RUTHFULLY YOURS

Right now, with marches and fiery speeches, the Islamic Republic in Iran is marking the 38th anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and the holding of American diplomats as hostages for 444 days.

As the US Congress seeks new ways of tightening the screws on Iran, the Tehran leadership remains prisoner to old illusions. Most of those illusions are centered on the United States, which has frightened and fascinated the mullahs since they seized power almost 40 years ago.

The mullahs are frightened of the US because their view of history is shaped by their belief in conspiracy theories. They regard the US as a heavily-centralized diabolical machine controlled by a small coterie of conspirators, determined to rule the world. Internal political fights in the US are seen as part of a carefully scripted scenario to confuse the outside world.

According to one prominent mullah, President Donald Trump is “playing mad on advice from Henry Kissinger, with the aim of frightening the Muslims.” According to another leading mullah, even the duel between Trump and Hillary Clinton was “nothing but a show to confuse the world.”

At times, the US is depicted as “on the verge of destruction” because of its “lack of morality and deep-rooted corruption”. At other times, it is the “Great Satan”, as powerful and just as deadly as the diabolical personage depicted in scriptures.

For some mullahs, including Ayatollah Imami Kashani, hating the US is part of “true belief.” For others, for example Ayatollah Qara’ati, no prayer could be regarded as validated until it ends with “Death to America!” Every day, President Hassan Rouhani, a mid-ranking mullah, and all members of his Cabinet trample the US flag under feet before they enter their offices.

Since the mullahs seized power, hardly a day has passed without the Islamic Republic holding some US hostages. The raid on the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 is dubbed “The Second Revolution” and marked with government-sponsored marches and seminars, exhibitions and propaganda campaigns across the nation.

“As liberals we defend the freedom of the citizen,” Frank Elbe, FDP member and former German ambassador to Japan, Poland, India and Switzerland said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September. But, he added, “an individual can only enjoy his freedom if he lives in security.”

BERLIN–Germany’s antiterror posture is facing a shake-up as parties locked in talks about forming the country’s next government wrangle over how to balance a strong state and individual liberties.

The arrest this week of a 19-year-old Syrian man suspected of building a remote-controlled bomb in northern Germany was a stark reminder of how acute a threat Germany still faces even though it hasn’t had a large-scale attack for almost a year.

And this week’s atrocity in Manhattan, in which a suspected Islamist radical mowed down cyclists and pedestrians with a rented truck, underscored the near-impossible task authorities face in preventing crude yet devastating plots.

Security experts see Germany as particularly exposed because of the outgoing government’s decision to open the country’s doors to nearly two million asylum seekers—most of them undocumented—since 2015. Since then, security officials have attributed most terrorist attacks perpetrated in the country to recently arrived migrants.

But how much Berlin can harden its security stance in response to the mounting challenges is in the balance as the three parties that have pledged to try to form a coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel seek to reconcile their views. The talks began late last month and are expected to stretch for weeks.

After taking a liberal stance on immigration for years, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives now want stricter checks on immigration as well as tougher terror laws and more resources for police and justice. The party called during the campaign for another 15,000 police officers to be hired.

It also wants to centralize the work of the domestic intelligence agency, which is now largely under the authority of the federal states, to permit better coordination across government.

The pro-business Free Democratic Party, once highly suspicious of state surveillance of citizens, has moderated its stance somewhat after recent terrorist attacks, calling for greater powers for federal security agencies and more police. But the party could still oppose Conservative push for more broad-based surveillance techniques. The FDP would also like to make it easier for federal agencies to share information on suspects.

“As liberals we defend the freedom of the citizen,” Frank Elbe, FDP member and former German ambassador to Japan, Poland, India and Switzerland said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September. But, he added, “an individual can only enjoy his freedom if he lives in security.”

Germany’s security and intelligence agencies already face some of the most severe constraints on their prerogatives among Western democracies, a legacy of the country’s Communist and Nazi dictatorships. Germany’s 16 states have their own surveillance laws, making it difficult for security services to investigate terrorist cells operating across state borders.

Raphael Bossong, security expert at the German Institute for International and Security in Berlin said Germany needs to harmonize its security laws to allow for tighter surveillance, adding it is “only halfway along the road” to a unified approach to counterterrorism despite the acute threat. CONTINUE AT SITE

In “Reform Islam or Live the ‘New Normal’ Forever,” Roger Simon argues that Donald Trump’s often frustrated travel ban on problematic countries, though not illegal, is insufficient. “It’s only a meager beginning in dealing with a situation that has not changed in any real sense since 9/11, as the events in New York Tuesday testify. If we do not move even more seriously to prevent them, they will indeed become the ‘new normal.’ ” The violence, he continues, “will never be squelched until the ideology is defeated and reformed… We must all now be obnoxious, politically incorrect busybodies and get in Islam’s face, demanding reform in every way possible, economically, socially, theologically and, yes, militarily.”

This is a bravely unpopular stance to adopt vis à vis Islam that will surely be opposed and condemned by progressivists and offended Muslims. In fact, however, it does not go nearly far enough. Islam is a notoriously resistant and tentacular faith. I have long argued in book and article that Islam cannot be reformed. For starters, it features no single “pontifical” authority that could institute real change. Moreover, the canonical network is too intricate and too vast to admit of effective modification. Expurgating the Koran, were it even possible, is only the tip of the sand dune. The hundreds of thousands of Hadith would need to be reviewed and amended, as would the Sunnah and Sirah, the five schools of jurisprudence, Twelver Shia, centuries of ulemic literature, and the underlying cultural predispositions, beliefs, ideals, and orthodox practices that form the bedrock of 57 Muslim nations and the West’s Muslim populations.

