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What Might be Missing in the Muslim World? by Denis MacEoin

Recently, Chinese, Japanese and other educators have found that rote learning and endless drills produce high achievers without creativity, originality, or the ability to think for themselves. Western academic standards of rationality and objectivity have been behind most of the West’s achievements.

“The campus has three mosques with a fourth one planned, but no bookstore. No Pakistani university, including QAU, allowed Abdus Salam to set foot on its campus, although he had received the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his role in formulating the standard model of particle physics.” — Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, commenting on Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, the second-best university among the 57 Muslim states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The very thought that “Islamic science” has to be different from “Western science” suggests the need for a radically different way of thinking. Scientific method is scientific method and rationality is rationality, regardless of the religion practiced by individual scientists.

In April this year, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Shaykh ‘Ali Gomaa, told an interviewer what he meant as a flat statement of fact: that there are no female heart surgeons, as such work required strength and other capabilities that no woman possesses. He put it this way:

“You may have noticed that there is not a single female heart surgeon in the world… It’s amazing. It’s peculiar. Why do you think that there are none? Because it requires great physical effort — beyond what a woman is capable of. That’s in general. Along comes a woman who challenges this, and she succeeds in becoming a surgeon. But she is one woman among several million male surgeons.”

Now even a child could have carried out a simple Google search and realized that there are countless female surgeons and many female heart surgeons. It would not have taken long to find, for example, the US Association of Women Surgeons, which includes heart surgeons — and that would have settled his hash. But apparently deep-seated, pre-formed judgements about women’s abilities prevented Gomaa from using whatever powers of reasoning and intelligence he may possess.

Sadly, there often seems a profound absence of scientific probing within the Muslim world.

It seems reasonable to assume that levels of intelligence are pretty well the same around the world, regardless of race, gender, or religious affiliation. As human beings, we share the same brainpower, just as we share all other physical functions. Mercifully, earlier views of racial inequality have in most places been replaced by a more fact-based understanding of human characteristics. Today, theories put forward in the last two centuries of a supposed “racial supremacy” of white people have been happily discarded. In democratic societies, white supremacists are universally loathed.

In the OECD’s 2015 PISA science results, seven out of the top ten countries, based on achievements at school level, were in the Far East — including Japan and China, with Korea at eleven. The United States was number 25. In mathematics, the results were even more striking: the top seven countries ranged from Singapore to Korea, with the United States at 39, well below most European nations. While such results show that Asian students are indeed intelligent, there is a price to pay for those outstanding results. Students put in long school days and long school years, and live regimented lives. Recently, Chinese, Japanese and other educators have found that rote learning and endless drills produce high achievers without creativity, originality, or the ability to think for themselves. Often, as we shall see, rote learning in the Middle East seems to lead to poor educational outcomes.[1]

For all that, we are all aware that different nations, different cultures and different religions achieve varied and even conflicting levels of intellectual achievement. The Western democracies, including Israel, have for some time now been the highest achievers in fields such as science, technology, medicine, information technology, astronomy and the exploration of space, as well as in modern academic disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, critical history, economics, analytical politics, statistics, and unbiased religious studies, among others. Western academic standards of rationality and objectivity have been behind most of those achievements. Sadly, many scholars in Western countries, not least the US, have abandoned even a semblance of neutrality on and off campus, following a deep politicization of many humanities subjects, above all the Middle East and related studies.

Violence against Women: Some Inconvenient Data for the Corrupt UN by Burak Bekdil

The last (worst) rankings of the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum, from 128th to 144th, are without exception overwhelmingly Muslim countries, including Turkey at the 130th place.

A 2016 study by Turkey’s Family and Social Policies Ministry revealed that no fewer than 86% of Turkish women have suffered physical or psychological violence at the hands of their partners or family.

So, tell us, Ms. Simonovic: Do Turkish men beat and sometimes kill their wives because of Israeli occupation? Is there “a clear link” between Turkey’s rising numbers indicating violence against women and “Israel’s prolonged occupation?”

