some news reports have emphasized that al-Shishani, among others, was possibly trained by officers who may have been trained by Americans.







The presence of such a large and well-organized and well-trained group of fighters who have left their homes to fight for the Jihadi cause to establish a Caliphate in the Levant, poses a serious threat to a wider region. In essence, the roving Caucasians, who are different from the Arabs in their looks and converse in a different language, are more like Jihadi-mercenaries on hire for all Salafi-Wahaabi outfits. Beside their role in Syria described here, these Caucasian Jihadis had long been engaged in Afghanistan and Central Asia under the Saudi and the Pakistani guidance.







Both India and China must make note that these Jihad-mercenaries could pose serious security threats in future in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, as well as in Xinjiang province in western China. Central Asian countries have already been victims of this menace but they are too weak and disunited and it is highly unlikely that they will be able to put up a common front in the short or middle-term to decisively defeat this menace.







However, not all these Caucasian fighters are tuned to the same ideology and as a result, quite a few of them have not pledged their allegiance to the IS flag. Some of them have remained loyal to the al-Qaeda-led Jabhat al-Nusrah in Syria. Those Caucasians who have remained loyal to al-Qaeda have also remained loyal to the Caucasus Emirate, whose objective is to help North Caucasus secede from Russia. However, notwithstanding these differences within the Caucasian fighters that have showed up later, they all had earlier combined together to join the campaign that began almost four years ago to dislodge the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Moreover, those who have joined the IS have not turned anti-al-Qaeda, but they claim that the al-Qaeda has become outdated.







All these Caucasian fighters had responded to the clarion call sent out by the anti-Syria, anti-Iran and anti-Russia western nations such as Britain, France and the United States. While Russia diplomatically fought that irregular warfare, China and India, among others expressed their disapproval in the international forums. These Caucasian fighters received funds distributed by the Saudi-Qatari-Kuwaiti governments and wealthy individuals of the Gulf-Sunni Shiekhdoms. These individuals had long been involved actively spreading Salafism and Wahhabism, providing finances to commit violence, whenever necessary. The Caucasian fighters transited into Syria through all those Sunni benefactor-nations, including Turkey.







Like many other Jihadis coming in to Syria from Arabia, Europe and from North Africa’s Maghreb nations, these Caucasians had earlier also received necessary on-the-ground training in irregular warfare. They received such training in Central Asia as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While they were in Syria, much of their arms came in from the West transiting into Syria through mostly Turkey. During their fight against the Kurds led by PKK-linked People’s Protection Units, or YPG, for the control of Kobane, a Syrian town bordering Turkey and considered a plum prize for the IS, these distinctive-looking Caucasian Jihadis, most of whom belonged to a group loyal to Omar al Shishani, a senior military leader in the IS, issued a video that came to establish their ethnic credentials.







A regional threat







According to Joanna Paraszczuk of From Chechnya to Syria, a website that tracks Russian-speaking fighters in Syria, this group is known as the al Aqsa Brigade. The group comprises those fighters who left the Chechen Jaysh al Muhajireen wal Ansar (Muhajireen Army) with Omar al-Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvilic, after he swore allegiance to the Islamic State.







The Muhajireen Army is a Chechen-led group that considers themselves to be the Syrian branch of the Islamic Caucasus Emirate. The US State Department has added the Muhajireen Army to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations on Sept. 24 2014. (Chechen unit from Islamic State reportedly fighting at Kobane: The Long War Journal: Bill Roggio & Caleb Weiss: October 2, 2014). Roggio and Weiss pointed out that Shishani’s al Aqsa Brigade has often spearheaded the Islamic State’s advance in key areas of Syria. Hence, it was no surprise that this experienced fighting unit was on the front line of the Islamic State’s offensive in Kobane.







Although the media in general club all those Caucasian fighters who have come out of Russia and adjoining countries to fight in Syria as Chechens, many of them have not lived in Chechnya but lived in a landmass that stretches from Russia’s Georgia borders to the Middle Volga region. According to Dr. Theodore Karasik, in his Sep 21, 2014 Azeri Daily article, The Chechen factor in the Islamic State: The immediate threat to the Russian Federation, 3000 or more Russian Federation citizens serve in Islamic State combat forces within the Islamic State. Some of these fighters may be part of the Chechen diaspora from Georgia, Turkey, and Europe.







The now-deceased Emir of the Caucasian Emirate, Dokku Abu Usman Umarov in October 2010 had addressed such intent when he issued a statement: “Today, I want to describe the situation in the world because, even if thousands of kilometers separate us, those mujahedin who are carrying out Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and many, many other places, they are our brothers, and we today (with them) are insisting on the laws of Allah on this earth.” (The Caucasus Emirate Jihadists: The Security and Strategic Implications: Gordon M. Hahn: Strategic Studies Institute Monograph: Russia’s Homegrown Insurgency: Jihad in the North Caucasus: October 2012)







The Caucasus Emirate (CE) was formed by Dokku Umarov, a veteran of the Second Chechen War (1999) in October 2007 with the likely intent to bring under its umbrella a number of militant groups functioning independently in North Caucasus against Russia. Umarov was the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), a militant movement to separate Chechnya from Russia. The formation of the Caucasus Emirate by Umarov occurred at a time when the ChRI was fading and Umarov wanted to get it attached to the international Jihadi movement under virtual control of al-Qaeda. That, however, does not imply that Umarov had handed over control of his outfit to al-Qaeda. Instead, he associated ChRI with al-Qaeda because both were Salafi-Wahhabi preaching militant outfits seeking to set up an Islamic Caliphate and al-Qaeda had both money and the ability to supply fighters to keep the North Caucasian pot boiling. In other words, what we are observing now is reverse migration. It is the Caucasian Emirate / Chechen Republic of Ichkeria fighters who have come out of their hold to provide military support to al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State, to help attain the larger groups’ objectives.







The Levant region, where the IS wants to establish its Caliphate, is a geographical region encompassing the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea from roughly the Isthmus of Suez to the Taurus Mountains, including present-day Israel, Lebanon, western Jordan, the Sinai in Egypt, and that part of Syria defined by the Orontes Valley and the region of Aleppo. Beyond the Levant, nations bordering it also have substantial Muslim populations. In some of those nations, Muslims are majority citizens while in nations like China and India, they are a minority but some of them are involved in disputes with the non-Muslim majority that control those countries’ affairs over seeking autonomy, if not outright secession.







