President Obama will pay a visit to his first US mosque this week in order to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.” There's only ...
January 31, 2016
Obama to visit Baltimore mosque with extremist ties
By Rick Moran
President Obama will pay a visit to his first US mosque this week in order to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”
There's only one problem; the mosque the president has chosen to honor with his presence - the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) - has a history of ties to extremist Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
Daily Caller:
An imam who served at ISB for a total of 15 years has also been a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood network and has worked for an Islamic relief group that was designated as a terrorist organization by the Treasury Department in 2004.
Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh, who served two stints as ISB’s imam, from 1983 to 1989 and from 1994 to 2003, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan in the 1970s. He also co-founded the Muslim American Society, a Falls Church, Va.-based group that is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.
While in Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as a regional director for the Islamic American Relief Agency. That group’s parent organization is the Islamic African Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department says provided funds to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
After leaving Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as imam at the infamous Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church. That mosque has a lengthy roster of known terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Its imam during much of the 1990s was Mohammed al-Hanooti. He was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people.
Dar al-Hijrah came under the control of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2001. He’s the American al-Qaeda recruiter who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Nov. 2009, is said to have attended the Virginia mosque when al-Awlaki served there. The pair also reportedly exchanged emails. Two of the 9/11 hijackers also attended Dar al-Hijrah during al-Awlaki’s tenure.
El-Sheikh defended Palestinian suicide bombers while at Dar al-Hijrah:
“If certain Muslims are to be cornered where they cannot defend themselves, except through these kinds of means, and their local religious leaders issued fatwas to permit that, then it becomes acceptable as an exceptional rule, but should not be taken as a principle,” he said in 2004, according to a Washington Post article at the time.
It should be noted that all of this disturbing information comes from the Justice Department and not Islamophobic bigots. In short, the president is ignoring the facts dug up by his own law enforcement agencies and will lend credibility to a mosque with obvious ties to groups dedicated to destroying Israel and killing Americans.
Why the Baltimore mosque? It's not like there aren't any mosques without ties to extremists in Washington or the nearby Virginia suburbs. The president has left himself wide open to criticism by visiting the ISB. Whatever statement he is trying to make with this visit will be lost in questions about his judgment.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/obama_to_visit_baltimore_mosque_with_extremist_ties.html#ixzz3yrAvNajt
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Donald Trump created a media firestorm when he called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration to the US. Trump was denounced as a xenophobic racist -- as if Islam was not a religion, but a race (go figure). Trump's announcement was apparently prom...
Islam is nothing like Christianity. For that matter, it's unlike every other religion on earth. Islam is not just a religion -- it's a vicious totalitarian system that governs every aspect of human behavior. Islam is not based on concepts of love or mercy. It's based on tyranny, killing, and suppression. Islam is utterly antithetical to the Western ideal of individual freedom.
January 31, 2016
Islam and the First Amendment
By David Deming
Donald Trump created a media firestorm when he called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration to the US. Trump was denounced as a xenophobic racist -- as if Islam was not a religion, but a race (go figure). Trump's announcement was apparently prompted by a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, where two Islamic terrorists killed fourteen people. The San Bernardino incident followed in the wake of a coordinated strike by ISIS in November that slaughtered 130 people in Paris, France.
It's an absurd but deadly circus. Time after time, Islamic terrorists murder innocent people, and leftists immediately fall all over themselves to embrace Muslims and declare Islam to be a "religion of peace." In my home state, the director of the Oklahoma chapter of CAIR denounced anti-Muslim rhetoric and warned, "hateful words too often lead to violence." Listening to this sort of propaganda one might obtain the impression that Christian Crusaders were massacring innocent Muslims. The reality is that Islamic terrorists worldwide are intent not just on the genocide of Christians but the replacement of Western Civilization by a universal caliphate. If any people doubt this, I would invite them to watch the Frontline documentary, The Rise of Isis.
BLOG: ISLAM IS THE CULT OF HATE, DEATH, MURDER, LOOTING and WOMEN LIVING UNDER RUGS! All the rest is bullshit spin!
A group called the Islamic Circle of North America has been putting up billboards in major cities in the US. The billboards read "Muhammad believed in peace, social justice, and women's rights." Of course he did. Muhammad's idea of peace and social justice was killing anyone who refused to accept his religion. And it is true that women have certain rights in Islam. So did African slaves in the antebellum South. Southern States enacted Slave Codes that detailed and protected these rights. It's easy to completely deceive people with half-truths.
