The news from Paris about the killing of twelve journalists highlights Islam’s war on the West that represents a fundamental truth about this cult of Mohammad.
Most are familiar with the Islamic schism between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites. It dates back to the very earliest days of Islam when the two groups disagreed over who should be the successor to Mohammad.
There is a new schism in Islam these days and it is between a moderate interpretation of Islam and fundamentalism. We have all seen what fundamentalism produces.
The past year had dramatic and tragic slaughters by the Islamic State (ISIS) in the Syrian-Iraqi area they control, the murder of more than 140 school children in Pakistan by the Taliban, and the kidnapping of 276 girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria. These acts represent a strict interpretation of Shia law based on the Koran.
That is why an address by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, on New Year’s Day, to clerics at Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry is particularly significant. As reported by Raymond Ibrahim of the Middle East Forum, Sisi “a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date.”
His speech was a warning that “the corpus of (Islamic) texts and ideas that we have made sacred over the years” are “antagonizing the entire world.”
Referring to the 1.6 billion Muslims, Sisi said it is not possible that they “should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live.” Islam, said Sisi “is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”
I cannot recall any other Islamic leader saying anything this bold and this true. Directly addressing the clerics, Sisi said “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (Islamic world) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.” That is, of course, exactly what has been occurring.
Sisi called for “a religious revolution”, what Christians would call a reformation. “You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting for your next move…”
Based on negotiations led by the U.S., the world is waiting to see what Iran, the home of the Islamic Revolution—the name given to the ayatollah’s movement that overthrew the Shah in 1979—will do in the face of demands that it cease its quest to produce its own nuclear weapons.
You don’t have to be a U.S. diplomat to know the answer to that. As Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently wrote, for decades the Iranian leadership has referred to “American Islam”, a term that describes what Iran “perceives to be a depoliticized perversion of the true faith, devoid of the revolutionary sentiment that guides the Islamic Republic.” Calling it “American” demonstrates their contempt for everything American.
The Iranians even apply the term to Muslim nations “deemed pliant before the will of superpowers like the United States.” In their view, they are the champions of “the pure Islam of Mohammad.” The Iranians are Shiites. As such, they are a minority sect within Islam, though a large one by any standard.
Those U.S. diplomats negotiating to get Iran to agree to cease pursuing the ability to construct their own nuclear weapons should read the memoirs of Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator. As Taleblu notes, Zarif has a PhD from an American university, but he still wrote “We have a fundamental problem with the West and especially with America. This is because we are claimants of a mission, which has a global dimension.”
That mission is to impose Islam—their fundamental brand of it—on the entire world. That would get easier if they can threaten the world with nuclear weapons. Iran has been the leading sponsor of Islamic terror since its revolution in 1979.
The gap between Egyptian President Sisi’s concerns about the state of Islam today and the intention of fundamentalists like Zarif are a capsule version of what is occurring among Muslims throughout the world.
Islam is not inclined toward any form of modernity and most certainly not toward any form of personal freedom so the world has to remain watchful and, at this point, far less inclined to give its terrorists a pass with the claim they do not represent Islam.
EDITORS NOTE: U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued the following statement regarding the deadly terrorist attack in Paris earlier today:
“I was saddened to learn of the terrorist attack that claimed 12 lives at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris earlier today. These journalists and satirists were apparently killed by Islamic extremists for exercising the fundamental human right of free speech and expression. These terrorists don’t hate cartoons, they hate freedom. They’re willing to target anyone and destroy anything in the name of intimidating free people and spreading their cruel and hateful dogmas. It is important for the United States – and free nations everywhere – to oppose these forces with strength and vigilance. Today, the United States must stand unequivocally with the people of France in their time of need and mourning. We must assist them to bring the perpetrators and sponsors of this act to justice.”
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/islam-stones.jpg381640Alan Carubahttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAlan Caruba2015-01-07 11:47:512015-01-07 15:10:01Islam Kills Again
Neither the late Katrina Dawson, 38, mother of three and a rising star in the Sydney bar or regular patrons thought anything out of the ordinary having a morning coffee at the Lindt Café in Martin Place, the heart of the city’s business and financial district. Neither did the other patrons, whether they were regulars, Christmas shoppers or tourists. At 9:42AM Monday, December 16, 2014 a bearded man wearing a head band with an Arabic inscription, clothed in a long white tee shirt entered carrying a blue bag causing terror. He extracted from the bag a pump shot gun and a Hizb ut-Tahrir black flag with the white inscription of the Islamic Shahada, “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.” He then asked the terrified patrons to stand against one of the windows with hands pressed against a window facing Channel 7 across the way holding the Shahada flag. The 16 hour standoff ended when police Swat teams entered early Tuesday, December 16th amidst exploding flash bang grenades and semi-automatic gunfire. This occurred after a sniper reported “hostage down.”
The perpetrator of the hostage taking was self-styled Muslim Cleric, 50 year old Man Haron Monis, who was eventually shot dead.
Unfortunately Ms. Dawson and Lindt Café manager, 34 year old Tori Johnson, were killed. Johnson had tried to seize the perpetrator’s weapon. Five others were wounded including a policeman whose head was hit by shotgun pellets, the others suffered gunshot wounds. Earlier in the hostage standoff, two patrons and three Lindt café workers escaped when the perpetrator nodded off.
The shock was that this could happen in broad daylight and according to Australian PM Tony Abbott, it was “the worst terrorist incident in 35 years in Australia.” The largest terror event was Australia’s “9/11” that occurred in Bali, Indonesia on October 10, 2002. 200 Australians lost their lives when an Indonesian Al Qaeda affiliate bombed a popular tourist nightspot. Hundreds of Sydneysiders poured out expressions of mourning with memorial floral tributes placed at the Lindt café site praying to comfort the loss of Ms. Dawson and Mr. Johnson and those injured in the explosive shoot out that ended the hostage stand off.
Monis, the perpetrator, was an Iranian national who had been given asylum as a political refugee in 1996 by Australia. He was a self-styled Muslim cleric who ran a so-called spiritual health center. He was notoriously well known to Sydneysiders. He had been the subject of more 40 charges of sexual assault. He was free on bail but facing charges as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife, 30 year old Noleen Hayson Pal by Monis’ companion, Amirah Droudis, a convert to Islam who left her Greek Orthodox faith. Monis’ ex- wife was stabbed more than 30 times and lit on fire in the stairwell of an apartment complex in April 2013. Ironically, Monis might have been thwarted from his lethal spectacle in Sydney, had he been remanded to police custody.
Monis had, in earlier years, raised the public ire of Australians for letters sent to the families of Australian soldiers killed in the Afghanistan war, accusing their sons of committing genocide against civilians. He was sentenced to 300 hours of community service for this action. One deceased Jewish Australian soldier’s family was told in their letter from Monis that “Jews were no better than Hitler.”
Monis, while originally raised as a Shia in Iran, recanted his sect and allegedly recently converted to become a Sunni Muslim. He could be seen on the streets of Sydney in a Sharia compliant gabila with white turban, and girded in chains parading with handmade posters accusing New South Wales police and prosecutors of violating his human rights. Monis’ lawyer, Manny Conditsis said he may have been “unhinged about the prospect of more jail time” and had “nothing to lose.” Conditsis defended his late client’s allegations of being tortured while in custody, found him extremely fundamentalist but “not a jihadist.” Conditsis contended the only reason that Monis walked free until trial was the alleged poor case the New South Wales prosecutors put on in court.
Monis, in his new role as a Sunni extremist wanted to create a spectacle. He seized the opportunity to carry out his jihad against the innocent patrons and staff at the Lindt Café in Sydney’s financial district. He had nothing to lose; he was free awaiting a court appearance in February of 2015.
After all, if ISIS could behead Muslims and infidels, more recently Christian children, in Syria and Iraq, then Monis could kill his infidels in Sydney’s Martin Place. ISIS had urged local Jihadis down under to follow in the way of Allah.
Tolerant Australians fearful of retribution against the country’s estimated 500,000 Muslims established a ride sharing social media message, #IllRideWithYou. Prime Minister Abbott, who called Monis “mentally unstable,” said:
It was an appalling and ugly tragedy. This is a very disturbing incident. It is profoundly shocking that innocent people should be held hostage by an armed person claiming political motivation.
CBS News cited earlier efforts by Australian counterterrorism officials concerned about an ISIS spokesman specifically targeting Australians:
Australia’s government raised the country’s terror warning level in September in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL. Counterterror law enforcement teams later conducted dozens of raids and made several arrests in Australia’s three largest cities – Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. One man arrested during a series of raids in Sydney was charged with conspiring with an Islamic State leader in Syria to behead a random person in Sydney.
In September, ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani issued a message urging attacks abroad, specifically mentioning Australia.
There were the usual cries of “lone wolf” by Australian and US counterterrorism experts and news commentators. Former CIA deputy director, Michael Morell, a CBS news contributor on national security, said social media facilitated the directives from ISIS.
Against this background we reached out to renowned forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Welner, Chairman of The Forensic Panel, to present his professional assessment of the Sydney Lindt Café terror episode. He has been the lead examiner in a range of highly complex and high profile criminal and murder cases, including the Guantanamo military tribunal that convicted Canadian Al Qaeda operative, Omar Khadr.
Dr. Welner is sought out in particular because of his ability to go beyond the customary bromides served up following major disasters and deaths and complex legal proceedings, including terrorist events. Readers are familiar with our recent interview of Dr. Welner on jihadist recruitment in American prisons in the October NER.
Watch this recent CNN interview with Dr. Welner discussing whether mental illness motivated the Sydney terror incident and the assassination of two NYPD officers in Brooklyn by a convicted felon:
We reflected on Australian Prime Minister Abbott’s depiction of Sheikh Monis as “mentally unstable” and wondered what insights Dr. Welner might have into the evidence now available of the Lindt Café tragedy.
Jerry Gordon
Jerry Gordon: Dr. Welner thank you for consenting to this interview.
Dr. Michael Welner
Dr. Michael Welner: My pleasure, as always.
JerryGordon: Australians are grief stricken over the tragic hostage standoff with loss of lives and injuries on the early morning of December 16th at the Lindt Café in downtown Sydney. It was perpetrated by an Iranian political refugee, a self styled Muslim cleric, Man Huron Monis, killed in the police action. Australian PM Tony Abbott suggested the perpetrator Monis was “mentally unstable” was that the case in your professional opinion?
Dr. Michael Welner: The first thing one has to establish in such questions, is:
1) What is the nature of the crime; and
2) How do the perpetrator’s actions relate to his customary behavior and his customary ideas.
Monis declared his allegiance to and influence by ISIS with the first words of his announced hostage-taking, after calmly sitting with other patrons and staff in the Lindt Café without any remarkable behavior. The hostage-taking had little to do with the Lindt Café and more with what was across the street, Channel Seven. This brought Monis instant hyper exposure that then drew in the coverage of other competing news networks, and with that, international news. Monis’ demands principally related to attention from the Prime Minister and acknowledgment of his actions in the name of ISIS. Sheikh Monis (as he was known by other Muslim elders in Sydney who identified him as such) neither killed, demanded money, nor the release of prisoners, nor his own safe passage. After a long standoff in which he injured no hostages, he began falling asleep whereupon he was attacked by a manager who was himself killed by Monis’ gun as they struggled for it. Police intervening in the ensuing chaos then reportedly killed Sheikh Monis and one other hostage.
