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Tuesday 23 September 2014

Islamic State Prompts Biggest U.S.-Arab Coalition Since 1991

Islamic State Prompts Biggest U.S.-Arab Coalition Since 1991

Islamist rebels from ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) on the outskirts of the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, in this July 4, 2013 file photo.

A surge in attacks by the fastest-growing Sunni Muslim militant group has prompted the broadest Arab-U.S. military coalition since the 1991 Gulf War.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar joined the U.S.’s bombing campaign against Islamic State extremists to rein in a group that has rampaged through Syria, threatened to ignite a civil war in Iraq and sought to recruit Saudi militants. Arab backing provides crucial cover for President Barack Obamaas he deploys military assets in a region where the U.S. has been accused of waging war on Islam.

“There’s common interest to make sure that these guys are destroyed before they” extend their rule, said Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of Cornerstone Global Associates, which advises clients on risk in the Middle East. In the past week, Islamic State has gained ground against Syrian Kurdish forces near the border with Turkey. Jordan has accused militants of plotting to attack it.

The strikes against the most powerful opposition force in Syria’s civil war may benefit President Bashar al-Assad, a leader that the U.S. and its Arab allies want to oust, and expose regional powers to retaliatory attacks by Islamic State, an al-Qaeda breakaway group. Still, the group’s expansion has made “inaction even riskier for the region,” Nuseibeh said.

Concerns have grown in Arab states as the militant group declared a caliphate in the heart of the Middle East as it seeks to redraw national boundaries set nearly a century ago.

The coalition used a “mix of fighter, bomber, remotely piloted aircraft and Tomahawk” missiles to strike the Islamic State, the U.S. Central Command said today. The U.S. had been attacking the movement’s fighters in Iraq since August.

Kuwait War

Since the 1991 war to force Iraqi soldiers out of Kuwait, in which Arab states also contributed ground troops, U.S. allies have largely shied away from taking part in American military ventures in the region. Most of them publicly opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Their involvement in the attacks in Syria is militarily symbolic, Shashank Joshi, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said by phone today.

“It makes a political and strategic difference and shields the U.S. from accusations it’s waging some kind of religiously motivated war,” he said.

Jordan, Bahrain and the U.A.E. confirmed their fighter jets took part in today’s strikes. Jordan said it acted in response to repeated attempts by militants to cross into its territory, according to the state-run Petra news agency.

‘Select Targets’

The coalition fulfills Obama’s pledge to seek partners in the campaign against Islamic State. For America’s Arab allies, mostly ruled by absolute monarchs and armed with U.S.-made planes and weapons, it’s the latest signal they are prepared to forge an aggressive foreign policy against jihadist movements and groups pursuing an Islamist agenda through elections.

Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have extended billions of dollars in aid to Egypt’s military-backed government since the army led the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July last year. U.S. officials last month said the U.A.E. bombed Islamist militias inLibya last month, using Egyptian air bases as a launchpad. Egypt has denied its forces were involved, while the U.A.E. said claims of its intervention were an attempt to divert attention from political reversals suffered by Libya’s Islamists.

Unlike in Iraq, where the U.S. has been backing government and Kurdish forces in the fight against Islamic State, the retreat of mainstream Syrian rebels under attack by both Islamist militants and troops loyal to Assad may limit the gains of the campaign across the border.

‘Ground Force’

“There is no ground force in Syria to exploit the strikes,” Joshi said. The attacks “can hit bases, training camps, vehicles on open terrain, but they can’t clear Islamic State from cities, or replace it with some kind of alternative authority in these areas.”

The U.S. and its allies have been split since the start of Syria’s war in 2011 over which rebels were best placed to overthrow Assad, and some turned a blind eye as men and cash flowed to the more militant elements.

Islamic State will use the coalition attacks as a tool to recruit more fighters, said Andrew Hammond, Middle East policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The strikes may also move Arab nations up the list of targets, he said by phone. “Saudi Arabia has appeared in their rhetoric here and there, but now they are putting themselves in the firing line. It’s a real risk they are taking.”

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Defeating the secularist plot in India & Sri Lanka

Defeating the Secularist Plot in India & Sri Lanka


 – Shenali Waduge


“To save India only Hindus can protect secularism and without Hindus there would be no secularism; this is essentially what we can say about Sri Lanka. People need to simply imagine what a country ruled by non-Hindus and non-Buddhists would be like!” – Shenali Waduge

Independence to colonies came at a cost with a legacy that bound nations to expend energy on solving the problems the colonials implanted. People were divided. Populations were divided. Ethnicities were divided. Tribes were divided. Boundaries were created and endless issues associated with each. Muslims have issues, Christians have issues, but when Hindus in India and Buddhists in Sri Lanka voice their issues it is referred to as communal. To be Hindu and to say one is Hindu is considered taboo, just as Buddhists and Sinhalese are finding out too. Political correctness has meant politicians are to view issues from the lens of what benefits non-Hindus and non-Buddhists for that meets the criterion of the West’s policy of multiculturalism.

When Sri Lanka repeatedly warned India not to take the path that would eventually lead to balkanization of India, the warnings seem not to have reached the necessary people. That is because the warnings are being deciphered by people who are helping that balkanization. We can name similar actors in Sri Lanka, promoting the same notions. When media in India has been usurped and placed in the hands of the Church, we can only express shock as to why such a great nation allowed such a thing to happen. The great orators, thinkers, philosophers and politicians would not have expected Hindu India to fall this way. Was it not the Westerners who created the Aryan-Dravidian divide? Is it not established that North and South Indians both carry the same DNA differentiated only by the pigmentation as a result of weather?

In juxtaposing the situation currently faced in Sri Lanka and the funny stuff taking place in Tamil Nadu, we have only to put the dots together to see where the ultimate orders are coming from. We now realize that India is in a worse pickle than Sri Lanka, with so many Indian intellectuals outsourced to foreign climes. We can see similar ploys in Sri Lanka as well.

When India now points fingers at the self-serving secular leaders and blames them for not heeding the concerns of Hindus in their preoccupation with minority votes, is this not what we are saying of Sri Lanka’s “self-serving secular leaders” who are not difficult to name?

India has a population of 1.2 billion of which 82% are Hindus, yet Subramanian Swamy alleges that State Government are “looting” Hindu temples to support churches and mosques! Dr Swamy also claims that the Indian Government feels shy to call India a Hindu nation and this same sentiment is echoed in Sri Lanka!

Most Hindus are passive regarding their Hindu identity; the same is true of Buddhists in Sri Lanka. Dr. Swamy has mentioned an appeasement policy by the Government of India; this resonates exactly in Sri Lanka. Dr. Swamy has called for at least 40% of the 82% to unite against the divides taking place in reference to a Bill being introduced by Sonia Gandhi that would automatically incriminate Hindus [Communal Violence Bill – ed].

It is noteworthy that Dr. Swamy called upon Indians to become “Virat Hindus”, proud Hindus, because to save India only Hindus can protect secularism and without Hindus there would be no secularism; this is essentially what we can say about Sri Lanka. People need to simply imagine what a country ruled by non-Hindus and non-Buddhists would be like!

If the Vatican can say it’s a Christian state (Roman Catholic) and no other religion is tolerated inside the Vatican, England is a secular state but the Anglican Church has official status, and all nations with over 60% Muslims are not secular, it is strange that India is unable to call itself a Hindu state when it has 82% Hindus. As for Sri Lanka, in spite of Article 9 in its Constitution giving foremost place to Buddhism, the political leaders cringe to say the country is Buddhist because they fear the world would come down on them.

Secularism cannot be defined in relation to a country alone. Though Christians may be in the minority in a country, the ‘minority status’ is not truly applicable by virtue of the Church’s global reach and assistance given to the community all over the world. The same can be said of Islam. Nations like Sri Lanka feel the effects of the influence of global Christian and global Islamic lobbies. This brings Buddhists leaders and Buddhists into minority status and these lobbies have used effective ways to penetrate the decision makers. Both Christianity and Islam are global majorities making Hindus and Buddhists local minorities in their respective nations.

If there is a threat that Hinduism and it is likely to be extinct in India in 100 years time, the same can be said of Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

It is for these very reasons that India needs to seriously look at the manner in which India is being forced into submission by Tamil Nadu that is greatly influenced by outside forces and these are NOT associated primarily with Sri Lanka. These forces are devising a greater plan piggybacking on the hyped “Eelam” tag as it provides the local sauce needed for emotional unrest.

Helping that is the media who are agents of these external forces in both nations, which is why the discriminations against Hindus in India and Buddhists in Sri Lanka are quite obvious.

How many newspapers give unbiased coverage in either of the two nations? How quick are media to tag Hindus as “communal” in India and “Buddhists” as “extremists”, “militants” in Sri Lanka. Most Sri Lankans are angered by India’s actions, but in looking deeper we need to realize that non-Hindus helped by self-seeking Hindu secularists are steering India towards its downfall and that same situation is taking place before our very eyes in Sri Lanka.

