Conflicts in the Middle East & Northern Africa

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  • Brian
    Banned
    • Oct 2011
    • 1130

    Guess we'll have to wait until next year (wow, what a suprise, remember me saying they wont spoil the NWO Olympic Games this year?) for the Iran war.

    Israel's plan to attack Iran put on hold until next year at the earliest



    29.03.12
    Damning U.S. war simulation forces Ehud Barak to reconsider attack plans; Americans pledge more money for Iron Dome antimissile system.

    Rest of article in Link.

    Comment

    • George S.
      Senior Member
      • Aug 2009
      • 10116

      if the crusaders were pork eaters, where would they get pork when they are only in muslim surroundings.??do they bring it as part of their entourage.??
      "Ido not want an uprising of people that would leave me at the first failure, I want revolution with citizens able to bear all the temptations to a prolonged struggle, what, because of the fierce political conditions, will be our guide or cattle to the slaughterhouse"
      GOTSE DELCEV

      Comment

      • Big Bad Sven
        Senior Member
        • Jan 2009
        • 1528

        Saudis slammed for usual rights abuse, never for exporting revolution - YouTube


        Funny that the most liberal and free arab countries in the middle east are lebanon and Syria (the so c alled "bad guys"), while the most oppressive is our good ally and friend Saudi Arabia. Woman are not allowed to drive in saudi arabia or need "permission" to get a job.

        Even the regular Saudi citizens are leaving Saudi Arabia and going to places were they can have fun and enoy freedom. I have a Saudi friend who tells me he goes to Bahrain every summer for a holiday to gamble and get on the piss as he cant in oppressive Saudi Arabia.

        You are not allowed to protest for your rights in Saudi Arabia as well, but the saudi's are quick to support "demonstrations" in Libya, Syria etc as long as it works with their goal of spreading fanatical islam through out the middle east (that of course is loyal to saudi arabia).....

        All this doesnt matter, lets just keep supporting the oppressive Saudi's and their pet project: Al Queada

        Comment

        • Onur
          Senior Member
          • Apr 2010
          • 2389

          Which Countries Have Nuclear Weapons? - YouTube

          Comment

          • Onur
            Senior Member
            • Apr 2010
            • 2389

            Newly-released videos show the US private contractor in Iraq, formerly known as Blackwater, running over a woman with a car, smashing into Iraqi cars to move them out of the way and firing a rifle into traffic in 2006.

            Video of Blackwater Contractors Driving Over Iraqi Woman - YouTube

            Comment

            • George S.
              Senior Member
              • Aug 2009
              • 10116

              that's democracy run a muck.The us doesn't give a shit.
              "Ido not want an uprising of people that would leave me at the first failure, I want revolution with citizens able to bear all the temptations to a prolonged struggle, what, because of the fierce political conditions, will be our guide or cattle to the slaughterhouse"
              GOTSE DELCEV

              Comment

              • Onur
                Senior Member
                • Apr 2010
                • 2389

                Blackwater is a private mercenary soldier firm in USA, founded by some christian fundamentalists. They mostly hire ex-soldiers, ex-convicts, ex-polices and all kind of lowlifes from USA, train them and send them to Iraq, Afghanistan as a security force.

                This wasn't the first case they did in Iraq, there was other videos released before too. Some people says that they are responsible from the most of Iraqi civilian deaths. For example, this one released few years ago and it looks like they are always driving like that in the streets of Iraq.;
                US ARMY SOLDIER DRIVING HUMMER IN IRAQ.. - YouTube

                Comment

                • Brian
                  Banned
                  • Oct 2011
                  • 1130

                  The 'war on terror' is a joke and so is the USA, Israel and any of their supporters (you know who you are) when it is now know that terrorist on their ow list of 'band' terrorist organisations got funding and training ON USA SOIL!

                  OUR MEN IN IRAN?

                  From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look …


                  APRIL 6, 2012
                  From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, was once used for nuclear testing, and now includes a counterintelligence training facility and a private airport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft. It’s a restricted area, and inhospitable—in certain sections, the curious are warned that the site’s security personnel are authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, against intruders.

                  It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some international credibility by publicly revealing—accurately—that Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret underground location. Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency, told me later that he had been informed that the information was supplied by the Mossad. The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.

                  Despite the growing ties, and a much-intensified lobbying effort organized by its advocates, M.E.K. has remained on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations—which meant that secrecy was essential in the Nevada training. “We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada,” a former senior American intelligence official told me. “We were deploying them over long distances in the desert and mountains, and building their capacity in communications—coördinating commo is a big deal.” (A spokesman for J.S.O.C. said that “U.S. Special Operations Forces were neither aware of nor involved in the training of M.E.K. members.”)

