The New Frontier, Part 7

At the end of Part 6, we promised we would begin to explore how Chinese are being targeted by terrorists in China's near-abroad, South Asia. Also, in Genesis, Part 33, we saw how it had been predicted that evaporating Pakistani support for an anti-Indian terrorist organization was expected to cause problems for Islamabad at home.



We now review The New Face of Jihad by Massoud Ansari, dated August of 2007:

Chinese nationals are targeted in Pakistan as China attempts to rein in its own jihadis.

Analysts in Pakistan are now beginning to link the spate of attacks against Chinese nationals in the country to Islamabad's policy of playing ball with Beijing in its attempt to quell the Islamist movement in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

"We are now quite certain that foreign militants living in Pakistan and their Pakistani hosts, infuriated with Islamabad's cooperation with Beijing, are carrying out these attacks," says a senior intelligence official, requesting not to be named.

Let me be clear that by connecting this post to Genesis, Part 33, I do not mean to suggest that Pakistan has been sponsoring terrorists in China like Pakistan has sponsored them in India.

Of course, if you independently draw that conclusion, that is your business.

Clear evidence supporting this argument was obtained by the authorities in early July when three Chinese nationals working in a three-wheel auto-rickshaw factory at Khazana, a town some eight kilometres from Peshawar, were killed and another seriously wounded in a daredevil attack.

Eyewitness accounts reveal that the militants were in three separate cars. They started firing at the Chinese nationals from two of the cars, while fellow militants in the third car filmed the action. The militants shouted religious slogans as they opened fire.

Fanning the flames of Islamic militancy, and thus extremism, was important in agitating for an independent Muslim state in the 1940's, as British colonial rule was coming to an end.

Now we understand what is being reaped from the seeds then sewn.

The film was sent to Chinese authorities earlier this week, apparently by anti-Beijing Uighur extremists, warning them that such attacks would continue against its nationals on Pakistani soil if it did not refrain from pursuing the policy of persecuting Muslims in China.

Earlier, in mid-July, when a suicide bomber rammed into a convoy of police vehicles escorting Chinese technicians through a busy street in Hub, Pakistani officials initially suspected that Baloch insurgents were behind the attacks. The Chinese were unhurt but the massive explosion killed 29 Pakistanis, including seven police officers riding in the van that was attacked.

"We were puzzled because we knew that insurgents who are involved in much of the violence in Balochistan have neither the resources nor the capacity to carry out such a suicide attack. Now we know for sure that it was the handiwork of Islamists linked to Uighur militants, who are trying to settle scores with the Chinese government," says an official.

But, how did the Uighur militants gain such a capacity?

Apparently, the Uighur militants are getting support that the Baloch independence movement isn't getting.

Pakistani officials now believe that the latest attacks against Chinese nationals on Pakistani soil were triggered off when an activist belonging to the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) was executed in China last month, after being deported from Pakistan.

The ETIM strives for a separate homeland in the Muslim populated Xinjiang province of China. According to some reports, the Chinese government has confiscated the passports of thousands of Muslims in the oil-rich Xinjiang province to prevent them from slipping away to join militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are some indications that the government may bar Chinese Muslims from performing Hajj this year. These reports follow intelligence indicating that the Hui Muslim minority community in central China is financed by extremists in the Middle East.

Aha! A Middle East connection. Dare we suggest Saudi Arabia?

Finding themselves in hot water in China, some militants have fled the country to seek shelter elsewhere.

Exact figures are not available, but some Pakistani officials suggest that nearly 1,000 Uighur militants from China's Xinjiang region have made their way to South and North Waziristan.

The Uighur militants are believed to have been closely linked with Osama Bin Laden's terror brigade, so much so that it was suspected that he might have been sheltered by these militants in Xinjiang province after he was forced out of Afghanistan in 2001. The militants fought alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan when it came under attack in the wake of 9/11.

A powerful argument for a Saudi connection....

Pakistani officials are now trying to investigate if the kidnapping of the eight Chinese, who owned a massage parlour in an upscale neighbourhood of Islamabad, by the self-appointed moral police of Lal Masjid, was also instigated by the militants and their supporters among the local Taliban.

According to one estimate, nearly 5,000 Chinese nationals, including 3,500 engineers and technicians work on various state-run projects in Pakistan. In the wake of the latest violence, many of them, especially the engineers working on various projects in Pakistan, have started leaving the country. Those who have chosen to stay on have restricted their movements. Some have taken to wearing shalwar kameez in an attempt to deflect attention. While westerners had faced deadly attacks in the country in the past, there was a perception that the Chinese were relatively safe. Recent events have drastically altered this perception.

Pakistani officials say that though militants belonging to the Xinjiang province have sought shelter in the lawless tribal zones for decades, never before had they used Pakistani soil to fight their "ideological" battles.

The trouble began when Pakistani officials reportedly rounded up several dozen Chinese Muslims from madrassahs in Pakistan and handed them over to China in 2004. "We heard from Uighur militants in the tribal lands of Pakistan that most of their fellow Muslims were shot dead immediately after they arrived in China," says Lateef Afridi, a local tribal elder.

Pakistan's elite have supported jihadism, but here is something that seems to trump ideology: business. China is helping develop Pakistan's infrastructure -- roadways and port facilities. The terrorists may have to put their holy war on hold, or else bite the hand that seems to have helped feed them.

After receiving reports that an Al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group had planned to kidnap senior diplomats of a "communist country," Chinese diplomats in Islamabad requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to beef up security around its missions two years ago. Heightened security measures may have helped to prevent attacks on these missions, but in October 2004, two Chinese engineers working on the Gomal Zam dam project were kidnapped from Tank, near the South Waziristan Agency by tribal militants. The kidnapping ended on a tragic note two days later. One of the Chinese hostages was killed; the other was rescued unharmed in a blitzkrieg commando action.

Some Pakistani officials assumed that the kidnapping was meant to embarrass Islamabad, as Beijing was its close ally and major supporter in defence and other projects. Others now suggest the militants kidnapped the engineers because they suspected them to be undercover spies, keeping tabs on Chinese Muslims in the area.

Only last month, China handed over a list of 20 militants belonging to the ETIM, wanted for disruptive activities in Xinjiang province, alleging that they were hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. Chinese officials requested the visiting Pakistani delegation, led by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, to furnish them with detailed information about these terrorists.

The ETIM has been declared a terrorist outfit by Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, China and the United States. The US government accuses it of committing over 200 acts of terrorism between 1990 and 2001, resulting in at least 162 deaths and over 440 injuries.

The militants believe that the Chinese government has deployed dozens of spies across Pakistan, under the garb of technicians and engineers, to keep track of the activities of several hundred Uighur extremists hiding in the tribal belt.

Senior counter-terrorism officials say there is a strong likelihood that the local Taliban may have been asked by Al-Qaeda to carry out attacks against the Chinese on Pakistani soil to protect the interests of their fellow Chinese militants who had remained associated with the network.

Pakistani government authorities faced a serious confrontion with tribal militants when they demanded that they expel or hand over militants belonging to Uighur province, including Uzbeks and Chechens, in the wake of the deal signed with them. Recently, the tribal militants renounced the peace deal struck last September.

An Uzbek and a Chechen connection, too?

Pakistan now faces great pressure from its western allies to do more to curb the militancy in the tribal areas. Washington has already questioned President Musharraf's ability to control the remote tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, in which, according to US officials, Osama Bin Laden is probably hiding. There is great concern that Al-Qaeda is being allowed to rebuild its organisation in this "safe haven."

Islamabad's problems just seem to get worse. Already fighting a virtual war within the country to combat one of the worst threats to its security, it faces opposition not just from local militants but from the international jihadists including Arabs and Uzbeks. Now, to the list of its deadly "enemies," it must add the reclusive militants belonging to China's Uighur province.

Of course, this article is from last year; all of that is no longer Mushy's problem, is it?

Stay tuned!

The Sword of Allah, Part 3

We continue from Part 2 reviewing Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

Around the same time, the United States released photos of industrial-size poppy farms — many owned by pro-government opportunists, others owned by Taliban sympathizers. Most of these narco-farms were near major southern cities. Farmers were digging wells, surveying new land for poppy cultivation, diverting U.S.-built irrigation canals to poppy fields and starting expensive reclamation projects.

They should put a sign in the poppy fields: "Your Tax Dollars At Work!"