This would be a good time for India’s Hindus to wake up and evaluate what has become of their Bharat nation and attempt to become “Virat Indians”. In Sri Lanka, of course the people have now realized the forces at play and foresee the future. -

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Agony of Hindu civilisation

Agony of Hindu civilisation


India faces a major demographic upheaval. The sharply rising Muslim numbers, both in absolute and percentage terms, and a corresponding decline in the population of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists has the potential to escalate fault-line conflicts and create a Lebanon-like situation. Data from the last six censuses held since 1951 suggests that in percentage terms there has been a relentless increase in the population of only one community, the Muslims; all other communities are in a declining mode. Since 1981, Muslim population growth has been in a fast forward mode, growing at almost 45% higher rate than Hindus and Christians. In terms of percentage, Sikh population has recorded the steepest decline since independence.

Census 2001 put the decadal growth rate of Muslims at around 36%, while Hindu growth rate declined from 23% to 20%. On the eve of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, an unseemly political controversy was manufactured by the government on the ground that since no census had taken place in J&K in 1991, the conclusions drawn in terms of Census 2001 data were faulty. This led to a very clumsy fudging of Census 2001, by omitting from the census 3.67 crore people living in Jammu & Kashmir and Assam, States having high Muslim population.

In 1981, no census could be held in Assam due to disturbed conditions, but that did not result in any political ruckus, nor was fudging of census data done at that time because no elections were due then. The most extraordinary aspect of this fudging of the population profile was the deletion with retrospective effect of population data of these two sensitive states from every Census held since 1961 – something never done before in any democratic country.

In a lucid article, professional demographers, late P.N. Mari Bhat and A.J. Francis Zavier, wrote that “the fertility of Muslims, which was about 10 per cent higher than that of Hindus before independence, is now 25 to 30 per cent higher than the Hindu rate”. This means the Muslim population is now growing at a rate nearly 45% higher than that of Hindus.

The authors added that the assertion in a section of English media that Census 2001 had revealed a higher reduction in the growth rate of Muslims than Hindus was incorrect. The decline in Hindu growth rate was higher at 12.2% as against 10.3% decline in Muslim growth. Fast growth of Muslim population, especially in non-Muslim countries, is a global phenomenon, they averred.

There is no truth in the assertion that higher Muslim fertility was due to poverty or illiteracy. Since 36% Muslims live in urban areas, as against only 26% Hindus, and as Muslims have a higher life expectancy at birth than Hindus, logically their fertility should have been lower than Hindus. But Muslim fertility continues to be higher despite their greater urbanization and lower incidence of infant and child mortality. Within 7-8 years, the gap between the longevity of Hindus and Muslims has widened to 3 years, i.e., 68 years for Muslims as against only 65 years for Hindus [National Family Health Survey of 2005-2006].

Acceptance of family planning by Muslims is lower at least by 25 percent than Hindus and other Indic communities. Late Mari Bhat and Francis Zavier highlighted the fact that in non-Muslim countries there is a general trend towards higher growth rate of Muslim populations.

According to the National Family Health Survey-2 of 1998-99, in Kerala where the literacy level of the two communities was almost equal (and due to large remittances from Gulf countries Muslims are economically better off than Hindus), the growth rate of Muslims remained much higher than Hindus by almost 45 percent. Analysis of Census 2001 shows that on an average every Muslim woman is giving birth to at least one more child than her Hindu counterpart.

Indians must understand the mind-boggling import of Statement 7 of Census 2001 Religion Data Report (page xlii) which gives the religion-wise breakup of children in the 0-6 year age group. It shows that the percentage of 0-6 year old Muslim cohorts (a term commonly used in demographic parlance) is 21% higher than Hindu cohorts. This gives Muslims an advantage of 7.6% over Hindus as and when these cohorts enter reproductive age, say roughly between 2012 and 2016.

This gives a vital clue to the demographic crisis likely to engulf India anytime after 2011 or latest by 2021. These 0-6 yrs old cohorts (enumerated in 2001) will become reproductively active between 2012 and 2016 and continue to reproduce for the next 30-40 years. With a 21% higher cohort population and at least 25 percent less acceptance of family planning, the growth in Muslim population during the next few decades is likely to become even more fast-paced.

The Census 2001 Religion Data Report further reveals that among all religious groups, the Muslim population of 0-6 year cohorts was highest at 18.7%. The lowest percentage was seen among Jains (10.6%) and Sikhs (12.8%). In coming years, the percentage increase in the population of these two religious groups, important components of Indic civilization, will be slower than the growth recorded in Census 2001, and their share in the population will decline further, possibly at a faster pace.

In terms of percentage increase, the biggest quantum jump in Muslim population in coming decades will occur in Haryana where the ratio of Muslim cohorts is almost 60% higher than Hindu cohorts! Next in descending order registering fast Muslim growth will be Assam, West Bengal, Uttaranchal, Delhi, Nagaland and Bihar.

A further analysis of 0-6 year cohorts’ data reveals that out of 35 States and Union Territories listed in Statement 7, the percentage of Muslim cohorts was higher than Hindu cohorts in as many as 31 States and UTs. The percentage of 0-6 year Hindu cohorts was marginally higher than Muslims only in Sikkim and Madhya Pradesh and the UTs of Daman & Diu and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. In coming decades, Muslim population will grow at a higher rate than that of Hindus in 31 States and Union Territories.

Statement 7 of Census 2001 Religion Data Report is self-explanatory and vividly depicts the looming shadow of future demographic changes across India.

Trapped in a suicidal cult of political correctness, most Indian intellectuals refuse to understand the reasons which prompted former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to advise all British couples to opt for the 5 children norm. Incidentally, his wife Cherry Blair gave birth to their fourth child while her husband was Prime Minister. Indeed, in recent years many European countries have announced liberal cash bonuses to couples who opt for more children. Peter Costello, Australia’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, urged every couple to have at least 3 children, preferably more – “one child for father, one for the mother and one for the country”.

Apprehensive of population growth in Indonesia, Peter Costello announced an incentive of 2000 Australian dollars for every child born after June 2004. Many keen observers of global population trends like Niall Ferguson, Bernard Lewis, Robert Costello, Bruce Bawer and Mark Steyn are alerting their countrymen to the threat posed by demographic changes to their civilisational values.

India has many bleeding heart liberals who will ask why this global panic? The answer is that in 1900, Muslims constituted only 12% of the world population; they grew to 18% in 1992-93 (when Huntington published his first thesis on clash of civilizations). Today Muslims constitute 24% of global population. Samuel Huntington pointed out that by 2025, they will constitute 30% of world population. [Source: Spangler, The Decline of the West].

According to some demographic estimates, Muslims might constitute 37% to 40% of world population by 2100 AD. In recent years the number of jihads worldwide has also multiplied; Thailand is the latest entrant to the growing list of jihadi conflict zones.

In India, the Hindu birth rate is fast approaching the European average. According to Census 2001, the decadal Total Fertility Rate of Hindus of Kolkata district (West Bengal) was barely 1.0%, much lower than the birth rates of Germany, Italy and Spain. In Kerala too the Hindu TFR at 1.64 is below the replacement level of 2.1in 2001.

Kerala has witnessed a massive increase in Muslim population from approx. 23,75,000 in 1951 to 78,64,000 in 2001. During the same period the population of Hindus grew from 83,48,000 to 1,79,2000, while that of Christians increased from 28,26,000 to 60,57,000. During the last five decades the Hindu percentage in Kerala’s population declined from 61.61 to 56.28, while that of Muslims rose from 17.53 to 24.70 percent. The percentage share of Christians declined from 20.86 in 1951 to 19.02 in 2001.

The Indian middle class and opinion makers must grasp the long-term consequences of the demographic crisis. In a different context, while analysing socio-economic aspects of Census 2001, demographer Ashish Bose estimated that in 49 districts Muslims already constitute more than 30% of the population. A back-of-the envelope calculation made in the light of Muslim growth rate in the last two decades shows that Muslims will attain majority status in all these 49 districts between 2091 and 2111, perhaps even earlier.

According to a study published by the Centre for Policy Studies, around 2061, the total Muslim population of the sub-continent (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, counted together) will exceed the total Hindu/ Sikh population. This could lead to a fierce struggle for supremacy in the sub-continent.

This is already visible in the chorus for more unmerited concessions for Muslims. The Sachar Committee admitted, perhaps unwittingly, that by 2101 Muslim population in India will be around 32 to 34 crores. It was 13.8 crores in 2001 and barely 3.77 crores in 1951.

In recent times, there have been strident demands by Muslim leaders for greater share in jobs and elected bodies. In 2006, Mohammad Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party called for carving a Muslim Pradesh out of Western UP, instead of a Harit Pradesh advocated by the Rashtriya Lok Dal.

