C L O S E R

Protected: "België geen draaischijf voor moslimterroristen"

Posted on December 1st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

Enter your password to view comments.

Protected: “België geen draaischijf voor moslimterroristen”

Posted on December 1st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

Enter your password to view comments.

"Nog meer Belgische vrouwen klaar voor zelfmoordaanslag"

Posted on December 1st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

“Nog meer Belgische vrouwen klaar voor zelfmoordaanslag”

Er staan verscheidene echtgenotes van vermoedelijke moslimterroristen die in Belgische gevangenissen zitten opgesloten klaar om een zelfmoordaanslag te plegen in Marokko. Dat vertelde Mohamed Reha, een Belg van Marokkaanse afkomst die in november in Marokko werd opgepakt, aan de speurders die hem verhoorden.

Mohamed Reha studeerde in Syrië aan een koranschool maar werd in juni 2005, op zijn achttiende, uit dat land gezet en kwam terug naar België. Daar zou hij door de echtgenote van een zekere Rachid Iba zijn opgebeld. “Ze vroeg me om naar Brussel te komen. We spraken af in een station”, zo vertelde hij aan de Marokkaanse politie. “Ze vertelde me dat vele moslimvrouwen, van wie de mannen aangehouden zijn in België, om het even wat willen doen in het kader van de jihad, de heilige oorlog.”

Explosieven bezorgen
“Ze vroeg me om hen te helpen door iemand te zoeken om hen te begeleiden en hen explosieven te bezorgen”, gaat hij verder. Hij benadrukt dat het hele gesprek gevoerd werd via kleine briefjes. Reha bekende dat hij de vrouw had beloofd om al het mogelijke te doen opdat ze in hun opzet zouden slagen.

Mohamed Reha bracht de Algerijn Khalid Abou Bassir, volgens hem de coördinator van al-Qaida in Europa, op de hoogte van de plannen en meldde aan Rachid Iba dat de leider van de kamikazes deze Abou Bassir werd. Reha trok daarop naar Nederland waar hij Samir Azzouz ontmoette. Deze laatste werd door het hof van beroep in Den Haag vrijgesproken.

Kamikazes aangeboden
Azzouz stelde Reha voor om mee te werken aan een zelfmoordaanslag tegen de Nederlandse inlichtingendiensten. Mohamed Reha biedt meteen de kamikazes aan maar Azzouz weigert, hij wil mannen voor deze daad.

Op 28 september vertrekt Reha naar Marokko waar hij in november samen met 16 anderen wordt opgepakt. Ze worden verdacht van aanslagen te hebben willen plegen tegen Amerikaanse en Israëlische instellingen in Marokko.

0 comments.

“Nog meer Belgische vrouwen klaar voor zelfmoordaanslag”

Posted on December 1st, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

“Nog meer Belgische vrouwen klaar voor zelfmoordaanslag”

Er staan verscheidene echtgenotes van vermoedelijke moslimterroristen die in Belgische gevangenissen zitten opgesloten klaar om een zelfmoordaanslag te plegen in Marokko. Dat vertelde Mohamed Reha, een Belg van Marokkaanse afkomst die in november in Marokko werd opgepakt, aan de speurders die hem verhoorden.

Mohamed Reha studeerde in Syrië aan een koranschool maar werd in juni 2005, op zijn achttiende, uit dat land gezet en kwam terug naar België. Daar zou hij door de echtgenote van een zekere Rachid Iba zijn opgebeld. “Ze vroeg me om naar Brussel te komen. We spraken af in een station”, zo vertelde hij aan de Marokkaanse politie. “Ze vertelde me dat vele moslimvrouwen, van wie de mannen aangehouden zijn in België, om het even wat willen doen in het kader van de jihad, de heilige oorlog.”

Explosieven bezorgen
“Ze vroeg me om hen te helpen door iemand te zoeken om hen te begeleiden en hen explosieven te bezorgen”, gaat hij verder. Hij benadrukt dat het hele gesprek gevoerd werd via kleine briefjes. Reha bekende dat hij de vrouw had beloofd om al het mogelijke te doen opdat ze in hun opzet zouden slagen.

Mohamed Reha bracht de Algerijn Khalid Abou Bassir, volgens hem de coördinator van al-Qaida in Europa, op de hoogte van de plannen en meldde aan Rachid Iba dat de leider van de kamikazes deze Abou Bassir werd. Reha trok daarop naar Nederland waar hij Samir Azzouz ontmoette. Deze laatste werd door het hof van beroep in Den Haag vrijgesproken.

Kamikazes aangeboden
Azzouz stelde Reha voor om mee te werken aan een zelfmoordaanslag tegen de Nederlandse inlichtingendiensten. Mohamed Reha biedt meteen de kamikazes aan maar Azzouz weigert, hij wil mannen voor deze daad.

Op 28 september vertrekt Reha naar Marokko waar hij in november samen met 16 anderen wordt opgepakt. Ze worden verdacht van aanslagen te hebben willen plegen tegen Amerikaanse en Israëlische instellingen in Marokko.

0 comments.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK suicide bomber family cleared

Posted on November 29th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK suicide bomber family cleared

The relatives of a would-be suicide bomber have been cleared of failing to disclose information about terrorism.

An Old Bailey jury decided the brother and sister of Omar Sharif had not known of his plan to attack an Israeli bar and could not have prevented it.

His sister Parveen Sharif, a teacher, was also cleared of inciting her brother to commit a terrorist act.

The body of Sharif, 27, of Derby, was found 12 days after he fled the scene. An accomplice’s bomb killed three.

Asif Hanif, 21, a student from London, died when he blew himself up outside a popular bar in Tel Aviv in April 2003. The explosion at Mike’s Place killed three people and injured more than 50.

Emails in full
(more…)

0 comments.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK suicide bomber family cleared

Posted on November 29th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK suicide bomber family cleared

The relatives of a would-be suicide bomber have been cleared of failing to disclose information about terrorism.

An Old Bailey jury decided the brother and sister of Omar Sharif had not known of his plan to attack an Israeli bar and could not have prevented it.

His sister Parveen Sharif, a teacher, was also cleared of inciting her brother to commit a terrorist act.

The body of Sharif, 27, of Derby, was found 12 days after he fled the scene. An accomplice’s bomb killed three.

Asif Hanif, 21, a student from London, died when he blew himself up outside a popular bar in Tel Aviv in April 2003. The explosion at Mike’s Place killed three people and injured more than 50.

Emails in full
(more…)

0 comments.

Protected: Elsevier.nl – Spaanse terreurcel had banden met Nederland

Posted on November 26th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

Enter your password to view comments.

Telegraph | Opinion | Listen to the word on the 'Arab street'

Posted on November 25th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism.

Telegraph | Opinion | Listen to the word on the ‘Arab street’

On Friday, the allegedly explosive “Arab street” finally exploded, in the largest demonstration against al-Qa’eda or its affiliates seen in the Middle East. “Zarqawi,” shouted 200,000 Jordanians, “from Amman we say to you, you are a coward!” Also “the enemy of Allah” – which, for a jihadist, isn’t what they call on Broadway a money review.