Yet Afghan officials continued to say that poppy cultivation was the only choice for its poor farmers. My first indication of the insincerity of this position came at a lunch in Brussels in September 2006 attended by Habibullah Qaderi, who was then Afghanistan's minister for counternarcotics. He gave a speech in which he said that poor Afghan farmers have no choice but to grow poppies, and asked for more money. A top European diplomat challenged him, holding up a U.N. map showing the recent trend: poppy growth decreasing in the poorest areas and growing in the wealthier areas. The minister, taken aback, simply reiterated his earlier point that Afghanistan needed more money for its destitute farmers. After the lunch, however, Qaderi approached me and whispered: "I know what you say is right. Poverty is not the main reason people are growing poppy. But this is what the president of Afghanistan tells me to tell others."

From Kabul to Washington, D.C., the battlefield efforts of our troops are being subverted by lies. The result is that people die in an endless "War on Terror", while well-positioned people on both sides make money dealing in everything from arms for fighting the war to heroin that is produced and trafficked taking advantage of the instability and politics.

Recall what Sibel Edmonds said in her May 7, 2004, interview with Jim Hogue, Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate:

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.

As I'm writing this post, I am reviewing some of my old material. As familiar as I am with it, it is still quite eye-opening.

Here are some passages from news articles, which I quoted in Bushfire, Part 4:

1. From Taliban rejects Bush's 'second chance' offer October 13, 2001:

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban has rejected President George W. Bush's "second chance" offer to surrender terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, the Afghan embassy in Islamabad said today.

President Bush told a news conference on Thursday that if the Taliban "cough him up and his people today" then the United States will "reconsider what we're doing to your country. You still have a second chance," Bush said. "Just bring him in, and bring his leaders and lieutenants and other thugs and criminals with him."

2. Then, from Bush pledges to get bin Laden, dead or alive December 14, 2001:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush pledged anew Friday that Osama bin Laden will be taken "dead or alive," no matter how long it takes, amid indications that the suspected terrorist may be bottled up in a rugged Afghan canyon. The president, in an Oval Office meeting with Thailand's prime minister, would not predict the timing of bin Laden's capture but said he doesn't care how the suspect is brought to justice. "I don't care, dead or alive -- either way," Bush said. "It doesn't matter to me."

3. Finally, from CNN EVANS, NOVAK, HUNT & SHIELDS: Interview With General Richard Myers April 6, 2002:

HUNT: The Big Question for General Myers: One embarrassment for the U.S. has been that, in almost seven months after 9/11, we still haven't captured Osama bin Laden. With the apprehension this week of one of his top lieutenants, have we gotten enough information to be any closer to maybe finally getting bin Laden?

MYERS: Well, if you remember, if we go back to the beginning of this segment, the goal has never been to get bin Laden. Obviously, that's desirable.

So, was this about getting Osama bin Laden, or wasn't it?

From General Dostum and the Heroin Trade:

The events that have transpired as a result of 9/11 have been of enormous benefit to the South Asian heroin industry -- and I have blogged about this a great deal.

It is interesting in view of all the other evidence -- how a Turkish translator at the FBI was aware of evidence that the blueprints for U.S. skyscrapers had gone to the Middle East prior to the attacks, how the same translator saw papers that show the U.S. knew Al Qaeda was going to attack cities with airplanes... I'm writing about Sibel Edmonds, of course, but there's much, much more.

In another passage from General Dostum and the Heroin Trade, I quote Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time by CRAIG MURRAY, July 21, 2007, then continue with my own comments:

Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them.

Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense.

Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.

Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.

They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy.

Remember that the Sibel Edmonds case is about U.S. officials, elected and appointed, from both parties, in Congress and the State and Defense Departments, as well as elsewhere, who are on the payroll of organized crime. The organized crime group is connected to the nuclear blackmarket, the arms trade, and narcotics trafficking in Central and Southwest Asia.

Reportedly, these corrupt officials do, while on the U.S. government payroll, favors to help organized crime -- and are rewarded with bribes and promises of a soft, cushy future.

Uh-huh.

It was in No Smoke Without Fire, Part 1 that I first showed this:



And, from Selling Out America, Part 1:

The Turkish Deep State is a modern mafia that includes Turkish government figures (political leaders and military officers), business moguls and cartels that smuggle heroin, sex slaves, weapons and nuclear secrets. Where the interests of these groups converge, might makes right and the purpose of the law is to further business.

Working as a translator in the FBI's Washington Field Office, Sibel Edmonds was assigned to translate a backlog of documents and tapes. Among the information that Edmonds came across was powerful evidence that strategically-placed US officials in Congress and the Executive Branch were on the take, receiving bribes from lobby groups that front for Turkish heroin traffickers.

While these lobby groups do have "legitimate" functions that they perform, and not everyone associated with them knows what they are about, their main purpose is to ensure that US foreign and economic policy gets steered in a way that favors the business interests of the Turkish Deep State. US Congressmen and Senators and officials in the State and Defense Departments perform services, while on the US government payroll, for their foreign masters; protection is provided against prosecution by strategically-placed employees of the FBI, who bury evidence and derail investigations. In return for their services, these people receive bribes, campaign contributions, and a variety of compensation, and are guaranteed a cushy retirement later.

Sibel Edmonds told her story at the FBI and was fired. She then went to the Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General; to the US Senate; and, finally, to the US media. All investigated at least some of her claims, and substantiated what they investigated -- 60 Minutes even did a segment on Edmonds. But, nothing happened, and, ultimately, Sibel Edmonds was gagged by the Bush Administration's Justice Department.

Congressman Henry Waxman, D-CA, was briefed on all of this, and promised in 2006 that should the Democrats win Congress, he would hold public hearings into the Sibel Edmonds case. The Democrats won, but one month after the Democrat-controlled Congress was convened in January of 2007, the Turkish Coalition of America came into existence, a key official of which had been a major player in the American Turkish Council -- the organization most associated in the obstructed FBI investigations with espionage and bribery of US government officials.

Its Congressional Caucus membership list includes Congressman Henry Waxman.



Needless to say, Congressman Waxman has yet to hold those hearings.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) was bought out by the Turkish Coalition of America; he is on the payroll of Turkish organized crime.

Again quoting Sibel Edmonds, this time from State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug Trade -- FBI Whistleblower by Fintan Dunne, June 7, 2004:

"There are certain points..., where you have your drug related activities combined with money laundering and information laundering, converging with your terrorist activities," Ms. Edmonds told BreakForNews.com.

And, as I quoted in Part 1, from 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

CD: Can you elaborate here on what countries you mean?

SE: It's interesting, in one of my interviews, they say "Turkish countries," but I believe they meant Turkic countries – that is, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and all the 'Stans, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and [non-Turkic countries like] Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these countries play a big part in the sort of things I have been talking about.

CD: What, you mean drug-smuggling?

SE: Among other things. Yes, that is a major part of it. It's amazing that in this whole "war on terror" thing, no one ever talks about these issues. No one asks questions about these countries – questions like, "OK, how much of their GDP depends on drugs?"

CD: But of course, you're not implying...

SE: And then to compare that little survey with what countries we've been putting military bases in --

From No Smoke Without Fire, Part 1, where I quote excerpts from Narco aggression, with a comment of my own interspersed.

When Russia backed the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the post-9/11 scenario, the last thing it expected to happen was that drug trafficking from Afghanistan would assume gargantuan proportions under the U.S. military. Since 2001, poppy fields, once banned by the Taliban, have mushroomed again. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world's heroin supply.

The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO] forces in the country have not only failed to eliminate the terrorist threat from the Taliban, but also presided over a spectacular rise in opium production. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Afghanistan was on the brink of becoming a "narco state".

Not "becoming" -- it already is a "narco state".

Narco business has emerged as virtually the only economy of Afghanistan and is valued at some $10 billion a year. Opium trade is estimated by the U.N. to be equivalent to 53 per cent of the country's official economy and is helping to finance the Taliban.

"Unfortunately, they [NATO] are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit," Putin angrily remarked three years ago. He accused the coalition forces of "sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe." As time went by, Russian suspicions regarding the U.S. role in the rise of a narco state in Afghanistan grew deeper, especially after reports from Iraq said that the cultivation of opium poppies was spreading rapidly there too.

"The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries," says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. "They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking."

Is there any truth to this? The answer I keep coming up with is that there is.

The Russians blame the CIA, and that is the only part I question; from the Sibel Edmonds case, it would seem that if the CIA is involved, they are to some extent acting on orders of corrupt Washington insiders.

