CNN — Retired generals: Be afraid of ISIS

Blindsided: Did ISIS catch the U.S. by surprise?

By Michael Flynn, James Livingston and Michael Smith

Updated 10:22 PM ET, Sun April 26, 2015

Story highlights:

• Authors warn President Obama must be clear about radical Islam threat
• Al Qaeda still a looming threat, they say

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Medal of Honor recipient and retired Maj. Gen. James E. Livingston, USMC, and congressional counterterrorism adviser Michael S. Smith II are co-founders of the strategic advisory firm Kronos Advisory. The views expressed are solely the authors' own. 

Watch 'Blindsided: How ISIS shook the world', on CNN.

(CNN)  Be afraid -- be very afraid. This is the warning the world deserves to hear. Because the leader of the free world refuses to look with clear eyes at the chief security challenges of the 21st century: the fruits of radical Islam.

The results of the Obama White House's innovative efforts to make the world a better place can be accounted for in the ever-growing numbers of victims of radical Islam in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Not to mention here in the United States, Canada and Europe. Is it not a tragic irony that the Arab Spring-era policies of a Nobel Peace Prize recipient accommodated the transition of Syria into the world's newest jihad theater while leaving Libya a failed state and Yemen a failing state?

The Syrian jihad gave rise to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which now uses Syria as a rear operating base to support its jihad in Iraq, which could soon spill over into Jordan. Plus, Libya is now being used as a rear operating base by ISIS and other global jihadist elements striving to redraw the map of the Middle East, even as they plan attacks in Europe and North America.

Exposed: Decade-Old Plan to Create Islamic State — and Obama Helped

This is one of the key stories I missed during my sabbatical this past winter. Extremely important and quite an eye-opener. In places it is downright prophetic. A must read, including this concluding quote about the final phase of the plan:

"There is certainly no good reason to think Western leadership will stop the final phase from occurring: a unified, aggressive, expansionist, and eventually possibly even nuclear armed caliphate preparing to terrorize its neighbors on a grand scale — just like its historic predecessor did for centuries."

Exposed: Decade-Old Plan to Create Islamic State — and Obama Helped
by Raymond Ibrahim — November 6, 2014

Although the birth of the Islamic state and the herald of the caliphate are often regarded as some of 2014’s “big shockers,” they were foretold in striking detail and with an accurate timeline by an al-Qaeda insider nearly one decade ago.

On August 12, 2005, Spiegel Online International published an article titled “The Future of Terrorism: What al-Qaeda Really Wants.”  Written by Yassin Musharbash, the article was essentially a review of a book written by Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist with close access to al-Qaeda and its affiliates, including the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who pioneered the videotaping of beheadings “to strike terror into the hearts” of infidels (Koran 3:151).

As Hussein explained in the introduction of his book Al Zarqawi: Al Qaeda’s Second Generation: “I interviewed a whole range of al-Qaeda members with different ideologies to get an idea of how the war between the terrorists and Washington would develop in the future.”

And in fact the book details the master plan of al-Qaeda—in its “second generation” manifestation known as the “Islamic State” which follows much of Zarqawi’s modus operandi—to resurrect a caliphate.  This plan is sufficiently outlandish that Yassin Musharbash, the author of the Spiegel article reviewing Hussein’s book, repeatedly casts doubt on its feasibility.  Thus al-Qaeda’s plan is “proof both of the terrorists’ blindness as well as their brutal single-mindedness”; there is “no way” al-Qaeda can follow the plan “step by step”; “the idea that al-Qaeda could set up a caliphate in the entire Islamic world is absurd”; and the following “scenario should be judged skeptically.”

Yet it is all the more remarkable that much of this plan—especially those phases dismissed as infeasible by Musharbash (four and five)—have come to pass.

In what follows, I reproduce the seven phases of al-Qaeda’s master plan as presented in Musharbash’s nearly ten-year-old article (in bullet points and italics, bold for emphasis), with my commentary interspersed for context.  Phases four and five are of particular importance as they describe the goals for recent times, much of which have come to fruition according to plan.