                  The training ended sometime before President Obama took office, the former official said. In a separate interview, a retired four-star general, who has advised the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in Nevada by an American involved in the program. They got “the standard training,” he said, “in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months,” the retired general said. “They were kept in little pods.” He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration’s global war on terror. “The JSOC trainers were not front-line guys who had been in the field, but second- and third-tier guys—trainers and the like—and they started going off the reservation. ‘If we’re going to teach you tactics, let me show you some really sexy stuff…’ ”

                  It was the ad-hoc training that provoked the worried telephone calls to him, the former general said. “I told one of the guys who called me that they were all in over their heads, and all of them could end up trouble unless they got something in writing. The Iranians are very, very good at counterintelligence, and stuff like this is just too hard to contain.” The site in Nevada was being utilized at the same time, he said, for advanced training of élite Iraqi combat units. (The retired general said he only knew of the one M.E.K.-affiliated group that went though the training course; the former senior intelligence official said that he was aware of training that went on through 2007.)

                  Allan Gerson, a Washington attorney for the M.E.K., notes that the M.E.K. has publicly and repeatedly renounced terror. Gerson said he would not comment on the alleged training in Nevada. But such training, if true, he said, would be “especially incongruent with the State Department’s decision to continue to maintain the M.E.K. on the terrorist list. How can the U.S. train those on State’s foreign terrorist list, when others face criminal penalties for providing a nickel to the same organization?”

                  Robert Baer, a retired C.I.A. agent who is fluent in Arabic and had worked under cover in Kurdistan and throughout the Middle East in his career, initially had told me in early 2004 of being recruited by a private American company—working, so he believed, on behalf of the Bush Administration—to return to Iraq. “They wanted me to help the M.E.K. collect intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program,” Baer recalled. “They thought I knew Farsi, which I did not. I said I’d get back to them, but never did.” Baer, now living in California, recalled that it was made clear to him at the time that the operation was “a long-term thing—not just a one-shot deal.”

                  Massoud Khodabandeh, an I.T. expert now living in England who consults for the Iraqi government, was an official with the M.E.K. before defecting in 1996. In a telephone interview, he acknowledged that he is an avowed enemy of the M.E.K., and has advocated against the group. Khodabandeh said that he had been with the group since before the fall of the Shah and, as a computer expert, was deeply involved in intelligence activities as well as providing security for the M.E.K. leadership. For the past decade, he and his English wife have run a support program for other defectors. Khodabandeh told me that he had heard from more recent defectors about the training in Nevada. He was told that the communications training in Nevada involved more than teaching how to keep in contact during attacks—it also involved communication intercepts. The United States, he said, at one point found a way to penetrate some major Iranian communications systems. At the time, he said, the U.S. provided M.E.K. operatives with the ability to intercept telephone calls and text messages inside Iran—which M.E.K. operatives translated and shared with American signals intelligence experts. He does not know whether this activity is ongoing.
                  Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated since 2007. M.E.K. spokesmen have denied any involvement in the killings, but early last month NBC News quoted two senior Obama Administration officials as confirming that the attacks were carried out by M.E.K. units that were financed and trained by Mossad, the Israeli secret service. NBC further quoted the Administration officials as denying any American involvement in the M.E.K. activities. The former senior intelligence official I spoke with seconded the NBC report that the Israelis were working with the M.E.K., adding that the operations benefitted from American intelligence. He said that the targets were not “Einsteins”; “The goal is to affect Iranian psychology and morale,” he said, and to “demoralize the whole system—nuclear delivery vehicles, nuclear enrichment facilities, power plants.” Attacks have also been carried out on pipelines. He added that the operations are “primarily being done by M.E.K. through liaison with the Israelis, but the United States is now providing the intelligence.” An adviser to the special-operations community told me that the links between the United States and M.E.K. activities inside Iran had been long-standing. “Everything being done inside Iran now is being done with surrogates,” he said.

                  The sources I spoke to were unable to say whether the people trained in Nevada were now involved in operations in Iran or elsewhere. But they pointed to the general benefit of American support. “The M.E.K. was a total joke,” the senior Pentagon consultant said, “and now it’s a real network inside Iran. How did the M.E.K. get so much more efficient?” he asked rhetorically. “Part of it is the training in Nevada. Part of it is logistical support in Kurdistan, and part of it is inside Iran. M.E.K. now has a capacity for efficient operations that it never had before.”

                  In mid-January, a few days after an assassination by car bomb of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, at a town-hall meeting of soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas, acknowledged that the U.S. government has “some ideas as to who might be involved, but we don’t know exactly who was involved.” He added, “But I can tell you one thing: the United States was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the United States does.”

                  Comment

                  • Soldier of Macedon
                    Senior Member
                    • Sep 2008
                    • 13670

                    Looks like there are some issues now arising in Syria regarding the Kurds, who some perceive to have supported the current government. Apparently the Kurds want a federal solution for Syria, which has made some circles in Turkey a bit nervous.

                    For Turkey, Syria's Kurds are a double-edged sword. By throwing their weight behind the anti-Assad revolution, they may yet expedite the collapse of the Damascus regime. But they may also make Turkey's biggest nightmare, the emergence of an independent Kurdish homeland, come alive.