Of course, the connections between the CIA and heroin trafficking seem to go back decades, and, in particular, the CIA helped set up heroin traffickers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with full and enthusiastic cooperation of Pakistan's ISI. The heroin trafficking was seen as a way of funding the jihad against the Soviet Union during the 1980's, while destroying the Soviet Army and the Soviet people through heroin addiction -- generating money for jihad, money that was out of reach of the American Congress.

And we seem to think corruption in Kabul is the problem? We will never be able to deal with corruption in Kabul if we can't deal with it in Washington.

From An Interview with Sibel Edmonds, Page Three by Chris Deliso, July 1, 2004:

CD: If your full testimony is heard by the public, who or what agencies are going to be in the biggest trouble?

SE: Well, as for agencies I guess the DOJ, FBI, State Department. But in a way these agencies get some kind of immunity when you charge them like this ... I hate to see how a lot of agents get stigmatized in this. Most of the field agents I met in the FBI were good, honest and hardworking individuals. They were trying to do their best, but up against this ingrown bureaucracy – this is where you have the problem, as will as with certain elected officials.

CD: What are they so afraid of?

SE: They're afraid of information, of the truth coming out, and accountability -- the whole accountability issue that will arise. But it's not as complicated as it might seem. If they were to allow the whole picture to emerge, it would just boil down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities.

CD: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

SE: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.

Including a Congressman who was fully briefed on the Sibel Edmonds case, who promised to hold hearings if his party gained power in Congress -- and who then joined an organization established by a frontman for Turkish organized Crime, and who has since been conspicuously silent.



Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The Sword of Allah continues!

Pride of Lions, Part 12

We continue from Part 11 reviewing The Gina Khan Interview - Part Three (I have fixed a few typos):

This war should be renamed clearly as the war on modern Islamism. Muslims don't have a Caliph, no-one authorised Osama Bin Laden to advocate and start Jihad. If the War is against the West then it's a war against British secular Muslims too - that means we Muslims in the west and our children will not be spared. When will Muslims understand that? No 'ummah' or silly veil can save us if Osama manages his recruits, while we allow Muslim leaders and Islamists to play down the threat. Gordon Brown can only mobilise the mind of the public by better defining the ideology and hopefully he can get his act together - he must understand that the solutions are mainstream even when the subject matter is not. They now know the name of this global ideology so they have to show some backbone.

There's a great deal in that paragraph.

A "War on Terror" is as foolish as it gets -- it lumps the IRA together with Al Qaeda. Terrorism is a method; how can you wage war on a method? That's like waging war on war and, ultimately, it is like having sex to promote virginity.

Terrorism is an abstraction; the more concrete enemy are Islamists who break the law promoting their hateful ideology.

While I disagree with Islam, I point to the Muslims like Gina Khan as why military operations are not against the Islamic world, but rather against those who advocate and promote what Gina calls Islamism -- militant, extremist Islam. It is the difference between a legitimate and much-needed defensive war, targeting the likes of Osama bin Laden, and simple ethnic cleansing that would target innocents and even allies like Gina.

Millions and millions of Muslims, in Saudi Arabia especially, cannot claim to understand the Quran word for word. It is a complex Arabic language that has been preserved but is not spoken even by today's Arabs. A beautiful language has now been turned into ugly aggressive tones by members of Hizb ut Tahrir, Anjem Choudhary, Shahid Butt, Abdu Abdullah. They use theology and politics. The suicide bomber's mind is indoctrinated with all these mens' misinterpretations to subtract the fear of death.

This war isn't just a militant war; it must be against the ideological intellectual Jihadists, Islamists, Imams and organizations who plant the seeds of Jihadism into the minds of Muslims.

But Bush has placed his focus on military operations -- and then done a bad job of that.

We are offered the choice: "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists." Both Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration have started wars based on lies, and both profit from those wars; decent folks are left in the middle, seemingly with nowhere to turn.

Q: In Ward End this war is hard to escape?

My son was approached by dynamic Islamists in Ward End. It was only because I had told him to be vigilant that he recognised their motives. These areas lack facilities and youth centres for the youth to access. Whatever sport centres there are, are dominated by sporty mullahs. Women/girls have to go into non Muslim areas or wait for specific women's' programmes. And yet there are mosques, mini mosques every few yards. Difficult to escape them - that's how the Islamists want it. You know the Tablighi pride themselves from spending days inside mosques?! They sleep, exercise and eat in there?

I observed many mosques that are empty all day except on a Friday afternoon. Most serve no purpose at all to women and children or to non Muslims in the community unless you're seeking conversion.

There are book shops where the wrong interpretation is being promoted, I have dozens of books I collected myself in the 90s when I was in search of my religion. Now in hindsight I realise I too could have been indoctrinated. I was pretty depressed back then, searching for peace of mind. I could have easily fallen into this trap.

And that comment gives us insight into why it is so easy to recruit jihadis in the Islamic world. Men are permitted to have up to four wives, plus as many concubines and so on as they are able; many women prefer to be the second or third wife to a rich man, rather than the only wife to a poor man. Frustrated, depressed and hopeless, these men find the promise of an eternity in the arms of virgins, plus a relatively substantial sum for one's family left behind on earth, very tempting indeed.

Q: And in schools?

I read the book Islam Beliefs and Teachings by Ghulam Sarwar. (Ed Husain pointed him out in his book -The Islamist). The first few chapters of Sarwar's book are devoted to the 5 pillars of Islam. He then goes on to discussions and questions on political Islam and Sharia law (which is outdated and was actually initiated by Caliphs not subscribed by Allah or the Prophet in any form), the status of Muslim women and our rights (which is less about rights and more about our duties) and he praises the "great" Islamic states of Iran and Sudan (lovely places?!).

Sarwar's ideas and teachings have been infiltrating British Education in Muslim communities (communities with high concentrations of Muslims) since 1966. These books were aimed at Muslims like me born here. Written in English.

"How do we create an Islamic State?" Sarwar asks the children. He tries to compare Sharia law with 'man made laws' but gives no indication what Sharia law will implement in his vision of a Islamic State. "A Muslim's happiest occasion in life is to see the Rule of Allah established on earth", he writes. I don't think so - ask the women of Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan (countries which are living hellholes for Muslim women). Ask Muslim women here in Britain - Somalians, Iranians or even Pakistani women. Would they dare go back as lone mothers??

Yes, Gina -- and, dear reader, the truth has a certain ring to it, does it not?

These writers - so called scholars and Imams - are indoctrinating our children and as mothers we exert the most power over our children in shaping their minds. We should pulp all these books. Question their ulterior motives and interpretations. We must educate our children against extreme versions and promote the values and principles of our democracy. The problem with Britain is that it still wants to hang onto the history of guilt regarding colonialism and imperialism. Today if India is a successful democracy in Asia, it's because it teaches it's young generation to love and respect it's Motherland. We spend too much time putting this country down instead of promoting our values and principles as a nation. There might be a high rate of teenage pregnancies in the west but at least you guys don't murder you daughters and you don't reject an illegitimate child. Muslim girls have been murdered and the 'bastard' child is stigmatised and abandoned. What kind of God would want that as justice for mankind?

Don't pulp the book -- sit down and read it with your kid, adding in your commentary. That is what will innoculate your children against Islamism. Gina, did you not essentially do this with your son? Innoculate him against Islamism by helping him understand what is out there?

Islamists are hateful fools -- they should certainly be allowed to advertise that fact by communicating their ideas. The alternative is to silence them, in which case others will be silenced as well until, ultimately, we will not know how dangerous some of these people are because we will not know what kind of criminal ideas they harbor.

Of course, Gina makes my point here:

Q: Mothers should be teaching their kids that suicide bombing and Islamism are wrong?

Absolutely.... These Islamists are every modern Muslim mother's nightmare, in fact many non Muslim mothers are very concerned. I would urge Muslims to reject political Islam outright. It's a myth that Islam and politics are one theology. How do I know that? Well millions of Muslims have lived in the West without a Caliph or Sharia law and lived as secular Muslims whether they use that term to define themselves or not. Millions of Muslims in countries like Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia aspire to democracy and reject Sharia laws as being outdated. It doesn't mean they are not Muslims. It means we evolved as Muslim People too. Men like Jinnah and Bhutto and Ghandi Ji studied in Britain and took back the tenets of Democracy to their countries.

Jihadism emerges and opposes the tenets of democracy. If women are fighting for the soul of Pakistan which is what Benazir Bhutto was hoping to implement, then why are we as British Asian Muslim women participating in our own oppression by remaining silent thinking someone else is going to come along and create change? We should let our feelings cascade down onto our kids.