Michael Moore scaled the heights of stupidity by standing outside the Trump Tower in New York City holding up a sign that read, "we are all Muslim." Moore knows we're not literally all Muslims, so presumably his message was that we're all capable of being victims of religious discrimination. President Obama has steadfastly refused to even acknowledge the existence of Islamic terrorism. The message we're supposed to take from this is that Islam is just another religion, like Buddhism, Hinduism, or Presbyterianism.
In 1997, a left-wing think tank in the UK, the Runnymede Trust, coined the neologism "Islamophobia." "Islamophobia" is now defined in a lengthy Wikipedia article as "prejudice against, hatred towards, or fear of the religion of Islam or Muslims." A phobia is an irrational fear. Thus the term by its very existence presumes what necessarily must be demonstrated: that dislike of Islam is irrational.
BLOG: WHEN HAVE YOU SEEN A DAY WHEN THE MUSLIMS WERE NOT MURDERING IN COLD BLOOD OTHER MUSLIMS, CHRISTIANS AND JEWS?
We're repeatedly assured that Islamic terrorists are not Islamic, that Islam is a religion of peace, and we should wholeheartedly embrace our peaceful Muslim brothers and open our borders to them. We're supposed to accept all of this while we're being slaughtered like sheep. What makes the promulgation of this nonsense possible and acceptable to a large segment of our society is simple ignorance. According to a recent Pew Poll, most Americans "know little or nothing about Islam."
I know something about Islam, and I'm writing to tell you that it's worse than you think. When Donald Trump suggested a cessation to Muslim immigration he didn't go far enough. We need a Constitutional Amendment to exclude Islam from the protections of the First Amendment. I hesitate to suggest such a radical idea, but will explain myself at length.
There was a time when I would have wholeheartedly embraced the extension of religious toleration to Islam. The idea that Islamic terrorism is promulgated by a tiny, radical minority that does not represent the heart of the faith is certainly a plausible proposition for anyone who has not studied the history of Islam. It is precisely because I know something about Islam and its history that I am led to the conclusion that our Constitution must be amended.
My views on Islam are informed by the research I did when writing the second volume of my history of science, Early Christianity, the Rise of Islam and the Middle Ages. Prior to studying the history of Islam, I would have assumed that it is just another religion. Views of religion held by most people in the US have been strongly influenced by the historical dominance of Christianity in Western Civilization. We tend to view religion as a matter of individual conscience. Different denominations may have different views on obscure matters of doctrine, but all religions are seen as promoting peace, justice, love, and mercy. Ignorant of the true nature of Islam, most Americans implicitly see it as a nothing more than a quaint variant of Christianity.
Islam is nothing like Christianity. For that matter, it's unlike every other religion on earth. Islam is not just a religion -- it's a vicious totalitarian system that governs every aspect of human behavior. Islam is not based on concepts of love or mercy. It's based on tyranny, killing, and suppression. Islam is utterly antithetical to the Western ideal of individual freedom. The very word "Islam" means "submission." William Muir (1819-1905) was perhaps the most perspicacious and knowledgeable Western scholar who ever studied Islam. The first one-hundred and five pages of his monumental Life of Mahomet is devoted to a discussion and evaluation of primary and original sources. Muir concluded "the sword of Mahomet, and the Koran, are the most fatal enemies of civilization, liberty, and truth, which the world has yet known."
Islam began with Muhammad, an illiterate merchant who resided in the city of Mecca during the seventh century. Around the year AD 610, Muhammad purportedly began to receive revelations from the god, Allah, through the angel Gabriel. The gist of these messages was that he was to preach a new, monotheistic religion designed to replace the animistic and polytheistic faiths of the Meccans. Unlike Jesus Christ, who readily attracted a multitude of followers (Matthew 15.30), Muhammad failed to spread his message by proselytizing. After ten years of preaching, he had only a handful of converts. During his final three or four years of residency in Mecca, Muhammad was unable to obtain a single new convert. Having failed in Mecca, Muhammad tried his luck in the nearby city of Taif. The town's inhabitants endured Muhammad for ten days. Then they beat him and summarily expelled the would-be prophet from their city.
In 622 AD Muhammad emigrated to the Arabian city of Yathrib, subsequently renamed Medina, the City of the Prophet. The move to Medina is known as the Hegira. This date marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Islam under Muhammad now took a new direction. Having failed to spread Islam by peaceful means, Muhammad resolved to initiate holy war, a jihad. The proliferation of Islam by violence continues to the present day. It is not an anomaly. Jihad was initiated by the founder of Islam and it will continue so long as Islam endures on earth. The Koran (Sura 61) asserts that Allah loves "those who...do battle for his cause," and that conflict must continue until Islam is "victorious over every other religion."