In October, Canadian Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot an unarmed Canadian soldier outside a war memorial in Ottawa. Martin Rouleau-Couture ran over an Army officer with his car in Quebec. Both incidents happened soon after ISIS called upon Muslims to take it upon themselves to attack Canadian military and police without seeking the input of others. Both Bibeau and Couture could not get travel permits to leave Canada in order to fight for ISIS in the Middle East. This holiday season, France has seen multiple high-visibility lethal attacks from ISIS loyalists on French Christmas shoppers, again following public calls by ISIS spokespeople for individuals to kill others around them. These incidents reflect killings in which lone killers, without apparent logistic support from an organization, initiated abrupt, murderous attacks. Australia similarly drew exhorting from ISIS spokespeople to Muslims residing there to kill others around them.
Sheikh Monis’ crime, on the other hand, did not kill abruptly. Although his own writings demonstrated a recent pledge to loyalty with ISIS, his was a spectacle crime without murder for many hours. More importantly, Monis’ had a long history of dramatic and attention seeking public behaviors advocating against Australia’s military participation in the Afghanistan conflict. He wrote bitter and angry letters to families of dead Australian soldiers, tasteless to the end of earning him prosecution and conviction. He chained himself in public and claimed to have been tortured by the authorities in connection with his political “peace” advocacy. And so Sheikh (a term meaning a respected elder) at 50 was well known to Australian law enforcement and to media – and had attracted over 14,000 followers on Facebook.
Monis also had a string of sex assault accusations against him by women who claimed he lured them with services that bore no references to his devout Muslim faith. At the same time, less than a year before the Lindt Café hostage incident, he was arrested for collaborating with his girlfriend on setting his ex-wife on fire and killing her. So Monis’ outlandish behavior went beyond the props of whatever Shiite or Sunni garb he donned and touched risk and death to others.
Mental illness is only distinguished as illness because the thinking and behaviors it affects is unwanted and unacceptable to that person when he is in a healthy state.
Monis’ behavior was entirely consistent with a highly attention-seeking personality who reveled in the spotlight that his letter-writing brought him and the platform he assumed that brought him so many followers.
That Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott deemed Monis mentally unstable was intellectually and factually dishonest. Monis neither evidenced any history of psychiatric hospitalization or treatment. Moreover, his criminal history, like the hostage taking, was deliberate, premeditated, organized, and agenda-oriented. A mentally unstable person, especially following the ISIS-Western murderous proxy script, would have walked into an establishment and killed as many as possible before being himself destroyed. Monis’ actions and history in Sydney demonstrated that he assumed the ISIS designation with aims at a show-trial in which he could emerge as a fluent spokesperson for Islamist entitlement to murderous attitudes toward the West. In my professional opinion, Monis was willing to die, but took a risk that he could ratchet up the drama and emerge an even more visible Muslim activist.
The Prime Minister’s use of the term “mental instability,” without specific evidence for same, followed the same marginalizing of Monis as a “self-styled” Sheikh and “self-styled” peace activist. But other Muslims referred to him as Sheikh, and he had many in his ideological cohort, including a devout Muslim girlfriend who lectured in recorded tapes on his website and was willing to engage in femicide in a distinctively Muslim style (immolation) with Monis.
When we otherwise deem behaviors and thinking mentally ill because the rest of us find them unwanted and unacceptable, we use the term “mental illness” the way the Soviet Union once did. Namely, if the state disapproves, it’s mentally ill. While that may serve public policy, it has nothing scientific behind it and is easy to abuse. Worse yet, it stigmatizes the mentally ill because we have more fears of stigmatizing another population.
Gordon: Monis had a history of prior multiple charges for sexual assault arising from his so-called spiritual healing practice. Some years ago, you published pioneering research into drug-facilitated sex assault, which you pointed out to be a crime of those who were otherwise integrated into the community or socially successful professionals, be they colleagues, business owners, and even health care professionals. What in your opinion motivated his record of violence?
Welner: Sexual assault in which an offender gains access to victims under false pretense is antisocial behavior perpetrated under cover of law-abiding legitimacy. It differs from those assaulters who dispense with ruses to entrap prospective victims and simply attack or rape targets with weapons or brute force to restrain them. But it is rape nonetheless, and the victim no less violated. The conviction of Jerry Sandusky and allegations against Bill Cosby (if true) illustrate that people can be sexual predators even as they are role models to others.
Sex assault investigation and disposition remains a complex problem, especially when evidence can be eliminated. An articulate perpetrator of bearing can explain away an encounter, particularly when he has a wife or otherwise submissive partner to vouch for his alibi. Alleged victims can be opportunistic and when not, may still be dissuaded by the consequences of their exposure. Even those who stomach the fortitude to endure the skepticism and proving grounds for sex assault complaints are sometimes crushed by prosecutorial decision-making that essentially protects a seemingly respected perpetrator. One such example is the college football star Jameis Winston, who only this week again eluded discipline even as he testified that he interpreted “moaning” as consent.
Avoiding prosecution, for those who are good talkers and have clever modus operandi, proves to facilitate their re-offense. High degrees of recidivism may be seen in such perpetrators. And so Monis’ history of sexual assault may not only reflect his expression of his fantasy life, but an entitlement borne of his success in avoiding accountability for violating others.
Gordon: We have witnessed many spectacular honor killings that have occurred in the West, including America. Do you consider Monis’ and Droudis’ crime in that category and why not?
Welner: Wife burning is too common a crime among Muslims to be dismissed as a by-product of mental instability. It is a common misconception that femicide occurs in Muslim cultures because of actual or perceived dishonor, whatever non-Muslims feel about its criminality. However, the “honor killing” explanation is no different from any defense of justifiability – the claim does not make it fact.
Femicide is far more a manifestation of how women are devalued in many Muslim cultures, especially in countries whose legal systems protect perpetrators who claim “honor killing” as a motive. The prevalence of femicide in Muslim societies is in direct relationship to societal attitudes that the lives of women do not matter. In reality, femicide among Muslim households is no more related to “honor” motives than it is the “exploding stove” that is implicated in femicides in which Muslim men cover murders of their wives as accidents. The silence of the international feminist movement to this reality (as well as on human trafficking) illustrates the cowardice of its core.
What is notable about this case, however, is the partnership of a dominant ex-husband with his Muslim-convert girlfriend (Droudis was born Anastasia Droudis, and converted from the Greek-Orthodox church). Just as Monis was a “spiritual advisor” able enough to lure women to being vulnerable to be preyed upon, so he was capable of seducing a recent convert in the form of her absolute loyalty to him to violent criminality toward a rival. That Droudis defends Monis now is testament to her allegiance to him. That Droudis, a woman of no remarkable violent criminality, was implicated as the prime mover in the femicide speaks to Sheikh Monis’ capacity to manipulate.
Charismatic and highly publicized offenders do quite well in attracting females – sometimes especially after they have become notorious. This includes even rapist murderers, in my experience. The Droudis-Monis relationship, after his publicized arrests for highly insensitive letters to the families of fallen Australian servicemen, speaks to this area of penologic and forensic interest.
Gordon: Monis’ lawyer stated that his client was unhinged about the prospect of serving more prison time for his role in his ex-wife’s murder and thus had nothing to lose. Was that a motivating factor in your professional opinion?
Welner: Consider the source: Monis’ criminal defense attorney would be expected to portray his client in most sympathetic terms. With that caveat, it is true that a person confronting the possibility of lengthy incarceration is under tremendous stress. A person who is habitually attention seeking will do so in times of trial and lowest esteem.
It is also true that Sheikh Monis’ history, as above, is that of a highly manipulative character. He may also have calculated, quite cleverly, that expressing his allegiance to ISIS would have been diversionary enough, especially if he were party to a show trial following the Lindt Café hostage crisis. The murder trial for his ex-wife would have been swept away and dealt with in abeyance. Given Monis’ history and his actions, I think this is the more likely scenario, especially since he did not kill anyone until a struggle ensued and aimed to resolve the crisis from his end without violence but rather his own international celebrity-seeking. I consider this a street-smart calibration of how the broader media and general public reacts to Islamist threat with peculiar denial and adamant attempts to make the aggressors feel as comfortable as possible.
I am reminded, in this regard, of my experiences in the American criminal justice system. Sex offenders are routinely regarded as the lowest humanity among criminal defendants, and judges have conspicuously less consideration of their civil rights. Murderers are far more protected in my experience. Those who are capital murderers, or those eligible for the death penalty, attract an unusual level of legal talent to defend them or to handle their appeals. But nothing compares to what I have seen with al-Qaeda among the American law community.
Al-Qaeda defendants attract pro-bono defense from the top law firms in the United States. It is the height of tragic-comedy to see how these firms and their Jewish and Christian lawyers, who would be slaughtered by the defendants if they had half a chance, fall over themselves to defend terrorists with every fiber of their being. Some of these attorneys now occupy the most influential positions in the Department of Justice. History will prove that fiascos like the Bowe Bergdahl case happen because of decision-makers with worldviews that are completely at odds with the national security interest. And in that vein, I have counseled sex offender defendants who have approached me, whose guilt was obvious and so I could not help them, that the justice system would show them no compassion — that (with tongue-in-cheek) if they declare allegiance to al-Qaeda (or ISIS) that they will have the most exceptional legal talent doing everything they can to help them regain their freedom. There is something in this whole Sheikh Monis story that reminds me of this perverse state of affairs in numerous Western justice systems. Monis may be the first prominent criminal defendant to have been outlandish enough to commit himself to such a stunt. I am frankly surprised that I have not yet seen it otherwise.
Gordon: Monis had engaged in street theater in Sydney garbed in Sharia compliant gabilas trussed in chains saying that he had been tortured while in custody. Is that typical behavior for someone convicted of violent crimes?
Welner: No it is not. Violent crime carries with it a variety of motivations, from financial predation to revenge to sexual opportunism, for example. Violent criminals are not typically driven to call attention to themselves. Such a personality is one whose attention-seeking has been useful enough to him in other instances to have reinforced this behavior, particularly during times in which he otherwise faces substantial life challenges.
Gordon: Monis and his companion Droudis had been engaged in a campaign of scurrilous letters sent to the grieving parents of Australian soldiers killed in the Afghanistan conflict. Were they motivated by Islamic doctrine or self promotion to draw attention to a reprehensible cause and for what gain?
Welner: There are many ways for one to express opposition to the Australian military role in Afghanistan, and many Muslims and non-Muslims do so. For those motivated to write, there are an endless supply of media outlets and other public forums in which their ideas can be aired and can influence others. The fact is that these letters were likely far less obscene than what one finds in the comments sections of relevant news articles published on the internet; or, what folks tweet. Furthermore, considering Monis was hoping to influence others, the quality of his correspondence would never have influenced their recipients.
Compassionate appeals to mourning families to reconsider their politics would never have resulted in criminal prosecution. Americans recall Cindy Sheehan and how her grief was massaged by antiwar activists, along with Ms. Sheehan’s own pathological need for the public eye, into photo-ops to embarrass the President waging war. But even a man like Monis, sophisticated enough to tout himself as a peace activist, used the vector of his contact with grieving families to mock and to maximize their pain. What gives?
It was, in my professional opinion, the stunt of having engaged grieving parents that was more important to Monis than the letters and their content. It was all about the spectacle.
Gordon: Droudis and Monis also sent a letter to the parents of a fallen Australian Jewish soldier likening him and all Jews to Hitler. Is this a reflection of primal Islamic Antisemitism or morally reprehensive behavior to attract notoriety?
Welner: It is neither. Jews are, sadly, reflexively defensive to others who draw parallels of Jews and especially Israel’s behavior to that of the Nazis. The comparisons require complete ignorance of history, which most Jews do not have, at least of this generation. However, Jews are afflicted as a general rule with self-doubt. Leftist Jews in particular identify with their aggressors the way a very sick rape victim blames herself for the attack.
