Pope Francis and Turkey’s Islamist leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan
By Christopher W. Holton
With the visit of Pope Francis to the United States, some attention has been paid to his views on Jihad in general and the September 11 attacks in particular.
On a visit to the September 11 memorial at Ground Zero, the pope made a statement that we find offensive and born of ignorance.
From USA Today:
In a remark some relatives of 9/11 victims may disagree with, the pope attributed “the wrongful and senseless loss of innocent lives” at Ground Zero to “the inability to find solutions which respect the common good.”
To what solutions could Pope Francis possibly be referring?
What “solutions which respect the common good” would have convinced Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta that violent Jihad was wrong?
Al Qaeda and all Jihadist groups have as their goal the imposition of Shariah through violent Jihad. We can only assume that the pope is unaware of this. We must also assume that he is unaware that mainstream Islamic doctrine also calls for the imposition of Shariah worldwide.
Which Catholics and other Christians should be sacrificed to live under Shariah for the “common good?”
This was not the first time Pope Francis made statements that demonstrate an ignorance of Islamic doctrine.
In his The Joy of the Gospel, the pope stated:
Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalizations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence.
No one can study Islamic doctrine based on the Islamic trilogy–the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah–and come away believing that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence.”
It should be noted that when it comes to commentary on Islam, Pope Francis is merely stating his opinion; this is not a statement that has the authority of the Catholic church behind it since it applies to the interpretation of another religion.
But all one has to do to see the folly in the pope’s assertion here is to review the too numerous to count examples of Islamic religious leaders and Shariah scholars admonishing their followers to violent Jihad.
We could fill volumes with examples of violent exhortations in the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah. We could go into depth here about the principle of abrogation in the Quran. But rather than do that, we would like to point out that there are other members of the Catholic clergy and community who are more informed on Islam, Shariah and Jihad and they have put their thoughts in writing. In some cases, these good men are much closer to the tip of the spear in the clash of civilizations:
Nigerian cardinal criticizes role of sharia, says Muslim leaders must ‘rein in their mad dogs’
Nigeria of course has been wracked for several years now by horrible violence committed by Boko Haram, which has recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Cardinal Onaiyekan has seen thousands of Christians in his country slaughtered at the hands of Jihadists and he knows that Boko Haram’s stated goal is the imposition of Shariah.
Rev. James V. Schall, S.J. expresses a very different view from that of Pope Francis on the issue of the Islamic State and the role of Islam in violence.
Robert Royal, editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., also expresses a far different view of Islamic terrorism than the one expressed by Pope Francis.
Why have these three men, two American and one Nigerian, two men of the cloth and one a prominent lay Catholic, one black and two white, reached such a different conclusion than that of Pope Francis?
To those of us who have studied Islamic doctrine over the past 15 years, the clear answer is that they have studied the Quran, the Hadith, the Sirah and Shariah. Pope Francis clearly has not. Francis is not alone in that state of being; few if any world leaders in the non-Islamic world have studied Islamic doctrine.
But those who have know what it contains and it isn’t all about peace, the “opposition to every form of violence” and “solutions for the common good.”
The US Army has issued a new shoulder patch for the slightly more than 3,000 troops who President Obama has decided he can spare to fight the world’s most dangerous Jihadist entity, the Islamic State, which the US federal government still insists on referring to as “ISIL,” despite the fact that there are now Jihadi groups from West Africa to the Philippines that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Nothing illustrates better the institutional denial that we are saddled with as a nation in our fight to save Western civilization than our federal counter terror bureaucracy’s slavish attitude toward outmoded views on the threat from Jihad…except maybe the new shoulder patch that is the subject of this post. Here it is:
New US Army shoulder patch. Note absence of anything identifiable with the US Army or the United States of America
Now compare the US Army’s shoulder patch to those of several known, prominent Jihadist groups…and prepare to be repulsed…
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
Jemaah Islamiyah in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia
Abu Sayyef Group in the Philippines
Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan and India
Boko Haram in Nigeria and west Africa
Al Shabaab in Somalia and east Africa
Al Qaeda. Remember them?