The United Nations panels lovingly practice hypocrisy all the time. In 2016, a UN debate revolved around the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which voted to blame Israel for Palestinian domestic violence. This year’s show was hardly different in the content of nonsense. The executive director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, asked Dubravka Simonovic, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, at a session on June 12: “Ms. Simonovic, in other words, what you are saying is as follows: ‘When Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault.'”

At first glance it sounds like dark humor, but it is not. Not just one but two reports presented before the UNHRC by Simonovic argue that Israel is to blame for Palestinian violence against women, through “a clear linkage between the prolonged occupation and violence”.

Where, Neuer asked Simonovic, is the data? There is data, but not the kind that Simonovic would prefer to believe exists.

According to the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum, there is not a single overwhelmingly Muslim nation in the best 50 scoring list of countries. In contrast, the last (worst) rankings of the index, from 128th to 144th, are without exception overwhelmingly Muslim countries, including Turkey at the 130th place. Turkey’s case is important to note, as the increasing supremacy of Islamist politics in daily life in the country has boosted patriarchal behavior and worsened gender equality since 2002, when President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power. In other words Turkey, the 17th biggest economy in the world, is the 15th-last country in terms of gender equality.

The United Nations Population Fund grimly observed in a report:

“… women and girls are still exposed to violence, being abused, trafficked, their access to education and political participation is refused and face with many other human rights violations … The fact of violence against women as a concept emerged through gender inequality is widespread in Turkey”.

A 2013 Hurriyet Daily News survey found that 34% of Turkish men think violence against women is “occasionally necessary,” while 28% say violence can be used to discipline women; a combined 62% approval of violence against women.

In 2014, Turkey’s Family and Social Policies Ministry reported that its domestic violence hotline received over 100,000 calls, and estimated that the number of unreported cases is three to five times that number.

A 2016 study by the same ministry revealed that no fewer than 86% of Turkish women have suffered physical or psychological violence at the hands of their partners or family. According to the ministry’s findings, physical violence is the most common form of abuse, as 70% of women reported they were physically assaulted.

The Balfour Declaration Was More than the Promise of One Nation By affirming the right of any Jew to call Palestine home, it also changed the international status of the Jewish people.Martin Kramer ****

In 1930, the British Colonial Office published a “white paper” that Zionists saw as a retreat from the Balfour Declaration. David Lloyd George, whose government had issued the declaration in 1917, was long out of office and now in the twilight of his political career. In an indignant speech, he insisted that his own country had no authority to downgrade the declaration, because it constituted a commitment made by all of the Allies in the Great War:

In wartime we were anxious to secure the good will of the Jewish community throughout the world for the Allied cause. The Balfour Declaration was a gesture not merely on our part but on the part of the Allies to secure that valuable support. It was prepared after much consideration, not merely of its policy, but of its actual wording, by the representatives of all the Allied and associated countries including America, and of our dominion premiers.

There was some exaggeration here; not all of the Allies shared the same understanding of the policy or saw the “actual wording.” But Lloyd George pointed to the forgotten truth that I sought to resurrect through my essay. In 1917, there was not yet a League of Nations or a United Nations. But, in the consensus of the Allies, there was the nucleus of a modern international order. The Balfour Declaration had the weight of this consensus behind it, beforeBalfour signed it. This international buy-in is also why the Balfour Declaration entered the mandate for Palestine, entrusted to Britain by the League of Nations. Those who now cast the Balfour Declaration as an egregious case of imperial self-dealing simply don’t know its history (or prefer not to know it).

Nicholas Rostowdoes know it, and we should be grateful for the efforts he has made to inform wider audiences about the legal foundations of Israel. “It is not just that ignorance of the past can lead to unnecessary policy error,” he writes. “As we know all too well from UN resolutions and opinions of the International Court of Justice, such oblivion, willed or not, can and in this case emphatically does lead to gross injustice.”

