RUTHFULLY YOURS

Maj. General Mohsen Rezai founded Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the early days of the revolution, upon the personal orders of Ayatollah Khomeini.

While he relinquished control of the IRGC in 1997, he remains one of the regime’s most influential leaders. A “principalist,” who is considered a revolutionary purist, Rezai has occasionally shown a more pragmatic bent.

He regularly boasts of the Iranian regime’s military power, and issues threats to all who would challenge the regime that seem to get dismissed in the Western media.

Last week, when he vowed to “level Tel Aviv to the ground,” was no exception.

He was speaking in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned at the Munich Security Conference last week that Israel would “act against Iran itself” if Iran continued to invade Israeli air space, as they did when they sent a drone into Israel from an air base in Syria.

And yet, outside of the Israeli media, only the Daily Mail paid much attention to Rezai’s threats.

But make no mistake about it: General Rezai understands the cold calculus of nuclear deterrence, and he was not making an idle threat.

His message was crystal clear: Iran considers itself to be a nuclear weapons-capable state. And he speaks from direct, personal knowledge since he was himself in charge of Iran’s nuclear weapons program for over a decade.

I know this because his son defected to the United States at the age of 23 in 1999, and wound up staying with me for several months, learning English in my basement by watching Jackie Chan movies. Many of the stories he told me about his father I related in a 2005 book, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran.

Here is just one of them, which explains why I am confident that General Rezai was not making an idle threat to Israel last week. It involves a January 1993 trip Rezai made to China and North Korea with a 50-man military delegation, as well as his then teenage son.

DAPCHI, Nigeria— Garba Sule was preparing for evening prayers when heavily armed Boko Haram jihadists rode into town last week in pickup trucks, firing hundreds of rounds into the air and demanding directions to the local girls’ school.

The camouflage-clad militants loaded up dozens of students from the Dapchi Government Girls Science and Technical College and drove them into the surrounding scrubland, according to eyewitnesses, schoolteachers and local officials. Among them: Mr. Sule’s 13-year-old daughter, Zara.

A week after the Feb. 19 attack, 110 schoolgirls from this remote town in northeastern Nigeria remain unaccounted for, stunning Africa’s most populous nation and rekindling memories of Boko Haram’s seizure of 276 girls from Chibok Government Secondary School in 2014.

That earlier attack, initially ignored by Nigeria’s government, ultimately prompted a global activist movement—#BringBackOurGirls. About half of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls either escaped or were ransomed; 112 remain missing. At least 13 are presumed dead. Boko Haram continues to hold thousands of abducted boys and girls.

The latest episode has sparked outrage across Nigeria, where public anger has focused on authorities who initially refused to acknowledge the incident and then incorrectly claimed to have rescued the girls.

“We are in deep pain. We’ve hardly eaten,” said Mr. Sule, a 45-year-old researcher at the local hospital. “The government has lied to us, like they did with the Chibok girls.”

Over the weekend, President Muhammadu Buhari said in a tweet that the kidnapping was a “national disaster” and pledged to mobilize all the government’s resources to locate the girls. On Sunday, Nigeria’s air force confirmed it was assisting in the manhunt. CONTINUE AT SITE

“They get paid for every Coptic Christian girl they bring in. In some cases, police provide the kidnappers with drugs they seize. The drugs are then given to the girls to weaken their resistance… I even know of cases in which police offered helped to beat up the girls to make them recite the Islamic creed.” — World Watch Monitor, Egypt; September 14, 2017.

On September 14, a court sentenced a Christian man to death for “blasphemy” against the prophet of Islam. Nadeem James, a 27-year-old father of two, was originally arrested in July 2016, after a Muslim angry with him for personal reasons falsely accused James, who is illiterate, of texting a poem deemed “blasphemous” of Muhammad. — Pakistan.

School textbooks taught her that “it was the Christians who wanted to plunder the lands and the riches of the Muslim world” and Turks merely responded by “defend[ing] what was rightfully theirs.” (In reality, modern day Turkey consists of territory that was Christian for more than a thousand years before it was conquered by Turks in the name of jihad.) “Everything is used to make the Christians look like villains,” she said, adding, “It’s the same all through Muslim countries.” — Turkey.

Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Pakistan: Sharoon, a Christian boy who achieved academic excellence despite years of entrenched discrimination and bullying—and whose poverty-stricken parents had worked hard to put him in MC Model Boys Government High School—was beaten to death by Muslim pupils. On his first day at the school, the teacher slapped him across the face while blurting an anti-Christian slur. Having set a precedent, the rest of the classroom of Muslim boys continued harassing him throughout the same first day: they hurled out derogatory terms against Christians, denied him access to drinking water, and told him, “You’re a Christian don’t dare sit with us if you want to live.” According to one report: “His academic prowess … only added to the disdain for him felt by other pupils.” Another report said, “there were repeated attempts to convert him to Islam. Sharoon however, never quit his faith to the chagrin of the Muslim children around him, exacerbating his pariah status.” Then, on August 27—his fourth day at the prestigious Model school—Muslim students attacked him in the classroom (the teacher supposedly did not notice; he was reading his paper). “The violence,” continues the report, “was of such sickening ferocity that poor Sharoon died where he was in the classroom.” A cacophony of insults accompanied the beating; he was called a “filthy Christian” and a “demon.” According to the murdered teen’s mother:

“My son was a kind-hearted, hard-working and affable boy. He has always been loved by teachers and pupils alike and shared great sorrow that he was being targeted by students at his new school because of his faith. Sharoon and I cried every night as he described the daily torture he was subjected to…. The evil boys that hated my child are now refusing to reveal who else was involved in his murder. Nevertheless one day God will have His judgement.”