The Taliban
HAMAS
And the granddaddy of them all…The Muslim Brotherhood
If you’re wondering what the HELL is going on here, you’re definitely not alone.
A German journalist named Jurgen Todenhofer managed to get himself embedded with the Islamic State for ten days without getting taken hostage and beheaded. How he managed that we have no idea, but he has written a book about what he learned during those ten days.
His book is called “Inside IS – Ten Days in the Islamic State,” and it reportedly reveals much about the Islamic State’s intentions, which come as no surprise to many of us, though the Obama administration has been oblivious and disinterested in the threat IS poses.
Todenhofer maintains that the West has underestimated the power of the Islamic State and is unprepared for what it seeks to do.
This rings true for us.
The Islamic State is a greater threat than Al Qaeda is and perhaps ever was. This is evidenced by the fact that, unlike Al Qaeda, the Islamic State has been able to inspire Muslims in the West to both carry out individual acts of violent Jihad and to travel to the Middle East by the hundreds–even by the thousands–to join its ranks.
Todenhofer claims that the Islamic State aims to get hold of nuclear weapons to kill millions of its enemies.
While we take this threat seriously, we believe there are other aspects of the IS threat involving WMD that pose a more immediate threat.
While we have no doubt that IS desires to kill millions with nuclear weapons, the only way we can see them fulfilling that dream in the near-term, is if someone in Pakistan gives IS a nuke, which we don’t regard as very likely in the near-term. The folks in charge of the nukes in Pakistan are the few who are still fairly responsible and Westernized from what we understand. We should expect that to change in the future, but not necessarily the near future.
Nevertheless, there have been persistent reports of IS using mustard gas in Syria, so they are more than willing to use WMD and have some capability in that regard. Mustard isn’t really that adaptable to terrorism as much as combat, but what we really fear is that IS would piece together a radiological “dirty bomb” and detonate it in a US or European city with lingering, devastating consequences. We think that is the number one threat from the Jihadists involving nukes/WMD.
Radiological material isn’t particularly difficult to obtain; a quantity was reportedly present in Mosul, a city in northern Iraq that IS seized well over a year ago.
The vast majority of Westerners–especially Americans–are completely ignorant of Islamic doctrine.
When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi claimed the title Caliph and declared the Islamic State in June 2014, many ignorant observers assumed that the establishment of the Caliphate was something that only “radicals” and “extremists” sought.
That isn’t true. A study of Islamic doctrine based on the Islamic trilogy–the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah–reveals that it is a doctrinal tenet of Islam that Muslims are supposed to work for the establishment of the worldwide Islamic state so that Allah’s law reigns supreme everywhere.
Below we have a curious example that illustrates the truth about the Caliphate and Islamic doctrine.
Syrian historian Sami Moubayed explains in an article in the UK Telegraph that the best way to battle back against the Islamic State Caliphate led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is to form a competing Caliphate led by a more appealing individual.
Essentially what this means is that even Muslims who do not approve of the Islamic State still desire to see a worldwide Caliphate ruled by Shariah dominating the world.
While much of Afghanistan has been wracked by violence in recent months with the resurgence of the Taliban as the US withdraws forces, along with the entry of Islamic State Jihadists, Allied forces are now evidently battling a new terror group called the ‘Islamic Commandos’.
The Islamic Commandos group has reportedly been operating in the Zabul, Urozgan and Kandahar provinces in Afghanistan, with at least 1,000 members, according to Afghan officials. The officials believe that the Islamic Commandos are a breakaway group from the Taliban.
Americans seem to be oblivious or desensitized to the growing evidence that Jihad is hitting the streets here in America. About a week ago or so we posted a rundown of recent Jihadi activity on the continent of Africa, illustrating the fact that it has become the central front in the global Jihadist insurgency:
What may not be apparent is the escalating level of Jihadi activity here in the USA. Even attacks such as those that occurred in 2014 in Moore, Oklahoma (beheading of a grandmother by a former Muslim co-worker) and Queens, New York (hatchet attack on NYPD officers) were far from front page news.