It is not unlikely that these Caucasian fighters will be made available from time to time by their “spiritual” and financial protectors to stir up violent movements in Afghanistan, Central Asian “stan” nations, China and India. In the majority-Muslim nations, such as those nations situated in Central Asia and in Afghanistan, threats are even greater since it is not unlikely that to become a part of the larger Islamic Caliphate could seem a highly-tempting option to some of their citizens.







The Jihad-fervor of these Caucasian fighters became evident in their continuing participation in the almost-four year old efforts by the Salafist Gulf nations, working hand-in-glove with the champions of democratic world - United States, Britain and France - to bring down the pro-Iran and pro-Russia Bashar al-Assad regime, in the distant land of Syria by engaging themselves in a long-drawn irregular warfare against Damascus and its allies, such as Lebanon. Many of these fighters had ignored the Caucasus Emirate’s diktat not to leave Caucasus fighting for others.







It is also evident that not all of these Caucasian fighters in Syria are steadfast any longer in their earlier goal, which was to dismantle the al-Assad regime. Many have shifted their focus towards establishing the IS Caliphate, defending its existence, expanding it in the future and making it their home. Although it continues to receive funds and arms from Salafist governments and individual allies in the region, these Caucasians are now battling a limited version of western military forces that exist in the region (often in the guise of ‘trainers’), and working towards toppling the Arab fiefs in the region in order to expand the Islamic States’ territory and secure oil and gas fields.







On the other hand, former colonial western nations and its principal ally and muscle, the United States, who had earlier acted as Godfather to these Caucasian Jihadis, continue to remain the major financial beneficiaries of various Sunni Arab fiefdoms in the region led by the House of Saud, House of Khalifa, House of Sabah and House of Thani. Having funded the anti-Syria rebels, many of whom were branded terrorists, to weaken Iran and strengthen the Sunni Arab fiefs to extract more benefits from them, the western powers have now come to realize that the monsters that they had bred and nurtured are going to dismantle the highly-profitable arrangement that they had set up with these fiefs almost seven decades ago.







Moreover, these Arab fiefdoms, in addition to establishing a mutually-beneficial “protection-for-cash” arrangement with these western colonial powers and their trans-Atlantic ally, had also effectively handed over the geopolitical control of the area to their protectors. The area is particularly strategic because it contains a vast amount of oil and gas and leads up to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean - a major trade route to Asia. Colonials consider maintaining geopolitical control over this area would provide them with a huge geostrategic muscle against all other nations, including the emerging ones in Asia and Asia-Pacific.







(To be continued…)



This article appeared in the Jan-Mar 2015 issue of Agni, a Journal of the Forum for Strategic & Security Studies

Quote:Rise of Saudi-funded Caucasian Salafist fighters in West Asia - II

by Ramtanu Maitra on 04 Apr 2015 0 Comment





Why were they bred? : Following West’s successful campaign in defeating the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s with the help of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, Britain and Pakistan, with the tacit approval of the United States, began to weaken Russia to break up the Federation further. The weapon they chose to use in their new venture was the fanatical Sunni Muslims imbued with Salafism and Wahhabism and their pent-up anger over the years against the Godless Soviets aka Russians.







The principal objective of the West, and its Sunni allies, was to unhinge the newly-found and structurally-weak Central Asian nations from the long-established Russian influence. Oil and gas in that area provided the added incentives to this anti-Russia mob, who did not want Russia to emerge in the future becoming a major competitor to their geostrategic control over oil and gas supply to a vast part of the world.







Within Russia, some of the Chechens, Dagestanis, Ossetians and other North Caucasians saw in this external support lent by the British-Saudi-Pakistani trio an opportunity to rev up irregular warfare against Moscow. Since these Caucasian secessionists were eager to seek all kinds of help to undermine Russia, a vastly superior power, they developed links with the British, Saudis and Pakistanis. One of the conduits they used was the Saudi-funded al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden. They picked up arms and the Saudis, Pakistanis and the west moved in to help them. This happened in the 1990s after the now-deceased Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda had set up bases inside Afghanistan and all along the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders.







It was the time when the mujahideen groups, who were involved in defeating the Soviet troops in Afghanistan on behalf of the West, were engaged in an internecine warfare trying to seize control of Kabul. None of these mujahideen groups had the firepower or the military skill to do so, nor could they join hands with each other to develop a formidable force because of their internal in-built animosities and little concern about the Afghans in general.







At that point in time, Pakistan, with the help of Saudi cash, actively launched a project with the intent of gaining virtual control over Afghanistan by helping to install a pro-Islamabad government in Afghanistan. While the West gave the Saudi-Pakistani duo the proverbial green light, Saudis poured in money. Deobandi madrassas, that preached a version of orthodox Islam akin to the Wahhabi version propagated by the Saudis, were set up to indoctrinate young Afghans and Pakistanis and to impart them with arms training to make them ready to capture Kabul. That objective was achieved in 1996 with the help of Pakistan soldiers playing a significant role in helping those Wahhabi-indoctrinated military neophytes to march into Kabul. As Pakistani analyst Ahmed Rashid pointed out later, Pakistan’s Deobandi madrassas played a major role in educating the Taliban leadership that captured Kabul in 1996.







But the plan to create Taliban and seize control of Kabul was part of a much larger project that ensured a long and a broader war in the region. Saudis heavily funded the Britain-based Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), an international group of white-robed Salafi preachers whose ties with the terrorists have led to their being banned in many countries, to propagate the Wahhabi-version of Islam in the most-populated areas of Central Asia, such as the Ferghana Valley. Ahmed Rashid pointed out that a major success of this project in Central Asia showed up in the civil war in Tajikistan (1992-97). That was the first testing ground for the reinterpretation of Islam in Central Asia.







Today, Islamic movements such as Hizb ut-Tahrir al Islami and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) pose the greatest threats to the Central Asian regimes and stability in the region. Well armed and well financed, highly motivated, and with extensive support from the wider world of Islamic radicalism and drug smuggling mafias based in Afghanistan, these are pan-Islamic and pan-Central Asian movements. (The Fires of faith in Central Asia: Ahmed Rashid: World Policy Journal, Spring 2001). But proselytizing of the HuT in Central Asia was always a facade. Their wide-ranging presence in the distant parts of Central Asia was meant to indoctrinate and then recruit individuals who were ready and had the skill to adopt violent means in order to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia - the stated objective of the HuT.