We all have a moral duty to create change and condemn the suicide bombers as pure evil and un-Islamic. We need to get our facts right. They have targeted Muslims born in the west for over 40 years, with their interpretations and indoctrinations on satellite tv, through cds, books. We have to hit back too. So I believe this war will last a minimum of 40 years, silence won't get us anywhere.

Q: The ideology won't just fizzle out even if the Islamists are cracked down on by the government?

Even if Osama bin Laden was arrested or shot dead, the ideology will create another Osama Bin Laden aspiring to be the revived Caliph or Mahdi. Sitting in caves and creating massacres, murdering Muslims who convert or women who seek freedom, assassinating activists and reformers who stand up for their natural rights. Islam does not give Islamists authority over matters of life and death. They will continue to unleash their violence to instil fear into the masses. They want to create this clash of civilizations and anti west propaganda but there's only one civilisation and they're not part of it. They have studied the weaknesses of the countries they want to target and they use our democracy to pursue their own distorted Islamic agendas. MCB are a good example. They should never have been nominated to be the voice of British Islam. Dr Bari should be concerned about the poor people of his own motherland instead of getting on the nerves of British people who don't believe in arranged marriages and don't have to conform to their 'Islamic' ideas. It's bad enough for Muslim women that they advocate our 'status' without consulting us.

They shut down debates. I'd like to see more debates on the veil, on the so-called status and rights of women that Maududi interpreted. Muslim women all over the world fight to free themselves from oppression and abuse, while these leaders are writing Muslim manifestos for our school children without consulting with any of us. They are taking us step by step backwards and manipulating the positioning of being British and Muslims.

What gets me are the likes of Anjem Choudary. If this war wasn't so dangerous I would have laughed at his rants. He lives with a 7th century mindset, believes in Sharia law, and demonises the west and democracy so why is he still here practising as a solicitor?? They are hypocrites -it's an easy life for them here either way and they are the last people to sacrifice the easy way.

As I said in Part 11, we need more debates about Islam.

Anyway, stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Pride of Lions continues.

Pride of Lions, Part 11

We continue Pride of Lions from Part 10 by continuing our look at a four-part interview with Gina Khan. We pick up with The Gina Khan Interview - Part Three (I have fixed a few typos):

Q: You knew Moazzam Begg from Bimingham?

Moazzam Begg was in Guantanamo. He was a local turned mujahid who was once a member of a Birmingham gang called the Links alongside Shahid Butt (during the 90s Butt was arrested in Yemen for planning a bombing and there are videos of him around sitting next to Abu Hamza and appeared on Dispatches ranting as any Jihadist would).

The civil rights lawyer (this seems a contradictory term for her) Salma Yacoob fought for their release. When I look and see what they are doing to Birmingham now I wonder why they were ever let out.

After being released from Yemen in the 90's Shahid Butt still roams free in Birmingham as a mujahid, while Moazzam Begg is still preaching from the Quran on British TV about the 'Ummah' and attempts to mobilise Muslims using extreme interpretations. He claims all Muslims all over the world are all from one body of Islam - a huge myth that needs to be dispelled. These guys embarrass me and the majority of British Muslims. Their notion is for Muslims to discredit the countries they are born in and join their 'ummah' to revive political Islam to revive a Caliphate. Similar attempts and doctrines are used by Hizb ut Tahrir. There is no 'ummah' anymore.

This is interesting.

In the past, when tyrants have sought world domination, they have begun with a nation-state. Now, however, militant Islam is just a disguised attempt to take over the world, without starting with a nation-state. (Of course, there are some nations that are or have been at the front of a movement to expand a certain version of Islam, so we could perhaps argue that point.)

The question that ought to be on the minds of Muslims who are trying to revive this "ummah" is this: once the caliphate is established, which earthly human will be in charge of it?

The point I'm making here is that young men from the Islamic community are dying, only to establish an empire for some rich sheikh.

Q: So you are not part of this 'Ummah'?

For Muslims like me I prefer to read the last message the Prophet gave to his people in reference to the society and community he ruled. The 'Ummah' is a powerful myth. It comes from the root word 'motherland' and the only motherland I have and would stand up for is my country, Britain.

Thank you, Gina! :)

Now, she goes on to make an important point:

Even if there was this exaggerated 'ummah' and a Muslim deferred from their nationality, Islamists would disable half the body of Islam by reversing the rights of women as they have done in Afghanistan or Iran. This reversal was also attempted in Pakistan by General Zia to reverse the freedoms and rights of Pakistani women in the 80s who engaged with Islamists. And for anyone who wants to debate me then read Maududi's version on Human Rights in Islam. He avoids the issues regarding equality of minorities and Muslim women.

Q: Women round here (Ward End) look like they think they are part of the Ummah?

I don't believe that wearing a ninja outfit will protect any Muslim woman against rape or sexual harassment. In the Quran it only states that "The believing woman should cover her bosoms and private parts" and most women in the world do that anyway. There is no 'true Islam ' to return to unless they are going to totally reject western modernity and ship in camels as well.

Perhaps you shouldn't suggest that part about bringing in camels.

So much more so that, since Saudi Arabia is running out of oil, and they have invested not in industry or alternative energy sources, but rather in hatred and holy war, camels is about what they are going to be left with not too far down the road.

Osama bin Laden didn't create this ideology, the ideology created him. Syed Qutb, Maududi, Al Wahab to name a few were inspired by the 13th century scholar Ibn Tammiya who badly distorted Islam and attempted to shut down Muslims' thinking and reasoning. That's another great myth the Butts and Beggs can't get a grip on. They can't shut down women's thinking or independent reasoning, or that of the majority of Muslims in general. No Islamic ummah will protect any woman. Women need a reality check if they believe that.

"Osama bin Laden didn't create this ideology, the ideology created him."

I very much respect Gina Khan and her views, but I would like to point out that, in my opinion, the ideology is Islam -- Osama bin Laden didn't create Islam, Islam created him. And, Islam created Wahhab, and thus Wahhabism.

Now, there are evil people ready, willing and able to hijack and pervert anything. My point here is that, in my opinion, Islam lends itself to such hijacking much more than, say, Buddhism.

In fact, does Islam even need to be hijacked to become violent? And, how many Buddhist fundamentalist terrorists does the world have?

Q: How best to combat the Islamist ideology round here?

It's because of these "mujahideen" and the Islamists who have a voice in Britain today (why? Oh government, please wake up and help us out here!) Muslims have to re interpret the Quran again in the 21st century. I am in no denial that there are verses that discriminate against minorities, women or the infidel. Fund more modern women to become Imams. It is not against the preachings of the Prophet for women to lead Friday prayers or teach pluralist Islam. Lets debate the Islamists who claim to represent this 'true Islam'.

And, if Islam is to be a "Religion of Peace", it will be because of Muslims like Gina, acknowledging troubling passages in Islamic holy texts, and implementing ideas such as this.

Ex Hizb ut Tahrir member Hassan Butt clearly stated in the media "that until Muslims acknowledge the violent streaks in the Quran, nothing will change." And he is right because those are the edicts that Islamists and Jihadists perpetrate to mobilise our minds. Osama Bin Laden swears by the Quran on video that he is not lying, and I'm telling you he is not lying. The Quran gives two messages and we as Muslims have a choice which message we want to adhere to. If the Quran speaks of war, it also speaks of peace. The Prophet Mohammed states in the Quran that "there is no compulsion in Islam, difference of opinion in my community is a manifestation of divine mercy". You wouldn't get any Islamists mention that passage in the Quran. They suppress the spiritual message of the Holy Quran. They have managed to establish their extreme version of Islam into the West because of imported, distorted translations and imported imams who can dynamically quote the Quran. Hence we tend to rely on them for the interpretation of the Quran.

It's not just the Quran that gives two messages; and there are more than two messages.

Again, if some criminal is looking for justification to do evil, that justification can be found.

With respect to the old historical Jihads, well those wars were similar to the biblical wars. These men fought face to face on battlefields, the Prophet had set principles in war; that women, children and the elderly must not be killed. So when it suits Islamists they reject what the Prophet preached and they transgress international laws. Islamists, be they Salafists, Wahhabists, Khomeinists, twist verses of the Quran reading it off into the present century as timeless, quoting historical edicts and interpretations that have not only hijacked the religion but blacklisted the name of Allah and Mohammed round the globe. These are not men you can sit around a table and negotiate with like the IRA. Jihadists won't even coexist with other reformed or moderate schools of thought. It is a supremacist ideology - it's their way or the highway.

Well, some terrible things happened to women and children while the "Prophet" stood right there. Mohammed was no saint.