Such incidents are almost always reflexively followed by the meant-to-be-comforting caveat…”no known connection to a terrorist organization.” This is actually more alarming than it is comforting as it is an indication that a revolutionary atmosphere has developed in the US Muslim community that has prompted individual Muslims to act on the calls to Jihad that we have seen from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Jihadi leaders.
We’ve decided to post recent articles about Jihadi arrests, plots and cases that have appeared in the news to illustrate that, well, the enemy is indeed here in our midst and active. Keep in mind that these are only the enemy that our law enforcement community has publicly identified, pursued and apprehended…
In just the last week, Jihadis from Texas, Philadelphia and New York have been apprehended…note also mention of a Jihadi from Minnesota…
U.S. prosecutors in New York City and Philadelphia charged four people with terrorism-related crimes, including two Queens women who allegedly discussed making bombs with an undercover federal agent.
Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, were accused of conspiring to prepare an explosive device to detonate in the U.S.
A Texas man, Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh, was charged separately with seeking to train alongside Muslim militants who allegedly plotted to attack New York City subways.
Friday, U.S. prosecutors announced charges against a Philadelphia woman, Keonna Thomas, accused of attempting to join Islamic State. The government said she posted items expressing support for the group on Twitter, and communicated online with a Somalia-based jihadi fighter from Minnesota, a radical Islamic cleric and an ISIS fighter in Syria.
Velentzas allegedly praised the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and declared that she and Siddiqui were “citizens of the Islamic State.” Siddiqui had repeated contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including propagandist Samir Khan, former editor of Inspire, al-Qaeda’s English-language online magazine, the U.S. alleged in court papers.
Khan, who was killed in Yemen in 2011, published articles including “I am proud to be a traitor to America” and “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” according to prosecutors.
In discussions with the undercover officer last year, the women allegedly said they were learning “science” in order to build a bomb. They later said they were reading technical books and learning about making homemade grenades, pipe bombs and pressure-cooker bombs, the U.S. alleged.
Siddiqui wrote jihadist poetry with lines about dropping bombs and referred to “nations wiped clean of filthy shrines,” according to the government. She obtained multiple propane tanks and had instructions for using them as explosives, prosecutors alleged.
Farekh [the Texas man], who studied at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, is accused of leaving the school for Pakistan in 2007, joining others seeking to train for attacks against U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan. He was eventually deported from Pakistan.
An alleged co-conspirator, Ferid Imam, aided a plot to attack the New York City subways, according to the government. That plot was foiled in 2009.
In the Philadelphia case, Thomas, who allegedly went by the name “YoungLioness,” was asked by an ISIS fighter if she wanted to be involved in a martyrdom operation. Thomas, 30, responded by stating, “that would be amazing….a girl can only wish,” according to the government. She was arrested after purchasing tickets to fly overseas, prosecutors said.
The cases are U.S. v. Velentzas, 15-mj-00303, and USA v. AL Farekh,1:15-mj-00021, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
There have been separate reports that Velentzas and Siddiqui sought to attack a police funeral to maximize casualties among U.S. law enforcement and that one of the two put on a veneer of patriotism with an American flag displayed in front of her home.
Noelle Velentzas…Note her affiliation with the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), one of the largest Islamic organizations in America
Velentzas and Siddiqui were apparently tied to Tairoid Pugh, the US Air Force veteran who was arrested in March for joining the Islamic State:
A one-time Air Force mechanic whose radical beliefs had him on the FBI’s radar since the late 1990s has been charged in federal court in Brooklyn with trying to join the Islamic State terror group..
Tairod Pugh, 47, of Neptune, New Jersey, allegedly did Internet searches for border crossings into Syria and downloaded execution videos by the jihadist group, before traveling from Egypt to Turkey in January to fight for the group…
After being turned away, the government said, he wiped most of his electronic devices of evidence but kept a picture of a machine gun on his phone. Deported from Egypt to the United States, he was charged in a sealed complaint in January, and indicted this week.
“Pugh, an American citizen, was willing to travel overseas and fight jihad alongside terrorists seeking to do us harm,” Diego Rodriguez, head of the FBI’s New York office, said in a statement.
In February, three Brooklyn men were accused of plotting to aid the terror group, including two who planned to join, authorities said.