Seven months after his arrival at Medina, Muhammad and his followers began to support themselves through brigandry. They raided mercantile caravans that traveled back-and-forth from Mecca. Initially, the Muslim raids failed. The caravan leaders had centuries of experience in evading and defending themselves from thieves. So Muhammad resolved to commit yet another crime. He decided to make a raid during the holy month of Rajab. During the raid, one of the Meccan traders was killed. This initiated full-scale warfare between the Muslims and Meccans.
The Meccans were not the only victims of Muhammad. In the seventh century, Arabia contained a number of thriving Jewish communities. They're not there any longer because Muhammad and his followers began a process of ethnic cleansing that resulted in the removal of all Jews from the Arabian Peninsula. In 627 AD Muhammad besieged the Jewish tribe of the Coreitza. After fourteen days the Jews surrendered. Muhammad ordered long, narrow trenches to be dug. He then led the Jewish men out of their enclave in small groups with their hands bound behind their backs. Seven-hundred Jews were made to kneel by the side of the trenches and decapitated. All the men were killed. The women and children were taken as slaves. When it came to the genocidal murder of Jews, Muhammad made Adolf Hitler look like a piker. If this seems like an unnecessarily inflammatory statement to you, you have to understand -- I'm just giving you the unvarnished truth. There is no controversy about the historical reality of the massacre of the Coreitzan Jews. The account is found in the eighth-century biography of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq, a primary source.
Eventually Muhammad won his wars with the Meccans. He rode into Mecca, removed all idolatrous images from the Kaaba, and established Islam as the dominant religion in the Arabian Peninsula. After Muhammad's death in 632 AD, Islam continued to be spread by warfare. Muslims conquered the Middle East and North Africa. They crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and were stopped from overrunning Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD. Muslims remained in Spain and Sicily until Europeans finally expelled them during the High Middle Ages.
Christianity and Islam are diametric opposites. Jesus Christ preached mercy (Matthew 5.7) and advised people to love their enemies (Luke 6.27). Muhammad killed his enemies. Furthermore, he exulted and reveled in bloodshed. He gave Muslims permission to "kill any Jew that falls into your power." At the Battle of Badr in AD 624, one of his followers brought Muhammad the severed head of an enemy. The prophet was overjoyed. He pronounced the gift as "more acceptable to me than the choicest camel in all Arabia."
But there is another, more ominous difference between Christianity and Islam. From the beginning, there has been a basis for separating the religious and the secular in Christianity. Asked if it was proper for a Jew to pay Roman taxes, Jesus Christ replied "render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22.21). Jesus also professed, "my kingdom is not of this world" (John 18.36).
Unlike Christianity, there is no basis in Islam for separating church and state. Islamic countries are necessarily theocracies. Islam is not just a matter of individual conscience. Islam is a totalitarian system designed to instruct and govern nearly every aspect of human life. William Muir explained "scattered throughout...[the Koran are]...the archives of a theocratic government in all its departments...the elements of a code both criminal and civil are...introduced. Punishments for certain offences are specified, and a mass of legislation laid down for the tutelage of orphans, for marriage, divorce, sales, bargains, wills, evidence, usury and similar concerns."
The implementation of the Islamic religious law is known as Sharia. Sharia Law governs not just religion, but a Muslim's "political, social, domestic, and private life." The Western tradition is that laws are implemented by men to establish just societies, however people living in different times and places may construe justice. But Sharia Law is based on the Koran. Muslims regard the Koran to be the literal word of Allah, a god they consider to be God. It cannot be amended, modified or reformed. It is an absolute. Since at least the advent of Greek democracy in the fifth century BC, this is a concept utterly foreign to the Western experience and tradition. Observant Muslims cannot conscientiously participate in democratic governments. They will go along with them until they reach the point at which they can implement Sharia Law by force.
Islamic countries are among the most backward and technologically primitive in the world. Lacking the technical means of conquering Western countries they have hit upon a far simpler method: reproduction and immigration. According to the Pew Poll, "Muslims have more children than members of other religious groups." Muslim women have, on average, 3.1 children. This is nearly twice the European fertility rate of 1.6. Unless it is stopped, the Muslim surge into Europe will erase twenty-five hundred years of Western achievements in science, technology, art, and literature. Libraries will be emptied. Every book that is not a copy of the Koran will be burnt.