No doubt some leftist Jews in Germany during Hitler’s rise did as much to the end that they convinced themselves, at least until they were in line waiting to be gassed, that Nazism had some basis in legitimate grievance. And more recently, the capitulationist attitudes of some Israelis, even in the face of thinly-veiled and sometimes undisguised Palestinian irredentist desires to exterminate every last Jew from the area, reflect the same pathological self-doubt.
Nazi-comparison imagery is routinely utilized by Palestinians, their advocates in the Arab World, among anti-Semites in the European-dominated intellectual circles and even among those self-loathers in Jewish intellectual circles who seek the approval of the aforementioned. It transcends hatred. Rather, this is done because invoking Hitler is an effective rhetorical device to manipulate the self-doubt tic that is the sad pathology of the psyche of so many Jews in positions of intellectual and political influence, including in Australia.
Gordon: Australian and US Counterterrorism experts say it is difficult to monitor the behavior of what some call lone wolves but we choose to call Islamikazes. Is that a legitimate excuse or does it constitute evasion of responsibilities to monitor Islamic radicals in Western countries?
Welner: It is difficult to monitor the activities of a person who keeps his own counsel. That is why ISIS does just as William Pierce did when he popularized the idea of the lone wolf among American white supremacists. He advocated the “leaderless resistance” among those who did not share news of their violent criminality with others, and therefore would create no witnesses. I once interviewed Joseph Paul Franklin, who was the template for Pierce’s writings on the topic, for many hours and so I understand the mentality of the lone wolf well.
Monis had long associations with Islamist groups. He was indeed on the radar of responsible intelligence agencies as far back as 2007. But he dropped off. So the argument that an intelligence service is incapable of tracking radicalized persons is false. What is happening, however, is a strong push among intelligence services, particularly those who are influenced by infiltrators from the Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the United States, to reclassify seditious Islamist organizations as peacefully motivated, and with it removing their adherents from scrutiny.
The Edward Snowden revelations made it clear that the United States and Western countries have massive capabilities to monitor the activities of private citizens, and that they do. It is true that the decision of a solitary actor as to when to strike is harder to track. But other cases such as the Boston Marathon bombings, in which the United States was reliant upon Russian intelligence to solve a crime on its own soil, introduce the question of whether intelligence agencies miss what they refuse to look at. The current mayor of New York famously dismantled the NYPD anti-terrorism monitoring of local mosques, a component of an NYPD that many American intelligence professionals quietly acknowledged as the most effective anti-terror intelligence unit in the United States. So the facts are that a certain evasion is taking place.
What is unclear is how meaningful that evasion is. If terror incidents happen that could have been avoided, this idea gains traction. Until that happens with greater frequency, however, we will not know whether we are witnessing an evading of intelligence responsibilities or our leaders are simply assuming a lower profile in intelligence gathering.
With that said, the readiness to die for the cause of Islam is different from Kamikaze tenets of selfless loyalty to Japan, where it originated. Islamist self-destructiveness is cultivated among young males, sexually repressed and manipulated with promises of 72 virgins. This is precisely why Islamist self-destructiveness and ISIS recruitment have been more successful with late adolescents and young adults. That is an age of conflicted sexuality and faith, and of vulnerability to messianic indoctrination of ultimate reward. It is another reason why I do not experience the 50 year old Monis as suicidal for redemption or gratification’s sake. He obviously was partaking of this world, or he would not have earned himself the sexual assault charges. And those of devout faith do not behave this way. So while he may well have been devout, his was the faith of other pontificators like Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden, who were old enough to have relegated beliefs about 72 virgins and martyrdom to a yen for hookers when one had freedom of movement and pornography when holed up in Pakistan.
Gordon: Former CIA deputy director Mike Morrell, who is a CBS news contributor on national security, points to possible direction by ISIS though social media as a probable cause for Monis’ behavior. Do you agree with his assessment and if not, why?
Welner: Sheikh Monis himself made it clear from the outset that he was acting at the behest of the ISIS movement. To argue otherwise is to essentially adopt the position that when Maj. Nidal Hassan was running around Ft. Hood yelling “Allahu Akbar,” he was merely clearing his throat.
Gordon: What suggestions do you have for the New South Wales, Federal Australian police and US federal and local law enforcement counterterrorism echelons to prevent a possible repetition of a similar event?
Welner: Canada has demonstrated sage policy in this regard. Denial of the presence and influence of terrorism, and its recruitment within the Muslim community, has to end. Canada is able to respect its very free and vibrant Muslim population while holding it accountable for actively resisting rejectionists aiming to get a foothold. Seditious Islamist groups who masquerade as peaceful interlocutors have no standing with the Harper government, unlike in America, where CAIR bullies media and lawmakers alike.
It is also imperative to engage the national Muslim organizations to collectively denounce domestic terrorism as unwanted, embarrassing, and reflective of Islam in a humiliating way. If the Muslim communities vomit out the terrorist element from within, because of how it creates suspicion of Muslims as a whole, public safety is maintained.
To say that terrorism is not part of Islam today is an obvious lie. It is out of control overseas, and even in many parts of Europe, but it doesn’t have to be seeding in the United States or in Australia. For Islam itself to denounce it with ferocity, as has happened in Egypt since Morsi’s ouster, would properly marginalize terrorist elements and prevent their gaining influence.
This is no different from how we deal with racial hatred toward blacks in the United States. No one is dishonest enough to pretend that racial hatred of whites toward blacks does not exist. Rather, this prejudice is so forcefully denounced that there is a huge social disincentive to be open to racist attitudes, whatever one’s vulnerability. Islam in Australia and in America has to deal with its terrorist adherents in the same way.
In order to do that, however, governments cannot pretend that Islamist terrorism does not exist, or is relegated to the “mentally unstable.” It is noteworthy, for example, to point out that the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Egypt, even as its loyalists maintain high positions of influence in the White House and State Department. The EU has removed Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations. Yet Europe’s lawmakers are under no illusions; they, like localities across Syria and Iraq, have opted for surrender out fear of the Islamist bully. This will only accelerate the foothold the terror organizations gain in their countries, be they through formal presence or more ideological foothold among rejectionist populations who refuse integration and demand governance by Islamic law.
Gordon: Given your development of the Depravity Standard, how would you rate Monis’ crime, and why?
Welner: The Depravity Standard would appraise the Monis hostage taking in comparison to other kidnappings. Apart from the timing of events, to seize as many as possible, the Monis crime distinguishes itself for its intent to terrorize – referencing the risk of destruction elsewhere – and carrying out a crime to show off. Otherwise, there are comparable cases, for example that in the Nariman House in Mumbai in 2008, that manifested far more evidence of depravity.
The Depravity Standard, which appraises the severity of a crime to inform criminal sentencing and release decisions, is informed by 25 different examples of intent, actions, attitudes and victimology. The items being researched are incorporating public opinion across a variety of demographics to refine the weight that would be attached to crimes such as the Sydney hostage taking, relative to other kidnappings. We invite your readers and all members of the general public to contribute to shaping future sentencing by participating in the Depravity Standard survey research, at www.depravitystandard.org. Your voice counts and this landmark project figures to influence future major crime justice, as well as even knotty issues such as those before the international criminal courts.
Gordon: Dr. Welner thank you for presenting your professional views on the Sydney terror episode.
Welner: You’re welcome.
EDITORS NOTE: This interview and column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Sheikh Man Haron Manis: long assuming the stage even before Sydney Lindt Café terror. Source: AAP Image/Dean Lewins.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Manis-e1420284450710.jpg360640Jerry Gordonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Gordon2015-01-03 06:27:592015-01-03 07:28:02Was the Perpetrator of the Sydney Lindt Café Terror Attack “Mentally Unstable”?
Over at PJ Media I recap ten of the year’s low-lights:
Here are the most significant advances made by Islamic supremacists this year.
10. The abduction of the Nigerian schoolgirls
Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Nigerian jihad group named the Congregation of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad and better known as Boko Haram (“Western Education Is Sinful,” or “Books Bad”), disgusted and horrified the world last May, and even provoked a Michelle Obama hashtag, by abducting over three hundred schoolgirls and selling them into sex slavery. Shekau even published a video in which he gloats about the abduction, telling the girls’ grieving families:
I abducted your girls. I will sell them on the market, by Allah….There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell.
Shekau had a point: the Qur’an really does allow for the owning of sex slaves. Muslim men can take “captives of the right hand” (Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 33:50). It also says: “O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war” (33:50). 4:3 and 4:24 extend this privilege to Muslim men in general, as does this passage:
Certainly will the believers have succeeded: They who are during their prayer humbly submissive, and they who turn away from ill speech, and they who are observant of zakah, and they who guard their private parts except from their wives or those their right hands possess, for indeed, they will not be blamed (Qur’an 23:1-6).
None – absolutely none – of the extensive international coverage of the abduction discussed the justifications for this practice within the Qur’an. This refusal to deal with the root causes only ensured that the practice would happen again, and it did later in the year, when the Islamic State pressed Yazidi and Christian women into sex slavery.
9. Britain’s capitulation on Muslim rape gangs
Britain’s Birmingham Mail reported in November that Birmingham’s City Council buried a report about Muslim cab drivers exploiting non-Muslim girls back in 1990.
A researcher, Dr. Jill Jesson, drafted a report on this issue. But, she explained,
the report was shelved, buried, it was never made public. I was shocked to be told that copies of the report were to be destroyed and that nothing further was to be said. Clearly, there was something in this report that someone in the department was worried about.
Authorities were worried because Jesson’s report illustrated that virtually all of the exploitative cab drivers were “Asians,” the British media euphemism for Muslims, and their victims were “white,” i.e., non-Muslim. The exploitation of these girls stems from Qur’an-based religious beliefs, but British officials were terrified because stopping this exploitation would appear “racist.”
Jesson elaborated:
There was a link between the sexual abuse of the girls and private hire drivers in the city. I thought at the time I did the work that there was an issue with race. Most of the girls were white. I was asked to take this link out, to erase it….Every time a news item has come on about sexual grooming of young girls and girls in care, and the link, too, between private hire drivers, I have thought “I told them about that in 1991 but they didn’t want to acknowledge it.”
“The sad part of this story,” Jesson concluded, “is not the suppression of evidence but that the relevant organisations have failed to address this problem.”
Indeed so – and that is because of its racial and religious aspects. British authorities persist in seeing this as a racial issue, when in fact these cabbies only preyed upon these girls because they were non-Muslims, and thus eligible to become “captives of the right hand” and used as sex slaves.
But the fact is they see it as a racial issue, and their anxiety to avoid “racism” led them to cover up these cases and allow thousands of girls to be victimized for 23 years. The officials responsible for this should be arrested, tried, and imprisoned. The race-mongers on the current British scene, such as far-Left smearmongers like Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate and Fiyaz Mughal of Tell Mama UK, have been denounced by opinion-makers and policymakers from all points on the political spectrum — and should be tried also if their complicity in this behavior is found to have risen to criminal culpability.
Instead, British authorities looked for scapegoats. The BBC reported in November that “the police watchdog is to investigate 10 South Yorkshire Police officers over the handling of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham,” where 1,400 British non-Muslim children were gang-raped and brutalized by Muslims, and “several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.”
