Tag Archive for: journalistic bias

Can the Hamas-Linked AP Any Longer Be Considered a News Source?

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My latest in PJ Media:

The Associated Press (AP) is one of the largest, most respected, most venerable news sources on the planet. It is also increasingly clear that the AP, in these overheated days, has reduced itself to acting as a press agency for Hamas. This tendency has become so pronounced recently that among all the massively biased far-Left propaganda outfits that make up the establishment media, the AP has essentially disqualified itself from being regarded any longer as even close to being a reliable source for news.

The first indication that the AP had run off the rails came during the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, when Israeli forces bombed a building in Gaza that housed a Hamas operations base and an AP office. The AP protested, claiming that it had no idea, none whatsoever, that it was sharing a building with Hamas, and this organization of intrepid journalists was put into the embarrassing position of having to be informed by Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, about the operations of Hamas right under their noses.

But it’s almost certain that they knew already, and said nothing about Hamas’ presence in their building because of sympathy with the jihad terror organization and a shared antipathy to Israel. This became clear again on July 13, when the AP ran a tear-jerker entitled “Israel bars jailed Palestinian from daughter’s funeral,” claiming: “Israel refused to let a prominent jailed Palestinian lawmaker attend her daughter’s funeral on Tuesday, despite a campaign by activists and human rights groups for her to be released on humanitarian grounds.”

Those terrible Israelis! And it gets even worse. According to the AP article, the “jailed lawmaker” was “Khalida Jarrar, 58, a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” who “has been in and out of Israeli prison in recent years. A military court sentenced her to two years in March for being a member of an outlawed group. With time served, she is set to be released in October.” Her late daughter Suha “worked on issues related to gender and climate change for the Al-Haq human rights group.”

Suha “worked on issues related to gender and climate change”! Why, she was a saint on earth, and the evil Israelis wouldn’t even let her bereaved mother pay her respects! However, the AP left out a few telling details. According to Gidon Ben-zvi in Algemeiner, Suha Jarrar worked for the same terrorist organization of which her mother was a member: “Suha Jarrar worked for al-Haq, a highly controversial organization with ties to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP], of which her mother was a member. Al-Haq has asserted that terrorists have a ‘right’ to receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CNN Uses Ashli Babbitt to Paint Trump Supporters As Terrorists

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My latest in PJ Media:

“To some,” CNN tweeted Friday, “Ashli Babbitt, who was killed in the Capitol riot, was a terrorist. To others, she’s a martyr and seen as a recruiting tool.” Twitter’s legion of blue-check Leftist propagandists immediately protested that other “terrorists” are seen as martyrs as well. Never-Trump former Bush consultant Matthew Dowd likened Babbitt to Hitler, who was responsible for the murder of twelve million people in Europe, and actor Terry Kinney likened her to Mohamed Atta, who was partially responsible for the murder of nearly three thousand people on September 11, 2001. In their indignation, however, they ignored the fact that CNN’s language was clearly designed to lead their tiny remaining audience to take Trump supporters for terrorists.

Of course, the comparisons Dowd and Kinney made were monstrous. How many people did Ashli Babbitt and the Capitol rioters kill on January 6, 2021? None. There isn’t even any actual evidence that their entry into the Capitol building really constituted an “insurrection.” But CNN’s tweet was little better. It was framed in exactly the same way it would have been if CNN had actually been talking about a jihadi: “To some, Osama bin Laden, who was killed in his compound in Pakistan, was a terrorist. To others, he’s a martyr and seen as a recruiting tool.”

Recruiting for what? Those “far-right terror groups” that loom so large in the Left’s imagination, but are so hard to find in reality. CNN’s story that was linked from the tweet makes this explicit: “‘She is going to be used for many, many years,’ said Simon Purdue, a fellow at the UK-based Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, who last month wrote an article on the significance of Babbitt’s supposed martyrdom as a recruiting tool. ‘The more they mention her, the more dangerous her story is going to be.’”

Purdue “drew parallels between the rhetoric surrounding Babbitt’s death and that of Vicki Weaver. Weaver was the wife of White separatist Randy Weaver who was fatally shot by an FBI sniper during a standoff with federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992. The Weavers’ teenage son was also killed a day earlier as was a U.S. marshal. Vicki Weaver’s ‘perceived status as an innocent, white, female victim of “state aggression” instantly placed her on a pedestal.’ Purdue wrote. Her death, in particular, became a rallying cry and recruiting tool on the far right and helped inspire Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.”

The Oklahoma City bombing was in 1995, but we sure are hearing a lot about it lately. That’s how far the establishment media has to go in order to find any really significant “white supremacist” violence, and so it has to be pressed into service to shore up the Left’s narrative, which Old Joe Biden’s handlers put into his mouth on June 1: “Terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Questions for the New York Times After Its Latest Blood Libel of Israel

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The New York Times recently carried on its front page photographs of 67 children, Arab and Jewish, who died during the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, over the caption “They Were Just Children.” Under each child’s photo, the Times had provided the name of the party responsible for the child’s death; for 64 of the photos, “Israel” was declared responsible. More on this atrocious story is here: “‘The New York Times’ Repackages a Classic Blood Libel,” by James Sinkinson, JNS.org, June 16, 2021:

Though most New York Times readers would not likely have realized it, the dramatic, front-page, full-color photo collage of children killed in the recent Hamas-Israel war was a crudely repackaged version of a classic blood libel against the Jewish people.

On May 28, after Israel ceased its defensive operations to stop Hamas rocket fire and ensure security for Israel’s citizens, The New York Time plastered on its front page a collage of 67 faces of children killed in the conflict, under the title, “They Were Only [sic] Children.”

A caption under each photo in the associated article described how each child died. The captions under 64 of the children perversely named Israel as the cause of death. The truth, of course, is quite the contrary.

Gaza’s terrorist-designated Hamas dictatorship, which started the fighting unprovoked by attacking Israeli citizens with thousands of rockets, determined the pace and intensity of the war, as well as the targets of Israeli retaliation.

While the Times insinuated that Israel chose to kill these children—and that Israel’s actions were unjustified at best and malicious at worst—in fact, every one of those 67 children died at Hamas’s hands.

Hamas was responsible for the deaths of Palestinian children whom the terror group deliberately put in harm’s way by placing its rockets, and launching them, from inside or near civilian structures – kindergartens, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and other places where children would naturally be found. Hamas wanted Palestinian children to die; they would then serve usefully for propaganda purposes – as they did when the photographs of dead Arab children appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Israel, of course, tries as hard as it can to avoid civilian casualties, including children, by telephoning, leafletting, emailing warnings about an impending attack on a target, practicing its “knock-on-the-roof” technique, all in order to get everyone in those buildings to flee. Israel has no desire to kill children or other civilians.