A similar account of events occurring in that region at the time is also available in the book, Serpent’s Tail, penned by Mark Curtis, former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), widely known as the Chatham House. In his book, Curtis said: “In the early 1990s it was not only Saudi Arabia that bolstered the rise of radical Islamist groups which emerged from the Afghanistan war... Islamabad undertook a new wave of operations by using Pakistani, Afghan and other Sunni jihadists to promote its foreign policy goals both in Kashmir and across Central Asia - a big push the consequences of which are still with us.







“Moreover, Britain armed and trained the Pakistani military at this time while deepening commercial relations. London not only turned a blind eye to the Pakistani push but conducted covert activities of its own, its eyes set on new oil and gas reserves in the Central Asia region. Just as Britain had sponsored Islamic radicals to destabilize the Soviet regime in the past, now Pakistan’s backing of these forces was useful to Britain in countering communist governments that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet empire, and to reduce Russian influence in the region. Islamabad’s surge in Central Asia coincided with a new jihad in Bosnia from 1992, backed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as Britain and the US ... These concurrent episodes constituted a second wave in the development of global terrorism after the first wave in Afghanistan the previous decade.







“Even after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Muslim volunteers for jihad continued to flow into Pakistan and Afghanistan. Throughout the early 1990s Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, trained around 20,000 militant volunteers at a special training school north of Peshawar... The school’s founder was Abdul Sayyaf, the pro-Saudi mujahideen leader during the Afghan war, and its funders were mainly Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden. Pakistan’s secret services also continued to run some of the Afghan training camps, and funded training by another mujahideen commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, of militants from the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) groups. It was from this infrastructure of terrorism that the Taliban would soon emerge and which Bin Laden would draw on after arriving back in Afghanistan in 1996...







“During the 1990s, some groups operating in Kashmir with ISI support turned to terrorism in places such as Tajikistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and the Philippines... The Pakistani strategy to ‘recover’ Kashmir was part of a broader campaign to exert influence over the Central Asian Silk Road to China, which would benefit the country economically and enable it to act as a strategic power between Iran and China. It soon involved covert operations in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to Pakistan’s north, and the Russian republic of Chechnya to its west. By 1994, the military under Benazir Bhutto’s government was training hundreds of Chechens, Uzbeks and Tajiks at camps in Afghanistan in techniques of guerilla warfare, the aim being to export Islamist revolution in the region and reduce Russian influence,” Curtis detailed in his book.







Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, the network of Chechens, Uzbeks and Tajiks got disturbed and it began to scatter. Many stayed in Pakistan’s Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) while some others moved out. With the help of Islamist charities, many traveled to the Pankisi Gorge, a mountainous area in northern Georgia. In December 2003, for example, an Azeri military court convicted the leaders of Revival of Islamic Heritage, a Kuwaiti humanitarian organization, for sending Azeri recruits to the Pankisi Gorge on their way to fight in Chechnya.







According to Georgian officials, in early 2002, some sixty Arab computer, communications, and financial specialists, military trainers, chemists, and bomb-makers settled in the gorge. The group used sophisticated satellite and encrypted communications to support both Ibn al-Khattab’s operations in Chechnya and terrorists planning attacks against Western targets. The “Pankisi Arabs” later tried to buy explosives for what Georgian security officials believe was to have been a major attack on US or other Western installations in Russia. (How Chechnya Became a Breeding Ground for Terror: Lorenzo Vidino: Middle East Quarterly: Summer 2005)







(To be concluded…)



This article appeared in the Jan-Mar 2015 issue of Agni, a Journal of the Forum for Strategic & Security Studies

Quote:Rise of Saudi-funded Caucasian Salafist fighters in West Asia - III

by Ramtanu Maitra on 05 Apr 2015 1 Comment





Enters Ibn al-Khattab : Then came the direct attack on Russia in the form of intervention in Chechnya by the Saudi-British-Pakistan combo. One of the key figures in this was Ibn al-Khattab, a collaborator of Osama bin Laden. Ibn al-Khattab, whose real name was Samir bin Salakh al-Suwailim, often referred to as Emir Khattab or simply Khattab, is a key player in the Saudi-Pakistan-Britain-led Chechen imbroglio. He had both Western and Islamic education and had appeared in Pakistan in 1987 at the height of the mujahideen-led war against the Soviet troops. In Pakistan, he met some of the key leaders of the Arab “Afghans,” including Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, Sheikh Tamim Adnani, and Osama bin Laden.







Between 1988 and 1993, Khattab participated in all the major operations in the Afghan jihad, including the capture of Jalalabad, Khost, and Kabul. He also spent time expanding his knowledge of Islam and his military skills, while becoming conversant in both Pashto and Russian. (Ibn al-Khattab: the bin Laden of Chechnya: Money Jihad: April 21, 2013)







According to a Money Jihad article, by the early 1990s, Khattab had emerged as one of the most fierce and competent commanders, popular with both the Afghan and the Arab “Afghan” mujahedin. He also became one of bin Laden’s key protégés. Khattab reportedly spent the years between early 1993 and early 1995 commanding a small Arab elite force in support of the Tajik Islamist mujahedin, particularly in the Ferghana Valley. He returned to Afghanistan to train and lead one of the first elite forces to go to Chechnya. Ali Hammad, a senior al Qaeda commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s, knew Khattab as a senior commander under bin Laden and considered him “one of the more important personalities in al-Qaeda.” Ali Hammad confirmed that Khattab went to Chechnya on bin Laden’s orders, and that he and bin Laden personally managed the subsequent flow of jihadist volunteers into the area.







“Khattab arrived in Chechnya in the spring of 1995 with eight veteran Arab ‘Afghan’ commanders, followed by a few dozen combat veterans. He soon became one of the most important commanders in Chechnya, quickly forming a close relationship with Shamil Basayev. One of Basayev’s closest personal friends, Chechnya’s onetime foreign minister Shamil Beno, reported that Basayev underwent a profound change in 1995 under Khattab’s influence. Basayev ‘started moving from freedom for Chechnya to freedom for the whole Arab world,’ Beno said. ‘He changed from a Chechen patriot into an Islamic globalist.’”