Of course, some of this ignorance and oblivion is indeed deliberate. Consider the way in which Britain “forgot” its own understanding of the Balfour Declaration. In 1922, an earlier British “white paper” interpreted the declaration in light of postwar conditions. Its key determination was that the Jewish people “should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance.” The mandate then interpreted the declaration to mean that the country’s nationality law should be “framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.”

The Balfour Declaration may or may not have implied a Jewish state, but by affirming the right of any Jew to call Palestine home, it changed the status of the Jewish people. There was one small spot on the globe in which Jews had a natural right to take up abode, by virtue of their “historic connection.” (The Balfour Declaration thus anticipated Israel’s own “Law of Return” of 1950, guaranteeing that “every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.”)

In issuing yet another “white paper” in 1939, the British took theopposite position. That document stipulated that after a five-year period of reduced immigration, “no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it.” The Jewish right had disappeared; Jews would henceforth be in Palestine on (Arab) sufferance.

The British justification? Between 1922 and 1939, the British had admitted 300,000 Jews to Palestine, and Jews now formed a third of the population. Wasn’t that enough?

At that time, there were 9.7 million Jews in Europe. Six years later, six million of them were dead, and even then the British were determined to keep the remnant out of Palestine. They reasoned that if the Jewish proportion was held to a third of the population, the Jews would never be able to found a state. And so the British “forgot” their own determination of 1922, that the Jewish people was in Palestine “as of right.”

In the end, a third of Palestine’s population, comprising 600,000 determined Jews, was enough to found Israel even in the teeth of pan-Arab opposition and British hostility. The act of reminding, with which Rostow credits me, should be commended to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been invited to London by Theresa May, the British prime minister, to “mark” the Balfour centennial. Netanyahu should be sure to link the history of 1917 to that of 1939. The former is a noble chapter; the latter, a shameful one.

Al-Shabaab Complains About ‘Fake News,’ Anonymous Sourcing Terror group makes case for Sharia-compliant journalism after couple who left Shabaab tell all. By Bridget Johnson

Al-Shabaab issued a lengthy slam against a report that the group decried as fake news, laying out a Sharia case against using anonymous sourcing and trying to shore up their defense with a list of terror leaders who think they’re great.

The terror group is taking issue with “Why My Wife and I Left Shabab in Somalia,” a two-part Skype interview featuring two Europeans, unnamed and with their faces covered and voices altered, who described life with the terror group and their imprisonment upon attempting to flee Al-Shabaab. The interviews were posted by New Yorker Bilal Abdul Kareem, who runs a video channel called On the Ground News.

Shabaab expresses “dismay” that the lengthy interviews were “nothing more than unsubstantiated allegations and sweeping statements that sought to delegitimize the Mujahideen of East Africa by portraying them as an oppressive band of crooks and criminals,” and accused “brother Bilal” of deviation from “the expected journalistic integrity and Islamic etiquettes required from a Muslim reporter.”

In a document penned earlier this month by Abu Muhammad Al-Muhajir — he says he came from another country and has fought with Al-Shabaab for nearly a decade — and distributed online by al-Qaeda’s Global Islamic Media Front, the group then lays out what they believe to be those journalistic standards.

“Entertaining allegations and presenting them as facts without double-checking their veracity is something unjustified, both from a Shari’ah as well as from a journalistic perspective,” the document states, accusing the video site of giving the couple “a platform to spread a one-sided, gloomy depiction of the Jihad in East Africa.”

Al-Shabaab’s second piece of advice says it’s against Islamic law to use anonymous or obscured sourcing.

“Of course, one might argue that hiding their identities was done out of concern for their safety. The rules, however, are binding considering the harmful effects of accepting disparaging testimonies from anonymous sources,” Al-Muhajir writes.

“For argument’s sake, even if the identities of these individuals were known to the reporter, then that still would not justify accepting their version of events to be true without verifying them, for that would be great injustice and bias,” the document continues. “Furthermore, it is imperative to ask ourselves, is the disparagement of these two unknown individuals enough to discredit an established Jihadi organization that has been recognized, recommended and respected by the senior leadership of all the Jihadi groups worldwide?”