Ever since the Middle Ages, Jews and Jewish communities around the world have been regularly accused of killing innocent non-Jewish children, in bloodlust or in the service of fantastical religious services. Over hundreds of years, such false accusations of murder have come to be known as “blood libel.”…

Despite the Times’ almost daily criticism of the Jewish state—and its decades-long tradition of siding with Israel’s enemies—the front-page photo collage reinvigorated an antisemitic canard, and clearly crossed a line….

There is a straight line from the medieval blood libel of Jews killing Christian children to use their blood in making Passover wafers, and the New York Times blaming “Jews” (Zionists) for the presumably deliberate killing of more than 60 Palestinian children.

Fair-minded people need to ask why, of all the bloody conflicts raging around the world, only the operation involving self-defense for the national homeland of the Jewish people was singled out for this graphically disturbing treatment.

Hundreds of thousands of people die in violent conflict and war around the world every year — 19,444 died in Afghanistan and 19,044 in Yemen in 2020, to say nothing of tens of thousands more in Syria, Somalia and Iraq. Not one of these conflicts was deserving of a front-page photo collage in the Times.

There were many more children who were killed in the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, and, Ethiopia than in the recent Hamas-Israel war. Why was it that the Times has never seen fit to print a similar front-page collage of the dead children in any of those conflicts? Were those children less important than the Palestinian Arab children? Or were the Palestinian Arab children worthy of heightened attention only because Israel could be, and was, blamed by the Times for their deaths?

Moreover, the Times collage project deceptively hid the context of the children’s deaths. It did not mention the [real] reason these children died.

According to HonestReporting, the context was buried: “Just minutes after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out, a 5-year-old boy named Baraa al-Gharabli was killed in Jabaliya, Gaza,” the opening sentence of “They Were Only Children” dramatically asserts. Only 20 paragraphs later do readers find out that al-Gharabli’s tragic death “may have been” caused by a Hamas rocket that fell short.

Israel Defense Forces’ radar images show that some 15 percent of all rockets launched by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fell inside Gaza, unquestionably killing and injuring many Palestinians. Initial research indicates that failed Palestinian rocket launches killed at least nine of the children pictured in the Times piece. Still, the Times absolves Hamas of the responsibility for their deaths.

The IDF had made public radar images that showed nearly 680 Hamas rockets that had been launched against Israel, but fell instead inside Gaza, where they injured and killed Palestinians, including children. It appears that at least nine of the children who died in Gaza had been hit by Hamas’ own rockets. There is no mention of this under their photos, which attributes their deaths to Israel alone. Nor did the Times mention in the body of its article that accompanied the photos that 680 Hamas rockets fell short in Gaza itself, injuring and killing children and other civilians. Why not? Who at the Times decided that information should be left out?

Furthermore, in an embarrassment to those who put the collage together, some of the photos were of children alive and well, while others were of those who Hamas claimed as members, even if they were only 17 years old. One of them, Khaled Qanou, was a member of the Mujahideen Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement. This vital information was not mentioned anywhere in the Times’ disingenuous diatribe.

Of the 67 Palestinian children who were reported as killed by Israel, we know of at least nine who die from Hamas rockets, not because Hamas admitted it, but because Israeli photos show where a Hamas rocket fell short in Gaza exactly where those children were then reported to have died. Other Palestinian “children” turn out to have been in their late teens, and members of terrorist groups, including the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, and Hamas itself. But that information was kept from its readers by the New York Times; it would only muddy the tear-jerking message that “They Were Only Children.”

Finally, the images provide no clarification as to the remarkably low ratio of civilian deaths in Israel’s wars with Hamas. Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, notes that a United Nations study showed “that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was by far the lowest in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare.”

Kemp states that this ratio was less than 1:1 and compared it favorably to the estimated ratios of NATO operations in Afghanistan (3:1), western campaigns in Iraq and Kosovo (believed to be 4:1), and the conflicts in Chechnya and Serbia (much higher than 4:1).

Kemp argues that the low ratio was achieved through unprecedented measures taken by the IDF to minimize civilian casualties, including warnings to the population via telephone calls, radio broadcasts and leaflets, as well as granting pilots the discretion to abort a strike if they perceived too great a risk of civilian casualties.

And as we know, Israel invented the “knock-on-the-roof” technique, the practice of dropping non-explosive or low-yield devices on the roofs of targeted civilian homes as a prior warning of imminent bombing attacks to give the inhabitants time to flee the attack. The practice was first employed by the Israelis in the 2008-2009 Gaza war, and along with telephoning, radio broadcasts, and leafletting, was used again in this latest war with Hamas. We have also learned of Israeli pilots aborting a mission when they detected the presence of children at a targeted site. Here is one example.

The astonishingly low ratio – 1:3 — of civilian-to-fighter casualties in Gaza is based on figures from the IDF, which believes it killed 225 Hamas fighters, with about 75 civilians killed. That is an amazing figure; in modern warfare the ratio of civilians-to-fighters killed is ordinarily at least 3:1. But because of the enormous efforts Israel makes to warn civilians away from its targets, sometimes giving them as much as two hours warning to flee, civilian casualties were kept very low, despite Hamas’ deliberate efforts to increase them. That two-hours warning was what Israel provided to the residents of the media tower, the Al-Jalaa Building, that received so much attention because the AP offices were located there, along with the actual target of the IAF, Hamas weapons development and intelligence facilities.

He [Colonel Richard Kemp] also states that the civilian casualties that did occur could be seen in light of Hamas’s tactical use of Gazan civilians “as human shields, to hide behind, to stand between Israeli forces and their own fighters,” and strategic exploitation of their deaths in the media….

Questions for the Grey Lady:

Why have you never published a front-page collage, or even one on an inside page, of children killed in any of two dozen recent conflicts, such continuing wars as those in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Ethiopia?

Why, in your coverage of the children who died in the latest Gaza war, did you make no mention of Hamas’ deliberate use of human shields, including children, by hiding its rockets in, and launching them from, civilian buildings such as kindergartens, schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings?

Why, in your coverage of the children who died in the Gaza war, did you make no mention of the fact that some were known to have been killed by the 680 Hamas rockets aimed at Israel but fell short, and struck people inside Gaza?