Michelangelo's David will be smashed with a hammer. The Mona Lisa will be incinerated. If you think I'm exaggerating, take a look at how ISIS is currently destroying art and antiquities.
I want to anticipate and rebut some of the arguments that are made in favor of the toleration of Islam. One of these is that most Muslims are peaceful people who have no intention of committing acts of violence or desire to force people of different faiths to convert to their religion. I concede this to be true, but it does not change my conclusions. The Pew Poll found that 86 percent of Muslims in the US agree that terrorism, in the form of violence against civilians for the purpose of promoting Islam, is "rarely or never justified." This statistic is not reassuring, but troubling. Muslims constitute 0.9 percent of the current US population of 322 million. That means we have 405,720 Muslims in the US who will not renounce terrorism. Pew furthermore found that a full seven percent of US Muslims (202,860 people) "say suicide bombings are sometimes justified."
Whether they are personally involved or not, every person who identifies as Muslim supports Islam and therefore implicitly supports jihad, the propagation of terror and violence, and the complete eradication of our freedoms. Based on election results from the early 1930s, about one-third to one-half of the German people supported the Nazi Party. The vast majority of Nazi supporters were not personally involved in rounding up Jews and herding them into railroad cars for trips to death camps. Rather, it was their implicit support that made the implementation of Nazi policies possible.
I often hear the argument that Christianity is as bad as Islam. It's denounced as being intolerant and having a history of violence. Frequently this claim is made by individuals resentful of the fact that traditional Christian morality condemns their lifestyle. I will concede that the history of Christianity is blemished. I cannot and will not defend the Spanish Inquisition, the Witch Mania, or the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. For hundreds of years in Europe, Catholics persecuted Protestants and the Protestant sects fought among themselves. It took a long time before people learned to tolerate those of different faiths.
Accepting, however, that the history of Christianity is riddled with violent persecution, let's turn the thesis around. If human nature is so corruptible that it allows men to persecute, maim, and kill in the name of a religion that teaches us to love our enemies, what are human beings capable of when empowered by a direct message of hate and violence? If Christianity, a religion based on love, mercy, and universal brotherhood, has produced violence, what may be expected of Islam, a faith based on violence, hatred, and death? Is it any surprise that ISIS revels in some of the most inhumane atrocities in human history?
Some people have argued that Islam can be reformed and metamorphose into a faith that can coexist peacefully with other religions. Good luck with that. Revealed religions in general tend to be extremely conservative. In all the major Abrahamic faiths, the age of prophecy is closed. There is no Jew or Christian who will entertain the idea of adding new chapters to the Torah or the Bible. Islam is even more conservative. The Bible and the Torah are considered to be the inspired word of God. Christian and Jewish theologians accept that their scriptures were written by men. For example, Moses is traditionally considered to be the author of the first five books of the Bible. Because the Bible was written by a human being, it is more subject to interpretation than the Koran. Muslims believe the Koran to be the literal word of Allah. It is profound heresy in Islam to attribute authorship of the Koran to Muhammad. Muhammad is regarded as the mouthpiece, repeating words given to him by Allah through Gabriel. Because the Koran is considered to be the literal word of Allah, it cannot be revised, and its text is less subject to vagaries of interpretation than the Bible or the Torah. Muslims view the Koran as infallible, absolute, and final. Thus reformation of Islam is impossible.
The preceding considerations lead me to a point that most conservatives and libertarians will be initially reluctant to consider: amending the Constitution to exclude Islam from the protections of the First Amendment. Specifically, what I have in mind is an Amendment that not only excludes Islam from the First Amendment but also grants Congress and the States the power to tax and regulate it.
To justify such a drastic step, I will review the historical underpinnings of the First Amendment. The modern concept of religious toleration developed among Protestant sects in seventeenth-century Europe. In A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), John Locke (1632-1704) argued for religious toleration and the separation of church and state. "The toleration of those that differ from others in matter of religion," Locke argued, "is so agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the genuine reason of mankind, that it seems monstrous for men to be so blind, as not to perceive the necessity and advantage of it, in so clear a light."
That same year (1689), England enacted a Toleration Act that guaranteed freedom of worship to differing Protestant sects. However Catholics and Unitarians were excluded. John Locke went further, arguing that toleration should also be extended to Jews, Muslims, and pagans. Locke excluded only atheists. He believed they had no place in civil society because "promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of humane society, can have no hold upon an atheist."\
The most fervent advocate of religious toleration was Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), an exiled Huguenot residing in Holland. Largely forgotten today, Bayle has been called "the father of modern toleration." His greatest work, the Historical and Critical Dictionary, is commonly referred to as the "arsenal of the Enlightenment," reflecting the fact that later Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire derived most of their arguments and ideas from Bayle's Dictionary.