                    The drive through town had become something of an obstacle course. On some streets, young boys, stones in hand, squared off against policemen, each group waiting for the other to make the first move.

                    In other parts of the city, chunks of broken pavement, remnants of recent clashes, rendered any attempt at passage impossible. It was the evening of March 20 and Nusaybin - a town in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated south-east - was still on edge. Earlier in the day, riot police had fired tear gas and water cannons on men and women marching back from a rally to celebrate Newroz, the Kurdish New Year. Similar scenes were to play out across the region throughout the week, after Turkish authorities decided to ban Newroz celebrations held on any day other than March 21.

                    At the offices of Mar-Has, the final stop on our ride through Nusaybin, the focus - rather than on the festering conflict between Turkey and its Kurds - was on events in Syria. Nusaybin lies within earshot of the border and Mar-Has, an NGO, helps people fleeing the country find their footing in Turkey, says Mir Mehmet, one of the group's members. "We provide them with food, with blankets, and we help find homes for them," he says.

                    Syria is said to be home to at least two million Kurds, many of them descended from families who fled Turkey after a series of bloodily suppressed Kurdish rebellions in the 1920s and 1930s. The government in Damascus having denied these Kurds citizenship, hundreds of thousands were left in limbo, unable to claim basic rights in Syria and - lacking national identity papers - unable to travel abroad.

                    That impasse was finally broken in April 2011 when Syrian president Bashar Al Assad, doing his best to appease the Kurdish minority and ensure that it remain on the sidelines of the anti-government revolution raging across Syria, promised to grant citizenship to 300,000 stateless Kurds. For those who hoped to take advantage of the measure to travel to Nusaybin, if only to call on relatives, the opportunity to do so proved short-lived. At the beginning of 2012, Al Assad's regime decided to close the border crossing between Nusaybin and its neighbouring sister city, Qamishli. Syrian Kurds attempting to enter Nusaybin now have to do so illegally, with the help of a smuggler, or via the closest border crossing still open, at Kilis, almost 500 kilometres away.

                    Although there may be as many as several hundred Syrians currently living in Nusaybin, few were willing to be interviewed, citing security concerns. Of those who agreed to speak, Munteser Sino claimed that during his first attempt to sneak across the border he was detained by Turkish border guards and sent back to Syria.

                    To date, Turkish authorities have received and accommodated well over 25,000 Syrian refugees, nearly all of them arriving in Hatay, a southern province of Turkey. The government in Ankara remains wary of new arrivals from Kurdish-populated northeastern Syria, however.

                    Some of these, Turkish officials fear, may be infiltrators from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a militant group that has waged war against the Turkish army since 1984. (Some 40,000 people, including militants, soldiers and civilians, have died since the beginning of the conflict. Turkey, the United States and the European Union all list the PKK as a terrorist organisation. Many of Turkey's 12-15 million Kurds would disagree. To them, the group remains a symbol of resistance against a Turkish state that is yet to meet the Kurds' demands for cultural rights and some measure of political autonomy.)

                    Sino had been involved in the anti-Al Assad revolution from the start, he says. Among other things, he had helped diffuse videos of protests in Qamishli. Apprehended by Syrian agents during a trip to Lebanon, he was brought to Damascus and tortured for three consecutive days, he recalls....................
                    In the name of the blood and the sun, the dagger and the gun, Christ protect this soldier, a lion and a Macedonian.

                    Comment

                    • DedoAleko
                      Member
                      • Jun 2009
                      • 969

                      Islam and Islamism-Faith and Ideology

                      Islam and Islamism - Faith and Ideology

                      by Daniel Pipes
                      National Interest
                      Spring 2000

                      One cannot emphasize too much the distinction between Islam - plain Islam - and its fundamentalist version. Islam is the religion of about one billion people and is a rapidly growing faith, particularly in Africa but also elsewhere in the world. The United States, for example, boasts almost a million converts to Islam (plus an even larger number of Muslim immigrants).

                      Islam's adherents find their faith immensely appealing, for the religion possesses an inner strength that is quite extraordinary. As a leading figure in the Islamic Republic of Iran maintains, "Any Westerner who really understands Islam will envy the lives of Muslims." Far from feeling embarrassed about its being temporally the last of the three major Middle Eastern monotheisms, Muslims believe that their faith improves on the earlier ones. In their telling, Judaism and Christianity are but defective variants of Islam, which is God's final, perfect religion.

                      Contributing to this internal confidence is the memory of outstanding achievements during Islam's first six or so centuries. Its culture was the most advanced, and Muslims enjoyed the best health, lived the longest, had the highest rates of literacy, sponsored the most advanced scientific and technical research, and deployed usually victorious armies. This pattern of success was evident from the beginning: in A.D. 622 the Prophet Muhammad fled Mecca as a refugee, only to return eight years later as its ruler. As early as the year 715, Muslim conquerors had assembled an empire that extended from Spain in the west to India in the east. To be a Muslim meant to belong to a winning civilization. Muslims, not surprisingly, came to assume a correlation between their faith and their worldly success, to assume that they were the favored of God in both spiritual and mundane matters.