“This is a group that has been praised by the likes of Shaikh Osama ibn Laden, Shaikh Abu Basir Nasir Al-Wuhayshi, Shaikh Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, Shaikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, Shaikh Abu Yahya Al-Libi, Shaikh Anwar Al-Awlaki, Shaikh Mustafa Abu Yazid, Shaikh Ayman Ad-Dhawahiri and others. Is it therefore logical or acceptable from a Shari’ah standpoint, for brother Bilal to cast away the praise and recommendations of such revered Islamic leaders based on the accusations of two anonymous individuals?”

Al-Muhajir also questioned whether the couple were “coerced by the apostate intelligence agencies” after leaving Al-Shabaab and whether they were part of a “new media strategy” against jihadists.

“Taking into consideration the gravity of the allegations and the damaging consequences they may cause, it would have been befitting for brother Bilal to carefully scrutinize the profile of Abdurahman ‘Doe’ and Saffiyah ‘Doe’ to know whether these anonymous individuals were trustworthy sources of information before disseminating their narratives to the world as facts,” the document adds.

Later on, the author admits that Al-Shabaab, as in “every Jihadi arena,” acknowledges “mistakes which have occurred and will continue to occur because error is something innate in human nature,” but insists mistakes — “if we were to hypothetically say that innocent people were killed during some of [Al-Shabaab’s] military operations” — don’t “render their Jihad illegitimate.”

The group claims that the couple were detained because the terror organization was trying to find a safe route by which they could go home. Al-Muhajir then complains that the couple didn’t talk about crimes against Muslims by “Crusaders” during their hourlong interview, “as if the couples’ personal dilemma is more important than the greater struggle” of jihad.

“In Islam, there is absolutely no room for entertaining unfounded accusations and merely claiming that ‘everyone knows’ will never hold water in the court of Shari’ah,” adds the rebuttal.CONTINUE AT SITE

Cyberattacks Hit Major Companies Across Globe Experts said the attacks, which hit Merck, Rosneft and others, appeared to be ransomware By Robert McMillan, David Gauthier-Villars and James Marson

Cyberattacks wreaked havoc across Europe and the U.S. on Tuesday in a confidence-shaking attack that appeared to stem in part from an obscure Ukrainian tax software product.

The virus, whose victims included major global companies from Merck MRK -0.58% & Co. to PAO Rosneft , bore similarities to last month’s global ransomware attack but was in some ways more insidious, security experts say.

The attack, which security experts dubbed Petya, exposed fresh weakness in the computer systems that run modern-day societies as the virus rapidly spread unimpeded across Ukraine, Russia and other European and U.S. locations.

Researchers were still investigating late on Tuesday the source of the outbreak, which locked digital files and demanded payment for them to be returned at more than 100 companies and institutions.

But two companies investigating the outbreak say that a software update from Kiev-based Intellekt Servis was a principal—and inadvertent—source. The company described itself as a victim of Tuesday’s attack, saying the virus had disrupted its own operations. It said that when it released its latest software on June 22 it didn’t contain any virus.

Some experts disagreed with that assessment. The software was pushed out to customers five days ago and then quietly spread within corporate networks before being triggered on Tuesday, said Craig Williams, security outreach manager with Cisco Systems Inc., a networking hardware company, Kaspersky Lab ZAO, an antivirus company, also cited Intellekt Servis as a main source of the outbreak but saw no evidence of triggering mechanism.

The cyber security department of Ukraine’s national police warned on its Facebook page that preliminary analysis suggested the accounting software was “only one of the vectors of the attack.” The Russian security firm Group-IB agreed, saying it saw companies infected via malicious email attachments. CONTINUE AT SITE

Auto Da Fé Car-fire jihad comes to Oslo. Bruce Bawer

As one major European city after another gives way to the invader, one measure of how far along the conquest has advanced is the frequency of car-burnings.

