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Reuters Kremlin: President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered Russia’s armed forces to act in an “extremely tough way” in Syria to protect Russian forces striking Islamic State targets there.
“Any targets threatening our (military) group or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed,” Putin said, speaking at a Defence Ministry event.
The stakes appear to have been raised in Russia’s Syria gamble, as President Vladimir Putin casually let it drop that Russia will “hopefully” not have to use nuclear weapons against Islamic State (Isis). The key word here, however, is “appear”.
It’s important to remember that military involvement in Syria, and the harsh statements that regularly accompany it, serve a dual purpose for the Russian government.
On the international front, Russia is busy expanding its comparatively limited sphere of influence and seizing whatever opportunity it can to one up the West. Prolonged confusion over how best to deal with Isis specifically and the Syrian civil war in general gave the Russian government a golden opportunity to seem proactive and decisive next to the likes of Barack Obama and David Cameron.
Sure, Russia threw its lot in with dictator Bashar al-Assad, but to Russian officials, those are merely details. What’s important is that Russia is acting as though it knows what it’s doing, while the West, all the way until the horrific, Isis-orchestrated Paris attacks, has demonstrated much more self-doubt.
Syria is Russia’s chance to be treated like a superpower again. Dropping the word “nukes” into a conversation about the Syrian conflict is just one more way of trying on that fancy old Soviet mantle, from the days when the US and the USSR seemed to divide the world between them.
This rhetoric doesn’t make Russia’s real path in Syria any less uncertain going forward, but it does up perceived prestige points, especially if we consider the rise of the right in Europe and the popularity of someone like Donald Trump in the US.
At a time when demagogues with extreme positions are dominating the headlines, Russia laying the nuclear option on the table can actually appeal to a certain demographic far beyond Russian borders. Trump is saying “ban all Muslims”, while Putin is slyly suggesting to basically nuke parts of Syria. But next to Trump, Putin appears to be more clever and refined (and always allowing himself a way to save face, by merely hinting at the nuclear option).
And in an environment of increased fear, decisive-seeming statements and decisions hold particular power. Already, Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and another 2016 US presidential hopeful, has praised Putin’s decision to get involved in Syria.
Of course, Putin’s words were meant primarily for his domestic audience, which must be placated with constant reminders of Russia’s might and greatness. The Russian ruble has devalued, pensions are in jeopardy, grocery prices have shot up, as has the poverty rate, and scattered economic protests have already begun. A great, if short-term strategy for dealing with that is simply redirecting everyone’s attention to enemies abroad.
Putin is essentially saying: “Sure, my fellow citizens, things might be tough right now, but just look at all of the butt we are kicking in Syria! Real patriots won’t mind tightening their belts for a little while longer, as Russia blazes a trail to glory!” This may seem simplistic, but one should never underestimate the average Russian’s desire to feel proud of their country. That desire was overlooked in the 1990s, paving the way for a politician like Putin to assume power.
It’s also important to remember that Russia has never nuked another country before. There is no difficult legacy there — and hence no room for self-reflection. This is why both Russian politicians and journalists can afford to be flippant about nuclear weapons.
It helps, of course, that Isis is the perfect, irredeemable villain here. And that Russia is no stranger to terror, and on a human level, images of beheadings in Syria and massacres in Paris resonate profoundly in this country.
Many remember images of Russian soldiers beheaded in Chechnya. All were outraged when a plane full of Russian holidaymakers was recently downed over the Sinai, with Isis claiming responsibility. Feelings of international isolation in Russia have been, however briefly, replaced by the need to reach out to foreign powers, to stand together against the extremist threat.
Once again, the fact that the Russian government is choosing to do so via supporting Assad is not a concern for most Russian citizens. And anyway, plenty of Russians will argue that there are doubts in the West as to Assad’s role going forward too.
None of this means that the Kremlin has foolproof plans for the future. Everything from the row over Nato member Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet to the growing Islamist threat in Russia’s own North Caucasus region shows the current state of things at home and abroad is actually unpredictable.
In such an environment, talking up one’s own nukes — ie weapons of last resort no matter how awesome and manly Russian television makes them out to be — is actually a tacit admission of doubt and uncertainty.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s new “ISIL czar,” Robert Malley, has a long and sometimes controversial history at the center of U.S. policymaking in the Middle East. He’s now taking on one of the toughest jobs in Washington: getting the struggling campaign against Islamic State militants on track while Obama refuses to entertain any wholesale strategy change.
Nearly 25 years after they were students together at Harvard Law School, these days Obama and Malley cross paths mostly in the Situation Room, where Malley’s role is to ensure the countless U.S. agencies fighting IS work in tandem despite differing time zones, capabilities, even views about the conflict. At stake is an extremist threat that has started exporting violence from Syria and Iraq deep into the West, raising fears that the U.S. is losing a battle that Obama concedes will still be raging when he leaves office.
Elevated to the role with little fanfare in late November, Malley’s appointment reflected an attempt to show that when it comes to IS, Obama wasn’t leaving anything to chance. The White House said Malley will serve as counterpart to Brett McGurk, the State Department official tasked with outreach to some five-dozen countries contributing to Obama’s coalition.