FIGHTERS LEAVING AL QAEDA AFFILIATES TO JOIN ISLAMIC STATE

by Awr Hopkins, Breitbart News — August 12, 2014

Fighters in Yemen and Africa are leaving Al Qaeda affiliates to join Islamic State.

The news has U.S counterterrorism analysts concerned that Islamic State's ability to conquer lands, oil fields, and infrastructure in Syria and Iraq has served to make the group more appealing to fighters who want to be on the winning side.

According to The Washington Post, "the influx" of new fighters is also bad for another reason--it makes Islamic State that much stronger.

The ability of Islamic State to draw fighters away from Al Qaeda is confounding when you consider that the group wasn't even in existence until Mosul was conquered on June 10.

The Common Core of Islamic Terrorism is Islam, not al-Qa`ida

"The four Islamic Al-Qaida groups, and the other 34 Islamic non-AQ ones,  have not radically re-interpreted Islam—they have simply returned to Islam’s historical and standard expansionist jihad mode."

by Timothy R. Furnish, Mahdi Watch — May 20, 2014

Timothy R. Furnish holds a PhD in Islamic, African and World history and works as an author, analyst and consultant to the US military. His website is www.mahdiwatch.org and he is on Twitter as @occidentaljihad

Earlier tonight (May 20, 2014), a debate ensued on “Fox News Channel” between faux-moderate Juan Williams and Dr. George Will (as well as Dr. Charles Krauthammer) about the Obama Adminstration’s incessant attempts to differentiate between “core” and “non-core al-Qa`ida” [AQ], which have been going on for almost two years now.  (Nothing quite beats listening to a journalist lecture those more educated than him.) Then just a bit ago I ran across a news item on the Egyptian Muslim terrorist group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, “Supporters of the Holy House” [Jerusalem], describing how ABAM is threatening to move its jihad out of the Sinai and into Egypt's cities and towns to fry the Western evil of KFC (that’s Kentucky Fried Chicken to old Kentuckians like yours truly).   Here is ABAM’s logo:

The top slogan, to the right of the AK-47 barrel (nice banana clip, by the way), says “there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messnger”—the standard-issue flag of Islam going back to the 8th century AD Abbasids (as I blogged on just last week).  The circle, which contains a map of Eurasia and Africa and a Qur’an below them, is emblazoned with Arabic which reads “kill them until fitnah no longer exists, and only the religion of  those of Allah exists"--which is almost verbatim from [the Quran] Sura al-Baqarah [II]:193. ( The very bottom Arabic script is the group’s name.)  

ABAM is neither “core” nor “non-core” AQ—in fact, it’s not AQ at all.  But it is no less dangerous for that.  The same is true of the 34 other non-AQ Islamic terrorist groups on the current State Department list.  Taking orders or even cues from AQ leadership, or being an AQ “franchise,” is really irrelevant—because it is not AQ which creates the bitter mindset leading to Islamic terrorism; it is Islam itself, when a literal reading is applied to the Qur’an’s many jihad passages, the supporting Hadiths, and the historical example of Muhammad himself.  The four Islamic AQ groups, and the other 34 Islamic non-AQ ones,  have not radically re-interpreted Islam—they have simply returned to Islam’s historical and standard expansionist jihad mode, after some decades of such being suppressed by Western-inspired ideologies between about the end of World War II and 1979 (the year that marked the rise of the mujahidin to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Iranian theocratic revolution, and the abortive Mahdist coup in Saudi Arabia). 