So, just as things are looking up on the distant, eastern front, they’re wobbling badly on the home front. Anti-Bush Continentals who would welcome a perceived American defeat in Iraq ought to remember the third front in this war: Europe is both a home front and a foreign battleground – as the Dutch have learnt, watching the land of the bicycling Queen transformed into 24-hour armed security for even minor municipal officials. In this war, for Europeans the faraway country of which they know little turns out to be their own. Much as the Guardian and Le Monde would enjoy it, an America that turns its back on the world is the last thing you need.

0 comments.

Telegraph | Opinion | Listen to the word on the ‘Arab street’

Posted on November 25th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism.

Telegraph | Opinion | Listen to the word on the ‘Arab street’

On Friday, the allegedly explosive “Arab street” finally exploded, in the largest demonstration against al-Qa’eda or its affiliates seen in the Middle East. “Zarqawi,” shouted 200,000 Jordanians, “from Amman we say to you, you are a coward!” Also “the enemy of Allah” – which, for a jihadist, isn’t what they call on Broadway a money review.

So, just as things are looking up on the distant, eastern front, they’re wobbling badly on the home front. Anti-Bush Continentals who would welcome a perceived American defeat in Iraq ought to remember the third front in this war: Europe is both a home front and a foreign battleground – as the Dutch have learnt, watching the land of the bicycling Queen transformed into 24-hour armed security for even minor municipal officials. In this war, for Europeans the faraway country of which they know little turns out to be their own. Much as the Guardian and Le Monde would enjoy it, an America that turns its back on the world is the last thing you need.

0 comments.

Asia Times Online :: Myths and madrassas

Posted on November 24th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Young Muslims.

Asia Times Online :: Myths and madrassas

By William Dalrymple

Earlier published in the NY Review of books.

Since the revelations that three of the four future British Muslim suicide bombers visited Pakistan in the year preceding the July 7 attack, the British media have been quick to follow the US line on madrassas, with the Sunday Telegraph helpfully translating the Arabic word madrassa as terrorist “training school” (it actually means merely “place of education”), while the Daily Mirror confidently asserted over a double-page spread that the three bombers had all enrolled at Pakistani “terror schools”.

In actual fact, it is still uncertain whether the three bombers visited any madrassas while they were in Pakistan: madrassas only entered the debate because the bombers told their families they were going to Pakistan to pursue religious studies, just as they told them they were going to a religious conference when they set off to bomb London.

Just as there are some yeshivas in settlements on the West Bank that have a reputation for violence against Palestinians, and Serbian monasteries that sheltered war criminals following the truce in Bosnia, so it is estimated that as many as 15% of Pakistan’s madrassas preach violent jihad, while a few have been said to provide covert military training. Madrassa students took part in the Afghan and Kashmir jihads, and have been repeatedly implicated in acts of sectarian violence, especially against the Shi’ite minority in Karachi.

Indeed, a number of recent studies have emphasized that there is a fundamental distinction to be made between madrassa graduates – who tend to be pious villagers from impoverished economic backgrounds, possessing little technical sophistication – and the sort of middle-class, politically literate global Salafi jihadis who plan al-Qaeda operations around the world. Most of these turn out to have secular and technical backgrounds. Neither Osama bin Laden nor any of the men who carried out the Islamist assaults on America or Britain were trained in a madrassa or was a qualified alim, or cleric.

It is true that there are several examples of radical madrassa graduates who have become involved with al-Qaeda: Maulana Masood Azhar, for example, leader of the jihadi group called Jaish-e-Muhammad and an associate of bin Laden, originally studied in the ultra-militant Binori Town madrassa in Karachi. A madrassa dropout took part in last year’s bombing of Musharraf’s convoy. In Indonesia, the Bali bombings were the work of the Lashkar-i-Jihad group, which partially emerged from a group of Salafi madrassas in Indonesia.

By and large, however, madrassa students simply do not have the technical expertise necessary to carry out the kind of sophisticated attacks we have recently seen led by al-Qaeda. Instead the concerns of most madrassa graduates remain more traditional: the correct fulfillment of rituals, how to wash correctly before prayers, and the proper length to grow a beard. All these matters are part of the curriculum of Koranic studies in the madrassas. The graduates are also interested in opposing what they see as unIslamic practices such as worshiping at saints’ graves or attending the Shi’ite laments called marsiyas, for the death of the Prophet’s son-in-law Ali at the battle of Kerbala.

(more…)

0 comments.

MediaMonitors.net – Zarqawi’s message hitting home in Arab World – Media Monitors Network (MMN)

Posted on November 21st, 2005 by .
Categories: Internal Debates, International Terrorism.

Home / Headlines / Zarqawi’s message hitting home in Arab World – Media Monitors Network (MMN)

by Ray Hanania

Everyone in the Arab World is denouncing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his attacks against the people of Jordan these days.

It’s politically correct, even though suicide bombings happen elsewhere and no one says a word, especially when the victims are civilians in Israel.

The truth is Zarqawi has a fundamental core base of support in the Arab World, despite the harsh attacks, the strong words of denunciation, and the tragedy Zarqawi brought on his own people – he’s Jordanian and most of the victims of the triple suicide bombings were Arab and Muslim.

And, if we want to win the “War on Terrorism,” we had better wake-up.

Yet, deep down, most Arabs and Muslims will forgive Zarqawi, mainly because his attacks are striking home.

For example, many Arabs are wondering out loud why Jordan’s King Abdullah, who claims to be the voice of freedom and Democracy in the Middle East, continues to remain silent as Israel reeks havoc on the Palestinian civilian population.

Israel’s continued abuses of Palestinian rights are outrageous. Yes, Israel has a right to fight the terrorists, but they have no right to destroy the lives of innocent family members who are related to suicide bombers.

And it’s not just in Palestine.

What about in Iraq, where more and more we learn about torture and violations of human rights?

The alleged purpose of the war in Iraq was to free the Iraqi people. They’re not free. They’re living in a Hell, imprisoned under a new dictatorship that is different only from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny by the fact that the Americans are better are “spinning” their actions.

How else can you explain the outrageous decision by the United States to avoid applying the fundamental basic rights of the Fourth Geneva Conventions to Arab prisoners?

Americans should remember that how we mistreat our prisoners will be exactly how other will mistreat our soldiers when they become prisoners.

Why isn’t King Abdullah talking about all this?

Why isn’t that other “Democratic” leader, Egypt’s President Husni Mubarak also denouncing American atrocities in Iraq or Israel’s continued violation of Palestinian rights in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Eact Jerusalem?

The Arab and Muslim “street” recognizes that Zarqawi is the only person who is championing the rights of the downtrodden. He is the only one who is speaking out against the injustices. He is the only one doing something to fight back.

They know that war is about violence and death, and they are learning from Israeli and the American policies that innocent people are killed and brushed aside all the time without anyone complaining.

So while they are outraged at the death of innocent Arabs and civilians in Amman, Jordan, they also are asking themselves quietly why they should be outraged when the American and Israeli publics are not outraged at all by their own governments’ abuses?

0 comments.

MediaMonitors.net – Zarqawi's message hitting home in Arab World – Media Monitors Network (MMN)

Posted on November 21st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Internal Debates, International Terrorism.