Q: What about the suicide bombing ideology?

These suicide bombers are not 'martyrs'. They are brainwashed (like my Dad became), become brain-dead and then used as pawns in this modern Jihad. These human bombs blow themselves up as well as innocent bystanders - it's a pathetic human carnage. They don't care what religion, race, gender or age we are. How can this just be a Muslim problem? It's criminality not religiosity.

True.

But, Islamic texts -- and even the conduct of the Prophet -- give plenty of bad examples.

We need to collectively oppose this ideology and name the ideology as Jihad. It is jihad. Osama's Jihad is an unholy war. Secular, modern Muslims in the 21st century with even half a brain know that and we must break the Islamists' silence to oppose it. It's no good repeating Islam means peace because we have been blacklisted as a religion globally thanks to their perverse and dangerous version of Islam.

Interesting.

The Islamists have infidels beaten down with cries of racism and whatever else, while Muslims are under threat of accusations of apostasy, and the death warrant they bring.

As far as Islam being "blacklisted", if that is the case, why do so few dare speak out against it openly?

For Muslims and non Muslims to feel secure in opposing this ideology there must be a law against Jihadism as there is for racism or Nazism - one that works on a community level. Jihadists' literature must be challenged and opposed - better just pulped.

Ban it, and it will become the forbidden fruit.

Better to allow it to exist, and encourage that it be studied and debated.

We have to speak out about Islam -- and other matters -- and allow the truth to be arrived at in the crucible of debate.

In the same light, making laws that prohibit the denial of the Holocaust is a foolish endeavor. In fact, making and enforcing such laws is a process that brings us a giant step closer to repeating the Holocaust.

Politics must be kept out of mosques and the likes of Dr Nassem in Birmingham must be forced into retirement. His politics and views are dinosaur-like to the great majority of Muslims. We - British Muslims - are not being victimised (though victimisation is a key Islamist strategy). The whole world is being victimised here by this extreme violent ideology that uses Islam as its doctrine.

"Victimisation is a key Islamist strategy" -- that nails it!

If you don't challenge the interpretations intertwined with the oppressive theology thrust upon Muslim women, you cannot defeat the enemy. I don't see how they (the British Government) can defeat the ideology in Birmingham Sunni mosques by handing them half a million pounds to eradicate radicalism when no one has even banned the anti west, anti gay, criminal edicts on minorities or apostles, or books on the War on Islam - when this country gave us full freedom to practice and worship our religion. We were never under attack for our religion until Jihadists and Islamists sent their human bombs to attack innocent bystanders.

Very true -- in the West, Islam was at first accepted as something different, perhaps even exotic, but it is only now that people are seeing what comes with Islam that Islam is beginning to be questioned.

But, since victimization is a key Islamist strategy, and since the Islamists are well-funded with the proceeds of criminal activities, with petrodollars, and even with Western handouts, people have to question Islam quietly, and not openly.

We need open debate about Islam.

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Pride of Lions continues.

Financial Onslaught, Part 6

We continue from Part 5 reviewing an article entitled The Fifth Generation Warfare by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen. In this part, the article gets a little choppy, so I have had to do some formatting and editing for punctuation.

As I mentioned previously, please keep in mind as you read this that Dr. Ehrenfeld is the target of a legal jihad, and needs contributions to her organization to continue her work and defend herself against the legal harassment of the libel terrorists that target her. See my sidebar for links for further information.

United Arab Emirates⁶⁴

Like every Muslim country, the UAE collects mandatory Islamic charity (zakat: the Third Pillar of Islam -- an annual wealth tax), of 2.5 percent to 20 percent from Muslim institutions and companies. Being non-Muslims, foreign banks and oil companies theoretically don't pay zakat. But foreign banks and oil companies do pay at least 20 percent of their profits in the form of a mandatory tax rather than zakat. In 2003, the UAE established an independent federal agency collecting zakat on government tax revenues from "companies listed on the Dubai Financial Market and Abu Dhabi Securities Market ... oil-producing companies and branches of foreign banks." In 2007 these revenues were estimated at $13.5 billion.⁶⁵

Although presenting itself to the West as a moderate ally, the UAE has consistently supported the peaceful and violent advancement of shari'a and terrorism worldwide. In 2006, to support suicide bombing, the UAE gave $100 million to the Palestinian Authority to build a new town named Sheikh Khalifa City, in honor of the UAE president. The city houses families of "shahids and prisoners" and was built on the ruins of Morag, one of the evacuated Israeli settlements in Gaza.⁶⁶

On July 27, 2005, the Palestinian Information Center carried a public HAMAS statement thanking the UAE for [its] "unstinting support." The statement said: "We highly appreciate his highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (UAE president) in particular and the UAE people and government in general for their limitless support ... that contributed more to consolidating our people's resoluteness in the face of the Israeli occupation."

The HAMAS statement continued: "the sisterly UAE had ... never hesitated in providing aid for our Mujahid people pertaining to rebuilding their houses demolished by the IOF .... The UAE also spared no effort to offer financial and material aids to the Palestinian charitable societies."⁶⁷

Indeed, as documented by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (CSS),⁶⁸ Hamas charitable societies are known as integral parts of the Hamas infrastructure, and are outlawed by the United States and Israel.

As we consider the support terrorism -- so much of which is linked to the Religion of Peace -- gets from "charities", it is worth keeping in mind Sibel Edmonds' quotes.

From 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

SE: You know how they always talk about these Islamic charities funding the terrorists, right?

CD: Yes...

SE: Well, and this is not a firm statistic, just a sort of ratio... but these charities are responsible for maybe 10 or 20 percent of al-Qaeda's fundraising. So where is the other 80 or 90 percent coming from? People, it's not so difficult!

From An Interview with Sibel Edmonds, Page Two by Chris Deliso, July 1, 2004:

CD: [snip] At several points you state that such organized crime networks employ "semi-legitimate organizations" as their point of interface with governments and the "legit" world. Can you explain exactly what you mean?

SE: These are organizations that might have a legitimate front -- say as a business, or a cultural center or something. And we've also heard a lot about Islamic charities as fronts for terrorist organizations, but the range is much broader and even, simpler.

CD: For example?

SE: You might have an organization supposed to be promoting the cultural affairs of a certain country within another country. Hypothetically, say, an Uzbek folklore society based in Germany. The stated purpose would be to hold folklore-related activities -- and they might even do that -- but the real activities taking place behind the scenes are criminal.

CD: Such as?

SE: Everything -- from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism.

CD: So with these organizations we're talking about a lot of money --

SE: Huge, just massive. They don't deal with 1 million or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions.

Returning to Ehrenfeld and Lappen:

Hamas also included a special tribute, promising to "never forget the generous donations of the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan [al Nahayan of Abu Dhabi],"⁶⁹ the current UAE president's father. The multibillionaire was an early PLO patron and, from the 1970s until his 2004 death, contributed millions of dollars to the PLO's terror agenda, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.⁷⁰

Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan was the first Arab ruler to understand the strategic importance of economic jihad⁷¹ against the West. He was first to use oil as a political weapon after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.⁷² He was also the major sponsor of the first international Islamic bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). The bank was created to serve as "the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists."⁷³ BCCI, which was shut down in July 1991 by New York City district attorney Robert Morgenthau,⁷⁴ funded and otherwise facilitated terrorist organizations and states, including the Sandinistas, Hezbollah, abu Nidal, the PLO, al Qaeda, Syria, Libya, Iran's Islamic revolution -- as well as Pakistan's nuclear program, to create the "Islamic Bomb."⁷⁵

BCCI is a scandal worth looking into. It was deeply linked to narcotics trafficking, organized crime, and covert activities of the West, as well as the funding of terrorism. In fact, it was a classic example of the kinds of things Sibel Edmonds later came across.

Immediately before the 1991 Gulf War, Sheikh Zayed branded the United States the Muslims' "number two enemy" after Israel. As of this writing, the UAE votes against the United States 70 percent of the time in the UN.⁷⁶

It is interesting how we were maneuvered into battling Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Even in 1990-1, the winds of war were fanned by lies and propaganda.

Many of our "allies" in the Persian Gulf have continuously called for jihad against Israel and the United States. Short of abandoning Israel and siding with terrorists, there is no policy the United States can have for the Middle East that will not be deemed a justification for terrorism, and even should the United States go that far, the reprieve -- if there were one -- would be short-lived, lasting only until Israel were destroyed and the jihadists could focus their attention more exclusively on America.