A better differentiation of terrorist groups would be Fawaz Gerges’ one beween those aiming to attack the “near enemy” and those targetting the “far” one(s): Hamas, Hizbullah, Lashkar-e Taiba and Boko Haram at one point fell under the former category (going after local or regional “non-Islamic” rulers); while AQ was the quintessential latter one (skipping over Mubarak’s and Saddam’s dyed heads to go after the Great Satan itself—us).   But that distinction matters much less nowadays, as the Islamic ummah has increasingly come to see itself as a global one united against not just the encroachments, but the predatory attacks, of both Western secularism and Christianity, “Zionism,” Chinese Communism—and now, with Modi’s election in India, Hinduism; and, concomitantly, that Islamic terrorist groups are actually, for the most part, soldiers of Allah defending Islamdom.    

Again, note ABAM’s slogan: “kill them until fitnah no longer exists, and only the religion of those of Allah exists.”  Fitnah is plural for “civil/religious wars,”  as well as for the more nebulous "mischief." So the ones to be killed can be either “apostate” Muslims who engage in the former, or those who stir up problems for the ummah in the latter vein, behind the scences (likely Christians and Jews)—and probably both categories.   So while the name of the group bespeaks the urgency of conquering Jersualem for Islam, the clearly-expressed aim is Allah-sanctioned killing of all enemies.  That idea comes from Muhammad, not Bin Ladin or al-Zawahiri.   And almost the same ideology is expressed by most of the Islamic groups on State’s list.   The issue, then, is not whether an organization is “core” AQ—rather,  the degree to which it's core Islamic, and the degree to which the seeds of Allah and Muhammad have germinated.

[Addendum, as of May 21, 2014: I owe the idea for the title change, as well as the importance of the "mischief" aspect of fitna, to a certain good Canadian mathematician friend.]

Islamic Cleric From Dearborn Michigan Is a Top Online Figure for Jihadists in Syria

Dearbornistan continues its descent into a Muslim Enclave and Sharia Zone. For the backstory on how Dearborn police and local government trampled on the rights of Christian Americans, see this special summary at Answering Muslims.

by Sara Carter, The Blaze — May 5, 2014

Ahmad Jibril, a U.S.-based preacher with Arab roots, has emerged as an influential figure for jihadist fighters in Syria. (Image source: International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence)

An Islamic cleric in Dearborne [sic], Michigan, has emerged as an online leader for extremists in Syria, according to a London-based nonprofit institute studying the Syrian conflict.

Ahmad Jibril, who was released from prison in 2012 after serving time for fraud, began his online sermons just as Al Qaeda extremists began flooding into the civil war in Syria.

“When your brothers in Syria speak, everyone today needs to shut their mouth and listen, because they’re proving themselves to be real men,” Jibril said in one sermon just several weeks after his release.

But the sermons were just the beginning: Jibril has also released a number of videos and online comments that have made him an inspirational symbol for militants on the battlefields of Syria, according to the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence.

Patriarch John X of Antioch appeals to International Community

Renews appeal for release of Bishops Paul and John of Aleppo.

Pravmir — May 6, 2014

TEHRAN (FNA)- Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East John X Yazigi appealed to the international community for working to bring peace to Syria through dialogue and to combat the Takfiri. 

[The term "Takfiri" refers to so-called "extremist" Muslims such as al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, the ISIL, the Muslim Brotherhood, Boko Haram, who wage jihad against and seek to convert, subjugate or slaughter Christians, other non-Muslims, and those Muslims they consider to be apostates, such as  the Alawites of Syria.]

Patriarch Yazigi stressed during the opening session of ‘Civilizations at service of Humanity’ Conference held in the Bahraini capital of Manama that “Syria’s salvation can be met through openness to the other and the unity of the country’s land and common consciousness”, Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

The Blood-Spangled Banner of the Mahdi, Jabhat al-Nusra and Syria

Apocalyptic dreams motivate Syrian Jihadists

by Dr Timothy Furnish, MahdiWatch — April 27, 2014

The Lone Horseman of the Muslim Apocalypse does not come meekly, riding on a colt. 

