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The Multiple Personalities of the Muslim Rage

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Photo credit: derek7272

At the height of the latest Islamic rage, one of the Muslim world’s first media-celebrity imams told worshippers they were indeed witnessing a clash of civilizations. But just not the kind you think.

This one also is within Islam, and it helps explain the multiple personalities of the fury.

It’s political: The uncompromising ethos of extremism clawing for any gains against more moderate voices. It’s social: Fed by an explosive blend of economic stagnation, anger over U.S.-led wars and — in some places — frustrations as the soaring hopes of the Arab Spring hit the grinding realities of rebuilding.

And it cuts deeply into questions that have added resonance in a hyper-connected world that moves at the quicksilver pace of the web: How to coexist with the free-speech openness of the West and whether violence is ever a valid response.

“Our manner of protesting should reflect sense and reason,” urged Egyptian-born cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi in his Friday sermon in Qatar’s capital Doha, where he has found a worldwide audience through the web and a show on the pan-Arab network Al-Jazeera.

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Anti-American Protests Spreading Beyond Middle East

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Anti-American rage that began this week over a video insult to Islam spread to nearly 20 countries across the Middle East and beyond on Friday, with violent and sometimes deadly protests that convulsed the birthplaces of the Arab Spring revolutions, breached two more United States Embassies and targeted diplomatic properties of Germany and Britain.

The broadening of the protests appeared to reflect a pent-up resentment of Western powers in general, and defied pleas for restraint from world leaders, including the new Islamist president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, whose country was the instigator of the demonstrations that erupted three days earlier on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The anger stretched from North Africa to South Asia and Indonesia and in some cases was surprisingly destructive. In Tunis, an American-run school that was untouched during the revolution nearly two years ago was completely ransacked. In eastern Afghanistan, protesters burned an effigy of President Obama, who had made an outreach to Muslims a thematic pillar of his first year in office.

The State Department confirmed that protesters had penetrated the perimeters of the American Embassies in the Tunisian and Sudanese capitals, and said that 65 embassies or consulates around the world had issued emergency messages about threats of violence, and that those facilities in Islamic countries were curtailing diplomatic activity. The Pentagon said it sent Marines to protect embassies in Yemen and Sudan.

The wave of unrest not only increased concern in the West but raised new questions about political instability in Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle East countries where newfound freedoms, once suppressed by autocratic leaders, have given way to an absence of authority. The protests also seemed to highlight the unintended consequences of America’s support of movements to overthrow those autocrats, which have empowered Islamist groups that remain implacably hostile to the West.

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Did Koran-Burning Pastor Promote Video that Incited Egyptian & Libyan Violence? (+video)

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The retired Florida pastor who attracted international attention two years ago for threatening to burn the Quran was again in the media spotlight on Wednesday for purportedly promoting a video that may have incited the violent attacks in Egypt and Libya.

But Terry Jones, 60, told reporters from his now-dismantled church here that his organization’s website was hacked and that he had not been able to post the short video mocking the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Whether he promoted the video or not, U.S. authorities were so concerned about Jones that Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, asked him not to post the controversial 14-minute video in fear it could further inflame tensions in Libya or Egypt.

Jones said he told Dempsey in a phone call Wednesday that he would “definitely consider it,” but later told reporters he would ignore the request during a lengthy interview in the building that once housed his congregation.

U.S. State Department officials believe the video, a trailer for a longer movie entitled “Innocence of Muslims,” may have contributed to the violence in Egypt and Libya, where four people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were killed. But Obama administration officials also believe the attacks — which happened on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — may have been planned.

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DNC Convention to Host Radical Muslims & Their “Jumah” Prayers for 2 Hours (+video)

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By Erica Ritz. The Democratic National Committee is raising a number of eyebrows after announcing that it will be hosting Islamic “Jumah” prayers for two hours on the Friday of its convention, soon after denying a Catholic cardinal’s request to say a prayer at the same event.

Up to 20,000 people are expected to attend the Friday prayers and Jibril Hough, a spokesman for the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs (BIMA), said the purpose of the event is to hold political parties accountable for the issues faced by Muslim-Americans.

In particular, the event will target the Patriot Act, the NYPD, the National Defense Authorization Act, and anti-Shariah sentiment.

And while Muslim-Americans undeniably face distinct challenges, those who are well-informed on the dangers of radical Islam are expressing their doubts about the event.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the Founder and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, wrote: “The leaders of this event – Jibril Hough and Imam Siraj Wahhaj [are not] moderates. They are radicals. These individuals embrace Islamist supremacy and have demonstrated support for radical ideologies.” Read more from this story HERE.

Here a video promoting the “Jumah.” It gets interesting at about the 2 minute mark:

Political Correctness Causing US Generals to Ignore Islam as Cause of Increased Afghan Casualties?

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Photo credit: isafmedia

The U.S. Army command recently announced that only 25% of the lethal “green on blue” Afghan military insider attacks against U.S. and N.A.T.O. troops were attributable to the Taliban. Mere “personal grievances,” we are told, account for the other 75% of attacks committed by our Afghan allies.

How could it be that so many Muslims in the Afghan National Army (A.N.A.) have become murderously enraged over personal disagreements and accidental insults? What has caused this upsurge in murders that has killed at least 40 U.S. troops since January 2012?

The answer is buried deep in a May 12, 2011 unclassified report by a U.S. Army “Red Team.” This report, titled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility,” contains a litany of bureaucratic puffery that tries to explain away these acts of murder committed against the U.S. and N.A.T.O. troops by their A.N.A. “allies.”

During a recent press conference, General John R. Allen, Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, claimed that Ramadan fasting, combined with operational tempo during the summer heat, were causing the current spate of killings of his own troops by Muslim A.N.A. soldiers.