Basayev worked closely with both al-Qaeda and Khattab. He trained for his jihad in the Afghansi camps, as he said in July 1995: “I was preparing for war with Russia a long time before the aggression against Chechnya began. Together with fighters from my Abkhazian [separatists within Georgia] battalion, I paid three visits to Afghan mujahedeen camps, where I learned the tactics of guerrilla warfare.” He also threatened China. In July 1998, as acting Prime Minister of Chechnya, he issued a threat to Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, that if China once more referred to Chechnya as part of Russia, Chechnya would launch support actions for the Uighur population in Xinjiang Province to split off as an independent state. (EIR Fact Sheet: Who Is Behind the Drive To Dismember Russia?: EIR Intelligence Team: Dec 19 2014)







Funding the Chechnya terrorism







“But al-Khattab didn’t only receive funds from the Middle East and Al Qaeda. He was the recipient of zakat donations from U.S. Muslims. Benevolence International Foundation, a Saudi-created Islamic charity which relocated to Chicago in 1993, was shut down by the Bush administration after 9/11 for its role in financing jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya. The racketeering trial against BIF’s leader revealed that “[Al-Khattab] did have ties to Saudi Arabia: a fund-raising website listed the Benevolence International Foundation—originally a Saudi-based charity—as a vehicle for contributions.” (Ibn al-Khattab: the bin Laden of Chechnya : Money Jihad: April 21, 2013)







Funds also came through bank accounts of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), Canadian Islamic Association, and Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), for which Adham Amin Hassoun, a prominent member of the Florida cell in the USA, filed incorporation papers in Florida. The cell pays out thousands of dollars in cheques, some of which were marked “Chechnya”, “Kosovo,” or “for tourism”. (History Commons: October 1993-November 2001: Florida Cell Supports Global Jihad, Is Monitored by FBI)







One other source of Ibn Khattab’s money was Britain where Jihadis and fundraisers working hand-in-glove with British intelligence to finance militants to undo “unfriendly” and geopolitically-important nations for the “benefit” of the West. Russia and its weak southwestern borders, of course, were natural targets in the 1990s. This collaboration between the MI5/MI6 and a brigade of radical Islamists that use Britain as their “safe house” has turned Britain into what the intelligence community calls Londonistan.







Long after the bird flew the nest and the nest was dismantled, news began to trickle out from Britain which showed that Londonistan was indeed raising and funding Khattab. During the eight-year-long (2006-2013) trial of Abu Qatada, a Palestinian-Jordanian whose real name is Omar Othman, it was revealed that when Abu Qatada was questioned in 2001 over his alleged connections to a German cell, police found £170,000 cash in his home, including £805 in an envelope labeled “For the mujahideen in Chechnya”. No charges were brought. (Profile: Abu Qatada: BBC NEWS: Dominic Casciani: June 26 2014). The New York Times pointed out that at the time, Qatada had no money-making job and was living with a wife and four children on government benefits worth $150 a week plus other housing aid.







Abu Qatada’s trial lingered for eight long years. The lengthy trial suggests it was orchestrated to keep him off-limits of the media. He is now living free in Jordan, a monarchy that is intricately interlinked with Britain. Jordan also harbors a large population of Chechens who had migrated decades ago. Some of these Chechens openly express their dual royalty displaying pictures of Chechen rebel leaders next to the Jordanian King. A Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, described Abu Qatada as the “spiritual head of the mujahideen in Britain” and Dominic Casciani tells us UK’s security agencies in their efforts to make sense of the Islamist scene, MI5 “had approached Abu Qatada on more than one occasion to ask for his help in minimizing the threat to the UK.”







On September 18, 2002, the Caspian Studies Program hosted a seminar at the Kennedy School of Government on the topic of Chechen diaspora communities in the Middle East. In this seminar, Wasfi Kailani, an anthropologist at the University of Yarmouk who has studied Jordan’s Chechen communities, answering a question on the Saudi funding of the Chechens said much of the foreign presence in and funding for the Chechen conflict has come from Saudi Arabia. Kailani indicated that Saudi militants have come to Chechnya to participate in what they see as a jihad and Saudi missionaries have come to the region to teach Wahhabi Salafism to Muslims who are embracing Islam after decades of Communist rule in the Soviet Union.







Conclusion







While it is evident that the rise of Islamic State and the threat it poses to the Sunni benefactors of the western colonial powers of yore, and its trans-Atlantic ally, the United States, has created a dilemma among the anti-Russia, anti-Iran cabal that had bred and nurtured these Wahaabi Jihadis. However, it would be premature to assume that the West has any real intent to cut off the snake’s head. It is more likely that the long-term geostrategic benefit that the West envisions it would accrue harboring these Caucasian terrorists will trump making serious efforts to eliminate them. In other words, despite all the revelations and bloodshed, these terrorists have come to stay.







West’s commitment to change Syria from a nation friendly to Russia and Iran to anti-Iran, anti-Russia is deep-rooted. In 2011, in Syria, when President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron, and President François Hollande joined forces to remove Syria’s elected President Bashar al-Assad from power, and thus deal a body blow to the Russians and Iranians, who acknowledge Assad’s legitimacy, not-so-militant groups within were bolstered by attaching them to well-trained Salafi-Wahhabi terrorists from a number of countries.







While Western countries were quite generous with arms, and worked with the neighboring countries to facilitate entry of arms into Syria, the bulk of the money came from the Salafi-Wahhabi bastions of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. Despite denials issued from Riyadh and Doha to quiet gullible Westerners, the funding of various Sunni groups seeking to establish Salafism and Wahhabism in a number of countries has long been well-documented. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, who is keen to see Assad, and the Russian influence over Syria, vanish altogether, praised the Saudis and Qataris for financial help lent to the Syrian “rebels,” in a discussion on CNN, in January 2014, “Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar, and for our Qatari friends,” the Senator repeated at the Munich Security Conference in late January. McCain praised Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and a former ambassador to the United States, for supporting forces fighting Assad in Syria. McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had previously met with Bandar to encourage the Saudis to arm Syrian rebel forces. (ISIS: Saudi-Qatari-Funded Wahhabi Terrorists Worldwide: Ramtanu Maitra: EIR: Aug 29 2014)







(Concluded)



This article appeared in the Jan-Mar 2015 issue of Agni, a Journal of the Forum for Strategic & Security Studies

Quote:Found your three part article informative. Wondered why all of sudden Libya and Syria became targets. Gadaffi had accepted all the conditions posed by the West. Syria? The Muslim population in the world and India are projected to increase significantly. If not militarily the Muslims will win by "womb" as some one commented.