My friend Charles Cameron, who blogs regularly on strategy and other high-brow issues at zenpundit, just recently pointed out that the major jihadist group in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, has yet again (on April 23, 2014) trumpeted its Islamic eschatological beliefs.  As per MEMRI:  

Jabhat al-Nusra cleric: “We are fighting the Safavid-Shiite alliance…and we are fighting the Zionist-Crusader alliance….Sami al-`Uraydi, senior JaN religious authority: “Thanks to Allah, the banner has been raised.  The first to raise the banner in this century was Sheikh Osama, may Allah accept him in Paradise. The banner passes from one lion to another, from one man to another, until it will reach Muhammad bin Abdullah, the Mahdi.  Allah willing, the banner will not be lost, until it has reached Muhammad bin Abdullah, the Mahdi. The age of great wars began with the 9/11 attacks” [emphasis added]. 

The Middle East Media Research Institute entitles this video clip translation “Al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra Conquers Military Post in the Syrian Golan, Commemmorates Bin Laden.”  A far more accurate appraisal would be “Major Sunni Jihadist Group Adduces the Mahdi.”

Seymour Hersh Unearths More Lies on Syria: Opposition Launched Sarin Attack

This reporting establishes a clear link to the 9/11/12 raid on our Benghazi compound, and reveals the Benghazi installation as a front for running U.S. weapons to al-Qaeda linked Syrian jihadists. Obama's support for the jihadist extremists in Syria includes tacit support for Turkey's schemes, including the use of chemical weapons last year.

The Red Line and the Rat Line
Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels

Il Faro Sul Mondo — April 7, 2014 — h/t Atlas Shrugs

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has a second fascinating essay that rewrites the official record of the sarin gas attack on Ghouta, near Damascus, in August last year. As usual, Hersh uses his sources in the US security establishment to throw light on what really took place. The bottom line: Turkey was almost certainly the party responsible for the attack, hoping it would force Obama to honour his threatened “red line” if Assad used chemical weapons. Was the Assad regime to be brought down by a US military campaign, Turkey assumed it would be able to turn Syria into a client state.

Like the earlier article, this one will probably gain very little attention. It is published in the obscure UK literary publication the London Review of Books. Presumably like last time, Hersh could not find a mainstream publication willing to take it – and I’m guessing that, like last time, these stunningly important revelations will be shunned by the liberal media. Instead, it will be consigned to the memory hole, along with so much other evidence of western crimes against humanity. Pundits and analysts will continue to tell us confidently that Assad carried out the Ghouta attack, oblivious to Hersh’s findings.

The reason the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian have been studiously ignoring Hersh’s investigations on this, it seems to me, is that they show the Obama administration’s foreign policy is just as criminal as the previous Bush White House’s.

Here is a summary of Hersh’s main findings:

* Obama’s sudden climb-down on his threatened military strike against Assad was in part forced on him by a chemical analysis of samples of the sarin used in Ghouta, which showed that its signature did not match that of the stockpiles held by the Assad regime.

* Despite US claims, the White House knew that the Syrian rebels had developed chemical weapons production facilities. UN investigators thought the Syrian opposition were the most likely culprits behind earlier chemical weapons attacks, in April and May 2013.

The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell.”

CHRISTIAN TOWN IN SYRIA ATTACKED BY ISLAMISTS; 80 DEAD, THOUSANDS DISPLACED

See also this article, documenting U.S. and Western involvement in the Kessab attack: NATO Wages Desperate Last Battle in Northern Syria

Once again, America is complicit in Islamic jihad attacks on defenseless Christian populations. America has the innocent blood on its hands. America is crucifying Christ all over again. Can America's judgment be far off?

CHRISTIAN TOWN IN SYRIA ATTACKED BY ISLAMISTS; 80 DEAD, THOUSANDS DISPLACED
Barnabas Fund — March 27, 2014

The population of a Christian town in north-west Syria was forced to flee when it was besieged by Islamist rebels; 80 people were killed, at least 13 of whom were beheaded, churches desecrated and homes looted. 

Militants from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, Sham al-Islam and Ansar al-Sham attacked Kessab on the Turkish border early on Friday 21 March.