Home / Headlines / Zarqawi’s message hitting home in Arab World – Media Monitors Network (MMN)

by Ray Hanania

Everyone in the Arab World is denouncing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his attacks against the people of Jordan these days.

It’s politically correct, even though suicide bombings happen elsewhere and no one says a word, especially when the victims are civilians in Israel.

The truth is Zarqawi has a fundamental core base of support in the Arab World, despite the harsh attacks, the strong words of denunciation, and the tragedy Zarqawi brought on his own people – he’s Jordanian and most of the victims of the triple suicide bombings were Arab and Muslim.

And, if we want to win the “War on Terrorism,” we had better wake-up.

Yet, deep down, most Arabs and Muslims will forgive Zarqawi, mainly because his attacks are striking home.

For example, many Arabs are wondering out loud why Jordan’s King Abdullah, who claims to be the voice of freedom and Democracy in the Middle East, continues to remain silent as Israel reeks havoc on the Palestinian civilian population.

Israel’s continued abuses of Palestinian rights are outrageous. Yes, Israel has a right to fight the terrorists, but they have no right to destroy the lives of innocent family members who are related to suicide bombers.

And it’s not just in Palestine.

What about in Iraq, where more and more we learn about torture and violations of human rights?

The alleged purpose of the war in Iraq was to free the Iraqi people. They’re not free. They’re living in a Hell, imprisoned under a new dictatorship that is different only from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny by the fact that the Americans are better are “spinning” their actions.

How else can you explain the outrageous decision by the United States to avoid applying the fundamental basic rights of the Fourth Geneva Conventions to Arab prisoners?

Americans should remember that how we mistreat our prisoners will be exactly how other will mistreat our soldiers when they become prisoners.

Why isn’t King Abdullah talking about all this?

Why isn’t that other “Democratic” leader, Egypt’s President Husni Mubarak also denouncing American atrocities in Iraq or Israel’s continued violation of Palestinian rights in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Eact Jerusalem?

The Arab and Muslim “street” recognizes that Zarqawi is the only person who is championing the rights of the downtrodden. He is the only one who is speaking out against the injustices. He is the only one doing something to fight back.

They know that war is about violence and death, and they are learning from Israeli and the American policies that innocent people are killed and brushed aside all the time without anyone complaining.

So while they are outraged at the death of innocent Arabs and civilians in Amman, Jordan, they also are asking themselves quietly why they should be outraged when the American and Israeli publics are not outraged at all by their own governments’ abuses?

0 comments.

Taipei Times – Bin Laden in his own words

Posted on November 21st, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism.

Bin Laden in his own words

`Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden’ give us a clearer idea of the man behind the image and al-Qaeda

There he (probably) squats, the most wanted man in the world. His world is a cave in the Hindu Kush or the badlands of Baluchistan. His life is constant flight. Maybe, because we’ve heard nothing from him for nearly a year now, he is wounded, cornered or dead. Maybe his famously loose network is unravel-ling faster than we think. Osama bin Laden, after all, is a turbaned crackpot, a mad mullah, an evil monster. Isn’t he?

Alas for such simplicities. If you read the texts of what he’s said and justified over the last decade, if you put aside soundbites and White House mantras, then any persuasive answer emerges cloaked in complexity.

Here, with a shrewd, scholarly introduction from Bruce Lawrence, is the complete bin Laden reader, from his early days when the House of Saud was enemy number one to his final advice to US President George W. Bush, John Kerry and America’s voters on the right way to win an election. It is full of brusque, slightly surprising judgments: “Saddam Hussein is a thief and an apostate.” He can sometimes turn a neat, almost humorous phrase. Bush has declared, a “Crusade attack” and the odd thing about this is that he has “taken the words right out of our mouth.” Most strikingly, it deals in facts and assertions that can’t easily be brushed aside.

Bin Laden, guerrilla warrior against the Russians in Afghanistan, campaigner against Riyadh sleaze, fulminating opponent of American influence in his region and implacable foe of Ariel Sharon (if he “is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace”), is not some random icon to the backstreets of Baghdad and Damascus.

He is formidable, an image, a force. If you’re looking for a British parallel, though their policies have nothing in common, the politician he most reminds me of is radical former Labour minister Tony Benn, convincing as always about a golden past that has been betrayed, unveiling statistical amazements and historical myths with equal facility, always seeming safe within a cocoon of certitude.

Could bin Laden, like so many terrorists before him, be drawn into some kind of deal?

It’s impossible, not because the man himself couldn’t wheel and deal (if you chart his varying degrees of denial over 9/11 or Dar or Nairobi, you see a trimmer in a jam, a negotiator in search of a bargain), but because he has nothing to offer his foes.

You might just construct a “peace plan” where the Riyadh regime changed, Israel was pinned back to its earliest borders and the US army went home, but nobody who matters would be interested. This is a fight to the end, Osama’s end. The only real question is how his legend will live.

The problem, as Lawrence says, is that bin Laden has no vision of the society he would wish to create, apart from a few thin riffs on Mullah Omar’s Afghanistan.

He merely wants to blow the house down or up. His is a “narrow, limited creed.” The lads who flock to his banner would soon grow restless if they had to live in Osamaland on “scriptural dictates, poetic transports and binary prescriptions.”

0 comments.

NY Times: From Tapes, a Chilling Voice of Islamic Radicalism in Europe – New York Times

Posted on November 19th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

From Tapes, a Chilling Voice of Islamic Radicalism in Europe – New York Times

Playing an Internet video one evening last year, an Egyptian radical living in Milan reveled as the head of an American, Nicholas Berg, was sawed off by his Iraqi captors.

“Go to hell, enemy of God!” shouted the man, Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, as Mr. Berg’s screams were broadcast. “Kill him! Kill him! Yes, like that! Cut his throat properly. Cut his head off! If I had been there, I would have burned him to make him already feel what hell was like. Cut off his head! God is great! God is great!”

Yahia Ragheh, the Egyptian would-be suicide bomber sitting by Mr. Ahmed’s side, clearly felt uncomfortable.

“Isn’t it a sin?” he asked.

“Who said that?” Mr. Ahmed shot back. “It is never a sin!” He added: “We hope that even their parents will come to the same end. Dogs, all of them, all of them. You simply need to be convinced when you make the decision.”

Unconvinced, Mr. Ragheh replied: “I think that it is a sin. I simply think it is a sin.”

The blunt exchange is contained in an 182-page official Italian police report that has not been made public, but is widely available in court circles and frames the judicial case against the two men. “The Madrid attack was my project, and those who died as martyrs were my dearest friends,” Mr. Ahmed boasted in one intercepted conversation.

Ahmed seems to be some kind of cameleon:

A onetime house painter who was able to take on new identities, hopscotch across Europe and dodge the police who had him on their watch lists, Mr. Ahmed is believed to have links to radicals in France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Saudi Arabia. The police report calls him a recruiter of suicide bombers for Iraq and at least one other terrorist operation, probably in Europe. For the Italians, Mr. Ahmed is emblematic of the new enemy in their midst.