                      And yet, in modern times battlefield victories and prosperity have been notably lacking. Indeed, as early as the thirteenth century, Islam's atrophy and Christendom's advances were already becoming discernible. But, for some five hundred years longer, Muslims remained largely oblivious to the extraordinary developments taking place to their north. Ibn Khaldun, the famous Muslim intellectual, wrote around the year 1400 about Europe, "I hear that many developments are taking place in the land of the Rum, but God only knows what happens there!"

                      Such willful ignorance rendered Muslims vulnerable when they could no longer ignore what was happening around them. Perhaps the most dramatic alert came in July 1798, when Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Egypt - the center of the Muslim world - and conquered it with stunning ease. Other assaults followed over the next century and more, and before long most Muslims were living under European rule. As their power and influence waned, a sense of incomprehension spread among Muslims. What had gone wrong? Why had God seemingly abandoned them?

                      The trauma of modern Islam results from this sharp and unmistakable contrast between medieval successes and more recent tribulations. Put simply, Muslims have had an exceedingly hard time explaining what went wrong. Nor has the passage of time made this task any easier, for the same unhappy circumstances basically still exist. Whatever index one employs, Muslims can be found clustering toward the bottom - whether measured in terms of their military prowess, political stability, economic development, corruption, human rights, health, longevity or literacy. Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia who now languishes in jail, estimates in The Asian Renaissance (1997) that whereas Muslims make up just one-fifth of the world's total population, they constitute more than half of the 1.2 billion people living in abject poverty. There is thus a pervasive sense of debilitation and encroachment in the Islamic world today. As the imam of a mosque in Jerusalem put it not long ago, "Before, we were masters of the world and now we're not even masters of our own mosques."

                      Searching for explanations for their predicament, Muslims have devised three political responses to modernity - secularism, reformism and Islamism. The first of these holds that Muslims can only advance by emulating the West. Yes, the secularists concede, Islam is a valuable and esteemed legacy, but its public dimensions must be put aside. In particular, the sacred law of Islam (called the Shari'a) - which governs such matters as the judicial system, the manner in which Muslim states go to war, and the nature of social interactions between men and women - should be discarded in its entirety. The leading secular country is Turkey, where Kemal Atatürk in the period 1923-38 reshaped and modernized an overwhelmingly Muslim society. Overall, though, secularism is a minority position among Muslims, and even in Turkey it is under siege.

                      Reformism, occupying a murky middle ground, offers a more popular response to modernity. Whereas secularism forthrightly calls for learning from the West, reformism selectively appropriates from it. The reformist says, "Look, Islam is basically compatible with Western ways. It's just that we lost track of our own achievements, which the West exploited. We must now go back to our own ways by adopting those of the West." To reach this conclusion, reformers reread the Islamic scriptures in a Western light. For example, the Koran permits a man to take up to four wives - on the condition that he treat them equitably. Traditionally, and quite logically, Muslims understood this verse as permission for a man to take four wives. But because a man is allowed only one in the West, the reformists performed a sleight of hand and interpreted the verse in a new way: the Koran, they claim, requires that a man must treat his wives equitably, which is clearly something no man can do if there is more than one of them. So, they conclude, Islam prohibits more than a single wife.

                      Reformists have applied this sort of reasoning across the board. To science, for example, they contend Muslims should have no objections, for science is in fact Muslim. They recall that the word algebra comes from the Arabic, al-jabr. Algebra being the essence of mathematics and mathematics being the essence of science, all of modern science and technology thereby stems from work done by Muslims. So there is no reason to resist Western science; it is rather a matter of reclaiming what the West took (or stole) in the first place. In case after case, and with varying degrees of credibility, reformists appropriate Western ways under the guise of drawing on their own heritage. The aim of the reformists, then, is to imitate the West without acknowledging as much. Though intellectually bankrupt, reformism functions well as a political strategy.

                      The Ideological Response

                      The third response to the modern trauma is Islamism, the subject of the remainder of this essay. Islamism has three main features: a devotion to the sacred law, a rejection of Western influences, and the transformation of faith into ideology.

                      Islamism holds that Muslims lag behind the West because they're not good Muslims. To regain lost glory requires a return to old ways, and that is achieved by living fully in accordance with the Shari'a. Were Muslims to do so, they would once again reside on top of the world, as they did a millennium ago. This, however, is no easy task, for the sacred law contains a vast body of regulations touching every aspect of life, many of them contrary to modern practices. (The Shari'a somewhat resembles Jewish law, but nothing comparable exists in Christianity.) Thus, it forbids usury or any taking of interest, which has deep and obvious implications for economic life. It calls for cutting off the hands of thieves, which runs contrary to all modern sensibilities, as do its mandatory covering of women and the separation of the sexes. Islamism not only calls for the application of these laws, but for a more rigorous application than ever before was the case. Before 1800, the interpreters of the Shari'a softened it somewhat. For instance, they devised a method by which to avoid the ban on interest. The fundamentalists reject such modifications, demanding instead that Muslims apply the Shari'a strictly and in its totality.