A similar demand to create four or five Muslim-dominated enclaves was voiced by Dr. Omar Khalidi in an interview published in The Times of India, New Delhi, June 2004. He later wrote in The Radiance, mouthpiece of Jamaat-e Islami. He was assiduously following the roadmap for another partition of India. Advocating the creation of Muslim-dominated enclaves in the Mewat region of Haryana, certain parts of UP, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Dr. Khalidi demanded reservations for Muslims on the pattern of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The late Dr. Khalidi was in the forefront of the lobby seeking proportionate representation for Muslims in various services, especially in the defence services and para-military forces. He and G.M. Banatwala of the Muslim League are believed to have indirectly used the Sachar Committee as a medium to mount political pressure for seeking jobs for Muslims in proportion to their growing population in government departments, especially the defence and para-military forces, besides greater representation in Parliament and State legislatures.

Muslims are fully aware of their future empowerment through sharp growth in their numbers. Many have started pushing the claim to disproportionate political power in India. Sometime ago when Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi visited Aligarh Muslim University, a student asked him how soon he visualised a Muslim becoming Prime Minister of India. Obviously, the battle lines are being drawn for another politico-religious conflict in India.

In conclusion, it would be in order to recall late P.N. Mari Bhat and Francis Zavier’s analysis that the fertility of Muslims was about 10% higher than that of Hindus before independence and is now 25 to 30% higher than the Hindu rate. Hindus have lost considerable ground since 1947. Yet no Hindu political or spiritual leader has tried to rouse the millions of ill-informed Hindus about the looming threat of demographic decimation of their ancient faith and civilisational values.

The writing on the wall is clear. The Christians of Europe and Hindus of India have pushed themselves to the edge of suicide by failure to understand the dynamics of demography in this age of adult suffrage. Russian demographers describe the rampant recourse to abortion by their countrymen in quest of the small family norm as ‘do it yourself genocide’

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Dirge of a dying Europe

Dirge of a dying Europe


Europe has woken up to the threat of likely Muslim domination of the continent within the next few decades. Across Europe, the fertility rates of Christians have fallen far below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. Islam is already the second largest religion of almost every European country. The European Union has an estimated 15-20 million Muslims, while the number of Muslims in the UK could be around two million or more. If the Muslims of the Balkans are added, the total Muslim population of Europe could add up to 53 million or more.

Muslim-dominated Kosovo broke away from Serbia in February 2008; it is now viewed as a beachhead for Islam’s speedy march across western and central Europe. Now the continent has four Islamic nations – Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Kosovo. As Muslims already comprise nearly one-third the population of Macedonia, homeland of Alexander the Great, that nation is likely to be Islamicised over the next two decades, despite stubborn opposition by Macedonian Christians. Soon the entire Balkans will be a Muslim dominated region of Europe, barring perhaps Serbia which has a long historical tradition of battling Muslims since the fourteenth century when the Serbs lost to the Ottoman Turks in the historic battle of Kosovo in 1389.

The demographic change has been accompanied by a surge in Islamic belligerence and in recent years Europe has witnessed many terrorist attacks. On 2 Nov 2004, Amsterdam witnessed the gruesome killing of Theo van Gogh, film director and descendant of Vincent van Gogh, for his controversial film, ‘Submission’, depicting the plight of a Muslim girl forced into an arranged marriage. The script was written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee and former member of the Dutch Parliament, who now lives in the USA under the shadow of a fatwa ordaining her death.

In one scene, which infuriated Muslim opinion, the documentary showed a girl in a see-through chador with Quranic verses written across her body along with whip marks. The film was about a forcibly married Muslim woman who was abused by her husband and raped by an uncle. Theo Van Gogh was first stabbed and then shot dead in public by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Moroccan with a Dutch Passport. A letter, affixed to the body with a dagger, declared that the film maker was assassinated because of his objectionable views about Islam. The missive was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali who had acted in the documentary. The letter called for jihad against kafirs, especially the USA, Europe, the Netherlands and Hirsi Ali herself.

The film had to be withdrawn from the International Film Festival, Rotterdam, due to fear of violence. After Van Gogh’s brutal killing, there were ‘revenge’ fire bombings of some mosques and Muslim schools, followed by counterattacks on churches. Netherlands is home to approx. one million Muslims who comprise about 5.5% of the population.

Radical Islam’s onslaught on Europe continued unabated post 9/11. One ghastly attack was the bombing of four trains in Madrid on 11 March 2004, in which nearly 200 innocents, including children, were killed and 1500 wounded. Investigations revealed the bombings were the handiwork of Al-Qaeda related outfits. A few months before that, a taped threat purported to be from Osama bin Laden had surfaced, which listed Spain among the countries which should be attacked in future. Mohammed Atta, a lead pilot of the 9/11 attack on WTC and Pentagon, had reportedly visited Spain twice in 2001, perhaps for working out last-minute details with plotters living in Spain. The country has a sizeable Muslim population and a long history of conflict with Islam.

Fifteen months later, on 7 July 2005, London went through the horror of coordinated suicide attacks on underground trains and a double-decker bus, which took 56 lives (including four terrorists) and caused injuries to nearly 700 persons. The bombings were carried out by four Britishers, three of Pakistani and one of Jamaican descent. They were angered by the British government’s decision to send troops to Iraq in support of the American attack on Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Another attempt to bomb London’s public transport system was made on 21 July 2005, by exploding four bombs. Luckily only one minor injury was reported. On 29 July 2007, two car bombs were detected – one near a nightclub in Haymarket and another in Cockspur Street – and were disabled before they could be detonated. The next day, there was an attack on Glasgow Airport involving Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian national who died due to injuries sustained while carrying out the attack.

Bilal Abdullah was arrested in Australia. According to CBS News, on 28 June 2007, a message had appeared on an internet forum, Al-Hesbah, declaring, “Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed”, which suggested that the bombings were part of a well planned international plot.

The sharply rising proportion of ageing Christians in most European countries means that more and more migrants are needed to man the factories and transport systems, even defence forces. These numbers are likely to come from Africa and West Asia, and are likely Muslims. Thus there is a clear civilisational mismatch between the original and migrant populations.

Zachary Shore noted in, ‘Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam and the Future of Europe’ that, “the world’s median age is 24, but by 2050 it is projected to be 53-55 in Germany and Japan. Western Europe and Japan will grey the most. At the same time, Europe’s mortality rate is falling, so too is the birth rate. Ethnic Europeans are having fewer children and consequently their populations are shrinking. And with them shrinks the labour force.”

He forecasts that by 2050, Japan’s work-force – those aged between 16 and 64 – will drop by an extraordinary 37%; Italy’s will fall an even greater 39% and Germany’s by 18%. Presently the ratio of workers to pensioners is 4:1, but by 2050 it may drop to 2:1. That will put enormous strain on societies with high ageing populations by drastically reducing the percentage of working age young population, leading to an economic disaster.

Global population scenario

Developing countries are largely responsible for this state of affairs, having for decades spread the disinformation that any increase in population per se impedes economic development. The truth is that manpower is a great asset for economic development. Of course, the population must be educated and invested with professional skills.

A study by the Development Research Centre of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development covering eight decades (1900-1980) revealed that the per capita income in most developing countries rose faster than the increase in population. In the same period, the population of Latin American countries increased nearly seven-fold, while their GDP grew thirty-five times, thus multiplying their overall prosperity nearly five times.

The latest threat to humankind comes from too few new arrivals, a phenomenon which will soon lead to depopulation of many countries and regions. With the spread of contraceptives all over world, except Muslim countries, fertility levels have sharply declined by more than half since 1972 – from 6 children per woman in 1972 to 2.9 in 1990s. The United Nations Population Report 2002 showed that Europe’s fertility rates had fallen far below the replacement level of 2.1. Russia’s population is decreasing by 7000,000 every year and President Vladimir Putin considers it a ‘national crisis’. In the next 40 years the population of Germany could go down by one-fifth, that of Bulgaria’s by 38% and Romania’s by 27%.

Muslim countries are striking exceptions to the global trend of declining population growth. In Europe, Albania and Kosovo are growing fast, and in Asia so are Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Besides growth in population, there have been huge mass migrations of Muslims from country to country and continent to continent in search of livelihood and better living conditions. Apart from Europe, India has been witnessing massive illegal infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims whose numbers, including their progeny, are now estimated at between three to five crore.

Across Europe, the increasing visibility of women wearing niqab or hijab, presence of bearded men with skull caps and ankle-high pyjamas, and growing number of mosques with lofty minarets, have made average European Christians feel insecure.

Bruce Bawer, in his book, ‘While Europe Slept’ (2006), warned that buoyed by their galloping population Muslims across Sweden were flaunting T-shirts announcing “2030 – then we take over”. He said Muslims across Europe were confidently planning to make Europe part of their caliphate. Europe is already being referred to as Eurabia by many futurologists and strategic analysts.

Phillip Longman, an expert in demography and author of The Empty Cradle, proclaimed that “Birth rates, not weapons or tech, spell power”. In countries where populations age, economies falter and the world influence of the affected country or community diminishes.

