RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at

Many extremist Muslims believe that their religious desire is coming true in in the US. Religiously speaking, for extremist Muslims, ruling America is Allah’s (God’s) word. To them, a sacred promise is coming to fruition.

What does being the second-largest religion in a country mean? Voters impact local and national politics, swing domestic elections, elect more representatives from the same religious affiliation, are influential enough to determine who the next president of the United States may be, and change the laws of the land.

This sense of immunity and dismissal led to the downfall of many countries throughout time.

“Soon,” said the letter, “America Will Be Ours”.

“Ours?”

The writer, it became clear, was an extremist Muslim in the U.S. who claimed to be a reputable religious preacher. With each new word, concern grew.

He pointed out, throughout the letter, the “sinful” ways of the West: dancing, drinking, dating…

He expressed disgust that most women did not wear the hijab or participate in prayer five times a day. Then he got straight to the point: “Ours,” he explained, represented Muslims like him.

The sentiment is hardly a new one. A person hears similar proclamations from many Muslim extremists throughout the years. The real shock was not letter but the reaction of many Americans after seeing it.

Such a thing, they said, could never happen. The writer’s words were “just bluster,” nothing to be taken seriously. Most surprisingly, they stated — honestly — that Muslims who speak of such intentions do not really mean what they say, so these threats should not be cause for concern.

The history of the two nations where I grew up — Iran and Syria — taught all of us there a big lesson about living in this kind of ignorance: the reality of how quickly a nation can be consumed by the philosophies of a religious state. An authoritarian and malicious regime, as exists now in Iran — the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and brutal even to its own people — is something we cannot forget.

Our allies are finally becoming force multipliers — joining with America to use its talent and technology finally to defeat the jihadist threat. We should assist and encourage the UAE and Saudi Arabia, not abandon them.

More than 7,000 miles from Washington and far from America’s headlines, a war in Yemen is rewriting America’s strategy against Iran and terrorism.

The three-sided civil war pits two radical Islamist forces — Al-Qaeda’s largest surviving army and Iran’s biggest proxy force — against each other and six of America’s Arab allies. U.S. Special forces carry out covert raids and CIA drones rain down missiles on terror leaders.

The outcome of the Yemen war matters: U.S. forces are fighting there and a new strategy against terrorism is now being tested in the Middle East’s poorest nation.

Since Britain’s Royal Marines marched out of their Aden Protectorate in November 1967, Yemenis have killed each other over nearly every international ideology: colonialism, communism, and radical Islamism. Add in the tribal rivalries and the religious divides between competing versions of Sunni and Shia Islam — and the stage is set for perpetual war. Indeed, Yemen, in every decade since the 1960s, saw bombings, bloodshed and barbarism.

Iran has also seemingly been trying to form a “Shi’ite Crescent” across the Middle East, through Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean.

According to nearly half a million computer files released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency late last year, captured from Osama bin Laden’s compound, Iran had also offered “support to al-Qaeda in exchange for targeting the Gulf.”

In addition, Iran has been sponsoring Shia uprisings in Bahrain. The US ambassador to Bahrain during the Obama administration evidently turned a deaf ear to pleas from Bahraini officials for help; he presumably feared upsetting the president’s Iran deal, just as Obama had, by failing to act after his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons was crossed in Syria.

One of Germany’s leading economists, Hans-Werner Sinn, warned that the migrant crisis could end up costing German taxpayers more than one trillion euros: “The cost to the taxpayer could also be higher. So far, there are about 1.5 million migrants who have come to Germany since 2015. And no: They are not dentists, lawyers and nuclear scientists, but mostly underqualified immigrants, who have arrived in the promised land… where the standard of living without employment is higher than in many countries of origin with employment.”

In his first media interview as the new head of the influential GdP police union in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Michael Mertens was asked if there are any no-go zones in NRW, Germany’s most populous state. He replied: “There are areas where police do not go alone, only in large teams. Such areas are now present in almost all NRW cities.

“We now have new phenomenon in having refugees or people of Arab origin who are bringing another form of anti-Semitism back into the country. This dismays us.” — German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

April 1. Senior German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, always quick to outdo each other with good wishes for Islamic festivals, failed to greet Germans for Easter, the most important Christian festival. By contrast, Aiman ​​Mazyek, the head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, did offer Easter greetings: “I wish you all peaceful and relaxing holidays. Happy Easter to the Christians, a happy ‘Passover’ to the Jews and a few contemplative days to the non-believers. #Variety makes you strong.”

April 2. German churches were sheltering 611 illegal migrants at the end of March, up from 530 at the end of December 2017. Many churches in Germany provide refuge for refugees who face deportation or fear social and psychological hardships. German authorities tolerate church asylum, although there is no legal basis for it, according to the newsmagazine, Focus.

April 4. Sohail A., a 34-year-old rejected Pakistani asylum seeker living in Hamburg, confessed to slitting his two-year-old daughter’s throat with a kitchen knife. Prosecutors said the man murdered his daughter out of “anger and revenge” because the girl’s mother refused to allow the child to be taken to Pakistan.