For Malley, the promotion completed an unusual return to the highest echelon of government, seven years after a political stir over revelations he’d met with the militant group Hamas.
At the time, Malley was working for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that studies violent conflicts like the one that has divided Israelis and Palestinians for generations. The U.S. considers Hamas a terrorist group, and amid the dust-up, Malley terminated his role as an informal adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign.
Malley said then that he’d never hidden the meetings, which he argued were appropriate for a researcher in his capacity. Still, the incident was one of many in Malley’s career that pointed to a willingness to engage with less-than-savory characters who — like it or not — are key players in conflicts the U.S. hopes to resolve.
“Today the U.S. does not talk to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah,” Malley wrote in Time Magazine in 2006. “The result has been a policy with all the appeal of a moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.”
Whether Malley’s stance on engaging with questionable entities will influence Obama’s anti-IS campaign remains to be seen. Obama has steadfastly insisted that Syrian President Bashar Assad be excluded from any future Syrian government, even though many coalition partners say eliminating IS, not Assad, must be the priority. Another key issue in diplomatic talks to end Syria’s war is which opposition groups should be deemed extremists and barred from negotiations.
“Rob has an appreciation for the need, if you’re going to make diplomacy succeed, to deal with the most important actors,” said Philip Gordon, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow who worked with Malley in the Obama White House.
Malley also raised eyebrows in 2001 with an article alleging that peace talks at Camp David failed not only because of then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but also Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Malley had been part of President Bill Clinton’s negotiating team, and his article challenged the prevailing opinion at the time that Arafat had spoiled the opportunity for peace.
Malley, 52, was born in New York but grew up partially in France, where his father — an Egyptian journalist born to a Jewish family — ran a magazine. He returned to the White House last year to oversee Mideast policy.
Critics continue to claim the U.S. lacks a coherent strategy to defeat IS, and the White House hopes that designating a point-man will reinforce the notion that Obama does, in fact, have a plan. To that end, the White House planned on Friday to launch a Twitter account, @RobMalley44, through which Malley can update the public on the campaign.
Although Malley doesn’t officially hold the title of czar — the White House prefers the wonkier “senior adviser” — the title has informally stuck. Like the Ebola, drug and health care “czars” before him, his job description entails coordinating the various U.S. agencies playing a role.
“Rob’s not somebody who’s consumed with turf-battling, but he’s a very capable defender of his points of view,” said former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who worked with Malley in the Clinton administration. “He’s not somebody who gets easily pushed around.”
While the Pentagon bombs targets in Iraq and Syria, the Treasury is working to cut off terrorist financing. The State Department is trying to broker a cease-fire in Syria’s civil war as a special envoy manages a 65-country coalition and the White House seeks to reassure an increasingly anxious American public.
When it comes to getting everyone on the same page, Obama’s administration has thus far been criticized for coming up short.
“I will tell you, am I satisfied with the level of integration? No,” Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week. He added: “We’re working on that.”
FreeBeacon: A U.S. taxpayer-funded aid organization has awarded $100,000 to an Islamic charity that has been banned in some countries for providing assistance to Hamas and other terrorism-linked organizations, according to grant information.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, also known as USAID, has pledged a federal grant of $100,000 for the charity Islamic Relief Worldwide, which has been repeatedly linked to the financing of terrorism.
Under USAID’s Foreign Assistance for Programs Overseas, Islamic Relief will be given $100,000 in 2016 for various foreign projects, according to grant information.
The award has generated controversy among critics of Islamic Relief’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the terror group Hamas.
Both Israel and the United Arab Emirates have banned the Islamic charity since 2014 following investigations that determined that the organization was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and entities providing support to Hamas, according to reports.
Islamic Relief has also been caught in a financial relationship with al Qaeda and other radicalized individuals.
The charity’s “accounts show that it has partnered with a number of organizations linked to terrorism and that some of charity’s trustees are personally affiliated with extreme Islamist groups that have connections to terror,” according to research conducted by Samuel Westrop, a terrorism analyst, and published by the Gatestone Institute.
Israeli authorities determined in 2006 that the charity was providing material support to Hamas.
“The IRW provides support and assistance to Hamas’s infrastructure. The IRW’s activities in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives,” according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The intensive activities of these associations are designed to further Hamas’s ideology among the Palestinian population.”
Israeli authorities arrested the charity’s Gaza coordinator, Ayaz Ali, in 2006 due to his work on Hamas’s behalf.
“Incriminating files were found on Ali’s computer, including documents that attested to the organization’s ties with illegal Hamas funds abroad (in the UK and in Saudi Arabia) and in Nablus,” according to Israel’s foreign affairs ministry. “Also found were photographs of swastikas superimposed on IDF symbols, of senior Nazi German officials, of Osama Bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as many photographs of Hamas military activities.
A review of Islamic Relief’s accounts have shown that it donated thousands of dollars to a charity founded by a leading al Qaeda terrorist, according to Westrop’s research.