An important aspect of demographic change in Europe is that many of the largest cities, mostly capitals, have come to acquire a disproportionately larger presence of Muslims. Daniel Pipes observed that Sweden’s Stockholm and Malmo may soon be the first Western European cities having a Muslim majority, soon to be followed by Moscow in Russia. Pipes says the fate of European civilisation in coming years will depend upon three unknowns: (i) whether radical Islamism will prevail, (ii) whether integration will prevail, or (iii) if a nationalistic turn in Europe will at some point opt to deport the immigrants. These are loaded questions and at this stage it is difficult to arrive at any conclusion.

Though the United States does not appear to have any comparable concentration of Muslims in any city, there is a sizeable Muslim presence in two towns, Dearborn and Michigan. The birth rate of Christians in USA is certainly lower than that of the Muslims, and has been causing concern to American society.

So overpowering is the dominance of Muslims across the UK that the British government has decided to allow the Sharia to regulate the lives of British Muslims; 85 Sharia courts function in Britain. Even though Muslims constitute less than 5 percent of UK population, the Archbishop of Canterbury agreed that “Sharia is unavoidable”. That emboldened the chief of London’s Sharia Court to declare, “if Sharia is implemented then you can turn this country into a heaven of peace… Once a thief’s hand is cut off, nobody is going to steal. Once an adulterer is stoned, nobody is going to commit this crime at all.”

Sometime ago, the well-known Dutch Member of Parliament, Geert Wilders, produced a controversial documentary ‘Fitna’ which juxtaposes passages from Surahs (chapters) of the Quran with 11 September 2001, jihadi attacks and beheadings, including shootings and speeches by Muslim clerics advocating violence against all non-Muslims; this led to his prosecution for racism.

At a speech at Four Seasons in New York, highlighting the plight of Christian Europe, he said that future generations will ask two questions. First, they will ask the Americans, “Who lost Europe?” Second, they will ask Dutch leaders of the next generation, “What were our fathers doing?” Wilders felt that in the coming decades no one would be able to answer either question.

Mark Steyn, a Canadian strategic analyst, asserts that the Eurabian civil war has already started with young rioters asserting a Muslim identity burning cars and firing at police in the suburbs of Paris in 2006, and subsequently off and on in several European cities. He feels it is easier to be optimistic about the future of Iraq and Pakistan than the future of Holland and Denmark. Fear of Muslim dominance has spread as far as Norway where the population of Muslims grew 75 times in just 23 years, from 1006 in 1980 to 75,761 in 2003.

In Norway, in 1974, some immigrants from Pakistan established an Islamic Cultural Centre. Later, it was found that the Centre was a direct subsidiary of a notorious religio-political movement known as Jamat-e-Islami, founded by Islamist ideologue Abu Ala Maududi (1903-1979), the inspiration behind total Islamisation of Pakistan by General Zia-ul-Haq. The ICC of Oslo was found to be associated with Pakistani Islamist Qazi Hussain Ahmed.

Norway, too, suffers from low birth rate of the non-Muslim population. Oslo and Akshersus are likely to soon become Muslim dominated areas.

France is the soft underbelly of Europe because it has the largest Muslim population in Europe. The ground reality is complex as France has more than 700 No-Go areas where the police find it difficult to enforce law because of persistent resistance by mobsters. After Switzerland in January 2010 banned more minarets, France decided to adopt a number of measures to protect its civilisational identity.

After a ban on wearing veils in public places, it decided to take proactive measures to reaffirm its secular tradition and curb the influence of radical Islam. President Nicholas Sarkozy declared the ‘burqa’ was unacceptable because it violated civilisational values cherished by France. Some innovative measures were initiated to insulate France from the influence of radical Islam, including singing national anthem with gusto and teaching the history of France to children and adults. Immigration Minister Eric Besson called for a national debate on the importance of national identity: “What does it mean to be French?” He announced that a decision had been taken to send back to Kabul all illegal Afghan immigrants by chartered flights. More than 21,000 were deported last year; the ultimate target is to deport 27,000.

Rising conflicts

There are now increased religion-based conflicts in West Asia, the Balkans, western Europe, Chechnya in Russia, erstwhile Soviet satellites like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ingushetia, Dagestan and even Azerbaijan. In Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, southern Thailand and India have been badly infected with the virus of secessionist campaigns.

In 1961, Kosovo had 67 percent Muslims (mostly immigrants from Albania), while Orthodox Serbs constituted 24 percent of the population. Due to conspicuously higher Albanian birth rates, by 1991 the Muslims rose to 90 percent, while the Serbs declined to a meagre 10 percent. Ultimately, Kosovo was lost to the Serbs.

Serbs had a civilisational attachment to Kosovo which was deemed as their holy land like Jerusalem, being the site of the famous battle between Serbs warriors and invading Ottoman Turks in June 1389, which the Serbs lost. They suffered the ignominy of servitude for nearly five centuries.

Another example of how demography can change the destiny of a civilization is Bosnia-Herzegovina, which went through a demographic transformation in three decades. In 1961, Serbs constituted nearly 43 percent of Bosnia’s population; Muslims were 26 percent, while Croats (another sect of Orthodox Christians) were 22 percent. By 1991, the percentage of Serbs dropped to 31%, Muslims rose to 43%, and the percentage of Croats fell from 22 to 17%. Now Bosnia-Herzegovina is a Muslim dominated country.

These demographic changes in the Balkans have caused multiple fault-line conflicts, enormous bloodbath and large scale uprooting of populations. The International Centre of Migration Policy Development has estimated that approximately 15 percent of the population of the Balkans – 75 million – had to move from their habitats in the 1980s due to force of demographic changes and the resultant politico-religious upheavals

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The demographic coup of Islam –

The demographic coup of Islam – R. K. Ohri

“It would be in order to recall late P.N. Mari Bhat and Francis Zavier’s analysis that the fertility of Muslims was about 10% higher than that of Hindus before independence and is now 25 to 30% higher than the Hindu rate. Hindus have lost considerable ground since 1947. Yet no Hindu political or spiritual leader has tried to rouse the millions of ill-informed Hindus about the looming threat of demographic decimation of their ancient faith and civilisational values.” – R.K. Ohri

Islamists are great strategists. Decades ago, while Europe slept and India slumbered, their leaders decided on a powerful global game changer, seeing in demography the key to power in a democracy, as elections are won or lost on the basis of voter support to a particular party or candidate. So, to achieve their ambition of world dominion, they decided on a global campaign to overwhelm the world by sheer increase in Muslim population. This is now emerging as a deadly weapon for capturing power in many parts of the world. Christian Europe and Hindu-dominated India appear to be on the hit list for takeover through fast population growth. After a limbo of nearly four centuries, radical Islam is again in fast forward mode.

Islam is essentially conquest oriented, as can be seen from the Quran, the Hadith and two authentic commentaries, the Sahi Bukhari and the Sahi Muslim. Its ultimate goal is Dar ul Islam, to be done first by inviting infidels to voluntarily accept the religion of the Prophet (‘Dawa’), or else by recourse to jihad. This quest has now been resumed.

Muslim strategists endeavour to humble non-Muslim civilizations by waging asymmetric war – jihad – against them through non-State actors promoted by Islamic States for launching terrorist attacks across the world.

Many bleeding heart liberals have been highly critical of US action against jihadi terrorists without acknowledging the repetitive targeting of US outposts and troops for years before the daring 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

In 1995, an American training facility was bombed in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and five US soldiers killed. The same year, an attempt was made in Sudan to assassinate the then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was regarded by Islamists as a US stooge. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, killing 224 persons including 12 Americans. American intelligence agencies said these attacks were organised by bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, which was responsible for attacking USS Cole near Yemen, claiming the lives of 17 US marines and soldiers. The attack on Twin Towers was the last straw which prompted the then US President George Bush to declare war on Al Qaeda.

9/11 was followed by a dastardly attack on the Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001 by Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Tayeba.

Since then, the western world and India have been subjected to thousands of jihadi attacks, the most spectacular being the Mumbai Massacre of 26 November 2008. The last decade has seen, world over, possibly 18,300 jihadi attacks in various countries. The cost in terms of human lives is nearly 60,000 innocents killed and roughly another 90,000 injured worldwide.

Most attacks were by so-called non-State Actors. But it is well-known that all non-State actors are fathered, nurtured and armed by one or other Islamic country. Pakistan has played a stellar role in fostering and strengthening Al Qaeda and Taliban, apart from siring Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Another Islamic strategy (sanctioned by the Prophet, as stated in Mishkat-ul-Masabih) is to exhort the faithful to have more children for multiplying the global strength of Umma.

This was clinically analysed by late Oriana Fallaci in her seminal The Force of Reason. She showed that the ultimate goal of Islamists is to overwhelm and overrun all non-Muslim countries by sheer growth in numbers and simultaneously undermine their governance by migration and infiltration of surplus Muslim population into non-Muslim countries. This demographic jihad of Islam has the potential to destroy democracy, root and branch. Once democracy is put to sleep through a demographic coup, a Shariah-ruled State can be established.