Anon

Quote:Islamic State releases 'al-Baghdadi message'



14 May 2015

From the section Middle East



There have been reports Baghdadi has been injured in air strikes, but none has been confirmed

Islamic State



Should the IS-Texas link be taken seriously?

Iraq: Growth of the Shia militia

Can Iraq's army dislodge Islamic State?

Who is Mohammed Emwazi?



[colore=red]Islamic State (IS) has released an audio message it says is from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,[/color] which if confirmed would be the first in months.



The message [size="5"]urges Muslims to emigrate to the "caliphate" it has proclaimed in areas of Syria and Iraq.[/size] A reference to the Yemen conflict means it is recent.



Analysts say the voice appears to be Baghdadi's but this is not verified.



Baghdadi's fate has been unclear amid reports of air strikes by the US-led coalition that is opposing IS.



The message came as IS advanced to within 2km (1.2 miles) of the Unesco World Heritage site of Palmyra, one of the archaeological jewels of the Middle East.



Syria's antiquities chief warned that if IS seized Palmyra it would destroy everything that exists there.

'War of Muslims'



The latest message was released by the group's al-Furqan media outlet and appeared on several websites.



Analysis: BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner



The voice on the audio recording is clear, assured and, in places, almost melodic. If it is indeed, as is claimed, the voice of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then it will put paid to previous rumours of his death.



Since we don't actually see him he could, of course, be physically incapacitated. But the lengthy, 33-minute speech does not sound like one made by someone in failing health. The speaker, who makes continual use of religious quotations, exhorts Muslims around the world to join forces with his group.



Most significantly, he mentions the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen which began on 26 March, meaning this recording can be no more than seven weeks old.



US government linguistic experts will have doubtless been quick to analyse the voice patterns on the tape to see if they match earlier recordings of Baghdadi when he appeared in vision last year.



The speaker says: "There is no excuse for any Muslim not to migrate to the Islamic State... joining [its fight] is a duty on every Muslim. We are calling on you either to join or carry weapons [to fight] wherever you are."

Islamic State fighters wave the group's flag near a Syrian fighter jet exhibit in Raqqa in Syria



He adds: "Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is the religion of fighting. No-one should believe that the war that we are waging is the war of the Islamic State. It is the war of all Muslims, but the Islamic State is spearheading it. It is the war of Muslims against infidels."



IS declared a "caliphate" over parts of Iraq and Syria in June 2014.



The speaker in the message says: "There is no might nor honour nor safety nor rights for you except in the shade of the caliphate."

(Yeah, global ummah infestation, go back to where you came from: the middle-east. And kill yourselves there.)



The speaker also makes references to the recent Saudi-led air campaign against Shia rebels in Yemen, which began on 26 March. He condemns the Saudi royal family and says the conflict in Yemen will lead to the end of its rule.

(Yeah, only ISIS is allowed to massacre Shia, not Saudi.

And uh-oh for Pakiland, which is in trouble by extension for helping Saudi bomb Yemen. Hope ISIS finishes off Pakiland too in a massive mutually-destructive fireball.)



Baghdadi's last message was in November.



His only public appearance was to deliver a sermon in Mosul in Iraq after IS took the city last July.



An Iraqi interior ministry spokesman said in April that Baghdadi had been seriously wounded in a coalition air strike in March.



However, the Pentagon said it had no information on that, and other reports last year of him being injured proved to be inaccurate.



The Iraqi ministry of defence said on Wednesday that the second-in-command of IS, Abdul Rahman Mustafa Mohammed, was killed in an undated coalition air strike on a mosque in northern Iraq.



But the US said coalition planes had not attacked a mosque.



(Are Iraqi ministries untrustworthy or the US. Alternatively, is ISIS a US-creation - hence US would keep propping them up - or does the Iraqi govt fighting ISIS have a reason/greater reason to lie?)



Profile: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Quote:Islamic State releases 'al-Baghdadi message'



14 May 2015



[colore=red]Islamic State (IS) has released an audio message it says is from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,[/color] which if confirmed would be the first in months.



The message [size="5"]urges Muslims to emigrate to the "caliphate" it has proclaimed in areas of Syria and Iraq.[/size] A reference to the Yemen conflict means it is recent.

Quote:Isis claims it could buy first nuclear weapon from Pakistan this year

The Independent



Heather Saul



Isis has used the latest issue of its propaganda magazine Dabiq to suggest the group is expanding so rapidly it could buy its first nuclear weapon within a year.



The hyperbolic article, which the group attributes to the British hostage John Cantlie, claims Isis has transcended its roots as "the most explosive Islamic 'group' in the modern world" to evolve into "the most explosive Islamic movement the modern world has ever seen" in less than twelve months.



Photojournalist John Cantlie is regularly used in the terror group's propaganda and has appeared in a number of videos, including a YouTube series called "Lend Me Your Ears". He has been held a hostage by Isis for more than two years.



The piece, entitled "The Perfect Storm", describes militant Islamist groups such as Boko Haram, which recently pledged allegiance to Isis, uniting across the Middle East, Africa and Asia to create one global movement.



(Note, Asia is mentioned: it is very much a part of their target. But not Europe or AmriKKKa yet, oddly enough.

Sounds like the AmriKKKan agenda to convert the world to monotheism and make everyone into unthinking slaves to the empire. Christos and islamis are famously slaves to ideology, and will denounce reason and facts if it stands between them and their religion/invisible monogawd and its utterings/book/the word.

So christoislamics are the perfectly pliable and manipulable population Amrikkka always wanted in Asia.

India really should nip christoislam within its boundaries in the bud, and also work with other Asian nations and Russia to push islam out of Asia, and preferably out of Africa too.)



The article claims this alignment of groups has happened because Isis militants seized "tanks, rocket launchers, missile systems, anti-aircraft systems," before turning to more extreme weapons the group is not in possession of - such as nuclear weapons.



"Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto the table," the article continues. "The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilāyah in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region."



It admits that such a scenario is "far-fetched" but warns: "It's the sum of all fears for Western intelligence agencies and it's infinitely more possible today than it was just one year ago.