These acts of arson are especially common on one annual holiday – New Year’s Eve – and during one season, namely summer. Earlier this year Robert Spencer quoted an article that traced the “custom” of European car burnings back to “Strasbourg, Germany and eastern France during the 1990’s.” They’re since spread elsewhere, notably to Muslim neighborhoods in the Swedish cities of Stockholm Gothenburg, and Malmö. They’re also especially big in Paris and other French cities, where in on New Years Eve 2012-13, at least 1,193 cars were torched.

On January 3, 2013, Time ran a piece by Bruce Crumley that, bizarrely, made light of all the car-burning. “Burn out the old year; torch in the new,” Crumley began, joking that France had kicked off 2013 “in its uniquely pyromaniac fashion.” He quipped about “France’s distinctive car-burning penchant,” about its “auto roasts,” about “flame-happy France,” about France’s “flaming-auto fetish.” Although Crumley brushed up against the truth – referring euphemistically to the fact that all these acts were taking place in “disadvantaged areas” and the so-called “projects” – he was careful to avoid using the word “Islam” or “Muslim.” No, the whole point of his piece was to spin the annual car fires as a quirky French tradition.

But then it’s par for the course for journalists, politicians, and police spokespeople alike to treat these car fires as a joke, a quirk, a temporary problem, a minor inconvenience – and, most important, to pretend not to know who’s setting them and why. “This crime is very hard to investigate,” said Malmö cop Lars Forstell last January. “We don’t see any patterns and we don’t have any suspects.” Last August, responding to the fact that car-burning was now becoming a familiar activity in Copenhagen, police spokesman Rasmus Bernt Skovsgaard said, “It is still too early to say anything on the extent to which this could have a connection to the fires that have happened in Sweden.” A month later, in a report on the Copenhagen car-burnings, the New York Times quoted a Danish detective inspector, Jens Moller Jensen, as saying: “It is a mystery why this is happening, and there has been a big increase over the last few months and that is worrying.” Jensen added: “I am working on several hypotheses….One theory is that cars in Denmark are being burned by individuals from an angry underclass in a country where far-right groups have organized bitter protests against immigration, calling it a threat to the nation’s identity.” In other words, the firebugs are immigrants whose feelings have been hurt by far-right bigotry. So the fires are, ultimately, the fault of Islamophobes.

Routinely, the mainstream media attribute the car fires to unnamed perpetrators whom they vaguely identify as “youths” and “hooligans.” Last September, the Atlantic’s urban-policy website, CityLab, actually ran a piece headlined “The Mystery of Scandinavia’s Car-Burning Spree.” Noting that dozens of cars had been set ablaze over the summer in Stockholm, Gothenberg, and Malmö, and that Copenhagen was now not far behind, author Feargus O’Sullivan spent 500 words puzzling over the phenomenon. What could possibly be the cause of all this arson? After all, “no particular group [was] claiming responsibility.” Could car owners themselves be doing this to collect insurance money? Could these crimes be “an expression of rage from young men who see no other outlet for it, or find that the attention it gets them a kick”? Like Crumley, O’Sullivan then brushed against the truth, noting that the car burnings “have mainly been concentrated in relatively deprived areas such as Malmö’s Rosengård, neighborhoods where social and ethnic segregation and a perceived lack of opportunities have left many young people, especially those from a non-Swedish background, frustrated that their futures are being overlooked.” In short, the car burnings are a cry for help by those who’ve been “deprived” and “overlooked.”

Our World: The PLO’s IDF lobbyists Caroline Glick

Should the United States pay Palestinian terrorists? For the overwhelming majority of Americans and Israelis this is a rhetorical question.

The position of the American people was made clear – yet again – last week when US President Donald Trump’s senior envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with Palestinian Authority chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and repeated Trump’s demand that the PA cut off the payments.
Not only did Abbas reject their demand, he reportedly accused the presidential envoys of working as Israeli agents.