War, terrorism and death are very popular among the two as was the case with the so called Hofstadgroup:

The attraction to death was a constant feature. One evening, Mr. Ahmed opened a file named, “Allah has said that each person has tasted death,” with links to subjects like “death is easy” and “the tomb.”

A song Mr. Ahmed listened to one weekend went: “We are terrorists, we want to make it known to the world, from West to East that we are terrorists, because terrorism, as a verse of the Koran says, is a thing approved by God.”

The sites are filled not only with calls for the destruction of Israel but also raw anti-Semitism. In one question-and-answer session with a Saudi sheik who is asked what suicide operations against Jews are allowed under Islamic law, the sheik responds that Jews are “vile and despicable beings, full of defects and wickedness.” God, he added, “has ordered us to wage war against them.”

They have enough plans or should I say hope?

On May 24, 2004, Mr. Ahmed discussed an “operation” that had started four days before with a would-be suicide bomber living in Belgium named Mourad Chabarou. Mr. Chabarou said he would be “completely ready” in 25 days, and the two men planned to meet in Paris.

Then came a conversation that struck closer to home. “Rome, we are entering Rome, Rome, if God wishes we are entering, even entering Rome,” Mr. Ahmed told Mr. Ragheh, the other potential suicide bomber, as if in a trance. “Rome, Rome, we are opening Rome with those from Holland. Rome, Rome, if God wishes, Rome is opening. It will be. It will be.”

Does he have some doubts about God?

In a holding cell shortly after his arrest, he worried aloud to Mr. Ragheh that the police “will find the pages I downloaded.”

He displayed none of the serenity he tried to impose on his disciples. He cursed whoever betrayed him to the police and predicted he would spend at least 30 years in prison.

“Things here are strange, they are strange, strange,” he confided to a friend. “I do not understand a thing.”

The friend tried to comfort him, saying: “Why do you torture yourself in this way? Leave everything in the hands of God.”

But Mr. Ahmed seemed inconsolable, adding later in the conversation, “Believe me, I swear to you, I’ve had this feeling before and I haven’t heard the voice of God.”

0 comments.

Independent Online Edition > London bomber’s westernised youth

Posted on November 18th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Independent Online Edition > Crime
Documentary reveals London bomber’s westernised youth

The suspected ringleader of the 7 July bombings spent years trying to shake off his Pakistani-Muslim identity, and tried to present himself as westernised, according to a BBC documentary.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, known as Sid, dreamed of going to America, displayed minimal interest in Islam and was “very English”, according to friends interviewed for the programme.

Khan was ostracised by his family after marrying a Hindu woman, Hasina. Friends also told the documentary-makers that Khan showed no interest in attending a mosque.

Rob Cardiss, a school friend, told last night’s radio documentary Biography of a Bomber that Khan “seemed to have more white friends than Asian friends [and] … used to hang around with white lads playing football.”

Mr Cardiss said: “He was very English. Some of the other Pakistani guys used to talk about Muslim suffering around the world but with Sidique you’d never really know what religion he was from.”

Khan’s one-time best friend talked about how Khan’s marriage to Hasina affected him. “His family wanted nothing to do with him after that,” he friend. “How can someone prepared to go through all that explode a bomb in the name of Islam?” he asked.

Khan’s rapid radicalisation came in adulthood, when he became friendly with a group of radicals from Leeds and Huddersfield, west Yorkshire, the associates suggest. In the months before Khan detonated the Edgware Road bomb, killing himself and six others, the group often watched violent videos depicting Muslim suffering around the world and went on paintballing trips immediately afterwards.

A member of the group said: “Looking back on it now, I do find it a bit weird that we had such a viewing. I can see why some youth would be affected by this – they get fired up, they get stirred up – and having the airing of that video might not have been in the best interests of certain people.”

Other Yorkshire Muslims say Khan’s tight-knit group inveigled their way into the youth community by helping Muslims off alcohol and drug addiction. Germaine Lindsay, the King’s Cross bomber, and Shahzad Tanweer, the Aldgate bomber, are also thought to have joined the group.

Khalid said Khan’s last visit to Pakistan was to join up with jihadi fighters: “I heard it frequently that he was going overseas for military training.”

You can listen to it here

0 comments.

Independent Online Edition > London bomber's westernised youth

Posted on November 18th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Independent Online Edition > Crime
Documentary reveals London bomber’s westernised youth

The suspected ringleader of the 7 July bombings spent years trying to shake off his Pakistani-Muslim identity, and tried to present himself as westernised, according to a BBC documentary.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, known as Sid, dreamed of going to America, displayed minimal interest in Islam and was “very English”, according to friends interviewed for the programme.

Khan was ostracised by his family after marrying a Hindu woman, Hasina. Friends also told the documentary-makers that Khan showed no interest in attending a mosque.

Rob Cardiss, a school friend, told last night’s radio documentary Biography of a Bomber that Khan “seemed to have more white friends than Asian friends [and] … used to hang around with white lads playing football.”

Mr Cardiss said: “He was very English. Some of the other Pakistani guys used to talk about Muslim suffering around the world but with Sidique you’d never really know what religion he was from.”

Khan’s one-time best friend talked about how Khan’s marriage to Hasina affected him. “His family wanted nothing to do with him after that,” he friend. “How can someone prepared to go through all that explode a bomb in the name of Islam?” he asked.

Khan’s rapid radicalisation came in adulthood, when he became friendly with a group of radicals from Leeds and Huddersfield, west Yorkshire, the associates suggest. In the months before Khan detonated the Edgware Road bomb, killing himself and six others, the group often watched violent videos depicting Muslim suffering around the world and went on paintballing trips immediately afterwards.

A member of the group said: “Looking back on it now, I do find it a bit weird that we had such a viewing. I can see why some youth would be affected by this – they get fired up, they get stirred up – and having the airing of that video might not have been in the best interests of certain people.”

Other Yorkshire Muslims say Khan’s tight-knit group inveigled their way into the youth community by helping Muslims off alcohol and drug addiction. Germaine Lindsay, the King’s Cross bomber, and Shahzad Tanweer, the Aldgate bomber, are also thought to have joined the group.

Khalid said Khan’s last visit to Pakistan was to join up with jihadi fighters: “I heard it frequently that he was going overseas for military training.”

You can listen to it here

0 comments.

Protected: NRC Handelsblad – Binnenland: Samir A. opnieuw vrijgesproken

Posted on November 18th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Enter your password to view comments.

spiked-politics | Article | Landscapes of Jihad: Osama bin Laden: more media whore than guerrilla warrior

Posted on October 30th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

spiked-politics | Article | Osama bin Laden: more media whore than guerrilla warrior

Ask yourself the question: what the hell does Osama bin Laden want? Why did he authorise (apparently) the worst terrorist attack of modern times on 9/11, and why do groups or individuals linked to him, or inspired by him, detonate crude bombs – and often themselves, too – everywhere from beachside cafeterias in Bali to bank forecourts in Istanbul to Tube trains packed with working men and women on a sunny Thursday morning in London?

The oft trotted-out answer to these questions is that bin Laden wants a free Palestine. Or he wants America’s grubby mitts off Saudi Arabia and an end to the sell-out House of Saud’s domination of that state. Or he wants to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan from American and British occupation and that however bastardised and bloody his tactics may be, he is nonetheless part of an ‘arc of resistance’ to Western meddling in the Middle East (1).