Around 3,000 Armenian Christian residents fled for their lives, taking refuge in neighbouring Latakia and Bassit. Some are staying with relatives and friends, but the rest are sheltering in over-crowded church buildings.

Reports Cite 80 Dead in Kessab; Churches Desecrated

"In the last one hundred years, this is the third time that the Armenians are being forced to leave Kessab and in all three cases, Turkey is the aggressor or on the side of the aggressors.”

OCP Media — March 24, 2014

KESSAB, Syria–The Armenian populated villages of Kessab, Syria were the target of three days of brutal cross-border attacks from Turkey by al-Qaeda affiliated armed bands, which have cost 80 lives and forced the civilian population of the area to flee to neighboring hills, with many seeking safe-haven in the nearby cities of Latakia and Basit.

In a written statement, the Armenian National Committee—International, condemned the attacks and Turkey’s active role in aiding and abetting extremist groups in their targeted attacks against the Christian and minority populations in Syria. “For months, we have warned the international community of the imminent threat posed by extremist foreign fighters against the Christian minority population in Syria,” noted the ANC-I statement. “These vicious and unprompted attacks against the Armenian-populated town and villages of Kessab are the latest examples of this violence, actively encouraged by neighboring Turkey. We call upon all states with any influence in the Syrian conflict to use all available means to stop these attacks against the peaceful civilian population of Kessab, to allow them to return to their homes in safety and security. In the last one hundred years, this is the third time that the Armenians are being forced to leave Kessab and in all three cases, Turkey is the aggressor or on the side of the aggressors.”

According to news reports, the armed incursion began on Friday, March 21, 2014, at 5:45a.m., with rebels associated with Al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front, Sham al-Islam and Ansar al-Sham crossing the Turkish border and attacking the Armenian civilian population of Kessab. The attackers immediately seized two guard posts overlooking Kessab, including a strategic hill known as Observatory 45 and later took over the border crossing point with Turkey. Snipers targeted the civilian population and launched mortar attacks on the town and the surrounding villages.

CIA Chief: Jihad a Product of Injustices, Economics, and Ignorance

Here is another look at the defective view of Islamic supremacism and terrorism held by CIA Director John Brennan and the Obama administration.

by Raymond Ibrahim, March 13, 2014

CIA director John Brennan is at it again—equivocating over the nature of jihad by evoking paradigms familiar to the West.

Last Tuesday, “during an event at the Council of Foreign Relations, Brennan was asked about the ‘war of ideas’ surrounding Islam, which the questioner said many Americans tend to equate with violence.”

The CIA chief responded by saying that al-Qaeda’s ideology is “a perverse and very corrupt interpretation of the Qur’an”; that “al-Qaeda has hijacked” Islam; that “they have really distorted the teachings of Muhammad.”

Even so, “that ideology, that agenda of al-Qaeda,” confirmed Brennan, “has gained resonance and following in many parts of the world.”

So what is the CIA chief’s explanation as to why such a “perverse and very corrupt” understanding of Islam—one that has “distorted the teachings of Muhammad”— resonates among Muslims?

He gives none—other than to say that this ideology is “fed a lot of times by, you know, political repression, by economic, you know, disenfranchisement, by, you know, lack of education and ignorance, so there—there are a number of phenomena right now that I think are fueling the fires of, you know, this ideology.”

Interestingly, if you watch the video clip of Brennan talking, you will note that he only “you knows” in the above quotation (four times) and right before it, when he says that al-Qaeda has “distorted the teachings of Muhammad, you know, for violent purposes.”

The rest of his talk is relatively smooth.

Could Brennan be self-conscious of his own equivocations—hence all these stilted “you knows” in one sentence?

Could he be aware of the Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009?   It found that “Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.”

