RUTHFULLY YOURS

Al-Qaeda will once again become legal in Switzerland in 2015 because a further extension of the ban of the group is not possible under Swiss Law.

“[It is] debatable whether Switzerland possesses an adequate legal framework to mitigate this [jihadist] threat.” Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point.

Another factor obstructing an official ban appears to be bureaucratic confusion. Swiss authorities are impeding progress by “blocking” each other. Berner Zeitung

If the NDB’s estimates are correct, they would imply that—in terms of percentage—there are now more Swiss jihadists in Syria than French jihadists, even though France has the largest Muslim population in Europe.

“IS shows us that modern terror threats can only be combatted through prevention.” Thomas Hurter, President of the National Security Commission.

Swiss lawmakers have filed a motion calling on the Swiss Parliament formally to ban the jihadist group Islamic State [IS] from operating in Switzerland.

The measure—signed by more than 40 politicians from across the political spectrum—is in response to new revelations that the IS has established a network of cells inside Switzerland to raise money and recruit fighters for the jihad in Syria and Iraq.

The jihadist cells are primarily focused on providing financial, logistical and propaganda support to help the IS establish an Islamic theocracy in the Middle East, according to a report published by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) on September 21.

But terrorism analysts are warning that the cells could easily be used to perpetrate terror attacks inside Switzerland.

According to the NZZ, Swiss authorities are investigating at least three Iraqi nationals who are the alleged ringleaders of IS activities in Switzerland.

In response to the report, the Swiss public prosecutor’s office confirmed that it is currently investigating at least 20 separate cases involving jihadist operations in Switzerland, including at least four directly related to the jihad in Syria.

Many leaders have been stating that the Islamic State’s actions are ‘unprecedented’, ‘extreme’, ‘unique’, or even ‘eccentric’. Western leaders who are intervening in the Syria-Iraq conflict justify their actions by declaring the Islamic State to be uniquely evil. In announcing military action and increased security measures, Australian Prime Ministry Tony Abbott said of the Islamic State that “To do such evil — and to revel in doing such evil — is simply unprecedented”. David Cameron stated that “ISIL is a terrorist organisation unlike those we have dealt with before.” Osama Obama claimed “these terrorists are unique in their brutality.”

The actions of Islamic State’s adherents are morally repugnant in the extreme, but only by applying historical amnesia and selective vision could one claim that their evil is unique or unprecedented.

In recent decades, not dissimilar horrors have regularly been reported from around the world, for example the abuses of the ‘Lord’s Resistance Army’, or the genocide currently being pursued by the government of Sudan against Nubian Christians.

The Islamic State’s actions are also not unique in history. Quite apart from the horrors of Nazism and Communism, Andrew Bostom has rightly pointed out that the atrocities of the Ottoman Caliphate in exterminating Christians under their rule were greater in magnitude than what is currently being experienced in Syria and Iraq. He writes:

“Notwithstanding the recent horrific spate of atrocities committed against the Christian communities of northernIraq by the Islamic State (IS/IL) jihadists, the Ottoman jihad ravages were equally barbaric, depraved, and far more extensive. Occurring, primarily between 1915-16 (although continuing through at least 1919), some one million Armenian, and 250,000 Assyro-Chaldean and Syrian Orthodox Christians were brutally slaughtered, or starved to death during forced deportations through desert wastelands. The identical gruesome means used by IS/IL to humiliate and massacre its hapless Christian victims, were employed on a scale that was an order of magnitude greater by the Ottoman Muslim Turks, often abetted by local Muslim collaborators (the latter being another phenomenon which also happened during the IS/IL jihad campaign against Iraq’s Christians).”

Bostom also points out that the Yazidi’s recent sufferings at the hands of the IS are nothing new, but are consistent with a a pattern of genocidal assaults against them which stretches back to Ottoman times.