Bayle advocated toleration of all faiths. He went beyond Locke and argued that everyone should enjoy complete freedom of religion because "religion is a matter of conscience subject to no control." Bayle pointed out the absurdity of trying to change a man's conscience through force. "Is falsehood to be overcome by any other arms than those of truth? Is not attacking errors with a cudgel, the same absurdity as attacking bastions with syllogism and harangue?" Bayle pushed for complete freedom and toleration in religion. "There can be no solid reason for tolerating any one sect, which does not equally hold for every other."
However even Pierre Bayle had his limits. He deliberately made an explicit exception to what was an otherwise universal policy of toleration. No civil society was under any obligation to tolerate a sect that preached lawlessness and violence. "Any sect, which strikes at the foundation of human society, and bursts the bounds of the public peace and amity, by exciting seditions, by preaching up rapine, murder, calumny, perjury, deserves to be immediately cut off by the sword of the magistrate."
And this is exactly why Islam must be excluded from the First Amendment. Unlike every other religion on earth, Islam is not just a matter of individual conscience. Islam is a totalitarian system dedicated to the complete eradication of every other faith and the erasure of every freedom. Muslims believe they are commanded by their god to make war on anyone who is not a Muslim. This warfare must continue until everyone on earth is Muslim. That is why Islam must be excluded from the First Amendment. Not because it is offensive, illiberal, or wrong. Everyone has the right to be wrong. No, an exception must be made for Islam because its continuing inclusion under the umbrella of the First Amendment would ultimately lead to the destruction of that law and all the freedoms it was designed to protect.
Once Islam has been excluded from constitutional protections we can begin the processing of curbing its growth. This must be done lawfully and peacefully. The simplest way to stop the spread of Islam in the US would be to tax Muslims and their institutions. This is exactly what Muslims do to non-Muslims. The jizya is a tax levied upon non-Muslims residing in Islamic countries. Taxation will exert a gradual but persistent pressure that will discourage immigration while simultaneously encouraging emigration and conversion. Imagine, for example, a tax that begins at ten percent a year and is mandated to increase five percent every year thereafter until it reaches a maximum of ninety-percent. Even the introduction and discussion of a constitutional amendment would immediately dampen Muslim immigration.
What about the slippery slope of intolerance? I concede that the action I am proposing opens the door to excluding other faiths. If Buddhists, Taoists, and Hindus start walking into cafes and theaters and shooting people with Kalashnikov rifles simply because they refuse to convert to their faith, they can be excluded also. Until that time, Islam remains the only religion that has a thirteen-hundred year record of violence, intolerance, and totalitarianism. Excluding Muslims from our society will ensure that everyone else is able to live in peace and practice the beliefs dictated by their conscience.
Why do liberal Democrats love Islam? The Democratic Party in the US purports to be a fervid advocate of women's rights. They talk about an imaginary Republican "war on women" while turning a blind eye to the way women are treated in Islamic countries. Islam is infamous for treating women like dogs. The Koran (Sura 4) states plainly that "men are superior to women." A virtuous wife is instructed to be "obedient" and her husband is advised to "scourge" an insubordinate spouse. The Democratic Party is also an advocate of gay rights, yet remains silent when ISIS summarily executes gay men by dropping them off the tops of buildings, head first. The answer to this apparent quandary is found in the Pew Poll. According to Pew, a full 70 percent of American Muslims identify as Democrats versus only 11 percent as Republicans. No wonder the Democratic Party wants to flood the US with Muslim immigrants! It's not about ideology; it's about obtaining power. The Democrats’ obsession with outlawing guns is another symptom of this lust for power and control.
What can average people do to save their country and preserve Western Civilization? First, educate ourselves. We need to understand not only the true nature of the Islamic threat but also be able to articulate the virtues of Western Civilization and how it differs from the Islamic totalitarian system. Second, have the courage to speak freely without fear of being criticized. In the last few months, one man, Donald Trump, has almost single-handedly broken the shackles of political correctness by refusing to back down or surrender the moral high ground. Cast off the guilt and shame that the enemies of this country have tried to hang around our necks! Our ancestors bought our freedoms with blood in the snow. The longer we wait to act, the greater the chances our children will have to repeat their sacrifices.
Dr. Deming is professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, and the author of Science and Technology in World History (McFarland, 2010, 2012).