Why, in your coverage of the children killed in Gaza, did you not subsequently let your readers know that several of those “children” whose photographs appeared were in their late teens, and were members of Hamas and the Palestinian Muhajideen Movement?

Why did The New York Times publish in its “They Were Only Children” collage a 2015 stock photo of a young girl, claiming Israeli forces killed her during the May 2021 war with Hamas? Why did it never apologize for that error?

Why did you not make any mention in the text that accompanies the photos of 67 dead children that Israeli pilots aborted missions when they detected children too close to the target?

Why do you nowhere mention, in the text accompanying the collage of photos of children killed in the war, Israel’s various methods to minimize civilian casualties? These include warning the inhabitants of impending targets through phone calls, leafletting, emails, and the “knock-on-the-roof technique,” giving them time – sometimes as much as two hours — to flee. Wasn’t all that worth mentioning?

Why do you trust the figures released by Hamas of “67 children” killed when, from the three previous Hamas-Israel wars, the numbers put out by Hamas proved, upon further investigation, to have been grossly inflated? Given that history, shouldn’t we be skeptical of Hamas this time?

Do we have any reason, on the other hand, to think that the figures about casualties provided by the IDF are to be trusted? Doesn’t the IDF have a long track record of putting out reliable figures?

That’s enough questions for now. I’m sure your continued skewed coverage of the Hamas-Israel conflict will prompt still others.

COLUMN BY

HUGH FITZGERALD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

CNN Runs Free Advertising for Protests in Support of Palestinian Jihad

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My latest in PJ Media:

First the Associated Press was exposed sharing an office building with Hamas in Gaza, which meant either that they were aware of Hamas’ activities and covered for the terror group, or didn’t know Hamas was there and are therefore the worst reporters in the world. And now comes more confirmation that what we are told are news organizations are actually propaganda arms not only for the Left’s agenda, but for the Palestinian Arab jihad against Israel. CNN on Saturday published an article entitled “Protests in support of Palestinians expected across the United States,” which was not so much a piece of reporting on those protests, but a free advertisement for them, complete with a case for why you should participate in your local orgy of Jew-hatred.

It doesn’t start out too badly: “Protesters are expected to rally in cities across the United States this weekend in support of Palestinians, as Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire ending days of destruction and bloodshed.” But immediately after that comes the staple of establishment media reporting on Israel and the Palestinians: the casualty count. “Since May 10,” CNN claims, “Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 243 people in Gaza, including 66 children, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. Twelve people in Israel, including two children, died as a result of militant fire from Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s emergency service.”

Oh, hey, that’s bad: 243 Palestinians, including 66 children, were killed versus only twelve Israelis. The clear implication of CNN’s framing of the story here is that Israel responded in a disproportionate manner to the rockets Hamas fired into Israel, and indiscriminately bombed Gaza without regard for the lives of civilians. Reality is quite different. In the latest conflict, Hamas followed its longstanding practice of launching attacks from civilian areas so as to draw retaliatory fire that would harm civilians and be usable for propaganda purposes. This launching of attacks from civilian areas has been abundantly documented, even by the unflaggingly anti-Israel United Nations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted Thursday: “It’s not easy fighting a terrorist organization that embeds its military infrastructure in civilian areas. We use the latest military technology to precisely strike Hamas targets, while minimizing damage to the surrounding areas.”

Also, casualty figures can be severely misleading. 419,400 Americans were killed in World War II; over five million Germans were killed. Does this mean that Nazi Germany had the moral high ground, and the United States was in the wrong? Of course not. But CNN presents the figures without any information on Hamas’ use of human shields. It mentions that use only as an Israeli accusation, without any mention of the UN’s findings: “Thousands of protesters gathered for rallies last weekend, stretching from New York to California. Protesters showed support for Palestinians and accused the Israeli government of using disproportionate force and bombing densely-populated civilian areas indiscriminately. The Israeli government has accused Hamas of launching rocket attacks from those population centers.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Muslim CNN Reporter: ‘The world today needs a Hitler’

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Now deleted, but the screenshots are everywhere. Will CNN fire him? Or give him a promotion?

CLICK HERE TO VIEW DELETED TWEET.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Teen Vogue Presents ‘Queer Muslim Heroes to Celebrate This Muslim Women’s Day’

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Fresh from its racism controversy, the hard-left propaganda organ Teen Vogue (“Get ’em while they’re young” is apparently the motto) appears to be going for a death fatwa, publishing an article Friday entitled “Queer Muslim Heroes to Celebrate This Muslim Women’s Day,” by Zainab Almatwari. Almatwari is a Muslim, but clearly one with views so heterodox that she could easily arouse the murderous ire of many of her coreligionists around the globe. Teen Vogue is doubtless oblivious to the risk it is taking in publishing such an article; the chance to advance “Islamophobia” victimhood propaganda was just too good to pass up.

“Many people,” Almatwari informs us, “might not think to put ‘queer’ and ‘Muslim’ in the same sentence. The two identities, some think, are like water and oil.” She doesn’t explain why this perception exists but gives the strong impression that the problem comes from “Islamophobes” who misunderstand the truly benign and progressive teachings of the cuddly Religion of Peace: “But despite being left unrecognized, queer Muslims exist, and I am proof. In my journey to better understanding my identity, seeing and learning from other queer Muslims have been incredibly validating and reassuring. So, just to remind you that we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going anywhere, I compiled a list of queer Muslim heroes.”

“We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going anywhere” is sloganeering that gay individuals and groups have used in the West to rebuke and defy alleged “homophobia.” Few, if any, have ever dared to chant this slogan on the streets of Riyadh or Tehran or Lahore, not because those cities and others in the Islamic world are welcoming and accepting of “queer Muslims,” but because those who would do such a thing would be putting themselves immediate danger of death.

Almatwari is also writing in Teen Vogue, where “Islamophobia” in the U.S. is a much larger concern than Sharia-inspired violence against gays in Islamic states. She is not writing in a publication with wide distribution among Muslims, or that is devoted to issues of concern to Muslims. All this makes it likely that the people she thinks need reminding of the “queer Muslim” presence are non-Muslim Americans, not doctrinaire imams and their followers.

Almatwari also complains that “being a queer Muslim seems too complex for the world to handle.” But is it, really? Here again, she doesn’t specify exactly what part of “the world” she has in mind. Would anyone in America really care if Zainab Almatwari informed them that she was a “queer Muslim”? Some Christians would likely try to explain to her that she was on the wrong path; some might even be rude about it. But it is very unlikely that any of them would threaten her. In the Muslim community, however, that likelihood is far greater. Now, why is that?

