Large-scale fighting raged in Iraq on Monday, following Sunday’s proclamation of an Islamic caliphate over large areas of Syria and Iraq by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The jihadist group declared its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as leader of the new entity and its caliph, theoretically combining religious and state authority in the tradition of Muhammad’s early successors, across Iraq and Syria and beyond.
This development should not be dismissed as mere propaganda. For the first time since the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in the aftermath of the Great War, there is a substantial state-like entity presuming to revive the mantle of Sunni Islamic universalism.
First of all, it is worth examining what exactly makes a state a “state.” Traditional international law postulates the possession of population, of territory, and the existence of a government which exercises effective control over that population and territory. To put it more technically, a state exists if it enjoys the monopoly of coercive mechanisms within its domain.
Some authors also postulate the prevalent loyalty of the population to the government, but recent legal practice does not support the assertion. In April 1992 the U.S. recognized “Bosnia and Herzegovina” in its Yugoslav federal boundaries, although its nominal government – led by the dedicated jihadist Alija Izetbegovic – commanded the loyalty of only two-fifths of its citizens who happened to be Muslims, and controlled at most a third of the territory. On the other hand, unrecognized state entities such as Transnistria, Abkazia, Northern Cyprus, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh (like them or hate them) command their denizens’ overwhelming loyalty and exercise effectively undisputed control over their entire territory.
Finally, there are international jurists who cite the ability of the self-proclaimed state’s authority to engage in international discourse, but that is a moot point. The capacity to control a putative state’s territory and population almost invariably leads to such ability, regardless of the circumstances of that state’s inception: South Sudan is a recent case in point, and the creation of Israel in 1947 also comes to mind.
Three million girls between infancy and age fifteen are subject to FGM every year, and it is believed that 140 million women worldwide are suffering from the lifelong consequences of the practice.
The Muslim Council of Britain [MCB], the most prominent Muslim council in Britain, has declared that female genital mutilation is contrary to Islam: “FGM is not an Islamic requirement. There is no reference to it in the holy Qur’an that states girls must be circumcised. Nor is there any authentic reference to this in the Sunnah, the sayings or traditions of our prophet.”
“This is a terrible situation for young girls. So our strategy is to target the cutters. They are hurting a lot of people and making a profit from it.” — Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service.
Thousands of schoolgirls in the United Kingdom are at high risk of undergoing female genital mutilation [FGM] during this year’s summer break, according to the British government, which is actively promoting several nationwide campaigns aimed at raising awareness of the spiraling problem.
The summer holiday—often referred to as the “cutting season”—is an especially dangerous time for at-risk girls, anti-FGM activists warn. Many families consider the summer to be a convenient time to carry out the procedure because there is time for the girls to heal before they return to school in the fall.
Mr. Tucker is the author of “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey” (Bartleby Press, 2010).
It’s not too late to fix Jimmy Carter’s energy blunder of the 1970s.
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a 645-page ruling whose basic aim is to cut coal plants out of the mix in producing the nation’s electricity. States will supposedly be given a choice, but the only real way to meet the agency’s demands for carbon-dioxide reductions will be to cut back on coal. All this will be a devastating blow to the Midwestern economy, driving up energy prices for everyone, while having only the slightest impact on global warming.
There is a great irony to this. In the early 1970s, coal was being phased out as the nation’s principal source of electricity. The initial concerns about air pollution had focused on coal, and environmental groups such as the Sierra Club were campaigning to lift the 20-year-old ban on imported oil so we could replace coal with low-sulfur oil from Libya and Indonesia.
All this came to a halt with the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74. It became clear that burning oil for electricity in the U.S. was a luxury we could no longer afford. But there was a salvation on the horizon. The nation was just embarking on a monumental effort to implement nuclear power, with almost 200 reactors on the drawing boards or in the pipeline. This would supplant both coal and oil and solve the problem of air pollution once and for all. (Concerns about carbon emissions had not yet arisen.)
Work on more than 50 reactors had already begun when the effort hit a snag. With the new administration of President Jimmy Carter, environmentalists gained a foothold in the government for the first time. They were opposed to air pollution but they were more opposed to nuclear power. At the same time, Mr. Carter was under tremendous pressure to find a replacement for foreign oil, so environmentalists came up with a solution. Theorists such as soft-energy guru Amory Lovins argued that coal could be cleaned up through new technologies—the fluidized bed, for instance, which pulverizes coal for nearly complete combustion. This would allow coal to serve as a bridge to the coming legions of wind, solar and other renewable energies that would be ready to take over completely somewhere around 2025.
Obama’s Dependent States of America — on The Glazov Gang
A disturbing report card on how a Radical-in-Chief’s domestic and foreign policy is crippling America.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/obamas-dependent-states-of-america-on-the-glazov-gang/ –
A culture that celebrates kidnapping is not fit for statehood.
In March 2004 a Palestinian teenager named Hussam Abdo was spotted by Israeli soldiers behaving suspiciously as he approached the Hawara checkpoint in the West Bank. Ordered at gunpoint to raise his sweater, the startled boy exposed a suicide vest loaded with nearly 20 pounds of explosives and metal scraps, constructed to maximize carnage. A video taken by a journalist at the checkpoint captured the scene as Abdo was given scissors to cut himself free of the vest, which had been strapped tight to his body in the expectation that it wouldn’t have to come off. He’s been in an Israeli prison ever since.
Abdo provided a portrait of a suicide bomber as a young man. He had an intellectual disability. He was bullied by classmates who called him “the ugly dwarf.” He came from a comparatively well-off family. He had been lured into the bombing only the night before, with the promise of sex in the afterlife. His family was outraged that he had been recruited for martyrdom.
“I blame those who gave him the explosive belt,” his mother, Tamam, told the Jerusalem Post, of which I was then the editor. “He’s a small child who can’t even look after himself.”
Yet asked how she would have felt if her son had been a bit older, she added this: “If he was over 18, that would have been possible, and I might have even encouraged him to do it.” In the West, most mothers would be relieved if their children merely refrained from getting a bad tattoo before turning 18.
