by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Commenting on the recent massacre of 17 Afghan civilians that was allegedly carried out by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, Glenn Greenwald, a leading pundit on the American political left, wrote the following:

There is, quite obviously, a desperate need to believe that when an American engages in acts of violence of this type, there must be some underlying mental or emotional cause that makes it sensible, something other than an act of pure hatred or evil. When a Muslim engages in acts of violence against Americans, there is an equally desperate need to believe the opposite: that this is yet another manifestation of inscrutable hatred and evil, and any discussion of any other causes must be prohibited and ignored.

This is a typical example of how Greenwald engages in overblown rhetoric. To take just a couple of examples that refute his inaccurate generalizations here, no one attempted to rationalize the Mahmudiyah killings in 2006, which involved the massacre of an Iraqi family — including the gang rape and killing of a 14-year old girl — by some U.S. soldiers from the 502nd Infantry Regiment.

(more…)

by David J. Rusin*

Claude Guéant, the French interior minister, sparked a firestorm last month when he praised Western values as “superior” to the oppressive ones found elsewhere, namely the Islamic world. Yet the controversy did more to spotlight an area in which the West clearly trails its rivals: self-confidence. If a government official cannot extol the unique virtues of freedom and equality that define Western life without being cast as a bigot by the politically correct, how can they be safeguarded against the highly motivated forces of Islamism, which doubt neither the superiority of their own principles nor the righteousness of imposing them on others?

(more…)

by Yvette Talhamy*

As Syrian president Bashar al-Assad struggles to contend with a massive popular uprising, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) is poised to dominate whatever coalition of forces manages to unseat the Baathist regime. Though in many ways the Brotherhood’s official political platform is a model of Islamist moderation and tolerance, it is less a window into the group’s thinking than a reflection of its political tactics. Unlike its parent organization, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which often kept its ideological opponents at arm’s length, the SMB has repeatedly forged alliances with secular dissident groups even as it secretly tried to negotiate a deal with the Assad regime to allow its return from exile. Since the moderation of its political platform over the past two decades has clearly been intended to facilitate this triangulation, it does not tell us much about the ultimate intentions of the Syrian Brotherhood.

(more…)

by Adam Turner*

Starting on March 11 and ending on March 19, a terrorist wearing a motorcycle helmet that covered his face conducted a vicious killing spree in Toulouse, France, murdering three French military officers (two of Arab ancestry, one of Caribbean ancestry) and four French Jewish civilians (a 30-year-old Rabbi, his 5-year-old son, his 4-year-old son and an 8-year-old girl). Much speculation as to the possible motives and background of the terrorist followed. On March 21, 2012, the French armed forces surrounded an apartment in Toulouse where the killer lived and released his identity: It was a French Islamist named Mohammed Merah. On March 22, Merah was shot dead while jumping out of his apartment window

(more…)

By Gary Gerofsky

Did you know that the murder of a Rabbi and children in Toulouse, the mutilation and killing of a Rabbi and his pregnant wife in Mumbai, the beheading of Daniel Pearl, and all wars and terror in the Middle East happened because Israel exists? Did you also know that Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism because, without Jews, there would be no cause for people to hate Jews? How’s that for reasoning?

(more…)

by Andrew Whitehead

Since the founding of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the majority of non-Muslim citizens of the United States have been constantly accused of “Islamophobia” (a word created as a propaganda tool used by CAIR), “racism” (even though there is no such race as “Muslim”), and “intolerance” (a word used by many groups to describe those who disagree with them without using words of substance or evidence to back up their accusations).

(more…)

Question: What enabled the slaughter of Jewish children and soldiers in the French city of Toulouse by a Muslim steeped in radical, victim-centric, warped Islamist ideology? Answer: People like EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, an apologist for terrorist hate. She is the epitome of ignorant, bigoted, cowardly, politically correct, morally relativistic trash allowed by decadent, fearful Westerners to run amok at the top of their societies. This combination of a disconnected public and crazy political elite creates an atmosphere where lying bullies — Islamo-fascist-leftists — trample Western values, commit horrendous acts of ultra-violence, and shut down free speech. Meanwhile, people of conscience have to fight to even be heard, and sometimes fear for and lose their lives. This is the upside-down, Animal Farm-like world to which Westerners are acclimating. How could the depraved Ashton become EU Foreign Policy Chief? Just read about her — she’s lost her mind:

(more…)

by Raymond Ibrahim*

What is the alternative to Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria? A simple if indirect way to find out is to consider which groups in Syria are especially for or against Assad—and why.