Court papers said Pugh served in the Air Force as an avionics instrument system specialist from 1986 to 1990, and worked for American Airlines and a military contractor in Iraq. Overseas for the past 12 to 18 months, he allegedly lost his last job as a mechanic in Kuwait in December.
The government said Pugh converted to Islam in 1998. In 2001, a co-worker allegedly tipped the FBI that Pugh sympathized with Osama bin Laden and held anti-American views. In 2002, an associate said Pugh hoped to fight jihad in Chechnya.
But the government said he objected to deportation from Egypt because the “U.S. doesn’t like black Muslims.” A search of his laptop revealed 180 jihadist videos and an email intended for his Egyptian wife, according to the criminal complaint.
“I am a Mujahid,” said the email. “. . . There is only two possible outcomes for me. Victory or Martyr.”
Tairod Pugh: Air Force veteran, former American Airlines employee and long-time Jihadi
Note in the article above the mention of the three Brooklyn men indicted on terror charges in February.
Here is an article about the Philadelphia woman who faces terrorism charges…
Authorities charged a Philadelphia woman on Friday with attempting to join Islamic State…
Keonna Thomas, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen who went by “YoungLioness” online, was arrested before she could travel to Syria and join the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, according to a criminal complaint.
Last month she bought a plane ticket to Barcelona, court records show, and was due to fly on March 29. Federal agents executed a search warrant at her home on March 27 and seized evidence, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia said.
Ms. Thomas, who is charged with knowingly attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, was ordered held until a detention hearing next week.
Ms. Thomas’s postings on social media drew the attention of law enforcement, according to an affidavit from a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.
But her case differs from other recent prosecutions of Islamic State sympathizers because it doesn’t appear to rely on an undercover FBI operative working with the target. Instead, the FBI intercepted communications between Ms. Thomas and an overseas Islamic fighter, among others. In them, she allegedly expressed her desire to travel to join the group in Syria.
In the past 18 months, dozens of Americans—from Colorado to Minnesota to New York—have faced criminal charges related to ISIS.
Ms. Thomas’s alleged support of Islamic State dates to 2013, according to court filings. The FBI affidavit claims that in August 2013 she reposted a picture on Twitter showing a camouflage-clad boy wearing firearm magazine pouches, with this caption: “Ask yourselves, while this young man is holding magazines for the Islamic state, what are you doing for it? #ISIS.”
In December 2013, court filings show, she exchanged messages with a man described by the FBI as a Somali-based violent jihadi fighter from Minnesota. Ms. Thomas allegedly told him she planned to “leave the land of kufr [nonbelievers]” and would travel once she got enough money.
In January 2014 she tweeted, “Only thing I’m jealous of is when I see the smiles of shuhadaa [martyrs],” according to court records, which allege that she posted messages throughout the year that appeared to support ISIS.
In late January of this year, the FBI alleges, she sent a message to a radical Islamic cleric in Jamaica in which she wrote, “i don’t want to say much here….as of now im still here in the states but will be leaving soon.”
Five days later she applied for a passport and in mid-February told the cleric she had deactivated her Twitter account, saying, according to court records, “don’t want to draw attention of the kuffar [nonbelievers] and it mess my plans and they take my pass port and I get stuck here.”
On Feb. 17, the FBI affidavit says, the known overseas fighter wrote to her: “U probably want to do Istishadee [martyrdom operations] with me.” She allegedly replied: “that would be amazing….a girl can only wish.”
“I can make that wish come true,” the militant allegedly responded.
She researched indirect travel routes to Turkey, a common transit point to Syria, according to the complaint. Among them was flying to Spain to avoid suspicion, then traveling by bus to Turkey.
Keonna Thomas appearing in court after arrest on terrorism charges. Why she is allowed to appear in court covered that way is anyone’s guess.
Here is an article on Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh, the Texas native indicted on terror charges…
A U.S. citizen accused of conspiring to support al Qaeda appeared in a federal court in New York on Thursday. Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, 29, was charged with conspiracy, reports said, citing the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Farekh reportedly plotted with others to provide material support to the terrorists. He also helped them gain personnel to kill U.S. citizens and members of the U.S. military in other countries, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a charging document. Farekh was deported from Pakistan and arrested due to a pending warrant.