“National Security officials are prohibited from developing a factual understanding of Islamic threat doctrines, preferring instead to depend upon 5th column Muslim Brotherhood cultural advisors.” — Richard Higgins, NSC official.

At the heart of the problem lies the fantasy that Islam must be very similar to other religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity, out of which it was, in fact derived.

The use of force, mainly through jihad, is a basic doctrine in the Qur’an, the Prophetic sayings (ahadith), and in all manuals of Islamic law. It is on these sources that fighters from Islamic State, al-Qa’ida, al-Shabaab, and hundreds of other groupings base their preaching and their actions. To say that such people have “nothing to do with Islam” could not be more wrong.

Recently, US National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster once again downplayed the significance of faith by claiming that Islamic ideology is “irreligious”; meanwhile, up to 1.5 billion Muslims continue claiming, as they have done for 1400 years, that it is.

As Stephen Coughlin, an expert on Islam, told Gatestone, “It is the believers who define their religion, not the non-believers. If someone says his religion is that the moon is made of green cheese, that has to be your starting point.”

On February 20, 2017, President Trump appointed McMaster, a serving Lieutenant General of the US Army, to the important position of National Security Advisor, after the forced resignation of Michael T. Flynn. McMaster came to the post with a reputation for stability, battlefield experience, and intelligence. According to the Los Angeles Times:

“It is not an overstatement to say that Americans and the world should feel a little safer today,” tweeted Andrew Exum, an author and academic who saw combat in Afghanistan and writes widely about military affairs.”

After the controversies surrounding McMaster’s predecessor in office, McMaster came as a safe hand.

It was not long before divisions opened up within the NSC, however, with quarrels, firings, and appeals to the president. Many controversies remain today. By July, it was reported that Trump was planning to fire McMaster and replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. By August, however, McMaster’s position seemed secure.

It is not the purpose of this article to discuss issues McMaster’s spell at the NSC has brought to light, except for one: McMaster’s position on Islam and terrorism. It became a cause for contention early in McMaster’s incumbency and continues to engender divisions, not just among NSC staff, but also with the president. The general’s viewpoint, which he has often expressed, is that international terrorism has nothing to do with the religion of Islam, a notion he seems to believe to the point where he has banned the use of the term “radical Islamic terrorism” — a term that Trump uses often.

The truth is starting to emerge about a recent Russian attack on U.S. forces in eastern Syria, and it deserves more public attention. The assault looks increasingly like a botched attempt to bloody the U.S. and intimidate President Trump into withdrawing from Syria once Islamic State is defeated. The U.S. military won this round, but Vladimir Putin’s forces will surely look for a chance at revenge.

Here’s what we know. Several hundred men and materiel advanced on a U.S. Special Forces base near Deir al-Zour on the night of Feb. 7-8. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed soon afterward that the “battalion-sized unit formation” was “supported by artillery, tanks, multiple-launch rocket systems and mortars.” U.S. forces responded in self-defense “with a combination of air and artillery strikes.”

Ms. White wouldn’t confirm how many attackers were killed or who was fighting, though the U.S. had “observed” the military buildup for a week. Defense Secretary James Mattis called the confrontation “perplexing,” adding that “I have no idea why they would attack there, the forces were known to be there, obviously the Russians knew.” He’s referring to the U.S.-Russia “deconfliction” agreement in which the Russians agreed to stay west of the Euphrates River.

Now we’re learning that Russian fighters were killed in the attack, and Lebanese Hezbollah was also involved. The Kremlin has tried to cover up the deaths, but that’s getting harder as the body bags come home and Russian social media spread the word. The Foreign Ministry finally admitted Tuesday that “several dozen” Russians were killed or wounded but claimed that “Russian service members did not take part in any capacity and Russian military equipment was not used.”

“While the brave Iranian women protested against hijab laws, Western feminists celebrated hijab”. — Rita Panahi, Herald Sun, Australia.

Instead of a celebration of Islamist discrimination against women, the West should promote a #MeToo in the mosque, the idea of an Egyptian, Mona Eltahawi. She would like to raise the issue of rape and sexual abuse suffered by Muslim women during the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Will the Western advocates of women’s rights also stand for the rights of Muslim women, or, in the name of “multiculturalism”, the will they keep appeasing those who persecute them instead?

While the march for women’s rights in Washington this year took place under the banner of #MeToo against sexual harassment, in Iran dozens of women were taking to the streets to protest against theocracy and compulsory wearing of the hijab. The Iranian women waved white flags to fight against the mullahs’ obligation to veil. But the white flag was not a surrender; it was apparently a symbol of Western feminists. As the Australian Rita Panahi wrote, “while the brave Iranian women protested against hijab laws, Western feminists celebrated hijab”.