Islamic Relief Worldwide was co-founded by a Muslim Brotherhood-linked individual who formerly worked for the Clinton Foundation. That individual, Gehad el-Haddad, was arrested by Egyptian authorities in 2013 and sentenced to serve five years for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
American law enforcement officials also have expressed concerns about the organization’s ties to Hamas.
“We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” one U.S. law enforcement official told Patrick Poole, a terrorism analyst, in 2011. “Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too.”
“Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina,” the official said. “Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers.”
While the charity attempted to perform an internal audit in 2014 in a bid to clear its tainted name, experts have cast doubt on the integrity of the investigation.
“The information provided by [Islamic Relief] on its internal investigation is insufficient to assess the veracity of its claims,” NGO Monitor, a watchdog group, wrote in a 2015 analysis. “NGO Monitor recommends that a fully independent, transparent, and comprehensive audit of IRW’s international activities and funding mechanisms be undertaken immediately.”
Kyle Shideler, director of the Center for Security Policy’s Threat Information Office, expressed shock that the U.S. government would be funding such a controversial organization, particularly in light of recent efforts to boost the fight against international terror organizations.
“The fact that the U.S. government would provide funding to an organization which two of our allies view as a terrorism finance entity is obviously highly problematic both for our domestic security, but also for foreign relations,” said Shideler, who has written extensively about the charity.
“Both Israel and the UAE consider IRW a threat to their security. And we’re funding them. The fact that this administration is aware of the role IRW plays, and yet sees fit not only to associate with, but actually funds them should be an outrage.”
The grant is particularly troubling given that Congress as Congress seeks to label the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, Shideler said.
“Given that there’s currently a bill before Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, and Congress is currently in discussion over an Omnibus spending bill, it would seem to me that now would be an opportune time to call for a total defunding of organizations linked to terror finance or Muslim Brotherhood activity,” Shideler said. “One would think such a move wouldn’t be necessary, but unfortunately it appears that this administration will continue to do so unless restrained by Congress.”
USAID did not respond to a request for more information about the grant.
Meforum: Within the United States, the cases of American Taliban John Lindh, the “Lackawanna Six,” and the Oregon cell that conspired to bomb a synagogue and sought to link up with Al-Qaeda,[30] all involve Tablighi missionaries.[31] Other indicted terrorists, such as “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, and Lyman Harris, who sought to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge, were all members of Tablighi Jamaat at one time or another.[32] According to Robert Blitzer, head of the FBI’s first Islamic counterterrorism unit, between 1,000 and 2,000 Americans left to join the jihad in the 1990s alone.[33] Pakistani intelligence sources report that 400 American Tablighi recruits received training in Pakistani or Afghan terrorist camps since 1989.[34]
The Tablighi Jamaat has made inroads among two very different segments of the American Muslim population. Because many American Muslims are immigrants, and a large subsection of these are from South Asia, Deobandi influences have been able to penetrate deeply. Many Tablighi Jamaat missionaries speak Urdu as a first language and so can communicate easily with American Muslims of South Asian origin. The Tablighi headquarters in the United States for the past decade appears to be in the Al-Falah mosque in Queens, New York. Its missionaries—predominantly from South Asia—regularly visit Sunni mosques and Islamic centers across the country.[35] The willingness of Saudi-controlled front organizations and charities, such as the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), the Haramain Foundation, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and others, to spend large amounts of money to co-opt the religious establishment has helped catalyze recruitment. As a result Wahhabi and Deobandi influence dominate American Islam. Full reading with citations here.
Take a hard look of the U.K. what happens there comes to America under the visa waiver system.
The activities of Tablighi Jamaat are gradually increasing in United States, and according to recent statistics disclosed during last year’s largest Tablighi congregations in Bangladesh, more than four hundred Tablighi groups are actively working in various so-called community mosques or in disguise mostly targeting young Americans with the goal of converting them initially to Islam and later giving them Jihadist provocations.
Tablighi Jamaat [Conveying Group] is a Muslim missionary and revival movement. Their activities are not limited to the Deobandi community. Leaders of Tablighi Jamaat claim that the movement is strictly non-political in nature, with the main aim of the participants being to work at the grass roots level and reaching out to all Muslims of the world for spiritual development.
Tablighi Jamat seeks to revitalize Muslims around the world. It is claimed that their ideology and practices are in strict accordance with Qur’an and Sunnah. Despite its affiliation and influence of the prominent scholars of Deoband, it does not focus any particular sect or community. It gathers its members and aids in community activities such as mosque building and education.
When it comes to freely traveling into the United States a deep look at visa requests of through the visa waiver countries, those that are alleged to be scholars of Deobandi frequently appear at mosques throughout the country with particular emphasis on the Riverside Islamic Center. This is one of the mosques attended by Syed Farook and his circle of sympathizers. Further reading here.
The fundamentalist Deobandi Muslim sect, widely represented in the Indian subcontinent and among South Asian Muslims abroad, resembles its ally, the Saudi Wahhabi clergy, in many ways. Both claim to “reform” the religion. Like the Wahhabis, the Deobandis preach a distorted utopia of “pure” Islam disrespectful of other faiths and condemning Islamic interpretations with which they differ. Deobandism, like Wahhabism, is harshly restrictive of women’s rights.