In short, many argue: it’s about territory, stupid! This view is held by thinkers on both sides of the left/right divide. So some of a leftish persuasion have come dangerously close to gushing over al-Qaeda and its offshoot groups, or at least seeking to explain their actions with reference to historic movements for land and freedom.

Rather, al-Qaeda is a new and peculiarly globalised movement. Its people can hail from Riyadh, Paris or Huddersfield, and can claim to be acting on behalf of Muslims in Iraq, Chechnya or Palestine – or even across historic periods as well as borders, as in the case of bin Laden’s claim that he wanted vengeance for the Moors who were booted out of Spain over 500 years ago. They blow up civilians in London or Madrid as payback for the killing of civilians in Grozny or Ramallah, and profess to represent Muslims in nations they have never visited, and which they might have difficulty pointing to on a map (a bit like their arch enemy, George W Bush, perhaps), but which they once saw on an evening news bulletin. ‘Take Mohammed Siddique Khan’, says Devji, referring to the Leeds-born former supply teacher who blew up himself and six others at Edgware Road in London on 7 July. ‘He said he was motivated by Iraq. When did he ever go to Iraq? What does he truly know about Iraq?’

In Landscapes of the Jihad, Devji argues that al-Qaeda’s relations are ‘not the kind of relations that had characterised national struggles in the past, which brought together people who shared a history and a geography into a political arena defined by processes of intentionality and control’. The jihad, he writes, ‘unlike the politics of national movements�is grounded not in the propagation of ideas or similarity of interests and conditions, so much as in the contingent relations of a global marketplace’ (5). In short, the disparate individuals who are part of al-Qaeda, or who claim to be part of al-Qaeda, are not bonded by any common experience of oppression (many of them are well-to-do and Western-educated) or by shared political visions, but rather by fleeting and fluid relationships, often forged in the planning and execution of a one-off spectacular event rather in the pursuit of a future-oriented programme of ideas and tactics.

So al-Qaeda’s fanciful war is not for something tangible; it is not about making a state or an Islamic territory. Where the Islamic radicals of the past – from the Iranian revolutionaries of 1979 to that last gasp of Islamic fundamentalism in the shape of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 1996 – were motivated by the desire to create an ideological state, al-Qaeda’s actions are better understood as a pose, Devji tells me, as ‘ethical gestures’. ‘Their acts function as exclamation marks’, he says.

‘Prior to al-Qaeda and networks of that ilk, the form that radical Islam took was fundamentalism – a form that explicitly drew from the communist imagination’, says Devji. ‘These were movements dedicated to setting up, through revolution, an ideological state, and they made use of all those terms: revolution; ideology; ideological state; even workers’ committees and all that. They had critiques of capitalism built into them to various degrees. That is no longer evident and it is not invoked at all by al-Qaeda. They have taken leave of that.’

According to Devji, al-Qaeda is not that different from other movements that inhabit our changed world – in terms of its substitution of moral posturing for politics and its appeal to the media rather than to a grassroots constituency. Indeed, Devji says al-Qaeda associates ‘resemble the members of more familiar global networks, such as those for the environment or against war and globalisation’. He writes: ‘Like the gestures that mark the environmentalist or anti-war movements, those of the jihad arise from the luxury of moral choice. This is a world whose concerns are global in dimension and so resistant to old-fashioned political solutions, calling instead for spectacular gestures that are ethical in nature. The passion of the holy warrior emerges from the same source as that of the anti-war protester – not from a personal experience of oppression but from observing the oppression of others. These impersonal and even vicarious passions draw upon pity for their strength. And pity is perhaps the most violent passion of all because it is selfless enough to tolerate monstrous sacrifices.’ (8)

Devji is at pains to point out that he isn’t saying al-Qaeda and Greenpeace are the same thing. ‘One uses murderous violence, the other doesn’t!’, he tells me. But he does think we need to interrogate the new political and social forces that have created something like al-Qaeda if we are going to come up with better ways of dealing with terrorism than simply by saying ‘sort out Palestine and everything will be okay’. It is time to ditch the lazy explanations that really are political hangovers from a bygone era, and look afresh at the problem of terrorism today.

Landscapes of the Jihad by Faisal Devji is published by Hurst & Company.

0 comments.

spiked-politics | Article | Landscapes of Jihad: Osama bin Laden: more media whore than guerrilla warrior

Posted on October 30th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

spiked-politics | Article | Osama bin Laden: more media whore than guerrilla warrior

Ask yourself the question: what the hell does Osama bin Laden want? Why did he authorise (apparently) the worst terrorist attack of modern times on 9/11, and why do groups or individuals linked to him, or inspired by him, detonate crude bombs – and often themselves, too – everywhere from beachside cafeterias in Bali to bank forecourts in Istanbul to Tube trains packed with working men and women on a sunny Thursday morning in London?

The oft trotted-out answer to these questions is that bin Laden wants a free Palestine. Or he wants America’s grubby mitts off Saudi Arabia and an end to the sell-out House of Saud’s domination of that state. Or he wants to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan from American and British occupation and that however bastardised and bloody his tactics may be, he is nonetheless part of an ‘arc of resistance’ to Western meddling in the Middle East (1).

In short, many argue: it’s about territory, stupid! This view is held by thinkers on both sides of the left/right divide. So some of a leftish persuasion have come dangerously close to gushing over al-Qaeda and its offshoot groups, or at least seeking to explain their actions with reference to historic movements for land and freedom.

Rather, al-Qaeda is a new and peculiarly globalised movement. Its people can hail from Riyadh, Paris or Huddersfield, and can claim to be acting on behalf of Muslims in Iraq, Chechnya or Palestine – or even across historic periods as well as borders, as in the case of bin Laden’s claim that he wanted vengeance for the Moors who were booted out of Spain over 500 years ago. They blow up civilians in London or Madrid as payback for the killing of civilians in Grozny or Ramallah, and profess to represent Muslims in nations they have never visited, and which they might have difficulty pointing to on a map (a bit like their arch enemy, George W Bush, perhaps), but which they once saw on an evening news bulletin. ‘Take Mohammed Siddique Khan’, says Devji, referring to the Leeds-born former supply teacher who blew up himself and six others at Edgware Road in London on 7 July. ‘He said he was motivated by Iraq. When did he ever go to Iraq? What does he truly know about Iraq?’

In Landscapes of the Jihad, Devji argues that al-Qaeda’s relations are ‘not the kind of relations that had characterised national struggles in the past, which brought together people who shared a history and a geography into a political arena defined by processes of intentionality and control’. The jihad, he writes, ‘unlike the politics of national movements�is grounded not in the propagation of ideas or similarity of interests and conditions, so much as in the contingent relations of a global marketplace’ (5). In short, the disparate individuals who are part of al-Qaeda, or who claim to be part of al-Qaeda, are not bonded by any common experience of oppression (many of them are well-to-do and Western-educated) or by shared political visions, but rather by fleeting and fluid relationships, often forged in the planning and execution of a one-off spectacular event rather in the pursuit of a future-oriented programme of ideas and tactics.

