RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bloody-month-of-jihad-11547769108

The Trump Administration says Islamic State has been defeated, and it is moving ahead with its withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and reducing America’s antiterror commitments in Africa. Meantime, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel is replacing a terrorism subcommittee with one focused on investigating what he apparently thinks is a bigger threat: Donald Trump.

The world’s terrorists don’t seem to have received this news that they’ve been defeated, as a spate of recent attacks around the globe shows.

• On Wednesday a suicide bomber killed two American soldiers, one civilian Pentagon employee and a Defense Department contractor, as well as 15 allied fighters and civilians, in Manbij, Syria. Islamic State took responsibility for the attack and claimed it specifically targeted Americans. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says the incident shows that Mr. Trump’s retreat and declarations of victory in Syria are emboldening jihadists—and he’s probably right.

• Also on Wednesday federal prosecutors charged a 21-year-old Georgia man with planning to attack the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and a synagogue. According to a criminal complaint, Hasher Jallal Taheb planned to form an assault group armed with guns, homemade bombs, an antitank weapon and hand grenades.

The man had “a hand-drawn diagram of the ground floor of the West Wing” and noted “the areas where the Secret Service and Homeland Security operated in the White House,” the complaint says. Credit the FBI for stopping him, but it shows that the threat from ISIS-inspired homegrown jihadists continues.

• On Tuesday militants from al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked group based in Somalia, attacked a hotel and office complex in Nairobi, Kenya. The 18-hour rampage killed at least 21 people, including American businessman and 9/11 survivor Jason Spindler.

• A Taliban suicide bomber hit a foreign compound in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. Four people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Since word leaked that Mr. Trump may withdraw some or all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, ISIS and the Taliban have ramped up attacks and peace talks with the Taliban have faltered.

• Fighters from Islamic State in West Africa stormed a Nigerian military base on Sunday. The following day militants attacked a military-controlled refugee town, causing thousands of civilians to flee.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13571/modernity

I longed for a revival of a golden age when Muslims were mighty and triumphant, ruling large parts of the world, fighting victoriously in the name of God. I gloried in this past. Reviving medievalism, these fantasies were a way to escape modern life. I dreamed of a past and future glory, like many in their dogmatic slumber. I was entrapped in the golden cage of Islamism. I was a bird of paradise that did not want to escape.

There is an increased fear, and rightly so, about the free expression of extremist ideas and opinions that are polluting our social, cultural, economic and political orders in the Arab world, which is why Jamal Khashoggi stands as an enemy to free thinkers. “There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it,” he wrote.

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammad Bin Salman is in the throes of a war to achieve modernity. We want our independence from religious extremism, the ills of our society; and “MBS,” as he is called, is leading the reform in order to fight it and move his country away from its temptations. He needs to go ahead with his reform and do his good works. Because Khashoggi wanted an uprising against the Saudi royal family, the Prince was facing the fears and possibly the threats of being assassinated by those opposing his reforms.

The assassination of Khashoggi was a horrible mistake. There is a way of curbing religious extremists without violence. We must address the political aspects in the Quran that are at times interpreted with hate, instead of our always turning a blind eye to these verses. This study alone would stop religious extremists from having the means of justifying their crimes.

This article is not for the faint-hearted. I do not share a single sentiment with a single religious extremist, Jamal Khashoggi included. My heart is closed to them.

As a Muslim woman, my anger against them became especially determined when three of my relatives in Yemen, young brave, men, had left their homes and families to protect them. They joined the Saudi-backed Yemeni military to fight against Iranian imperialism, to fight for Yemeni independence, to fight for love and freedom. One was killed by a bullet; the other two on sand dunes when they stepped on landmines. Their bodies were so dismembered by explosions that it was difficult to identify them. Their families had to flee their homes; one woman, also terrified of stepping on a landmine, carrying a newborn baby in her arms.

http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/01/17/there-is-

I’m sure everyone is fixated with the circus that is UK politics at the moment. The problem as I see it is the desire to “have a deal”. The stark reality is that there are no deals to be had – certainly no better deals.

Talking to a UK based friend last year about why she voted remain there were three points:

She favoured close economic ties with Europe – that is a bigger market argument,
She perceived many of the Leave arguments to be racist – yes, there was an element of racism in some of the Leave arguments,
She hoped the EU would get a wake up call and negotiate a better deal for the UK after the referendum.