                      In their effort to build a way of life based purely on the Shar'i laws, Islamists strain to reject all aspects of Western influence - customs, philosophy, political institutions and values. Despite these efforts, they still absorb vast amounts from the West in endless ways. For one, they need modern technology, especially its military and medical applications. For another, they themselves tend to be modern individuals, and so are far more imbued with Western ways than they wish to be or will ever acknowledge. Thus, while the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was more traditional than most Islamists, attempted to found a government on the pure principles of Shiite Islam, he ended up with a republic based on a constitution that represents a nation via the decisions of a parliament, which is in turn chosen through popular elections - every one of these a Western concept. Another example of Western influence is that Friday, which in Islam is not a day of rest but a day of congregation, is now the Muslim equivalent of a sabbath. Similarly, the laws of Islam do not apply to everyone living within a geographical territory but only to Muslims; Islamists, however, understand them as territorial in nature (as an Italian priest living in Sudan found out long ago, when he was flogged for possessing alcohol). Islamism thereby stealthily appropriates from the West while denying that it is doing so.

                      Perhaps the most important of these borrowings is the emulation of Western ideologies. The word "Islamism" is a useful and accurate one, for it indicates that this phenomenon is an "ism" comparable to other ideologies of the twentieth century. In fact, Islamism represents an Islamic-flavored version of the radical utopian ideas of our time, following Marxism-Leninism and fascism. It infuses a vast array of Western political and economic ideas within the religion of Islam. As an Islamist, a Muslim Brother from Egypt, puts it, "We are neither socialist nor capitalist, but Muslims"; a Muslim of old would have said, "We are neither Jews nor Christians, but Muslims."

                      Islamists see their adherence to Islam primarily as a form of political allegiance; hence, though usually pious Muslims, they need not be. Plenty of Islamists seem in fact to be rather impious. For instance, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, Ramzi Yousef, had a girlfriend while living in the Philippines and was "gallivanting around Manila's bars, strip-joints and karaoke clubs, flirting with women." From this and other suggestions of loose living, his biographer, Simon Reeve, finds "scant evidence to support any description of Yousef as a religious warrior." The FBI agent in charge of investigating Yousef concluded that, "He hid behind a cloak of Islam."

                      On a grander level, Ayatollah Khomeini hinted at the irrelevance of faith for Islamists in a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev early in 1989, as the Soviet Union was rapidly failing. The Iranian leader offered his own government as a model: "I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system." Khomeini here seemed to be suggesting that the Soviets should turn to the Islamist ideology - converting to Islam would almost seem to be an afterthought.

                      Contrary to its reputation, Islamism is not a way back; as a contemporary ideology it offers not a means to return to some old-fashioned way of life but a way of navigating the shoals of modernization. With few exceptions (notably, the Taliban in Afghanistan), Islamists are city dwellers trying to cope with the problems of modern urban life - not people of the countryside. Thus, the challenges facing career women figure prominently in Islamist discussions. What, for example, can a woman who must travel by crowded public transportation do to protect herself from groping? The Islamists have a ready reply: she should cover herself, body and face, and signal through the wearing of Islamic clothes that she is not approachable. More broadly, they offer an inclusive and alternative way of life for modern persons, one that rejects the whole complex of popular culture, consumerism and individualism in favor of a faith-based totalitarianism.

                      Deviations From Tradition

                      While Islamism is often seen as a form of traditional Islam, it is something profoundly different. Traditional Islam seeks to teach humans how to live in accord with God's will, whereas Islamism aspires to create a new order. The first is self-confident, the second deeply defensive. The one emphasizes individuals, the latter communities. The former is a personal credo, the latter a political ideology.

                      The distinction becomes sharpest when one compares the two sets of leaders. Traditionalists go through a static and lengthy course of learning in which they study a huge corpus of information and imbibe the Islamic verities much as their ancestors did centuries earlier. Their faith reflects more than a millennium of debate among scholars, jurists and theologians. Islamist leaders, by contrast, tend to be well educated in the sciences but not in Islam; in their early adulthood, they confront problems for which their modern learning has failed to prepare them, so they turn to Islam. In doing so they ignore nearly the entire corpus of Islamic learning and interpret the Koran as they see fit. As autodidacts, they dismiss the traditions and apply their own (modern) sensibilities to the ancient texts, leading to an oddly Protestant version of Islam.