So al-Qaeda’s fanciful war is not for something tangible; it is not about making a state or an Islamic territory. Where the Islamic radicals of the past – from the Iranian revolutionaries of 1979 to that last gasp of Islamic fundamentalism in the shape of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 1996 – were motivated by the desire to create an ideological state, al-Qaeda’s actions are better understood as a pose, Devji tells me, as ‘ethical gestures’. ‘Their acts function as exclamation marks’, he says.

‘Prior to al-Qaeda and networks of that ilk, the form that radical Islam took was fundamentalism – a form that explicitly drew from the communist imagination’, says Devji. ‘These were movements dedicated to setting up, through revolution, an ideological state, and they made use of all those terms: revolution; ideology; ideological state; even workers’ committees and all that. They had critiques of capitalism built into them to various degrees. That is no longer evident and it is not invoked at all by al-Qaeda. They have taken leave of that.’

According to Devji, al-Qaeda is not that different from other movements that inhabit our changed world – in terms of its substitution of moral posturing for politics and its appeal to the media rather than to a grassroots constituency. Indeed, Devji says al-Qaeda associates ‘resemble the members of more familiar global networks, such as those for the environment or against war and globalisation’. He writes: ‘Like the gestures that mark the environmentalist or anti-war movements, those of the jihad arise from the luxury of moral choice. This is a world whose concerns are global in dimension and so resistant to old-fashioned political solutions, calling instead for spectacular gestures that are ethical in nature. The passion of the holy warrior emerges from the same source as that of the anti-war protester – not from a personal experience of oppression but from observing the oppression of others. These impersonal and even vicarious passions draw upon pity for their strength. And pity is perhaps the most violent passion of all because it is selfless enough to tolerate monstrous sacrifices.’ (8)

Devji is at pains to point out that he isn’t saying al-Qaeda and Greenpeace are the same thing. ‘One uses murderous violence, the other doesn’t!’, he tells me. But he does think we need to interrogate the new political and social forces that have created something like al-Qaeda if we are going to come up with better ways of dealing with terrorism than simply by saying ‘sort out Palestine and everything will be okay’. It is time to ditch the lazy explanations that really are political hangovers from a bygone era, and look afresh at the problem of terrorism today.

Landscapes of the Jihad by Faisal Devji is published by Hurst & Company.

0 comments.

C L O S E R – If you are going to Fallujah Send my regards to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Posted on October 23rd, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism.

C L O S E R

Is it fake or is it real? Thats the question. The letter from Ayman Zawahiri to Abu Musab Zarqawi has led to many reactions. Some people are questioning if the letter is real. According to Bruce Lawrence on Tabsir (and in National Review Online):

On the face of it, the content reflects much of what Zawahiri and his comrade, Osama bin Laden, have long been saying is the crux of the jihadi cause: Muslim lands have been invaded by infidels; apostate Muslim rulers welcome the invaders.

ALSO FAMILIAR is the incremental theory of how the reclamation of Muslim territory will take place: Expel the Americans from Iraq; establish an Islamic authority there; then extend the jihad wave to the secular countries nearby.

But Lawrence also has some doubts:

In fact, so important is winning goodwill that it entails overlooking doctrinal error, even heresy just short of blasphemy, among the Sunni ulama (the elite religious community). It also requires non-provocation of Shiite leaders, even though the falsehood of Shiite doctrines (and the Shiites� collusion with the invaders) is said to be “well known.”

If the letter is authentic, this would be a rare and extraordinary instance of strategic gamesmanship within Al Qaeda. For Al Qaeda to suggest compromising with tainted followers in order to ensure group cohesion to gain a larger prize � freedom from foreign occupation � would certainly be unprecedented.

They do have some very plausible arguments:

First is the suspiciously long delay between when the letter was written and when it was made public.
And then there is the improbable request for the payment of 100,000 (presumably dollars) from Zarqawi to Zawahiri, when one might have expected the opposite channel of funding.
And the bizarre suggestion that if the reader is going to Fallouja, “send greetings to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” Did the writer of this letter forget that it was already addressed to Zarqawi?

The last part is important, because it is the reason why Katz states in a reaction on Lawrence on National Review Online the letter is for real.

In spite of these and similar doubts, Reuters quoted a spokesman for John Negroponte, U.S. director of national intelligence, who acknowledged that the greetings passage did appear confusing, but that the intelligence community was confident the letter was authentic. Other terrorism experts suggested that perhaps the letter was not addressed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but rather to abu Musab al-Suri, also known as Mustafa Setmarian Nasser, al Qaeda ideologist and expert on urban warfare.

Media representatives, U.S. government officials, and experts who doubt the credibility of the letter may have jumped to the wrong conclusion. The greetings in the passage in question, if anything, strongly confirm the letter�s authenticity. What all these pundits are sometimes missing is a familiarity with the vernacular of the jihadi community.

She points to a poem and a song that circulates widely on the internet

Since November 2004, following battles with the Coalition Forces in Fallujah, jihadis on the Internet have been widely using a slogan that was borrowed from a poem. The poem included the following lines:
It will be destroyed on the arrogant son of an arrogant

You who rule countries by his infidels

You can kill flies with chemicals

You who are riding the fast thing

By Allah, where are you going to?

If you are going to Fallujah

Send my regards to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

And all the jihadis in his group . . .1

The poem has caught on in jihadi circles. Members of hundreds of online jihadi forums, not just ones directly connected to the insurgents in Iraq, had posted and discussed it. Some of these discussions are down now, but others are still active. Examples are the Jihadi Palestinian Forum where the poem has been posted since November 15, 2004, and the Yemen Youth Forum, which still features an active link.

On November 14, 2004 ,the Buradh jihadi message board posted a new thread titled �By Allah, if by chance you are going to Fallujah, send greetings to Abu Musab al-zarqawi.� The entire al-Ghamidi poem was posted, but the focus of discussion was the slogan. Likewise, on January 23, 2005, a member of a Palestinian forum signing as �Muhammad the engineer� posted a new thread, with the same title. Shortly thereafter, the slogan turned into a synonym for Zarqawi�s �great war� against the �crusaders.�Some message-board members even use it as a signature and in response to al Qaeda communiqu�s. The slogan is also frequently used in greetings, blessings, or, as in Zawahiri�s letter, as concluding statements.

This would mean, according to Katz, that this sentence (By Allah, if by chance you are going to Fallujah, send greetings to Abu Musab al-zarqawi.) is an important symbolic message to incite people for the war against the ‘crusaders’.

Katz makes a strong (but is it convincing?) argument concerning the specific sentence but she doesn’t adress the other concerns. So the question is still open for debate…

0 comments.

Ynetnews – News – British Muslim group declares new jihad

Posted on October 21st, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism.

Ynetnews – News – British Muslim group declares new jihad

British Muslim group declares new jihad

A Ynetnews investigation has uncovered online recruitment of British Muslims for participation in terror attacks; ‘We should give them another magnificent day in history’ threatens one man

There is also a threat against Denmark, more information about that you will find at infovlad.net

0 comments.