Raymond Ibrahim: 'The Double-Edged Sword of Jihad'

Another significant analysis, with some meaty historical context, from Raymond Ibrahim. Those familiar with the Old Testament will recognize in the perpetual warfare of Islam the prophecy concerning Ishmael and his descendants, the Muslims:

"He will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him." (Genesis 16:12)

The Double-Edged Sword of Jihad
by Raymond Ibrahim — March 13, 2014

Islamic nations are again learning that the jihad is a volatile instrument of war that can easily backfire on those who preach it; that “holy war” is hardly limited to fighting and subjugating “infidels”—whether the West in general, Israel in particular, or the millions of non-Muslim minorities under Islam—but can also be used to fight “apostates,” that is, Muslims accused of not being Islamic enough.

In an unprecedented move and following Egypt’s lead, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain recently withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar, largely due to its Al Jazeera propaganda network which, since the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been inciting chaos in the region.

According to a March 7 Reuters reports, “Saudi Arabia has formally designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, in a move that could increase pressure on Qatar whose backing for the group has sparked a row with fellow Gulf monarchies….  Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fuming over Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and resent the way Doha has sheltered influential cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, a critic of the Saudi authorities, and given him regular airtime on its pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera.”

Qaradawi, of course, has been an Al Jazeera mainstay for many years, regularly preaching jihad against Israel and other “infidels”—telling millions of Muslim viewers to “obey the prophet, even if he tells you to kill.”

Back then, Qaradawi was not a problem for the Gulf States.

However, since the Egyptian June 30 Revolution saw the ousting and subsequent banning of the Muslim Brotherhood, and ever since the Brotherhood’s supporters—chief among them Qaradawi, through his Al Jazeera program—have been inciting violence in the region, especially in Egypt and Syria, the jihad is spinning out of control; and the Gulf monarchs know that, if not contained and directed, it can easily reach them.

For if jihadis are fighting fellow Muslims in Egypt and Syria—under the accusation that they are not “true” Muslims—what is to stop them from targeting the Gulf monarchies in the same context?

March 11, 2004 – Muslims bomb Madrid train killing 191 and injuring more than 1,800

via Creeping Sharia — March 11, 2014

Click for slide show of images from the Madrid jihad terror attack.

via 2004 Madrid Train Bombings – History Commons

At about 7:40 a.m., four trains are bombed in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people and injuring about 1,800 more. These are not suicide bombings, but were set by cell phone timers. Basque separatists are initially blamed, but evidence later points to people loosely associated with al-Qaeda. It will later be reported that 34 out of the 40 main people suspected or arrested for involvement in the bombings were under surveillance in Spain prior to the bombings (see Shortly Before March 11, 2004). Most of the bombers had never been to any training camps. In 2006, Spanish investigators will announce that the bombings were inspired by al-Qaeda, but not ordered or funded by al-Qaeda’s leadership. Specifically, the bombers are said to have been inspired by a speech allegedly given by Osama bin Laden in October 2003 (see October 19, 2003). [New Yorker, 7/26/2004; Associated Press, 3/9/2006] However, there will also be evidence against this that will not be refuted. For instance, the investigators will claim that all the key participants are either dead or in jail, but a number of them remain free overseas.

More:

Hours later, police find a van with detonators and a cassette tape with verses from the Qur’an at a train station through which all of the trains had passed.

History Commons has extensive details on the pre-attack surveillance and failure to prevent the Madrid bombing.

June 2001: Spain Does Not Heed French Warning to Arrest Future Madrid Train Bomber

January 2003-March 10, 2004: Spanish Authorities Fail to Arrest Madrid Bombers Taking Part in Common Crimes

Ten years on, Spain is facing a different type of attack.

SYRIAN CHRISTIANS FORCED TO SUBMIT TO ISLAMIST RULERS

Al Qaeda openly applying Dhimma Contract in Syria, just like 7th century Muslim warlords.

This article does an excellent job of presenting the situation in an accurate fashion. The dhimma contract and jizya tax are explained, as are the three choices presented to the Christians by their Muslim captors. For an expanded and highly readable treatment of what all this means, with context spanning the centuries and all geographic areas where Islam has spread its dark rule, purchase and read Dr Mark Durie's book, The Third Choice, and Raymond Ibrahim's, Crucified Again.