Abbas’s treatment of Kushner and Greenblatt was in line with his refusal to even meet with US Ambassador David Friedman, reportedly because he doesn’t like Friedman’s views.

The most amazing aspect of Abbas’s contemptuous treatment of the Trump administration is that he abuses Trump and his senior advisers while demanding that Trump continue funding him in excess of half a billion dollars a year, and do so in contravention of the will of the Republican-controlled Congress.

Abbas’s meeting last week took place as the Taylor Force Act makes its way through Congress.

Named for Taylor Force, the West Point graduate and US army veteran who was murdered in March 2016 in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian terrorist, the Taylor Force Act will end US funding of the PA until it ends its payments to terrorists and their families – including the family of Force’s murderer Bashar Masalha.

The Taylor Force Act enjoys bipartisan majority support in both the House and the Senate. It is also supported by the Israeli government.

Given the stakes, what could possibly have possessed Abbas to believe he can get away with mistreating Trump and his envoys? Who does he think will save him from Congress and the White House? Enter Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), stage left.

CIS is a consortium of 260 left-wing retired security brass. It formed just before the 2015 elections. CIS refuses to reveal its funding sources. Several of its most visible members worked with the Obama administration through the George Soros-funded Center for a New American Security.

Since its inception, CIS has effectively served as a PLO lobby. It supports Israeli land giveaways and insists that Israel can do without a defensible eastern border.

Last Wednesday CIS released a common-sense defying statement opposing the Taylor Force Act.

The generals mind-numbingly insisted the US must continue paying the terrorism-financing PA because Israel needs the help of the terrorism-incentivizing PA to fight the terrorists the PA incentivizes. If the US cuts off funding to the PA because it incentivizes terrorism, then the PA will refuse to cooperate with Israel in fighting the terrorism it incentivizes.

If you fail to follow this logic, well, you don’t have what it takes to be an Israeli general.

Time for a U.S.–India Rebalance Trump and Modi could forge a defining partnership for the next century. By Arthur Herman & Husain Haqqani

The meeting this week between President Trump and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi could be one of the most important of the Trump presidency. Certainly the time is ripe for a major transformation of U.S.–Indian relations, and both Modi and Trump are uniquely positioned to bring it about. They must overcome domestic political distractions to forge what could be a defining partnership for the next century.

Both men are deeply committed to the interests of their countries, and both see the need to expand the economic opportunities that flow from modern post-industrial growth (in India’s case, estimated to be almost 7.5 percent this year) to the entire society. Both also lead countries that share many of the common cultural characteristics of the Anglosphere, including the English language and a belief in the rule of law and constitutional democracy. Both countries combine rich ethnic and religious diversity with a strong sense of national pride.

The U.S. and India also confront similar challenges on the international front. Both face the daily threat of Islamist terrorism, with the horrors of 9/11 and the attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando paralleled by the deadly assault in Mumbai in 2008 that killed or injured more than 500 people, including several Americans. The terrorists who threaten both countries also share a sanctuary — namely, Pakistan — that has provided safe haven for groups responsible for terrorist strikes in India as well as for attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Both also confront the rise of an aggressive, militarized China. Beijing’s efforts to push the U.S. Navy out of the East China and South China Seas are matched by its growing geopolitical presence in the Indian Ocean. In addition to massing formidable military forces on its common border with India, China has plans for a major naval base at Gwadar, Pakistan, which would bring it to the doorstep of the Persian Gulf. China’s multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects in Pakistan, part of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, also expand China’s reach to India’s western doorstep.

Fortunately, Prime Minister Modi fully understands the extent of the China challenge and the importance of the U.S. strategic partnership as a counterbalance. Now it’s time for the U.S. to step up and assume the role of partner and guide.