Consequently, the whole exercise of siding with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries against Hussein's Iraq was to some extent like siding with Stalin's Russia against Hitler's Germany; we would perhaps be foolish to even delude ourselves into thinking that we have chosen the lesser of two evils.

Human Appeal International (HAI), a UAE government-run "charitable" organization, whose board includes the UAE president,⁷⁷ continues to fund Hamas and other Palestinian organizations, "martyrs," and Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons and their families. The HAI modus operandi includes transferring funds to the Palestinian Red Crescent, whose West Bank and Gaza branches Hamas runs. Hamas, in turn, distributes the money to Hamas "charities." The Toronto, Canada, Orient Research Center reports that the UAE compensation plan for the Palestinian intifada in 2001 included $3,000 for every Palestinian shahid, $2,000 for his family, $1,500 for those detained by Israel, and $1,200 for each orphan. In addition, the families of terrorists whose homes Israel demolished each received $10,000. Also in 2001, the UAE held two telethons to support the "martyrs'" families. One entitled "We Are All Palestinians" raised 135 million dirham, or $36.8 million, and another called "For Your Sake Palestine" raised 350 million dirham, or $95.3 million.

My denunciation of the terrorists should not be construed as to imply blanket endorsement of Israeli operations to destroy the homes of families of terrorists and suicide bombers. I think it is, in principle, wrong to hold a family responsible for the actions of one of its members, just because the people are family members. If it can be shown that those family members actually helped perpetrate the terrorist act, then that of course begins to be a far different matter.

On 15 February 2005, the Hamas Web site reported on funds transferred from HAI to two West Bank Hamas front organizations, IQRA and Rifdah, outlawed in Israel.⁷⁸ On 22 March 2005, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam reported that in 2004 the UAE Red Crescent donated $2 million to Hamas "charities" for 3,158 terrorists' orphans.⁷⁹

A detailed 25 March 2005 report, in the Palestinian daily Al Hayat al-Jadeeda, noted that the UAE Friends Society transferred $475,000, through the UAE Red Crescent, to West Bank "charitable" organizations in Hebron, Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem to distribute to families of "martyrs," orphans, imprisoned Palestinians, and others.

And in July 2005, Osama Zaki Muhammad Bashiti of Gaza's Khan Younis was arrested while returning from the UAE⁸⁰ for often transferring as much as $200,000 at a time to the Gaza branch of Hamas.

As long as there is this support network for terrorism, the terrorism will continue: in an environment where there is no hope, and where "religious" institutions fan the flames of hatred and promise virgins in heaven for sexually-frustrated males (in a society wherein wealthy males have up to four wives, and others do without), getting to Allah by means of a suicide attack on innocent civilians becomes a viable option for helping one's family and getting one's frustrations out -- the perfect storm.

Financial Onslaught, Part 3

We continue from Part 2 reviewing an article entitled The Fifth Generation Warfare by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen.

As I mentioned previously, please keep in mind as you read this that Dr. Ehrenfeld is the target of a legal jihad, and needs contributions to her organization to continue her work and defend herself against the legal harassment of the libel terrorists that target her. See my sidebar for links for further information.

According to a 1991 U.S. Library of Congress report on Sudan, the IDB also supported Faisal Islamic Bank, established in 1977 under Sudan's Faisal Islamic Bank Act by Saudi prince Muhammad ibn Faisal Al Saud and managed by local Muslim Brotherhood members and their party, the National Islamic Front. Soon other political groups and parties formed their own Islamic banks. Together, Sudanese Islamic banks then acquired 20 percent of the country's deposits "providing the financial basis to turn Sudan into an Islamic state in 1983, and promoting the Islamic governmental policies to date."²⁵ Sudan Islamized its banking in 1989. However, Pakistan was the first country to officially Islamize its banking practices, in 1979.

Rising oil revenues encouraged MB leaders to formalize al-Banna's vision. In 1977 and 1982, they convened in Lugano, Switzerland, to chart a master plan to co-opt Western economic "foundations, capitalism and democracy" in a treatise entitled "Towards a Worldwide Strategy for Islamic Policy," also known as The Project. MB spiritual leader al-Qaradawi wrote the explicit document, dated 1 December 1982.²⁶ The 12-point strategy includes diktats to establish the Islamic state and gradual, parallel work to control local power centers ... using institutional work as means to this end. This requires "special Islamic economic, social and other institutions," and "the necessary economic institutions to provide financial support" to spread fundamentalist Islam.²⁷

In other words, this is a coordinated plan to spread not some "Religion of Peace", but the very ideology that terrorists adhere to.

Consequently, the IDB founded the AAOIFI in 1990. AAOIFI members include the Saudi Dallah al Baraka Group, al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation, and Kuwait Finance House²⁸ -- all implicated in funding al Qaeda and other MB offspring, according to Richard Clarke, the former national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counter-terrorism.²⁹ The 18 AAOIFI members also include Iran and Sudan, both on the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list; Iran is a U.S. State Department-designated terror-sponsoring state, too. UAE banks wired most of the funding for the 9/11 attacks.³⁰

In addition, the "de facto Islamic Central Bank," the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB),³¹ was established in 2002 in Kuala Lumpur "to absorb the 11 September shock and reinforce the stability of Islamic finance." Chairing the organizers' meeting, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir stated, "A universal Islamic banking system is a jihad worth pursuing to abolish this slavery [to the West]." IFSB members include the central banks of Iran, Sudan, and Syria (all designated state sponsors of terrorism) and the Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA), which is widely documented since its inception to be a terror funder.³²

I hope my regular readers by now understand that terrorism is not occurring on a shoe-string budget; rather, it is a proxy war being waged by people who know that if we really understood what was going on, we'd regime change them right out of a job, so they do this covertly.

Was it Benjamin Netanyahu? "It's the regimes, stupid."

According to Dallah al Baraka Group and Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) president Saleh Kamel,³³ more than 400 Islamic financial institutions³⁴ currently operate in 75 countries.³⁵ They now hold more than $800 billion in assets³⁶ growing 15 percent annually. HSBC, UBS, J.P. Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds TSB, and BNP Paribas are but a few that offer Islamic banking and shari'a-based products to their Western clients -- and promote them as "ethical investments."

So what is at risk, here?

"It's the economy, stupid."

And much, much more.

Billionaire Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel and his family, like other wealthy Saudis, have built their terror-funding-affiliated $3.5 billion Dallah al Baraka Group to service the shari'a.³⁷ Its business, finance, and media sectors incorporate agriculture, communication, health care, real estate, tourism, trade, transportation, and finance companies -- including 10 banks and many leasing and finance firms, Arab Radio & Television and Arab Digital Distribution, and the International Information & Trading Service Co., producing the Top 1000 Saudi Companies Directory, among other publications.

Rapidly rising oil prices fill the coffers of Islamic banks, fuel the expansion of shari'a economics and financial jihad -- and threaten the United States and the entire non-Muslim world, in real time. Indeed, shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden called on Muslims "to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means.... Look for the key pillars of the U.S. economy. Strike the key pillars of the enemy again and again and they will fall as one."³⁸

Of course we won't hear about any of this from Bush & Cheney, nor will we hear about this from McCain or Obama. They will argue over federal taxes on gasoline, and debate health care and social security, and we will think we have an election; the real issue about how not just Western but all infidel societies everywhere are being targeted by Islamist economic warfare, with the sole goal of bringing us to our knees in forced submission, will not be addressed.

Why?

The NASDAQ acquisition, purchases of over 52 percent of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and 47.6 percent of OMX (Nordic exchange), and vigorous expansion of shari'a finance all steadily implement al-Banna's plan to spread and ultimately impose shari'a worldwide.

Bourse Dubai in December 2006 loudly proclaimed its new conversion to "shari'a compliance and accounting practices."³⁹ Yet, responding to a specific inquiry on the Islamic nature of Bourse Dubai from the Partnership for New York City on 22 October 2007, Bourse Dubai denied being an Islamic exchange.⁴⁰ Still unaware of the implications of importing shari'a finance, however, hoards of Westerners eagerly attend such pricey events as the October 2007 Islamic Finance Summit in New York,⁴¹ which focused on the "innovations in shari'a compliant finance." According to an eyewitness, when one participant timidly inquired, "What is shari'a law?" a leading Islamic scholar responded from the podium: "It's good for you."

Executing rape victims, gays and lesbians, and anyone who wishes to leave Islam -- "It's good for you."

Lost on the attendees was the inescapable fact that shari'a calls for the supremacy of Islam, thus negating the U.S. Constitution.⁴²

Does anybody even read that document anymore?