REPORT: SYRIAN CHRISTIANS SUBMIT TO ISLAMIST RULERS
by Dr. Susan Berry, Breitbart News — Feb 27, 2014

Syrian Jihadists — Photo © Reuters

Christian leaders in Raqqa, Syria who had been captured by a former al-Qaeda affiliate, have signed a treaty this week that bans them from practicing Christianity in public in return for protection by Islamist rulers.

According to Elhanan Miller writing at The Times of Israel, the submission document, which displayed the stamp of al-Qaeda, was signed Sunday and distributed through Islamist Twitter accounts. The document states that the Christian community in the northern province of Raqqa, captured last March by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS), had been given three options: to convert to Islam; to remain Christian, but vow submission to Islam; or to “face the sword.”

Christian leaders reportedly chose the second alternative, which is known as “dhimmitude,” a reference to the Muslim ruler’s protection, or “dhimma,” in exchange for a tax known as “jizya” that must be paid by Christians and Jews living under Muslim sovereignty.

As The Times indicates, the document states the Christian leaders chose to sign the “dhimma” treaty over war because they received a commitment from local ISIL commander Ibrahim Al-Badri, also known as Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, that they would not be physically harmed or subjected to religious targeting.

PLO Official: Al-Qaeda To Target Lebanese Christians

By Jamie Dettmer — The Daily Beast via AINA — Feb 8, 2014

Foreign jihadists are recruiting among Lebanon's Palestinian camps and plan to start targeting Lebanese Christians with suicide bombings, according to a former top PLO official.

Al-Qaeda-affiliate jihadists are redoubling their recruitment in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and are likely to try to further fan sectarian tensions in the country by targeting Lebanese Christians in a suicide bombing campaign that until now has focused on Shia Muslims, warns a top Palestinian official.

Muslim Brotherhood Leader Meets Obama in White House

One would think that the United States and the UK might keep the Muslim Brotherhood at a safe distance if not prosecute and outlaw it completely, especially after it was re-criminalized by the Egyptian government following its repressive sharia experiment and its murderous persecution of Coptic Christians. But no, Obama, Cameron and the West's Islamophilic governments continue their support for Muslim terrorist organizations at the expense of Christians in the Islamic world, even when they have proven links to Al Qaeda.

Related:

• UK government: Muslim Brotherhood membership not proof of “extremism,” Brotherhood activists free to operate in UK.
• Exposed: The Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda Connection.

“Muslim Brotherhood Leader Meets Obama in White House” 

by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon — February 5, 2014

A senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood was recently hosted at the White House for a meeting with President Barack Obama, prompting an outcry from critics of the global Islamist organization.

Anas Altikriti, a top British lobbyist for the Muslim Brotherhood whose father heads Iraq’s Muslim Brotherhood party, recently met with the president and Vice President Joe Biden as part of a delegation discussing problems in Iraq.

Altikriti, whose work has also been tied to Hamas, can be seen smiling in photos published by the White House as he stands next to Iraqi Parliament Speaker Usama al-Nujaifi, who is pictured shaking hands with President Obama in the White House’s Roosevelt Room. The meeting was first highlighted by the blog Harry’s Place.

The Obama administration has been criticized its outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood, the international Islamist organization whose members’ brief reign in Egypt was supported by the White House.

Al-Qaeda: Defender of Christians?

Al Qaida chief's recent call for Muslims to "not seek war with Christians" hardly cause for hope.

by Raymond Ibrahim — February 4, 2014

Coptic monk shows charred remains of one of dozens churches burned in part thanks to Zawahiri’s incitements against Christians following June revolution that ousted former president Morsi.

Muslim persecution of Christians is the “Achilles Heel” of the global Islamic movement’s image—the surest way of exposing its supremacist and intolerant elements and one of the main reasons the major media and establishment rarely report or address it.