The campaign for increasing Muslim population, in non-Muslim countries and Muslim societies, is being pushed forward with the help of Ulema and Islamic scholars who issue regular diktats directing Muslims not to accept the small family norm on the ground that Islam does not permit use of contraceptives. Simultaneously, the growing population in Muslim dominated countries is being pushed into non-Muslim countries for jobs, with a long-term objective of establishing domination. This double whammy of increasing Muslim population and promoting migration and infiltration into non-Muslim countries has played havoc with the geopolitical scene in many countries where Muslims are still in minority.

Importance of demography

To progress economically, a country needs adequate and efficient human resources. It also needs an ample reservoir of youthful manpower to defend its borders from predators and hostile groups; especially countries like India, China, America, Russia and Australia which have extensive land mass, large borders and over-stretched coastlines. The demographic constituents of a society determine a nation’s societal mores, its religious and social composition and socio-political attitudes, the mode of governance and civilisational values.

Death by demography

Rewind to 1974 when Algerian President Boumedienne famously declared in his address to the UN General Assembly: “One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst upon the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women”.

In The Force of Reason, Oriana Fallaci dubbed this ‘the Policy-of-the-Womb’ for breeding Muslims in abundance and then exporting them to take possession of a territory or a country. She said a Resolution passed in the same year during a session of the Islamic Conference at Lahore in Pakistan spelt out a plan to turn into a tide the then modest flow of immigrants to Europe and penetrate the continent through demographic preponderance. She said that in every mosque of Europe, the Friday prayer is accompanied by the Imam’s exhortation to Muslim women to bear at least five children. And if the immigrant has two wives, they will have ten children and so on…

Fallaci chided European liberals as ‘intellectual cicadas’ for promoting fundamentalist Islam across the continent. Long before Geert Wilders took up cudgels against the rising crescendo of radical Islam across Europe, Fallaci was the first intellectual to warn that Christians were in the midst of “a cultural, political and existential war” with Islam. She recalled an interview with Palestinian leader George Habash in Beirut in March 1972; he told her the Palestinian problem was more than a clash with Israel, their enemy was the whole West, including Europe and America. “Our revolution is a part of the world revolution”, he asserted.

He meant it was going to be the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war, waged by stealing a country from its citizens. Without mincing words, George Habash disclosed the global agenda of Islam: “To advance step by step. Milimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn and patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the planet.”

So as early as the 1970s, the Muslim leadership across the globe had formulated a grand plan of a demographic coup. Rapid growth in Muslim population is now a worldwide phenomenon, especially in non-Muslim countries like India, Nepal and Thailand. Akbar S. Ahmed, a Pakistani diplomat turned scholar, boasts that due to a unique combination of geo-political factors, Islam is in confrontation with all major religions: Judaism in the Middle East, Christianity in the Balkans, Chechnya, Nigeria, Sudan, and sporadically in The Philippines and Indonesia, Hinduism in south Asia, and after the Taliban blew up the statues in Bamiyan, Buddhism.

It seems that an Islamogeddon, turbo-driven by billions of petro-dollars bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries, and strategically powered by Pakistan’s jihadi storm-troopers, is on the move across Europe and India.

The case of Lebanon

Lebanon is a classic example of a society driven to violent politico-religious civil war on account of large-scale demographic changes due to fast decline in the fertility rate of Maronite Christians. In 1932, Maronite Christians comprised roughly 55% of Lebanon’s population; Muslims were around 45%.

On this basis, Lebanon’s National Pact of 1943 stipulated that political power would be shared between Christians and Muslims as per ratio of their population in the country. Consequently, the posts of top ministers were apportioned between Christians and Muslims in a ratio of 6:5 (six posts to Christians, 5 to Muslims). It was further decided that the President of Lebanon would be a Christian and the Prime Minister a Muslim.

But within three decades, the tables were turned on the Christians. Due to large-scale acceptance of the small family norm, their share in the country’s population fell sharply and around 1970-72 Lebanon became a Muslim majority country. The denouement came because the fertility of Christians declined to four children per woman from the earlier average of six, while Muslims maintained their fertility rate at six children per woman. The decline could not be reversed despite the efforts of community leaders.

The civilisational conflicts started rising sharply even before the climactic demographic change. When Muslims became the majority community and staked claim to rule over the country, a civil war broke out in 1975 between the two communities. Ultimately the jihadi militias aided by Syria and neighbouring Muslim countries carried the day in a decade-long civil war. The Christians were routed; a few lakh migrated to Europe and USA. Presently the Christian population of Lebanon stands reduced to 25 percent or less and is declining rapidly. The embers of the civil war continue to glow every now and then leading to occasional outbreak of hostilities between the two communities.

Belatedly, European and American strategic analysts have woken up to the threat posed by the demographic surge of Islam. According to a study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Muslim population across the world was estimated at 1.65 billion in 2008 (global headcount 6.69 billion). Thus Muslims already constitute 24.31% of the world population.

A survey by the Pew Research Centre in 2009, however, placed the Muslim population at 1.57 billion and world population at 6.8 billion. The 2010 survey by Pew Research Forum shows Muslim population growing worldwide at 1.5% per annum, while the population of non-Muslims is growing barely at 0.7%.

Christian Europe is in serious panic because the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of Muslims in Europe is three times higher than that of Christians. In 1900, Muslims constituted only 12% of the world population; now they are touching 25 percent in just one hundred years. And in tandem with the percentage increase in Muslim population, the incidence of jihad against non-Muslims across the globe has increased. – Vijayavaani

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Friday 19 September 2014

Modi says Indian Muslims will live and die for India, won't join al Qaeda

Modi  says Indian Muslims will live  and die for India, won't join Al Qaeda
Al Qaeda would be delusional to think Indian Muslims will respond to its call to launch a jihad in the region, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said, praising the community’s love of the country.

"They are doing injustice towards the Muslims of our country," Modi told CNN, which aired excerpts of his pre-recorded interview on Friday.

"If anyone thinks Indian Muslims will dance to their tune, they are delusional. Indian Muslims will live for India, they will die for India -- they will not want anything bad for India."

It was Modi's first reaction to al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri's announcement this month that the group would set up a new operation to wage jihad in South Asia, which has a large but traditionally moderate Muslim population. A few days later it claimed responsibility for the failed hijacking a Pakistani naval ship.

There have been relatively few reports of young Indian men leaving to fight Islamist causes abroad. Only recently four young men from Maharashtra were believed to have travelled to Iraq to fight for the Islamic State.

Modi said the threat from Islamist extremist groups was "a crisis against humanity, not a crisis against one country or one race.

"We have to frame this as a fight between humanity and inhumanity, nothing else," he added.

Modi's comments come amid a debate within his Bharatiya Janata Party about how to deal with religious minorities after an inflammatory by-election campaign drew the ire of rights activists and failed to win over voters.

Yogi Adityanath, the party’s star campaigner in the recent by-elections in Uttar Pradesh, has been accused of delivering inflammatory speeches against Muslims.

Ahead of a visit to meet US President Barack Obama later this week, Modi said ties between the United States and India, a Cold War ally of the Soviet Union, will continue to improve.

"From the end of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century we have witnessed a big change," Modi said.

"These ties will deepen further."

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Saturday 13 September 2014

ISIS, Al-Qaeda’s influence pushes Australia to raise terror threat level such as "Jabhat Al-Nusra"

ISIS, Al-Qaeda’s influence pushes Australia to raise terror threat level
Such as "jabhat Al-Nusra"


MRITYUNJAY KUMAR

ISIS extremists fighting against Iraq’s democratically elected Government.

Despite no direct threat from ISIS, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced to raise terrorism threat level from medium to high.

A BBC report says, the move comes in response to growing concern over the domestic impact of militant conflicts in Iraq and Syria. It has quoted the Prime Minister as saying, “Security officials were concerned by the growing number of Australians “working with, connected to or inspired by” Islamist groups.”

In his interactions with media, Abbott said, “I want to stress that this does not mean that a terror attack is imminent. We have no specific intelligence of particular plots. What we do have is intelligence that there are people with the intent and capability to mount attacks here in Australia.”

Reports say that many Australian citizens have gone to Middle East to fight for jihadist groups such as ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra and the Government is concerned about the domestic security related issues which may crop up once these war hardened fighters and militants return back home. This has been one of the major concerns not only for Australia, but also for the US and many European countries which have seen the participation of over 2000 of their nationals in this war for ISIS.

Australian Government has made it clear that people’s daily life will be normal but additional security at airports, ports, military bases, Government buildings and large public events could be seen. Reports suggest that at least 60 Australians are believed to be fighting alongside jihadist groups in Syria and northern Iraq, and 15 of them have been killed so far in these conflicts, including two suicide bombers.

The report suggests that over 100 Australians are thought to be actively supporting these groups.

In a bid to ward off any untoward incident, Australia has restricted citizens from travelling to certain areas to join militant groups, and is installing new counter-terrorism units and biometric screening at all international airports, the report said.

Having proclaimed the formation of the Islamic Caliphate, ISIS has claimed religious authority over all Muslims across the world and aspires to bring most of the Muslim-inhabited regions of the world under its political control. They have declared war against incumbent Governments of Iraq, Syria and other territories of the Middle East which include Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus and parts of southern Turkey.