There are distinctions separating Deobandis and Wahhabis, aside from those between the idiom, food, dress, and other cultural aspects of South Asia, whence the Deobandis emerged, and Nejd, the remote zone of the Arabian peninsula that produced Wahhabism. Deobandism began in the 19th century in India as a nonviolent, purificationist movement. The failure of the 1857 Indian rebellion against the British convinced the clerics who established Deobandism that peaceful revivalism would better unite the Indian Muslims for resistance against the colonial rulers.
By contrast, Wahhabism emerged in Nejd three quarters of a century earlier, as a violent phenomenon. Wahhabis claimed that the Sunni Islam of the time, centered on the Ottoman caliphate, as well as Shia Islam and spiritual Sufism, represented a return to pre-Muslim polytheism and must be fought to the death.
Deobandism had no command over any government until the mid-1990s, when Deobandi students (“Taliban,” the plural form of the Arabic-Pashto word “talib,” meaning “student”) from Afghanistan took over that devastated country. Until then, many Taliban were medresa pupils in Pakistan, and Islamabad is widely acknowledged to have organized and backed the Afghan takeover by the faction. Wahhabism, however, has been the sole Saudi religion since the formation of the first, unsuccessful 18th and 19th century Saudi-Wahhabi “states” in Arabia. The official standing of Wahhabism was confirmed with the establishment of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
Their installation as rulers of Afghanistan, originally with Saudi financing, led the Taliban – i.e. the Pakistani-trained Deobandis – to abandon their nonviolent past. They imposed a brutal, repressive regime, originally in Kandahar, that claimed a basis in Islamic law. Deobandi depredations against other Muslims had a precedent in the 1971 Bangladesh independence war, when the Deobandis and their jihadist allies committed widespread human rights violations in the former “East Pakistan.” Early in February 2013, the Bangladesh High Court found one such figure, Abdul Quader Mollah, guilty of murder and rape, as crimes against humanity in that conflict. He was sentenced to life in prison. A.Q. Mollah was a member of the youth organization in the Bangladesh branch of Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), the most influential South Asian jihadist party. JEI is accused of the main responsibility for depraved actions during the Bangladesh struggle.
Some moderate Muslims perceived in this verdict a victory for non-sectarian justice in Bangladesh. But almost immediately, Bangladeshis came out in the streets in large numbers. They expressed their discontent with the outcome and called for the execution of A.Q. Mollah and a ban on JEI. In January, Abdul Kalam Azad, another Islamist charged with crimes against humanity in Bangladesh, had been sentenced to death – in absentia, since he has apparently fled to Pakistan. More radicals facing trial in Bangladesh for crimes against humanity include, as described by BBC News, Ghulam Azam, the head of the Bangladesh wing of JEI; Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, Bangladesh JEI secretary-general; Motiur Rahman Nizami, originally a Bangladesh JEI youth leader, and Delwar Hossein Sayeedi, a former Bangladesh JEI parliamentarian. [Update: On February 28, Delwar Hossein Sayeedi was sentenced to death. JEI responded with further disorders, resulting in an unconfirmed number of injuries and fatalities.] Although a minor party in Bangladesh, JEI reflects the continuing intrusion of Islamist ideology from Pakistan.
During two weeks of anti-JEI protests in Shahbag Square, Dhaka, after the A.Q. Mollah decision, an anti-JEI blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was stabbed and hacked to death in his house. This intensified the demands of the Shahbag participants for suppression of the JEI.
JEI had demonstrated against the trial before it began and as it proceeded. The Islamist party reacted to the Shahbag Square protests by rioting against the government and journalists, with at least four people killed during an outburst after Friday prayers on February 22. JEI followers accused the Shahbag participants of insulting Muhammad and Islam.
In response to the anti-JEI anger of the Bangladeshi public, Dhaka adopted an amended law that permits the state to appeal the Mollah verdict and hold a new trial. Under the revised legislation, prosecutors may call for the death penalty for those previously convicted and given lesser sentences. The Bangladeshi government will now have the power to indict, try, and punish – even prohibit – political parties like JEI, for crimes against humanity in the 1971 liberation of the land.
The horrors in Bangladesh were perpetrated by Deobandis from then-“West” Pakistan. The center of the Deobandi movement remained at Darul Uloom Deoband in India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Until the second recent Afghan war began in 2001, the Indian Deobandis adhered mainly to their past quietist attitude. The Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Deobandis then radicalized the Indian Deobandis, leading members of the latter element to adopt rhetoric justifying terrorism.
The impact of the Indian Deobandi transformation has been predictable: a series of atrocities in India. Deobandis also founded the preaching movement Tabligh-i-Jamaat (Call of the Community or TJ), which pledges nonviolence though holding to extremist Deobandi doctrines. TJ has had significant success in Bangladesh and in the Bengali diaspora in the West.