“Tayah,” writes Almatwari, “is another Queer Muslim woman whose fight against societal standards is far from conventional. Our friendship started with a compliment of each other’s Hijabs and grew quickly to deep discussions about how Queer Muslim figures existed in all Muslim spaces thousands of years ago.” And what happened to them?

Because the left has deemed it “Islamophobia” to discuss the motivating ideology behind jihad violence and Sharia oppression, Teen Vogue wouldn’t dream of telling you that the primary reason why “queer Muslims” are threatened is because of the Islamic holy book: “As for those of your women who are guilty of lewdness, call to witness four of you against them. And if they testify, then confine them to their houses until death takes them, or Allah finds another way for them.” (Qur’an 4:15)

This explanation of that passage is attributed to Muhammad’s companion Ibn Abbas: “The early ruling was confinement, until Allah sent down Surat An-Nur (sura 24) which abrogated that ruling with the ruling of flogging (for fornication) or stoning to death (for adultery).” If a woman is found guilty of adultery, she is to be stoned to death; if she is found guilty of fornication, she gets 100 lashes (cf. 24:2).”

A later tradition has one of the people who are identified as Muhammad’s companions observing, “When the revelation descended upon the Messenger of Allah, it would affect him and his face would show signs of strain. One day, Allah sent down a revelation to him, and when the Messenger was relieved of its strain, he said, ‘Take from me: Allah has made some other way for them. The married with the married, the unmarried with the unmarried. The married gets a hundred lashes and stoning to death, while the unmarried gets a hundred lashes then banishment for a year.’”

Teen Vogue would never dare tell you any of this, for fear of being considered “Islamophobic.” Instead, it implies that the only problems “queer Muslims” face are from racist, redneck, “Islamophobic” yahoos in the U.S. As such, they are leading both non-Muslim and Muslim girls down a very risky path. Risky in innumerable ways.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

USA Today fires ‘race and inclusion editor’ for claiming Boulder jihadi was ‘angry white man’

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As a Syrian, Ahmad Al Issa is indeed “white,” but of course what Hemal Jhaveri meant was that he was a white, Christian, Trump-supporting Enemy of All That Is Good. It is extremely strange that USA Today fired her. In today’s “journalistic” culture, it would have been less surprising if she had been given an award and promoted.

“USA Today ‘Race and Inclusion’ Editor Fired For Falsely Blaming White People For Boulder Shooting,”

by Paul Joseph Watson, Summit News, March 26, 2021 (thanks to Ken):

A ‘race and inclusion’ editor was fired by USA Today after she falsely blamed the Boulder supermarket shooting on white people.

“It’s always an angry white man. Always,” tweeted Hemal Jhaveri on Monday evening immediately after news of the shooting broke.

The gunman was named the next day as 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, a migrant from Syria.

“Hi friends. Some news,” tweeted Jhaveri earlier today. “I am no longer working at For The Win and USA TODAY. Here’s what happened.”

In a Medium piece about her dismissal, Jhaveri explains that even after seeing a picture of the shooter, she tweeted a “dashed off over-generalization” about the culprit.

“It was a careless error of judgment, sent at a heated time, that doesn’t represent my commitment to racial equality,” Jhaveri said. “I regret sending it. I apologized and deleted the tweet.”…

However, Jhaveri thinks that her firing wasn’t specifically in relation to that tweet, but to others in which she was “publicly naming whiteness as a defining problem.” She also referenced a 2017 tweet in which she called out “a reporter’s white privilege” as another reason for her dismissal.

“My previous tweets were flagged not for inaccuracy or for political bias, but for publicly naming whiteness as a defining problem,” Jhaveri said. “That is something USA TODAY, and many other newsrooms across the country, can not tolerate.”

The now unemployed journalist also claimed she was the victim of racist “microaggressions” carried out by “majority white” USA Today staff during her 8 year run with the media outlet….

Jhaveri wasn’t the only journalist to let slip anti-white racism in the aftermath of the shooting – literally countless others posted similar tweets.

None of them appear to have been fired.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Orlando Weekly and Hamas-linked CAIR hit CPAC for speaker who opposes jihad violence and Sharia oppression

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First, smear opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression as “anti-Muslim.” Invoke the discredited far-Left smear propaganda organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center as if it were an infallible and impartial authority on what constitutes a “hate group.” Present the SPLC’s smears without any substantiating evidence, as if they were unquestionable fact. Throw in the word “extreme,” so as to abet the growing campaign to portray all dissent from the far-left agenda as terrorism.

Then drag in the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), identifying it only as a “civil rights organization,” without bothering to inform your readers that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.

Note also that Presler isn’t even set to speak about anything related to Islam or jihad. Hamas-linked CAIR and far-left organs such as Orlando Weekly, or at least its reliably fascist writer Matthew Moyer, want to hound anyone who stands against them to their deaths. If you oppose jihad terrorism, Hamas-linked CAIR won’t just come after you if you ever speak about this in a public forum. It will come after you no matter what you’re doing, and try to intimidate event organizers, in this case CPAC, to drop you for your transgression of Sharia blasphemy provisions. If it were up to the left and Islamic supremacists, their critics would all be unemployed and unemployable, starving to death on the streets (at best). A few years ago I was invited to address an education conference in California that had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam; the hate-filled fascist “Islamophobia” propagandist-turned-real estate agent Nathan Lean got the weak and ignorant Catholic bishop Jaime Soto, under whose auspices the conference was being held, to cancel my appearance. (I spoke at the conference as scheduled, in a venue outside the bishop’s purview.) And also a few years ago, the Washington Post discovered that the Qur’an-burning pastor Terry Jones was driving for Uber; they duly got him fired. I don’t approve of book-burning, but it is not illegal in the United States, and the idea that a man must be hounded forever and prevented from making a living for views that dissent from the left’s reveals what Leftists really are.

So it has been clear for years that if you dissent from leftist orthodoxy, you must be destroyed. Not just “debunked” or “discredited” in your field, but also prevented from doing everything else, so that the only option you have is to die.

This smear of Presler is also ironic in light of the fact that when it comes to the jihad threat, CPAC, like all establishment conservative organizations, left the building years ago, barring all discussion of the actual nature and magnitude of the threat, and opting instead for comforting religion-of-peace fictions. This hit piece on Presler must have the cowardly Matt Schlapp quivering under his desk.

