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Kerry: Extremism Exploits a ‘Beautiful Religion’

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Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster, PoolThe response to Islamist extremism, which “exploits a legitimate and beautiful religion,” must include offering alternatives to young people who lack opportunities and “feel oppressed,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday.

“The challenge of our generation is going to be to deal with religious radical extremism, which exploits a legitimate and beautiful religion that is being totally distorted, has nothing to do with what they purport to be pursuing, and nevertheless captures the minds of some of our young people – even in America,” Kerry told staff at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa.

He noted that more than 100 Americans have traveled to the region to fight with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), while more had done so from European countries, Australia and elsewhere.

“And so we have to push back. We’re not going to win this exclusively through our efforts on the ground in this coalition with kinetic efforts,” he said, referring to the U.S.-led coalition’s military operations against the jihadist group. “We’re going to win this with ideas.”

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Photo Credit: AP / KUNAUS Envoy: To Defeat ISIS, We Must Highlight ‘Our Profound Respect’ for Islam

A global effort to counter claims by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) that it is acting in the name of Islam must include a counter-narrative that highlights “our profound respect” for the religion, the administration’s point man in the anti-ISIS coalition said this week.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen was speaking in Kuwait, where representatives of more than a dozen Islamic and Western met to discuss using public communications to combat ISIS (also known as Da’esh – an acronym for the Arabic rendering of the group’s name, ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah fil-Iraq wa ash-Sham).

“As we seek to expose Da’esh’s true nature,” Allen told the gathering on Monday, “we must also tell a positive story, one that highlights our respect – our profound respect for Islam’s proud traditions, its rich history, and celebration of scholarship and family and community.”

“We must work with clerics and scholars and teachers and parents to tell the story of how we celebrate Islam, even as we show that Da’esh perverts it.”

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Dad Banned From School After Complaints About Daughter’s Islam Homework

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Photo Credit: ShutterstockA Maryland father and former Marine finds himself under a no-trespass order for asking that his daughter be excused from Islam homework in her world history class.

Kevin Wood, the eight year Marine veteran, was upset because he did not want his high-school junior daughter to participate in instruction on Islam.

He called La Plata High School in Maryland, hoping to get his daughter excused.

Wood spoke first to an administrative assistant and then to Vice Principal Shannon Morris.

A school-district spokeswoman, Katie O’Malley Simpson, claimed that Wood threatened to cause problems at the school in his conversation with Morris.

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Rev. Graham: Obama’s Wrong, Islam ‘Is a False Religion’

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Photo Credit: BGEAReverend Franklin Graham, son of world renowned evangelical pastor Billy Graham, said that President Barack Obama was “fundamentally mistaken” about radical Islam; questioned why peaceful Muslims do not collectively condemn jihadist terrorism; and argued that Islam “is a false religion” and that “it is impossible for a false religion to be a true religion of peace.”

Rev. Franklin Graham also cited examples from a speech he recently gave outside the White House, decrying the actions of followers of a “peaceful religion” who practice “female circumcision,” hijacking, kidnapping, “honor” killings, and decapitation.

Rev. Graham commended President Obama for sending some U.S. troops to fight the Islamic State but, citing Obama’s Sept. 24 speech at the United Nations where the president said “Islam teaches peace,” the reverend said, “I also believe our president is completely and fundamentally mistaken about the intolerant and violent nature of hardened Islamic followers.”

“For Muslims, peace comes only through submission to Islam,” said Rev. Graham in his November commentary for Decision magazine, published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. “When they speak of peace, they mean submission to their religion. Worldwide, tens of thousands of men, women and children have been slaughtered in the name of Allah, under the bloody flag of Islam.”

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Father Mad Because Public School Teaches ‘There Is No God But Allah’

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Millions of students in public schools don’t understand fractions or pronouns at even a basic level but students in the oceanfront Boston suburb of Revere, Mass. are taking the time to learn all about Islam — in the most embarrassingly shallow and cheerleading way imaginable.

Part of the textbook prints the Muslim Call to Prayer,according to Boston NBC affiliate WHDH.

“I bear witness that there is no God but Allah,” it says.

The textbook portion also reverently celebrates Muhammad’s life.

“Muhammad never expected to change world,” the admiring, rah-rah textbook reads.

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Kerry, Campaigning Against ISIS Ideology, Meets With Muslim Leader Who Enforces Shari'a Punishments

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Photo Credit: Brunei government / InfofotoSecretary of State John Kerry met with several Southeast Asian leaders on Monday to promote the anti-ISIS campaign including the need to delegitimize its ideology. The people he met with include a Muslim ruler who less than six months ago introduced the death penalty for apostasy, stoning for adultery and limb amputation for theft.

The controversial shari’a-based penal code was enacted by the Sultan of Brunei on May 1. Invoking the same shari’a obligations, the jihadist group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) enforces similar punishments in areas under its control.

President Obama, Kerry and other administration officials repeatedly contend that there is nothing “Islamic” about ISIS or the atrocities it is committing in Syria and Iraq.

Kerry’s meeting with Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah was one of several bilaterals held in Jakarta on the sidelines of the inauguration of Indonesia’s new leader, President Joko Widodo.

The sultan’s office said in a brief statement afterwards that the two had “discussed bilateral issues and cooperation between Brunei and the United States, and exchanged views on regional and international matters of mutual concern.”