Texas born Al Qaeda terrorist Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh
Another Jihadi case surfaced in Illinois over a week ago when two cousins–one a soldier with the Illinois Army National Guard–were arrested on terrorism charges:
An Army National Guard member and his cousin have been arrested in Illinois for allegedly conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist organization ISIS, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
The alleged plot included a plan to attack a U.S. military installation in Illinois.
In the past 18 months, the Justice Department’s National Security Division has prosecuted or is prosecuting 32 cases of people attempting to travel abroad to join or providing support to terrorist groups. Of those cases, 18 allegedly involve support to ISIS.
Spc. Hasan Edmonds, 22, was arrested Wednesday night at Chicago Midway International Airport while attempting to travel to Egypt to eventually join ISIS…
His cousin, Jonas “Yunus” Edmonds, 29, was arrested at his home in Aurora in connection with an alleged plot to carry out an armed attack on an unspecified U.S. military facility in northern Illinois where Hasan Edmonds had been training.
After an undercover FBI informant posing as an ISIS fighter outside the United States sent Hasan Edmonds a Facebook “friend” request in late 2014, he began to receive private messages from him indicating that he and his cousin were willing to travel to overseas and fight for ISIS, according to the court documents.
“InshAllah we will complete our task or be grants [sic] shahada [Arabic for martyr] I look forward to the training,” Hasan Edmonds is alleged to have told the informant in January. “I am already in the American kafir army and now I wish only to serve in the army of Allah alongside my true brothers.”
They continued to communicate over the following weeks, with Hasan Edmonds expressing concerns about Jonas Edmonds’ criminal record and whether he would be allowed to travel overseas.
“They try hard to keep people like him trapped in America,” he told the undercover FBI employee.
“I know several Muslims have been caught attempting the Turkey route so tell me why not many Americans take the Egypt route. I am open to either way,” Hasan Edmonds told the informant, according to court documents.
On February 2, Hasan Edmonds contacted the undercover informant again and said his cousin was willing to carry out an attack on U.S. soil.
“Honestly we would love to do something like the brother in Paris did,” Hasan Edmonds stated, referring to the French terror attacks in January in which 16 people were killed.
Prosecutors said Jonas Edmonds contacted the informant to arrange travel accommodations.
“Number one on my list is Mosul,” he stated, referring to Iraq’s second-largest city. “If I find myself stuck here [in the United States], I intend to take advantage of being so close to the kuffar.”
Jonas Edmonds this week accepted that he would be unable to travel and told the FBI informant of his intention to buy AK-47s and grenades to carry out an attack on the military facility. He would use his cousin’s uniform and “anticipated a body count of 100 to 150.” He was given a list of officer rankings by his cousin and advised to “kill the head,” according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Jonas Edmonds planned to carry out the attack after Hasan Edmonds left the country.
Hasan Edmonds planned to use his military training to fight for the terrorist organization, prosecutors said in a statement. Hasan Edmonds booked airline travel to depart Wednesday from Chicago and arrive in Cairo on Thursday.
The cousins presented an undercover informant with plans to attacks the military facility, prosecutors said.
More than 20,000 fighters, from more than 90 countries, have traveled to the ISIS battlefield, according to the testimony of Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, before the House Homeland Security Committee.
The rate of foreign fighters traveling to Syria “exceeds the rate of travelers who went to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any point in the last 20 years,” Rasmussen said.
Of those fighters, an estimated 3,400 are believed to have come from Western countries, including more than 150 from the United States, officials said.
Jonas Edmonds–evidently no stranger to the penal system.
Hasan Edmonds
Finally, in Boston, Americans for Peace and Tolerance have uncovered evidence of Jihadist indoctrination at the Islamic Society of Boston, which was the mosque attended by the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon. It was also founded by Abduraham Alamoudi, who was later revealed to be an Al Qaeda terrorist and was convicted on terrorism charges…
Islamic Society of Boston: co-founded by Al Qaeda terrorist, mosque of Boston marathon bombers.