Both Deobandis and Wahhabis despise Shia Muslims and have been involved in or have incited violence against the Shias. Unlike the Wahhabis, the Deobandis do not denounce Sufism outright. Yet the Deobandis share Wahhabi prohibitions on some of the practices commonest and most beloved among Sufis, such as milad–an–nabi (celebration of the birthday of Muhammad) and musical performances. Deobandis have further been implicated in the devastation of Sufi shrines in Pakistan and India. Additionally, Saudi Wahhabism wiped out the four recognized schools of Sunni jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali), replacing them with an arbitrary form of Islamic law derived supposedly (and spuriously) from Hanbalism. The Deobandis disagree discreetly with this posture, alleging their loyalty to the Hanafi school, which is traditional for Sunnis in India and, paradoxically, the most open to controversy.
Unlike Saudi Wahhabis, who reject parliamentary institutions and participation in them, and leave governance ostensibly to the monarchy, the Deobandis are involved in Islamist political parties, exemplified by JEI, from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and in Britain, the U.S., and South Africa. Indian Sufi Muslims have complained bitterly and extensively against a bias toward relations with the Deobandis, as representatives of Indian Islam, on the part of the secular Indian government.
In the UK, Deobandis are active in seeking ascendancy over Sunni believers. They pursue this aim through the establishment of Deobandi mosques, the takeover of mosques erected previously by the moderate, conservative Barelvi sect, which supports Sufism actively, and the missionary activities of TJ. In Britain, Barelvi and other conventional Muslims resist the Deobandi invasion. Statistics enumerating Deobandi vs. Barelvi and other South Asian Sunni Muslims in Britain are unreliable; they typically count the number of mosques administered by the two groups, rather than the creed of the believers. Since the Deobandis will declare any prayer space a mosque, they can exaggerate their influence.
In the United States, where people of South Asian origin form a plurality of about 35 percent among Muslims, Deobandism dominates Pakistani-American Sunni mosques. Unlike in Britain, Barelvis in the U.S., although numerous, have been unable to organize their own community institutions. As noted by Marcia Hermansen of Loyola University in Chicago, “most [South Asian Muslim] community organizations were already controlled by anti-Sufi Islamists.”
Wahhabism is more notorious for some of its retrograde and bizarre doctrines, which have produced such limitations on Saudi women’s rights as forbidding their operation of motor vehicles. Thousands of cars and trucks are owned by Saudi females, and while they cannot drive them openly in cities and on highways, it is well-known that Saudi women drive in rural areas. Wahhabism founded the infamous Saudi “morals patrols” or mutawiyin, often miscalled a religious police. The Taliban have created similar “religious enforcement” groups in Afghanistan and Pakistani Deobandis have appealed for their importation into the latter country.
Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, since he succeeded to the throne in 2005, has taken measures, small but significant, to expand women’s rights and curb the excesses of the Wahhabi clerics and the “morals patrols.” Still, the South Asian Deobandis, as noted, have grown more nihilistic in their outlook and practices.
Deobandis and Wahhabis are dissonant on other matters of little significance. Nevertheless, Wahhabi-Deobandi linkages persist. In 2011, Abdurrahman Al-Sudais, a prominent Wahhabi fanatic and Friday preacher at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, was allowed by India to visit Darul Uloom Deoband in U.P., as well as Delhi and Old Delhi. His mission was to reinforce amity between the sects and demonstrate that together, Deobandism and Wahhabism are expanding their influence in India. His journey to India was permitted although Al-Sudais is barred from Canada and has been criticized in Saudi Arabia for hateful declamations.
According to the American Muslim academic Ebrahim Moosa, who studied at Darul Ulum Nadwatul ‘Ulama, a Deobandi medresa at Lucknow, U.P., the international spread of the ideology, lacking the financial resources of the Saudi Wahhabis, depends on donations by British and South African Muslims.
If there is a single feature the Wahhabis and Deobandis have in common, it is their dedication to the gratuitous issuance of weird and illogical fatwas, or religious opinions. Some of the more ludicrous Saudi Wahhabi fatwas have held, for example, that Wahhabi strictures against gender mixing between unrelated men and women may be evaded if the man drinks the breast milk of the woman, making them, allegedly, members of the same family. A fatwa issued in February called for imposition of the face veil (niqab) on female infants as a supposed protection against sexual abuse.
The proliferation of fatwa websites in Saudi Arabia has been criticized by King Abdullah and senior Saudi clerics, who have sought to regulate such activities. The king and the religious authorities warn that many are directed by self-designated Islamic jurists without credentials, and announce their opinions on whim and a desire for publicity. Unlike Christianity, Islam – except for Wahhabism – does not encourage free-lance preaching by unschooled, “inspired” individuals usurping clerical titles. Even the Deobandis stress a rigorous Islamic education, however deviant their beliefs.
A similarly eccentric spirit of fatwa composition has, withal, overtaken Darul Uloom Deoband. The chief Deobandi medresa has recently promulgated contradictory fatwas that leave Indian Muslims confused, in the words of commentator Shuriah Niazi. In 2010, the Deobandi center released a fatwa forbidding gender mixing in the workplace, an effective bar on any female employment, preventing women from supporting their families. The fatwa against women working alongside men exceeded the bounds of Wahhabism, and was previously unknown in Islamic jurisprudence. Repudiation of the fatwa by Indian Muslim women, Islamic scholars, and media commentators led Darul Uloom Deoband to qualify it by stating that work outside the home is permissible for women if they are covered completely when interacting with men. Even this amelioration reflected a discrimination against women previously absent from Islamic law.