The first step would be to encourage more energy trade and cooperation, so that the U.S.’s new oil and natural-gas export boom can flow directly to the benefit of India. Differences over trade deficits and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have masked both countries’ interest in increasing the bilateral trade of energy. India would much rather get its oil and natural gas from the United States than from Russia and Iran, while India’s own rich natural energy resources, including its shale-gas reserves, could benefit from cooperation with U.S. energy companies.

A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: May 2017 by Soeren Kern

“The whole system failed and that is what has been happening for the last 30 years. And it is PC. People are just too, too afraid to, you know, just too, too afraid to speak the truth.” — Mohan Singh, founder of the Sikh Awareness Society.

MI5, Britain’s domestic security agency, revealed that it has identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in the country.

Manchester bomber Salman Abedi used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, according to the Telegraph. Abedi is believed to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run-up to the attack even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training. It also emerged that the chief imam of Abedi’s mosque fought with militants in Libya. The mosque was also reported to have hosted hate preachers who called for British soldiers to be killed and non-believers to be stoned to death.

“It is no secret that Saudi Arabia in particular provides funding to hundreds of mosques in the UK, espousing a very hardline Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It is often in these institutions that British extremism takes root.” — Tom Brake, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman.

May 1. Army cadets in Scotland were warned not to wear their uniforms in public because they could be targeted by jihadists.

May 1. Three female teenagers were arrested in East London on terrorism charges. The arrests were in connection with an anti-terror operation in London on April 27 in which a woman wearing a burqa was shot by police. Police said that an active terror plot had been foiled.

May 2. Samata Ullah, a 34-year-old jihadist from Cardiff, was sentenced to eight years in prison for five terror offenses, including membership of the Islamic State, as well being involved in training terrorists and preparing for terrorist acts. Ullah, a British national of Bangladeshi origin, was a key member of a group calling itself the “Cyber Caliphate Army” and gave other members of IS advice on how to communicate using sophisticated encryption techniques.

May 3. Damon Smith, a 20-year-old convert to Islam, was found guilty of making a bomb filled with ball bearings and leaving it on a subway train in London. Jurors at the Old Baily court were told that Smith had downloaded an al-Qaeda article entitled, “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom,” which contained step-by-step instructions on how to make a homemade bomb. The court also heard that Smith had a keen interest in Islam, guns and explosives, and had collected pictures of extremists, including the alleged mastermind of the 2015 Paris terror attacks. Smith, who suffers from autism, admitted to making the device but claimed he only meant it as a prank.

May 3. The trial began of four Muslim men who gang-raped a 16-year-old girl in Ramsgate, Kent. The girl was attacked when she got lost after a night out and asked for directions at a Kebab shop. Restaurant owner Tamin Rahani, 37, Rafiullah Hamidy, 24, Shershah Muslimyar, 20, and an unnamed teenager are accused of taking turns raping the girl in an apartment above the restaurant.

May 9. Aine Davis, a 33-year-old British convert to Islam, was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison by a court in Turkey for being a member of the Islamic State. The BBC reported that Davis was one of a four-man IS cell nicknamed “The Beatles” responsible for beheading more than two dozen hostages in Syria. Davis, the only one of the group to face a trial, had denied the charges against him. Davis left his home in West London in 2013 to join the Islamic State. His wife, Amal El-Wahabi, after a trial at the Old Bailey court, was jailed in November 2014 for funding his terrorism.

May 11. A mother and daughter, along with another woman, appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court on charges of plotting a jihadist attack near the British Parliament. Mina Dich, 43, her daughter Rizlaine Boular, 21, and Khawla Barghouthi, 20, are accused of plotting a random knife attack. Dich and Boular appeared in court wearing burkas covering their faces. Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot asked them to lift their veils to reveal their eyes when they were identified in the dock. Barghouthi wore a niqab with her face showing. All three are accused of conspiracy to murder.

May 12. Female drivers in Stockport were warned about a gang of young Muslim males who have been attempting to get into cars stopped at intersections. Several women in the area reported that they had been approached by the men while waiting for traffic lights to change.