Tightening immigration protocols, as Trump is valiantly trying to do, may be a welcome step in the right direction, but it cannot meaningfully address the problem of jihadist violence or creeping Islamization. Ilana Mercer reminds us that “Religion is The Risk Factor, not chaotic countries-of-origin… The data show that young, second-generation Muslims are well-represented among terrorists acting out almost weekly across the West.”

Trump’s initiative, then, would not have prevented truck-ramming Sayfullo Saipov, a legal Uzbek immigrant, from killing eight Americans; nor would it have prevented American Muslims, immigrant or native-born, such as the Fort Hood shooter, the San Bernardino couple, and the Orlando gay nightclub killer, from wreaking carnage and mayhem. The “new normal” will persist for the soldiers of Islam are already among us. Their agenda has been materially facilitated by a treasonable left-wing constituency and pandering political class in Europe and America, by the sentimental tolerance of current liberalism, and by the general ignorance of the tenets, doctrines and usages of Islam.

November 4, 2017 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews.org – Al Sabah is reporting that Bin Talal was arrested Sunday morning as part of a round-up of Saudi VIPs who were perceived by Crown Prince Mohammed to be potential bars to his being named the successor to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who at 81 is nearing the end of his reign.

“Bin Talal, Waleed Al Ibrahim, chairman of Middle East Broadcasting Center, and Sales Kamal, owner of television channel ART and founder of the Dallah al Baraka Group (DBHC), one of the Middle East’s largest conglomerates, were arrested along with Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, head of the National Guard and dozens of princes and former ministers in a new anti-corruption probe. Prince Miteb was once considered a contender for the throne. [source, Bin Talal Arested In Saudi Corruption Probe , Al Sabah]

Bin Talal in addition to being among the world’s richest businessmen, owns 5% of Twitter [the second highest stockholder] as well as having investments in other US entertainment enterprises including NewsCorp, the parent of Fox News and Time Warner. He conducts his business through Kingdom Holding Company.

We view Talal’s ownership of such a significant portion of NewsCorp’s stock to be one of the reasons why the network continues to push the ridiculous meme of lone-wolfism.

Equally troubling is the fact that Talal also founded the Georgetown Center for the Propagation of Jihad…err…Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

This means that John Esposito, one of academe’s most influential purveyors of disinformation regarding the threat posed by Islam, should rightly be seen as a bin Talal puppet.

As to the matter the lone woolf…

It has become the normative meme across Western journalism that Muslims in some manner or form become motivated to commit mass casualty attacks because of outside influences such as online “radicalization.”

However when consulting primary source materials, in this case ISIS’ very slickly produced online magazine, “Inspire,” two things become clear immediately.

“In Western countries, dawa aims both to convert non-Muslims to political Islam and to bring about more extreme views among existing Muslims. The ultimate goal of dawa is to destroy the political institutions of a free society and replace them with strict sharia.” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book, The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It.

The ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic state in the United States could hardly be much clearer. The pretense of caring for “diversity” and “inclusion” that ICNA displays on its public website cannot be characterized as anything other than an attempt at dissimulation, as is the stated goal of “establishing a place for Islam in America.”

If Western leadership is unable to fathom the danger posed by organizations such as Tablighi Jamaat, iERA and ICNA, and, according to critics, others such as CAIR and ISNA — let alone do something about it, instead of endlessly obsessing over “Islamophobia” — Qaradawi could be proven right.

While the West is preoccupied with fighting “hate speech”, “Islamophobia” and white supremacist groups, it appears more than willing to ignore the cultivation of Muslim hate speech and supremacist attitudes towards non-Muslims.

It is a cultivation that occurs especially in the process of dawa, the Muslim practice of Islamic outreach or proselytizing, the results of which seem to have been on show this week in a downtown New York terror attack. The terrorist, Sayfullo Saipov, originally from Uzbekistan, was apparently only radicalized after he moved to the United States. The mosque he attended in New Jersey had been under surveillance by the NYPD since 2005. A 2016 U.S.-commissioned report said Uzbek nationals were “most likely to radicalize while working as migrants abroad,” according to the U.S. State Department.

On the surface, dawa, or outreach — in person or online — appears to be a benign missionary activity, about converting non-Muslims. Legal in Western societies, it is allowed to proceed undisturbed by the media or government. Dawa generally attracts little attention, except when members of an outreach organization suddenly turn up in the headlines as full-fledged jihadists.

Politicians and the media in the West seem to prefer viewing Islam solely as a religion and not as a political system that, according to critics, seeks to impose its own laws and regulations, sharia, on the world.

According to the Somali-born Muslim dissident and author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, however, in her recent book, The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It:

“The term ‘dawa’ refers to activities carried out by Islamists to win adherents and enlist them in a campaign to impose sharia law on all societies. Dawa is not the Islamic equivalent of religious proselytizing, although it is often disguised as such… [It] includes proselytization, but extends beyond that. In Western countries, dawa aims both to convert non-Muslims to political Islam and to bring about more extreme views among existing Muslims. The ultimate goal of dawa is to destroy the political institutions of a free society and replace them with strict sharia.”