I do, and I'll be most of my American readership is familiar with it, too.

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Financial Onslaught continues.

Financial Onslaught, Part 2

We continue from Part 1 reviewing an article entitled The Fifth Generation Warfare by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen.

As I mentioned in Part 1, please keep in mind as you read this that Dr. Ehrenfeld is the target of a legal jihad, and needs contributions to her organization to continue her work and defend herself against the legal harassment of the libel terrorists that target her. See my sidebar for links for further information.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The origins of the modern financial jihad infrastructure, including all Islamic economic and financial regulatory organizations like the 1991-Bahrain-registered and -based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), date back to the 1920s and were an invention of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. He designed political, economic, and financial foundations to enable Muslims to fulfill a key form of jihad mandated by the Qur'an -- financial jihad.⁸

Terrorism is big business.

We have a popular misconception of underfunded and oppressed peoples battling their oppressors. This view was to some extent accurate during the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets, but there the mujahideen were not terrorists.

What is the difference?

To my view, targets make the difference. Guerrillas attack military targets, whereas terrorists attack defenseless and innocent civilian targets; guerrillas have a military objective, whereas terrorists have the political objective of terrorizing people.

Terrorists are criminals, plain and simple; one motivation for criminals is money, big money is needed in conducting terrorism, and with the extensive links modern terrorism has with organized crime and smuggling, there is big money to be made in terrorism.

He viewed finance as a critical weapon to undermine the infidels -- and "work towards establishing an Islamic rule on earth." ⁹ He was first to understand that to achieve world domination, Muslims needed an independent Islamic financial system to parallel and later supersede the Western economy. Al-Banna's contemporaries and successors (such as the late Sayed Qutb and current Yusuf al-Qaradawi) set his theories and practices into motion, developing shari'a-based terminology and mechanisms to advance the financial jihad -- "Islamic economics," finance, and banking.¹⁰

Early 1930s MB attempts to establish Islamic banking in India failed. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser shut down the second attempt, in 1964, after only one year, later arresting and expelling the Muslim Brotherhood for attempts to kill him.¹¹

It is important to note that these secular Arab governments, such as Nasser's Egypt (and later Sadat's Egypt and now Mubarrak's Egypt) are enemies of the jihadists. The jihadists accuse these secular Arabs of apostasy and make takfir out of them.

Which brings us to a question: why did we invade Iraq? There was not one Iraqi alleged to have been on those planes on 9/11. Hussein's regime was despicable, but his was just another dictator-centered personality cult.

Or, was Iraq involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, as has been very credibly alleged? (See Out of Context, Part 5.) And thus, was the OKBOMB just a dress-rehearsal for 9/11?

But, if that's the case, why does no one in the government say so?

Speaking of all this money it takes to fund terrorism... from Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 07, 2004:

....JH: Let me read you a short quote from Dr. Griffin's book, quoting from War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September 11 by Michel Chossudovsky and ask you to comment on it. "...The transfer of money to Atta [$325,000], in conjunction with the presence of the ISI chief in Washington during the week, [is] the missing link behind 9/11....The evidence confirms that al-Qaeda is supported by Pakistan's ISI (and it is amply documented that) the ISI owes its existence to the CIA."

SE: I cannot comment on that. But I can tell that once, and if, and when this issue gets to be, under real terms, investigated, you will be seeing certain people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally.

Returning now to Ehrenfeld and Lappen:

But Saudi Arabia welcomed this new wave of Egyptian dissidents, as did King Saud bin Abdel Aziz earlier waves in 1954 and 1961.¹² Their ideas so appealed to him and his clerics that in 1961, Saud funded the MB's establishment of the Islamic University in Medina to proselytize its fundamentalist Islamic ideology, especially to foreign students.¹³ In 1962, the MB convinced the king to launch a global financial joint venture, which became the cornerstone and engine to spread Islam worldwide. This venture created charitable foundations, which the MB oversees and from which most Islamic terrorist groups benefit.¹⁴

The first were the Muslim World League (MWL) and Rabitta al-Alam al-Islami, uniting Islamic radicals from 22 nations and spinning a web of many other charities with hundreds of offices worldwide.¹⁵ In 1978, the kingdom backed another MB initiative, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), which, with all these "charities," is implicated for funding al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks, Hamas, and others.¹⁶ These "charities" are used to advance the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi political agenda, namely empowering the ummah and imposing worldwide shari'a. "I don't like this word 'donations'," al-Qaradawi told BBC Panorama on 30 July 2006. "I like to call it Jihad with money, because God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and our money."¹⁷

In 1969, the Saudis convened Arab and Muslim states to unify the "struggle for Islam," and have ever since been the Organization of the Islamic Conference's (OIC's) major sponsor. The 56 OIC members include Iran, Sudan, and Syria. The Jidda-based, "pending the liberation of Jerusalem," OIC's charter mandates and coordinates "support [of] the struggle of the Palestinian people, ... recovering their rights and liberating their occupied territories." ¹⁸ The OIC charter includes all the MB principles. Its first international undertaking in 1973 was to establish the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) "in accordance with the principles of the shariah,"¹⁹ as prescribed by the MB -- and to launch the fast-growing petrodollar-based Islamic financing market. The IDB, more a development than commercial bank, was established largely "to promote Islamic banking worldwide." ²⁰ "[A]n Islamic organization must serve God ... and ultimately sustain ... the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life," writes Nasser M. Suleiman in "Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking."²¹

If we're going to change a regime, Saudi Arabia is the place to do it -- not Iraq, and not Iran. Saudi Arabia is the major instigator and a major source of the money; pull the plug on The Kingdom, and you pull the plug on most of the terrorist organizations that have been causing the problems. Riyadh is a critical node in the web of terror.

And the IDB has done just that. Between 1975 to 2005, the IDB approved over $50 billion in funding to Muslim countries,²² ostensibly to develop their economic and educational infrastructures, but effected little regional economic impact. Its educational efforts, however, paid huge yields -- via the rapid and significant spread of radical Islam worldwide. Moreover, in 2001 alone, the IDB transferred $538 million²³ raised publicly by Saudi and Gulf royal telethons to support the Palestinian intifada and families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IDB has also channeled UN funds to Hamas, as documented by bank records discovered in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, the IDB received UN observer status in 2007.²⁴

Imagine if that money and that kind of effort had gone into the economic development of the Palestinian people.

But these guys don't want peace, and it's worth recalling from Part 1 the interpretation from one "holy man", that those who sacrifice money to fund the jihad are making a bigger contribution than those who sacrifice their lives actually fighting it.

In other words, some rich sheikh sending money to pay for terrorism, then going inside his harem and having a good time, is more pleasing to this "Allah" of theirs than the holy warriors who actually die bringing the Religion of Peace to the world.

This "Allah" that these guys are trying so hard to please isn't just evil; he's a cynical manipulating user.

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Financial Onslaught continues.

Financial Onslaught, Part 1

An article entitled The Fifth Generation Warfare by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen recently appeared addressing yet again the threat we face of financial jihad. In this short series, I review the article; I have tried to reproduce it faithfully, but there were some parts that seemed a little garbled in the article at FrontPageMag.com.

As you read this, please keep in mind that Dr. Ehrenfeld is the target of a legal jihad, and needs contributions to her organization to continue her work and defend herself against the legal harassment of the libel terrorists that target her. See the links in my sidebar for further information.

The United States and the West cannot win the war against radical Islam merely with the most sophisticated military strategies. Winning requires understanding the role of shari'a and the Muslim Brotherhood in developing a global ideological and political movement supported by a parallel "Islamic" financial system to exploit and undermine Western economies and markets. This movement is the foundation and the major funding source for the political, economic, and military initiatives of the global Islamic movement.¹

As I have pointed out before (in my very first post), the Religion of Peace is in fact an ideology of imperialism and armed conquest.

True, there are many Muslims who live their lives peacefully, and who sincerely believe that extremists are misinterpreting Islamic texts to justify criminal acts. However, my take on this is that there is something fundamentally wrong with Islam, and that those who try to live and practice a religion of peace are in fact veering off from what was originally a violent ideology.

Okay, so perhaps you are one of these people who really believes Islam is a religion of peace. Regardless, the point being made in the article is that the militant criminal extremists have quite a financial infrastructure behind them; this infrastructure is spreading.