The logic (fully explained here) can be summarized as follows:

Islamic and jihadi attacks targeting the West or Israel pose no problem to the image of Islam.  No matter how violent or brutal, no matter how many Islamic slogans are shrieked—“Allah commands the subjugation of infidels!”—Muslim violence against the West and Israel will always be dismissed as desperate acts of disempowered, oppressed, and frustrated Muslims—the “underdogs,” which the West tends to romanticize.

And so they will always get a free pass, without further reflection.

But if jihadis get a free pass when their violence is directed against those stronger than them, how does one rationalize away their violence when it is directed against those weaker than them—in this case, the millions of Christians being persecuted today by Muslims across 41 nations?

This is the dilemma that none other than Ayman al-Zawahiri, chief of al-Qaeda, understands.

A new definition for al-Qaeda

By Katherine Zimmerman, Washington Post Opinion — h/t Act! for America

January 31, 2014

Katherine Zimmerman is a senior analyst at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project and authored the report “The al-Qaeda Network: A New Framework for Defining the Enemy.”

What exactly is al-Qaeda? And who cares? Confusion about how to define the terrorist group is rife. Was al-Qaeda involved in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, Libya , that left four Americans dead? The Obama administration says no. Are the groups proliferating around Africa and the Middle East really part of the al-Qaeda that toppled the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon?

There is no simple answer. Al-Qaeda is a global terrorist organization that relies on secrecy to survive. Even al-Qaeda members are confused about each other’s status: The leader of the group in Yemen had to ask his Algerian counterpart for clarification about Ansar al-Din’s relationship to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The covert nature of the network intentionally obscures many relationships.

Here’s the problem: According to recently declassified testimony of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the House Armed Services Committee in October, the U.S. military regards itself as legally barred from going after the perpetrators of the Benghazi attacks (and, presumably, others who attack Americans) unless they are affiliated with al-Qaeda. The Obama administration’s parsing of words to deny al-Qaeda’s direct involvement effectively precludes a military response in these situations.

But the United States can neither disrupt nor defend itself from an enemy it cannot define. Nor are we safer because of arbitrary definitions. The question demands an answer: What is al-Qaeda?

Al-Qaeda training British, European and American jihadists in Syria to set up jihad terror cells at home

A follow up to these reports of American and European Muslims traveling to Syria to wage jihad, establish an Islamic sharia state in the Levant, and cleanse the region of the last remnants of Christianity. And now they are targeting us. 

Related: Number of French citizens going to Syria to wage jihad has quadrupled since May 2013

Al-Qaeda training British, European and American jihadists in Syria to set up jihad terror cells at home
by Ruth Sherlock and Tom Whitehead for the Telegraph, Jan. 19, via JihadWatch

British people fighting in Syria are being trained as “jihadists” and then encouraged to return to the UK to launch attacks on home soil, an al-Qaeda defector and western security sources have told the Telegraph.

In a rare interview on Turkey’s border with Syria, the defector from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) said that recruits from Britain, Europe and the US were being indoctrinated in extremist anti-Western ideology, trained in how to make and detonate car bombs and suicide vests and sent home to start new terror cells.

From Syria to Stateside: New Al Qaeda Threat to US Homeland

by James Gordon Meek, ABC News, via ACT! for America
January 10, 2014

Seen in this image is "Abu Dujana al-Amriki," who identifies himself as an alleged al Qaeda fighter from the U.S. American officials have not been able to identify the young man and suspect the video could be part of an Assad regime hoax.

Dozens of people from the U.S. who fought in Syria have returned home and are under FBI surveillance, but American officials fear that they haven't identified all of them, several senior officials told ABC News in interviews beginning last October.

The senior officials said that more than 50 "U.S. persons" -- a designation that covers both natural-born and naturalized citizens as well as those who have lived in the U.S. -- have returned here after battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in the Middle Eastern nation's bloody civil war. One of the senior counter-terrorism officials went further, saying the actual number of returning U.S. fighters from Syria is classified but is "much higher" than 50.