“CPAC speaker called out for anti-Muslim sentiments, and that’s only scratching the surface of this year’s spectacle,”

by Matthew Moyer, Orlando Weekly, February 25, 2021:

Another speaker on the lineup for the conservative mega-gathering CPAC is getting some unwelcome spotlight for anti-Muslim statements and activity, and this is only scratching the surface of the extreme ideologies being trotted out at this week’s event in Orlando.

On Tuesday, civil rights organization the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on CPAC organizers to remove Scott Presler from their conference lineup.

CAIR points out that Presler had been involved with “ACT for America” from 2017-2018 as an organizer. The Southern Poverty Law Center has characterized that organization as “an anti-Muslim hate group because it pushes wild anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, denigrates American Muslims and deliberately conflates mainstream and radical Islam.”

More recently, Presler was in Washington, D.C., for the Stop the Steal rally and even called the Jan. 6 insurrection the “largest civil rights protest in American history.”

Preslar is scheduled to participate in a group session on Saturday afternoon titled, ironically, “Front Porch Politics: How to Talk About Issues Without Starting a Back Alley Brawl.”

“CPAC organizers should immediately drop anti-Muslim activist Scott Presler, who has actively worked to promote conspiracy theories about American Muslims and Islam,” said CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert S. McCaw. “Presler’s reported role in supporting the January 6 insurrection is enough to disqualify him from being offered a credible speaking platform.”…

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

New York Times Details Horrors of Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban,’ Ignores Victims of Jihad Attacks

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The New York Times story opens with a scene of unmitigated horror: “On May 30, 2019, Mohamed Abdulrahman Ahmed should have been in class preparing for exams. Instead, neighbors found the gifted high school senior hanging lifeless from a beam in his home in the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. He had taken his own life.” Since this is the New York Times, it comes as no surprise that the ultimate culprit is none other than Donald J. Trump, and his nefarious “Muslim Ban” that his wise successor’s handlers have now consigned to the dustbin of history.

Times author Ty McCormick does his best to tug at our heartstrings as he describes Dadaab, “a sea of sand and thorn scrub and makeshift tarpaulin dwellings” that is “home to more than 200,000 people — a city the size of Richmond, Va., or Spokane, Wash., except without electricity or running water.”

It’s a place absolutely mired in despair, but “over the years, refugees in Dadaab have clung to one hope: resettlement overseas, sometimes in Europe or Canada but mostly in the United States. Tens of thousands of Dadaab’s residents have come to the United States; in 2015, for instance, more than 3,000 people from the camp were resettled there.”

But then came the reign of the Evil One: “Those hopes of a better life were dashed on Jan. 27, 2017, when on his eighth day as president, Donald Trump suspended all refugee admissions and banned entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, including Somalia. (Restrictions were eventually applied to 13 countries in all.)”

It’s a predictable sob story about how hard the residents of Dadaab have had it since they have been unable to come to America. One is moved to tears, but when one begins to consider the issue rationally, other considerations inevitably intrude: there are people who are having hard times all over the world. In fact, there are even people who are having hard times in the United States of America. There are people who are suffering economically, like the people in Dadaab. There are people who are suffering physically, emotionally, mentally, and in other ways. All over the world, there is suffering and pain. Why, then, is it the moral responsibility of the United States of America to alleviate the suffering of the people of Dadaab? No one in Kenya or Somalia or France or China or Australia or anywhere else is doing a thing to alleviate the sufferings of Americans; why is it up to Americans, all of whom are suffering in various ways themselves, to alleviate the suffering of everyone else?

Meanwhile, what about the suffering of those whose lives were destroyed by Somali migrants who came into the country before Trump’s travel ban came into effect? Can we get a New York Times article on them? Somali Muslim migrant Mohammad Barry in February 2016 stabbed multiple patrons at a restaurant owned by an Israeli Arab Christian. When is the New York Times going to interview the people whom Barry stabbed, and publish a piece about how they have suffered, and how their lives forever changed that day? When is the New York Times going to write a piece about the other people who were in the restaurant that day, and explore their trauma, their horror, their terror, and the nightmares and anxiety they have experienced since then?

When does the New York Times plan to profile the victims of Dahir Adan, another Somali Muslim migrant, who in October 2016 stabbed mall shoppers in St. Cloud while screaming “Allahu akbar”? Do Adan’s victims get a New York Times article about their injuries, their healing processes, any operations they may have had to undergo, and their own ongoing trauma and fear?

How about the victims of Abdul Razak Artan, yet another Somali Muslim migrant, who in November 2016 injured nine people with car and knife attacks at Ohio State University? Does the New York Times plan to explain to us how the victims whom Artan tried to run down with his car (in an instance of the common phenomenon of vehicular jihad) now find their hearts racing at the prospect of having to cross the street?

Of course, the New York Times is not going to publish even a single line about the suffering of those people and others like them, or even consider the possibility that Trump’s travel bans did anything but harm. Only the suffering of the people of Dadaab and others like them, not the suffering of victims of jihad attacks, matters to the Times. The suffering of the people of Dadaab is very real, and should be addressed, but is the only solution, or the best solution, really the resettlement in the United States of large numbers of people among whom is an unknowable number of jihad terrorists, who will enter undetected since any vetting to try to discover them will be deemed “Islamophobic”?

There will soon be new victims of Biden’s handlers’ marvelous, multicultural discarding of the “Muslim Ban.” The New York Times will ignore them, while congratulating themselves on how they helped install a president who strikes back against “racism” and “xenophobia.”

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIRGINIA: Muslim professing love for Allah murders two, county attorney says we ‘may never know’ his motive

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Ivan Maertens Aramayo is Ayanna Maertens Griffin’s father. In this Washington Post report, consistent with the establishment media’s never-ending mission to exonerate Islam from all crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings, he offers two quotations from the Qur’an, apparently in order to establish that what Mohamed Aly did was completely inconsistent with his “professed love for Allah.”

The first one (“And do not kill one another…”) is Qur’an 4:29. The full verse is: “O you who believe, do not squander your wealth among yourselves in vanity, except in a trade by mutual consent, and do not kill yourselves [or one another]. Indeed, Allah is always merciful to you.” It is thus clearly addressed to “you who believe,” and does not override the Qur’an’s thrice-repeated imperative to kill unbelievers (2:191, 4:89, 9:5).