Just before the outbreak of war in Iraq, reports of appeals to Muslims across the world to join ISIS had been pouring in. A Reuters report in June 2014 said that five Islamist fighters identified as Australian and British nationals called on Muslims to join the wars in Syria and Iraq, in a video released by the ISIS.

The report further adds that a jihadi, while speaking in the video, said, “We are a State which is implementing the sharia (Islamic law) in both Iraq and Sham (Syria), and look at the soldiers – we understand no borders.”

Clarifying their intentions, the jihadis had added, “We have participated in battles in Sham (Syria), and we will go to Iraq in a few days, and we will fight there, Allah permitting, and come back, and we will even go to Jordan and Lebanon, with no problems.”

Such appeals had made a deep impact among Muslim nationals from several European countries and the US. Some among them were reported to be backing and fighting for the cause of the ISIS.

It is significant to note that given the mounting threat from ISIS terrorists in countries which have been a part of the fight against Islamic terrorists, US President Barack Obama addressed Americans on Wednesday, laying out his strategy to combat the new group. The US president in his speech said that it just won’t be American soldiers wearing the boots. Obama described the American role as “using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground.” It is possible, however, that there will be American footwear on the ground, as part of the initiative involves arming and supplying Iraqi and Syrian fighting forces. Obama warned the nation saying “It will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIS.”

Clearly, the tremors of a rising ISIS is being felt by the Governments which are part of anti-Islamic terrorism drive and they are gearing up to take the threat upfront. The Governments are raising alert level for their citizens and are working on the strategy to counter the menace.

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Friday 12 September 2014

Weak leadership in US, Israel is making region more dangerous

Weak leadership in US, Israel is making region more dangerous

Obama insists on tackling IS, not Iran, while Netanyahu does nothing to keep the West Bank from deteriorating

BY AVI ISSACHAR

Plenty has been written in recent years about the foreign policy of US President Barack Obama’s administration, especially regarding the Middle East.

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Still, he never fails to surprise us anew, time and again, with his hesitancy in dealing with regional problems.

Only two weeks ago, Obama acknowledged that America did not have a strategy for countering the Islamic State. Presumably, setting up such a strategy for dealing with the murderous organization would require considerable thought. Yet on Wednesday Obama presented his strategic plan, which any Middle Easterner who didn’t support IS could have come up with long ago: intensification of strikes against IS everywhere, including Syria (finally); more support for those fighting IS on the ground (the Iraqi Army, the Kurds, and the Syrian opposition groups that have been begging the US administration for help for years, which Washington refused); drying up IS financial sources; improving intelligence; and providing humanitarian aid to residents of the region harmed by the organization’s actions.

It’s hard to understand how the White House views of the Middle East are shaped. Certainly, the administration has repeatedly shown weakness in the region.

This began when Obama came into office and chose to attack Israel and the settlements in a way that caused the Palestinian Authority, which could hardly afford to be less critical of Israel than the Jewish state’s chief ally was being, to present an ultimatum — either a settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, or no peace talks.

In Egypt, the White House then stood up against then president Hosni Mubarak, while treating the Muslim Brotherhood with respect, and later Obama gave president-elect Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi the cold shoulder. He also ignored for too long Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own citizens.

But in the case of IS, the administration broke its own records for cynicism and misplaced priorities. The president asserted this week that the Islamic State presents a greater danger to the region than Iran. Yes, that “Toyota Army,” with no more than 32,000 fighters in total, ostensibly threatens the Middle East more than a threshold nuclear power like Iran, which runs terror cells in every corner of the globe. Iran — with its operatives in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, Sinai, North Africa, South and Central America, and even in Europe — is less dangerous than IS?

Islamic State fighters near the border between Syria and Iraq (photo credit: YouTube screen capture/Vice)

Obama has found himself an enemy to fight. If the president can’t handle the biggest problems in the region, at least he’ll make sure he’s settled the score with the guys with guns driving around in Toyotas.

Israel has its own leadership problems

The details being revealed about the kidnapping and killing of the three teens Gil-ad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel, and Eyal Yifrach indicate that there was a major conceptual failure by Israel’s political and security leadership.

The Shin Bet had already established that the man who financed the June 12 attack in the West Bank was Mahmoud Kawasme (whose brother, Husam, was the head of the murderous cell). Mahmoud was expelled to Gaza as part of the Gilad Shalit release deal. Earlier this week, I revealed in The Times of Israel that Kawasme’s commander was Abed a-Rahman Ghanimat, originally from Zurif, and his deputy was Iyad Dudin, both of whom were exiled in the Shalit deal and were given command of Hamas’s military wing activities in the Hebron area.

Amos Harel wrote in Haaretz that the Hamas leadership in Gaza appointed regional commanders who sit in the Strip and manage the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades cells across the entire West Bank. All the appointed commanders had been expelled in the Shalit deal. The senior figure among these commanders is Saleh al-Arouri, who was expelled by Israel to Turkey in 2010.

Israeli soldiers begin a search operation in the village of Halhul, near the West Bank town of Hebron, on June 29, 2014. (photo credit: AFP/Hazem Bader)

The idea that exiling prisoners make them less dangerous is bankrupt. In fact, the opposite is true. Their freedom of action and distance from the IDF’s short arm allows them more space to plan attacks. In other words, the same decision makers who approved and advocated for the Shalit deal, including — especially — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should bear responsibility for the sequence of events that led to the kidnapping of the three teens.

But Netanyahu, too, likes to pick on the weak. Even after the kidnapping investigation ended — with unequivocal denunciations from the PA, not to mention intelligence cooperation in the case from Mahmoud Abbas — and even after the PA helped in the ceasefire negotiations to end the summer’s conflict in Gaza, Netanyahu still refuses to budge an inch on the diplomatic front.

Ministers Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid, and Yaakov Peri might understand the importance of breaking free from the political stalemate with the Palestinians, but the prime minister refuses to hear it. Instead, it seems that, after the fighting in Gaza, the government’s positions have actually hardened over everything having to do with security arrangements.

Netanyahu, paralyzed by the threats from Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman, continues to bury his head in the sand and hope for the best. But better times don’t seem to be on the horizon.

On Wednesday morning, a 21-year-old Palestinian named Issa Salim al-Katri was killed by IDF fire in the al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah. Later that day, the shops and restaurants in the camp began closing their shutters and locking the doors. Workers at the restaurant I was in told me politely that I had to leave, or stay inside the restaurant with the shutters closed. When I asked why, the woman at the front told me, “If we leave the shutters open, ‘they’ will come and break the windows.”

It doesn’t look like the alternatives available to the Palestinians are especially good. They have three options to choose from: a Gaza-style Islamist future, i.e., under Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood; a future under Abbas; or still more radical Islam, Islamic State-style. Instead of understanding the urgency of pushing the West Bank model — with a Palestinian leadership that is willing to negotiate for peace — Israel is doing nothing.

This policy could blow up in our faces in the coming year. Abbas is insisting on taking drastic steps against Israel and Hamas. He doesn’t intend to help Israel by deploying his forces to the Gaza-Israel border at Rafah without a new, substantive political process with Israel. At the same time, he isn’t about to help rehabilitate Gaza as long as Hamas holds on to power there. In addition, Abbas intends to turn to the UN and international institutions to advance his demands for statehood.

As the Israeli security apparatus understands, if there is no political breakthrough in six months to a year, Abbas intends to halt the PA’s security cooperation with Israel. The consequences on the ground could be dramatic. Thus, an escalation of hostility lurks on the horizon, this time in the West Bank.
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Yazidi girl tells of horrific ordeal as Isil sex slave

Yazidi girl tells of horrific ordeal as Isil sex

slaveritish extremists fighting in Syria and Iraq have boasted on Twitter and other social media that Yazidi women had been kidnapped and used as "slave girls"

By Nick Squires, Rome
17-year-old says she is one of about 40 Yazidi women and girls, some as young as 12, still being held captive and sexually abused on a daily basis by Isil fighters

A young woman from the Yazidi religious minority captured by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) has described the horror of being kept as a sex slave by the extremist group.

The 17 year-old said she was one of a group of about 40 Yazidi women who were still being held captive and sexually abused on a daily basis by Isil fighters.

She said she was captured on August 3 during a jihadist assault against the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq and is now being held in horrific conditions of sexual servitude in a village south of Mosul.

British extremists fighting in Syria and Iraq have boasted on Twitter and other social media that Yazidi women had been kidnapped and used as "slave girls".

The young woman said she was being kept in a building with barred windows and guarded by men with weapons.

"I beg you not to publish my name because I'm so ashamed of what they are doing to me. There's a part of me that just wants to die. But there is another part of me that still hopes that I will be saved and that I will be able to embrace my parents once again," she told Italy's La Repubblica newspaper.

The newspaper was able to interview her by calling her on her mobile phone, after being given the number by her parents, who are in a refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The woman said her captors had initially confiscated her mobile and those of all the other women, but had then "changed strategy", returning the phones so that the women and girls could recount to the outside world the full horror of what was happening to them.