May 13. A divorce practice that allows Muslim men instantly to terminate an Islamic marriage simply by repeating the word talaq, meaning divorce, three times to his wife, has been described as “really common” among Muslims in Britain, according to the Times. Women cannot use the method, known as “triple talaq.” Under civil law in Britain, Islamic marriages are not acknowledged, leaving women with little power to escape an unhappy or abusive marriage, or to defend their interests in court when a marriage breaks down. Women often face homelessness and a loss of financial support after divorce. Campaigners have called for an update to Marriage Act 1949 to demand the civil registration of all religious marriages. Christian, Jewish or Quaker marriages must be registered under the law, but Muslim, Hindu and Sikh unions do not. Qari Asim, an imam at the Leeds Makkah mosque, suggested that talaq should initially be uttered just once, and only spoken a second and third time after cooling-off periods of at least three months.

May 14. Mohan Singh, founder of the Sikh Awareness Society, said that Muslim grooming gangs have been allowed to prosper in Britain because the authorities are afraid they will be labelled racist if they speak out. In an interview with Katie Hopkins at LCB radio, Singh said that political correctness had allowed the gangs to succeed:

“I think it is due to political correctness, but it is also down to nobody wants to be called a racist…. Nobody really is grabbing the bull by the horns and saying ‘No, abuse is abuse.’ But they do not want to be labeled that we are after one community, we are targeting one community. We can see all the reports coming out Rotherham, the failings of the police, the failings of the local councilors. The whole system failed and that is what has been happening for the last 30 years. And it is PC. People are just too, too afraid to, you know, just too, too afraid to speak the truth.”

Looking the Wrong Way on Iran by Shoshana Bryen

How will Iraq get rid of the Iranians? Or will it? The chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Qassem Soleimani, has been seen several times in Iraq, most recently near the Syrian border, an indication that Iran has bigger plans than the liberation of Mosul.

The Sunni part of Iraq actually is an essential part of the land bridge being built from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea. There is a second and equally compelling issue for Iran to the southwest: encircling Saudi Arabia in the water.

If Iran is allowed to solidify its Shiite Crescent and its naval obstructionism, American allies across the Middle East and North Africa will pay a heavy price.

We have been looking in the wrong direction. While the West was hoping temporarily to check Iran’s nuclear aspirations, Iran was making plans to advance on the ground and in the water — and the plans are unfolding nicely. For Iran.

After the U.S. withdrew from Iraq in 2011, large swaths of Iraqi territory were easily brought under Islamic State (ISIS) control, culminating in the proclamation in 2014 of “The Caliphate” with its seat in Mosul. Having denigrated its capabilities as “the JV team,” the Obama administration was desperate to get rid of ISIS, but the Iraqi army (trained and armed at a cost of $26 billion between 2006 and 2015 with another $1.6 billion spent in 2016) was unable to handle the job, even with American air power and Kurdish fighters as allies.

The Iraqi army has since been improved, but in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, Shiite “militias” have become America’s ally in the battle for Mosul. Some militias are Iraqi Arab Shiites and some are sponsored and commanded by Persian Shiite Iran. There is no love between the two, and certainly no love between any of the Shiite militias and the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi military. But the battle has largely gone against ISIS. Militias on one side and Iraqi forces on the other are recapturing territory amid evidence of outrageous human rights abuses against Iraqi civilians by all sides. At some point soon, Iraqis (army and militias), Iranians, Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and Americans will be eyeball-to-eyeball in Mosul. This run-in raises two questions:

Could Sunni Iraqi civilians prefer ISIS to Shiite militias, whether Iraqi or Iranian? If they do, Mosul may be liberated, but ISIS may still find havens from which to conduct a grinding guerrilla war.
How will Iraq get rid of the Iranians? Or will it? Some Iraqi Shiite militias have been loosely but legally incorporated into the Iraqi military; the Iranian ones have not. The chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Qassem Soleimani, has been seen several times in Iraq, most recently near the Syrian border, an indication that Iran has bigger plans than the liberation of Mosul.