The other quote is Qur’an 5:32, which is one of the most oft-quoted verses of the Qur’an, the one that Western non-Muslim leaders refer to frequently in order to establish that Islam is a religion of peace. There is, however, less to it than Western leaders and Islamic apologists claim. It is not a general prohibition of killing: there are big exceptions to the prohibition on killing, for “manslaughter or corruption on the earth.” Also, this prohibition is not a general command, but is specifically directed at the children of Israel. After it was given, “many of them committed excesses on earth,” so all this passage is really saying is that Allah gave a command to the children of Israel and they transgressed against it. Some Islamic authorities interpret this passage in a supremacist manner, as applying only to Muslims. The eighth-century Muslim jurist Sa’id bin Jubayr is said to have explained: “He who allows himself to shed the blood of a Muslim, is like he who allows shedding the blood of all people. He who forbids shedding the blood of one Muslim, is like he who forbids shedding the blood of all people.” Then 5:33 continues from 5:32 and makes clear the dire punishments that are prescribed for the corruption and transgressions of the children of Israel, and a warning to the Jews to stop their bad behavior. Seen in its light, this celebrated passage, Qur’an 5:32, is explaining what must be done with Jews who reject the messenger and commit the vague sin of spreading corruption on earth. Contrary to popular belief in the West, the passage is not dictating lofty moral principles.

Meanwhile, is anyone even looking into the possibility that Mohamed Aly’s murders of Ayanna Maertens Griffin and Ntombo Joel Bianda may be tied to his “love for Allah”? Or has such an investigation been dismissed out of hand as “Islamophobic”?

“Nearly a year after a young couple were killed, a guilty plea provides few answers,” by Rachel Weiner, Washington Post, January 4, 2021 (thanks to Darcy):

…Ayanna Maertens Griffin, 18, and her boyfriend, Ntombo Joel Bianda, 21, were shot to death in southern Halifax County nearly a year ago. An 18-year-old student at Alexandria’s T.C. Williams High School was quickly arrested and confessed. Mohamed Aly pleaded guilty in December to first-degree murder counts and sentenced to four life terms, but his reasons for killing two acquaintances remain a mystery.

“One of the most painful aspects of this case is that the family may never know Aly’s motive to murder their loved ones. We are all left asking, why?” Halifax Commonwealth’s Attorney Tracy Quackenbush Martin said in a statement. “We may never have an answer to that question.”…

After the arrest, Maertens Aramayo had looked at Aly’s social media pages and saw that the teenager professed love for Allah. A Roman Catholic himself, he studied theology, and what he knew about Islam gave him an opening. He offered two quotes from the Koran:

“And do not kill one another, for God is indeed merciful unto you” and “Whoever kills an innocent life, it is as if he has killed all of humanity.”

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Seriously? As Trump Announces Another Mideast Peace Deal, Biden Named Person of the Year

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Time magazine has named Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “Person of the Year,” in a tacit acknowledgment that they are, for all their individual differences, essentially a single cog in the socialist internationalist machine that is poised to roll all over us. And there is no doubt that driving the American republic to the point of near-death with election chicanery on a breathtaking scale is indeed a significant achievement, but amid all the excitement, it was barely noticed that President Trump had delivered yet another rebuke to the massively failed foreign policy establishment that is poised to get back in the saddle and start failing some more, by engineering peace between Israel and another Arab state, Morocco.

Trump tweeted Thursday: “Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!” The Morocco deal, like the previous one between Israel and Sudan, seems to be a straightforward bargain. Trump also tweeted Friday: “Today, I signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Morocco’s serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity!” So Morocco gets recognition of its sovereignty over the Western Sahara, and the world gets another step toward peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

That makes four agreements between Israel and Arab nations, something John Kerry confidently stated was not even remotely possible. Isn’t it great that Kerry is about to go back to work for the Person of the Year (what pronouns does that beast with two backs use?) and start showing us how it’s done again?

No one thought it could be done, except, of course, Donald Trump. Back in September, when Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates signed their deals with Israel, Trump stated: “We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history. After decades of division and conflict we mark the dawn of a new Middle East.” This was accurate. These “Abraham Accords” have already changed the entire landscape of the Middle East as, for the first time in decades, pragmatic considerations are taking precedence over the fixed ideas that have guided the foreign policy stances of all the Muslim and Arab countries regarding Israel.

Although this aspect of the conflict has been little noted and is still routinely ignored by foreign policy analysts, the Muslim world’s opposition to Israel has not been based upon conflicting claims for land or anything else, but upon core principles of the Islamic religion. As The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process shows, the Qur’an commands Muslims to “drive them out from where they drove you out” (2:191). Even though it is a historical fiction that Israel actually drove Muslim Arabs out, this claim is a staple of pro-Palestinian propaganda, and hence it is a divine imperative, no more negotiable than the Ten Commandments are for Jews and Christians, that Muslims must destroy Israel and “drive out” the Israelis.

That means that as long as pious, believing, knowledgeable Muslims are in charge in Muslim countries, which is by no means always the case, no negotiated settlement will ever establish Israel securely and end the jihad against it. That in turn is why analysts ignore Islam when considering the conflict: people don’t like bad news, or problems that cannot be solved. Nonetheless, this is the reality of the situation, and no good can ever come from ignoring reality.

Why, then, did Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and now Morocco normalize relations with Israel? Because it was in their interests to do so. Sudan was taken off the terror list in exchange for normalization. The Islamic Republic of Iran has for years claimed Bahrain as Iran’s nineteenth province, and the UAE likewise feels the heat of being in close proximity to one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror. In a certain sense, these deals with Israel are a byproduct of Barack Obama’s decision to send billions to the mullahs’ tottering regime: a newly secure and empowered mullahcracy threatens Bahrain and the UAE, and so it was in their best interests to look for assistance from a country that Iran also menaces.

Now, with the mullahs expecting The Person of the Year and their minions to prop them up again, there are numerous indications that many in the Islamic world have had quite enough of the Palestinians’ jihadist intransigence and resistance to all peace accords, and are willing to proceed on a pragmatic basis, quite aside from what Islamic doctrine and law say, in order to secure their own countries against the threat from Iran.

And so maybe Old Joe deserves the credit for Middle East peace that the establishment media is certain to give him no matter what: if he hadn’t publicly stated his intention to empower and enable the Islamic Republic, Sunni Arab states wouldn’t see the need to make accords with Israel to protect themselves from the mullahs. Make that man, uh, those people, Person of the Year!