"To hurt us even more, they told us to describe in detail to our parents what they are doing. They laugh at us because they think they are invincible. They consider themselves are supermen. But they are people without a heart.

"Our torturers do not even spare the women who have small children with them. "Nor do they spare the girls - some of our group are not even 13 years old. Some of them will no longer say a word." The woman, given the false name Mayat by La Repubblica, said the women were raped on the top floor of the building, in three rooms. The girls and women were abused up to three times a day by different groups of men.
"They treat us as if we are their slaves. The men hit us and threaten us when we try to resist. Often I wish that they would beat me so severely that I would die."

Some of the men were young fighters fresh from Syria, while others were old men.

"If one day this torture ever ends, my life will always be marked by what I have suffered in these weeks. Even if I survive, I don't know how I'm going to cancel from my mind this horror.

"We've asked our jailers to shoot us dead, to kill us, but we are too valuable for them. They keep telling us that we are unbelievers because we are non-Muslims and that we are their property, like war booty. They say we are like goats bought at a market.

The captive women were praying for rescue by anti-Isil ground forces or an international intervention.

"My only hope is that the peshmerga [Kurdish militia] come and rescue us. I know that the Americans are bombing [Isil positions]. I want them to hurry up and drive them all out, because I don't know how much longer I can stand this. They've already killed my body. Now they're killing my mind."

She said she had heard that Arab Christian women had also been captured and imprisoned as sex slaves by Isil, but that her group consisted exclusively of Yazidi women, all of whom came from the town of Sinjar.

The town is at the foot of Mount Sinjar, where thousands of Yazidis were forced to flee last month after being encircled by Isil.

While many of the refugees managed to eventually escape the mountain, others were captured by the extremist group.

The United Nations has accused Isil of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq, detailing a campaign of mass detentions and executions in Christian, Turkmen and Yazidi areas.




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Saturday 6 September 2014

ISIS want to impregnate Yazidi women and smash our blond bloodline':

"ISIS want to impregnate Yazidi women and smash our blond bloodline"




Fears grow for the 300 women kidnapped from Sinjar


By Simon Tomlinson and Tom Mctague, Mail Online Deputy Political Editor10:57 14 Aug 2014, updated 21:34 14 Aug 2014

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Jihadist troops bolster forces further south in apparent bid to broaden front with Kurdish peshmerga fightersExpert tells MailOnline: 'IS is coming under pressure and they need to show results to fuel their media machine'Comes after air strikes and Kurdish forces helped to break siege of Mount Sinjar that allowed 45,000 Yazidis to fleeU.S. defence secretary Chuck Hagel said mission to rescue others stranded on mountain was now 'far less likely'UN declares highest level of emergency for the humanitarian crisis as number of displaced Iraqis tops 1.5million

Fears are growing for the 300 Yazidi women reportedly kidnapped by Islamic State fighters last week amid claims they would be used to bear children to break up the ancient sect's bloodline.

The minority group is originally Aryan and has retained a fairer complexion, blonde hair and blue eyes by only marrying within the community.

But in a furious bid to convert all non-Muslims, ISIS jihadists have vowed to impregnate the hostages.

Some 45,000 Yazidi refugees have finally been able to escape from Mount Sinjar after U.S. air strikes and a fightback by Kurdish forces appeared to have broken the ten-day siege by Islamic militants.

However, as the women remain trapped, Kurdish militia are calling on Western forces to give them arms rather than plotting rescue missions.

Addressing the kidnapping, Adnan Kochar, chairman of the Kurdish Cultural Centre in London, told MailOnline: 'The Kurds and Yazidis are originally Aryans. But because the Yazidis are such a closed community they have retained a fairer complexion, blonder hair and bluer eyes. They don't marry non-Yazidis.

Scroll down for video

In hiding: Members of the Yazidi community take shelter on Mount Sinjar after fleeing Islamic State militants who stormed their town ten days agoCrisis downgraded: A mission to evacuate the Iraqi civilians trapped on the mountain was shelved after it was found that only a few thousand Yazidis remained thereDefiant: Some Yazidis have indicated to American forces tasked with rescuing them that they see the mountain as a safe haven and were reluctant to leaveHostile terrain: Yazidis settle in abandoned houses as they take shelter on the top of Mount Sinjar after fleeing the jihadists

'ISIS have taken around 300 women from Sinjar to give to jihadists to marry and make pregnant to have a Muslim child. If they can't kill all Yazidis, they will try to smash the blond bloodline.'

According to reports, a small band of Iraqis stranded on the barren mountain top are apparently either too scared or too proud to come down.

U.S. officials claim some Yazidis have indicated to American forces tasked with rescuing them that they see the mountain as a safe haven and were reluctant to leave.

The Yazidis adhere to a 4,000-year-old faith passed down and adapted through the generations by word of mouth and composed of elements of several religions.

But they are unjustly regarded as 'devil worshippers' on account of their unusual beliefs, which derive from the ancient faith called Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persia long before Islam arrived.

Successive waves of persecution - they claim to have survived 72 genocides - by the Ottoman Turkish rulers of what is now Iraq, by Saddam Hussein and now by Islamic militants, have reduced the number of Yazidi from millions to an estimated 700,000.

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Friday 5 September 2014

Female dentist 'guilty' of treating male patient executed by Islamic State

Female dentist 'guilty' of treating male patient executed by Islamic State

           The brutalityunleashed by the Islamic State has reached new heights. Now, ISIS has executed a female dentist who was found 'guilty' of treating a male patient.

Dr Rou’aa Diab was a dentist in the historic city of Al-Mayadeen, located on the border of Iraq. Two days ago, she was nabbed by the Islamic State, along with four others. She was summarily executed without even the facade of a trial. The reasoning for the execution was bizarre, under the crime of “treating male patients”.

Diab’s death has created widespread dismay and anger in Al-Mayadeen, an area where the Islamic State continues to assert its brutal power. As the conflict reaches a feverish pitch in the war-ravaged country, the jihadist organisation has increased such brazen use of power. It is a potent tool to intimidate commoners.

Diab is one of the many civilians executed by the Islamic State over the last seven days. Syrian Government sources claim 700 civilians from a tribe in Deir ez-Zor were executed last week. Violence between tribal factions in Deir ez-Zor and the Islamic State has escalated over the last two weeks. Ironically these two groups used to have a good relationship earlier.

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Understand Why Westerners Are Joining Jihadi Movements Like ISIS.

Understand Why Westerners Are Joining Jihadi Movements Like ISIS.
I was almost one of them.

By Michael Muhammad Knight

Michael Muhammad Knight is the author of 9 books, including Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing.​


Iraqi Shiite militia fighters hold the Islamic State flag as they celebrate after breaking the siege of Amerli by Islamic State militants. (Youssef Boudlal/Reuters)

The Islamic State just released a gruesome new beheading video, again helmed by a western-bred Jihadist. As often happens, I received messages asking for explanation.

You see, I’m the jihadi who never was.

Twenty years ago, I ditched my Catholic high school in upstate New York to study at a Saudi-funded madrassa in Pakistan. A fresh convert, I jumped at the chance to live at a mosque and study Qur’an all day.

This was in the mid-1990s, during an escalation of the Chechen resistance against Russian rule. After class, we’d turn on the television and watch feeds of destruction and suffering. The videos were upsetting. So upsetting that soon I found myself thinking about abandoning my religious education to pick up a gun and fight for Chechen freedom.

It wasn’t a verse I’d read in our Qur’an study circles that made me want to fight, but rather my American values. I had grown up in the Reagan ’80s. I learned from G.I. Joe cartoons to (in the words of the theme song) “fight for freedom, wherever there’s trouble.” I assumed that individuals had the right — and the duty — to intervene anywhere on the planet where they perceived threats to freedom, justice and equality.

For me, wanting to go to Chechnya wasn’t reducible to my “Muslim rage” or “hatred for the West.” This may be hard to believe, but I thought about the war in terms of compassion. Like so many Americans moved by their love of country to serve in the armed forces, I yearned to fight oppression and protect the safety and dignity of others. I believed that this world was in bad shape. I placed my faith in somewhat magical solutions claiming that the world could be fixed by a renewal of authentic Islam and a truly Islamic system of government. But I also believed that working toward justice was more valuable than my own life.

Eventually, I decided to stay in Islamabad. And the people who eventually convinced me not to fight weren’t the kinds of Muslims propped up in the media as liberal, West-friendly reformers. They were deeply conservative; some would call them “intolerant.” In the same learning environment in which I was told that my non-Muslim mother would burn in eternal hellfire, I was also told that I could achieve more good in the world as a scholar than as a soldier, and that I should strive to be more than a body in a ditch. These traditionalists reminded me of Muhammad’s statement that the ink of scholars was holier than the blood of martyrs.