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/islam_and_the_first_amendment.html#ixzz3yr3VHqvL
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"Some Mexican smuggling networks actually specialize in providing logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United States, the government documents say. The top Al Qaeda leader in Mexico was identified in the September 2004 cable from the American consulate in Ciudad Juárez as Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah."
Judicial Watch Uncovers New State Department Records Confirming Arab Smuggling “Cells,” Al Qaeda Leader in Mexico.
For more than a decade the U.S. government has known that “Arab extremists” are entering the country through Mexico with the assistance of smuggling network “cells,” according to State Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch that reveal among them was a top Al Qaeda operative wanted by the FBI. Some Mexican smuggling networks actually specialize in providing logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United States, the government documents say. The top Al Qaeda leader in Mexico was identified in the September 2004 cable from the American consulate in Ciudad Juárez as Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah. The cable was released to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.
The new intelligence records were released as a result of an ongoing JW investigation into the critical national security threats on the southern border, specifically those created by Islamic terrorists teaming up with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate and attack the U.S. In response to JW’s reporting in the last two years the Obama administration—through various spokespeople, including FBI Director James Comey—has vehemently denied that Islamic terrorists are operating in Mexican towns near American cities or entering the U.S. through the famously porous southern border.
The State Department documents, which include substantial redactions supposedly to protect classified and personal information, contradict this. JW obtained them as part of an investigative series into Shukrijumah, an Al Qaeda operative also known as Javier Robles. In December, 2014 Shukrijumah was killed by the Pakistan Army in an intelligence-borne operation in South Waziristan. But before he died Shukrijumah helped plan several U.S. attacks, including plots to bomb Oprah Winfrey’s studio and detonate nuclear devices in multiple American cities. For years Shukrijumah appeared on the FBI’s most wanted list and, despite being sought by the agency, he crossed back and forth into the U.S. from Mexico to meet fellow militant Islamists in Texas. JW has reported that, as one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, Shukrijumah piloted an aircraft into the Cielo Dorado airfield in Anthony, New Mexico.
The new State Department records show that U.S. authorities knew Shukrijumah was in Mexico because they say that the Regional Security Office (RSO) at the consulate in Ciudad Juárez used newspapers to distribute information throughout Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico about the Al Qaeda operative at the request of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in El Paso. This appears on page 17 of the documents, which are linked above in their entirety. Of interesting note is that the government uses an exemption that applies to classified information to continue to withhold some of the records when the entire file was already declassified back in September, 2014.
Information about Middle Eastern terrorists entering the U.S. through Mexico appears in a September 2, 2004 cable—declassified 10 years later—titled “CONFIDENTIAL INFORMANT, A PROVEN CI TO USG IN THE PAST, REPORTS ARAB CELLS WITHIN MEXICO.” It explains that a reputable government informant went to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez and provided information pertaining to suspect Arab extremists who have been smuggled into the U.S. through the Mexican border. “The confidential source (SUBJECT) stated his family member, who is a human trafficker, knows the exact whereabouts of three Arabs who are currently being hidden in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico,” the State Department cable reads. “Although not absolutely positive, one of the three is likely Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, alleged to be a Saudi Arabian terrorist cell leader thought to be in Mexico. SUBJECT also provided information on two smuggling networks, “cells,” that specialize in providing logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United States.”
Many questions remain about the U.S. government’s relationship with Shukrijumah, but last spring JW obtained records from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) that indicate he was a Confidential Source/Informant for the government. Shukrijumah lived in South Florida’s Broward County and graduated from Broward Community College with a degree in computer engineering. Four months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks Shukrijumah fled the U.S. He was one of the suspected actors in a number of planned terror attacks in the U.S., including a plot to simultaneously detonate nuclear devices in several U.S. cities. Convicted terrorist Jose Padilla claimed to have trained with Shukrijumah to blow up U.S. apartment buildings using natural gas explosions.
In 2010 Shukrijumah was indicted in the Eastern District of New York for his role in a terrorist plot to attack targets in the United States—including New York City’s subway system—and the United Kingdom, according the FBI. The plot against New York City’s subway system was directed by senior Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, the FBI says, and was directly related to a scheme by Al Qaeda plotters in Pakistan to use Western operatives to attack a target in the United States.