Shari'a finance is a new weapon in the arsenal of what might be termed fifth-generation warfare (5GW).² The perpetrators include both states and organizations, advancing a global totalitarian ideology disguised as a religion. The end goal is to impose that ideology worldwide, making the Islamic "nation," or ummah, supreme.³

Rising oil prices and the West's dependency on Middle East oil, combined with willful blindness and political correctness, provide a surge of petrodollars, making financial and economic jihad so much easier to carry out. Moreover, according to shari'a, Muslims hold all property in trust for Allah.⁴ Therefore, under the shari'a, all current and historic Muslim acquisitions everywhere, including the United States, belong to the ummah, in trust for Allah.

That's it in an ominous nutshell.

From the right to rape female captives to the right to extort wealth from conquered peoples, this "Allah" that these people worship is an evil entity that promises those who submit to it anything they want, provided they can figure out a way to get it.

Shari'a is the crucial source and ultimate authority dictating the actions of practicing individuals and radical Muslim states and movements alike. Failing to understand the political use of shari'a hampers the U.S. ability to mount effective policies, plans, and strategies to successfully counter this fast-growing totalitarian threat.

There are Muslims who see shari'a as the threat it is, and are against it. See my sidebar.

This ignorance is illustrated by the statements of Massachusetts representative Barney Frank and Utah senator Bob Bennett. Responding to opponents of Bourse Dubai's then-proposed acquisition of 20 percent of NASDAQ in September 2007, Frank quipped, "In the ports deal, the concern was smuggling something or someone dangerous.... What are we talking about here" --smuggling someone onto a stock exchange?" ⁵ Similarly, Bennett said, "Dubai is making a purchase on the open market of an asset that's for sale. What's wrong with that?"

Although Senator Bennett is correct -- buying portions or all of NASDAQ is legal, and NASDAQ regulations could not be changed without Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval -- Bourse Dubai's shari'a influence in the heart of the U.S. markets and economy should have been of grave concern.

Shari'a is the set of Islamic laws established by Muslim jurists, based on the Qur'an and deeds of the prophet Muhammad, as recorded beginning more than 1,200 years ago. Its end goal, for all time, is establishing a world ruled entirely by Islam and the harsh shari'a laws. These laws govern every aspect of daily life and prohibit individual, political, and religious freedoms.

I addressed this in one of my first posts, Islamic Imperialism 102.

FINANCIAL JIHAD

Funding the jihad, i.e., financial jihad, or Al Jihad bi-al-Mal, is mandated by many verses in the Qur'an, such as chapter 61, verses 10.11: "you ... should strive for the cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives," and chapter 49, verse 15: "The [true] believers are only those who ... strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah." This has been reiterated throughout Islamic history and in recent times. "Financial Jihad [is] ... more important ... than self-sacrificing," according to Saudi and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) spiritual leader Hamud bin Uqla al-Shuaibi.⁶

In other words, in the Religion of Peace, there is no such thing as "sin" if you pay for a holy warrior to rape, pillage and plunder.

Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most prominent Sunni scholars in the world today, reiterated the legal justification for "financial jihad [Al-Jihad bi-al-Mal]" in a lecture he gave on 4 May 2002 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). According to him, "collecting money for the mujahideen (jihad fighters... ) was not a donation or a gift but a duty necessitated by the sacrifices they made for the Muslim nation."⁷

And it is every good Muslim's duty to support these holy warriors (may Allah be pleased with them all).

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Financial Onslaught continues.

Bridging the Gap

In this post we review 'A clash of perceptions, not civilisations' by Imam Feisal Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, 09/06/2008:

Today in Malaysia, representatives from the West and the Muslim world will meet to discuss what many consider the seminal issue of global concern – the supposed "Clash of Civilizations".

We all see symptoms of the divide between the Muslim and Western worlds but many struggle to understand it. Some say we are indeed locked in a "Clash of Civilizations"; others attribute differences between societies to little more than a series of misunderstandings. How can we make sense of problems that we observe so that we may try to solve them?

The misunderstanding is that the Islamic community is growing radicalized, and wants to destroy the West's culture and cause its people to either submit to Islam or become dhimmis, but too many people in the West misunderstand this, and talk about things like poverty and skin color, when it is a hateful, imperialistic ideology being passed off as a religion that is causing the problems.

And, to my Muslim readers, don't try to tell me that what the radicals preach isn't hateful, imperialistic ideology, because you know as well as I do that it is; just like I know that NOT every Muslim is like those guys.

In Kuala Lumpur today and tomorrow, religious scholars, academics and government and business leaders will try to do just that. By defining the breach in perceptions that exists on both sides, they will lay the foundation for bridging the gap.

Some might ask: how can such a bridge be built when so much violence, protest and misunderstanding seem to dominate headlines on both sides of the Muslim-West seam?

To start, let's be clear in asserting that dialogue can take place. What we have today is much less a "Clash of Civilizations" than a clash of perceptions. Little about our cultures, religions or ways of life—though these are certainly different—suggests coexistence to be impossible; rather, it is our perception of this impossibility that drives discord.

Dialog can only really take place with the jihadists after they have been militarily defeated.

The greatest misunderstanding, therefore, is that we imagine the problems that separate the Muslim and Western worlds to be larger and more formidable than they actually are.

Yeah, like calling the West the House of War, calling for the destruction of Western culture, and the enslavement and rape of its people, combined with efforts to make these things happen -- this is really not as big a problem as we make it out to be.

Some in the Muslim World, for example, perceive Western military invention on their soil as a vestige of a malignant narrative stretching from the Crusades to the era of colonialism, whereas many Westerners view current events, such as the American invasion of Afghanistan, strictly in terms of a struggle against international terrorism.

As long as the Crusades -- a terrible chapter in human history -- came up, let me ask a question: Who started it?

That militants often justify acts of violence with Islamic vocabulary only distances Muslims and Westerners from mutual understanding.

Wait a minute: Gina Khan is a Muslim and a Westerner.

And, there are many people like her.

Let's call it jihadists versus infidels and takfir.

It is the militant extremists of every creed, in fact, who bear the greatest responsibility for exacerbating negative perceptions. The atrocities of Christian and Jewish extremism should be on display alongside those perpetrated by their Muslim counterparts: from the Ku Klux Klan to Baruch Goldstein to September 11th, religious fanatics of all faiths perpetrate violence that aggravates intercultural tensions and widens the perception gap.

The Ku Klux Klan is indefensible.

But, it has caused only a tiny fraction of the suffering that militant Islamists have.

Incorrect perceptions in the West about Muslims need fixing too, including the oft-heard charge that Muslims categorically practice violence and abuse women. As we know, however, Muslim-majority countries are more tolerant and diverse than many in the West suppose.

The impressive plurality of ethnicities, languages, beliefs and opinions among today's population of more than 1.2 billion Muslims does more than validate the Prophet's tradition that "Differences of opinion in my community are a blessing"—it puts to rest the notion that Muslims are a homogenous and insidious group, naturally opposed to dissent from within or without.

And Saudi Arabia and the Taliban's Afghanistan have been such shining examples of progressive, multicultural tolerance, where the right to any belief is honored.

Issues of perception are key in debunking the sense that cultures are clashing. Lately, it has become clear just how carefully religious scholars, politicians and commentators must choose their language to avoid making the problem worse.

To illustrate, the current US Presidential election has seen both John McCain and Barack Obama distance themselves from former spiritual guides—Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who famously blamed the US for the September 11th terrorist attacks and Reverend Rod Parsley, the notorious defamer of Islam.

Though both candidates have rightly disavowed such comments, they recognize that more work still needs to be done, and have sent representatives to Kuala Lumpur to help repair the damage to the public's perception of the Muslim-West divide.

Yes, there is certainly a divide, a set of real problems that often fan the embers of misunderstanding until they flame up into something far more sinister and threatening. But the breach exists only because we have created it through government policies, academic discourses, media relations and other interactions that feature pessimistic rhetoric. Regrettably, enough leaders from all walks have spent so much time brooding on the factuality of the Muslim-West divide that many no longer consider the gap bridgeable.

We can indeed bridge this gap. What we need first, however, is to measure its width so that our engineering won't go to waste. In Kuala Lumpur, for the first time ever, practical-minded leaders will meet to begin this task by setting down a concrete definition for the divide, to be encased in the "Kuala Lumpur Accord."

Then will they will tackle the issue of how to construct positive policy, academic and media initiatives that will help future leaders span the gulf of false perception.

It is not a "clash of civilizations" -- it is civilization, which most emphatically includes some elements of the Islamic world, clashing with barbarians.

The gap that needs to be bridged is the gap between this reality and the political newspeak that refuses to acknowledge the truth.

Hat tip to my email tipster.