                      The modern world frustrates and stymies traditional figures who, educated in old-fashioned subjects, have not studied European languages, spent time in the West, or mastered its secrets. For example, traditionalists rarely know how to exploit the radio, television and the Internet to spread their message. In contrast, Islamist leaders usually speak Western languages, often have lived abroad, and tend to be well versed in technology. The Internet has hundreds of Islamist sites. François Burgat and William Dowell note this contrast in their book, The Islamist Movement in North Africa (1993) :

                      The village elder, who is close to the religious establishment and knows little of Western culture (from which he refuses technology a priori) cannot be confused with the young science student who is more than able to deliver a criticism of Western values, with which he is familiar and from which he is able to appropriate certain dimensions. The traditionalist will reject television, afraid of the devastating modernism that it will bring; the Islamist calls for increasing the number of sets . . . once he has gained control of the broadcasts.

                      Most important from our perspective, traditionalists fear the West while Islamists are eager to challenge it. The late mufti of Saudi Arabia, 'Abd al-'Aziz Bin-Baz, exemplified the tremulous old guard. In the summer of 1995, he warned Saudi youth not to travel to the West for vacation because "there is a deadly poison in travelling to the land of the infidels and there are schemes by the enemies of Islam to lure Muslims away from their religion, to create doubts about their beliefs, and to spread sedition among them." He urged the young to spend their summers in the "safety" of the summer resorts in their own country.

                      Islamists are not completely impervious to the fear of these schemes and lures, but they have ambitions to tame the West, something they do not shy from announcing for the whole world to hear. The most crude simply want to kill Westerners. In a remarkable statement, a Tunisian convicted of setting off bombs in France in 1985-86, killing thirteen, told the judge handling his case, "I do not renounce my fight against the West which assassinated the Prophet Muhammad. . . . We Muslims should kill every last one of you [Westerners]." Others plan to expand Islam to Europe and America, using violence if necessary. An Amsterdam-based imam declared on a Turkish television program, "You must kill those who oppose Islam, the order of Islam or Allah, and His Prophet; hang or slaughter them after tying their hands and feet crosswise . . . as prescribed by the Shari'a." An Algerian terrorist group, the GIA, issued a communiqué in 1995 that showed the Eiffel Tower exploding and bristled with threats:

                      We are continuing with all our strength our steps of jihad and military attacks, and this time in the heart of France and its largest cities. . . . It's a pledge that [the French] will have no more sleep and no more leisure and Islam will enter France whether they like it or not.

                      The more moderate Islamists plan to use non-violent means to transform their host countries into Islamic states. For them, conversion is the key. One leading American Muslim thinker, Isma'il R. Al-Faruqi, put this sentiment rather poetically: "Nothing could be greater than this youthful, vigorous and rich continent [of North America] turning away from its past evil and marching forward under the banner of Allahu Akbar [God is great]."

                      This contrast not only implies that Islamism threatens the West in a way that the traditional faith does not, but it also suggests why traditional Muslims, who are often the first victims of Islamism, express contempt for the ideology. Thus, Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's Nobel Prize winner for literature, commented after being stabbed in the neck by an Islamist: "I pray to God to make the police victorious over terrorism and to purify Egypt from this evil, in defense of people, freedom, and Islam." Tujan Faysal, a female member of the Jordanian parliament, calls Islamism "one of the greatest dangers facing our society" and compares it to "a cancer" that "has to be surgically removed." Çevik Bir, one of the key figures in dispatching Turkey's Islamist government in 1997, flatly states that in his country, "Muslim fundamentalism remains public enemy number one." If Muslims feel this way, so can non-Muslims; being anti-Islamism in no way implies being anti-Islam.

                      Islamism in Practice

                      Like other radical ideologues, Islamists look to the state as the main vehicle for promoting their program. Indeed, given the impractical nature of their scheme, the levers of the state are critical to the realization of their aims. Toward this end, Islamists often lead political opposition parties (Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia) or have gained significant power (Lebanon, Pakistan, Malaysia). Their tactics are often murderous. In Algeria, an Islamist insurgency has led to some 70,000 deaths since 1992.

                      And when Islamists do take power, as in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan, the result is invariably a disaster. Economic decline begins immediately. Iran, where for two decades the standard of living has almost relentlessly declined, offers the most striking example of this. Personal rights are disregarded, as spectacularly shown by the re-establishment of chattel slavery in Sudan. Repression of women is an absolute requirement, a practice most dramatically on display in Afghanistan, where they have been excluded from schools and jobs.

                      An Islamist state is, almost by definition, a rogue state, not playing by any rules except those of expediency and power, a ruthless institution that causes misery at home and abroad. Islamists in power means that conflicts proliferate, society is militarized, arsenals grow, and terrorism becomes an instrument of state. It is no accident that Iran was engaged in the longest conventional war of the twentieth century (1980-88, against Iraq) and that both Sudan and Afghanistan are in the throes of decades-long civil wars, with no end in sight. Islamists repress moderate Muslims and treat non-Muslims as inferior specimens. Its apologists like to see in Islamism a force for democracy, but this ignores the key pattern that, as Martin Kramer points out, "Islamists are more likely to reach less militant positions because of their exclusion from power. . . . Weakness moderates Islamists." Power has the opposite effect.