Seven held in anti-terror raids in the Netherlands

Posted on October 14th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Expatica’s Dutch news in English: Seven held in anti-terror raids in the Netherlands

Seven held in anti-terror raids in the Netherlands. The operation was designed to prevent terror attacks. It was ordered by the national detective unit as part of an investigation into a terrorist organisation, a spokesperson for the office of the public prosecutor (OM) said.

The suspects were held in Almere, Amsterdam and The Hague. Six of the suspects are men, aged 18 to 30. The seventh is a 24-year-old woman. One of the men is 19-year-old Samir A., the OM spokesperson said.

Probably his wife Abida is held as well.

A. was cleared by a court earlier this year of charges he was plotting terrorist attacks on a nuclear power station and other key
installations in the Netherlands. He is considered the main suspect in the latest investigation.

Reports received by the Dutch intelligence service AIVD suggested, the OM said, that A. was trying to obtain automatic weapons and explosives.

The national coordinator for countering terrorism has released a press statement as well.

Following the arrest of several individuals suspected of terrorist activities, additional security measures have been put into immediate effect at the recommendation of the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism (NCTb). Information from intelligence services has prompted these measures, which relate to surveillance and protection of specific objects and persons. Some measures will be visible to the public. For instance, the Binnenhof (the parliamentary and governmental complex in The Hague) will be under tighter surveillance. The headquarters of the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) in Leidschendam, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations will also be under tighter surveillance. It is not yet possible to say how long this level of surveillance will be in place. For security reasons, no further information about personal security measures can be provided.

There is no need to raise the general threat level associated with the national terrorist threat assessment. As reported earlier, the current threat level for the Netherlands is substantial, and that level remains unchanged. Nor is there any need to place any of the sectors participating in the Counterterrorism Alert System (Alerteringssysteem Terrorismebestrijding; Atb) on alert, or to raise either of the sectors already at a moderate alert level � Dutch Railways (NS) and Amsterdam�s Schiphol Airport � to a higher level.

At the press conference Dutch ministers Donner (Justice department) and Remkes (Interior) declared they are related to the so called ‘hofstadgroup’. A group that, according to them, has grown and become more autonomous (not really clear what they mean by that but probably that there are few or none international links) and abuse islam for their terrorist activities (a message clearly directed at Muslims and non-muslims in the Netherlands).

UPDATE:
Samir A. is considered the prime suspect. According to the Dutch intelligence and information service (AIVD) he was looking for explosives and automatic weapons and probably preparing an attack on politicians and a governmentbuilding (perhaps the AIVD office).

0 comments.

Protected: NRC Handelsblad – Binnenland: Remkes: gemeenten niet alert op radicalisering

Posted on October 11th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism.

Enter your password to view comments.

President Discusses War on Terror at National Endowment for Democracy

Posted on October 6th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues.

US President Bush ‘Discusses War on Terror at National Endowment for Democracy’

In a speech delivered at The National Endowment for Democracy (an organisation for the support of freedom around the world) he discusses the ‘evil of islamic radicalism’ (and the strategies of countering this ‘evil’) and refers to (among other things) at the killing of Van Gogh by Mohammed B.:

The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses. Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, “what is good for them and what is not.” And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers. He assures them that his — that this is the road to paradise — though he never offers to go along for the ride.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life. We’ve seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, and Margaret Hassan, and many others. In a courtroom in the Netherlands, the killer of Theo Van Gogh turned to the victim’s grieving mother and said, “I do not feel your pain — because I believe you are an infidel.” And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims.

When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing, or Iraqi teachers are executed at their school, or hospital workers are killed caring for the wounded, this is murder, pure and simple — the total rejection of justice and honor and morality and religion. These militants are not just the enemies of America, or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity. (Applause.) We have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, and the Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields.

(my italics)

Bush, and I would like to state that here, did not meant (in this speech) that islam is evil:

Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it’s called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus — and also against Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics.
[…]
As we do our part to confront radicalism, we know that the most vital work will be done within the Islamic world, itself. And this work has begun. Many Muslim scholars have already publicly condemned terrorism, often citing Chapter 5, Verse 32 of the Koran, which states that killing an innocent human being is like killing all humanity, and saving the life of one person is like saving all of humanity. After the attacks in London on July the 7th, an imam in the United Arab Emirates declared, “Whoever does such a thing is not a Muslim, nor a religious person.” The time has come for all responsible Islamic leaders to join in denouncing an ideology that exploits Islam for political ends, and defiles a noble faith.

Many people of the Muslim faith are proving their commitment at great personal risk. Everywhere we have engaged the fight against extremism, Muslim allies have stood up and joined the fight, becoming partners in a vital cause. Afghan troops are in combat against Taliban remnants. Iraqi soldiers are sacrificing to defeat al Qaeda in their own country. These brave citizens know the stakes — the survival of their own liberty, the future of their own region, the justice and humanity of their own tradition — and that United States of America is proud to stand beside them. (Applause.)

So now you can applaud 😉

0 comments.

War comes to the heart of Europe

Posted on September 25th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Internal Debates, International Terrorism, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Public Islam, Religious and Political Radicalization.

An article in Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy. by Pepe Escobar that owes much credit to Gilles Kepels book ‘War for Muslim Minds’

The battle over the future of global Islam will be fought and decided in Europe.

Whether or not it is responsible for the attacks on London, the al-Qaeda nebula is now configured as a relentless jihadi recruitment mechanism, profiting from the fact that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has been added to its original mix of extreme Wahhabism and Silicon Valley (which al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited in the early 1990s).

In this article the author discusses the concepts of al-wala wal-bara (“loyalty and separation”) that is crucial for understanding Mohammed B. cs ideology.

Whether or not it is responsible for the attacks on London, the al-Qaeda nebula is now configured as a relentless jihadi recruitment mechanism, profiting from the fact that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has been added to its original mix of extreme Wahhabism and Silicon Valley (which al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited in the early 1990s).

“Al-Qaeda” is a mutating virus, proliferating secretly in unexpected places. It used to thrive on subterfuge, evasion and deception. Now, the virus is attacking on three fronts. The Internet spreads the lethal, remixed Koran of jihad’s aims and ideology; Iraq has become the university for a new, deadly generation of internationalist jihadis; and Europe is the latest battleground where the new generation is bound to strike. The Euro-jihadi is here to stay.

“Al-Qaeda” is now a metaphor for global, deterritorialized jihad – indeed a “database” (as its original name implies) that strives to represent the microcosm of the whole Islamic umma (community). This is a political war conducted by a revolutionary vanguard. It is also a social war. It is definitely not a religious war. Whether religious war may succeed it depends to a large extent on the Muslim population of Europe, and whether it can isolate the Euro-jihadis.

No one is innocent
The killing of innocents, or massacre of infidels – as in London’s attacks – is not considered terrorism by either Osama bin Laden or Zawahiri: as bin Laden himself has made clear, it is seriously regarded as only a minor reparation for all the crimes committed against Islam since the end of the 600-year-long Ottoman Empire in 1923.