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WHOA! Rick Perry Has Tough Words for Radical Islam

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Texas Governor Rick Perry is already a conservative superstar and is a likely 2016 Presidential candidate. But at a private meeting with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in London, Perry explained his foreign policy positions and just how serious the radical Islam threat is.

In addition, he described how dangerous the creeping “Islamification” of Britain is. He called for moral clarity in this ongoing global battle against terrorism.

Speaking on the dangers of radical Islam, Governor Perry chose not to follow the form of U.S. President Barack Obama or UK Prime Minister David Cameron by insisting that Islamic terrorists are “not Muslim,” a convenient dodge recently described as a “reassuring assertion, and one that almost everyone, including the vast majority of Muslims, would desperately like to believe”, but ultimately “wishful thinking.”

Instead, Perry asserted the moralistic strength of Western culture, and that of ISIS a “falsehood”: “Their twisted version of Islam amounts to a creed of human cruelty – pure sadism, and nothing more.”

He pulled no punches when describing in graphic detail the ISIS advance: “The enslavement, the beheadings, the crucifixions, the mass executions, the forced conversions. And all of this, of course, by men who tell themselves they are doing God’s work on this earth.” Criticising those who assert “quite plainly, that the Middle East is ultimately no concern of ours” Perry opposed moral relativism in the face of the barbarity of the Islamic State: “we have every right to judge, and every reason to act.”

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Whippings, Forced Marriages, and Beheadings: Inside ISIS's 'Morality Police'

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A Syrian woman who joined the ISIS morality police and patrolled the streets enforcing strict Islamic State female dress codes has spoken of her experiences after finding the country too much to handle, having witnessed crucifixions and beheadings and being forced into an arranged marriage.

The 25 year-old woman, who has only been identified by pseudonym ‘Khadija’ has spoken to CNN while dressed in a full veiled niqab to hide her face has told the network about life in Raqqa. As a member of the al-Khansaa brigade she was charged with enforcing the morality of the Islamic regime, and patrolled the streets while heavily armed to ensure compliance.

Speaking of the punishment for dissent, she said: “We’d patrol the streets. If we saw a woman who was not wearing the correct sharia clothing, we would grab her. Sometimes, they would be lashed”.

Describing the first time she met the senior figure within the al-Khansaa morality police tasked with carrying out the physical punishments, ‘Khadija’ said: “she’s female, but she’s not a normal female. She’s huge. She has an AK-47, a pistol, a whip, a dagger. And she wears the niqab”.

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Iraqi Vicar: No Communion in Nineveh this Week for First Time in 2,000 Years

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Photo Credit: Reuters The Islamic State’s goal of eradicating Christianity from its ancient home in northern Iraq is nearly complete, report Christian officials remaining in the area. According to one Vicar, last week marked the first time in millennia that Christians did not receive Holy Communion in Nineveh, northern Iraq.

As the Telegraph reports, Canon Andrew White, the only Anglican Vicar remaining in Iraq, reported that Communion did not take place in Nineveh this year. “All [churches] are closed, all their people have run away.” Canon White noted that the few Iraqis remaining in the region are there due to poverty or immobility, and that those remaining fear for their lives constantly.

He added that many in the area expressed concern over the possibility of airstrikes on the region, citing the possibility of civilian casualties. “From the Iraqi point of view, the only way we can gain some kind of real safety and real removal of the Islamic State, as they call themselves, would be by having troops on the ground,” he noted. President Obama has categorically refused to entertain the option of ground troops in Iraq during this operation.

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Iran’s President: Calling Islamic State Islamic is Part of Western ‘Islamophobic Project’

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Photo Credit: AP / Jason DeCrowIranian President Hasan Rouhani accused Western media Thursday of deliberately trying to vilify Islam by identifying Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) terrorists as Muslims.

“I am astonished that these murderous groups call themselves Islamic,” he said in a speech at the U.N. General Assembly devoted largely to terrorism and extremism. “What is more astonishing is that the Western media, in line with them, repeats this false claim, which provokes the hatred of all Muslims.”

Muslims, he added, “see this defamation as a part of an Islamophobic project.”

While rejecting any link between his religion and terrorism, Rouhani instead blamed factors like foreign conspiracies, poverty and injustice.

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‘The World Is United,’ Obama Tells 5 Arab Partners Who Joined Attack on ISIS

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Photo Credit: AP / Pablo Martinez MonsivaisBy Patrick Goodenough.

President Obama on Tuesday thanked representatives of the five Arab nations that took part in Monday night’s U.S.-led airstrikes against terrorists in Syria “for their participation and commitment to rolling back the violent extremism that has so disrupted Iraq and Syria and threatens the region as a whole.”

“Because of the almost unprecedented effort of this coalition,” he said, “I think we now have an opportunity to send a very clear message that the world is united; that all of us are committed to making sure that we degrade and ultimately destroy not only ISIL, but also the kinds of extremist ideologies that would lead to so much bloodshed.”

Obama was speaking in New York during a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar, joined by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

“This is not going to be something that is quick, and it is not something that is going to be easy,” he said. “It will take time, and it’s not only a military effort.”

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PM Cameron: Defeating ALL Extremism Means “Banning Preachers of Hate and Intolerance”

By Greg Hengler.

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