"And if not a nuke, what about a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive? That's easy enough to make."



An attack launched by Isis against America would ridicule "the attacks of the past".



"They'll [Isis] be looking to do something big, something that would make any past operation look like a squirrel shoot, and the more groups that pledge allegiance the more possible it becomes to pull off something truly epic.



"Remember, all of this has happened in less than a year. How more dangerous will be the lines of communication and supply a year on from today?"



The capacity of Isis to acquire such a device is certainly beyond the group at the moment.



The finances of the group have been estimated by some to be in the $2bn area, though it is impossible to verify how much money it actually has access to.



In September last year, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, warned that the militant group could become the world's first "truly terrorist state".



"We will see the risk, often prophesied but thank God not yet fulfilled, that with the capability of a state behind them, the terrorists will acquire chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to attack us," she said.

• globalresearch.ca/the-isil-is-in-ukraine-americas-agents-of-chaos-unleashed-in-eurasia/5446989
  
  
• globalresearch.ca/isil-is-using-ukraine-as-a-forward-base-into-caucasia-and-entry-into-europe/5447162
  
  

Quote:Saudi funded Rs 1,700 crore for Wahhabi influence in India – Vicky Nanjappa

Posted on 30/06/2015 by Admin



“Saudi sponsored Wahhabis are aiming to set up their own education system in India. … Out of the total Rs 1700 crore that has been earmarked for the cause, Rs 800 crore is being spent on setting up universities in different parts of the country. One such university was seen in Andhra Pradesh as well. Over all they propose to set up 4 such universities which will only cater to Wahhabi preachings.” – Vicky Nanjappa



[...]

Quote:BJP as such is dummy political force in TN, and full of Rationalist (In fact all their leaders are Rationalists in state and center) they wont do any proactive public gatherings don't create awareness among mass but when such incident happens they just come to take credit.



At least Hindi Munnani organizes public gatherings and there several leaders have been killed in last few years non cared for thorough investigation.



Jay

July 05, 2015



(HindOOs need to realise that their only friends are other Hindoos, i.e. heathens. Non-heathens end up being a noose around Hindus' neck and are a liability: at best they can only ever twist Hindoo heathenism in an attempt to make it fit them their unheathenism.

Hindutva has turned heathen nationalism into an unheathenism and utterly diluted and weakened it. Oh for another Shivaji, preferably one in every state, and followers to match. Note: Wishing is still allowed.)





Tamil medias especially Print media which has got far reaching circulation among people of Tamil Nadu don't mention any such incident for e.g violent incident took place near Ambur but ask anyone from Salem or Erode or any other cities of TN they will say we haven't come across any such news neither in Print Media nor Electronics media.



Almost every time violent incident happens Govt just black out such incident being reported in media.



Spineless media!



Surprise to read that Dinamalar reported it or else if DMK is in power they too would have not bothered to report this news.



Jay

July 06, 2015





Sir, it is the same story everywhere. Tamil Nadu going the Kashmir way. Kerala, UP, Bihar, Assam, Maharashtra, etc. going the Kashmir-way. In short, all going the Saudi way. The problem is that Hindus don't take pains to derive religious education from their holy scriptures. They readily believe whatever is said about various religions of the world by political parties, NGOs, Marxists. A discerning eye would quickly see that these people have an agenda to destroy Hinduism and hence they glorify other religions and paint Hinduism in dark. It is high time Hindus shun all political parties and think as a Hindu first. Don't spare anyone, even if it is BJP if they do not serve the interests of Hindus.

The revolution has to come within and not from political parties.

Naveen

Quote:West Bengal as a Jihadi Playground



One of five identified in the Delhi blasts was Mehboobque Ali Mandal of North 24 Parganas West Bengal.



Anirban Banerjee

Persecution & Proselytisation | 03-07-2015



Uninspired by the need to safeguard India’s national security, Mamata supports jihadis on West Bengal soil, who aim to establish an Islamic Caliphate in the West Bengal and Assam by driving out non-Muslims

Quote:“Attacking in India is the Holy Grail of South Asian jihadists”: The document warns that “preparations” for an attack in India are underway and predicts that an attack will provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with America: “Even if the U.S tries to attack with all its allies, which undoubtedly it will, the ummah will be united, resulting in the final battle.” "Striking in India would magnify the Islamic State’s stature and threaten the stability of the region”.



[...]

Quote:Islamic State recruitment document seeks to provoke 'end of the world'



An apparent Islamic Stt document found in the dry reaches of Pakistan’s tribal lands reveals that ISIL is recruiting a new terrorist army in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plans to trigger a war in India to provoke an Armageddon-like “end of the world.



Islamic State recruitment document seeks to provoke 'end of the world'

Sara A. Carter, American Media Institute 10:28 a.m. EDT July 28, 2015





A video grab released by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on July 11, 2015, shows Hafiz Saeed, the Islamic State leader of the Khorasan State, at an undisclosed location along the Pakistani-Afghan border.(Photo: TTP/EPA)

4681 CONNECT 2028 TWEET 138 LINKEDIN 207 COMMENTEMAILMORE



An apparent Islamic State recruitment document found in Pakistan’s lawless tribal lands reveals that the extremist group has grand ambitions of building a new terrorist army in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and triggering a war in India to provoke an Armageddon-like “end of the world.”

(What about pre-emptively nuking TSP? Both TSP-W and TSP-E. After all, isn't nuking then "apologising" the AmriKKKan tactic too?)



The 32-page Urdu-language document obtained by American Media Institute (AMI) and reviewed by USA TODAY details a plot to attack U.S. soldiers as they withdraw from Afghanistan and target American diplomats and Pakistani officials.



AMI obtained the document from a Pakistani citizen with connections inside the Pakistani Taliban and had it independently translated from Urdu by Harvard researcher and translator Mustafa Samdani. The Pakistani's identity was shared with USA TODAY, which has agreed not to identify him publicly because of concerns for his safety.



The document was reviewed by three U.S. intelligence officials, who said they believe the document is authentic based on its unique markings and the fact that language used to describe leaders, the writing style and religious wording match other documents from the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS. They asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.



The undated document, titled “A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet,” seeks to unite dozens of factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror. It includes a never-before-seen history of the Islamic State, details chilling future battle plans, urges al-Qaeda to join the group and says the Islamic State's leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world’s 1 billion Muslims under a religious empire called a “caliphate.”



“Accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah," it proclaims. "This is the bitter truth, swallow it.”



Retired Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who also reviewed the document, said it “represents the Islamic State’s campaign plan and is something, as an intelligence officer, I would not only want to capture, but fully exploit. It lays out their intent, their goals and objectives, a red flag to which we must pay attention.”



Alistair Baskey, deputy spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, told AMI, “we are aware of the presence of ISIL-affiliated militants in Afghanistan, and we are monitoring closely to see whether their emergence will have a meaningful impact on the threat environment in the region.”



The Taliban is another radical Islamic group that ruled Afghanistan until ousted during the U.S. invasion in 2001. It continues fighting the current Afghan government and also trying to thwart the Islamic State's expansion into Afghanistan.



The document warns that “preparations” for an attack in India are underway and predicts that an attack will provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with America: “Even if the U.S tries to attack with all its allies, which undoubtedly it will, the ummah will be united, resulting in the final battle.” The word “ummah” refers to the entire global community of Muslims.



Striking in India would magnify the Islamic State’s stature and threaten the stability of the region, said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution who served more than 30 years in the CIA. “Attacking in India is the Holy Grail of South Asian jihadists.”



Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry said the Islamic State threat in Pakistan was discussed with White House, State Department and Pentagon officials in June. He told reporters at the Pakistani Embassy in June that successful allied military operations have scattered the Pakistani Taliban.



Chaudhry denied there is an Islamic State presence in Pakistan. It could be “a potential threat for the whole world, for our region too, for our country too,” he said. “We believe that all countries need to cooperate, and Pakistan, yes.”



Unlike al-Qaeda, which has targeted terror attacks on the United States and other western nations, the document said Islamic State leaders believe that’s the wrong strategic goal. “Instead of wasting energy in a direct confrontation with the U.S., we should focus on an armed uprising in the Arab world for the establishment of the caliphate,” the document said.



So far, the U.S. strategy has been limited to fighting the militant group in Iraq and Syria, ordering limited airstrikes and deploying trainers to strengthen Iraqi security forces.



Meanwhile, the Islamic State has recruited tens of thousands of fighters and sympathizers from around the world.



The failure to target the radical Islamic ideas behind the group has given its fighters the opportunity to spread, Flynn said. “If I were in their shoes, I would say,'We are winning, we are achieving our objectives,'” Flynn said. “They have demonstrated an incredible level of resiliency and they will not be defeated by military means alone.”



Richard Miniter contributed to this story.

[...]



American Media Institute is an independent investigative journalism organization. USA TODAY assisted in the editing of this story.

Quote:Islamic State recruitment document seeks to provoke 'end of the world'

Sara A. Carter, American Media Institute 10:28 a.m. EDT July 28, 2015

[...]



An apparent Islamic State recruitment document found in Pakistan’s lawless tribal lands reveals that the extremist group has grand ambitions of building a new terrorist army in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and triggering a war in India to provoke an Armageddon-like “end of the world.”

Quote:French special forces launch an assault on the Bataclan concert hall in an attempt to free hostages



Angelique Chrisafis, Peter Walker and Ben Doherty



Saturday 14 November 2015 03.56 GMT Last modified on Saturday 14 November 2015 05.38 GMT



At least 158 people have died in Paris in a seemingly coordinated wave of gun and suicide bomb attacks, prompting the French president, François Hollande, to declare a state of emergency and bring in controls on the country’s borders.



At least eight of the attackers are dead, seven of them in suicide bombings, but witnesses to one shooting said police told them at least one attacker was still at large.



What seems likely to be the most deadly terrorist attack in Europe since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid saw attacks at six venues across Paris, including gun attacks at a rock concert and two restaurants, and a series of blasts near the Stade de France, where the national side were playing Germany in an international friendly football match.



[...]



At Bataclan, one concertgoer, Julien Pearce, a journalist from Europe 1 radio, said he saw two or three men armed with Kalashnikov-type rifles burst in midway through the concert and begin “shooting blindly at the crowd” for a number of minutes.

Quote:Paris Bomb Attack 2015: ISIS And Islamic Extremists Have Threatened France For Months

By Christopher Harress @Charress c.harress@ibtimes.com on November 13 2015 6:36 PM EST





Security services carry away an injured man after Paris attacks

French fire brigade members aid an injured individual near the Bataclan concert hall following fatal shootings in Paris, Nov. 13, 2015. Christian Hartmann TPX/Reuters



Amid reports that as many as 60 people were killed and 100 others taken captive during attacks across Paris on Friday night, no group immediately came forward to claim responsibility. However, the Islamic State group made serious threats against Paris in March and July this year, claiming that its members would “fill the streets of Paris with dead bodies.”



"On the other hand, we -- with Allah's help -- want Paris, before Rome and Islamic Iberia and after we blow up the White House, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower before Paris, and Rome," Abu Mohammad al-Adnan, a spokesman for the Islamic State group -- also known as ISIS or ISIL -- warned in March.



Simultaneous explosions rocked France’s capital at various locations Friday, including suicide bombings outside a bar near the Stade de France soccer stadium in the northern area of Saint-Denis. As many as 100 hostages were being held in the Bataclan concert hall, according to Agence France-Presse.





Police and other emergency services were at the attack sites, one of which was close to where the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack happened in January. Paris' Deputy Mayor Bruno Julliard said Friday’s attacks were a horrific reminder of the Hebdo massacre, in which 12 people were killed and 11 injured after two Islamic gunmen targeted the publication.



"It's a heavy recollection of what happened in January," Julliard said. "Now we are struck again. This is harder. I am shaken."



France has become a hotspot in recent months for attacks related to Islamic extremism, in part because of its open-border policy that has attracted a number of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. There are 1,573 French nationals or residents in France "listed as being implicated in terrorist networks," government estimates say. Of these, 442 were believed to be fighting with ISIS in Syria, where 97 have died, according to a Daily Mail report from July.

Quote:At least 158 people have died in Paris in a seemingly coordinated wave of gun and suicide bomb attacks

Quote:IS jihadists claims Paris attacks that killed 128

AFP By Guy Jackson, Simon Valmary

17 minutes ago



Paris (AFP) - Islamic State jihadists on Saturday claimed a series of coordinated attacks by gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris that killed at least 128 people in scenes of carnage at a concert hall, restaurants and the national stadium.