These managers are the ones who are really responsible for this, along with opinion-makers such as Lowles and Mughal who created the culture in which people cower in fear at charges of “racism.” These ten police officers who were being investigated were just being set up to take the fall; they originated neither the police policies nor the cultural climate that led to the abandonment of these 1,400 abused children to their fate. Those who created the climate in which those who knew about this hesitated to speak out, for fear of being called “racist,” are the ones who ought to be put on trial — Lowles and Mughal and their ilk. These police officers, if they did cover up the activities of these rape gangs, are just the symptoms of the problem, not its cause.
8. The Bergdahl trade
The British weren’t the only ones capitulating. When he announced on May 31 the exchange of five Guantanamo detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan since 2009, Barack Obama declared that the swap was “a reminder of America’s unwavering commitment to leave no man or woman in uniform behind on the battlefield.” However, as ever more damning information came to light about both the deal and Bergdahl himself, it became increasingly clear that the prisoner exchange was actually a reminder of Barack Obama’s unwavering commitment to appeasing and aiding jihadis.
The freed jihadis included, according to the Associated Press, “Abdul Haq Wasiq, who served as the Taliban deputy minister of intelligence”; “Khairullah Khairkhwa, who served in various Taliban positions including interior minister and had direct ties to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden”; and “Mohammad Fazl, whom Human Rights Watch says could be prosecuted for war crimes for presiding over the mass killing of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Even more disturbing were the questions swirling around Bergdahl himself. Former infantry officer Nathan Bradley Bethea, who served with Bergdahl, wrote in the Daily Beast that “Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.” Refuting reports that Bergdahl got separated from his unit while on patrol, Bethea declared: “Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not ‘lag behind on a patrol,’ as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.”
By the year’s end, the results of the investigation of Bergdahl’s conduct have – as the most pessimistic among us could have predicted – not been released.
7. The Islamic State beheadings
Bergdahl was one of the few captives of jihadis to come home alive. The Islamic State shocked and appalled the world as it carried out a series of beheadings of hostages and other prisoners, including Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig, and Britons David Haines and Alan Henning.
The White House response to these atrocities took on a clockwork predictability. Obama might as well have had a form ready for the next one: all he would have had to do would have been to fill in the blank and then take to the airwaves to say that the latest bloodshed had nothing to do with Islam.
In Kassig’s case, Obama seized on the hostage’s at-gunpoint conversion to Islam to assert: “ISIL’s actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own.”
“Least of all”! As if it were possible that the Islamic State’s actions represented Buddhism, or Methodism, or Christian Science, or the Hardshell Baptists, or the Mandaeans, to greater or lesser degrees, but the most far-fetched association one could make, out of all the myriad faiths people hold throughout the world, would be to associate the Islamic State’s actions with…Islam. The Islamic State’s actions represented no faith, said the president, least of all Islam – as if it were more likely that the Islamic State were made up of Presbyterians or Lubavitcher Hasidim or Jains or Smartas than that it were made up of Muslims.
Yet anywhere that people read the phrase “when you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (Qur’an 47:4) as if it were a command of the Creator of the Universe, the fatuousness of Obama’s claim is revealed anew. The truth will out; indeed, it is already abundantly out. We can only hope that not too many more will have to feel the blade at their necks before Obama and the rest can no longer avoid taking realistic and effective action.
6. The Oklahoma beheadingOn September 21, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, urged Muslims to murder non-Muslims in the West. “Rely upon Allah,” he thundered, “and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.” He also addressed Western non-Muslims:
You will not feel secure even in your bedrooms. You will pay the price when this crusade of yours collapses, and thereafter we will strike you in your homeland, and you will never be able to harm anyone afterwards.
Five days later, Jah’Keem Yisrael (formerly Alton Alexander Nolen) beheaded one of his coworkers and was shot while in the process of trying to behead another in Vaughan Foods, a food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma. No one made the connection between his actions and al-Adnani’s call, despite the fact that Yisrael’s Facebook was full of admiring material about the Islamic State, the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The beheader even had a graphic photo of a beheading captioned with another Qur’anic beheading verse (8:12) on his Facebook page.
Authorities did not classify his action as terrorism.
5. The Canadian jihad strikes
In October, Canada experienced two murderous jihad terror attacks in three days. Ahmad Rouleau, a convert to Islam, hit two Canadian soldiers with his car, murdering Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent. Then he led police on a high-speed chase, during which he called 911 and explained that he was doing it all “in the name of Allah.” The chase, and Rouleau’s jihad, ended when he flipped his car and then, brandishing a knife, charged police, who shot him dead. One of Rouleau’s close friends said:
It was a terrorist attack and Martin died like he wanted to. That’s what happened….He did this because he wanted to reach paradise and assure paradise for his family. He wanted to be a martyr….The caliphate called all the Muslims on earth to fight. He listened to what they had to say and he did his part here.
Two days later, another Muslim, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, went on a shooting rampage in Ottawa, murdering military reservist Corporal Nathan Cirillo and engaging in a gun battle inside Canada’s Parliament building. He had threatened to strike “in the name of Allah in response to Canadian foreign policy.”
Islamic State spokesmen Al-Adnani told Muslims in September to murder non-Muslims with any weapon at hand, or anything that could be used as a weapon: “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.” Zehaf-Bibeau found a bullet. Rouleau found a car.
In reality, what motivated him was blazingly obvious, but it was the one thing most Western government officials and all of the mainstream media have determined to ignore, and so the search was one for some other remotely plausible motive that could be sold to a public that is increasingly suspicious of what the government and media elites are telling them. Toronto’s Globe and Mail quoted a friend of Zehaf-Bibeau saying, “I think he must have been mentally ill.” It was a refrain we would increasingly hear in connection with jihad attacks as the year went on.
Meanwhile, the denial and unreality regarding the jihad threat took other forms as well…
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/French-Jihadi-Syria-e1420281070770.jpg370640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2015-01-03 05:32:152015-01-03 05:34:27The 10 Most Important Jihad Stories of 2014
The death toll grows. We heard earlier that a “number of people had been hit,” so the death toll may go higher still. AP has this: “Police say 34-year-old man and 38-year-old woman are among 3 dead in Sydney hostage crisis.” Time for another mainstream media story about “backlash” against Muslims.
“Gunman and Two Others Dead in Sydney Hostage Crisis,” by Hamish MacDonald, Dan Good, Rym Momtaz and Meghan Keneally, ABC, December 15, 2014:
The gunman who had been holding people hostage inside a chocolate store in downtown Sydney has been killed, Australian police confirmed to ABC News.
And two other people have been killed, a highly place Australian source told ABC News.
The suspect had previously been identified as Man Monis by local news reports, and the manner in which he died still remains unclear but New South Wales police have confirmed his death. The identities of the two others killed were not immediately revealed.
Police stormed the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in the early hours of Tuesday morning, local time, and three injuries have been reported, including one policeman.
Explosions of what were believed to be flash bang grenades were heard when police stormed the shop and while there were many loud noises, it is not clear if or how many shots were fired by either police or Monis during the face off.
At 10:19 a.m. ET, a group of at least seven heavily armed police officers went into the Lindt cafe under the cover of loud bangs of what local news Channel 9 is calling stun grenades. Shortly after the police stormed the café, at least two hostages emerged, looking visibly shaken.
A few minutes later, a few paramedics were seen entering the café behind police officers with medical packs — followed by at least two stretchers. The explosive police action came shortly after a new wave of hostages emerged from the shop.
Monis was believed to be a self-proclaimed Islamic “sheikh” who is known to Australian police because he was allegedly involved in dozens of counts of sexual assault, according to Australia’s 9News.
He was born in Iran as Manteghi Bourjerdi and migrated to Australia in 1996, according to the station.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/sydney-hostage2.jpg480640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2014-12-16 06:25:592014-12-16 06:25:59Australia: 34-year-old man and 38-year-old woman dead, as well as jihadist gunman, in Sydney hostage crisis
As you know, I’ve conducted my own research and study in the history of Islam and its effects upon the world. However, I came across this video from a very astute gentleman named David Wood, who encapsulates some 1400 years of history and crystallizes it so beautifully.
I sincerely hope you’ll take the time to watch this video — and I bet you’ll watch it more than once. You can also download and print this handy leaflet, which explains the three stages of jihad. Please share it generously!
Using the backdrop of President Barack Hussein Obama’s 2009 speeches at the Turkish General Assembly and at Cairo University — where Obama demanded Muslim Brotherhood members be seated in the front center two rows – Wood explains the three stages of jihad.
Those three stages of jihad historically correspond with the three stages of Islam — Stealth (Mecca I, 612-622 AD), Defensive (Medina, 622-628 AD), and Offensive (Mecca II, 628 – Today). Wood is meticulous in comparing history to the modern actions we see being promulgated today and uses Islamic doctrine as stated in the Quran, Hadiths, and Sunnah to explain his analysis. It’s the most thorough and concise assessment and presentation, and it should be shared widely. Only then can we all be a part of Operation Monkey Wrench.
I already know what the detractors will be saying, but then again David Wood does an exceptional job explaining from whence those comments emanate as part of the three stages. Finally, I recommend you pass this video onto your respective elected political officials and ask them to stop allowing the infiltration to occur here in our America — such as how Qatar, the funder and sponsor of Islamic terrorists has provided millions of dollars influencing policy through the Brookings Institute.
This is the type of education and information that cultural jihadist organizations such as the Council for Islamic Relations (CAIR) do not want disseminated. As we’ve reported, they’re trying hard to purge training materials at the FBI, DoD, and local law enforcement. We cannot allow them to censor the truth from us.
Mr. Wood, if this post gets back to you, hat tip for this exceptional video and your efforts — and watch yer six brother!
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/jihad-woman.jpg429640Allen Westhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAllen West2014-10-31 17:56:132014-10-31 17:56:55Jihad in our midst: We are “willfully stupid” if we ignore it [VIDEO]
There is a growing concern that converts to Islam in America and Canada are ready, ideologically willing and certainly able to conduct individual attacks against soldiers, police and innocent civilians. This week the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has called for increased security at some federal buildings. The Associated Press reports:
Security will be increased at various federal government buildings in Washington and other major American cities, the Homeland Security Department announced Tuesday in what it described as a “precautionary step.” The move came one week after a gunman in Ottawa fatally shot a soldier as he stood as a ceremonial guard at Ottawa’s National War Memorial, then stormed the Parliament building. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the shooting a terrorist attack.
As Mohammedans wage jihad against U.S. and Canadian citizens, in the name of Allah, the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has published a list of American individuals and organizations it considers to be “Islamophobic.” The new CAIR website is Islamophobia.org.
The purpose of the CAIR website is, “[T]o monitor and challenge the growing anti-Muslim bigotry in American society. CAIR’s Islamophobia.org site presents detailed profiles of a number of individuals and institutions involved in the American Islamophobia network.” CAIR is characterize by some as a “moderate” Islamic organization. An anonymous quote on the internet states:
A radical Muslim wants to behead you. A moderate Muslim wants a radical Muslim to behead you.
On the list are Floridians Allen West, Guy Rogers, USF Professor Jonathan Matusitz, Dr. Rich Swier, Sam Kharoba and Tom Trento. The Islamic State has called for attacks against the United States targeting those who defame Mohammed. Are these men, women and organizations on the CAIR list designed to evoke the deadly passions of those who have joined the Islamic State in the U.S.?
Question: Will the Islamic State use the CAIR list of Islamophobes to attack these individuals?
Those individuals and organizations listed by CAIR as Islamophobic, with descriptions taken directly from the Islamaphobia.org website, include:
Stop Islamization of Nations logo.
Ali Sina A member of the board of directors of Stop Islamization of Nations, Sina believes, “there is NOTHING good in Islam and that it is all evil.”