The Boston Marathon bombers’ mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), employs an intensive radicalizing program aimed at Boston’s historically moderate Muslim community, especially at its youth. It’s called “Tarbiya,” which is Arabic for “growth and refinement.” It is not something that is practiced as part of classical mainstream Islam.
APT has obtained several curriculum documents created by ISB-affiliated groups, which describe exactly what is taught and when, with assignments detailed down to book and page number.
In recent years it has become increasingly clear that the Jihadists have targeted the African continent.
On September 11, 2001, the groups Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar al Shariah and the Islamic State were not just unheard of–they didn’t even exist.
Today these groups are waging Jihad, killing thousands in their drives to establish Islamic rule under Shariah law…
This development didn’t just “happen.” The rise of Jihad was promoted and financed. Africa is becoming a battleground because the global Jihadist movement has targeted it.
At least one analyst reports that Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and Boko Haram are all training in the Saharan desert nation of Mauritania:
Human Rights Watch reports that Boko Haram has killed 1,000 people so far this year in four different African nations (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger):
Al Shabaab has taken a page from the Islamic State’s propaganda manual, producing a video showing the barbaric and cowardly execution of unarmed civilians:
Last week, Ansar al Shariah killed 23 mostly Western tourists in an attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis (there may also have been Al Qaeda involvement):
In Mali, Jihadists with AQIM beheaded a civilian for cooperating with the French Army, which has been doing a bang up job of clobbering AQIM Jihadists in Mali for a few years now…
Ironically, after aiding Jihadists in Libya a few years ago, US government officials are now worried that the Islamic State is making inroads in Libya:
What all this indicates is that the global Jihadist movement is getting stronger and spreading its violent attacks to more areas of the world, giving them more training areas, launching pads and recruiting fodder with which to wage war against America and the West.
Two Taliban Jihadis getting ready to behead a Polish hostage. Note the flag in the background. If you can’t tell the difference between this setting and those of EVERY OTHER JIHADIST organization in the world, then you aren’t qualified to work for President Obama
Obama and his Obamanistas have told so many outright lies about the Taliban over the years that we can now devote a lengthy article to it.
It started way back in 2008 when Obama was campaigning for the presidency. Back in those days he was saying that Iraq was a sideshow and that President Bush had “taken his eye off the ball.” According to Obama, the good war was in Afghanistan and he was going to concentrate on Afghanistan, where the Taliban were fighting US forces, when he got to be president.
That turned out to be campaign rhetoric. Sure, he pulled out of Iraq first, but, let’s face it: Obama never really went hard in Afghanistan and now he’s abandoning that fight, just as he abandoned the fight in Iraq.
Pretty soon into his administration, the Obamanistas started the meme that the Taliban weren’t actually our enemy. This predates the latest supposition that the Taliban aren’t terrorists by several years.
Two lies there. The Taliban are America’s enemy and they are also terrorists.
In December 2013, the Taliban published the autumn edition of their magazine, Azan.
This was the fourth issue of the magazine and was significant in that it called for Muslims in the West to launch attacks at home or fight on foreign battlefields, urging recruits to even leave behind their children or elderly parents:
If calling on Jihadis to launch attacks in the West doesn’t amount to terrorism, nothing does.
Such calls to Jihad and other propaganda are nothing new, so why was this particular publication worth mentioning here?
Because it had been released just a few days after the Obama administration was quoted saying that “the Taliban are not our enemies and we don’t want to fight them.”
Such statements about the Taliban were nothing new from the Obama administration. Vice President Joe Biden told Newsweek magazine the same thing almost exactly two years before:
Not only are these statements from the Obama administration disheartening because our troops have been fighting Taliban Jihadis for a decade, they also demonstrate a profound ignorance about Jihadist doctrine.
Jihadist doctrine does not regard nationalities or international borders as significant. Under their doctrine, Jihad is to be waged to make Allah’s law and religion supreme around the entire world. With their fall Azan magazine, the Taliban clearly demonstrate adherence to that doctrine with their call for Muslims in the West to launch attacks at home.
What’s more this is not something new from the Taliban. When they seized power in Afghanistan in 1996, they announced that Afghanistan was to be a launching pad for global Jihad and invited Jihadi fighters to come to their country. Jihadis from all over the Islamic world and even parts of the West and the Pacific Rim heeded that call and gravitated to the new Shariah-ruled outpost established by the Taliban regime.