                      Islamism has now been on the ascendant for more than a quarter century. Its many successes should not be understood, however, as evidence that it has widespread support. A reasonable estimate might find 10 percent of Muslims following the Islamist approach. Instead, the power that Islamists wield reflects their status as a highly dedicated, capable and well-organized minority. A little bit like cadres of the Communist Party, they make up for numbers with activism and purpose.

                      Islamists espouse deep antagonism toward non-Muslims in general, and Jews and Christians in particular. They despise the West both because of its huge cultural influence and because it is a traditional opponent - the old rival, Christendom, in a new guise. Some of them have learned to moderate their views so as not to upset Western audiences, but the disguise is thin and should deceive no one.

                      izvor: http://www.danielpipes.org/366/islam...h-and-ideology

                      Comment

                      • Soldier of Macedon
                        Senior Member
                        • Sep 2008
                        • 13670

                        As expected, both sides are blaming each other. If this was the work of the so-called 'liberation' movement in Syria, or their supporters, it has dealt a serious blow to their cause.


                        TWO suicide bombers have killed at least 55 people and wounded nearly 400 in Damascus in the deadliest attacks of the country's 14-month uprising.
                        The government and the opposition traded blame, with Syria's foreign ministry, in a letter to UN chief Ban Ki-moon hours after the attacks, saying they were the work of "terrorists" armed and funded by foreign organisations and media.

                        The blasts during morning rush hour left an apocalyptic scene of destruction and further put into question a UN-backed ceasefire that has failed to take hold since it went into effect on April 12.

                        Washington condemned the attacks as "reprehensible" while UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who brokered the truce, described them as "abhorrent".

                        Russia and China, both supporters of President Bashar al-Assad's embattled regime, called for a stop to the violence and urged all parties in Syria to cooperate with Mr Annan's peace plan.

                        State television aired gruesome footage of the aftermath of the twin explosions in the neighbourhood of Qazzaz, also blaming "terrorists", a term used by authorities to refer to rebels seeking to topple Assad's regime.

                        The television showed images of a woman's charred hand on a steering wheel, her gold bracelets dangling from her blackened wrist.

                        Other burnt and mangled bodies lay in the street amid the carcasses of smouldering vehicles and rubble.

                        "Is that the freedom you want? Students from schools and employees going to work are dead," shouted one man in the middle of the destruction.

                        The explosions took place on a main freeway in the south of Damascus, in front of a nine-storey security complex whose facade was heavily damaged while nearby residential buildings collapsed.

                        The interior ministry said the suicide attackers used a tonne of explosives, killing at least 55 people and wounding 372.

                        Emergency workers filled 15 bags with body parts, and that the blasts also destroyed around 200 cars, the ministry said.

                        "These crimes show that Syria is targeted by a terrorist attack launched by organisations armed and funded by parties who proclaim their backing to terrorist crimes," state news agency SANA quoted the foreign ministry as saying.

                        It also said 300 soldiers and members of the security forces had been killed since the putative ceasefire technically went into effect.

                        The opposition Syrian National Council accused Assad's regime of staging the bombings in a bid to undermine the UN observer mission and to impress upon the international community that the regime was battling "terrorists."

                        "This is the only way for the regime to claim that what is happening in Syria is the work of terrorist gangs and that al-Qaida is expanding its presence in Syria," said Samir Nashar, of the exile group's executive branch.

                        UN chief Mr Ban urged the Syrian government and opposition to "distance themselves" from indiscriminate bombings and terrorist acts, according to his spokesman Martin Nesirky.

                        The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the bombings targeted an intelligence base and killed 59 people, including civilians and security personnel.

                        The attacks came a day after UN observers monitoring the ceasefire escaped unharmed when a roadside bomb exploded as they were visiting the flashpoint southern city of Daraa. Ten Syrian troops escorting them were hurt.

                        "This is yet another example of the suffering brought upon the people of Syria," said Major General Robert Mood, chief of a UN observer mission, who visited the site of the explosions.

                        "We, the world community, are here with the Syrian people and I call on everyone within and outside Syria to help stop this violence," said General Mood.

                        In Geneva, Mr Annan said through his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi that he "condemns in the strongest possible terms the attacks that took place earlier today in Damascus."

                        "These abhorrent acts are unacceptable and the violence in Syria must stop," he added.

                        In Washington, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement: "Any and all violence that results in the indiscriminate killing and injury of civilians is reprehensible and cannot be justified."

                        Damascus has been the target of a number of bombs in the past few months.

                        Suicide bombers hit two security service bases in the capital on December 23, killing 44 people, in attacks the regime blamed on al-Qaida but which the opposition said were the work of the regime itself.

                        Mr Ban had warned on Wednesday of a "brief window" to avoid civil war and indicated the future of the ceasefire monitoring mission was in doubt.