Allen West A former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Allen believes, ” Islam does not coexist.”
Ann Coulter A conservative commentator who suggested that “we should invade their [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
Ashraf Rameleh A member of the board of directors of Stop Islamization of Nations. When speaking about the September 11th attacks he said “they are not terrorists, they are jihad. They are for the Quran.”
Babu Suseelani a member of the board of directors of Stop Islamization of Nations. In 2012 Suseelan told an audience “If we do not kill the bacteria, the bacteria will kill us. Muslims will breed like rats and they will be a majority.”
Bill Maher Bill Maher hosts a political satire program, Real Time with Bill Maher, on HBO. Despite his claim to hold progressive opinions, Maher consistently demonizes and stigmatizes the Muslim community.
Brian Kilmeade A Fox News Channel commentator. In June 2013, Kilmeade told a leader of the English Defence League, an anti-Muslim group known for violent protests, “We got your back.”
Brigitte Gabriel The head of Act for America. Gabriel has said, “America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam.”
Bryan Fischer The director of issues analysis at the American Family Association. According to Fischer, “Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam.”
Carl Goldberg A member of the Arizona chapter of Act for America. According to an announcement for an October 2013 event, Goldberg can prove that “Islam is not just a religion but also a totalitarian and imperialistic ideology.”
Clare Lopez Lopez is the vice president for issues and analysis at the Center for Security Policy. She also a board member at the Clarion Project. In 2013, Lopez told an audience, “When people in other bona fide religions follow their doctrines they become better people — Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Jews. When Muslims follow their doctrine, they become jihadists.”
Cliff Kincaid A member of the board of directors of Stop Islamization of Nations. In 2013, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the United States, listed Kincad among the “30 new activists heading up the radical right.”
Constance Gavras The director of the Illinois chapter of Act for America.
Daniel Pipes The founder and director of the Middle East Forum. Pipes is also connected to the National Review, Clarion Project, and Washington Times. Pipes is the grandfather of Islamophobia in the United States. In 1990 he wrote, “Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene…All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”
Dave Agema A former Michigan state legislator, Agema now represents his state as a national committeeman of the Republican National Committee. In early 2014, Agema made anti-Muslim comments on his Facebook account: “Have you ever seen a Muslim do anything that contributes positively to the American way of life?
David Horowitz The founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks hate in the United States, names Horowitz “the godfather of the modern anti-Muslim movement.”
David Yerushalmi A co-founder of the American Freedom Law Center and employee of the Center for Security Policy. Yerushalmi beleives, “Our greatest enemy today is Islam.”
Debbie Anderson The leader of the Minneapolis chapter of ACT for America.
Debbie Robinson A member of the president’s council of Stop Islamization of Nations. Robinson’s Q Society of Australia asserts, “Islam is not just another religion, but also a totalitarian ideology with a global agenda.”
Dorrie O’Brien O’Brien acts as a national mentor for ACT for America. According to O’Brien “Islam…is a poisoned well.”
Frank Gaffney The founder and president of the Center for Security Policy. Gaffney is also connected to the Washington Times, and Clarion Project. Gaffney has advocated renewing the House Un-American Activities Committee, a discredited McCarthy-era congressional committee that President Truman once described as “the most un-American thing in the country today.”
Glenn Beck Beck hosts the Glenn Beck show on the Blaze. In February, 2011, Beck hosted anti-Muslim speaker Joel Richardson on his Fox News program and the two “tied Islam to the Antichrist in the new testament.”
Guy Rodgers The executive director of ACT for America. In 2010, Rodgers “contended that Muslims should be treated differently because their legal system is inherently flawed.”
James Lafferty Originally known for his work with the Virginia Anti-Shariah Taskforce, Lafferty is now with both the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Jihad Watch.
John Guandolo The founder of Understanding the Threat. Guandolo is a former FBI agent who trains law enforcement officers to believe in conspiracy theories such as his beleif that CIA Director Brennan is a secret Muslim.
Jonathan Matusitz The membership director for the central Florida chapter of Act for America and a professor at the University of Central Florida. Matusitz claims that Muslims “procreate like mushrooms after the rain” and that “the problem is Islam.”
Kamal Saleem A board member of Former Muslims United. In October 2012, Right Wing Watch posted a video of Saleem and noted that in that video, “Saleem alleged that Obama’s top speech writer and Sasha and Malia’s babysitter are both Islamic fundamentalists that are wielding secret power.”
Kevin Carroll A member of the president’s council of Stop Islamization of Nations.
Mano Bakh A key individual with the California group Concerned American Citizens. On its website, the group asserts, “The real source of the devastating 9/11 attack is the Islamic Ideology as prescribed in Quran.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) A Minnesota Republican, Bachmann is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In June 2012, Bachmann led a group of House Republicans on a series of five letters to federal inspectors alleging that the Muslim Brotherhood was infiltrating the U.S. government. The allegations primarily centered on an aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and were soundly rejected by Republican leadership.
Mike Huckabee A host on the Fox News Channel and former governor of Arkansas. Huckabee referred to Islam as the “antithesis of the gospel of Christ.” He also seemed to compare Muslim prayer being allowed in a church to the showing of pornographic films.
Nina Cunningham Cunningham serves on the boards of many anti-Islam organizations, including the Center for Security Policy, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and also the Clarion Project.
Nonie Darwish A founder of Former Muslims United. Darwish asserts that “Islam should be fought and should be conquered and defeated and annihilated.”
Pamela Geller The cautic mouthpiece of the U.S. Islamophobia network, Geller believes, “Hitler was inspired by Islam.”She blogs atAtlas Shrugs and is a leader with the American Freedom Defense Initiative, Jihad Watch, and Stop the Islamization of Nations. Note: Geller also heads Stop Islamization of America, but this entity is identified as an AFDI project.
Rep. Peter King (R-.N.Y.) Peter King represents a district centered in New York’s, Long Island. He served as chairman of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee from 2010-2012. King has maintained that “80%, 85% of the mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists,” and that average Muslims “are loyal,” but “don’t come forward, they don’t tell the police what they know”. Additionally in 2007, Representative King said, “Unfortunately, we have too many mosques in this country.”
Richard Swier Swier is the director of the Sarasota, Fla. chapter of ACT for America. (EDITORS NOTE: Dr. Rich Swier has not been the Director of the Sarasota ACT for America chapter for 8 years.)
Rick Joyner Joyner is the president of the Oak Initiative. He is also the founder/director of Morningstar Ministries and the founder/director of Heritage National Ministries. He has authored more than forty books. His book The Harvest lays out some of his views on Islam: “Islamic terrorists will permeate the West with teams that target Christian organizations and leaders. This is in preparation for an Islamic assault upon the entire world. They will compile computer data on every Christian leader who has any kind of extra-local influence (i.e. newsletters, television or radio outreach).
Robert Spencer A prolific member of the U.S. Islamophobia network, Spencer runs the Jihad Watch web site and is also connected with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and Stop Islamization of Nations.Spencer has referred to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a “con man. Someone who is knowing [sic] that what he is saying is false, but is fooling his followers.” In the same video he asserts, “From a historical standpoint, it is not even clear that Muhammad existed.”
Roger Ailes Ailes is the president and CEO of Fox News Channel. According to a source who spoke to Rolling Stone, “He has a personal paranoia about people who are Muslim — which is consistent with the ideology of his network.”
Ryan Mauro Mauro is a staff member at the Clarion Project.
Sam Kharoba Kharoba is the founder of the Counter Terrorism Operations Center. He claims to have trained “over 20,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers. Kharoba has no formal academic degrees in Islamic studies and no experience in law enforcement. His only claim of any qualification is that he has a pre-university level certificate in Arabic culture, but Arabic culture is not Islam; in fact, only 20 percent of the world’s Muslims are Arabs. Upon review, it was found that large sections of Kharoba’s training manual were word-for-word identical to unreliable web-based sources. The investigation found his most common source was Wikipedia.
Scott Saunders Saunders is affilliated with the Virginia Beach, Va. chapter of Act for America.
Shalom Lewis Shalom Lewis is a cleric at the Congregation Etz Chaim synagogue in Marietta, Georgia. Etz Chaim’s website states Lewis “generates a caring warmth”, but his hateful speech about Islam is alarming and barbaric.
Stephanie Reis Reis is the Virginia State Director for Act for America. In 2010, as part of her welcome message for ACT’s Oklahoma chapter, Reis wrote, “The ideology, politics and religion of Islam has one purpose – to bring the world into submission to Islam and under its laws.”
Stephen Coughlin Now a fellow at the Center for Security Policy, Coughlin holds the beleif that belief that Islam “obligates Muslims to use violence in the name of spreading or defending the faith.”
Steven Crowder A Fox News Channel commentator, Crowder alleges “the real problem is the Quran.”
Steven Emerson The founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Upon reviewing a book he wrote, the New York Times determined that Emerson has “an unfamiliarity with the Middle East and a pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias”.
Timothy Wildmon The president of the American Family Association, Wildmon has said, “[Islam] is, in fact, a religion of war, violence, intolerance, and physical persecution of non-Muslims.”
Tommy Robinson A member of the president’s council of Stop Islamization of America. Founder of the English Defence League (EDL), Robinson was jailed in 2013 for “having entered the United States illegally using someone else’s passport” and again in 2014 for mortgage fraud.
Tom Trento Trento is the founder and director of The United West. He believes mosques exist to wage a “cultural jihad” against America.
Usama Dakdok According to the web site of Dakdok’s Straight Way of Grace Ministry one of the group’s goals is to “expose Islam for what it is, and yes it is worse than a cancer, and this can be shown clearly in the reading of the Qur’an and theHadith.”
Wafa Sultan Sultan is connected to both Former Muslims United and Stop Islamization of Nations. She says, “I don`t see any difference between radical Islam and regular Islam…You cannot be American and Muslim at the same time.”
Walid Shoebat The founder of the Forum for Middle East Understanding, Shoebat is the author of “The case for Islamophobia,’ a book published in March 2013. Shoebat’s training and speaking events are promoted using his credentials and his “background” as a former PLO terrorist who converted to Christianity. In 2011, CNN researchers “found no evidence” to support Shoebat’s trademark claim of being a “former PLO terrorist.”
Former Lieutenant General William Boykin A board member of the Oak Initiative. Boykin asserts that “[Islam] should not be protected under the First Amendment,” that there should be “no mosques in America,” that Islam is a “totalitarian way of life,” and that there can be no interfaith dialogue or cooperation between Muslims and Christians.
Zuhdi Jasser Jasser is founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and a board member of the Clarion Project Under Jasser’s leadership, AIFD is embedded with groups that are dedicated to spreading false information, fear, and distrust of Islam and Muslims.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/cair-isis.jpg360620Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)2014-10-29 14:33:202014-11-02 04:23:54CAIR publishes list of American ‘Islamophobes’ — Will it become a ‘hit list’ for Islamic State ‘lone wolves’?
2014’s spate of Islamic terror attacks against Western targets leaves observers grasping for words to describe what’s happening. President Obama doesn’t want to deal with it at all, so after a Muslim convert beheaded a woman in Oklahoma, he thought it appropriate to send the beheader’s mosque (the Islamic Center of Greater Oklahoma City) warm greetings about “shared peace” and “a sense of justice.” (The occasion was the Muslim feast of Eid Ul-Adh, but the timing was awful.) U.S. national security agencies are no help either—under the tutelage of the Muslim Brotherhood, they were purged long ago of any vocabulary useful for dealing with jihad. “Lone wolf” gets a lot of play with the media, but as Michael Ledeen, Andrew McCarthy, and Patrick Poole (here, here, and here) have all pointed out, there’s nothing ‘lone’ about Muslim warriors, self-selected or otherwise, engaging in fard ‘ayn (individual jihad) in obedience to the doctrine of their shared faith.