On February 1, many of these Iranian women were arrested for not wearing a hijab. On that very day, the World Hijab Day was celebrated in the West, and Western appeasers celebrated the veil. Even British PM Theresa May backed the claim that women should be “free” to wear hijab. A few days after that, the American department store Macy’s decided to sell the hijab as an item of fashion clothing. Unfortunately, in some Islamic countries, women are not “free” to wear the veil; they are obliged to wear the veil, as the arrests in Iran show us.

Instead of a celebration of Islamist discrimination against women, the West should promote a #MeToo in the mosque — the idea of an Egyptian, Mona Eltahawi. She would like to raise the issue of rape and sexual abuse suffered by Muslim women during the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

I’ve written many times over the last decade and a half about that rare bird the “moderate Muslim”. Surely one reason for his scarceness is that, whenever he pops his head above the parapet, he’s hung out to dry by craven infidel politicians and bureaucrats, who on the whole find the admirably straightforward demands of your average firebreathing imam more congenial. Hence the pandering to returning Isis warriors: Mods vs Raqqa’s – it’s no contest.

The latest examples are the headmistress and chairman of the board of governors of St Stephen’s Primary School in Newham, East London. St Stephen, you’ll recall, was the first Christian martyr, but observant Christians are thinner on the ground in today’s Newham than they were in first-century Jerusalem. So St Stephen’s School today is mostly Muslim. Nevertheless:

In June last year, [headmistress Neena] Lall removed the hijab from the school uniform for girls aged seven and under and tried to curb young children from fasting at school in case they became unwell.

Good for her. Hijabs for under-sevens? If you’re in most Muslim countries, you notice that the gals don’t disappear under the veil until puberty: Covered kindergartners is largely a western phenomenon.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—Dozens of schoolgirls remained missing two days after a jihadist raid on a boarding school in northeastern Nigeria raised fears of a repeat of the mass kidnapping in Chibok in 2014.

A convoy of fighters in machine-gun-mounted trucks from the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency rolled into the Government Girls Science Technical College in the town of Dapchi, Yobe state, on Monday evening, local officials and Western diplomats said.

Police officers and teachers initially said they believed the 800-member student body was safe after fleeing to their homes and nearby villages. But dozens still remained unaccounted for, Yobe state police commissioner Summonu Abdulmalik said.

Nigeria’s government confirmed late Wednesday that the attackers were from the militant group that also carried out the Chibok raid.

The Nigerian military said it saved “some of the girls from the terrorists who abducted them” in an operation, without giving figures. Residents of Dapchi reached by telephone in Dapchi, a remote and dust-caked village less than 50 miles from Nigeria’s border with Niger, said they were celebrating the return of some of the girls, adding that not all had returned home.

President Muhammadu Buhari said on Twitter that he had dispatched his defense minister to Yobe and directed military and police “to mobilize immediately to ensure that all the missing girls…are found.”

One of the most troubling aspects of this rapidly spreading dhimmitude, is the de-facto enforcement of Islamic blasphemy laws. Local European authorities have been utilizing “hate speech” laws to prohibit criticism of Islam, even though Islam represents an idea, not a nationality or an ethnicity. The conventional purpose of most hate-speech laws is to protect people from hatred, not ideas.

The British Foreign Office, which has ignored Iranian women’s desperate fight for freedom and stayed shamefully silent during the Iranian people’s recent protests against Iran’s regime, unbelievably handed out free headscarves to its staff. Meanwhile, at least 29 Iranian women were arrested for shedding the hijab, and were likely subjected to rape and other torture, as is common in Iranian prisons. Yet British MPs and Foreign Office employees were perversely celebrating the hijab as some sort of twisted tool of “female empowerment”.

Counter-jihad measures have been obstructed by Western leaders everywhere since immediately after 9/11. President George W. Bush declared that “Islam is peace”. President Obama removed all references to Islam in FBI terror training manuals that Muslims deemed offensive. New York City’s current leadership threatened New Yorkers, immediately after the October terror attack in Manhattan, not to link the terror attack to Islam. UK Prime Minister Theresa May claimed that Islam is a “religion of peace”.

Although Europe is not part of the Muslim world, many European authorities nevertheless seem to feel obliged to submit to Islam in more or less subtle ways. This voluntary submission appears to be unprecedented: Dhimmi, historically speaking, is the Arabic term for the conquered non-Muslim, who agrees to live as a second-rate, “tolerated” citizen, under Islamic rule, submitting to a separate, demeaning set of laws and the demands of his Islamic masters.

In Europe, submitting to the demands of Islam, in the name of “diversity” and “human rights”, has also been happening voluntarily. This submission to Islam is, of course, highly ironic, as the Western concepts of “diversity” and “human rights” do not exist within the foundational texts of Islam. On the contrary, these texts denounce in the strongest – and supremacist – terms those who refuse to submit to the Islamic concept of divinity, Allah, as infidels who must either convert, pay the jizya [“protection”] tax or die.