Meanwhile, it’s too bad that there is no unbiased, trustworthy organization giving out prizes for efforts toward world peace. If there were, Trump would be a shoo-in. But that would require a sane world.

RELATED TWEET:

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Post Wants You to Fast for Ramadan

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My latest in PJ Media:

The far-Left anti-Trump propaganda organ masquerading as a news source and operating under the name the Washington Post on Thursday published an inspiring op-ed entitled “As American Muslims fast this Ramadan, maybe the rest of America should consider joining in.” The Post’s articles exhorting people to keep the Lenten fast or the Yom Kippur fast have not yet been published, but I’m sure that they will be when the appropriate times for them roll around again. Won’t they?

In the meantime, I’ll consider fasting for Ramadan, but I have a fairly good idea of what my conclusion will be. The article’s author, the imam Omar Suleiman, “founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research and an Islamic studies professor at Southern Methodist University,” writes: “The end result of Ramadan for Muslims, according to the Koran, is for ‘you to complete the period and glorify God for that which He has guided you, and that you may be amongst the grateful.’”

That sounds terrific, but what exactly does the Qur’an mean by glorifying God? According to the Islamic holy book, one way that Muslims can glorify God is by fighting and killing infidels (cf. 2:191. 4:89, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, etc.). In fact, according to the prophet of Islam, there is no better way to glorify the supreme being. A hadith has a Muslim asking Muhammad: “Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).” Muhammad replied, “I do not find such a deed.” (Bukhari 4.52.44) A jihad group explained: “The month of Ramadan is a month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and God’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators.”

Somehow that doesn’t sound as appealing as Omar Suleiman made it out to be. But the good imam can’t be faulted for walking through a door that the Washington Post opened. His article was published in response to a Post call: “The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.” Suleiman saw an opportunity for dawah, Islamic proselytizing, and seized it.

Still, if someone had sent in those stories about how Americans should join in the Lenten fast, or the Yom Kippur fast, would the Post have published them? Almost certainly not. Suleiman’s article, however, is just one example of a general tendency: it is imperative in today’s society to be solicitous to Muslims and warmly positive toward even the aspects of Islam that are oppressive.

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Notre Dame Professor Gabriel Said Reynolds falsely claims that Qur’an teaches only Allah should take revenge

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The fact that Gabriel Said Reynolds, who demonstrates here that he is either abjectly ignorant or willfully dishonest about Islam, is a professor of theology at Notre Dame shows how much our nation’s universities (and the Catholic Church) are dominated by fantasy and wishful thinking rather than being willing to deal with unpleasant realities. Reynolds is an academic laden with honors, employed at Notre Dame and published in the New York Daily News, not because he speaks the truth, with which he is either unacquainted or unwilling to disclose, but because he tells people what they want to hear: that Islam, if only it were properly understood, is actually a religion of peace. How it came to be that so many Muslims misunderstand the religion they follow so devoutly, he does not bother to explain.

Meanwhile, would the New York Daily News ever publish a comparably lengthy theological defense of Christianity? Not on your life.

Anyway, to make his case that in Islam, vengeance belongs to Allah alone, Reynolds quotes a number of Qur’an verses, but he doesn’t even mention or attempt to explain away others that disprove his case. There is actually a great support, passed over in silence by Reynolds here, in the Qur’an and Sunnah for the death penalty for blasphemy. It can arguably be found in this verse: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.” (5:33)

But if you don’t think that verse justifies killing those who insult Islam, there is this: “Those who annoy Allah and His Messenger – Allah has cursed them in this World and in the Hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating Punishment” (33:57)

Yes, he has cursed them both in this world and the hereafter. What does a curse in this world look like? Muslims are told to fight such people: “If they violate their oaths after pledging to keep their covenants, and attack your religion, you may fight the leaders of paganism – you are no longer bound by your covenant with them – that they may refrain” (9:12).

Not only that, but the Qur’an explicitly says that Allah will punish people by the hands of the believers: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people, and remove the fury in the believers’ hearts.” (9:14-15)

There is more in the hadith. In one, Muhammad asked: “Who is willing to kill Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?” One of the Muslims, Muhammad bin Maslama, answered, “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” When Muhammad said that he would, Muhammad bin Maslama said, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab).” Muhammad responded: “You may say it.” Muhammad bin Maslama duly lied to Ka’b, luring him into his trap, and murdered him. (Bukhari 5.59.369)

“A Jewess used to abuse the Prophet and disparage him. A man strangled her till she died. The Apostle of Allah declared that no recompense was payable for her blood.” (Sunan Abu-Dawud 38.4349)

Why doesn’t Gabriel Said Reynolds mention any of those passages?

“What radical Muslims get wrong about the Koran: Vengeance is reserved for God alone,” by Gabriel Said Reynolds, New York Daily News, March 1, 2020:

In the name of Allah, militant Muslims continue taking up arms against people they consider threats to their faith and way of life. But does it make theological sense for humans to pick up swords and guns to exact retribution in this life?

The Koran, the book those same Muslims purport to revere, says no….

The irony of blasphemy laws, and the tragedy of these attacks carried out in supposed defense of Islam, is that the Koran time and again insists that it is God’s right, and God’s right alone, to exact vengeance.

Allah does not need Muslims to step in and punish those who insult Him. In fact, Allah does not want Muslims to do so. The God of the Koran is clear: He is the only avenger of Islam.

The case of blasphemy laws in Islam is particularly peculiar in light of the example of Muhammad himself. The Koran describes how the unbelievers in his native city of Mecca disputed his claims of prophethood and insulted him.

Koran 68:51 describes how they accused him of insanity: “Indeed, the faithless almost devour you with their eyes when they hear this Reminder, and they say, ‘He is indeed crazy.’”

The Koran does not respond by demanding that the blasphemers be killed for their insolence. It simply affirms the claims of Muhammad.

Elsewhere in the Koran, the voice of God counsels Muhammad to be patient when faced with opposition. Koran 16:126 alludes to some persecution or affliction which Muhammad has suffered from the unbelievers.

The next verse, in response, suggests that Muhammad could strike back in moderation, but should simply endure the persecution patiently: “If you retaliate, retaliate with the like of what you have been made to suffer, but if you are patient, that is surely better for the steadfast.”

This does not mean that the idea of vengeance is foreign to the Koran. The question the Koran poses is not whether offenses against Islam and Muslims should be avenged, but who should do the avenging.

And the answer is consistent: “God.”