Gunmen kill more than 120 in wave of attacks across Paris AFP

The Latest: Germany offers anti-terror unit to Paris Associated Press

Islamic State group claims Paris attacks AFP

Islamic State claims Paris attacks that killed 127 Reuters

Hollande says Paris attacks 'an act of war' by Islamic State Reuters



French President Francois Hollande also blamed the Islamic extremist group for the bloodshed and called the coordinated assault on Friday night at six different sites an "act of war".



The discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one of the attackers appeared to confirm fears over the threat posed to Europe by extremism in the Middle East.



The attacks were "prepared, organised and planned overseas, with help from inside (France) which the investigation will establish," Hollande added on Saturday.



The streets of the French capital were eerily quiet on Saturday, as authorities declared a state of national emergency following the worst attacks in Europe since the 2004 Madrid train bombings.



While many locals and tourists stayed indoors out of fear, hundreds gathered spontaneously at blood donation centres. At the spots where lives had been lost only hours before, well-wishers passed to place flowers and candles.



- 'They didn't stop firing' -

View gallery

Forensic scientists inspect the Cafe Bonne Biere on Rue du Faubourg du Temple in Paris on November 1 …



Shocked survivors told how eight militants, all wearing suicide vests, had stalked the city Friday night gunning down people at bars and restaurants indiscriminately at one of the busiest times of the evening.



In the worst of the bloodshed, four men armed with assault rifles and shouting "Allahu akbar" ("God is great!") stormed into the Bataclan concert venue.



They mowed down dozens of people at a sold-out show by American rock group Eagles of Death Metal before executing hostages one by one, witnesses said.



"They didn't stop firing. There was blood everywhere, corpses everywhere. Everyone was trying to flee," Pierre Janaszak, a radio presenter who was at the concert, told AFP.



The gunmen were heard raging at Hollande and his decision in September to begin air strikes on Islamic State jihadists in Syria.



"I clearly heard them say 'It's the fault of Hollande, it's the fault of your president, he should not have intervened in Syria'," Janaszak added.



(Soon the cryptochristo Indian media facilitating jihad will pull an "Ayodhya and Godhra riots" (and Mumbai attakcs) on France: that the French had invited "retaliation" from the "poor, put upon christoislamaniacs" who were "only reacting". Indian christodemons are evil that way.

Then WitSSel and Doniger and other anti-Hindu western writers will start writing the same psychoanalytical tomes about the French that they've written about Hindus: that France's majority have been "oppressing" the "poor, innocent" christoislamaniacs and being "violent" against them.

US and UK anti-Hindu 'thinktanks' and their appointed university staff - who are the root source of apologetics for jihad in the subcontinent and former Yugoslavia etc - are just evil that way.)



A woman asks a policeman to lay down flowers near a crime scene at the Rue de Charonne in Paris on N …



Three of the militants blew up their explosive belts as heavily armed anti-terror police ended the siege at around 12.30 am (2330 GMT), while a fourth was hit by police fire.



Another attacker blew himself up in nearby Boulevard Voltaire.



A police officer who took part in the storming of the building told AFP: "It was horrible inside, a bloodbath, people shot in the head, people who were shot as they were lying on the ground."



- IS claim -



In a statement posted online Saturday, IS said "eight brothers wearing explosive belts and carrying assault rifles" conducted a "blessed attack on... Crusader France."



It said the targets of Friday's attacks "were carefully chosen".



French President Francois Hollande (L) welcomes Tunisian President Beji Caid El Sebsi in Paris on No …



The statement also made reference to French air strikes on IS in Syria.



It said France was guilty of "striking Muslims in the caliphate with their aircraft" and threatened further attacks "as long as it continues its Crusader campaign."



The death toll of 128 does not include the eight attackers, the first suicide bombers to strike in France.



The assault also left at least 250 wounded, 100 of them seriously.



In a sombre address, Hollande said the multiple attacks were "an act of war... committed by a terrorist army, Daesh, against France", using another term for IS.

(Christoislam is terrorism, hence breeds terrorists. And all their acts are acts of war, as the Indian nation knows from tragic experience.)



France has been on high alert since January when jihadist gunmen killed 17 people in Paris in attacks targeting satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket.



A cordoned off area at the site near the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on November 14, 2015 (AFP Ph …



Another disaster was narrowly averted in August when a gunman was overpowered on a packed high-speed train in northern France.



No arrests had been made by midday Saturday. Police were screening hours of CCTV footage of the attack sites and were attempting to identify the body parts of the attackers.



Hollande declared three days of mourning, and in a sign of the nervousness in the capital, sports events were cancelled, many museums were closed and public demonstrations were banned.



[...]

Quote:'This time it's war': French press react with horror to attacks

AFP

7 hours ago



Members of a police intervention unit walk near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, on November 14, 2015 (AFP Photo/Florian David)



Paris (AFP) - "This time it's war," declared the Le Parisien daily, as France's media reacted with horror but determination after Friday's wave of attacks that left at least 120 dead.



Centre-right daily Le Figaro took up a similar theme, splashing with the headline "War in central Paris" amid scenes of carnage at several locations in the French capital.



Many papers called for unity in the country that is still reeling from jihadist attacks in January that claimed 17 lives.



"In the name of the true martyrs of yesterday, the innocent victims and in the name of the Republic, France will be able to stay united and stand together," said Le Parisien.



The "terrorist barbarism" has crossed a "historic line," said the head of the left-leaning Liberation daily, calling for France to stay resolute.



"It is impossible not to link these bloody events with the battles raging in the Middle East. France is playing its part there. It must continue to do so without blinking," wrote Laurent Joffrin in an editorial.



Sports daily L'Equipe splashed the one word "L'Horreur" ("Horror") across a black front page.



Papers immediately made the link between the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine that claimed 17 lives in January, spawning an outpouring of solidarity around the Twitter hashtag #jesuischarlie (I am Charlie).



"We were Charlie. We are Paris!" wrote the Republique des Pyrenees regional daily.

Quote:Islamic State says France remains top target



By Eric Knecht CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for attacks that killed 127 people in Paris, saying it sent militants strapped with suicide bombing belts and carrying machine guns to various locations in the heart of the capital. The attacks, described by France's…

Reuters17 mins ago