The media often draw a clear line between our imagined categories of “good” and “bad” Muslims. My brothers in Pakistan would have made that division much more complicated than some could imagine.These men whom I perceived as superheroes of piety, speaking to me as the authorized voice of the tradition itself, said that violence was not the best that I could offer.

Some kids in my situation seem to have received different advice.

It’s easy to assume that religious people, particularly Muslims, simply do things because their religions tell them to. But when I think about my impulse at age 17 to run away and become a fighter for the Chechen rebels, I consider more than religious factors. My imagined scenario of liberating Chechnya and turning it into an Islamic state was a purely American fantasy, grounded in American ideals and values. Whenever I hear of an American who flies across the globe to throw himself into freedom struggles that are not his own, I think, What a very, very American thing to do.

And that’s the problem. We are raised to love violence and view military conquest as a benevolent act. The American kid who wants to intervene in another nation’s civil war owes his worldview as much to American exceptionalism as to jihadist interpretations of scripture. I grew up in a country that glorifies military sacrifice and feels entitled to rebuild other societies according to its own vision. I internalized these values before ever thinking about religion. Before I even knew what a Muslim was, let alone concepts such as “jihad” or an “Islamic state,” my American life had taught me that that’s what brave men do.
Courtesy- The Washington Post

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Wednesday 3 September 2014

What ISIS's Leader Really Wants

What ISIS's Leader Really Wants

The longer he lives, the more powerful he becomes
By Graeme WoodOn June 29, 2014—
    the first of Ramadan, 1435, for those who prefer the Islamic calendar to the Gregorian—the leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) publicly uttered for the first time a word that means little to the average Westerner, but everything to some pious Muslims. The word is “caliph.” ISIS’s proclamation that day formally hacked the last two letters from its acronym (it’s now just “The Islamic State”) and declared Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, born Ibrahim ibn Awwad ibn Ibrahim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai, the Caliph of all Muslims and the Prince of the Believers. For Muslims of a certain hyper-antiquarian inclination, these titles are not mere nomenclature. ISIS’s meticulous use of language, and its almost pedantic adherence to its own interpretation of Islamic law, have made it a strange enemy, fierce and unyielding but also scholarly and predictable. The Islamic State obsesses over words like “caliph” (Arabic: khalifa) and “caliphate” (khilafa), and news reports and social media from within ISIS have depicted frenzied chants of “The Caliphate is established!” The entire self-image and propaganda narrative of the Islamic State is based on emulating the early leaders of Islam, in particular the Prophet Muhammad and the four “rightly guided caliphs” who led Muslims from Muhammad’s death in 632 until 661. Within the lifetimes of these caliphs, the realm of Islam spread like spilled ink to the farthest corners of modern-day Iran and coastal Libya, despite small and humble origins.
          Muslims consider that period a golden age and some, called Salafis, believe the military and political practices of its statesmen and warriors—barbaric by today’s standards but acceptable at the time—deserve to be revived. Hence ISIS’s taste for beheadings, stonings, crucifixions, slavery, anddhimmitude, the practice of taxing those who refuse to convert to Islam.
         Other Muslims have romanticized the time of the early caliphs—but by occupying a large area and ruling it for more than a year, the Islamic State can claim to be their heirs more plausibly than any recent jihadist movement. It has created a blood-soaked paradise that groups like Al Qaeda contemplated only as a distant daydream.
           “There is a mystical belief that, if you just establish the caliphate in the right way, Muslims will come to you and everything will fall into place,” says Fred Donner, a historian of early Islam at the University of Chicago. And it is precisely this promise of inexorable, righteous expansion that has drawn recruits from all over the globe—not just nearby, war-ravaged nations, but England and Australia and France, too. Together, they have formed the most monstrous squad of historical reenactors of all time.

Reuters/Abdalghne Karoof
         The word khalifa means “successor” (to Muhammad), and as such, a rightful caliph can demand the allegiance of all Muslims. But historically, an applicant for the job has had to fulfill a few conditions. He (always he) must be Muslim, fully grown, devout, sane, and physically whole. Because he is theoretically meant to lead Muslims in battle, missing limbs or a sickly disposition will automatically disqualify him. He must also hail from the Quraysh tribe of the Arabian peninsula, a requirement that turns out to matter a great deal in the case of the current caliph.
          After the first four caliphs—whose rule the Islamic State remembers as a period of Muslim solidarity, although three died violently—dynasties of Sunni caliphs ruled out of Damascus (the Umayyads, 661–750), Iraq and Syria (the Abbasids, 750–1258), and Istanbul (Ottomans, 1299–1924). As Islam aged, many not-so-exemplary men held the office of caliph. By the Ottoman period, they receded from view and remained as figureheads, with military rulers called sultans making all decisions of consequence. The last Ottoman caliph, Abdülmecid II, was ousted by the secularist Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and reacted not by raising an army of vengeful zealots but by retiring to a life of beard-grooming and nude portraiture in Paris.
           We don’t know which caliphs from history are most revered by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who rules by his birth name Caliph Ibrahim. To him, the ineffectual aesthetes of the Ottoman period may not even count as caliphs. (That softie Osama bin Laden likely accepted them as legitimate: In his early statements, he bemoaned their downfall.) Baghdadi seems to have sentimental fondness for the Abbasid caliphate. The Abbasids ruled primarily from Baghdad, where the current caliph is said to have earned a doctorate in Islamic law. And Harun al-Rashid, perhaps the greatest Abbasid caliph, briefly relocated the caliphate to Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the capital of the Islamic State. After ISIS fighters invaded Mosul and slew a dozen imams, Baghdadi led Friday prayers at the main mosque and wore all black—the regnal color of the Abbasid caliphs—as if the last eight centuries never happened.
               Past caliphates have bent the rules and selected corrupt or worldly men for leadership. Some have also ignored the Qurayshi requirement, or fabricated caliphs’ pedigrees on the grounds of necessity. But the Islamic State refuses to let such things slide. Baghdadi’s Mosul sermon demonstrated command of the florid rhetoric of classical Arabic, so his religious chops are confirmed. And his Qurayshi lineage is beyond public dispute. Many Iraqis, including Saddam Hussein, can also boast Qurayshi descent, and because no one knows much about Baghdadi—certainly not enough to trace his lineage back 1,400 years to a preliterate society a thousand miles away—it’s hard (and in the Islamic State, probably fatal) to suggest he’s lying.
                  Slavish loyalty to historical example at least makes the beliefs and plans of ISIS a little more predictable than those of a spry, global-reach organization like Al Qaeda.

Interpretations of what constitutes a legitimate caliph are so loose that it’s surprising how few caliphates have been declared since 1924. But radical Muslims have been reluctant to invoke the word for reasons both practical and purist. “If you go back to the 1970s, you’ll find they all just call themselves ‘groups’ or ‘fronts,’” says Thomas Hegghammer, who studies jihadists for the Norwegian government. Not until the late ’80s do you find the first jihadist “emirate,” which is a state run by an emir, a secular prince. Some Muslims have suggested that the Taliban’s Mullah Omar is caliph material. He styles himself “prince [emir] of the faithful,” a historical term nearly but not quite synonymous with “caliph.” But he is neither Qurayshi nor (some would say) physically intact, due to an eye lost in battle. And bin Laden never declared himself caliph, either, in part because he lacked Qurayshi blood. (Fred Donner told me that the bin Ladens’ Kennedy-like prominence in Saudi Arabia ensured that no lie about Qurayshi descent could gain traction.)

Reuters/Stringer
                This tenderness about using the term “caliph” extends to almost everyone in the old guard of Al Qaeda, which hates ISIS. In general, the grayer the beard, the less enthusiasm for rule by Baghdadi. Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the Palestinian jihadi theorist who mentored Abu Musa’b al-Zarqawi (himself Baghdadi’s guru), has condemned the declaration of the caliphate on the grounds that it creates discord among mujahedin. Bernard Haykel, an Islamic law expert at Princeton, says caliphs are supposed to be chosen by consultation with all Muslim scholars, and Baghdadi hasn’t shown he has the support of even a majority of ultra-radical Muslims.
               Mostly, though, caliphate declarations have been rare because they are outrageously out of sync with history. The word conjures the majesty of bygone eras and of states that straddle continents. For a wandering group of hunted men like Al Qaeda to declare a caliphate would have been Pythonesque in its deluded grandeur, as if a few dozen Neo-Nazis or Italian fascists declared themselves the Holy Roman Empire or dressed up like Augustus Caesar. “Anybody who actively wishes to reestablish a caliphate must be deeply committed to a backward-looking view of Islam,” says Donner. “The caliphate hasn’t been a functioning institution for over a thousand years.
          Cole Bunzel, a doctoral candidate at Princeton, thinks Baghdadi maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” about when to declare himself caliph. “The Islamic State has acted like a caliphate from the beginning, but they couldn’t announce themselves as one because they would have sounded ridiculous.” Now that they’ve controlled Raqqa for more than a year—and oversee as much territory as Abu Bakr, the first rightly guided caliph, himself—the claim looks far more credible. The mass executions and public crucifixions have also done much to erase any lingering aura of comedy.

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