Remarkably, and if only Boko Haram and other Salafi-Jihadis would listen, the Koran even teaches this lesson specifically about Christians. In Sura 5, God asks some questions of Jesus about those who followed him, but Jesus does not demand that the wrongdoers be punished.

He leaves their fate in God’s hands: “If Thou chastisest them, they are Thy servants; if Thou forgivest them, Thou art the All-mighty, the All-wise.”

The same lesson is taught about Muslims who are unfaithful to the laws of Islam. In chapter 5, verse 95, the Koran describes the laws of the pilgrimage to Mecca (known as the Hajj). But as for he who breaks the rules, the Koran gives no worldly punishment: “God will take vengeance on him, God is all-mighty, Vengeful.”

So what does divine vengeance look like in the Koran? Allah punishes those who offend Him in hell. The Koran not only describes paradise in vivid colors (as a place with food, drink, and women), it also describes hell in gruesome detail.

Angels of punishment will strike the damned from the front and the back. The damned will be condemned to drink boiling water and eat from a tree named Zaqqum whose fruit is like the heads of demons.

The Koran clearly considers this punishment enough for an unbeliever. Whereas the standard schools of Islam teach that someone who leaves the religion, an apostate, is to be killed, the only punishment for apostasy spoken of in the Koran is hell: “’Did you disbelieve after you had believed? Then taste the chastisement for that you disbelieved!’” (Quran 3:106).

The Koran also teaches that God need not wait for the afterlife to punish unbelievers. He is the lord of the universe and can intervene when He chooses.

A number of chapters in the Koran tell a series of tales, dubbed “punishment stories” by scholars, in which unbelieving peoples are punished for rejecting the prophet who is sent to them. Among these prophets are Biblical figures including Noah, Lot, and Moses, and others who seem to come from Arabian lore with names like Hud, Salih, and Shuʿayb.

In each story it is not the Prophet but God who intervenes….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

University of Florida Prof Hails Caliphate as ‘Historic Institution’ That ISIS Is ‘Hijacking’

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My latest in PJ Media:

University of Florida professor Ken Chitwood wrote Wednesday in the Associated Press’ commentary section, “The Conversation,” that “the Islamic State tries to boost its legitimacy by hijacking a historic institution.” He then provided a drive-by overview of the history of various Islamic caliphates, so whitewashed as to rival the Washington Post’s famous characterization of Islamic State (ISIS) caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in misleading duplicity. Even worse, Chitwood tells us that “as a scholar of global Islam, every time I teach my ‘Introduction to Islam’ class,” he teaches this nonsense to his hapless University of Florida students. No surprise there, given the fact that most universities today are little more than Antifa recruitment centers.

“Under Umar,” Chitwood writes blandly, “the caliphate expanded to include many regions of the world such as the lands of the former Byzantine and Sassanian empires in Asia Minor, Persia and Central Asia.”

Yeah, uh, Professor Chitwood, how exactly did that “expansion” occur? In reality, beyond the pseudo-academic whitewash and fantasy that Chitwood purveys, the caliphates always behaved much like the Islamic State, because they were all working from the same playbook. The true, bloody history of the caliphates can be found, detailed from Islamic sources, in the only complete history of 1,400 years of jihad violence, The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.

The word khalifa means “successor”; the caliph in Sunni Islamic theology is the successor of Muhammad as the military, political, and spiritual leader of the Muslims. The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS demonstrates that the great caliphates of history, from the immediate post-Muhammad period of the “Rightly Guided Caliphs” to the Umayyads, Abbasids, and Ottomans, as well as other Islamic states, all waged relentless jihad warfare against non-Muslims, subjugating them under the rule of Islamic law and denying them basic rights.

These weren’t the actions of a “tiny minority of extremists,” abhorred by the vast majority of peaceful Muslims for “hijacking” their religion, as Ken Chitwood would have you believe. This was, for fourteen centuries, mainstream, normative Islam, carried forth by the primary authorities in the Islamic world at the time. The accounts of eyewitnesses and contemporary chroniclers through the ages show that in every age and in every place where there were Muslims, some of them believed that they had a responsibility given to them by Allah to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law.

And so it is today: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi enunciated that responsibility more clearly and directly than most Muslim spokesmen do these days, but he is by no means the only one who believes that it exists.

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Facebook spokesman compares Tommy Robinson to convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic

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Many viewers were likely left speechless last week after watching Deadline – one of Denmark’s most popular news programs — during an interview with Peter Andreas Münster, Facebook’s Head of Communications for the Nordic Region. The issue was Facebook’s decision to censor virtually everything connected to the English journalist Tommy Robinson.

Facebook censors Danish Media Outlet and Free Speech Organization

Earlier this year, Facebook banned the Danish online media news outlet 24NYT. The organization is known for criticizing the establishment and focusing on the negative consequences of Muslim immigration to Denmark.

Last week, Facebook also banned the Danish free speech organization Trykkefrihedsselskabet. The move comes after a series of posts about Facebook censorship of Tommy Robinson. The organization’s Facebook page was taken down.

In the Deadline interview, the journalist host Lotte Folke Kaarsholm asked a number of critical questions to Facebook’s official representative. There were not many clear answers. At some point during the interview, even the journalist is clearly shocked.

Facebook: Tommy Robinson is in line with a convicted war criminal

That happened when the Facebook official said that; “In this way, we consider him [Tommy Robinson] a person in line with Ratko Mladic.”

Ratko Mladic, nicknamed the “butcher of Bosnia,” is a convicted war criminal. He has been found guilty of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

According to an BBC article; “The worst and most enduring crimes pinned on the former army chief and his men were an unrelenting three-year siege of Sarajevo that claimed more than 10,000 lives, and the massacre at Srebrenica, where more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys were slaughtered and dumped in mass graves.”

Facebook takes down post, which encourages watching the interview

After the interview, a storm of criticism quickly spread among Danes, who were shocked by Facebook’s comparison.

Subsequently, the state-owned Danmarks Radio, which broadcasts Deadline, posted a message on their Facebook page encouraging people to watch the interview. But this post was soon deleted by Facebook.

According to journalist Lotte Folke Kaarsholm, the post is again available, after Danmarks Radio complained to Facebook.

The newly elected Danish anti-immigration party Nye Borgerlige has now requested an official meeting with the Danish Prime Minister. Facebook’s censorship is on the agenda. Before being appointed Facebook’s chief of communication for the Nordic countries, Peter Andreas Münster worked in the press department of Det Radikale Venstre – a political party, which has one of Denmark’s most radical pro-immigration policies.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.