Christian minorities, who, at 10% of the Syrian population, have the most to gain from a secular government and the most to suffer from a Sharia-state, have no choice but to prefer Assad. They are already seeing aspects of the alternative. A recent Barnabas Fund report titled “Christians in Syria Targeted in Series of Kidnappings and Killings; 100 Dead,” tells of how “children were being especially targeted by the kidnappers, who, if they do not receive the ransom demanded, kill the victim.” In one instance, kidnappers videotaped a Christian boy as they murdered him in an attempt to frame the government; one man “was cut into pieces and thrown in a river” and another “was found hanged with numerous injuries.”

(more…)

by Raymond Ibrahim*

Half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians are gone due to the unleashed forces of jihad, many of them fleeing to nearby Syria; yet, as the Assad regime comes under attack by al-Qaeda and others, the jihad now seeps into Syria, where Christians are experiencing a level of persecution unprecedented in the nation’s modern history. Likewise, some 100,000 Christian Copts have fled their native Egypt since the overthrow of the Mubarak regime; and in northern regions of Nigeria, where the jihadi group Boko Haram has been slaughtering Christians, up to 95 % of the Christian population has fled.

(more…)

By Jonathan Spyer

This week, leading Gaza-Hamas activist Salah al-Bardawil told The Guardian newspaper that in the event of a war between Iran and Israel, Hamas would not back Teheran. Hamas Foreign Minister in Gaza Mahmoud Zahar later appeared to refute Bardawil’s stance, saying that Hamas would respond “with utmost power” to any “Zionist war on Iran.”

These statements reflect confusion and divisions in the main Palestinian-Islamist movement. The confusion derives from the variety of options which the Arab upheavals of 2011 have placed before Hamas.

(more…)

by Raymond Ibrahim*

According to several Arabic news sources, last Monday, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.”

The Grand Mufti made his assertion in response to a question posed by a delegation from Kuwait: a Kuwaiti parliament member recently called for the “removal” of churches (he later “clarified” by saying he merely meant that no churches should be built in Kuwait), and the delegation wanted to confirm Sharia’s position on churches.

(more…)

by Phyllis Chesler and Fern Sidman

As Islamist terrorists are being arrested in Baku for a plot to attack both the American and Israeli Embassies; as Muslims torture, murder, and exile Christians from their native Arab lands; as Hamas constantly bombards Israeli civilians with rockets launched from Gaza; even as Iran is threatening to send many “caravans of tens of thousands” of hostile Iranians to march on Jerusalem—guess what subject drew 225 eager audience members and the media to an upper west side Jewish Community Center?

(more…)

In civilized societies, most people regard youth as a time for learning, playing, exploration, creativity, music, fine arts, and independent thinking. Not so in much of the Muslim World. One only need to look at Iran, an Islamic Republic which specializes in repressing its young people. Most recently, we find a sickening wave of intolerance against young, creative kids in Iraq — an intolerance driven by the prevailing belief system based in Islamic law (”Sharia”). This intolerance is being expressed in the most brutal forms of ultra-violence — supported no less by Iraq’s interior ministry:

Young people who identify themselves as so-called Emos are being brutally killed at an alarming rate in Iraq, where militias have distributed hit lists of victims and security forces say they are unable to stop crimes against the subculture that is widely perceived in Iraq as being gay.

Officials and human rights groups estimated as many as 58 Iraqis who are either gay or believed to be gay have been killed in the last six weeks alone — forecasting what experts fear is a return to the rampant hate crimes against homosexuals in 2009. This year, eyewitnesses and human rights groups say some of the victims have been bludgeoned to death by militiamen smashing in their skulls with heavy cement blocks. …

(more…)

by Mark Durie*

This was no “furious mob” on a “rampage,” reacting to Koran-burning. These men are methodically, deliberately, and in an organized fashion going about destroying crosses and objects marked with crosses. Their mood seems happy.

In the recent destruction of Commonwealth war graves in Benghazi, Libya (YouTube Video), you can see not just the desecration of graves, but attacks on crosses.

The radical Muslims who are kicking over and smashing headstones marked with crosses (and one with a Star of David), also took pains to demolish a tall “Cross of Sacrifice” standing at the edge of the cemetery.

(more…)

By Alexander Maistrovoy

An Arab/Muslim caliphate is not a figment of the imagination anymore: Fragments of Middle Eastern regimes will soon form a group of islands called “The Muslim Archipelago.”

“A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Communism.” These were the first words of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. More than a century later a different specter has appeared on the threshold of the Old World — the specter of an Islamic Caliphate. (Ed. note: “Caliphate, the political-religious state comprising the Muslim community and the lands and peoples under its dominion in the centuries following the death [ad 632] of the Prophet Muḥammad. …”)

(more…)