Nor are these attacks simply “terrorism” in any way that is uniquely descriptive. As Ledeen noted, the Unabomber was a domestic terrorist. The FBI calls the ELF (Earth Liberation Front) terrorist. The Black Liberation Army was accused of murdering more than a dozen police officers in its day. But none of these operates today in obedience to a 1400-year-old ideology that claims a divine commandment to conquer the earth. Nor is any of these other ‘domestic terrorists’ the 21st century embodiment of a force that already has overrun many powerful civilizations, including the Buddhist, Byzantine, Middle East Christian, Hindu, and Persian ones.
It’s time to call this what it is: Jihad.
Jihad is a unique descriptor: it is motivated solely by one ideology—an Islamic one. It encompasses any and all tactics of war, be they the kinetic violence of terrorism, the stealthy influence operations of the Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian intelligence agencies, or funding, speaking, teaching, and writing. Importantly, the term ‘jihad’ is the one used by its own practitioners—the clerics, scholars, and warriors of Islam. Arguably the most valid qualification of all is that Islamic Law (shariah) defines jihad as “warfare to spread the religion [Islam].” Warfare encompasses many things, though, and not all of them are violent.
Katharine Gorka, President of The Council on Global Security, has an astute new essay entitled “The Flawed Science Behind America’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy” in which she skewers the Obama administration’s misguided policy it calls “Countering Violent Extremism.” She explains how America’s counter-terrorism ‘experts’ have tried haplessly to apply Social Movement Theory to what actually is a totalitarian ideology cloaked loosely in a handful of religious practices. A decade or more of attempting to apply the language of grievance, poverty, and unemployment laid at the door of Western colonialism or secular modernity has achieved little but the neutering of America’s national security defenses. Yet, even this dead-on analysis doesn’t quite get us where we need to be.
Just as Obama’s bland “violent extremism,” deliberately devoid of meaning identifies neither the enemy nor the ideology that animates him, so in its way, ‘terrorism” likewise falls short. For if “terrorist” can and does mean anyone from a nut job like Ted Kaczynsky to assorted tree huggers, neo-Nazi skinheads, as well as Islamic warriors committing atrocities in the name of Allah, then its scope is just too broad to define precisely the paramount threat to global stability in the 21st century: jihad.
The magnitude of the jihad threat demands its own category. Neither Kaczynsky nor animal and environmental activists nor neo-Nazis could threaten the very existence of our Republic. Certain 20th century totalitarian ideologies arguably did, though, and that’s why the U.S. marshaled every resource at its disposal to fight them to defeat. Islamic totalitarianism is such an ideology, albeit one that has survived cyclical periods of defeat and resurgence for many centuries. We constrain ourselves both conceptually and legally, however, when the only way to label an act of violence ‘terrorism’ is when it is carried out against civilians for a political purpose and the perpetrator(s) can be tied to a designated terrorist organization, with no consideration for the ideology that so many of them—and others not on such lists—share.
Islamic terror attacks of recent decades typically involved identifiable Islamic terror groups such as al-Qa’eda, Ansar al-Shariah, HAMAS, Hizballah, and the PLO, but were often funded and supported by jihadist nation states such as Iran, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. As Katharine Gorka described in her white paper, though, the Obama administration’s willfully amorphous term, “violent extremism,” ensured that no enemy threat doctrine called ‘jihad’ that unifies these diverse yet similarly-motivated actors and that actually may threaten the Republic, was ever permitted to be articulated—or confronted.
Now, after the overwhelming post-9/11 Western retaliatory offensives, both al-Qa’eda and more recently, the Islamic State, increasingly have called for acts of ‘individual jihad’ (fard ‘ayn, according to Islamic doctrine). Such attacks by Islamic true believers against armed service members, civilians, and law enforcement officers as well as ordinary citizens duly are proliferating across the West, but the U.S. national security establishment grasps for any term—lone wolf, violent extremist, workplace violence—to avoid saying either ‘terrorism’ or ‘jihadist.’ Granted, as Daniel Pipes noted in his 24 October 2014 essay, “Terrorism Defies Definition,” there are legal consequences under the U.S. Legal Code for “formally certifying an act of violence as terrorist.” But as we see, it’s more than that – and it’s why we need to use “jihad” more often and “terrorism” less.
To properly identify individual jihad attacks is to acknowledge that there is an established ideology behind them that derives its inspiration from Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture. To acknowledge that would mean the threat actually is existential, at a minimum in its objective: universal conquest and enforcement of shariah. Until and unless the entire American citizenry, federal bureaucracy, Intelligence Community, law enforcement, and the U.S. military understand that failing to acknowledge, confront, and defeat the forces of Islamic jihad and shariah indeed do endanger the very existence of our Republic as we know it, and mobilize to meet this challenge, the inexorable advance of shariah will continue. As Pipes notes with some understatement, the current “lack of clarity presents a significant public policy challenge.“
The term “terrorism” will continue to provide useful applications in security categories and lists. But it is much too inclusive and yet restrictive to offer a precise definition of the Islamic threat. The forces of Islamic jihad and shariah are mounting a whole of civilization assault against liberal, modern, representative, secular civil society. Nation states, sub-national terror organizations, transnational alliances, academics and scholars, media conglomerates, networks of mosques and Islamic Centers, so-called ‘charitable foundations’ and their donors, battlefield fighters, and too many individual Muslims are united in a jihad that is not only violent but insidious, inexorable, and sophisticated. Unless we learn to resist in the same way—a whole of civilization way—that list of subjugated civilizations may yet include one more: ours.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/jihad-america-e1402832675211.jpg362631Clare M. Lopezhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngClare M. Lopez2014-10-29 06:09:022014-10-29 06:09:02Call it Jihad: ‘Terrorism’ Just Doesn’t Define This Threat
Yet another convert to Islam misunderstands his new religion and gets the crazy idea that it has something to do with violence against unbelievers. Yet another convert to Islam gets the strange notion that he has ceased to be a citizen of his nation, but has instead become its enemy. If only Barack Obama or John Kerry had been around to set him straight.
“Videos depict young Jacksonville terrorist enthusiast burning American flag, preaching jihad,” by Larry Hannan, Florida Times-Union, October 23, 2014:
Like many young men in their late teens, Shelton Thomas Bell had a fondness for shooting video of himself.
But while most show them performing or playing pranks, Bell recorded himself burning an American flag, preaching jihad and repeating sermons given by an American-born Muslim cleric who was killed in a U.S. drone strike.
Thursday those images of a bearded and long-haired Jacksonville resident were played in a Jacksonville courtroom while the 20-year-old, now clean-shaven with closely cropped hair, watched impassively with his lawyer while sitting at a defense table in a red prison uniform and shackles.
Bell previously pleaded guilty to conspiring and attempting to provide material support to terrorists and faces up to 30 years in prison. Prosecutors are asking U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan to sentence Bell to 30 years in prison, while defense attorneys are arguing for a more lenient sentence.
Bell generated suspicions at the Islamic Center in Jacksonville after talking with teenagers about jihad and the civil war in Syria. Center attorneys contacted the FBI, and he was arrested on the terrorism charges in July 2013. Prosecutors have said in court documents that immigration authorities in Jordan also alerted the U.S. government to Bell’s actions.
Bell’s plans included traveling to Yemen to join Ansar Al-Sharia, an alias for al-Qaida. Bell and a juvenile who has never been named flew to Jordan in late 2012 in the hopes of crossing over into Yemen and joining the terrorist organization.
But they never crossed the border and ended up being arrested in Jordan after Bell preached jihad at a mosque. The Jordanian authorities sent both men back to America.
In an effort to buttress their claim that Bell was a dangerous terrorist, prosecutors called Special Agent William Berry with the U.S. Customs Joint Terrorism task force to testify for most of Thursday. Berry was one of the lead investigators in the case and has interviewed Bell multiple times, the first time right when Bell returned from Jordan.
During that first interview Bell told him he would continue to pursue violent jihad, Berry said.
Bell was particularly inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamic militant and terrorist recruiter who died in Yemen in a 2011 drone strike that became controversial because he was an American citizen.
Bell had downloaded to his computer numerous al-Awlaki videos preaching jihad. Thursday prosecutors showed one of them and then videos of Bell saying similar things.
“The worst thing that can happen to you is death,” Bell says in one video. “And that’s really not that bad.”
Bell speaks repeatedly of the need for Muslims to rise up against the United States and other western powers. The videos also show him firing guns, making amateur bombs and criticizing Muslims who oppose terrorism, calling them “blatant hypocrites.” He and another man also are shown getting ready to vandalize an Arlington church in July 2012. Statues were defaced at Chapel Hills Memory Gardens cemetery, with the head and arms of Jesus cut off.
The video of guns and bombs also show him burning a small American flag while several others cheer.
The second day of Bell’s sentencing hearing will be Friday with both sides calling mental-health experts.
Attorneys for Bell will argue that he never committed any terrorist acts and lacked the funds and contacts to provide much help to a terrorist organization.
“One thing he never did was take up arms against his own countrymen, which, if he were truly interested in more than just the concept of armed jihad, would have been easier to do in Jacksonville than halfway around the world,” said Assistant Federal Public Defender Lisa Call in a sentencing memorandum.
Call is expected to argue that Bell suffers from extreme attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, had substance-abuse issues and grew up in a dysfunctional home….
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/florida-flag-jihad1.jpg400640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2014-10-28 05:36:562014-10-28 05:39:15Florida: Videos show convert to Islam burning American flag, preaching jihad terror
“May you live in interesting times,” an expression (a curse) that may be traced back to post-World War II England, but is apt today, when times have become all too interesting – chaotic and troubling. We must be reminded of the July 7, 2005 bombings of a bus and three tube trains that killed 52. More recently, May 2013, when a Muslim beheaded a soldier on the streets of London; and September, 2014, when a Muslim sodomized a dog and stabbed two women, beheading one of them; and October, 2014, when Scotland Yard captured four Muslims who admitted their mission to terrorize and decapitate ordinary people on city streets, and another four who were plotting to kill police officers or soldiers on London streets – a total of 218 arrests in the past 12 months alone. Britain identified a “complex web” of 60 Muslim Brotherhood organizations now operating from London, Istanbul, and Doha, Qatar.
In Turkey, in August, Islamists shelled, beheaded, crucified and shot 700 members of the Shaitat tribe because they dared to rise up in their own defense. Over the past week, a recent convert to Islam ran down two Canadian soldiers in a Quebec province, and was shot while preparing to stab a woman police officer. A Canadian soldier was shot and killed by another convert at the National War Memorial in Ottawa; the suspect was killed. A Muslim terrorist ran his car into a crowd in a Jerusalem railroad station, wounding six adults and killing a 3-month-old baby. This was followed by rock-throwing session on a kindergarten and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s praise of the killer’s heroics. Two hospital guards at a Philippines hospital were murdered by a Muslim group. A suicide bomber killed another person in Libya, and six young people were executed and then hung, by ISIS, in Iraq.
America surely needs repeated reminding of 9/11, for which Islamist apologists persistently dismiss with a flick of the wrist. Major Hassan’s Allahu Akbar was cast aside with a flimsy “workplace violence” designation, and the stabbing and beheading of an employee at a meat-packing plant in Oklahoma was lost in the media amid all the other excitement of the times, including crimes called “scandals.” But earlier today, a hatchet-wielding, self-inspired terrorist purposely targeted four New York police officers, perhaps in keeping with the new Islamic directive discovered by Scotland Yard.