Darul Uloom Deoband emitted more fatwas in 2012, of the same kind. One attempted to bar Muslims and others from submitting to body scans. A leading anti-Wahhabi Indian Sufi, General Secretary of the All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB) Maulana Syed Muhammad Ashraf Kichowchhwi, rejected the fatwa, declaring, “If a scan is necessary for security reasons or to detect or treat a disease then it is not haram [forbidden] or un-Islamic.” Soon, Darul Uloom Deoband caused a new uproar with a fatwa against Shia Muslims. The Deobandis praised Yezid Ibn Muawiya, responsible for the murder of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Muhammad and son of Imam Ali, at the battle of Karbala in 680 CE. This was among the worst insults that could be crafted against the Shias. A later fatwa from Darul Uloom Deoband banned Muslim women from working as receptionists, because the job would require them to forego total body covering.
The Deobandi center ended the year with fatwas against multimedia smartphones and the practice of showing prospective husbands photographs of girls seeking to be married.
Indian Muslims view the fatwa antics of Darul Uloom Deoband much as Saudis have come to regard the similar behavior of Wahhabi “callers to religion.” That is, sensational fatwas are created to gain media attention for the “scholars” that improvise them.
Muslims and non-Muslims in South Asia and elsewhere in the world should understand the identical motive behind the activities of Deobandi and Wahhabi “fatwa factories,” whether originating in medresas or websites. The Deobandis and Wahhabis seek absolute direction over the lives of Sunni Muslims, and, by extension, over all Muslim relations with their non-Muslim neighbors. The aim of “fatwa fanatics” is not religious; it is political and totalitarian.
In a normal world, U.S. and British law enforcement would aggressively investigate the “Wahhabi lobby” of radical Islamist organizations that, in the main English-speaking countries, provide pseudo-religious cover for the terrorist assault on civilization. U.S. and British investigators would not be deterred by the unfortunate fact that the “Wahhabi lobby” constitutes the “Muslim establishment” in both lands.
But we do not live in a normal world. We live in a perverse environment where U.S. and British law enforcement frequently appear more concerned about their reputation for political correctness and more afraid of accusations that they might violate someone’s civil liberties, than about the death and destruction they are supposed to prevent.
Thus we see the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), one of the most hypocritical and suspect Muslim organizations in America, preening itself on having met, on August 14 in Los Angeles, with the Consul General of the United Kingdom as well as with representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the federal Department of Homeland Security, and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. The point of the meeting? Apparently, nothing more than an opportunity for Salam al-Marayati, MPAC founder, to claim credit for a decision by a Muslim individual in Britain to tip off British authorities about the alleged transatlantic airline terror conspiracy.
Al-Marayati said, “I want to acknowledge the crucial tip that came from a worried member of the British Muslim community and was the primary reason that this alleged plot was disrupted. It is that unknown hero that we want to acknowledge today as well as those Muslims in America, Europe and throughout the world who are stepping forward out of their Islamic obligation to protect their communities and their societies… These are people who are serving [sic] their patriotic duty in the United States and elsewhere.”
There are two lessons to be derived from this maudlin performance.
First, al-Marayati and those like him are so desperate to show that Muslims of their stripe will participate on the right side of the battle to defend civilization that he will try to associate himself with the action of an obscure individual living thousands of miles away.
Second, the British consul general and American law enforcement, although approaching the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, seem to have learned nothing about al-Marayati and his cohort.
While British diplomats, the FBI, DHS and assorted other agencies assigned to guard the peace may not be clear on what al-Marayati represents, five years ago al-Marayati himself was quite precise about such matters. Speaking on radio within hours of the 9/11 atrocities, according to The New York Times of October 22, 2001, al-Marayati told L.A. station KCRW, “If we’re going to look at suspects we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.”
The spectacle of official British and American representatives cozying up to Salam al-Marayati should be disgusting to any loyal citizen of either country, regardless of religion, and should be especially repellent to moderate Muslims, who do not want or need al-Marayati to speak for them. The more al-Marayati and Co. are permitted to represent American Islam, the fewer opportunities moderate Muslims will have to rescue their religion from the common enemy: extremism.
It appears that neither British nor American authorities, no matter their anti-terrorist will, have changed much since 9/11; but neither has Salam al-Marayati. Since then, MPAC has conducted a consistent campaign of “profiling” against anti-terrorist figures such as Steven Emerson of The Investigative Project. I documented MPAC’s hate spree against Emerson and others back in 2004.
MPAC has not changed its spots. But neither have the U.S. or British authorities changed their method of dealing publicly with those who promote defiance, exaggerated grievances, claims of victimization, and general political confrontation by Muslims in the English-speaking nations. It is past time for democratic governments to cease appeasing these domestic agitators for radical Islam; to dispense with political correctness, and to bring all such extremist activities, and those of their backers, wherever they may be, to an end.