That doesn’t seem right. The U.S. Army has been in Afghanistan for 11 years, and the number of attacks has climbed enormously in the last year.

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European far right flirts with Norwegian mass murderer Breivik’s ideas

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Photo credit: Oslo politidistrikt

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik may have failed to ignite a race war with Muslims, but he succeeded in stoking anxieties about the stability of Europe’s increasingly diverse societies.

Though his talk of an international underground of killers – latter-day Crusaders he called the Knights Templar – seemed to be mere fantasy, and while his methods place him far beyond the pale of mainstream politics, many of his beliefs are to be found within the fold of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant populists.

“His ideological `manifesto’ is a distilled representation of a cultural crisis that pervades the European continent and finds expression in an increasingly xenophobic populism,” Kirsten Simonsen, a professor at Denmark’s Roskilde University, wrote in “Bloodlands”, a 2012 series of essays about Breivik.

Some notions – that Europe and its indigenous cultures are being weakened by immigration and multiculturalism – have been helping reshape the continent’s right-wing politics for years.

These beliefs occasionally find an echo on the margins of centre-right parties, among politicians seeking support from communities plagued by rising unemployment.

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Prime Minister Netanyahu “determined to attack Iran before the US elections”

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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is determined to attack Iran before the US elections,” Israel’s Channel 10 News claimed last night, and Israel is now “closer than ever” to a strike designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive.

The TV station’s military reporter Alon Ben-David, who earlier this year was given extensive access to the Israel Air Force as it trained for a possible attack, reported that, since upgraded sanctions against Iran have failed to force a suspension of the Iranian nuclear program in the past two months, “from the prime minister’s point of view, the time for action is getting ever closer.”

Asked by the news anchor in the Hebrew-language TV report how close Israel now was to “a decision and perhaps an attack,” Ben-David said: “It appears that we are closer than ever.”

He said it seemed that Netanyahu was not waiting for a much-discussed possible meeting with US President Barack Obama, after the UN General Assembly gathering in New York late next month — indeed, “it’s not clear that there’ll be a meeting.” In any case, said Ben-David, “I doubt Obama could say anything that would convince Netanyahu to delay a possible attack.”

The report added that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak believe Obama would have no choice but to give backing for an Israeli attack before the US presidential elections in November.

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Pakistani Christian with Down’s Syndrome arrested for blasphemy

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Photo credit: Omer Wazir

Pakistani police have arrested a mentally disabled 11-year-old girl after a mob accused her of desecrating pages of the Koran. The mob demanded the Christian girl’s arrest and threatened to burn down Christian homes outside the capital Islamabad, local media say.

Officials said the girl could not properly answer police questions.

Her parents have been taken into protective custody following threats and other Christian families have fled.

It is thought that the girl has Down’s syndrome. Paul Bhatti, Pakistan’s minister for National Harmony, told the BBC that the girl was known to have a mental disorder and that it seemed “unlikely she purposefully desecrated the Koran”. “From the reports I have seen, she was found carrying a waste bag which also had pages of the Koran,” he said.

“This infuriated some local people and a large crowd gathered to demand action against her. The police were initially reluctant to arrest her, but they came under a lot of pressure from a very large crowd, who were threatening to burn down Christian homes.”

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Iran: Jewish state is a “cancerous tumor” that will soon be excised

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an annual anti-Israel protest in Tehran on Friday that the Jewish state was a “cancerous tumor” that will soon be excised, drawing Western rebukes.

Washington said Ahmadinejad’s statements were “reprehensible”, while Paris viewed them as “outrageous.”

Ahmadinejad’s diatribe against Israel in his Quds (Jerusalem) Day address was the latest in a long line to have drawn criticism from Western governments.

“The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour,” he said. “The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land…. A new Middle East will definitely be formed. With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists,” he said.

The diatribe took place amid heightened tensions between Israel and Iran over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program. The Jewish state has in recent weeks intensified its threats to possibly bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent it having the capability to produce atomic weapons.

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European Union refuses to restrict Iranian-backed terrorist group, Hezbollah

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Washington and Jerusalem insist that Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed terrorist organization with bloody hands, and that it is working closely with Tehran to train, arm and finance the Syrian military’s lethal repression of the uprising there. Yet, the European Union continues to treat it foremost as a Lebanese political and social movement.

As Israel heightens fears of a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, intelligence analysts warn that Iran and Hezbollah would respond with attacks of their own on targets abroad. Israeli and American officials have attributed the Bulgarian bus bombing last month that killed six people, including five Israeli tourists, to Hezbollah and Iran, saying it was part of a clandestine offensive that has included plots in Thailand, India, Cyprus and elsewhere.

While the group is believed to operate all over the Continent, Germany is a center of activity, with 950 members and supporters last year, up from 900 in 2010, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said in its annual threat report. On Saturday, Hezbollah supporters and others will march here for the annual Jerusalem Day event, a protest against Israeli control of that city. Organizers told the Berlin police that the event would attract 1,000 marchers, and that two counterdemonstrations were also likely.

Hezbollah has maintained a low profile in Europe since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, quietly holding meetings and raising money that goes to Lebanon, where officials use it for an array of activities — building schools and clinics, delivering social services and, Western intelligence agencies say, carrying out terrorist attacks.

European security services keep tabs on the group’s political supporters, but experts say they are ineffective when it comes to tracking the sleeper cells that pose the most danger. “They have real, trained operatives in Europe that have not been used in a long time, but if they wanted them to become active, they could,” said Alexander Ritzmann, a policy adviser at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels, who has testified before Congress on Hezbollah.

Read more from this story HERE.