Point 3 is worth discussing. The fact is that the UK already has a preferential deal, many deals, with the EU. They can legitimately ask the question, “More? You want more?”. Then David Cameron went to Brussels a few weeks before the vote and tried to get a better deal and the Europeans said no. So there was no better deal on the table if the UK had voted to remain.

But we know the UK voted to leave. The Remainers put up a whole bunch of legal challenges but in big pictures terms lost the fight. The UK parliament passed legislation that takes the UK out of the EU at the end of March. That part of the process is on automatic pilot and will occur unless the legislation is amended.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13543/strasbourg-capital-europe

A quarter of the Strasbourg’s public school students choose the halal menu in school cafeterias.

In October, from Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the shameful conviction of an Austrian woman for what the court called an “abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam” — just like that, in a stroke, accepting and legitimizing Islam’s blasphemy laws. It was, as one news analyst, born in Iran, took note, “the day free speech died in Europe.”

“Strasbourg,” according to the city’s official website, “embodies the fundamental values ​​of Europe”. But if the current trend continues, these values will be the opposite of those, such as freedom of expression, on which Europe was founded.

“New York, Geneva and Strasbourg are the only cities in the world which are home to international institutions without being national capitals”, an official page of the French city proudly proclaims. “The choice of Strasbourg as the European capital following the Second World War is no accident. The city stands as a shining symbol of reconciliation between peoples and of the future of Europe”.

Last December, however, Strasbourg was shocked by a new terrorist attack. Cherif Chekatt, shouting “Allahu Akbar”, murdered five people, before being neutralized in a two-day manhunt. Among Chekatt’s victims were Italian, Polish and French citizens. Unfortunately, Strasbourg has become one of Europe’s hotbeds of jihadism, an ideology seemingly aimed at destroying Europe’s people, not conciliating with them.

The weekly Valeurs Actuelles called Strasbourg a “French bastion of jihadism”. Seven men from Strasbourg, who went to Syria between December 2013 and April 2014, have already been sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to nine years. The heaviest sentence was handed to Karim Mohamed-Aggad, the brother of the Bataclan Theater suicide bomber Foued Mohamed-Aggad. The weekly L’Obs called Strasbourg “land of jihad”.

“It’s true that we have statistically more ‘S-Files’ [individuals labelled by authorities as a threat to national security] here in Strasbourg and in the Bas-Rhin department than the national average”, the mayor of Strasbourg, Roland Ries, said. Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist and director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, explained:

“Strasbourg is one of those leading cities of what could be called ‘jihadogenic urban areas’, such as the suburbs of Paris, Toulouse, Nice or Lyon in the past… Strasbourg is at the crossroads of Europe, all you have to do is cross the Rhine to be in Germany and you are not very far from Switzerland.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272566/do-pakistans-blasphemy-laws-trump-americas-1st-jules-gomes

The religious police who patrol the precincts of Twitter recently slapped Jamie Glazov, the editor of Frontpagemag.com and the author of Jihadist Psychopath: How He Is Charming, Seducing, and Devouring Us, with anti-free speech blasphemy codes. The social media giant threatened Glazov with the Section 37 of PECA-2016, Section 295 B and Section 295 C of the Pakistan penal code.

Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer has documented how Twitter, along with other leading social media venues, is enforcing Sharia compliance. In the new world of Western dhimmitude, Twitter, acting on behalf of the Pakistan government, is informing American citizens that they could be imprisoned or hanged for insulting Islam.

This new global imposition of Islamic blasphemy law is the handiwork of a leftist playboy on a Muslim prayer mat. This figure of utter incongruity, loved by liberal Westerners, was once a world-class cricketer and Pakistan’s most successful cricket captain—and cricket, a sport foreign to Americans, is the quintessential sport of the gentleman.

As a cricket-loving boy growing up in Bombay, my walls were plastered with posters of Imran Khan. The cricket captain is now Pakistan’s Prime Minister and a poster boy for his nation’s barbaric blasphemy laws – search no further for a striking study in cognitive dissonance.

Oxford-educated Imran Khan, dressed in a mink coat and Mao cap, is equally fluent in the double-speak of radical Islam to his in-house audience and moderate Islam as a mode of public relations discourse. Since his time at Oxford University, Khan also learned to speak the progressive tongue of the social justice warrior tribes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/mays-historic-defeat-and-swift-triumph/

Parliamentarians are risking No Deal or No Brexit.