Among those who relocated to Afghanistan was Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. We know the rest: Al Qaeda launched its attack on America from Afghanistan and the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda from the US when America sought to bring justice down on them.
How anyone can look at these facts and conclude that the Taliban are not our enemy is mind-boggling. The idea that the Taliban want to strictly limit their evil designs to Afghanistan is absurd. Yet that has been the policy of the Obama administration for years. It is a policy of lies.
And, yes, despite what the Obamanistas might claim, the Taliban are in fact terrorists.
Actually, we don’t believe that it makes sense to get too wrapped up in labeling them “terrorists.” Terrorism is a tactic, a method of warfare. The warfare that the Taliban–and the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Lashkar e Taiba, HAMAS, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and a host of other groups–are waging is called Jihad. In Islamic law, Jihad is defined as warfare to establish the religion:
All of the groups mentioned above, including the Taliban, are Jihadis.
But it is still NOT true that the Taliban haven’t engaged in terrorism and they are not just “armed insurgents” like the bodyguards of lies in the Obama administration maintain.
Just 6 weeks ago, on December 16, the Taliban slaughtered 153 people–mostly young school children–in a terrorist attack on a school in Pakistan.
Taliban have also been involved in terrorist plots and activity on US soil:
• In May of 2011, six people, including two Imams at a Florida mosque, were indicted for providing material support to none other than the Taliban:
Irfan Khan of Florida, indicted for providing material support to the Taliban
• Faisal Shahzad, the Jihadist who attempted to detonate a Vehicle-Born Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) in New York’s Time Square in May 2010, was trained at a Taliban camp and, according to Attorney General Eric Holder himself, “the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack…We know they helped facilitate it. We know they probably helped finance it and that he was working at their direction.”
Faisal Shahzad. This Connecticut resident/Pakistani immigrant attempted to bomb Times Square in New York City
• Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American who pled guilty in a plot to bomb the New York City subway in 2009, traveled to Afghanistan to join the Taliban when he was recruited by Al Qaeda to go back to America to attack targets in the US homeland. This shows the continued, close cooperation and collaboration between the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Najibullah Zazi. This Denver resident travelled to Afghanistan where he received terrorist training. Upon his return, he plotted to bomb New York subways.
Most recently, there are new reports from Leftist NBC News that hundreds of Taliban fighters have joined the Islamic State, which is becoming a greater factor in the southwest Asia region.
The Obamanistas try to make a distinction between the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Taliban in Pakistan. But not even NBC is subscribing to that nonsense. No one in the world outside the Obama administration believes that the Taliban in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan have nothing to do with each other.
The Taliban are committed Jihadists. As such, they are undoubtedly an enemy of America. They have killed and wounded thousands of US GIs in combat over the past decade and they have, from the time they originally seized power in Afghanistan to today, involved themselves with other Jihadist organizations from around the world, all of which are classified as “terrorist” organizations. Jihadis do not limit their scope based on political borders; their stated goals are global. To say that the Taliban are not the enemy of the United States or are not terrorists is to demonstrate a profound ignorance of the doctrinal basis for the threat from Jihad. When that ignorance comes from the executive branch of the US government, it can only be described as frightening.
Here is a reminder of the Jihad we have mostly been ignoring in the West. While we have largely been focusing on the Islamic State in the Middle East, Boko Haram in west Africa has been slaughtering innocent victims at an even more rapid pace.
Other than a self-serving photo op of Michelle Obama using hashtag diplomacy after 300 Christian school girls were kidnapped by the Jihadists, there has been almost no attention focused on Boko Haram. (Does anyone even remember those poor girls any more?)
Deaths related to violence caused by Nigeria’s Islamist terror group Boko Haram is now comparable with the number of civilians killed by the Islamic State, or ISIS, group in Iraq, according to new figures.
Between November 2013 and November 2014, at least 10,340 violent deaths related to Boko Haram-related violence were reported…
According to the United Nations figures, 10,733 civilians were violently killed by ISIS in Iraq in the same period.
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Terror Trends Bulletin 