Al-Qaeda may be a revolutionary vanguard, but it is always careful to cloak its war as a war against unbelievers. In December 2002, Zawahiri published a crucial pamphlet in the London daily, al-Quds al-Arabi, widely reproduced on the jihadi Internet. He quoted a Koranic verse to justify the accidental killing of Muslims in attacks against unbelievers: the Muslims should not be there in the first place. Because it is ostensibly a war against unbelievers, al-Qaeda cannot but stress that if Muslims are associated with unbelievers, Islam itself is in danger.

Many clerics used this scholarly doctrine – al-wala wal-bara (“loyalty and separation”, in Arabic) to explain why Baghdad fell to the Mongols in the 13th century, as well as the Spanish Reconquista of Andalusia. Zawahiri used it to legitimize any “collateral damage” by jihad. The measure of Zawahiri’s influence is offered by the new, lethal and even more nihilistic generation of jihadis operating in Iraq: they have no problems justifying the killing of fellow Muslims and innocent Iraqi civilians, because for them these people are “associating with unbelievers”. Zawahiri made it clear in 2002 that any Muslim ally of America was by definition an apostate: “Jihad against Americans, Jews and their allies among the hypocrites and apostates is mandatory on all Muslims.”

The Euro-jihadis
The London investigation followed three leads: the attackers might have come from the Middle East, from Northern Africa, or they could have been British. Now Scotland Yard has established they were four men aged 18 to 30, “cleanskins” – with no criminal record – and British-born, of Pakistani origin. In short: the new, lethal, generation of suicide-bombing Euro-jihadis.

Most EU counter-terrorism analysts in Brussels – indeed, all over Western Europe – are stunned. This is what many had feared for a long time. As for rumors that London was part of a plan hatched by former Iraqi Mukhabarat agents to use British jihadis and thus retaliate inside British territory, EU analysts say they have no evidence – at least not yet – that Ba’athists were involved. But the jihadi component of the Iraqi resistance may well be. EU analysts tell Asia Times Online, “At the moment we have no evidence that former Iraq intelligence was involved, but we are studying the possibility of Zarqawi agents being infiltrated in Britain, or having come to Britain to conduct an operation.”

If “al-Qaeda”, the virus, really did perpetrate the London bombings, it won’t be confronted with the huge public relations problem posed by the Casablanca attack in Morocco. Then, al-Qaeda’s ideology – disseminated by Salafist sheikhs – had contaminated a group of lumpen proletariat Moroccans, who decided to turn their impotence into terrorism. The problem is that only fellow Moroccan Muslims were killed. The attacks on Madrid in March last year – perpetrated by Casablanca-linked Moroccans – was a different story: the victims were scores of “infidel” Europeans. These jihadis were trained by al-Qaeda. The same pattern, according to EU counter-terrorism analysts, may have played itself out in London.

Just as in Madrid, the attack was claimed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades (which honor the Egyptian Abu Hafs, a former security chief for bin Laden and trainer of Arab Afghans, killed by American bombs in Kandahar in November 2001). Then a communique was sent to the London daily al-Quds al-Arabi. Now a communique has appeared on an Islamist website from Dubai.

Zawahiri’s jihad masterplan, elaborated in 2001, was to conduct selected, spectacular strikes whose powerful reverberation on global TV and the Internet would mobilize the Muslim masses. But Gilles Kepel, professor of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, warns that “apart from some narrow and unlikely alliances with intellectuals or black sheep, a few random Islamic bankers, and young, dispossessed bombers, bin Laden has been unable to unify poor urban youth, the Muslim middle classes, and the Islamist intelligentsia into a coalition capable of repeating the only triumphant Islamic revolution the world has ever seen: the one that took place in Iran in 1979”.

After London, this situation may be about to change. Kepel already talks of “the fight for Europe”.

Over 10 million immigrants from Muslim countries now live in Western Europe. Their children were born in Europe, speak one or more European languages, carry EU passports, are well educated and technology-savvy, and are familiar with the maze of European institutions. Internationalist jihadis are fighting to capture the hearts and minds of these 10 million.

EU analysts, among the doom and gloom, agree that tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims are bound to peak, especially in Britain and France. Some parts of Brussels, the capital of Europe, feel like Morocco. Belgium, as well as Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Scandinavia have all tried very hard to carefully calibrate their policies in terms of keeping potential jihadis under a close watch while at the same time integrating their Muslim populations. France has been too harsh; Britain had thought it kept everything under control by monitoring “Londonistan”. Now the battle for Europe has come – a matter of fitna – sedition, disagreement, war in the heart of Islam. Fitna is Islam’s enemy within – and it’s the jihadis new thrust that is provoking the turmoil.

The question facing the jihadis is whether to force the destabilization of national governments – like those of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan – or to go deeper into internationalist jihad. In these terms, “al-Qaeda”, the virus, is not different from any revolutionary vanguard: one is reminded that Stalinists wanted to consolidate the revolution in the USSR, while Trotskyites wanted a permanent, world revolution. Until now, London was a Salafi, and Salafi-jihadi, sanctuary. Now there’s bound to be major repression – and dispersal. “Invisible” Euro-jihadis may be holed up anywhere. The point is not that “al-Qaeda” wants to impose Islam in Europe: what it wants is to impose Wahhabi values in the Arab-Muslim world, and extirpate the West from Muslim lands.

Retaliation
Salafis – closely linked to House of Saud-approved sheikhs – will keep discouraging jihad with a vengeance. They prefer discreet integration. As an example: in France, they did not even protest the law that forbids veiled girls in schools. Sheikh Yousef al-Qardawi – immensely popular because of his al-Jazeera talk show – is against suicide bombing as in September 11 or London, but he approves of jihad in Palestine.

The reverberations of London’s attacks, on the other hand, may embolden more Salafi jihadis in west Yorkshire, Hamburg, Paris or Madrid. Some of these jihadis have been to Bosnia, Pakistan, Chechnya or Iraq and are more than ready to strike in western Europe. Not to mention the new jihadis born in Europe, with clean records, apparently well-socialized, and aged between 18 and 30.

When Zawahiri launched his jihad, one of his basic aims was to punish the West, specifically the Anglo-American sphere. He didn’t foresee that the massive response would include death and destruction in the Middle East, as in Iraq. According to some Middle Eastern media reports, more than 128,000 Iraqis have been killed by the invasion and occupation since March 2003; 55% are believed to be women and children under the age 12. This figure is said to be based on information gathered in Iraqi hospitals and from the families of victims. This is how the Middle East evaluates the occupation. And this is one of the major factors giving jihadis what they see as justification for no-holds-barred retaliation against the West.

This new generation of Euro-jihadis is now turning it all upside down, profiting from widespread revulsion against the Anglo-Americans takeover of Iraq to retaliate as well as advance a Salafi worldview. This could all have been prevented by a very simple move: a real democratic project for the Middle East – before indiscriminate support for every one of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s excesses; before Guantanamo; before Abu Ghraib; before the leveling of Fallujah.

Instead, thanks to Pentagon propaganda regurgitated by corporate media, we now have a cipher, a man nobody is sure even exists – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – elevated to supernatural status. EU analysts despair: we may be entering the age of one thousand Zarqawis coming from the shadows to haunt not the US, but western Europe. It’s as much a war at the heart of Europe as a war at the heart of Islam.

0 comments.

« Previous Page — Older » « Newer — Next Page »