It is also past time for Salam al-Marayati and his ilk to realize that honeyed words and photo-ops with cops will not eradicate from the public record the memory of their past incitement – exemplified by the infamous statement quoted above. MPAC and groups like it have no role to play in the struggle for democracy unless they turn over all the information they possess to law enforcement, warn American and British Muslims in no uncertain terms against radical rhetoric, and then shut down their operations. They have no hope of saving their reputations, at least in the short run of events. They should get out of the way and let those intent on protecting democracy and rescuing Islam – and who have nothing to hide, explain away, or apologize for – carry on the struggle. They should go home, read their Qur’an, and ponder how their addiction to ideology and publicity, and their ambitions and dishonesty, have harmed their community. They have succeeded for too long in imposing silence on the majority of American Muslims. Better that MPAC and the rest now be silent, than that they continue their charade of moderation, enabled by naïve Western public officials.
Sohiel Kabir is a naturalized citizen and was charged in 2012 with providing material support to the Taliban.
CNN: FBI investigators say they believe San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook had ties to one of four Riverside, California, men who were charged in 2012 with planning to join al Qaeda in Afghanistan, two U.S. law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity Thursday.
The officials said Farook was in the social circle of Sohiel Kabir, who the FBI has said recruited and helped radicalize the other three men in the Riverside group.
Kabir, who was apprehended in Afghanistan in 2012, was sentenced this year to 25 years in prison for his role in the case.
FBI investigators who are probing the San Bernardino shooting are taking a new look at Kabir, the two officials said.
The FBI says the husband-and-wife team behind the San Bernardino attacks had developed extremist views before they even met.
“They were actually radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online, and online as early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States,” FBI Director James Comey said at a Senate oversight hearing Wednesday.
“We also believe they were inspired by foreign terrorist organizations,” he added. “We’re working very hard to understand exactly their association and the source of their inspiration.”
Investigators are also looking at whether Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik had “other plans either for that date (last week) or earlier,” Comey said.
When asked by the Senate panel whether a terrorist operative or group arranged the couple’s marriage, Comey stated: “I don’t know the answer to that yet.”
When pressed whether such an arranged marriage would be a “game changer” in the FBI investigation, Comey added, “It would be very, very important thing to know.”
***
It is becoming apparent that the dating sites that jihadis join are not for meeting or dating at all, it appears they are created as cover to merge like-minded terrorist together. Clues are pointing to this notion in the case of Farook and his arranged wife, Tashfeen Malik.
In part DailyMail: The FBI is investigating whether the marriage between San Bernardino killers Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik was set up by a terror group such as ISIS.
Senator Lindsey Graham raised the possibility that the pair could have been brought together by terrorists in Congress today, after it was revealed they were radicalized before they started dating.
When Graham put the prospect to FBI Director James Comey, he said: ‘I don’t know the answer to that yet,’ but added that it is ‘a very, very important thing to know’.
It was previously believed that Malik, from Pakistan, had become radicalized long before her husband, perhaps dating back to her time at university in 2009 when family members say she became much more conservative and started wearing a full-body veil.
Malik was then thought to have sought out American-born Farook online, before moving to the U.S. on a fiancee visa and passing her murderous ideology on to him.
However, Comey today revised that narrative, telling a Senate Judiciary Committee that the pair began discussing jihad and martyrdom in late 2013, before they began their relationship.
Comey added that his agency believes the pair were inspired by foreign terror organizations, but is still investigating which group they were affiliated with.
The pair professed their loyalty to ISIS during their December 2 attack on the Inland Regional Center in California which killed 14 and injured another 21.
But Comey raised doubt over whether ISIS was behind the pair’s initial obsession with jihad, as it had yet to rise to prominence in 2013 when they began discussing the subject online.
It is also still unclear whether either partner had contact with a terrorist organization, or whether they simply viewed radical material via the internet.
It is also important to integrate yet another fact and that is the neighbor and gun buyer for Farook, Enrique Marquez, he is married to a Russian who came to the United States on a J1 visa and they don’t live together.
Going back to 2014:
An Islamic rights organization has asked for the public’s help in gathering information about a secret FBI informant whose claims led to a homegrown terrorism conspiracy indictment, with trial set to start Tuesday, Aug. 12, in Riverside for two Inland men charged with plotting to meet with the Taliban and al-Qaida and murder Americans overseas.
An attorney for the Greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday the organization “can’t say we won’t” expose the identity of the informant, if it comes across verifiable information.
“It will come down to what is in the best interest of our community,” said Fatima Dadabhoy, senior civil rights attorney for the Los Angeles office of CAIR.
The organization asked for those with information to call its Anaheim office’s civil rights hotline, or call the federal public defender investigator’s office in Riverside.
The federal public defender investigator’s office is not working in cooperation with CAIR, said Jeffrey A. Aaron, the deputy federal public defender who is one of the attorneys representing Sohiel Omar Kabir of Pomona, whom prosecutors have identified as the leader of the conspiracy.
Dadabhoy said her organization believes the FBI has used confidential informants to entrap people, and that a majority of terrorist plots are fabricated or provoked by the FBI.
“We want to make sure that our community is aware,” she said. “When the FBI sends in people with this criminal background into our community, we want to know how they are acting and who is vulnerable to them. Our best way is to identify this and the tactics that are being used.”