Brexit has temporarily transformed the governing laws of parliamentarian democracy. Theresa May finally submitted her negotiated deal for withdrawal from the European Union to Parliament this week. This is the effort on which her entire premiership has been staked. It takes up nearly all the energy of her government. And Parliament delivered its verdict by voting it down 432 to 202. In other words, it told her: You have failed miserably at the one thing your government was supposed to do.

Historians are searching for some parallel example of the government’s business being so viciously rejected by Parliament. Losses by 60 votes or 90 votes have invariably caused prime ministers to resign, or triggered no-confidence votes that those PMs promptly lost. May’s loss also triggered a no-confidence vote. And even though the Parliament had utterly and viciously rejected her government’s main piece of legislation, the most important bill in decades, Theresa May won it easily.

So what in the world is going on in Westminster?

As I’ve outlined before, there are two crises at work. The first is a crisis of responsibility in Parliament. Theresa May’s deal may not be what hard Brexiteers wanted. But they have neither the votes nor the courage to oust May and expose their own Brexit to parliamentary and public criticism. And they certainly don’t have the votes in Parliament to pass their preferred terms. By shooting down a deal that has been negotiated with over two dozen other European heads of state, with the clock ticking down, their rejection of their party leader’s deal makes the possibility of crashing out of the EU without a deal at the end of March more likely, or it will provoke the rest of Parliament to delay or cancel Brexit altogether, possibly inflicting yet another national referendum on the issue.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13537/india-tolerance-terrorism

Engaging in “dialogue” with the separatists and the Taliban makes little sense. Neither group has demonstrated any faith in the values of modern civilization and democracy. Contrary to claims on the part of Jammu and Kashmir separatists and Pakistan — that India never offered “unconditional dialogue,” and has been rejecting Islamabad’s peace overtures — it is actually Pakistan’s propaganda against Indian society that is responsible for the violence in Kashmir.

In fact, according to a 2017 Indian Intelligence Bureau report, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence paid separatist leaders Rs 80,000,000 (approximately $1.2 million) to fuel unrest in Kashmir. These leaders include Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Asiya Andrabi, both of whom are reported to have links to Hizbul Mujahideen, a J&K separatist group that in August 2017 was designated by the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

New Delhi’s soft approach to the J&K separatists can only serve to embolden extremist forces. The Modi government also needs to refrain from extending any goodwill gestures to the Taliban — a junior partner of Qaeda that aims to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Indian subcontinent, including in Jammu and Kashmir.

The current administration in Washington, like that in Jerusalem, grasps that all of the above radical groups have “common political targets — the United States, India and Israel.” Rather than risk being seduced by the false notion that it is possible to negotiate with terrorists, India would do well to reach out to its main democratic allies: the U.S. and Israel.

When the Narendra Modi-led government came to power in India with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in May 2014, the public hoped that a peaceful resolution would be reached over the strife-torn northern state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

A key element of the BJP’s platform had been a policy of “zero tolerance towards terrorism.” Yet, since Modi’s election, the situation in J&K — which has been the focus of a long-standing conflict between India and Pakistan, with minority Hindus fleeing Islamist violence in 1990 — has worsened. No Hindu has returned to the Kashmir Valley during Modi’s premiership, and the number of Indian civilians and security personnel killed in attacks by Pakistani militants has increased. In fact, during the four-year period between 2014 and 2018, 75 more Indian soldiers and other security personnel were killed in J&K than during the previous five years (219, compared to 144).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kenyan-forces-in-standoff-with-militants-after-attack-on-hotel-complex-11547620051

NAIROBI, Kenya—Islamist militants’ deadly 18-hour siege of an upscale complex here jolts a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism and raises questions over how the Somalia-based insurgents have survived more than a decade of international military campaigns.

On Tuesday afternoon, unmasked attackers carrying AK-47s and explosives shot their way into the 14 Riverside hotel and office complex in the capital—a favorite hangout for foreigners and upper-class Kenyans—detonated at least one suicide bomb and barricaded themselves in with hundreds of hostages overnight. It took until late Wednesday morning for Kenyan special forces to kill five gunmen and free the remaining captives.

By then, at least 20 people, among them a Kenyan accountant for Colgate-Palmolive Co. and an American who specialized in development finance, were dead. A police officer later succumbed to his injuries in hospital.

The foyer of the DusitD2 hotel, an emblem of Nairobi’s emergence as East Africa’s business hub, was covered in blood and debris; parked outside were the skeletons of several incinerated cars.

Al-Shabaab, a Somali extremist group affiliated with al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the assault. Kenyan police said it had arrested two people it believes helped facilitate the attack. CONTINUE AT SITE