A year earlier Shukrijumah helped plan a terrorist truck-bomb targeting Winfrey’s Harpo Studios in Chicago as well as the iconic Sears Tower. Two of his fellow conspirators—Emad Karakrah and Hector Pedroza Huerta—were arrested in 2014 for unrelated state crimes in different parts of the country. Karakrah got busted in Chicago on charges of making a false car bomb threat after leading police on a high-speed chase with an ISIS flag waving from his vehicle. Huerta, an illegal alien twice convicted for driving intoxicated, got nabbed in El Paso for drunk driving. Both Karakrah and Pedroza were released from custody in 2015 under highly unusual plea deals.
The men formed part of a sophisticated narco-terror ring, exposed in a JW investigative series, with connections running from El Paso to Chicago to New York City. The operation includes an all-star lineup of logistics and transportation operatives for militant Islamists in the United State, drug and weapons smugglers for the Juarez drug cartel in Mexico, an FBI confidential informant gone rogue and two of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists. Shukrijumah was one of them and, though he’s dead, he is an important part of the puzzle and extremely relevant when connecting the dots in the narco-terror ring.
The headline at The Clarion Project reads: “Christian Persecution in 2015 at ‘Levels Akin to Ethnic Cleansing.’” The sub-heading notes that 2015 was & ldquo;the most violent year in modern history for Christians.” I...
In 2015, more than 7,000 Christians were killed because of their faith (twice as many as the year before). And the estimate is conservative because it excludes places where there is ongoing persecution but where accurate records don’t exist (such as in North Korea, Syria, and Iraq). In addition, last year 2,400 Christian churches were attacked or damaged (more than double from 2014).
Virginia Police Make Arrests in Gruesome MS-13 Gang Murders
by Warner Todd Huston17 Jan 2016Alexandria, VA63
17 Jan, 2016
17 Jan, 2016
Police have announced that they have solved two murders in Virginia linked to the violent gang MS-13, which is primarily made up of Central American illegal immigrants.
At a press conference earlier this week, Alexandria Police Chief Earl Cook reported that arrests have now been made in the case of two murders carried out by members of the California-based Hispanic gang.
Late last year the bodies of the two victims, Jose Luis Ferman Perez, 24, and Eduardo David Chandias Almendarez, 22, were discovered in separate cases. Police determined that neither victim was a member of the Salvadoran-dominated gang but both were killed by gang members.
Perez’s body was discovered in November. Now police have announced that a 17-year-old MS-13 gang member has been arrested and charged with the murder. A 16-year-old girl and another adult male will also soon be charged for Perez’s death, authorities say.
As to Almendarez’s murder, Chief Cook said that 18-year-old Edwin Alexander Guerreo Umana, also an MS-13 gang banger, was arrested and charged with that murder.
The chief reported that MS-13 activity has been increasing in the area.
“All of this gang activity in this region, and many of you have reported on it recently in the last couple years, the intensity of the violence has risen a great deal in the last couple years. We unfortunately had two of the victims here in Alexandria die because of that violence,” the Chief said.
Alexandria is certainly not alone in seeing a rise in MS-13 activity.
During the same week that police in Alexandria were announcing their arrests, plea deals were being announced in North Carolina as prosecutors go after a large number of MS-13 gang members.
Police in Washington D.C. were also announcing an uptick in the gang’s activity in the nation’s capital and say that the gang is responsible for a rise in homicides in the city.
Additionally, officials in Maryland were also saying that there has been a resurgence of MS-13 activity in the Old Line State.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
January 22, 2016
Christian persecution at record levels
By Carol Brown
The headline at The Clarion Project reads: “Christian Persecution in 2015 at ‘Levels Akin to Ethnic Cleansing.’” The sub-heading notes that 2015 was “the most violent year in modern history for Christians.” It takes one’s breath away to see the blunt truth summed up like that. And the world is turning a blind eye.
The article the references a piece at Open Doors that provides an overview of the rise of Christian persecution around the world. (See summary below.)
In 2015, more than 7,000 Christians were killed because of their faith (twice as many as the year before). And the estimate is conservative because it excludes places where there is ongoing persecution but where accurate records don’t exist (such as in North Korea, Syria, and Iraq). In addition, last year 2,400 Christian churches were attacked or damaged (more than double from 2014).
“Islamic supremacy remains the most virulent ideology that drives persecution.” Countries singled out for being particularly risky for Christians were North Korea, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, and India (due to hardline Hindu nationalists).
The Middle East, as we are well aware, has become an increasingly dangerous place for Christians as the Islamic State sweeps across the region, massacring Christians, enslaving them, raping Christian women, destroying ancient Christian buildings and artifacts, and spurring a mass exodus of Christians fleeing the region. There is also a constant “low-level” persecution as Christians are driven out of their communities, denied jobs, denied an education, and/or refused burials.