In fact, the Jihad Report shows Islamic terrorists are responsible for 78 deadly attacks during the week of October 11 – 17, 15 Allah Akbars, 630 dead and 828 critically wounded, bringing the total terror attacks since 9/11 to 24,184 – a number that changes with increasing rapidity.
Walid Shoebat cautions in Why I left Jihadthat Muslims have come here for one reason only – to physically act out their hatred for Jews and Christians, until their “enemy is obliterated.” Muslims are attending universities only to infiltrate the student body and train and indoctrinate new jihadists. The extremists win over the moderates with campus events that incite the naïve Americans who have already been taught to accept multiculturalism, moral relativism, and contempt for the West. Spoon-fed Islam as an alternative culture by leftist professors, the students are motivated to collect huge sums of money and support the branches of the Muslim Brotherhood whose missions are to kill Jews, take over Israel, and conquer Western civilization.
Crimes are on the rise in the US, such as the recent stabbing and beheading of an employee at a food distribution center in Oklahoma by an ex-convict, converted to Islam while in prison. When the crimes are reported, they are unconnected to any common denominator, yet there have been kidnappings, assassinations, and arson or firebomb attacks that are attributed to the homegrown Islamic terrorists, Muslims of America (MOA)/Jamaat ul-Fuqra, (aka Soldiers of Allah). Their connection is terrorist communes that are fully established and operational in rural America, Canada, and the Caribbean.
Beginning in 1979, there were attacks on eastern houses of worship – Hare Krishna temples, Iranian (Shi’ite) mosque, an Islamic Cultural Center, an Indian-owned hotel, an Ahmadiyya Center, the Integral Yoga Society and two Vendanta Societies, a Laotian temple, and more. Physicians of Hindu and East Indian origin have been kidnapped and killed, as were mosque leaders.
Tom Gallagher, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, describes the MOA, specifically, as a “violent, black Muslim extremist sect that acts out jihads against perceived enemies.” The group provides firing ranges and paramilitary and guerilla-warfare training to spread Islam and destroy America through violence. Trained in camps in America, they are sometimes sent to Pakistan to become a new generation of jihadists.
Their activities in Colorado (1989) have included fire breakouts at a power station. Law enforcement officials also discovered a large, well equipped arsenal, documents and photos of the Jewish Community Center and Hare Krishna Temple in Denver; and an illegal collection of checks. Four of five MOAs were arrested. An MOA arsenal was discovered in 1992, with plans for targets in Denver, Tucson, and Los Angeles.
Five MOAs were arrested in New York in the 1990s for conspiracy to bomb a Hindu temple and Indian theater in Toronto, with an expected death count in the thousands. The FBI and local police discovered a cache of weapons to be used across the Canadian border. The NYC Dept. of Investigation uncovered an Islamic compound a year before the World Trade Center attack (arresting some for mixing explosives) and one year later, learned that this had been a training compound for 9/11. Eight men were arrested from another group with a plot to bomb the UN, FBI headquarters, and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels. A gang of ten who were arrested in three New York boroughs for selling illegal weapons was also linked to MOA.
For a larger view click on the map.
Other camps in the network were discovered in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, California (see map at left), all controlled by the group’s founder, a Pakistani Sufi mystic, Sheikh Syen Mubarik Ali Gilani. Although general reports claim more than 3000 members – many ex-convicts who had been convicted of violent crimes, the cleric and known international terrorist asserts to have as many as 15,000 followers, 35 “villages” in 22 states, ranging from 33 acres in South Carolina to 300 acres in California.
En route to interview Gilani about his follower, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded because Gilani thought he (Pearl) was a secret service agent. Although Gilani’s original purpose was to recruit mujahedeen to fight the Soviets, Gilani’s ideology is the purification of Islam through violence – meaning, the obliteration of all infidels. And, recruiting American citizens makes it is more difficult to stop their activities. Not only are they protected as citizens by state laws, the US Constitution, and our climate of political correctness, but they formed a legal church, hence a tax-exempt organization. As such, they can conduct banking transactions, launder money; purchase land, buildings, lodging and safehouses, communication equipment, weapons, lethal substances/explosives, all without having to pay taxes or report expenditures or income.
The U.S. State Department has known of these training camps since 1993. FBI Director Robert Mueller admits their existence; special FBI agent Jody Weis declared the homegrown terrorists to be more dangerous than any known group; and Ryan Mauro, national security analyst and political analyst, exposed the camps in the Counter Jihad Report. Sean Hannity (Fox News) reported on the status of these camps in 2009.
Law enforcement officials believe Gilani hides terrorists (as the “Beltway Snipers” were probably hidden during their 23-day shooting spree in Washington D.C.). Christian Action Network (CAN) urges the U.S. to designate Muslims of America a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO). Sheikh Gilani operates from Lahore, Pakistan, and that connection would make illegal any support to his group, and restrict their funding and expansion. CAN also asks that we contact our political leaders and demand that Muslims of America be placed on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization watch list and demand that each State and Congress outlaw any Islamic communities, organizations and mosques that preach Jihad against America.
There exists a real and present danger to the survival of our country and our civilization, and a few phone calls might work to protect us. After all, daily life is interesting enough under the best of circumstances.
A bloodied steel hatchet lay on a rainy Queens sidewalk on Thursday like an portentous question mark. Was the bearded man who used it to wound two New York City police officers motivated by radical Islam?
Zale H. Thompson can no longer answer that question. He is dead, stopped by bullets from the guns of two other officers.
His unprovoked attack on four policemen, which injured one critically in the head and sliced the other in the shoulder, was certain suicide.
A chain of attacks and plots in rapid succession in the Western world by assailants with a radical interpretation of Islam have raised suspicion that Thompson’s attack could be the latest link.
[ … ]
On a Facebook page bearing Thompson’s name, a warrior masked in a head and face scarf and armed with spear, sword and rifle gazes out at the beholder. The vintage black and white photo is the profile picture of the user, who lives in Queens.
For a larger view click on the image.
A Quran quote in classic Arabic calligraphy mentioning judgment against those who have wandered astray serves as the page’s banner.
[ … ]
Thompson’s attack is the third on people in uniform in North America in a week.
ISIS, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, has recently called to sympathizers in the West to carry out attacks against men and women in uniform.
EDITORS NOTE: Video thanks to Marc. Photos courtesy of the New York Times and Reuters.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/141023-ax-attack-queens-1817_dd0e1c53aefd89b2ed022ea5e3cb35fc.nbcnews-ux-840-600.jpg427640Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)2014-10-24 06:00:282014-10-24 08:17:15VIDEO: Jihad comes to New York City wielding a hatchet!
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/oklahome-mosque.jpg360640The United West/ Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe United West/ Defend The Border2014-10-12 06:25:382014-10-12 06:30:46VIDEO EXPOSE: Stealth Jihad at a Oklahoma City Mosque
The launch of a new Center for Global Islamic Studies at the extremely leftist University of Florida in Gainesville may have been planned as a purely academic affair, but the announcements in the local and national media, including AP and Fox News, exhibited more than a purely academic interest in this event. To compare, one doesn’t often see national media announcements about, let’s say, a local center for the study of viruses — unless the virus is Ebola. And just like with any news about Ebola studies, any news about studies of Islam attracts attention from the general public, who want to know if there’s a hope for the cure, containment, and safety from danger.
Unfortunately, these may not be the kind of Islamic Studies that answer those hopes. The Center opened on September 18th with a conference on “Global Islam and the Quest for Public Space,” headlined by none other than Georgetown professor John Esposito, a known apologist for radical Islam and founding director of the Saudi-sponsored Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in the Walsh School of Foreign Service.
A small group of protesters picketed the event outside the Pugh Hall on the university campus, with a dozen creative posters and a vinyl banner pointing out that John Esposito and the leader of ISIS both hold PhDs in Islamic Studies: “Same goal, different tactics.” The video of the protest can be seen below.
The protest organizer, Randy McDaniels of ACT for America and the Counter-Terrorism Advisory Group, stated that our students certainly need to study Islam, as long as such studies are based on scientific objectivity and critical analysis. But the presence of John Esposito as the keynote speaker indicated that the new Global Islamic Studies Center was likely to go the way of many other universities, opening their doors and exposing our children to political Islam under the guise of education, with programs funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other state sponsors of Islamic fundamentalism.
While many among the leftist faculty and the students were visibly upset with the protest, complete with occasional angry obscenities, a few others were interested in the message and asked for a flyer. Some of them asked, “What’s wrong with having an Islamic Studies Center, even if it’s financed by foreign money?”
The short answer would have been to compare such a project to active measures undertaken in America by the KGB during the Cold War — except that, unfortunately, most American students aren’t familiar with this term. Their knowledge of the Cold War has been thoroughly sanitized by the leftist faculty, especially if the professors are Marxists who used to root for the other side. The resulting perceived absence of the Soviet subversion, propaganda, disinformation, and other influence operations inside the U.S. and around the world creates the impression of an ideologically neutral world, in which America’s response to protect liberty can very easily be misconstrued as imperialist aggression against the innocent.
Ignorance about the enemy leads to confusion about one’s own nation’s role in the world, regardless of the historical era or the current adversary. Whether we admit it or not, we are now in a new global conflict that has many parallels with the Cold War; it is often fought by similar means and sometimes even by the same actors.
Now, just as it was then, we’re up against a supremacist collectivist ideology whose goal is to establish a totalitarian utopian society on a global scale. The two deadly pipe dreams — global communism and the global caliphate — may have their differences, but in practical terms they both view the United States as the main obstacle in their quest of world domination. There is no reason why one can’t learn from the other’s vast experience in subverting this country.
Both foes have made claims that they stand for peace. The problem is that Marxists understand peace as the absence of opposition to socialism, just as the Islamist supremacists understand peace as the absence of opposition to Islam. Eventual peace will theoretically ensue once they subjugate the rest of the world to their totalitarian rule.
In both cases, tolerance is a one-way street: everyone must be tolerant of their“superior” views, while they retain the right to self-righteous intolerance of the “inferiors.” Both ideologies generate a variety of wild-eyed conspiracy theories as a means to retain loyalty, boost morale, recruit new members, and demoralize their opponents.
The Soviets didn’t necessarily hate Americans or wanted to kill them off; they only wanted to “convert” our economic and political system for our own good. Likewise, the Islamists feel morally justified: they don’t view terrorism as the murder of innocents, but rather as a collective punishment for being foolish in resisting Islam. This makes mass murder a moral virtue, absolving them of all sins and encouraging them to keep punishing us, “the inferior fools,” until we see the light and either convert or accept their supremacy. They’d rather convert than kill, so if we force their hand, it’s “our own fault.”
Now, just as it was then, the U.S. is being drawn into fighting regional proxy wars while maintaining a semblance of dialogue with the main instigator, who remains visibly uninvolved but is pulling the strings of a vast network of loosely affiliated non-governmental groups, from registered non-profits to armed gangs of cutthroats. The seeming lack of affiliations, in both cases, is usually a cover for a centralized, coordinated effort.
Cold War spy thrillers may show some exciting action, but the fact is that espionage wasn’t even the main focus of the KGB operations in the U.S. According to retired KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence was “not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West.”
The KGB maintained an extensive, sophisticated network of agents in the media, academia, government, and the cultural establishment. Acting on strategies designed in Moscow, they led a relentless, coordinated attack on this country’s institutions, often quite effectively demoralizing the population, undermining people’s confidence in America’s political and economic systems, spreading rumors, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories, influencing politicians, swaying public opinion, promoting some public figures and discrediting others, creating a positive image of the USSR, and so on.