                        Highlighting an "alarming upsurge" of roadside bombs, alongside government attacks, Mr Ban said in New York that both sides "must realise that we have a brief window to stop the violence, a brief opportunity to create an opening for political engagement between the government and those seeking change."

                        If the violence did not stop, Mr Ban said he feared "a full-scale civil war with catastrophic effects within Syria and across the region."

                        Elsewhere in the country yesterday, at least 14 people died in violence, including a child killed by army shelling in northwestern Idlib province, the Observatory said.

                        More than 12,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria since the revolt broke out in March last year, the Observatory calculates.
                        In the name of the blood and the sun, the dagger and the gun, Christ protect this soldier, a lion and a Macedonian.

                        Comment

                        • Onur
                          Senior Member
                          • Apr 2010
                          • 2389

                          There are no anti-Assad groups in the capital of Damascus, so why would Assad kill his own people with a suicide bomber? All the the so-called "freedom fighters" are from northern Syria, close to Turkish border and ofc most of them are Kurds.

                          Unfortunately their leaders are being kept in NATO base in Adana, southern Turkey and CIA orchestrates the terror from there as well as from Jordan at south. Our government denies this and says that only regular people of refugees are living in Hatay, southern Turkey but i don't believe that, no one believes that. Some journalists tried to enter NATO base in Adana but no one can get permission to enter the base since last year. They deny everyone. It`s obvious that something fishy going on in there.

                          Comment

                          • DraganOfStip
                            Senior Member
                            • Aug 2011
                            • 1253

                            Many religions in the world have their own radical supporters that misinterpret the words of God (whatever He's called in them) and do insane stuff in His name.There are many examples through history,but the story of islamism and anti-islam believers goes well back in the time of the crusades,some thousand years ago.Many,many people were killed in the efforts of taking ownership of the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem in the middle ages.So the opinion that Christianity\Islam is the enemy was embedded in the minds of Christians/Muslims in the generations that followed.However,the percentage of those radicals in their religion isn't that big.Labeling someone as an islamist just for being a Muslim is wrong.My wife's best friend since she was in kindergarten till this day is a Turkish girl.And she's such a sweet thing,has a great character and hasn't hurt a fly in her entire life.She comes to our house for Easter for 'egg cracking' and we go to hers during Bajram for an original Turkish baklava.And when I was in the army (and this was something like 1 and a half year after the conflict) there was just one Albanian guy in my barracks.He was someone you could trust the most there and a great friend to all of us,always willing to assist in any way,he was simply ONE OF US.However,any radical form of a religion,being Islam,Christianity or whatever,should be condemned and denied from the believers in question.
                            Last edited by DraganOfStip; 05-11-2012, 07:22 PM.
                            ”A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims... but accomplices”
                            ― George Orwell

                            Comment

                            • ProMKD
                              Member
                              • Oct 2011
                              • 367

                              If these people really believed that God supported their military campaigns across Europe or the world, they're completely insane, and that goes for any believer who thinks God would support any military takeover of another people/country/territory. Where in the bible or other religious book does it say that God loves it when people murder others for their own benefit?

                              Religion doesn't make people strong in the literal sense (not spiritual strength), it's people sticking together that makes a group of people strong. Right now, Christians don't stick together, and they are losing the global religious battle. Muslims are sticking together, thus they are multiplying like rabbits and believe they are superior because their numbers are growing. For some reason, people take this as an 'accomplishment' of some kind, as if breeding uncontrollably equals success or superiority. These people are out of control.
                              www.everythingmacedonia.com
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                              Comment

                              • DedoAleko
                                Member
                                • Jun 2009
                                • 969

                                US Military arrested Two Albanians in Iraq on Terrorism charges





                                Two Albanians from Tetovo were arrested by the US Military in Iraq back in 2006 on terrorism charges. Mak police became aware of this few months after their arrest, while the media was told... today!

                                Imran Ceka and Jusuf Alliu were arrested after bomb sniffing dogs at an Iraqi base became alarmed of the two upon entering the base. Both Ceka and Aliu were working for the Americans at the base, however used their breaks outside the base to aid and provide explosives to the enemy.
                                Once the dogs became alarmed, the US military quickly investigated the two and placed them in jail on terrorism charges.

                                Macedonian police has information that dozens of its citizens have been involved in fighting against NATO in both Afghanistan and iraq.

                                A local police chief had also stated there are local Albanians who have now gone to fight against the Syrian Government. These are former UCK and ANA fighters who for a fee are going into Kosovo camps where after short training sessions are transferred to Syria.

                                This information was widely reported by the world media. The Russian ambassador at the UN (Vitaly Curkin) had raised the alarm and confirmed Kosovo was the staging ground for militants who were sent to Syria."Turning Kosovo into an international terrorist camp is the most serious breach of international laws and destabilizing influence in the region and Europe as a whole" stated Curkin at the UN.


                                izvor: http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/21018/45/

                                p.s. I wasn't sure where to put this story,so...
                                Last edited by DedoAleko; 05-16-2012, 05:33 PM.

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