As the caliphate expands, there are two central hubs: one in the Middle East and the other in sub-Sahara Africa. Though both regions are threatening to Christians, the Middle East poses the gravest threat. The Islamic State is in Syria, Iraq, and now Libya, while Muslims across the Middle East become more devout. Meanwhile, Boko Haram has moved into Cameroon and Chad, Al-Shabaab is in Kenya, and smaller terror organizations continue to pledge themselves to the Islamic State and the vision of the caliphate.
Lawlessness contributes to the risk level for Christians, who face untold suffering in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, where migrant Christians from Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea have been brutally executed. Meanwhile, Saudi-led forces in Yemen have made life for the few Christians remaining even more dangerous. Pakistani Christians are fleeing as well, heading to countries in Southeast Asia.
In Central Asia, governments are tightening controls where, under the guise of fighting Islamic extremism, they’ve increased surveillance of the church, while in Myanmar, the state punishes those who convert from Buddhism to Christianity.
Christians are on the move around the globe, running for their lives, taking enormous risks as they cross deserts and hope they don’t fall victim to trafficking gangs. The journey is long and filled with danger. And even after they arrive at refugee camps, they continue to face threats and attacks by Muslims. At the same time, though not comparable to the barbarism Christians are facing around the world, the climate in the West is increasingly hostile to them – a climate so sick that the United States has essentially closed its doors to Christians fleeing the growing caliphate.
We are living in perilous times. As Christianity is replaced with Islam (as well as godlessness in the West), Western culture will collapse. The process has already started. It is a time to pray, a time to act, and a time to be unified against the forces of evil.
Hat tip: Counter Jihad Report
The headline at The Clarion Project reads: “Christian Persecution in 2015 at ‘Levels Akin to Ethnic Cleansing.’” The sub-heading notes that 2015 was “the most violent year in modern history for Christians.” It takes one’s breath away to see the blunt truth summed up like that. And the world is turning a blind eye.
The article the references a piece at Open Doors that provides an overview of the rise of Christian persecution around the world. (See summary below.)
In 2015, more than 7,000 Christians were killed because of their faith (twice as many as the year before). And the estimate is conservative because it excludes places where there is ongoing persecution but where accurate records don’t exist (such as in North Korea, Syria, and Iraq). In addition, last year 2,400 Christian churches were attacked or damaged (more than double from 2014).
“Islamic supremacy remains the most virulent ideology that drives persecution.” Countries singled out for being particularly risky for Christians were North Korea, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, and India (due to hardline Hindu nationalists).
The Middle East, as we are well aware, has become an increasingly dangerous place for Christians as the Islamic State sweeps across the region, massacring Christians, enslaving them, raping Christian women, destroying ancient Christian buildings and artifacts, and spurring a mass exodus of Christians fleeing the region. There is also a constant “low-level” persecution as Christians are driven out of their communities, denied jobs, denied an education, and/or refused burials.
As the caliphate expands, there are two central hubs: one in the Middle East and the other in sub-Sahara Africa. Though both regions are threatening to Christians, the Middle East poses the gravest threat. The Islamic State is in Syria, Iraq, and now Libya, while Muslims across the Middle East become more devout. Meanwhile, Boko Haram has moved into Cameroon and Chad, Al-Shabaab is in Kenya, and smaller terror organizations continue to pledge themselves to the Islamic State and the vision of the caliphate.
Lawlessness contributes to the risk level for Christians, who face untold suffering in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, where migrant Christians from Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea have been brutally executed. Meanwhile, Saudi-led forces in Yemen have made life for the few Christians remaining even more dangerous. Pakistani Christians are fleeing as well, heading to countries in Southeast Asia.
In Central Asia, governments are tightening controls where, under the guise of fighting Islamic extremism, they’ve increased surveillance of the church, while in Myanmar, the state punishes those who convert from Buddhism to Christianity.
Christians are on the move around the globe, running for their lives, taking enormous risks as they cross deserts and hope they don’t fall victim to trafficking gangs. The journey is long and filled with danger. And even after they arrive at refugee camps, they continue to face threats and attacks by Muslims. At the same time, though not comparable to the barbarism Christians are facing around the world, the climate in the West is increasingly hostile to them – a climate so sick that the United States has essentially closed its doors to Christians fleeing the growing caliphate.
We are living in perilous times. As Christianity is replaced with Islam (as well as godlessness in the West), Western culture will collapse. The process has already started. It is a time to pray, a time to act, and a time to be unified against the forces of evil.</