Fast forward to the fall of the USSR. What happened to these strategies, this system, its networks, and its methods? Did they just disappear? Not really. The KGB was never dismantled; it was renamed into FSB and one of its former lieutenant colonels, Vladimir Putin, is now running the country, using the old KGB network just as effectively to spread disinformation and to promote his imperial agenda.
Even more disturbingly, this system has now replicated itself, producing an even more dangerous and aggressive clone.
In 1960, the Soviet government had set up the so-called Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University in Moscow, offering free higher education to students from the Third World, many of them from Muslim countries. In addition to regular student curriculum, the goal was to train and recruit agents who would then spread the ideas of Marxism in their home countries, and if possible, conduct active measures designed by their Moscow handlers.
To be exact, the university received its African name in 1961. Patrice Lumumba was a pro-Soviet Congolese prime minister who earlier that year was removed from power in a coup d’état and shot by a firing squad. The international Left quickly made Lumumba into a martyr of anti-imperialist struggle; what they won’t mention is that the coup and the execution were a drastic response to Lumumba’s plans of bringing the Soviet troops to the Congo and potentially staging a major military conflict in Africa, similar to the wars that the USSR fought in Korea, Vietnam, and later in Afghanistan. In this regard, the school’s name was rather symbolic.
According to KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin, who defected to the West, “The University’s first vice-rector and a number of its staff were KGB officers who used the student body as a recruiting ground for Third World agents.” The students were trained in the art of propaganda, infiltration, and influence operations. More specialized training, such as terrorist activities, was provided at locations in Baku, Odessa, Simferopol, and Tashkent.
Carlos the Jackal, the notorious Marxist terrorist from Venezuela, who joined Palestinian terrorists and later converted to Islam, was one of the graduates, even though the school insists that he was expelled. A BBC News article titled Carlos the Jackal — three decades of crime puts it this way:
He began acting in the name of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine after leaving Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, a notorious hotbed for recruiting foreign communists to the Soviet Union.
Grand Ayatollah and the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, is listed among notable graduates on the University’s Wikipedia page, although he vehemently denies it. Another graduate is Timoleón Jiménez, the leader of FARC — a communist guerrilla army in Colombia, which is funded by drugs, kidnappings and extortion.
Other notables include the President of Honduras, the President of Namibia, the President of the Central African Republic, a former President of Guyana, a former Jamaican MP, a leader of the Sudanese Socialist Democratic Union, and — of all people — Anna Chapman, a Russian intelligence officer.
Most importantly, the list of graduates includes today’s Palestinian leaderMahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the PLO and President of the Palestinian National Authority, who received his Ph.D. in Moscow in 1982 after completing a thesis partly based on Holocaust denial.
In a 2004 interview with FrontPage Magazine, Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service, described the KGB role in setting up terrorist networks around the world and particularly in the Middle East, as well as persuading Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi to join the terrorist war against the US, with the added benefit of using Iraq’s and Libya’s huge intelligence services that were being run by the KGB advisers and extended their tentacles to every corner of the earth.
Says Pacepa:
The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Then there was the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created by the KGB in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro, which was soon deeply involved in kidnappings, hijackings, bombings and guerrilla warfare. In later years the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks on the “Palestinian territories” occupied by Israel.
“In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter — a document that had been drafted in Moscow,” Pacepa continues.
The Palestinian National Covenant and the Palestinian Constitution were also born in Moscow, with the help of Ahmed Shuqairy, a KGB influence agent who became the first PLO chairman.
The entire story of the Palestinian “liberation,” which has provoked a tidal wave of global Islamic extremism, has recognizable marks of a manufactured influence operation. That includes media coverage in the Western press, which regurgitates regularly produced and coordinated disinformation. A lot of this dirty work was done initially by the Middle Eastern graduates of Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University in Moscow, many of whom are still active in the field.
The school still functions today, having dropped Lumumba from its name and calling itself The Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. Its page claims that as of now, more than 97,000 of its graduates work in approximately 170 countries around the world.
Granted, not all of the graduating engineers, doctors, or agricultural experts have become KGB agents or even Marxists, but how many of them have? Even a small percentage of the total 97,000 means that thousands of agents with the knowledge of propaganda, infiltration and influence operations are currently active in the world today, particularly in the Middle East. If in the past some Muslim students may have embraced Marxism, they no longer do now. Even Carlos the Jackal has now converted to Islam. Today’s Next Big Thing is the Muslim Brotherhood, and that’s where all the action is.
The astounding sophistication and effectiveness of the Muslim Brotherhood in setting up networks of various front groups, infiltrating the Western establishment, spreading disinformation, swaying public opinion, promoting some public figures and discrediting others, creating a positive image of their ideology, and other influence operations are the evidence that the thousands of trained experts in these fields didn’t just disappear. Even if they aren’t being run from Moscow today (some may still be), they are still using their knowledge and skills, as well as teaching a new generation of Islamic supremacists the intricacies of active measures. If the methods and techniques are effective, they don’t get abandoned.
Given the history, what are the chances that the new Center for Global Islamic Studies at the Florida University, “christened” by a Saudi-financed, PLO-loving Georgetown professor, won’t be turned into yet another center for the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence operations on American soil?
Vice President Joe Biden recently proclaimed we would “chase ISIS to the gates of hell” — well, it seems they’re going to be a bit delayed, as they’re at the gates of Baghdad right now. Perhaps those almost 1,500 American troops — boots on the ground — will be allowed to leave from behind the gates of the U.S. Embassy and compound to fight — oops, that would be combat, and Obama said that’s not allowed. So could we be on the verge of seeing a 21st century version of the last U.S. helicopter taking off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon as the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong breached those gates?
For a larger view click on the map.
And you must understand this would be the third U.S. Embassy that would have been evacuated in this year! First Libya, now it seems we’re doing the same in Yemen, and Baghdad could be next. I remember transiting through Baghdad as we moved in to take up our positions at Taji AB, just north of the city.
But it’s not just ISIS at the gates. The al-Qaida in Syria affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, is joining forces with ISIS — so much for those Obama air strikes to “degrade” ISIS.
As reported in the UK Independent, “Isis fighters are reportedly just one mile away from Baghdad as reports emerge of al-Qaida militants bolstering their ranks in Syria. According to the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, Isis was approaching the Iraqi capital on Monday morning. “The Islamic State are now less than 2km away from entering Baghdad,” a spokesperson said. “They said it could never happen and now it almost has. Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very, very little.”
I suppose this is something else that will sneak up on the Obama administration? It’s clearly evident — well, except to the mindless progressive socialists — that Obama’s political agenda and narrative is far more important to him than the security of the American people or the precious blood many of my warrior brothers and sisters shed in Iraq. Just last year at the UN General Assembly, it was B. Hussein Obama who spiked the football in his speech and took a personal victory lap before the world over his acclaimed achievement of ending the war in Iraq and bringing all US troops home — looks like he never consulted with the enemy about their perspective on the matter.
But we can all expect Obama to just blame the U.S. intelligence community — or maybe he’ll blame ISIS for not playing along.
The Independent says “Isis fighters were also battling Government forces in a key town 25 miles west of Baghdad – Amiriyat al-Fallujah. According to a BBC correspondent, fighting had calmed by Monday afternoon but a standoff continued along the main road to nearby Fallujah, which is under Isis control. US air strikes overnight targeted other Isis positions in Anbar province, the Pentagon said, and in Syria four more oil fields controlled by militants near Raqqa were hit on Sunday.”
“American officials called the attacks “successful” but the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed mostly civilians were hit and a grain silo was destroyed.”
Folks, this is what happens when you’re just dropping bombs with no targeting assets on the ground to enable precision. I love the pretty fighter jet tapes that are being released, but all I’ve seen are a truck here and a truck there being brilliantly blown up.
According to the Independent, “The news comes amid reports of an emerging alliance between ISIS forces in Syria and Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as the Nusra Front. The group is the Syrian offshoot of al-Qaida and has been fighting against the Assad regime in the civil war. Despite months of clashes between its forces and Isis (also known as Islamic State) militants, the two groups appear to be forming a loose coalition in parts of the country to fight increasing attacks by the US and its allies.”
“Al-Nusra’s official spokesperson, Abu Firas al-Suri, threatened the coalition nations with retaliation on Saturday. “These states have committed a horrible act that is going to put them on the list of jihadist targets throughout the world,” he said. “This is not a war against al-Nusra, but a war against Islam.”
Ok, so I just have to ask, is this guy al-Suri a high school or college teacher of the “religion of peace?” Now, does anyone believe we should take the enemy at his word and realize that his reality must become our own? So now please remind me, who are these “moderate” Islamists who are going to fight ISIS again?
“Al-Nusra and Isis leaders are now holding war planning meetings together, a source told the Guardian, although no formal alliance has been confirmed. The reports follow growing defections from other Islamist groups to Isis, which is seen as better organised and equipped to create an “Islamic State” straddling Iraq and Syria. A loyalty pledge was reportedly made by al-Nusra in June in the town of Al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, and the two groups have fought together against Government forces.”
People follow winners and in the eyes of those in the Islamic world, ISIS is kicking arse, and they want to be a part of that. Here in America we have a loser – and just so you know, winning presidential elections through deceit, media manipulation and nefarious voting actions doesn’t make you a winner, just a progressive socialist.
I’m waiting to hear the excuses when Baghdad potentially falls — which is quite possible within this week. May Obama be cursed with nightmares by all those who lost their lives in Iraq. The “Lie of the Year for 2013″ was Obama’s “You can keep your doctor.” The Lie of the Year for 2014 should be “ISIS is the jayvee team.” But the greatest lie has to be, “al-Qaida has been decimated and is on the run.”
Leaders take responsibility, not credit, and winners don’t need to lie.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com. The featured image is courtesy of the Associated Press and UK Mail Online.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/iraqi-soldier-fighting-isis.jpg423634Allen Westhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAllen West2014-10-02 07:03:502014-10-03 15:22:05ISIS one mile from Baghdad: May Obama be cursed with nightmares of the Americans we lost in Iraq
EDITORS NOTE: The featured edited image originally appeared on Jihadmin.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/the-key-to-paradise.jpg360640Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)2014-09-01 06:33:212014-09-01 06:44:11New Jihadi Entitlement Program — A One Way Ticket to Paradise
YOU ARE INVITED! Amazing Israel Security Summit on Sept 9, 2014, in Stoughton, MA., just south of Boston. This powerful event features four American heroes who have over 100 years of commitment and dedication to the US Military and Intelligence community.
Come meet, LTG Jerry Boykin, U.S. Army (Ret.), LTG Tom McInerney, U.S. Air Force (Ret.) , LTC Allen West, U.S. Army (Ret.) and former CIA Station Chief Gary Berntsen as they detail and analyze exactly how the United States and Israel should work together to fight Islamic jihad including the HAMAS and their public relations arm, CAIR, Council on American Islamic Relations.
Do not miss this life-changing event. Your hosts are Rabbi Jonathan Hausman and me.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/israel-summit-boston.jpg360640The United West/ Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe United West/ Defend The Border2014-08-27 06:26:462014-08-27 11:15:19Israel Security Summit – Boston Area – Sept 9, 2014 features Boykin, McInerney, Berntsen and West
Based on negotiations led by the U.S., the world is waiting to see what Iran, the home of the Islamic Revolution—the name given to the ayatollah’s movement that overthrew the Shah in 1979—will do in the face of demands that it cease its quest to produce its own nuclear weapons.
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