U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek declined to comment Monday. The FBI also declined to comment Monday, citing the pending case.
In court papers, defense attorneys have described the FBI informant as a “convicted drug trafficker” who has been paid “‘over’ a quarter million dollars” and was being allowed to stay in the United States, although he should be deported for his felony conviction.
The CAIR-Los Angeles news release issued Sunday said the amount paid to the informant is now $356,645 and that the informant’s conviction was for trafficking pseudoephedrine, a decongestant used to make methamphetamine.
Whether the informant – referred to as a “confidential human resource” in court papers – will testify during the anticipated 20-day trial is unknown; like many documents in the case that started in late 2012, the government’s witness list is sealed.
Dadabhoy said she knew of no existing positive identification of the informant. “There is no picture of him. If there is information, then maybe we will put together an advisory for the community about who this person may be,” she said.
The case broke in November 2012 with the arrests of Kabir in Afghanistan and three others – Ralph Deleon of Ontario, Arifeen David Gojali of Riverside and Miguel Santana of Upland, who authorities said were about to leave for the first leg of their trip from the United States to Afghanistan.
The government’s case brief says the defendants’ alleged conspiracy was underway before they met with the informant in February 2012, when one of them told him of a plan to travel overseas “to engage in violent jihad.”
Keep an eye on Libya, it too may require a repeated effort.
Without any formal announcements, the military has been testing missile systems both in an offensive and defensive measure. The Pentagon is charged with keeping ahead of forecasted conditions and they are successful and do make robust recommendations to the White House. Under sequestration, some needed measures are not possible yet proving the need given recent global terror events some requests are approved while others are delayed.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — An early morning missile test in New Mexico left a white contrail that quickly turned into a corkscrew that was visible for hundreds of miles Thursday.
The unarmed Juno target missile was launched at 6:55 a.m. MST from an old military depot in northwestern New Mexico.
It was aimed at White Sands Missile Range, some 215 miles away, but a White Sands spokesman says it was successfully intercepted over the range by a Patriot missile and disintegrated midair.
Range spokesman Luciano Vera says a second Patriot fired from White Sands self-destructed after the first Patriot hit the target.
The corkscrew-shaped contrail was visible in Phoenix, 245 miles southwest of the launch site.
Moving forward, the Pentagon is also diligently working to gain a robust intelligence advantage as well as expanding a Middle East war footing.
WASHINGTON — As American intelligence agencies grapple with the expansion of the Islamic State beyond its headquarters in Syria, the Pentagon has proposed a new plan to the White House to build up a string of military bases in Africa, Southwest Asia and the Middle East.
The bases could be used for collecting intelligence and carrying out strikes against the terrorist group’s far-flung affiliates.
The growth of the Islamic State’s franchises — at least eight militant groups have pledged loyalty to the network’s leaders so far — has forced a debate within the Obama administration about how to distinguish between the affiliates that pose the most immediate threat to the United States and Europe and others that are more regionally focused. The regional groups, some officials say, may have opportunistically adopted the Islamic State’s brand to bolster their local clout and global stature.
In the midst of that debate, senior military officials have told the White House that the network of bases would serve as hubs for Special Operations troops and intelligence operatives who would conduct counterterrorism missions for the foreseeable future. The plan would all but ensure what Pentagon officials call an “enduring” American military presence in some of the world’s most volatile regions.
While it is in vogue to side with Putin and his mission to stop Islamic State in Syria, it is pure propaganda. Russia has assumed a full defensive posture aiding Bashir al Assad and is only targeting anti-Assad forces in Syria, many of which are supported by the West and the Middle East Gulf States. Russia in fact is expanding their bases in Syria stealing away some objectives even from Iran. Further, Russia is using the conflict in Syria to test the skill levels of ground troops and newly created weapons systems.
Then while the globe is focused on tracking terrorists around the world and connecting them to Islamic State or al Qaida, there is yet another matter of grave concern pointing to North Korea. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says his country has developed a hydrogen bomb, state media reported Thursday.
Information related to the highly secretive nation of North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, is extremely difficult to independently confirm.
A report by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the country is now a “powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a self-reliant A-bomb (atomic bomb) and H-bomb (hydrogen bomb) to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation,” Yonhap reported. *** This is not a new condition, as the United States has advanced technology to test the air quality to determine what it reveals, which is in fact part of the signals intelligence used by the geo-spatial systems. Going back a few years, conditions were prove what North Korea was doing when it comes to the creation of a hydrogen bomb. There was and is a surge in radiation going back to 2010.
We cannot overlook the matter of the continued aggression by China in the South China Sea where the United States has deployed the USS Larson, which is a guided missile destroyer tasked with surveillance and intelligence gathering.
While there is still the matter of Iran testing missile systems in violation of all resolutions, there is very little if anything being considered to stop Iran.
It appears all of these global events are in fact part of the briefings provided to the White House, yet the Commander in Chief has proven he would rather remain focused on social justice issues and defer national security matters to the next President. You be the judge as to what the worldwide global security conditions will be by then.
