RUTHFULLY YOURS

Note from Janet Levy

As you probably know, the European press has been compromised for a very long time and typically refers to Muslims as “southerners” or “Asians” or nothing. Muslim-sounding names are purposely kept out of reports, wherever possible.

Also, with Islamic blasphemy laws in place in many countries, great care is exercised to avoid possible prosecution for “defaming” Muslims or Islam in any way. The many visible prosecutions of truth tellers has had a profound censoring effect on formerly free Europe. J.L.

The Islington assault has left a man, a woman and their two-year-old son with burns. Scotland Yard said “strong acid” was thrown at the group by an assailant.

Firefighters, who were among the first at the scene, used their hose to cool the victims’ burns. A Met Police spokesman said the man, aged 40, has suffered serious injuries.

They said: “The man’s injuries, whilst not believed to be life threatening, are being treated as life-changing.” Both adults suffered 15 per cent burns, while the child suffered burns to the face.

The mother and boys injuries are not as serious as those suffered by the father. All three are being kept in hospital. The incident occurred at around 1pm at the junction of Copenhagen Street with Caledonian Road.

“We have to accept that we are in a long war. That this has no easy answers.”

Georgetown University professor and terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman made this grim diagnosis while recently speaking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The institute’s presentation “Post Caliphate: The Future of the Salafi-Jihadi Movement” gave a distressingly sober examination of why victory over the world’s militant groups will not come any time soon.

Referencing the 2011 American SEAL killing of Osama bin Laden and the demise of other Al-Qaeda leaders, Hoffman pointed out that five years ago, that militant group was widely believed to be on the downward slope toward collapse. But last February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper spoke to the United State Committee on Armed Services and “painted a remarkably bleak and melancholy picture of a newly resurgent Al-Qaeda.” In a now-famous 1998 interview, bin Laden said that he welcomed “the opportunity of martyrdom, because I am completely confident that my death will produce thousands of more Osamas.” According a slide showing the number of Al-Qaeda affiliates currently operating across the globe from Nigeria to Indonesia, bin Laden’s dream may well have been realized.

According to Hoffman, the “conventional wisdom in recent years was also that [the Islamic State] would remain an entirely local phenomenon” in the Middle East. But ISIS attacks like the November 2015 event in Paris have disproved this thesis. Such miscalculations “should make us very sober about any conception that we have a good pulse on ISIS even today – much less that we truly understand the dynamics and the evolution of the broader jihadi movements.”

Hoffman warned against unfounded optimism, pointing out that the Islamic State’s expulsion from Iraq would not end the group’s widespread threat. According to his presentation, at a minimum, ISIS will go underground like Al-Qaeda did, using international terrorist strikes in particular to keep the organization vibrant. But many analysts “don’t consider one of the worst case scenarios,” he said, “and that is the potential for some sort of reconciliation between Al-Qaeda and ISIS.”

Militant groups like the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda don’t just disappear. They are continuously attempting to rejuvenate themselves. “These groups – for more than a decade and a half – have been able to withstand the greatest onslaught directed against terrorists in history, often by the most technologically advanced military in the history of mankind,” Hoffman said, pointing out that this phenomenon seems to confirm the jihadist belief in “their divinely-ordained struggle: that there will be travails; there will be setbacks. But that victory is still possible.”